Coleman Young’s first mayoral campaign began 50 years ago

Today's Free Press contains a great historical and beautifully written retelling of Coleman Young's election campaign by veteran reporter emeritus Bill McGraw as seen in the following snippets. It seem like yesterday.

The two candidates were streetwise Detroiters in their mid-50s who served in World War II. They both carried .38-caliber revolvers. Both grew up in modest circumstances; Young in Black Bottom, the son of a tailor and night watchman, and Nichols in southwest Detroit, the son of a Ford Motor worker. The mustachioed Young dressed fashionably and addressed people with the then-hip term “baby.” Nichols wore his hair in a military-style brush cut; his clothes were as conservative as his politics.

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It was certainly a time of upheaval and of a city careening downward:

It would be a hard-fought contest in a contentious era. The campaign took place amid the city’s continuing attempts to recover from the 1967 rebellion, and the recovery was lagging.

Crime, arson, abandonment and paranoia were on the rise. The city’s 672 homicides in 1973 would be a record. [[It was surpassed in 1974.) In June, the papers reported that since the start of the year 12 Detroiters over 60 had been murdered in their homes by invading robbers. Twelve cops were under indictment for dealing heroin. A teachers’ strike kept 277,000 students out of school for six weeks. Wildcat walkouts led by radical activists crippled auto plants.

Detroit had more than twice as many residents in 1973 as today, and the population was virtually split 50-50 between Black and white. But the city was hyper-segregated, with Black residents unwelcome in many sections of town, especially where whites lived in monochromatic neighborhoods close to the borders. Suburban flight continued: Some 7,000 to 9,000 Detroit households were changing from white to Black each year, according to a Wayne State University study.

By 1973 the City of Detroit had already lost around 400,000 from its 1950 census count.

The rest of the result from Detroit's 1973 Mayoral Election. Ninety percent of Black Detroiters chose Coleman Young because they are ready for a first black mayor and ten percent of White Detroiters voted for Young, too. That seal the deal. Now he can tell all the crook, drug dealers and rapists to to hit 8 Mile Rd.

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Originally Posted by Danny

...tell all the crook, drug dealers and rapists to hit 8 Mile Rd.

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That is so precious!

Wikipedia's 1973 Detroit mayoral election article.

• Coleman Young

Young was allowed to be Mayor of a city the was hemorrhaging severely. Factories were closing. White flight was increasing taking along with them a number of Black professionals white collar baby boomers. The bus system was getting worse, Hudson's had started developing an exit plan to close it flagship store

This was the year my dad, the DPD Inspector, retired and moved us to a small town at the base of the thumb...
I was miserable

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Originally Posted by jcole

This was the year my dad, the DPD Inspector, retired and moved us to a small town at the base of the thumb...
I was miserable

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Your dad was smart. Detroit's decline began with Young.

Young addressed important, unaddressed issues. I don't blame him for his policies. But they were divisive and hurt blacks more than they have helped.

Young could have led Detroit away from bigotry, but he fed the beast. Lost opportunity.

I hope we can realize now that only by discarding the race hustlers can we succeed together.

Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets [[STRESS) was a unit that operated from 1971 until 1974. They were the “Boogeyman” he was using as the scapegoat for all Detroit’s problems. It worked and he got elected.

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Young's greatest accomplishment was transforming the police department from a force full of bigoted cops to an integrated force that was represented by officers from all communities in Detroit. I know some white officers were angry with him for promoting more African Americans to leadership positions that they felt they were qualified for, but Young's actions made the police force more diverse. That's why today when it comes to "Rodney King" or "George Floyd" incidents, they don't occur in Detroit.

If John Nichols would have won that first election, you have to wonder how different the city would have been...

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Originally Posted by royce

Young's greatest accomplishment was transforming the police department from a force full of bigoted cops to an integrated force that was represented by officers from all communities in Detroit. I know some white officers were angry with him for promoting more African Americans to leadership positions that they felt they were qualified for, but Young's actions made the police force more diverse. That's why today when it comes to "Rodney King" or "George Floyd" incidents, they don't occur in Detroit.

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HELLO? Ever hear of Malice Green?

"Oh, yeah," a passerby says when asked if he knew it was the Malice Green memorial. "There used to be a picture of a guy painted on there," he adds, but seems otherwise unconcerned. MLive-July 2013

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Originally Posted by Wheels

HELLO? Ever hear of Malice Green?

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Malice Green was killed by two white cops known as "Starsky and Hutch" in that neighborhood.

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Originally Posted by softailrider

If John Nichols would have won that first election, you have to wonder how different the city would have been...

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You never know with counterfactuals, but probably much the same. I doubt any of the underlying tensions would have been resolved under Nichols, and eventually you would have gotten Young, or someone similar.

The great tragedy, in my mind, anyway of that election, is that Mel Ravitz could have made the runoff, and then almost certainly won the election, if the Free Press hadn't made the incomprehensible decision to back Mogk. That might actually have resulted in a better path, although obviously it wouldn't have changed the underlying issues that the city still would have had to deal with.

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Originally Posted by Wesley Mouch

Your dad was smart. Detroit's decline began with Young.

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There is no sense in which Detroit's decline began with Young. And I say that as someone who did not like Young, and who is perfectly willing to agree that he wasn't at all helpful. But Detroit's decline began a couple decades earlier, at least.

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Originally Posted by mwilbert

...But Detroit's decline began a couple decades earlier, at least.

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Depends how you define decline.

My father was on the force for 37 years, went through 3 "riots" and the previous declining years and loved the city with all his heart. Young was the last straw; claimed he had arrested him when he was a young man and wasn't going to work for someone he had put in jail. Dad was coming up on retirement and decided it was time.

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Originally Posted by mwilbert

There is no sense in which Detroit's decline began with Young. And I say that as someone who did not like Young, and who is perfectly willing to agree that he wasn't at all helpful. But Detroit's decline began a couple decades earlier, at least.

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Originally Posted by jcole

My father was on the force for 37 years, went through 3 "riots"

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Check this out, the Detroit Historical Society encyclopedia of Detroit refers to the 1967 riots as “The Uprising of 1967 is also known as the Detroit Rebellion of 1967”. I have never heard or seen it referred to in that way. It’s the line of text at the very bottom edge of the image.

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A friend of mine is the Curator Emeritus of the Detroit Historical Society and edited the book "Detroit 1967" and the first time I heard of the Uprising of 1967/Detroit Rebellion of 1967 was in that book and at a talk I went to regarding it. Book came out in 2017. It appears that academics and others have taken to referring to the event that way in recent years; that's why I put "riots" in quotes.

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Originally Posted by CassTechGrad

Check this out, the Detroit Historical Society encyclopedia of Detroit refers to the 1967 riots as “The Uprising of 1967 is also known as the Detroit Rebellion of 1967”. I have never heard or seen it referred to in that way. It’s the line of text at the very bottom edge of the image.

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In the late 1980s After Young took care of what's left of Detroit business. He decided to take a Hawaiian vacation saying "Aloha Motherf---!"

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Originally Posted by softailrider

If John Nichols would have won that first election, you have to wonder how different the city would have been...

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Even more racially polarized. Nichols was a "Good Ole Boy". STRESS definitely wouldn't have been eliminated, and the status quo would have continued... Young shook things up. There was a Free Press article that came out during the 08-09 recession that stated Young actually ran the city better fiscally than any Mayor prior to him taking office. He may have had his warts [[they all do) but Young did some positive things for Detroit that get swept under the rug.

I voted for Coleman Young in the 1973 mayoral election. I was living in New Center at the time on Delaware and Second.
I did not vote for Young in his following campaigns.
I saw John Nichols as out of step with Detroit where its white population had been leaving the city since the 1950s.
Coleman Young deserves much of the criticism he has received, but he is not the primary reason the city slid during his twenty years as mayor.
Had there been more of a small business class in Detroit, that might have made the difference in the city remaining viable during its extreme transition in the second half of the century.
I finally left Detroit in 2003 after a half century of residing and working in city of. I moved to the Pacific coast, but still vacation in downtown Detroit hotels when visiting every year. The El Moore was a pleasant discovery.