Down on Hastings Street: a Cultural Study of a Black Detroit Community 1941 - 1955
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Down on Hastings Street: A Cultural Study of a Black Detroit Community 1941 - 1955 John Cohassey History 803 December 21, 1992 I'm going to Detroit get myself a good job Tried to stay around here with the starvation mob. "Detroit Bound Blues" Blind Blake, 1928 Located in the heart of Black Bottom, Hastings Street remained the center of Detroit's black nightlife scene up until the early postwar era. For decades, its clubs, restaurants, and taverns featured the finest local and national jazz and blues talent. Blacks and whites flocked to Hastings Street to gamble and watch elaborate floor shows. Like New York's Fifty- Second Street and Memphis's Beale Street, Detroit's Hastings Street represented a colorful urban black music scene in the mid-twentieth century. In his Michioan Quarterly Review article "From Hastings Street to the Blue Bird," music historian Lars Bjorn offers one of the only sources concentrating on Hastings Street's blues and jazz musicians. But as Bjorn points out, a true picture of the street and its musicians cannot be brought about until "we know more about the specifics of Detroit History." The following work is an effort to explore the social historical significance of Hastings as well as the blues and jazz communities which emerged on the street between 1941 and 1955. 1 Organized in topical form, the study will begin with providing the historical background of Black Bottom, euphemistically known as Paradise Valley. After discussing both origins of the lower East Side community, there will be an effort to outline the history of Hastings Street in regard to its role in the economic, social, and cultural prosperity of Paradise Valley, as well as its significance 1n the 1943 riot. From this point, the discussion will move to the entertainers and nightspots on Hastings, emphasizing the distinct 1 Lars Bjorn. "From Hastings to the Blue Bird." Michigan Quarterly. Vol. XXV, (Spring, 1986), p. 267. blues and jazz communities which thrived on the street. Such an investigation will help provide a better understanding ol the urban black experience, and how music reflected the diverse cultural and social aspects of black lite in northern industrial centers in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1826, Hastings Street first appeared on the Detroit City map. Named in honor ot Connecticut-born Detroit banker and philanthropist Evortas P. Hastings, the street became the main thoroughfare in Detroit's Jewish quarter during the eighteen eighties. The Hastings Street community stretched over one hundred city blocks, bordered by Orleans on the east, Brush on the west, Watson on the north, and Monroe on the south. Running north and south, Hastings served as the main center tor business and community lile. 2 With its rows ot small shops, groceries, bakeries, and eateries Hastings became Detroit's "Jewish port of entry," welcoming 45,000 German and Eastern Jews who settled in the surrounding community by 18903 Although most business on Hastings were owned by Jewish proprietors, one could walk down the street in 1909 and lind the manes of Moscovitch, Johnston, Bonilideo, and Podizikovski on doors next to those ornately decorated with Yiddish characters.4 Near the 2 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Michigan. Detroit: 1897. Vol. 4; Robert A. Rockaway. The Jews of Detroit: From the Beginning 1762-1914. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986), p. 59; Silas Farmer. History of Detroit and Early Michigan: A Chronological Encyclopedia of the Past and Present. 3rd ed. (Detroit: Silas Farmer & Co., 1890), p. 942; "1l1e Who, Why, and Wherefore of Detroit's Streets Names." Detroit News. (May 20, 1926), p. 41. 3 Sidney Bolkosky. Harmony & Dissonance: Voices of Jewish Identity in Detroit, 1914-1967. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), p. 76. 4 Detroit News. (Feburary 2, 1909), p. 10; "The Ghetto! Where the jews of Detroit Congregate!" News Tribune. (March 19, 1905), p. 23. corner of Hastings and Napoleon, Jewish families passed neatly dressed blacks on their way to worship at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which, since 1889, served as the center of black religious, educational, and economic activity. 5 On adjoining residential streets, blacks lived alongside Italian immigrants. These Italian newcomers often competed with blacks for jobs as stevedores, barbers, artisans, and small businessmen. 6 The population of blacks around Hastings greatly increased in 1915 when a wave of Jewish migration to northern and western sections occurred simultaneously with the influx of thousands of southern blacks .7 By July 1916, one thousand blacks arrived in Detroit every month.s In May of the following year, an Urban League report found that the area bounded by Brush and Hastings contained a population numbering seventy percent Jewish and twenty percent black. The failure to build new homes forced blacks to live in inferior structures, usually without inside toilets or baths. 9 During the early to mid-nineteen twenties, overcrowding caused blacks to take up residence in rooms converted from basement, garages, and stables. Because of the severe shortage of rooms available for rent, blacks paid fees for privileges of sleeping on pool tables or in the back of gambling houses.JO Drawn by the promise of "Ford's Five Dollar Day" and better educational opportunities, most black 5 Ulysses W. Boykin. A Handbook of Negro Detroit. (Detroit: The Minority Study Associated, 1943), p. 35; The Detroit Herald. (November 30, 1920), p. 2. 6 Detroit News. (February 2, 1909), p. 10. 7 Bolkosky, p. 97. 8 Richard W. Thomas. Life for Us)_,; What We Make.!!: Building Black Community in Detroit 1915-1945. (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 90. 9 Boy kin, p. 54. 10 Detroit Herald. (November 30, 1916), p. 2; Thomas, p. 99. newcomers hailed from Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, and the Caribbean Islands. The YMCA, YWCA, Urban League, and storefront churches provided industrial environment. Black and white social workers hoped by exposing migrants to the more established black middle class that the newly arrived migrants could develop urban survival skills, so as to replace what they considered as backward southern cultural traditions.11 The migrational wave caused a transformation in the ethnic composition of Hastings and the lower East Side community. While Hastings still accommodated numerous Jewish shops and stores, by 1926 few Jewish families resided on the street. To escape increasing crime perpetrated by the growing population of uneducated youths, Jews moved to new centers along Oakland Avenue and Twelfth Street.12 As the Jewish community established a "second front" beyond Hastings, the local Detroit press acknowledged the shift in the racial population by referring the the Hastings Street area as Black Bottom.13 In 1930, the number of blacks on the lower East Side rose to 120,000. Still without new housing to compensate for the increase in population, blacks paid high rents for substandard dwellings. Black ministers in the lower eastside struggled to contain the rampant gambling and the prevalent black-on-black violence sweeping the community.14 A health survey published in The 11 Boy kin, p. 15-19; Thomas, p. 26, 100. 12 Bolkosky, p. 97. 13 Ibid, p. 13. 14 TI1omas, p. 17, 26. Detroit Times in 1934 found the average life span for the 23,000 blacks living between Hastings and Beaubien to be twenty-nine years old. In addition, the report stated that black families living within this ten-block area suffered a three times higher risk of death from pneumonia than the average for the rest of the city.1S The same year, the Detroit News reported that the population in Black Bottom suffered a 1 .5 times higher infant mortality rate and a 71.5 higher death rate from tuberculosis as compared to the numerical average for the rest of the city.16 Amid the economic and social deprivation of the Depression era, blacks did, however, make strides in forming a sense of community in Black Bottom, or what became known at that time as Paradise Valley. Residents of Paradise Valley, like those of Harlem and Sepia City in Toledo, elected their mayor. Despite the mayor's unofficial status in city government, he was expected to campaign against crime, stage charity drives, and generate jobs for the unemployed. Elected for a term of one year by a newspaper poll, the mayor of Paradise Valley attended an inaugural ball at the Graystone Ballroom an elegant Gothic building on Woodward Avenue.17 The increasing role of black business on Hastings in the early thirties also contributed to a strong sense of racial pride in Paradise Valley. Numerous black medical professionals opened private practices on Hastings like Dr. J. W. Collins specializing in 15 "Report Slum Menace to Life." Detroit Times. (january 4, 1934), p. 4. 16 "Why Slum Clearance." Detroit News. (january 3, 1934), p. 1. 17 "Brown Mayors: Unofficial Negro Mayors Elected in Regular Polls and other Functions as Chief Consultants on Racial Matters in White Cities." Ebony. (December, 1949), p. 44; Graystone jazz Museum (Handbill). Detroit; "The Great Black Strip." Detroit Free Press. (january 7, 1973), p. 11; "The Past Prologue: Paradise Valley." Detroit Discovery "painless extractions" and Dr. C. C. Strickland who treated "private diseases. "18 But because most blacks did not have means to acquire substantial capital, most business along Hastings remained small time operations. A great number of blacks borrowed money from loan sharks to start shoeshine parlors, barber shops, and newspaper stands. 19 Black-owned rib shacks and shrimp huts sprang up on almost every corner on Hastings, filling the street with a thick spicy smoke which hung in the air for blocks.2o After working in apprenticeship positions under Jewish businessmen, many blacks opened their own tailor shops, groceries, and fish markets.21 A 1937 survey found that blacks in Paradise Valley owned 48 groceries, 97 eating places, and 27 drug stores.22 Given the new status of many black middle class businessmen, they, similar to their Jewish counterparts, began moving to outlying residential areas, primarily on the West Side and Eight Mile Road.