Reviews for History of Missouri: 1875 to 1919, Vol. 4

The average rating for History of Missouri: 1875 to 1919, Vol. 4 based on 3 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-12-13 00:00:00 Terri Harn Things that I learned from this book: 1. In 1833, a race riot started when slave hunters came to Detroit to look for two slaves. They found them, but the whites were so resentful of the commotion that the slave hunter caused that they burned down every black home in the city. 2. In 1924, a KKK candidate almost became Mayor of Detroit. He only lost because 17,000 votes were thrown out. 3. The depressing and then uplifting and then depressing saga of Ossian Sweet. 4. In the 1920s, Detroit actively Things that I learned from this book: 1. In 1833, a race riot started when slave hunters came to Detroit to look for two slaves. They found them, but the whites were so resentful of the commotion that the slave hunter caused that they burned down every black home in the city. 2. In 1924, a KKK candidate almost became Mayor of Detroit. He only lost because 17,000 votes were thrown out. 3. The depressing and then uplifting and then depressing saga of Ossian Sweet. 4. In the 1920s, Detroit actively recruited its police force from the south. (This fact interests me more than it should.) 5. In 1932, Henry Ford said "If we could only realize it, these are the best times we ever had." 6. Pinkertons use to break picketlines by charging at them with knives. 7. Coleman Young was a CIO guy. 8. Jimmy Hoffa was once arrested 18 times in 24 hours. 9. The 1943 riots started with a tussle on Belle Isle that got intense when 300 sailors joined in on the white side. By the night, blacks were breaking into the shops in Paradise Valley, and there was a roving gang of 5,000 whites moving up and down Woodward, looking for blacks to beat. 10. There's never been a time when Chrysler wasn't on the verge on bankruptcy. 11. On July 21st, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. visited Detroit and was joined by Governor Romney and the young liberal mayor,Jerome Cavanagh. The idea was to show how much progress there'd been since '43, that peace had been achieved. 12. That year, Fortune magazine praised Detroit's race relations. One C.E.O. said it was the most advanced of any American city. 13. Jerome Cavanagh is kind-of the most tragic figure in American history. 14. In the eighties, future Governor Engler said that Detroit is like Beirut: "...where nobody would seriously think of going to invest. You simply can not create jobs in a combat zone." And then the only people who protested were Lebanese who didn't like their native city being compared to Detroit. 15. It's strange reading now, as a guy who grew up in Troy in the 1990s and 2000s, quotes from the 1980s about the whiteness of Dearborn and Eastland. The book's not perfect. It spends more time on unions than I'm interested in (more my fault than Widick's, I suppose), and starting with the Detroit riots things start to seem unbalanced, something that becomes particularly true in the revised 1980s chapter. But I know insanely more now about the city I didn't grow up in and what it means that I didn't.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-09-11 00:00:00 Tyler Cantwill Anyone who wants a vivid description of the political state of affairs in Detroit immediately before the election of our late & very much lamented Mayor Coleman A. Young in 1973 needs only to read this book. It was saddening, and shocking even after living in the city of Detroit for the best part of 26 years, to once again be reminded that we are facing essentially the same issues and difficulties in 2018 as did residents of this city in 1972. Many of those difficulties, unfortunately, are now i Anyone who wants a vivid description of the political state of affairs in Detroit immediately before the election of our late & very much lamented Mayor Coleman A. Young in 1973 needs only to read this book. It was saddening, and shocking even after living in the city of Detroit for the best part of 26 years, to once again be reminded that we are facing essentially the same issues and difficulties in 2018 as did residents of this city in 1972. Many of those difficulties, unfortunately, are now in fact far worse. This is even more depressing given the ridiculous and pathetic performance of Mayor Young's son, State Senator Coleman Young II, last year during his failed attempt to defeat the incumbent suburbanite neo-colonial administration of "Livonia Mike" Duggan which has been in control of the city since November 2013...

Review # 3 was written on 2010-07-05 00:00:00 Martin Kabrna A good introduction to labor and racial struggles in Detroit going back over 100 years. The book was especially strong in its descriptions of the strikes that led to the building of the CIO in Detroit in the 1930s, and the oppression that led up to the riot of 1967.