When Eva Nelson-McClendon first moved to Detroit’s Birwood Street in 1959, she didn’t know much about the wall across the street. At 6 feet tall and a foot thick, it wasn’t so imposing, running as it did between houses on her street and one over. Then she started to hear the talk.
By Bill Loomis / Special to The Detroit News It was not long after the first steamboat, “Walk in the Water,” docked in Detroit in the summer of 1818 that emigrants from Europe and New England, tourists, soldiers and other visitors began pouring into the small town. By 1835 there were hundreds of newcomers daily; … Continue Reading →
By Bill Loomis / Special to The Detroit News When visitors to the Detroit Institute of Arts park their cars in the Farnsworth lot behind the building, they walk by a curious brick building with a walled garden. The building is unadorned except for a Pewabic Pottery glazed scarab over the front entrance, a bronze … Continue Reading →
In the years before the Emancipation Proclamation, a wagon full of what looked to be free black laborers would on occasion pull up to Mariners’ Church at its old location on Woodward Avenue close to the Detroit River. The group would dismount and start carrying goods back and forth from the wagon into the church … Continue Reading →
It’s now Roosevelt Park,, but once it was home to a lively Detroit working class community, pushed out to make way for the train station
Detroit — Local families will be among hundreds expected in the west Michigan town of Idlewild today to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of “America’s Black Eden,” the vacation hotspot for African-Americans from 1912 through the 1960s.
By Dave Alexander / Associated Press Muskegon — The history of Muskegon can be told through the geological “freak of nature” that is Muskegon Lake. The lake over the centuries and generations has become the essence of the community. The history of Muskegon has been tied to water since the earliest Native American inhabitants came … Continue Reading →
By Lauren Abdel-Razzaq / The Detroit News Pontiac — In a small room at the Pontiac Creative Arts Center, a group is on a mission to preserve the city’s African-American heritage. The volunteers have embarked on a yearlong process of discovery, launching an exhibit and soliciting residents for photos and stories of The Corner on … Continue Reading →
Detroit — On June 11, 1982, Detroiter Robert Harrington, incensed over an insurance dispute, burst into a law office in the Buhl Building with a shotgun, pistol and jar of gasoline. He shot to death Eve August, a promising 24-year-old law clerk intern, and his actions injured — some critically — 38 others in what … Continue Reading →
By Bill Loomis / Special to The Detroit News Summer Saturdays in Detroit means it’s time to shop at the venerable and still popular Eastern Market, a destination drawing untold thousands of bargain hunters for more than 125 years. Yet perhaps few shoppers today know that the market, bracketed by Gratiot Avenue, the I-75 service … Continue Reading →