A Visit To Detroit's Black Bottom Community
The pictorial histories published by Images of America offer the opportunity to broaden one's perspective and to get to know some of the many wonderful communities in the United States. The Black Bottom community in Detroit, alas, is no more; but the community's history is preserved in this 2009 Images of America book, "Detroit: The Black Bottom Community" by Jeremy Williams. Although a great deal of information is available about African Americans in Detroit, Williams' book is unusual in its focus on Black Bottom.
Black Bottom was located on Detroit's east side; the name "Black Bottom" is old and derives from the fertility of the soil in the area when it was still agricultural. In the late 1900's Black Bottom became home to a succession of immigrant groups. Beginning in 1914, Black Bottom became increasingly African American in demographics. The community was home to a large African American population from 1914 -- 1951, when the neighborhood was demolished by urban renewal projects. Black Bottom was adjacent to a related community known as Paradise Valley, which, unlike Black Bottom, would become famous as a center for music, clubs, and African American culture.
In his short book of images and texts, Williams offers a history of Black Bottom. The book begins with a four-page written overview of the community (unusually long for an Images of America book) followed by images and commentary. The book's first chapter offers an unusual look at the German, Italian, Jewish, and Polish immigrants who began the settlement of Black Bottom and who lived in uneasy harmony among themselves and with the African Americans. With the Great Migration and WW I, African Americans migrated to Detroit in large numbers. With restrictions on their settlement, many African Americans lived in Black Bottom under increasingly crowded, unhealthy conditions in dilapidated housing. They struggled to find remunerative work in the factories and industries of Detroit.
Williams focuses on the African Americans in Black Bottom from early in the 20th Century through both World Wars and through the Great Depression. The book offers many photographs of the streets, housing, and businesses in the community that are difficult to find in one place. The book includes many images of slum housing, of small businesses and of people -- including two young women of the many reduced to prostitution. With all the economic and social difficulty they experienced, Williams shows how the African Americans created a cohesive community though the work of local organizations, schools, and churches.
Much of the book is devoted to the housing situation in Black Bottom. Many houses from the 1930s on were demolished and not replaced. In 1935, the Federal Government funded in Black Bottom the first housing development for African Americans known as the Brewster Projects. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Black Bottom to mark the beginning of the construction of this landmark program.
Other housing projects proved more controversial. White residents in Detroit objected to the opening of the Sojourner Truth housing development to African Americans. Ultimately, African Americans were allowed to move into the development under heavy police guard. Several riots took place in Black Bottom during the 1940s between whites and African Americans which resulted in loss of life and in the destruction of many homes and businesses. The local police tended to overlook the white role in the violence and to come down hard on the African American community.
With all of the community's problems, Williams finds that Black Bottom had constituted a "tight-knit community that had stood as a living example of human will, courage, endurance, and strength". The last sections of the book document the destruction of Black Bottom, under urban renewal plans developed in 1946. The community was destroyed piecemeal and replaced largely by a freeway and by a park.
I never had any contact with Black Bottom, but it was moving to see images of the community and its people in Williams' book. It is valuable to have the something of the community preserved in Images of America.
