"Melior speramus, resurgens cineribus." We hope for better things, rising from the ashes. This is the motto of the city of Detroit, which was coined by Fr. Gabriel Richard whose parish church of Ste. Anne's was destroyed in the great fire which burned Detroit on June 11, 1805.
Ever wonder how our once great cities fell into such disrepair? How were large parts of Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago transformed from vibrant communities of beautiful homes where people prospered into dark, dangerous places full of deserted buildings where violent criminals have drained the lifeblood of the people who remain?
It is said that if one does not know history, then one is doomed to repeat it.
Fr. Richard responded to the great fire that almost completely destroyed Detroit by organizing local French farmers to take their canoes up and down the river to collect donations of food for the victims of the fire. When the canoes returned, a meal was cooked and served to the victims. some of the local men used fallen posts of the stockade to give shelter to the homeless.
I believe that Mr. Jones is describing the slaughter of the cities not in a morbid sense, but rather in a sense of hope aimed toward their reconstruction. Only by learning how these once-great cities have been brought so low can we hope to see these cities rebuilt.
The details of this book are grim, and Mr. Jones provides extensive documents which show the slaughter of the cities was deliberate. His thesis is that ethnic groups were broken apart because their rising political power threatened those who reigned over the U.S. This slaughter took many forms, one major method was the construction of our vast highway system, which was routed so to destroy the ethnic neighborhoods by knocking down their homes and scattering the residents. Through this targeted destruction of their neighborhoods, these people were robbed of their political power, a power which had resulted in the election of a Catholic president, John F. Kennedy in 1960.
Mr. Jones book is a fascinating study of the destruction of the great cities of America, and should be required reading for anyone interested in rebuilding our once-great cities.