Floyd Mccree

Flint Mayor Floyd J. McCree

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​Floyd McCree  (Marcy 29, 1923 - June 15, 1988)

First Black Mayor of a Major American City

Floyd McCree was a Flint City Councilman and the first black mayor of a major American city post-Reconstruction.

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Floyd McCree was born in Webster Grove, Missouri on March 29, 1923. He grew up in St. Louis and eventually graduated from Lincoln University, a historically black university in Missouri. After college McCree served in the army during WWII in the South Pacific and rose to the rank of staff sergeant. Like many men coming home for WWII, McCree was looking for well paying work as manufacturing jobs turned from producing machines of war back to their civilian pursuits. He was hired at the Buick foundry and moved to Flint. The foundry had been a starting point for black workers in Buick since the early twentieth century when the lack of safety protections and union support made foundry jobs especially dangerous and undesirable.  It was still difficult though less dangerous work in the 1940s and 50s but McCree was dedicated and, just like in the army, quickly climbed through the ranks. He was promoted to foreman and ultimately supervisor of maintenance. ​

Floyd McCree, campaigning, 1954

It was at the Buick foundry that Floyd McCree met civil rights leader Edgar B. Holt. Holt began at Buick in 1950, also a WWII veteran of Pacific theater. Together Holt and McCree became involved with organizing a union bargaining committee to obtain equal pay and rights for black employees which became known as the Foundry Council. Holt would be McCree’s campaign manager during his first unsuccessful run for City Commission in 1954. Holt believed in McCree though and continued to manage his political campaigns. McCree was successful in 1958 in securing a seat on the City Commision representing the 3rd Ward. In 1966, the City Commision appointed Floyd McCree mayor of Flint.   ​

The McCree family, 1954

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Edgar B. Holt at Michigan State University, NAACP, 1959

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The controversial claim

There is some controversy to the claim that McCree was the first black mayor in America. McCree is often referred to as one of the first black mayors, partly because during the Reconstruction period in the 19th century at least two black mayors were elected: Pierre Caliste Landry in Donaldsonville, Louisiana and W.B. Scott in Maryville, Tennessee. Thomas Henthorn, history professor at the University of Michigan-Flint, pointed out in a 2015 article that though McCree was picked by the City Council, as was Robert Henry Clayton of Springfield, Ohio another mayor who often received the ‘first black mayor’ title, the first popularly elected black mayor was Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana. Hatcher was also elected in 1966 but took office after Cleveland, Ohio’s Carl Stokes. So Stokes is often referred to as the first popularly elected black mayor to be sworn in after Reconstruction. However, Floyd McCree’s Flint was a much larger city than Cleveland, Springfield, or Gary. Flint was the 62nd largest city in America, so many still remember him as the first black mayor of a major city post-Reconstruction. ​

The Fight for Equal Housing

Floyd McCree is best known for his fight for equal housing in Flint. Redlining, the practice of refusing home loans or sales to individuals based on race in certain areas, was a rampant problem throughout America and was one of the focuses of the Civil Rights movement. Flint’s labor history and its history as a destination for Southern Black Americans escaping Jim Crow led to a lively and fascinating Civil Rights history that is unfortunately too much to explore in this article. In addition to Edgar Holt and Floyd McCree’s activities, Olive Beasley was appointed District Executive of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission's office in Flint in 1964 and moved to the city from Detroit in 1966. These three leaders played a role in a historic victory for equal housing that was desperately needed. 

McCree asked the Flint City Commission to adopt an open housing ordinance and when the council initially refused he threatened to quit. According to The Flint Journal McCree said, “I am not going to sit up here and live an equal opportunity lie.” This seemed a fight destined to fail. Flint had become one of the most racially segregated cities in America by the time McCree was elected. The Flint City Commission did ultimately adopt the ordinance by a 5-4 vote on Oct. 30, 1967.  Four months later in February 1968, the equal housing ordinance barely survived a public referendum and in fact at first it looked as though they had failed. 

The night of the election it had looked like the open housing ordinance was struck down by voters. McCree announced the initiative had failed on the night of February 20th 1968 and the crowd was devastated. "... The atmosphere around (McCree) was one of abject misery" and the mayor "puffed on a cigarette and then stuck an empty pipe in his mouth," The Flint Journal reported. The next morning however, election officials discovered an error and found that the ordinance had passed by a mere 43 votes (this number is hotly contested, I have seen the difference in votes listed alternatively as 30 votes, 38 votes, and 43 votes in three different The Flint Journal articles). Flint made history as the first American city to ban at blatant discrimination by banks and relators against Black Americans buying homes in “white-only” neighborhoods. 

Olive Beasley

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McCree was not appointed mayor again, perhaps due to his civil rights activities but he had achieved something great in his short time as mayor. McCree continued to serve on the City Commission until 1971 when he was elected as Genesee County Register of deeds. In 1975, when changes in the city charter called for the mayor to be popularly elected rather than appointed, McCree ran unsuccessfully against rival James W. Rutherford. McCree continued to serve the City of Flint and was repeatedly elected to the position of County Register of Deeds until his death in 1988

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What is redlining?

According to Britannica:

Redlining, illegal discriminatory practice in which a mortgage lender denies loans or an insurance provider restricts services to certain areas of a community, often because of the racial characteristics of the applicant’s neighbourhood. Redlining practices also include unfair and abusive loan terms for borrowers, outright deception, and penalties for prepaying loans. The term redlining came about in reference to the use of red marks on maps that loan corporations would use to outline mixed-race or African American neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods in more-affluent areas, which were deemed the most worthy of loans, were usually outlined in blue or green. Neighbourhoods outlined in yellow were also considered desirable for lending.
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During the 1930s, federal programs such as the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (created in 1933) and the Federal Housing Administration(created in 1934) were established to encourage widespread home ownership and suburban development by making home loans and mortgages affordable. However, neighbourhoods that were mixed-race or predominantly African American did not benefit from those programs, because their credit was considered high-risk.

In the early 1900s, before the practice of redlining began, racial homogeneitywas preserved in suburban communities by implementing zoning laws that did not allow the construction of small, affordable houses or apartments. Racial homogeneity also was preserved through residential segregation, as whites tended not to sell or rent to nonwhite persons, often by placing racially restrictive covenants in property deeds. African American newcomers who found a way to work around such policies and practices to move into suburban neighbourhoods usually found themselves in hostile environments.

​In the period following World War II, suburban communities remained largely white, despite antidiscrimination rulings and legislation to the contrary. In 1948 the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case Shelley v. Kraemer, ruled that courts could not enforce racially restrictive practices. In 1968 the Federal Fair Housing Act forbade discrimination against minorities by real estate brokers, property owners, and landlords. The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) of 1975 required lending institutions to report public loan data, while the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was intended to encourage banks and other financial institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate.

Although redlining is illegal, there still remains significant work to overcome racially restrictive practices. Patterns of residential segregation remain the norm in many parts of the country, despite the increasing movement of African Americans to formerly all-white communities since the late 1900s.

An example of a map exhibiting redlining
The 1938 Home Owners’ Loan Corporation map of Brooklyn. 
​Credit: National Archives and Records Administration, Mapping Inequality

Written by Colleen A. Marquis

About Colleen:  She is an archivist at the University of Michigan-Flint, in the Francis Willson Thompson Library.  She is also a board member of the GCHS, serving as the Archivist.
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Photo credits:  University of Michigan - Flint, Archives