Black Detroit
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Fard, Lincoln noted, had established a temple, developed a ritual and worship rules and regulations, founded a University of Islam—a combined elementary and secondary school—with an emphasis on mathematics, and created the Muslim Girls Training Class, “which taught young Muslim women the principles of home economics and how to be a proper wife and mother.”
Furthermore, Fard left the seven thousand or so black Muslims with a new sense of identity, a new cosmology, a new eschatology, and a special place in the universe. To his way of thinking, African Americans were “Asiatic,” the “original people” on Earth. He gave black men godlike status in relationship to the devil, whom Muhammad would transmogrify into white men.
17.After Fard vanished into thin air, the door was open for Muhammad to elevate Fard himself from prophet to God incarnate, the Supreme God, “to whom was subordinated the commonplace godliness of the rank-and-file Blackman,” Ernest Allen wrote in his essay included in The Farrakhan Factor, edited by Amy Alexander. “No more the worse for its indeterminacy than the idea of the Christian Trinity,” Allen continued, “this dualistic notion of the divine would remain a pillar of NOI belief.”
18.Herb Boyd, Amsterdam News, May 11, 2011.
19.G. Hubert, The Detroit Riot of 1967 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1969), 132.
Chapter 12: Boom Town
1. Jeremy Williams, Detroit: The Black Bottom Community (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009), 71. Mary Clarice McCauley Cosey in Elaine Latzman Moon’s Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes: An Oral History of Detroit’s African American Community, 1918–1967 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), said the Brewster Public Housing Projects had just been built when she moved with her family in 1939.
2. Wilma Wood Henrickson, ed., Detroit Perspectives: Crossroads and Turning Points (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 408–9.
3. Ibid., 410.
4. Angela Dillard, Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 138.
5. Matthew Wilhelm Kapell, Michigan Academician, Sept. 22, 2009, and www.thefreelibrary.com/%22Miscreants,+be+they+white+or+colored%22%3A+the+local+press+reactions+to . . . -a0218112266.
6. Dillard, op. cit., 139.
7. Robert C. Weaver, Negro Labor: A National Problem (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1946), 61.
8. Ibid., 68.
9. Ibid., 66.
10. Ibid., 77.
11.B. J. Widick, Detroit: A City of Race and Class Violence (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1972), 93.
12.Megan Taylor Shockley, “Working for Democracy: Working-Class African American Women, Citizenship, and Civil Rights in Detroit, 1940–1954,” Michigan Historical Review 29, no. 2 (Fall 2003), 126.
13.Ibid., 142.
14.Interview with Katherine Brown, January 2014.
15.Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 28.
16.Stephen M. Ward, ed. Pages from a Black Radical’s Notebook: A James Boggs Reader (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011), 11. See Ernest Allen Jr.’s essay “Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism,” Black Scholar 24, no. 1 (Winter 1994).
17.Ernest Allen Jr., “Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism,” Black Scholar 24, no. 1 (Winter 1994), 39.
18.Ibid., 13.
19.Coleman Young with Lonnie Wheeler, Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young (New York: Viking Penguin, 1994), 49.
20.Ibid., 77.
21.Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Phoenix, AZ: Secretarius Memps Ministeries, 1965), 179.
22.Allen, op. cit. 23.
23.Louis De Caro, Malcolm and the Cross: The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 37.
24.E. U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 68.
25.Ibid., 70.
26.Harvard Sitkoff, “Detroit Race Riot of 1943,” Michigan History Magazine 53 (1969): 188.
27.Ibid., 189.
28.Interview with Katherine Brown, Jan. 11, 2014.
29.Interview with Sidney Barthwell Jr., Jan. 13, 2014.
30.Elaine Katzman Moon, Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes: An Oral History of Detroit’s African American Community, 1918–1967 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), 78.
31.John Dancy, Sand Against the Wind: The Memoirs of John C. Dancy (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1966), 198.
32.Henrickson, op. cit., 423.
33.Williams, op. cit., 113.
34.Sitkoff, op. cit., 202.
35.Dancy, op. cit., 199.
36.James McGrath Morris, Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (New York: Amistad/HarperCollins, 2014), 44.
37.Williams, op. cit., 76.
38.Young, op. cit. 85.
39.“25 African Americans You Need to Know,” Michigan History, Jan.–Feb. 2001, p. 30; and www.blackpast.org/aah/brown-cora-mae-1914–1972.
40.Carolyn P. DuBose, The Untold Story of Charles Diggs: The Public Figure, the Private Man (Arlington, VA: Barton Pub. House, 1998), 7. This biography was originally published at Ann Arbor by the University of Michigan Press. According to Helen Nuttall Brown, whose father was Dr. Harry M. Nuttall, the family didn’t really rent the place to Diggs but allowed him to be the undertaker. See Elaine Latzman Moon’s Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes.
Chapter 13: Breakthroughs
1. David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard Books, 1993), 128–29.
2. McArthur Binion, Simplicism (Detroit: G. R. N’Namdi Gallery, 2005), 1; interview with Binion, June 2, 2014.
3. Interview with Katherine Brown, Jan. 2014.
4. Halberstam, op. cit., 118–19.
5. Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 100.
6. Coleman Young with Lonnie Wheeler, Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young (New York: Viking, 1994), 146.
7. Suzanne E. Smith, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 35.
8. Young, op. cit., 120.
9. See www.daahp.wayne.edu. Crockett was representing Carl Winter when he was cited for contempt of court and sentenced to four months in jail.
10.See http://hall.michiganwomen.org.
11.See www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/07/01/john-conyers-korea/2480861.
12.Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine, 1964), 220.
13.Simeon Wright with Herb Boyd, Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2010), 73–74. In this memoir, Wright dispels a number of myths and misconceptions about the incident, including whether Emmett actually whistled at Carolyn Bryant and what happened to the family after the trials.
14.Gayraud S. Wilmore and James H. Cone, eds., Black Theology: A Documentary History, 1966–1979 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), 338–39. A much more definitive discussion of Cleage’s ever evolving Black Christianity and the Shrine of the Black Madonna can be found in Black Messiah and Black Christian Nationalism.
15.Nick Salvatore, Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 85.
16.Jeremy Williams, Detroit: The Black Bottom Community (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub. Co., 2009), 120.
17.See www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/shirley-ann-woodson-reid-40.
18.William R. Bauer, Open the Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).
19.Herb Boyd and Kenn Cox, “Detroit Nightclubs,” The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, ed. Barry Kernfeld (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 206–7.
20.Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 173.
21.Yusef Lateef with Herb Boyd, The Gentle Giant: The Autobiography of Yusef Lateef (Irvington, NJ: Morton Books, 2006), 71.
22.Dan Ouellette, Ron Carter: Finding the Right Notes (New York: Artistshare, 2008), 73.
23.Davis, op. cit., 171–75.
Chapter 14: From Motown to Showdown
1. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 219.
2. Ibid., 220.
3. Peter J. Hammer and Trevor W. Coleman, Crusader for Justice: Federal Judge Damon J. Keith (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014), 68.
Chapter 15: A Brand-New Beat
1. Berry Gordy Jr., To Be Loved (New York: Warner Books, 1994), Kindle edition, chapter 2.
2. Ibid., 92.
3. William Robinson with David Ritz, Smokey: Inside My Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989), 74.
4. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 143.
5. Stephen M. Ward, ed., Pages from a Black Radical’s Notebook: A James Boggs Reader (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011), 57.
6. Ben Fong-Torres, ed., The Motown Album: The Sound of Young America (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 30.
7. Gordy, op. cit., 114.
8. Robinson, op. cit., 103.
Chapter 16: Bing and Bang
1. Nick Salvatore, Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 237.
2. Aretha Franklin with David Ritz, Aretha: From These Roots (New York: Villard Books, 1999), 99.
3. Ken Coleman, Million Dollars Worth of Nerve: Twenty People Who Helped to Power Black Bottom, Paradise Valley, and Detroit’s Lower East Side (Detroit: Coleman Communications, 2014), 54.
4. Peter J. Hammer and Trevor W. Coleman, Crusader for Justice: Federal Judge Damon J. Keith, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014), 80.
5. Coleman A. Young with Lonnie Wheeler, Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young (New York: Viking, 1994), 156.
6. Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying—a Study in Urban Revolution (Boston: South End Press, 1998), 16.
7. An e-mail from Charles Simmons, Nov. 30, 2014. He elaborated on the organization and some of its activities: “We protested regularly at white owned and operated supermarkets which refused to hire Blacks. Or, we had our regular meetings in which we talked about a number of social justice leaders throughout history. These informal discussions always began a great debate about the person and the organization they represented. Our subjects included Critical Thinking; Education in Political Economy; African American and Labor History; Community Organizing; Social Justice History and Activism; U.S./Western International New Colonial and Military Policy; Leadership Training; Analysis of Corporate and Independent Media. And from studying the leaders of social justice and anti-colonial movements around the world, we learned about the need for study and courage to fight for change. Our development grew amidst the political and economic situation of de-facto segregation in commerce and official segregation in housing; rising unemployment and discriminatory and unsafe working conditions due to the introduction of new technology into the auto industry sector, and a consistent level of Police Brutality against our community in 1963–65 Detroit. Four of the major confrontational activities we had included our opposition to the proposed Detroit Olympics in 1964; a major demonstration against Police Brutality; our travel to Cuba the same year; and General Baker’s Call in 1965 ‘for support in Opposition to the Vietnam War draft.’” During his tenure at Muhammad Speaks, of which Malcolm X was the principal founder, Simmons filed numerous stories. He recounted his early days at the paper: “I began contributing articles to Muhammad Speaks Newspaper while I was working for the Associated Press in New York in 1969. I was hired by the Nation of Islam Leader, Mr. Elijah Muhammad to be the international correspondent after graduating from Columbia School of Journalism the following year. I continued writing for it through 1973 when I did a special assignment on the war in Angola. During that assignment, I was based at the United Nations and shared an office with a veteran journalist and editor of the Harlem Daily Worker, Abner Winston Berry. During the Fall, I would write about the discussions in the General Assembly by the Foreign Ministers, Presidents and representatives of the African Liberation Movements fighting against Apartheid and Colonialism, who came to the world body to share their views.”
8. David Goldberg, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/05/detroit-s-radical-general-baker. Luke Tripp recalled his days at Wayne State University: “I was attracted to socialist groups, which advocated struggle against racism and capitalism. It was through my contacts with these groups that I met young people who were interested in fighting racism through direct action. Together with a few of my Black friends whom I met on campus, we organized the Detroit Chapter of the Friends of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in 1961 and participated in Civil Rights demonstrations in both the South and the North. However, most of us who were Black did not subscribe to the philosophy of nonviolence nor to the belief that racism and social inequality could be abolished within a capitalist system. Subsequently, we organized several radical student based organizations including the Black Action Committee and Uhuru. Our activities were directed mainly against racial discriminatory practices of businesses in the Black community.” See www.iww.org/history/documents/misc/Tripp, 2009.
9. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 195.
Chapter 17: March to Militancy
1. Peter Gavrilovich and Bill McGraw, eds., The Detroit Almanac: 300 Years of Life in the Motor City (Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 2001), 113.
2. Salvatore, op. cit., 256.
3. See http://vault.fbi.gov/Malcolm%20X/Malcolm%20X%20Part%2014%20of%2038/view.
4. Nick Salvatore, Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 266; and see the New York Times, Oct. 4, 1964, and the Michigan Chronicle from September through December.
5. Coleman Young with Lonnie Wheeler, Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young (New York: Viking, 1994), 165.
6. George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1965), 171.
7. Iyaluua Ferguson with Herman Ferguson, An Unlikely Warrior: Herman Ferguson, the Evolution of a Black Nationalist Revolutionary (Holly Springs, NC: Ferguson-Swan Publications, 2011), 144.
8. Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 194.
9. Jeffrey Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907–81 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 302.
10.Ibid., 316.
11.Ibid., 321.
Chapter 18: The Motor City Is Burning
1. Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying—a Study in Urban Revolution (Boston: South End Press, 1994), 20.
2. Interview with Conrad Mallett Jr., Apr. 26, 2106.
3. Van Gordon Sauter and Burleigh Hines, Nightmare in Detroit (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1968), v–vi.
4. Arthur L. Johnson, Race and Remembrance: A Memoir (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 102.
5. Martha Reeves with Mark Bego, Dancing in the Street: Confessions of a Motown Diva (New York: Hyperion, 1994), 147.
6. Peter J. Hammer and Trevor W. Coleman, Crusader for Justice: Federal Judge Damon J. Keith (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014), 91.
7. Jeanne Theodaris, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013), 195.
8. Robert H. Mast, ed., Detroit Lives (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 170–71
.
9. See http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eii/eiiweb/ing5427.0527.070jimingram.html. Also see the television documentary series Eyes on the Prize, Henry Hampton, dir. (Two Cities, 1993).
10.Ibid., 41.
11.Joann Castle, from her unpublished manuscript, Nov. 29, 2014.
12.H. Rap Brown, Die Nigger Die! (New York: Dial Press, 1969), 137–38.
13.Dan Aldridge honored the author’s request for his memory of the event, which he completed in September 2014. We offer it here in its entirety.
The Algiers Tribunal
Dan Aldridge
The Algiers Tribunal began on Wednesday, July 26, 1967, when Dorothy Dewberry of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee informed me that she had received a telephone call from Margaret Cooper Gill and Omar Gill telling her that their son, Carl Cooper, and two of his friends had been shot to death by members of the Detroit Police Department at the Algiers Motel on Woodward Avenue near Virginia Park Street. They called Dorothy because they knew that she was involved in “the movement.” I telephoned Mr. Gill seeking more detail, and he told me that he and his wife had been awakened from their sleep by a call from Lee Forsythe and James Sorter telling them that “Carl is dead.” Gill explained further that when he called his son’s room at the motel, the telephone was answered by what sounded like a “White policeman or detective,” and when he said that he wanted to see the body of his stepson, Carl Cooper, the voice on the other end of the line told him, “You had better keep your black ass home. If you come over here, you’ll get the same.” It was about that time that he reported that Lee Forsythe and James Sorter burst into his living room, covered in blood almost head to toe and telling him that they witnessed the murder of Carl and saw Aubrey Pollard beaten so badly that he was almost unrecognizable. Gill ended the conversation by telling me that his son and his friends had been executed and that he wanted something done about it.