Black Detroit: A People's History of Self-Determination by Herb Boyd

Abstract

Book Reviews Herb Boyd. Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination. New York: HarperCollins, 2017. Pp. 428. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $27.99. Detroit occupies a central place in the African American experience, from the city’s earliest days as a French colony to the first stirrings of abolitionism to the pioneering of civil rights and up to the present. Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination chronicles this history through an eminently readable narrative that combines extensive primary and secondary sources, as well as personal memoir. It is a kaleidoscopic view of the often underacknowledged contribution of African Americans to Detroit’s development, as well as the nation as a whole, and the first to relate that history across the city’s 300-plus years. By that measure alone, the book should be required reading for anyone interested in Detroit and the African American experience in general. The first documented presence of African Americans in Detroit dates to 1736, with two slaves reportedly owned by the Campeau family: fur traders, merchants, and land speculators who were among the first French colonists to settle the region, having purchased two land grants from Detroit’s founder, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. While the exact number is unclear, black slaves were present in the first Detroit census conducted by the French in 1750. Their number continued to increase after jurisdiction was transferred to the British a decade later. From initial anonymity, the presence of specific African Americans soon began to be noted in the city, both those in bondage and those born free or freed under their own auspices. As the nineteenth century unfolded, Detroit increasingly figured prominently in the African American experience. As early as 1830, Detroit emerged as an important last stop on the Underground Railroad, the launching site for African Americans to attain freedom from bondage by crossing the river into Canada. Among the foremost abolitionists identified in Black Detroit include William Lambert, George DeBaptiste, and Henry Bibb. The end of the century saw the rise of a black middle class in Detroit. In 1883, the Pelham brothers, Robert, Jr. and Benjamin, founded the Detroit Plaindealer, the city’s first black newspaper. One of the most notable community leaders of the period was D. Augustus Straker, who as the first African American attorney to appear before the Michigan Supreme Court, successfully argued in the 1890 case Ferguson v. Gies that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional under state law, more than six decades before Brown v. Board of Education. 122 The Michigan Historical Review Detroit’s role in the civil rights movement is more well known. The celebrated 1925 case argued by Clarence Darrow defended Dr. Ossian Sweet’s right to protect his home against attack by white neighbors at a time when restrictive covenants prevented most African Americans from moving out of Detroit’s ghettos. After the Second World War, Rev. Clarence L. Franklin was among the national leaders of civil rights. His friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr. brought the civil rights leader to Detroit in a precursor to the historic 1963 march on Washington and in which King delivered an early draft of the iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. These are only a few of the stories told in Black Detroit, which documents the role of scores of African American Detroiters in business, culture, and politics from the city’s founding to its emergence from bankruptcy. It is a study that is long overdue. Vince Carducci College for Creative Studies Colin G. Calloway. The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of a Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 621. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Maps. Notes. Cloth: $34.95. Colin Calloway holds an endowed chair in history and Native American studies at Dartmouth College and is the author of numerous books concerned with the Indians and their troubled encounters with EuroAmericans in the cis-Mississippi world. The Indian World of George Washington brings new insights into the over half-century of interactions between the man who eventually became the first president of the United States and Native Americans from the Great Lakes to the...