Black Detroit: A People's History of Self-Determination

by Herb Boyd

Overview

NAACP Image Award Finalist: “Boyd’s riveting new history…turns an oft-caricatured community into a world of actual, struggling human beings.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me

A Michigan Notable Books Honoree

In this book, the author of Baldwin’s Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit—in “a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city’s past, present, and future and its significance to the African American legacy and the nation’s fabric” (Detroit Free Press).

Herb Boyd moved to Detroit in 1943, as race riots were engulfing the city. Though he did not grasp their full significance at the time, this critical moment would be one of many he witnessed that would mold his political activism and exposed a city restless for change. In Black Detroit, he reflects on his life and this landmark place, in search of understanding why Detroit is a special place for black people.

He reveals how Black Detroiters were prominent in the city’s historic, groundbreaking union movement and—when given an opportunity—were among the tireless workers who made the automobile industry the center of American industry. Well-paying jobs on assembly lines allowed working-class Black Detroiters to ascend to the middle class and achieve financial stability, an accomplishment not often attainable in other industries.

Boyd makes clear that while many of these middle-class jobs have disappeared, decimating the population and hitting blacks hardest, Detroit survives thanks to the emergence of companies such as Shinola—which represent the strength of the Motor City and its continued importance to the country. He also brings into focus the major figures who have defined and shaped Detroit, including William Lambert, the great abolitionist, Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, Coleman Young, the city’s first black mayor, diva songstress Aretha Franklin, Malcolm X, and Ralph Bunche, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

“The characters who walk across Boyd’s pages are fascinating.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Comprehensive and compelling.”—The Washington Post

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062346643
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	455
Sales rank:	208,132
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Herb Boyd is a journalist, activist, teacher, and author or editor of twenty-three books, including his latest, The Diary of Malcolm X, edited with Ilyasah Al-Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter. His articles have been published in the Black Scholar, Final Call, the Amsterdam News, Cineaste, Downbeat, the Network Journal, and the Daily Beast. A scholar for more than forty years, he teaches African American history and culture at the City College of New York in Harlem, where he lives.

Table of Contents

Foreword Rev. Dr. JoAnn Watson ix

Introduction 1

1 Cadillac, "The Black Prince" 15

2 The Blackburn Affair 27

3 Black Abolitionists 35

4 Faulkner and Flames 43

5 Early Years of the Black Church 49

6 Black Arts in the Gilded Age 57

7 The Pelhams and the Black Elite 71

8 Detroit and World War I 91

9 Dr. Sweet and Mr. Ford 105

10 White Ball and the Brown Bomber 121

11 The Turbulent Thirties 127

12 Boom Town 139

13 Breakthroughs 159

14 From Motown to Showdown 175

15 A Brand-New Beat 179

16 Bing and Bang 185

17 March to Militancy 193

18 The Motor City Is Burning 201

19 Our Thing Is DRUM! 217

20 Under Duress from STRESS 225

21 Muses and Music 235

22 Coleman and Cockrel 245

23 Postindustrial Blues 253

24 A Mayor and Malice 271

25 Emergency, Resurgency 293

26 Kwame Time! 303

27 A Spark of Redevelopment 311

28 Dhaka in Detroit 321

29 A Looming Chimera 333

Afterword Ron Lockett, Executive Director of the Northwest Activities Center 341

Author's Afterword 345

Author's Note: A San Remembers 349

Acknowledgments 353

Notes 357

Index 403

Editorial Reviews

Detroit has found its griot in Herb Boyd. Traditional West African storytellers, griots carry their people's traditions from generation to generation, and are renowned for their encyclopedic knowledge, their wit and their ability to bridge the past and present. In the tradition of the griot, Boyd has written a song of praise to what he calls "the city's glorious history"…Boyd offers an unusual retelling of Detroit's past, with black voices on nearly every page. The arc of his narrative is a familiar one in which he traces the transformation of Detroit from a French trading outpost to the world's automobile production center to a national symbol of urban decline and rebirth. Along the way, Boyd introduces us to some of Detroit's key social movements: abolitionism, union organizing, civil rights and black power. But this book is not a conventional urban history. Boyd's purpose is to celebrate the black men and women, the city's "fearless freedom fighters," who would otherwise remain on history's margins. The characters who walk across Boyd's pages are fascinating.

The New York Times Book Review - Thomas J. Sugrue

★ 05/15/2017
Boyd (Baldwin’s Harlem) breathes new life into the history of Detroit through stories of the city’s black residents from its earliest days to its bittersweet present. True to its title, the book documents the display of black determination, a mix of ingenuity, courage, and persistence in the midst of discrimination and repression. Boyd aptly highlights the complexity of the city’s racial legacy from its earliest days. Detroit was neither a slaveholding territory nor fully free; he tells of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, who in 1831 escaped slavery in Kentucky for the promise of freedom in Detroit, only to be arrested in their new home two years later under the Fugitive Slave Act. A group of outraged black citizens rallied together to plan a jailbreak and secure the couple’s passage to Canada. By the 1920s, the city’s formerly small black population had ballooned into a bustling community, mainly due to Henry Ford’s $5 hourly wage, which attracted Southerners during the Great Migration. Boyd also examines the city’s black newspapers, Berry Gordy’s founding of Motown, and the fall from grace of the city’s youngest mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick. He leaves no stone unturned, making his work an invaluable repository of all that is black Detroit. 16-page b&w photo insert. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Comprehensive and compelling... We owe [Boyd] a debt of gratitude.” — Washington Post

“A blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city’s past, present, future and its significance to the African-American legacy and the nation’s fabric.” — Detroit Free Press

“Detroit has found its griot in Herb Boyd. Traditional West African storytellers, griots carry their people’s traditions from generation to generation, and are renowned for their encyclopedic knowledge, their wit and their ability to bridge the past and present. In the tradition of the griot, Boyd’s purpose is to celebrate the black men and women, the city’s “fearless freedom fighters,” who would otherwise remain on history’s margins. The characters who walk across Boyd’s pages are fascinating.” — New York Times Book Review

“Boyd...breathes new life into the history of Detroit through stories of the city’s black residents from its earliest days to its bittersweet present... He leaves no stone unturned, making his work an invaluable repository of all that is black Detroit.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An inspiring, illuminating book that will interest students of urban history and the black experience.” — Kirkus Reviews

“The extensive coverage demonstrates the full range and influence of black citizens in Detroit… Recommended for anyone interested in Detroit or in urban history.” — Library Journal

“Herb Boyd has done it again. Black Detroit is a powerful, timely, and important history of an iconic city whose hopes and dreams, triumphs and tragedies, continue to both challenge and shape the African American experience and American democracy. This brilliant history is a must read for students, scholars, and all those interested in the history of the civil rights movement and black freedom struggle.” — Peniel E. Joseph, Author of Stokely: A Life

From the Publisher

Comprehensive and compelling... We owe [Boyd] a debt of gratitude.

Washington Post

Detroit has found its griot in Herb Boyd. Traditional West African storytellers, griots carry their people’s traditions from generation to generation, and are renowned for their encyclopedic knowledge, their wit and their ability to bridge the past and present. In the tradition of the griot, Boyd’s purpose is to celebrate the black men and women, the city’s “fearless freedom fighters,” who would otherwise remain on history’s margins. The characters who walk across Boyd’s pages are fascinating.

New York Times Book Review

Herb Boyd has done it again. Black Detroit is a powerful, timely, and important history of an iconic city whose hopes and dreams, triumphs and tragedies, continue to both challenge and shape the African American experience and American democracy. This brilliant history is a must read for students, scholars, and all those interested in the history of the civil rights movement and black freedom struggle.

Peniel E. Joseph

A blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city’s past, present, future and its significance to the African-American legacy and the nation’s fabric.

Detroit Free Press

Comprehensive and compelling... We owe [Boyd] a debt of gratitude.

Washington Post

As a lifelong resident of Detroit, from a young age, my father’s activism in the UAW exposed me to the city’s political and social history. It imbued me with a deep awareness of and love for its black culture, history, and resilience. Herb Boyd’s exhaustive research is compelling and extensive, it quickened my knowledge of the city’s Black History. Beginning in 1701, Boyd guides his readers through the long journey of Black Detroiters as they struggle for their place in the city. The depth and breadth of this magnum opus is profoundly informative in narrating the rich history of the city. Every Detroiter should read this book.

John Conyers

With extraordinary passion, and with truly beautiful prose, Herb Boyd captures all that is the Motor City. Through the pages of this book readers actually feel Detroit-they not only experience a city that has always been at the very epicenter of this nation’s most important freedom struggles, but they also come to know a city that has always, always been anchored by a most powerful and determined black community. As Boyd reminds us all: Black Detroit is the place where dreams of justice never, ever, die.

Heather Ann Thompson

In Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination, Herb Boyd does a captivating job of writing, compression, and interpretation. The personal spine of his narrative makes it special. Readers will appreciate Boyd’s comprehensive grasp of one of America’s most important cities. It’s a superb read with vital lessons on a people’s struggle for self-determination.

Dr. David Levering Lewis

Detroit has become a code for urban failure, which is to say, black failure. Herb Boyd’s riveting new history gives us, Black Detroit, and turns an oft caricatured community into a world of actual, struggling human beings. This is not easy work. But Boyd, with his Detroit roots and lucid prose, performs the labor as though he were born to do so.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

06/01/2017
In his latest work, Boyd (The Diary of Malcolm X) covers more than 300 years' worth of Detroit history, from the arrival of the earliest African slaves in the early 1700s to the struggle to rebuild the city in the 2010s. The author traces the development of the city through the lens of its black citizens. In doing so, he covers the area's place on the Underground Railroad, the influx of blacks during the Great Migration in the early 20th century, and how civil rights-era demands for fair housing led to the exodus of white residents to the suburbs. Boyd also covers arts and culture, touching on prominent Detroiters such as boxer Joe Louis, religious leader Elijah Muhammad, and singer Aretha Franklin, and looking at the lasting influence of Barry Gordy and Motown. With a lot of history to cover in a relatively short amount of space, this book can feel rushed at times. However, the extensive coverage demonstrates the full range and influence of black citizens in Detroit. VERDICT Recommended for anyone interested in Detroit or in urban history.—Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Library Journal

Boyd packs hundreds of years of rich and poignant African-American culture into his history of Detroit. His account gets the proper treatment in the deep voice and deliberate pacing of narrator James Shippy. He commands the prose with such skill that the intention of every sentence is clear through his emphasis and timing. However, Boyd’s prose and rich detail can carry on for so long that even Shippy may have trouble keeping the attention of some listeners. The various threads of history that comprise the African-American experience in Detroit get a full account—perhaps too full—through Boyd's in-depth work. At its best, it establishes a rich cultural tapestry within a city that has become both a central hub and a place of alienation for African-Americans. L.E. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile

Boyd packs hundreds of years of rich and poignant African-American culture into his history of Detroit. His account gets the proper treatment in the deep voice and deliberate pacing of narrator James Shippy. He commands the prose with such skill that the intention of every sentence is clear through his emphasis and timing. However, Boyd’s prose and rich detail can carry on for so long that even Shippy may have trouble keeping the attention of some listeners. The various threads of history that comprise the African-American experience in Detroit get a full account—perhaps too full—through Boyd's in-depth work. At its best, it establishes a rich cultural tapestry within a city that has become both a central hub and a place of alienation for African-Americans. L.E. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile

2017-04-30
The history of the many contributions of African-American Detroit to the larger American project.If Paris, as the German critic Walter Benjamin put it, was the capital of the 19th century, then Detroit was surely the capital of 20th-century African-America. As native son Boyd (African-American History and Culture/City Coll. of New York; Black Panthers for Beginners, 2015, etc.), a respected author and journalist, recounts, this centrality dates back to the American Revolution but became pronounced at the time of the Civil War, when Detroit went from being an important station along the Underground Railroad to become an important source of abolitionism, industrialism, and sheer manpower for the war effort—including black soldiers bound for the Union ranks. As the author notes, however, the ascendancy of Black Detroit did not mean an end to racial tension; though he grew up on a block with Italian, Irish, and Jewish families, "our blackness was for our neighbors an object of derision and insult." Boyd celebrates the rising-above that accompanied this ethnic contest, the grit and determination that put Berry Gordy's Motown on the map, lifted the members of the Supremes and the Miracles from the projects, and ushered in a second black literary renaissance through the pens of Gwendolyn Brooks and Nikki Giovanni. As he reminds his readers, immigrants and exiles from other regions and countries did their parts to shape Black Detroit: Malcolm X lived there before moving to New York and taking a leading part in the radical wing of the civil rights movement, while Rosa Parks moved there from the South in 1957. "Parks's commitment to fight Jim Crow—North or South—was unrelenting," writes the author. Though the city has fallen victim since to outmigration, its population having fallen from 1.8 million in 1950 to about 670,000 today, Boyd writes confidently that the city's African-American population will be central to its revival, concluding, "I'm proud to be a Detroiter." An inspiring, illuminating book that will interest students of urban history and the black experience.

Kirkus Reviews