David Maraniss, a native Detroiter, associate editor at the Washington Post and Pulitzer Prize winner, talks about his recently released book: "Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story," which focuses on Detroit in the year 1963, plus a few months in 1962 and 1964.
He recently sat down with Jeffrey Brown of the PBS NewsHour. Here are excerpts from the seven-minute interview:
Brown: Motown famously invented itself and then many wonderful and famous musicians.
Maraniss: Totally, yes, which is one of the key threads of the book, Berry Gordy and his family.
I give a lot of due to his sisters actually. The whole Gordy family created Motown. And all of this local talent, it’s just stunning to think about Smokey Robinson Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, the Supremes, Martha Reeves, Mary Wells. All these great musicians grew up near each other, and Aretha Franklin, who wasn’t Motown, but was there.
Brown: You’re writing saying that the seeds of the problems to come were already there.
Maraniss: One of the important things to understand is, when people think about the decay of Detroit, a lot of people tend to blame it on three things, the riots in 1967, the municipal corruption that followed, and the pension problems that ensued.
But you could see the structural problems before that. In 1963, some great sociologists at Wayne State predicted exactly what was going to happen. Productive people are going to leave the city. It was a perfect storm of racial problems, housing unfairness, urban renewal, and the structural problem of a one-company town. And all of that together just created this problem that could see in 1963.
Brown: Did it happen quickly?
Maraniss: No, it didn’t. It happened over a decade, more people leaving every year, the city’s structure changing, obviously, the auto industry expanding all over the world and leaving Detroit behind.
Some very crucial decisions were happening then, but it took decades for the full decay of Detroit and now finally perhaps its renaissance.
Brown: I read that. . . Eminem somehow inspired the book. Explain.
Maraniss: Yes, it’s a very odd thing.
I was born in Detroit, because I’m a Green Bay Packers fan because I have spent most of my time in Wisconsin.
Brown: OK. I’m not sure I will ask you to explain that, how that worked.
Maraniss: The 2011 Super Bowl, Packers are playing, I’m watching the game in New York City at a bar.
And, at halftime, I’m not paying too much attention, until on the screen I see a commercial that has the Detroit Freeway sign, and then this hypnotic beat starts, and you see Diego Rivera Detroit industry mural and the Joe Louis Fist, and Eminem getting out of the car, walking into the Fox Theatre, and say, this is the Motor City. This is what we do.
I teared up. Why? It’s just a commercial. As my wife told me very clearly, you know, Detroit is dying, they’re selling cars, and you’re getting emotional.
But that struck a chord with me about Detroit in a very powerful way. Made me think, I don’t want to buy a Chrysler, but I do want to write about the city from which I came, the city of my birth, and what it gave America.
