From 1910 into the 1930s, the black population of Detroit rose more than 600% -- double the rate of nearby Cleveland and four times faster than the increase in Chicago.
Nobody was moving here for the weather. The influx of people to Detroit -- the city tripled in size during the same period to a population of about 1.5 million -- was about jobs, mainly in the auto industry, after Henry Ford made his famous offer of $5 a day.
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Among the many side effects of the assembly line was the rise of the American middle class and, in Detroit more than anywhere else, the creation of a black middle class. While segregation and racism were obstacles, Detroit became a place where good factory wages enabled African Americans to afford homes and cars; where black businesses could start up with ready customers and where succeeding generations had a measure of upward mobility. Hundreds of African-American professionals, businesspeople and academics owe their start to parents or grandparents who were able to make a decent living in Michigan's auto plants.
That avenue to the proverbial American dream has now been largely closed off by the disappearance of job opportunities at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler and the many industry supplier firms.
"What is happening now to the black middle class is absolutely devastating," said Dr. Curtis Ivery, chancellor of Wayne County Community College District. "But it is also much needed. We needed to come out of our comfort zone, that sense of entitlement to those jobs."
Ivery and others said this massive economic shake-up should be a wake-up call for Detroit and indeed all Michigan to fix its schools and redirect young people toward higher education.
"The old paradigm was graduate from high school and get a good job," said Daniel Baxter, director of elections for the City of Detroit and the son of an assembly line worker. "Now, it's totally different. We have to shift the thought process, recognize the new dynamic."
Juliette Okotie-Eboh, senior vice president of public affairs for MGM Grand Detroit and the daughter of a Ford worker, recalled a time in the 1960s when the best-dressed among her classmates at Detroit Northern High School were the young men who had second-shift auto jobs.
"They had the cars, they had the clothes," she said. "The point is, I guess, they didn't need the education at that time to make the good money. But those doors have been closed for a while. Are blacks disproportionately affected? We're always disproportionately affected. ... But the lack of opportunity is more acute now."
Michael Porter, vice president for corporate communications at DTE Energy, is the son of an autoworker. His mother started out as a stenographer but worked her way up to computer systems analyst at the Army's Tank Automotive Command plant.
"I was exceedingly fortunate," Porter said. "My parents placed a high premium on education and sacrificed -- sending us to parochial schools to help prepare for college. ... But for those who couldn't or didn't want to go to college, the plants were a viable option.
"Today, those manufacturing jobs are gone. ... And even if the auto companies had the market share they enjoyed in the 1960s, the jobs our parents held would be gone. ... Today, computers and robots do many of the things that were formerly done by men and women with air wrenches and paint spray guns."
Hence the critical need, said Porter, Ivery and others, to address the ills of predominantly African-American school districts and the widespread applause for Robert Bobb, the emergency financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools, who's becoming a local folk hero as he reshapes the district with an emphasis on accountability. Bobb's trying to make changes that are at least a generation beyond overdue.
"The school systems have got to do a much better job now of meeting the needs of these students," said Bart Landry, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and author of a 1987 book, "The New Black Middle Class," plus a 2006 follow-up, "Black Working Wives."
"But first, students have to understand, the good dollars-for-hours jobs are gone. 'If I'm going to make it, I must go to college' ... and if they don't get into pre-college work, that road is extremely difficult."
At WCCCD, which now has upward of 80,000 people taking credit and noncredit courses, Chancellor Ivery is more blunt about the impact of all the closed factories in southeast Michigan.
"Unfortunately, we're exactly where we need to be, and it's a painful thing," he said. "But we've got to get something out of this. There's an opportunity if we take it over the next one or two years. And if we get it right here, we can get it right for the whole country.
"We have a chance," Ivery said, "to ... turn this around."
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