This thesis examines how local leaders in Detroit, Michigan attempted to use the Detroit Tigers' World Series victory in 1968 to repair the city's image following the 1967 riot. First, this study looks at the history of race relations in Detroit, beginning with the founding of the city in 1701. Second, it analyzes the 1967 riot, which, up to that point, was the most destructive urban riot in American history. Finally, this thesis examines the public relations campaign of local leaders in 1968. They tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the public that Detroit's race relations could be healed through a sense of unity that the Tigers' success brought about. This study argues that Detroit's racial problems ran too deep and lasted for too long for a single, transient sporting event to have any sort of permanent effect. / Department of History

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of History, 1993. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of History, 1993.

No description available.

Detroit's shocking decline has been a topic of national concern for several decades now, but attention paid to the city's problems reached new levels when the American public learned that the U.S. automotive industry was in jeopardy, eventually needing more than $17 billion in loans from the United States government to stay afloat. Once the fourth largest city in the United States, the Motor City ushered in the twenty-first century with half the number of residents it had just fifty years before and new monikers like Murder City that mocked the city's formerly heroic identity. To the nation, Detroit was dying, and its failure to live up to its potential as a thriving metropolis demanded the public's mournful attention. How had a city that was once mighty fallen so far? The purpose of this thesis is to understand what meanings media texts attribute to Detroit, how they negotiate its symbolic value in the American narrative, and what functions they perform in the public sphere by contributing to national discourse in these ways. The nation has been told it should care about the city's recovery, which begs the question: Why? Why does Detroit matter? Drawing primarily from memory studies and integrating urban history, sociology, and ruin studies, this thesis performs a rhetorical analysis of four case studies that negotiate the meaning of Detroit as public discourse. This thesis argues that narratives of Detroit implicitly placate a country in crisis and reinforce the continued relevance of American values--individualism, capitalism, and post-racial multiculturalism--to the new world order. These cultural texts implicitly ask: Are we the superpower we were when Detroit stood at the helm of our empire? If not, who or what can we blame for the overthrow of the nation? In this way, media discourses on Detroit function to negotiate a transitioning national identity and restore social order by resolving the questions that Detroit's demise evokes, determining its impact--symbolic and otherwise--on the future of the country, and assessing the state of the nation. / Mass Media and Communication

This thesis identifies the attractors of Detroit’s growth and divulges into the cultural, federal, socio-economic and urban deterrents that have afflicted Detroit for the past fifty years. It probes the city of Detroit and exposes a hyper-segregated city that has been destroyed by a self-feeding cycle of nomadic behaviour and a speculative culture of endless opportunities. To initiate change this thesis examines real alternatives that are not defined for the citizens of Detroit, but are created by them. It is a self-organizing grassroots approach that applies pressure on the city to rethink its conventional methods of urban revitalization. Utilizing the city’s large inventory of vacant land, abandoned buildings and neighbourhood schools, an alternative design methodology is logically applied to atomize, consolidate, fortify and envisage a new Detroit; one where residents can remain sufficiently abreast of the social and economic problems that consistently challenge them.

This thesis identifies the attractors of Detroit’s growth and divulges into the cultural, federal, socio-economic and urban deterrents that have afflicted Detroit for the past fifty years. It probes the city of Detroit and exposes a hyper-segregated city that has been destroyed by a self-feeding cycle of nomadic behaviour and a speculative culture of endless opportunities. To initiate change this thesis examines real alternatives that are not defined for the citizens of Detroit, but are created by them. It is a self-organizing grassroots approach that applies pressure on the city to rethink its conventional methods of urban revitalization. Utilizing the city’s large inventory of vacant land, abandoned buildings and neighbourhood schools, an alternative design methodology is logically applied to atomize, consolidate, fortify and envisage a new Detroit; one where residents can remain sufficiently abreast of the social and economic problems that consistently challenge them.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1999. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 278-295).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1999. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 278-295).

This study has examined the present condition of 16 high school newspapers known as the Downriver high school press by comparing it to the findings of the Commission Of Inquiry Into High School Journalism, as well as comparing the recommendations made by the Commission to the present status of the high school press in the Downriver Detroit, Michigan area. The Commission’s findings were published in a book titled Captive voices.