Local Resident wins Pulitzer Prize

Heather Thompson won a Pulitzer Prize this week for her excellent book, Blood in the Water, about the violence at Attica prison. Her previous book, Whose Detroit?, published in 2001 by Cornell Press, is also an excellent one. No one has done a better job of analyzing and describing the way Detroit was riven by political, racial and labor conflict during the 1960s and 1970s.

She has also received attention for her very powerful recent essay arguing that a major reason for Detroit’s decline was the war on crime and drugs. She contends those federal policies led to the arrest and imprisonment of a substantial fraction of Detroit young adults, thereby damning their opportunities for educational attainment and occupational achievement.

Heather Thompson now teaches at an Ann Arbor school that was formerly located on Larned near Campus Martius.