I Want To Write For History, Not

Well, There Were Several Things. One Was That The Industry Itself Built In Detroit Was Abandoning The City - Taking Factories Elsewhere, The Corporate Headquarters Elsewhere.

Detroit Was An Exaggeration Of What Was Going On Across The Country. You Could See The Divisions, Even Within The Civil Rights Movement Of That Period. At The Same Time That Martin Luther King Was Talking About His Dream, Malcolm X Gave His Most Famous Address In Detroit During That Same Period, "the Message To The Grass Roots," Dismissing The Notion Of Integration.

It Was So Crucial To The Civil Rights Movement That On June 23, 1963, Martin Luther King Came To Town, Walked Down Woodward Avenue With More Than 100,000 People And Delivered The First Major Public Iteration Of His "i Have A Dream" Speech, Two Months Before He Did It In Washington.

I Look For Two Things When I Am About To Launch Into A Book. First, There Has To Be A Dramatic Arc To The Story Itself That Will Carry Me, And The Reader, From Beginning To End. Second, The Story Has To Weave Through Larger Themes That Can Illuminate The World Of The Subject.

And That John F. Kennedy Uttered The First Variation Of "ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You" In Detroit On Labor Day In 1960. So Detroit Was Really Central To Democratic Politics United States. Every Democratic Candidate Would Start Their Fall Campaigns In Cadillac Square.