Detroit's Worst Mayor Doesn't Deserve a Statue in Washington

If you didn’t know (or care), every state gets to decide two statues to display in the U.S. Capitol. Michigan currently has the likenesses of former governor Lewis Cass and President Gerald R. Ford standing for us in the National Statuary Hall Collection.

The hot news in the statue world this week is that Democrats in Detroit and Lansing want to swap out Cass for a graven image of Coleman A. Young, whose long tenure as mayor solidified the downward spiral of Detroit.

The irony is that Michigan’s ruling class is bent on replacing a racist with a segregationist who wanted Detroit to be only black.

I’m not even talking about his most famous quote about sending all the drug dealers up to 8 Mile. I’m talking about the time Jimmy Carter said he was against altering the “ethnic purity” of neighborhoods.

When someone asked Young about the aspiring candidate’s comment, Detroit’s mayor said: “Ethnic purity is as American as mom’s apple pie.”

He also put it into practice: When it came time to put in a new GM plant, Young targeted Poletown, one of the last white neighborhoods in the city.

While people were in the process of being forced out of their homes in that neighborhood, Young turned off city services, according to a 2013 article published in the Wall Street Journal.

To hear Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield tell it, Young was the best thing that ever happened to the city and the state.

Whitmer told the audience on a recorded video that Coleman Young spent his life “fighting for a better future for Detroit” and that he helped “shape Detroit and our history for years to come.”

That’s true. When he took office, there were half a million more people in the city than when he left. Businesses and industry also left the city. Young didn’t think the economic state of it was his fault.

“Hell, no, I don’t think Detroit is better off than it was when I became mayor,” Young wrote in his autobiography in 1994. “The auto industry certainly isn’t better off than it was in 1974. The job market certainly isn’t better off than it was then. How the hell could Detroit be better off? But I damn sure think it’s better off for me becoming mayor.”

Instead of getting tough on crime like robberies, Coleman Young sought federal aid and corporate welfare, which has continued as the city’s playbook to this day.

Speaking of the playbook, Sheffield said at Tuesday's event that she was “standing on his shoulders” and that her administration fights every day to carry the Young’s legacy of putting Detroiters first, starting with herself.

Young showed how Detroit mayors could enrich themselves and those around them with dubious spending and relationships. His longtime girlfriend Joyce Garett also served as his director of public information.

And despite budget cuts, Young found it imperative to spend $1 million on renovations for what The New York Times called a “well-furnished office.”

Sheffield seems to truly follow in his footsteps given her relationships with Brian McKinney and Marvin Walker as exposed by Charlie LeDuff in these pages.

Sheffield was taking romantic getaways with Walker while voting tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts as a member of the City Council. Worse, McKinney’s company is accused of putting poisoned dirt in holes where homes used to stand in the neighborhoods.

Marvin Walker, meanwhile, says in a lawsuit that he has videos of Sheffield working inside a marijuana grow facility while she served on the Detroit City Council and that she let him use a City of Detroit vehicle for his own business.

Sheffield also allegedly wrote checks for Walker to cash from her political charity. He would cash them and give her the money. Now the FBI is on the case.

Young started the grift. Sheffield perfected it.

Don’t even get me started on Young’s failed economic vision for Detroit where he incentivized businesses to move with tax breaks and then sought federal bailouts.

Michigan should make a better choice for the National Statuary Hall Collection. What about Aretha Franklin? She lived here in Detroit and made the world a better place.

We can’t say the same about Young.