Topic: Steve Cohen

Stephen Ira Cohen (born May 24, 1949) is the U.S. Representative for Tennessee's 9th congressional district, serving since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic Party.

Tennessee's 9th district includes almost three-fourths of Memphis. Cohen is Tennessee's first Jewish congressman.

Cohen was born in Memphis, Tennessee on May 24, 1949 to pediatrician Morris D. Cohen and his wife Genevieve. He has two older brothers, Michael Corey and Martin D. Cohen. He is a fourth-generation Memphian, and is the grandson of a Jewish newsstand owner who immigrated from Lithuania. Cohen contracted polio when he was five, and the disease caused him to shift his attention from sports to politics at an early age. When Cohen was eleven, John F. Kennedy made a campaign stop in Memphis, and Cohen took a picture of Kennedy sitting on a convertible. Cohen describes Kennedy as his political hero; the picture still hangs in his office. In 1961, Cohen’s family moved to Coral Gables, Florida where his father received a fellowship in psychiatry at the University of Miami. From 1964 to 1966, the Cohen family resided in Pasadena, California where Dr. Cohen had a fellowship in child psychiatry at the University of Southern California. Cohen, who attended Polytechnic School, returned to Florida in 1966 to graduate from Coral Gables High School before returning to Memphis where his father established his private psychiatry practice.