Quote Originally Posted by Hermod View Post
Greatly diluted by the effects of "at-large voting" for the city council members. A concentrated voting bloc is only as strong as its numbers in those cases. How long did it take for Detroit to have a black councilman?
There's little doubt about the political implications for blacks of at-large voting for council, instituted in 1918, right after the first batch of Southern blacks moved north. But the kind of political power that comes from a neighborhood where the poorest hooker or dice-thrower knew the most respected surgeon, undertaker or lawyer was something that deconcentration definitely did away with. And when all blacks lived together [[with the exception of a few black "villages" on the west and north sides), it definitely meant that upper class African-Americans had a vested interest in improving their lot as a group. [[Not so much when the leaders of Detroit's black community get to live ensconced in Palmer Park...)