DETROIT
A city of movers and shakers
Detroit's Background
Before becoming an American city, Detroit was first known as Fort Détroit as part of New France. At its founding in 1701, Detroit was a fur trading outpost for New France’s other water adjacent settlements. In fact, the original French name “Détroit” translates to the “strait” and refers to the waters between Lake Erie and Lake Huron that lay near the city. Migrating almost 300 miles from Fort Michilimackinac, French fur traders left to create a new fort closer to English territory so as to stop the English from encroaching on New France’s fur domain. Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac, the visionary behind this mission, chose Detroit’s specific locale for the militarily advantageous high banks should they need to repel invading English.
This advantage would evidently matter very little as Detroit was ultimately surrendered to the British in 1760 during the Seven Years' War and then later taken again in 1796 when Detroit came under American control.
Detroit, as an American city, first got it's claim to fame as one of the final destinations for the Underground Railroad before sending black slaves to seek asylum in Canada. On the last leg to freedom, local white Baptists collaborated with freed African Canadians to hide black slaves until they could be ferried across the mile-wide Detroit River. As more former slaves were brought up north, eventually more and more black men and women had decided to stay in Detroit rather than press forward into Canada.
As more black Americans threw down roots, Detroit saw the formation of black-owned businesses and a sort of public education system for black children that was organized by and held in the basements of churches. This church education was deemed necessary at the time since black children were prohibited from public and private schools.
Bounty hunters and slavers still presented a problem to black Detroiters as they would drag black people down to the South but, by 1846, there were enough black citizens living in Detroit to adequately form militias to protect black communities from outsiders.
These small, but thriving urban black communities would later go on to establish Detroit as a welcoming destination to the many black refugees escaping southern oppression during the Great Migration.
Detroit's Growth
The Great Migration had a direct effect on Detroit's black population and it's economic prosperity. From 1910 to 1920, Detroit saw the doubling of its population. Detroit’s African American population alone grew 611.3 percent - from less than 6,000 to 41,000. What you're seeing on the left hand side is a visual representation of that initial 6,000 person population (on the following slide you'll see 611.3% or 6.113 times the area of what you see here).
For black Americans in Detroit, it was commonplace that if a relative in Detroit was currently employed and had heard about a job opening, they would write for their southern family members to come up to Detroit to fill the position. As this trend continued, by the end of 1920, at least 1,000 black migrants arrived in Detroit every week from the South looking for opportunity to fill the labor demands that companies like the Ford Motor Company (FMC) and the Packard Motor Car Company set.
As more African-Americans migrated to Detroit, Detroit's industrial and automotive industries received a massive economic boost.
In 1916, at the start of the Great Migration, Detroit placed fourth in the nation in terms of dollar value of manufactured goods; in four short years, Detroit would rise to third.
At this time the urban area of Detroit became the most committed city to manufacturing in the nation due its ever growing automotive industry.
City Planning Efforts Made By Detroit's Black Community
The Detroit chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) founded in 1920 by A. D. Williams was integral in exposing the unfair housing treatment towards African Americans in Detroit’s “Black Bottom”. This division would later go on to establish drugstores, restaurants, laundries, theaters, shoeshine parlors, and a gas station all the while maintaining a viable infrastructure for future developments in the black community.
To your left are two cultural cornerstones to Detroit's past. The leftmost marker is MBAD's African Bead Museum and to the immediate right of that is the historical marker of were the First Congregational Church of Detroit used to be.
Major Debates and Early Contemporary Issues
Despite once being a major player in the Abolitionist Movement, Detroit still faced many problems as Southern black migrants entered, spread and began starting families throughout Detroit’s urban areas. Tensions rose between whites and blacks, and many were all too vocal about their contempt towards these growing black communities. By 1923, a thousand or so Detroiters pridefully admitted to belonging to the Ku Klux Klan and felt discontent with how their local government handled this immigration “problem”. At this time crosses were openly burned in front of City Hall and the Wayne County Building.
Well-meaning black Detroiters also faced the wrath of these bigots. One such man, Dr. Ossian Sweet, purchased a home at Garland and Charlevoix in 1925 much to the disdain of many whites in the area. These same white Detroiters later harassed the family ad nauseam until a man living nearby was killed. Sweet and his brother were then tried for the man’s murder but were successfully defended by Clarence Darrow.
Hostile Policy Concerns for Detroit's Black Communities
Detroit’s African Americans, like many other cities, experienced “redlining”. Redlining was a practice in which minority communities, like African Americans, were denied credit. Programs like the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) and the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) actively discouraged lending money in urban communities with high concentrations of the poor and minorities so as to keep them in impoverished areas. Since many African-Americans were deemed a "risk" for paying back state and federal loans, many African-Americans could not take the loans necessary for them to move out of impoverished neighborhoods. This effectively denied many blacks access to better workplaces and places of education by keeping them in underfunded neighborhoods.
While the FHA wouldn't be formed until 1934, the FHA's goal of segregating communities is based in eugenics; a belief in natural biological differences between race groups that was popularized in the 1920s. Simply put, FHA and NAREB officials simply hoped segregating minorities from whites would cause "lesser races" to die off.
Pictured to the left is one of the earliest maps for redlining Detroit before the Supreme Court deemed relining illegal in 1948.
Significant Legislative Shifts
Detroit has been a prominent liberal-left city for over a century, and its legislative action shows this best. In 1935, Detroit created the Civil Rights Federation (CRF) to evaluate and assess civil rights violations in Detroit. The CRF would go on tackle problems like housing discrimination and unfair wages faced by the black communities of Detroit. However, not every law that was needed got passed and, despite the CRF's best attempts, not every voice was heard.
In the summer of 1943, Detroit's social tensions boiled to a head as black communities faced worsening housing conditions and an increase in their population density. What followed were the 1943 Detroit "race riots". After calling in the military to end the rioting, the riots ended but the demand for change did not stay silent. More protests continued for decades as black Detroiters fought for their voices to be heard. With the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, black Americans were given legitimate opportunities to make their voices heard.
Nearly a decade later, black Detroiters would see a major victory in 1974 with the election of Detroit's first black mayor, Coleman Alexander Young (pictured to the left).
Future Outlook
To this day, Detroit has maintained its role as a civil rights leader for other American cities. Spurred by George Floyd's murder on May 25, hundreds of Detroiters (most predominantly Detroit's high school and college students) have participated in protests to garner the attention of lawmakers and government officials to make lasting changes to ensure that black Americans can live freely.
As of June 2020, a state representative from Detroit, Tyrone Carter, has begun crafting legislation that would create a central database for Michigan police officers who’ve been disciplined in order to prevent police departments from hiring or re-hiring cops that pose a threat to civilians. Many local law enforcement officers are against the proposed law and argue that it will amount to no change, but that hasn't deterred Detroiters from protesting for legislative change and justice for their black communities.
