Detroit Northwest Heydays 1918–2001

By William Phillips

This is where the KKK and Back Legion congregated in the 1920s and 1930s. This is where America’s most racist suburb bread. By centuries end, this is where the white extremists control the city some sixty miles out. This is a racist hell. These are the Detroit Northwestern Heydays.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796010848

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Copyright © 2018 by William Phillips.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-7960-1085-5

                eBook            978-1-7960-1084-8

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Rev. date: 01/16/2019

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1   Meeting of the Minds Cass Tech High (1918-1920)

Chapter 2   Introduction

Chapter 3   Chasing the american Dream (Detroit Western 1921-1924)

Chapter 4   Restrictive Covenants (1925-1928)

Chapter 5   The Great White City Detroit Northwestern (1929-1933)

Chapter 6   The Natives Curtain Call Detroit Central (1934-1941)

Chapter 7   WW2 - Detroit Mackenzie (1942-1945) The Arsenal of Democracy

Chapter 8   Mourning the past, dawning the Future Detroit Cooley (1946-1949)

Chapter 9   The Peak Detroit Redford (1950-1957)

Chapter 10   Rock n Roll Detroit Cody (1958-1961)

Chapter 11   A New Day A New Way Redford Thurston (1962-1963)

Chapter 12   Suburban Convenience Garden City East

(1964-1967)

Chapter 13   The Space Age Westland John Glenn (1968-1971)

Chapter 14   Family First Livonia Franklin (1972-1975)

Chapter 15   The Panic Prince Livonia Churchill (1976-1980)

Chapter 16   Clean Living (Livonia stevenson 1986-1991)

Chapter 17   (Novi 1997-2001) Novi to Infinity

Afterword

INTRODUCTION

Ah yes, the Heyday! This was the place to be, the attraction, the magnet, the ping the pang, the mesmerizer, the popular, the heart, the spectacle, the genius. Detroiters loved to work to live, put in a hard day’s work at school or a job, and where they lived would transcend, evolve, move along (always moving further out going northwestward), match the times. A place would arise to commemorate the times.

You could separate Detroit from the go, into six different slices. Clockwise from the river to the river, the six coordinates are from the Detroit river to Michigan Ave, Michigan to Grand River Ave., Grand River to Woodward, Woodward to John R, John R to Gratiot, Gratiot to the Detroit River river. This book is a concentration on the section between Michigan Ave to Grand River, the coordinates that go to Lansing on the north, and Chicago on the south, at a 30 degree angle. This area was slow to grow between the two world wars, most of the northwest area was purchased by Detroit in 1926 on small farms, and forgotten-town build-ups like Strathmore.

Even though the northwest was slow to grow, the ‘extremist convictions’, the superiority control, the WASP, the Anglo, were in strong force on the northwest side, then subjecting the east side, eventually the metro area conspiring, with the state of Michigan, and blending into ‘southern beliefs’, a way of life with similar convictions as 19th century dixie.. That is, the migration from southern American states to the industrial north, along with southern ethics. They would have to compromise with all they oppressed, and manipulate (Catholic, Irish, Jewish, African Americans),and grow with the automotive industry, and technology upgrades.

After the first great war, the ego pressure was on for the city to step up, to become an american phenom, give americans a reason for the first world war. They could see what New York, and its black labor of Harlem, built America’s most famous city, a respected city worldwide. Also, Chicago, and its southside black labor, putting the midwest on the map internationally. By the end of the great war, Chicago also becoming respected by the European powers of Great Britain, Germany, France. Detroit, and it being a half built 10 square mile city, built in the middle of mosquito infested, beaver nested, uninhabitable swampy land, covered with lilies, willows, thick brush, was in dire want to step it up.

The Land Speculators, the real estate agents, the business owners, the factory moguls and many others knew ‘black labor’ was the ticket to bringing the city out of the frontier, and into the limelight. They also knew their was a negative side to bringing this integration, bringing in ‘black labor’ to do what ‘white labor’ was unable to achieve. The top end didn’t live with labor class, the top end would remain white, while the factories, like the sugar fields back to the 16th century, cotton fields of the south in the 1800s, the trains of the west in the late 1800s, would become reliant on black labor. Detroit rioted during the Civil War for fear all the formers slaves would eventually take all the jobs from european immigration Detroit. This bubble of anger is about to burst thru the 20th century in Detroit, always bubbling while a heyday grew erstward out of it, the sanctuary from the realities of racial inadequacies, and tguilt.

The northwest side was originally settled by extremists. The white supremacy of the anglo saxon dominated this section in the 19th century. In the early 1800s this was home of the night riders, people who caught runaway slaves, and put northerners into the southern way of life, for a high price. Cotton money towered over lumber, and fishing money of Detroit. The greed of money embedded itself on the morals of this growing city. They were also involved in the extermination of Indians in the early 1800s, a blind insensitive approach to life, the dirtier the more.

In the 1910s, and ’20s, these extremist groups ran too hot for city life. Too much swamp mentality, too much horse transportation, too much violence. The heyday leaves the extremist center (Detroit northwestern between world wars, Detroit Redford school district till the 1967 rebellion, Livonia city till 1990, Howell/Cohoctah till end of century)in the 20s, the 40s, the 60s, the 80s, always to return to its master, the center of white extremism. Started on track, then labor infusion sparked thing in the 20s. They didn’t cool until the late 20s, when they took control of the municipalities of Detroit, eventually automotive out dueling extremism, as the federal government, and military, outdueled extremist during world War 2..

There were many ‘nordic beliefs’, the anglo saxon elite, the blue eyed blonde haired Jesus, the nordic of the north, the invisible empire hidden behind white sheets, hidden in far away conversations, hidden in inadequacy, hurt, lostness, fear. Groups like the KKK and the Black Legion would eventually compromise into a ultra violent hypocrisy, a hidden conviction of life, a growing weed in the landscape of life. The northwest side was a collection of the growing european immigrant population and southerners emigrating with confederate flag idealisms. As the 20th century evolved away from these laws of inhumanity, the city’s northwest side would evolve too, always rotting from the greeds and hatred castes down originally from the anglos.

This fiery way of life brought good and bad. The hunger for creating new, the activity and energy of a glorious day, the pride, was done at all cost, take no prisoners. Detroit would rise, considered one of the wealthiest city in the 1920s, the great city of the 1950s. We will bring you the prideful, glory of the heydays, a bubble of feigning, a fluff that hypnotised ya, heaven on earth persuasion, that is better than life. A fairy tale to live it, a tragedy to be without it. Many stories and inspirations through the 20th century were centered on living the dream, or living on the outside trying to get in.

Of course, when dealing with elite, glory, pride, apathy, there is going to be declines. Each evil debt would have a cost in spades. When researching this book, came across the epic dramatic declines that would follow a heyday, how it all fell apart, or went away, each their own end.

The difference between need and want is what concocted the heyday. The early anglo believed in the myth of ‘white superiority.’ Almost every white person, inside, felt the black person a human, a neighbor, a person who is born, lives, dies, with a consciousness of right and wrong. When blacks started taking the most excruciating jobs in the motor city, things change. From world war 1 back, the more challenging the labor, the more pay. When black labor enter the workforce, whites arrange the pay structure, to where they always come out on top. The difference between ‘fair pay’, and what was pay, is the heyday. The extra, the stolen, the cheated, all the pennies, nickels, and dimes that was received for you efforts, or lack of, all consumed together, to make the make believe world of the heyday. Example, in the 50s when black labor was filling the auto factories, working all day and night, just enough for the city, while white people were building stores selling extras, fun things, wants.

Detroiters really twisted the karmic repercussions of pride, as pride has done since man inherited the earth. No evil deed will be left unpunished, as the city grew many would run as far away as possible. The meltdowns were epic, disturbing, catastrophic, and interesting. The endings balancing the pains.

The fire - the place to be - would roll from after WW1 to the end of the industrial age in 2001, the end of the 20th century. It was a collection of different values, new objects, social times, boom periods, immigration and depopulation, family growth, stabilizations. With each technological breakthrough, with each increase in population, with each draining of swamps, and rivers, each road and business built, each skyscraper towering, each house built, with each move up the river, a fresh and new way of life would come to be. It was now, it was lightening in the bottle.

Ask yourself the deep questions threw the book, answer them for yourself. Why is Detroit the only major city in the United States of America, with little to no white population at the end of the 20th century? Why did the northwest side go from all-white in 1940, to no white by 1980, unlike any other city in America, Sure Chicago, New York, Flint, all have racial problems. How come in Detroit it is absolute, no quarter or the slightest compromise. How come white people who live a block from Harlem in New York, don’t move in panic, followed by the next block, and next block, till all of Manhattan is Harlem? How come the community in Detroit started on the east side until world war 2, and the northwest side was without white almost 10 years prior?

The book will take you to heaven in the area an era graced, and rust you out in its decline - sometimes slowly, sometimes with total devastation, sometimes a state of mind going bye-bye), too soon with little forward thinking.

The inspiration of these scriptures, was from the stories of my ancestors, who settled in Highland Park on a farm plot of land in the early 1900s. With tears in their eyes, emotions bursting with inclination, when they brought up the train station in the ’20s, to others who spoke of the ’30s, ’40s, and onward, the beauty of it, how special it was to be there. Then from the end of World War II till 9/11, and the end of industrial white city america. There is much more ink on the declines, then there is for the ‘heydays’, and each one different from the next. The stories are family stories past down since after the great war, to the end of the century. Always told with a Detroit swagger, and a cry of sentimentality. Also following along is the top public school of the era, coincidentally running parallel with the heydays, and fleeting the same time.

My family followed along with the racist protocol. Myself had a unique perspective. With being one of the only white families after the white flight flew past us, it was my chance to learn the truth, deal straight up with the community, the militants, and cleanse myself of the dupe of the plantation, and the hellish breaking walls of crackers.

As a child I learn the white lie, and my neighbors of oppressing ethnicity, taught me every crack in the code, the physical, the genetical, the mental, the accepting of life’s emotion. In the city after the white flight, we talked of every white person who moved, the elder and their racist disdain.

My family would move to Livonia, and even though the suburb was far from Detroit, the extremism was evident, and I was living and breathing with racial organizers, and klansman. It got sadder when as began to learn worldly situations, that the world was black and white, and it just wasn’t the northwest side.

The historical hiphop collection goes off northwest between the world wars. The industrial mogul left the northwest, the north end to be specific, in the 20s, leaving the area riddle with kkk. This area during the 20s, grew with poverty, and idealistic autocracies.Would you rather live off the water, boblo island, getting a speakeasy drink, going to the tigers, or dig deep in your pockets, for a due to the kkk, where you performed Satanic offerings, and brainwashing propaganda. Thats how the northwest was mostly in the 20s.

Then after the jewish community top end left the area in 30s, it became night again with neighborhood associations, a country in the depression and the black legion. Sure the jewish children went to Cooley, while the extremist stayed at Northwestern, they still brought much needed money to the equation. Then the high end Jewish community moved north of area, leaving the northwest poor, despair, and blood oaths of the black legion, there only salvation. These areas creating violence, and oaths of rebellion. The area voided itself of heyday.

The extremist were dependent on the moguls, the jewish community, the military, the upper class, making new bedfellows as the decades past.

It wasn’t until 1950 when the wealthy left Detroit, the influx of southern migrants into the northwest sector, that the extreme northwest could function independently, the area between Grand River and Michigan Avenue, only dependent indirectly on black labor to function in society. Their lifestyles were similar to the crackers of the 1800s southern cotton plantations, only more crackers, and all together instead of separated into plantations, a democracy of crackers with little to no forward thinking..

The extreme life style has a lusty appetite for the new, and a on and on haunting neglect, and guilt, of what they left behind.

There are key components to follow thru the book. Detroit is the only major city in America, with a white population under 10% to finish the decade. Why detroit? How come the white people ran here like they never ran from any other city? Every city in america experience some form of racism, how come in Detroit it is absolute?

Detroit is the International City in the 21st century. How can we truly bask in our destiny, if we have not learn about the from the past?,

It has always been my dream of cleansing society of cracker. This is insanity, dupe, and ultra instability rolled into one. Maybe someday…

Enjoy the memories…

OVERTURE

‘Beep…….Beep…..Beep"

The last days of my Rich Uncle Roy in the early 1970s. He laid mercilessly in a nursing home bed, on the eastside of Detroit, in the city/suburb/town of Grosse Pointe.. His hands shaking, and trembling without control, laying in bed, tubes and needles stuck in him, an air compressor going thru motions, machine on the wall keeping track of his heart rate. Most of his facilities have been expired. The ripe smell of urine piercing the halls, loud chants from the unstable, craziness, the end, all around.

The small room where Uncle Roy was passing took his last dime for his health. Three of my cousins, an Aunt, my Mother, and myself took turns visiting him in his last hours. The forever bachelor bought homes for members of the family, paid for College for the offsprings, and made connections for the growing number of descendents in the Curtis family, was now down to his last dime, passing away with a Will of bills.

The last I saw of him, during the day of the evening he would pass on. he held a picture in his hand, looking over at me with dark deep eyes, unclear yet tearie. With his hand shaking he handed the 8x12 picture to me. I looked at it briefly, and observed. It was a picture of him playing Piano, from the 1920s in a luxury apartment, himself dressed to the nines, nice clean suit with new garments underneath, smiling confidently as six wealthy dress people singing gayly around the Piano, him playing the piano with rhythm and heart, were also in the photo. It caught my eye, the expensive dark shoes he was wearing, the large clock and portraits of Eastern European folklore on the wall, the friends of his wearing hats, costume jewelry, smoking thick cigars, holding champagne glasses, smiling jovially as they recite the words to a chorus they were singing. The picture showed him cheerful, introspective on the keyboards, full of feeling, his heart on a sleeve, and zest for life. Now he laid unstable, depressed, down on himself to the very bottom. He would pass in his sleep that night.

Twenty years later, at a family reunion, I would see this picture on my Cousins wall. My cousin, 15 years my Senior, observe me as I stared at the picture Uncle Roy was so eager to share. With melancholy overwhelming me, and my throat choking, barely able to speak, I ask my cousin to tell me about this picture. He was energetic for the invitation.

‘Great Uncle Roy, struck it rich after the first world war. This is him, and other bohemians, singing and dancing well into the night, sometimes playing till sunrise.

‘Great Uncle Roy was an Attorney, been practicing for 10 years, and got involved with ‘brokering the sewage contracts’ throughout Detroit, and Wayne County. It took so many hours a week, over 400 most weeks, years of expansion, adding personnel, to get this job done.

You’re talking digging deep into the ground, rerouting God’s waterways, connecting tributaries and streams to the surface, battling underground currents, crumbling walls of soil. Finding 1000 laborers who could complete the task, the funding from the city, county, and state’s, land speculators making sure all the ‘T’s’ were crossed, and the ‘Is’ dotted. He had to hire a whole staff of legal workers, to which he got a percentage of the hourly on the staff, and was making money hand over fist. Ten dollars an hour he charged the city municipalities, staff making $15 dollars a day, it goes from there.

‘The picture is from the luxury apartment he bought four months into handling the legalities of the growing city. It was his heyday as he called it, friends and fun everywhere, everyday.

My cousin stop, took a drink of water, and proceeded.

‘He was of Slavic descent, as are you Junior, or..Billy, and work his way straight up out of the agriculture of late 19th century Highland Park, threw graduating from University of Michigan with the highest honors, to the booming northwest corner of the city. During the great war, many people of this heritage, back in Europe, were killed for various reasons. This behavior carried over into the automotive world of Detroit.

"His practice was flourishing around the year 1919, right after the great war ended, and the city was building up by the day. He just got the new apartment on Alexandria and Cass Avenue, more a large luxurious studio apartment. It was on the third floor of a four story apartment building. The solid brick frame exterior, the calmness compared to the inner city the sturdiness, the modern kitchen try, and toiletry. It was the first stone building he ever lived in. It was solid, and built to last, to the point the nicest apartments built, nowhere before did he live somewhere, and wasn’t worried about it being blown over in the Winter, burning down, or felt flimsiness in a strong wind, and the leaks. This was rock solid, built to last.

‘This third story apartment could hold his brand new Piano in the corner, along with a kitchen, parlor, shelves for my books, comfortable social area, small desk for paperwork, and bathroom in the back with updated facilities. The thickness of the walls gave you a privacy.The aroma of freshness, of brand new, the new wood, the fresh paint, the plaster walls, it was a marvel.’ My cousin’s eyes would glisten with introspection and flavor, as he accented its value.

‘Great Uncle Roy was the liaison for all the piping in the ground of the city, county, the rerouting of rivers, creation of lakes, rerouting waterways deep into the ground. It’s a whole world under the surface of the city, every inch taxable, not to mention getting it all straighten out to run concurrent with the surface.

‘He was the 4th person offered the first chair for this position of brokering the plumbing contracts. Still in his early 30s it was an ambitious move. The first three didn’t like that it involved ‘negro labor.’ Sure this type of labor was big in some automotive factories, to have the negro labor on the edge of town, outside of the north end, down Grand River, and 12th street, was pushing the envelope with the Anglo Saxons, the noble nordics, who owned the city for over 100 years.

‘On the street, anyone who condone, supported black labor was singled out, it was a voodoo curse, unacceptable. Roy would hear people in the lobby of the apartment building, at the trolley waiting to catch a ride downtown, on the trolley till you made it to the financial district, complaining about negro labor, are they better then us, how they despise them in revolutionary terms. That pinkish blush, the teeth grinding, the angered eyes staring to the heavens for salvation, the release of hatred as they babbled on. They wanted black labor out, which was new during the war, curtail, out, pogram. The blacks took the whites jobs, what did the white people do when negro after negro took their jobs, they would become worthless. This resented into a wave of anger, inadequacy, and desperation to keep your job. Too much intimidation. The riotous happenings in Chicago, New York, and Oklahoma were mind altering, and spoke of often. People killing each other over labor, keeping the yankee factory north a white city.

‘The three Attorneys who refused and resigned from the position Uncle Roy accepted, all older than Uncle Roy, had various reason for declining the position, One of the Attorneys found it offensive, said it was against his religion to poison the city with negros.One of the Attorneys was beaten up in the alley, by anglo saxons wearing sheets, and rescind the next day. He lived on Boston in a brand new mansion, bought on the promise of altering, and updating, the water works for the city. He was one of the first to get it from the growing KKK, and the list would grow. Roy would say he can still see his face after he was jumped, waking him up in the middle of the night all his life. it looked like he went 12 rounds with a gorilla. After being jumped, he was gun shy, shacky, terrified of mob violence, bouncing up and done when you greeted him. He let the home he purchased on Boston go, sold it on the cheap in the early 1920s, and took a sabbatical.

‘Types of jumpings began to be the talk of the law offices off of Cass Avenue and Vernier. Uncle Roy weighed the options, and decided to go for it. People asked your ethnicity, and how you felt about others, you play it neutral.

‘The municipal brass brought him in the backdoor. He was arms length from any labor meetings, having assistants attend the meetings. If he passed an extremist on the street, they viewed him as just another invisible Slav wandering the street looking for a handout, or a sweeper job. Uncle Roy was a secret agent, dressing low key in the public, listening to the echos in the halls of violence against negro labor, and those who endorse it, never speaking of who he was, never sticking his chest out saying, ‘o yeah, look at me.’. He felt it was a matter of time before they would turn on him. The clock was ticking as 1919 became 1920, and 1920 became 1921. The luxurious apartment he rented for three years lost its zest, its zenith.

‘Still Uncle Roy had to negotiate, get contracts signed, have everything in compliance with Landholders, Land Speculators, Commissions, Accountants, the City, the car factories, disgruntled farmers, everyone had something vital, stipulations, to creating the modern water works system citywide. Uncle Roy had to filter everything to be paper correct. The city was over density, a major shortage of living areas. Most people lived in caves (enclaves), older areas of their own ethnics with little to no capital, homes 60 years old, no addresses, no sanitation or working sanitation, about to fall over, yet people payed premium. Negro labor was how the city would grow, become a great city. Still it was the negro presence that scared the europeans, taking the women, taking the jobs, taking it all.

‘Suspicion grew by the year, the week, the day If a Protestant saw him in the building, they gave him a shakedown. They asked him odd questions, ready to pounce on his response if incorrect. He learn how to move along, sandbag your value and wages, not get attached, when to walk outside to wait for the trolley, not go out at night, to leave before saying hello. If someone baited him on the horrors of eastern europe, the mass slayings, he would bite his tongue. All this to get out of his apartment, and to work everyday, a prison in its own right.

‘This picture was taken in 1921, the next day other tenants got suspicious of the parties rich laughter, and began questioning him. The apartment walls gave him privacy, still others listen at the door.

‘The Police would knock on his door, after poising for the picture Uncle Roy always said, with neighbors in the apartment halls staring at him, making comments, sarcasm, complaints, sighs of discuss. It was the pride before the fall.

‘Great Uncle Roy felt the sides squeezing in. There was ample pressure from the city municipalities, and the white house, to modernize the city, with any means possible to modernize the city. This meant negroes working around the city, prison and free labor together, moving heavy equipment that the european laborer couldn’t handle, digging deep into the pressurized ground, draining the swamps and dealing with beavers, and snakes, changing the landscape daily, of God’s creation. The higher ups had the authority, and the updates were to go down if they had to turn the city into marshall law, production would move forward. That’s why he took the position, it was going to get done one way or another, had to be patient, and quiet.

‘On paper everything was a go, there was nothing the angry noble nordics could do.it was the anglos who put their own rules into effect, bending the law to their wants, and they superseded on the streets. The streets grew more and more hostile the more organized the plan became.People brainstorming witch hunts for anyone orchestrating, anyone making a dime off of black labor, and killing of the negroes, get them out of this city. There was autocratic rebellion in the air.

‘Uncle Roy had countless meetings for this achievement. Would have lunch, and Dinner at the Whitney off of Woodward, about four times a week getting conditions cleared. The seething smell of the entrees in The Whitney left your mouth watering while he and the party spoke of stipulations, and organizations. The four entree dinners were a scrumptous backdrop for the course of planning the city. He would meet four to eight people a meeting, lots of office meeting, train rides around town, and telephones calls. As the 20s unfolded he looked more and more over his shoulder, studying those in his area all the time.

‘He often spoke of the guilt of the inhuman behavior of treatment of the negro labor, seeing them stacked in boxcars sent to work, the collapse of underground tributes causing agonizing fatalities, seeing families of dead, and injured workers, left with no compensation. it sent him into alcoholism. He had remorse of taking this side, how the black labor was treated. It was his wage to turn the cheek, and live with this embedded contempt all his life.

‘The slow witted extremist would put things together, He was a an unknown to them, faceless. Still, he could feel the walls closing in. One day, he feared with tension, the neanderthals would point the finger at him, and then what. Would he be caught by a mob at the wrong time? Would he be beaten in the alley by his ‘european white betrayal.’

‘While all this was going on, the new Masonic Temple was being built. They had negro labor putting the building together, fresh from the county and state prisons, carrying the heavy material, and they were feeling the wrath of white labor vetoing the moves, organized protest. The negroes, along with the Moguls, the greats of this city, and city development became Roy’s allies, while the labor force of the Europeans became the enemy.

‘Everyone else Uncle Roy talk to, from the shoe shine boy, to the bus driver, to the manual laborer, to the guy on the next stool at Lafayette Coney Island, had a negative disposition about the influx of negro labor. They’re gonna take our jobs, take our women, breed out white people, quoting scripture and the Detroit News. A feeling of inadequacy in every mouth of anger, lawlessness was the answer.

‘It was two different currents at once, the secret team would start loading the trains with every negro laborer they could find off of Hastings, and they would load on train after train to certain springs and rivers across the city on the outskirts, turn the city inside and out to dig out the trenches, all this while out in public the denouncement of negroes was flirting with a pogrom. They would have full train boxes of negro labor going threw the white area of town, as the whites blind to the happening.

‘A sanctuary was the Masonic Temple, the old one, a few blocks south, while the new one on Temple was being erected. Many of the moguls, and their entourages, like to dine there, a great place for big meetings. If you were to make a stand for the moguls, the labor, this was the place you could discuss it in ‘intellectual foram.’

‘The Masons played the superior facade to the public general members, and collected where it counted most, two sides, powerplays. When the doors were shut, the empathy was enormous, the moguls would be happy with all black labor, and a few crackers, similar to the plantations of the old south. They knew if they ever announced such a decision, every southern agitator would be crawling into Detroit, the city would be sacked.

‘There was pressure, it mounted with sweat and heartburn, no one, not even a mogul, Henry Ford himself, would stand and speak against the european laborers in public, if so they would get you in the middle of the night. Henry Ford, the great car producer, had bodyguards, he was in fear himself, he moved his family out of town, all of them. So the Moguls started having closed door meetings. Uncle Roy would meet at the restaurant there, still you knew behind the doors the masons were hatching something, secret agendas were everywhere, every group was a chess match. Many spoke of leaving the city, the white labor spoke of killing all their adversaries, the moguls were losing all compassion for the city, taking the money and leave the chaos behind.

‘As things progressed, it got more hectic, painfully stressful. As 1920 turned into 1921, and 1921 turn into 1922, word was out that the negroes were here to stay. Ford brought many workers up here from southern states, with high paying jobs, the $5 day. There was a optimism among the southerns, and Europeans, that the negro labor would all go back to the south, since the war was over. This would not happen. The negroes could do more, build more, and the city, the moguls, the rich, became dependent on them for their riches, to which the city could turn into tax dollars. This greed grew as industrial plants started to be built along the Detroit River, far out in Northville, building the Dequindre drake, Plymouth, draining swampy western Wayne County into the Rouge River, and the covering up of springs in Springwell, up along the east side. The whole world as it was platted by God, now had a productive look.

‘More angry laborers got involved with southern speakers, who had warnings of the negroes. Each day this hit home more and more, the Cass Corridor was filled with speakers on soap boxes, passing out propaganda, making their claims for americans, white americans, the ones who fought in the war for their homes, recruiting for the freemasons, and the kkk. They had soap boxes out on Alexander, meetings in the apartment lobby, talks in the halls. Great Uncle Roy would go down the back stairs to avoid them, they were pushing their weight around in my own building. The europeans, with venom of a cobra, would kick in doors, raid and trash places, and there was little you could do, if you didn’t do exactly as they said. They made examples, they left marks on people who didn’t choose their lifestyle.

‘The labor force began to win. We couldn’t send for more negro labor in the south anymore, it was cut off on the trains, the negro population was frozen under 100,000, that was a compromise that left the two conflicting parties, angry.

‘The gig was up on Uncle Roy, the walls were closing in, he became more high strung, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Every creek in the hall could be an attacking mob. The white extremist set it up to throw any negro off the train when they went north, pass Kentucky into Ohio, and Michigan, that’s how the anglos kept the city white.it was a burden getting them thru the south, many lost their lives going north. The extreme militant groups in the northwest became larger, angrier, violent. I would wake in the middle of the night, in terror that they would find out who I was, that they already knew, one of them as they would say.

‘As the night’s pass, and the commoner, in mobs, started weeding out anybody involved in their eyes, against their conspiracy, anybody helping the negro stay around. Concerning organization, we had to figure out how to sneak in prison labor, had to move the workers out of black bottom on box car in the morning, and sneaking them past the violent areas of the northwest, and Highland Park, in the evening, with Policeman riding inside the cars with shotguns. It was the rich replacing labor with negro labor.

‘Each opportunity the commoner had to stop this avalanche they would. Whites would come out to the work sites, picking fights with the blacks. The Police were on the whites side, many of the Police were kkk, yet they knew the pressures above that they would lose their jobs if violence occurred. It was a slippery slope leading to my practice on Cass, and my home.

‘They made my life nauseous. When getting paperwork past at city hall, when I went in the office, it would fill with quiet, stares out of the side of everyone’s eyes, no one trusted no one. Those who worked with me, the ones who were pro white labor, persuaded me in private to team with them, change sides, take a 90% pay cut, they, acted annoyed with me at the office, as I was betraying them. I became the scapegoat. You didn’t know who was conspiring to jump you at any particular moment. I became unstable. They pressured me till I moved to Grosse pointe in 1922, they pressured many. Little things got me exposed, booming into a the fear of a white riot. They began to circle me. When word got out where I lived more and more, Grosse Pointe was my only choice, the white extremist could have the northwest side. I was exiled from Detroit forever….

CHAPTER 1

Meeting of the Minds Cass Tech High (1918-1920)

As ‘The Great War’ ended, World War I, there was a lot of money in the Detroit area. The city, the arsenal of democracy, was very significant in winning World War I. The auto plants (Ford, GM, Dodge) were involved in making parts for the US Army, and other countries. The US had become the industrial giant of the world.bStill consider second team to the European powers, with a high ceiling.

The streets north of Vernor were quiet, long, well guarded by the Police. The area north of Vernier/ west of Woodward. The crispness of the holiday time of Christmas, was at its essence, you could get into the spirit seeing all the colorful lights, hearing the instruments playing, drinking eggmpg and christmas cheer, the voices of carolers.

When it rain the streets were dry. Cars were the man means of transportation, while the rest of the city relied exclusively on the Trolley, and paid transportation, huge difference in statue owning a car, to not having a car, especially in the automotive capital of