Devil's Night (33 page)

A group of dignitaries, led by Pastor Charles Butler, came to the pulpit, and began to warm up the crowd. UAW vice-president Ernie Lofton delivered an impassioned attack on the press: “We have two papers in this town that can't tell fact from fiction,” he hollered. “We remember what Detroit was like prior to Coleman Young and we didn't like what we saw.” When he finished, the crowd gave the union official a warm hand. “Seems like Brother Lofton came here to preach today,” said Reverend Butler, getting an appreciative chuckle.

More brief remarks followed. An activitist from Operation Get-Down seconded the attack on the press. “We don't listen to any local media and we don't listen to any national media, either,” he said. Tom Turner of the AFL-CIO was the only speaker to even allude to Barrow. “I don't recall Coleman's opponent ever paying any dues,” he told them. The attack on Barrow got much less applause than the press-bashing.

The choir sang “Victory Shall Be Mine,” and the crowd, more like a congregation, swayed and clapped. Then Young and Jackson took the pulpit, accompanied by Aretha Franklin, dressed for church in a modest black brocade suit and white pearls. There was an excited buzzing in the audience—they hadn't known that she was on the show.

Reverend Butler introduced the mayor in three words: “Behold the man.” The crowd rose and cheered as Young, dressed as usual
in an elegant double-breasted suit, came to the rostrum. His remarks were short and surprisingly low-key. He talked briefly about his accomplishments, praised the church as a pillar of the community and called for racial harmony. “There are some who have mistaken African-American unity as antiwhite,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” The proverbial visitor from Mars, landing at New St. Paul's Tabernacle that afternoon, would have thought Coleman A. Young a conciliatory, statesmanlike old man with a very good tailor.

Then Aretha Franklin sang “Precious Lord,” the same song she sang at Martin Luther King's funeral. She was a little hoarse in the beginning, but her voice returned as she went along, and as she soared to the end, the
Free Press
man turned to me. Like the other reporters on the campaign trail, he had come in for a fair share of personal abuse. Now he had a beatific smile on his face. “Covering politics in Detroit has its compensations,” he said.

Jesse Jackson delivered the finale. He is to black political oratory what Franklin is to gospel music—an inspired, inspiring virtuoso—and he was at the top of his form that afternoon. “I'm here today for an emancipation rally,” he intoned. “The blood of Malcolm and Martin brings us to an emancipation rally. When they were needed, they were there. And when the roll was called, Coleman Young was there. He answered ‘Present.' ”

Skillfully, Jackson contrasted the mayor's long, distinguished civil rights record with that of his yuppie opponent. He talked about Young's defiance of Jim Crow regulations in the army, of his battle with the House Un-American Activities Committee, of his dedication to black causes. “The most effective affirmative action policy for jobs and contracts in America is right here in Detroit, Michigan,” he said.

Then Jackson turned his rhetorical guns on Barrow. “They say he knows how to get along with white folks,” he thundered contemptuously. “Well, that's no great accomplishment. That's no special
skill. African-Americans have always known how to get along with white people. We learned how to get along with white people during slavery. The time has come for white people to learn to get along with us.” The church rocked with applause and cheers.

Finally Jackson and the others held hands and led the audience in “We Shall Overcome.” For a moment it was 1963, and Aretha's father, C. L. Franklin, was leading Martin Luther King up Woodward Avenue at the head of a giant crowd. Back then, no one could have imagined the Detroit of today. In that sense, they
had
overcome; self-determination was a fact of life. But there were other facts, too. Dr. King had been murdered by a racist, and Reverend Franklin by a criminal—victims of the polarities of black suffering. In 1989, no one was certain anymore who the real enemy was—them, or us.

No one, that is, but Coleman Young. He had built a black city-state in the heart of the American middle west, given his people a government that spoke their language, streets and parks named for their heroes, city jobs and contracts and more political control than blacks have ever had, anywhere, in North America. He had, more than any politician in the country, created a city in his own image.

The irony was that he, better than anyone, knew the terrible limitations of his achievement. The price of black control had been abandonment and antipathy. White people had taken their businesses and factories and fled; the motherfuckers had stolen the city's boots along with its bootstraps. It was this certainty—that the hostility of the white press, the white suburbs and, by extension, white America was ultimately responsible for the plight of his city and his people—that enabled the most powerful man in Detroit to hold Aretha Franklin's hand and, in a wobbly, off-key voice, to sing, with sincere defiance, “We Shall Overcome.”

They sang “We Shall Overcome” at Tom Barrow's final rally, too, but with a different accent and a different meaning.

The rally, held on the eve of the election, began at Barrow's headquarters. Clusters of black-and-white balloons hung from the ceiling, and clusters of black-and-white supporters waited for the candidate's towering brother, Shorty, to form them into a line for the candlelight march up Woodward Avenue. One wall was dominated by a large placard: “God Bless America, Land of Opportunity.”

Shorty, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Joe Louis, called “Hey-yo, hey-yo” and began herding the marchers to the door, where each was given a lit candle. Barrow, dressed in an open-collared striped shirt, blue blazer and gray slacks, led the procession. At his side was Reverend William Quick, the white pastor of the largely white Metropolitan United Methodist Church, where the rally was to take place.

Quick and Barrow marched four blocks up Woodward Avenue to the church, past vacant lots and boarded-up pawnshops. They sang as they went, “This little light of mine, I'm gonna make it shine,” but there was no one to hear them; at 6:30
P.M.
, the sidewalks of Detroit's main street were deserted, and only a trickle of cars drove past.

The procession wound past the apartment building of the black grandmother who had been propositioned by Floyd at my cocktail party, almost a year before. Once, driving by Metropolitan United, she had pointed out the church, an imposing building that dominates a city block. “Every Sunday I see those white folks coming in from the suburbs to go to church,” she said. “They come to thank God—they thank Him that they don't have to live next to niggers.”

The Barrow crowd was thin enough to fit into the church's small sanctuary without filling up the balcony. Naturally, the rally began with a prayer, and then a middle-aged white woman in a white dress and thick glasses sang “Be Not Afraid” in a Joan Baez-like soprano, accompanied by an elderly white woman on the organ.

Reverend Quick kicked off the speeches with a rousing denunciation of Coleman Young and all his works. The litany of sins
included buying off Quick's fellow divines. “Millions of dollars have gone to the churches,” he declaimed. “Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?” The whites applauded but many of the blacks looked quizzical; they were mad at Coleman, after all, not at Jesus.

Quick was followed by another white minister, and then a black woman. “When the wicked are removed, the people rejoice,” she quoted, bursting into tears. A collective “Aw” rose from the pews, and Barrow, on his way to the podium, hugged her.

Barrow's text that night was his usual message of responsibility and racial cooperation. “We're sick of crime, crack, hate and racism,” he told the audience. “We're not going to blame the white folks. Nobody is going to save us from us but us …”

As he talked, several reporters in the balcony began to compare notes on the campaign. Judging by the rally, it seemed to me that Barrow had failed to galvanize much black support—the key to his strategy. But the others dissented. “Barrow says that he's only three points back,” said a usually well-informed journalist. “He's got a poll, and I believe it. There's a hell of a lot of dissatisfaction out there.” He took out a piece of paper and wrote “Coleman 51%, Barrow 49%.” “And it could go the other way,” he said.

“… In order for Detroit to come back, we've got to bring the community back together,” yelled Barrow, coming to a close. “It's time to stop thinking about black and white, city and suburbs. We've got to work together. United, we can make this a great city again.”

Reverend Quick came forward and held the candidate's hand high in the air. The two men began to sing “We Shall Overcome” in a flat tone. The Barrow partisans joined in—“Black and white together, black and white to-ge-he-ther,” they sang, swaying gently in the pews. “Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.”

There was little doubt what the crowd had in mind; they intended to overcome Coleman Young, to liberate his liberated city, seize it
from the forces of black self-determination and return it to America. Dr. King's heir, Jesse Jackson, had been with Young at New St. Paul's but his disciples, believers in assimilation and integration, were with the yuppie accountant at Metropolitan United Methodist.

Thus did the campaign of 1989 come to a close. Nominally it was a race for mayor of America's sixth largest city, but there was much more at stake than who would occupy the Manoogian mansion for the next four years. There had been talk about housing and education, crime and clean streets, but despite Barrow's best efforts, the city's quality of life was never the main issue. The election was really about the black state of mind in a place where blacks are free to express themselves without worrying about white people.

The campaign posed serious ideological questions that went far beyond the specifics of Detroit. What is the root cause of the desperate condition of African-America—black irresponsibility or white racism? What is the best way for African-Americans to progress—self-rule or a junior partnership with whites? Is defiant struggle merely an evolutionary step toward inclusion in the broader American polity—or is it, in the words of Ronald Hewitt, the best that blacks can hope for in the United States? In a very real sense, the election in Detroit was a referendum on the contemporary black interpretation of reality.

On election day, the voters of America's African-American capital returned their verdict, and it wasn't even close. Coleman Young was reelected by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent, with almost 70 percent of the black vote (and only 13 percent of the whites). Detroit, the city with the country's highest rate of teenage murder, unemployment and depopulation, twelve thousand abandoned homes, a Third World infant mortality rate and an epidemic drug problem, had spoken: Four More Years.

That night, the citizens of the black polis came together to celebrate the fifth consecutive victory of Coleman Alexander Young.
Several thousand people packed Cobo Hall, the convention center on the river—executives with gleaming, gold-rimmed glasses and thousand-dollar suits and street people in jeans and torn sweaters; churchwomen wearing crosses large enough to frighten vampires and stylish ladies in ball gowns and glittering jewelry; aging auto workers sporting UAW jackets and young Muslims dressed in white robes and skullcaps. The mayor's rainbow coalition ranged from coal black to light tan—there weren't more than a couple of dozen whites at the celebration.

The Muslims and church ladies munched sedately on catered fried chicken while the others bellied up to the bar for drinks at $3.50 a shot. Giant speakers poured out r&b and several hundred young people did the electric boogie, moving together in coordinated lines like Fred Busby dancers. A young black reporter from the
News
, attending her first election night bash, surveyed the room with wonder. “The mayor sure knows how to throw a party,” she said.

Close to midnight, “Respect” came blaring over the loudspeakers and Coleman Young took the stage, accompanied by an entourage that included a rotund black woman in a red dress. The crowd screamed “Four more years!” and the mayor smiled and waved. Then the woman, whose name was Gloria McKee, took the microphone and sang—“You're the best thing that ever happened to me.” She finished to loud applause, and the mayor seized the microphone. “The lady has sung,” he announced, and the room burst into appreciative laughter.

Suddenly Young turned serious and statesmanlike. “We should join in the spirit of democracy here by extending the hand of unity, brotherhood and friendship,” he told his followers. “Let us all come forward together now and move this city forward. Let us join hands across Eight Mile Road. We can't make it without the suburbs, and they can't make it without us.”

“He sounds like Tom Barrow tonight,” I remarked to the
News
reporter. “He wants harmony with the white folks.”

“There's only one difference,” she said. “Coleman wants it on his terms.”

That, indeed, was the difference, not only between Young and Barrow, but between him and the other two black candidates who won major victories that night. Young congratulated David Dinkins, for being elected mayor of New York, and L. Douglas Wilder, for winning the governorship of Virginia. Television pundits were already heralding them as harbingers of the new black politician—moderate, mainstream liberals, successful because they eschewed racial rhetoric. But in Detroit, they wouldn't have had a chance. In the city that has so often been the true bellwether of black America, Dinkins and Wilder were yesterday, not tomorrow.