Jerome Patrick Cavanagh (June 16, 1928 – November 27, 1979) was an American politician who served as the
mayor
In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well a ...
of
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
from 1962 to 1970. Initially seen as another
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...
, his reputation was doomed by the
1967 riots 1967 riots may refer to:
* Long, hot summer of 1967, marked by race riots and civil disorder throughout the United States
** Avondale riots of 1967, June 12–18, Cincinnati, Ohio
** Buffalo riot of 1967, June 27–July 1, Buffalo, New York
** 1 ...
. He was the first mayor to reside at
Manoogian Mansion
The Manoogian Mansion is the official residence of the Mayor of Detroit, Michigan. It is located at 9240 Dwight Street in the Berry Subdivision Historic District, on the city's east side, backing up to the Detroit River.
History
The mansion was b ...
, donated to the city by the industrial baron
Alex Manoogian
Alexander Manoogian ( hy, Ալեք Մանուկեան; June 28, 1901 – July 10, 1996) was an Armenian-American industrial engineer, businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist who spent most of his career in Detroit, Michigan. He was the foun ...
.
Early life and family
Jerome P. Cavanagh was born on June 16, 1928, in Detroit, the son of Mary Irene (Timmins) and Sylvester J. Cavanaugh, a
boilermaker
A boilermaker is a tradesperson who fabricates steel, iron, or copper into boilers and other large containers intended to hold hot gas or liquid, as well as maintains and repairs boilers and boiler systems.Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Dep ...
at
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...
.
He attended the
University of Detroit
The University of Detroit Mercy is a private Roman Catholic university in Detroit, Michigan. It is sponsored by both the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and the Sisters of Mercy. The university was founded in 1877 and is the largest Catholic universi ...
, earning an undergraduate degree in 1950 and a law degree in 1954, and practiced law in Detroit after graduation.
He was active in
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to:
*Democratic Party (United States)
Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to:
Active parties Africa
*Botswana Democratic Party
*Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea
*Gabonese Democratic Party
*Demo ...
politics while attending school, and afterward served in low-level appointed positions as an administrative assistant at the
Michigan State Fair
The Michigan State Fair is an annual event originally held from 1849 to 2009 in Detroit, the state's largest city. In 2009 the governor declined to fund it because of other priorities.
Because agriculture still has a major place in the Michigan ec ...
Authority and as a member of the Metropolitan Airport Board of Zoning Appeals.
Cavanagh was a
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
. He is the brother of Mike Cavanagh, a former Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court (1983–2014) and father of eight children, among whom are Mark Jerome Cavanagh, since 1989 a judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals, David Peter Cavanagh and Christopher Francis Cavanagh (both former Wayne County Commissioners), and
Phil Cavanagh
Phil Cavanagh is an American politician from Michigan. Cavanagh is a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives from the 10th District (previously the 17th District before redistricting). He is the son of Jerome Cavanagh, who was May ...
(a former member of the
Michigan House of Representatives
The Michigan House of Representatives is the lower house of the Michigan Legislature. There are 110 members, each of whom is elected from constituencies having approximately 77,000 to 91,000 residents, based on population figures from the 2010 ...
).
1961 mayoral campaign
In his first campaign ever, the 33-year-old Cavanagh entered the
1961 Detroit mayoral race, one of eleven candidates in the nonpartisan primary opposing incumbent
Louis Miriani
Louis C. Miriani (January 1, 1897 – October 18, 1987) was an American politician who served as the mayor of Detroit, Michigan, from 1957 to 1962. To date, he remains the most recent Republican to serve as Detroit's mayor.
Biography
Miriani g ...
.
None of these candidates was seen as serious opposition to Miriani, who had an enormous amount of institutional support and had easily won the mayoral race four years earlier.
Cavanagh ran second to Miriani in the primary, earning a slot in the general election, but received less than half the primary votes Miriani did.
However, Cavanagh campaigned relentlessly, criticizing Miriani's handling of Detroit's financial affairs and race relations with the city's
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
community.
Many in the black community believed Miriani condoned police brutality.
On election day, black voters turned out in force, and Cavanagh stunned political observers by defeating the incumbent Miriani.
Mayoralty
Cavanagh got off to a popular start as mayor, appointing a reformer to be chief of
police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...
and implementing an
affirmative action program for most city agencies.
Unlike
Richard J. Daley
Richard Joseph Daley (May 15, 1902 – December 20, 1976) was an American politician who served as the Mayor of Chicago from 1955 and the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party Central Committee from 1953 until his death. He has been cal ...
, who resisted forced implementation of the
American civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United ...
, Jerry Cavanagh welcomed
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
to Detroit, and marched with him in June 1963 down Woodward Avenue in the 100,000 strong
Detroit Walk to Freedom
The Walk to Freedom was a mass march during the Civil Rights Movement on June 23, 1963 in Detroit, Michigan. It drew crowds of an estimated 125,000 or more and was known as "the largest civil rights demonstration in the nation's history" up to ...
.
Cavanagh was successful in receiving money from the U.S. federal government through the
Model Cities Program
The Model Cities Program was an element of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty. The concept was presented by labor leader Walter Reuther to President Johnson in an off-the-record White House meeting on May 20, 1965. In ...
.
New skyscrapers were built downtown. The Model Cities Program was a key component of President
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
's
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The term was first coined during a 1964 commencement address by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the University ...
and War on Poverty. Begun in 1966, it operated five-year-long experiments in 150 cities to develop new antipoverty programs and alternative forms of municipal government. The ambitious federal urban aid program succeeded in fostering a new generation of mostly black urban leaders. Detroit was one of the largest Model Cities projects. Mayor Cavanagh was the only elected official to serve on Johnson's task force. Detroit received widespread acclaim for its leadership in the program, which used $490 million to try to turn a nine-square-mile section of the city (with 134,000 inhabitants) into a model city. The city's political and business elite, and city planners, along with the black middle class, wanted federal funding to assist the economic growth of the entire city. They sought to protect the central business district property values from nearby slums and to construct new revenue-generating structures. However local community organizers and civil rights activists rallied poor residents in opposition to these plans. They said federal renewal funding should be used to replace deteriorating housing stock, whether with new public housing or low-cost housing built by private developers. The Model City program was terminated in Detroit and nationwide in 1974 after major race riots in most of its target cities.
Well-informed observers believed that Detroit had extinguished the embers of resentment left over from the
1943 Detroit Race Riot.
For example,
''Fortune'' magazine commented:
Nor was Detroit doing so badly economically. The ''
National Observer'' commented:
In the face of this optimism, Cavanagh was reelected overwhelmingly in 1965.
In 1966, Cavanagh was elected president of both the
United States Conference of Mayors
The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) is the official non-partisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. The cities are each represented by their mayors or other chief elected officials. The organization was founded i ...
and the
National League of Cities
The National League of Cities (NLC) is an advocacy organization in the United States that represents the country's 19,495 cities, towns, and villages along with 49 state municipal leagues. Created in 1924, it has evolved into a leading membership ...
, the only mayor to hold both posts at the same time.
He served as president of the United States Conference of Mayors until the following year.
1967 riots
However, deeper problems existed under the surface. After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the
automobile
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with Wheel, wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, pe ...
industry, requiring more lateral space than was available in a city, and desiring to avoid city taxes, decentralized its operations. As with other cities, Detroiters were leaving Detroit for its suburbs by the thousands by 1967. Some 22,000 residents, mostly white, moved to the suburbs in 1966 alone, following new auto plants and new housing, or using the newly constructed Interstate system to commute into Detroit.
Detroit faced serious financial trouble. Cavanagh had inherited a $28 million budget gap in 1962. To close the gap, and to pay for the new programs he wanted to implement, Cavanagh had pushed through the legislature
income
Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. For ...
and
commuter tax
A commuter tax is a tax (generally on either income or wages) levied upon persons who work, but do not live, in a particular jurisdiction. The argument for a commuter tax is that it pays for public services, such as police, fire, and sanitation, re ...
es for Detroit, but these proved unpopular with residents and businesses.
On July 23, 1967, a police attempt to break up an illegal party escalated into what would be known as the
12th Street Riot
The 1967 Detroit Riot, also known as the 12th Street Riot or Detroit Rebellion, was the bloodiest of the urban riots in the United States during the "Long, hot summer of 1967". Composed mainly of confrontations between Black residents and the De ...
. Feeling a large police presence would make things worse, Cavanagh acted slowly to stop the riots. Late Sunday afternoon, Cavanaugh and city officials met at the 10th precinct with black community leaders and neighborhood activists. When asked why it took so long to call in the guard, Cavanaugh replied "because they're all white. Were leery about that." The riots lasted for five days, killed 43 people, made over 5,000 people homeless, and required two divisions of federal paratroopers to be put down; they were the worst of the four hundred or so riots that American cities experienced in the 1960s. Cavanagh himself had to admit in July 1967, "Today we stand amidst the ashes of our hopes. We hoped against hope that what we had been doing was enough to prevent a riot. It was not enough."
The prior summer in 1966, a potential riot that began on Kercheval Street on the east side of Detroit, was successfully prevented at its inception. This, in addition to the generally accepted view that Detroit and its reputation as a “Model City," led to the belief that Detroit might not suffer the same race-related troubles many other cities had. Thus, 1967 came as a complete surprise and shock to Cavanagh and many other city officials. In addition, Cavanagh was procedurally limited in his ability to control the riots as it was the role of Governor George Romney to ask for Federal assistance once it appeared local resources might not be sufficient. However, Romney was seen as a potential Republican presidential opponent of President Lyndon Johnson, and there is considerable evidence that the delay by Johnson in sending troops was partly based on an effort to stymie Romney. When troops were finally called in, it was too late. Cavanagh believed that a prompt federal response may very well have greatly reduced the severity of the riots.
Cavanagh chose not to run for reelection in 1969.
Later career
The latter part of Cavanagh's second term was also difficult for him personally, in addition to the pressure from the aftermath of the riots. Cavanagh ran for the
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and pow ...
in 1966 but lost in the Democratic primary to former governor
G. Mennen Williams
Gerhard Mennen "Soapy" Williams (February 23, 1911 – February 2, 1988) was an American politician who served as the List of governors of Michigan, 41st governor of Michigan, elected in 1948 and serving six two-year terms in office. He lat ...
.
In July 1967, Cavanagh's wife Mary Helen filed for separation, and the couple split the custody of their eight children.
In October, Cavanagh counter-sued,
and in 1968 the couple went through a contentious and public divorce.
After Cavanagh left office, he returned to his private law practice in Detroit and was also one of the first adjunct professors at the newly created Public Policy Department (later renamed The Gerald Ford Public Policy Institute) at the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
.
In 1974, Cavanagh again ran for office, this time for Governor, but lost in the primary election to Democrat
Sander Levin
Sander Martin Levin (born September 6, 1931) is an American politician who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 2019, representing (numbered as the from 1983 to 1993 and as the from 1993 to 2013). Levin, a member o ...
, who later lost in the general election to Republican
William Milliken
William Grawn Milliken (March 26, 1922 – October 18, 2019) was an American businessman and politician who served as the 44th governor of Michigan. A member of the Republican Party, he is the longest-serving governor in Michigan history, serv ...
.
It was Cavanagh's last attempt at political office.
Cavanagh died of a
heart attack
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may tr ...
on November 27, 1979, at St. Joseph Hospital in
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is a city in Kentucky, United States that is the county seat of Fayette County, Kentucky, Fayette County. By population, it is the List of cities in Kentucky, second-largest city in Kentucky and List of United States cities by popul ...
, while visiting a client in that city. He was 51 years old. He is buried in Mt. Elliott Cemetery in Detroit.
References
Further reading
Jerome Cavanagh Personal Papersat the
Walter P. Reuther Library
The Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, located on the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, contains millions of primary source documents related to the labor history of the United States, urban affai ...
in Detroit. This collection includes over 300 linear feet of correspondence, reports, studies, speeches, minutes, and other materials of the mayor's office and commissions and departments of the city.
* Fine, Sidney. ''Violence in the Model City: The Cavanaugh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967'' (1989)
* Turrini, Joseph. "Phooie on Louie: African American Detroit and the Election of Jerry Cavanagh", ''Michigan History,'' Nov./Dec. 1999
online
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cavanagh, Jerry
1928 births
1979 deaths
Mayors of Detroit
University of Detroit Mercy alumni
Michigan Democrats
20th-century American politicians
Presidents of the United States Conference of Mayors