Coleman Young: The First Two Years

Coleman Young: The First Two Years

We have chosen to devote this edition of the SUN to the city of Detroit, and especially to an overview and evaluation of the first two years of Mayor Coleman Young's administration, because of the overwhelming significance of what is going on in the city now -- not only for Detroit itself, but for the suburbs, Ann Arbor, and in fact the whole American urban scene.

Detroit is the fifth largest urban area in the nation and one of its industrial nerve centers. Like all other big cities in the U.S., it is presently involved in a crisis, the outcome of which will determine its very survival. This outcome will have tremendous import for the region in which it is situated, and for every other city now standing at the same crossroads. Will Detroit, as its motto states, rise again from the ashes, as it did in 1805? Or is it headed down the road to ruin, well past the point of no return?

For decades, the contradictions inherent in the rapid growth and expansion of the city have been exacerbated to the breaking point. The breaking point, in fact, has already been reached twice in the city's history, resulting in the riots of 1943 and 1967. Neither was sufficient to produce a turn-around in the forces of greed and racism that have gutted the city.

The 1973 election of Coleman Young as Detroit's first black mayor signaled a break with the police-dominated politics and sluggish administrations of the past. Political control of the city had finally passed into the hands of its new black majority, who have suffered the most from the city's decay for so long. The mayoralty now belonged to a man who carne up on Detroit's lower East Side and saw it bulldozed for freeways and housing projects, a man whose perspective was shaped by a lifelong struggle to improve the lot of black people-first through the civil rights movement and labor organizing, later as State Senator and Democratic leader in the Michigan legislature.

The city whose administration Coleman Young inherited owes its present condition, for better or worse, largely to the tremendous influence of its automobile industry. The incredible growth of that industry in this century has been the city's blessing and its curse. While the automobile provided the economy base for Detroit's rapid expansion, it also carried the seeds of its destruction.

When Henry Ford offered his workers the $5 day, hundreds of thousands of black people realized they had nothing to lose by abandoning their miserable existence in the Jim Crow south and heading for the Motor City to work on the lines -- as had droves of other immigrants before them. The "Promised Land," however, turned out to be just as rife with; racism, and all its implications, as the land they left behind.

Only foundry jobs, the worst in the plants, were open to them. They were forced to live in the worst housing in the city, cut off from its services and opportunities, plunged into a segregated social environment where they were exploited by merchants and landlords and brutalized by police. The auto industry fed the fires of racism by using them as scabs; Ford showed his open contempt by creating an all-black suburb and naming it "Inkster." Criminality was allowed to flourish unchecked in the ghetto, as long as it didn't affect white people.

Detroit's east side black community, which produced Coleman Young, nevertheless managed to "make do" under these circumstances because it was, however neglected, a functioning community with its own tradition and a geographic focus. It soon fell victim, however, to the automobile industry's version of "city planning." As the industry continued to 'build' new plants on vacant land in outlying areas, the freeway became a necessity. If the big roads had to go through black neighborhoods, no matter. Stable, cohesive communities were bulldozed or split to make room for highways, and their populations were scattered to the four winds. The rising tensions of racism first exploded in the unprecedented riots of 1943, leaving 34 dead.

Whites responded by deserting the city in droves after the war. Businesses and industries soon followed, setting in motion a new pliase of chaotic, unplanned growth. The suburbs sprawled: the highway system was greatly expanded to get whites in and out of the city as rapidly as possible; "urban blight" spread outward from the central city. Things got worse for black people, whose expectations had been raised by the civil rights movement and an intensified cultural consciousness. In the long, hot summer of 1967, the lid blew off again, and for a few days the rulers of the city feared the end of the world might have come.

Perceiving a real threat this time, the city's leaders forged an official unity to deal with it; the New Detroit Committee emerged, and for a time liberal rhetoric reigned. But no amout of professed good intentions could reverse the decay set in motion decades before and allowed to eat away at the city. The HUD scandals devastated many of the remaining liveable neighborhoods in the city. Heroin poured into Detroit on an unprecedented scale, crime statistics rose accordingly, and whites continued to run for the hinterlands. The city's tax base was disappearing fast.

It was into this scenario that Coleman Young stepped two years ago. After defeating "law and order" candidate John Nichols in the mayoral election, Young began the unenviable and arduous task of salvaging what remained of the city. Young shook up the ossified City Hall bureaucracy; launched a series of actions aimed at restoring the police to their proper role as public servants; pressured HUD to deal with its huge stock of deteriorating housing; moved toward the city's first mass transit system; and set up a network of neighborhood city halls and police mini-stations to bring government closer to the people. He began to forge the basis for a functional unity among government, private industry, labor, and community groups; with input from all of them, his staff developed a comprehensive, long range master plan for economy revitalization of the city and took it straight to the President.

Slowly, the city is beginning to respond to these initiatives. Black people know where Coleman Young is coming from; with a friend in the Mayor's office for a change, they are beginning to feel they have a stake in the city and in a government that has some concern for their needs. Night life is coming back to the city. Belle Isle is getting fixed up again. Whites disillusioned with the suburban trip are starting, to take another look at Detroit. Next year's Bicentennial plans are shaping up to be an exciting celebration of the city's culture and its amazing will to survive and rebuild.

As Mayor Young said in his last State of the City message, "We would not attempt to kid you." A black mayor alone, as has been proven time and again, is certainly no panacea for the enormous problems faced by America's cities. Two years, or even four, is scarcely enough time to reverse decades of neglect, greed, and racism -- still very real forces in Detroit today. There is fierce resistance to change from reactionary elements, notably the police and their political apparatus.

Yet, it is impossible to miss the new stirrings in the air, and it would be a mistake to minimize the potential for change in the present situation. Some excellent beginnings have been made in the .past two years. Detroit may indeed be entering into a renaissance- a period in which the blindly selfish, acquisitive, and fear-driven imperatives which have brought the city to the brink of chaos and extinction will be moderated, and eventually brought under control, by the truly progressive thrust now being initiated by the Young administration. To the extent that Coleman Young continues to move in this direction -- and we have every reason to believe he will- he deserves the careful attention and active support of all Detroiters, black and white -- to whom the future of this city really matters. He also deserves to have himself and his programs fully and accurately reflected in the city's media, in their proper perspective in this place in time. With this issue, we hope to have taken a step in that direction.