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Home owners Loan Corporation map of Detroit.

Beyond Brown: The Failure of Desegregation in the North and America’s Lingering Racial Fault Lines

On the ongoing legal struggle for educational and racial equality across the United States.
by Michelle Adams via Literary Hub on January 15, 2025
A member of the Michigan National Guard stands at the ready as firemen battle a blaze in Detroit in July 1967.

White and Black Activists Worked Strategically in Parallel in Detroit 50 Years Ago for Civil Rights

Since George Floyd’s murder, some white allies seek ways to fight racial inequality. Detroit’s 1960s "racially parallel organizing" offers insights.
by Say Burgin via The Conversation on December 5, 2024
Men sitting in a bar, drinking and smoking in suits, implied to be members of the Mafia.

How Black Workers Challenged the Mafia

A story of intrigue and power involving union organizers, Black laundry workers, the Mafia, and the FBI in 1980s Detroit.
by Keith Kelleher via The Forge on November 19, 2024
A newspaper article from the Inner City Voice in Detroit with the headline, "Black Workers Uprising."

Acid Rhythms

A look at the psychedlic-inspired music scene of Detroit.
by William Harris via n+1 on April 10, 2024
Two men carrying a weakened hunger striker.

Remembering the 1932 Ford Hunger March: Detroit Park Honors Labor and Environmental History

On March 7, workers at the Ford Rouge River plant marched for better working conditions. Almost a century later, a quiet park honors their memory.
by Paul Draus via The Conversation on April 2, 2024
African American factory worker assembling an automobile engine.

How the UAW Broke Ford’s Stranglehold Over Black Detroit

The UAW's patient organizing cemented an alliance that would bear fruit for decades.
by Paul Prescod via Jacobin on October 23, 2023
A techno DJ.

The Battle Over Techno’s Origins

A museum dedicated to techno music has opened in Frankfurt, Germany, and many genre pioneers feel that Black and queer artists in Detroit have been overlooked.
by T. M. Brown via The New Yorker on April 14, 2023
The Detroit Renewable Power waste incinerator

Dire Straits

A new history of Detroit’s struggles for clean air and water argues that municipal debt and austerity have furthered an ongoing environmental catastrophe.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via New York Review of Books on June 2, 2022
Margaret Watson, 93, touches a section of the Birwood Wall that runs behind her house

Built to Keep Black From White

Eighty years after a segregation wall rose in Detroit, America remains divided. That's not an accident.
by Erin Einhorn, Olivia Lewis via NBC News on July 19, 2021
Photographer Leni Sinclair in a crowd filming an event.

When Detroit Was Revolutionary

In the 1960s and 1970s, photographer Leni Sinclair stood at the center of a local scene where political and cultural ferment merged.
by Leni Sinclair, Billy Anania via Jacobin on July 7, 2021
Police aiming guns at unarmed black people

Police and the License to Kill

Detroit police killed hundreds of unarmed Blacks during the civil rights movement. Their ability to get away with it shows why most proposals for police reform are bound to fail.
by Matthew D. Lassiter via Boston Review on April 28, 2021
A sign that reads "We Want White Tenants in Our White Community." Two American flags are on top of the sign.

Highway Robbery

How Detroit cops and courts steer segregation and drive incarceration.
by Jade Chowning, Erin Keith, Geoff Leonard via ArcGIS StoryMaps on June 8, 2020

Rosa Parks on Police Brutality: The Speech We Never Heard

The Northern Student Movement considered inviting Rosa Parks to give a speech on police brutality, but ultimately decided against it.
by Say Burgin via Black Perspectives on January 23, 2020

When a City Goes Bankrupt: A Brief History of Detroit c. 2010

“The country cannot prosper if its cities are decaying.”
by Jodie Adams Kirshner via Literary Hub on November 21, 2019

Capturing Black Bottom, a Detroit Neighborhood Lost to Urban Renewal

A new exhibit at the Detroit Public Library, displays old images of the historic African American neighborhood in its final days.
by Amy Crawford via CityLab on February 15, 2019

Rosa Parks’ Detroit Home And Hard Truths About The ‘Northern Promised Land That Wasn’t’

The civil rights activist and her family had to contend with racial discrimination beyond Montgomery.
by Jeanne Theoharis via The Root on September 7, 2017

What We Still Get Wrong About What Happened in Detroit in 1967

One of the key factors in what happened in 1967 in Detroit has long gone overlooked
by Lily Rothman via TIME on August 3, 2017

The Rage and Rebellion of the Detroit Riots, Captured in One Poem

50 years later, Philip Levine's poem, "They Feed They Lion," helps us remember and understand that time.
by Elizabeth Flock via PBS NewsHour on July 17, 2017
Map of Sterling Heights

What Explains Michigan's Large Arab American Community?

Why has Michigan continued to draw so many immigrants from the Arab world, creating one of the largest Arab communities outside the Middle East?
by Sarah Cwiek via Michigan Radio on July 9, 2014
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Wrongly Accused of Terrorism: The Sleeper Cell That Wasn't

Six days after 9/11, the FBI raided a Detroit sleeper cell. But, despite a celebrated conviction, there was one problem — they’d gotten it wrong.
via Retro Report on November 19, 2013
Silhouettes of people dancing at a techno music festival with colorful laser lights.

Machine Soul

A history of techno.
by Jon Savage via Hyperreal Music Archive on June 1, 1993
Portrait of Henry George

“The Great Enigma of Our Times”

The 1881, Henry George’s ”Progress and Poverty” proposed a land value tax — helping to usher in the Progressive Era.
by Hunter Dukes via The Public Domain Review on May 21, 2025
Publicity still from Black Legion, 1937.
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Ohio’s Little-Known Fascist Member of Congress

How a local prosecutor protected white supremacists and went on to a career in Washington, DC.
by Dana Frank via HNN on November 4, 2024
Collage of George Romney giving a speech, the Baileys, their house, and riot police.

In 1967, a Black Man and a White Woman Bought a Home. American Politics Would Never Be the Same.

What happened to the Bailey family in the Detroit suburb of Warren became a flashpoint in the national battle over integration.
by Zack Stanton via Politico Magazine on December 22, 2023
A group of Transappalachain migrant workers in Department 312 of the Anderson Delco-Remy plant pose for a photograph in February 1953.

On the New Book, "Hillbilly Highway"

Recovering the long-overlooked significance of the “hillbilly highway” in the US, with implications for labor history as well as US history broadly.
by Max Fraser, Joseph Rathke via LaborOnline on December 15, 2023
A man with a raised fist poses by a portrait of Vincent Chin.
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The Crime That Fueled an Asian American Civil Rights Movement

The 1982 attack against Vincent Chin redefined hate crimes and energized a push for today’s stronger legal protections.
via Retro Report on April 26, 2023
Corner store in Detroit.

Murder At the Corner Store: Immigrant Merchants and Law and Order Politics in Postwar Detroit

With seventeen holdups in the past few months, something had to be done. “We will talk to the mayor and the police commissioner. We need more protection".
by Kenneth Alyass via The Metropole on November 17, 2022
Illustration of Vincent Chin on red background surrounded by smaller illustrations of videographers, protestors, and grieving people

The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin

Chin’s killing, 40 years ago, has inspired documentaries, young-adult books, and countless works of scholarship. What do we want from his story, and the people who tell it?
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on June 23, 2022
La Choy cans and food

The Korean Immigrant and Michigan Farm Boy Who Taught Americans How to Cook Chow Mein

La Choy cans are a familiar sight in American grocery stores, but behind this 100-year-old brand is a story fit for Hollywood.
by Cathy Erway via TASTE on May 3, 2022
Hasiba N. Ali conducts a class at the Clara Muhammad School in Southeast Washington in 2001.
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Inequality Has Long Driven Black Parents to Pull Children From Public Schools

What’s happening amid the coronavirus pandemic is nothing new.
by Amaarah DeCuir via Made By History on February 24, 2022
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