When rock‘n’roll star Bruce Springsteen belted out the phrase “Down in Youngstown” in one of his hit songs nearly 30 years ago, it referred to the struggles of Americans in a steel-mill town in northeast Ohio’s Mahoning County.
The 1995 song title was “Youngstown,” and it pointed to the importance of the industrial anchor for the city’s economic success and national security. The decline resulted in a depressed region for decades, following the collapse of the American steel industry, the diminished blue-collar worker, and the fading American Dream.
