Detroit’s population loss may leave Michigan without a black representative in Congress for the first time since 1955, reports Chris Chrsitoff of Bloomberg magazine, who a calls it "a shift that would punctuate the erosion of African-American power in a region with a history of racial friction."
New boundaries pushed Detroit’s two congressional districts deeper into the suburbs because Detroit lost one-quarter of its population since 2000. As a result, U.S. representatives John Conyers Jr. and Hansen Clarke may be ousted by white Democratic challengers in districts where blacks are a smaller majority than before.
Detroit is a city that in 1973 elected Coleman Young as its first black mayor after a devastating 1967 race riot, and it has had black mayors ever since.
Eighty-three percent of Detroit’s population is black compared with 14 percent of Michigan’s, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. While Detroit’s population dropped, black populations increased in most communities near the city, according to data from the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments.
