Washington — A Democratic lawmaker is optimistic that by year's end the Michigan Legislature will approve his measure to begin the process of replacing the Michigan statue of Lewis Cass at the U.S. Capitol with one of Coleman A. Young, the first Black mayor of Detroit.
Outgoing state Sen. Adam Hollier of Detroit met with Republican state Rep. Mike Mueller, chairman of a key House committee, who said he supports getting the resolution to the floor for a vote and has raised the matter with GOP leadership; however, its fate could depend on the Legislature's lame-duck schedule, starting Dec. 6.
"We’ll see if we can move it forward," Mueller told The Detroit News. "It’s courteous, and it’s the right thing to do."
The resolution, which is sponsored by about 30 Democratic state lawmakers and two Republicans, already passed the state Senate in June. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also has expressed support for replacing the statue of Cass, a 19th-century territorial governor of Michigan who supported slavery.
Young, who died 25 years ago Tuesday, had a political career filled with controversy but of a different brand. His outspokenness on race and civil rights made him a polarizing figure in some of Detroit's majority-White suburbs, and he became a foil for Republican elected officials like the late L. Brooks Patterson, the longtime Oakland County politician.
Even if the measure approving a Young statute doesn't pass during the House's lame-duck session, Michigan Democrats are poised to take control of the Legislature in January and could adopt a similar measure next year. But Hollier, whose term in office is ending, noted that Republicans have customarily chosen who represents their party at the U.S. Capitol, and Democrats have chosen their representative.
"There's no reason not to do it now, right? Democrats choose. Republicans choose," he said. "If anything, it is a good opportunity for some bipartisanship and to do something that just makes sense."
Since 1864, federal law has allowed for each state to donate statues in marble or bronze of two distinguished but deceased individuals to be part of the National Statuary Hall Collection at the Capitol. Michigan gifted the marble Cass statue to the collection in 1889, and it has a prominent location in the hall, which served as the original House chamber and is visited by thousands of tourists each day.
Starting in 2000, Congress let states remove and replace statues in the collection with new ones with the approval of the state's Legislature and governor. That allowed Michigan Republicans to swap out the state's statue of Zachariah Chandler, a former Detroit mayor and U.S. senator, for a 7-foot-tall bronze depiction of President Gerald Ford in 2011. Ford's statue now stands in the Capitol Rotunda.
Michigan Democrats have been calling for the removal of the Cass statue since at least 2020 when U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, led the state's Democratic delegation in calling on the state Legislature replace his likeness in pursuit of "a more inclusive society, where all Michiganders feel welcome and respected."
Hollier took up the cause in the Legislature, arguing that it's time for Cass to go. The second territorial governor of Michigan oversaw the forced removal of tens of thousands of Native Americans from their lands as secretary of war under President Andrew Jackson and, as a U.S. senator, promoted the doctrine of popular sovereignty that allowed for the expansion of slavery in western territories. He owned at least one slave.
"I'm the perfect poster case for why former Gov. Cass should not be representing Michigan: I'm a Black and Native American man whose grandmother's grandmother walked on the Trail of Tears from Georgia to Oklahoma," said Hollier, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation.
"Lewis Cass was a supporter of the expansion of slavery and led the Trail of Tears. He had his time, his moment and played an important role in the history of Michigan, but is no longer the person that Michigan should be saying represents us as a state going forward."
Hollier has made the case for former Mayor Young, with the support of his son, Detroit City Councilman Coleman A. Young II.
The elder Young flew with a Tuskegee airmen unit during World War II and became one of the first Black big city mayors, leading Detroit for 20 years. Hollier noted how Young pushed back against McCarthyism "when no one else was willing to do so."
"That level of political courage has never been more needed than in the challenging times that we see today," Hollier said.
'It's their pick'
If Michigan sends a statue of Young to Washington, it would become the first in the Statuary Hall Collection of an African American man and the second depiction of a Black American following the dedication of a statue of Florida civil rights activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune in July.
A statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, dedicated in 2013, also sits in Statuary Hall but does not represent Michigan, though she lived in Detroit and served as an aide for years to the late U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit. The Rosa Parks statue was commissioned by Congress and is not part of the Statuary Hall Collection.
Other states are in the process of replacing their statues in the state collection, including Virginia, which removed its statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and plans to provide one of the civil rights activist Barbara Johns. Arkansas is replacing both of its Confederate-era statues with monuments to singer/songwriter Johnny Cash and civil rights activist Daisy Bates.
Mueller of Linden, who chairs the House Government Operations Committee, said he views Hollier's resolution as a non-political matter that extends the same courtesy to Democrats as they showed when Republicans swapped out the Chandler statue for Ford. "It is their pick," he said.
In late October, Mueller traveled to Hollier's district in Detroit, where Hollier introduced him to Coleman Young II and others who explained what Young meant to the city and why they'd rather have him representing Michigan Democrats than Cass.
"I wanted to make sure it was something that I agree with," said Mueller, adding he doesn't support "erasing" history. "I didn’t want it to be a thing like the 'woke' stuff about tearing down statues. That’s not what this is."
He noted that Hollier and his allies will have to find a place to display the Cass statue, likely back in Michigan.
Mueller also has a personal connection to Young, who as mayor was friends with Mueller's father, former state Rep. Charles Mueller, when he served in the state House more than 40 years ago. Mueller recalled meeting Young as a boy, and his father telling him about his service with the Tuskegee Airmen.
"People outside of Detroit have a different view of Coleman Young than folks do in Detroit because, during that time, Detroit had a high crime rate and all this other stuff. But he actually did a lot for the city, and that's what I learned from going down there," Mueller said. "My dad said, 'Coleman Young had a way of getting things done.'"
Cass, Young legacies
Born in New Hampshire, Cass served in the state Legislature in Ohio, fought in the War of 1812 and was appointed governor of the Michigan territory at age 31 by President James Madison. He later served in Jackson's cabinet, then as minister to France, was the unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee in 1848 and then became secretary of state under President James Buchanan.
While Cass isn't well known today, he was quite prominent in the Democratic Party in the 19th century, both as governor of Michigan but also as an expert in Indian affairs after he negotiated treaties that helped whittle down Indian territory to make it available for settlement, said historian Michael Witgen, formerly of the University of Michigan.
Cass formed the opinion that indigenous people are not fully human and were unwilling to accept civilization, and, therefore, he thought they should be removed to open up territory, said Witgen, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.
"The main reason he shouldn’t be representing Michigan is he was the main intellectual architect of Indian removal. It became a policy that resulted in the forced removal/ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi — not all of them, but many of them," said Witgen, now a professor in the Department of History at Columbia University. "It's a pretty awful legacy."
Choosing Young to replace Cass would be "flipping the script" by Michigan, Witgen said.
"Taking somebody who is sort of notoriously racist and advocated for what can only be described as a racist policy in Indian removal and replacing him with somebody who was a big advocate of civil rights is definitely a flipping the script kind of moment," he said. "That seems like a decent replacement."
During his Army years, Young led a protest against the exclusion of Blacks from a segregated officers' club in Indiana and later became a union activist for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), leading to his and other union leaders being hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in Detroit. He told the panel: “I consider the activities of this Committee as un-American.”
Young was elected to the Michigan Senate in 1964, becoming the state’s second Black state senator and later was elected Democratic minority floor leader, according to the Detroit Historical Society. After 10 years in Lansing, he won a race for Detroit mayor in 1973 and was re-elected four times, serving until 1993.
"That's the kind of impact and person that we should be celebrating," Hollier said. "When people go to our nation's Capitol and say, 'Oh, who is the person from Michigan?' and go take a photo with it, they should be able to hear the stories of the growth of the auto industry, of Tuskegee Airmen, and the fight for civil rights and police reform that we're still talking about today."
Replacement process
Hollier's resolution formally requests that the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress approve the replacement of Michigan's statue of Cass with a statue of Young as part of the Statuary Hall Collection, saying that honoring Cass "is no longer consistent with the values of the people of Michigan."
The measure also extolls the contributions of Young, noting he was re-elected four times and was known for "championing" the needs of the city's Black community, building coalitions among business leaders and shepherding major projects such as the Renaissance Center, Detroit People Mover and Joe Louis Arena.
If the measure were to pass, the next step would fall to Whitmer, who would have to send a letter to the Architect of the Capitol requesting to provide a new statue, along with a description of the location in the state where the old statue of Cass would be displayed after it is removed. She also would have to supply a copy of the Legislature's resolution authorizing the replacement.
Hollier's resolution creates a five-member commission to raise private money to cover project costs. That would include paying a sculptor for designing and casting the statue and pedestal, transporting both to the Capitol, installing them and removing the old statue to a new location. Hollier envisions that the Coleman A. Young Foundation would serve as the fiduciary so any "overage" would go toward scholarships for Detroit youth.
More:Proposed Capitol statue prompts revisiting of former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young's career
Like Florida's Bethune statue, Hollier expects the Young statue would travel around the state for public viewing before it makes its way to Washington for placement in the Capitol.
Fundraising for the marble Bethune statue took two years to raise about $1 million, said Nancy Lohman, president of the nonprofit organization that led the effort. But only about half of that went to the marble statue and its installation, while the rest paid for a related exhibit, school curriculum and a less expensive bronze statue on display locally in Daytona Beach.
"Some states do appropriate funds for the statue, but the state of Florida did not," Lohman said.
The cost of the bronze statue of Ford was covered by the Grand Rapids-based Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, which at the time did not disclose the cost. It took about 2.5 years from when a sculptor was selected in 2008 to the statue's dedication in May 2011.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has supported the effort to honor Young nationally, and Whitmer has demonstrated a willingness to end monuments to Cass by renaming the Lewis Cass Building, home of the state Department of Health and Human Services, to the Elliott-Larsen Building in 2020.
"Who a state chooses to memorialize in Statuary Hall should be a representation of our values and ideals," Whitmer spokesman Bobby Leddy said. "Unfortunately, that’s where the current Lewis Cass statue falls short."
"Now, through their elected representatives, Michiganders have an opportunity to do the same on the federal level. When it comes to selecting a replacement, Michigan has no shortage of history makers that have transformed this state into what it is today."
mburke@detroitnews.com
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