To the Editor: I very much enjoyed your "We're history". One of your themes reminded me of Coleman Young's words in his autobiography _Hard Stuff_ ( page 2 Viking 1994) :
"The real message lies in the fact that since 1914, when Henry Ford's futuristic production system and new-wage workday began to attract the multiracial, ethnic, huddled masses yearning to be gainfully employed, Detroit's special place in urban American history has been as its great indicator, a condensed, microcosmic, accelerated version of Everycity, U.S.A. Tocqueville noticed that about Detroit as far back as th early nineteenth century. In the evolutionary urban order, Detroit today has always been your town tomorrow. Superannuated as it may seem in this late segment of a swirling century, troubled and forsaken as the times have conspired to leave it, Detroit remains a surpassingly purposeful place, as important to the nation right now as it has ever been ---- maybe more so, because right now it is telling us that cities are in trouble. Detroit is the advance warning system - the flashing red light and siren --- for what could be a catastrophic urban meltdown, and the country had damn well better pay attention. " Perhaps academic history is reflecting Mayor Young's thinking here some when it makes Detroit a "model city again " and a " symbol" and "way of exploring urban problems" today. We're History The kiss, the wall & other true tales Combing Detroit archives for the seeds of racism, urban crises, social movements and economic travail. by W. Kim Heron 5/15/2002 "Detroit's become this symbol, this way of exploring urban problems." Neighbors in his dilapidated west Detroit neighborhood remember James Major as a preacher who helped his wife manage an apartment building. They recall watching as sickness claimed his wife's life, as infirmity stifled his, and he unceremoniously disappeared into a nursing home. It's hardly the kind of life one expects to be grist for historians. But there in the September 1997 issue of the Journal of American History, along with articles on slavery in Bourbon County, Ky., and African-American scholar-activist W.E.B. DuBois, you can find the story of James Major and the kiss that sparked a wildcat strike and derailed his future. Major was then, in 1955, a strapping married man of 35, a would-be boxer, a World War II Army veteran who that January had landed a job in the trim department of Chrysler's Dodge Main Plant in Hamtramck. As an African-American, his mere presence in that department was a reminder of recent changes, troubling changes for the white men who had formerly had a lock on the installation of hardtops and side chrome. Troubling, too, for the hierarchy, was the presence of white women like Major's frequent work partner, Catherine Young. When Major and Young became friendly, even flirtatious, tensions simmered and finally, on the last work day before Christmas, boiled. That last work day was traditionally a festive one, complete with booze. Young proposed a round of Christmas kisses between the couples who occupied consecutive workstations; she proceeded to kiss a white co-worker, while Major delivered a peck to the cheek of one Leona Hunt, also white. As Hunt walked away, the Yule festival, in the words of author Kevin Boyle, became "something much more ominous." complete article at: http://www.metrotimes.com/ Thomas J. Sugrue's expert testimony as part of a University of Michigan defense of its affirmative action policies can be read at www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/legal/expert/. The testimony includes key themes from The Origins of the Urban Crisis. Kevin Boyle talks about the Ossian Sweet trial in a video clip as part of the informative Detroit African-American History Project at www.daahp.wayne.edu/interviews.html. ^^^^^^^^^ Model city - again by W. Kim Heron 5/15/2002 8:00:00 AM SEE ALSO For a brief period in the mid-'60s, Detroit was the Model City. Newspapers and magazines from coast to coast wrote admiringly of its young, progressive mayor, interracial civic committees, anti-poverty programs and apparent promise. Then came the disastrous riot of 1967. But why is Detroit becoming a model city of a different type now for historians? For one thing, Detroit fits in with a trend within the field of history to look at cities and intertwined issues of class and race. For some former residents, writing about Detroit is a returning to roots. Here are some of the other reasons cited: * There's an element of opportunity here for historians. The city is relatively under-studied, compared to Chicago or New York, for instance. * Younger historians are hardly working from scratch here. Heather Ann Thompson of the University of North Carolina recalls the inspiration for her own work in the 1975 book Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution by Dan Georgakas, Marvin Surkin and Manning Marable. Others mentioned such earlier works as Richard W. Thomas' Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit and Sidney Fine's Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967. * Studies of the city's industrial history and the union movement, particularly the UAW, also overlap with the recent work. Revisionist examinations of the internal conflicts and compromises of the labor movement have been particularly important. (Nelson Lichtenstein's Walter Reuther biography, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, is a prime example of the latter.) * Detroit offers historians a bounty of archives to supply primary sources. The Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library and the records of other groups, such as the Detroit NAACP, all came up in discussions with historians. * There is apparently a snowball effect in the wake of Thomas W. Sugrue's widely lauded The Origins of the Urban Crisis. Sugrue, says Thompson, "paved the way" for discussion of the city's stories that she and others are exploring. University of Massachusetts historian Kevin Boyle credits The Origins of the Urban Crisis as the inspiration for his upcoming book on Detroit in the 1920s. W. Kim Heron is the Metro Times managing editor. Send comments to [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
