| Coleman A. Young | |
|---|---|
| Coleman A. Young, Detroit, 1981 | |
| Mayor of Detroit | |
| In office January 1974 – December 1993 |
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| Preceded by | Roman Gribbs |
| Succeeded by | Dennis Archer |
| Personal details | |
| Born | May 24, 1918 Tuscaloosa, Alabama |
| Died | November 29, 1997 (aged 79) Detroit, Michigan |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Religion | Episcopalian |
Coleman Alexander Young (May 24, 1918 – November 29, 1997) served as mayor of Detroit in the U.S. state of Michigan from 1974 to 1993. Young became the first African-American mayor of Detroit in the same week that Maynard Jackson became the first African-American mayor of Atlanta. His policies led the city into spectacular decline and by 2011 a quarter of the city was derelict, and nearly all the white inhabitants had left.
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Young was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Coleman Young, a dry cleaner, and Ida Reese Jones. His family moved to Detroit in 1923, where he graduated from Eastern High School in 1935. He worked for Ford Motor Company, which soon blacklisted him for involvement in labor and civil rights activism. He later worked for the United States Postal Service, where with his brother George started the Postal Workers union. George later went on to become Postmaster for this same facility, which handles over ten million pieces of mail each year. During the second World War, Young served in the 477th Medium-Bomber Group (Tuskegee Airmen) of the United States Army Air Forces as a bombardier and navigator. As a lieutenant in the 477th, he played a role in the Freeman Field Mutiny in which 162 African-American officers were arrested for resisting segregation at a base near Seymour, Indiana in 1945.
Young's involvement in progressive and radical organizations including the Communist Party, the Progressive Party, the AFL-CIO, and the National Negro Labor Council made him powerful enemies, including the FBI and HUAC, where he refused to testify. He protested segregation in the Army and racial discrimination in the UAW. In 1948 Young supported Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace, which he later viewed as a major mistake.[1]
In 1960, he was elected as a delegate to help draft a new state constitution for Michigan. In 1964 he won election to the Michigan State Senate, where his most significant legislation was a law requiring arbitration in disputes between public-sector unions and municipalities.
Young's 1973 Mayoral campaign addressed the role of the violence inflicted upon a predominantly black city by a disproportionately white police department. Young pledged the elimination of one particularly troubled police unit, STRESS (Stop the Robberies and Enjoy Safe Streets.) This one police unit had been connected to the death of eight black people in its first four months of operation and 18 people in its first 14 months. The unit's operations were suspended in 1972 by order of the mayor. In November 1973, Young narrowly defeated former Police Commissioner John F. Nichols (whom the previous mayor had to dismiss as Police Commissioner when Nichols refused to resign while campaigning for mayor. Nichols would later be elected as Oakland County Sheriff) to become Detroit's first black mayor. Young promptly disbanded the STRESS unit, integrated the police department and increased patrols in high crime neighborhoods utilizing a community policing approach.[2] Young's effect on integrating the Detroit Police Department was successful with the percentage of black police officers rising from 19% in the early 1970s[3] to 63% by 2000.[4] Young, however, was not able to cure all issues related to crime and police, and the Detroit Police Department was viewed by some as having a pattern of an alleged reckless use of deadly force.[5]
Young won re-election by wide margins in November 1977, November 1981, November 1985 and November 1989, for a total of 20 years as mayor, based entirely on black votes. But these voters did not, in the main, contribute much in the way of tax to fund the city. That money came largely from the white suburbs, and many of Young's policy and much of his rhetoric was seen as attacking these. Large scale white flight ensued, and the city revenues collapsed.
Young's administration was controversial, and he found himself the subject of continued FBI scrutiny amid allegations of contract kickbacks. He was criticized for his confrontational style toward whites and suburban interests, and the apparent diversion of city resources to downtown Detroit from other neighborhoods. Young was generally popular with African-American inhabitants of the city, while generally disliked by white Detroiters and suburban-dwellers because of his outspoken criticism of racism and white flight to the suburbs, and his perceived favoritism of African-American interests.
Young was an outspoken advocate for federal funding for Detroit construction projects, and his administration saw the completion of the Renaissance Center, Detroit People Mover, Joe Louis Arena, and several other Detroit landmarks. He also negotiated with General Motors to build its new "Poletown" plant at the site of the former Dodge Main plant. This was very controversial, as the new plant was larger than the old one and the deal involved many evictions via eminent domain. During Young's last two administrations there was increasing opposition among some neighborhood activists to these large construction projects. This opposition typically manifested itself in rigorous budget debate rather than in serious electoral challenges against Young. During this period City Council President Maryann Mahaffey became an outspoken advocate for neighborhood development with the involvement and leadership of community based organizations. Most of the time Young prevailed over this opposition, seeking jobs and economic stimulus as a way to help rebuild Detroit's neighborhoods.[6]
Young fathered an illegitimate child, whose mother, Annivory Calvert, gave him the alias Joel Loving at birth, for security reasons. Young set up a private Roman Catholic Baptismal Ceremony when his son was 2 months old and gave the child his name on sequestered Roman Catholic Baptismal records. Young went to court when his son was age 13 and had his birth certificate changed to match the baptismal record.
His son, Coleman A. Young II, is currently a State Senator in Michigan's 1st State Senate district and was previously a State Representative in Michigan's 4th State Representative district; the same district where Young lived as Mayor and served as State Senator. Though Young had publicly denied the child as being his, he later admitted the paternity, after DNA tests linked the boy to the mayor following a paternity lawsuit filed by Calvert.
A known heavy smoker, Young died from emphysema in 1997. Upon learning of Young's death former President Jimmy Carter called Young "one of the greatest mayors our country has known." [7]
Mayor Young's hand-picked Police Chief, close friend and political advisor William L. Hart, served for 15 years as Chief before being indicted and convicted for stealing $2.6 million from police undercover funds.[8] The Deputy Chief of Police (Kenneth Weiner), also a close associate of Coleman Young, was charged and convicted in a separate case involving investment fraud.[8] The culmination of the many investigations, indictments and convictions of those around Young led many observers to believe he was at the center of widespread corruption in the city government, which included school boards, sanitation, and many other departments, but especially the police department. Detroit has been unable to lose its reputation as one of the most corrupt cities in America; that perception is frequently attributed to the period coinciding with Young's long tenure as mayor. However, given close continuing FBI scrutiny extending from his days as a radical left activist, other observers believe that Young had to be clean because any wrongdoing on his part would have been readily discovered and disclosed by the FBI; the convictions of Weiner plus others were in part based on evidence from wiretaps on Young's home telephone.[9][10][11][12][12]
Young had also been blamed by some for failing to stem the crime epidemic that Detroit became notorious for in the 1970s and 1980s, or even encouraging it. Dozens of violent black street gangs gained control of the city's large drug trade, which began with the heroin epidemic of the 1970s and grew into the even larger crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s. Major criminal gangs that were founded in Detroit and dominated the drug trade included The Errol Flynns (east side), Nasty Flynns (later the NF Bangers) and Black Killers and the drug consortiums of the 1980s such as Young Boys Inc., Pony Down, Best Friends, Black Mafia Family and the Chambers Brothers. Several times during Young's tenure Detroit was named the arson capital of America, and repeatedly the murder capital of America. Often Detroit was listed by FBI crime statistics as "most dangerous city in America" during his administration. Crime rates in Detroit peaked in 1994 at more than 2,700 violent crimes per 100,000 people.[13] However, crime has continued to be a problem in Detroit long after Mayor Young left office; according to national statistics the arson rate in Detroit was 6.3x the national average in 2003 and the murder rate was 5.1x the national average.[14]
Coleman's administration coincided with some periods of broad social and economic challenges in the U.S. including recession, the oil-shock, decline of the U.S. automotive industry and loss of manufacturing sector jobs in the Midwest to other parts of the U.S. and the world. Detroit faced a continuing white flight to the suburbs that began in the 1950s and accelerated after the 1967 Detroit race riots and ongoing crime and drug problems in the inner city. It was common for Young's opponents to blame him for these developments, but Young's defenders responded that other factors such as white resistance to court ordered desegregation, deteriorating housing stock, aging industrial plants and a declining automotive industry leading to a loss of economic opportunities inside the city all contributed to the phenomenon. By the end of Young's term in office Detroit had a population of just under 1,000,000, down from a measured high of 1,849,568 in 1950.[15] Nearly all the outflow consisted of white middle-class taxpayers.
Economic conditions in Detroit generally trended sideways or downward over the period of Mayor Young's political tenure, with the unemployment rate trending from approximately 9% in 1971 to approximately 11% in 1993, when Mayor Young retired. However, most economic metrics (unemployment, median income rates, and city gross domestic product) initially dropped sharply during economic recessions, reaching their "low points" in the late 1980s and/or early 1990s, with the unemployment rate in particular peaking at approximately 20% in 1982.[13]
Young himself expressed his belief that reform of the Police Department stood as one of his greatest accomplishments. He implemented broad affirmative action programs that lead to racial integration, and created a network of Neighborhood City Halls and Police Mini Stations. Young used the relationship established by community policing to mobilize large civilian patrols to address the incidents of Devil's Night arson that had come to plague the city each year. These patrols have been continued by succeeding administrations and have mobilized as many as 30,000 citizens in a single year in an effort to forestall seasonal arson.[16]
Coleman Young was known for his blunt statements, frequently using profanity:
- "I'm smiling all the time. That doesn't mean a God damned thing except I think people who go around solemn-faced and quoting the Bible are full of shit."
- "Swearing is an art form. You can express yourself much more exactly, much more succinctly, with properly used curse words."
- Coleman Young to Detroit journalists via closed-circuit television from Hawaii: "Aloha, Mother Fuckers!"[17]
- "Racism is like high blood pressure—the person who has it doesn’t know he has it until he drops over with a God damned stroke. There are no symptoms of racism. The victim of racism is in a much better position to tell you whether or not you’re a racist than you are."
- "I issue a warning 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 uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road."[18]
- "You can't look forward and backward at the same time."
- "We need to dream big dreams, propose grandiose means if we are to recapture the excitement, the vibrancy, and pride we once had."
- "We don't need no Goddamn Greenpeace!" (In response to activists suspended from the smoke stacks of a new incinerator that was about to be put into operation.)
- "There is no brilliant single stroke that is going to transform the water into wine or straw into gold."
- "I've learned over a period of years there are setbacks when you come up against the immovable object; sometimes the object doesn't move."
- "Boogien Mansion" (Repeated reference to city of Detroit's official mayoral residence the Manoogian Mansion)
- "I don't know nothing about no God Damned Krugerrands."
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Roman Gribbs |
Mayor of Detroit 1974–1993 |
Succeeded by Dennis Archer |
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