MJH Volume XV

The Michigan Journal of History VOLUME XV Cover Photo: Snapshot from Stanley Nelson, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. Public Broadcasting Service, September 2, 2015. Featured in the Appendix of Jessica Selzer’s “THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY: VIOLENCE, BLACK IDENTITY, AND LEGACY,” 459. 2 FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Dear readers, When I was first approached by our former Editor-in-Chief and asked to fill his shoes for this year’s edition of the Michigan Journal of History, I never imagined the sheer amount of work that goes on behind the scenes in compiling and publishing the journal. What you are holding in your hands right now is the product of countless of long nights, large coffees, and Slack DMs. Nevertheless, I could not be prouder of our final result, and our dedicated and inspired team of editors behind it all. We received a record number of submissions this year, and our editors deliberated long and hard to select the most interesting, insightful and original undergraduate research for the 18th edition of our publication. I think they succeeded in doing so, and I hope that upon reading, you will agree. We strived to maintain MJH’s reputation by publishing a diverse collection of papers, each highlighting new and exciting history from places which may or may not be familiar. I would be remiss if I did not properly give credit where credit is due. To that extent, I’d like to once again thank our amazing editorial staff, our advisor Professor Hussein Fancy and the University’s extraordinary Department of History. I would also like to thank our counterparts at the Society of Undergraduate Humanities Publications, whose guidance throughout the publication process was invaluable. Now without further ado, we hope you find the following pages inspiring and educational. Sincerely, Alexandra Paradowski, Editor-in-Chief 3 MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY EDITORIAL BOARD, 2018-2019 Alexandra Paradowski Editor-in-Chief Kelly Kacan Managing Editor Amal Alzendani Tessa Banks Meghan Brody Ilina Krishen Giacomo Squatriti Senior Editors Emily Bacon Grace Bergeron Allison Brown Alexandra Card Anna Chudov 4 Naomi Fergusson Sam Franz Chase Glasser Venesa Haska Keelin Kraemer John Kristler Hannah Litchman Caroline Llanes Maria LoCicero Shannon Maag Zach Matthews Michael Russo Sofia Spencer Associate Editors 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS 10 RECLAIMING THE CITY: URBAN RENEWAL AND POLICING IN DETROIT 1967-1977 Kenneth Alyass, Wayne State University 56 THE SACRIFICE FOR CULTURAL TOLERANCE: ASIAN WOMEN AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN MULTICULTURAL BRITAIN Emily Bacon, University of Michigan 96 POLITICS, AMERICA, AND SEX: WHAT COULD GO WRONG? THE ORANGE COUNTY RIGHT WING AND THE BATTLE OVER PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION Emma Bianco, University of California – Berkeley 172 “BUT HE CAN’T WORK IN STOCKTON”: EL MALCRIADO AND THE UNITED FARM WORKERS’ SHIFTING BORDER POLITICS Samantha Chomsky, Brown University 6 218 “THIS BEAUTIFUL PROMISE LAND”: NICODEMUS AND THE FUTURE, 1877-1880 Claire Mcmahon Fishman, Brown University 268 A STUDY IN KASHMIR: PARTITION TO SPECIAL STATUS Ilina Krishen, University of Michigan 308 NON-ALIGNED FEMINISM: REPRESENTING A “THIRD WORLD” IN THE U.N. COMMISSION ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN, 1947–1951 Natalie D. Mcdonald, Pomona College 360 “THE GREAT POPULAR HEART” IN CIVIL WAR NORTH CAROLINA William Bryson Penley, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill 7 414 THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY: VIOLENCE, BLACK IDENTITY, AND LEGACY Jessica Selzer, University of Michigan 466 TWO LEFT FEET: THE BALANCING ACT OF LEFTIST INTERESTS IN THE SALFORD LABOUR PARTY, 1924-1929 Andrew Yang, University of California, Berkeley 8 9 RECLAIMING THE CITY: URBAN RENEWAL AND POLICING IN DETROIT 1967-1977 KENNETH ALYASS WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY On January 14, 1973, then Mayor of Detroit, Roman Gribbs spoke at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Renaissance Center, a series of interconnected skyscrapers on the riverfront of Detroit. He remarked that the project represented the "beginning of a vast revitalization of our riverfront which will stretch from bridge to bridge (from Belle Isle to the east, to the Bridge to Canada to the west)."1 Financed by the Ford Motor Company, the Renaissance Center was the largest privately funded construction project in history to that point, and the urban neoliberal impulses the project embodied generated similarly giddy responses amongst the region’s business elite. Developers were eager to invest in Detroit's downtown at a discount, and notable investors like Max Fisher, Robert Surdam, and Henry Ford II, poured 1 "Downtown Renaissance Is Underway," Detroit News, January 14, 1973. 10 millions of dollars into the inner city. A sense of revanchism boosted this jump on the vacuum of disinvestment and disarray left behind in postindustrial Detroit, and business elites proposed an idea to make the city anew with investments through private-public partnerships that emphasized massive downtown buildings as a form of revitalization. These men, their companies, and city officials consciously mapped out a different Detroit; a city not made for the hundreds of thousands of largely Black working-class residents, but for white collar professionals. As the private sector embarked on its plan for downtown redevelopment, the city instituted a series of police reforms that would turn the Detroit Police Department (DPD) into the most violent police force in the nation. By the early 1970s Detroit notoriously had the highest number of civilian killings by police per capita.2 The most infamous of these initiatives was “Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe 2 Anti-STRESS Lawsuit, Box 5, Folder 26, Kenneth V. and Sheila M. Cockrel Papers, Walter P. Reuther Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University. 11 Streets” (STRESS). STRESS utilized reviving law enforcement tactics such as foot patrol, constant surveillance, and decoy squads. This new method of policing was replicated in city after city across the country.3 By 1973 STRESS was responsible for 6,000 arrests, 24 deaths, and nearly 5 years of hyper-intensified policing of Black working-class communities.4 The creation of STRESS was the outgrowth of a more muscular and militaristic approach to urban policing that began in 1965 following the Watts Rebellion. President Lyndon Johnson responded to what was then the largest urban uprising of the decade by investing millions of federal dollars as well as military equipment into urban police departments.5 “Criminology” and “criminal justice” experts began gaining legitimacy during this era, and the technocratic practitioners of these fields gave rise to new ideas, theories, and tactics 3 Frank Rizzo’s police force in Philadelphia and New York City’s BOSSI unit are similar examples. 4 Report of the Police-Community Relations Commission to the Common Council, Box 5, Folder 22, Kenneth V. and Sheila M. Cockrel Papers, Walter P. Reuther Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University. 5 Elizabeth Kai Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Harvard University Press, 2016). 12 that permeated discussions and policies designed to reduce the ever- increasing crime rates and to establish “law and order”.6 These new methods of policing were directly aimed towards policing the inner city and corresponded with the latest effort to “revitalize” Detroit’s downtown. White collar suburbanites refused to work in areas that had high crime rates as well as a Black majority. To entice white professionals to work in Detroit, the city utilized intensive policing to “reclaim” the city, sanitizing it for suburbanites and pushing Black and poor working-class whites further into the margins. 6 “United States Crime Rates 1960 – 2017,” accessed November 12, 2018. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.html; Crime rates steadily rose in the 1960s, however, it is important to understand that the way law enforcement agencies collected crime statistics changed in the 1960s, and that crime rates were much higher in the early 1900s than in the latter half of the century. See Heather Ann Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History,” The Journal of American History 97, no. 3 (2010): 703–34. Several theories try to explain rising crime rates, these stem from environmental lead levels to unprecedented levels of suburbanization that had more kids born than in earlier baby booms. However, a more compelling argument states that as industrial restructuring decimated urban communities, entry level employment in factories disappeared from the urban landscape, which left millions of youth unemployed and marginalized. See Scott Kurashige, The Fifty-Year Rebellion: How the U.S. Political Crisis Began in Detroit (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2017). 13 Using STRESS as a case study, this paper argues that intense policing tactics were directly linked to urban renewal in the 1970s and sought to reshape downtown Detroit to “make the city safe” for white collar workers and investment. This paper also examines the Black community’s response to STRESS. Black activists consciously understood that this was one of many efforts to stymy the shift of Detroit’s racial geography. Under the leadership of Marxist lawyer and Wayne State University Law School graduate, Kenneth Cockrel, a grassroots movement of Black activists established a powerful anti- STRESS campaign that attacked the racism of both the DPD as well as business elites designs to facilitate racial and spatial segregation via privatized urban renewal. Historiography This thesis is situated between three historical literatures: postwar redevelopment, post-1967 Detroit, and carceral studies. Historians have payed close attention to the effects redevelopment 14 policies had on American cities after World War II, and many use Detroit as a case study to understand how these policies played out on a local scale. The history of policing and criminalization in cities has also been thoroughly documented. This thesis brings these three literatures together to understand them in conjunction.

Load more