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Coleman Alexander Young (May 24, 1918 – November 29, 1997) served as mayor of Detroit in the U.S. state of Michigan from 1974 to 1994.
Pre-Mayoral career
Young was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Coleman Young and Ida Reese Jones. His family moved to Detroit in 1923, where he graduated from Eastern High School. He worked for Ford Motor Company, which soon blacklisted him for involvement in labor and civil rights activism. He later worked for the United States Postal Service. During the second World War, Young served in the 477th Medium-Bomber Group (Tuskegee Airmen) of the United States Army Air Forces as a bombardier and navigator. As a lieutenant in the 477th, he played a role in the Freeman Field Mutiny in which 162 African-American officers were arrested for resisting segregation at a base near Seymour, Indiana in 1945.
Young's involvement in progressive and dissident organizations including the Progressive Party, the AFL-CIO, and the National Negro Labor Council made him powerful enemies, including the FBI and HUAC, where he refused to testify. He protested segregation in the Army and racial discrimination in the UAW. In 1948 Young supported Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace, which he later viewed as a major mistake.
In 1960, he was elected as a delegate to help draft a new state constitution for Michigan. In 1964 he won election to the Michigan State Senate, where his most significant legislation was a law requiring arbitration in disputes between public-sector unions and municipalities.
Four terms as Mayor
In 1973, Young narrowly defeated Police Commissioner John F. Nichols (who would later become Oakland County Sheriff) to become Detroit's first African American mayor. He won the four subsequent terms by very wide margins.
Young's administration was controversial, and he found himself the subject of continued FBI scrutiny amid allegations of contract kickbacks, although no evidence was ever found. He was criticized for his confrontational style toward suburban interests and the apparent diversion of city resources to downtown Detroit from other neighborhoods. Young was generally popular with the inhabitants of the city proper, while generally disliked by those of the suburbs.
Young was a tireless advocate for federal funding for Detroit construction projects, and his administration saw the completion of the Renaissance Center, Detroit People Mover, Joe Louis Arena, and several other Detroit landmarks. He also negotiated with General Motors to build its new "Poletown" plant at the site of the former Dodge Main plant. This was very controversial, as the new plant was larger than the old one and the deal involved many evictions via eminent domain. Many, including the near universal opinion of white suburbanites, stated that the only reason Young wanted the Poletown plant was because it would remove a neighborhood that consisted of a constituency (Polish-American voters) that generally disliked him. While many neighborhoods in Detroit were reduced to literally nothing (there are still open fields in many parts of the city from the 1967 riot), Young chose to eliminate a neighborhood that was still contributing tax revenue.
Similar to John Lindsay in New York, a major problem Young had as mayor was the growing strength of public-sector unions. Since unions have nothing to lose and only money, shorter hours, and benefits to gain by requesting arbitration, they always did so and typically won at least half of what they were asking for. Eventually, as mayor of Detroit, stuck in ceaseless negotiations with municipal unions, Young came to rue the day he sponsored his arbitration bill:
- "Never have the anti-democratic impulses found so fecund a method of undermining democracy at all levels of government — state, federal, and local — as the method implicit in public sector bargaining and arbitration. Like Pilate, all duly elected and appointed public officials in public sector bargaining communities can wash their hands of responsibility for the stupendous waste of public resources that the system entails. They can even put on a show of resisting union demands now and then, knowing that private arbitrators, who make a living by pleasing unions, will grant what the politicians denied.
- "We know that compulsory arbitration has been a failure. Slowly, inexorably, compulsory arbitration destroys sensible fiscal management. Arbitration awards have caused more damage to the public service in Detroit than the strikes they were designed to prevent." *
By the mid-1970s Detroit had the highest per-employee labor costs in the nation, although not the highest per capita costs, due to the relatively-high pay scales resulting from the high rates of unionization. (At the time, Michigan's per capita income was 10 percent above the national average.)
| City | Labor Costs per Employee | Employees per1000 Population | Labor Costs perCapita | Labor Costs as a % of personal income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York City | $19,543 | 45.5 | 889 | 19.9% |
| Chicago | 15,102 | 15.4 | 232 | 5.5 |
| Detroit | 23,424 | 14.8 | 346 | 8.4 |
The difficulties in maintaining fiscal stability and fulfilling the demands of unions came to a head in 1978. After weeks of negotiations, Young and the police and firefighters unions went to arbitration. In Michigan a single person decided arbitration cases. Detroit, at this time, already teetering on the edge, lost the case. It now had to pay $80 million per year in extra salaries and benefits that it did not have. The decision, combined with a large reduction in federal aid under Ronald Reagan, increased the city's economic problems. To pay for the additional burden, Young had to increase already-high income taxes, implement a commuter tax, and cut back on other services. The city curtailed maintenance of parks, decreased school funding, and deferred maintenance on civic amenities such as street lights and traffic lights.
Before 1978 Detroit had seen a drop in crime, but to pay the extra salaries the city was forced to lay police officers off. The police force shrank from 5,400 officers to 4,000. As a result, crime rates increased by 15.2% in 1980 alone, and by the mid-1980s Detroit's crime rate per capita was three times higher than the nation's nine other largest cities. Perhaps most infamously, Devil's Night became the first and only civic holiday devoted to arson.
While civic services deteriorated, federal corruption investigations targeted many members of Young's administration. Some, like a Chief of Police, eventually went to jail. Rumors alleged Young himself kept South African Krugerrands in the Manoogian Mansion. When asked about the rumors in a television interview, Young stated "I don't know nothing about no God Damned Krugerrands," a reply that became legendary in the Detroit area.
Young fathered a child with Annivory Calvert. His son, Coleman Young, Jr., has recently returned to the Detroit area from California, and is running for a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives.
Young died from emphysema in 1997.
Assessment
As one of the first blacks to lead a major U.S. city, Young became the voice for a generation of black political leaders in the 1970s. However, he often offended people with his brashness, self-assurance, and intentionally-provocative comments. The white flight of the 1950s and 1960s, the legacy of the 1967 riots, and changes in Detroit's economy proved too much to overcome, and his Poletown project arguably directly contributed to the decline. Young worked to bring economic growth to Detroit, but he was hampered by both the refusal of the State of Michigan to assist him with funding and the deep divide that separated the City of Detroit from the suburbs.
Quotes
Coleman Young was known for his blunt statements, rarely holding back profanity when it suited the occasion:
- Judd Rose: "The feds say you are corrupt."
- Coleman Young: "Who the fuck told you that? I have never heard anybody make that direct charge."
- "I'm smiling all the time. That doesn't mean a goddamned thing except I think people who go around solemn-faced and quoting the Bible are full of shit."
- "Racism is something like high blood pressure -- the person that has it doesn't know he has it until he drops over with a goddamned stroke."
- "You don't grow balls. Either you got 'em or you don't."
- "That sonofabitch Detroit News columnist Pete Waldmeir followed me down to Jamaica. All I can say is I wish that mother fucker had caught me. I'm mayor of nothing down there. It would be just two crazy Americans fighting in the alley."
- "I think Ed Koch is full of shit."
- To reporters in Hawaii: "Aloha, mother fuckers."
Young, Coleman A. (1991). The Quotations Of Mayor Coleman A. Young. Wayne State University Press.
External links
1918 births | 1997 deaths | Deaths from emphysema | American Freemasons | Mayors of Detroit | Spingarn Medal winners | African American politicians
"Coleman Young"