Former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young Dies at 79

Former Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young, a tailor’s son who became the city’s first black mayor and ruled it for an unprecedented five terms, died of respiratory failure Saturday. He was 79.

Young died at Sinai Hospital in Detroit, where he had been in intensive care since July 24.

“I think he was hanging on to life,” said his cousin and personal physician, Claud Young. “He loved life, and he was not willing to give in until he had to.”

Young suffered cardiac arrest Nov. 12 and was in a coma on a ventilator after he was resuscitated. He had advanced emphysema and was hospitalized several times in recent years for heart and respiratory problems.

“The people of this city have lost a great warrior,” said Detroit Mayor Dennis W. Archer, who succeeded Young. “His bold and forthright advocacy for the people of Detroit, and especially for those who knew the deep pain of discrimination and the stabbing injustice of the denial of opportunity, will always mark Coleman Alexander Young as one of the greatest mayors in urban America.”

Gov. John Engler said Young was a “legend in his own time” who was a leader, fighter and pioneer in the battle against discrimination and for equal rights.

The salty-tongued and feisty mayor was credited with bringing Detroit’s majority black population into a position of political power, but he also was often criticized for alienating white business interests, which many believe helped accelerate the city’s economic decline during the 1970s and ‘80s.

Though Detroit was plagued by the steady move of jobs and residents to the suburbs, crime and the decline of the auto industry in the years after he took office in 1974, Young was always optimistic about turning the city around.

White flight from Detroit didn’t begin with Young, but it continued during his administration despite such projects as the completion of the Renaissance Center, a towering riverfront convention center.

By 1990, Detroit’s population had fallen by nearly half to under 1 million, and the metropolitan area had become one of the nation’s most segregated: 76% black, with its suburbs less than 5% black.

While Young was regarded by many suburban residents as anti-white, the former mayor counted many whites among his closest advisors and friends.

Bob Berg, Young’s longtime press secretary, said despite Young’s achievements and success in politics, he never forgot his humble beginnings in Detroit’s poor Black Bottom neighborhood.

“He was a man of vision,” said Berg, who is white and runs a public relations consulting business in Detroit. “He saw things the way they ought to be and tried to set them that way.

Close friends and associates said Young was often unfairly labeled a racist by whites because of his inflammatory rhetoric.

Sharon McPhail, a Detroit attorney who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 1993 with Young’s backing, said Young was “incredibly misunderstood” and falsely accused of fomenting racial division. “He believed we are all of one race, the human race,” she said.

The Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the NAACP’s Detroit chapter, said Young taught blacks that they could demand their rights and do what was necessary to obtain them. “He always struck me as a fighter,” said Anthony. “He never said ‘die.’ When the system said you can’t do it, Coleman Young did it.”

When Young announced in 1993 that he would not seek a sixth term, he said: “I’ve decided 20 years is enough. I’m tired.”

Several scandals marked Young’s later years.

In 1991, his police chief and a deputy chief who was a business partner with the mayor were indicted in the disappearance of $2.6 million from a fund used to pay informants and make drug purchases. The deputy chief, Kenneth Weiner, pleaded guilty. Former Chief William Hart was convicted and sent to prison in 1992.

Young was born May 24, 1918, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., the oldest of five children. His family came north when he was 5 and eventually settled on Detroit’s east side.

Educated at a Roman Catholic elementary school, Young learned that racism wasn’t confined to the South. Despite earning top grades, a Catholic high school refused to accept his scholarship application. When he graduated from a public high school, his color barred him from financial aid at the University of Michigan and other colleges, despite his high grades.

He took time out from a Ford assembly line job for service in World War II as a bombardier-navigator with the Tuskegee airmen. He later became a labor organizer, and in 1951 founded the National Negro Labor Council.

A year later, the House Un-American Activities Committee heard allegations the council was a communist front. Young declined to answer many of the panel’s questions and challenged the racial politics of his questioners.

When he ran for mayor in 1973, he defeated former Police Commissioner John F. Nichols by 7 percentage points.

Times staff writer Donald W. Nauss in Detroit contributed to this story.