Low Road

by Eddie B. Allen, Jr.

  While her socialization continued at home, eventually it was time for Marie to enter kindergarten. One incident in school gave the child what was perhaps her first lesson about race and the strange dynamics of color within her family. After all, she had a father who tried to avoid being identified with black folks—who thanked God every day for Marie’s thin lips and small nose—and a mother who was willing to throttle white folks who might perceive Myrtle as being like them. How, then, was she to associate herself? The answer became either stunningly clear or all the more confusing the day Myrtle showed up to retrieve her from class. Finding herself at a loss to locate Mrs. Goines’s daughter, the teacher informed Myrtle of her quandary. Only then did the mother realize the teacher had gone looking for a little white child before finally releasing Marie to her custody. Marie would never forget the day she and her doting mother were treated as complete strangers to one another.

  Just two years behind her, Donnie appeared to be growing into a rather typical boy. It was only fitting that he would lop off his sister’s long, beautiful braids one day when they were outside “playing Indians.” It was also only fitting that Joe and Myrtle would go out and raise a hearty fuss about it. They preferred that the children recognize their Native American ancestry in other ways. About 1940, wanderlust kicked in once more. Joe and Myrtle shut down the cleaning store, packed up the children, and returned to Detroit, this time to stay. They briefly lived with George and Clairette before settling into a house at 13953 St. Aubin on the city’s northeast side. There, they were surrounded by relatives from both Joe’s and Myrtle’s families. Joe set up shop nearby on Victor Street. He called the new business Northside Cleaners. Meanwhile, Thomas Goines had also ventured into dry cleaning with his own establishment in the area of historic Fort Wayne. But he just barely got out alive when the boiler in his building exploded. Tom lost fingers and his ears burned off, leaving him permanently deformed after a stay in the hospital.

  Various primarily European ethnic groups had inhabited the city since Frenchman Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Detroit nearly 250 years before the Goines clan decided to backtrack. German immigrants established the Sacred Heart Catholic School sometime after Sacred Heart parish opened in 1875. Located at 970 Eliot, the school was for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. In 1938 Edward Mooney, who was an archbishop at the time, designated Sacred Heart the facility where black parishioners could send their sons and daughters to be educated. The Catholic Church didn’t formally support racial segregation, yet students were expected to attend classes at their assigned locations, which would not have qualified as ethnically diverse. In 1939 Holy Ghost was constructed from the ground as a second school to which the archbishop assigned students of color.

  Donnie was admitted to Sacred Heart kindergarten on September 2, 1941. His birthday still months away, he was a four-year-old student among his school peers. He started in Room 101 and remained there until the end of first grade. By then World War II had begun, ushering in a renewal of the mass migration to Detroit as the city became known as the “Arsenal of Democracy.” Production of war supplies led to $14 billion in contracts—approximately 10 percent of the nation’s battle spending—which resulted in an increase of available factory positions. The region’s population increased by about 300,000 within only four years. As the constituency of southeastern Michigan’s broader territory grew, within a decade Detroit’s black population had doubled to 200,000 by 1943. Caucasian resentment about the location of a city housing project in a white neighborhood, expressed in cross burning and other hateful acts, provided a disturbing resemblance to the South for many transplanted opportunity-seekers who thought they’d left behind the days of being unable to live comfortably in their God-given skin. In an act of defiance toward whites and as a statement of retaliation against unfair conditions, some initiated a “bumping campaign,” through which they would deliberately walk into white folks on the street, knocking them off sidewalks or nudging them in elevators. Nationally distributed Life magazine likened the situation in Detroit to dynamite. Shortly thereafter, the city exploded in a way that proved the accuracy of Life’s reporting.

  Tension related to the increased competition for jobs, housing, and educational opportunities was probably a primary factor. Those who were irritated by the influx of newcomers and the hustle for advancement took to referring to their city as “the arsehole of democracy.” Then there was the 200-person battle royal on Belle Isle Park that followed an incident involving two black men who’d shown up behaving rather aggressively toward white visitors in response to their ejection from Eastwood Park five days earlier. And there was false information: incendiary lies about attacks on innocent citizens that never took place. The combination of dangerous elements developed into thirty-six hours of race rioting, shooting, and marauding like Detroit had never seen. Policemen were shot, stores were looted, blacks were attacked as they descended from streetcars, and an Italian doctor, Joseph De Horatiis, was killed after he disregarded police warnings and responded to a house call in a black neighborhood. Ultimately, federal troops were called in, and armored cars and Jeeps carrying automatic rifles rolled down Woodward, Detroit’s main drag in and out of town. In addition to the dozens killed, more than 1,800 people were arrested.

  “They have treated the Negroes terribly,” William Guther told the media, referencing the police department’s lily-white force of 3,400 officers. “They have gone altogether too far.”

  Guther’s reaction to the bigoted rage and hostility was all the more significant, considering that he was an army brigadier general who had been charged with supervising the troops dispatched to Detroit to help quell the uprising. Close to 300 similar racial disturbances took place that same summer in forty-seven other cities, including Mobile, Alabama, and Harlem. The tone for five more decades of continued social fear, ignorance, and ethnic intolerance throughout America had, in effect, been set. The Goines home prospered while the nation went about the business of war and its communities stood nakedly vulnerable to spontaneous combustion. They were the first in the neighborhood to purchase a car and the first to bring a television into their living room. Between long hours of work, Joe and Myrtle partied hard with their in-laws and siblings. Myrtle enjoyed sipping Canadian whiskey; Joe liked the sport of betting. On Sundays he and Tom would regularly take the children to a bar on Dequindre, which was owned by a woman. The brothers kept cash. They even wore their money belts as they played games like five-card stud and tonk. With hundred-dollar bills stacked like Monopoly money, they encouraged the children to gamble. Marie would usually sit on Tom’s lap, while Donnie stayed near his father. Oftentimes, after they’d played their hands, the men let Donnie and Marie keep their winnings and gave them fare for a matinee movie.

  Goineses—or Goinses—and Baughs occupied four houses in a row on St. Aubin. When Regina came home from the convent she stayed with Joe and Myrtle in an upstairs room. Holidays for the family resembled country-style feasts and celebrations that might have made the former Baugh neighbors in Little Rock envious. Joe and Tom found hogs to slaughter and have the women prepare. The ladies made sausage from the fresh meat. Joe and Myrtle would drink spirits together until they were pleasantly intoxicated, as they occasionally did after slipping away into the dry cleaners after business hours. In the warmer months, they would take the children horseback riding in nearby Canada. Theirs was a kind of life experience that had always seemed reserved for others of a caste that was self-selected for favor and advantage. It appeared to be a great beginning for a little boy who enjoyed lemon meringue pie to grow into a happy, successful young man.

  Third times proved not to be the charm for Donnie early on, as he was held back to repeat grade three at Sacred Heart. Just weeks after the New Year on January 28, 1946, he began attending classes in the Detroit Public Schools system, leaving behind the nuns who’d served as his instructors. Inside the walls of Davison Elementary he would continue his education, but like a few of
his cousins Donnie was assigned to the “open-air” section because of a spot on his lungs. By now the family had moved to Dequindre Road near Davison Avenue on a tract of land where both the house and their new cleaning facility were located.

  Many of the public schools in the area were enrolled with a sizable population of immigrant students, some of whom had not yet adjusted to American culture. Administrative records indicated each child’s birth country as well as the birthplace of his or her parents and the language spoken at home. About 300,000 of the city’s nearly 2 million people were foreign born. In adjacent Highland Park there were a good number of Irish, and neighboring Hamtramck was mainly Polish. Canadians, Italians, Germans, and others new to the country had also settled in the area in their search for security during the evolving auto age.

  Donnie more or less struggled in the classroom all the way through his years at Cleveland, the junior high school where he enrolled in 1949. Whether he had particular learning problems or simply failed to apply himself, he apparently earned only two As during all three of his years at Cleveland, both in the seventh grade for a class called Household Mechanics. In English he earned mostly Cs and Ds; social science, Ds; math, more Ds; and general science and first aid he ultimately failed, due to lack of hours. Donnie also took elective-type courses like art, swimming, and drafting but evidently had little interest. Where he did find stimulation was on the baseball field. He preferred the use of Cleveland’s diamond to its classrooms. Donnie developed into a talented athlete, a left-handed pitcher who dreamed of playing in the majors. The Detroit Tigers had recently played their first night game before 54,480 spectators at Briggs Stadium, and Jackie Robinson’s 1947 integration of the league as a Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder generated excitement in black communities nationally.

  Oddly, Joe Goines had taken to keeping company with another prominent black sports hero. Joe Louis retired after seventeen years as the world’s heavyweight boxing champion the same year that Donnie first walked through the doors of Cleveland. Louis, who had become a legitimate American hero after defeating the Adolf Hitler–endorsed Max Schmeling in a rematch bout, was, like Joe, a transplanted southerner who had moved to Detroit during the Great Migration. However the two Joes got to know one another, clearly the drycleaner put aside his disassociation from Negroes long enough to develop their friendship. Louis was among the most recognizable black men anywhere in the world and took pride in his race. Conscious of stereotypes, the boxer refused to be photographed while eating watermelon, an image that he knew could be misinterpreted as primitive or undignified. After meeting John Roxborough, a street-wise numbers runner and businessman, along with Roxborough’s partner, Julian Black, he had managers who’d advised him about his public conduct. The Brown Bomber avoided drinking, smoking, and being spotted with white women. Though Louis’s nightlife was active—including courtships with ladies, both black and white—his gentlemanly and humble ways gained him popularity, even among white southerners who condescendingly viewed the champ as nonthreatening. Donnie and Marie enjoyed visiting Louis’s land in the outlying areas of the city. In such company, there was little reason to wonder why they were seen as the “rich kids” among their peers in the extended family. Joe would often take Myrtle and the children to visit there. They had drinks under a veranda, rode horses, and enjoyed fine company.

  But life wasn’t all recreation for the Goines kids. Donnie and Marie were responsible for helping at the cleaners on weekends and on weekday evenings after school. The newest store also had an on-site plant, which enabled Joe to treat his customers’ laundry without leaving the premises. Delivery and retrieval service was the only thing where work was concerned that truly made it necessary for Joe and his assistants to stray from home at all. Joe drove a route out into the rural areas of southeast Michigan, removing clothes for return and loading others onto a pickup truck. Further out, he had mostly white customers, who seemed all too pleased to give him their business, while his black clientele was in the city. When Marie became old enough, he taught her to drive, and she would help him make the rounds. Eventually, Joe shut down the Victor Street location as the Dequindre store became the lifeblood of the Goines’s sustenance.

  It was not long, however, before Donnie’s disinterest in supporting the family business began to surface. As his parents worked and played hard, he became disturbed when they didn’t attend school functions or baseball games in which he took part. Perhaps it didn’t seem to Donnie that his father was enthused about him. Far from an affectionate sort of dad, Joe preferred to let his actions as a provider speak for themselves. On the other hand, he was partial to his daughter and made it quite obvious. His oldest girl was his joy; though he didn’t express it with hugs and kisses, some of his broadest smiles were reserved for Marie. Now Myrtle was a different story. She surely loved her daughter, but Donnie would always be her boy. If her husband wouldn’t show it, she could be proud for both of them. Donnie’s perceptions, nonetheless, were forming in ways that would be difficult to reverse. Before he turned sixteen, in what would seem like the span of only a few moments, Myrtle’s boy would make a decision to alter the course of his entire life.

  War

  With a vigorous shove, Jessie started me towards the door. I ran out of the shop into the street I loved so well. There was not much difference between the daylight business and the night business on Hastings. The street was full of slow-moving cars, the drivers being more interested in the colored prostitutes in the doorways than on the traffic moving in front of them.

  —Whoreson, Donald Goines

  Hudson’s department store was a symbol of Detroit prosperity as the 1950s began. The towering structure employed hundreds of workers and drew multitudes of shoppers. Store executives reported million-dollar sales days on at least two occasions. Hudson’s five restaurants served something in the neighborhood of 14,000 meals on a daily basis. Negroes were limited to work as kitchen help; women, generally fair-complexioned, were paid as elevator operators. The store became the center of a bustling downtown. The city’s most prominent black neighborhood had been thriving as well. East of downtown was the self-contained Black Bottom community. Coincidentally named for the dark texture of its soil during the nineteenth century, Black Bottom was a virtual network for entrepreneurs of color. Though some of the residential sections resembled slums, with ragged houses and outdoor toilets, Black Bottom functioned as an empowerment zone without the benefit of federal dollars and designations. A city within a city, the neighborhood and its residents exuded a pride and devotion that belied any suggestion by white society that they were second-class citizens. Black Bottom produced men and women of character and determination. Its businesses and institutions, which included a breadth of service provision, left little need for any form of reliance on sources outside the community. For food and necessities, there were grocery stores. For recreation, pool halls could be found with little effort. For information, newspapers were published and distributed. Accountants set up shop in the area. Even deaths and funerals could be handled by a number of Black Bottom’s mortuaries. And there was also entertainment. That was one area where the neighborhood was without rival anywhere within the city limits or in most of the Midwest. Paradise Valley was just about the liveliest spot around. Hastings Street, lined with every imaginable establishment, was the main drag through the community. There were twenty-four-hour movie theaters that offered admission for a few dimes and restaurants where it was said that the cooking oil flavored all of the entrees. No matter what a patron ordered, the meal was often reported to have the savor of fish. One of the most popular places to eat was Perkins, while Brosche’s was known for its tasty biscuits.

  Jazz royalty like Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, and bluesy Billie Holiday took to the stages of nightclubs in the Paradise Valley district. The pains of poverty, abuse, and drug addiction could be heard in Holiday’s high-pitched vocals. Bandleader Duke Ellington surely thrilled crowds when he and his orchestra took their
“A Train” through the Valley, performing the signature Billy Strayhorn collaboration to the joy of audiences who loved the blaring horns and multi-instrumental sound. And who would have been fool enough to miss a Cab Calloway performance? In his signature white tux with flowing tails, Calloway was the personification of style. The self-fashioned vocalist and showman told Detroiters all about “Minnie the Moocher” in his animated and often humorous delivery.

  She ran around with a cat named Smokey

  She loved him, though he was cokey

  Further elaborating on poor Minnie’s misfortunes with her cocaine-addicted lover, Calloway sang to the crowd of how Smokey Joe took her to Chinatown and “showed her how to kick the gong around”—a coded reference to smoking opium. The performer delighted, as always, in hearing the crowd join in with his call-and-response:

  Hi de hi de hi de hi!

  [“Hi de hi de hi de hi!”]

  Hey de hey de hey de hey!

  [“Hey de hey de hey de hey!”]

  Along with appearances by such top-shelf national and local performers of the day, to accompany the Harlem-like nightlife of Paradise Valley, there were welcoming bars like the Flame Show and the 606 Horseshoe Lounge. Out-of-towners could even stretch out at hotels like the Dewey, the Biltmore, the Norwood, or Mark Twain. But by 1950 the look of the neighborhood had begun to change. Named for a member of the prestigious family that established the thriving automobile company, the Edsel Ford Freeway was constructed. The Ford was built through Black Bottom’s boundaries, and more of the area was obliterated in 1953 when the John C. Lodge Freeway opened. About 17,000 residents were displaced. A few years later, city officials would choose to build Interstate 75 over Hastings Street. The sights and sounds of Paradise eventually gave way to the capitalism and convenience of white urban renewal.