Detroit 
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SOURCE: The Nation
5/8/2023
Joe Louis was the World's Most Popular Athlete; Racist Businessmen Refused to Let Him Endorse Fords
by Silke-Maria Weineck
Market research documents related to the Ford Motor Company's refusal to grant retired champ Joe Louis a dealership franchise reveal a combination of middle-class prejudice and the willingness of the business world to accommodate Jim Crow.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/10/2023
I Grew Up in a Black Liberationist Commune
From 1973 to the early 2000s, the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church operated a communal home in a Detroit apartment building, dedicated to the collective project of replacing received notions of Black inferiority with a sense of possibility.
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SOURCE: The Metropole
11/17/2022
Immigrant Merchants and Law-and-Order Politics in Detroit
by Kenneth Alyass
The Chaldean community of Detroit became a significant middleman-minority through the operation of small stores in working-class and majority-Black neighborhoods. As white flight and disinvestment created increasingly dire conditions, they also became a constituency for aggressive policing.
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SOURCE: WDET
7/22/2022
Preserving Detroit's Native History
Karen Marrero of Wayne State University discusses how oral traditions have kept indigenous histories alive even as many physical markers of that history have been destroyed.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
4/21/2022
For Black Detroiters, the City's History of Mutual Aid is as Relevant as Ever
by Nate File
"The mutual aid movement here is steeped in history and working to build the city that politicians and private actors have promised for decades but failed to deliver."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/7/2022
Adults Support Empowering Youth – Until Youth Dissent
by Dara Walker
American youth are seldom credited for having a clear understanding of the policies that affect their lives. COVID safety walkouts are the latest example of student activism to be dismissed.
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SOURCE: The Metropole
1/25/2022
Greening Detroit's History
by Brandon Ward
Urban historians are starting to recognize something that urban activists grasped in the 1960s: power and inequality are reflected in cities' environments.
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SOURCE: Deadline
10/26/2021
Detroit Bankruptcy Documentary Wins Library of Congress Prize
Ken Burns, who collaborated with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on the selection, called "Gradually, Then Suddenly" a "complex, nuanced, layered" examination of the city's financial crisis and the political divide between Detroit and the state of Michigan.
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SOURCE: Click on Detroit
9/14/2021
Detroit Historical Society Launches Interactive Walking tour of Historic Black Bottom District
Black Bottom was a predominately Black neighborhood in Detroit that was demolished for redevelopment in the late 1950s, and was replaced with the Lafayette Park district and I-375.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
4/30/2021
Police and the License to Kill
by Matthew D. Lassiter
The history of the Detroit Police Department shows that police reforms won't reduce killing as long as departments can set priorities that result in racially targeted and discretionary enforcement and are allowed to investigate and sanction the conduct of their own officers.
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SOURCE: Variety
2/8/2021
Mary Wilson, Co-Founder of the Supremes, Dies at 76
Mary Wilson was sometimes overshadowed by Diana Ross in the popular Motown group, but her peers recognized her contributions to the Supremes and popular music.
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SOURCE: Detroit Free Press
9/7/2020
Rosie the Riveters gathered on Labor Day to Honor the Working Women of WWII
"The Rosies and veterans then told stories from the front lines. One Rosie said she was shocked at the idea of wearing pants to work. A veteran recalled being shot down from the sky in northern Italy and receiving notes from Rosies back home full of profanities toward Hitler."
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SOURCE: The New York Times
4/27/2020
Detroit Students Have a Constitutional Right to Literacy, Court Rules
A major ruling in a lawsuit involving the Detroit public schools comes at a time when school shutdowns are expected to affect poor children most adversely.
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SOURCE: The Jurist
4/25/2020
Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Students Have the Right to Basic Minimum Education
The decision in a suit brought by Detroit students against the state of Michigan referenced a number of historic cases and revives the question of whether inequality among school systems violates equal protection under the Constitution.
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SOURCE: Michigan News
10/18/19
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Heather Ann Thompson sees Detroit as central for carceral reform
We’re poised for positive change with incredible energy to make our criminal justice system more just, and nowhere are we seeing that more than in Detroit.
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SOURCE: AP
4/22/19
New Website aims to preserve Detroit’s civil rights history
Rise Up Detroit is scheduled to officially launch with a kickoff event May 14 at Wayne State’s David Adamany Undergraduate Library. The program is expected to include a discussion with civil rights veterans and experts.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
3/3/`9
Two prizewinning books detail slavery in the north: Washington’s fugitive, Detroit’s forgotten crime
The authors detail the life of a woman who refused to be a possession of the nation’s first president and the Michigan city’s troubled past.
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SOURCE: The Conversation
9-10-18
Police killings of 3 black men left a mark on Detroit’s history more than 50 years ago
by Jeffrey Horner
"I believe these events show that police brutality today, perpetrated disproportionately against blacks in urban areas, is more of a continuation of historic patterns than a set of novel events.”
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SOURCE: Medium
3/8/18
From Segregation to Gentrification
by Mike Green
Lessons from Seattle and Detroit: How city policies and NIMBYism lead to unimpeded market forces displacing poor people of color.
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SOURCE: The Chronicle of Higher Education
10-1-17
Tiya Miles is mapping forgotten corners of slave history
The MacArthur "genius" grant winner and author of "Ties That Bind” is digging into the history of slavery in Detroit.