The last stop before freedom, Paradise Valley, Motown and techno.
The Last Stop
For people escaping slavery, Detroit was one of the final stops on the Underground Railroad, with Canada just across the river. On October 20, 2001, the city dedicated the Gateway to Freedom International Memorial at Hart Plaza on the riverfront. Ed Dwight's bronze shows six people about to make the crossing, one of them pointing across the water, and its twin, the Tower of Freedom, stands across the river in Windsor, Ontario.
Black Bottom And Paradise Valley
For decades, Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were the heart of Black Detroit. Hastings Street and St. Antoine Street were their main avenues, lined with jazz bars and nightclubs where Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke and Ella Fitzgerald played.
In the early 1960s both neighborhoods were demolished for slum clearance and to build the I-375 freeway, which now runs directly over where Hastings Street once was.
Hitsville U.S.A.
On January 12, 1959, Berry Gordy Jr. founded Tamla Records with a family loan, the label that became Motown. From a house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard known as Hitsville U.S.A., the label made the Motown sound, with the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Miracles and the Temptations. Motown moved to Los Angeles in 1972, and the house has been the Motown Museum since 1985.
Coleman Young And The Wright
In November 1973 Coleman Young was elected the first Black mayor of Detroit, and he served five terms, from 1974 to 1994. In 1965 the obstetrician Charles H. Wright founded what is now the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Midtown, one of the world's oldest and largest independent African American museums.
Black Detroit Today
In the 1980s Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, the Belleville Three, created Detroit techno, and the Movement festival, named in 2004, showcases electronic music in the city where techno began. Black-owned restaurants, salons, studios and brands are part of everyday Detroit.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Detroit on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
Hitsville U.S.A. on West Grand Boulevard. Photo: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Photo: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons