Grab Your Edition Terror In The City Of Champions: Murder, Baseball, And The Secret Society That Shocked Depression-Era Detroit Fashioned By Tom Stanton Disseminated As Volume
learning more history about my fair city of Detroit, but would have preferred more attention and greater depth on the Black Legion and far less ideally no talk about sports.
CASEY Award nominee
Seymour Medal finalist
NPRs "Great Reads"
Briefly: Compelling history
Terror in the City of Champions offers a tour of major events in mids Detroit, focusing on the success of its sports icons and on the unmasking of a secret society.
Both storylines make for compelling, pageturning reading, Unfortunately, the two storylines are almost entirely unrelated, so that the book reads as two separate narratives told in parallel, Despite some tonal suggestions that the two unfolding dramas will at some point intertwine into a single payoff, they remain separate through the end, The book is still a worthwhile read, with two histories worth discovering, but the lack of cohesion undermines its effectiveness, Hank Greenberg is one of my all time favorite non Cubs baseball players, so when I noticed a book featuring thes era Detroit Tigers at my library, I was intrigued.
Detroit area writer Tom Stanton had heard older family members mention a part terrorist group part gangster network based near Detroit during the same era, yet had heard nothing about the group growing up or in school.
The presence of this group during Americas low point in history moved him to investigate, The fact that they operated concurrently to when Detroits athletic teams held championship titles in every major sport got Stanton thinking that between the terrorist group and the sports championships he would have the basis for a fast paced book.
Thus, the idea for Terror in the City of Champions had been planted, a hybrid sports and true crime book designed to shed light on Detroit during the height of the Depression.
During thesports cycle, Detroit found lightning in a bottle and held every major championship baseball, football, hockey plus heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis.
That the football Lions won was a fluke as they clearly were not the best team that year however, init was evident that the Detroit Tigers were the best team in the American League.
Bested in a seven game World Series the year before, the Tigers returned all their key players including playermanager Mickey Cochrane, second baseman Charlie Gehringer, pitcher Schoolboy Rowe, and first baseman and eventual league most valuable player Hank Greenberg.
Coowner Frank Navin was praying to see at least one championship during his lifetime, something that eluded even the teams lead by the great Ty Cobb.
The
Tigers started out on fire and would eventually capture the pennant and the hearts of the city, While the Tigers were out winning ball games, another clandestine group was instilling fear into the minds of working class Detroit,
The Black Legion had been the brainchild of former Klansman Bert Effinger, In his mutual hatred of Blacks, Jews, and Catholics, he was determined to rid the world of all of them and take over the federal government in the process.
With a gunpoint oath and initiation ceremony and the promise of beatings and floggings if members missed meetings, the Black Legion recruited thousands of unsuspecting white, Protestant members.
Boasting membership in the upward of three million people, the Legion would systematically murder black and catholic good standing citizens just to do it, Because lawmakers at all levels of society were either Legion members or supported their belief system, the group was given free reign to operate, With murders being cited as suicide and closed cases, especially with the murder of black citizens, law enforcement not in the ranks of Legion were unable to rid society of this menace.
Effingers grandiose plans included a takeover of the federal government, which he believed orchestrated the depression for its own communist gains, His rhetoric hit a nerve with out of work white workers, and, unless federal agents not in the pockets of the Legion could prove that these plans were legit, Effinger was determined to follow through with them.
Ironically, the Legion were still big baseball fans and many members supported the Tigers during their championship season, Although they may have taunted Hank Greenberg with antiSemitic slurs, Legion members largely left him alone because he was a member of the Tigers, Other Jews, the Legion plotted to douse synagogues with cyanide gas, but, thankfully, that plot had been uncovered, Likewise, the Legion as a whole may not have liked that Joe Louis was black, but because he won a boxing title and brought glory to Detroit, the group looked the other way, although it appears as though the Legion detested blacks even more than they did Jews or Catholics.
Louis might have been unaware of the Legions operations it is tough to surmise from these pages, He won overwhelming victories and brought glory to black Detroit and became a champion of champions, Tigers manager Mickey Cochrane, on the other hand, did not fare as well as Louis, As one of Detroits well to do citizens, some of his associates may have assisted the Legion in their operations, Cochrane feared the Legion and suffered a nervous breakdown midway through theseason, putting a damper on the championship from the year before, With even athletes and other upwardly standing citizens not immune to the Legions psychological scheming, it is no telling how far the group would go before a government takeover was imminent.
Tom Stanton himself had not heard of the Black Legion an uncle mentioned it to him once, and he was intrigued to research the group for this book.
All the key players in this story have long been deceased but Stanton has been able to piece together the Legions operations and was alarmed at how far reaching the group became.
He either did not have enough information to write a book strictly about the Legion, or he wanted to contrast the group with the glory of Detroits four champions in thesports cycle that remains to be seen.
With so many facets of this story, at times it became hard to follow because there were too many key players in it, As a result, what could have been a fast moving true crime story fell a little flat, I did enjoy the sections on Joe Louis and Tigers but felt that even those could have been more detailed for more information on those sports stories there will have to be another book at another time.
It is apparent that Tom Stanton has pride in the Detroit community where he has lived his entire life, Terror in the City of Champions pays homage to the history of that community, and with a little fine tuning could have been an epic story.
Imagine an America just starting to right itself after an economic calamity, Imagine a changing America where racial and religious resentment lead to a sometimes polarized society, whipped up further by demagogues and religious media, Imagine "a low type of mentality, men easily incited by mob psychology, who have taken a silly pledge and gone through a crazy ritual apparently created by a fanatic who seeks power.
"
Imagine, too, politicians and police who often place political gain or personal prejudice above the common good, Imagine further a sportscrazed America, in love with the champions of professional baseball, football, hockey and boxing, Imagine Detroit in the midos, a place amazingly similar in many ways to America in,
"Detroit the Dynamic" was home, of course, to the mighty American auto industry, theChampion Detroit Tigers in baseball, the Lions in football, and the Red Wings in hockey, a major sports trifecta that no other city has ever matched, making Detroit truly "The City of Champions.
" Add to that, Detroit native Joe Louis' rise to the ranks of the boxing elite,
However, Detroit was also home to the notorious Purple Gang, and to the secret and sinister Black Legion, a Klanlike organization that draped itself in flagwaving, Constitutionspouting patriotism, but who terrorized and murdered people simply for being black, or Catholic, or leftist.
Author Tom Stanton brings the longago streets of Detroit to life again, along with the outsized personalities of Tiger playermanager Mickey "Black Mike" Cochrane, his Jewish star player Hank Greenberg, Catholic radio priest Father Coughlin who drifted from bible lessons to antisemitic diatribes before being shut down by his Bishop, and the strangely disinterested FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover. Stanton also brings to life the mean, violent, racist members of the blackrobed Black Legion and the people they harassed, bombed, shot and sabotaged,
From the bright sunshine of Navin Field and the World Series What exactly DID happen to star pitcher "Schoolboy" Rowe's hand that caused him to lose to the Cardinals in theWorld Series What led to Cochrane's nervous breakdown in June ofto the shadowy clandestine meetings of the Black Legion, to the offices of the three major Detroit dailies and the halls of government and justice, this is a truly a tour through one American city's best of times and worst of times.
What really struck me the most is how little people and institutions have changed since then, Highly recommended. Terror in the City of Champions is an excellent piece of historical/journalistic investigation, It is set in Detroit in the period of, Detroit was an amazing contrast in wealth and poverty, This is a city that came out of the Great Depression in better economic shape than perhaps any other city in the U, S. However the rapid change in demographics, recent immigration and the increased unemployment created a city primed for all kinds of class and racial problems,
The primary thread in the book reveals the story of the Black Legion, The Black Legion was a secretive and murderous white nationalist organization with thousands of members in southeast Michigan and northern Ohio during the early's with one historian estimating membership at,in the Midwest.
The Legion was embedded within police departments, Ford Motor Company, and mayor's offices to such an extent that the overwhelming majority of the fifty murders linked to the Legion were never prosecuted.
The author presents some limited evidence indicating the reason that J, Edgar Hoover repeatedly declined to investigate was to avoid this issue at the national level and which might create undue pressure on southern Democrats who were linked with the KKK.
The Legion and KKK were using similar racist tactics,
This was the same period and city where Father Coughlin and Henry Ford were routinely spouting antisemitic beliefs and where the mob was active.
The author includes these threads as supporting rationale for the systematic racism and the authorities' reluctance to throw the book at the masterminds behind the murder plots.
There were somemembers convicted of murder andconvicted of other related crimes, Membership declined dramatically when the court cases were eventually covered by the press,
The parallel thread to the Black Legion story is sports related, Inthe Detroit Tigers and Detroit Lions won their first world championships and the following springseason the Detroit Red Wings won their first Stanley Cup.
Detroit was coined the City of Champions by the national press, This is the only time in the history of the four major sports in America that teams from one city have ever held three titles simultaneously! The story also follows Joe Louis who became AP's Athlete of the Year inand won the world title inover Braddock.
Tom Stanton is a journalist so the pace moves pretty fast, A lot of comparisons have been made between this book and Erik Larson's style because of the multiple parallel threads and the obvious use of the city as the backdrop of some heinous crimes.
This book is dense with facts, including sports figures and references many locations that only a local would be familiar with, The writing is a little choppy at times as well, That is my only reservation with the book but I grew up here so I appreciate all good books set in Michigan
Stanton spentyears researching and writing the book and the detail shows.
For what it's worth, I think a more apt title for the book might have been Detroitbut I guess terror sells, .