Solid bungalow style houses line the serene tree-lined streets south of 8 Mile in Detroit and do little to belie the racial contrast of their owners to those of similar houses just on the other side of 8 Mile. 

When Detroit's first Afro American mayor made his inaugural speech in the high crime year of 1974 he announced, "To all those pushers, to all rip-off artists, to all muggers: It's time to leave Detroit; hit Eight Mile Road! And I don't give a damn if they are black or white, or if they wear Superfly suits or blue windows with silver badges. Hit the road!"

What was meant to be an anti-criminal declaration somehow became widely misinterpreted as a message to Euro Americans, already in full panic flight, that he was driving Detroit criminal elements into their new neighborhoods. In later years Young confided, "I thought that was innocent enough; I was the new marshal telling the bad guys to get out of Dodge."

  8 MILE ROAD 

Today Detroit has a population that is 85% Afro American while many of the suburbs north of 8 Mile are almost entirely Euro American, particularly along the borders of Hazel Park, Warren, and East Pointe.  The latter community even went so as to change its name from East Detroit, to underline its separation from the mother city.