Press & broadcasting / Notorious figures
Jerry Buckley
1891–1930 · radio commentator
Corktown-born radio commentator who crusaded against crime and corruption and was shot dead in the LaSalle Hotel lobby hours after Detroit recalled its mayor in 1930.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 39- Birth name
- Gerald Emmett Buckley
- Detroit years
- 1891–1930
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Gerald Buckley was born and raised in Corktown, Detroit's oldest neighborhood. Before radio he worked as an investigator for Henry Ford and as a special investigator for the federal government. In the late 1920s he began a nightly commentary on station WMBC, broadcasting from the top floor of the LaSalle Hotel on Woodward Avenue. Prohibition had made Detroit a center of bootlegging and gangland killings, and Buckley, calling his listeners the Common Herd, attacked officials he blamed for the lawlessness. In July 1930, as ten men were killed in two weeks, he turned his fire on Mayor Charles Bowles, who had taken office that January, and helped lead the campaign that made Bowles the first mayor of a major American city to be recalled, on July 22, 1930. In the early hours of the next day, gunmen shot Buckley to death in the hotel lobby. His murder, never solved in court, shocked the city, and tens of thousands attended his funeral.
Highlights
- Nightly commentator on WMBC radio from the LaSalle Hotel
- Helped lead the 1930 recall of Mayor Charles Bowles
- Shot dead in the LaSalle Hotel lobby on July 23, 1930
- His killing was never solved in court
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · late 1920s–1930
LaSalle Hotel (WMBC studios)
Status being checked
Woodward Avenue hotel whose top floor housed the WMBC studios he broadcast from; he was shot dead in its lobby on July 23, 1930.