Coleman A. Young (1918 - 1997)
Forever Young
Admirer and sometime adversary Maryann Mahaffey recalls a vital vision.
by Curt Guyette
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12/3/97The memories accumulated over the course of a half-century come flooding back in a rush as City Council President Maryann Mahaffey starts reminiscing about the life and times of Coleman Young.
Like a lot of people, Mahaffey knew about Young before ever actually meeting him. By 1952, when Mahaffey moved to Detroit from Indianapolis, almost everyone had heard of the black labor organizer with balls enough to take on the House Un-American Activities Committee when its traveling road show rolled into town that spring. Young made his mark early on in the proceedings, which had everyone's ears glued to the radio, waiting for the sparks to fly.
They weren't disappointed.
The first time the committee's counsel -- a native of the Deep South with what Young later described as a "plantation dialect" -- drawled the word "Niggra," Young slapped him down. "That word is 'Negro,' " informed Young, who relates in his autobiography how he went into the hearing determined to fight those so keen on judging the patriotism of others without having proven their own.
"I had incredible respect for him and the way he tackled the House Un-American Activities Committee," recalls Mahaffey.
The brashness and the stubborn refusal to buckle under to someone else's authority on display during those hearings were typical of the traits that carried him through the years.
"He knew what he believed in," says Mahaffey, "and he stuck by it."
Mahaffey witnessed those traits in action plenty of times over the years, her admiration of him deepening as the two worked on campaigns and progressive social movements such as the anti-war Detroit Area Mobilization committee in the '60s.
She still recalls the night in the late '60s, when, during a party for Young, Lyndon Johnson appeared on TV to announce he would not seek re-election "and everyone in the room cheered."
Over the years she came to know a man with the kind of vigor and charisma that energized any room he walked into, a man with an intellect not matched by many.
"You'd feel his vitality whenever you were around him," explains Mahaffey.
"He had a fabulous ability to analyze events. And he had the ability to take a complicated legislative issue and explain it in such plain language that everybody understood it, ranging from guys in the foundry at Ford to university professors."
But the relationship between Young and Mahaffey was not always smooth. The year Young became mayor, she won election to the City Council; the two butted heads frequently after.
"He had this attitude that the city's budget was his budget and the council shouldn't be messing around with it," explains Mahaffey.
And as Young's years in office grew, Mahaffey watched him struggle with the weight that almost inevitably comes to bear on those who hold the reins of power for as long as he did.
"I think he changed," observes Mahaffey. "I think people who get into positions of power are often pushed to go too far with it. The problem when you are in office is that you can get carried away with your feeling of omnipotence. Power, when you have so much of it ... it is hard to maintain a sense of balance.
"And with Coleman, as his health deteriorated, he became more isolated and had less patience."
But those characteristics on display back in the spring of '52 never faded. When Young played an instrumental role in helping Jimmy Carter win the presidency in 1976, it looked like the mayor might be in line for a cabinet position. "But he told me he didn't want that," recalls Mahaffey. "He said that in a position like that, you lose your independence and you lose your ability to speak out if you don't agree with the guy who appointed you."
What stands out now is the vitality of the man, his vision and his intelligence, and the legacy he leaves this city.
"He was the mayor we needed when he ran back in 1973," says Mahaffey. "The city had become majority African-American, and there was a desperate need for the police force to become more representative, to end the brutality and the use of the police as a colonial force.
"Coleman made it very clear that he was on the side of poor people and that he intended to redress some of the terrible oppression that had occurred."
Bigger than life, Young left an indelible mark, both on this city and the lives of people he touched.
"He proved to the world that you didn't have to be white to run a big city and he made a difference, an immense difference," Mahaffey adds. "He was a strong leader. You knew where he was coming from and why. He had his stubbornness, but he also had his charisma.
"And he was a friend."
Curt Guyette is the Metro Times investigative reporter.