A People's History of Detroit
A People's History of Detroit

Author: Mark Jay

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2020-04-17

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1478009357

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Recent bouts of gentrification and investment in Detroit have led some to call it the greatest turnaround story in American history. Meanwhile, activists point to the city's cuts to public services, water shutoffs, mass foreclosures, and violent police raids. In A People's History of Detroit, Mark Jay and Philip Conklin use a class framework to tell a sweeping story of Detroit from 1913 to the present, embedding Motown's history in a global economic context. Attending to the struggle between corporate elites and radical working-class organizations, Jay and Conklin outline the complex sociopolitical dynamics underlying major events in Detroit's past, from the rise of Fordism and the formation of labor unions, to deindustrialization and the city's recent bankruptcy. They demonstrate that Detroit's history is not a tale of two cities—one of wealth and development and another racked by poverty and racial violence; rather it is the story of a single Detroit that operates according to capitalism's mandates.

100 Years of the Detroit Historical Society
100 Years of the Detroit Historical Society

Author: Joel Stone

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2021-12-01

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 0814348882

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A behind-the-scenes look at the creation and evolution of a cultural institution in Detroit. Since its founding in 1921, the Detroit Historical Society (DHS) has been dedicated to safeguarding the history of our region so that current and future generations of metro Detroiters can better understand the people, places, and events that helped shape our lives. 100 Years of the Detroit Historical Society, written by senior curator Joel Stone, captures in words and photographs the little-known story of the people who have been telling Detroit's stories and preserving its material culture for the last century. 100 Years of the Detroit Historical Society leads in a chronological manner through four distinct phases—each with its own successes and failures—with a nod to the future direction of the DHS. Stone begins by laying a foundation of the city's history and describing the era that prompted the organization's founding—first intended as support for the Burton Historical Collection, then as stewards of a growing artifact collection in a "cabinet of curiosities." DHS became the primary support organization for a new municipally owned and managed historical department, resulting in multiple facilities and storytelling capabilities. Later, changing social and fiscal priorities prompted the DHS and its partners to adopt new strategies for interpretation, funding, outreach, and inclusion. Eventually, the DHS would assume stewardship of the Detroit Historical Museum and Dossin Great Lakes Museum, bringing new momentum to regional public history. It is important to note the truism that historical museums and archives can be poor caretakers of their own history. The DHS's history was intertwined with a municipal department for so long that they actually have two histories that are only roughly preserved. Research for this volume has woven many disparate details into a cogent tapestry that is easily digested by museum professionals and visitors alike. It is a fascinating tale that reflects the pride Detroiters have in their city and shows trends in historical preservation and organizational structures across North America.

How It Happens
How It Happens

Author: Jean Alicia Elster

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 081434870X

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Intergenerational story of three Black women and their struggle to stake their claim to the American dream. How It Happensfollows the story of author Jean Alicia Elster’s maternal grandmother, Dorothy May Jackson. Born in Tennessee in 1890, Dorothy May was the middle daughter of Addie Jackson, a married African-American housekeeper at one of the white boardinghouses in town, and Tom Mitchell, a commanding white attorney from a prominent family. Through three successive generations of African-American women, Elster intertwines the fictionalized adaptations of the defining periods and challenges—race relations, miscegenation, sexual assault, and class divisions—in her family’s history. A continuation of the plots begun in Elster’s two novels Who’s Jim Hines? and The Colored Car, How It Happens continues the story for an older audience and begins with Addie’s life before the turn of the century in the South as a married Black woman with three biracial daughters navigating the relationship between her husband and Tom Mitchell. Later the story shifts to Addie’s daughter Dorothy May’s experiences both as a child and later, as a teacher who, choosing between her career and marriage to a man she barely knows, moves to Detroit. The story moves along with Dorothy May’s daughter Jean, who, with the support of her mother and the memory of her grandmother, confronts and comes to terms with her role in society and the options available to her as a college-educated Black woman in the post–World War II industrial North. While there is struggle and hardship for each of these women, they each build off one other and continue to demand space in the world in which they live. Written for young adult readers, How It Happens carries the heart through the obstacles that still face women of color today and persists in holding open the door of communication between generations.

Whose Detroit?
Whose Detroit?

Author: Heather Ann Thompson

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1501702017

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America's urbanites have engaged in many tumultuous struggles for civil and worker rights since the Second World War. Heather Ann Thompson focuses in detail on the struggles of Motor City residents during the 1960s and early 1970s and finds that conflict continued to plague the inner city and its workplaces even after Great Society liberals committed themselves to improving conditions. Using the contested urban center of Detroit as a model, Thompson assesses the role of such upheaval in shaping the future of America's cities. She argues that the glaring persistence of injustice and inequality led directly to explosions of unrest in this period. Thompson finds that unrest as dramatic as that witnessed during Detroit's infamous riot of 1967 by no means doomed the inner city, nor in any way sealed its fate. The politics of liberalism continued to serve as a catalyst for both polarization and radical new possibilities and Detroit remained a contested, and thus politically vibrant, urban center. Thompson's account of the post-World War II fate of Detroit casts new light on contemporary urban issues, including white flight, police brutality, civic and shop floor rebellion, labor decline, and the dramatic reshaping of the American political order. Throughout, the author tells the stories of real events and individuals, including James Johnson, Jr., who, after years of suffering racial discrimination in Detroit's auto industry, went on trial in 1971 for the shooting deaths of two foremen and another worker at a Chrysler plant. Whose Detroit? brings the labor movement into the context of the literature of Sixties radicalism and integrates the history of the 1960s into the broader political history of the postwar period. Urban, labor, political, and African-American history are blended into Thompson's comprehensive portrayal of Detroit's reaction to pressures felt throughout the nation. With deft attention to the historical background and preoccupations of Detroit's residents, Thompson has written a biography of an entire city at a time of crisis.

Detroit Then and Now
Detroit Then and Now

Author: Cheri Y. Gay

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13:

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Famous the world over for automobile manufacture and the distinctive sounds of Motown music, Detroit, the Motor City, celebrated its 300th birthday in 2001. "Detroit Then and Now" is a fascinating look at this city's great history, taking historic photographs from the dawn of the camera age and comparing them with full-color photographs of the same scenes today.

Detroit's Historic Places of Worship
Detroit's Historic Places of Worship

Author: Marla O. Collum

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0814334245

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In Detroit's Historic Places of Worship, authors Marla O. Collum, Barbara E. Krueger, and Dorothy Kostuch profile 37 architecturally and historically significant houses of worship that represent 8 denominations and nearly 150 years of history. The authors focus on Detroit's most prolific era of church building, the 1850s to the 1930s, in chapters that are arranged chronologically. Entries begin with each building's founding congregation and trace developments and changes to the present day. Full-color photos by Dirk Bakker bring the interiors and exteriors of these amazing buildings to life, as the authors provide thorough architectural descriptions, pointing out notable carvings, sculptures, stained glass, and other decorative and structural features. Nearly twenty years in the making, this volume includes many of Detroit's most well known churches, like Sainte Anne in Corktown, the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Boston-Edison, Saint Florian in Hamtramck, Mariners' Church on the riverfront, Saint Mary's in Greektown, and Central United Methodist Church downtown. But the authors also provide glimpses into stunning buildings that are less easily accessible or whose uses have changed-such as the original Temple Beth-El (now the Bonstelle Theater), First Presbyterian Church (now Ecumenical Theological Seminary), and Saint Albertus (now maintained by the Polish American Historical Site Association)-or whose future is uncertain, like Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church (most recently Abyssinian Interdenominational Center, now closed). Appendices contain information on hundreds of architects, artisans, and crafts-people involved in the construction of the churches, and a map pinpoints their locations around the city of Detroit. Anyone interested in Detroit's architecture or religious history will be delighted by Detroit's Historic Places of Worship.

Detroit Rock City
Detroit Rock City

Author: Steven Miller

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 2013-06-25

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0306821842

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Detroit Rock City is an oral history of Detroit and its music told by the people who were on the stage, in the clubs, the practice rooms, studios, and in the audience, blasting the music out and soaking it up, in every scene from 1967 to today. From fabled axe men like Ted Nugent, Dick Wagner, and James Williamson jump to Jack White, to pop flashes Suzi Quatro and Andrew W.K., to proto punkers Brother Wayne Kramer and Iggy Pop, Detroit slices the rest of the land with way more than its share of the Rock Pie. Detroit Rock City is the story that has never before been sprung, a frenzied and schooled account of both past and present, calling in the halcyon days of the Grande Ballroom and the Eastown Theater, where national acts who came thru were made to stand and deliver in the face of the always hard hitting local support acts. It moves on to the Michigan Palace, Bookies Club 870, City Club, Gold Dollar, and Magic Stick -- all magical venues in America's top rock city. Detroit Rock City brings these worlds to life all from the guys and dolls who picked up a Strat and jammed it into our collective craniums. From those behind the scenes cats who promoted, cajoled, lost their shirts, and popped the platters to the punters who drove from everywhere, this is the book that gives life to Detroit's legend of loud.

Historic Photos of Detroit
Historic Photos of Detroit

Author: Mary J. Wallace

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1596523123

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From the Underground Railroad to the Model T, the Cultural Center to Motown, Historic Photos of Detroit is a photographic history collected from the areas top archives. With around 200 photographs, many of which have never been published, this beautiful coffee table book shows the historical growth from the mid 1800's to the late 1900's of ""the Motor City"" in stunning black and white photography. The book follows life, government, events and people important to Detroit and the building of this unique city. Spanning over two centuries and two hundred photographs, this is a must have for any long-time resident or history lover of Detroit!