Coleman Young
Coleman Alexander Young (May 24, 1918 – November 29, 1997) served as mayor of Detroit, Michigan from 1974 to 1994. Young became the first African-American mayor of Detroit in the same week that Maynard Jackson became the first African-American mayor of Atlanta. Although Young had emerged from the far left element in Detroit, he moved to the right after his election as mayor. He called an ideological truce and gained widespread support from the city's business leaders. 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." Young's tenure as mayor has been blamed in part for the city's ills, especially the exodus of middle class taxpayers to the suburbs, the emergence of powerful drug-dealing gangs, and the rising crime rate. Political scientist James Q. Wilson wrote that, "In Detroit, Mayor Coleman Young rejected the integrationist goal in favor of a flamboyant, black-power style that won him loyal followers, but he left the city a fiscal and social wreck." In 1981, he received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.