Adolph Mongo

Community affairs

Mongo led a protest against the Detroit Medical Center in 1998 when a white nursing supervisor at Sinai Hospital posted a sign outside a 74-year-old white patient room demanding that black people, including medical personnel, be excluded from entering his room. The supervisor was later fired.[]

Mongo was also instrumental in forcing the release of three black college-bound students accused of killing a Taylor, Michigan, white woman in 2007. He organized several protests that forced the Wayne County Prosecutor, Kym Worthy to drop the charges. The real killers were later arrested and convicted to long prison sentences.

Early life

Mongo was born in Detroit and was raised in the community of Royal Oak Township Michigan and attended Oak Park public schools. He has over thirty years of professional experience as a journalist, political strategist, media consultant and jury consultant.

Adolph Mongo organized his first protest (in 1968) at the age of fourteen. When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the administrators at Clinton Junior High School in Oak Park, Michigan, refused to allow black students to leave school early to attend services at a local black church in Royal Oak Township. This led to a walkout by black students in protest of not being allowed to leave school early. . Mongo recalled just four and a half years earlier when the late President John F. Kennedy was assassinated the students at his grade school were dismissed early. A month after Dr. King was killed, those same white administrators at Clinton Junior held services for Senator Robert F. Kennedy after he was assassinated in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen hallway.

While a junior at Oak Park High he served as managing editor of the high school newspaper, The Eagle American. Mongo was the first African American to hold the coveted position; It was also at the Oak Park high school that Mongo first cut his teeth in politics. During his senior year in high school he orchestrated and executed a last minute write in campaign for the student government day. The position was student Mayor of Oak Park. He won, making him the first black student to hold that student office. During his senior year, Mongo help lead Oak Park to their first state championship in track, where he earned All State Honors.

In 1972 he earned the WJR Scholarship in Broadcast Journalism to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He graduated with honors in May, 1976. Following graduation Mongo joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and received a certificate in Photo Journalism from the Defense Information School, (DINFOS) in 1978. He also earned a master's degree in labor history from Wayne State University in 1999.

From 1978 until 1983, he worked as a reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun, Frederick News-Post, the South Haven (Michigan) Daily Tribune and the Michigan Chronicle newspapers.

From 1984 until 1991, Mongo served as Deputy Director of Public Information under the late Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young.

Recent life

Mongo has appeared on the CNBC program American Greed and CNN Anthony Bourdain:Parts Unknown. Mongo has been quoted frequently in newspapers throughout the United States and in publications such as the Weekly Standard, New York Times, Washington Post and GQ Magazine (November 2000) as an expert on Detroit politics. He has been a contributing columnist to The Detroit News, The Michigan Chronicle, The Michigan Citizen, [(Deadline Detroit)] and has been a regular guest on WMXD-92.3 FM (Detroit Mi), Fox 2 News "Let It Rip," WDIV (NBC) "Flash Point" and The Detroit News web program "Hold the Onions." He is featured in former New Times and Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Charlie Le Duff, latest book, Detroit, An American Autopsy, (2013) in a chapter called "Mongo"and is also spotlighted in chapter thirteen of Tim Skubick's book, "See Dick and Jen Run" (2006). Skubick highlights Mongo's involvement in the 2006 race for Michigan Governor. Two of Mongo’s newspaper attack ads "Lynching is Still Legal in America" and "Sometimes a handshake and an acknowledgment makes a difference" sparked nationwide controversy in 2005 and 2006. In March 2011, Mongo led a boycott against the Detroit NAACP Chapter Annual Freedom Fund Dinner, because they gave singer Kid Rock, an award. Mongo protested the award because of Kid Rock support of the Confederate Flag at his concerts, and wearing one on the back of his jacket. "That flag stands for hate, racism and bigotry," Mongo said.