Black Detroit

by Herb Boyd

  As Detroit enters a new phase of growth after so many fits and starts, its future looks mixed. Ideas abound—for urban farms, bike paths, mixed residential/commercial developments, etc. But the city can achieve its true greatness only when the majority population shares in the incredible growth downtown and this same material energy is duplicated in the neighborhoods. One major dilemma facing young African American Detroiters is whether to stay in Detroit or go elsewhere to start careers and pursue business dreams. Many parents fret that their kids will not return home after college.

  One part of the city is being revitalized by several entrepreneurs pulling together to fill shopping and service voids. The Avenue of Fashion on Livernois Avenue is the prototype of what should be replicated in neighborhoods throughout the city. Residents now eat in new restaurants and shop for quality merchandise in upscale stores owned by local entrepreneurs. This type of synergy is vital for a city with vestiges of its historical legacy of political and economic inequality still very tangible.

  Our spirits were uplifted when two of our high schools, Cass Tech and Martin Luther King Jr., brought home state championships in football in 2016.

  Detroit is a city of survivors who have endured highs and lows throughout its storied history. We have gone from the riot in 1943 and the rebellion in 1967 to the Pistons’ world championships in 1989, 1990, and 2004, from Martin Luther King’s first “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 to the election of our first African American mayor, Coleman A. Young in 1974, from a population of 1.8 million in 1950 to 670,000 today. Detroit will find a way to survive by rebranding, retooling, and rediscovering itself. I’m proud to be a Detroiter.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: A SON REMEMBERS

  Here and there throughout Black Detroit I have mentioned Katherine Brown. That is my personal pride, because she is my mother. Now you can go to the index and see how she is inextricably woven into the narrative. I could not have done this book without her sharing her story, her memories, with me. And what a memory! Only on a couple of points did we differ, mainly in counting the number of places where we’ve lived in this city.

  I deliberately refrained from including every historical incident in which she was present or which she vividly recalled. However, I found it impossible to exclude my deepest impressions of her, when I was four and she brought my brother Charles and me from Alabama to Detroit, just in time for me to experience the race riot of 1943.

  From her early reconnaissance trips to Detroit before moving here, down to her apartment in the LaBelle Towers in Highland Park, most of her ninety-six years have been in her beloved Motown. I think I was about five or six when I began badgering her with questions about my father, asking why he wasn’t with us in Detroit. It took me years to unravel that she and my father had different views about how and where the children should be raised. As a farmer, my father was a man of the soil; my mother was a dreamer and wanted something more than the limitations of Jim Crow.

  She had only an eighth-grade education, but my mother was extremely resourceful. During World War II, she was among a fortunate few black women to gain employment in the “arsenal of democracy.” When that ended, I remember the succeeding years when she would leave the house at the break of day and return as the sun went down. It took a full day for her to travel to the suburbs and then come home after her job as a domestic was done. Her native abilities were phenomenal, stuff no classroom could have taught her.

  She shared these things with me, teaching me to read and write, to prepare my breakfast, to handle her precious shellac records—and she was the best bid whist partner I’ve ever had. Imbued with her lessons of life, I was never without confidence, never without her encouragement to excel.

  When I was nineteen, she managed the kitchen at Hall’s Department Store on Schoolcraft and Wyoming. It wasn’t long before she convinced the owner to give me a job chasing stock and working in the warehouse. But neither of us lasted very long at the store, and soon she was back doing “day work.” Because of the thorough way she cleaned a house, she was always in demand in the suburbs, primarily working in Jewish homes, where she learned their culture and taught me a smattering of Yiddish. She acquired additional familiarity with Jewish rites and rituals during her many years working in the kitchen at Shaarey Zedek, one of the nation’s largest synagogues.

  I should note that Cat Boyd became Katherine Brown after marrying my stepfather, Willie, whose most memorable gift to us was my sister Corliss and my brother Russell. When their marriage ended, her sense of independence was renewed. Now on her own with four children, her determination to provide for them was given a fresh round of stress, another test she passed with flying colors.

  Over the years, Katherine Brown, like her children, grew up with the city, rolled with its punches, and cheered its victories, ever ready to meet each challenge with imagination and ingenuity. I sat next to her one day at Briggs Stadium and watched as she rooted for Charles, the captain of the Northwestern High School baseball team, as they defeated Cass Tech for the city championship. She had every reason to be proud, for it was she who taught us how to catch and hit the ball, as well as the intricacies of the game. I know few women who can rattle off information about sports as knowledgeably as she can.

  She was also an indispensable fount of news when I wasn’t in the city. I was in the army in 1963 when Cynthia Scott was killed, but my mother filled in the blanks for me on this tragedy because Cynthia, or Bay-Bay, as we called her, had lived upstairs over us on Cardoni Street when she was a little girl.

  My mother’s ability to relate and discuss current events in Detroit was the real bounty for her son. How blessed I was to share in her wisdom and knowledge, particularly about how to be a good person. Sometimes I wish more of her good sense would have rubbed off on me. I would consider myself lucky to possess more of her Christian charity, her sense of community. When I tell people that at ninety-six, she drives to the various food pantries around the city, gathering items that she then shares with the seniors in her building, they are flabbergasted.

  What I know about Detroit I learned following her path, talking to her friends, listening to her recollections about Black Bottom, Paradise Valley, Little Rock Baptist Church, the Jeffries Projects, and the changing aspects of the city.

  I can expect a wave of criticism when she reads this book—things I left out, people I didn’t mention, events I’ve forgotten. Then with her typical praise, she’ll tell me how wonderful it is, and maybe next time I’ll do even better.

  No matter her judgment, my one wish is that the book is finished before she joins the ancestors, because it was so often her words and guidance that led me to them and their stories.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As Captain Renault did in Casablanca, I’ve rounded up the usual suspects for another one of my literary journeys, and these suspects are informants in the best sense of the word. Some of these informants are no longer with us, but what they taught me about the history of Detroit are lessons of lasting memory, and I hope I’ve given them the truth and insight with which they were delivered.

  The alpha and omega of this book is my mother, Katherine; she blessed me with a passion for life, an infinite curiosity, and as she has collected a home overflowing with whatnots, knickknacks, photos, and memorabilia. I’ve inherited that spirit in gathering friends, all of them repositories of black history and culture. There is an affectionate circle of griots who have been indispensable to all of my books, and their impressions abound on the pages here. That circle includes Dan Aldridge, Malik Chaka, Ron Lockett, George Gaines, Michael Dinwiddie, Don Von Freeman, Dorothy Dewberry, Imhotep Gary Byrd, Lloyd Williams, Voza Rivers, Elinor Tatum, Nayaba Arinde, Jules Allen, Robert Van Lierop, Haki Madhubuti, Ralph “Buzzy” Jones, Ron Daniels, Ron Williams, Fred Beauford, Keith Owens, Eddie Harris, Keith Beauchamp, Gloria Aneb House, Larry Gabriel, Kim Heron, Jeff Santos, Rae Alexander Minter, Dan Coughlin, Don Rojas, Christopher Griffith, Gene Cunningham, Geri Allen, Barbara Cox, Leni Sinclair,
Reggie Carter, Ruben Wilson, jessica Care moore, JoAnn Watson, Billy Mitchell, Woodie King Jr., Cliff Frazier, David Ritz, and Hakim Hasan.

  This is the immediate circle, and I have called on them and relied on them in one way or another in all of my writing assignments, and those on the list know exactly the wisdom they have dispensed. Each one of the several neighborhoods in Detroit, from Black Bottom to Eight Mile Road, possessed a reservoir of storytellers, folks eager to bend my ear with gossip and tall tales. I met the late Cleophus Roseboro on the North End, and over the years he was a boundless resource of information, particularly about downtown Detroit and how the city operates. His almost weekly letters to the Free Press kept me abreast of municipal shenanigans and issues of importance to ordinary citizens.

  From Cardoni, we took flight to Pinehurst where the Binion brood were my companions, none more enduring than John, McArthur, and Tom. They helped me navigate the tricky racial terrain, giving me the support I needed as we integrated an all-white territory. I wasn’t long enough in the vicinity to gather the lessons I learned at Moore School, McMichael, and Northwestern High School. A few of those teachers and counselors, particularly Ms. Johnson, Mr. Sweetini, Ms. Vyn, and H. P. Brown, prepared me for the research, and instilled in me a pursuit of excellence that was extended during my fifteen years at Wayne State University, where the loss of Malcolm X had sent me.

  From Professor Norman McRae at Wayne State, I got my first dose of Detroit’s history, and his inspiration dovetailed nicely with a coterie of students and associates guiding me deeper into the city’s historic precincts. Lonnie Peek, Ozell Bonds, Bruce Williams, Susan Cooper, Gerald Simmons (Kwadwo Akpan), and Kathy Gamble were my comrades when we launched the Association of Black Students and the seminal seeds of black studies. Most of them came of age in the city, and their varying paths instructed me in ways they will never know. Geneva Smitherman, David Rambeau, Ernie Allen, Art Blackwell, Richard Simmons, Conrad Mallett Jr., Charles Simmons, Edward Simpkins, Hubert Locke, Woodburn Ross, John Sinclair, Charles Moore, Bob Mast, John Watson, Harry Clark, Ron Hunt, Queen Dooley, and Alice Tait were on campus enhancing my academic and intellectual compass.

  Several institutions, their administrators, and staff deserve thanks, including the Burton Historical Collection and the E. Azalia Hackley Collection at the Detroit Public Library; the Walter Reuther Collection, especially Louis Jones; the stacks at Wayne State University Library; and the Dr. Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, particularly Juanita Moore, Charles Ezra Ferrell, and Yolanda Jack; the Detroit Institute of the Arts; the Detroit Historical Society; and the Skillman Branch of the Detroit Public Library.

  Working at the Detroit Free Press, the Michigan Chronicle, the Detroit Sun, and the Metro Times afforded me access to reporters, editors, and the papers’ archives—and the early stewardship of Longworth Quinn, Jim Ingram, and Nadine Brown was vastly rewarding

  Of service to me were a number of critical players—Doug Bretz provided living accommodations during two monthlong stays in the city; members of my family, such as Thelma and Odell Dinwiddie, and Taylor and Michelle Segue, opened their doors and hearts to a couple of vagabonds. My daughters, Rhonda, Almitra, Catherine, and Maya; my son, Johnny; and their mothers reminded me that my Detroit roots are more than words but blood and marrow.

  And then there are the scholars and civic leaders who took time from their busy schedules to give additional ballast to the project, and a few of them—Heather Ann Thompson, David Levering Lewis, Peniel Joseph, Betty DeRamus, Rep. John Conyers, and Ta-Nehisi Coates—even contributed very thoughtful blurbs. Photos by Dale Rich present empowering images that more than complement the narrative. Recently, this group has been enlarged by the arrival of Errol Henderson, Cheryl Sterling, Fred Logan, Sabira Bushra, Shimon Mercer-Wood, Cinque Brath, Bob Gumbs, Glenn Hunter, Suzanne Smith, and Michael Stauch.

  There is a confederacy of black women who forged and developed this book: My editor Tracy Sherrod meticulously combed the manuscript, and I hope I have sufficiently answered many of her queries; Marie Brown, my agent and guardian angel, watched over the book with a deep love and attention; and my wife, Elza, completes this triumvirate of talent that gives the book a special balance of meaning and gravitas. Since my wife has been joined at the spine with me and of such immeasurable value in all my books, praising her is like patting myself on the back. We have been an inseparable duo, and nothing I’ve done in the classroom, in my journalism, and certainly as an author has been finished without her approval—and of course that would mean approving her own indivisible contribution.

  But in the end, no matter the competence and intelligence of your “suspects,” the book belongs to the author, and I am ready and willing to take the blame for the shortcomings and charge the suspects for its accomplishments.

  Black Detroit was a lifetime in the making and, like the city, it remains a work in progress, a progress that only its denizens and readers can complete.

  NOTES

  Chapter 1: Cadillac, “The Black Prince”

  1.“Cadillac Papers,” ed. Clarence M. Burton (Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society Collections 33, 1904), 96–101.

  2.Alice C. Laut, Cadillac: Knight Errant of the Wilderness (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1931), 45–47.

  3.C. M. Burton, The Building of Detroit (1912), 10.

  4.Scott Martelle, Detroit: A Biography (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2012), 4.

  5.C. M. Burton, Cadillac’s Village; or, Detroit under Cadillac with List of Property Owners and a History of the Settlement, 1701–1710 (Detroit, 1896), 70. Among the slaves owned by Joseph Campau was a young one named Crow, who was quite a favorite of Mr. Campau. He was often dressed in scarlet in stark contrast to his color. To amuse townspeople, Crow would climb to the top of Sainte Anne’s steeple, and like Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, perform gymnastic tricks. He was as supple and elastic as a circus rider. He had been purchased from Montreal and later drowned in the Campau swimming pool. See General Friend Palmer, Early Days in Detroit (Hunt & June, 1906), 105.

  6.Norman McRae Jr., Blacks in Detroit, 1736–1833: A Search for Community on the Western Frontier (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982), 52.

  7.Marcel Trudel, L’esclavage au Canada François: Histoire et conditions de l’esclavage (Les presses de l’Université Laval, 1960), 188.

  8.Jorge Castellanos, “Black Slavery in Detroit,” Detroit in Perspective: A Journal of Regional History 7, no. 2 (Fall 1983): 43. This also appears as a chapter in Detroit Perspectives—Crossroads and Turning Points, ed. Wilma Wood Henrickson (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991).

  9.Tiya Miles, National Public Radio with Michel Martin, Jan. 30, 2012.

  10.McRae, op. cit., 54. F. Clever Bald explained: “Some of the Indians at Detroit were slaves. They were captives who had been taken in wars between hostile tribes and sold to whites. These people were known as Panis, phonetic spelling of Pawnee, a tribe considered by more warlike savages to be degraded and fit only for servants. Visitors to Detroit reported that there were none better.” Detroit: First American Decade 1796–1805 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1948), 40.

  11.Brian Leigh Dunnigan, Frontier Metropolis: Picturing Early Detroit, 1701–1838 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 50.

  12.Milo Milton Quaife, ed., The Siege of Detroit in 1763: The Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy and John Rutherford’s Narrative of a Captivity (Chicago: Lakeside Press, R. R. Donnelly & Sons, Christmas, 1958), 27. Not only is there an alternative version of Pontiac’s plan, but also there are different spellings of Gladwyn’s name and Catherine’s tribal background. Howard Peckham in Pontiac and the Indian Uprising (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947) cites an account by Henry Connor, “son of the first permanent settler of St. Clair County, and himself as interpreter at Detroit in the early nineteenth century, related that he was acquainted with Catherine; that she was young (in 1763) and in love with Gladwin; and that she
unromantically perished long afterward by falling while drunk into a vat of boiling maple syrup.” See Quaife, 31.

  13.Robert E. Roberts, Sketches and Reminiscences of the City of the Straits and Its Vicinity (Detroit: Free Press Book and Job Printing House, 1884), 24. Many residents of Black Bottom recall a yellow frame house with a turret-like arrangement at the top that might have served as a lookout during the battle. If you dug deep enough, local wags said, the earth was bloody red from the wounded and the dead, and that’s why a cemetery was established at this location.

  14.Clarence M. Burton, The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701–1922 (Detroit: S. J. Clarke, 1922), 193.

  15.Ibid., 24. This incident is reminiscent of one that occurred in New York City in January 1641, when an overweight Manuel de Gerrit de Reus broke the hangman’s ropes. He had been tried and convicted of killing another company slave, Jan Premero. He and nine other company slaves confessed to the murder, knowing it was a capital crime in New Amsterdam but relying on the reluctance of the company to execute nine of its thirty slaves. Since no individual confessed to inflicting the lethal blow, the Provincial Council (acting in a judicial capacity) ordered the drawing of lots to determine who would be punished. “They believed that the hand of God would intervene to help identify the perpetrator. Manuel drew the short straw and was sentenced to death by hanging. But when Manuel was pushed off the ladder, both ropes broke and he fell to the ground. The crowd shouted for mercy, convinced that a failed execution was an act of God. The Provincial Council agreed and pardoned all nine slaves on condition of good behavior and willing service.” See www.newamsterdamhistorycenter.org/bios/manuel.html.