Mayor Albert Cobo
Continuing its celebration of the 313's 313th birthday Thursday, the Free Press names Detroit's five worst mayors in Tuesday editions, compiled by staffer Dan Austin, who provides meaty summaries of the un-fab five's biographies.
On Tuesday, Austin listed the city's five best mayors.
The bad guys are headed, naturally, by Kwame Kilpatrick, currently serving a 28-year sentence in federal prison in Oklahoma for corruption.
No. 2 is Richard Reading, another mayor who went to jail for corruption, before World War II.
No. 3 is Charles Bowles, who ran with Ku Klux Klan support and was recalled after nine months. Enough said.
No. 4 is Albert Cobo, who presided over Detroit in the 1950s. He is little remembered today, except for the convention center that bears his name, but Austin writes Cobo's policies had negative effects on African American residents and their neighborhoods.
No. 5 is Louis Miriani, who succeeded Cobo when he died in office in 1957 and served through 1962. Like Cobo, Miriani also pursued policies that hurt black Detroiters.
Austin writes:
Leaders in the black community accused Miriani of ignoring racial discrimination in public housing and lambasted him over his refusal to support a city-funded public works program. They also said that black people were racially profiled by the city’s police department. One of the most controversial police tactics was the Big Four, an elite unit that dispatched four cops in an unmarked car out to search for the city’s worst offenders. This group was known in particular for randomly stopping African Americans walking down the street. This harassment and police brutality is considered one of the factors that led to the 1967 race riot — considered an uprising by some.
