Carl Levin papers

The collection includes architectural drawings, correspondence, directories, financial records, legal documents, minutes, maps, memoranda, notes, newspaper clippings, reports, and tables generated during Mr. Levin’s seven year tenure as a Detroit councilmember.

Topics covered under the city council files include inner city and ethnic relations and real estate management, particularly racial discrimination in housing and rehabilitation of residential and commercial property in Detroit.

Mr. Levin corresponded extensively with U.S. Senators Phillip A. Hart, Charles H. Percy and Robert P. Griffin and Detroit public officials, Mayor Coleman A. Young, Chief of Police Philip G. Tannian, Director of the Human Rights Department, Agnes Bryant and Councilman Nicholas Hood.  Other correspondents include: Elmer C. Binford, Director of the Detroit Area Office of HUD; Ronald J. Hewitt, Director of the Community and Economic Development Department; Robert Holland, Director of the Detroit Development Corporation; Richard L. Thornburgh, Assistant Attorney General; Charles J. Wolfe, General Superintendent of Schools

He also had contact with various civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’rith. He also corresponded with various leaders in Detroit’s African American and Hungarian American neighborhoods. Materials of note include his correspondence with Pro-Detroit, a private organization devoted to encouraging peaceful acceptance of the court-ordered desegregation of the Detroit Public School System during the mid-1970s.