Coleman Young
Coleman Young (Coleman Alexander Young) was born on Friday, May 24, 1918 in Tuscaloosa and he was a famous politician from United States.
His family moved to Detroit in 1923, where he graduated from Eastern High School in 1935. He worked for Ford Motor Company, which soon blacklisted him for involvement in labor and civil rights activism. He later worked for the United States Postal Service, where with his brother George started the Postal Workers union. George later went on to become Postmaster for this same facility, which handles over ten million pieces of mail each year. During the second World War, Young served in the 477th Medium-Bomber Group (Tuskegee Airmen) of the United States Army Air Forces as a bombardier and navigator. As a lieutenant in the 477th, he played a role in the Freeman Field Mutiny in which 162 African-American officers were arrested for resisting segregation at a base near Seymour, Indiana in 1945.
Young's involvement in progressive and radical organizations including the Communist Party, the Progressive Party, the AFL-CIO, and the National Negro Labor Council made him powerful enemies, including the FBI and HUAC, where he refused to testify. He protested segregation in the Army and racial discrimination in the UAW. In 1948 Young supported Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace, which he later viewed as a major mistake.
In 1960, he was elected as a delegate to help draft a new state constitution for Michigan. In 1964 he won election to the Michigan State Senate, where his most significant legislation was a law requiring arbitration in disputes between public-sector unions and municipalities.
Young fathered a child, whose mother, Annivory Calvert, gave him the alias Joel Loving at birth, for security reasons. Young set up a private Roman Catholic Baptismal Ceremony when his son was 2 months old and gave the child his name on sequestered Roman Catholic Baptismal records. Young went to court when his son was age 13 and had his birth certificate changed to match the baptismal record.
His son, Coleman A. Young II, is currently a State Senator in Michigan's 1st State Senate district and was previously a State Representative in Michigan's 4th State Representative district; the same district where Young lived as Mayor and served as State Senator. Though Young had publicly denied the child as being his, he later admitted the paternity, after DNA tests linked the boy to the mayor following a paternity lawsuit filed by Calvert. A known heavy smoker, Young died from emphysema in 1997. Upon learning of Young's death former President Jimmy Carter called Young "one of the greatest mayors our country has known."
Young himself expressed his belief that reform of the Police Department stood as one of his greatest accomplishments. He implemented broad affirmative action programs that lead to racial integration, and created a network of Neighborhood City Halls and Police Mini Stations. Young used the relationship established by community policing to mobilize large civilian patrols to address the incidents of Devil's Night arson that had come to plague the city each year. These patrols have been continued by succeeding administrations and have mobilized as many as 30,000 citizens in a single year in an effort to forestall seasonal arson.
