COLEMAN A. YOUNG (1918-1997)

Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on May 25, 1918, Coleman Young arrived in Detroit, Michigan with his family when he was five.

The Colemans settled in the working class neighborhood of Black Bottom (East Detroit), where his father operated a dry cleaning business and his mother was a schoolteacher.

Early in his life Coleman suffered various forms of racial discrimination from denial of scholarships to a racially motivated firing at an automobile plant.