Half of Michigan Blacks Lose Local Power in Detroit Takeover

[Purveyor]

By Mark Niquette and Chris Christoff - Mar 15, 2013
When emergency manager Kevyn Orr arrives in near-bankrupt Detroit, almost half of Michigan’s black population will live under the rule of state overseers with little say in the governments nearest them.

In cities run by governors’ appointees after decades of decline, Michiganders whose ancestors fled the segregated South for factory jobs and the right to vote weigh the abstract value of autonomy versus the palpable comfort of a stable community.

Joe Harris, 69, embodies the conflict. His family left Alabama in the 1930s after the Ku Klux Klan threatened an uncle for refusing to let a white man cut in a line. Eight decades later, the longtime government auditor unilaterally ran Benton Harbor, Michigan, where the state installed him after the majority-black city failed to free itself from fiscal distress.

“I understand their frustration with this concept of, ‘Well, you’re taking away our democratic rights,’” Harris said. “But what’s the alternative, especially in Detroit?”

Governor Rick Snyder, a white Republican, yesterday named Orr, an African-American bankruptcy lawyer from Washington, as Detroit’s emergency manager. The city is 82 percent black with a history of racial migration and strife.

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/half-of-michigan-s-blacks-lose-local-control-in-detroit-takeover.html

[Old Union Guy]

1. How much power did they have *before* the takeover?

Precious little, I'd say.