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Berry Gordy, Jr’s Motown
had broken into the big time with artists aplenty and
recordings that were topping the charts. Good times indeed,
Maraniss tells us.
Cavanaugh, the Democratic
mayor of Detroit; George Romney, the Republican governor of
Michigan and Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Democratic president
of the United States, were waxing philosophically about the
future of the city in those heady days of prosperity and
hope.
“This city and its people
are the herald of hope in America,” said Johnson on his
first appearance in Michigan as president in 1964.
“Prosperity in America must begin here in Detroit. You folks
in Detroit put American citizens on wheels; you have the
American economy on the move. Unemployment in Detroit is
down, profits are up, wages are good and there is no problem
too tough or too challenging for us to solve.”
However, as Maraniss tells
us, even in the optimism of the early 1960’s, beneath the
good news, were some troubling indications of the difficult
times ahead for Detroit.
Even as the Detroit auto
industry was booming, it was losing market share worldwide –
1963 was the first year it did not have more than 50 percent
of the world market in car sales. Worse, Detroit’s auto
executives were steadfastly refusing to entertain the idea
of building anything but big cars dismissing the notion that
Volkswagen, much less Japanese companies, could possibly
pose a threat in the future.
Urban renewal was underway
with all those big buildings and new highways but for black
residents this meant the demolition of homes and businesses
that were so important in their neighborhoods. “Negro
removal” it was dubbed in the African-American community.
Perhaps most tragically,
the city was losing population at a rapid rate. The 1.8
million residents recorded in the 1950 census were already
down to 1.67 million in 1960 and, in 1963, Wayne State’s
urban studies department forecast a 1970 population of
1,259,515 – a loss of one quarter of the population in one
decade. They were indeed correct.
Gordy’s Motown in 1963 was
growing and prospering even though its soon-to-be three top
acts, the Supremes, the Temptations and the Four Tops, had
not yet broken out with their first blockbuster hits –
“Where Did Our Love Go,” “My Girl” and “Baby, I Need Your
Loving,” respectively. Even in 1963, however, Gordy was
looking at the possibilities offered by California and
Hollywood. By 1972 he would be gone, leaving behind museums
to Motown’s glory days in the Motor City.
If there was one single
incident that spoke of troubling times ahead it was the
city’s failed bid in that summer of 1963 to bring the 1968
Olympics to southeastern Michigan. In spite of a dazzling
presentation by the Detroit delegation – Detroit was one of
four finalists – the vote by the International Olympic
Committee went to Mexico City and by 1968, the Detroit
decline was evident.
A devastating race riot in
1967, sagging auto sales and the subsequent loss of jobs,
the flight to the suburbs began to turn the city that
President Johnson had called a “herald of hope” into a
disaster that would be unprecedented among cities in the
Rust Belt.
David Maraniss, a Detroit
native, who is an associate editor at the Washington Post,
recounts the story of the Motor City brilliantly,
interweaving tales of the civil rights struggle, the musical
culture, the auto industry, the politics and the mobsters –
the good, the bad and the very ugly. The wonder of American
might and the failure to perceive the fragility of such
might. The glow and the decay.
For all the glamour of the
Big Apple, the history of the City of Brotherly Love or the
grit of the Windy City, no tale is more fascinating or more
totally American than that of the Detroit.
“Can’t forget the Motor
City,” sang Martha Reeves in 1964. We still can’t. |
