Matt Helms

Detroit Free Press

Detroit author and historian Ken Coleman says that with 20 years since the late Coleman Young left office as the city’s longest-serving mayor, young people and those new to metro Detroit may not know much about him, beyond that he was the city’s first black mayor.

Coleman, a Detroit native who’s a communications consultant and former Michigan Chronicle journalist, recently released his fourth self-published book, “Forever Young: A Coleman Reader.” It’s a book he said is aimed at those unfamiliar with one of Detroit’s most colorful, polarizing and yet beloved politicians and his legacy.

“I believe there’s a whole generation of people, millennials and others, who are too young to really understand who he was and why he was important,” Coleman said in a recent interview at the city recreation center named for the former mayor. “I thought this book would especially be geared toward people new to the region or people too young to have voted for him.”

“Forever Young” includes a short biography of Young and a fact about him for every day of the year, ranging from his birth to his election as mayor and major events during his tenure.

It also includes excerpts from some of his notable public statements. One was in 1952 during his appearance before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee, in which Young, then a union official, stood up to questioners, challenged their pronunciation of the word "negro" and at one point said, “You have me mixed up with a stool pigeon.” Another was the 1993 news conference in which he spoke frankly about his time in office after announcing he wouldn’t seek a sixth term.

Later this summer, Coleman said, he will begin a project to record audio and video oral histories from people who worked for or with Young and others who knew him best, in preparation for a documentary on him. Coleman also is in discussions with educators about creating a curriculum for social studies or history classes in metro Detroit public schools.

The projects are tied to the centennial in May 2018 of Young’s birth.

One person who knew him and shares his name — and some say resemblance — is his son, state Sen. Coleman Young II. He said he has yet to read "Forever Young,'' but agreed that there are many facets of his father's life that the current public may not know, such as “how incredibly generous and open and kind he was. He had such a loving heart.

"Behind the scenes he was a thoughtful, loving man and a really good father,” said Young II, 33, adding that the rumors that the two of them did not have a relationship are untrue. "He did have a relationship with me."

Love him or hate him, Mayor Young was an enduring figure in southeast Michigan. He was a hero among black Detroiters but often scorned by white suburbanites. Coleman, the author, said that with time, Young’s legacy has begun to emerge as much more nuanced and fair to him.

Whites may have viewed him as something of a black nationalist, Coleman said, but Young was comfortable in the halls of power in Lansing — where he was a state senator representing the east-side neighborhoods, including Black Bottom where he grew up — and making deals with captains of industry and forming coalitions with people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

He was politically liberal but managed the city’s declining finances as a fiscal conservative, slashing thousands of jobs during his tenure as the city hemorrhaged jobs and residents and kept the city’s debts at manageable levels.

“He called himself a radical pragmatist,” Coleman said. “There was a method to the madness, at least in political terms.”

Young was never afraid to call out racism where he saw it. Coleman said that was a product of his upbringing in a Detroit where the Ku Klux Klan burned crosses outside the old Wayne County Building downtown and where, as a young Boy Scout, Young wasn’t permitted to go to Boblo Island with the rest of his troop because he was black.

Coleman said Young was often misunderstood, but that’s changing with time.

“He walked and talked with Fortune 500 leaders and business moguls but he had the common touch,” Coleman said. “Hazen Pingree is often considered the city’s best mayor, but if you place (Young) in the context of the times he lived, Coleman is right up there with the three, four or five best mayors the city has had.”

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @matthelms.

FIVE FACTS ABOUT YOUNG

Here are five things you may not have known about Detroit's first black mayor:

1. He attended St. Mary's Catholic School in Greektown for grade school. There he helped to start a Boy Scouts troop.

2. Young graduated from Eastern High School in Detroit at age 16, one of only a handful of blacks in his 1935 class.

3. As a member of the 477th bomber unit of the U.S. Air Force, Young in April 1945 helped to lead a demonstration to racially integrate an all-white officer's club.

4. President Jimmy Carter offered Young an opportunity to become U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the late 1970s. Young turned down the offer.

5. When Young died in 1997, he left behind an estate with assets worth about $500,000. It was divided among his sisters Juanita Clark and Bernice Greer, his companion Barbara Parker and his son Coleman Young Jr.

Source: "Forever Young: The Coleman Reader" By Ken Coleman

ABOUT THE BOOK

“Forever Young: The Coleman Reader” is available as an e-book on Amazon and Smashwords. A limited edition of print books is for sale at Eric’s I’ve Been Framed Shop, 16527 Livernois in Detroit. Contact the store at 313-861-9263.