Notes from the Author

Every history book begins with a set of questions that an author feels is particularly worthy of greater attention and investigation. This book is no different, although perhaps the questions that fueled its creation are more closely linked to my own history than most. My desire to understand Detroit dates back to the late 1970s, when I was growing up in the city and was a student at Cass Technical High School in the heart of downtown. Because I loved living in the city, I often wondered why it was that most of the suburban white kids I knew were so vocal about their hatred of Detroit as well as so hostile to the African Americans who lived there. For that matter, I wondered why there were so few white kids in Detroit or in my school when, according to old yearbook and city photos, there used to be many. Finally, I tried—as I rode the Grand River bus home from school each day—to figure out why Detroit, the home of the American auto industry, looked increasingly abandoned and rundown.

When I went away to college, this adolescent puzzling soon turned into a scholarly inquiry. In my junior year, I came across the book Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, by Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, which directly shaped how I thought about the Motor City. This book chronicled numerous dramatic events that had taken place in Detroit and its auto plants during the 1960s and 1970s, and it immediately seemed to me that these events held the key to understanding the city’s present. Thanks to this treasure, I went to graduate school knowing exactly what I wanted to study and write about: Detroit and its labor movement after World War II.

In the course of writing this book, I have leaned on many people, and I am happy now to be able to give them the public acknowledgment that they each deserve. The first person I want to thank for encouraging my work is Terrence McDonald at the University of Michigan. This project began with him and has unfolded with his initial words of advice in mind. I also want to thank Carol Karlson at the University of Michigan for her early support of my work. Scholars Nell Irvin Painter, Gary Gerstle, Liz Lunbeck, and Sean Wilentz of Princeton University were also most helpful and inspiring to me during my years in graduate school and I want to thank them most sincerely.

As I began to research and write my dissertation, I had the good fortune to meet Detroit attorney Ronald Glotta, as well as Walter P. Reuther Library archivists Carrolyn Davis, Mike Smith, Bill LeFevre, Louis Jones, Pat Bartkowski, Tom Featherstone, and Mary Wallace. Ron Glotta graciously shared his time and his voluminous collection of documents about James Johnson Jr., and because my many attempts to locate Johnson himself failed these sources proved invaluable. Likewise the Reuther librarians’ wide knowledge of Detroit’s archival collections was a godsend.

I am deeply indebted to a number of my fellow historians who have commented on, and encouraged, my work as it has evolved. I am particularly grateful to Robin D. G. Kelley, Nelson Lichtenstein, Darlene Clark Hine, David Colburn, Robert Self and David Farber. I am also thankful that there were other historians who had become as fascinated with the past and present of the Motor City as I had. Thanks to the dynamic works of Kevin Boyle, Tom Sugrue, Suzanne Smith, Karen Miller, David Riddle, and David Freund, I became even more convinced that Detroit is worth thinking about. This belief was furthered by the enthusiasm of several undergraduate students who participated in various “history of Detroit” research seminars that my colleague Charlie Bright, or I offered at the University of Michigan between 1994 and 1997. Thanks to these students’ energetic digging in local Motor City archives, many of the stories told in my book are far more interesting and colorful than they otherwise would have been. I particularly want to acknowledge University of Michigan students Amy Carroll, Ellen Schweitzer, Sean Gilbert, Tim Sabota, Greg Parker, John Bauman, Amy Dinges, Charlie Walker, Devon Perez, Rachel Paster, Mike Soules, Katherine Brady, and Brian Dunn. Likewise I want to thank scholar Robert Mast. The interviews he conducted in Detroit Lives were invaluable to my work and to the history of the city itself.

The most recent chapter in my book-writing saga unfolded at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where I now teach. Moving from Detroit to Charlotte was difficult, but my colleagues have made life here wonderful. I especially want to thank Donna Gabaccia, Cindy Kierner, and David Goldfield, as well as John Smail and my previous UNCC colleagues Lisa Lindsay and Paul Betts, for their support and friendship. I also thank the UNCC administration for awarding me several research grants, which allowed me much-needed resources to finish the book. And speaking of finishing the book, sincere thanks to Cornell University Press and to Sheri Englund in particular for believing in this project and putting so much energy into it.

I would also like to thank several key people in my personal life for their amazing support as I wrote this book. My forever-friend Tamara Smith spent many hours helping me to get my text into type and helping me to meet deadlines ever since this project first began. My friend Eric Beste was a sounding board for this project since the early 1980s. And my friends Marcus Daniel and Patricia Schechter have always been there to listen as well.

To Agnes Spitzer Greig, and to her husband, Robert Greig, I must give special thanks. Robert, you are a saint to have put up with me sighing, swearing, pacing, and fretting at your breakfast nook table summer after summer as I tried to make my dissertation into a book. Agnes, you are my sanity, my deepest confidante, and, of course, my lifelong scrabble/yahtzee/cards/musing-about-life partner. Without the long, late talks, I would never have been able to stick to this. I am so grateful for your wisdom, loyalty, wit, and understanding.

The love and support of my in-laws and family has been equally invaluable to me while completing this book. Daniel and Betsey Wells, as well as my sister-in-law, Caroline Wells, have always encouraged me, stood by me, and believed in me. I thank them for this as well as for welcoming me and my children into their family so lovingly and willingly. They have taught me just how kind and generous the human spirit really can be. My own parents, Frank Wilson Thompson and Ann Curry Thompson, are equally deserving of my gratitude. Their curiosity about the world and anger at injustice have formed the core of who I am and have inspired this book. Thanks to their faith that wrongs can be righted, I have learned to see the past as well as the future in new ways. From my sister, Saskia LoRee Thompson, I have learned that a commitment to Detroit, and to any inner city for that matter, goes deeper than mere loyalty to a locale. Saskia’s dedication to improving cities and the lives of inner-city residents is based on her larger faith that unpopular causes are worth fighting for. For that, and giving me a beautiful niece, Isabel LaBarrie Thompson, I am so thankful that she is my sister.

There are four more people that I want to acknowledge in these pages: my sons, Dillon Thompson Erb and Wilder Thompson Erb, my new daughter Ava Thompson Wells, and my husband, Jonathan Daniel Wells. Dillon, I began this project when you were only five months old, and I knew then that you would have to endure a years-long journey with me as I found my way as a parent and historian. In many respects, you and I have grown up together, and you, more than anyone, can appreciate that the saga of writing this book is finally over. I love you; I am so proud of the young adult you have become; and I promise to stand by you as your life journeys unfold. Wilder, you, too, have weathered many of my book-writing years with patience and love. I want you to know that having your sweet presence around me is what has made these difficult years most wonderful as well. I love you; I am so proud of you; and I can’t wait to help you become the world’s first major league baseball player archaeologist! Ava, having you arrive (unexpectedly!) right as I was completing this book was the most wonderful and magical gift I could ever have received. Jon, you also are a gift that I will never take for granted. Your love and support of me, Dillon, and Wilder is ever-present and unqualified. Your daily words, notes, help, companionship, and laughter have been vital to me and to them. I want to thank you for these things, as well as for bringing Ava into the world with me and for willingly taking on more than your fair share of the parental work and responsibility, so that I could finish this book. As a fellow historian and an incredible person, I admire you, lean on you, and love you. Thank you.