FBI Kept Files on Ex-Mayor for Years

Former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, who ran the city for an unprecedented 20 years, was under FBI surveillance for roughly four decades, the Detroit News reported. Records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act show the surveillance began in the 1940s when agents who suspected the well-known labor activist had communist ties followed him to union organizing meetings, the newspaper said. Young, Detroit’s longest-serving mayor and its first black mayor, took office in 1974 and retired in 1994 after five terms. He died in November 1997 at the age of 79.