Coleman A. Young
Coleman A. Young, Detroit, 1981
66th Mayor of Detroit, Michigan
In office January 1, 1974 – January 3, 1994
Preceded by	Roman Gribbs
Succeeded by	Dennis Archer
Member of the Michigan State Senate
In office 1965–1974
Personal details
Born	(1918-05-24)May 24, 1918 Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Died	November 29, 1997(1997-11-29) (aged 79) Detroit, Michigan
Resting place	Elmwood Cemetery Detroit, Michigan
Political party	Democratic
Profession	Politician
Military service
Branch/service	United States Army Air Corps
Years of service	1942-1946
Battles/wars	World War II

Coleman Alexander Young (May 24, 1918 – November 29, 1997) served as mayor of Detroit in the U.S. state of Michigan from 1974 to 1993. Young became the first African-American mayor of Detroit in the same week that Maynard Jackson became the first African-American mayor of Atlanta.

In 1981, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.^[1]

Young was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Coleman Young, a dry cleaner, and Ida Reese Jones. His family moved to Detroit in 1923, where he graduated from Eastern High School in 1935. He worked for Ford Motor Company, which soon blacklisted him for involvement in labor and civil rights activism. He later worked for the United States Postal Service, where with his brother George started the Postal Workers union. George later went on to become Postmaster for this same facility, which handles over ten million pieces of mail each year. During the second World War, Young served in the 477th Medium-Bomber Group (Tuskegee Airmen) of the United States Army Air Forces as a bombardier and navigator. As a lieutenant in the 477th, he played a role in the Freeman Field Mutiny in which 162 African-American officers were arrested for resisting segregation at a base near Seymour, Indiana in 1945.

Young's involvement in progressive and radical organizations including the Communist Party, the Progressive Party, the AFL-CIO, and the National Negro Labor Council made him powerful enemies, including the FBI and HUAC, where he refused to testify. He protested segregation in the Army and racial discrimination in the UAW. In 1948 Young supported Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace, which he later viewed as a major mistake.^[2]

In 1960, he was elected as a delegate to help draft a new state constitution for Michigan. In 1964 he won election to the Michigan State Senate, where his most significant legislation was a law requiring arbitration in disputes between public-sector unions and municipalities.

Young's 1973 Mayoral campaign addressed the role of the violence inflicted upon an increasingly black city—the black population in Detroit was slightly less than fifty percent in 1972—by a disproportionately white police department.^[3] Young pledged the elimination of one particularly troubled police unit, STRESS (Stop the Robberies and Enjoy Safe Streets.) STRESS had been connected to the death of eight black people in its first four months of operation and 18 people in its first 14 months. The unit's operations were suspended in 1972 by order of the mayor. In November 1973, Young narrowly defeated former Police Commissioner John F. Nichols (whom the previous mayor, Roman Gribbs, had to dismiss as Police Commissioner when Nichols refused to resign while campaigning for mayor. Nichols would later be elected as Oakland County Sheriff) to become Detroit's first black mayor.

Mayor Young promptly disbanded the STRESS unit, began efforts to integrate the police department and increased patrols in high crime neighborhoods utilizing a community policing approach.^[4] Young's effect on integrating the Detroit Police Department was successful with the percentage of black police officers rising from 19% in the early 1970s^[5] to 63% by 2000.^[6] However, Young was clearly unable to cure many of the city's problems of crime and policing; the Detroit Police Department was viewed by many residents as having a pattern of reckless use of deadly force; in addition, by the end of his term, many city residents accused the police department of concentrating their efforts in the downtown and business areas, such as the new center, and ignoring many residential neighborhoods.^[7] By the end of his last term, the population of Detroit had shrunk by more than half and the crime rate was far higher than it was before he became mayor.

Although Young had emerged from the far left element in the UAW, he moved to the right as mayor. He called an ideological truce and work to win over the support of Detroit's economic elite.^[8] The new mayor was energetic in the construction of the Joe Louis Arena, and upgrading the city's mediocre mass transit system. Highly controversial was his assistance to General Motors to build its new "Poletown" plant at the site of the former Dodge Main plant, which involved evicting many long-time residents. Rich argues that he pulled money out of the neighborhood to rehabilitate the downtown business district, because "there were no other options."^[9]

Young won re-election by wide margins in November 1977, November 1981, November 1985 and November 1989, for a total of 20 years as mayor, based largely on black votes.

Young was an outspoken advocate for federal funding for Detroit construction projects, and his administration saw the completion of the Renaissance Center, Detroit People Mover, , and several other Detroit landmarks. During Young's last two administrations there was opposition among some neighborhood activists to these large construction projects. This opposition typically manifested itself in rigorous budget debate rather than in serious electoral challenges against Young. Most of the time Young prevailed over this opposition, seeking jobs and economic stimulus as a way to help rebuild Detroit's neighborhoods.^[10]

Young fathered a child, whose mother, Annivory Calvert, gave him the alias Joel Loving at birth, for security reasons. Young set up a private Roman Catholic Baptismal Ceremony when his son was two months old and gave the child his name on sequestered Roman Catholic Baptismal records. Young went to court when his son was age 13 and had his birth certificate changed to match the baptismal record.

His son, Coleman A. Young II, is currently a State Senator in Michigan's 1st State Senate district and was previously a State Representative in Michigan's 4th State Representative district, the same district where Young lived as Mayor and served as State Senator. Though Young had publicly denied the child as being his, he later admitted paternity, after DNA tests linked the boy to the mayor following a paternity lawsuit filed by Calvert.

Young was a Prince Hall Freemason.^[11] He died from emphysema in 1997. Upon learning of Young's death, former President Jimmy Carter called Young "one of the greatest mayors our country has known." ^[12]

Republican Michigan Gov. John Engler called the former Democratic mayor "a man of his word who was willing to work with anyone, regardless of party or politics, to help Detroit -- the city he loved and fought for all his life." ^[13]

Mayor Young's hand-picked Police Chief, close friend and political advisor William L. Hart, served for 15 years as Chief before being indicted and convicted for stealing $2.6 million from police undercover funds.^[14] The Deputy Chief of Police (Kenneth Weiner), also a close associate of Coleman Young, was charged and convicted in a separate case involving investment fraud.^[14] The culmination of the many investigations, indictments and convictions of those around Young led many observers to believe he was at the center of widespread corruption in the city government, which included school boards, sanitation, and many other departments, but especially the police department. Since that time, Detroit has been unable to lose its reputation as one of the most corrupt cities in America—a perception frequently attributed to the period coinciding with Young's long tenure as mayor. However, given close continuing FBI scrutiny extending from his days as a radical left activist, other observers believe that Young was innocent of the many charges of fraud, corruption, kickbacks, and other crimes because Young was extensively investigated by the FBI and other federal & state agencies for most of his tenure as mayor and never charged with any crime.

The convictions of Weiner and other members of Young's administration were in part based on evidence from wiretaps on Young's home telephone.^{[15][16][17][18][18]}

Young has also been blamed for failing to stem the crime epidemic that Detroit became notorious for in the 1970s and 1980s. Dozens of violent black street gangs gained control of the city's large drug trade, which began with the heroin epidemic of the 1970s and grew into the even larger crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s. Major criminal gangs that were founded in Detroit and dominated the drug trade at various times included The Errol Flynns (east side), Nasty Flynns (later the NF Bangers) and Black Killers and the drug consortiums of the 1980s such as Young Boys Inc., Pony Down, Best Friends, Black Mafia Family and the Chambers Brothers. However, it should be pointed out that none of these gangs are currently active, and the leaders of each of these criminal organizations are either dead or serving lengthy prison sentences.

Several times during Young's tenure Detroit was named the arson capital of America, and repeatedly the murder capital of America. Often Detroit was listed by FBI crime statistics as the "most dangerous city in America" during his administration. Crime rates in Detroit peaked in 1991 at more than 2,700 violent crimes per 100,000 people.^[19] However, crime continues to be a problem in Detroit long after Young's tenure as mayor ended; according to national statistics the arson rate in Detroit was 6.3x the national average in 2003 and the murder rate was 5.1x the national average.^[20] In addition, the majority of Detroit residents, including many blacks, have left the city, leaving a glut of abandoned buildings that have become magnets for drugs, arson, and other crime.

Coleman's administration coincided with some periods of broad social and economic challenges in the U.S. including recession, the oil-shock, decline of the U.S. automotive industry and loss of manufacturing sector jobs in the Midwest to other parts of the U.S. and the world. Detroit faced a continuing white flight to the suburbs that began in the 1950s and accelerated after the 1967 Detroit race riots and ongoing crime and drug problems in the inner city. It was common for Young's opponents to blame him for these developments, but Young's defenders responded that other factors such as white resistance to court ordered desegregation, deteriorating housing stock, aging industrial plants and a declining automotive industry leading to a loss of economic opportunities inside the city all contributed to the phenomenon. By the end of Young's term in office Detroit had a population of just under 1,000,000, down from a measured high of 1,849,568 in 1950.^[21] Nearly all the outmigration during Young's tenure consisted of white middle-class taxpayers. However, many of the city's residents who have left are also black.

Economic conditions in Detroit generally trended sideways or downward over the period of Mayor Young's political tenure, with the unemployment rate trending from approximately 9% in 1971 to approximately 11% in 1993, when Young retired. However, most economic metrics (unemployment, median income rates, and city gross domestic product) initially dropped sharply during economic recessions, reaching their "low points" in the late 1980s and/or early 1990s, with the unemployment rate in particular peaking at approximately 20% in 1982.^[19]

Young himself explained the impact of the riots in his autobiography:

"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.^[22]))

Young himself expressed his belief that reform of the Police Department stood as one of his greatest accomplishments. He implemented broad affirmative action programs that lead to racial integration, and created a network of Neighborhood City Halls and Police Mini Stations. Young used the relationship established by community policing to mobilize large civilian patrols to address the incidents of Devil's Night arson that had come to plague the city each year. These patrols have been continued by succeeding administrations and have mobilized as many as 30,000 citizens in a single year in an effort to forestall seasonal arson.^[23] However, arson, murder, and crime, in general, remain serious problems in Detroit, and the city is far less safe than it was in 1973 before Young became mayor.

Coleman Young was known for his blunt statements, frequently using profanity:

” On trying to enroll at De La Salle High School in Detroit: “A brother in the order asked if I was Hawaiian. I told him, ‘No, Brother, I’m colored.’ He tore up the application form right in front of my nose. I’ll never forget it. It was my first real jolt about what it means to be black. That was the end of me and the Catholic Church.”^[24]

"I'm smiling all the time. That doesn't mean a God damned thing except I think people who go around solemn-faced and quoting the Bible are full of shit.

"Swearing is an art form. You can express yourself much more exactly, much more succinctly, with properly used curse words."

Coleman Young to Detroit journalists via closed-circuit television from Hawaii: "Aloha, Mother Fuckers!"^[25]

"Racism is like high blood pressure—the person who has it doesn’t know he has it until he drops over with a God damned stroke. There are no symptoms of racism. The victim of racism is in a much better position to tell you whether or not you’re a racist than you are."

"I issue a warning to all those pushers, to all rip-off artists, to all muggers: It’s time to leave Detroit; hit Eight Mile Road! And I don’t give a damn if they are black or white, or if they wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road."^[26]

On mortality: “I know goddamned well that I am not immortal, nor do I have any mortal lock on the position of mayor. I’m a phase in the history of this city and, depending on your perspective, a brief one.” On how he would like to be remembered: “I suppose I’d like to be remembered as the mayor who served in a period of ongoing crisis and took some important steps to keep the city together, but left office with his work incomplete.”^[27]

• Young is interred at Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.^[28]
• The city county building for the City of Detroit and Wayne County was renamed the "Coleman A. Young Municipal Building."
• He has a wing named after him at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
• Detroit City Airport, a general aviation facility serving Detroit, has since been renamed Coleman A. Young International Airport.

• Hard Stuff, Coleman Young autobiography; published by Viking Adult (February 24, 1994) ISBN 978-0-670-84551-4
• The Quotations of Mayor Coleman A. Young, compiled by McGraw, Bill et al., and originally published in 1991 is still in print. Today it is published by Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-3260-3
• Coleman Young and Detroit Politics: From Social Activist to Power Broker (African American Life Series) by Wilbur C. Rich, Wayne State University Press, February, 1989, ISBN 978-0-8143-2093-8
• Made in Detroit, by Paul Clemens, Anchor, (2006), memoir of growing up in Detroit during Mayor Young era. ISBN 978-1-4000-7596-6
• The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton Studies in American Politics) by Thomas J. Sugrue, Princeton University Press; Revised edition (August 1, 2005), ISBN 978-0-691-12186-4

• List of mayors of Detroit
• Tuskegee Airmen

• Harp, Andrea S. April 17, 2001. "Coleman A. Young: Social and Political Powerbroker". The Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Wayne State University. (Accessed June 20, 2007)
• Metro Times. December 3, 1997. "Coleman A. Young (1918 - 1997)" Recollection and remembrance on the longtime mayor. (Accessed June 20, 2007)
• The Coleman A. Young Foundation. "Coleman A. Young". (Accessed June 20, 2007)
• "Coleman Young". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2009-12-24.
• [1]

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