There has been a steady decline in Detroit’s population during the last six decades, representing a 37 percent decline. This trend began in the1950s with suburban ascendancy, construction of the highway system, dismantling of streetcar systems, and mortgages financed by the federal government began, according to University of Pennsylvania history and sociology professor Thomas J. Sugrue.  Sugrue, author of “The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit” a March 26, 2011 article in the New York Times about Detroit,  explains how the recent loss of about 200,000 African Americans from the city in the last decade derives from their move to older suburbs in the area. The evidence of the loss of about 200,000 African Americans is supported by a comparison of the 2000 Census and 2010 Census.