Word: dearborn
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Abutting heavily black Detroit, the predominantly white suburb of Dearborn has earned an unsavory reputation as one of America's more segregated communities. Conditions have not changed appreciably since the 1980 census showed only 83 blacks among Dearborn's 90,660 residents. The city's lily-white makeup was maintained by Mayor Orville Hubbard, a chest-thumping racist who ruled Dearborn's city hall from 1942 to 1978. Although Hubbard died in 1982, his legacy was hauntingly present last week as civil rights activists expanded a boycott of local stores to protest efforts to bar nonresidents from most of Dearborn...
...issue was an ordinance, passed by referendum last November, that threatens nonresidents who invade the parks with fines of up to $500 or jail sentences of up to 90 days. Dearborn residents said they were forced into acting because they were being crowded out of recreation facilities they pay for. Said William Peretto, 39, whose son Scott could not get into a municipal swimming pool last summer because it was mobbed: "We had to do something...
Quickly, though, the ordinance served to spotlight the area's long-standing racial divide. Civil rights leaders saw it as a clumsy move to keep out blacks from Detroit. In retaliation, the N.A.A.C.P. organized a boycott of Dearborn's stores, including those at Fairlane Town Center, a 2,360-acre complex that includes the state's largest shopping mall. Before the boycott, an estimated 28% of Fairlane's shoppers were black. Says the Rev. Charles Adams, minister of Hartford Memorial Baptist Church and head of the Detroit N.A.A.C.P.: "They welcome us to shop in their stores, but don't allow...
...Chrysler and American Motors, which last week slashed their financing rates. Ford matched GM's 7.7%, and Chrysler and AMC went even lower, to 7.5%. Compared with conventional car loans, which carry rates as high as 13%, the automakers' deals strike customers as a steal. At Village Ford in Dearborn, Mich., showroom traffic increased 50% last week. "When they come in the door, they're ready to buy. We've been absolutely swamped," says Bob Wheat, Village Ford's general sales manager...
...unlikely leader for a band of bearded, wild-shooting, anti- American militiamen. Nabih Berri, 46, is invariably clean-shaven and speaks softly in the precise phrases of the lawyer he was trained to be. He regularly visits a former wife and six children, who live in Dearborn, Mich. He carries a green card entitling him to permanent residency in the U.S., apparently to allow him to visit his American family freely. In Beirut he has often attended the private get-togethers held by U.S. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew for Lebanese factional leaders...