Former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer reflects on his tenure, criticizes right-wing extremism 

Although the city of Detroit was facing significant budget woes on Jan. 2, 1994 — his first day on the job — former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer told the Advance that he is proud of his two-term tenure and believes he helped the Motor City and its residents.  

“We developed a plan of action to move the city of Detroit forward in a number of different areas,” Archer recalled in an interview this month about his first weeks in office.

After a national recession, the city of Detroit faced a $271 million deficit spring 1993. Coleman A. Young, Archer’s predecessor, reduced the government workforce and called for a continued 10% salary cut for each city employee in his Fiscal Year 1994 budget, his last as mayor.

Archer, now 82, pointed to the development of Comerica Park, Ford Field, as well as the Campus Martius area in downtown Detroit and securing federal empowerment zone funds during the President Bill Clinton administration that helped to increase the number of police and job training opportunities.  

“Nobody gave us a chance [to secure empowerment zone funding],” Archer recalled. “Not a prayer. The discussion was always about New York, Los Angeles and other cities.” 

In addition, Archer said that the city’s three casinos have helped to provide jobs and to help the city government through their contribution to the local general fund. Union workers at the casinos successfully carried out a strike in 2023 centered on wage and benefits. 

“When the stadiums were being built. When the casinos were being built, they included joint ventures with people of color,” said Archer, who initially opposed casino gambling on moral grounds. “They did an outstanding job and people went back to work.” 

Detroit is 77% African American and 7% Latino.

Archer, a Democrat, served as mayor between 1994 and 2001. He previously served as a Michigan Supreme Court justice between 1985 and 1990. 

In 2021, current Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and the Detroit City Council collaborated to name a greenway after Archer. 

Archer, who is African American, also said he is proud of Michigan Supreme Court Justice Kyra Harris Bolden, the first Black woman to serve on the seven-member body; and Garlin Gilchrist, who is Michigan’s first African American lieutenant governor. Michigan Supreme Court justices are nominated by state political parties, and justices nominated by Democrats currently hold a 4-3 majority.

However, Archer expressed concern about extreme actions carried out by some elements of the right, such as the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection of former President Donald Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol and the national backlash against Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT is a college-level concept that is more than four decades old and is not part of the K-12 curriculum in most Michigan schools. It centers on the idea that race is a social construct, asserting that racism is not only the product of individual bias or prejudice, but it is also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

“We’ve never had the blatant openness where the president of the United States talk about a nationality or people of whatever,” Archer said about former Trump in 2018 decrying immigrants from “shithole countries” coming to the United States.

“If you take that history away, you wouldn’t hear about [civil rights legend] Rosa Parks and other people who made a difference here.” Archer said.