Restoring the Heart

Despite its long history of rancorous race relations, Detroit in recent years has been one of the few big Northern cities to escape large-scale Negro rioting. The distinction was not won by accident -- unless that accident is Jerome Cavanagh, the outsider who in 1961 toppled an arteriosclerotic regime to become Detroit's nonpartisan mayor.

Last week, with support from every major element in the city, Cavanagh, 37, won an overwhelming primary victory that all but assures his re-election in November.

Cavanagh was helped into office initially by Detroit's half million Negroes, who were bitterly resentful of shoddy treatment by previous administrations and rough handling by a virtually all-white police force. His first step as mayor was to make a humanitarian Michigan Supreme Court Justice his police commissioner. The city began hiring and promoting more Negro police, integrated two-man patrol cars for the first time; and the police commissioner supervised meetings with Negro groups to discuss police problems. Cavanagh appointed a Negro city controller, highest appointive office ever held by a Negro in Detroit. In 1963, 20 years to the day after the Detroit race riot that cost 34 lives, the mayor led a Freedom March of 150,000 Negroes and whites down Woodward Ave., the city's main thoroughfare.

Industry's Return. Cavanagh showed equal vigor and imagination in tackling Detroit's other problems, which were legion. To pump revenues into the nearly bankrupt city treasury, he introduced a 1% income tax that adds $42 million annually to city revenues. With added funds generated by the current auto boom, Cavanagh has wiped out the $34.5 million deficit he inherited, put the city budget in the black, cut property taxes, and halved a tax on industrial machinery.

Tax reductions and some ardent wooing of company executives by Cavanagh have stemmed the flight of industry from Detroit, brought a new Chrysler foundry, expansion of G.M.'s Cadillac and Ternstedt facilities, new plants for Budd Co. and Lear Jet Corp.--Detroit's first large-scale industrial construction in 35 years.

Help for Hotels. The young mayor, a lawyer who had never held political office before 1961, has proved prodigiously skillful at extracting federal money to help revitalize his city. With some $70 million he has brought home from Washington so far, Detroit has resurfaced many of its streets, built a $1,800,000 addition to its art museum, financed the nation's first major anti-poverty campaign and job retraining programs. Federal Area Redevelopment Act funds were even used to help private entrepreneurs build a brand-new 25-story Pontchartrain Hotel and one of three other high-rise hotels (the city's first since the 1920s) now under construction.

To stimulate use of the city's huge and handsome new convention hall, which had been languishing because of prohibitive fees and Neanderthal union practices, Cavanagh threatened to replace union labor in the center with city employees. The unions got into line. As a result, the city's convention business has doubled, from $13 million to $26 million annually, in five years.

Population Boom. The heart of the city, half dead in 1961, is pulsing again with new office buildings and hotels and the return of many suburbanites to new luxury apartments. A characteristic Cavanagh touch has been to brighten the city with flower beds and sidewalk flower pots. "I'm kind of a nut about flowers," he admits. "If you can bring a little beauty into the city, I think you should."

Detroit's new heart and good looks have, in turn, begun to bring people back into the city. Population dropped from 1,800,000 to 1,600,000 between 1950 and 1960, has since increased by 69,000. Naturally, Jerry Cavanagh has helped. Last June his wife gave birth to their eighth child.

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