Category Archives: The Michigan Pages: History: Black History

Black History Month: Michigan's Own James Earl Jones

He has one of the most recognizable voices in the entertainment business and it all began with a grapefruit and a dedicated teacher. James Earl Jones was born in Mississippi in 1931. His parents separated before his birth and his grandparents raised him. When Jones was five, his family moved to Michigan and settled in [...]

Black History Month: Discover Detroit's Important Role

Mask by pinehurst19475
As we continue to celebrate Black History Month in Michigan, it wouldn't be fitting for us to unravel the past without a trip to the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.
The museum's main exhibit, And We Still Rise!, is all about the significant role that Detroit played in African [...]

Black History Month: Fighting for Equality in Michigan

During the mid-nineteenth century, Michigan’s African American population was quite small in number. In 1860, about 7,000 blacks lived in Michigan-less than 1 percent of the state’s population. Although white Michiganians supported the destruction of slavery that came with the end of the Civil War, most were unenthusiastic about giving blacks equal rights. Three years [...]

Michigan's Own Black History

For years, February has been recognized as Black History Month. In nearly 250 years of living in Michigan, African Americans have made many important-and often overlooked–contributions to our state's past. One of the earliest records of African Americans living in Michigan came in the early 1760s when the British replaced the French at Detroit. [...]

Slavery in the Northwest Territory

As the Continental Congress discussed the Northwest Ordinance, a Massachusetts delegate suggested adding a provision banning slavery in the Northwest Territory, which included the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. The Ordinance, including this measure, was adopted on July 13, 1787. It was the first time the federal government set limits on [...]

The Brown Bomber Strikes

Hours before his second fight with Germany's Max Schmeling, Joe Louis was asked how he felt. "I'm scared," he said.
"Scared?" asked his trainer.
"Yes, I'm scared I might kill Schmeling tonight," Louis declared.
Two years earlier, Schmeling had beaten Louis. This rematch was more than a fight between two boxers. Schmeling came from Germany and German [...]

Freedom at Idlewild

Idlewild, wild and free
Our jumpin' rhythms always calling me,
Country air, sweet and strong,
Packing up my suitcase
So it won't be long,
Sing and dance 'til sundown,
It's such a rat race in Chicago town,
Still I feel like a child,
Cuz I'm heading up to Idlewild.
When Ray Kamalay of Lansing, Michigan, wrote this poem, he hoped to capture the excitement [...]

Rosa Parks

On October 24, 2005, Rosa Parks, the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement," died in Detroit. She had earned that appellation fifty years earlier when she refused to move from her seat on a segregated bus in her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama.
It was December 1, 1955. Parks was coming home from a long day as [...]

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth lived more than a century ago, but she remains an important national symbol for strong women of all races.
Because her mother was a slave, when Sojourner Truth was born in New York State in 1797 she was a slave. She was given the name Isabella. At the age of nine, Isabella was taken [...]

Detroit's Walk To Freedom

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. is among America's best-recognized civil rights activists. His many accomplishments include his "I Have A Dream" speech that he gave on August 28, 1963, in Washington, DC. King, however, first gave that now-famous speech in Detroit.
In the spring of 1963, Detroiters looked for a way to commemorate the anniversary [...]