Troy Lee James (April 18, 1924 – November 1, 2007) was a Democratic politician who formerly served in the

Ohio House of Representatives The Ohio House of Representatives is the lower house of the Ohio General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Ohio; the other house of the bicameral legislature being the Ohio Senate. The House of Representatives first met in ...

. A former

laborer A laborer (or labourer) is a person who works in manual labor types in the construction industry workforce. Laborers are in a working class of wage-earners in which their only possession of significant material value is their labor. Industries e ...

and union leader, James initially ran for the

in 1966, following the

Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement ...

. He won, and was seated on January 3, 1967. He went on to win again in 1968, 1970, 1972 and 1974. By 1975, James was serving as the Chairman of the Economic Development and Small Business Committee. He would later go on to serve as Chairman of the Health and Aging Committee, and would go on to win reelection twelve more times. At the end of his tenure in the House, he served as Ranking Minority Member of the Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Following the establishment of

term limits A term limit is a legal restriction that limits the number of terms an officeholder may serve in a particular elected office. When term limits are found in presidential and semi-presidential systems they act as a method of curbing the potenti ...

in 1992, James was ineligible to run again following 2000. He left the House in 2000, after 34 years in the legislature, making him the longest serving Democrat in the history of the

Ohio General Assembly The Ohio General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Ohio. It consists of the 99-member Ohio House of Representatives and the 33-member Ohio Senate. Both houses of the General Assembly meet at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus ...

. Retiring to

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, he died in 2007. In 2003 Interstate 490 in Cleveland was named the Troy Lee James Highway.

Ohio Revised Code The ''Ohio Revised Code'' contains all current statutes of the Ohio General Assembly of a permanent and general nature, consolidated into provisions, titles, chapters and sections. However, the only official publication of the enactments of the G ...

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References

Democratic Party members of the Ohio House of Representatives 1924 births 2007 deaths 20th-century American politicians African-American state legislators in Ohio 20th-century African-American politicians 21st-century African-American people {{Ohio-OHRepresentative-stub