When Detroit, the city that has long served as synonym for American manufacturing, filed for bankruptcy in July, there was no shortage of people leaping to explain why that city's population and finances declined so precipitously.
An analysis in the Detroit Free Press says the city's decline wasn't precipitous at all, that the financial collapse was decades in the making. While it's become popular to blame the city's succession of black, Democratic mayors, the newspaper acknowledges that Coleman Young, who has often been criticized for his management, was actually the fiscal hawk among Detroit's roster of mayors.