Detroitnerd, you've outdone yourself with your screenplay and all your stuff before and after on this thread ! High five to you my friend.

I like how this thread has highlighted the political alliance or strengthening of an african-american electorate of all classes, and the dissolution of it.

This, to me is a repeated offense. I suppose that even if Young had managed to do a perfect number on a pan-african american congress in Detroit, the outcome would always be an us vs them debate. Where and when in history can you find a semblance of cohesion between an urban, suburban; black and white electorate that could move a city forward. I mean, San Francisco has become progressively less black as it has gentrified. Chicago has issues that are similar to Detroit's and knows it but does not do all that better in the crime stats.

For Coleman Young who must indeed have been an angry bitter man at times, there were few friends in power outside the pale of Detroit to save the day.
This was not a Ralph Lauren conjured-up world of the Kennedys playing touch football in Hyannis. Detroit may have been a dream place to a lot of late arrival black southerners, and a nightmare to those who were left out of the straight and narrow world of manufacturing jobs.

OK, Coleman Young was an angry guy, preaching to a narrow parish, grabbing hold of power in a mighty city, but beyond 8 mile, another bunch of dukes, barons and princes were lording over more money and suburban/country estates. Where were his friends then? Did you ever hear the tone of private conversations in Nixon's oval office? Black power then equated to the black fist of the Black Panthers, and that is about it. So I think that Detroit's demise as the core city cannot be blamed solely on a series of corrupt inbred administrations because the ghetto needs two parts to exist.