What killed Detroit?

[EMG]

I personally saw Coleman execute the city for his own personal gain.

Did you forget about his custom built armored limosine? His personal police force?

Actually, I did forget about those, and actually I think anyone in his position should be entitled to that sort of protection. But I sure remember the corruption in the police department and the scandals surrounding his police chiefs.

[urbanophile]

Regarding Coleman Young, I do not remember him, but you might find this comment that was left on my blog from a Detroit native and currently a city planner in the Chicago area interesting. NB: He is African American:

I know Detroit very well, having grown up there. I visit 1-2 times a year. I've only been to Cleveland 2 or 3 times, but it has always struck me as being very similar to Detroit in its built environment and its local culture. I think that the only real difference between Detroit and Cleveland was the diversity of the manufacturing sector -- Detroit was/is very auto-dominant, while Cleveland's manufacturing base was a little broader. Still, both suffered the same decline.

To me, there are three overarching factors that led to the decline of both cities. The first is poor race relations. Detroit and Cleveland both had dynamic/charismatic/controversial black mayors who entered City Hall at the same time the wheels were coming off the industrial sector [[the late '60s and early '70s). Coleman Young and Carl Stokes [[like many first-generation African-American politicians) ran on an "it's our turn" platform that was especially alienating to the white-ethnic middle class, largely because African-Americans had never really been a part of the power or establishment structure prior to their elections. And neither mayor was willing or able to be inclusive in their governance once in office; in fact, I don't believe either was effective in governing [[and I say this as an African-American). I believe that Young and Stokes were the impetus that gave the white-ethnic middle class the reason to not only move from the city, but to eradicate it from their consciousness. Yes -- eradicate it from their consciousness. Those who fled for the burbs in both cities psychologically and emotionally abandoned them. Does any city have worse city-suburban relations than these two? [[As an aside, I think the one thing that kept Chicago from falling like Detroit and Cleveland was the leadership of Richard J. Daley and the political Machine. Chicago held onto its white-ethnic middle class far longer than either Detroit or Cleveland, because that group had confidence in their leadership. I think that enabled Chicago to make its transition to globalization much easier.)

The second factor is education. I would argue that both Cleveland and Detroit established public school systems in the late 1940s that were designed to give its graduates the rudimentary skills needed to survive in the industrial world. And they're still doing that today. And I don't limit this to just the city public school systems -- many suburban school systems follow the same pattern. The result? An ever-growing base of residents without true analytical or problem-solving skills, or even the desire to examine and question, "why?" This becomes compounded when in-migration comes to a stand-still.

The third factor is culture -- which may actually supercede and impact the first two. There is little to no entrepreneurship in either city. There is little leadership by the industrial/corporate titans in either city. There are so many people still waiting for the return of good-paying, low-skilled manufacturing jobs in both cities. Why? There are so many people chasing the same empty dreams that other cities are pursuing? Why?
------------------------
Second post from this person in the same thread:

I think some people misunderstand my points on how race is an issue in Cleveland and Detroit. Let me see if I can clarify.

First, I said race was an issue, not the issue. Clearly other cities have had horrid race relations problems [[Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee come to mind), but few cities had the up-front challenge to the political and cultural establishment by African-Americans that Detroit and Cleveland did in the late '60s and early '70s. In both cities, new administrations upset the applecart and completely disrupted the status quo.

This I believe led to accelerated suburban flight, and a psychological abandonment of the city by those moving out. Why is this psychological abandonment important? Because it leads to the bad image problems both cities have. All of a sudden, Detroit is not the "Arsenal of Democracy" anymore, it is the home of devastating riots and "murder capital of the world". Cleveland has a river that catches fire and a government that goes belly-up. What suburbanite wants to be associated with that? The new suburbanites mentally vacated Detroit and Cleveland even moreso than physically. I read recently that over the last 15 years or so, 1 out of 7 burial plots in Detroit cemeteries have been disinterred and relocated to places closer to the suburban or out-of-state locales where people are now. Can there be a clearer picture of psychological abandonment? You team that social challenge with the industrial decline of the time, the poor quality education, and a culture that doesn't nourish entrepreneurial energy, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Lastly, here's my provocative statement. If Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee had gotten the same kind of charismatic/controversial African-American mayor in the late '60s or early '70s, they would each have precisely the same problems that Detroit and Cleveland have today.

[Detroit500]

He is certainly right about colleges. Wayne is, okay... but pales in comparison. If we could at least get Wayne in the top 75 university US News & World Reports, it could help the city in a major way.

[EastsideAl]

Nonetheless, the election of John Nichols and the maintenance of a strong police force minus the internal corruption that was the hallmark of the Young administration could have slowed down the decline considerably.

A more restrained and better trained police force, meaning a lack of police thuggery towards the city's black citizens, and the outright murder of dozens of them, might have helped as well. But it was the long history of police nastiness aimed at blacks that created so much of the tension.

[jtf1972]

The author of those blogs fails to consider the alternative to Coleman Young and the climate of the time. [[I am not as familiar with the history of Cleveland.) I have actually known people in the Detroit suburbs who blame Young for the riot, not taking into account that he first took office nearly 7 years later. I do not intend to slander Nichols, but if he had won in '73 he would likely have continued STRESS. That alone was a program that practically invited another riot. The overwhelmingly white management of city departments led to a tension that caused the head of the Dept. of Public works to blow up at the Mayor's budget meeting even before Young took office. The white flight mad been increasing for years. Even the Lions & Pistons had made their plans to run far away.

Could Young have done more? Sure. Could anyone else have? I don't know. The "What if?" game that can really be played is "What if Richard Austin had been elected in '69?" Gribbs did well in many regards [[other than losing the Lions & Pistons!) But he was pressured into running against Austin and didn't even want to run for a second term. I've wondered what Detroit would have been like had Austin been Mayor...

[ziggyselbin]

That is an interesting blog. However Mayor Young did have many whites in his administration.In fact he deliberately made a point to be inclusive in his administration.

I don't mean to say he was the best Mayor ever; only that he gets a bad rap and is often conveniently blamed for much of Detroit's problems.

Any reasonable person would probably agree that crime became a huge problem beginning in the young tenure. However how many of you are familiar with the fact that young negotiated a tough contract with the police union?. And that the admin lost in arbitration forcing massive layoffs.Prior to that there had been a noticable reduction in crime and a downtown upturn.

I have heard that citizens that called on mayor young often got prompt response to their concerns. When is the last time anyone knows of that.....in any city?

As I said I don't claim young to be the greatest mayor ever but things are complicated and it seems way too easy to blame him.

[mwilbert]

One thing I will never forget [[or forgive) Young for is that he was the first Detroit mayor to plaster his name on everything. Very soon after he was elected, all the buses had "Coleman A. Young, Mayor" stuck over the doors, and they weren't covering up the "Roman G. Gribbs, Mayor" stickers. Aside from costing money, it was pointless egomania, which actually is kind of representative of his administration.

[stasu1213]

I still say the automobile companies had a hand in destroying detroit. Bailey had mentioned that everything is so spreaded out that you couldn't walk to them. That is because you have to get into you CAR and drive to them. That is the way the Big Three operates. Especially in the Motor City. This is a car town. I hate to admit it. That is why Detroit did not come to the table recently for mass transit throughout the region. Dave Bing is a puppet for the remaining Big 2.. We had a thriving downtown and a retail business district in almost every neighborhood. I decent market every 5 blks. You could walk to the things. In the past 30 yrs or so everything had moved outward. Look at it. The suburbs has or had a thriving business district that it's residents could walk to. Detroit doesn't. That is why visitors get put off having to find a way to go out to a good retail district. Usually they would have to rent a CAR to drive outward.

[buildingsofdetroit]

Note he says, "Preservation is as vital to urban health as renovation. Indeed, they are inseparable. The preservation of the old incubates the new."


Too bad nobody in power here seems to agree; it's yet another thing distinguishing us from other Rust Belt cities like Buffalo and Cleveland.

[buildingsofdetroit]

Detroit has a theatre district?

You're kidding, right? Well, Detroit HAD a theatre district. Most of it has been leveled. In fact, Detroit has had a couple. The area around the National Theatre was its first before it "sprawled" north to Grand Circus Park.

[Det_ard]

He is certainly right about colleges. Wayne is, okay... but pales in comparison. If we could at least get Wayne in the top 75 university US News & World Reports, it could help the city in a major way.

Turn Wayne, or some parts of it into UM-Detroit. Have an honors program to attract the big brains. Let students from UM-AA do a year in Detroit. Cross-pollinate.

[Retroit]

Q: What killed Detroit?

A: The decline in manufacturing due to the export of factories from Detroit and the Free Trade importation of foreign products.

Everything that Frum mentioned is merely a side effect of this.

[stasu1213]

Clinton's NAFTA plan had destroyed Detroit. City leaders should had concentrated on bringing other industries and companies to Detroit when signs of the decline of auto industry was showing in the 60's

[Retroit]

It started long before Clinton [[and continued after him), and the leaders of Detroit couldn't have been any more successful than the leaders of any other city. I don't disagree with you, statsu1213, but I just think it is a much greater problem. Our federal government has allowed this to happen, under the auspices of the American Consumer.

[firstandten]

The author of those blogs fails to consider the alternative to Coleman Young and the climate of the time. [[I am not as familiar with the history of Cleveland.) I have actually known people in the Detroit suburbs who blame Young for the riot, not taking into account that he first took office nearly 7 years later. I do not intend to slander Nichols, but if he had won in '73 he would likely have continued STRESS. That alone was a program that practically invited another riot. The overwhelmingly white management of city departments led to a tension that caused the head of the Dept. of Public works to blow up at the Mayor's budget meeting even before Young took office. The white flight mad been increasing for years. Even the Lions & Pistons had made their plans to run far away.

Could Young have done more? Sure. Could anyone else have? I don't know. The "What if?" game that can really be played is "What if Richard Austin had been elected in '69?" Gribbs did well in many regards [[other than losing the Lions & Pistons!) But he was pressured into running against Austin and didn't even want to run for a second term. I've wondered what Detroit would have been like had Austin been Mayor...

I've heard whites play that "what if" game with Austin. In Austin they would have gotten a moderate black man that whites would have been happy with. The city was rapidly turning majority black so I doubt if Austin would have beaten Young to get a second term . I maintain that the economic forces affecting the city were more than any one mayor could contain. Politically, Young played to his base like the mayors of the border suburbs played to theirs.


"I do not intend to slander Nichols, but if he had won in '73 he would likely have continued STRESS. That alone was a program that practically invited another riot. The overwhelmingly white management of city departments led to a tension that caused the head of the Dept. of Public works to blow up at the Mayor's budget meeting even before Young took office. The white flight mad been increasing for years. Even the Lions & Pistons had made their plans to run far away."

quote Jtf

You're right those forces were already in motion, blacks were unhappy with attitudes that people like John Nichols had and the segregation going on within the city limits. For those whites that hated Coleman Young they created the conditions that allowed the man to come in and spend 20 years in office.

[gnome]

Firstandten, you raise an interesting point, that the folks that kept Coleman in office were the ones that hated him the most. Or, the haters galvinized Coleman supporters thereby turning Young into the icon he is today.

I can see your point. In Zev Chafets' 1990 book Devil's Night and Other True Tales of Detroit, the author wrote at length about the cult of personality surrounding Young and comparing him to a third-world dictator. In politics 101 we learned that some leaders stay in power through a ballance of consensus and conflict. To generate consensus a leader will invent a crisis; that crisis can be in the form of a threat from either the inside or outside. Coleman was a master at inventing conflict where none existed, thereby galvinizing his poticial base through a code-speak he largely invented.

A poor attempt at building consensus through conflict was Kwame's N-word speexh at the State of the City. Whereas Coleman was artful, Kwame was awful in dipping down into the collective well of cultural violations. People didn't believe that he'd been verbally assaulted that way, because everyone knew no one could have fought through his phallanx of EPU bodies to hurl an N-bomb. His almost shaking rage served to pursuade a few of his most ardent kool-aid sippers, but eventually most of them would turn silent as the facts began to trickle out one texted letter at a time.

Coleman used Bubba Helms masterfully. With a little help for an AP photog, Coleman was able to turn Bubba into not just a drunken lout but rather the commanding general of those armed suburbanites who were massing on the Detroit's borders.

It would have been interesting if Bill Bonds had tried to kiss Coleman rather than challenge him to a fight.

[ziggyselbin]

At the risk of throwing myself to the wolves s.t.r.e.s.s. gets a bad rap. And again I would ask how many actually remember or have jusr heard or read accts of it?

I was quite young but not so young that I don't recall. Stress was I believe successful in curtailing armed robberies. The persons shot by the dpd were in the process of robbing police decoys. The problem now is how can we get an accurate account of what happened? My account is what I remember but it is no more valid then another.

The history of racism and violence toward blacks in Detroit also must be taken into account. So it is understandable that coleman young would be skeptical of stress and the intentions of those implementing it.

But when some homeowner in Detroit shoots an intruder the sentiments of this forum for example often side with that homeowner. So why is stress such a bogeyman?

[gnome]

There's a book out there written by former Police Chief Johannes Spreen, titled Who Killed Detroit. He came on board just after the '67 riots. A terrible read, in that it sounds like he sat down with a Radio Shack cassette player and recorded his memories, but still interesting in its detail and backstory.

Just a stories about Nick Hood jr and Shelia Murphy-Cockrel are worth the price of the book.

Spreen invented STRESS and orginally concieved it as a community policing thing. A old fashioned Beat-Cop approach with a see-and-be-seen premise.

I've been told that the STRESS scooped up enough good guys on their way to church as they did punks looking for trouble. Essentially it was viewed as an occupying force. However, I didn't live here at the time, so my opinion should be discounted.

[stasu1213]

When I had heard Kwame use the "N' word the first thing I had thought was who had called him that. Was it whites or other blacks being that blacks called each other that at times. Kwame wasn't clear of whom had called him that under what content

[stasu1213]

Who was STRESS invented for. The protection of whites living in detroit from black muggers? Was it protecting citizens no matter what creed or color the citizens are. In some cases STRESS was an excellent idea if undercover cop discrimated the bad suspicious looking characters from the good citizens mind their businesses. We need a form of STRESS in this city presently. That will cut down on some of the crime for the potential criminal will not be able to distinguish a potential victim from an undercover.

[usa1]

Coleman Young is what wnet wrong with Detroit and the Democrats that followed. Their gang of thieves had no oversight and took what they wanted. He allowed the black people to drive out the whites and told them to stay the other side of eight mile road! His followers, JoAnn Watson is still practicing what he preached and is another the keep Detroit divided. The city workers under Coleman Young treated whites badly and they got away with it - No all, but most Detroiters seem to feel the city is "theirs" and stay out. Well now you see what the Dems and Coleman Young did to a once beautiful city. It is shameful. Even if you don't have money, you can keep your property clean and look at what they do now, every day to Belle Isle. It is a trash yard. Detroiter's have no sense of ownership and how to take care of things they are like animals!

[firstandten]

Who was STRESS invented for. The protection of whites living in detroit from black muggers? Was it protecting citizens no matter what creed or color the citizens are. In some cases STRESS was an excellent idea if undercover cop discrimated the bad suspicious looking characters from the good citizens mind their businesses. We need a form of STRESS in this city presently. That will cut down on some of the crime for the potential criminal will not be able to distinguish a potential victim from an undercover.

STRESS took undercover policing to a new level. Johannes Spreen who I thought was a good man who had an bad idea. STRESS was judge, jury and executioner out in the streets. It was primarily in the black areas of the city. You don't create the conditions for people to commit a crime and then once that crime is committed shoot them down in the streets which essentially what STRESS was. Any politican pushing any form of policing that even sounds a little like STRESS can kiss their political career in Detroit bye-bye.

[Downtown diva]

To everyone who continues to blame Coleman A. Young...

It is easier to point the finger at a man who spent 20 years attempting to keep the city afloat than to examine the root of the problems and those who are to blame. Mayor Young is a much more convenient target than our parents and grandparents who abandoned the city they claimed to love.

is this a joke?

Everyone knows that Coleman didnt kill Detroit.

According to most of you, it was the

Unsustainable Suburbs
Mike Illitch
George Jackson
and Andy from the other website

They are the ones!

[firstandten]

At the risk of throwing myself to the wolves s.t.r.e.s.s. gets a bad rap. And again I would ask how many actually remember or have jusr heard or read accts of it?

I was quite young but not so young that I don't recall. Stress was I believe successful in curtailing armed robberies. The persons shot by the dpd were in the process of robbing police decoys. The problem now is how can we get an accurate account of what happened? My account is what I remember but it is no more valid then another.

The history of racism and violence toward blacks in Detroit also must be taken into account. So it is understandable that coleman young would be skeptical of stress and the intentions of those implementing it.

But when some homeowner in Detroit shoots an intruder the sentiments of this forum for example often side with that homeowner. So why is stress such a bogeyman?

Its different watching a policewoman acting as a woman of the night on 8 mile
and somebody dressed as a drunken bum laying out in a dark alley at night. Two different levels of undercover policing.

[stasu1213]

Coleman Young had actually said that the pimps, dopepushers and others who are bad for detroit hit 8 mile road. He had never said that whites hit 8 mile road. The people in my community are disillused