Introduction
1. Christopher Morley, Where the Blue Begins, chapter 6 (public domain, available at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1402).
2. As quoted by John J. Macionis and Vincent N. Parillo, Cities and Urban Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 218.
One: September 5, 2017
1. Kevin Shea, “One on One with Mike Ilitch,” Hockey Hall of Fame, https://www.hhof.com/htmlSpotlight/spot_oneononeb200301.shtml.
2. “Tigers, Red Wings Owner Mike Ilitch, Founder of Little Caesars Pizza, Dies at Age 87,” Chicago Tribune, February 10, 2017.
3. Elisha Anderson and Hasan Dudar, “LCA Opens to Fanfare, Excitement in Detroit,” Detroit Free Press, September 5, 2017.
4. “World’s Best Cities: 94. Detroit,” Best Cities, www.bestcities.org/rankings/worlds-best-cities/detroit.
5. Allan Lengel, “The Making of the District Detroit,” Urban Land, April 9, 2018, www.urbanland.uli.org/development-business/making-district-detroit.
6. “TERRIBLE ILITCHES,” www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=14j7aXj1U9GxOkzOAD2UWyos4EZA&shorturl=1&ll=42.33990916492976%2C-83.05959105&z=14.
7. Tom Perkins, “Big Promises for a Thriving Urban Core in Detroit Vanish in a Swath of Parking Lots,” The Guardian, October 8, 2018.
8. Louis Aguilar, “Cass Corridor Neighbors See Unfilled Promises in Little Caesars Arena District,” Detroit News, November 5, 2018.
9. There is a now a large economics literature on this issue. See, for example, Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys, “The Growth Effects of Sport Franchises, Stadia, and Arenas,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 18, no. 4 (1999): 601–24, and also John Siegfried and Andrew Zimbalist, “The Economics of Sports Facilities and Their Communities,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, no. 3 (2000): 95–114. These findings extend to hosting mega-events such as the Olympics Games: Robert A. Baade and Victor A. Matheson, “Going for the Gold: The Economics of the Olympics,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 30, no. 2 (2016): 201–18.
10. Tim Delaney and Tim Madigan, “The Sociology of Sport,” in The Sociology of Sports: An Introduction (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), 3–25. There is growing evidence that major sports events can generate a significant “feel-good factor.” See, for example, Georgios Kavetsos and Stefan Szymanski, “National Well-Being and International Sports Events,” Journal of Economic Psychology 31, no. 2 (2010): 158–71 and Paul Dolan et al., “Quantifying the Intangible Impact of the Olympics Using Subjective Well-Being Data,” Journal of Public Economics 177 (2019): 104043.
11. Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley, The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013).
12. If you want to learn more about the league, go to www.detroitrollerderby.com.
Two: October 24, 2012
1. See, for example, Thomas Boswell, “Justin Verlander Is Rocked by Pablo Sandoval in Shocking Start to 2012 World Series,” Washington Post, October 25, 2012; Ian Casselberry, “One Bad Start or Did Justin Verlander Fold Under Pressure?,” Bleacher Report, October 25, 2012.
2. See, for example, Charlie Scrabbles, “2012 World Series Odds: Tigers favored over Giants,” SB Nation, October 24, 2012.
3. “Source: Tigers to Sign Prince Fielder,” ESPN, January 24, 2012.
4. Michael Maidenberg, “Police Recruitment Doubles in 1970,” Detroit Free Press, April 19, 1970.
5. U.S. Department of Justice, Crime in the United States 2012, Table 78, Michigan, ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/78tabledatadecpdf/table-78-state-cuts/table_78_full_time_law_enforcement_employees_michigan_by_city_2012.xls.
6. Nathan Bomey, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back (New York: W.W. Norton, 2016), 51.
7. Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, City of Detroit, 2012, https://detroitmi.gov/Portals/0/docs/finance/CAFR/Final%202012%20Detroit%20Financial%20Statements.pdf and City of Detroit Annual Report, 1970.
8. Paige Williams, “Drop Dead Detroit,” New Yorker, January 27, 2014.
9. Bomey, Detroit Resurrected, 43.
10. See Josh Hakala, “How Did We Get Here? A Look Back at Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law,” Michigan Radio, February 3, 2016, and Jonathan Oosting, “Snyder Signs Replacement Emergency Manager Law: We ‘Heard, Recognized and Respected’ Will of Voters,” MLive, December 27, 2019.
11. Nick Brown, “Chapter 9 Bankruptcy Puts Detroit in Driver’s Seat of Its Restructuring,” Reuters, July 18, 2013.
12. David Ng, “Detroit Institute of Arts Collection Worth Billions, Report Says,” Los Angeles Times, July 11, 2014.
13. Hamilton Nolan, “Sell Detroit’s Art, Save Detroit’s People,” Gawker, July 10, 2014.
14. Bomey, Detroit Resurrected, 117, 122–23.
15. Mark Caro, “Will Detroit Have to Sell Its Art to Pay Its Bills?” Chicago Tribune, October 18, 2013.
16. For examples of the debate’s coverage, see Philip Kennicott, “Detroit Institute of Arts Fire Sale: The Worst Idea Out of Motor City Since the Edsel,” Washington Post, October 4, 2013, and Karen McVeigh, “Detroit Mired in Fresh Controversy over Sale of 60,000-Piece Art Collection,” The Guardian, August 14, 2013.
17. See Maureen B. Collins, “Pensions or Paintings: The Detroit Institute of Arts from Bankruptcy to Grand Bargain,” U. Miami Bus. L. Rev. 24, no. 1 (2015): 1–29.
18. Louis Aguilar, “Putting a Price Tag on Properties Linked to Gilbert,” Detroit News, April 29, 2016.
19. At the time of writing, late 2019, this project is now uncertain.
20. Louis Aguilar, “Putting a Price Tag on Properties Linked to Gilbert,” Detroit News, April 29, 2016.
21. For examples of such reactions, see Dana Afana, “‘We Screwed Up Badly,’ Says Dan Gilbert After Advertisement Sparks Outrage,” MLive, July 24, 2019.
22. See “About DCFC,” Detroit City FC, www.detcityfc.com/page/show/1570886-about-dcfc.
23. “Meet the Northern Guard,” www.noonelikes.us/about-ngs.
24. This YouTube video shows Tetris being performed at the team’s first home, Cass Tech. Do Haeng Michael Kitchen, “NGS Does the Tetris,” Video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXAkavgsQSs.
25. Bill Shea, “Detroit City FC Raises $741,250 for Stadium Renovation Project,” Crain’s Detroit Business, February 16, 2016.
26. Larry O’Connor, “Detroit City FC, Manchester Club Share Common Bonds,” Detroit News, July 29, 2016. and Sean Spence, “Detroit City FC Hosts FC St. Pauli in Front of 7,264,” Detroit City FC, May 19, 2018. www.detcityfc.com/news_article/show/919588.
27. Larry O’Connor, “Club Necaxa visit to DCFC Taps into Latino Community’s Soccer Passion,” Detroit News, July 11, 2018.
28. The Fieldhouse is adjacent to the Mount Elliot Cemetery and the location of the Bloody Run, where a battle took place on July 31, 1763, between British troops and the Native Americans under Pontiac who were besieging Fort Detroit. Pontiac’s forces were victorious, killing 20 British soldiers and wounding 32. The battle is described in detail in chapter 15 of Francis Parkman’s The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War After the Conquest of Canada (London; New York: J.M. Dent; E.P. Dutton, 1851).
29. David Lengel, “World Series 2012: Tigers vs Giants—Everything You Need to Know,” The Guardian, October 24, 2012.
1. “Detroit Lions Lose to Finish 0-16,” Washington Post, December 29, 2008.
2. In 2017 the Cleveland Browns emulated their neighbors to produce another 0-16 season. Comparisons of awfulness may seem odious, but arguably, Cleveland 2017 was not as bad as Detroit 2008—the Browns lost by smaller margins on average (11 points compared with 16) and even managed to take two games to overtime.
3. Tom Goldman, “Detroit Lions: Worst NFL Team Ever?,” NPR, December 29, 2008; Seth Livingstone, “0-16 Lions Enter Hall of Shame,” USA Today, December 29, 2008; “Zero-Sum Game for Lions, Who Finish 0 for 16,” Washington Post, December 29, 2008; Karen Crouse, “0-16: Milestone the Lions Would Rather Forget,” New York Times, December 29, 2008; John Niyo, “Perfectly Awful,” Detroit News, December 29, 2008.
4. Niyo, “Perfectly Awful.”
5. Joe Posnanski, “Darkness Falls Across the Land,” Kansas City Star, December 31, 2008.
6. Bob Wojnowski, “Reviving the Lions Will Take Far More,” Detroit News, December 30, 2008.
7. John U. Bacon, “An Appreciation of William Clay Ford, Sr.,” March 14, 2014, www.johnubacon.com/2014/03/an-appreciation-of-william-clay-ford-sr.
8. Nick Kostora, “Detroit Lions: The 5 Best Quotes of the Matt Millen Era in Detroit,” Bleacher Report, September 22, 2011.
9. Michael Rosenberg, “The Seven-Year Glitch,” Sports Illustrated, December 2, 2013.
10. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic (New York: Encounter Books, 2002). On Bill’s early years, see 188–89; on the Continental, 205–8 and 216–19; on alcoholism and the acquisition of the Lions, 256–57.
11. A good analysis of the relationship between the decline of Detroit and the motor industry can be found in George Galster’s Driving Detroit: The Quest for Respect in the Motor City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
12. As we were writing this book GM first announced the closure of the other remaining plant, Poletown, in the city’s other enclave, Hamtramck, then announced a temporary reprieve, and then in early 2020 announced that the plant would be converted to the construction of electric cars. It overlooks Detroit City FC’s Keyworth Stadium.
13. Mitt Romney, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” New York Times, November 18, 2008.
14. See Bill Vlasic, Once upon a Car: The Fall and Resurrection of America’s Big Three Automakers—GM, Ford, and Chrysler (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), chaps. 27–31 for a good account of the bailout.
15. See Kimberly Amadeo, “Auto Industry Bailout,” The Balance, June 25, 2019, for a detailed accounting of the bailout costs and returns, https://www.thebalance.com/auto-industry-bailout-gm-ford-chrysler-3305670. Her skepticism about the benefits of the bailout perhaps stems from the fact that she places little weight on the social costs that closing GM would have created for Detroit’s population.
16. Mike Wilkinson, “Nearly Half of Detroit’s Workers Are Unemployed: Analysis Shows Reported Jobless Rate Understates Extent of Problem,” Detroit News, December 16, 2009.
17. Alexandra Marks, “ ‘Hip Hop Mayor’ Aims to Rev Motor City Engine,” Christian Science Monitor, August 7, 2002.
18. “Kwame Kilpatrick,” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Kilpatrick.
19. Robert Snell and Mike Martindale, “New Witness Says There Was a Manoogian Party: Unsealed Filing Asserts Broad Cover-Up in Death of Stripper,” Detroit News, November 22, 2010. For an example of dog-whistle news coverage, see Awr Hawkins, “Detroit: A Microcosm of Democrat Failure,” Breitbart, July 22, 2013.
20. See, for instance, Robert Snell, “Consultant: Fouts Called Kwame Kilpatrick an ‘N-word,’” Detroit News, January 21, 2019; Gus Burns, “Report: Relative Calls Kwame Kilpatrick Prosecution Racist, Detroit Brainwashed,” MLive, February 21, 2013.
21. Mark Guarino, “Kwame Kilpatrick: Disgraced Detroit Mayor Gets ‘Massive’ 28-Year Sentence,” Christian Science Monitor, October 10, 2013. For other analysis comparing Kilpatrick’s sentences with others, see Breanna Edwards, “Was Kwame Kilpatrick’s Sentence Too Harsh?,” The Root, October 11, 2013, www.theroot.com/was-kwame-kilpatricks-sentence-too-harsh-1790898437.
22. Mike Riggs, “Why Kwame Kilpatrick Should Not Serve 28 Years in Prison,” CityLab, October 11, 2013.
Four: November 19, 2004
1. Jonathan Abrams, “The Malice at the Palace: An Oral History of the Scariest Moment in NBA History,” Grantland, March 20, 2012, grantland.com/features/an-oral-history-malice-palace. The words are from Mark Montieth, a journalist who covered the Pacers for the Indianapolis Star.
2. “NBA Commissioner David Stern Recalls ‘Malice at the Palace’ as Toughest Crisis He’s Dealt With,” Indianapolis Star, November 12, 2013.
3. Greg Sandoval, “Four NBA Players Suspended for Melee; Incidents Involving Athletes, Fans Are Increasing in U.S. Leagues,” Washington Post, November 21, 2004.
4. The story of this series and the story of the Pistons’ 2003–04 season is told in Detroit News, Detroit Pistons: Champions at Work (Detroit: Sports Publishing, 2004), which provides a collection of news stories published in the Detroit News about the team in that season. Much of what follows is drawn from this book.
5. Abrams, “The Malice at the Palace.”
6. Abrams, “The Malice at the Palace.”
7. Most of the whole sequence of events can be seen on YouTube here: “Pacers / Pistons Brawl (2004) Original,” Video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdyqIh4nJ3Y. At the end of the video you can just make out Ron Artest lying on the bench and getting up to brawl with the fan who had thrown his drink at him.
8. Jeffrey Lane, Under the Boards: The Cultural Revolution in Basketball (Nebraska: Bison Books, 2007), 86.
9. You can watch the routine here: “Bill Burr | How You Know the N Word Is Coming | Shaq’s Five Minute Funnies I Comedy Shaq,” Video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8b81UM74Ow&feature=youtu.be&t=2m46s.
10. Rudy Martzke, “TV Sports,” USA Today, November 23, 2004.
11. Abrams, “The Malice at the Palace.”
12. Jeremy Peters and Liz Robbins, “5 Pacers and 5 Fans Are Charged in Fight,” New York Times, December 9, 2004.
13. Matthew Kitchen, “How the ‘Malice at the Palace’ Changed Basketball Forever,” Men’s Journal, November 19, 2014.
14. For a detailed account of “the assault on blackness,” including an analysis of the “Malice,” see David Leonhardt, After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012), as well as Boulou Ebanda de B’béri and Peter Hogarth, “White America’s Construction of Black Bodies: The Case of Ron Artest as a Model of Covert Racial Ideology in the NBA’s Discourse,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 2, no. 2 (2009): 89–106.
15. Zack Graham, “How David Stern’s NBA Dress Code Changed Men’s Fashion,” Rolling Stone, November 4, 2016.
16. Candace Buckner, “As ‘Malice at the Palace’ Brawl Turns 10, Impact Lasts,” USA Today, November 16, 2014.
17. Santiago Colás, Ball Don’t Lie! Myth, Genealogy, and Invention in the Cultures of Basketball (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016), 135.
18. Andrew Seifter, “Limbaugh on NBA fight: ‘This Is the Hip-Hop Culture on Parade,’” Media Matters, November 23, 2004, www.mediamatters.org/rush-limbaugh/limbaugh-nba-fight-hip-hop-culture-parade.
19. Derek L. John, “New Fallujah, Michigan,” Recount, December 15, 2004, www.nyujournalismprojects.org/recount/article/102.
20. Harvey Araton, “One Year After Pacers-Pistons Fight, Tough Questions of Race and Sports,” New York Times, October 30, 2005.
21. In the 2000 census, the racial makeup of Auburn Hills was 75.9 percent white, 13.2 percent African American, 0.3 percent Native American, 6.3 percent Asian, 0.04 percent Pacific Islander, 1.6 percent from other races, and 2.6 percent from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race made up 4.5 percent of the population.
22. Eminem and Sacha Jenkins, The Way I Am (New York: Plume, 2009), 115.
23. You can still find an ad for “The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit Tour” here: www.detroityes.com/fabulous-ruins-of-detroit.
24. The history of the theater is described here: Dan Austin, “Michigan Theatre,” Historic Detroit, www.historicdetroit.org/building/michigan-theatre.
25. Thomas Morton, “Something, Something, Something, Detroit,” Vice, July 31, 2009.
26. Tom Walsh, “Success Story Goes to Work at the Palace,” Detroit Free Press, October 28, 2003.
27. Detroit News, Detroit Pistons, 79.
28. Chris McCosky, “Pistons Smother Bucks; Out-of-Sync Milwaukee Looks Out of Place in Rout,” Detroit News, April 19, 2004.
29. For a detailed account of the line and all it implies, see Yago Colás, “‘ Ball Don’t Lie!’ Rasheed Wallace and the Politics of Protest in the National Basketball Association,” Communication & Sport, 4, no. 2 (2016): 123–44.
30. Joanne C. Gerstner, “Pistons Say Rasheed Had a Huge Role,” Detroit News, June 16, 2004.
31. Detroit News, Detroit Pistons, 114.
32. Detroit News, Detroit Pistons, 119.
33. William Rhoden, “Pistons’ Championship Is What Detroit Needed,” New York Times, June 17, 2004.
Five: September 27, 1999
1. The events of the final game and of the final season are lovingly chronicled in Tom Stanton’s The Final Season: Fathers, Sons, and One Last Season in a Classic American Ballpark (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001).
2. Lee Lamberts, “Robert Fick Reflects on Final Home Run at Tiger Stadium,” Holland Sentinel, June 5, 2015.
3. Stanton, The Final Season, 238.
4. Richard Bak, A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 323ff.
5. Patrick J. Harrigan, The Detroit Tigers: Club and Community, 1945–1995 (Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 258–59.
6. Harrigan, The Detroit Tigers, 351–53.
7. “The Way It Was—Briggs Stadium, 1958,” Hour Detroit, https://www.hourdetroit.com/from-the-magazine/the-way-it-was-briggs-stadium-1958.
8. Harvey Briggs, “Great Grandson of Former Tigers Owner: Turning a Racist Legacy into One of Hope,” Detroit Free Press, August 22, 2017.
9. Documentation related to the Cochrane Plan can be found on the website of the Detroit Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), sabr-detroit.org/wordpress/?p=70.
10. John Holusha, “Detroit Journal; Baseball Fans to Give an Aging Tiger Stadium a Great Big Hug,” New York Times, April 20, 1988.
11. Citizens Research Council of Michigan, “Memorandum No. 1040,” February 1996, crcmich.org/PUBLICAT/1990s/1996/memo1040.pdf.
12. Bak, A Place for Summer, 355–64. A hagiography commissioned by Monaghan that seeks to place his view of the world in its religious context can be found in Joseph Pearce’s Monaghan: A Life (Charlotte, NC: Tan Books, 2016). Bak explains that he decided to sell the Tigers because Domino’s Pizza was in financial difficulties and the banks gave him little choice (pp. 163–65). He also boasts of making a large profit from his ownership—he was paid $103 million in 1992, a much greater sum than the $53 million he paid in 1983, which doesn’t include the $40 million taken out of the club in profits over his tenure. This amounts to a 14 percent annual rate of return, compared with average return on the stock market (S&P 500) of 11 percent over the same period. Fans might say that if Monaghan had taken a smaller profit out of the ball club and used the money for a better team, or for investing in the stadium, then his stewardship might have been a bit more fruitful. However, he is unapologetic, pointing out the average win percentage under his tenure (52 percent) was better than either the nine years before him (43.8 percent) and the nine years after (41.8 percent). The problem with that argument is that Monaghan inherited a good team, and winning a World Series in his first year of ownership is at best a shared achievement with the prior ownership. The fact is that under his tenure the team was on a downward trend, and the first few years of the Ilitch tenure must to a large part be attributable to the signings of the Monaghan era. His description of his tenure as “a golden era” is not only lacking in proper Christian modesty, it would be unlikely to be endorsed by most fans.
13. Bak, A Place for Summer, 370.
14. Bak, A Place for Summer, 380–81.
15. Tina Lam, “Tigers, City Agree on Stadium,” Detroit News, October 28, 1995.
16. Harrigan, The Detroit Tigers, 274.
17. Dennis Archer and Elizabeth Atkins, Let the Future Begin (Grosse Pointe Farms, MI: Atkins & Greenspan Writing, 2017), 317.
18. The mayor’s perspective on this deal is described in his autobiography, Archer and Atkins, Let the Future Begin, 317–21. See also Bak, A Place for Summer, 385–89.
19. Tina Lam and Daniel Fricker, “Team Effort,” Detroit Free Press, August 21, 1996. The Citizens Research Council Memorandum, written in advance of the referendum, sets out the background in some detail.
20. Much has been written about blackmail strategies employed by major league teams in the United States. A good summary of the financial shenanigans and the costs, to taxpayers and fans, can be found in Neil deMause and Joanna Cagan, Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008).
21. Payroll data for Major League Baseball can be downloaded from Professor Rodney Fort’s “Rodney Fort’s Sports Business Data,” sites.google.com/site/rodswebpages/codes.
22. See, e.g., Bak, A Place for Summer, 396.
23. The festival is a joint celebration between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, of Independence Day and Canada Day. See Ronnie Minor and Laurie Tamborino, Detroit’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2003).
24. For a picture see Cheri Y. Gay, Detroit: Then and Now (London: Pavilion Books, 2015), 40.
25. You can watch a video of the demolition here: “J.L. Hudsons Department Store - GUINNESS WORLD RECORD!! - Controlled Demolition, Inc.,” Video, www. youtube.com/watch?v=JP1HJoG-1Pg.
26. Homrich Inc., “J.L. Hudson’s—Detroit, MI,” www.homrichinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/J.L.-Hudsons-Detroit-MI1.pdf. A history of the Hudson’s site that includes the current construction of an 800-foot skyscraper combining retail, residential and office space by Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock company, see Paul Sewick, “The past, present, and future of the Hudson’s site,” Curbed Detroit, November 21, 2017.
27. “Sorrow of Hudson’s,” Michigan Now, October 1, 2012, www.michigannow.org/2012/10/01/sorrow-of-hudsons.
28. The final pitch can be viewed here: “The final out at Tiger Stadium,” Video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=uljvXvdYHoE.
Six: October 27, 1995
1. Viv Bernstein, “Red Wings Draw on New Line,” Detroit Free Press, October 25, 1995.
2. Keith Gave, The Russian Five (Ann Arbor, MI: Gold Star Publishing, 2018), 165. Our account of how the Russian Five came to play for Detroit is based on his book.
3. There is a lot of detailed historical work on the Detroit Tigers, as there is with baseball in general. But when it comes to Detroit’s other major league teams, the record is patchy. There are many books written in praise of individual players, e.g., Stan Fischler, Detroit Red Wings: Greatest Moments and Players (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2012), or famous victories, e.g., the Detroit News–published Stanley’s Back! The Detroit Red Wings and the Capture of the Cup (Detroit: Sports Publishing, 2002), or even arenas, e.g., Rich Kincaide, The Gods of Olympia Stadium: Legends of the Detroit Red Wings (Detroit: Sports Publishing, 2003). But a complete narrative history of the club remains to be written. This is problematic when looking at periods when the team was not successful, such as the Dead Wings era. What Stefan found the most instructive was talking to hockey fans in his class at the University of Michigan, who were able to ask their parents and grandparents about it—there was a lot of shared misery. Much of this can be picked up on Wikipedia and other websites. See, for example, “1967–82: The ‘Dead Wings’ Era,” kaisercoolcat.weebly.com/dead-wings.html.
4. Before 1942 there were more teams in the NHL, but the Great Depression forced several of them to fold, and the Original Six were the last men standing.
5. On the cultural significance of hockey in Canada, see Richard Gruneau and David Whitson, Hockey Night in Canada: Sports Identities and Cultural Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), and David Whitson and Richard Gruneau, eds., Artificial Ice: Hockey, Culture, and Commerce (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012).
6. Estimates vary: one suggested figure of $107 billion per year comes from Kurt Nagl and Alexa St. John, “Bridge Promises New Trade Gateway for Automakers in U.S., Canada,” Automotive News, July 17, 2018; another, of $120 billion, comes from “The New International Trade Crossing,” July 2012, www.detroitchamber.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/NITC-The-Facts.pdf.
7. “Million Dollar Arena Will House Detroit’s High Priced National Hockey League Team,” Detroit Free Press, May 3, 1926.
8. U.S. Census Bureau, “2009–2013 American Community Survey.”
9. Reports of active discrimination in professional hockey most often concern French Canadian players, who are rarely drafted by Anglo-Canadian teams and are paid less when they are (a practice that is improving with the expansion of U.S. franchises).
10. Coleman Young and Lonnie Wheeler, Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young (New York: Viking, 1994), 232.
11. On the Underground Railroad, see, for example, Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (New York: W.W. Norton, 2015).
Seven: June 19, 1988
1. Mitch Albom, “Oh So Close!,” Detroit Free Press, June 20, 1988.
2. Much of the information presented here is contained in the ESPN “30 for 30” documentary Bad Boys. The story of the Bad Boys is also told in Cameron Stauth, The Franchise: Building a Winner with the World Champion Detroit Pistons, Basketball’s Bad Boys (New York: William Morrow, 1990), Isiah Thomas with Matt Dobek, Bad Boys! An Inside Look at the Detroit Pistons’ 1988–89 Championship Season (Grand Rapids, MI: Masters Press, 1989), and Isiah Thomas, The Fundamentals: 8 Plays for Winning the Games of Business and Life (New York: Harper-Collins, 2001). Sam Smith, The Jordan Rules (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), describes what it was like playing against the Pistons.
3. You be the judge: “Bill Laimbeer Phantom Foul,” Video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSHGG0sGUOc.
4. Mitch Albom, “Bad Boys? These Pistons Are Pussycats,” January 25, 1988.
5. “Raiders of the N.B.A.,” New York Times, February 19, 1988.
6. Thomas, with Dobek, Bad Boys!, 24–25.
7. Thomas, Bad Boys!, 25.
8. Dan Holmes, “How the Detroit Pistons Came to Be Known as the Bad Boys,” Vintage Detroit, April 27, 2016, www.vintagedetroit.com/blog/2016/04/27/how-the-detroit-pistons-came-to-be-known-as-the-bad-boys.
9. Holmes, “How the Detroit Pistons.”
10. Thomas, The Fundamentals, 1.
11. Ira Berkow, “Thomas Keeps Promise to Mom,” New York Times, May 11, 1987.
12. Thomas, The Fundamentals, 97.
13. Thomas, The Fundamentals, 31.
14. Santiago Colás, Ball Don’t Lie: Myth, Genealogy, and Invention in the Cultures of Basketball (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016), 129. The “myth of blackness,” for Colás, is an operation that “groups together decontextualized descriptions of playing style, clothing, and on- and off-court behavior with stereo-types about urban black men and boys common in the 1980s and especially the 1990s” (123).
15. Albom, “Bad Boys?”
16. Ze’ev Chafets, “The Tragedy of Detroit,” New York Times, July 29, 1990.
17. Jeffrey Lane, Under the Boards: The Cultural Revolution in Basketball (Nebraska: Bison Books, 2007), 150.
18. Scott Ostler, “Those Unfortunate Remarks about Larry Bird Just Don’t Fly,” Los Angeles Times, June 1, 1987.
19. Lane, Under the Boards, 142.
20. Lane, Under the Boards, 142.
21. Lane, Under the Boards, 150.
22. Mike Downey, “Isiah ‘Hurt’ by ‘Joke’ About Bird,” Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1987.
23. Roy Johnson, “Thomas Explains Comments on Bird,” New York Times, June 5, 1987.
24. Johnson, “Thomas Explains Comments.”
25. Charles A. Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: The Free Press, 1994).
26. Johnson, “Thomas Explains Comments.”
27. Downey, “Isiah ‘Hurt.’”
28. See Smith, The Jordan Rules, 7–20.
29. Duane Noriyuki and Dan Gillmor, “Kings of Basketball Bring Crown Home,” Detroit Free Press, June 15, 1989.
30. Dori Maynard and Jim Schaefer, “Fans Sweep Detroit Area with Championship Revelry: A Little Violence, Damage Reported,” Detroit Free Press, June 15, 1989.
31. Paul Kersey, Detroit: The Unauthorized Autopsy of America’s Bankrupt Black Metropolis (self-pub., SBPDL Publishing, 2014). SBPDL (Stuff Black People Don’t Like) is the name of his blog. His name appears to be a pseudonym taken from the hero of the “Death Wish” movie franchise. Kersey’s strategy is to list acknowledged crimes committed by black people, cite the decline of Detroit, and then wave his hands to say that the one was the cause of the other. Of course, there is no mention of the endless crimes perpetrated by white people on black people throughout the history of the city.
32. The National Center for Victims of Crime, “Urban and Rural Crime,” ovc.ncjrs.gov/ncvrw2016/content/section-6/PDF/2016NCVRW_6_UrbanRural-508.pdf. According to the statistics, in urban areas there are 3.8 aggravated assaults per 100,000 people, while the figure for rural areas is 4.9 per 100,000.
33. Firearm density was measured by a combination of the proportion of armed robberies in total robberies and the proportion of suicides using firearms. David McDowall, “Firearm Availability and Homicide Rates in Detroit, 1951–1986,” Social Forces 69, no. 4 (1991): 1085–101.
34. Ching-Chi Hsieh and M. D. Pugh, “Poverty, Income Inequality, and Violent Crime: A Meta-Analysis of Recent Aggregate Data Studies,” Criminal Justice Review 18, no. 2 (1993): 182–202.
35. Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic, June 2014.
36. Coates, “The Case for Reparations.”
37. Samuel George, Amber Hendley, Jack Macnamara, Jasson Perez, and Alfonso Vaca-Loyola, “The Plunder of Black Wealth in Chicago: New Findings on the Lasting Toll of Predatory Housing Contracts,” a study conducted at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University in collaboration with the Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement at the University of Illinois in Chicago, the Policy Research Collaborative at Roosevelt University, and the Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola University Chicago, available at socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Plunder-of-Black-Wealth-in-Chicago.pdf.
38. Lewis Wallace, “In Detroit, a Risky Alternative to Mortgages,” Marketplace, October 6, 2016, www.marketplace.org/2016/10/06/inside-land-contracts.
39. Lindsay Gibbs, “The Story Behind The Biggest Brawl in WNBA History,” Deadspin, September 12, 2019.
40. Carl Bialik, “WNBA Brawl Shows Toughness, Poor Judgment,” Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2008.
Eight: April 15, 1985
1. George Puscas, “Marvin’s Just Marvelous: TKO in 3,” Detroit Free Press, April 16, 1985.
2. P. Coster, “Hagler Humbles the Great Pretender,” Courier-Mail, April 17, 1985.
3. “Past Winner of The Ring’s Year-End Awards,” The Ring, February 24, 2012, www.webcitation.org/6E2HQNrhM?url=http://ringtv.craveonline.com/blog/171651-past-winners-of-the-rings-year-end-awards.
4. Brian Hughes and Damian Hughes, Hit Man: The Thomas Hearns Story (Lancashire, UK: Milo Books, 2009), 140.
5. The quote comes from Donald Curry, professional boxer, in “Marvin Hagler vs. Thomas Hearns,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Hagler_vs._Thomas_Hearns.
6. Hughes and Hughes, Hit Man, chapter 2.
7. Tommy George, “Hearns Won’t Rest with Fewer than 4 Titles,” Detroit Free Press, June 11, 1984.
8. George, “Hearns Won’t Rest with Fewer than 4 Titles.”
9. Associated Press, “Thomas Hearns Raises Money to Pay Tax Debt Through Auction,” April 4, 2010.
10. Mark Kram, “The Heavyweight Who Created Kronk,” Detroit Free Press, April 14, 1985.
11. Much of the following is drawn from the official Kronk website: Richard T. Slone, Sylvette Steward, Scott Eisner, and Janae Freeman Stacks, “History,” kronksports.com/history. The website is run by his relatives.
12. Kram, “The Heavyweight Who Created Kronk.”
13. See, for an example, Ivan Light, Ethnic Entrepreneurship in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).
14. Sterling Bone et al., “Shaping Small Business Lending Policy Through Matched-Paired Mystery Shopping,” working paper, bit.ly/2UsKbTt.
15. Andy Lee with Niall Kelly, Andy Lee: Fighter (Dublin: Gill Books, 2019), 100–105.
16. Lee, Andy Lee, 218.
17. Personal interview, June 12, 2017.
18. Martin Mulcahey, “Boxing’s a Driving Force in Detroit,” Dog House Boxing, January 29, 2011, www.doghouseboxing.com/DHB/Mulcahey012911.htm; Jackie Kallen, “New Prospects in Detroit,” Boxing Insider, January 9, 2012; Jackie Kallen, “Detroits Boxing Scene on the Upswing,” Boxing Insider, December 12, 2013.
Nine: June 6, 1982
1. Shav Glick, “Detroit Passes Test, So Does Watson,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1982.
2. Cooper Rollow, “Detroit Grand Prix Was Grand,” Chicago Tribune, June 7, 1982.
3. American Motors Corporation was the smallest of the Big Four and would eventually be swallowed up by Chrysler in the 1980s, leaving just the Big Three.
4. An outline history of activities undertaken by Detroit Renaissance can be found at “History Archive: 1970–2000,” Business Leaders for Michigan, businessleadersformichigan.com/history-archive-1970–2000.
5. The planning and construction of the Renaissance Center is described at length in Joe Darden, Richard Hill, June Thomas, and Richard Thomas, Detroit: Race and Uneven Development (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 44–54.
6. “The Circuit,” Racing Sports Cars, www.racingsportscars.com/covers/_Detroit-1984–06-24t.jpg.
7. Jackie Jones, Roger Martin, Mike Robinson, and Marcia Stepanek, “The Prix Was Grand for Some Merchants and Grim for Others,” Detroit Free Press, June 20, 1982. Detroit Renaissance put estimated revenues at $4 million, and it was suggested that the Detroit economy could be boosted by as much as $12 million (Curt Sylvester, “Grand Prix Primer,” Detroit Free Press, April 11, 1982). However, promoters can claim almost any number they like, since nothing is provable after the event.
8. Jones et al., “The Prix Was Grand for Some.”
9. “Practice Delayed on Detroit Course,” Toronto Globe and Mail, June 4, 1982.
10. United Press International, June 5, 1982, and Toronto Globe and Mail, June 5, 1982.
11. “The Cars Have Come and Gone, but Is Detroit Any Better?,” Detroit Free Press, June 12, 1982.
12. Tim Sablik, “Recession of 1981–82,” Federal Reserve History, www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/recession_of_1981_82. Since then only the Great Recession of 2008–9 has been worse.
13. “7 Michigan Cities Are in Top 10 For Worst Unemployment Rates,” New York Times, January 20, 1981.
14. Sally Smith, “Minority Vendors Seek More Contracts,” Detroit Free Press, December 7, 1982.
15. Of the seventeen teams entering cars in the 1982 Formula One World Championship, thirteen were powered by Ford engines: “1982 Formula One World Championship,” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Formula_One_World_Championship.
16. Production figures for the United States by make for every year from 1899 to 2000 can be found here: “U.S. Automobile Production Figures,” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Automobile_Production_Figures.
17. Thomas Klier, “From Tail Fins to Hybrids: How Detroit Lost its Dominance of the U.S. Auto Market,” Economic Perspectives 33, no. 2, (2009): 3.
18. Micheline Maynard, The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 10.
19. Kent Trachte and Robert Ross, “The Crisis of Detroit and the Emergence of Global Capitalism,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 9, no. 2 (1985): 186–217.
20. CARE (Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe) packages were sent to Europeans when Americans became aware of the terrible postwar conditions. Kat Eschner, “How WWII Created the Care Package,” Smithsonian Magazine, November 27, 2017.
21. William J. Mitchell, “Care Packages for Detroit,” Detroit Free Press, February 27, 1983. Schmidt said, “If soup kitchens have to be set up in Detroit, it amounts to a depression there. Such a state of affairs is unbelievable. It is grotesque to think of German automobile workers sending packages to Detroit.” A spokesman for the German autoworkers at a GM-Opel plant, who contributed $20,000, said, “We criticize the social policy of the Reagan administration and we say his policy of armaments does no good for the social situation of all American workers.”
22. Helen Fogel and Sandy McClure, “Devil’s Night Hellish for City’s Fire Fighters,” Detroit Free Press, November 1, 1983.
23. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 88–92 and 211–23.
24. Fogel and McClure, “Devil’s Night Hellish.”
25. Ze’ev Chafets, Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit (New York: Random House, 1990).
26. Ze’ev Chafets, “The Tragedy of Detroit,” New York Times, July 29, 1990.
27. For more, see Khalil AlHajal, “Detroit Radio Station Calls Out Rush Limbaugh over False Statements on Motor City History,” MLive, August 3, 2013.
28. Trachte and Ross, “The Crisis of Detroit and the Emergence of Global Capitalism,” 186.
29. For a description of the history of Poletown, see John J. Bukowczyk, “The Decline and Fall of a Detroit Neighborhood: Poletown vs. G.M. and the City of Detroit,” Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 41, no. 1 (1984): 49–76.
30. Bukowczyk, “The Decline and Fall of a Detroit Neighborhood,” 58–59.
31. Bukowczyk, 60–64.
32. Bukowczyk, 64–71.
33. Bukowczyk, 66.
34. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001).
35. John Maynard Keynes, A Tract on Monetary Reform (London: Macmillan, 1923), Ch. 3, p. 80. Keynes, a British economist, was responding in 1923 to the argument that in the long run markets will adjust to full employment, during a UK recession in the aftermath of World War I.
36. Coleman Young and Lonnie Wheeler, Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young (New York: Viking, 1994), 246.
37. Janice Bockmeyer, “A Culture of Distrust: The Impact of Local Political Culture on Participation in the Detroit EZ,” Urban Studies 37, no. 13 (2000): 2417–40.
38. See, e.g., David Fasenfest, “Community Politics and Urban Redevelopment: Poletown, Detroit, and General Motors,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 22, no. 1 (1986): 101–23, and Lynn W. Bachelor, “Regime Maintenance, Solution Sets, and Urban Economic Development,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1994): 596–616.
39. Something similar exists in the world of sports. Research often suggests that goalkeepers facing penalty kicks in soccer would do better simply to stand still, since many kickers drive the ball at the center of the goal; goalkeepers tend to dive, either left or right, often vacating precisely the space where the ball will go. However, a goalkeeper who simply stands still will often be accused of doing nothing. Thus, it might seem better to be busy and wrong, even if you might be right more often by being idle. This issue is discussed in Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, Soccernomics (New York: Nation Books, 2018), chapter 10.
40. Bachelor (1994) calls this tendency “policy replication.”
41. Neil DeMause and Joanna Cagan, Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008).
Ten: April 1, 1977
1. The coining of the phrase “Pathetic Pistons” seems to have happened during the 1966 season, when the team lost 58 games in an 80-game season. Joe Falls, “Pathetic Pistons Need Leadership,” Detroit Free Press, March 22, 1966. The title “Dead Wings” came much later, and appears to have emerged in the late 1970s. The first mention in the Detroit Free Press is on January 29, 1979: Tom Henderson, “OK, Here’s What’s Wrong with the ‘Dead Wings’ …”
2. Robert Ostmann Jr., “Red Wings Going to Pontiac,” Detroit Free Press, April 2, 1977.
3. Curt Sylvester, “Pistons Won’t Rule Out Move to Pontiac,” Detroit Free Press, April 2, 1977.
4. Tom Henderson, “Our Pro Teams: Do They Make Money?,” Detroit Free Press, July 3, 1977.
5. Records of purchase and sale prices of professional sports franchises in the United States can be found at Rodney Fort’s “Rodney Fort’s Sports Business Data,” sites.google.com/site/rodswebpages/codes. Some caution must be exercised, since the only numbers available are based on press reports. However, the general picture of large capital appreciation is very clear.
6. Strictly, Grand River Avenue intersects Woodward five hundred yards north of Campus Martius, although in the original Woodward Plan developed after the fire of 1805, the street plan was to be formed on a pattern of intersecting hexagons with streets running along the edges and from the center of each hexagon to its vertices. June Manning Thomas and Henco Bekkering, eds., Mapping Detroit: Land, Community, and Shaping a City (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015), 36–39.
7. “Olympia Stadium,” The Concert Database, theconcertdatabase.com/venues/olympia-stadium. The website is a project aimed at documenting as much of Michigan’s blues, jazz, and rock history as possible.
8. Joe Falls, “Red Wings in Pontiac, Too,” Detroit Free Press, May 24, 1976.
9. Jim Neubacher, “Oakland Arena Still a Big Maybe,” Detroit Free Press, October 8, 1976.
10. Joe Falls, “Pistons Will Have to Follow,” Detroit Free Press, April 3, 1977.
11. Jim Schutze, “Executive Is Slain Near Olympia,” Detroit Free Press, November 8, 1976.
12. Curt Sylvester, “Pistons Sold for $8.1 Million,” Detroit Free Press, July 30, 1974. Accounting for inflation, this would have been worth about $42 million in 2019.
13. Curt Sylvester, “He Considered Only 2 Sports,” Detroit Free Press, August 15, 1974.
14. Johnette Howard, “Pistons Owner Knows What He Wants,” Detroit Free Press, November 12, 1986. The rest of the paragraph comes from this source.
15. Howard, “Pistons Owner Knows What He Wants.”
16. STRESS stands for “Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets.” Coleman Young and Lonnie Wheeler, Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young (New York: Viking, 1994), 192–93, 205.
17. Young and Wheeler, Hard Stuff, 212–13.
18. Heather Ann Thompson, new prologue to Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (2004; repr., Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017), xiii.
19. “Memorial Ceremony for Ernest C. Browne, Jr.,” Detroit Historical Society, November 11, 2015, detroithistorical.org/things-do/events-calendar/events-listing/memorial-ceremony-ernest-c-browne-jr.
20. Jim Crutchfield, “Browne Wooing White Vote, Too,” Detroit Free Press, June 26, 1977; Wilbur C. Rich, Coleman Young and Detroit Politics: From Social Activist to Power Broker (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), 110–12; Herb Boyd, Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination (New York: HarperCollins, 2017), 247.
21. Kirk Cheyfitz, “Detroit White Voters Shift, Support a Black Candidate,” Washington Post, September 15, 1977.
22. Young and Wheeler, Hard Stuff, 230–32. On his redevelopment strategy for Detroit, see June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013), chapter 7: “Coleman Young and Redevelopment.”
23. Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 35–45.
24. Browne took advertising space to publish a letter in the Detroit Free Press on April 20, 1977. Under the heading “The Riverfront Arena: Let the People Decide,” he expressed his opposition to the proposed arena, describing it as “an economically unsound project.”
25. Robert Ostmann Jr., “City Pushes Arena but Key Queries Are Unanswered,” Detroit Free Press, February 14, 1977.
26. Rich, Coleman Young and Detroit Politics, 172–76.
27. Young and Wheeler, Hard Stuff, 222–23, 229–31.
28. M.L. Elrick, “How Coleman Young Got Joe Louis Arena Built, and Kept the Red Wings in Detroit,” Fox 2 Detroit, April 6, 2017.
29. Jim Crutchfield, “Riverfront Arena Given Court OK,” Detroit Free Press, May 20, 1977.
30. Jim Crutchfield and William J. Mitchell, “Quiet Beginning for New Arena,” Detroit Free Press, May 21, 1977.
31. Jim Crutchfield, “Mayor Young Pulls Off Coup: Red Wings Will Play Downtown,” Detroit Free Press, August 4, 1977.
32. Jim Crutchfield and Allan Sloan, “Garage Is Key to Arena Deal for Wings,” Detroit Free Press, August 5, 1977.
33. Curt Sylvester, “It’s Official: Pistons Sign Pontiac Deal,” Detroit Free Press, September 27, 1977.
34. Drew Sharp, Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2013), 197–98.
35. See Sharp, Dave Bing, chapter 13, “The (Almost) Deal” for an account of the failed attempt to bring NBA basketball back to the city.
Eleven: December 26, 1970
1. “Super Bowl–Starved Lions Roar Today,” Detroit Free Press, December 26, 1970.
2. George Puscas, “Why the Lions Lost: They Wouldn’t Pass,” Detroit Free Press, December 27, 1970.
3. Between 1966 and 1985 the Cowboys reached the playoffs in every season except two.
4. “Propose $900,000 Stadium for Athletics in Detroit,” Detroit Free Press, December 22, 1921. According to the article, three possible locations were proposed: Memorial Park, on East Jefferson Avenue (downtown), Pingree Park (the northwest side), and Northwestern Field (the east side).
5. Jeffrey R. Wing, “Olympic Bids, Professional Sports, and Urban Politics: Four Decades of Stadium Planning in Detroit, 1936–1975” (PhD diss., Loyola University Chicago, 2016), 74.
6. Wing, “Olympic Bids,” 94.
7. Wing, 47–48, 56.
8. Wing, 74.
9. Peter Benjaminson, “Lions Never Liked Idea of a Riverfront Stadium,” Detroit Free Press, February 3, 1971.
10. Wing, “Olympic Bids,” 139.
11. Wing, 146.
12. Planners in Pontiac started working on the idea at the end of 1967 (Larry Adcock, “Stadium Proposal Shocked Pontiac Officials in 1967,” Detroit Free Press, February 3, 1971), but the plans did not become public until mid-1969 (George Puscas, “Pontiac Enters a Bid for Pair of Stadiums,” Detroit Free Press, July 1, 1969).
13. Larry Adcock, “Lions OK a Pontiac Site, If … ,” Detroit Free Press, October 28, 1970.
14. June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013), 154.
15. Dave Smith, “Downtown Stadium Is the Core of Plan to Revitalize the City,” Detroit Free Press, January 21, 1970. The article stated, “A new plan for the ‘economic revitalization of Detroit’ with a domed downtown stadium at its focal point has been formulated by the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce, it was learned Tuesday. Called ‘Detroit Renaissance for the 1970s,’ the plan calls for the formation of a ‘blue ribbon leadership group.’”
16. Joe Darden, Richard Hill, June Thomas, and Richard Thomas, Detroit: Race and Uneven Development (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 48.
17. Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 144–46.
18. Eric J. Hill and John Gallagher, AIA Detroit: The American Institute of Architects Guide to Detroit Architecture (Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2003), 26.
19. Darden et al., Detroit, 49–51.
20. Darden et al., 51–54.
21. On the process of acquisition, see Dennis Archer and Elizabeth Atkins, Let the Future Begin (Grosse Pointe Farms, MI: Atkins & Greenspan Writing, 2017), 308–11.
22. Philip Power, “Racial Shadow over the Stadium,” Detroit Free Press, March 28, 1969.
23. Coleman Young and Lonnie Wheeler, The Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young (New York: Viking, 1994), chapter 2.
24. Young and Wheeler, chapter 3.
25. Young and Wheeler, chapter 5.
26. Gordon Skene, “1952—HUAC Hearings Come to Detroit—Coleman Young Testifies—Past Daily Reference Room,” Past Daily, October 24, 2017, past-daily.com/2017/10/24/coleman-young-past-daily-reference-room.
27. Her many achievements are set out in her obituary: Ika Koznarska Casanova, “Mary V. Beck, Trailblazer for Women on American Political Scene, Ukrainian Activist,” Ukrainian Weekly, February 20, 2005, www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/2005/080509.shtml.
28. Michael Maidenberg, “Mary Works On in Defeat,” Detroit Free Press, September 11, 1969.
29. David Cooper, “Austin Hurt by Racial Split,” Detroit Free Press, September 11, 1969.
30. Michael Maidenberg, “The Mayor’s Race: Survey Shows Voters Are Divided,” Detroit Free Press, August 3, 1969.
31. Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (2004; repr., Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017), 80–81.
32. Thompson, 82–90.
33. Thompson, 82–83.
34. Herb Boyd, Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination (New York: HarperCollins, 2017), 225–34.
35. Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 99–100.
36. Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2007), 457.
37. Heather Ann Thompson, “Rethinking the Politics of White Flight in the Postwar City: Detroit, 1945–1980,” Journal of Urban History, 25, no. 2 (1999): 163–98.
Twelve: October 10, 1968
1. “It Was a Mad, Mad Scene When Downtown Erupted,” Detroit Free Press, October 11, 1968.
2. “Tigers Avoid Welcoming Mob,” Detroit Free Press, October 11, 1968.
3. “Tigers Avoid Welcoming Mob.” Oddly, with rose-tinted hindsight some writers have tended to see the celebrations as entirely peaceful. For example: “Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh [sic] ordered fire and civil defense to be on alert, they weren’t needed as more than 150,000 peacefully crowded the downtown sector.” Tim Wendel, Summer of ’68 (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2012), 197. A more wary description is given in George Cantor, The Tigers of ’68: Baseball’s Last Real Champions (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 210: “There were a few scattered reports of violence during the night. But almost no looting or gunplay.”
4. “Tigers Avoid Welcoming Mob.”
5. “It Was a Mad, Mad Scene When Downtown Erupted.”
6. Bill McGraw, “How 1968 Detroit Tigers Soothed a Rebellious City’s Racial Tension,” Detroit Free Press, September 7, 2018.
7. Patrick J. Harrigan, The Detroit Tigers: Club and Community, 1945–1995 (Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 123.
8. William Serrin, “In the Wake of a Pennant, Color Blindness Prevails,” Detroit Free Press, September 19, 1968.
9. “Looting Reported as Fans Celebrate,” Detroit Free Press, October 11, 1968.
10. George Cantor, “Tigers Split … in Hole Now: Must Win Last 2 for Tie,” Detroit Free Press, October 1, 1967.
11. George Cantor, “It’s All Over: Tigers Lose Finale, Finish 2nd,” Detroit Free Press, October 2, 1967.
12. The Saturday games’ attendance had been a mere 20,421, in a stadium with a capacity of 54,000. Richard Bak, A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 305.
13. Bak, A Place for Summer, 307. See also Joe Dowdall, “Fans Rip Apart Tiger Stadium,” Detroit Free Press, October 3, 1967.
14. Jack Saylor, “Horns Blow, Sirens Sound—Bosox Did It,” Detroit Free Press, October 2, 1967.
15. U.S. Department of Justice, “Crime and Justice Atlas 2000,” www.jrsa.org/projects/Crime_Atlas_2000.pdf.
16. Graham C. Ousey, “Explaining Regional and Urban Variation in Crime: A Review of Research,” Criminal Justice, 1 (2000): 261–308. See exhibit 4, p. 274, and exhibit 6, p. 276.
17. Ousey, “Explaining Regional and Urban Variation in Crime,” 280–95.
18. Kelley L. Carter, “Motown Mastermind Behind ‘Dancing in the Street’ Recalls the 1967 Detroit Riots—When Black Folks Took to the Streets,” The Undefeated, https://theundefeated.com/features/motown-1967-detroit-riots/, no date.
19. David E. Nantais, “That Motown Sound: Berry Gordy, Jr. and the African-American Experience,” America, February 16, 2009.
20. Mark Clague, “What Went On? The (Pre-)History of Motown’s Politics at 45 RPM,” Michigan Quarterly Review, 49, no. 4, Fall 2010.
21. “Motown Mastermind.”
22. For a fuller account, see Suzanne Smith, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
23. James Baldwin, “A Report from Occupied Territory,” The Nation, July 11, 1966.
24. Chris Hayes, A Colony in a Nation (New York: W.W. Norton, 2017), 33.
25. Hubert G. Locke, The Detroit Riot of 1967 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017), 110.
26. Steve Light, “Why ‘Race Riot’? On the Need to Change a Misleading Term,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 12, 2016. See also: Ken Coleman, “Rebellion, Revolution or Riot: the Debate Continues,” in Detroit 1967: Origins, Impacts, Legacies, ed. Joel Stone (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017).
27. Fine, Violence in the Model City, 135–36, and Locke, The Detroit Riot of 1967, 65–66.
28. “Urban Renewal … Means Negro Removal. ~ James Baldwin (1963),” Video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Abhj17kYU.
29. For a detailed chronology of events, see Stone, ed., Detroit 1967, 119–36.
30. National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders, Report of the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968), 60–61. (This is generally known as the Kerner Report.) Even in 2019 terms, the value of the property damage, less than $400 million, sounds small. Initially the newspapers were citing figures ten times higher than this.
31. Quoted after Stephen C. Finley, “‘We Needed Both of Them’: The Continuing Relevance of Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr.’s (Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman’s) Radical Interpretations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in Scholarship and Black Protest Thought,” in Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Madonna and Child, ed. Jawanza Eric Clark (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 66.
32. “Cities: The Fire This Time,” Time, August 4, 1967.
33. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 273.
34. For a history of those policies, see Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright, 2017).
35. Richard Bak, “Fifty Years Later: A Look Back at the Tigers’ 1968 World Series Win,” Hour Detroit, June 21, 2018.
36. Denny McLain, I Told You I Wasn’t Perfect (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2007), 111–13.
37. Wendel, Summer of ’68, part VI; and Cantor, The Tigers of ’68. In Cantor, chapters 28–32 provide blow-by-blow accounts of the World Series.
38. Horton’s life story up until 2000 is told in Grant Eldridge and Karen Elizabeth Bush, Willie Horton: Detroit’s Own Willie the Wonder (Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2001).
39. Jim Bouton, Ball Four (New York: Wiley, 1970), 302.
40. Lynn Henning, “Rage Too Much for a Tiger to Tame,” Detroit News, July 20, 2017.
Thirteen: October 18, 1963
1. The film was subsequently repurposed by Mayor Cavanagh as a promotional film entitled “Detroit, City on the Move,” which is still widely available on You-Tube, see, e.g., William Hynde, “You Have to See Detroit’s 1968 Olympic Bid Video,” Detroit Metro Times, June 1, 2016. The President’s involvement in the bid is also recorded in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library archives, and can be found online here: “United States Olympic Committee,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKPOF/110/JFKPOF-110–007.
2. Lyall Smith, “Olympic Loss Laid to Anti-US Bias: Detroit 2nd as Mexico Gets Games,” Detroit Free Press, October 19, 1963.
3. Lyall Smith, “Anti-US Feeling Hurt City,” Detroit Free Press, October 19, 1963.
4. David Maraniss, Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 257.
5. In 1959, an editorial in the Detroit Times had accused him of attempting to sabotage earlier bids: “Why Detroit Lost,” Detroit Times, May 27, 1959.
6. This article, though somewhat starry-eyed, gives a good sense of the relationship between Garland and Brundage: John A. Lucas, “‘Almost the Last American Disciple of Pure Olympic Games Amateurism’: John J. Garland’s Tenure on the International Olympic Committee, 1948–1968,” Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies 15 (2006): 113–26.
7. Lyall Smith, “How Cold War Perils Detroit Olympic Bid,” Detroit Free Press, October 14, 1963.
8. Daniel Lawrence, “Dashed Dreams: Detroit and the 1968 Summer Olympics,” Michigan History 96, no. 4 (July–August 2012).
9. Fred Matthaei bequeathed all of his files relating to Detroit Olympic bids to the Detroit Public Library, where they are archived in the Main Branch on Woodward Avenue. The archive runs to some twenty boxes of material, and has yet to be fully catalogued.
10. The list of committees is contained in a document headed “Detroit Olympic Committee,” February 25, 1963, Detroit Public Library, Detroit Olympics Archive.
11. All of this was illustrated in the official bid document, “XIX Olympiad 1968: An Invitation to the US Olympic Committee,” Detroit Public Library, Detroit Olympics Archive.
12. The interaction between politics, local teams, and the Olympic stadium site debate is set out in Jeffrey R. Wing, “Olympic Bids, Professional Sports, and Urban Politics: Four Decades of Stadium Planning in Detroit, 1936–1975” (PhD diss., Loyola University Chicago, 2016). On the Fairgrounds consensus, see page 58ff.
13. See David Wiggins and Patrick Miller, The Unlevel Playing Field: A Documentary History of the African American Experience in Sport (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 347–54, on Johnson’s community work. Competing in the Decathlon, he won a silver medal in the 1956 Olympics and gold in the 1960 games. He was a civil rights activist and was also among the group that apprehended Sirhan Sirhan after he assassinated Robert Kennedy. Johnson was selected to light the Olympic flame at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
14. Maraniss, Once in a Great City, 253–255.
15. Frank Beckman, “Mayor Blasts Booing Pickets,” Detroit Free Press, October 12, 1963.
16. Hal Cohen, “Law to Ban Housing Bias Rejected by Council, 7–2,” Detroit Free Press, October 9, 1963.
17. Lloyd D. Buss, “The Church and the City: Detroit’s Open Housing Movement” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2008), 140.
18. Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2007), 18–19.
19. Maraniss, Once in a Great City, chapters 11 and 12.
20. The experience of the Model Cities program is evaluated in Bernard J. Frieden and Marshall Kaplan, The Politics of Neglect: Urban Aid from Model Cities to Revenue Sharing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977).
21. See for example, Angela Dillard, Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 269–73.
22. He was the father of Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul.
23. Dillard, Faith in the City, 273–74, and Fine, Violence in the Model City, 25–30.
24. Romney’s commitment to government intervention and spending to address problems of social inequality, as well as his intense interest in promoting civil rights and affirmative action made him in many ways indistinguishable from Democrats, and out of place in the Republican Party of his time and ours.
Fourteen: December 29, 1957
1. “Can These Be OUR Lions?,” Detroit Free Press, December 30, 1957.
2. The details are described here: “Play-by-Play of Victory,” Detroit Free Press, December 30, 1957.
3. Baseball was still the national pastime, but thanks to TV, the NFL was flexing its muscle. The year before, eleven of the twelve teams in the league landed a deal to broadcast regular season games. While court challenges, based on antitrust law, delayed collective deal-making until 1961, forcing teams to make individual deals, the co-ordination itself differed sharply from the baseball model, where each club focused on the local broadcasting market.
4. The blackout rule survived, in different form, until 2014, and it has been suspended on a year-to-year basis since. From 1973 to 2014, games would be blacked out only if ticket sales did not reach a set percentage, a rule designed to increase ticket sales and ensure robust attendance in the stadiums.
5. “What Blackout? Have a Beer,” Detroit Free Press, December 30, 1957.
6. Bob St. John, Heart of a Lion: The Wild and Woolly Life of Bobby Lane (Dallas, TX: Taylor Publishing, 1991), 71–72.
7. Taylor T. Room, “The Incomparable Bobby Layne,” SB Nation Barking Carnival, September 11, 2008. Layne’s influence on the culture of the team persisted for many years. In 1963 the journalist George Plimpton joined the Lions training camp as a third-string quarterback on the unlikely proposition that a thirty-something non-athlete could just pick it up. He recounted his experiences in the book George Plimpton, Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). In one scene he describes being forced to stand on a chair and sing a song, a form of hazing imposed on rookies. “Friday explained that the hazing—the singing of school songs mostly—was a tradition fomented originally by Bobby Layne,” p. 26.
8. The history of the Edsel car is told in Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic (New York: Encounter Books, 2002), 211–25.
9. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census, “Current Population Reports,” November 1956, Series P-60, No. 23, Washington, DC.
10. Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, 214–15.
11. Jamie Page Deaton, “Why the Ford Edsel Failed,” How Stuff Works, auto.howstuffworks.com/why-the-ford-edsel-failed.htm.
12. For a history of the car’s failure, see Kathleen Ervin, “Edsel: An Auto Biography,” Failure Magazine, March 7, 2002, failuremag.com/article/edsel-an-auto-biography.
13. Edward S. Hanawalt and William B. Rouse, “Car Wars: Factors Underlying the Success or Failure of New Car Programs,” Systems Engineering 13, no. 4 (2010): 389–404. McNamara went on the in the 1960s to oversee the escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam as secretary of defense.
14. James J. Flink, “Three Stages of American Automobile Consciousness,” American Quarterly 24, no. 4 (1972): 451–73.
15. June Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013), 51–52.
16. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 58.
17. Ken Coleman, “Black Bottom & Paradise Valley, What Happened?,” Detroit Is It, October 5, 2017, detroitisit.com/history-black-bottom.
18. Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 81–88.
19. Manning Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 55–65.
20. Ryan Patrick Hooper, “Detroit’s Black Bottom Neighborhood Resurrected in Photo Exhibit,” Detroit Free Press, January 24, 2019.
21. Michael Ranville and Gregory Eaton, “Bob Mann Arrives in Detroit After Stellar Career at U of M,” Michigan Chronicle, October 26–November 1, 2005.
22. Taken from Scott Ferkovich, “The First Black Player to Play for the Detroit Lions,” Vintage Detroit, October 9, 2016. Mann went on to become a noted defense lawyer in Detroit.
23. See Richard Bak, A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 238 and 242.
24. Although Willie Horton, recalling growing up in Detroit, commented, “No one thought Virgil was black. Larry Doby was the first black.” Richard Bak, Turkey Stearnes and the Detroit Stars: The Negro Leagues in Detroit, 1919–1933 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 212.
25. Klier, “From Tail Fins to Hybrids,” 5–6.
26. Bobby Layne with Bob Drum, Always on Sunday (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962), 47.
27. Peter King, “Searching For Bobby Layne,” Sports Illustrated, March 2, 2009.
Fifteen: April 15, 1952
1. This was the era of the Big Six, referring to the small group of six teams in the league (alongside the Red Wings were the Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, Chicago Black Hawks, Montreal Canadiens, and Toronto Maple Leafs), which meant there were only two playoff rounds. In today’s NHL, with thirty teams and four playoff rounds, the chances of another postseason sweep are slim.
2. Roy MacSkimming, Gordie: A Hockey Legend (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2003). See chapter 5, “Working on the Production Line.” Gordie Howe’s own account is contained in his autobiography, Mr. Hockey: My Story (New York: Berkley Books, 2014): “The newspapers ended up calling us ‘The Production Line.’ I didn’t know if it was because of the goals we scored or if it was a nod to Detroit’s auto industry. Maybe it was both,” p. 73.
3. MacSkimming, Gordie, chapter 1.
4. MacSkimming, 49
5. Kevin Shea and Jason Wilson, The Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club: Official Centennial Publication (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2016).
6. MacSkimming, Gordie, chapter 6.
7. MacSkimming, 82–85.
8. Marshall Dann, “Wings Nip Rangers, 3–2, in NHL Opener,” Detroit Free Press, October 12, 1950. Howe is mentioned only once in the match report, with no reference to his miraculous recovery.
9. In the decade 1950–59, Howe led the league in scoring four times, was second four times, and ranked fifth in 1955 and sixth in 1959.
10. MacSkimming, Gordie, 65–66.
11. MacSkimming, 91.
12. Lindsay’s efforts are recounted in J. Andrew Ross, “Trust and Antitrust: The Failure of the First National Hockey League Players’ Association, 1957–1958,” Business & Economic History On-Line: Papers Presented at the BHC Annual Meeting 8 (2010).
13. Ross, “Trust and Antitrust,” 5.
14. Data from “Rodney Fort’s Sports Business Data,” https://sites.google.com/site/rodswebpages/codes.
15. Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 11–12.
16. Arthur Kornhauser, Detroit as the People See It: A Survey of Attitudes in an Industrial City (Detroit MI: Wayne University Press, 1952), 91.
17. Quoted in Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 21.
18. This brief outline is based on David M. Lewis Colman, Race Against Liberalism: Black Workers and the UAW in Detroit (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 55–57.
Sixteen: October 26, 1951
1. “Marciano Gets 8th-Round TKO over Bomber,” Detroit Free Press, October 27, 1951.
2. Tim Belknap, Billy Bowles, Mary Trueman, and Marianne Rzepka, “Ex-Athletes, Others Recall Boxing Great,” Detroit Free Press, April 13, 1981.
3. “Marciano Gets 8th-Round TKO over Bomber,” Detroit Free Press, October 27, 1951.
4. William C. Rhoden, “Joe Louis Moment,” New York Times, November 5, 2008. In 2017 the Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko exceeded Louis’s tenure by 113 days but, unlike Louis, he did not hold the title continuously.
5. Howard Bryant, The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism (Boston, Beacon Press, 2018), 33.
6. Bryant, The Heritage, x.
7. Thom Greer, “America Loses Its Greatest Hero,” Daily News, April 14, 1981.
8. Thomas E. Wagner and Philipp J. Obermiller, African-American Miners and Migrants: The Eastern Kentucky Social Club (Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 129.
9. Frank Sinatra, foreword to Neil Scott, Joe Louis: A Picture Story of His Life (New York: Greenberg, 1947).
10. On Jack Johnson see Theresa Runstedtler, Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). On Tommy Burns see Dan McCaffery, Tommy Burns: Canada’s Unknown World Heavyweight Champion (Toronto: Miles Kelly Publishing, 2000).
11. Paul Beston, The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 100.
12. David Margolick, “Only One Athlete Has Ever Inspired This Many Songs,” New York Times, February 25, 2001.
13. The story is often repeated but may be apocryphal: see David Margolick, “Save Me, Joe Louis!,” Los Angeles Times, November 7, 2005.
14. Beston, The Boxing Kings, 104.
15. “Black Moses,” Time, September 29, 1941.
16. Randy Roberts, “Jack Dempsey: An American Hero in the 1920’s,” Journal of Popular Culture, 8, no. 2 (1974), 411–26.
17. Randy Roberts, Joe Louis: Hard Times Man (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 201.
18. See William H. Wiggins, “Boxing’s Sambo Twins: Racial Stereotypes in Jack Johnson and Joe Louis Newspaper Cartoons, 1908 to 1938,” Journal of Sport History 15, no. 3 (1988): 242–54, for a comparison of the treatment of the two champions in the media.
19. Margolick, “Only One Athlete Has Ever Inspired This Many Songs,” 171–72.
20. Dominic J. Capeci Jr. and Martha Wilkerson, “Multifarious Hero: Joe Louis, American Society and Race Relations During World Crisis, 1935–1945,” Journal of Sport History 10, no. 3 (1983): 5–25.
21. Joe Louis, Edna Rust, and Art Rust, Joe Louis: My Life (New York: Harcourt, 1978), 246–47.
22. Louis, Rust, and Rust, 245–46.
23. Roberts, “Jack Dempsey: An American Hero in the 1920’s.”
24. Capeci and Wilkerson, “Multifarious Hero.”
25. Lee Finkle, “The Conservative Aims of Militant Rhetoric: Black Protest During World War II,” Journal of American History, 60, no. 3 (1973), 692–713.
26. Finkle, “The Conservative Aims of Militant Rhetoric.”
27. Charles C. Euchner, Nobody Turn Me Around: A People’s History of the 1963 March on Washington (Boston, Beacon Press, 2010).
28. Finkle, “The Conservative Aims of Militant Rhetoric,” 692–96.
29. Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff, “Constructing G.I. Joe Louis: Cultural Solutions to the ‘Negro Problem’ During World War II,” Journal of American History 89, no. 3 (2002): 958–83.
30. Neil A. Wynn, The Afro-American and the Second World War (New York; London: Holmes & Meier, 1993), 6–11.
31. Roberts, Joe Louis, 207–11.
32. Beston, The Boxing Kings, 121.
33. Quoted in Bryant, The Heritage, 33.
34. Louis, Rust, and Rust, Joe Louis, 172.
35. Roberts, Joe Louis, 228–29.
36. Capeci and Wilkerson, “Multifarious Hero,” 21.
37. Louis, Rust, and Rust, Joe Louis, 179.
38. Louis was putting on exhibition matches with another boxing great, Sugar Ray Robinson, and the two spent much of the war together. The incident is detailed in Wil Haygood, Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011), 79–82.
39. Bryant, The Heritage, 31.
40. Box 33, Accession 998, Walker A. Williams records subseries, 1934–1961, Benson Ford Research Center, The Henry Ford. We want to thank Sam Rood at the Benson, who drew our attention to this particular folder.
41. “NAACP Asks Action Against Col. Selway, Old 477th Commander,” New York Age, July 21, 1945.
42. Daniel Haulman, “Freeman Field Mutiny: Victory for Integration or Segregation?,” Air Power History 63, no. 3 (2016): 41–45.
43. Coleman Young and Lonnie Wheeler, Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young (New York: Viking, 1994), 67–73.
Seventeen: April 28, 1949
1. The passage is well worth reading as a whole: “During the sixty years that have elapsed since 1887, when Detroit became one of the fourteen charter members of the Amateur Athletic Union, there have been many changes. During this period Detroit has made tremendous mechanical contributions improving the living standards of the entire world. Mass production has indeed proceeded at a furious pace, but incident thereto, Detroit has agglomerated a vast population from world sources; and the great plants building automobiles, trucks, accessories, machines, chemicals and drugs have sprawled out along the river and the lakes with the people dispersed among them. Difficult social problems have always accompanied industrial progress, and there are admittedly factions and classes in Detroit, and there is some cynicism; and there are many who are now concerned that we might irretrievably lose the best attributes of Detroit’s civic character…. The very pulsation of the Twentieth Century can be reckoned in the heart of Detroit where the crucial economic and social problems are focused as at no other place …. Whatever presages ill for Detroit is ominous, for the evil can extend rapidly from it throughout the land and beyond. But it is neither wishful thinking nor imagining when Detroit’s leaders say that a sublimation and unification of civic spirit and pride, that would eradicate the evils we fear, would result from the tremendous joint effort made necessary to conduct an Olympiad in all its glorious pageantry at Detroit.” “Brief on Behalf of the City of Detroit Urging Acceptance of Detroit’s Invitation to Act as Host of the Olympic Games, to Be Filed with the United States Olympic Association, Pursuant to Its Resolutions Adopted Monday, July 28, 1947,” Detroit Olympic Committee archive, Burton Collection, Detroit Public Library.
2. The findings about Detroit, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia are contained in the seventeen-page Report of the Inspection Committee of the United States Olympic Association. There is also a five-page supplementary report on Chicago. Detroit Olympic Committee archive, Burton Collection, Detroit Public Library.
3. The 1940 and 1944 offers are supported by a letter from Mayor Richard Reading, dated July 26, 1938, in the record of the Common Council, p. 1745. The process for deciding the host of the 1948 Games was hastily organized by postal ballot in March 1946, and there is some confusion over the identity of the bidding cities, but an article from the Detroit News on February 23, 1946, “Detroit’s Olympic Committee Has Stadium Plan,” cites a report from Matthaei to Mayor Reading claiming that “to date it is a 50-50 proposition” whether Detroit will get the 1948 Games. The 1952 bid was submitted to the IOC at its 40th Session in Lausanne, Switzerland, in September 1946, and then again at its 41st Session in Stockholm in June 1947, when the Games were awarded to Helsinki. Copies of all documentation are found in the Detroit Olympic Committee archive, Burton Collection.
4. In 1966 Matthaei sold American Metal Products to inventor William Lear, and the business survives to the present day as part of the Lear Corporation. Matthaei’s life story is recited in his obituary: Larry Bush, “Regent-Emeritus Fred Matthaei Dies,” Ann Arbor News, March 26, 1973, available at https://aadl.org/node/83737.
5. Brundage’s theory of precedence was explained in a series of letters from the Detroit Olympic Committee archives: “A strong battle for the Games of the XIII Olympiad 1944 will place you in a better tactical position for 1948,” Brundage to Matthaei, January 23, 1939; “Detroit, with its invitation lodged with the Committee in 1939, has priority so far as American cities are concerned,” Brundage to Matthaei, April 12, 1946, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
6. Brundage to Matthaei, April 28, 1948, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
7. Matthaei to Brundage, May 25, 1948, Box 20, Avery Brundage Collection, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
8. Report of the Inspection Committee, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
9. A formal letter confirming the decision was sent by Asa Bushnell, secretary of the USOA, to Otto Mayer, secretary of the IOC, on December 22, 1948. Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
10. “Initial Meeting of the Detroit Olympic Organizing Committee, Hotel Statler, September 21, 1948,” Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
11. “Meeting of the Detroit Olympic Organizing Committee, Michigan Room, Hotel Statler, October 11, 1948,” Detroit Olympic Committee archive; Chairman, Sub-committee on Finance, to Matthaei, November 11, 1948, and Matthaei to Van Antwerp, December 28, 1948, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
12. Minutes of Executive Committee Meeting, Detroit Olympic Organizing Committee, October 8, 1948; Edward Jeffries, Chairman of Finance Sub-committee, to Mayor Van Antwerp, November 16, 1948, and Matthaei to Mayor Van Antwerp, December 28, 1948, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
13. The Paul Bunyan Company, April 20, 1948, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
14. Detroit City Plan Commission, Report on Study of City Planning Aspects of the Olympic Games, Detroit City Plan Commission, December 1948, Detroit Olympic Committee archive, December 1948.
15. Matthaei to Van Antwerp, December 28, 1948, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
16. Brundage to Matthaei, December 18, 1948, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
17. Edstrom to IOC, December 17, 1948, IOC archives, copy provided by Dr. Benjamin Dettmar.
18. Kirby to Brundage, August 13, 1948, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
19. Asa Bushnell to Otto Mayer, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
20. Roby to Edstrom, February 22, 1949, in reply to Edstrom’s letter of February 28, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
21. Roby to Jack Garland, January 17, 1949, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
22. “Duplicity Balks Matthaei’s Valiant Effort,” Michigan Manufacturer and Financial Record, May 1949, p. 60, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
23. Article translated from De Rotterdammer, Netherlands, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
24. Sales tax revenues from the United States: Bureau of the Census, “The County and City Data Book, 1956, Supplement to Statistical Abstract of United States,” p. 389. The Michigan sales tax rate in 1950 was 3 percent (Michigan Sales and Use Taxes, Tax Analysis Division, Bureau of Tax and Economic Policy, Michigan Department of Treasury, “Michigan Sales and Use Taxes,” August 2004).
25. “The County and City Data Book, 1956,” 364–420. Strictly, this relates only to cities with populations in excess of two hundred thousand. Also, Chicago actually beat Detroit by $1 in terms of median income—a statistical tie.
26. “As We See It … ,” Detroit Free Press, May 10, 1949.
27. Brundage to Matthaei, n.d., Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
28. Matthaei to Brundage, November 29, 1949, Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
29. Matthaei to Brundage, n.d., Detroit Olympic Committee archive.
30. “The Embattled World of Avery Brundage,” Sports Illustrated, January 30, 1956.
Eighteen: October 10, 1945
1. This account of Game 7 of the 1945 World Series is based on Burge Smith, The 1945 Detroit Tigers: Nine Old Men and One Young Left Arm Win It All (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 244–62.
2. A fine biography is Terry Sloope, “Preston Rudolph ‘Rudy’ York,” Etowah Valley Historical Society, https://evhsonline.org/archives/45477.
3. “Super Slugger: Georgia Hall-Bound Rudy York Had a Shrewd Eye for Pitchers,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 26, 1977.
4. H.G. Salsinger, “One for Psychologists: Why Do Fans Ride York?,” Sporting News, September 2, 1943. p. 5.
5. Hank Greenberg (with Ira Berkow), The Story of My Life (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1989). His wartime service is recounted in chapter 9.
6. A.J. Baime, The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2014), p81.
7. Baime, The Arsenal of Democracy, chapters 11 and 12.
8. Nelson Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), chapter 10.
9. Richard J. Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: Norton, 2014), 194–98.
10. Alan Clive, State of War: Michigan in World War II (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979), 34.
11. The phrase “Arsenal of Democracy” was coined by President Roosevelt in a radio speech to the American people on December 29, 1940, at the time referring to the entire nation.
12. Harriet Arnow, The Dollmaker (1954; repr., New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012).
13. It is worth noting that Arnow takes creative license here since Coughlin himself had been forced off the air by the mid-1940s; his numerous fans, however, were still around.
14. Joyce Carol Oates, “An American Tragedy,” New York Times, January 24, 1971.
15. “She’s the Eddie Plank of Bloomer Girl Team,” Detroit Free Press, August 13, 1916, p. 22.
16. “Girls Put Up Regular Game,” Detroit Free Press, August 12, 1916, p. 12.
17. Lois Browne, Girls of Summer: The Real Story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1992), 16.
18. Carly Adams, “Softball and the Female Community: Pauline Perron, Pro Ball Player, Outsider, 1926–1951,” Journal of Sport History, 33, no. 3(2006), 323–43.
19. “Detroit Still Softball Hub in War Setting,” Detroit Free Press, December 26, 1943.
20. The story is recounted in Browne, Girls of Summer, and was made into the 1992 film A League of Their Own.
21. “Inquiring Reporter Asks: Do You Favor Women Participating in Professional Sports?,” Detroit Free Press, February 28, 1943.
22. Bob Latshaw, “Mixed Emotions Greet Attempt to Sign Detroit Girls for Pro Softball League,” Detroit Free Press, May 4, 1943.
23. “A Thrilling Time: Women Baseball Players Recollect Years on the Diamond That Sparkled,” South Bend Tribune, September 22, 2002, p. 64.
24. Merrie A. Fidler, The Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015), 192.
25. John E. Williams, “Women Find Many Opportunities at Ford Co.,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 24, 1943.
26. Though oddly, the film Rosie the Riveter was set in California. Once again, LA was undermining Detroit.
27. Alfred J. Hudson, “Her Tip on Gun Wins $1,000 Bond,” Detroit Free Press, November 11, 1942.
28. On hate strikes directed against African Americans, see Clive, State of War, 141–42; James Sparrow, Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); 184–88, and Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-war Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), chapter 4. On a hate strike directed at women, see Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 200.
29. Clive, State of War, 189–90.
30. Clive, 193–98.
31. Clive, 186.
32. Ruth Milkman, “Redefining ‘Women’s Work’: The Sexual Division of Labor in the Auto Industry During World War II,” Feminist Studies 8, no. 2 (1982): 336–72.
33. Mac Slavin, “All-American Girls Baseball League Visited Comerica Park,” Medium, August 5, 2010, https://tigers.mlblogs.com/all-american-girls-professional-baseball-league-48b69afbd33d.
Nineteen: February 5, 1943
1. Dale Stafford, “To Whom It May Concern,” Detroit Free Press, February 5, 1943.
2. Charles P. Ward, “18,930 See LaMotta Floor Robinson in Scoring Upset Victory,” Detroit Free Press, Feb 6, 1943.
3. Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 8.
4. Charles P. Ward, “Ward to the Wise,” Detroit Free Press, February 28, 1943.
5. Wil Haygood, Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011).
6. Haygood, Sweet Thunder.
7. “Harlem Hurricane Drubs Bronx Rival,” News Journal (Wilmington, DE), February 27, 1943.
8. Andrew Eisele, “Ring Magazine’s 80 Best Fighters of the Last 80 Years,” 2002, https://www.liveabout.com/ring-magazine-fighter-rankings-4153939.
9. Haygood, Sweet Thunder, 197–200.
10. Haygood, 14–16.
11. Haygood, 18–20.
12. Haygood, 19.
13. Sugar Ray Robinson would go on fighting for more than twenty years. He fought his last fight in November 1965. After his defeat to LaMotta, he would not lose another fight until 1951, and thirteen of the nineteen losses of his career, which spanned more than 200 professional fights, occurred in the 1960s. Sugar Ray would step into the ring in Detroit eight more times, seven times at Olympia, and once, in 1961, at the Cobo Arena. But his ongoing rivalry with LaMotta would go down in boxing history as an epic series: they went at it six times, LaMotta winning exactly once. The final fight, in 1951, is known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. LaMotta took a horrendous beating, and by round 13, he had lost the ability to punch at all. In the end, the referee simply stopped the fight.
14. Harry Ferguson, “What Makes White Hope Necessary?,” Detroit Free Press, September 7, 1941.
15. Charles P. Ward, “White Hopes Fail to Stir Excitement,” Detroit Free Press, October 25, 1941.
16. “Sponsor of White Hope Tourney Pays and Pays as Hungry Heavyweights Haunt the Motor City,” Newsweek, November 3, 1941.
17. Charles P. Ward, “Ward to the Wise,” Detroit Free Press, August 28, 1941; “Boxing Promoters Rise, Only to Fall with a Thud,” Detroit Free Press, December 28, 1941.
18. Savold fought once more, in 1952, going down to Rocky Marciano; Louis would fight only three more bouts.
19. Jennifer Guglielmo, “White Lies, Dark Truths,” in Are Italians White? How Race is Made in America, eds. Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno (New York: Routledge, 2003), 8.
20. Arthur W. Kornhauser, Detroit as the People See It (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1953), 45.
21. John Hartigan, Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 32.
22. Hartigan, Racial Situations, chapter 1.
23. Joe Darden, Richard Hill, June Thomas, and Richard Thomas, Detroit: Race and Uneven Development (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987: 114–19.
24. Darden et al., Detroit, 115.
25. See Larry Kress, “1917: A Discrimination Tale,” Tales from a Schmo, January 11, 2017, https://middleageschmo.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/1917-a-discrimination-tale.
26. Noam Hassenfeld, “Hank Greenberg: Caught Between Baseball and His Religion,” WBUR, September 22, 2017, www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/09/22/hank-greenberg-rosh-hashana-tigers.
27. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 41.
28. Sugrue, 74.
29. See “Sojourner Truth Housing Project,” Detroit 1701, http://www.detroit1701.org/Sojourner%20Truth%20Housing%20Project.html.
30. Wendy Plotkin, “‘Hemmed in’: The Struggle Against Racial Restrictive Covenants and Deed Restrictions in Post-WWII Chicago,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 94, no. 1 (2001), 39–69.
31. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 63–64. A photograph of the wall is shown on 65.
32. Ian Thibodeau, “Big, Heavy Planters Placed at Grosse Pointe Park-Detroit Border,” Mlive, posted Jul 14, 2015, updated Apr 03, 2019, https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/2015/07/big_heavy_planters_placed_at_g.html.
33. August Meier and Elliott M. Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 109–10, and 125–26.
34. “5,000 at Rally Ask Jobs for City’s Negro Women,” Detroit Free Press, April 12, 1943.
35. Janet L. Langlois, “The Belle Isle Bridge Incident: Legend Dialectic and Semi-otic System in the 1943 Detroit Race Riots,” Journal of American Folklore 96, no 380 (1983): 183–99.
36. Dominic J. Capeci and Martha Wilkerson, Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), chapter 1.
37. Capeci and Wilkerson, Layered Violence, 13.
38. “Cars Overturned and Burned, Negroes Beaten by Rioting Crowd on Woodward,” Detroit Free Press, June 22, 1943, p. 13, and “Mob Rule: Twenty-Three Persons are Killed in Detroit Race Riots,” New York Times, June 22, 1943, p. 7.
39. Dominic J. Capeci and Martha Wilkerson, “The Detroit Rioters of 1943: A Reinterpretation,” Michigan Historical Review 16, no. 1 (1990): 49–72.
40. Capeci and Wilkerson, Layered Violence, 33.
41. Capeci and Wilkerson, 37–39.
42. Capeci and Wilkerson, “The Detroit Rioters of 1943,” 54.
43. Capeci and Wilkerson.
44. Richard Bak, A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 204.
45. Harold Draper, The Truth About Gerald Smith: America’s No. 1 Fascist, Workers Party LA, 1945.
46. Richard Walter Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 169.
47. Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It, 168.
48. Waston Spoelstra, “Through Gates of Ford Empire Pass Many Famous Athletes,” The Morning Herald (Uniontown, PA), July 13, 1943.
49. Richard Rothschild, “Greatest 45 minutes Ever in Sports,” Sports Illustrated, May 24, 2010, www.si.com/more-sports/2010/05/24/owens-recordday.
50. Jesse Owens, with Paul Neimark, Jesse: The Man Who Outran Hitler (New York: Fawcett, 1978), 101.
51. “Start Negro Housing,” Detroit Free Press, November 21, 1943.
52. “National Roundup: Michigan,” People’s Voice, June 12, 1943.
53. Owens, Jesse, 137–38.
54. William J. Baker, Jesse Owens: An American Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 166.
55. Baker, Jesse Owens, 167.
56. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 85.
57. Baldwin, Notes, 94.
1. This account is based on the film of the fight that is available on YouTube: “Joe Louis vs Max Schmeling II—June 22, 1938,” Video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BLGdFQPh8c.
2. Quoted after David Margolick, Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink (New York: Vintage, 2010).
3. George Spandau, “Schmeling’s A Cultural Victory,” in The Crisis, vols. 43–44, ed. W.E.B. Du Bois (New York: Crisis Publishing Company, 1936), 301.
4. George Sullivan, Knockout! A Photobiography of Boxer Joe Louis (National Geographic Society, 2008), 43.
5. Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York: Henry Holt, 2007).
6. Dan Austin, “Meet the 5 Worst Mayors in Detroit History,” Detroit Free Press, August 29, 2014.
7. “Bowles Wins by 7,800 Votes; Recount Likely,” Detroit Free Press, November 6, 1929.
8. Rick Perlstein, “I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrong,” New York Times Magazine, April 11, 2017.
9. Allie Gross, “Michigan Has Long Been Fertile Ground for the Far Right,” Detroit Free Press, August 17, 2017.
10. Tom Stanton, Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball and the Secret Society That Shocked Depression-Era Detroit (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2016), 22–29.
11. Lawrence McCracken, “Candidate Reveals That Secret Bullet Club Made Threats Against Family,” Detroit Free Press, March 5, 1935.
12. Stanton, Terror in the City of Champions, 128–34.
13. Joe Louis, Edna Rust, and Art Rust, Joe Louis: My Life (New York: Harcourt, 1978), 9.
14. Louis, Rust, and Rust, 15. The young Louis learned some important lessons at school. Talking about his friend Freddie Guinyard, he recalled, “The teacher had said, only to colored kids, that if they made good grades she would see to it that they were rewarded by getting a chance to shine shoes at J.L. Hudson’s department store on weekends. Freddie jumped up and said, ‘Why would you need to have good grades to shine shoes?’ And they sent him straight home. It was the first time I started thinking about racial matters.”
15. Louis, Rust, and Rust, 26.
16. Louis, Rust, and Rust, 35–36.
17. Noam Hassenfeld, “Hank Greenberg: Caught Between Baseball and His Religion,” WBUR, September 22, 2017.
18. Dominic J. Capeci, “Black-Jewish Relations in Wartime Detroit: The Marsh, Loving, Wolf Surveys, nos. and the Race Riot of 1943,” Jewish Social Studies 47 3–4 (1985): 221–42.
19. For example, a search of the New York Times for 1936 produces 239 references to “Jesse Owens,” but 352 to “Joe Louis.” For 1937 the ratio is 38 to 394, and for 1938, 24 to 298.
20. Margolick, Beyond Glory, 325.
21. Margolick, 314–19.
22. Alan Gould, “Louis K.O’s Schmeling in First, Flooring Maxie Three Times; Fight Lasts Only 2:04 Minutes,” Detroit Free Press, June 23, 1938.
23. Margolick, Beyond Glory.
24. “A Pair With a Punch: How World-Class Boxer Max Schmeling Discovered His Love for Coca-Cola,” Coca-Cola Journey, October 29, 2013, www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/00000142–05ea-dc23-a5c2–9fffccf20000. The story has been deleted, but the internet is forever, and it can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org/web/20170502083824/www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/00000142–05ea-dc23-a5c2–9fffccf20000.
Twenty-One: April 18, 1936
1. Charles Avison, Detroit: City of Champions (Detroit: Diomedea Publishing, 2008). The governor’s letter is reproduced on page 117.
2. Ironically, it was in his next fight, two months later, that he would be defeated by Max Schmeling. This would remain his only defeat until 1950.
3. Scott Ferkovich, Motor City Champs: Mickey Cochrane and the 1934–1935 Detroit Tigers (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018), chapter 10.
4. John C. Skipper, Charlie Gehringer: A Biography of the Hall of Fame Tigers Second Baseman (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008).
5. Charles Bevis, “Mickey Cochrane,” in Detroit the Unconquerable: The 1935 World Champion Tigers, ed. Scott Ferkovich (Phoenix, AZ: Society for American Baseball Research, 2014), 38–41.
6. Gregory Wolf, “Schoolboy Rowe,” in Ferkovich, Detroit the Unconquerable, 116–22.
7. The story of the regular season is told in Ferkovich, Motor City Champs. Chapter 11 deals with the start of the season, chapter 12 the first half up to the All Star Break, and then chapter 13 covers the second half of the season.
8. Ferkovich, Motor City Champs, chapter 16.
9. Richard Bak, A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), 176–86.
10. On the failure of the Detroit banks see Darwyn H, Lumley, Breaking the Banks in the Motor City: The Auto Industry, the 1933 Detroit Banking Crisis and the Start of the New Deal (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009).
11. On espionage see Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 37–42; on violence see Stephen Norwood, “Ford’s Brass Knuckles: Harry Bennett, The Cult of Muscularity, and Anti-Labor Terror—1920–1945,” Labor History 37, no. 3 (1996): 365–91; and on the role of the police see Nelson Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 99–101.
12. Wyndham Mortimer, Organize! My Life as a Union Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 104.
13. Mortimer, Organize!, 105.
14. Howard Zinn, “A People’s History Of The United States: Chapter 15—SelfHelp in Hard Times,” History Is A Weapon, www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnselhel15.html.
15. The complete story of the sit-down strike is recounted in Fine, Sit-Down.
16. Amy Wilson, “Harry Bennett: Henry Ford’s Chief Thug Targets UAW, Later Threatens Family Peace,” Automotive News, June 16, 2003.
17. “The Battle of the Overpass,” Detroit News, August 6, 1997, blogs.detroitnews.com/history/1997/08/06/the-battle-of-the-overpass. See also Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 85–86.
18. See for example Beth Tompkins Bates, The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), chapter 1, or August Meier and Elliott M. Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), chapter 1.
19. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941), 930.
20. On Ford’s anti-Semitism see David Lanier Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976), chapter 9. See Bates, The Making of Black Detroit, 39–54, on rationalizing Ford’s racial and political prejudices.
21. David M. Lewis-Colman, Race Against Liberalism: Black Workers and the UAW in Detroit (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 14–24.
22. James Baldwin, “A Report from Occupied Territory,” The Nation, July 11, 1966.
23. Bates, The Making of Black Detroit, 230–31. Schuyler is a fascinating character. He began life as a socialist and his most famous work is a bitter satire, the novel Black No More, in which scientists discover an operation that can turn skin white. Lampooning white and black alike, he had a sharp eye for hypocrisy. Yet after the war he became a virulent anti-communist, providing support for the McCarthy witch hunts, and in the 1960s he actively opposed the civil rights movement and campaigned for Barry Goldwater. See Oscar Renal Williams, George S. Schuyler: Portrait of a Black Conservative (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2007).
24. Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 211.
25. “UAW Opens Drive on Jobs Bias,” Detroit Free Press, November 22, 1952; Lewis-Colman, Race Against Liberalism, 54–55; “Senate Passes Watered Down FEPC Bill,” Detroit Free Press, May 25, 1955.
26. Other projects with a nationalist leaning at this time include the America First Committee, established in 1940 as an advocacy campaign to keep the United States out of the war. Like Coughlin, the America First Committee was associated with anti-Semitism.
27. Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 109.
28. Michael Beschloss, “Hank Greenberg’s Triumph over Hate Speech,” New York Times, July 25, 2014.
29. John Rosengren, Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes (New York: New American Library, 2014), 115.
Twenty-Two: September 2, 1933
1. Jack Carveth, “20,000 See Gallant Sir Win Fair Grounds Inaugural,” Detroit Free Press, September 3, 1933.
2. On the general decline of horseracing in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, see Steven Riess, “The Cyclical History of Horse Racing: The USA’s Oldest and (Sometimes) Most Popular Spectator Sport,” International Journal of the History of Sport 31, nos. 1–2 (2014): 29–54, especially 37–38. On Michigan law see William Hamilton, “Horse Racing in Michigan—A Primer,” Michigan House of Representatives Fiscal Agency, Fiscal Focus, June 2017, www.house.mi.gov/hfa/PDF/Agriculture/FiscalFocus_Horse_Racing_in_Michigan.pdf. The State of Michigan passed a law against lotteries in 1835, which was often taken to encompass horse race betting. Yet various forms of racing, especially trotting, were popular in and around Detroit, and this form of racing has survived in metro Detroit to the present day.
3. Hub M. George, “Horse Racing Bill Passes and Takes Immediate Effect,” Detroit Free Press, June 17, 1933.
4. The data is from Hamilton, “Horse Racing in Michigan,” 16.
5. Lewis H. Walter, “Seabiscuit Captures Feature by Nose as 28,000 Attend,” Detroit Free Press, September 8, 1936. He took another prize less than three weeks later: Lewis H. Walter, “Seabiscuit and Sweep Like Share Fair Grounds Honors,” Detroit Free Press, September 27, 1936.
6. Hamilton, “Horse Racing in Michigan.”
7. JC Reindl and John Gallagher, “Northville Downs, Michigan’s Last Horse Track, to Become Upscale Homes,” Detroit Free Press, April 17, 2018.
8. W.J. Rorabaugh, Prohibition: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Michigan was the first state to vote to repeal on April 10, 1933.
9. Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 257.
10. Lisa McGirr, The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (New York: Norton, 2016), 49–54.
11. Okrent, Last Call, 256.
12. Okrent, 259.
13. “Blind pigs” were so called because savvy bar owners would charge entrance to see a blind pig, after which the patrons would pass into a second room where they were presented with a free drink.
14. Okrent, Last Call, 129.
15. Okrent, 260.
16. McGirr, The War on Alcohol, 140–41.
17. James Buccellato, Early Organized Crime in Detroit: Vice, Corruption and the Rise of the Mafia (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2015).
18. Okrent, Last Call, 321.
19. Paul Kavieff, The Violent Years: Prohibition and the Detroit Mobs (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2013), 33.
20. Immortalized in Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock”: “The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang.”
21. Paul Kavieff, The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910–1946 (New Jersey: Barricade Books, 2013), chapter 1.
22. Kavieff, The Purple Gang, chapter 6.
23. Holly M. Karibo, Sin City North: Sex, Drugs and Citizenship in the Detroit-Windsor Borderland (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 35.
24. Karibo, Sin City North, 36.
25. A good description of the numbers game is in Felicia Bridget George, “Numbers and Neighborhoods: Seeking and Selling the American Dream in Detroit One Bet at a Time” (PhD diss., Wayne State University, 2015).
26. “City Officials ‘Pass Buck’ on Vice, Charge,” Detroit Free Press, July 11, 1926.
27. Okrent, Last Call, 260.
28. Kavieff, The Purple Gang, 99–108.
29. Karibo, Sin City North, 15–20. To this day young Detroiters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one cross the river for the same reason.
30. Sidney Fine, Frank Murphy, vol. 1, The Detroit Years (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975), 246–47.
31. Beth Tompkins Bates, The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 146–47.
32. “Tells Food Need Here,” Detroit Free Press, October 28, 1931.
33. Diane Bernard, “The Time a President Deported 1 Million Mexican Americans for Supposedly Stealing U.S. Jobs,” Washington Post, August 13, 2018. A first wave of deportations had occurred in 1921, during the post–World War I recession. As the Great Depression set in, they resumed. See Zaragosa Vargas, Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917–1933 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 83, 176–77.
34. Maurice Sugar, The Ford Hunger March (Berkeley, CA: Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, 1980), 30–39.
35. Fine, Frank Murphy, 408–9.
36. Fine, 257–96.
37. Greenberg, The Story of My Life, 140–41. He was not the only Detroit sports star to participate in prison exhibition games organized by Purple Gang members. In 1954, Gordie Howe and Ted Lindsay played a hockey game in the prison yard, with the Red Wings providing the equipment and constructing the temporary ice rink. Richard Bak, “Red Wings’ 1954 Prison Game Featured Pros and Cons,” Vintage Detroit, January 25, 2015, www.detroitathletic.com/blog/2015/01/25/red-wings-1954-prison-game-featured-pros-cons.
1. “Detroit Stars Win Two Games,” Detroit Free Press, May 12, 1930.
2. “Cuban Nine Beats Stars in Overtime,” Detroit Free Press, May 11, 1930.
3. Richard Bak, Turkey Stearnes and the Detroit Stars: The Negro Leagues in Detroit, 1919–1933 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 189.
4. “Turkey Stearnes,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/stearnes-turkey.
5. Bak, Turkey Stearnes and the Detroit Stars, 188.
6. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 180.
7. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 188.
8. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 189.
9. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 189–91.
10. “Night Game Draws Crowd,” Detroit Free Press, June 28, 1930.
11. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 191–95.
12. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 195–97.
13. Norman L. Macht, “Does Baseball Deserve This Black Eye?,” Baseball Research Journal 38, no. 1 (2009): 5–9.
14. Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 213.
15. Lawrence D. Hogan, Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African American Baseball (Washington, DC: National Geographic Books, 2006), 195.
16. Hogan, Shades of Glory, 108.
17. Richard Bak, Cobb Would Have Caught It: The Golden Age of Baseball in Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 99.
18. Bak, Cobb Would Have Caught It, 193.
19. “Lawyer Roxborough Dead,” Detroit Free Press, August 19, 1908.
20. Greg Kowalski, Wicked Hamtramck: Lust, Liquor and Lead (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2010), 43–47, 57–64.
21. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 195–99.
22. The story of this era is told in Lanctot, Negro League Baseball.
23. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 205–7.
24. Richard Bak, A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), 202–3.
25. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 57–61.
26. Mark Ribowsky, A Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 1884–1955 (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1997), chapter 2.
27. Bak, Turkey Stearnes and the Detroit Stars, 55–59.
28. “Mayor Smith Welcomes Joint Annual Meeting of Eastern and Western Colored Leagues,” New York Amsterdam News, January 19, 1927.
29. Young and Wheeler, Hard Stuff, 20.
30. Erdmann Doane Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit,” American Journal of Sociology 43, no. 6 (1938), 894–907.
31. Born Elijah Poole in 1897, he moved his family from Georgia to Hamtramck in 1923. When Fard disappeared in 1934, Elijah Muhammad took over the Nation of Islam after a split with his co-religionists and moved to Chicago. “Elijah Muhammad,” Biography, January 24, 2018, www.biography.com/political-figure/elijah-muhammad.
32. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 184–87; Michael Lomax, Black Baseball Entrepreneurs: The Negro National and Eastern Colored Leagues, 1902–31 (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2014), 401–3, 416–17.
33. Bak, Cobb Would Have Caught It, 136.
34. Bak, Turkey Stearnes, 5.
Twenty-Four: May 10, 1927
1. Harry Bullion, “Cobb in Auspicious Debut as Mackmen Turn Back Tigers,” Detroit Free Press, May 11, 1927.
2. James Walker, Crack of the Bat: A History of Baseball on the Radio (University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 67–68.
3. Curt Smith, Voices of the Game: The Acclaimed Chronicle of Baseball Radio and Television Broadcasting—From 1921 to the Present (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 34–37.
4. Matt Bohn, “‘Good Afternoon, Boys and Girls’: The 1935 Tigers on the Radio,” in Detroit the Unconquerable: The 1935 World Champion Tigers, Scott Ferkovich, ed. (Phoenix, AZ: Society for American Baseball Research), 185–91.
5. “Ty Cobb,” Baseball Reference, www.baseballreference.com/players/c/cobbty01.shtml.
6. Al Stump, “A Money Player: Ty Cobb Was a Peach When It Came to Investments, Too,” Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1991. In 2020 dollars, $85,000 is worth about $1.3 million. According to Spotrac, there are more than five hundred current MLB players with salaries in excess of $1.3 million.
7. Al Stump, Cobb: A Biography (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1996), 284–86.
8. Stump, Cobb, 320.
9. Michael Jackman, “103 Years Ago, That Asshole Ty Cobb Attacked a Fan,” Detroit Metro Times, May 15, 2017.
10. Stump, Cobb, 206–7.
11. Stump, 419.
12. Stump, 118–19.
13. Stump, 415.
14. Stump, 420.
15. Charles Leerhsen, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015).
16. Leerhsen, Ty Cobb, 304.
17. Michael Bamberger, “Man of the Century Double Duty Radcliffe Nemesis of Ty Cobb, Close Friend of Satchel Paige, A Negro Leagues Legend Remains the Life of the Party as He Celebrates his 100th Birthday,” Sports Illustrated, July 15, 2002.
18. Leerhsen, 151–53.
19. Leerhsen, 186–89.
20. A search of newspaper archives reveals hundreds of references to the incident published between September and November 1909, many of which are identical, but some of which vary significantly in detail. Not all mention the knife and not all mention the bellhop. However, none of them mention the race of the Euclid Hotel employees, and all refer to the victim as “Stanfield.” In Stump’s biography, however, he becomes “Stansfield,” and both bellhop and nightwatchman are identified as black: Stump, 170–72.
21. Leerhsen, 302–4
22. Richard Bak, Cobb Would Have Caught It: The Golden Age of Baseball in Detroit (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 170.
23. Kyle P. McNary, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe: 36 Years of Pitching and Catching in Baseball’s Negro Leagues (Minneapolis: McNary Publishing, 1994), 45–46.
24. Karen Miller, Managing Inequality: Northern Racial Liberalism in Inter-war Detroit (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 77–78.
25. Brent Staples, “How Italians Became White,” New York Times, October 12, 2019. His column is partially based on Matthew Frye Jacobson’s book, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
26. The Italian consul Pasquale Corte wrote a harrowing contemporary account, preserved in the New York Times: “Signor Corte’s Farewell,” May 24, 1891.
Twenty-Five: July 12, 1921
1. “Auto Kills Son of Councilman,” Detroit Free Press, July 13, 1921.
2. David Finkelman, “Frederick Winslow Taylor,” in The Automobile Industry, 1896–1920, ed. George S. May (New York: Facts on File, 1990), 438–40.
3. Ford R. Bryan, Henry’s Lieutenants (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003). There is no evidence that Taylor worked directly with Ford, but Taylor’s ideas were widely reported, and it seems certain that the Ford organization would have been aware of them.
4. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic (New York: Encounter Books, 2002), 39. These words were actually spoken under cross-examination in the George Selden patent case. Ford was accused of infringing a patent taken out in 1895, at a time when most producers were acknowledging the patent and paying licenses. Ford lost in the first instance but then won on appeal, with the court opining that the gasoline automobile was a “social invention” and therefore the patent did not apply.
5. “U.S. Automobile Production Figures,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Automobile_Production_Figures.
6. Steven Klepper, “The Capabilities of New Firms and the Evolution of the US Automobile Industry,” Industrial and Corporate Change 11, no. 4 (2002): 645–66.
7. Bryan, Henry’s Lieutenants, 69.
8. Charles E. Sorensen, My Forty Years with Ford (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006), 36.
9. Harry Barnard, Independent Man: The Life of Senator James Couzens (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002). On the early history of the company see chapters 7–12. Chapter 13 on the $5-a-day plan. Sorensen stated the plan actually originated with Ford, largely because Ford told him so, but historians consider this version less plausible. David Lanier Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976), 69–73.
10. Michael Ballaban, “When Henry Ford’s Benevolent Secret Police Ruled His Workers,” Jalopnik, March 23, 2014.
11. Richard Snow, I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford (New York: Scribner, 2013), 232.
12. Ford Motor Company, Helpful Hints and Advice to Employees to Help Them Grasp the Opportunities Which Are Presented to Them by the Ford Profit- Sharing Plan (Detroit: Ford Motor Company, 1915).
13. Snow, I Invented the Modern Age, 233.
14. Elizabeth S. Anderson, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don’t Talk About It) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), xix. She mentions Ford’s rules on page 47.
15. “Melting Pot Ceremony at Ford English School, July 4, 1917,” The Henry Ford, www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/254569.
16. Bill Loomis, “1900–1930: The Years of Driving Dangerously,” Detroit News, April 26, 2015.
17. “John A. Kronk,” Find A Grave, www.findagrave.com/memorial/135056233/john-a.-kronk. According to his obituary in the Detroit Free Press he was born in Detroit (“John Kronk Dies of Heart Attack,” Detroit Free Press, February 24, 1954). Although the two sources disagree as to place, they agree that the date was April 19, 1883.
18. “John Kronk Dies of Heart Attack.”
19. Daniel Amsterdam, Roaring Metropolis: Businessmen’s Campaign for a Civic Welfare State (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 16–27.
20. He parted with the saloon even though he clearly liked to drink, a diversion he combined with a sense of humor. According to one tribute after he died, during elections he would go into a bar and start up a loud argument opposing the views of the local clientele, storming out once everyone was riled up, and declaring as he left, “If that isn’t my attitude, my name is not … , giving the name of an opposing candidate: James Ransom, “Pay Tribute to Council Dean,” Detroit Free Press, February 28, 1954.
21. “John Kronk Dies of Heart Attack.”
22. “D.U.R. Is Denied Fare Petition,” Detroit Free Press, September 14, 1918.
23. Barnard, Independent Man, chapters 20–22.
24. Amsterdam, Roaring Metropolis, 58–59.
25. “City Building’s Cost Is Shaved,” Detroit Free Press, March 14, 1922.
26. “Kronk Is Honored by City Council,” Detroit Free Press, January 6, 1926.
27. “Propose $900,000 Stadium For Athletics In Detroit,” Detroit Free Press, December 22, 1921.
28. Genevieve Fox, “Recreation – A Part of the City’s Job,” National Municipal Review 10, no. 8 (1921): 423–27.
29. John H. Varnum, “Municipal Recreation Department Grows from $300-A-Year Start 25 Years Ago to Huge Undertaking Reaching Life of Every Citizen,” Detroit Free Press, September 25, 1927; “Play Budget Is Explained,” Detroit Free Press, January 5, 1930.
30. Forrester B. Washington, “Recreational Facilities for the Negro,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 140, no. 1 (1928), 272–82.
31. Richard Bak, Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope (Dallas, TX: Taylor Publishing, 1996), 26.
Twenty-Six: October 9, 1910
1. Rick Huhn, The Chalmers Race: Ty Cobb, Napoleon Lajoie, and the Controversial 1910 Batting Title that Became a National Obsession (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 230.
2. For example, a walk is just as good a way to get to first base as a single, so any batter who gets more walks should be credited. This was the conceit behind the 2004 bestseller Moneyball, covering innovations credited with fundamentally changing the way that teams approach the game.
3. This is before the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 led the leagues to appoint a single, all-powerful MLB commissioner.
4. Rick Huhn, The Chalmers Race, 12–15.
5. Huhn, 40–44.
6. Huhn, 76–77.
7. Huhn, 99.
8. Huhn, 103–109.
9. Huhn, 109–11.
10. Huhn, 112–13.
11. E. A. Batchelor, “Unofficial Averages Make Lajoie Winner,” Detroit Free Press, October 10, 1910.
12. Huhn, The Chalmers Race, 139–41.
13. Huhn, 141–42.
14. Huhn, 222–25.
15. Huhn, 156–57.
16. Kenneth Brevoort and Howard P. Marvel, “Successful Monopolization Through Predation: The National Cash Register Company,” in Antitrust Law and Economics, ed. John B. Kirkwood (Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2009), 85–125.
17. Walter A. Friedman, “John H. Patterson and the Sales Strategy of the National Cash Register Company, 1884 to 1922,” Business History Review 72, no. 4 (1998), 552–84.
18. Huhn, The Chalmers Race, 10–12.
19. Brent D. Ryan and Daniel Campo, “Autopia’s End: The Decline and Fall of Detroit’s Automotive Manufacturing Landscape,” Journal of Planning History 12, no. 2 (2013), 95–132. The mansion survives, and the architectural ensemble on Seminole and Iroquois Streets remains a spectacular monument to the wealth of that era.
20. See for example Hugh Chalmers, “Putting Sales Force into Advertising,” 26–29; and Chalmers, “Advertising ‘Copy,’” 42–43, 93, cited in Rob Schorman, “ ‘ This Astounding Car for $1,500’: The Year Automobile Advertising Came of Age,” Enterprise & Society 11, no. 3 (2010), 468–523.
21. Rob Schorman, “‘ This Astounding Car for $1,500’: The Year Automobile Advertising Came of Age,” Enterprise & Society 11, no. 3 (2010), 468–523.
22. Michael J. Seneca, The Fairmount Park Motor Races, 1908–1911 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 65–94.
23. David Lanier Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976), 72.
24. Hugh Chalmers, “1912 Prospects for Automobile Industry,” Scientific American 105, no. 5 (1911): 109–10.
25. Donald Finlay Davis, Conspicuous Production: Automobiles and Elites in Detroit, 1899–1933 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 101–3.
26. Davis, Conspicuous Production, 103–4.
27. Ken Voyles and Mary Rodrique, The Enduring Legacy of the Detroit Athletic Club: Driving the Motor City (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2012), 11.
28. Voyles and Mary Rodrique, 73.
29. Davis, Conspicuous Production, 90.
30. Davis, 154–56.
31. George S. May, The Automobile Industry, 1896–1920 (New York: Facts on File, 1990), 76–79.
32. Ryan and Campo, “Autopia’s End,” 10.
33. “Hugh Chalmers Dies in East After Illness on Auto Tour,” Detroit Free Press, June 3, 1932.
34. Charles K. Hyde, Riding the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 19–20.
Twenty-Seven: October 10, 1901
1. Lawrence Goldstone, Drive! Henry Ford, George Selden, and the Race to Invent the Auto Age (New York: Random House, 2016), 105–7.
2. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic (New York: Encounter Books, 2002), 27.
3. “Alex Winton’s Fast Mile,” Detroit Free Press, October 11, 1901.
4. “Alex Winton’s Fast Mile.”
5. Goldstone, Drive!, 100.
6. David Lanier Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976), 17.
7. Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, 27–28.
8. “Tom Cooper: Fastest Man in Detroit,” m-bike, m-bike.org/2012/11/21/tom-cooper-fastest-man-in-detroit.
9. Goldstone, Drive!, 112–15.
10. “Oldfield Hero of Auto Races,” Detroit Free Press, October 26, 1902.
11. Goldstone, Drive!, 116–18.
12. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford, 25–26.
13. Lewis, 26–27. Ford did produce racing cars again in 1909 and did not formally announce an end to participation in competition until 1912. In 1935 the company resumed racing again.
14. James J. Flink, America Adopts the Automobile, 1895–1910 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970), 279–92.
15. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford, 17.
16. (now 6520) Mack Av on Beltline RR—between Beaufait and Bellevue.
17. “Alex Winton’s Fast Mile.”
18. “Grosse Pointe, Michigan Harness Track 1894: Tuesday, July 17, 1894,” MI Harness, www.mi-harness.net/Mich/grsptetrk.html.
19. “1853 Hamtramck: A Classic Race,” MI Harness, www.mi-harness.net/Mich/1853.html.
20. “The Turf,” Detroit Free Press, April 3, 1884; “American Trotting Association,” Detroit Free Press, March 3, 1887.
21. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford, 26.
22. Frank S. Cooke, “Famous Blue Ribbon Classics May Expire with the Local Driving Club,” Detroit Free Press, February 17, 1918.
23. Dan Austin, “William Cotter Maybury Monument,” Historic Detroit, www.historicdetroit.org/building/william-cotter-maybury-monument.
Twenty-Eight: October 24, 1887
1. Brian Martin, The Detroit Wolverines: The Rise and Wreck of a National League Champion, 1881–1888 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017), 168.
2. Martin, The Detroit Wolverines.
3. Martin, 14–18.
4. Martin, 12–15.
5. There are many accounts of the beginnings of baseball—Harold Seymour’s remains one of the best. Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), chapters 1–8.
6. Martin, The Detroit Wolverines, chapter 2.
7. William G. Thompson was mayor between 1880 and 1883, and should not be confused with William B. Thompson, who had two stints as mayor, 1907–08 and 1911–12. William G. was a colorful character. Severely wounded at Chancellorsville in the Civil War, he enjoyed frequenting Detroit’s many saloons and eventually died in 1904 after being knocked down by a bicycle. Melvin G. Holli and Peter d’Alroy Jones, Biographical Dictionary of American Mayors, 1820–1980 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 360–61.
8. Seymour, Baseball, 91–93.
9. Martin, The Detroit Wolverines, 43–50.
10. Martin, 53–56.
11. “Sporting Matters,” Detroit Free Press, October 15, 1884.
12. Martin, The Detroit Wolverines.
13. Seymour, Baseball, chapter 12.
14. “Sporting Matters.”
15. Martin, The Detroit Wolverines, chapter 8.
16. “Extend the Championship,” Detroit Free Press, October 25, 1887.
17. Martin, The Detroit Wolverines, chapter 11.
18. Melvin Holli, Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 13–15. The following paragraphs are based on this book.
19. “H.S. Pingree for Mayor,” Plaindealer, November 1, 1889.
20. Bill Loomis, “Hazen Pingree: Quite Possibly Detroit’s Finest Mayor,” Detroit News, January 6, 2013.
21. Loomis, “Hazen Pingree,” 79. See also “The Pre-D.S.R. Years—Part II: The Streetcar Companies vs. Mayor Hazen Pingree (1890–1900),” Detroit Transit History, www.detroittransithistory.info/ThePingreeYears.html.
22. Holli, Reform in Detroit, chapters 5–6.
23. A stone memorial on Jefferson Avenue just east of the bridge to Belle Isle marks the spot where the last toll booth in the city stood.
24. Holli, Reform in Detroit, 57–59.
25. See Loomis, “Hazen Pingree,” for these and other details.
26. Loomis, “Hazen Pingree,” chapter 4.
27. Bak, A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), 42–46.
1. “Base Ball Match,” Detroit Free Press, August 9, 1859.
2. “Base Ball Match.”
3. John C. Schneider, Detroit and the Problem of Order, 1830–1880: A Geography of Crime, Riot, and Policing (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), 7.
4. Schneider, Detroit and the Problem of Order, 49.
5. Schneider, Tables 1-1 and 1-2, pp. 16–19.
6. Silas Farmer, History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan: A Chronological Cyclopedia of the Past and Present (1890; La Crosse, WI: Brookhaven Press, 2000), 360, 478.
7. “He Was the Champion,” Detroit Free Press, March 14, 1896.
8. Farmer, History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan, 352.
9. Schneider, Detroit and the Problem of Order, 42.
10. Schneider, 36–40.
11. Schneider, 27.
12. Schneider, 23.
13. Schneider, chapter 3.
14. “Base Ball Match,”
15. Peter Morris, Baseball Fever: Early Baseball in Michigan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 1.
16. Brian Martin, The Detroit Wolverines: The Rise and Wreck of a National League Champion, 1881–1888 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017), 13–14.
17. Melvin Holli, Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 46.
18. Morris, Baseball Fever, 199.
19. Morris, 195–96.
20. James William Massie, America: The Origin of Her Present Conflict; Her Prospect for the Slave, and Her Claim for Anti-slavery Sympathy (London: John Snow, 1864), 309.
21. Massie, 66.
22. David Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 46.
23. Farmer, History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan, 348.
24. Schneider, Detroit and the Problem of Order, 80–83.
Thirty: June 2, 1763
1. Francis Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War After the Conquest of Canada, (London; New York: J.M. Dent; E.P. Dutton, 1851) 338–41.
2. A letter from Etherington dated June 12 was printed in George William Featherstonhaugh, A canoe voyage up the Minnay Sotor; with an account of the lead and copper deposits in Wisconsin; of the gold region in the Cherokee country; and sketches of popular manners; &c. &c. &c. (London: Richard Bentley, 1846), 115–16.
3. Patty Loew, Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2001). The alliance was recognized by the French settlers who arrived in the seventeenth century: Donald L. Fixico, “The Alliance of the Three Fires in Trade and War, 1630–1812,” Michigan Historical Review 20, no. 2 (1994): 1–23.
4. Peter N. Moogk, La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada—A Cultural History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000).
5. Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (1999): 814–41.
6. Fred Anderson, The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War (New York: Penguin, 2006).
7. Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War, 167–68.
8. Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War, 172–76, and Keith R. Widder, Beyond Pontiac’s Shadow: Michilimackinac and the Anglo-Indian War of 1763 (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013), 96–98.
9. Alfred A. Cave, “The Delaware Prophet Neolin: A Reappraisal,” Ethnohistory 46, no. 2 (1999): 265–90.
10. An account by an Ottawa written in 1887 suggests that he did not have the full support of his own people—Andrew J. Blackbird, History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan: A Grammar of Their Language, and Personal and Family History of the Author (Ypsilanti, MI.: Ypsilantian Job Printing House, 1887), chapter 1.
11. Richard Middleton, “Pontiac: Local Warrior or Pan-Indian Leader?,” Michigan Historical Review 32, no. 2 (2006): 1–32.
12. The Siege of Detroit in 1763: The Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy, and John Rutherford’s Narrative of a Captivity, ed. Milo Milton Quaife (Chicago: RR Donnelley, 1958), 21.
13. Quaife, The Siege of Detroit in 1763, 28–32.
14. Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War, 305–21. “Bloody Run” is still marked on Google Maps.
15. Quaife, Siege of Detroit in 1763, 211.
16. Middleton, “Pontiac: Local Warrior or Pan-Indian Leader?,” 30.
17. Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War, chapter 31.
18. Linda Ball, “Early French Families of Detroit,” Michigan Roots, January 6, 2014.
19. Jean Dodenhoff, “Grosse Pointe’s First Settlers: From Whence Did They Come?,” in Tonnancour: Life in Grosse Pointe and Along the Shores of Lake St. Claire, vol. 2, ed. Arthur M. Wood, www.gphistorical.org/pdf-files/tonnancour/settlers.pdf.
20. See Tiya Miles, The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits (New York: The New Press, 2017).
21. Thomas Vennum, American Indian Lacrosse: Little Brother of War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
22. Indeed, according to descriptions by English settlers Native Americans also had their own version of football, which the English noted was much gentler to the one they had grown up with back home: William Wood, Wood’s New England Prospects (Boston: Prince Society, 1865), part 2, chapter 7, p. 83.
23. Donald M. Fisher, Lacrosse: A History of the Game (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), chapter 1.
24. Miles, Dawn of Detroit, 1.
