Preserve Black History

Obama's home has long produced political stars

By Joseph Williams, Globe Staff | November 2, 2008

CHICAGO - At age 19, South Side resident Conrad Cochran waited in line to cast his very first vote for William L. Dawson, a ground-breaking African-American politician from the neighborhood who was running for Congress. Forty-five years later, Cochran stood for more than an hour to vote for another exceptional politician who called the South Side home: Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor in 1983.

Now, at age 89, Cochran, can barely stand at all; the walker he needs to get around has a built-in seat. On Thursday, however, the retired postal worker was as excited as anyone inside Bronzeville's Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center to vote for Barack Obama, a transplanted son of the South Side. And it didn't matter that he had to wait in a three-hour-long line to do it.

"I've never seen nothing like this," said Cochran, who, because of his age, was escorted to the head of the line by poll workers. "It means change" that's been long in coming, "and now it's finally happening," he said.

The change Cochran referred to isn't from one administration to another, or from one set of policies to another: It's a deeper change that has allowed Chicago's large African-American community - the incubator of many black leaders - to become, for this moment at least, the center of all American politics.

Obama ran for the US Senate from Chicago, and he still lives on the South Side.

The neighborhood has been home to some of the most significant black political figures in American history, including Dawson, a powerful congressman and national leader who advanced African-American causes in the House for nearly 30 years; civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, creator of the PUSH-Rainbow Coalition and a two-time presidential candidate; and Carol Moseley Braun, who in 1996 became the first black woman to win election to the US Senate.

"Only Harlem might have been stronger" in producing black political leaders of national prominence, said Michael Dawson, a political science professor at the University of Chicago and a relative of Dawson, who won his congressional seat in 1942. The city's South Side, Michael Dawson said, "developed black politicians at a level no other state has seen."

For decades, Chicago has occupied a unique place in African-American history, and a high number of nationally-known black entrepreneurs got their start here, from Ebony magazine founder John Johnson to talk-show icon Oprah Winfrey. Black Chicagoans such as Jackson and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, both with strong ties to the South Side, led movements that influenced the national agenda.

The political springboard that propelled Obama's astonishing rise to the doorstep of the White House, however, was established on the South Side, decades before his birth in Hawaii.

Historians note that, beginning in the early 1900s, that area of Chicago became a destination for hundreds of thousands of former slaves and their descendants who moved to the Midwest, fleeing Jim Crow oppression and the grinding, hand-to-mouth poverty of the postwar South. Lured by the prospect of good jobs and a more tolerant racial climate, many of them boarded trains, hitched rides, or traveled however they could, following a northbound path that traced the Mississippi River.

Stephanie Davenport, director of educational programs at Chicago's DuSable Museum of African American History, said the migrants found racial hostility and segregation along with jobs in Chicago's factories and foundries. Most of the migrants, she said, didn't have much money and settled on the South Side, which had plenty of cheap, substandard housing.

But the hard times helped forge a strong sense of community and self-sufficiency, she said; segregation gave rise to the city's first African-American doctors, dentists, and attorneys, which in turn helped create the city's upwardly-mobile black middle class. As community leaders began to demand better working and living conditions, Davenport said, "that meant you had to go against the political system" and learn how it worked.

Gradually, South Side businesspeople, community activists, and aspiring politicians began to realize their collective power. White politicians "could see that there were lots of votes here," inspiring trans-racial coalitions, Davenport said. "You had all of this coming together," she said. "And it found a home on the South Side."

Toni Preckwinkle, a longtime alderman who represents the Hyde Park neighborhood in the South Side, said the area has "always had an interesting relationship with national politics," starting with Arthur Mitchell, who was elected to Congress in the 1930s and authored the country's first anti-lynching bill. Dawson, she said, was widely regarded as a kingmaker for judges and up-and-coming politicians - black and white - during his tenure on Capitol Hill, "the person Democrats looked to for recommendations."

The South Side "has produced the preeminent African-American politicians in the country," said Preckwinkle, who was an early mentor to Obama when he moved to the area as a community organizer in the 1990s.

David Axelrod, Obama's chief political strategist and a former Chicago Tribune political writer, was working for the newspaper when Washington ran for mayor in "a very, very ugly election" that broke sharply along racial lines. But Obama carried nearly all of the city during the Illinois primary - including the ones Washington lost. Though it remains to be seen whether other young, aspiring black politicians follow Obama's model and come to the South Side to establish themselves, the signs for the future are good, he said.

"We already elected two African-American United States senators. We've made tremendous progress in Illinois in breaking down some of these old barriers," said Axelrod, pausing between campaign events in Florida during the last week of the presidential race.

"I don't know if it makes it the hub of black politics. Hopefully, if we are successful - and even if we're not - at this point it's fair to say that Obama has helped shatter some old shibboleths and myths and barriers, and I think that will be important," he said.

"But he's not running to be the leader of the black community," Axelrod said. "He's running to be president of the United States."

Scott Helman of the Globe staff , who is traveling with the Obama campaign, contributed to this report.

The Day Lincoln's Hometown Erupted In Racial Hate

All Things Considered, August 14, 2008

Springfield, Ill., commemorates the centenary of the Aug. 14-15 race riot of 1908

A century ago this week, the normally placid town of Springfield, Ill., the hometown of President Abraham Lincoln, erupted in a two-day spasm of racial violence and mayhem that still has the power to shock today.

Goaded by two alleged attacks by black men on whites, a mob of white residents killed two black men, destroyed dozens of black-owned businesses and ran most of the city's black population out of town on Aug. 14, 1908. At least four whites also died during the rioting.

Roberta Senechal de la Roche, professor of history at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., tells host Liane Hansen that, "White Northerners had a rather complacent and self-satisfied attitude that anti-black prejudice and anti-black violence in particular was largely a Southern problem. … And one of the really shocking things about the well-publicized Springfield race riot — and its association with Abraham Lincoln — was that the North had a race problem."

After allegations that a black man had murdered a white homeowner and that another black man had raped a white woman, a crowd massed at the jail where two black suspects were being held and demanded the county sheriff hand them over.

"They clearly wanted to mete out lethal justice there on the spot," says Senechal de la Roche, who has written a book on the riots titled In Lincoln's Shadow.

Officials managed to sneak the two black suspects out of town, and the crowd then went on a rampage that began blocks from Lincoln's family home.

As many as 1,000 people marched to the black business district and destroyed and looted virtually every black business downtown. The crowd moved to a nearby, very large, working-class and poor African-American neighborhood, where most blacks had either hidden themselves or left town.

The white mob "went from one end to the other looting homes, damaging homes and ultimately setting them on fire. By the time they were through, they'd displaced at least 40 families," Senechal de la Roche says. The state militia arrived and found the mob preparing to lynch a black barber.

On the second day of rioting, the rioters began targeting high-status African-Americans. The mob's first target was an 80-year-old retired cobbler and real estate dealer named William Donnegan. An excerpt from In Lincoln's Shadow describes the crowd's horrific actions:

The old man was dragged outside to the front yard and beaten with bricks torn up from the sidewalk. One rioter produced a razor and cut Donnegan's throat. Dragging the dying man to the street, the rioters tied a small cotton clothesline around his neck and tried to hoist him to the limb of a small maple tree in front of the school across the street. When the militia and police arrived, most of the crowd had already fled, and the authorities could do nothing but cut William Donnegan down and carry him off.

Senechal de la Roche says Springfield residents resorted to this level of violence to avenge the two alleged victims and, because the "largely working-class rioters were expressing resentment over visible black success and influence in the community."

Although about 80 people were charged in the wake of the riot, she says, only two people were convicted: One person had to pay a $5 fine and got 30 days in jail, and a teenager was sent to a reformatory for six months. Interestingly, the woman who told police she had been raped later recanted her claim, and there were rumors that she made up the allegation to hide an extramarital affair.

"From the perspective of many Springfield residents who were white, justice was not done in the end," Senechal de la Roche says.

The 1908 riot has left an enduring legacy — it was the catalyst for the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"Liberals in the North were so outraged by the symbolism of this violence occurring in Lincoln's hometown that they got together, called a series of meetings and announced their intent on Lincoln's birthday in 1909 to form a new organization whose prime initial goal would be to fight anti-black violence," Senechal de la Roche says. "And the NAACP was formally organized less than a year after that."

Exhibit highlights imprint of blacks on U.S. history

Published Thursday, August 14, 2008 2:00 am

by Jazmine Grier, For The Charlotte Post

A national exhibit that connects black heritage to America’s history is coming to Charlotte.

The Afro-American Cultural Center is hosting an exhibit called “America I AM: The African American Imprint” Aug. 16 at the Afro-American Cultural Center, 401 North Myers Street.

Developed with The Smiley Group Inc. and organized by Arts Exhibition International, “America I AM” is a four-year traveling museum exhibition that tells the story of African people and their legacies through objects, texts, religion, music, and media gathered from every period of the nation’s history. The exhibit will be taking visitors from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and is free.

“America I AM encourages all people to connect in a meaningful way with the foundations of democracy, cultural diversity, exploration, and free enterprise, which began when the first Africans arrived in Jamestown,” Smiley said. “By telling the stories and the events of the past we can help the leaders of the future set the stage for active participation in the democratic process for years to come.”

The exhibit provides a multi-sensory experience complete with more than 150 artifacts, celebrating 400 years of African American contributions to the nation.

“America I AM” contains a customized mobile recording booth where visitors can leave their own “imprints” as recorded video messages that will travel with the exhibition.

For more information call          (704) 374-1565       .

SFGATE.com: Sad chapter in Western Addition history ending

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/21/BA6511Q4G0.DTL

(07-20) 18:13 PDT -- The city's redevelopment agency razed the Fillmore's thriving black neighborhood and business district 40 years ago, promising to revamp the area and then bring the residents and merchants back. Instead, the project languished for decades.

Today, there is a renowned jazz club, an Ethiopian restaurant and a cluster of high-rise apartment buildings. But those projects stand out in an area that has become known for its violence and is home to a number of fast-food restaurants and empty storefronts.

The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency will leave the Western Addition in January, ending a 40-year "urban renewal" project that was touted as a move to wipe out blight but actually destroyed the city's most prominent African American neighborhood.

In total, 883 businesses were shuttered and 4,729 households were forced out, according to city officials. Roughly 2,500 Victorian homes were demolished.

There are mixed feelings about the agency's departure, with some happy to see it go and others wanting more of an effort to repair the damage.

Agency officials admit that mistakes were made during the project, but a state law requires that they leave at the end of the year.

"The agency's time there has not been a happy story," said Fred Blackwell, who recently took on the title of executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. "There have been thousands of units of affordable housing developed and a substantial investment made in the community, but those things are in no way envisioned as making up for the damage that was done in the early days.

"There is no way to make up for clearing large swaths of land and displacing thousands of people."

Defining blight

The redevelopment of the Western Addition, of which the Fillmore district is a part, was one of the largest urban renewal efforts in the West. The California Redevelopment Act of 1945 allowed cities and counties to create redevelopment areas to combat urban blight, which was defined by economics, dilapidation of housing and social conditions - including the size of the nonwhite population.

The Fillmore, where 60 percent of the residents were African American, was declared blight in 1948. The first demolition project began in 1956. The second phase, the brainchild of the redevelopment agency's then-head Justin Herman, began in 1964 and expanded the area to 60 square blocks. Eminent domain was used to purchase Victorian homes and buy out local businesses. The thriving black business community was destroyed as owners of nightclubs, barbershops, banks and retail stores were forced to close up shop.

"The agency would go to a house and give the head of household a certificate that said they would be given preference in housing built in the future," said Benjamin Ibarra, a spokesman for the agency. "But there wasn't a lot of housing built for a long time."

"People say black folks chose to sell their homes, but that's not true," said the Rev. Arnold Townsend, who has lived in the Western Addition for more than 40 years. "We couldn't get loans to fix up the houses, so we didn't have a choice but to sell or crumble. There was a mean-spiritedness that occurred during the entire process."

Though the agency promised to move people back into the neighborhood after the project was completed and help the business community recover, the area sat empty for years.

Blackwell said the agency has put $50 million into the economic development of the area, with loans to businesses in the jazz preservation district, money to the four-block Japantown district, street improvements, lighting and landscaping and public art. He could not say how much of that went to African American-owned businesses.

"We don't have the investments broken down by race," he said.

The Rev. Amos Brown, who heads the San Francisco branch of the NAACP, has been a pastor in the area for decades. "There is still frustration, hopelessness and a negative mind-set on the part of the African American community because of what redevelopment did," he said. "In yesteryears, there was a sense of community, with Victorian homes and black-owned businesses.

"They wiped out our community, weakened our institutional base and never carried out their promise to bring people back."

In recent years, there have been some successes, like Rasselas Ethiopian restaurant, the Sheba Piano Lounge and the 1300 Fillmore restaurant, but many residents say those do not make up for the past injustices.

"Yoshi's is wonderful, but not worth destroying a community," Townsend said.

"They keep saying they invested $50 million," said Agonafer Shiferaw, owner of Rasselas Ethiopian restaurant, "but how much of that went to African Americans? I would guess about 6 percent. If the objective is to stimulate African American economics and business, that is not enough."

Residents are planning to hold workshops to find ways to move on. They will look at how to connect with the Planning Department, Public Works and the Office of Economic Development. They plan to form more community organizations and block clubs.

Townsend is calling on the mayor to issue an official apology to the Western Addition and the black community for what was done by the redevelopment agency.

"We can't move on until that is done," the reverend said.

"There is so much resentment because people feel like they haven't been heard," said Sheryl Davis, a five-year Western Addition resident. "Nobody seems ready to deal with what's happened and fix it and move on. The people most impacted have not benefited at all. There were so many black businesses that closed and will not be able to come back.

"On the whole, people are very dissatisfied. I don't know if we can fix it."

Lesson for Bayview

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, whose district includes the Fillmore, said the city needs to make good on the promise of returning African Americans and the working class to the area.

"We need to legislate outcomes that make it better. We need to create housing, work and business opportunities. We need legislation that speaks to the pain and suffering."

Mirkarimi said he is concerned and apprehensive about future development projects.

The city plans to turn over 1,300 acres - more than half of the Bayview-Hunters Point area - to the Redevelopment Agency to help clean up blight, build affordable housing and stimulate business. The project creates the largest redevelopment district in San Francisco history.

"We should look at the mistakes made in the 40 years in the Western Addition and make sure the rest of San Francisco is not having the same kind of experience," the supervisor said. "The Fillmore should be a lesson for the Bayview, not a harbinger."

At the July 10 meeting to discuss the departure of the agency from the Western Addition, dozens of residents showed up to share memories and concerns. But Francee Covington, the president of the Redevelopment Agency, told audience members they were not allowed to applaud and numerous times demanded people in the gallery be quiet.

"They expect people not to be emotional after 40 years. That's as mean as you can get," Townsend said. "We are glad they will be gone, but it would be better if they had never come.

"Our community is gone and never coming back, and that is painful."

Western Addition redevelopment project

TIMELINE

1948

Area declared blighted

1956

Demolition begins

1964

Area expanded to 60 square blocks

BY THE NUMBERS

883

Number of businesses closed

4,729

Number of households forced out

2,500

Number of Victorian homes demolished

$50 million

Amount spent on the project

E-mail Leslie Fulbright at lfulbright@sfchronicle.com.

Long-buried story of black America

www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-blacktowns_bd08jun08,0,9628.story

chicagotribune.com

Archeologists provide concrete details about African-American land speculators and utopian pioneers in the Midwest

By James Janega

Tribune reporter

June 8, 2008

BARRY, Ill. –– The three archeologists moved deliberately across a soggy Illinois farm field, marking boundaries for a vanished town where blacks determined their destiny on the American frontier well before the Civil War.

The town, New Philadelphia, turned out to be bigger than they thought.

So, too, scholars believe, is the long-buried story of black Americans during this period.

With fresh scholarship, new grants and high technology, university archeologists are renewing and expanding efforts to explore the Midwestern towns where African-Americans lived in the 1800s. In the last few years they have pried back the earth in Nicodemus, Kan., reconsidered the lessons of places like Buxton, Iowa, and returned this spring to the hilltop site of New Philadelphia, where digging began in 2002.

Tantalizing recoveries from the sites, along with yellowed documents and oral history, have fueled a surge of interest in black towns during the last several years, building hopes that the interest would help rewrite a neglected chapter in American history books. Scholars of African-American history are familiar with the idea of blacks as land speculators and utopian pioneers.

Now archeologists––more recent arrivals to the topic––are adding concrete details.

Every discarded button from a Civil War uniform, shard of china from England or food scrap from trash pits adds to an emerging narrative in which African-Americans faced and surmounted obstacles on the frontier when much of America was consumed with racial turmoil.

"Black people had guns, and they owned the land," University of Illinois scholar Abdul Alkalimat said of New Philadelphia, which was established in 1836. "Whatever the definition of black power is, it certainly existed in New Philadelphia."

Though each town had a different personality, scholars say self-determination tied them together. All are on the National Register of Historic Places and are National Historic Sites or recently nominated for inclusion.

Officials call their appeal universal.

"It is a story of people overcoming hardship and succeeding in the face of what most people would fail at," said Bill Hunt of the National Park Service Midwest Archeological Center.

Freed slaves hoping for a better life far from white America founded Nicodemus in 1877 after a grueling journey from the South ended on the dry plains of northwestern Kansas.

Beginning with sod houses dug out of hillsides, settlers at Nicodemus built a town with two newspapers, three general stores, a school, an ice cream parlor and a literary society. About 40 people still live in Nicodemus, and descendants of settlers hold reunions there on Emancipation Day.

Research at the original settlement site revealed details of the town's beginnings and remarkable rise from them, said Margaret Wood of Washburn University, who led digs at the site in 2005 and 2006. The excavations identified the town's first dugout homes and uncovered such everyday possessions as earthenware bowls and glass bottles, shell buttons and tin cans––and attracted hundreds of curious volunteers and visiting scholars. "It's a growing area of research," Wood said. "The field is coming to a greater maturity."

As it does, scholars are paying renewed attention to previously excavated towns such as Buxton.

A prosperous village founded by a union-busting coal company in 1900, Buxton was home to African-American doctors, lawyers and teachers, two YMCAs (one for children) and interracial swimming pools. Even the Ku Klux Klan confined local marches to nearby towns, said David Gradwohl of Iowa State University, who led excavations at Buxton in the 1980s.

A series of public talks centered on African-American heritage in the Midwest kicked off last week with a speech about his findings. The last digs at Buxton were guided by crumbling building foundations and the hazy memories of former residents who described the Monroe Mercantile Co. warehouse, the White House Hotel and the superintendent's home at the Consolidated Coal Co., Gradwohl said.

When he talks nowadays about the digs in Buxton, he addresses how academics have refined their perspective on black history in the Midwest––a discussion inspired recently by finds in New Philadelphia.

The interracial town on the western Illinois prairie was a short wagon ride from slave markets in Hannibal, Mo. Founded by Frank McWorter, a land speculator and a free black man, Buxton had a population that was two-thirds white and an integrated school.

By the Civil War, it reached a height of 160 people who had gambled that a railroad would pass nearby. When it didn't in 1869, the settlement faded into the prairie, the abandoned structures pried apart and used to patch remaining homes, until all that remained were memories and buried clues.

The Tribune last reported on the digs at New Philadelphia in 2004; a year later, the town joined the National Register of Historic Places.

National Historic Landmark status could come this fall, after more digging this summer.

The project resumed mid-May when archeologists returned to the farm field near modern Barry, trailing measuring tapes.

They walked past the spot where New Philadelphia's blacksmith once pounded out nails, past the shoemaker, cabinetmaker and grocery shops, over the buried town's old main drag and past the fresh wooden stakes where a find of century-old slate pencils rewrote a best guess on the location of New Philadelphia's schoolhouse.

After talking with Christopher Fennell, the U. of I. professor coordinating the summer's digs, archeologists Tommy Hailey of Louisiana and Bryan Haley of Mississippi staked wide metal flashings in the damp ground that are visible from the air.

The next time they see the site, they will be dangling from an ultra-light aircraft, searching for hidden foundations with an infrared camera.

For the first time in generations, someone might see the entire town at once, the archeologists said.

As insights mount, historians have a responsibility to put those lessons into textbooks, scholars say. So far, history books cling to images of blacks as victims benefiting from others instead of bold pioneers, they say.

"Archeology is not just looking at rocks and pieces of pottery. It's what this represents," said Gradwohl, who held broken china from Buxton and saw shattered stereotypes in his hand.

"It's just incredible how this history is there," he said. "And until relatively recently, how it hasn't been a part of our American textbooks and literature."

jjanega@tribune.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

Today's Detroit has little to do with 1967

What if riot never happened? City was still headed for slide

July 20, 2007

BY BILL McGRAW

FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Some year, July 23 will pass in metro Detroit without reexaminations of the 1967   riot/rebellion/insurrection/civil disturbance.

Some year, the scratchy images of Motown's version of the Summer of Love -- burning buildings, looted stores, sniper fire, "Soul Brother" graffiti, combat-hardened paratroopers and spread-eagled young black men in fedoras and skinny pants -- will fade.

Forgetting won't be easy, though. There are numerous books about the riot, at least one TV documentary and songs by Gordon Lightfoot, John Lee Hooker and the MC5.

The riot also looms large in the consciousness of white suburbanites; conventional wisdom is that July 1967 was the turning point in Detroit's recent history, the cause of flight to the suburbs, the breeder of all things bad about their once-beloved city, the event that kicked off Detroit's transformation from the world's greatest factory town to the struggling, impoverished city of today.

There is one question, though, that the discussion panels rarely take up: What if the events of that July never happened?

What if the police raid on that blind pig at 12th and Clairmount had gone off peacefully and Detroit had escaped the 1960s without a week in which 43 died and 2,509 stores were looted or burned?

The passage of four decades allows some perspective. And there is ample evidence that however dramatic and dreadful, the riot was not the sole turning point for Detroit.

Even without a riot, there is much evidence that Detroit still would be pretty much the city it is today -- still yoked to the troubled auto industry, still fighting economic decline, still shrinking, still struggling valiantly to remake itself, still achieving some successes amid the fires, shootings and poverty that are ubiquitous in 21st-Century American cities.

The roots of all those things were in place before the Motor City started burning.

"Many, many white Detroiters think of the riot as having caused the city's problems. It's exactly the opposite," said Kevin Boyle, a history professor and author at Ohio State University who grew up in Detroit. "The riot was a consequence of -- a manifestation of -- its deep problems."

Problems went back a long way

At one point in the 1960s, city officials were struggling to get a handle on factory closings, stem the flight of white residents to the burbs and deal with a crime wave. Time magazine reported back then that "blight is creeping like a fungus through many of Detroit's proud old neighborhoods."

The mayor blasted the story as slanted and biased.

The year was 1961. The mayor was Louis Miriani. The riot was still six years away.

Some white suburbanites like to poke fun at the way Detroit is run today. But they ignore the facts: Postwar Detroit, run by whites from top to bottom, clearly was foundering long before the first looter busted the first window on 12th Street. And the system that whites had created over the decades was discriminatory and at times brutal for the more than one-third of the city's residents who were African American in 1967.

"The riot's roots lay in unemployment, poverty and powerlessness -- all caused by an urban system that couldn't provide people with jobs, opportunity and hope," Boyle said.

Consider:

• Suburban flight: U.S. census figures show the white population of Detroit dropped by 23% in the 1950s alone. The number of whites had plummeted by at least 500,000 between 1950 and July 1967. The suburbs were booming: Northland, Eastland, Wonderland, Summit Place, Macomb, Universal, Livonia and Westland malls had opened by 1967. And Warren, by some accounts, was the fastest-growing city in the nation.

• Factory closings: According to a 1961 planning study, Detroit lost about 840 manufacturing plants in the 1950s, chief among them the Packard and Hudson auto companies. During the 1950s, the number of manufacturing jobs in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park dropped by 30%. Unemployment among black men ages 18 to 24 in 1967 was more than 25%.

• Retail loss: In 1961, the city's Board of Assessors reported to concerned City Council members that about 12% of Detroit's 40,460 store buildings were vacant.

• Abandoned houses: A 1961 University of Michigan study found that 22% of the dwelling units within 3 miles of downtown were empty.

• Race relations: A true race riot, in which black and white Detroiters engaged in vicious hand-to-hand combat, took place in 1943 -- 34 people died in three days. The 1950s were filled with incidents of white mobs attacking black families who had the audacity to move into all-white neighborhoods. Brutality by the virtually all-white police force was one of the black community's chief complaints in 1967.

All of these reasons are why some refer to the actions of that week in July as a rebellion instead of a riot.

If the riot had not happened, it seems fair to assume that business and resident flight would have continued, and poverty would have increased, just as in other beleaguered Rust Belt cities such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St. Louis and Buffalo that did not experience riots of the magnitude of Detroit's.

The crisis in Detroit's lifeblood -- manufacturing -- is a nationwide phenomenon that has nothing to do with the riot. The automakers' U.S. market share has been declining for years. It stood at 47.8% from April to June. Would the city's three automakers be better off in 2007 had 1967 been just another year in Detroit? Unlikely. There is no connection.

Detroit has a unique history. It experienced a sudden surge of growth starting in 1900 that ended with the Depression, picked up again in the 1940s and ended for good in the early 1950s. Then the city began shrinking rapidly.

J.L. Hudson Jr., the 35-year-old president of Detroit's largest department store in 1967 and a leader in postriot efforts to rebuild the city, told interviewer Sidney Fine in 1984 that the city's dizzying growth left it ill-prepared for long-term stability.

"The riots were certainly a negative, but not the sole cause of this," Hudson said.

The death of a dream in Detroit

The riot certainly accelerated white flight and commercial abandonment. So, without a riot, the imbalance in almost everything from bowling alleys, to movie theaters, to shopping malls between city and suburbia in southeast Michigan likely would not be so extreme in 2007.

The violence of July 1967 certainly jacked up the local paranoia level, as well as rumors, handgun ownership and rhetoric.

Would the region's troubled race relations be better today had the riot not happened? Perhaps. But the riot also led to the founding of New Detroit Inc., Detroit Renaissance and FOCUS: Hope, which all continue to work for racial harmony and development.

The riot clearly delivered a blow to Detroit's reputation, from which it never has recovered. Detroit in 1967 bragged of itself as a model city when it came to race relations and fighting poverty -- two hallmarks of Mayor Jerome Cavanagh's administration.

Local author B.J. Widick, writing in the Nation magazine in 1967, said one of the greatest casualties of the riot was the "death of the dream that Detroit was different."

Reynolds Farley, a University of Michigan sociologist, said this week: "For some decades, Detroit has been the most negatively stereotyped major city in the country. Part of that, I suspect, is attributable to the riot and its consequences."

The riot led to a radicalization of many black activists. And eventually to the election in 1973 of Coleman Young as Detroit's first black mayor, according to Heather Ann Thompson, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who also grew up in Detroit. She wrote a book about the era, "Whose Detroit?" published in 2001.

Thompson said this week that the riot served as the catalyst for black radicals to battle the white power structure in auto plants, the police department and courts from 1967 to '73. They won many victories. And that set the stage for Young, a leftist Democrat with a radical background, who took extreme positions -- in the minds of many whites -- on such issues as race and reforming the police department.

Addressing white flight, Thompson said there is no question "the most precipitous group exodus was in the wake of the political battles that were waged in Detroit after -- and because of -- the riot, and in the wake of the finale of those battles, the election of Young."

City-suburban divide continues

Forty years after the 1967 riot, Detroit has made great strides in rebuilding its downtown and riverfront, but many neighborhoods are poorer and shabbier than in 1967. Flight continues, but now many African-American families are moving to the suburbs.

As the region's economic crisis lingers, many suburbs are experiencing the population loss and commercial abandonment that were the first signs in the 1950s that Detroit was in decline. Once fast-growing Warren lately has been losing a higher percentage of residents than Detroit, and the question of how to handle blight has become one of the city's major political issues.

Race relations remain complex and problematic, and they pop up in everything from actual assaults, to regional debates about the zoo, to the water system and expanding Cobo Center.

There is no white or black public figure who can be considered an outspoken leader on improving race relations: If you are white and from the suburbs, appearing too sympathetic to Detroit can be career suicide. If you are a black Detroiter, appearing too sympathetic to suburbia can get you branded as an Uncle Tom.

The ongoing integration of suburbia eventually could change the racial dynamic across 8 Mile.

Some year, metro Detroiters might be able to debate issues, like rebuilding the region, without racial rancor. Some year, the riot might seem irrelevant.

Contact BILL McGRAW at 313-223-4781 or bmcgraw@freepress.com.

Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.

Edward F. Boyd -Breaking Down Walls

I learned about the passing of Edward F. Boyd yesterday and was so thankful I knew of his incredible   story. I had stumbled across an article in the Wall Street Journal during Black History Month that detailed his life and contributions towards helping open doors for African Americans at Pepsi Co., and African American salespeople overall in the late fifties and early sixties.

Hearing about his life reminded me of the countless family gatherings where at some point in the evening my husband's Uncle would tell the story (again) of how he was denied a sales position shortly after he graduated from college in the early fifties because of his race. With each telling you could feel his frustration about working hard to prove himself on the entrance exam only to be told they did not have a position for him. He was persistent and pursued several other positions to no avail and eventually gave up on his dream to work in business. It was a bitter pill to swallow for many men and women of his generation that change was yet to come. Granted, Eric’s Uncle went on to be a successful teacher and is proud of the fact that both his daughters are Harvard graduates (paid for in cash), but nothing can erase the pain and rejection of being denied a dream and opportunity simply because of the color of his skin. He has been very supportive of my professional sales career over the years, and always marvels at the amount of money men and women have the ability to earn as salespeople today.

Most people would complain about having to hear the same story over and over again. I often hear my peers complain about the older generation always pointing out "so and so" being the first black person to accomplish something.

I understand and realize the importance of letting the elders tell their stories while at the same time being firmly focused on the present and future. I am thankful I have people still living in my life who are constant reminders of how far we have come. In the instances when I find myself occasionally focused on the wrong things I remind myself of the experiences told to me by my Mother and Father, my late Aunt Gloria, Grandma Evans, Eric's Uncle and the stories about history makers like Edward Boyd.

And then I think about Oprah, Ken Chennault (American Express), Dick Parsons (AOL Time Warner), John Rogers (Ariel Capital) and say to myself "success is a choice". I am blessed that I can look to people in my own family who are trailblazers in business, music and media such as Ralph Tyler (Ralph Tyler Co.), Fred Fouse (Time Warner Cable), Lauren Tyler (CCMP Capital Advisors), Dana Tyler (CBS News NYC) and Yvonne Frazier (Berlin Opera). Their accomplishments make me think about how my daughters' generation will look back on this era and reflect on the progress we've made. Mr. Boyd's granddaughter certainly has an important legacy to be proud of.

We all need to be reminded and inspired to push forward and to grow. Please read the article from the Wall Street Journal about Edward Boyd and his life story, or listen to Tavis Smiley's interview with the late Mr. Boyd (NPR radio-cast Feb. 27, 2007). And just in case you need a serious reminder of how far we've really come, check out this slide show about the history of racist spokes characters  - Uncle Ben CEO.

African-American corporate pioneer dies

Edward Boyd helped integrate sales force of Pepsi-Cola, changed blacks' image in advertisements.

May 2 2007: 3:42 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Edward F. Boyd, a seminal figure in African-American business history, died Monday at the age of 92, Pepsi announced Wednesday.

In 1947 Pepsi-Cola hired Boyd to lead an all-black sales force to sell the soft drink in the African-American market, seeking to gain a foothold against well-entrenched Coca-Cola (Charts, Fortune 500). The sales team endured Jim Crow-era segregation as it traveled the country doing work that led to double-digit percentage sales increases, according to a release from Pepsi.

Boyd helped integrate the professional staff of Pepsi-Cola. He was also responsible for changing the image of African-Americans as caricatures in advertisements to conventional, attractive, middle-class Americans, the release said.

Boyd's sales team was featured in the 2007 book, "The Real Pepsi Challenge" by Stephanie Capparell.

Boyd left Pepsi (up $0.60 to $67.00, Charts, Fortune 500) in 1951 and worked at the ad agency Sherman & Marquette before going on to be a mission chief for the international aid agency CARE in 1954. He later worked for the Society for Ethical Culture.

Boyd retired in 1981 and lived in New York City. He's survived by his wife, four children, their spouses, and a granddaughter.

How Pepsi opened door to diversity in the 1940s

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 By STEPHANIE CAPPARELL, The Wall Street Journal

The rivalry between Pepsi and Coke, which started in the 1940s, is legendary in business. Less known is that a more important battle was being fought on the front lines of the cola wars at the same time: the struggle of African-Americans to gain access to professional jobs in major corporations. Walter S. Mack, the astute president of the underdog Pepsi-Cola Co., decided he could lift the stalled sales of his soft drink by hiring a team of African-American marketers to make a more concerted effort to pursue the black consumer dollar. How those qualified employees would fit into Pepsi-Cola's corporate culture, and whether they could ultimately be promoted above their separate and narrow specialty — that was the real Pepsi challenge. At the time, Pepsi was already popular among members of the black population because it offered, as its ads boasted, "twice as much" for the standard nickel price of a soft drink: 12 ounces compared with the six-ounce bottle of most rivals. But the full revenue potential of what was then called "the Negro market" was largely ignored. It wasn't until the end of the decade that white-owned manufacturers began paying serious attention to the untapped market. In 1948, Modern Industry magazine estimated the spending power of America's 14 million blacks at $10 billion — an amount equal to that of the entire population of Canada, the magazine observed. Mr. Mack had long believed that being different could sometimes provide an advantage. He started pursuing black customers by hiring a three-member sales team of African-Americans in 1940. During World War II, sugar rations and economic pressures made it all but impossible to continue that initial effort. But after the war ended, Mr. Mack decided to court the black consumer with a full department of salesmen, with a budget for advertising and promotional tools. In 1947, he hired Edward F. Boyd, a onetime singer and actor working then for the National Urban League in New York, to create the new division. Six members of that team, now in their 80s and 90s, lived to tell their story for the book, "The Real Pepsi Challenge": Mr. Boyd, Dr. Jean Emmons of Florida, Allen L. McKellar of St. Louis, Julian C. Nicholas of North Carolina, William R. Simms of Massachusetts and Dr. Charles E. Wilson of New Jersey. To their delight, they also lived to see Indra K. Nooyi, an India-born woman, appointed chief executive officer of PepsiCo Inc. in August 2006 — not long after the company edged past Coca-Cola Co. in value of market capitalization. Both milestones would have been unthinkable in the days when the marketing team was working. Ms. Nooyi, in her post since Oct. 1, also marvels at the struggle of some of the company's earliest hires. "This inspiring team of African-American professionals were far ahead of their time and set the standard for passion, determination and connecting with our customers and consumers," she said. "They also established the economic value of diversity long before 'affirmative action' was conceived." The mission of the black sales representatives at Pepsi-Cola was to win over loyal new customers — first by making personal appearances, then by placing ads in the black press and setting up displays at mom-and-pop stores in black communities. The team members had a grueling schedule, working seven days a week, morning and night, for weeks on end. They visited bottlers, churches, "ladies groups," schools, college campuses, YMCAs, community centers, insurance conventions, teacher and doctor conferences, and various civic organizations. They got famous jazzmen such as Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton to give shout-outs for Pepsi from the stage. No group was too small or too large to target for a promotion. These national sales representatives — 12 at the team's peak in 1951 — were celebrities in their communities when they worked for Pepsi-Cola. At that time, African-Americans rarely saw a black man working in a suit and tie, carrying a corporate business card. Their activities were covered in the black press, in front-page articles and in gossip columns. "We were living examples of what can happen to you if you go into business," said former salesman Julian Nicholas. The team members were more qualified than their white counterparts — all had college degrees and one, Jean Emmons, had an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago — but they were consistently paid less. They also were well-trained, getting additional outside instruction from an expert at the National Urban League, one of the many black organizations desperate to have the men do well. The salesmen did succeed, boosting Pepsi sales in every area they hit with a marketing blitz. "This is what happened in Louisville, KY ... 13 percent increase among accounts called," read one sign posted by Mr. Boyd at a Chicago bottlers' convention. Thanks to their help, too, Pepsi was able to overtake Coke sales in some rare instances in Northern cities such as Cleveland and Chicago. Their jobs turned most of the men into Pepsi fanatics. Said team member Jean Emmons: "All of my friends had to buy Pepsi. I kept stockpiles of Pepsi in my house. All the places I went had to have Pepsi. If I was out with someone and they ordered Coke, I might have thrown a glass of water in their face. ... My wife would say, 'I think you're going crazy — Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi!'" But as much as the men enjoyed their new status, their sales trips could also be humiliating, and sometimes harrowing. Lynchings were still part of the American landscape, and the men knew they had to be careful. They were traveling salesmen in the time of Jim Crow segregation laws. They had to sit in the back of buses, ride in separate train compartments, and eat behind closed curtains in dining cars. Mr. Boyd said one team member, Alexander L. Jackson, the son of a prominent Chicago family, found the indignities too much to bear and soon quit. "The first time he saw a white bus driver order a black man to sit at the back of the bus, he nearly had a stroke," Mr. Boyd said of the late Mr. Jackson, who was a Harvard graduate, the son of a Harvard graduate and the brother of a Harvard graduate. "He just couldn't take it — or any of the separate-but-equal laws of the South." Early on, Mr. Mack tried to protect his sales force by insisting the black representatives travel in Pullman cars, so that they could dine and sleep by themselves. But even having the black salesmen traveling in the special, high-priced sleeping cars offended some people. "The conductor would come and pull down the shades so the whites couldn't see the blacks," Allen McKellar, a member of the special-markets team, recalled. The white business leaders who hired black salesmen in the 1940s and 1950s also had to be careful. They wanted the black customer's dollar, but companies seen as pandering to African-Americans — by donating to their communities, selling them products and hiring black professionals — were often shunned by white consumers. Even Mr. Mack, who seemed sincere in his efforts to forward racial equality, mostly confined his boasts about pro-black business initiatives and charitable programs to the black press, away from the mainstream. At one bottlers' convention in New York in 1949, Mr. Mack went so far as to tell the bottlers, "We're going to have to give Pepsi a little more status, a little more class — in other words, we're going to have to develop a way whereby it will no longer be known as a nigger drink," recalled Mr. Russell. Mr. Boyd confirmed his recollection. A seething Mr. Boyd walked out on his boss from the front row, and later received a personal apology from Mr. Mack. "I didn't forget it, but I didn't hold it against him, either," Mr. Boyd said. In a statement Tuesday, a PepsiCo spokesman said about the incident: "It's an appalling and completely unacceptable comment, with as much sting today as it had 60 years ago. Hopefully, starting with Mr. Mack's apology in 1949, and nearly six decades of positive actions we've taken since, we've shown PepsiCo's true commitment to diversity." The so-called Negro marketers helped bolster sales at Pepsi-Cola during its most troubled times. But they also helped define the concept and strategy of niche marketing and were instrumental in changing the way African-Americans were portrayed in advertising. Instead of stereotypes — from Aunt Jemimas and Uncle Bens to offensive caricatures of bare-bottomed children — the Pepsi ads that appeared in the black press showed African-Americans as stylish, fun-loving, middle-class consumers living the American Dream. Mr. Boyd hired some of the first professional black models. "I kept saying, I wanted to make something impressive," he said. He launched three major press campaigns from 1948 to 1951. For the first, he found accomplished African-Americans to profile for a "Leaders in Their Fields" series — about 20 names in all. The campaign compared the professionals with Pepsi, a "Leader in Its Field." It began in April 1948 with United Nations diplomat Ralph Bunche. That series was complemented in the upstart Ebony magazine by a seven-ad series drawn by award-winning African-American cartoonist Jay Jackson, known for his biting satire of racists and red-baiters. For his third series, Mr. Boyd took a crew to the campuses of black universities to photograph top students enjoying Pepsi. Finally, Mr. Boyd was ready to tackle the displays in stores selling the soft drink. He wanted to make a splash with a colorful point-of-sale advertising piece showing a black family, and thought a friend's son would make a perfect model. The seven-year-old was handsome, bright and full of energy. His real-life father, William Brown, was the new manager of a hotel in Harlem. "Ronnie used to run around the Theresa hotel, in and out of the bar, greeting people," said Mr. Boyd with a grin. "He was very precocious. We were concerned he'd come to no good." To everyone's surprise, when it was the young boy's turn to pose for the shoot, he was poised, cooperative and professional. He did his shoot, smiling and reaching up for a six-pack of Pepsi held by his "mother," a popular new model named Sylvia Fitt. The result was a handsome tableau of a middle-class African-American family enjoying a meal and Pepsi. The boy was Ron Brown, who grew up to become secretary of commerce in the Clinton administration. The ad campaigns were a hit. Thousands of individuals and schools asked for reprints of the Leaders series to use as educational tools. But the Pepsi-Cola hiring experiment had mixed results. In the end, one team member who stayed on at Pepsi-Cola, the late Harvey C. Russell, became a vice president in the company in 1962, the first African-American ever promoted to that title at a major corporation. (Jackie Robinson, the baseball star, had been made vice president of smaller Chock full o'Nuts in 1957.) A handful of other team members had long and lucrative careers at Pepsi-Cola. But most of the team members complained they were never considered for other positions around the company. The experiment came to an end after Mr. Mack left the company and was replaced by Alfred N. Steele, a former Coca-Cola executive and the future husband of actress Joan Crawford. (Mr. Mack died in 1990 at the age of 94. Mr. Steele died in 1959 just short of his 58th birthday.) The new boss was more focused on building up the company and expanding its reach overseas than on workforce diversity and marketing to minorities. Embracing the decentralization trend in management popular at the time, he saw no need for a New York-based special-sales division. In a broad reorganization in 1951, Mr. Steele fired Mr. Boyd and had his team members dispersed to offices around the country. In those offices, the salesmen succeeded only as far as their managers believed in the need for niche marketing to boost profits locally. Most of the men quit soon after. One of the most educated found himself mopping floors for a time, but all eventually went on to remarkable second careers: Ed Boyd joined the international aid agency CARE in the Middle East, for example. Charles Wilson studied medicine in Geneva and became a doctor. Julian Nicholas, who stayed long enough to be promoted to national head of special markets, left in 1963 to work for the State Department and the protocol offices of the administrations of President Johnson and President Carter. Jean Emmons earned a Ph.D. in education and became a career superintendent of schools. All the way, they continued to break down color barriers to their careers. Mr. Boyd proudly takes credit for helping open the door to diversity. "It was a contribution to social progress," said Mr. Boyd of his work at Pepsi. "I didn't make that much of a dollar. I wasn't paid on the basis of other executives. It was at the beginning."

USVI excavation project seeks to reveal slave 'Voices From Beyond the Grave'

ST CROIX, USVI: St Croix activist Shelly Moorhead, who has led delegations to Denmark to discuss reparation for the ancestors of enslaved Africans, recently announced a new collaboration between Denmark and the Virgin Islands entitled "Voices from Beyond the Grave."

"Voices from Beyond the Grave" project seeks to excavate ancient burial grounds of enslaved Africans to learn more about the lives they led.  Danish anthropologist Pia Bennike, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen's laboratory of biological anthropology will lead the excavation and anthropological examination of skeletons.

Slave Voices from the Past - read entire article