THE POWER’S OUT: SOCIAL NEGLIGENCE IN , 1973-2003

Ryan Arnold

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

August 2018

Committee:

Nicole Jackson, Advisor

Michael Brooks

Rebecca Kinney

ii

ABSTRACT

Nicole Jackson, Advisor

The Power's Out: Social Negligence in Detroit, 1973-2003 examines the ways in which the of Detroit has deteriorated in the late twentieth due to the incompetent functionality of the power structure within the city and how they have overlooked the needs of Black inner-city residents. This thesis utilizes a combination of primary sources and secondary sources such as newspaper articles, community organizational records, autobiographies, blog posts, and interviews to contribute a narrative of Detroit that discusses the conditions of Detroit post-1967 into the twenty-first century. Although industrial decline and were major contributors to

Detroit’s decline, the negligence of the city administration to provide an inner-city efficient infrastructure, adequate public housing, and proper civic service response and police-community relations. Research about Detroit revealed the city corruption within Coleman A. Young's city administration was vital to the overall during his twenty-year tenure. iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my advisor and mentor, Dr. Nicole Jackson for her outstanding support and belief in my ability to create this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. Rebecca Kinney and Megan Goins-Diouf for additional support, advice and guidance within my research and journey creating this thesis. I would like to thank all three of you for being my support system throughout this project. I would like to thank the History Department, specifically, Dr. Michael

Brooks for our many conversations about Detroit and the additional sources he provided that made my thesis possible. I am truly blessed to have had you all there through this process, and without you all this thesis would not be possible. iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER I. COLEMAN A. YOUNG'S PLAN FOR A NEW DETROIT ......

Black Mayor...... 18

The Young Administration and the New Detroit ...... 22

Metro-Detroit ...... 25

Conclusion: Devil's Night ...... 29

CHAPTER II. CORRUPTION IN DETROIT'S HOUSING PROJECTS ...... 33

Inner-city Nieghborhoods ...... 34

A History of Housing Discrimination ...... 36

The Projects ...... 37

Discrimination in Housing ...... 42

Corruption ...... 44

CHAPTER III. POLICING DETROIT...... 49

Most Violent Police in the Nation ...... 51

Policing Black Youth ...... 55

Gross Negligence ...... 57

Malice Green ...... 59

Coalition Against Police Brutality ...... 62

CONCLUSION ...... 66

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 70 1

INTRODUCTION

A banner reading “See Detroit Like We Do,” featuring a crowd of only young White people was hung in the window of the new Vinton Building in , at the intersection of Congress street and Woodward avenue, incited controversy amongst Detroiters on July 23, 2017. The banner was problematic for two reasons: First, the poster made its debut on the weekend of the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion. And second, even though

Detroit’s population is majority Black and has been since the 1970s, the advertisement alluded to the idea that the new Detroit under construction was only for White people.1 The controversial billboard and its message was sponsored by Bedrock Detroit, a real-estate company owned by

Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Gilbert is considered a “visible investor…most prominent behind Detroit’s recent development in terms of both financial investors and boosterism.”2 Gilbert responded to the controversy by ensuring that the full banner planned to be installed “was a very inclusive and diverse set of images that reflects the population of the city.”3 Bedrock also issued a public apology on Facebook by acknowledging the image “was unfortunately, not diverse or inclusive when looked at by itself.”4

Bedrock ultimately canceled its campaign, however people continued to respond to the apology message posted on Facebook. One White woman left the following message: For someone to take this campaign and see the words “See Detroit as we do” and turn it into a race issue instead of something along the lines of: a company that invests billions of dollars every year in this city, employs people that live in this city, pays taxes to support this city, restores buildings to preserve the rich history

1 The 1967 Rebellion have also been commonly referred to as the 1967 Riots. For my thesis, I will be using Rebellion in place of riots, except when the event is mentioned in quotations. 2 Rebecca Kinney, Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), Kindle Version, location 2802. 3 Keith A. Owen, Senior Editor, “This may be how YOU see Detroit, Bedrock, but Detroit doesn’t see Detroit that way,” Chronicle (Publication Date) Accessed January 10, 2018, https://michronicleonline.com/2017/07/24/this-may-be-how-you-see-detroit-bedrock-but-detroit-doesnt-see-detroit- that-way/. 4Ibid. 2

here, etc. – then its [sic] you that’s the problem. It’s you that’s keeping racism alive. Everything can be turned different ways and misconstrued. I’m personally sad to see this campaign go because I do see the city the way they see it – and know that the banner had nothing to do with racism. #riseabove #coexist.5 Not satisfied by that answer, a Black woman responded: You have to love all the white people in the comments section, who don’t even live in Detroit or just moved here last year, attempting to police and negate Black feelings, thoughts, and emotions. Clearly this “apology” isn’t directed towards you, because it doesn’t offend you, you’re represented, and you always are…This ad was done in poor taste, this apology was fake and horrible, and we know that we’re wanted to make money for you, but the “New Detroit” you’re creating is not for us.6 This exchange between these two women reflects the duality of the Detroit experience. Although both of these women are Detroiters, they live in divergent realities with different understandings of the city.

After WWII, Detroit has most often been represented as a Black city, reflecting its overwhelmingly large Black population. In the last fifty years, Detroit has changed from a growing hub of working class White opportunity to a derelict husk of its former glory.

Contemporary residents often refer to Detroit as “The Murder Capitol” or “The Dirty D” because of the city’s high crime rates, widespread poverty and failing infrastructure.7 Lacking adequate housing, a quality city infrastructure or reliable emergency services, one must wonder how the city changed so drastically. The answer lies in the issues to which Detroit has become synonymous: governmental corruption, municipal decline and urban blight. In a moment where the city has become a center of urban renewal, to which Bedrock Detroit has financially invested,

5 Keith A. Owen, Senior Editor, “This may be how YOU see Detroit, Bedrock, but Detroit doesn’t see Detroit that way,” Michigan Chronicle (Publication Date) Accessed January 10, 2018, https://michronicleonline.com/2017/07/24/this-may-be-how-you-see-detroit-bedrock-but-detroit-doesnt-see-detroit- that-way/. These conversations happened over Facebook in the comments section. 6 Ibid. 7 Rupert Cornwell, “Obituary: ,” Independent @IndyVoices (Tuesday 2 December 1997), Accessed February 12, 2018, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-coleman-young-1286415.html. 3 it is important to understand how the Motor City became the Murder Capital. “The Power’s Out:

Social Negligence in Detroit, 1973-2003” argues that the institutionalized racism of the city’s political and economic structure ultimately neglected the city’s poorest and most vulnerable members through a failing infrastructure. Neglected neighborhoods lacked basic resources and the city’s social services disregarded residents while also aggressively policing those in Detroit’s blighted neighborhoods. This study focuses on social negligence and state violence within the racial institutions of policing, housing, and maintenance of a city in Detroit from 1973-2003 to illustrate how the city administration, especially under the aegis of Mayor Coleman Young, participated in the containment of Black people within Detroit and isolated these residents from the post-1967 redevelopment. Subsequently, the city continued to deteriorate despite the presence of a Black mayor, Black leadership in the city, and the integration of the Detroit Police

Departments and EMS services.

Racism and discrimination look different in the North compared to the South; Detroit is a perfect example of the distinction.8 The Great Migration of Black Southerners moving North was filled with the hope that away from Jim Crow racism, they would be able to access the full expression of their citizenship rights. Although Black Southerners believed they had escaped the overt violence of Southern racism, what they found in the North was similar. White people

“demanded privileges that superiority conferred” and Black people were discrimination against in “health care, housing, employment and criminal justice” within both and the growing suburbs. 9

8 I use North with a capitol “N” to indicate northern states in which Jim Crow was illegal; not to be confused when I use north to signify a direction or location. 9 Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (City of Publication: Henry Holt and Company, 2007), 340. 4

To understand present day Detroit, one must begin with the 1967 Rebellion. 10 The 1967

Rebellion is a specific moment in time that best illustrates the conflict between the police and the

Detroit residents. Although this was not the first racial unrest in Detroit’s history, it is significant because Detroit still remembers 1967 as the breaking point between the Black community and the police and how violent the police can be to the community it is supposed to serve and protect.

In the Summer of 1967 the police raided a night cub on 12th Street and Clairmont. In response to what was perceived as unfair targeting of Black social activities, Black Detroiters began rioting.

In the wee hours on July 23, 1967, urbanites took to the streets of Detroit in an uprising that stunned the nation. For days, Detroit’s poorest neighborhoods burned, and virtually overnight the city came to symbolize America’s inability to solve vexing problems of race of poverty.11

At the end of the unrest, forty-three people were dead, and the city faced $50 million in damages.12 Immediately following the Rebellion, tensions between Black and White Detroiters were strained. An undercover special unit of the Detroit Police Department called STRESS (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets) was organized with a stated mission of crime reduction, but which was widely believed to be a surveillance and harassment campaign against Black people.

By the early 1970s, White Detroiters began to leave the city in large numbers. What emerged was a sharp racial divide between the city of Detroit and its suburbs.

Another ramification of the aftermath of the Rebellion, however, was the election of the city’s first Black mayor, Coleman A. Young, in 1973. Black Detroiters celebrated Young’s

10 , Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 2004), 84. 11 Ibid, 84. 12 Rupert Cornwell, “Obituary: Coleman Young,” Independent @IndyVoices (Tuesday 2 December 1997), Accessed February 12, 2018, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-coleman-young- 1286415.html. 5 election, but most White Detroiters were uncomfortable with his outspoken racial politics.13

Mayor Young’s impact and legacy are as divided as the city today. There continues to be sharp differences of opinion over Mayor Young’s impact and legacy into the present-day. Economist

Walter E. Williams centers Detroit’s deterioration with Young’s tenure as mayor. He says,

Much of the city's decline began with the election of Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor and mayor for five terms, who engaged in political favoritism to blacks and tax policies against higher-income, mostly white people.14 However, Dan Austin from the argued that Coleman A. Young was one of

Detroit’s top five mayors. In the article, “Free Press Ranks Detroit’s 5 Best Mayors; Coleman

Young is 4th,” Dan states:

Young is undoubtedly one of the more controversial and divisive figures in Detroit history. There is no doubt of that. There is also no doubt, however, that he is often wrongly blamed for single-handedly destroying the city. In fact, if you actually look at just the facts, he was actually one of the city’s best mayors... The one greatest thing that hurt his legacy is that he didn’t bow out early enough. Had he stopped at three terms, his record would have been more impressive... Under Young, Detroit cut about 6,000 workers from 1978 to 1984, according to financial records reviewed by the Free Press. During his two decades as mayor, he also cut about 2,000 Police Department employees and about 500 Fire Department employees. And all this austerity came during the national recession in the 1980s. Also consider this: Young was the only Detroit mayor -- from either party -- since 1950 to lead the city with more income than debt. 15

Despite Young’s early rhetoric about helping the Black community during his first campaign, it did not materialize. As the inner-city, ravaged by the Rebellion, began to deteriorate metro-

13 Carlito H. Young, "CONSTANT STRUGGLE: Coleman Young's Perspective on American Society and Detroit Politics," The Black Scholar,27: 2 (1997), 33. Accessed January 17, 2018, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bgsu.edu:8080/stable/41068729. (31-41 14 Walter E. Williams, “Detroit’s Tragic Decline is Largely Due To its Own Race-Based Policies”, Investor’s Business Daily, December 18, 2012, Accessed March 12, 2018, https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/detroit-collapse-was-due-to-race-based-politics/. 15 Dan Austin, Free Press Ranks Detroit’s 5 Best Mayors; Coleman Young is 4th, Detroit Free Press, July 22, 2014, Accessed April 12, 2018, http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/9927/free_press_ranks_detroit_s_five_best_mayors_coleman_young_finish es_fourth#.WunW74jwbIU. 6

Detroit rapidly expanded and Detroit’s geography became racialized, criminalized, neglected and over-policed.16

Historians of modern Detroit have often interrogated the city’s decline. Detroit, plagued by urban poverty, is bordered by Oakland County, one of the wealthiest counties in the country.

The most common theme in the historiography focuses on the decline of the auto industry and

White flight as a primary reason for the urban crisis. However, in Whose Detroit? Politics,

Labor, and Race in a Modern American City Heather Ann Thompson argues:

The 1980s was a far more complex decade than scholars have assumed. It is undeniable that when whites left America’s inner-cities, many of them became centers of vast poverty and social malaise. It is also the case, however, that by that decade a great many cities had become places where , and more specifically black middle class, finally could experience real social, economic, and political opportunity.17 This is significant as Thompson illustrate how White flight not only affected the deterioration of the city’s landscape but contributed to the neglect of Black people who resided there. Thompson explains that the White exodus from inner-city neighborhoods and their simultaneous rejection of postwar liberalism have led to an overemphasis on the White hostility to both African Americans and liberalism in preceding decades. Thompson closely examines how race and poverty are inexplicably combined and in order to talk about Detroit as an impoverished city. In short: one cannot ignore the role that race played in this process.

The city’s weakening infrastructure has contributed to the containment of Black people therein. In Detroit Divided, public policy analyst Harry J. Holzer, sociologist, Reynolds Farley

16 Metro-Detroit refers to the tri-county area of Wayne County, Oakland Country and Macomb County but most commonly referred to as Detroit metropolitan suburbs; Editorial Staff, “Much More on Why Detroit Is Murder City”, , The New York Times Archives. JUNE 16, 1974, Accessed February 24, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/16/archives/much-more-on-why-detroit-is-murder-city.html. 17 Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 2004), 5. 7 and political scientist Sheldon Danziger, examine the ways in which industrial decline affected

Black men in the auto industry. Although they address race, they tend to focus on how White men, with better educations and “suburban home loans,” were allowed to “migrate into skilled jobs on the city’s outskirts,” which allowed White men a better opportunity to find a reliable job and nice home outside of the city.18 On the other hand, Black workers did not have the same options, stuck in the inner-city. “Regardless of their poverty or prosperity, Detroit whites generally lived in the suburbs and blacks in the central city. No more than 20 percent of whites with the least favorable socioeconomic characteristics had central-city address, but for similar

African Americans it was 85 percent.”19

At one point, Detroit was one of the fastest growing US cities, reaching its highest population of 1,868,517 in 1950.20 In the 1950s, White people were 83% of the total population, but by 1980, the White population had declined to 34%, representing the largest White exodus of a major city in fifty years.21 When “Detroit lost its white residents, it also lost a significant portion of its economic base.”22 The steady movement of White people to the suburbs stripped Detroit of many of its businesses in addition to its residents. The racial polarization caused by this movement transformed the Motor City into a kind of nightmare in the White imagination, both locally and nationally.

18 Reynolds Farley, Sheldon Danziger, and Harry J. Holzer, Detroit Divided (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000), 171. 19 Ibid, 170. 20 Bureau of the Census, “1950 Census: Population of Michigan by Counties,” U.S. Department of Commerce (Washington 25, D.C. 1950) Series PC-2: No. 36, 6. Accessed March 5, 2018. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/pc-02/pc-2-36.pdf. 21 Ibid. 22 Heather Ann Thompson, Rethinking the Politics of White Flight in the Postwar City Detroit, 1945-1980. (University of North Carolina at Charlotte 1999), 163. 8

Another recurring theme within the historiography of modern Detroit has been the city’s renewal. Urban geographer Joe T. Darden and historian Richard Thomas’s Detroit: Race and

Uneven Development and Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial

Divide uses a socioeconomic analysis to reveal the intersection of race and place in Detroit and what that means in terms of redevelopment schemes around the city. Darden and Thomas consider how spacial injustice and geography have affected the way Black people navigate

Detroit as they describe (Black) Detroiters as “isolated” and physically contained in the inner- city.23 Race and development are at the core of Detroit’s history.

June Manning Thomas examines race relations and progress in Detroit.24 Thomas’ discussion of race relations refers to the ways in which Black Detroiters and suburban White people interacted within the city and how this has either contributed to or hindered progress— development—in the city’s infrastructure. Thomas’ study focuses on the fifty years following

WWII and considers how planners failed to “save” more populated areas of the city.25 She notes,

The 1980s and 1990s were important because of the cumulative effects of decades of social and economic decline, because of the revelation that a mayor’s brown skin did not guarantee community-based redevelopment policy, and because both the Black electorate and the corporate elite discovered that, for all its shortcomings, planning offered a useful model for city and neighborhood improvements.26 However, even though Thomas refers to the importance of race in her analysis, she tends to focus—as other scholars have—on White flight instead of the experiences of the inner-city areas and Black Detroiters.

23 Joe T. Darden, Detroit: Race and Uneven Development. (Temple University Press, 1990), 43. 24 June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (Detroit: Press, 1997), 7. 25 Ibid, 7. 26 June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), 10. 9

Lastly, in Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier scholar of race, place, and popular culture, Rebecca J. Kinney, analyzes the narrative in which

Detroit can be considered an American frontier for White exploration and investment. She examines the implications of these new spaces being created for “Whiteness” and how it is problematic for the people who had been living in Detroit. Kinney summarizes the prevalent narrative about Detroit,

The diminishing reputation of Detroit parallels the decrease in its white population and the increase in its black population. The damage, both physical and psychological of the 1967 urban rebellion, the construction of the heavily fortressed complex, the movement of Motown to Los Angeles and the continual decrease in the domestic interest in American cars all served as cultural fodder for the narrative of the decline. By the 1980s, Detroit was an easy punch line.27 | She also examines White Flight and the city’s declining landscape; however, she offers a present- day understanding of Detroit and how it has transformed from “a symbol of American greatness to a symbol of American urban crisis.”28

Historians of Detroit offer compelling reasons for the city’s regression, nonetheless, the scholarship too often focuses on White flight from the city rather than developments within it.

Scholars often discuss race, but they do not consider the creation of racialized spaces in the city and suburbs. This thesis then contributes to the expansive historiography of Detroit by analyzing the circumstances through which the “Motor City” became the “Murder City.” In particular, I consider the late 20th century through the eyes of Black Detroiters who called it home.

27 Rebecca J. Kinney, Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), Kindle Version, 238. 28 Ibid, Kindle Version, 238. 10

This thesis begins by first discussing the infrastructure of Detroit and how housing and policing were major issues within the failing overall functioning of the city. In chapter one,

“Coleman A. Young’s Plan for a New Detroit,” I chart the failure of the city’s infrastructure through the political and economic vision of the city’s first Black mayor. I argue that the reason for Detroit’s decline is directly tied both to White flight and to the racialized containment of

Black people in Detroit. Mayor Young’s policies essentially overlooked the inner-city and as a result, the city’s largely Black neighborhoods crumbled. In the second chapter, “The Brewster

Projects, Herman Gardens, and Detroit Housing Projects,” I examine the decay of public housing through the vector of the city’s administration corruption and mismanagement. The Detroit

Housing Department’s mismanaged funds allocated to the inner-cities by the U.S Department of

Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Although, the DHD—later changed to the Detroit

Housing Commission—were investigated, no one was held accountable for the mismanagement.

Chapter three, “Policing Detroit,” argues that essential city services, such as the police and fire departments and emergency services, were both negligent and aggressive in response to Black

Detroiters. In this chapter I look at the integration of the Detroit Police Department and Detroit

Fire Department and the failure to transform the long history of violent and negligent interactions between city emergency services and Black residents. But outside of the often-aggressive police, police and emergency services were also negligent; not responding to calls for aid or denying health aid or intervention. This chapter illustrates how state violence and negligence were rooted in institutional racism of the police department, what that meant for Black Detroiters, and the city’s changing racial landscape.

My primary research comes from archival documents and city reports from the City of

Detroit, Department of Housing and Development and the Coleman A. Young papers. I also 11 consult newspaper articles, community organizational records, autobiographies, journal articles, blog posts, and interviews. The three chapters outlined above will demonstrate how the plan for a new Detroit based on integrating the police and revitalizing the city’s industries, failed to save the city because these plans did not address the needs of Black Detroiters. The New Detroit plan, although mentioned as a vital platform in Young’s initial campaign, excluded impoverished

Black inner-city Detroiters. 12

CHAPTER I. COLEMAN A. YOUNG’S PLAN FOR A NEW DETROIT

I will lead a business resurgence that will produce jobs by the thousands, revitalize our downtown, and our entire city. I will move Detroit forward on a program that includes new port facilities, a stadium, rapid transit, recreational facilities, and houses. -Coleman A. Young, 1973 29

During the long hot summer of 1967, over 150 US cities were awash in flames as Black city dwellers took to the streets in response to racial tensions between Black communities, including the urban lower-middle class, and local police forces. Detroit’s uprising was the worst of them all.30 The 1967 Detroit Rebellion was representative of everything that could go wrong in a US “model city” known for being the motor capitol of the world. 31 Five days of unrest saw incidents of arson, violence between White and Black residents as well as the police and

Detroiters, looting (primarily of Black owned businesses on 12th Street), all of which left the city’s residential west side a husk of its former glory. Popular images of the 1967 Rebellion typically portray “city streets filled with crowds of primarily black people looting, looking on, running in all directions alongside tanks and faces of primarily white national guardsmen brandishing rifles with the imagery of burning and burnt-out buildings in the background.”32

The condition of Detroit during the Rebellion resembled a battlefield. Following the Rebellion,

Detroit was slow to rebuild, and large numbers of White Detroiters fled to the suburbs, while

29 Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, Vol. 2. (: South End Press, 1998), 22; This is a snippet from a speech given by Coleman A. Young during campaign in fall of 1973. 30 The Long Hot summer of Detroit refers to the 159 instances of urban unrest that took place in cities across the in the summer of 1967 in response to racial tensions continued after the successful civil rights movement of the South.; , Violence in the Model City: The Cavanaugh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967, (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1989). 31 Lyndon B. Johnson created the Model Cities program to implement the Great Society initiative and a response to the War on Poverty. Detroit, Michigan was a recipient for one of the largest model cities projects, where they were awarded nearly $500 million to try to transform and nine-square miles of the city into a new faction of Detroit. Fine, Sidney, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanaugh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967, (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1989). 32 Kinney, Beautiful Wasteland, location 1275. 13 internal forces within the city, such as the police, formed special units to surveil Black

Detroiters.

This chapter is about the infrastructure of Detroit and the underdevelopment of the inner- city in contrast to the downtown and midtown areas that were being revitalized. I argue the reason for this decline in infrastructure was not only due to White flight, but also the Coleman administration’s neglect of the inner-city in favor of the downtown, Cass Corridor and Riverfront areas, all to attract White suburbanites back into the city.33 As a result, tensions between the mostly White suburbs and the mostly Black city heightened, causing more population decline in the city. This chapter will examine the complicated legacy of Coleman A. Young, the first Black mayor of Detroit.

Black Mayor

Coleman A. Young was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 1918. When Young was five years old, his parents moved to Detroit where they lived in the Black Bottom neighborhood.34

Young became interested in politics “at the neighborhood barbershop of an African American

Marxist named Haywood Maben. It was a scene of lively discussion and a place for political education.”35 Young was a strong student, but he was denied financial assistance at both the secondary and university levels due to the racial discrimination typical of educational institutions

33 The Cass Corridor is now referred to as Midtown- Located on the East and West side of Woodward Avenue, North of Downtown and just South of New Center Area. Portions of Wayne State University is in midtown. Border by Detroit Major Freeways, I-94—East to West, M-10 Lodge freeway, I-75—North to South and downtown’s I-375. 34 The JBHE Foundation, Inc. “In Memoriam Coleman A. Young 1918-1997,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 18 (Winter, 1997-1998), Accessed March 2, 2018, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2998742 35 Martin Halpern, "'I'm Fighting for Freedom': Coleman Young, HUAC and the Detroit African American community," Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 17, no. 1, 1997, p. 19+. U.S. History in Context, Accessed March 4, 2018, 2018, 4, http://i.ezproxy.nypl.org/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20435738/UHIC?u=nypl&xid=8ee4a734. 14 in the 1930’s and 1940’s.36 He went to work at Ford and, later, the post office where he was fired for attempting to unionize.37 In 1950, Young helped organize the National Negro Labor Council

(NNLC), an organization “for African American people, focusing on their economic needs, and sought democracy and equality within the trade union movement.”38 However, the NNLC was labeled a communist organization by U.S Attorney General Herbert Brownell for its left-leaning political ideologies.39 In 1952, thirty-four-year-old Coleman A. Young gained national attention after the Detroit FBI office and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigated Young’s organizational affiliations and associates on suspicion of “Communist infiltration into defense industries.”40 Young was questioned in front of a HUAC panel on

February 25, 1952.41 When asked about his participation in and support of communist activity,

Young unapologetically responded, “I am part of the Negro people. I am now in process of fighting against what I consider to be attacks and discrimination against my people. I am fighting against un-American activities such as and denial of the vote. I am dedicated to that fight and I don’t think I have to apologize or explain it to anybody.”42 After the exchange, some

White Detroiters began to view Young as combative and he was labeled a communist for his

36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Wilbur C. Rich, Coleman Young and Detroit Politics: From Social Activist to Power Broker, (Wayne State University Press. 1999), 71. 40 Martin Halpern, "'I'm Fighting for Freedom': Coleman Young, HUAC and the Detroit African American community," Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 17, no. 1, 1997, p. 19+. U.S. History in Context, Accessed March 4, 2018, 2018, 24, http://i.ezproxy.nypl.org/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20435738/UHIC?u=nypl&xid=8ee4a734. 41Ibid. 42 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide, (Michigan State University 2013), 101. 15 labor organizing.43 However, Young’s testimony earned him the support of many Black and labor activists, who later became a significant voting bloc in his mayoral run.

In 1959, Young ran unsuccessfully for a seat in Detroit’s City Council.44 By 1961,

Young had run as the Democratic nominee to be part of the convention to rewrite the Michigan

State Constitution.45 Three years later, Young was elected to the state Senate, where he remained for three terms. In 1969 Young began to seriously consider running for mayor of Detroit in response to the harassment of Black residents by the police with a “law and order” regimen both before but now more violent in the aftermath of the 1967 Rebellion.46 Finally in 1973 Young announced his intention to run for mayor of Detroit, a move that spurred John Nichols, Detroit

Police Commissioner, to run as his opponent.

Young’s campaign focus ranged from “housing reform, educational reform, and other issues that…had been central to blacks and progressive whites alike,” however, Young’s primary platform was to improve the relationship between the White police department and the mostly

Black community it served.47 During Young’s campaign he said, “One of the problems is that the police run the city…STRESS is responsible for the explosive polarization that exist now.”48 In

43 Martin Halpern, "'I'm Fighting for Freedom': Coleman Young, HUAC and the Detroit African American community," Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 17, no. 1, 1997, p. 19+. U.S. History in Context, Accessed March 4, 2018, 2018, 24, http://i.ezproxy.nypl.org/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20435738/UHIC?u=nypl&xid=8ee4a734. 44 Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City. Cornell University Press, 2004), 195. 45 Ibid. 195. 46 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide, (Michigan State University 2013), 101; Wilbur C. Rich, Coleman A. Young and Detroit Politics: From Social Activist to Power Broker, (Wayne State University, 1999); Mark Binelli, “The Fire Last Time,” New Republic, April 6, 2017, Accessed April 27, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/article/141701/fire-last-time-detroit-stress-police-squad- terrorized-black-community. 47 Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004),196. 48 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide, (East Lansing: Michigan State University 2013), 101; Wilbur C. Rich, Coleman A. Young and Detroit Politics: From Social Activist to Power Broker, (Wayne State University, 1999); Detroit Free Press, May 11, 1973. 16

Young’s opinion, the entire outlook of the police were based on “intimidation” and they used this in addition to violence—with weapons—to keep citizens in line.49 His rhetoric on community- police relations overshadowed other matters Young initially rallied behind, making the election seem as if it were a single-issue race.

During his campaign, Young’s rhetoric of revitalization was popular. “I will lead a business resurgence that will produce jobs by the thousands, revitalize our downtown, and our entire city. I will move Detroit forward on a program that includes new port facilities and housing.”50 The battle between Nichols and Young highlighted the growing racial polarization in the city; most Black people rallied behind Young while fearful, conservative White people supported Nichols.51 The local media supported Nichols, believing he would win.52

Even with the odds stacked against him, however, it was still important that Young talked about the issues affecting Black and working-class Detroiters.53 Young’s race envisioned a city that would represent both Black and White Detroiters, a fact often missed in analysis of his political career. Scholars often assume that Young only focused on the needs of Black Detroiters, however, he often admitted that his goal was to integrate the city. Reflecting on his 1973 campaign, Young noted:

The race was about race. Everybody in the city was aware of that, despite the fact that Nichols and I tried to hold our tongues whenever the issue turned to color. For me, it was only prudent to assume a conciliatory tone, because the white voters seemed to harbor a preconception that I would run them off with guns or

49 Ibid, 100. 50 Georgakes and Serkin, Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, 222; B.J. Widick, Detroit, City of Race and Class Violence, Revised Edition (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), 1989. 51 Darden and Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide, 101. 52 Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 196. 53 Ibid. 197. 17

spears or something and turn the city into a black empire. I assured them that my hiring practices would reflect a fifty-fifty racial balance.54

Darden and Thomas examine how Young used his redevelopment rhetoric to win over the city:

Young had more than a growing black political base on his side. His broad political experience in local, state, and national politics gave him an important edge over the single-issue Nichols. Notwithstanding this edge, Nichols had the advantage of exploiting white fear of black crime in the street. Young knew better than to ignore crime, but his appeal to white voters emphasized economic development for the city. He promised to lead ‘businesses resurgence’ that would produce thousands of jobs and would include ‘new park facilities, a stadium, rapid transit, recreational facilities and housing.’55 During Young’s first campaign, he was a more appealing candidate than Nichols to a larger cross section of Detroiters because of his history of labor organizing and ties to Black and working communities in Detroit. He was aware of the issues within the inner-city, nonetheless, he talked around the issue of crime and blight to focus on rebuilding Detroit economically. Kinney asserts that, “development is almost always approached with ideas of places or locations that are deemed ripe for development or in need of development not necessarily for the benefit of locations of populations but for the benefit of profit.”56 Thus, Young’s message of a new Detroit aimed at transcending racial polarization, appealing to White and Black Detroiters in different ways. Young sought to appeal to White audiences specifically through redevelopment rhetoric, hoping to convince them to stay in city. While the integration of the police force and disbanding

STRESS resonated with Black Detroiters.

In November of 1973, Coleman A. Young was elected Detroit’s first Black mayor. The win did not interrupt Young’s plans to bring all people of Detroit together. He stated, “I didn’t

54 Darden and Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide, (Michigan State University, 2013), 101. 55 Ibid, 101. 56 Kinney, Beautiful Wasteland, location 3194. 18 win; we won. All of Detroit won.”57 During the campaign Young promised a variety of improvements, however like most politicians he did not keep then all, and at times what he delivered to the city was the opposite of those campaign promises.

The Young Administration and the New Detroit

After Mayor Young took office in 1974, he proposed an urban improvement agenda for

Detroit. In “Moving Detroit Forward: A Plan for Urban Economic Revitalization” Young asked the federal and state governments for $3 billion dollars to fund revitalization projects in

Detroit.58 Another critical part of Mayor Young’s plans involved soliciting Black elites to buy into his vision and aid the administration. Black elite participation, together with federal and state, funds would, Young believed, provide both economic and social capital necessary to rebuild Detroit.59 However, Black upper-class Detroiters were eager to help with the city too, volunteering for planning committees and organizing Black leadership.60 Ideally, this would be vital in resurgence of Black-owned businesses.

The Young administration “decided that the city could not survive without cooperation among business, labor and the state and federal governments. He called together some of

Detroit's leading business and labor figures and persuaded them to approve his plan for reshaping the Riverfront. With their help, the Renaissance Center office-retail complex became the

57 Darden and Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide, 101; Detroit Free Press, November 8, 1973. 58 June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 10;” Black Mayors, Black Enterprise Magazine, 1983 pg. 130. 59 Wilbur C Rich, Coleman Young and Detroit Politics: From Social Activist to Power Broker (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), 272. 60 Ibid. 19 showpiece of downtown, and the adjacent Hart Plaza, a Riverfront park, became the area’s anchor.”61

In support of the proposed revitalization plan, the Young administration was awarded

Three billion dollars. Young planned to allocate the three billion dollars thusly: $555 million in to retrain the unemployed and for the creation of public service jobs; $526 million to improve the

Riverfront, industrial corridors, construct industrial parks and business incubators, renovate existing industrial plants, federal buildings and update municipal services; $300 million to revitalize the downtown district, including the Riverwalk, neighborhood shopping centers, and create a business district. 62 Another $735 million was needed for construction, demolition, and rehabilitation for housing and to fix decaying housing projects; $120 million for new police facilities and to hire a more diverse police force; and the remaining $730 million to provide public transportation, construct a “people mover” downtown, and launch a regional rail transit system.63 The rationale behind “ Moving Detroit Forward” was to rebuild the city and make it place that was attractive to both its residents and suburbanites. However, the motive turned into rebuilding the downtown area and attract White people back to Detroit. The Young administration also believed that revitalizing the Riverfront and Riverwalk would provide a recognizable city skyline and boost commercial and opportunities. Although Young’s primary campaign platform was on police reform, when in office this transformed into a general plan for the city’s reintegration.

61 “Coleman A. Young, 79, Mayor of Detroit and Political Symbol for Blacks, is Dead”, New York Times, December 1, 1997, 2. 62 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide, (Michigan State University, 2013), City of Detroit, Mayor’s Office, “Moving Detroit Forward: A Plan for Urban Economic Revitalization, “April 1975. 63 Ibid. 20

In Young’ first term he was credited with building the Renaissance Center, located downtown on the Riverfront, which opened in 1977. It is one of Detroit’s most successful developments from the Young tenure.64 The Renaissance became a popular landmark, made up of five towers. Four of the towers have thirty-nine floors, featuring ample commercial space. The fifth tower is a hotel with 1,400 rooms. Another successful attraction was the , bought in 1977 to keep the baseball team in the city.65 Eager to keep local sports organizations in the city the was constructed to house two of Detroit’s sports teams: Pistons, and Red Wings. The arena was opened in 1979. In its central location it in the heart of downtown, the arena was supposed to contribute financially to the city’s economic growth.

Job creation was one of Young’s campaign promises. Young was adamant about creating jobs in downtown Detroit for workers in both inner-city and suburban areas, focusing on

Chrysler and , since was Detroit’s second largest employer, with 28,185 workers and another 51,000 workers from supplier firms.66 The original plan was for General

Motors and Chrysler to have a joint plant in 1980.67 Unfortunately, Chrysler was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1980 and Detroit’s Chrysler jobs fell by almost 45 per cent, going from 81,700 workers to 47,200. Several plants were also closed in 1980.68 The story of Detroit’s other prominent employers took a different track. In 1981, General Motors built a new assembly plant in Hamtramck, a small city inside of Detroit, costing $600 million.69 This new plant in

64 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide, (Michigan State University, 2013), 102. 65 Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 205. 66June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit, (The John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 161-162. 67 Ibid, 162. 68 , B. J. Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence, (Wayne State University Press, 1989). 243. 69 Ibid. 243. 21

Hamtramck displaced residents in the area. The “Poletown” plant was created to replace another auto plant; however, it only created a fraction of the projected jobs.70 Historian B.J. Widick identifies Young’s accomplishments as, “primarily a White community gain, whereas, the Blacks are still on the periphery,” to point out how Young was neglectful to inner-city Detroiters in the implementation of his redevelopment plans.71

Transportation in the city of Detroit was a major issue, however, Mayor Young had a vision to improve transit with the People Mover, “a 2.9-mile overhead rail system connecting various points in the downtown enclave of buildings and hotels,” introduced to the public on July

31, 1985.72 The original plan was to connect downtown Detroit to its suburbs with a convenient, timely and affordable transportation system. The new transportation system was expected to attract 15,000 users a day, but in 1987 it only averaged around 10,000 users a day.73 The People

Mover was also supposed to turn into a subway line north along Woodward avenue then level off as a street level train at McNichols Rd—referred to as Six Mile Rd. by Detroiters—and run northwest into Pontiac, a suburb thirty miles north of the city. Additional rails were to run east along Gratiot Avenue, connecting Detroit and Port Huron. The project, however, never met its projected length. Thus, the People Mover did not service the inner-city, nor did it connect the city’s downtown to its suburbs. The People Mover plans also neglected the reality that Detroit is a city with a car culture, because of the city’s decentralized landscape. In sum, the portion of the

$730 million—over $250 million—allocated to transportation redevelopment used on constructing the People Mover was effectively wasted.74

70 Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 208. 71 B. J. Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence, 242. 72 Ibid, 247. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid. 22

During the day, nearly 100,000 people come to the city to work, shop and tour, however at night downtown Detroit was deserted.75 Just at the border of the business district the remnants of the city’s turbulent past remained; burned down buildings, boarded up shops and empty factories. The failure of Young’s downtown revitalization was vast. Within a few years of its opening, the Renaissance Center went bankrupt and had to be reorganized in 1983 after experiencing a $103 million deficit.76 In 1975, the owner of the Lions, William Clay Ford Jr., moved the NFL team to the new Pontiac Silverdome Sports Arena, located thirty minutes north of the city. The Pistons followed suit, relocating to the Palace of Auburn Hills in 1988, leaving the Red Wings in the newly-built Joe Louis Arena and the Tigers. Historian Heather Ann

Thompson asserts that “the mayor’s ambitious urban renewal projects did not offset the hostility of racially conservative whites.”77 With White and Black residents fleeing to Detroit’s suburbs for safe neighborhoods, employment, shopping, recreational centers, and schools, the suburbs had turned into the Metropolis that Young had hoped for downtown.

Inner-City Detroit vs Coleman A. Young

In 1981 Detroit faced a budget crisis in large measure due to the 1981-82 recession, and the city administration had to sell $125 million in emergency bonds.78 As a result, workers suffered a wage freeze while Black unemployment continued to rise. Mayor Young blamed

White people who had fled the city for this economic loss.79 The Detroit Free Press, on the other

75 Ibid, 242. 76 Ibid, 247. 77 Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Cornell University Press, 2004), 208. 78 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide, Michigan State University, 2013. Pg.114, Detroit Free Press, January 5, 1981. 79 Nathan Bomey and John Gallagher, “How Detroit Went Broke: The Answers May Surprise You — And Don't Blame Coleman Young,” Detroit Free Press. Sept. 15, 2013, A1, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2013/09/15/how-detroit-went-broke-the-answers-may- surprise-you-and/77152028/. 23 hand, reported that White suburbanites blamed Mayor Young for these failures. “Mayor Young has polarized the city to a greater degree of racism than was displayed in the two race riots the city has experienced.”80 Affluent neighborhoods in Detroit suffered as well. Black middle-class

Detroiters, consisting of business owners, professionals, and corporate managers became worried due to the increase in “the number of Black people in Detroit with incomes below the poverty line.”81 The poverty rate in 1970 was eighteen percent, however, that number rose to thirty-two percent in 1990.82

The following year in 1982, Mayor Young was under investigation for his business relationship with the Magnum Oil Company diesel fuel supplier.”83 The city's Auditor General,

Marie Farrell-Donaldson, who is also Black, publicly criticized Young’s dealings with Magnum

Oil in June, saying the city overpaid Magnum $247,897 for bus fuel. She also questioned a $1 million loan by the city to the company.”84 With other Black leadership criticizing the mayor’s action, revealed that not all elite Black Detroiters were on board with the city management under the Young administration. Prior to this investigation Young’s administration seemed “relatively free of scandal, and he has remained popular with voters.”85 However, by the early 1980s perception about Young from his most loyal constituents had begun to change. And Young’s refusal to respond to interviews regarding his subpoena further incited the public suspicion.86

80 Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City, (Cornell University Press, 2004), 206. 81 Todd C. Shaw, Now is the Time!: Detroit Black Politics and Grassroots Activism, (Duke University Press, 2009), 66. 82 Ibid, 66. 83 “Mayor of Detroit Subpoenaed in Graft Inquiry,” New York Times, September 5, 1982, Accessed March 5, 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/05/us/mayor-of-detroit-subpoenaed-in-graft-inquiry.html. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 24

In light of the city’s mismanagement of governmental funds, residents in inner-city neighborhoods became more concerned. Because new developmental projects in the city under

Mayor Young’s administration did not improve the decaying neighborhoods in the inner-city, neighborhood groups began to organize and advocate on their own behalf. A concerned resident and member of one of Detroit’s neighborhood coalitions reported: “While we have been trying to attract upper-income people to the Riverfront, mostly white folks, the quality of life for neighborhood residents has been ignored. If you continued to ignore those issues, then Riverfront residents will tire of their property tax bills going up, and of the feeling of insecurity they have if they go outside the gates of their property and will leave.”87 Young’s failure to serve Black residents was not just economically and socially detrimental, it was also a betrayal of the inner- city Black people and workers who helped put him in office.

Conflict between inner-city communities and the city administration heightened throughout the 1980’s. Mayor Young was criticized for using funds however and wherever he saw fit, neglecting the inner-city. Community’s activists and neighborhood groups organized meetings to address issues within in the inner-city. In a distressed state, neighborhood organizers and community activists could not “conquer the abandonment and decay.”88 Public housing activists petitioned housing authorities and the federal government for funds to manage the housing projects on their own and to save and maintain public housing. Their platform asserted that “resident management could do no worse than the Detroit Housing Department which repeatedly had been fined by federal officials from HUD throughout the 1980’s failing to provide adequate public housing.” 89Among the issues concerning the “urban environment” were public

87 June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 168; Detroit Free News, September 23, 1991, 7A. 88 June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 168. 89 Larry Bivins, “City Spurs Ideas to Let Tenants Run the Projects,” The Detroit Free Press, September 23, 1990, 59; Jane Daugherty and Phil Linsalata, “Critics say Detroit Housing Agency Spends Too Much Cash Fixing Holes 25 health, neighborhood empowerment, urban parks, suburban sprawl, and public transportation.

June Manning Thomas describes the conflict between the neighborhoods and the city administration:

Year after year, the city council fought with Mayor Young about whether the city should spend its resources on big ticket items in the central business district, riverfront, or industrial sector or spread funding around to benefit smaller neighborhood projects. The Tradeoff was real, because Young frequently used funds designated for neighborhoods to pay for projects such as the and Poletown.90 When Young outlined his new plan for Detroit, he highlighted the integration of the police force, housing reform and revitalization of neighborhoods. But very little of this had manifested by the

1980s. Projects such as the People Mover, the Poletown plant and the creation of the downtown business district to attract White people back to the city however, had failed and at the expense of Black residents.

Metro-Detroit

Metro-Detroit refers to the city of Detroit and its suburbs in the three counties; Wayne,

Oakland, and Macomb. Sometimes metro-Detroit is also called the Detroit tri-county area.91 It is important to understand the relationship between Detroit and its suburbs to understand how the failures of Young’s revitalization plan was a factor in Detroit’s urban crisis. Metro-Detroit became wealthier as those cities attracted Detroit’s former White economic base. After 1973,

“Detroit became more impoverished…neighboring Oakland Country had become ‘the country

in Management Instead of Leaks” in Homes, (The Detroit Free Press October 22, 1995), 1; Joe T. Darden, “Will America Finally Get an urban policy?” The Detroit Free Press, 1992. 90June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013) 166; Detroit Free News, September 23, 1991, p.1A;7A. 91 Metro-Detroit refers to the tri-county area of Wayne County, Oakland Country and Macomb County but most commonly referred to as Detroit metropolitan suburbs 26 with the nation’s highest average household-effective buying income.”92 Metro-Detroit had become the metropolis that Coleman A. Young had hoped to create in Detroit, with quality housing, parks, adequate municipal services. “By 1983, there was an $11,685 gap in the median household income within the area of Metropolitan Detroit ($33,241) and the city of Detroit

($21,556).93

Metro-Detroit was isolated from the city. Economic developments outside of Detroit such as shopping plazas, malls, grocery stores, and other recreational amenities were generating revenue in contrast to the barren landscape of Detroit, which featured boarded-up store fronts throughout. “In most ways, the towns of this tri-county area have little in common; what they share is an estrangement from Detroit. Unlike the suburbs of other major cities, they are not bedroom communities. The average suburbanite almost never visits the city - much less has any reason to want to live there.”94 In 1986, Bob Talbert, columnist at , described his feelings as a White person coming to the city. “I hate to feel nervous driving around city streets and parking mall lots. For the first time in 18 years I’ve had this feeling.”95 Crime and drug related fear was another factor that led to the deterioration of the city. Businesses began to leave the downtown area and set up shop in malls bordering the city, for instance Northland,

Westland, and Eastland malls. “Sears and Montgomery Wards closed several of their outlets in the city, and Federal Department Stores and Hughes and Hatcher went out of business, the national food chains A&P and Kroger shut down their stores in the city. Perhaps nothing illustrates business’s flight from Detroit more than the huge, vacant department store building in

92 Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 206; Thompson and Sinclair, Metropolitan Detroit, 54. 93 Ibid, 206. 94 Ze'ev Chafets “The Tragedy of Detroit” The New York Times, July 29, 1990. 95 Andrew W. McGill, A quote from “: A Look Ahead,” reprint of a 15-part Detroit News Special Report, January 6, 1985 to January 20, 1985, written by, business editor, Accessed November 4, 2017, www. newspapers.com/Detroit News. 27

Down Detroit—J.L. Hudson’s—a store that once did more business than Macy’s in New

York.”96 Hudson’s was a staple Department store in Detroit, founded in 1881 by J.L. Hudson in

1980. However, when their primary customers—White Detroiters—fled to the suburbs, profits declined, and the company considered closing its stores.97 Hudson’s finally closed in January

1983, representing Detroit’s irreversible defeat in keeping its White residents.98 Ultimately,

White Detroiters picked up their businesses and moved elsewhere because they had the economic means to do so. This resulted in Detroit’s economic decline, which also deprived

Black people of resource and conveniences. The suburbs could survive without Detroit, but the reverse became less realistic every year. Darden and Thomas assert that, “Young understood the need for suburban-city cooperation as essential for regional growth. The city could not exist without the suburbs and the suburbs could not exist without the city. In the same way, he said, downtown could not exist without the neighborhoods and the neighborhoods could not exist without downtown.”99

Just as businesses were leaving the city, so were Black middle-class Detroiters. An editorial in the Detroit Free Press included an interview with a White suburbanite describing the advantages of living in the suburbs.

The main reason why I live where I do is that I can shop at Twelve Oaks Mall, Westland Mall, Livonia Mall, and Tel-Twelve Mall. I can shop at these malls with relative safety. Also, the suburbs provide careful zoning of land that allows for easements connected to property and neighborhoods for the use of parks…What does Detroit offer to the common people living day to day? The Renaissance Center, Trappers Alley and Joe Louis Arena are fine for out of town travelers and

96 Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence, revisited edition 1989, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), 236. 97 "Retailing: No Embarrassed Customers." Time 2 June 1961. Archived from the original 98 J. Madeline Nash, Maureen Dowd and Barbara B. Dolan, "Tales off Ten Cities," Time Magazine, January 31, 1983, Accessed March 1, 2018. 001023, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,951913-1,00.html. 99 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2013) 115. 28

once a week Saturday night entertainment, if you can afford the process and the parking. Detroit has nothing to offer in the way everyday downright living.100 These conveniences were unavailable in Detroit.

In a 1990 article published in the New York Times, entitled the “Tragedy of Detroit,” journalist Ze’ev Chafets looks at the condition of Detroit due to its failing economy. “The suburbs of Detroit are the most segregated in the United States. Many blacks look beyond the

Eight Mile Road border and see an undifferentiated, uncaring world of suburban affluence where they are neither liked nor wanted.”101 Eight Mile, being a notable land marker separating Detroit from its suburbs, was representative of the economic capitol White people had to create an enclave outside of the city. The border also represented the containment of Black people as many

Black Detroiters experienced discrimination and harassment when entering the Oakland County suburbs north of Eight Mile Road.

Dearborn, located in Wayne County, off Michigan avenue, nine miles southwest of

Detroit, became known for its blatantly racialized city politics, which kept out Black residents of

Detroit. Orville Hubbard, elected mayor of Dearborn in 1942, held office for over three decades.

He was an open segregationist. Darden and Thomas assert that Hubbard was known as the

“mayor who provided excellent municipal services, recreation, and the exclusion of blacks from

Dearborn.”102 Hubbard’s initial campaign slogan “Keep Dearborn Clean,” was code for keeping

Dearborn White, and was posted on the side of Dearborn Police patrol cars from the 1940s through the 1970s.103 In 1956, Hubbard told the Montgomery Adviser, a daily newspaper in

100 Widick, B.J. Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence, 259. 101 Ze’ev Chafets, “The Tragedy of Detroit,” New York Times, July 29, 1990, Accessed February 13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/29/magazine/the-tragedy-of-detroit.html. 006022 Ze'ev Chafets is the author of Devil's Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit, to be published by Random House in October 102 Darden and Thomas, Detroit (Michigan State University, 2013. Pg. 144. 103 “Detroit News: Orville Hubbard—The Ghost Who Still Haunts Dearborn,” Detroit News in David L. Good, Orvie: Dictator of Dearborn (Wayne State University Press, 1989), 29

Montgomery, “They can’t get in here. We watch it. Every time we hear of a Negro moving—for instance, we had one last year—in a response quicker than to a fire. That’s generally known. It’s known among our own people and it’s known among the Negroes here.”104 Hubbard’s racial views were not limited to African Americans, he was known to complain that “the Jews own this country,” that the Irish “are even more corrupt than the Dagos,” and as Middle Easterners began moving into Dearborn that “the Syrians are even worse than the niggers.”105 While Hubbard died in 1982, his policies of segregation and exclusion of Black people from Dearborn continued on.106

Southfield, however, was a more inclusive suburb located north of the Eight Mile Road border in Oakland County. Southfield was incorporated in 1958 and was populated largely by

White people until the 1970’s and 1980’s when “Southfield experienced the largest percentage black increase (6,739 percent) of any suburb in metropolitan Detroit.”107 Southfield was particularly open to middle class Black people. “Due to the large increase from 1970 to 1980 of blacks residing in Southfield it was the only suburb bordering Detroit to grow during the decade.

Unlike some other bordering suburbs such as Warren and Dearborn which over the years have demonstrated hostility and resistance to blacks, Southfield decided not to engage in the mass white racial hysteria and bigotry.”108 Dearborn and Southfield represent some the range of the suburban racial landscape.

Conclusion: Devil’s Night

104 Farley Reynolds, Sheldon Danziger, Harry J. Holzer, Detroit Divided (New York: Russel Sage Foundation2000. 105 Detroit News: Orville Hubbard—The Ghost Who Still Haunts Dearborn.” The Detroit News. Excerpted from Good. David L (1989). Orvie: Dictator of Dearborn. Wayne State University Press. 106 Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2013) 146. 107 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2013) 147. 108 Ibid, 146. 30

During Young’s twenty-year tenure as mayor, his redevelopment projects bore some fruit, specifically at the Riverwalk and downtown. In 1990, the city’s skyscape was recognizable.

The river housed new marinas, apartment complexes, the expansion of recreational and business spaces and three new parks. A new hotel, restaurants, parking garage and local breweries dominated the northern stretch of Jefferson Avenue. The downtown developments improved the city’s appearance, however, “systematic difficulties persisted.”109

In the 1980s Detroit’s crime rate became an issue of concern, locally and nationally. The state of the inner-city began to catch up with the city administration. Downtown Detroit had been revitalized, however, it continued to fall short of Young’s desire to attract White people back to the city. Although tourism was on the rise, White metro-Detroiters were not coming into the city for any reason. The inner-city, already deteriorating, became heavily infested with drugs and crime. In Young’s call to action against crime he condemned all people who were not being ideal citizens of the city He said, “I warn all dope pushers, all rip-off artists, all muggers . . . It's time to leave Detroit . . . And I don't give a damn if they're black or white, or if they wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road. As of this minute we're going to turn this city round.”110 Historian June Manning Thomas describes the inner-city in the late 1980s:

The social fabric of the city began to come apart. Faced with seeming hopelessness, many city youths turned to drugs as a quick way to get money. After crack—a cheap, viciously addictive drug—became popular, neighborhoods lost more houses to the drug culture. Dealers rented or appropriated vacant houses as places of business. These houses almost invariable deteriorated, as their addicted residents used them almost like disposable shelters. The result was lethal for stable residential areas. A new, violent, subculture arose, much more extensive and damaging than the ‘skid rows characteristic of previous decades. Guns and shootings proliferated, and high murder rate for children and youth became another national scandal. 111

109 Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 169. 110 Rupert Cornwell Independent Obituary: Coleman Young @IndyVoices, Tuesday 2 December 1997, Accessed February 17, 2018, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-coleman-young-1286415.html. 111 Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 31

Drugs and crime in the inner-city proved to be detrimental to the surrounding stable neighborhoods in Detroit. Abandoned houses became crack houses; drug dealers assumed the vacant houses, sold crack out of the houses and sometimes allowed users to smoke or squat there.

Black Detroiters suffered in this environment, whether or not they were a part of the drug and crime activity. The city administration’s disregard for the inner-city created an environment in which Black Detroiters within the city had to live in inhabitable conditions. Detroit became a derelict wasteland of “human resources.”112

With few avenues for recourse, in 1984 the city’s most neglected population once again sought to make those in power hear them. “For three nights in 1984—which including

Halloween and the preceding night, Devil’s Night—the city was plagued with over 810 fires. No one person or gang were responsible but rather a collective act performed by Detroit youth, gangs, and homeless people individually. The blazes reminded everyone of the 1967 riots.

Burned out of old houses, buildings, and garages were visible evidence of the frightening events.”113 These burned carcasses were left, untouched. In response to the rash of arson, the police put strict curfews for inner-city youth in place and there was an increased police presence in following years on Halloween night. Although the number of fires diminished, arsonists continued to burn down abandoned buildings, businesses, and homes.

Conditions were so bad even Mayor Young was forced to acknowledge the failures. “I don't dispute the gravity of Detroit's problems…they are basically the same problems that beset every American city, except that they are magnified by the fact that modern Detroit was built around the auto industry, which has been losing blood for two decades, and the accompanying

112 Widick, Detroit, 236. 113 Ibid, 234. 32 reality that white flight, industrial and social, has left Detroit with the damnedest demographics in America.”114 The failing infrastructure severely affected the inner-city and the neighborhoods, specifically with public housing.

114 “Coleman A. Young, 79, Mayor of Detroit and Political Symbol for Blacks is Dead,” New York Times, December 1, 1997, 2. 33

CHAPTER II. CORRUPTION IN DETROIT HOUSING PROJECTS

On the morning of November 2, 2013, nineteen-year-old Renisha McBride crashed her car on Detroit’s west side, near the corner of Bramell and Majestic, a mile from West Outer

Drive, a street that separates Dearborn Heights from Detroit. Just past 4:40 in the morning

Theodore Paul Wafer heard loud banging at his front door on West Outer Drive and Dolphin. He fired through his screen door leading to his front porch, shooting McBride in the face. Wafer claimed he was afraid and acted out of self-defense, while McBride’s family believes she needed help following the crash but was murdered instead.115 Carmen Beasley, who had witnessed the crash, went to check on the situation after hearing noises outside her home. She remembered

McBride being “discombobulated” after the accident. “McBride was holding her head in her hands and unable to find her cell phone to call for help.”116 Beasley called 911, but McBride had left the scene of the crash by the time EMS arrived. Theodore Paul Wafer was convicted of murder and sentenced to seventeen to thirty-two years in prison for second-degree murder and a two-year sentence for a firearms charge.117 What makes this case controversial is that

Wafer was not immediately arrested for the murder of Renisha McBride and although authorities said the motivation of the shooting was not necessarily about race, #BlackLivesMatter protested that a White man had killed an unarmed Black and the case gained national attention.

115 Jonathan Oosting, “McBride Killer Stands Grounds at , Detroit News Lansing Bureau, October 12, 2017, Accessed April 1, 2018, https://www.detroitnews.com/stoy/news/local/wayne- county/2017/10/12/theodore-wafer-renisha-mcbride-michigan-supreme-court/106566438/. 116 Kate Abbey-Lambertz, “Opening Statements Reveal Shooter’s State of Mind in Renisha McBride Case, Black Voices: Huffington Post, July 23, 2018, Accessed April 1, 2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/23/renisha-mcbride-theodore-wafer-trial_n_5614481.html. 117 Jonathan Oosting, “McBride Killer Stands Grounds at Michigan Supreme Court, Detroit News Lansing Bureau, October 12, 2017, Accessed April 1, 2018, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne- county/2017/10/12/theodore-wafer-renisha-mcbride-michigan-supreme-court/106566438/. 34

The shooting of Renisha McBride was not about race in a way that is easily delineated, but its racial contours become clear if one understands its relationship to Detroit’s racial landscape. Suburbanite’s fear of Detroiters reveals just how important that border separating the city from the suburbs is in reinforcing ideas about who belongs in the city and who belongs in the suburbs and how close that line is in reality. The suburbs represent White racial spaces that are exclusive of Black people. A Detroit resident (Beasley) responded to the crash and called

EMS, while a mile away, a Dearborn Heights resident feared for his life when responding to the banging on his door. And the response of the Dearborn Heights police department, specifically in not arresting Wafer, is another layer of this story and related to a long history of housing segregation in Detroit and its suburbs. In this chapter I argue that Black people have been subject to unaffordable, uninhabitable, and crime-ridden public housing. Excluded from some suburban areas contained them in the crumbling city. This has been a result of not only institutionalized racism against Black people but also the way that Coleman A. Young, the city administration and the Detroit Housing Department mismanaged the city’s redevelopment efforts.

Inner-city Neighborhoods

By 1992, Mayor Young’s vision for downtown began to manifest, specifically with the construction of the Riverfront, Millender, and Trolley Plaza high rise apartments throughout the

1980s. With the newly integrated apartments racial divides seemed as if they were closing for residents that could afford it.118 However, forty-percent of inner-city Detroit continued to be

“unused” and the Black community criticized the mayor for his neglect of their neighborhoods.

Some had even come to believe that the city had deteriorated under his administration. The

118 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2013), 102; Coleman A. Young, 79, Mayor of Detroit and Political Symbol for Blacks, is Dead, New York Times, December 1, 1997, 2. 35

Young administration was accused of expending most of its attention and funding on redeveloping the downtown area with business districts, commercial space, and housing aimed at

White suburbanites, instead of Black communities within the city, especially those in Detroit’s east and west sides.

Young’s integrationist rhetoric was used during his campaign as a way to integrate all

Detroiters, but by the early 1990s his message of reunification was primarily used to attract

White people back to Detroit. “Some critics in the black community, however, saw this

‘integration’ as Young’s attempt to stop white flight at the expense of inner-city blacks. Young denied that he has ‘caved in to gentrification’ like other cities.”119 Mayor Young challenged

Detroiters who criticized his accomplishments; saying, “The deterioration was well advanced before I became mayor…All of them were damned near burned down in ’67…You asked what are we going to do about Linwood, Mack, and Kercheval. What were they before? 12th Street was worse than Linwood before we rebuilt it. So was Black Bottom, [which] we rebuilt it.”120

Young’s statements attempted to absolve himself of responsibility for neighborhood reform, but the persistent problem was that the city administration, beginning with Mayor Young, refused to invest in Black inner-city areas.121

In 1974, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Detroit

Housing Department (DHD) were allocated funds to repair public housing units and improve neighborhoods. In ““Moving Detroit Forward” the outlined allocation of funds for housing was noted as $735 million for construction, demolition, and rehabilitation. However, Young’s

119 Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 116; Michigan Chronicle, November 2, 1985. 120 Ibid, 116. Linwood, Mack, and Kercheval streets are where some of the worst street affected by the 1967 Rebellion. 121 Robert E. Pierre, “In Detroit, Displaced Residents Still Waiting,” The Washington Post, August 24, 2003. 36 administration spent the funds on other projects such as commercial space and luxury apartments. As downtown and the Riverfront were being reconstructed, the inner-city was being devastated by poverty, crime, and drugs. This resulted in unsafe, filthy, housing and abandoned buildings littered throughout residential areas. At the same time, Black people in inner-city areas were barred from moving to metro-Detroit areas, such as Dearborn [discussed above] or because they were charged higher rent than their White counterparts. These forms of housing discrimination contained Black Detroiters in Detroit and in inner-city areas increasingly run down and neglected by the city government.

A History of Housing Discrimination

Historically, for Black Detroiters, gaining access to decent housing has been difficult since the 1920s. Prior to the 1920’s, however, discrimination in the north was not widespread until the mass migration of Black people into the city from the south.122 In the 1920s, the only

Black neighborhood in Detroit was the Black Bottom. However, “it wasn’t until 1924 that the real estate agents’ trade association absolutely barred its member from selling houses in white neighborhoods to Negro customers and imposed sanctions on those who dared to break the rules.”123 The organization forbade the selling of housing to Black people based on social custom. Neighborhood coalitions also restricted integration by building a segregation wall— which barred Black people from entering the neighborhoods.124 The Black Bottom neighborhood, although a space where Black people felt safe and welcomed, was overcrowded.

122 Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice (Henry Holt and Company, 2007), 144. 123 Ibid, 145. 124 Ibid, 194. 37

However, segregated housing was practiced and put “into city policy as carried out by the Detroit

Housing Commission.”125

During the 1930’s, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s guaranteed new public housing for

Detroit’s rapidly growing population. Black families were the first to occupy these new units, moving from slum-like housing in the Black Bottom. As a part of the Housing Act of 1937, local housing authorities could obtain land, build low-income housing units and townhouses to provide low-density living spaces.126 This initiative provided more housing for Black and lower- class people who lived in overcrowded housing. Housing for Black people outside of the city was not available. Though 178,000 new low incoming housing was built between 1950-1956, only 758 were available for nonwhites.127 Therefore, low-income housing in Detroit was the only housing available for Black Detroit, soon turning the low-income housing into an overcrowded dumping ground; the projects.

The Projects

Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects were the largest residential public housing units owned by the city. The name of the housing projects come from the collective living space of the

Brewster Project and the Frederick Douglass Apartments. Brewster-Douglass was located in the

Brush Park section on the east side, near I-75 (also known locally as the Chrysler Freeway),

Mack avenue, and St. Antoine street. In 1938, The Brewster projects became the first housing projects built exclusively for Black Americans, with 701 Black families moving in during its

125 Kinney, Beautiful Wasteland, 573. [Kindle Edition]. The DHC is formerly known as the Detroit Housing Department, founded in 1933. It was changed to Detroit Historical Commission in 1996 under the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 126 Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 20. 127 Ibid. 38 debut.128 In 1942, construction began on the Frederick Douglass Apartments, directly south of the Brewster Project. When completed in 1955 there were two six-story low-rise apartments and six fourteen-story high rises completed. The entire Brewster-Douglass projects occupied fourteen acres of housing for low-income Detroiters.129 The Brewster-Douglass became famous as the birthplace of Motown legends Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballad of The Supremes.

Because they were publicly subsidized housing units, the city-imposed restrictions on who could move into Brewster-Douglass. Initially, the Detroit Housing Department (DHD) required that at least one parent or a family member be employed, but over time this policy was relaxed due to mass migration of Black and poor White families. Nearly 250,000 people seeking brought them to the Brewster-Douglass projects between 1940 and 1945.130

Unable to build enough housing to accommodate needy families, many families had to share units with other families.131 As more people moved into the Brewster-Douglass projects, it became hard to maintain the structure, the Detroit Housing Department failed to comply with safety precautions and Brewster-Douglass began to slip into disrepair. In 1950, the city added more units onto the already expansive Brewster-Douglass housing projects, piling units on top of

128 Stateside Staff “A former Housing Project Charles Detroit’s urban Planners,” April 2, 2014, Accessed March 1, 2018, http://michiganradio.org/post/former-housing-project-challenges-detroits-urban-planners. Dan Austin “Brewster-Douglass Projects, Historic Detroit,” Accessed February 12, 2018, http://historicdetroit.org/building/brewster-douglass-projects/. ; June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013), 20. 129 Dan Austin, “Brewster-Douglass Projects”, Accessed February 12, 2018, http://historicdetroit.org/building/brewster-douglass-projects/. 130 In 1996 The Detroit Housing Department (DHD) name was changed to the Detroit Housing Commission (DHC) by the U.S. Department of Justice (HUD). I will refer to the DHD as DHC when referring to agency post 1996, I will use DHD when referring to the agency before 1996. Suzette Hackney and Marisol Bello, and Knight Ridder, “Feds to Oversee Detroit’s Public Housing Agency,” Chicago Tribune, July 17, 2015, Accessed April 1, 2017, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2005-07-17/business/0507170436_1_freman-hendrix-public-housing-mayor- kwame-kilpatrick; June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013), 20. 131 Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 20. 39 one another.132 These cheaply made additions diminished the condition of the structures and the quality of the community. “The units became concentrated foci of poverty.”133

In the 1990s. the Brewster-Douglass was “a deserted place. Burned-out, marred with graffiti and littered with trash. It is the stereotypical image the uninformed imagine when they think of Detroit. The whole complex is an eyesore.”134 The projects that had once symbolized

Black mobility in post-World War II Detroit had become, by the 1980s, symbolic of the city’s general decline. The projects were a dumping ground even though there was state, local, and federal funding available to improve it and alleviate the overcrowding.

The Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had been planning to demolish housing projects across Detroit in the 1980’s. Brewster-Douglass residents were forced to move in 1986, but the application for demolition was not officially approved until the 1990s. The prematurely abandoned buildings “tower[ed] over a blighted urban wasteland just on the edge of downtown. Four empty, windowless skyscrapers hovering along I-375” until 1991.135 And in

1998 the projects were replaced with the Brewster Homes, a neighborhood of townhomes. Other housing projects suffered under similar conditions without any city intervention.136 According to the Detroit Housing Commission Annual Plan for FY 2001 The Brewster-Douglass Housing projects were allocated $245,079. DHC reports, however, show $0 were spent on the public

132 Ibid, 26. 133 Ibid, 26. 134Dan Austin, “Brewster-Douglass Projects, Historic Detroit,” Accessed February 12, 2018, http://historicdetroit.org/building/brewster-douglass-projects/. 135 Dan Austin, “Brewster-Douglass Projects, Historic Detroit,” Accessed February 12, 2018, http://historicdetroit.org/building/brewster-douglass-projects/. 136 Herman Gardens and Brewster-Douglass, once the realm of the Young Boys, are now provinces of Pony Down, say narcotics experts. 40 housing units.137 In 2001, HUD inspected the DHC and found that $18 million in federal funds had been mishandled.138

The Herman Garden Projects were built in 1943 on Detroit's west side at Joy road and

Southfield Freeway. The Gardens, as they are colloquially known, had 2,144 units organized into two-story multifamily buildings and a 129-unit, Garden View Senior Building for the elderly. By the 1980s, however, Herman Gardens was known exclusively for high drug activity.139 “In the context of the War on Drugs, Herman Gardens was heavily policed, as the Garden were home to local drug gangs, Young Boys and Pony Down.”140 Black men were the primary target of this police activity. A 1990 New York Times article, entitled “The Tragedy of Detroit,” described the status of the city: “There is a war in Detroit…And young black men are the targets. Our sons are at risk - to suicide, murder, jail and hopelessness. Really, it's genocide; the enemy is the society that has forced the situation on them. Right now, the largest employer of young men in Detroit is drugs.” 141 The community within the Gardens became drug and crime ridden—affecting the quality of life for the residents in the projects. In the 1980s, the “muddy grass and peeling paint” depressed residents despite the housing complex being in close proximity to transportation, schools and local stores.

Memories of the Herman Gardens housing projects reflect just how rough the community was. In a forum entitled “What Did Herman Garden[s] Look Like” on Atdetroit.net a commenter

137 Detroit Housing Commission Annual Plan for FY 2001, Wayne County, 2000. . 138 Brewster Homes are still commonly referred as the Brewster or Brewster-Douglass projects. 139 “Public Housing on New Track in Detroit; Old Buildings fall,” The Detroit Free Press, August 9, 1996, 36. 140 Judy Diebolt and Brian Flanigan, “Heroin RING Grows TO Fill Young Boys’ Shoes, Officials Say”, Detroit Free Press Sunday, October 2, 1983, 1. 141 Ze’ev Chafets, “The Tragedy of Detroit, The New York Times Archives, 1990, p.006022, Accessed April 1, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/29/magazine/the-tragedy-of-detroit.html. 41 with the screenname Tayshaun22 wrote: “The . The end.”142 Another user named

Reddog289 posted: “Scary when I was a kid back in the [sic] 70, s/8o, s [sic]. We would go to the A&P and Frank’s nursery on Greenfield, my Grandma would pray that the car wouldn’t break down in front of ‘That Herman’s Gardens’. As a little kid id be scared, yet when my cousin played football at Lutheran West I thought nothing of it. When I do drive by their I also wonder what’s the deal with the gardens?”143 Raggedclaws remembered, “Herman Gardens was legendary where I grew up, the ‘big bad’, so to speak. See reddog's post. As kids were told to never, ever go there. And stay in school so that we would not end up there. Like Tayshaun said.... the ghetto. My friends and I didn’t give it much thought, just where the poor folk lived.”144 The conversation continued as one user, named English said,

I can't believe that across the nation, many of these housing projects are gone. When I was a kid in the 1980s, I always considered the projects hell... although both my parents were raised in them. They said they were bad in the 1950s, and from the way they talked, certain death back then. I only went into a project a couple of times... one of the high-rises (Jeffries?). A friend of the family lived there... I was little. However, some of the apartment buildings in certain areas of Detroit and Highland Park remind me of the projects. Back in 2006 the girl who did my hair lived in a scary-looking building. Her place was very nice and fixed up, but the rest of the place was totally jacked up.145 This online conversation seemed to confirm the picture illustrated of the Gardens in 1980 by the elderly residents as “scary, dirty, and unsafe.”146 Conditions were so bad that HUD threatened to

142 Tayshaun22, “What did Herman Gardens look like Atdetroit.net, Discuss Detroit, Archives-July 2008,” August 25, 2008 12: 53am.Accessed September 17, 2017. http://www.atdetroit.net/forum/messages/148145/152803.html?%25201219859887. 143 Reddog289, “What did Herman Gardens look like?” Atdetroit.net, Discuss Detroit, Archives-July 2008, August 25, 2008 1:15am, Accessed September 17, 2017. http://www.atdetroit.net/forum/messages/148145/152803.html?%25201219859887. 144 Raggedclaws, “What did Herman Gardens look like?”, Accessed September 17, 2017. http://www.atdetroit.net/forum/messages/148145/152803.html?%25201219859887. 145 English, “What did Herman Gardens look like?” Atdetroit.net, Discuss Detroit, Archives-July 2008, August 25, 2008 10:34. Accessed September 17, 2017. http://www.atdetroit.net/forum/messages/148145/152803.html?%25201219859887. 146 Larry Bivins, “City Spurs Ideas to Let Tenants Run the Projects, “Detroit Free Press, September 23, 1990, 59. 42 revoke $22 million set aside to replace the ruins of the old Herman Gardens demolished in 1998.

These living conditions, however, were a result of overcrowding in the projects and the city’s failure to implement housing reform.

In the early 1990s, the Brewster-Douglass projects were demolished completely alongside 800 units from Herman Gardens and Parkside Projects were demolished. These three projects were the city’s largest and their demolition eliminated 10,000 housing units, leaving thousands of people without adequate housing.147 The demolition of public housing on this scale seemed to solidify the city’s abandonment of inner-city communities.148 Kinney describes the market forces that shaped this process:

The consolidation by both federal and state government of neoliberal policies, prioritizing privatization and ideologies of personal responsibility, resulted in scaffolding of the logic of “the market” onto and into government policies. Most famous among these were summations that wide-scale poverty, crime, and joblessness in America’s urban cores were the result of either structural failure or the redeployment of the “culture or poverty.”149 Even before the demolition plans of Brewster-Douglass and Herman Gardens, there was a critical lack of available, affordable housing, regardless of condition. In 2000, the DHC had a waiting list for families in need of housing consisting extremely low income at ninety-two percent, very low income at seven percent and two percent were low income families. 150

Discrimination in Housing

Private housing also became an issue for many residents seeking low-income housing outside of public housing. Housing restrictions for poor and working class Black people allowed

147 Ibid, 59. 148 Ibid, 59. 149 Kinney, Beautiful Wasteland, 573. 150 “Detroit Housing Commission Annual Plan for FY 2001,” Wayne County, 2000. Detroit Public Library. 43 landlords to take full advantage of them and many created apartments by dividing large rooms into smaller units. As a result, overcrowding in both private and public housing caused units to deteriorate at a faster rate. In 1968 Black residents were charged $77 for rent ($556.67 today), whereas White residents paid $76 for rent ($549.44 today).151 Although the difference each month was not great, over the course of a year Black Detroiters paid ($86.76 today) more in rent than their White counterparts. Also, the quality of housing for the Black residents were smaller, in poor condition an in less desirable locations than their White counterparts. If you consider that in the context of the ways in which Mayor Young’s plans for job creation primarily benefited

White Detroiters, one can see the long-term effects of these policies in housing. Thus, Black people were generally unable to access the economic benefits of Detroit’s post-Rebellion redevelopments under Coleman Young and after.

Discrimination was present both in the city and metro-Detroit within public and private housing. In the winter of 1993, the Department of Justice filed two civil rights lawsuits against two suburban Detroit housing developments, accusing the city of a pattern of racial discrimination where landlords refused to rent housing units to Black Detroiters. These lawsuits alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act based on investigations by surveyors for the Fair

Housing Center of metro-Detroit.152 Private owners refusing Black people and the suburbs refusing to accept funds to provide public housing left Black people with no other choice but to live in barely habitable conditions in the inner-city.

In 1979 the city as awarded $10 million in federal grants from HUD to improve Detroit’s public housing and provide “a comprehensive housing and supportive services package within a

151 Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 137. 152 Jane Daugherty and Phil Linsalata, “Critics say Detroit Housing Agency Spends Too Much Cash Fixing Holes in Management Instead of Leaks,” Detroit Free Press, October 22, 1995, 1. 44 subsidized housing environment.”153 At this time, Detroit Housing Department (DHD) reports described the vacant housing projects as “looking like a bombed-out village in World War II.”154

Demolitions had not yet been set for the public housing units; but they were being vacated. The state of public housing persisted as a major issue following the end of Young’s tenure in 1994.

The DHD planned to propose housing reform to create public/private partnerships to provide affordable housing. The Detroit Housing Commission— (formerly DHD, renamed while being reorganized by HUD)—applied for funds in 1996 to reduce the number of public housing units from 1,573 to 672.155

Corruption

In 1980 the applied for a $64.1 million federal Urban Development

Action Grant for inner-city and housing reform but, Mayor Young did not support the application.156 Although, most of the redevelopment in Detroit had a focus on downtown and midtown, Young felt the money could be used on other projects downtown; instead of relining the streets in the New Center area, an up and coming middle class neighborhood, located in uptown Detroit. The Detroit City Council created a list of priorities of how the money would be spent within the inner-city: neighborhood improvements, community center improvements, fire equipment, rehabilitation for salvageable abandoned building, youth programs, housing projects, street improvements, and protection of neighborhoods and housing projects.157 The city’s plans however were not congruent with resident priorities.

153 “Herman Gardens: Home Amid Decay,” Detroit Free Press, April 9, 1979, 22.; Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD. Gov. https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/housing/mfh/progdesc/chsp/chsp 154 “Council to Reconsider Grant Programs,” Detroit Free Press, February 21, 1980. 155 “Public Housing on New Track in Detroit; Old Buildings fall,” The Detroit Free Press, August 9, 1996. 156 “Council to Reconsider Grant Programs,” Detroit Free Press, February 21, 1980. 157 “Council to Reconsider Grant Programs” Detroit Free Press February 21, 1980. 45

In the 1981 fiscal budget, the city did not allot any money for public housing. Public housing in Detroit had yet to be repaired. In 1985, Dane Smith, a writer for the Detroit Free

Press reported “thousands of units are being lost annually to decay and disrepair. In Detroit alone, about 30 percent of the city’s 10,070 units are boarded up and empty because of vandalism and insufficient repair money.”158 What little available housing that did exist was mostly privately owned and often in worse conditions than public housing, at least according to

Victoria Kovari, director of the United Community Housing Coalition, a local advocacy group for low income tenants.159 Private housing projects were more expensive, crowded and poorly heated. It had gotten so bad “that the city had guards on round-the-clock patrol.” 160

Again in 1983, the Detroit Housing Department received money to repair housing projects, but the units were not adequately renovated, and some were so damaged they could not be restored. In 1985 an infant died due to lead poisoning from the lead paint exterior wall in the housing projects where he and his unnamed seventeen-year-old mother lived. His mother was convinced his death was due to the awful living conditions, particularly the removal of air conditioners in the building, which left “gaping” holes that exposed the outside of the apartment to the interior. 161 In December of the previous year, the Michigan Chronicle reported that the public housing where the infant resided “was cold and the child was cold to the touch.”162 The conditions of the housing unit resulted in the child’s death. Detroit’s public housing projects were “deteriorating, dilapidated, or lacking full plumbing.”163

158 Dane Smith, “Wanted: Shelter- A Freeze on Housing Funds Leaves Homeless in the Cold-Nationwide Plight,” Detroit Free Press, December 29, 1985. 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid. 161 M.A. Goodin, “Death Claims Infant in Landlord Dispute,” Michigan Chronicle, January 5, 1985, 8. 162 Larry Bivins, “City Spurs Ideas to Let Tenants Run the Projects,” Detroit Free Press, September 23, 1990, 15. 163 The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968). 46

Under the Housing Act of 1937 HUD held contracts with “housing authorities to provide subsidies and grants for operating expenses and modernizing deteriorated housing. In return, housing authorities agree to provide residents with decent, safe, and sanitary housing.”164 The

DHD violated their contract in 1992, but the agency was not penalized by HUD.165 In 1992,

HOPE VI was established by HUD to diminish the amount of abandoned and unlivable housing by demolition and consisted of various grant programs for revitalization, demolition and Main

Street and planning addition grant programs.166 Detroit was one of the many cities to receive these funds; yet another attempt to help revitalize public housing in the city, without any improvement.

Detroit was allocated funding in 1993 to fix three of Detroit’s housing projects including

Jeffries West Homes, located west of the Lodge Freeway, and Herman Gardens, but this did not add to the available housing stock. As a result, housing remained limited and unaffordable. The following year, HUD investigator, Obie Benson, was sent to audit Detroit’s public housing to make sure the city was maintaining its public housing.167 Throughout his audit Benson discovered unfulfilled maintenance requests eight years prior and high vacancy rates. But

Benson also noted terrible living conditions. HUD took notice of persistent mismanagement of housing in Detroit, still after the HOPE VI, and intervened in the Detroit Housing Department, despite ignoring the incident the previous incidents, in 1995 during 's mayoral

164“Statement of Judy A. England-Joseph, Director, Housing and Community Development Issues, Resources, Community, and Economic Development Division,” Testimony Before the Subcommittee, July 8 1996, 2. Accessed March 7, 2018, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GAOREPORTS-T-RCED-96-212/pdf/GAOREPORTS- T-RCED-96-212.pdf. 165 Ibid. Accessed Date, March 7, 2018, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GAOREPORTS-T-RCED-96- 212/pdf/GAOREPORTS-T-RCED-96-212.pdf. 166 Robert E. Pierre, “In Detroit, Displaced Residents Still Waiting,” The Washington Post, August 24, 2003, Accessed February 20, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/08/24/in-detroit-displaced- residents-still-waiting/dae0c38d-f5df-4ac4-8d27-84bcc51a3bf2/?utm_term=.4f66c96e2420. 167 Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy-Annual Plan FY 93 presented by the Wayne County Government in December of 1992, Detroit Public Library. 47 term.168 In 1997, under the guidance of HUD Director Carl Green, the Detroit Housing

Commission was taken off “the HUD’s list of trouble authorities” for the first time since 1979.169

With no more funds to spend on housing improvement, to reduce vacancy rates and unsightly buildings, there was no other option but for HUD to direct the city to be demolished.

The DHC had a plan for housing reform in Detroit’s inner-city that included four new developments to replace some of the demolished housing, while 350 homes were to be made available for purchase by public housing tenants.170 From governmental funds allocated to the city for housing reform, $4.1 million was set aside to go toward “fighting drugs, gangs, and crime in public housing in Detroit,” rather than home renovation and rebuilding.171 These funds were used solely for surveillance systems, guards and safety equipment to secure public housing, which did not materially benefit public housing tenants. HUD had a history of demolishing public housing units without efficient replacement and since 1992, Detroit public housing has gone from 12,500 units to 4,200 and continues to drop.172

The Detroit Housing Commission was removed from HUD’s troubled housing authority in May 1996 list as more buildings were demolished.173The few housing units available have more strict regulations mandating eviction of tenant families if a convicted felon resides in the

168 Ben Schmitt, Kathleen Gray and Jennifer Dixon Suzette Hackney and Marisol Bello, Knight Ridder “Feds to Oversee Detroit’s Public Housing,” Midwest Chicago Tribune/Tribune: Detroit Free Press, July 17, 2005, 16. 169 Ibid, 16.; “Statement of Judy A. England-Joseph, Director, Housing and Community Development Issues, Resources, Community, and Economic Development Division,” Testimony Before the Subcommittee, July 8 1996, 2. Accessed Date, March 7, 2018, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GAOREPORTS-T-RCED-96- 212/pdf/GAOREPORTS-T-RCED-96-212.pdf. 170 “Public Housing on New Track in Detroit; Old Buildings fall” Detroit Free Press August 9, 1996, Accessed March 1, 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/100384535/. 13 171 Ibid. Detroit Free Press August 9, 1996.13 172 Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy-Annual Plan FY 93 presented by the Wayne County Government in December of 1992. Detroit Public Library. 173 Suzette Hackney and Mario Bello, Knight Ridder, “Fed to Oversee Detroit’s Public Housing Agency, Chicago Tribune, July 17, 2005, Accessed February 21, 2018, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2005-07- 17/business/0507170436_1_freman-hendrix-public-housing-mayor-kwame-kilpatrick. 48 unit or a guest commits a crime after visiting. They also hold programs to provide residents with skills to maintain their homes in order to accomplish adequate living standards. Eligibility rules have also become so rigid that disabled people under sixty-two years of age cannot qualify. In addition, since there were fewer units available, DHC created vacancies primarily through eviction, rather than the erection of new units. But a 2001 HUD audit condemned the DHC for mismanaging roughly $18 million. The audit alleged that most of the maintenance problems, resulting in the uninhabitable conditions, stemmed from officials not managing spending. Again, in 2003, HUD threatened to withhold $46 million from Detroit programs for demolishing vacant buildings and removing lead paint from houses due to the previous mismanagement of grant money by the city in the 1980’s and 1990’s.174 And a second HUD audit that same year reported that the DHC had not met its goal to provide safe and sanitary housing.

Historically, the Detroit Housing Commission’s negligent behavior and mismanagement of local, state and federal funding, has created poor living conditions for poor Black Detroiters.

Detroit’s housing projects are some of the worst in the nation. Nonetheless, this has not been a story of a city without the financial means to make improvements. Rather, even when the DHC has been awarded millions in federal funding specifically to improve their public housing, the funds were misappropriated. That the federal government has never held any city official responsible for these misdeeds has created an environment where the city’s poorest residents have effectively been preyed upon and neglected by those elected and appointed to serve them, without federal complicity.

174 Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy-Annual Plan FY 93 Wayne County Government in December of 1992. Detroit Public Library. Detroit Public Library. 49

CHAPTER III. POLICING DETROIT

A&E’s The First 48 shadowed the Detroit Police Special Response Team in a raid on

May 16, 2010, filming the events that resulted in the death of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-

Jones.175 The raid, led by Officer Joseph Weekley, was a “midnight SWAT-style operation” to arrest Aiyana Stanley-Jones’ uncle for the murder of a teenager.176 Mertilla Jones, the girl’s grandmother, was laying on the couch with her granddaughter when Weekley came into the house, launched a flashbang grenade and fired one shot hitting Aiyana Stanley-Jones in the head.

Jones said she asked for them to help her grand-daughter, but the raid continued until the arrest of the girl’s uncle, as Stanley-Jones laid, covered in blood, in her grandmother’s arms.

Joseph Weekley claimed the shooting was an accident as he thought Stanley-Jones was a pile of clothes on the couch.177 Weekley was charged with involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment in October 2011. During the initial trial in June 2013, Jones said to Weekley, “She was only a baby, man. She was sleeping and I told you all ‘Let me get my granddaughter’, and you didn’t give me a chance. Why you do this to me...I get no sleep. I am sick. I am sick as hell.

I get no sleep. The flashbacks. I wouldn’t wish this on nobody in the world. Not even you.”178

Despite the details of the case both of Weekley’s initial trials—June 2013 and October 2014— ended in a mistrial. 179 In last trial, in January 2015, Weekley was acquitted of the remaining charges and he returned to his position as a police officer with the Detroit Police Department.

175 Kate Abbey-Lambertz, “How A Police Officer Shot A Sleeping 7-Year-Old to Death,” Huffington Post: Black Voices, September 17, 2014. Accessed March 17, 2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/17/aiyana- stanley-jones-joseph-weekley-trial_n_5824684.html. 176 Rose Hackman, “She Was Only a Baby: Last Charge Dropped in Police Raid that Killed Sleeping Detroit Child,” : In Detroit, Accessed March 24, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/31/detroit- aiyana-stanley-jones-police-officer-cleared. 177 Abbey-Lambertz, “How A Police Officer Shot A Sleeping 7-Year-Old to Death.” 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid. 50

The Aiyana Stanley-Jones case exposed deep-seated issues in the DPD surrounding negligent behavior and the disregard for Black life. “This was essentially a military assault on a private dwelling,” Ron Scott, of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality commented in

2012.180 The weaponry used, such as the flashbang grenades, and the excessive force displayed resulted in the death of a child, with no accountability from the officer who killed her, which illustrates the militarization of the police in recent memory.

When Mayor Young was elected to office in 1974, the first campaign promise he fulfilled was to disband STRESS (Stop the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets) and set about integrating the police force. But “not only did whites continue to comprise the majority of the

Detroit Police Department, but in Detroit’s fire department, whites still made up to 90 percent of the highest-ranking uniformed officers.”181 During Young’s campaign, he expressed his dislike for the DPD’s operation at the time.

One of the problems is that the police run the city…. STRESS is responsible for the explosive polarization that now exits; STRESS is an execution squad rather than the enforcement squad. As mayor, I will get rid of STRESS…The whole attitude of the whole Police Department, historically, has been one of intimidation and that citizens can be kept in line with clubs and guns rather than respect.182 Thus, in Young’s first year in office he successfully enforced an affirmative action plan to integrate the DPD and divided the larger precinct into thirteen mini-precincts based on geographical location.183 However, public perception of the DPD changed little. Detroiters continued to face a police force, both within and outside of the city, that was aggressive in its handling of the city’s residents. There has been an overwhelmingly negative perception of the

180 Ibid, Accessed March 17, 2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/17/aiyana-stanley-jones-joseph- weekley-trial_n_5824684.html. 181 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit, (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2013),103; Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 205. 182 Ibid, 100. 183 Detroit Police Department, Annual Report 1974, Accessed March 24, 2018, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/29163NCJRS.pdf. 51

DPD as violent and aggressive, but this ignores that other city services, such as the Detroit Fire

Department (DFD) and Emergency Medical Services (EMS), have a track record of treating

Black and White Detroiters in ways that, rather than aggressive might be more accurately described as negligent.

Although the police were integrated, and the city had a large Black population; the ways in which the city government abandoned and neglected them was symptomatic of the institutional racism, which included (and was maintained by) the aggressive and negligent services provided by the DPD and other emergency services. Thus, even though Coleman Young disbanded STRESS and sought to integrate the police, much like the stories told in the previous chapters, his policies did not prevent the victimization of Black Detroiters. In this chapter I argue that despite integration, the DPD and emergency services like the EMS and fire departments were often negligent and aggressive when responding to Black residents. As Detroit transformed in the aftermath of the 1967 Rebellion police were unable to meet the needs of the people they served which only increased tensions and divisions between the Black community and the city.

Most Violent Police in the Nation

The tense relationship between the DPD and Black Detroiters has a long history, stemming from, at least, the 1930s.184 Journalist and activist Jill Nelson recounts the precursors to the 1943 Detroit riots. “In Detroit, however, the police behaved like partisans in a race war.

They had already shown their colors one year earlier, when policemen joined White mobs in preventing Black tenants from moving into the Sojourner Truth Projects.”185 The Projects became a battleground in 1943 when police officers armed themselves with tear gas and entered

184 Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 7. 185 Robin D.G. Kelly, “Slangin’ Rocks…Palestinian Style” Jill Nelson, ed. Police Brutality: An Anthology, (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2001), 34. 52 the Sojourner Truth Homes. In addition, White people rampaged through Black neighborhoods with impunity while Black people were being killed and arrested by White police officers.186

Seventeen Black people were killed.187 Heather Ann Thompson asserts that these events “make clear [that] white racial conservatism played a visible role in postmigration Detroit”188 In the post-WWII period, “distinctions between the city’s white and black communities remained clear, although the black grew and expanded during the 1960’s,” becoming the new untouchables.189 In 1953, the Michigan Chronicle, a local Black newspaper, claimed that between 1943 and1953 police brutality, “became the symbol of everything that was wrong with

Detroit.”190 Race relations between the White police and Black community became so tense the

NAACP received complaints against the Detroit Police Department.

Scholar Sandra Bass argues that cities such as Detroit have a history of policing Black people in a violent manner. Bass argues “that three factors have been central in forwarding race- based social control and have been intertwined in public policy and police practices since the earliest days of U.S. history.”191 The factors she discusses are, “race, space, and policing in U.S. history.”192 These forces led to the over policing of working class Black people in the inner-city.

But negligence and violence go hand-in-hand. When the police only show up keep people in line, and the police, fire and emergency services are slow to appear when residents are in need, there can develop a pervasive distrust of these services. Even though were made illegal

186 Ibid, 34. 187 Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit, (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2013), 33. 188 Thompson, Whose Detroit? (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 16; Dominic Capeci, Race Relations in Wartime Detroit: The Sojourner Truth Housing Controversy of 1942. (Philadelphia:1984), and Dominic Capeci and Martha Wilkerson, Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943 (Jacksonville, Miss.) ,146. 189 Ibid; John DeSantis, The New Untouchables (Chicago: Nobel Press Rights, 1994), 131. 190 Michigan Chronicle, March 21, 2018. 191 Sandra Bass, “Policing Space, Policing Race: Social Control Imperatives and Police Discretionary Decisions,” Social Justice Vol. 28:1 1 (83), Spring 2001, Accessed January 15, 2018, https://www.jstor.org/stable/29768062?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. 157. 156-176. 192 Ibid, 157. 53 in 1967, the North had not practiced racism in the same ways as the South and de facto segregation remained integrated in “policies and practices” that “perpetuate[d] a substantially authoritarian, regulatory, and punitive relationship between racial minorities and the police.”193

Detroit is a prime example this process.

The 1967 Rebellion changed the way police surveilled the streets of Detroit. As discussed in chapter one, the Rebellion heightened racial tensions between White police officers and Black

Detroiters. Immediately following the 1967 Rebellion, poor Whites in the city organized neighborhood clubs that UPI reporter, and author of The New Untouchables, John DeSantis asserts “Some of these were little more than fronts for the KKK. Some Detroit Police officers, if not actually members of these neighborhood groups, were at the very least sympathetic to their goals.”194 The Precinct Support Unit was plainclothes “cops functioning much like booster cares except they were free to precinct boundaries, roaming citywide to focus on the hottest major crimes and crime spots.”195 Historically, Detroit police have acted as a watchdog of Black spaces and movement around city, blending in as regular civilians.

The most apparent response of the Rebellion was the formation of STRESS by John

Nichols (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets) in 1971, an undercover task force of undercover officers. In his autobiography Good Cops, Bad Verdict: How Racial Politics Convicted Us of

Murder, Larry Nevers, former Detroit police officer, asserts that “The department formed the plainclothes STRESS unit, entirely devoted to attacking the street-crime rampage…A STRESS cop’s only mission would be to bring in felons.”196 STRESS was also known for its decoy squads

193 Ibid, 157. 194 DeSantis, The New Untouchables, 129. 195 Larry Nevers, Good Cops, Bad Verdict: How Racial Politics Convicted Us of Murder, (LAN Publications, 2007), 43. 196 Ibid, 38. 54 in which officers would try to blend into the crowd but also plant an “easy victim” to lure in criminals.197Activist Ron Scott of the Coalition Against Police Brutality, founded in 1996, describes the formation of the unit differently. “Detroit still maintained a police unit reflective of the majority white police department and administration. They lured Blacks into confrontation;

26 Blacks were shot and killed in less than 2 years.”198 STRESS was representative of a type of policing where the authorities utilized their power to harass and regulate Black citizens in public spaces, reinforcing the rift between the population and the city and the communities these officers served.

Because of this historically contentious relationship between the DPD and Black

Detroiters, Young received significant support from local Black activist organizations, churches, and working-class and labor groups.199 Besides disbanding STRESS, Mayor Young also promised to have equal racial representation on the police to make the police department more sensitive to the needs of the people and eradicate police brutality.200 Upon taking office, Young’s administration hired Black police officers and implemented new “community-based policing” practices. Understandably, these were not popular developments in some police quarters. White officers opposed to Black recruits filed a suit against the mayor for discrimination for reverse racism.201 Young denied the claims and supported affirmative action in the police department.

Ultimately, integration did not stop the aggressive policing tactics of Detroit’s Black citizens.

197 Mark Binelli, “The Fire Last Time,” New Republic, April 6, 2017, Accessed April 27, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/article/141701/fire-last-time-detroit-stress-police-squad-terrorized-black-community.

198 Ron Scott, How to End Police Brutality: An Organizer’s Manual, (Scottsdale, Arizona: Taser International Inc.), 6. 199 Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 111-112. 200 Hispanic populations, Asian populations and Middle Eastern populations also make a up minority of Detroit’s overall population. However, Black and White Detroiters made up majority of the population in 1974; John DeSantis, The New Untouchables, (Chicago: Nobel Press Rights, 1994), 132. 201 Ibid, 108. 55

Policing Black Youth

Devil’s Night changed the way Detroit policed its youth, specifically young Black men.202 In 1985, “Mayor Coleman Young ordered a full alert for the 4,400-member police force and 1,200-member fire department” to strictly enforce a 10 o’clock curfew for youth seventeen and younger.203 Although the curfew was implemented to stem the tide of arson, it also helped to criminalize youth as gang members and drug criminals. In the 1980’s the War on Drugs was in full swing as drug distribution and abuse seemed to be skyrocketing. The most notorious examples of youth gangs in Detroit were Young Boys Incorporated and Pony Down.204 These gangs had a strong hand on Herman Gardens and the Brewster Projects recruited youth as

“runners for narcotics rings that supply the city’s estimated 50,000 addicts.”205 Thus, police activity tended to concentrate on young men in these primarily Black neighborhoods, mostly as a means to regulate, but not necessarily reduce, crime in the projects. Public housing residents found their neighborhoods transformed into warzones where they were inundated with the sounds of “gunfire outside,” locking themselves in at night and fearful to go out during the day.206 One young man, aged fifteen, expressed her concern as drug and gunfights were

202 Howard Blum, “U.S. Helps Detroit to Attack Drug Rings That Use Young”, The New York Times, January 28, 1984. 1001006. 203 “A Devil’s Night Tradition Plagued Detroit Again”, United Press International Archives, October 31, 1985, Accessed March 28, 2018, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/10/31/A-Devils-Night-tradition-plagued-Detroit- again-nearly/8403499582800/. 204 “Pony Down Crew, Drug Ring,” 1980-1986, Accessed: March 20, 2018, http://www.geocities.ws/jiggs2000_us/pony. 205 Howard Blum, “U.S. Helps Detroit to Attack Drug Rings That Use Young,” New York Times, January 28, 1984. 1001006. 206 Sandy McClure and Andrea Ford, “Drugs and Fear at Housing Project Young Pushers Spawn Wave of Violence”, Detroit Free Press,1A March 12, 1982. Accessed March 28, 2018, http://www.crimeindetroit.com/documents/031282%20Drugs%20and%20Fear%20at%20Housing%20Project.pdf. 56 increasing in his housing project. He said, “If I have to go to the store after dark, I don’t go. I don’t go out at night. Period.”207

The particular profile that police used to identify gang members or drug dealers was essentially Black children and young Black men. Thus, in neighborhoods with large numbers of

Black people it became hard to determine who was a criminal and who was not. Narcotics police officer James D. Tishuck said, “Despite all we do, it’s going to be impossible to stop gangs from recruiting these kids. It is a matter of economics. You’re 12 years old, living in a Detroit housing project, your parents are out of work, and some guy in a fancy car comes by and tells you he can help you make $300 a day. You’re going to listen.”208 Mayor Young, in the midst of controversy because of his supposed refusal to address crime in the city, said that he “would not be willing to unveil any plan to fight criminals in Detroit until he found more space in which to jail them.”209

This response illustrates that, even with a decade of integration on the DPD, and a Black mayor, public policy did not seem to have changed drastically. Young also blamed youth for high crime rates; “We know 300 to 500 kids that were removed from the streets, that would reduce the shootings to almost zero.”210

In 1994, the Devil Night antics returned with over two-hundred fires. 211 Many credit this resurgence to the new mayoral administration of Dennis Archer underestimating the severity of

207 Ibid. 1A. 208 Sandy McClure and Andrea Ford, “Drugs and Fear at Housing Project Young Pushers Spawn Wave of Violence,” Detroit Free Press,1A March 12, 1982. Accessed March 28, 2018, http://www.crimeindetroit.com/documents/031282%20Drugs%20and%20Fear%20at%20Housing%20Project.pdf. 209 Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence, 261. 210 Ibid. 211 McClure and Ford, “Drugs and Fear at Housing Project Young Pushers Spawn Wave of Violence,” Detroit Free Press, March 12, 1982, 1A. Accessed March 28, 2018, http://www.crimeindetroit.com/documents/031282%20Drugs%20and%20Fear%20at%20Housing%20Project.pdf. 57 the issue.212 The fire departments and volunteers were unable to monitor hundreds of fires in nearly vacant neighborhoods and over three hundred teenagers were arrested for violating the citywide Devil’s Night curfew. The curfew made it easier to target youth and people who appeared suspicious of the arson because of the youth’s association with drugs rings and gangs, making the terms “youth” and “criminal” synonymous.

Gross Negligence

Police-community relations were not improving but to make matters worse, the Detroit

Police Department was not the only source of public mistrust. Emergency Medical Services and the fire department were also sued for acting in a negligent manner in the time period of this study, even if there has not been any adequate study of patterns of negligence by these organizations or how one might understand them historically. Thus, what I offer below are illustrations of patterns that seem to hold historical and cultural weight in the attempt to understand the impact of institutional racism on the lives of Black Detroiters. In the case of

Jennings v. Southwood,

the Supreme Court overruled the seven-decade ruling of, Gibbard v. Cursan, in which the case defined gross negligence ‘in a way that was both anachronistic and unique to Michigan. Gibbard and its progeny defined gross negligence to mean that the negligent individual had the last clear chance to avert the harm. Michigan's common law definition of gross negligence had led to more than a little confusion in the Michigan courts.213 There was no clear definition of what constituted gross negligence within the Michigan law. As a result, police officers and EMS workers—firefighters, ambulance, and paramedical services—

212 “300 Teenagers Are Arrested don Devil’s Night in Detroit,” Washington Post, November 1, 1994, Accessed March 28, 2018, 1, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/11/01/300-teenagers-are-arrested-on- devils-night-in-detroit/eaeba95e-6ee3-4152-8467-056a3df2f043/?utm_term=.34a09dd13336. 213 Gross Negligence in Michigan: A Report to the Michigan Law Revision Commission, (Michigan Law Revision Commission Thirty-First Annual Report, 1996, Accessed February 23, 2018, https://council.legislature.mi.gov/Content/Files/mlrc/1996/gross1.htm. 58 followed a flawed code of conduct, which endangered citizens but also absolved them of responsibility for their actions when they are mishandling citizens.

In one case from November 1982—Bokor v. City of Detroit—an elderly female resident was experiencing difficulty breathing. Emergency Services were called, and the patient’s family was told that an ambulance had been dispatched to her residence. After twenty-five minutes,

EMS had not arrived, and the woman’s son drove her to the emergency room. Unfortunately, she went into respiratory arrest, fell into a coma, and died. The family of the victim claimed that the

City of Detroit was liable for her death because emergency services were negligent by not responding in a timely manner.

Plaintiffs alleged that defendants committed gross negligence, reckless or willful and wanton acts or omissions which might have reasonably led to bodily harm or death by failing to dispatch an EMS unit to the decedent’s residence as quickly as reasonably possible to administer first aid to the decedent and to transport her to a hospital. Plaintiffs further allege for the City of Detroit was vicariously liable for the torts of its employees, the EMS dispatcher and 911 operator.214 Although the dispatchers did not send an EMS in time, there were found not liable for the death of the female resident. Without a clear definition of gross negligence, the EMS had no set standards outlined by the state and could not be held accountable for the death. This was a loop hold for emergency services that placed resident lives in danger.

The case of Malcom v. City of Detroit, decided in 1989, also focused on potentially negligent actions of EMS responders. In 1984, William Malcom collapsed during dinner due to a heart attack. His wife, Cynthia Malcom, called 9-1-1 which dispatched two fire fighters, “Arthur

Klawender and Shelly Moen, neither of whom was certified as an emergency medical

214 Michigan Court of Appeals. (Bokor v. City of Detroit), Mich. App. 268 (1989) 178 443 N.W.2d 399, Decided March 10, 1989, Accessed February 23, 2018, https://www.leagle.com/decision/1989446178michapp2681421. 59 technician.”215 When the two fire fighters arrived, Klawender checked plaintiff for a pulse.216

Klawender began to administer CPR, while Moen called for assistance.217 An ambu-bag pump was used to get air into Mr. Malcolm’s lungs, but he vomited during the process. The fire fighters ignored Malcom’s son pleas to clear his father’s mouth and the ambu-bag of vomit and continued to pump the ambu-bag.218 Eventually the vomit disappeared back into the victim and by the time he was transported to the hospital Malcom had suffered severe brain damage.219 The role of EMS is to be the first responders in emergency situations. The fact that the city failed to send a medical professional and the two fire fighters ignored Malcom’s son advice on proper care, a man lost his life. The city of Detroit awarded Malcom’s family $500,000 but the fire fighters were not publicly reprimanded.

Malice Green

As stated before, the Detroit Police Department were often in the spotlight more than any other emergency services available in Detroit because of negligence and aggressive policing.

One of Detroit’s most infamous cases of police brutality was the case of Malice Green in 1992, which brought national attention to the DPD’s routine use of violence.220 On the evening of

November 5 Malice Green, a thirty-five-year-old Black Detroiter, was accused by two veteran

215 Michigan Court of Appeals, (Malcolm v. City of East Detroit), Mich. App. 633 (1989) 180 447.N.W.2d 860, Decided October 17, 1989, Accessed February 23, 2018,https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11675249064867504171&q=Bokor+v.+City+detroit&hl=en&as _sdt=80000006&as_vis=1. 216 Ibid. 217 Ibid. 218 Ibid. 219 Michigan Court of Appeals, (Malcolm v. City of East Detroit), Mich. App. 633 (1989) 180 447.N.W.2d 860, Decided October 17, 1989, Accessed February 23, 2018, https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11675249064867504171&q=Bokor+v.+City+detroit&hl=en&as_sdt= 80000006&as_vis=1. 220Joe Darden and Richard Thomas, Detroit, (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2013), 150. 60 police officers, Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn, of being involved in a drug transaction on the city’s west side at 23rd Street and Warren.

According to the testimony of a witness, the officers were dressed in civilian clothing and patrolling the area in an unmarked car. They approached the side of Green’s car and demanded to see his driver’s license and registration.221 Green reached for his car’s glove box, with his hand clenched, and the officers, after receiving no response to their demands that Green drop what was in his hand, “began beating at his hand with a two-pound flashlight.”222 According to witnesses, a struggle ensued, the officers beat Green in the head and body with their flashlights and fists until all of them ended up on the sidewalk in front of an abandoned beauty salon storefront. When backup units arrived, officers continued to beat Green, even after he was handcuffed and unconscious.223 Green was eventually taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital where he died in the emergency room upon arrival.

Eyewitnesses reported that the scene of Green’s arrest and beating was gruesome. The sidewalk outside the home of Ralph Fletcher, Malice Green’s friend, was “stained with Green’s blood and remained there for days.”224 In the aftermath of Green’s death, the site became a meeting space for angry protestors as his story of spread. The response to this incident was at once about the specifics of this one case but also a much larger context in the city and nation, coming just a year after the public beating of Rodney King and the acquittal of the LAPD officers who perpetrated it. The death of Malice Green struck a chord. 225

221 Ibid, 150. 222 Ibid, 150. 223 DeSantis, The New Untouchables, 134. 224 Ibid. 225 Ibid, 135. 61

According to the first autopsy, conducted by Dr. Kalil Jiraki, the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, inflicted by a police service flashlight; “Green had suffered fourteen blows to the head and a torn scalp.”226 Another autopsy was conducted by Dr. Ljubisa Dragovic, in an attempt to prove that the cause of death was a lethal mixture of crack cocaine and alcohol.227 With new claims, Dr. Jiraki stood by his conclusion of Green’s death arguing, “that even Dragovic’s testimony taken at full face value, one would have to conclude that were it not for the intervention of the police, Green would have not died.”228

Despite the efforts to improve community-police relations, the relentless problems of poverty and blight limited the possibilities for the DPD’s reformation. 229 Toward the end of

Mayor Young’s administration, in November of 1992, the case of Malice Green, came to embody the legacy of police misconduct and brutality. The case was most disturbing for Young and the city of Detroit because one of the White cops involved in the killing had been part of the

STRESS unit Young disbanded in the first months of his first term.230 After nearly two decades it seemed that the policing tactics of White officers was still aggressive toward Black citizens.

Young expressed his regret:

For nearly twenty years…I had emphasized a firm but respectful style of law enforcement. I had campaigned on that issue and fought over it with veteran cops…. I was damn proud of the progress we had made since then in our relationship with the people, much of which could be attributed to the affirmative action measures we so diligently pursued for two years trying decades.”231

226 Ibid,132 &135. 227 Ibid, 141. 228Ibid. 229 Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 116. 230 Coleman A. Young and Lonnie Wheeler, Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Coleman Young, (New York: Viking Adult, 1994), 322. 231 Ibid; Darden, and Thomas. Detroit, 116. 62

Former DPD officer Larry Nevers, who was involved in Malice Green’s murder, claims he was a good a cop and doing good police work. With more than twenty-years as an officer more than

5,000 felony arrests, Nevers believed he was acting appropriately in Malice Green’s arrest:

I had worked plainclothes in the Third for the last sixteen years, all that while in Coleman Young’s police department. He had taken office demanding that guns and drugs be taken off the streets. That’s what I did. In retrospect, that effort seems to have been futile, but I did it. So, I was startled to discover that Coleman Young and the black power structure and the editorial writers couldn’t believe somebody like me was still on the streets the night Malice Green died. What? Except for the color of my skin, I was Coleman Young’s dream—somebody willing to wade in and do real police work in a city that couldn’t get enough of it.232

On August 23, 1993, Nevers and Budzyn were found guilty and on October 12, Nevers was sentenced to twelve to twenty-five years, while Budzyn received a sentence of eight to eighteen years.233 Nevers maintained in his autobiography that he was a good officer “doing real police work.”234 But the Malice Green case illustrated how minor police interactions could easily become deadly for young Black men in Detroit.

Coalition Against Police Brutality In 1996 Ron Scott founded the Coalition Against Police Brutality to organize an anti- police brutality campaign. The non-profit organization, comprising of local neighborhood activist, held vigils, organized demonstrations, facilitated legal cases, provided legal support, and governmental assistance and “exposed a reign of terrorism carried out consistently against

Detroit citizens that included beatings, killings, and the arrests, detention coercion of witnesses to give testimony as if they were guilty.”235 The organization primarily focused on police

232 Nevers, Good Cops, Bad Verdict, 15. 233 Ibid, 15. 234 Larry Nevers, Good Cops, Bad Verdict, 15. 235 Ron Scott, How to End Police Brutality, (Detroit: Taser International Inc, 2012), 2. 63 brutality and violent conflicts between civilians and the police, however, they were also concerned with the DPD’s negligent behavior.

After years of collecting complaints about the police from community members, the organization’s first organizing effort was to advocate for a Consent Decree against the DPD. A consent decree is an agreement or settlement between two involved parties who do not admit of guilt or liability submitted in writing to a court; frequently used by federal courts.236 The coalition drafted an outline of ten demands for police reform and invited media coverage and sympathy.237 The primary mission of the consent decree was to “seek civil response” in order to prevent civil disorder.238 The coalition is most famously known for helping to “initiate a 30- month Justice Department investigation that led to two Federal Consent Judgments against the

City of Detroit” and for getting a federal overseer appointed who “mandated reforms in the use of lethal force and the holding and treatment of detainees.”239 In Ron Scott’s How to End Police

Brutality, he noted:

Between 1987 and 2000, the City had paid over $124 million to settle civil suits against DPD officers, including $46 million for claims that involved officers who had been previously sued. And at least 19 pretrial detainees had died in DPD custody between 1994 and 2000, although no officer had reportedly ever been disciplined for neglect of duty in any of the incidents. The DOJ investigation found that the DPD engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional force.240

236 Los Angeles Police Department, Civil Rights Consent Decree, Consent Decree Overview, The Angeles Police Foundation, Accessed March 4, 2018.http://www.lapdonline.org/search_results/content_basic_view/928. 237 Ron Scott, How to End Police Brutality (Scottsdale, Arizona: Taser International Inc), 22. 238 Ibid. 239 Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, Accomplishments, accessed: March 17, 2018. http://detroitcoalition.org/about/. 240 Scott, How to End Police Brutality, 22; Accessed, March 4, 2018; United States of America v. City of Detroit, Michigan and the Detroit Police Department, Report; Consent Decree https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2010/12/15/detroitpd_uofwdcd_613.pdf. 64

In 2000 the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint against the city of

Detroit and the Detroit Police Department. The complaint states:

The defendants, through their acts and omissions, are engaging in a pattern or practice of conduct by Detroit Police Department officers of subjecting individuals to uses of excessive force, false arrests, illegal detentions, and unconstitutional conditions of confinement. The defendants have failed to adequately train, supervise, and monitor police officers; to investigate, review and evaluate use of force incidents; to investigate alleged misconduct, and discipline officers who are guilty of misconduct; to review and evaluate the basis of seizures and warrantless arrest and secure timely judicial review of such arrests; to protect detainees from undue risks of harm; and to implement effective systems to ensure that management controls adopted by the Detroit Police Department are properly carried out.241 The complaint addressed the harassment and aggressive behavior by the police, acknowledging that the police had not been trained to conduct civil interactions with the community it serves.

In the same year, the City of Detroit requested an investigation by the US Department of

Justice be conducted into the Detroit Police Department. This investigation, concluded in 2003, said the DPD was using excessive force and violating the civil rights of civilians. The department's thirteen precincts were consolidated into six larger districts: central, southwestern, northeastern, eastern, western, and northwestern, divided geographically across the city. This was the first time that the DOJ had responded to reports of police violence, however, it was three more years for the DOJ to officially investigate the DPD, after the consent decrees request was submitted in 2000.

In 2003, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District, Jefferey Collins, contacted the

Coalition of Police Brutality to inform the organization that the DOJ would consider a federal

241 Scott, How to End Police Brutality, 28. 65 consent decree. In a press release from the DOJ the organization outlined their findings for necessary improvements for the Detroit Police Department.

 Implement revisions to the use of force policy and training with an emphasis on de-escalation techniques;  Require written supervisory review of arrests for probable cause, as well as prohibit the detention or conveyance of an individual without reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or consent from the individual;  Analyze trends in uses of force, searches, seizures, and other law enforcement activities that create a risk of officer misconduct;  Develop a comprehensive medical and mental health screening program approved by qualifies medical and mental health professionals; and,  Implement a comprehensive fire detection, suppression, and evacuation program in consultation with the Detroit Fire Department.242 The federal government’s intervention in the Detroit Police Department relayed to Detroit’s citizens that the police would be retrained and expected to uphold the best practices by complying with the DOJ’s code of conduct.243

The Detroit Police Department had been known as one of the most violent police departments in the nation.244 Race is a crucial factor in the way Black civilians have been treated by the police. Although, the police and emergency services were integrated under Coleman A.

Young’s twenty-year tenure, emergency service violence, misconduct, and negligence did not necessarily change Black citizens’ interactions with these city services. Bringing together discussions of police brutality and EMS negligence, I have tried to illustrate the context in which

Black Detroiters lived.

242 Ibid. 243 United States of America v. City of Detroit, Michigan and the Detroit Police Department, Report; Consent Decree, https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2010/12/15/detroitpd_uofwdcd_613.pdf. 244 Jerry White, “Detroit Leads US in Police Killings,” May 17, 2000, Accessed March 18, 2018https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/05/det-m17.html. 66

CONCLUSION

Growing up in Detroit in the late-1990s and 2000s, I always understood Detroit as a majority Black city. I noticed the abandoned and boarded up buildings, businesses in ashes, barren lots with sprouting weeds, places that were once crowded housing projects abandoned.

These were normal sights for me. While writing this thesis I remembered the stories my mother and father told me about growing up in Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s. They had hopes for me to move out the city, asserting, “It is nothing left here” or “The city Detroit was iconic for being known as the “Worst City in America.”245 As a child, I can recall wondering how the city had become so crime ridden and empty. People did not walk down the streets, store fronts were always boarded up, and sirens were always in the distance. I used to believe the folklore about

Detroit; “It’s so hard in the D” was the running joke for my peers living outside of Detroit, but I never wanted to separate myself from the city. Detroit looked like a poor city, but I loved it. It was home; people looked like me.

As a teenager I remember seeing national news coverage of Detroit that framed it as one of the worst places to live. I remember Detroit shutting down, especially in the wake of former

Mayor Kwame’ Kilpatrick national scrutiny for the mismanagement of city funds. During the

2000s and early 2010s, Detroit was the same blighted space that I have discussed in the previous pages but the emptiness that I noted as a child made it an urban frontier for rescue, investment and revitalization.246 Investments from primarily White people and suburbanites, unthinkable during the 1970s, became a possibility in the twenty-first century. With new investors like Dan

Gilbert, the public perception of Detroit began to change, and the neighborhoods became

245 Kinney, Beautiful Wasteland, 261. 246 Ibid. 67 possible sites for the emergence of new businesses and commercial districts, homeownership, higher learning and decent governance, a stark contrast to Detroit thirty years previous.

The controversy surrounding Dan Gilbert’s, “See Detroit like we do” banner emerged out of growing tensions in the city about this wave of gentrification. In this moment, the national and popular character of Detroit is changing alongside its perceived racial character. Detroit’s history as a “Black city” has been firmly implanted in popular memory since the 1967 Rebellion; represented in music, film and fiction. But the hyper focus on Detroit’s blackness, especially as representative of its deterioration and violence, have not led to greater understanding about the root of these issues. Detroit used to be synonymous with Black, crime, and urban blight—even influencing the name of organizations after nicknames of the city (Blight Busters and Angels

Night).

Places that had been deliberately neglected due to their negative associations with poverty and Black people are now central spaces for gentrification projects. For example, in

2010, going downtown was undesirable as it was near the projects, dangerous and the police did not show up when one needed help. The Fireworks—a celebration in which Detroiters gather along the Riverwalk to see fireworks for the Fourth of July—was banned because of shootings, fights, and unrest. Today, however, downtown is not as aggressively patrolled by the police, amidst crowds of White people and Canadians walking to Red Wings Tigers and Pistons games.

These changes are not necessarily a bad thing as I had hoped for my entire life to see

Detroit as a smaller Chicago or New York; diverse, busy, and blooming. But when White people move into the city and see the landscape as uninhabited “frontier” areas, fomenting economic changes that make it difficult for Black residents to remain there, problems arise. The “See

Detroit like we do” image of young White people is illustrative of the coming changes. 68

When Coleman A. Young was elected mayor, he entered the position on the strength of the social backlash epitomized by the 1967 Rebellion. Black Detroiters accepted Young as a

“hero who pledged to fight crime,” while White residents felt Young did not have their best interests in mind.247 Mayor Young was credited with revitalizing the waterfront and downtown but just outside of his proposed business district and away from the industrial development he attempted, the largely Black inner-city areas were compared to war zones, with neighborhood buildings crumbling, businesses boarded up and poverty on the rise.248

In a moment of reflection in 1994, Mayor Young discussed his belief that the 1967

Rebellion made Black people the victim of the Rebellion as it essentially left them without any resources. He says:

The heaviest casualty, however, was the city. Detroit's losses went a hell of a lot deeper than the immediate toll of lives and buildings. The riot put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earnings taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money. The money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the white people who fled as fast as they could. The white exodus from Detroit had been prodigiously steady prior to the riot, totally twenty-two thousand in 1966, but afterwards it was frantic. In 1967, with less than half the year remaining after the summer explosion—the outward population migration reached sixty-seven thousand. In 1968 the figure hit eighty-thousand, followed by forty-six thousand in 1969”249 As mayor, Young secured substantial funding to create a new downtown Detroit to lure White metro-Detroiters back to the city. At the same time, however, he neglected to set aside funds or develop clear plans for the inner-city, which effectively kept Black Detroiters from benefiting

247 Amy Padnani, Susan C. Beachy, Celina Fang, Jacky Myint, “Anatomy of Detroit’s Decline” The New York Times, December 8, 2013.In a matter of decades, Detroit went from one of America’s most prosperous cities to one of its most distressed. Here is a look at how the collapse of this metropolis – battered by financial missteps, racial tensions and leadership lapses – culminated in insurmountable debt that led the city to file for bankruptcy. See also Scott Martelle, “Detroit: A Biography” (2012), Joe Darden, T., "Detroit, Race and Uneven Development"(1987). 248 Ibid. 249 Ibid. 69 from his redevelopment plans. In the same vein, despite his desire to reform the DPD, integrating the police force did not erase decades of police violence and racial tensions in the city. However,

Young was not the cause of these issues. Rather, he perpetuated pervious patterns; his race was not a bulwark against institutional racism. Both the city and metro-Detroit played a crucial role in the city’s demise.

I chose to write this thesis because I wanted to understand not just the but how my experience in Detroit was shaped by the two-decades before my birth. This was crucial in understanding my place in Detroit. My perspective of Detroit has changed during my time writing this thesis. During my first year of graduate school Detroit was the same old Detroit

I remembered: no street lights, burned down buildings, and empty streets. But as I am finishing this degree, the city has introduced the Q-line transit system, the have finally moved back downtown, and I see a mass of people throughout the city that do not look like me.

For many Detroiters like me, it is bittersweet because it has taken decades for outsiders to recognize Detroit’s potential. 70

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