Download or read book Detroit s Paradise Valley written by Ernest H. Borden and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most prominent and dynamic African-American neighborhoods in U.S. history, Paradise Valley served as a social and cultural mecca for Detroit's black community from the 1920s through the 1950s. Now the site of stadiums and freeways, the area was once home to places like the Gotham Hotel and the Surf Club, and welcomed the likes of Billie Holiday, Joe Louis, and Sammy Davis Jr. This book uses more than 200 previously unpublished photographs to take readers on a rare tour of the entertainers, entrepreneurs, businesses, and events that made the now-lost Paradise Valley legendary.
Download or read book Paradise Valley written by Reuben Ray II and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paradise Valley / Black Bottom was an area in Detroit where African Americans lived and survived. This story was about a time in American history in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, concerning citizens who, because of restrictions based on their race, were forced to build and create their own social order and leave for their successors a rich legacy and an indelible mark for posterity. This is a story of Reuben Ray Sr. and his resolve to exist successfully in a space that didnt seem too receptive to his presence. His son, Reuben Ray II, and daughters, Izetta Carol Jackson and Gayle Hawkins, encouraged him to put his life story on tape so that his grandchildren could enjoy his commanding voice as much as they had. Little did they realize the significance of their request until after Reuben Ray Sr.s death on Tuesday, March 18, 1980.
Download or read book Paradise Valley written by Reuben Ray II and published by . This book was released on 2023-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Detroit written by Jeremy Williams and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1914 and 1951, Black Bottom's black community emerged out of the need for black migrants to find a place for themselves. Because of the stringent racism and discrimination in housing, blacks migrating from the South seeking employment in Detroit's burgeoning industrial metropolis were forced to live in this former European immigrant community. During World War I through World War II, Black Bottom became a social, cultural, and economic center of struggle and triumph, as well as a testament to the tradition of black self-help and community-building strategies that have been the benchmark of black struggle. Black Bottom also had its troubles and woes. However, it would be these types of challenges confronting Black Bottom residents that would become part of the cohesive element that turned Black Bottom into a strong and viable community.
Download or read book Paradise Blue written by Dominique Morisseau and published by Concord Theatricals. This book was released on 2019 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blue, a gifted trumpeter, contemplates selling his once-vibrant jazz club in Detroit’s Blackbottom neighborhood to shake free the demons of his past and better his life. But where does that leave his devoted Pumpkin, who has dreams of her own? And what does it mean for the club’s resident bebop band? When a mysterious woman with a walk that drives men mad comes to town with her own plans, everyone’s world is turned upside down. This dynamic and musically-infused drama shines light on the challenges of building a better future on the foundation of what our predecessors have left us.
Download or read book Detroit written by Scott Martelle and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detroit was established as a French settlement three-quarters of a century before the founding of this nation. A remote outpost built to protect trapping interests, it grew as agriculture expanded on the new frontier. Its industry leapt forward with the completion of the Erie Canal, which opened up the Great Lakes to the East Coast. Surrounded by untapped natural resources, Detroit turned iron into stoves and railcars, and eventually cars by the millions. This vibrant commercial hub attracted businessmen and labor organizers, European immigrants and African Americans from the rural South. At its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, one in six American jobs were connected to the auto industry and Detroit. And then the bottom fell out. Detroit: A Biography takes a long, unflinching look at the evolution of one of America’s great cities, and one of the nation’s greatest urban failures. It seeks to explain how the city grew to become the heart of American industry and how its utter collapse resulted from a confluence of public policies, private industry decisions, and deep, thick seams of racism. This updated paperback edition includes recent developments under Michigan’s Emergency Manager law. And it raises the question: when we look at modern-day Detroit, are we looking at the ghost of America’s industrial past or its future? Scott Martelle is the author of The Fear Within and Blood Passion and is a professional journalist who has written for the Detroit News, the Los Angeles Times, the Rochester Times-Union, and more.
Download or read book This Side of Paradise written by Curtis James Tilleraas and published by Xulon Press. This book was released on 2012-06 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Side of Paradise: The Religious World of Elijah Muhammad was first written as a Master's thesis. Although his thesis was defended less than a year before September 11, the author has not based any of his changes on that horrific event. Elijah Muhammad stood at the helm of an organization called The Nation of Islam, but the religion of Mr. Muhammad is not the religion of today's suicide bombers and pan-national Islamic jihadists. His religion was made in America, by him, for African Americans and other people 'of color' who were willing to renounce their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and follow him, Elijah Muhammad, into Paradise - a state of mind and being in which there would never be seen the 'ungodly' faces of any white man, woman or child. Curtis J. Tilleraas was ordained in the Old Catholic Church as a deacon and then a priest. Today he is serving as a Lutheran pastor in a beautiful country church, surrounded by corn fields and headstones. He is a former President of ScreenWriters' Workshop, a former lumber yard worker, creamery worker, taxi cab driver, civil service worker (at several universities and colleges), Grant Writer and Director of Development. His poems have appeared in a number of small, literary magazines; and he also worked as a Script Consultant and Research Interviewer on the documentary, Clouded Land: Land Claims Issues on Minnesota's White Earth Indian Reservation. While he was in seminary working on his MDIV degree at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN, Pastor Tilleraas also earned an M.A. degree in Islamic Studies. His Arabic teacher at the seminary was a Muslim psychologist from Egypt, and his tutor was a young Palestinian Muslim who grew up in Bethlehem.
Download or read book Paradise Valley Days written by and published by Detroit Black Writers Guild. This book was released on 1998 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dream City written by Conrad Kickert and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing two centuries of rise, fall, and rebirth in the heart of downtown Detroit. Downtown Detroit is in the midst of an astonishing rebirth. Its sidewalks have become a dreamland for an aspiring creative class, filled with shoppers, office workers, and restaurant-goers. Cranes dot the skyline, replacing the wrecking balls seen there only a few years ago. But venture a few blocks in any direction and this liveliness gives way to urban blight, a nightmare cityscape of crumbling concrete, barbed wire, and debris. In Dream City, urban designer Conrad Kickert examines the paradoxes of Detroit's landscape of extremes, arguing that the current reinvention of downtown is the expression of two centuries of Detroiters' conflicting hopes and dreams. Kickert demonstrates the materialization of these dreams with a series of detailed original morphological maps that trace downtown's rise, fall, and rebirth. Kickert writes that downtown Detroit has always been different from other neighborhoods; it grew faster than other parts of the city, and it declined differently, forced to reinvent itself again and again. Downtown has been in constant battle with its own offspring—the automobile and the suburbs the automobile enabled—and modernized itself though parking attrition and land consolidation. Dream City is populated by a varied cast of downtown power players, from a 1920s parking lot baron to the pizza tycoon family and mortgage billionaire who control downtown's fate today. Even the most renowned planners and designers have consistently yielded to those with power, land, and finances to shape downtown. Kickert thus finds rhyme and rhythm in downtown's contemporary cacophony. Kickert argues that Detroit's case is extreme but not unique; many other American cities have seen a similar decline—and many others may see a similar revitalization.
Download or read book Detroit Remains written by Krysta Ryzewski and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An archaeologically grounded narrative of six legendary Detroit places"--
Download or read book Fighting in the Streets written by Max Arthur Herman and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2005 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fighting in the Streets provides a comparative analysis of some of the most severe episodes of urban unrest that took place in twentieth-century America, including the 1919 Chicago Riot, the 1943 Detroit Riot, the 1967 Newark and Detroit Riots, the 1980 Miami Riot, and the 1992 Los Angeles Riot. Examining the patterns of death and destruction of property that occurred during these events, as well as historical evidence regarding struggles for housing, jobs, and political power among members of different racial/ethnic groups, this book makes the case for a general explanatory model of urban unrest as a product of rapid demographic change. Focusing at the neighborhood level, where demographic changes have their greatest impact, Fighting in the Streets posits that riot-related violence is most likely to take place in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of black/white segregation, poverty, unemployment, and rapid population turnover. Such a "profile" of the riot-prone neighborhood may enable policy makers to avert future violence through targeted economic and political intervention, such as building community institutions that integrate newcomers and natives. This book is particularly suited for classes in urban studies, race/ethnic relations, and collective behavior/social movements as well as public policy and planning.
Download or read book Christmas in Detroit written by Bill Loomis and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yuletide in the Motor City No city seems to love Christmas as much as Detroit. Whether at Hudson's, or sitting at the Fox Theatre, or seeing the hundreds of dolls and live reindeer at the famous Rotunda, the city can't get enough of the holiday season. Detroiters have been celebrating Christmas for over 300 years, when the city was French and children waited for Pere Noel. As holiday traditions evolve, some endure, like Christmas trees and children writing letters to Santa. Some, such as meat pie and saying 1,000 Hail Marys for good luck, fade, and new ones--Santa at the Thanksgiving Day Parade--take their place. Local history writer Bill Loomis leads a very merry jaunt through the happiest days of Christmas in Detroit.
Download or read book Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume Two written by Philip A. Greasley and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-08 with total page 1074 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips, graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest's continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature.
Download or read book Detroit written by Charlie LeDuff and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An explosive exposé of America’s lost prosperity by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charlie LeDuff “One cannot read Mr. LeDuff's amalgam of memoir and reportage and not be shaken by the cold eye he casts on hard truths . . . A little gonzo, a little gumshoe, some gawker, some good-Samaritan—it is hard to ignore reporting like Mr. LeDuff's.” —The Wall Street Journal “Pultizer-Prize-winning journalist LeDuff . . . writes with honesty and compassion about a city that’s destroying itself–and breaking his heart.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A book full of both literary grace and hard-won world-weariness.” —Kirkus Back in his broken hometown, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff searches the ruins of Detroit for clues to his family’s troubled past. Having led us on the way up, Detroit now seems to be leading us on the way down. Once the richest city in America, Detroit is now the nation’s poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age—mass-production, blue-collar jobs, and automobiles—Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, dropouts, and foreclosures. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark, and the righteous indignation only a native son possesses, LeDuff sets out to uncover what destroyed his city. He beats on the doors of union bosses and homeless squatters, powerful businessmen and struggling homeowners and the ordinary people holding the city together by sheer determination. Detroit: An American Autopsy is an unbelievable story of a hard town in a rough time filled with some of the strangest and strongest people our country has to offer.
Download or read book The American Midwest written by Andrew R. L. Cayton and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-08 with total page 1918 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first-ever encyclopedia of the Midwest seeks to embrace this large and diverse area, to give it voice, and help define its distinctive character. Organized by topic, it encourages readers to reflect upon the region as a whole. Each section moves from the general to the specific, covering broad themes in longer introductory essays, filling in the details in the shorter entries that follow. There are portraits of each of the region's twelve states, followed by entries on society and culture, community and social life, economy and technology, and public life. The book offers a wealth of information about the region's surprising ethnic diversity -- a vast array of foods, languages, styles, religions, and customs -- plus well-informed essays on the region's history, culture and values, and conflicts. A site of ideas and innovations, reforms and revivals, and social and physical extremes, the Midwest emerges as a place of great complexity, signal importance, and continual fascination.
Download or read book Street Poison written by Justin Gifford and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first and definitive biography of one of America's bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the twentieth century: Iceberg Slim, né Robert Beck, author of the multimillion-copy memoir Pimp and such equally popular novels as Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow. From a career as a, yes, ruthless pimp in the '40s and '50s, Iceberg Slim refashioned himself as the first and still the greatest of "street lit" masters, whose vivid books have made him an icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg and a presiding spirit of "blaxploitation" culture. You can't understand contemporary black (and even American) culture without reckoning with Iceberg Slim and his many acolytes and imitators. Literature professor Justin Gifford has been researching the life and work of Robert Beck for a decade, culminating in Street Poison, a colorful and compassionate biography of one of the most complicated figures in twentieth-century literature. Drawing on a wealth of archival material—including FBI files, prison records, and interviews with Beck, his wife, and his daughters—Gifford explores the sexual trauma and racial violence Beck endured that led to his reinvention as Iceberg Slim, one of America's most infamous pimps of the 1940s and '50s. From pimping to penning his profoundly influential confessional autobiography, Pimp, to his involvement in radical politics, Gifford's biography illuminates the life and works of one of American literature's most unique renegades.
Download or read book The Origins of the Urban Crisis written by Thomas J. Sugrue and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-27 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reasons behind Detroit’s persistent racialized poverty after World War II Once 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. This Princeton Classics edition includes a new preface by Sugrue, discussing the lasting impact of the postwar transformation on urban America and the chronic issues leading to Detroit’s bankruptcy.
