Thomas Lunsford Stokes, Jr. (November 1, 1898 – May 14, 1958) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist.
His father was a co-founder of Davison-Paxon-Stokes, a major department store chain in the southeastern United States.
He greeted the New Deal with enthusiasm and his coverage of the early days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration brought him to the attention of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, which hired him as its Washington correspondent in 1933.
He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939 for investigating how Kentucky politicians had corrupted the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to advance their own careers.
[8] A reviewer described him: "He is irreverent but not flip, ironic but not bitter, a hater of pretense and arrogance but not of people.
[10] In 1947, he won the Raymond Clapper Memorial Award for general excellence in Washington reporting and crusading.
The Thomas L. Stokes Award is given annually for reporting on the development, use, and conservation of energy and other natural resources.