Dec 18, 2017
- In this episode of The Detroit History Podcast, we hear a rare recording of a confrontation between Coleman A. Young and a congressional committee in 1952. Many people pleaded their Fifth Amendment rights when the House of Un-American Activities Committee came to town looking for Reds. But a young labor organizer, Coleman Young, gave better than he got, telling his inquisitors: "you have me mixed up with a stool pigeon sir." The exchange was recorded and turned in to an underground hit, but Young couldn't work for a decade. He eventually became the city's longest-serving mayor.