With them came Donald Trump, with his latest campaign chief, this one with ties to the white nationalist movement, pitching voters on a newfound notion that he could be a savior for African-American communities.
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Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump both spoke at the American Legion convention this week in Cincinnati.
Trump gives a thumbs up during the service at the African-American church in Detroit.
Many black people in the city, she said, are still stung by his stop in MI last month, when he went before a mostly white audience and declared, “You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed”.
Fifty-four percent of blacks said “Increasing border security and controlling immigration” is an important problem, almost identical to the number of whites (56 percent).
Ms Hightower’s is “a disgusting story”, Mr Trump said, “but it’s a story a lot of people are going through”. “I’ve had a wonderful life here in America as an African-American, but what I have to lose is the future for my grandchild”.
About 24 percent of black residents age 24 to 55 were neither employed nor looking for work in 2014, compared 19 percent of whites in that age group, according to federal data.
As Trump held the private meeting, black union leaders held a news conference a few blocks away outlining why they don’t support Trump. Polls this year suggest Trump could fare worse than Obama’s opponents.
The event is a continuation of the candidate’s recent aggressive appeal to black voters.
Similarly, 70 percent of African-Americans ranked “Stagnation of lower-to-middle-income wages” as an important problem.
Black voters are relatively concentrated in Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern states, but they also represent a significant portion of the populations in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia.
Trump and his campaign staff are hoping his trip to Detroit will help salvage his image among African-Americans across the United States.
The Rev. Herb Lusk II, pastor of Greater Exodus, is a prominent conservative and former adviser to President George W. Bush. Democratic politicians have ruined inner cities, he says. All of it together – the rallies and rhetoric, the echoes of oppression – rekindled fears for Sterling that Trump was excavating the racist vestiges of the Old South.
“What do you have to lose?”. Trump has asked delivering his pitch to an overwhelmingly white audience.
But the most revealing part of the script lies in one of Jackson’s questions, not Trump’s answers.
In 2012, about 93 percent of black voters backed Obama – an overwhelming enthusiasm that Clinton appears to have kept alive, taking 90 percent of the black vote in her primary contest against Bernie Sanders. On Friday, he made a rare pit stop: a predominantly black community. African-Americans as a whole lag other race and ethnicity groups in many economic indicators.
He pointed to Census data on income: African-Americans in MI had a median household income of $29,697 in 2014 compared to a median of $49,847 for all MI households.
The city’s unemployment rate has dropped, but is still among the highest in the nation. “You are coming into a place to be interviewed, and we don’t want anybody to be hurt or anybody to be misused, so that’s it”.
“It’s insulting and offensive that Donald Trump thinks one church appearance will undo the divisive undertone of his campaign”, said Rollins, a native of Benton Harbor.
“There’s a great deal of suspicion among blacks, and whites, that Trump could actually bring back those jobs”, he added. Black Democratic primary voters opted almost 4-to-1 for Clinton over Bernie Sanders in states where exit polling was conducted.
“This was an African-American event on African-American issues”, Mr. Sanders said. But you made it impossible to ignore racism when 35 to 40 percent of this country is willing to vote for someone whose entire platform is built on scaring people into believing people of color are what’s wrong with America.
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What exactly Trump, 70, plans to do in Detroit remains unclear. “And then if he greets the congregation, as we do with all politicians or all visitors if he wants to say, “Hey, I’m Donald Trump, I’m glad to be here” – and it’s not going to be an interview or speech to the congregation”.
