When Detroit First Started to Stall

The experts at Detroit’s Wayne State University saw the white exodus coming first. In February 1963 they predicted that Detroit’s population, then 1.6 million, would fall by a quarter in just seven years. The Detroit Free Press buried the story inside.

And why not? In early ’63, Detroit was booming, churning out 7 million cars a year. Ford’s blockbuster Mustang was taking shape in Dearborn, Mich. Motown was tuning up for a decade of hits. What could slow Detroit down?

The answer, revealed in David Maraniss’s elegantly written Once in a Great City, is a mix of good intentions, overconfidence and what the author calls “the American dilemma of race.” Maraniss carefully confines his story to an 18-month period between October 1962 and May 1964 when giants like Walter Reuther, Henry Ford II, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Berry Gordy all gather onstage, backed by a colorful collection of local mobsters, saloon keepers and pro football players. Fifty years later, Motor City’s fall is summed up by a diagram in the front of the book, reminding readers where to find Detroit on a map.

–MICHAEL DUFFY