David Maraniss Quotes

And Then The Industry Itself Was So Cocky About What They Were Doing That They Weren't Seeing What Was Coming On The Horizon With Japan And Germany And Other Places That Were Building Smaller Cars.

Originally, John Kennedy Was Going To Come Speak, And Then Lyndon Johnson. Because It Was October Of '62, Neither Made It Because Of The Cuban Missile Crisis.

Well, There Were Several Things. One Was That The Industry Itself Built In Detroit Was Abandoning The City - Taking Factories Elsewhere, The Corporate Headquarters Elsewhere.

It Was A Time Of Uncommon Possibility And Freedom, When Detroit Created Wondrous And Lasting Things. But Life Can Be Luminescent When It Is Most Vulnerable.

And That John F. Kennedy Uttered The First Variation Of "ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You" In Detroit On Labor Day In 1960. So Detroit Was Really Central To Democratic Politics United States. Every Democratic Candidate Would Start Their Fall Campaigns In Cadillac Square.

It Was So Crucial To The Civil Rights Movement That On June 23, 1963, Martin Luther King Came To Town, Walked Down Woodward Avenue With More Than 100,000 People And Delivered The First Major Public Iteration Of His "i Have A Dream" Speech, Two Months Before He Did It In Washington.

Detroit Was An Exaggeration Of What Was Going On Across The Country. You Could See The Divisions, Even Within The Civil Rights Movement Of That Period. At The Same Time That Martin Luther King Was Talking About His Dream, Malcolm X Gave His Most Famous Address In Detroit During That Same Period, "the Message To The Grass Roots," Dismissing The Notion Of Integration.

You Also Had In Detroit That Summer, An Early Variation Of Ferguson. A Black Prostitute Was Shot In The Back By Police. And All Of The Efforts That A Very Progressive Police Chief And Mayor Of That Period Had Put Into Trying To Restore Race Relations Started To Fall Apart Again, And You Could See That Unraveling For Several Years Until The Riots Or Rebellion Of 1967.

Well, There Is Something Beautiful About Ruins. I Mean, In One Sense It's Not That Different From Going To Rome And Looking At The Forum. But It's Changing. It Truly Is. I'm Optimistic But Skeptical.

So, I Mean, There's Still Vast Swaths Of The City That Are Suffering From A Lack Of Jobs And Poor Housing And Poor Public Schools, But They Are Building Momentum - You Know, Techies, Foodies, Artists, Musicians, All Coming To Detroit. So There Is This Vibrancy. You See It In The Newspapers Every Day - Some Story About The New Detroit.

Well, Here You Had A City That Was Selling More Cars Than Ever Before, That Had This Wondrous Music Being Created, That Was So Vital To The Labor And Civil Rights Of This Country, And Yet It Was Dying And Didn't See It, Except For Some Sociologist At Wayne State University Who Predicted That Detroit Was Losing Population By A Half-million By The End Of That '60s Decade, And That That Trend Would Continue Taking Away Its Tax Base.

There Was A Precarious Balance During Those Crucial Months Between Composition And Decomposition - What The World Gained And What A Great City Lost. Even Then, Some Part Of Detroit Was Dying, And That Is Where The Story Begins.