Read Online Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie Leduff - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Charlie Leduff
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gave the key to the city to Saddam Hussein. And never took it back.
Watching a retinue of Young sycophants take the plunge into prison, Mongo decided to strike out on his own. “It was crooked even then,” he would tell me later. “I wasn’t willing to do what they asked. I wasn’t willing to risk my freedom for a two-thousand-dollar suit.”
Still, he was connected, and so Mongo became a political consultant. You could hire him to strategize for you—or you could pay him to keep his mouth shut or he would hammer you mercilessly. Mongo knew where the back doors were.
Mongo had beat on Kilpatrick in the lead-up to his reelection campaign, making the local television and radio circuit calling Kilpatrick a pansy and a mama’s boy. Instead of fighting him, Kilpatrick simply hired Mongo for $200,000—proving to many that he was indeed a pansy and a mama’s boy.
With Kilpatrick down double digits in the polls, Mongo came up with a now infamous back-page “lynching” ad that ran in a special edition of the
Michigan Chronicle
, an ad commemorating the life and death of Rosa Parks.
The ad drew a comparison between a historical photograph of black men hanging from a tree and the media’s treatment of Kilpatrick. It worked. Kilpatrick stormed back from the double-digit deficit to victory. Mongo knew the number-one rule of politics: win.
Black politicians pretended he didn’t work for them. White politicians suffered the same amnesia. But they sought his advice and they drank with him during the off years of the election cycle. I couldn’t have cared less. He was what politics really were around here. It was my job to know him.
“Adolph Mongo?” I said, standing up and offering my hand. “Charlie LeDuff, the
Detroit News
. I’ve been meaning to meet you.”
He gave me the eye. “Goddamn motherfucker. Dressed like that? I thought you was a junkie or some shit.”
He shook my hand, introduced the large, well-dressed man as his younger brother Skip and took a seat next to me.
“You that motherfucker that wrote that stripper story,” he said. “Good fucking story. I try to tell the mayor, he’s got to work the media better. He can beat this thing if he looks like he’s in charge. But he ain’t listening. He’s a talented guy. But he’s ignorant. Politically ignorant. Ignorant of history. He don’t read. You know he doesn’t have a book in his office? Not a fucking book in the shelves. Ain’t that some shit?”
The receptionist interrupted: “Mr. Mongo, the reverend will see you now.”
Mongo got up to go, took a few steps down the hall, turned and asked me: “You wanna come in?”
“With you all?”
“Yeah, motherfucker, with us all.”
I went along.
Sheffield sat imperiously behind his desk, a man in excess of three hundred pounds. He was a large presence in the community. Besides his social work, he preached on the east side of town and did a lot for the people, often pulling money from his own pocket to pay for funerals. He was another who talked the race game—despite the fact that his father was black and his mother was white. In Detroit, we all talked the race game. It is a way of life.
As we walked in the door, he looked at Mongo and then at me.
“I invited him,” Mongo said. “He’s all right.” I took a seat in the back. Sheffield was planning a run against Rep. John Conyers—the aging, barnacle-like fixture in the U.S. Congress. Conyers had served more than twenty terms in the House and had presided over the collapse of his district—including Highland Park—where he did not even bother to keep an office.
Highland Park, the birthplace of the Model T, was an industrial hamlet wholly surrounded by Detroit. Today, little is there. It is poor, black, burned down and so tough that even the Nation of Islam moved its mosque away. The saying goes that suburbanites don’t go to Detroit and Detroiters don’t go to Highland Park.
Conyers was weak. If only someone with connections
Watching a retinue of Young sycophants take the plunge into prison, Mongo decided to strike out on his own. “It was crooked even then,” he would tell me later. “I wasn’t willing to do what they asked. I wasn’t willing to risk my freedom for a two-thousand-dollar suit.”
Still, he was connected, and so Mongo became a political consultant. You could hire him to strategize for you—or you could pay him to keep his mouth shut or he would hammer you mercilessly. Mongo knew where the back doors were.
Mongo had beat on Kilpatrick in the lead-up to his reelection campaign, making the local television and radio circuit calling Kilpatrick a pansy and a mama’s boy. Instead of fighting him, Kilpatrick simply hired Mongo for $200,000—proving to many that he was indeed a pansy and a mama’s boy.
With Kilpatrick down double digits in the polls, Mongo came up with a now infamous back-page “lynching” ad that ran in a special edition of the
Michigan Chronicle
, an ad commemorating the life and death of Rosa Parks.
The ad drew a comparison between a historical photograph of black men hanging from a tree and the media’s treatment of Kilpatrick. It worked. Kilpatrick stormed back from the double-digit deficit to victory. Mongo knew the number-one rule of politics: win.
Black politicians pretended he didn’t work for them. White politicians suffered the same amnesia. But they sought his advice and they drank with him during the off years of the election cycle. I couldn’t have cared less. He was what politics really were around here. It was my job to know him.
“Adolph Mongo?” I said, standing up and offering my hand. “Charlie LeDuff, the
Detroit News
. I’ve been meaning to meet you.”
He gave me the eye. “Goddamn motherfucker. Dressed like that? I thought you was a junkie or some shit.”
He shook my hand, introduced the large, well-dressed man as his younger brother Skip and took a seat next to me.
“You that motherfucker that wrote that stripper story,” he said. “Good fucking story. I try to tell the mayor, he’s got to work the media better. He can beat this thing if he looks like he’s in charge. But he ain’t listening. He’s a talented guy. But he’s ignorant. Politically ignorant. Ignorant of history. He don’t read. You know he doesn’t have a book in his office? Not a fucking book in the shelves. Ain’t that some shit?”
The receptionist interrupted: “Mr. Mongo, the reverend will see you now.”
Mongo got up to go, took a few steps down the hall, turned and asked me: “You wanna come in?”
“With you all?”
“Yeah, motherfucker, with us all.”
I went along.
Sheffield sat imperiously behind his desk, a man in excess of three hundred pounds. He was a large presence in the community. Besides his social work, he preached on the east side of town and did a lot for the people, often pulling money from his own pocket to pay for funerals. He was another who talked the race game—despite the fact that his father was black and his mother was white. In Detroit, we all talked the race game. It is a way of life.
As we walked in the door, he looked at Mongo and then at me.
“I invited him,” Mongo said. “He’s all right.” I took a seat in the back. Sheffield was planning a run against Rep. John Conyers—the aging, barnacle-like fixture in the U.S. Congress. Conyers had served more than twenty terms in the House and had presided over the collapse of his district—including Highland Park—where he did not even bother to keep an office.
Highland Park, the birthplace of the Model T, was an industrial hamlet wholly surrounded by Detroit. Today, little is there. It is poor, black, burned down and so tough that even the Nation of Islam moved its mosque away. The saying goes that suburbanites don’t go to Detroit and Detroiters don’t go to Highland Park.
Conyers was weak. If only someone with connections
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