Coleman Young's identity, life, and career were closely intertwined with issues pertaining to the African American community in Detroit and the nation. As the city's chief executive officer for five full terms, more than any other Detroit mayor, Young served the city he loved for twenty years.
Throughout his political career, the White establishment, representing suburban interests and their media mouthpieces, viewed Coleman Young's ascendency to Detroit's mayor as a social trespass upon their political turf. But the demographics of the city were favorable for Young's election.
The phenomonon known as White flight decimated the city's population and tax base leaving crippling poverty in its wake. White flight redefined the city, first with the G.I. Bill for World War II veterans who moved to the suburbs, and after 1967 when Detroit experienced one of the worst race riots in the history of the United States.
Both of these demographic shifts happened years before Young was elected mayor in 1974. Factor in the virtual collapse of the city's main employer, the automobile industry, due to the oil crisis in the Middle East. This was the situation Mayor Young faced as he entered office and soon became defined by every urban social problem Detroit was heir to. He was the man in the moment.
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Coleman Young began his boyhood in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on May 24, 1918. His father William Coleman Young was a barber who sold a Black newspaper out of his shop. For this, the local KKK began a harrassment campaign prompting him and his growing family in 1924 to become part of what history notes as the Great Migration to the North in search of jobs in the automobile factories and steel mills. Impoverished Southerners, Black and White, poured into Detroit. The men competed for unskilled jobs on the assembly lines, steel mills, and iron foundries, while the women found work in the domestic services industry.
Coleman was five years old when his family moved to Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood on Antietam Street between St. Aubin and the railroad tracks. He was the oldest of five children born to Ida Reese Young. As Coleman Young details in his autobiography Hard Stuff, he graduated from Eastern High School in 1935 during the depths of the Depression. To help support his family, he hustled to earn money doing small jobs. He recycled glass bottles, swept floors, delivered packages, and answered phones for Dr. Ossian Sweet.
Eventually, Young was hired as an autoworker for the Ford Motor Company. It was there where he joined the United Automobile Workers of America. After being fired from Fords for fighting, he went to work for the United States Postal Service before entering the service during World War II.
"My political consciousness was awakened at the neighborhood barber shop in Black Bottom where I shined shoes," Young wrote. "Local radicals educated me with dialogue that offered nothing about passivity or surrender but much about unity. As both a means and an end, unity has driven virtually every pursuit of my public life."
The two-chair, barber shop was owned and operated by Haywood Maben, "a self-educated Marxist and (political) pontificator." He and his customers would argue about trade unionism, dialectical materialism, and unity between the races which made for provocative conversation. Maben's barbershop was a left-wing caucus in the afternoon; at night, political meetings were held behind drawn curtains.
These meetings did not go unnoticed by the FBI, which recorded names of participants and labeled them Communist sympathizers and socialists. Coleman Young's name was included on that list leading to the opening of a confidential dossier on him which followed him through his adult life. Time and again, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI interfered with Young's ability to hold onto a decent job or get fair treatment in the Army Air Corp. All it took was a well-placed phone call or a letter from the FBI and Young's opportunities vanished into thin air.
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With the end of World War II, Detroit was on a collision course with history. The post-war economy began shrinking rapidly as government military contracts expired. The Arsenal of Democracy scrambled to transition back to a peacetime economy. Nowhere was this felt more than in Detroit. To compound Detroit's economic woes, the G.I. Bill and the Veterans' Administration provided low-cost, zero percent down home loans that sparked a dramatic exit from the city which became known as White flight, further devastating the city's population and tax base.
Then came a gut punch which sealed Black Detroit's fate. President Eisenhower pushed for an Interstate Highway System based on the Autobaun, which he had seen in Germany at war's end. His primary argument for such a highway was it allowed the military to deploy personnel and equipment quickly to virtually anywhere in the country on expressways. In Detroit, local politicians saw this as an opportunity to clear out the depressed Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.
The Black population regarded the construction of I-375 as little more than Negro removal. Local politicians gave no regard to the people who would be displaced or the impact it was destined to have on the city. Impoverished Black residents were forced into other underfacilitated, overpopulated, segregated areas within Detroit. In short, a powder keg of human misery was created waiting only for a spark to ignite and engulf the area. Up to this point, Detroit's African American community had little or no political influence.
Although not the first American urban area in the 1960s to erupt in civil unrest, the Detroit Riot/Rebellion began on July 23, 1967. It became the most devasting race riot of the era. President Lyndon B. Johnson sanctioned a federal investigation in 1968 into its causes and of other urban civil disorders called The Kerner Commission.
The Commission determined after an exhaustive study that the rioting in Detroit was a response to decades of "persausive discrimination and segregation." The siege mentality of the mostly White, aggressive, and combative Detroit Police Department was singled out in particular.
After the week-long rebellion, Detroit public opinion polls revealed that 75% of White respondents believed the rioting was caused by radicals guided by a foreign conspiracy to overthrow the American government and our way of life--specifically, Pinko Commies and Black Panthers.
Conservative politicans disputed that the blame fell on White institutions or White society and took no ownership of the issue. Most White people were dismissive and believed that the rioters were criminals who were "let off the hook" by bleeding-heart liberals.
Refuting that popularly held suburban belief, the Kerner Commission determined that the insurrection was a revolt of underprivileged, overcrowded, and irritable citizens. During a blistering heatwave, they reacted against a provocative police raid that provided the spark igniting the week-long rebellion.
The Commission concluded that the root cause of the violence was institutional racism. American society in general is "deeply implicated in the ghetto," the report read. "White society created it. White society maintained it. And White society condoned it."
Ironically, President Johnson, who initiated the study, was unhappy with the result because the Commission's recommendations
were all budget busters with no chance of passage in the United States Congress. Johnson was also a man from the South and knew there would be political repercussions if he threw the weight of the presidency behind the Committee's recommendations.
As cruel fate would have it, one month after the Kerner Report was published, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated while standing on the Lorraine Motel balcony by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee. America's best hope for pulling our nation out of this racial quagmire was cut down in his prime. Grief and anger broke out across the land and demonstrations occured in over one hundred American cities. The Kerner Report was back-shelved and conveniently forgotten.
In Detroit, a new wave of White flight made Detroit the Blackest city in the United States. African Americans were now in the political majority.The stage was set for a new generation of Black leaders who would struggle to lift Detroit out of its death spiral. The most visible among them--Coleman Young Jr.
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Young began his political career coming from the left-wing branch of the American labor movement. He became a respresentative for the Public Workers Union and devoted himself to full-time union organizing. By 1946, Young won a leadership role as a director within the larger Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO). His election to the position was a major victory for the Black community, and he instantly became a spokesperson for Blacks across Detroit.
Earning a reputation as a devoted and hard-working labor organizer in the 1950s, Young was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives in 1960. He helped draft a new state constitution for Michigan, which in turn led him to run for State Senator in 1964, a position he held for ten years making a name for himself as an effective legislator.
In 1970, Wayne County Sheriff Roman Gribbs became mayor of the City of Detroit running on a law and order platform. Gribbs hired former New York Police Commissioner John Nichols. Together, they created a special police unit named STRESS, an acronym for Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets, to apprehend street thugs and patrol in primarily minority-isolated neighborhoods. The group became simply known as The Big Four by the city's Black residents. The special unit soon devolved into what amounted to agents of urban terror.
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| STRESS Police Unit |
STRESS police cruisers consisted of a driver and three burly, usually White, plainclothed police detectives. The department had several such units. In less than three years, twenty-two Detroit citizens (twenty-one of them Black) were shot to death, hundreds of illegal arrests were made, and an estimated 400 warrantless police raids were conducted. Rather than protect the citizenry, The Big Four terrorized the city's Black residents.
In 1973, Roman Gribbs stepped down as mayor after a single term in office, throwing his support behind his police commissioner John Nichols, who ran on a law and order platform. Coleman Young saw this as an opportunity to leave the Michigan senate and run for Detroit mayor.
Young campaigned against the abuses of the Detroit Police Department which Black residents identified as their number one issue. He also ran on a platform of reconstructing the inner city, creating sorely needed jobs for city residents, and hiring city employees to reflect a 50/50 racial balance.
On election day there were no surprises. In this hard fought election, White precincts voted for Police Commissioner Nichols, and Black precincts voted for Coleman Young Jr., making Young Detroit's first Black mayor by earning 52% of the vote to John Nichols' 48%.
In his inaugral speech, Young urged unity between the races, White and Black, the rich and poor, and the suburbs and the city. He also spoke about restoring law and order.
Young addressed Detroit's criminal element directly, "Dope pushers, rip-off artists, and muggers, it is time for you to leave Detroit. Hit Eight Mile Road. I don't give a damn if you're Black or White, or if you wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road!"
While Mayor Coleman Young's "New Sheriff in Town" speech resonated with many city residents, The White political establishment extrapulated it as an invitation for Detroit's Black criminals to prey upon the affluent White surburbs. The opposition's fear mongering was echoed and amplified by Detroit's media outlets. And thus, Coleman Young's new administration began.
Young's first political act was to disband the police STRESS units and move toward a community policing approach with mini stations located around the city. He also made good on his promise to hire more Black policemen. The percentage of Black officers went from 10% to 50% during his administration. The net effect was the reduction of police brutality complaints against the department by over 35%, improving police relations within Detroit's neighborhoods.
The nationwide recession of the mid-1970s hit Detroiters especially hard. Unemployment was at 25% increasing costs for public relief programs and reducing city income and property taxes. In 1974, Automobile production was at its lowest level since 1950, and the Middle Eastern oil embargo drove up inflation nationwide.
As if German Volkswagen imports in the 1950s and 1960s were not enough of a nuisance, in the 1970s, Japanese imports caught Detroit's Big Three (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler) flat-footed with an large inventory of high-cost, gas-guzzling, luxury and muscle cars gathering dust in storage lots.
To vent the frustrations of laid-off auto workers, the UAW hosted fundraisers around the city where workers, or anybody else with a few bucks, could take a sledge hammer to a Toyota Corolla for a dollar-a-whack. These displays of the area's collective blue-collar angst did nothing but provide the local media with dramatic made-for-television news moments. The sledgefests also proved how well these imports were built. Most drove off under their own power after an afternoon of pounding.
The fundamental problem rested with the automobile executives who did not take the small car trend seriously and frantically rushed to produce economical cars which were inferior to Japanese imports.
As Detroit sank deeper into financial crisis, Mayor Young's second, third, and fourth elections were focused on creating jobs for city residents. Young's mantra was "Jobs built Detroit, and only jobs will rebuild it." The automobile companies decentralized and moved much of their manufacturing to the suburbs or to the South where wages were lower. That left Detroit out in the cold. The city could no longer depend on the auto business to enrich its coffers and pay its bills. Something huge and dramatic needed to happen.
Young tossed the dice and decided that casino gambling was the answer to his city's woes, especially after Windsor, Ontario, across the Detroit River approved gambling on their waterfront. For his next three election campaigns, Young made casino-style gambling the centerpiece of his political platform, much to the dismay of his most ardent supporters, the ministerial alliance of Black churches.
Young's most strident political opponents, the suburban power elite and their media machine hammered away at Young on a daily basis in the city's major newspapers and local news programs. Each time Young promoted casino gambling, the ballot measures were soundly defeated by a 2 to 1 margin in expensive and dirty campaigns.
For Young's fifth and final campaign for mayor, he did not make casino gambling part of his political platform. It took his successor Mayor Dennis Archer to win approval for casino gambling within the city limits.
With the State of Michigan running a daily and weekly lottery and Windsor's Caesar's Casino raking in a million dollars a week from Michigan residents, voters' attitudes about gambling softened. In 1996, the proposition narrowly passed. The creation of construction jobs, casino jobs, and vendor jobs did much to stablize Detroit's economy and help revitalize downtown.
Coleman Young decided not to run for a sixth term as mayor. His emphysema from a lifetime of smoking robbed him of his strength and energy. Twenty years serving the city he loved was enough. He fought long and hard to improve Detroit and left the city in better shape than when he entered office.
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| The Renaissance Center |
During his tenure, the Renaissance Center was completed in 1977 creating jobs and increasing the city's tax base. The Hart Plaza, thirteen acres of people-friendly sidewalks and promenades along the bank of the Detroit River, humanized what was once a blighted area. It included an amphitheater hosting all manner of ethnic and music festivals bringing city and suburban audiences together.
Among many other large construction projects Young supported the People Mover, a light rail loop in the downtown area; Detroit Receiving Hospital; Riverfront Condominiums; and the FOX Theater restoration, looking out at what would become Comerica Park and Ford Field bringing the Tigers and the Lions downtown.
From the beginning of his political career, Coleman Young was accused by his critics of being corrupt. In a Freedom of Information Act investigation, Young discovered he had been under FBI surveillance since 1940 because of his reputed association with suspected Communists and his labor union activities. Surveillance continued through the 1980s.
After six federal investigations of his administration, Young was never indicted or charged with a crime. Claims that he was corrupt were malicious myths designed to tarnish the mayor's brass.
Young emerged from a left-leaning element but moderated his political view once in power. He allied himself closely with community leaders, business entrepreneurs, and bankers proving that rather than a socialist, Young was a devout capitalist committed to rebuilding Detroit and improving the lives of its residents. His vision for Detroit laid the foundation for much of the city's resurgence we see today.
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| Coleman Young Surveying His Legacy |
At the age of seventy-nine, Coleman Alexander Young succumbed to lung disease on November 29, 1997. The mayor's body laid in state for two days under the Rotunda in the Hall of Ancestors at the Museum of African American History in Detroit's cultural district.
Funeral services were conducted on Friday, December 5th by Reverend Charles Butler at the New Calvary Baptist Church. Aretha Franklin sang at the ceremony with the combined chorus of Greater Grace Temple and the New Calvary Baptist Church. Coleman Young was buried in a private ceremony in Elmwood Cemetery where many of Detroit's distinguished citizens are interred.
