Detroit: Labor Gains

Bald Frank FitzGerald, candidate of organized labor and of the Negro, came up from nowhere to win Detroit's non-partisan primary right under the suntanned nose of Mayor Edward J. Jeffries Jr. (TIME, Oct. 18). Then the fight grew hot. FitzGerald hammered that Jeffries' campaign was "based on race and class prejudice." Jeffries jabbed at FitzGerald's inexperience in municipal affairs.

Black & White. Negro groups, backing FitzGerald, set up a Vote Mobilization Headquarters in Paradise Valley, Detroit's Harlem. C.I.O., which spent $30,000 for FitzGerald in the primary campaign, tossed in almost as much again. But the city's three newspapers were solidly for Jeffries.

A wildly alarmed chain of neighborhood weeklies declared that Communists were trying to seize Detroit's soot-blackened city hall, shrilled: "If the true picture could be told, patriots would not sleep nights." Handfuls of small cards fluttered one day into downtown streets. Sample: "FitzGerald Says the Negroes Need Protection! Protection Against Whom? What do YOU Think?"

Gradually Jeffries' hammering, six-speeches-a-night campaign told against FitzGerald's infrequent and stumble-tongue appearances. On a bright, pleasant election day, 383,000 Detroiters went to the polls, gave victory to Jeffries by almost 32,000.

Then-&-Now. Seeing its man kayoed after he was so far ahead on points was a bitter dose to Paradise Valley Negroes. But labor's political strategists took heart. True, they had lost. But the last time they took an important hand in a Detroit mayoralty race they lost overwhelmingly, 260,95740-154,050. This time, in partnership with the Negroes, labor had furnished Detroit its first real mayoral battle in 20 years.

Meanwhile, for the next two years, Detroit would have a mayor who had been generally friendly to labor and who, in the first election slugfest of his career, had doubtless learned much about his own shortcomings.

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