Once in a Great City

by David Maraniss

  Three blocks apart on West Lafayette, the newspaper buildings Kahn designed for the Detroit News and Free Press were still there, but not serving the same purpose. The Free Press cleared out of its plant in the late 1980s to move in with the News, and both announced plans to leave the News Building, an aging architectural jewel, for another space several blocks away—struggling newspapers adjusting to a changing culture, just as they had a half century earlier. In fact Frank Beckman’s report on Henry Ford II’s endorsement and Gene Roberts’s dispatch from Ann Arbor would not have had an audience if LBJ had delivered his Great Society speech seven weeks later. Newspapers were in turmoil then too, as back shops rebelled against automation and work conditions, and on July 13, 1964, Pressmen’s Local 13 went out on strike against both Detroit papers and did not return until shortly before Thanksgiving.

  The Fox Theater, restored to gilded glory in the late eighties, held its place along Woodward Avenue, marking a fifty-year continuum from the sellout crowds that came to see Motown artists perform there to the Chrysler commercial featuring Eminem and a black gospel choir. But the Graystone Ballroom, where Motown once staged vibrant battles of the bands, is long gone—one small loss in the larger departure of Motown. In 1967, the year of the riot, Berry Gordy uprooted from the houses on West Grand and moved the operation to the Donovan Building, closer to downtown at 2457 Woodward. That address had an unlikely reverberation in our story. Robert Ankony, the truant and future cop and PhD who witnessed the burning of the Ford Rotunda, lived at 2457 Woodmere in southwest Detroit. Woodward, Woodmere—same numbers. Mail intended for Motown often ended up in his parents’ mailbox, and Ankony remembered how his father “would get angry and throw it away, swearing.”

  By 1972 Gordy had abandoned Detroit altogether, moving Motown body if not soul to Los Angeles, where it waxed and waned for decades but was never the same, even as Michael Jackson from the Jackson 5 burst into global stardom, Diana Ross became a movie star and diva, and Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder burnished their reputations as musical marvels. Gordy, fit and trim in his eighties, was living in a mansion high above Bel Air when I interviewed him for this book. Marvin Gaye, the third of the Motown geniuses, was dead, shot by his father. Also gone were Mary Wells, four of the five original Temptations, one of the Supremes, and three of the Four Tops. Most of the groups had been torn asunder by ambition, drugs, or dissension, their lead singers eager to break out as solo acts and new group members coming and going. Only the Four Tops stayed together—one for all, all for one—until Lawrence Payton and then Obie Benson and then Levi Stubbs died, leaving Duke Fakir behind. They had kept their base in Detroit after most everyone else left, their cohesion a point of pride and a reflection of the confidence and humility of Levi Stubbs. Over the years, Fakir pointed out, there were a few dozen Temptations, but, while they were all alive, “there were only four Tops.”

  Mom and Pops and the rest of the Gordy family followed Berry out to Los Angeles, all except his big sister Esther Gordy Edwards. She had been the keeper of the castle, taking photos, gathering documents, storing memorabilia and records. For many years after her brother left, she noticed that people still made pilgrimages to the old brick houses on West Grand Boulevard, where it all began in 1959, and it was her idea to transform that location into the Motown Museum. “Berry, I think we made history and don’t even know it,” she once explained to her brother. The museum opened in 1985 and has survived through the decades, modest but lively and informative, and the people keep coming. Esther died in 2011 at age ninety-one, and Motown’s stars descended on Detroit again to pay homage. Stevie Wonder, who called her his second mother, gave a musical tribute, and her brother Berry and Smokey Robinson offered reflections, along with her stepson, Harry T. Edwards, a federal judge in Washington. By the time I visited the museum it was being run by Esther’s granddaughter, Robin Terry, and Allen Rawls, a Detroit native and music lover who had attended Winterhalter, my elementary school. The tour led down to Studio A, where the Funk Brothers played, and it was noted that the piano in the room, for decades out of tune, had been restored as a gift from one museum visitor who had found early inspiration in Motown, Sir Paul McCartney.

  There was a world map on one wall with push pins designating the homes of visitors. They came from Vietnam, Jakarta, New Zealand, Mongolia, Greenland, Iceland, Ethiopia, Madagascar, everywhere. On one of my days there, I encountered a delegation of South Africans dancing and singing and posing for pictures on the front walk. Another day it was a busload of Japanese tourists who were awestruck at the site of Tamla-Motown, as they called it in their country. Motown was and is a global language. In the winter of 2014, at the same time that Motown the Musical was running on Broadway, I went to see Martha Reeves when she and the Vandellas appeared in Washington. It had been fifty-two years since the first Motortown Revue rolled out of Detroit to introduce the music of Motown to the nation. The first stop then—during that frightening week of the Cuban Missile Crisis—had been the Howard Theater, only a few miles from the White House, and now the Vandellas were back on that same stage. Martha Reeves was in her early seventies, but her voice had the familiar joyful kick, and in her long, shimmering silver dress and high heels she could still outdance anyone in the room, or in the streets. Don’t forget the Motor City. And here came the heat wave and the quicksand and we all had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide and we came and got those memories. What lasts? What did Detroit give America? You could hear the answer in every song.

  CONNECTIONS

  TIME LINE

  1962

  October 7

  President Kennedy campaigns in Detroit in off-year elections.

  October 20

  Detroit Auto Show opens, unveiling 1963 cars that sold more than any in history to that point.

  October 22

  LBJ, scheduled to appear at the auto show, cancels his trip at last minute because of the unfolding Cuban Missile Crisis.

  October 23

  Motown artists leave Detroit on nationwide Motortown Revue. First stop is Howard Theater in Washington.

  November 6

  George Romney, former president of American Motors and a moderate, pro–civil rights Republican, is elected governor of Michigan.

  November 9

  Ford Rotunda burns to the ground on the same day federal agents and Detroit police, under orders by Police Commissioner George Edwards, raid the gambling operation at the Gotham Hotel.

  Mid-November

  J. Walter Thompson advertising agency establishes a secret room known as the Tomb at its Buhl Building offices in Detroit to work on schemes to market a new Ford car that will become the Mustang.

  November 20

  Motown roadie Eddie McFarland is killed and trip manager Beans Bowles is severely injured in a traffic accident in Florida during Motortown Revue tour.

  December 31

  Motown artists Mary Wells, the Miracles, Little Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and the Marvelettes return to Detroit and perform at Michigan State Fairgrounds.

  1963

  January 1

  In his New Year’s Day message, Mayor Jerome Cavanagh declares 1962 “the year of Detroit’s rebirth” and promises the momentum will be carried into 1963.

  January 5

  Police Commissioner Edwards breaks the story linking Detroit Lions football star Alex Karras and a few teammates to the Party Bus and local mobsters Tony and Vito Giacalone.

  January 6

  LBJ visits Detroit to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.

  January 11

  Life magazine runs a feature spread on the auto boom, “Glow from Detroit.”

  Mid-January

  Ford Division general manager Lee Iacocca guides J. Walter Thompson executives into a top-security styling room in Dearborn to show them a model of what eventually will be named the Mustang. At this early stage they start working on a marketing campaign calling the model a Torino.

  February 15
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br />   Detroit Olympic Committee mobilizes to hold off an attempt by Los Angeles to strip Detroit of its nomination as the U.S. candidate for the 1968 Summer Olympics.

  February 20

  A report released by sociologists at Wayne State University predicts that Detroit will lose one quarter of its 1960 population by the end of the decade. The report finds that productive taxpayers are leaving the city, “leaving behind the nonproductive.”

  February 22

  Motown releases “Come and Get These Memories” by Martha and the Vandellas, a song that captures the Motown sound.

  March 17

  Rev. C. L. Franklin, Aretha’s father, moves his New Bethel Baptist Church congregation to new quarters on Linwood Avenue, ending the wandering that began with urban renewal demolition of the old church on Hastings Street.

  March 19

  U.S. Olympic Committee turns back L.A.’s attempt to preempt Detroit and reaffirms its support of Detroit’s bid for the 1968 Summer Olympics.

  April 20

  Martin Luther King is released from Birmingham jail after protests there. From Detroit, Walter Reuther and the United Auto Workers provide much of the money to win the release of King and his supporters.

  May 17

  Reverend Franklin and others form the Detroit Council for Human Rights and begin planning a rally in support of Martin Luther King and the southern civil rights movement.

  June 11

  The Kennedy administration confronts George Wallace, governor of Alabama, at the schoolhouse door and forces the integration of the University of Alabama. That night JFK delivers a nationally televised speech unveiling his civil rights legislation. Hours later Medgar Evers, NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, is assassinated.

  June 22

  Reuther joins King and other civil rights leaders at a meeting in the Oval Office with JFK regarding plans for protest marches that summer. That same day, back in Detroit, Police Commissioner Edwards announces the arrest of mobster Tony Giacalone on bribery charges.

  June 23

  King, Reverend Franklin, Mayor Cavanagh, and Walter Reuther lead a Walk to Freedom with more than 100,000 citizens down Woodward Avenue to Cobo Hall, where King delivers a version of the “I Have a Dream” speech that will become famous two months later.

  June 29

  Governor Romney, who missed the Walk to Freedom because as a Mormon he does not work on Sundays, joins an open-housing protest march in Grosse Pointe, the elite suburb east of the city.

  July 5

  Detroit prostitute Cynthia Scott, known as St. Cynthia, is shot and killed by Detroit police early in the morning near the corner of John R and Brush, setting off a hot summer of protest over police treatment of black citizens and undermining Commissioner Edwards’s two-year effort to improve relations between his department and the African American community.

  August 2

  Work crews haul debris from the site where the Gotham Hotel has just been demolished. John White, the owner, is on his way to prison on gambling charges.

  August 5

  Berry Gordy concludes contract negotiations with Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for permission to sell an album recording of his speech in Detroit.

  August 28

  King delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech at the end of the March on Washington. Reuther also speaks at the historic rally. Berry Gordy, realizing the Washington version has overtaken the Detroit version of King’s speech, begins the process of turning it into an album.

  September 10

  International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage comes to Detroit, the city of his birth, and is courted by Detroit officials seeking 1968 Summer Games.

  October 8

  Detroit Common Council defeats open-housing legislation.

  October 13

  The Olympic torch arrives in Detroit after being carried by a relay of runners 2,600 miles from Los Angeles. Protesters angry at the defeat of open-housing legislation boo during the playing of the National Anthem at the arrival ceremony.

  October 16

  Mayor Cavanagh and Governor Romney lead Detroit delegation to Baden-Baden, the resort town in West Germany where the IOC is meeting to select a site for the 1968 Olympics. They learn that IOC delegates have been sent letters from Detroit saying the city should not be picked because it did not play fair on open housing.

  October 18

  IOC awards the 1968 Olympics to Mexico City. Detroit, once optimistic of winning, finishes a distant second.

  November 10

  Malcolm X delivers his “Message to the Grassroots” at King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit, criticizing King and other mainstream civil rights leaders. During the same week C. L. Franklin stages a Negro Summit Leadership Conference that is shunned by most of Detroit’s black Baptist preachers.

  November 16

  Motown presents its full Motortown Revue to sellout crowds at the Fox Theater, with Smokey Robinson and the Miracles closing each show with a raucous version of “Mickey’s Monkey.” That same week, the Flame Show Bar, Detroit’s premier black music club, closes after being targeted for demolition in the name of urban renewal.

  November 22

  President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas.

  November 24

  President Johnson calls Walter Reuther, who is in Washington for the funeral, at his Washington hotel room and says he needs his help.

  December 11

  Former police commissioner Edwards is confirmed by the U.S. Senate for a seat on the federal bench.

  December 13

  Blues singer Dinah Washington, wife of Lions defensive back Night Train Lane, dies of an overdose of pills at their Detroit home. Aretha Franklin sings at her memorial service at New Bethel Baptist.

  1964

  January

  Mayor Cavanagh is named one of the Outstanding Young Men in America by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. Talk begins that he might challenge Romney and run for governor. Romney, meanwhile, says he would consider seeking the Republican presidential nomination if people want him and that the policies of candidate Barry Goldwater would prove a long-term disaster for the party.

  March 5

  Walter Buhl Ford III, nephew of Henry Ford II, drives a red Mustang convertible into downtown Detroit a month before the car is to be unveiled. Photos are published in the Free Press. Assembly-line production of Mustangs at Dearborn plant begins the following week.

  March 13

  Motown’s Mary Wells records “My Guy,” written by Smokey Robinson, that takes her to the top of the charts, displacing the Beatles from the No. 1 position.

  April 13

  Lee Iacocca unveils the Mustang at a press conference in the Ford Wonder Rotunda at the New York World’s Fair, launching one of biggest marketing campaigns in history.

  April 17

  The Mustang goes on sale across the country, setting sales records.

  April 22

  New York World’s Fair officially opens. Civil rights demonstrators attend fair, and a sit-down protest at the Ford pavilion prompts closing of the Magic Skyway ride.

  May 22

  LBJ lands in Detroit, met by Mayor Cavanagh, George Romney, and Henry Ford II, who endorses him. After declaring the city “the herald of hope,” the president travels to nearby Ann Arbor to deliver his “Great Society” speech at the University of Michigan commencement.

  (1)

  (2) The Ford Rotunda (foreground) was circular in an automotive manufacturing kind of way. It was shaped like an enormous set of grooved transmission gears, one fitting neatly inside the next. In the postwar fifties, millions of American paid homage to Detroit’s grand motor palace. Ford claimed it was the fifth most popular tourist site in the country.

  (3) Robert Ankony was fourteen and playing hooky from school when he watched the Rotunda burn to the ground. He lived a few miles away in southwest Detroit and could see the smokestacks of Ford’s River Rouge plant out his rea
r window.

  (4) By the time firefighters reached the Rotunda on the afternoon of November 9, 1962, the entire roof, made of highly combustible plastic and fiberglass, was ablaze. The fire was ignited by sealing vapors while the roof was being repaired.

  (5) Diego Rivera painting a scene from his twenty-seven-panel mural Detroit Industry that fills the courtyard of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The murals were commissioned by Edsel Ford, the founder’s son and father of Henry Ford II.

  (6) John F. Kennedy paid his final visit to Detroit on October 6 and 7, 1962, a few weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis. At his room in the Sheraton Cadillac Hotel he met with Jerome Cavanagh, the mayor, and George Edwards, the police commissioner, who together offered a racially progressive agenda for the city.

  (7) John J. White (second from right) at his Gotham Hotel. In its heyday it was the social epicenter of black Detroit. On the same day that the Ford Rotunda burned down, the Gotham, which was also the headquarters for the city’s numbers racket, was raided by a joint police task force.

  (8) Mayor Cavanagh on the steamship T. J. McCarthy plying the Detroit River on the way to deliver new Chrysler Imperials and Valiants to Cobo Hall for the 1962 Detroit Auto Show.