Former Detroit, Michigan Mayor Jerome Cavanagh 1962-1970

Jerome Cavanagh, also spelled "Cavanaugh," (June 16, 1928 – November 27, 1979) was the mayor of Detroit, Michigan from 1962 to 1970. Initially seen as another John F. Kennedy, his reputation was doomed by the 1967 riots. Jump to: navigation, search ImageMetadata File history File links Jerome_Cavanagh. ... June 16 is the 167th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (168th in leap years), with 198 days remaining. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1928 was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search November 27 is the 331st day (332nd on leap years) of the year. ... Jump to: navigation, search This page refers to the year 1979. ... Jump to: navigation, search Motto: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes - this motto was adopted after the disastrous 1805 fire that devastated the city) Nickname: The Motor City and Motown Location in Wayne County, Michigan Founded Incorporated July 24, 1701 1815... Jump to: navigation, search 1962 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1970 was a common year starting on Thursday. ... JFK redirects here. ... The 12th Street Riot in Detroit began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967, after vice squad officers executed a raid at an illegal after-hours drinking establishment (colloquially referred to as a blind pig) on the corner of 12th Street (today also known as Rosa Parks...

In his first campaign ever, 31 year old Jerry Cavanagh stunned political observers by defeating incumbent Louis Mariani. Mariani had an enormous amount of institutional support, but he had managed to alienate both Detroit's growing black community by condoning police brutality and Detroit's white reactionaires by not doing anything to halt residential integration.

Cavanagh got off to an popular start as mayor, appointing a reformer to be chief of police and implementing an affirmative action program for most city agencies. Unlike Richard J. Daley, who stonewalled the American civil rights movement, Jerry Cavanagh welcomed Martin Luther King, Jr. to Detroit, and marched with him in June 1963 down Woodward Avenue in the 100,000 strong March for Freedom. Affirmative action (U.S. English), or positive discrimination (British English), is a policy or a program providing access to systems for people of a minority group who have traditionally been discriminated against, with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society. ... Richard Joseph Daley (May 15, 1902 - December 20, 1976) was an Irish-American politician who served as Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee from 1953 and Mayor of Chicago from 1955, retaining both positions until his death in 1976. ... The civil rights movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all citizens of United States. ... Jump to: navigation, search Martin Luther King, Jr. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1963 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Cavanagh was successful in getting money from Washington, DC through the "Model Cities" program. New skyscrapers were built downtown. People were very hopeful about where Detroit was going; well-informed observers believed that Detroit had extinguished the burning embers of resentment left over from the 1943 race riot. Aerial photo (looking NW) of the Washington Monument and the White House in Washington, DC. Washington, D.C., officially the District of Columbia (also known as D.C.; Washington; the Nations Capital; the District; and, historically, the Federal City) is the capital city and administrative district of the United... Jump to: navigation, search Taipei 101, considered the worlds tallest skyscraper. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1943 is a common year starting on Friday. ... United States Main article: Mass racial violence in the United States See also pogrom 2004 Australian Riots May 13th Incident (Malaysia) ...

From Fortune magazine: Categories: Magazines stubs | Time Warner subsidiaries | Business magazines ...

"the most significant is the progress Detroit has made in race relations. The grim specter of the 1943 riots never quite fades from the minds of city leaders. As much as anything else, that specter has enabled the power structure to overcome tenacious prejudice and give the Negro community a role in the consensus probably unparalleled in any major American city.

"Negroes in Detroit have deep roots in the community, compared with the more transient population of Negro ghettos in Harlem and elsewhere in the North. ... more than 40% of the negro population own their own houses.

Nor was Detroit doing so badly economically. From the [[National Observer]:

"The evidence, both statistical and visual, is everywhere. Retail sales are up dramatically. Earnings are higher. Unemployment is lower. People are putting new aluminum sidings on their homes, new carpets on the floor, new cars in the garage.

"Some people are forsaking the suburbs and returning to the city. Physically Detroit has acquired freshness and vitality. Acres of slums have been razed, and steel and glass apartments, angular and lonely in the vacated landscape, have sprung up in their place. In the central business district, hard by the Detroit River, severely rectangular skyscrapers—none more than 5 years old—jostle uncomfortably with the gilded behemoths of another age.

"Accustomed to years of adversity, to decades of drabness and civil immobility, Detroiters are naturally exhilarated. They note with particular pride that Detroit has been removed the Federal Bureau of Employment Security's classification of 'an area with substantial and persistent unemployment.'

(All quotations found in B. J. Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence. Quadrangle Books, Chicago. 1972. 156-159.)

However, deeper problems existed under the surface.

After World War II, the automobile industry, requiring more lateral space than was available in a city, and desiring to get away from the United Auto Workers and city taxes, decentralized its operations. Detroit lost 134,000 jobs from 1947 to 1963, despite a growth in population. Between 1946 and 1956, GM spent $3.4 billion on new plants, Ford $2.5 billion, Chrysler $700 million, none of that in Detroit. 25 auto plants were opened in Detroit's suburbs, none in the city. Whites could escape Detroit, but due to closed housing, blacks were trapped there, like people holding onto a sinking ship. Jump to: navigation, search World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th-century conflict that... Jump to: navigation, search A small variety of cars, the most popular kind of automobile. ... Jump to: navigation, search The United Auto Workers (UAW), officially the United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union, is one of the largest labor unions in North America, with more than 700,000 members in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico organized into approximately 950 union... Jump to: navigation, search 1947 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1963 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1946 was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... 1956 was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

All the federal monies in the world could not help a city losing jobs. Detroit, which was not a large financial, entertainment, educational, or government center, was a city in serious trouble. Cavanagh had inherited a $28 million budget gap in 1962. To close the gap, and to pay for the new programs he wanted to implement, Cavanagh had pushed through the legislature income and commuter taxes for Detroit, thereby further driving out businesses and middle class residents. Jump to: navigation, search 1962 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Detroit was actually not a city of squalid tenements in 1967. In fact, it had the highest black homeownership rate in the nation, due to the fact that many blacks held relatively high-paying automotive industry jobs and were capable of affording homes of their own. The blacks who rioted in 1967 were responding just as much to conditions in Newark, New Jersey and Chicago as they were to conditions in Detroit. Newark, nicknamed The Brick City, is the largest city in New Jersey and the county seat of urban Essex County. ... Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ...

On July 23, 1967, a police attempt to break up a party quickly escalated into what would be known as the 12th Street Riot. Feeling a large police presence would make things worse, Cavanagh acted slowly to stop the riots. They lasted for five days, killed 43 people, made over 5,000 people homeless, and required two divisions of federal paratroopers to be put down; they were the worst of the four hundred or so riots that American cities experienced in the 1960s. July 23 is the 204th day (205th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 161 days remaining. ... The 12th Street Riot in Detroit began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967, after vice squad officers executed a raid at an illegal after-hours drinking establishment (colloquially referred to as a blind pig) on the corner of 12th Street (today also known as Rosa Parks... The 1960s, or The Sexy Sixties, in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ...

Assessment

Cavanagh embodied the hopes of the 1960s. He ran for the United States Senate in 1966, and had ideas of higher achievement. Cavanagh wanted to show the nation that cities could be relevant and livable. His hopes were dashed by large macroeconomic forces, generations of anger, and tragic fate. Seal of the Senate The United States Senate is one of the two houses of the Congress of the United States, the other being the House of Representatives. ...

Cavanagh himself had to admit in July 1967, "Today we stand amidst the ashes of our hopes. We hoped against hope that what we had been doing was enough to prevent a riot. It was not enough."

Jerry Cavanagh died of a heart attack in 1979 at age 51. He is buried in Mt. Elliott Cemetery in Detroit. Jump to: navigation, search A myocardial infarction occurs when an atherosclerotic plaque slowly builds up in the inner lining of a coronary artery and then suddenly ruptures, totally occluding the artery and preventing blood flow downstream. ...