Detroit

American Visions, April-May, 1995 by Charles Blockson, Henry Chase

Detroit's location, just across the narrow waters from Windsor, Ontario, was instrumental in its role in the Underground Railroad. Detroit's Underground Railroad history was fairly well-known even 30 years ago, when I was beginning my research. The meeting of Frederick Douglass and John Brown and others at William Webb's house, for instance, has long been part of the known story--but I was fascinated when I came across documentation about Detroit's Order of African Mysteries, an underground black organization dedicated to the struggle against slavery.

The Order of African Mysteries was based on a Masonic lodge and had a system of secret signs, handshakes, passwords and other signals. The group was dedicated to protecting brothers and sisters from the South by making sure that there was a secure connection to Canada. The order had a profound influence on the Underground Railroad in Detroit, though its role is still largely unknown to many historians.

Interestingly, the Detroit railroad employed the services of a group of white cutthroats, known as the McKensyites. These people, many of them former prisoners, stole slaves from the South and brought them to the Underground Railroad. Although they were more or less unsavory people, the McKensyites played a role in the Underground Railroad movement in Detroit. Many of their escapees went on to Canada. As Malcolm X used to say, "Liberation or freedom, by any means neccessary."

Though Michigan's role in the Underground Railroad forms the centerpiece of the permanent exhibit at Detroit's Museum of African American History, the wider experience of abduction and slavery provides visitors with an interpretive context. From the shores of West Africa, through the Middle Passage (interpreted through a fullscale mock-up of the cargo hold of a slave ship), to Colonial and antebellum America, slavery's long night is detailed. Two-dimensional explanatory panels predominate in the museum, though these are complemented by period artifacts, including letters of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington and photographs of stalwarts of the antislavery movement.

The museum also hosts temporary exhibits that touch upon the artistic expression and historical experience of African Americans. In August of each year, the museum sponsors its African World Festival, which drew a crowd of more than one million people in 1994.

A still longer perspective on the cultural substratum of the black diaspora is provided to visitors of the Detroit Institute of Arts, one of the city's true highlights. The institute's Ancient Egypt collection embraces the Predynastic through the Roman and Coptic periods, with its greatest strengths in Middle and Late Kingdom sculpture and Coptic textiles. The Islamic North Africa rooms examine the Abbasid period (A.D. 75-1258) and the Fatimid and Mameluke dynasties--the collection's strength being in Abbasid textiles and Mameluke glass--and Maghreb (Morocco) illuminated manuscripts, rugs and clothing. If the names of the periods and dynasties are unfamiliar, don't be put off: the objects are stunning, and the story they tell--of Africa's great contributions--is enlightening.

The institute also holds more recent objects traditionally associated with African collections. Sub-Saharan Africa is represented by sculpture, decorative arts and textiles from West and Central Africa. Figural sculpture and masks from the Kongo, Yaka, Bena Lulua and other peoples are complemented by the metalwork of the Akan peoples and the bronzes of Benin.

There are few cities in America that treat you to four millennia of history--fortunately, you're in Detroit!

"Don't know much about history," but why isn't Berry Gordy Jr. a case study in more graduate business schools? Why can't the man get more Respect? To move from the streets to the history books is rare--but nothing more; from the shop floor to the boardroom is rarer still. But a black guy moving from the shop floor of a Detroit auto plant in the mid-1950s to the boardroom of a multimillion-dollar business in the early 1960s? Gordy had to build his own business and boardroom to get there, of course; by dint of imagination and drive he could break into the record industry--he never could have broken into the boardroom of a white company.

As everywhere in life, luck and timing played a part: Gordy elbowed his way into the recording business as black music was crossing over and as the industry and radio stations were running scared from the payola scandal--in which the major labels bribed DJs to play their songs--and Gordy just happened to have this song-writing-looking-to-be-a-singer friend ... who went by the name of Smokey Robinson. Please, Please, Please--everyone should be so lucky, crying Tears of a Clown all the way to the bank. Gordy's Motown label, initially headquartered in his two-story home prophetically dubbed "Hitsville USA," rained Supremes throughout the 1960s. With his dreams, it's no Wonder that Gordy felt the Temptations of Los Angeles, to which he departed in the early 1970s. He left behind his old home, which now serves as the Motown Historical Museum.