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In honor of Black History Month, I want to take a minute to talk a little bit about local Black history here in Michigan and particularly the role Detroit played in our national story. Detroit’s geography, being just a 2,400-foot boat ride from Canada, helped make us a major Underground Railroad destination in the United States, with the code name “Midnight” for escaped slaves from the South. Here are some of the important milestones most people don’t know.

In 1833, before Michigan had become a state, hundreds of Black Detroiters and white abolitionists joined together to break a Black husband and wife out of prison in Wayne County. They succeeded in transporting the couple by boat to Canada. It was a galvanizing point, and the ringleaders of the uprising went on to found the Second Baptist Church, the oldest Black church in Michigan and a stop on the Underground Railroad. It’s estimated that 50,000 escaped slaves settled or stopped before the final leg of their journey across the Detroit River into Canada.

In 1869, a member of the same Second Baptist Church who was working as a teacher joined a lawsuit, Workman v Detroit Board of Education, challenging mandatorily-segregated schools in Detroit. They won and opened an integrated public school in 1869, 85 years before Brown v Board of Education.

In the 1910s and 20s, the Great Migration brought more than 100,000 Black residents to Michigan, seeking good jobs and an escape from the Jim Crow regime in the South. But they encountered racist practices when they arrived, with redlining, racially restrictive covenants, and discriminatory Homeowners Associations enforcing segregation for decades.

Nevertheless, Black Michiganders worked towards equality and justice. The Second Baptist Church, 119 years after its founding, was the largest financial donor to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, the event kicked off by Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat. Parks later moved to Detroit, where she spent decades working in politics and activism, including to dismantle racist housing practices.

This is just a tiny snippet of Michigan’s Black history. I encourage you to explore Michigan’s Black history, not just this month, but year-round. Take a trip to the Motown Museum, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, or the Henry Ford Museum (where you can tour the actual bus Rosa Parks sat in). Visit one of the many monuments to the Underground Railroad in our state, or make a stop at a Black-owned business.

Happy Black History Month!

Elissa
 


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