How Black Detroit Fell First: The School System That Signaled a City’s Collapse

Before Detroit declared bankruptcy.

Before the auto jobs left.

Before blight took over blocks and the wealth of Black Detroiters was stolen—

They came for the schools.

The toppling of Detroit didn’t begin with buildings. It began with books. And the coordinated attack on Detroit Public Schools (DPS) was the first domino in a long chain of economic, political, and community collapse.

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David Snead Was Our Turning Point

In the 1990s, Superintendent David Snead represented stability, leadership, and vision. DPS wasn’t perfect, but under Snead, it was led by someone who believed in our children and our neighborhoods. He wasn’t just managing schools—he was protecting the soul of the city.

But Snead’s leadership threatened the power brokers. Ed McNamara, the godfather of Wayne County politics, saw DPS as a political prize. And like many others who’ve hijacked Detroit’s future, he didn’t attack Snead head-on. He sent one of our own.

Irma Clark-Coleman, then on the school board, became the inside weapon used to politically execute David Snead’s leadership. That same Irma Clark-Coleman later went on to topple me as Wayne County Commissioner, not because I failed my constituents, but because I refused to kneel to a machine that prioritized political favors over people.

This is how power operates in Detroit. And this is how Detroit began to fall.

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Once They Took the Schools, They Took the Neighborhoods

When Snead was pushed out, the district began to hemorrhage resources, students, and trust. The state took over DPS, and from that moment on, decision-making moved farther and farther away from the people. Schools began closing. Neighborhoods began emptying. With each closure, we lost a cornerstone of community.

• A closed school meant a vacant lot.

• A vacant lot meant lower home values.

• Lower home values meant less tax base.

• Less tax base meant fewer services, fewer businesses, and fewer dreams.

Detroit’s economic destruction was engineered—not by accident, but by design. And it started with the dismantling of Black-led education.

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Political Betrayal from Within

The most painful part is that much of this betrayal came from people who looked like us but worked for those who didn’t believe in us.

Black leadership was weaponized against Black empowerment. And I say this with firsthand knowledge—because I lived it. As a Commissioner, I fought to bring small business programs, senior services, and one-stop shops for the people. But I wasn’t loyal to the machine, so the machine moved me out.

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The Ripple Became a Tsunami

After the fall of DPS came the rest:

• School emergency managers with no accountability

• Water shutoffs and land seizures

• Over-assessed property taxes that robbed over $600 million from Detroit homeowners

• Bankruptcy, controlled by outsiders

• And now, developers subsidized to build billion-dollar buildings, while neighborhood schools still sit boarded up

It all traces back to the moment when public education was sacrificed on the altar of political ambition.

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The Path Forward: A New Ecosystem of Power

Detroit can rise—but only if we learn from how we fell.

That’s why I launched the Courageous Ecosystem:

• To restore youth opportunity through The Courageous Games

• To tell the truth through Courageous Detroit Network

• To rebuild community gathering spaces like Soul Village

• And to champion Hope Zones, a race-neutral economic reinvestment model that captures tax revenue for the neighborhoods that need it most

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We cannot allow the same people who dismantled Detroit to claim credit for its so-called comeback. The real comeback will be when every child can walk to a thriving school, every family can own a home without being overtaxed, and every leader serves the people—not the machine.

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Final Word

They took our schools to take our future.

We reclaim our schools to reclaim our destiny.

The first fall was engineered.

But the next rise will be ours.