Arnold Pinkney was a staunch Democrat and savvy political strategist whose fingerprints are attached to the vast success that many political leaders in Cleveland have enjoyed for decades.
Earning the trust that he could and would deliver political victories, countless politicians in Cleveland, and throughout the state, sought his political advice and services on many occasions.
Pinkney died on Jan. 13 in his beloved Cleveland at the age of 83.
Pinkney’s political career began in the late 1960s when he became an advisor to Cleveland’s Mayor Carl Stokes, who was the first Black mayor in a major American city when he was elected in 1967. He also managed Stokes’ successful mayoral re-election campaign several years later.
When Louis Stokes, the brother of Carl Stokes, made history as Ohio’s first Black member of Congress in 1968, Pinkney was lauded for rendering creative political strategies during the winning campaign.
In 1983, he was credited with crafting strategies that were instrumental in delivering the victory for governorship to Richard Celeste.
When Jesse Jackson ran for president 1984, he asked Pinkney to manage his historic Democratic national campaign.
“With his passing, a huge part of history goes with him,” Jackson told media outlets after learning of Pinkney’s death. “He was the key political powerbroker who was instrumental in the historic elections of Carl Stokes and Louis Stokes. He was a national treasure.”
While Pinkney achieved success for others on most political fronts, he personally tasted defeat on two occasions when he unsuccessfully ran for mayor in the 1970s.
But the defeats did not stop local, regional and national politicians, elected officials and civil rights leaders from seeking his wisdom and advice on numerous issues.
“He was probably the greatest political campaign organizer in the history of American politics,” said Dr. William F. Pickard, chairman and CEO of Michigan-based Global Automotive Alliance, the No. 8 listed company on Black Enterprise magazine’s Top 100 Black-owned companies in America.
“He was an outstanding and gifted strategist, a great leader and had this keen ability to see leadership qualities in people and, in many cases, before they saw the qualities themselves.”
Pickard met Arnold Pinkney more than 40 years ago. Pickard, at the time, was 25 and had moved to Cleveland from Michigan to begin his first professional job at the Cleveland Urban League where Pinkney was a board member.
“He saw that I had leadership qualities and the potential to organize, so he asked me to lead a group of young adults called Young Folks for Stokes, which supplied the energy for the political campaign that elected Carl Stokes Cleveland’s first Black mayor,” Pickard recalled.
“When I was 26 years old, Arnold Pinkney sent me to take the position of executive secretary of the Cleveland Branch of the NAACP, which at the time was the nation’s second largest branch. He saw great things in me before I realized that I had them.”
Pickard last saw Pinkney, a Youngtown, Ohio, native, on Dec. 22, 2013 in Cleveland. “He was in the hospital but was talking about the good old days,” Pickard said.
“He was upbeat. I was glad that I got a chance to see and spend some time with him because he was my mentor, he was my friend,” he said.
Pickard noted that Pinkney will be greatly missed and many agree.
“Arnold Pinkney was a friend to Real Times Media and Who’s Who Publishing,” said Hiram E. Jackson, CEO of Real Times Media, publisher of the Michigan Chronicle, the Chicago Defender, the New Pittsburg Courier and the Atlanta Daily World, and Who’s Who Publishing, the creator of publications that highlight African-American achievement in 25 U.S. markets.
“He was a great political strategist and civil rights activist who didn’t wait for things to happen; he made things happen,” said Jackson.
“The Cleveland community has lost a remarkable public servant who cared deeply about the future of our children and the well-being of all people,” said U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus.
“Mr. Pinkney has been a friend and an astute political mentor. My thoughts and prayers go out to his wife, Betty, his daughter, Traci, and all other members of his family.”
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