1900 - Detroit Population: Total: 285,704. Black: 4,111. (1.4%)

1900 The Detroit Study Club, a literature and poetry reading group, which later evolves into a leading social reform agency fostering moral and racial up-lift, is the first African-American women's club to join the Detroit Federation of Women's Clubs.

1902 Oscar W. Baker graduates from the University of Michigan Department of Law. After practicing with L.E. Joslyn, he establishes his own practice in Bay City, Michigan with nearly all white clients.

1904 African-American Christian clubwomen, members of the Second Baptist Church, respond to the needs of young single women who have recently migrated to Detroit. They establish the Christian Industrial Club, a training institute, and the Christian Industrial Home, which provides clean, safe room and board.

1905 African-American lawyers Robert C. Barnes and partner Walter H. Stowers open their law paractice. It becomes one of the most well known law firms in Michigan.

1906 Detroit's African-American clubwomen play host to the Fifth Biennial Convention of the National Association for Colored Women. NACW is a coalition of middle-class African-American clubwomen, which advances an agenda of moral and racial uplift.

1908 Henry Ford introduces the Model T. It was the first mass-produced car that was generally affordable.

1909 Benjamin Pelham, an African-American, becomes Wayne County accountant, eventually rising to the rank of county cheif fiscal officer.

Mary McCoy, one of the founders of the Phyllis Wheatley Home for Aged Colored Women, is a principle founder of the McCoy Orphanage. In addition to orphans, the home provides day-care for the children of domestics and washerwomen. She is the wife of inventor and prominent businessman Elijah McCoy.

 

1906 December 4th - Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. is the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity formed by African-Americans. It was founded on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and incorporated January 29, 1908.

1908 Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority is the first Greek-letter organization founded by African-American women. It was incorporated in 1913.

 

 

 

 

1910 - Detroit Population: Total: 465,766
African American: 5,741 (1.2%)

1911 Named for Frederick Douglass, the prominent African-American abolitionist and statesman of the 19th century, the Douglass Institute opens on Columbia and St. Antoine. It is the precursor to what was formally called the Colored Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). There, young men, new to the city, could find room and board in a protective, nurturing environment.

1914 January - Henry Ford offers $5.00 a day for unskilled labor at his factory in Highland Park, Michigan. At the time, this was a significant amount of money. Although African Americans often would not receive this wage, many came to Detroit in the hopes that they would.


1915 August - Governor Woodbridge N. Ferris appoints the Michigan Freedmen's Progress Commission to monitor African-American accomplishment 50 years after emancipation. The Michigan Manual of Freedmen's Progress lists 98 African-American professionals.

1916 The Detroit Urban League, organized to help acclimate rural African-American migrants to an urban lifestyle, is established when the National Urban League (NUL) sends NUL-trained social worker Forrester B. Washington to establish the Detroit chapter.

1916 The Young Negroes' Progressive Association, a group of twenty-five young "race men" take leadership in a number of Detroit Urban League initiatives, including management of the community dances, the basketball, and later, baseball leagues that it funds. Additionally, it provides the staff for training and "racial uplift" programs targeting new migrants.


1917 Drs. Davis and Daisy Northcross establish Mercy General Hospital. The 20-bed facility is the first African-American-owned and operated hospital in Detroit.

African-American doctors establish the Allied Medical Society, which they later name the "Detroit Medical Society," in affiliation with the National Medical Society.

The Detroit Urban League, organized to help acclimate rural African-American migrants to an urban lifestyle, establishes the Dress Well Club, a concerted effort to acculturate new migrants to northern and urban dress and behavioral standards. Blaming segregation on what it labels as loud, noisy, almost nude women in Mother Hubbards [southern-style domestic clothing] standing around in the public thoroughfares, Dress Well Club members often welcome new arrivals at train stations distributing cards and pamphlets on these subjects and inviting them to take advantage of Urban League services.

July - The first wave of "The Great Migration" of African Americans from the rural south to the northern industrial cities is in full swing: African Americans arrive in Detroit at the rate of one thousand per month throughout the rest of the summer.

1918 Forrester B. Washington, founding executive director of the Detroit Urban League, organized to help acclimate rural African-American migrants to an urban lifestyle, leaves Detroit, accepting a position as supervisor of the Department of Negro Economics in the United States Department of Labor.

November - The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) opens the Industrial Women's Service Center to provide room and board to African-American women who are employed in industrial war work.

May 1 - Michigan's prohibition law takes effect, one year before the federal statute. This law bans the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages.

Dr. James W. Ames and several others establish Dunbar Hospital, which was long thought to be the first African-American-owned and operated hospital in Detroit.

June - John C. Dancy takes over as head of Detroit Urban League. The former educator and National Urban League industrial secretary serves as the Detroit branch's head until his retirement in 1960.

1919 March 22 - Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity's Gamma Lambda Chapter (Detroit's graduate chapter) is founded.

Southeast Michigan African-American attorneys form the Harlan Law Club, predecessor to the Wolverine Bar Association. Initially, it is primarily a loose and informal social network, named for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan -- the lone dissenting vote in Plessy v. Ferguson, a case that made segregation legal for more than the next 50 years.

Under the leadership of the new director, John C. Dancy, the Detroit Urban League, organizes to help acclimate rural African-American migrants to an urban lifestyle, opens the Columbia Community Center. Its function is to provide a common facility where young men and women can engage in positive activities, such as sports, music and tutoring in sex-segregated groups. Detroit's racial segregation meant that these young people were often in close proximity to such "unsavory" elements as pool halls, brothels, dance halls and bars.

Reverend Robert Bradby, pastor of Second Baptist Church, joins the newly-founded Metropolitan Detroit Council of Churches. It is a cooperative effort to address secular social concerns in the context of the Gospel. Bradby is able to represent the African-American community and convince white social service agencies to provide greater assistance to the Detroit migrant community.

In response to the recent influenza pandemic, the Detroit Urban League opens its baby clinic within the Columbia Community Center to treat the under-served African-American population. Mothers bring their babies to the clinic five mornings a week to see the doctor and two nurses. According to the Urban League, its clients were often making first contact with professional health services.

1911 January 5th - Kappa Alpha Psi, Inc. was founded on the campus of Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana. It was incorporated May 15, 1911

November 17th - Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. was founded at Howard University. Incorporated October 28, 1914

1913 January 13th - Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. was founded at Howard University. It was incorporated in 1930

1914 Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. was founded at Howard University.

 

June 28 - Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary is assassinated. This is one of the key events touching off the Great War in Europe, later called World War I. Germany, using its newest technology - the "U-Boat" - curtails most commercial activity in the European shipping lanes. Northern industrial cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee lose access to the unskilled industrial labor from Southern and Eastern European nations.

 

1917 April 8 - United States enters the War in Europe, later called World War One.

 

 

1920 - Detroit Population:
Total: 993,678 (up 113% from 1910) African American: 40,838 (4.1% of the total - a 611% increase from 1910)

1920 Members of the Second Baptist Church form the Baptist Christian Center, located at 1718 Russell Street. It is a traditional "settlement house" to assist new migrants in adjusting to life and work in Detroit.

 

1923

May 24 - The Michigan legislature enacts the "Burns Act" prohibiting "public gatherings of masked men." The law is carefully drafted to apply almost exclusively to Ku Klux Klan activity.

June 21 - Grace Costavas Murphy graduates from the Detroit College of Law and becomes the first African-American woman lawyer in Michigan. She will practice until her death in 1932.

1925 Septemeber 8 - A white mob attacks the 2905 Garland home of Dr. & Mrs. Ossian Sweet, an African-American doctor and family that has moved out of the African-American community called Paradise Valley to an otherwise all-white East Side neighborhood. As the growing crowd moves towards the house, someone inside shoots, wounding one man and killing another. After one acquittal, the court rules in a subsequent trial that the Sweets were defending their lives and property.

1926 Mayor John Smith forms the Mayor's Interracial Commission in response to a number of violent racial clashes throughout 1925. In part of its report, The Negro in Detroit, former Detroit Urban League founding Director, sociologist Forrester B. Washington, reports on the rampant police brutality in the city.

1927 November - Charles Bowels, local activist with ties to the Ku Klux Klan is elected Mayor of Detroit.

1928 The Detroit Urban League establishes and sponsors the visual and literary artist's group called The Pen and Palette Club.

 

 

1920 Zeta Phi Beta, Inc. Sorority was founded with the assistance of Phi Beta Sigma at Howard University.

1922 January 26 - The Dyers Anti-Lynching Bill, introduced by Missouri Congressman R.L. Dyers, passes the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, the bill will be stopped by a filibuster, a parliamentary maneuver to capture the debate and prevent a vote on a measure.

1929 October 29 - With the stock market crash, "The Great Depression," the worst economic climate of the 20th century, begins. Detroit, now firmly an automotive industry town, is particularly hard hit.

 

1930 - Detroit Population: Total: 993,578
African American: 120,000 (7.6%

1930 June 16 - Fannie Peck, wife of Reverend William Peck, pastor of Bethel AME Church, holds a meeting of African-American women and establishes the Detroit Housewives League. It is one of the first women's organizations in Detroit to unite middle-class clubwomen and working class women. League members use their stewardship of the family budget to support African-American businesses and service providers.

July 22 - Mayor Charles Bowles is recalled in the first large-city mayoral recall in the United States. Charges of corruption and ties with the KKK results in his demise.

November - Charles A. Roxborough, an African-American attorney, is elected to the Michigan State Senate.

1932 African-American attorneys Harold E. Bledsoe, Charles Diggs, Sr., and Joe Craigen, form the Michigan Black Federated Democratic Club, considered the first such organization of African-American Democrats in the United States.

March 7 - Unemployed workers stage the "Ford Hunger March" to protest under-employment at the Ford Rouge Plant, and Henry Ford's failure to participate in relief efforts. A peaceful crowd of 3,000 march from Detroit to the Dearborn plant but is disbursed by the Ford Service Department's security force using live gunfire. Of the five men killed, one was an African American who died days later as a result of being mortally wounded on this day.

1933 Jessie Slaton is the first full-time African-American secretary in Detroit City Hall. She goes on to teach special education, graduate from law school and later becomes the first African-American woman referee in Detroit Traffic Court.

1934 The Harlan Law Club adopts its new constitution and becomes the Wolverine Bar Association. Its membership is open to any lawyer who "is a member of the Michigan bar in good standing" although it will have no white members for thirty years.

1935 May 8 - The Integrated State Bar Act creates the State Bar of Michigan. It is the first state-wide lawyers organization and membership is mandatory for all licensed attorneys.

1936 African-American attorney Harold E. Bledsoe accepts Governor Frank Murphy's appointment to the Michigan Workmen's Compensation Study Commission and participates in drafting the state's first Workmen's Compensation Act.

1937 June 22 - Detroiter Joe Louis (Barrow) defeats James J. Braddock in an eighth round knockout to win the World Heavyweight Boxing Title.

1938 Michigan Equal Accommodations Act passed into law.

June 22 - World Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis knocks out Max Schmeling in round 1 of their title fight, avenging his 1936 loss to the German boxer. Detroit's African-American community erupts in spontaneous street celebrations and Louis vaults into prominence as a national hero for whites and African Americans.

Drs. DeWitt T. Burton and Chester Ames establish Wayne Diagnostic Hospital, an African-American-owned and operated medical facility. It is rededicated as Burton Mercy in 1949.(See 1974 entry)

 

1932 Nine young African-American men are arrested in Scottsboro, Alabama, charged with raping two white women on a freight train. After a sham trial, they are convicted and sentenced to death. The International Labor Defense and the Communist Party defy the National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and raise international interest in the case.

1940 June Abigaile E. Ross graduates from Wayne State University Law School as its first African-American woman graduate.

1940 Ed Davis, owner of a used car lot, gains a Studebaker Dealership and is Michigan's (and long believed to be the nation's) first African-American automobile dealer.

1941 April 2 - Organized by Local 600, the UAW strikes Ford Motor Company at its River Rouge Plant; its leaders include some African-American organizers, including Quill Pettway and Dave Moore.

December 11 - Detroit factories will shift from automobile production to war materials, earning the city the moniker: "the Arsenal of Democracy."

1942 February 27 - Ku Klux Klan burns a cross at a rally near Sojourner Truth public housing complex, which is set to open the next day. Because the Detroit Housing Commission designated it for African-American families, white residents of the adjacent East Side neighborhood protest violently.

February 28 - An unruly mob of whites, estimated at more than 1,200 people, many of whom are armed, start a race riot and turn back African-American families who are attempting to move into the Sojourner Truth public housing complex.

March 10 - White residents, numbering around 500, march to protest planned African-American residency of the Sojourner Truth public housing complex.

1943 Marjorie Peebles (later Peebles-Meyers) is the first African-American woman to graduate from Wayne University Medical School and to pursue an internship / residency at Detroit General (now Detroit Receiving) Hospital.

June 3-5 - White workers at Packard Motor Company engage in a "hate strike," unauthorized by the union, to protest the hiring of African Americans and the desegregation of jobs at the plant.

June 20 - The bloodiest race riot in Detroit, Michigan to date explodes from an incident on Belle Isle. Thirty-four people are killed, 25 African-Americans, (17 of whom are killed by the police) and 9 whites. Hundreds of people, mostly African-Americans, were injured. Of the 1,182 arrested who face formal charges, 970 are African American and 212 are white.

June 21 - Governor Harry Kelly declares martial law to quell the on-going race riot that began the day before.

1944 June 15 - The Mayors Special Commission issues its report on the 1943 race riot. Among the recommendations: Detroit needs programs that "highlight the achievements and contributions of Black Americans and Detroiters."

December 14 - Detroiter Charles Leroy Thomas earns the Distinguished Cross, the highest military honor not requiring congressional approval; he is the first African-American soldier to be so honored.(See 1997 entry)

July 22 - Detroit Interracial Committee publishes its report. Among the findings: There is inadequate housing for African Americans in Detroit. Additionally, it recommends that community organizations work to combat rumors of African-American plans for rioting which the committee cites as a key cause of "white flight" to the suburbs.


1946 November 18 - Mayor Edward J. Jeffries, Jr. unveils his urban development model, which he calls "The Detroit Plan." The city will acquire the "slum" known as Paradise Valley, approximately 100 acres of land, and prepare it for private investors. Jeffries assumes the city will realize $134,200 in annual tax revenue from the resultant development.

1947 February - Detroit begins the process of eminent domain condemnations of properties in the African-American community known as Paradise Valley. ("Eminent domain is the power of the government to compel private land owners to sell their land to the government. African-American residents and business owners, often renters, went uncompensated).

November - Lawsuits stall "the Detroit Plan" and its condemnation proceedings.

Dr. Marjorie Peebles-Meyers enters into private practice with Drs. A.B. Henderson and Eugene Schafarman. It is believed to be the first inter-racial medical practice in Detroit.

Photo Courtesy of the Tony Spina Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library.

1948 Coleman A. Young becomes Michigan Chairman for the Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace, who had been labeled a subversive in federal government circles.

 

May 3 - The U.S. Supreme Court strikes "restrictive covenants" (clauses in deeds to houses that restricted sale or use by others, usually African-Americans or Jews) in consolidated cases Sipes v. McGhee and Shelley v. Kraemer, overturning the Michigan Supreme Court. McGhee and his wife Minnie purchased a house in a white neighborhood at 4626 Seebaldt Street in Detroit. The sale had been in violation of the covenant not to sell to African Americans or Jews until the Supreme Court intervened.

June - Detroit police kill 15-year old Leon Mosley, shooting him in the back as he fled their assault. It is the fifth such incident this year of police killing an African American under questionable circumstances. Attorneys George W. Crockett, Jr., Ernest Goodman and Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Elvin L. Davenport rally the community and force a rare special investigation on the corpse, known as a coroner's inquest. One police officer is tried but he is acquitted.

October - The Michigan Supreme Court finds that Detroit has the right to use eminent domain to raise slums and build new housing. ("Eminent domain is the power of the government to compel private land owners to sell their land to the government. African-American residents and business owners, often renters, went uncompensated).

December 13 -The Tel-Craft Association, a homeowners group near Telegraph Road and Schoolcraft, petitions the Common Council to withdraw a multi-use zoning change from property owned by the Schoolcraft Gardens Housing Cooperative (SGHC). Tel-Craft is seeking to block SGHC from building a 400-500-unit, 70-acre integrated housing development. (Zoning is the rules on how land and property can be used in a particular area. Multi-use zoning allows for a variety of uses for land or property in a particular area).

While defending members of the Communist Party, Detroit-based African-American attorney and labor activist, George Crockett is jailed for contempt of court while defending activists who have been indicted under the "Smith Act," which outlaws advocating "the violent overthrow of the U.S. government."

December 22 - The Redford Record (a community newspaper owned by Floyd McGriff, formerly the original Paris bureau chief of what would become United Press international) begins an intense and racially inflammatory dis-information campaign intended to raise fear about the proposed Schoolcraft Gardens Housing Cooperative.


December 29 - Following the recommendation of the City Planning Commission, Common Council rejects the petition of the Tel-Craft Association to withdraw zoning adjustment from the Schoolcraft Gardens Housing Cooperative.

 

1941 June - President Franklin D. Roosevelt, under pressure from A. Philip Randolph, a national leader among African Americans and the president of the predominately African American Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union, opens "Arsenal of Democracy" to African Americans by signing Executive Order 8802. This order bans race discrimination in defense industries nationwide and establishes the Fair Employment Practices Commission.

December 8-11 - Congress declares war on the Empire of Japan the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Germany and Italy declare war on the United States.

1945 April 12 - President Roosevelt, suffering a cerebral hemorage, dies. Harry S. Truman is sworn in as President.

August 15 - The Empire of Japan signs an unconditional surrender and World War II ends.

1947 April - Jackie Robinson begins the Major League Baseball season playing for the Brooklyn (New York) Dodgers. He is the first African American to play in the white leagues since the 19th century.