Black Detroit

by Herb Boyd

  Kilpatrick’s intelligence and charisma were showcased again on January 5, 2006, during his second mayoral inaugural address at the Fox Theatre, still glowing from the marvelous renovations of metalsmith Carl Nielbock. Local radio commentator Frankie Darcell served as moderator and brought David Baker Lewis, Kilpatrick’s reelection campaign chairman, and his campaign’s chief political strategist, Art Blackwell, to the stage to introduce the city’s sixtieth mayor. Standing beside his wife, Carlita, who held the Bible, with his three boys nearby, Kilpatrick was sworn in by Judges Damon Keith and Karen Fort Hood. Change is usually a typical topic of such speeches, and Kilpatrick devoted considerable time to it, noting that it was “a chance to change the image of Detroit.” He told the packed theater and distinguished guests, including Governor Jennifer Granholm, Council President Maryann Mahaffey, Erma Henderson, and Congressman John Conyers, that his administration would not be about “fixing things, it will be about transformation.” Inevitably, race and regional cooperation were dominant themes, and he cited the prominence of those factors in the city’s history. The Detroit Pistons’ teamwork was the example he used to stress how the city could succeed. It should not be about who scores the most points, but about winning, he explained, “like the Pistons.” Toward the close of the nearly hour-long ceremony, which was broadcast nationally on C-SPAN2, Kilpatrick began a humorous recitation of why he loved the city and what Detroit love is. “Going to the corner store and getting a Faygo and some Better Made hots, that’s Detroit love.” He drew the loudest response when he said, “Ice Skating at Campus Martius Park with some brothers from Linwood and Dexter who have never put on a pair of skates, that’s Detroit love.” But most striking was his fragment of lyric about cars: “Diamond in the back, sun-roof top, making the scene in a gangster lean, uh-huh, that’s Detroit love!”11 The image he evoked was prophetic, later applied to him.

  It may not have been a key item on his list of things to highlight during his inaugural address, but Mayor Kilpatrick did give a nod to the upcoming Super Bowl XL and what it could mean to the city’s economy. The event also presented a grand opportunity for promoters of a national monument to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, DC, to do some backslapping, handshaking, and schmoozing with the local bigwigs with healthy bank accounts.

  Columnist Cooper, ever alert for ways to tie sports into civil rights, featured a story on former football great Kellen Winslow, a business-development director for Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, who was in town representing those proposing a King memorial. She couldn’t catch up with the still fleet-footed former tight end, but there was a comment from Harry Johnson, president of the Memorial Project Foundation. “The goal is to raise about $300,000 in Detroit at the beginning of Black History Month,” he said. “Despite its hardships, Detroit has always been a giving community.”12 Black history, Super Bowl, Kellen Winslow, and Dr. King—it sounded like a perfect mix to get the ball rolling, and if Winslow and the King coordinators could have gotten $5 from each of the nearly seventy thousand spectators at Ford Field for the game on February 5, exactly a month after Kilpatrick’s speech, that would have been a splendid kickoff for the fund-raising initiative. But that idea was not part of the plan. The money would come from a series of other Super Bowl–related events, the proceeds of which would be added to the $50 million already in the coffers for the monument.

  27

  A SPARK OF REDEVELOPMENT

  Two years after Mayor Kilpatrick launched the Detroit Economic Development Organization to spur employment and training in various industries, the plan was beginning to take effect. Ford Field had been packed to the rafters for the Super Bowl, and similar crowds were expected in the summer at Comerica Park, where the Tigers play. At both venues, whites were the majority of the attendees, most of them from the suburbs. A bustling arts scene is a better barometer of diversity in the city. Indicative of this hopeful sign was the annual Ford Freedom Award gala at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in May. Woodie King Jr. was at the center of the festivities at the Museum. King, a former Detroiter now living in New York City and cofounder of the Concept East Theater, was saluted along with Morgan Freeman and the late Ossie Davis. King was given a special Ford Freedom Pioneer Award for creating numerous opportunities in the performing arts for African Americans.1 Some of those in attendance for this gala and other events were among the seventy thousand paid admissions and the twenty thousand paid memberships for the year, thereby meeting the goals established in return for the $2.5 million grant from the Kresge Foundation Challenge. While the grant saved the museum, the goals were not sustainable, according to the museum’s chief communications officer, Tony Spearman-Leach. “Many of the new memberships and admissions were one time and many of the members did not renew.”2

  A sizable number of Detroiters who love art and perhaps visited the museum from time to time assembled outside the six-foot-high concrete wall that ran a half mile from Eight Mile Road to Pembroke Avenue. It was called the Birwood Wall because it ran between that street and Mendota. It was built in the 1940s as a barrier separating black and white residents. Children who lived nearby played ball against the wall in the early fifties and would often mount it to see who could walk atop the narrow strip the farthest. The folks who gathered there in May 2006 were black and white, urban and suburban, and rather than putting a sledgehammer to the wall and tearing it down, they were there to help the artist Chazz Miller convert a symbol of racism into one of unity and inspiration. The huge, colorful mural with all sorts of insets and bubbles, resembling in many ways the illustrations on parts of the Berlin Wall, was a continuation of Miller’s efforts with the Public Art Workz, which he founded and directed. The project was part of the Motor City Blight Busters program. As one reporter noted, it is impossible to take the entire mural in all at once, because of its length. “But certain images pop out in a slow pan: Rosa Parks boarding a bus that would make her a household name in the civil rights struggle, followed by a man carrying a sign that says, ‘Fair Housing.’” There is a proliferation of children blowing bubbles, within each of which is contained a painting of an auto plant or a word, such as peace or flowers. Miller explained that the “bubbles are a form of creation. Children’s imaginations create the future,” he said. “Also, bubbles capture images and distort them and give you a new perspective.”3

  A coterie of black business leaders came together in the fall of 2006 with the objective of improving Michigan’s dismal economic outlook. Included in the network of organizations, tentatively called the African American Business Alliance, were the longstanding Booker T. Washington Business Association, the National Association of Black Automotive Suppliers, the Detroit Chamber of Commerce, and the Black Women Contracting Association. All told, they represented more than five hundred companies in the Detroit metropolitan area. Among the group’s objectives was to promote black-owned firms (of which there were nearly twenty thousand in the state with almost $2 billion in sales), bridge gaps in access to capital, and influence politics to the benefit of the member organizations and their constituents. Bill Brooks, chief executive officer of United American Health Care Corporation, was selected to lead the alliance. “The time, therefore, is particularly great because of what Detroit is doing and its attempts to revitalize its economy,” said Geneva Williams, one of the organizers of the alliance and president of City Connect Detroit, a nonprofit that specializes in fund-raising.4

  It’s debatable what impact the alliance may have had on James Hooks, the sole proprietor of the only African American–owned grocery store in the city, or even if his was among the five hundred companies earmarked for assistance. His store, Metro Foodland, is located at Southfield Freeway and Grand River Avenue, where it’s been since he left his job at Kroger’s in the mid-eighties. Despite thefts and security problems, he said his business—with sixty employees—is doing very well, especially during the first part of the month. Residents who live within walking o
r short driving distance of his store have an advantage that more than a half million other Detroiters do not have—those who live in “food deserts,” vast stretches of the city where residents have little or no access to affordable, nutritious food. But there are researchers who contend that the city is not a food desert. “Detroit’s food issue does not come from a lack of physical stores . . . it is rooted in an unequal racial and economic system that [creates] the necessity for self-determined communities.”5

  Self-determination has been a watchword for Malik Kenyatta Yakini for years and was a motivating factor in February 2006 when he, along with several residents, founded the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN). For his work in educating the children of the city, he was honored as Administrator of the Year by the Michigan Association of Public School Academies. The first plot of land acquired by the DBCFSN was on the city’s east side, and there they began with the “lasagna method,” in which they planted vegetables and herbs and developed work schedules, layering new activities as they became achievable. Eventually they became one of the treasured stops on the Detroit Garden Tour. When the quarter acre of land was purchased by a developer, they relocated to the city’s west side on property owned by the Pan-African Orthodox Christian Church, founded by Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman. They revitalized land that had grown fallow, renaming it the D-Town Farm. On its website, the group stated:

  We observed that many of the key players in the local urban agricultural movement were young whites, who while well-intentioned, nevertheless, exerted a degree of control inordinate to their numbers in Detroit’s population. Many of those individuals moved to Detroit from other places specifically to engage in agricultural . . . work. It was and is our view that the most effective movements grow organically from the people whom they are designed to serve. Representatives of Detroit’s majority African-American population must be in the leadership of efforts to foster food justice and food security in Detroit. While our specific focus is on Detroit’s African-American community, we realize that improved policy and an improved localized food system is a benefit to all Detroit residents.6

  By 2007, the organization, with an emphasis on creating garden beds, walkways, and an irrigation system, had grown considerably, gathering additional resources, tools, and outlets for their products, including space at the city’s renowned Eastern Market. That summer, plans were under way for a Harvest Festival in the fall.

  From the Food Security Network or D-Town Farm came the vegetables to complement the meat being cooked and served at Bert’s Marketplace, within walking distance of the urban farmers’ site at Eastern Market. No matter where you roamed in the market, the aroma from the huge outdoor barbecue pits wafted your way, enticing you to sample the spareribs, burgers, sausages, and hot dogs being prepared by Jai-Lee Dearing, the son of Bert Dearing, one of the city’s most industrious African American entrepreneurs. Many of the patrons at the pits and the nearby club were also regular customers at Dearing’s blues club not too far away downtown. From his father, Jai-Lee, thirty-four, was learning the intricacies of running his own business, which will undoubtedly buttress the nearby music and live theater venue under the Dearing name. In an interview with reporter Cassandra Spratling, Jai-Lee elaborated on the family’s history, noting that his father’s was the only black-owned business in the Eastern Market. Shoppers in the market were often lured to Dearing’s restaurant, where the smell of barbecue filled the air. When she asked him the most important lesson he had learned thus far from his father, he said: “When things are great, you need to know how to save. When times are tough, you need to know how to stretch what you have. . . . I’m the fourth generation to be in business, and I’m teaching my children to be involved in the business.”7

  What Bert Dearing was trying to do and succeeding so well at in the city’s hub, Mark Douglas was doing on the outer rim of metropolitan Detroit with his auto dealership. Douglas was the son of Walter Douglas, a former vice president of New Detroit, Inc. and an advisor to Coleman Young. In 1985, Walter Douglas entered a minority training program hosted by the Ford Motor Company. A year later, he purchased a share of Avis Ford in suburban Detroit. He became a majority owner in 1992. In 2006, he turned over the business operation to his son, Mark.

  It should be noted that prior to Douglas’s ownership in 1992, there were a number of black-owned automobile dealerships, most notably those of Porterfield Wilson; Nathan Conyers, the brother of Representative John Conyers; Pamela Rodgers; Mel Farr, a former running back for the Detroit Lions; and Ed Davis, the pioneer in this business. By the time Davis retired from selling new and used cars in 1971, designer Ed Welburn, a native of Philadelphia, was completing his bachelor’s degree in fine arts at Howard University. In 1972, the same year of his graduation from Howard, he began working at GM as an associate designer. A year later, he joined the Buick Exterior Studio, lending his creativity to the Buick Riviera and Park Avenue. Within a few years, he was director of GM’s Advanced Design in Warren, Michigan. His talented team was responsible for the development of new and innovative vehicles for all GM models. In 1975, he was assigned to the Oldsmobile Exterior Studio and was subsequently named chief designer of the studio in 1999. Seven years later, in 2006, he began a two-year stint at Saturn, which culminated in a prize overseas assignment in Germany, where he worked on future global design programs.

  By 2007, Mark Douglas was among the last of the black car sellers. His dealership is located on the outskirts of the city at Twelve Mile Road and Telegraph. “Ultimately to be legacy and to have the opportunity to pass on a legacy type business, like the one I’m fortunate enough to be in, is really the blessing,” Douglas said. “Not so much that I’m an African American business owner, but more so the fact that I’m an African American business owner who just happens to be a Ford dealer, that just happens to be on one of the most successful corners in Southeast Michigan.”8

  There were other thriving corners in the city. One in the Cass Corridor belonged to Janet Webster Jones, the owner of Source Booksellers. Jones, whose mother was a librarian, has been in the book business for more than twenty years, opening her store in 1989. She is also a living repository of Detroit and Michigan history, elements of which are invariably interwoven in any discussion with her. “We’ve had about forty years of loss of population, loss of jobs, income,” she told an interviewer. “Our social fabric has been shredded in a lot of ways.” But there is always a glimmer of optimism in her discussions. “So I look at Detroit and it is huge, huge. And what it will be, how it will look is all going to depend on the people. Because it’s always the people and not the place.”9

  This chapter opened with a discussion of black Detroit’s evolving art scene, and there is no better way to begin its conclusion than by profiling George N’Namdi, an art dealer and educator, who has been a resident of Detroit for more than a generation. A native of Columbus, Ohio, he earned his master’s degree in education from Ohio State University and a PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1974. But his passion was art, which he began collecting while a student in college. In 1978, he and his wife, Carmen, founded Nataki Talibah School House, an independent grade school they named after their late daughter. While his school prospered, N’Namdi continued to collect art, and by 1989 he opened his gallery in Detroit, relocating to the city from Birmingham, Michigan. He also has galleries elsewhere, including one in New York City.

  “Relocating back to Detroit, there were a lot of complexities to it,” he said. “We decided to establish an art center, as opposed to remaining a gallery. The challenge of funding the renovation of the building was complex and took longer than expected.”10

  A Detroiter or Highland Parker for many years, Marian Kramer had no need to relocate. What was new and invigorating for this activist, who was a prominent member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, was her role as director of New Chances JET. In many respects this new program is an extension of what she had done for many years as a le
ader of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. Kramer has a reputation of being a thorn in the side of the status quo, the movers and shakers whom she feels compelled to irritate to action. She and her colleagues have always tried to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted,” as newspaperman Finley Peter Dunne once put it, particularly in helping those on welfare and ignored by bureaucrats and policy makers.

  When Kramer was honored by the Michigan Chronicle in 2007 as one of the city’s leaders, it could not have saluted a more determined and uncompromising activist. “The fire that burns in the hearts of such activists keeps the powerful in check,” the Chronicle said of Kramer, and that fire shows little sign of dimming or being extinguished.

  Another spark of redevelopment has long been flickering at the Northwest Activities Center (NAC), where Ron Lockett has been the executive director since 2002. A lifelong Detroiter with many years working as a counselor in youth affairs, Lockett found his niche at NAC. It was a very propitious moment recently when Dave Bing showed up at the center for the inauguration of a new gymnasium there. “None of this renovation could have been done without the financial support of the Fifth Third Bank,” Lockett said. “They have been indispensable and unstinting in helping the center become the axis of a thriving community.”11