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Racism and Anti-Racism in Southeast Michigan
This guide was created by a group of librarians at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and many of the resources we’ve collected here focus on Washtenaw County. Detroit, and Southeast Michigan more broadly, has a rich history of anti-racism and rebellion. Below, you will find recommendations to help you begin to learn about the history and context of the region. This portion of the guide will be expanded as we connect with our partners in Flint, Dearborn, and Detroit.
Please be advised, that this guide is not meant to be comprehensive and should be considered a starting point for those who want to research race, inequality, and anti-racist resistance in Detroit.
Books and Recommended Reading
Dawn of Detroit by ISBN: 9781620972328Publication Date: 2017-10-01The Dawn of Detroit reveals for the first time that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest’s iconic city. The Dawn of Detroit meticulously uncovers the experience of the unfree—both native and African American—in a place wildly remote yet at the center of national and international conflict. Tiya Miles has skillfully assembled fragments of a distant historical record, introducing new historical figures and unearthing struggles that remained hidden from view until now.
Arc of Justice by Call Number: KF 224 .S8 B691 2004ISBN: 0805071458Publication Date: 2004-09-07Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Ossian Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet's story, and Clarence Darrow's defense of him, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times. Arc of Justice is the winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James & Grace Lee Boggs by ISBN: 9780807835203Publication Date: 2016-11-07James Boggs (1919-1993) and Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015) were two largely unsung but critically important figures in the black freedom struggle. Born and raised in Alabama, James Boggs came to Detroit during the Great Migration, becoming an automobile worker and a union activist. Grace Lee was a Chinese American scholar who studied Hegel, worked with Caribbean political theorist C. L. R. James, and moved to Detroit to work toward a new American revolution. As husband and wife, the couple was influential in the early stages of what would become the Black Power movement, laying the intellectual foundation for racial and urban struggles during one of the most active social movement periods in recent U.S. history.- Detroit: I Do Mind Dying byCall Number: F 574 .D4 G37 1998ISBN: 0896085724Publication Date: 1999-07-01Since its publication in 1975, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying has been widely recognized as one of the most important books on the Black liberation movement and labor struggle in the United States. Detroit: I Do Mind Dying tells the remarkable story of the Dodge evolutionary Union Movement, based in Detroit, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, two of the most important political organizations of the 1960s and 1970s.
Black Detroit: A People's History of Self-Determination by Call Number: F574 .D49 N429 2017ISBN: 9780062346629Publication Date: 2017-06-06Herb 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. Boyd reveals how Black Detroiters were prominent in the city's historic, groundbreaking union movement and were among the workers who made the automobile industry the center of American industry. Boyd makes clear that while many of these middle-class jobs have since disappeared, decimating the population and hitting Black communities hardest, Detroit survives thanks to the emergence of companies such as Shinola--which represent the strength of the Motor City and and its continued importance to the country. He also brings into focus the major figures who have defined and shaped Detroit.
The Fifty-Year Rebellion by ISBN: 9780520967861Publication Date: 2017On July 23, 1967, the eyes of the world fixed on Detroit, as thousands took to the streets to vent their frustrations with white racism, police brutality, and vanishing job prospects in the place that gave rise to the American Dream. Mainstream observers contended that the "riot" brought about the ruin of a once-great city; for them, the municipal bankruptcy of 2013 served as a bailout paving the way for the rebuilding of Detroit. Challenging this prevailing view, Scott Kurashige portrays the past half century as a long rebellion whose underlying tensions continue to haunt the city and the U.S. nation-state. This epochal struggle illuminates the possible futures for our increasingly unstable and polarized nation.
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by ISBN: 9781400851218Publication Date: 2014-04-27Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II.
The Next American Revolution: sustainable activism for the twenty-first century by ISBN: 9780520953390Publication Date: 2012-05-31The pioneering Asian American labor organizer and writer's vision for intersectional and anti-racist activism. In this powerful, deeply humanistic book, Grace Lee Boggs, a legendary figure in the struggle for justice in America, shrewdly assesses the current crisis--political, economical, and environmental--and shows how to create the radical social change we need to confront new realities.
The Poisoned City: Flint's water and the American urban tragedy by Call Number: RA 591 .C53 2018ISBN: 9781250125149Publication Date: 2018-07-10In the first full account of this American tragedy, Anna Clark's The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint's poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision making. Places like Flint are set up to fail--and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences can be fatal.
Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis by Call Number: GE 235 .M53 P38 2019ISBN: 9780262536868Publication Date: 2019-05-01An account of the Flint water crisis shows that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water is part of a broader struggle for democracy. In Flint Fights Back, Benjamin Pauli examines the water crisis and the political activism that it inspired, arguing that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water was part of a broader struggle for democracy. Pauli connects Flint's water activism with the ongoing movement protesting the state of Michigan's policy of replacing elected officials in financially troubled cities like Flint and Detroit with appointed "emergency managers."
Michigan Civil Rights Commission Reports by Michigan Department of Civil Rights.
Collections and Archival Materials
Below are some collections from institutions within and beyond the University of Michigan. Links will take you directly to the finding aid and/or digital collection on that institution's website. This is not an exhaustive list and more will be added as we work with partners at these and other institutions in Southeast Michigan.
Americans Citizens for Justice Records (1983-2004) - University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Society (Finding Aid)
The American Citizens for Justice, (or the Asian American Center for Justice) a Detroit-based Asian American civil rights group, was founded in reaction to the fatal beating of Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American man. The ACJ later evolved into an organization advocating for the rights of Asian-Americans in general. Records consist of meeting minutes, financial reports, correspondence, publications and grants, Vincent Chin related information, legal case files, health project files, as well as topical files.
Austin McCoy papers: 1994-2018 (bulk 2013-2018) - University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Society (Finding Aid)
NAACP Detroit Branch Records - Wayne State University, Walter P. Reuther Library (Finding Aid)
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was established in 1910 to help African-American citizens secure their rights, obtain legal justice and gain equal political, economic and social opportunity. The Detroit Branch was established in 1912 and has worked to improve conditions in housing, employment, education, and police-community relations and in doing so has received community-wide and national recognition. Their records reflect these accomplishments, including material on the Detroit race riot of 1943, scattered records concerning police brutality and discrimination in housing, employment, and education, civil rights complaints, membership campaigns, events and programming, and administrative materials.
Detroit Revolutionary Movements Records - Wayne State University, Walter P. Reuther Library (Finding Aid and Digital Collection)
The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was formed in May, 1968 at the Chrysler Dodge Main Plant in Hamtramck, Michigan. Among those active in its founding were General Baker, Mike Hamlin, John Watson, Ron March, Luke S. Tripp, Jr., Kenneth Cockrel, John Williams and Charles J. Wooten.
The collection has multiple parts. Part one primarily covers the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW). Part two primarily covers the Communist Labor Party.
Kenneth V. and Sheila M. Cockrel Papers - Wayne State University, Walter P. Reuther Library (Finding Aid)
Kenneth Vern Cockrel was born November 5, 1938 and raised in Detroit. He earned a B.A. in political science and his J.D from Wayne State University. Ken Cockrel also became active in politics while at Wayne. While working at the Detroit News to pay his way through school, he met Mike Hamlin and John Watson, and together they formed the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as an umbrella organization uniting local Revolutionary Union Movements, such as the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), and related support groups. In 1971, Cockrel and Motor City Labor League defectors formed the Labor Defense Coalition, which was instrumental in forcing the dismantling of STRESS, a notorious Detroit Police unit. At the same time, Cockrel helped found the law firm, Philo, Maki, Ravitz, Pitts, Moore, Cockrel & Robb. Over the next ten years, he and his colleagues earned reputations as crusaders for working and poor people by winning a number of high-profile lawsuits —cases such as New Bethel, James Johnson, Hayward Brown and Madeline Fletcher. In 1977, Cockrel was elected to a seat on the Detroit City Council as an "independent socialist". Those who had worked on his election campaign regrouped as the Detroit Alliance for a Rational Economy (DARE), and charged themselves with researching various issues Cockrel would face as a councilman such as tax abatement, public health, and attempts to create an independent, mass political force to work for strong community control of basic urban institutions. Disillusioned at his inability to use his Council position to improve conditions in the city, however, he decided not to run for re-election in 1981. He returned to the practice of law, ultimately rejoining his friend and former colleague, Justin Ravitz, at Sommers, Schwartz, Silver & Schwartz in 1988.
Sheila Ann Murphy Cockrel is the daughter of the founders of the Detroit Catholic Worker movement, Louis and Justine L'Esperance Murphy. From 1966-1968 she worked as staff secretary for the West Central Organization. In the late sixties and early seventies, as a founder of the Ad-Hoc Action Group, the Motor City Labor League and the Labor Defense Coalition, Cockrel honed her organizing skills in demonstrations and rallies against police brutality, absentee landlords and jail conditions, as well as petition campaigns such as the one to abolish STRESS. At the same time, she helped initiate and maintain a series of city-wide mass educational programs known first as the Control, Conflict & Change Book club, and then, as the From the Ground Up Bookclub. Perhaps the best tests of Murphy's organizing and administrative skills came in 1972 when she successfully managed Justin Ravitz's campaign for Detroit Recorder's Court judge, and again, in 1977 with her stewardship of the Kenneth Cockrel campaign and his Council staff. Longtime political allies, Sheila Murphy and Kenneth Cockrel married in 1978. In 1993 Sheila Cockrel ran successfully for the Detroit City Council and served on that body until 2009.
Recommended Viewing
Watch & Listen
- 12th and Clairmount (2017)
- American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (2013)
- Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1990)
- Vincent Who? (2016)
Museums and Archives
Visit
- Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
- Detroit Historical Society
- Motown Museum
- Tuskegee Airmen National Museum
- Association of Chinese Americans
- Heidelberg Project
- MBAD African Bead Museum
- African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County
- Burton Historical Collection at Detroit Public Library
- E. Azalia Hackley Collection at Detroit Public Library
- Reuther Library at Wayne State University