Albert Cobo

Albert Cobo began his career as Detroit’s Mayor in 1949 after defeating Liberal Common Council member George Edwards. Edwards, an activist for the United Automobile Workers (UAW), public housing administrator and democratic proponent of the New Deal represented Cobo’s antithesis. Cobo embodied a Republican, corporate executive, real estate investor who adamantly focused his campaign on race and public housing.[5] Cobo, a fiscal conservative, translated his past career as a utility company executive into politics through a strong mistrust of government, economic intervention and deep confidence in the unhindered operation of a free market. While his opponent George Edwards openly supported the provision of public housing for families in any neighborhood of Detroit, Cobo adamantly opposed so called “Negro invasions” thought to occur through public housing [6] White neighborhood improvement associations strongly endorsed Cobo, motivated by the threat of public housing, allowing him to sweep largely white precincts in the Northeast and Northwest sides. Cobo won the election in a Democratic city and dominated union voters.[6] He was elected twice more, in 1951 and 1953 (the latter time for a four year term).[1]

Cobo’s election facilitated the successful prominence of civic associations and destruction and vicious vilification of public housing. Once elected, Cobo pledged “it will not be the purpose of the administration to scatter public housing projects throughout the city, just because funds may be forthcoming from the Federal Government. I WILL NOT APPROVE Federal Housing Projects in the outlying single home areas.”[7] Cobo justified his staunch opposition by rationalizing it as protecting the rights and consideration of people that move and invest in single-family areas.[8] Twelve proposals for public housing in Detroit were under consideration when Cobo was elected mayor, and he adamantly opposed the construction of all but four sites—all in city centers with a large black population.[6] By slowing and stopping the construction process for public housing and placing single-family home developer Harry J. Durbin in charge of the Detroit Housing Commission, Cobo significantly limited the housing options for poor families in 1950s Detroit.[6] Accordingly, Cobo once said in a radio interview, "The people who pay taxes want better services for their money", touting as justification for his malicious actions that private property owners, and not public housing benefactors, were the ones primarily paying the city taxes.[9] Cobo’s stance on public housing, which perpetuated a cycle of racist oppression, were applauded by real estate groups, Roman Ceglowski (president of the Detroit Civic League), and Orville Tengalia (president of the Southwest Detroit Improvement League). Only 8,155 public housing units were constructed between 1937 and 1955. Jeffries, Brewseter, and Douglass Homes, high-density complexes constructed in the inner city, represented the three largest projects. On a ranking of largest cities based on their ratio of low-rent starts to housing starts Detroit was ranked 18th out of 25.[6] Cobo’s staunch opposition to public projects in outlying sites coupled with his support from public housing opponents rendered Detroit’s public housing transient, unattainable, and ultimately annihilated. Cobo’s successful dismantling of public housing programs instilled in Ralph Smith, president of the Michigan Council of Civic Associations, confidence that “minority pressure groups” would “collapse.”[10][6] Cobo's career successfully condemned and prevented government institutions' attempt to remedy their past historically racist housing oppression through public projects, therefore leading to the continuation of vicious cycles of violent oppression.

During office, Cobo continually encouraged and enhanced his reputation as sympathetic to racially fueled antipathy towards the African American housing movement and mobility. In 1950, Roy E. LaVigne, director of Courville District Improvement Association, implored city officials, to no avail, to buy back houses bought by African Americans in white neighborhoods. In 1952 Marx Street residents sent petitions to Detroits Common Council illegally asking for the city to “exclude Negros” from the area. Although prevented legally from aiding their oppressive requests, Cobo remained sympathetic to their racist pleads and continued receiving such letters.[11]

Cobo facilitated private business domination while perpetuating historic disparity of impoverished minorities by infecting city positions with ineffective racist novices or self-serving corporate executives. Cobo’s uncompromising, racist prerogatives outraged James Inglis, head of the Detroit Housing Commission under Mayors Jeffries and Van Antwerp, to the point of resignation. Cobo utilized this resignation to continue his restructuring of the housing’s official roster to largely contain members of the real estate and construction industry. Cobo appointed Harry J. Durbin, former president of the National Association of Home Builders and successful developer, as Inglis replacement along with Walter Gessell, a real estate giant, and Georgo Isabell, a property manager.[10][6] Cobo further enforced the interest of private industry and building trades on public city housing policy with two members of the Housing Commission, Ed Thal and Finlay C. Allan, also being officers of the Detroit Building Trades Council of the American Federation of Labor.[12] In 1951, Cobo appointed Alan E. MacNichol, president of the Federated Civic Association of Northwest Detroit, to the City Plan Commission. Cobo continued enhancing private influence through an advisory committee that consulted on city zoning and consisted of Ross Christile of Gratiot from Chalmers Property Owners Association and Alan C. Laird of the Park Drive-Ravendale Improvement Association.[13] Cobo vigorously opposed public housing because he opposed subsidies for poor people in favor of more private developer’s ownership of property.[6]

Arguably, Cobo’s most controversial action represented the appointment of John Laub as head of Commission of Community Relations (CCR). The Detroit Common Council authorized restructuring of the Mayor’s Interracial Committee (MIC) into the CCR. The restructuring occurred in response to MIC’s vilification by white Detroiters for its advocacy for civil rights and desegregation of public housing and opposition to restrictive covenants and discrimination. Laub had no qualifications since he was the president of pro-Cobo Northwest Civic Federation and a highschool coach and counselor. Cobo rejected the highly regarded Beulah Whitby, because of her opposition to segregated public housing, and John Field, the director of Toledo Human Relations Board.[14][6] Each of Cobo’s appointments lacked rigorous passion and attention to preventing further disparagement of Detroit’s vulnerable minorities and the destruction of vicious racial tensions. Instead they perpetuated capitalistic exploitation of Detroit’s impoverished in order to further private institutional enrichment.

A major aspect of Cobo's campaign and subsequent terms in office involved urban renewal and reinvention of an aging city. Cobo continued his destructive practices through adamant support of urban renewal projects like the Civic Center, Medical Center and apartment projects in the predominantly Black inner city for middle-income families.

Cobo’s destruction of the Schoolcraft Gardens Cooperative on Detroit’s far Northwest Side represented a racially fueled and crushing blow to improving housing equality. The project represented a privately funded and well-publicized effort to design a model for “workers” housing in spacious modern townhouses. This construction contrasted the mute, sterile towers of other public housing projects and was backed by the UAW who resisted pressure from community groups to restrict the development to whites. The project’s advocates viewed its fruition as the “[i]deal testing ground to see whether whites and Negroes could live side by side without difficulties.”[15] However, those opposed vocally resisted. William Louks, on behalf of Detroit Real Estate Board believed that “proponents of the Schoolcraft Gardens sought to inject the century-worn strategy of pitting class against class or race against class or race and to promote the socialistic theory of cooperative society.”[6] Floy McGriff initiated a year long campaign against the project in Northwest Neighborhoods through newspaper articles touting the project as a “socialistic” challenge to the “vested rights” of homeowners.[16][6] The Tel-Craft Association, led by Northwest Detroit’s Homeowners Association sent over 10,000 postcards of protest to city officials while 12 fundamentalist Christian ministers signed resolutions to condemn the project.[17][6] These acts did not fall on deaf ears as Cobo agreed with the opposition and vetoed City Council’s authorization of zoning changes to begin construction. Cobo’s swift destruction of Schoolcraft Gardens' private attempt to integrate the city showcased his visceral opposition and the beginning of a decade long struggle against liberal advocacy for public housing and asserted his emphasis on protecting “homeowner’s rights.”

Cobo also heavily pushed for the expansion of the expressway system; many of his backers were wealthy suburbanites, who wanted a faster, easier commute into the city.