Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises by Jodie Adams Kirshner

My family moved to Metro Detroit in 1963 for a better life. My folks did achieve their dreams--a blue-collar job, a home of their own, medical insurance, a decent income, and a pension to retire on. Dad loved his job at Chrysler.

Just a few years later my friends and I watched as planes with National Guard troops flew overhead and tanks lumbered along Woodward Ave., heading to Detroit. The city's legacy of racist policies had birthed rebellion.

Over my lifetime the once-great city plummeted into bankruptcy and stretches of 'urban prairie'.

Why do we remove people from homes, leaving the houses empty to scrappers and decay and the bulldozers? Isn't it better for all to have the houses occupied, assist with their improvement, to have neighborhoods filled?

Jodie Adams Kirshner's Broke relates the series of events and decisions that brought Detroit from vibrancy to bankruptcy. But Kirshner doesn't just give a history of racist housing discrimination and government policy decisions. We experience Detroit through the stories of real people and their struggles to achieve their dreams.

Homeownership is the American Dream. Detroit's homeownership rate was once one of the highest in the nation. Then, African American neighborhoods were razed for 'urban renewal' projects while redlining curtailed housing options.

Kirshner shows how governmental decisions on the federal, state and local level disenfranchised Detroit residents who valiantly endeavor to remain in their homes and neighborhoods.

Bankruptcy, we come to understand, is not just a fiscal issue but hugely impacts individuals' lives.

These six people's stories are moving and devastating. They dream of owning the home in which they live. They purchase houses, repair them, and discover back taxes and water bills follow the house, not the resident, and they can't pay them. Investors purchase houses and let them stand empty while the family who had been living there are forced out.

They can't afford the $6000 a year car insurance they need to work--and to get their kids to school as Detroit has no school buses.

Some are native Detroiters but others were drawn to Detroit's atmosphere and sense of possibility. They are unable to obtain mortgages to purchase empty buildings for development.

They are never sure if rent payments are actually getting to the landlord, or if the discount car insurance they purchase is legit.

House damage remains unrepaired by distant landlords, jeopardizing the safety of a woman and her child.

Meanwhile, Midtown and Downtown development draws suburbanites at the price of huge tax breaks while neighborhood needs are ignored.

Kirshner is a journalist and bankruptcy lawyer and teaches at Columbia Law School. Broke offers deep insight through compelling narrative writing that illuminates and reaches our hearts.

I was granted access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read how Kirshner came to write this book here.

“As a resident and business owner in Detroit, I think Broke captures the complexity and heartbreak here. Clear, accessible, and to the point, it’s so readable that I sped through it and then read it again to take notes.” —Susan Murphy, Pages Bookshop, Detroit

Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises
by Jodie Adams Kirshner
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date 19 Nov 2019
ISBN 9781250220639
PRICE $28.99 (USD)

*****

Read More:

Detroit 1967
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2017/06/we-hope-for-better-things-detroit-1967.html
Once in a Great City by David Maraniss
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/09/once-in-great-city-detroit-story-by.html
The $500 House in Detroit by Drew Philp
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2017/04/building-new-world-order-500-house-in.html
Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2012/03/legacy-of-racism.html
Lost Detroit: Stories Behind the Motor Cities Majestic Ruins by Dan Austin and photos by Sean Doerr
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2014/01/detroit-city.html
The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgitt M. Davis
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-world-according-to-fannie-davis-my.html

The Welcome Home Diner: A Taste of Detroit

I was attracted by the cover, and then intrigued by the story line of The Welcome Home Diner, which is set in a nearly abandoned East Side Detroit neighborhood.

Cousins Addie and Samantha are part of the influx of idealistic young people flocking to the city with visions of being part of its comeback. They buy a long abandoned diner and serve up locally sourced foods, using heirloom recipes from their Polish grandmother.

The book is packed with Detroit references from the Packard Auto Plant to the Detroit Zoo, the Eastern Market to Holiday Market.

The characters are optimistic and excited about Detroit's future, and happy to be part of its transformation. They hope that the Welcome Home Diner will become a neighborhood gathering place. But the locals are fearful: gentrification brings higher taxes, and those who have stayed can't afford to pay them.

Addie and Samantha both struggle with guy problems that require a need for self-understanding and personal growth. What they learn is good advice for all.

They take huge risks beyond investing in a decimated neighborhood. They hire an escapee from human trafficking and a young man whose tragic teenage mistake landed him in prison.

Behind the hard work, flirtations and commitment issues, and endeavoring to bring locals into the diner and not just suburbanites, they are being stalked by an unknown person who is trying to destroy all they are building.

I don't read a lot of 'women's fiction' or romance or 'foodie' books with recipes. This novel certainly will be enjoyed by readers who love those genres. I do read books that incorporate social and political issues into entertaining stories. This book certainly hit that mark for me.

Book Club Discussion Questions are included as well as recipes, including Greens with Turnips and Potlikker, Cabbage Rolls,  Lamb Burger Sliders, Ginger-Molasses Bundt Cake with lemon Curd, and Heartbreaker chocolate chip cookies! Yum!

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Welcome Home Diner
by Peggy Lampman
Lake Union Publishing
ISBN: 9781542047821
PRICE $14.95

Author Peggy Lampman was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama but attended the University of Michigan, After working as a copywriter and photographer fin New York City she returned to Ann Arbor and opened a specialty foods store, the Back Alley Gourmet. Later, she wrote a food column for the Ann Arbor News and MLive. Lampman’s first novel, The Promise Kitchen, published in 2016, garnered several awards and accolades. She is married and has two children. She also writes the popular blog www.dinnerfeed.com.

From the publisher:
Betting on the city of Detroit’s eventual comeback, cousins Addie and Samantha decide to risk it all on an affordable new house and a culinary career that starts with renovating a vintage diner in a depressed area of town. There’s just one little snag in their vision.

Angus, a weary, beloved local, is strongly opposed to his neighborhood’s gentrification—and his concerns reflect the suspicion of the community. Shocked by their reception, Addie and Samantha begin to have second thoughts.

As the long hours, problematic love interests, and underhanded pressures mount, the two women find themselves increasingly at odds, and soon their problems threaten everything they’ve worked for. If they are going to realize their dreams, Addie and Samantha must focus on rebuilding their relationship. But will the neighborhood open their hearts to welcome them home?

Who's Jim Hines? Life in Jim Crow Detroit

I met author Jean Alicia Elster at a books and writers fundraiser at Leon & Lulu's in Clawson, MI. I bought her book The Colored Car, which I reviewed here, and the next year brought home Who's Jim Hines?

Elster's books are drawn from family stories about their life in 1935 when her grandfather ran a business delivering wood.

In Who's Jim Hines? we meet twelve-year-old Doug whose father runs the Douglas Ford Wood Company from their Halleck Street home in Detroit. Every day his father collects wood pallets from the auto factories, breaks them down, and loads them into his truck. He saws the wood into pieces sized for his customer's wood burning stoves, which is then delivered by his employees. Doug's mother runs the office, taking orders and managing the paperwork while caring for her family.

Their neighborhood, and the men who work for Doug's father, include African Americans, many from the South, and Polish immigrants. The families help each other, especially Doug's father who is grateful for their financial security during the Depression. He looks the other way when children steal a bit of wood to fashion playthings, and exchanges wood for services. The Ford family goes to nearby Hamtramack to shop, then a predominately Polish neighborhood and today a diverse multi-cultural magnet.

This is the story is of a boy's idolization of his father as a man and provider. Doug wants to be like his dad, but Douglas Sr has other plans: he intends that his son become a doctor.

The tension in the story is provided by Doug's gnawing need to know 'who's Jim Hines,' the faceless employee his dad says makes his business possible.

Doug must help his dad in his work to pay for lost school books, discovering exactly what it means to be black when he leaves the shelter of his narrow world.

In her Epilogue, Elster tells that after WWII and the decline in wood burning stoves her grandfather worked for Chrysler (as did my dad) and her father Doug Jr did graduate from medical school.

Written for ages eight through twelve, Who's Jim Hines? is a gentle story that brings a place and time in history to life, addressing an issue that resonates to this day.

Who's Jim Hines?
Jean Alicia Elster
Wayne State University Press
Publication 2008
ISBN: 9780814334027

Eugene Gochenour's Memoirs: Chrysler Stories Continued

Dad took a new position at Chrysler and made lifelong friends. He also shared some stories that are legendary in our family.

The Windshield Wiper Lab
"I started work as a mechanic at the Windshield Wiper Lab, which was part of the Air Conditioning Lab. There were two other mechanics, and it was small room. The room had benches and cabinets and dynamometers on each wall with very little space between for us. It was very cramped. One whole wall of the room was windows that separated us from a room with about thirty mechanics in it.

Dave M. and Terry H. were the names of the two mechanics I worked with. Dave had worked with Chrysler since 1941. Chrysler had never manufactured an electric motor before and it was our lab's job to design and develop one. My work there consisted of building experimental motors, and dynamometer testing them and others supplied from vendors.

The engineers I worked with were Emile N. and Paul V. Emile designed an armature winder and a magnet charger and I assembled it. It was quite a challenge because nothing like it existed on a small scale.

Terry and I became good friends and he helped me to learn the job. He was a heavy smoker and one day as he was running a test on the dynamometer I took the cigarette he had set in an ash tray and set it where he could not see it. The ash tray was behind him as he worked and he turned around and lit another, and set that one in the ash tray and then went back to his test. I sat that cigarette by the other I had hid, and when he turned around he lit another one and set it down! After the fourth cigarette I sat them all in the ash tray and when he turned and saw them all sitting there he looked surprised then laughed when he realized what had happened.

The Boat
Terry had a son named John and he was Tom's age. Sometimes the four of us would go camping and fishing at the Old Orchard campground by the Ausable River. Terry eventually bought an old house trailer and parked it at the same park and then we all stayed there.

The Montgomery Ward store at Hazel Park had an ad for a 12-ft aluminum boat for $152 dollars and Terry and I both decided to buy one. We bought them on the same day and I hauled his to his house then returned and brought mine home. Tom and I used it for fishing and when we went camping. The bought was bought in 1964 and I still have it in 2003. The boat is thirty-nine years old and is still in very good condition.

During the 1970s Tom and I would put the boat on top of our Duster, load his mini-bike, the outboard motor, our tent, and all of our camping supplies and take off for Canada or Upper Michigan.

Woodward Stories
I thought Woodward Avenue at Detroit was a spectacular street when I first went there during the 50s. The median was probably thirty feet wide with four, and in some places, six lanes on each side. The street with crowned with American Elms that arched over the road. During the 50s it was called "the strip" of course.

It seemed every time I drove Woodward in those days I would see an accident, or a smashed car sitting by the road. But the time we moved to Detroit in the early 60s it had calmed down a little Eventually, I-75 was build and I could use the expressway to get to work at Highland Park, but I continued to use Woodward. The traffic on I-75 could often come to the standstill if an underpass flooded or there was an accident. Woodward, while slower, was never closed.

Woodward by McNichols [Six Mile Road] in Detroit was a hangout for prostitutes and they would try to flag you down as you drove by. Sometimes they would stand in the middle of the road and try to stop you. one day as I was passing by one she lifted her blouse and flashed me. Of course she had no bra on.

One Saturday I stopped at a Howard Johnson restaurant on Woodward in Highland Park to get a coffee. As I was leaving a nice looking black girl asked me if that was my car out at the curb. I said no, I owned that black pickup truck. Then she made me an offer for ten dollars. I was so flustered, I said, "I have to go or I'll be late for work." She did not look like that kind.

There was a black porter at work and he rode the bus to work every day. The bus dropped him off at Woodward and McNichols and he would have to walk to work from there. So sometimes I would wait where the bus let him off and drive him to work with me. Well, one day I got there early and as I waited a gal started walking up to my truck. I knew what she wanted, and when she got near the truck I opened the window and blurted out, "I'm waiting for a guy!" Then I decided to leave and as I was going I saw a policeman coming around the corner. I think they were trying to catch a "john." My buddy had to walk to work that day!

After I got to work I remembered the look on the gal's face and realized what she thought I'd meant. She did not know I was waiting for someone on a bus!

*****

Before we moved to Michigan my family would drive to see my grandparents. We would cross Ontario, Canada and take the Tunnel into Detroit. After the long hours and flat landscape of farms it was amazing to come out of the eerie, claustrophobic tunnel into a city of skyscrapers. I had been to Buffalo, but Detroit was bigger! It would be night by the time we arrived, and the streetlights and building lights and signs would fill the sky. I remember the tree lined avenue as we drove up Woodward to Royal Oak. 

I also remember the engineer Dad worked with, Emile Najm. He and his wife had my folks over for dinner and served their traditional Lebanese foods. Later in life Emile lost his vision but Chrysler arranged for him to continue working. Dad often helped Emile, sometimes driving him to Lansing, MI. 

Eugene Gochenour's Memoirs: Working at Chrysler's Road Test Lab & Installing a HEMI for Petty

Dad's first job at Chrysler was in Road Testing. His initial pay was low and he took a temp job--working on race cars! No wonder he loved 'muscle cars' and was proud of the HEMI engine in his RAM-1500.

Gene Gochenour

"On many days two mechanics would work together. One of the mechanics was named Herman Jacobs. Herman was old. he had worked for the Oakland Car Company when he was young. As old as he was, he was a very hard worker. He would work all day without taking lunch or other breaks, then leave about an hour before everyone else. Herman was the Police Chief for the town of Frazer, and when he left he went to work there. I don't know when he slept! Whenever we finished a job and took [the car] for a road test he always insisted on paying for the coffee because he said he had an expense account. Herman retired soon after. He had worked for the company for fifty-two years!

Another mechanic I worked with was John DiV***. Whenever we were on a job, John would work for a few minutes then say he would be back in a few minutes and leave. I would continue working. In a while he would come back and work a few minutes and leave again. This went on all day long and he spent more time gone than working. I later found out he was selling numbers, gambling tickets. I soon decided working with John was like working alone. Even though this always went on, I never heard a foreman complain.

Working at the Road Test Garage was an African American floor sweeper. His name was Sam. His job was to keep the floor clean of oil, grease, and water and other spills. Sam and I often talked and he was a fairly well educated man. He told me he had always sold the numbers because he knew he would never earn much money on the job because of his color. He said the money he made on the side had put his son through college and that he was a doctor.

No one ever approached me at work to sell me a number for gambling, and I never did buy one.

Ed Kasky was a very large Polish mechanic who worked in the Engine Buildup Room. He was pretty old when I started working at Road Test but was an expert at anything to do with engines. One day I was given a work-sheet and Ed and I were given the job of installing a Chrysler six cylinder engine into an American Motors car. This meant making special engine mounts, exhaust system, and other adaptations. It took a while but when it was completed it made a good submission. I don't know if Chrysler sold them the engine, but everyone liked it.

One day the foreman asked if any of us would be interested in assembling some race cars at a private conversion company as an after work job. The job paid ten dollars an hour, and about four of us said we would.

So every day for a week, after our day job, we would work at a shop in Birmingham until ten o'clock at night. When Saturday came we felt like zombies. We were all worn out. These cars had a big Hemi engine and plastic body parts. They were on a tight schedule, and Saturday they had to ship the cars to California, even though they were not completed. Richard Petty thanked us for the work we had done. After we left that Saturday we went to a bar and had a drink to celebrate the end of the job. I had to pay because the others had no money on them! The place where we had worked on the race cars normally converted large cars like Cadillac into hearses and ambulances.

At Road Test every day was a new experience. Sometimes we would spend all day auditing new cars as they came from the factory. If we found anything wrong we were to fix it. At other times we would go to a competitor's dealer and pick up one of their new cars, bring it back to the garage, and completely strip every part from it. The parts were measured, weighted, and cost evaluated, then displayed for anyone to check out. We were always picking up competitive vehicles for comparison and to find any new ideas or features they had.

Many of our own [Chrysler] cars were stripped of their parts and stored to be put back on later. Experimental parts were installed and tested, then later the original parts were reinstalled and the car was taken to a lot where it was sold as a used vehicle.

If we installed a new engine in a vehicle we had to drive it at least a hundred miles to break it in, so we would usually drive to Port Huron.

One day another mechanic and I were asked to go to where a retired executive's car had broken down, take him home, and wait for a dealer to come and pick up the car. When we got there the other mechanic took about fifty pounds of meat and groceries from his trunk and took the man home leaving me with the car until the tow truck came. When it came I went to the dealer and I waited until my buddy came, and then we went back to work. This guy had some pull even after he retired!

When I went to work for Chrysler I started at the lowest pay for a mechanic, and after a few months of work I thought I had proved my worth and went to my foreman and asked him to see if I could get a raise. His name was Pete and he and another foreman named Al Ferrari went to the department manager and tried to get me a raise, but he would not give a raise to anyone. but a few days later they told me of an opening at the Air Conditioning Lab.

I went there and talked with them and got transferred there. This put my pay to $113 a week. On top of that they were working overtime, so I was finally drawing a decent pay."

*****

Herman Jacobs was indeed a Frazer, MI chief of police. In the 1950s he was asked to patrol the village after his days working at Chrysler. Later he was promoted to Constable and then Chief of Police overseeing six officers and two patrol vehicles.

*****

Richard Petty's Plymouth with a Hemi engine won the 1964 Daytona 500. Sadly, the Hemi engine was boycotted by NASCAR and in 1965 his Barracuda with a HEMI crashed and killed a child, leading to a lawsuit against Petty and Chrysler. Read about the HEMI and Petty at

http://www.allpar.com/history/inside/plymouth-11-nascar.html

http://www.allpar.com/racing/petty-plymouth-racing.html

Eugene Gochenour's Memoirs: 1963: Test Driving Chrysler Cars

Dad's memoir recalls his early days working at Chrysler in Highland Park. Here he talks about test driving new and modified cars, including the protoype Barracuda with a V-8 engine.

Dad and Mom around 1969. Yes, I had an Avocado green piano!

 My sister Alice and her husband Ken came to visit us during the summer and while they were there we got to talking about an interview I just had at Chrysler. I had previously been hired, but that job fell through because one of their existing workers was transferred to that lab. This time I was quite discouraged, though, because while they said they would hire me the starting salary was only $98 a week. But Joyce and Alice and Ken talked me into going back and accepting the job

So once again I told Harvel that I was quitting and went to work for Chrysler at their Road Test Garage. They pay was so small I would not even look at it. To make more money I got a part time job at a nearby Shell station as a mechanic where I worked evenings and Saturdays.

Road Test Garage* was in a very old building that was originally used by the Oakland Car Company at the beginning of the [20th] century. I enjoyed working there because all the cars were new, and before we worked on the, they had to be washed, and then road tested after we worked on them. No more rusty cars! When we took them for a road test would usually stop for a coffee break and on paydays we were allowed to take a care to cash our checks at the bank.

There were about seventy-five mechanics that worked at the garage, and there were two shifts. i worked the day shift. Some of the mechanics worked on boats at a marina on the Saint Clair River at Algonac, some worked at the proving ground at Chelsea, and many worked at Highland Park where I worked. Probably the total number of mechanics at that time was about 500.

The work was interesting because I never knew what I would be working on from one day to another. One day I had a job on a Chrysler turbine car and when I finished I got to road test it. Chrysler had made 250 of them as test vehicles. Before I took it out on the road I was told to turn it off if the temperature exceeded 1500 degrees. It was a strange car to drive and it got a lot of attention.

To me, the traffic at Detroit was quite intimidating. I had not worked there very long when they gave me a brand new car that had just came from the factory, and a map of the city of Detroit, and told me to drive the 22 mile course marked on it. The object of the drive was to put 50,000 miles on the vehicle as fast as they could. I drove the car all day in the city, then another driver would drive to Chelsea, drive it on the high speed track, then back to the garage so I could drive it the next day.

The first day I took the vehicle I had white knuckles from watching the cabs, buses, and other vehicles, and watching for the streets marked on the map. But after a few days it got to be old stuff, and I became at ease driving [in Detroit].

There were five other drivers with different model cars driving the same course, and most of them knew the city very well. Sometimes we would play follow the leader, and the leader would drive through back alleys and trucking lots, trying to lose us. Sometimes he would and we would find each other going in different directions, or coming from cross streets from which we could not follow. When we became too dispersed we would give up and go back on course.

Second Street was a rough area and prostitutes walked the streets and some of them would even call from the windows of their houses as you passed by. Some of the drivers would stop to talk with them and as the gal was to get into the car, drive off. They thought that was fun.

Every day we would go to Palmer Park where we would eat our lunch at a picnic table, feed the ducks, and take a walk.

Vintage postcard of Palmer Park in Detroit, MI

One payday I decided to cash my check at a bank on Grand River Street. All our cars had a device in the trunk that wrote on a paper disc to show that the car was in motion, so I hoped to just pop into the bank, cash my check, and get back on the route.

Well the line I was in had a lady in front of me, and in front of her was a man talking to the cashier. The man left, then the cashier left, and a man came from the rear of the ban and asked us to move to another line. In a few minutes a policeman came in and then I found out that the bank had been robbed by the man in the line ahead of us. The detective asked if I had seen anything, and I never saw a thing. I wanted to get back to the car because I was worried that the disc record would show I was not driving, and I was hoping the car had not been stolen. I turned the record in at the end of the day and nothing was said the following day, so I had gotten away with it.

It was summer and one of the cars I was given was a convertible and I put the top down and it was great! Each day we were given instructions to run the air conditioner, or the wipers, in an attempt to simulate real life use. If anything went wrong with the vechicle we were to report and repair it. This went on for a month, then we went back to work at Road Test. After a month of driving city traffic I was no longer intimidated.

One day I was given a work order and it said to install a special instrumented and modified automatic transmission into a new car that I was provided with. I was to remove the right front bucket seat, the floor mat, and cut a large hole in the floor board so that the transmission could be looked at. The transmission had a window of Plexiglas at the torque tube so its inside could be viewed. When I was done with the job two engineers and I took the car for a test drive. While I was driving each engineer would get on his knees and look at the window in the transmission. They were trying to find out when and how much oil was going to the real seal. After each of them looked we changed places and I looked. That job went pretty well.

Another job I was provided with a new Barracuda and asked to install a V-8 engine in it. It was the first V-8 engine ever put in that model car. When I was done with the job a different pair of engineers and I took the car on the road to test drive it.

We drove it down Second Avenue in Detroit. It was running along just fine until the driver kicked it into passing gear. When he did this, the car jumped, kicked, and shuddered. We stopped the car, opened the hood, and looked inside. The wiring harness was all burned up. What they had not thought of was that when the accelerator was depressed all the way, the rod in the engine compartment contacted the starter relay, which burned out the wiring harness.

Luckily we could still drive the car back to the garage where I repaired it.

* According to Marc Rozman the Road Test garage "was the first concrete poured-wall building in Michigan a high tech building" with forms in concrete walls. 

My Favorite Books of 2016: American History

One of my reading themes in 2016 concerned American history. Events from places I have lived and the times I have lived in, presidential history, Native American history, African American history, and the American Revolution continue to be interest areas I am drawn to.The books were galley ebooks, Arcs, or books provided by the publisher. All were my choices to read.

Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression Era Detroit by Tom Stanton brought to life a city thrilled by its team's sport wins while The Black Legion, a hate group spawned from the KKK, pressed unsuspecting people into membership at gunpoint then sent them out to kill.

The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World's Fair by Margaret Creighton peels back the tinted postcard memories of the Pan-American Exposition to reveal the seamy side of American society a hundred years ago. 


67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence by Howard Means was a moving, important, and disturbing book, particularly for my generation.

Of Arms and Artists by Paul Staiti shows how artists of the American Revolution created a national identity.  

The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe by Elaine Showalter reveals the complicated life of the woman who penned our national anthem.

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink reveals how the lack of preparation by a for-profit hospital resulted in avoidable deaths.

Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital by Joan Quigley is the story of 90 year old Terrell's fight to end segregation in Washington D.C. in 1950. It is the inspiring story of how age has nothing to do with standing up for what is right.

The Parker Sisters: A Border Kidnapping by Lucy Maddox is a historian's study of the Fugitive Slave Law through the kidnapping of two African American teenagers.

Truevine: Two Bothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South by Beth Macy concerns Albino African Americans enslaved by a circus and their mother's endeavor to protect them.


Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy by Gary Roberts was commissioned by the United Methodist Church. Leaders in this attack on 'friendly' Native American women and children were Methodist. It is a warning of how 'good people' can be led by cultural norms to commit crimes against humanity.

The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, The Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History by Paul Andrew Hutton is a dense and comprehensive history, another revelation of treaties broken and genocidal military leaders.

The Thunder Before the Storm: The Autobiography of Clyde Bellecourt is a raw, honest, and moving relating of his journey from juvenile delinquent to the leader of the American Indian Movement.

John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery by David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason draws from Adams diaries to trace his evolving understanding, personally and legally, of slavery, culminating in his eight year battle to end the Gag Rule that forbade the House from accepting petitions to end slavery.

Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon by Larry Tye is a fascinating biography focusing on Bobby's evolution from McCarthy staffer to Civil Rights spokesperson.

Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency by Charles Rappleye is a great study on how the Great Humanitarian, a successful business man, failed as president.

The Gatekeeper:Missy LeHand, FDR, and the Untold Partnership that Defined a Presidency by Kathryn Smith is the first biography of President Roosevelt's constant companion for twenty years in the office and out, the first female 'chief of staff'.

Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair that Shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn considers the friendship, and possibly love affair, that supported the First Lady to blossom into leadership.

Valient Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick shows that our country's founding was pretty messy and the ramifications of leaders obsessed with image, personal power, and monetary success.

Washington's Spys: The Story of America's First Spy Ring by Alexander Rose is the book behind the series Turn, the real story of the Culpepper spy ring.

Love Canal: A Toxic History From Colonial Times to the Present by Richard S. Newman was another upsetting read of how industry used Niagara Falls for profit, leaving a legacy of chemical waste, Activist Lois Gibbs work helped establish the Superfund, which almost immediately was defunded. We are all affected by industrial toxic waste.

A History of New York in 101 Objects by Sam Roberts is a more lighthearted look at our past, considering the things that made New York, and America and the world, what it is today.

Dead Wake by Eric Larson is the moving tale of the Lusitania.

I hope you found something here to put on your 2017 reading list!

Mini Reviews: Sagas of the Handicapped, the Chinese, and the Apache

Annie's Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg was my Book Club selection for June. It was the Great Michigan Read selection in 2013-14. After his mother's funeral Luxenberg discovered a secret aunt and set on a quest to discover Annie and why she was kept secret.

The immigrant experience, the Holocaust, the Depression, and Detroit's Eloise Asylum are revealed in his search. Luxenberg discovers more than one family secret.

My book club enjoyed the book and identified with the concept of family secrets, but several found the book at time repetitive and lacking in focus.

Shanghi Girls by Lisa See

I borrowed this book from the library after seeing it was the 2016 Everyone's Reading pick for the Detroit Public Libraries.

Pearl was born in 1916, the fourth year of the Republic of China, in Shanghai. Women's lives had changed for the better; foot-binding was forbidden, arranged marriages were replaced by free love and marriages for love. Pearl attended the Methodist Mission, posed with her younger sister May as a Beautiful Girl immortalized on calendars and advertising, and stayed out late clubbing. When her father gambled away everything the price was selling his daughters in marriage to two brothers, one a fourteen-year-old with brain damage, the other a 'paper son' adopted to inherit the business. The girls are to travel to the US with their husband's family but 'miss the boat'.

With the Japanese invasion the girls and their mother flee their home town. They meet with tragedy that alters Pearl's life forever. Finally managing to arrive in the US to go to their husbands they are delayed for months living in prison-like isolation until proving they are legit. Life in America turns out to be hard, jobs scarce and the Chinese forced to live in ghettos.

Shanghi Girls tells the saga of Chinese immigrants in America from the 1920s into the Communist regime and McCarthy era. Told in the first person by Pearl the novel lacks emotional depth and deep characterization, although the experiences she undergoes are harrowing. The book's appeal is learning about the broader history of the Chinese in the 20th c. and for those who are not familiar with how America treated these refugees the story will be a real eye-opener. See's research included taking oral histories, some of which appear nearly verbatim in the novel.

The follow-up novel Dreams of Joy takes Peal and her daughter to Communist China. Readers will learn about life under Mao, with the characters secondary to the greater picture.

The Apache Wars by Paul Andrew Hutton was my Blogging for Books choice. It was a subject I knew almost nothing about.

At nearly 500 pages this book offers a complete and detailed history of the relationship between the Native Americans of Apacheria and Americans whose expansion encroached into their traditional homelands. This is not a book for the fainthearted, and I rued not making a list to keep track of the ever-changing major players. The publisher description calls it a "sprawling, monumental work" about the "two decades of the last war for the West through the eyes of the men and women who lived it." Because the book is encyclopedic it can be overwhelming.

I moved by the stories and quite disgusted (once again) by the horrible choices American government has made concerning those we fear--or those just plain in the way of 'progress,' which mostly means making money. It was very interesting to learn details of the Apache culture.

When I was a kid in the 50s watching the TV and movie westerns there were several cliches, one being 'white man speak with forked tongue.' Well, that is about it in a nutshell. Treaties and promises were broken with impunity, and the Apache who sought peace were treated badly and barely trusted. And there were leaders who tired of war and just wanted peace with the White Eyes. Not giving them a fair deal lost their trust Even when President Grant endeavored to change how the Apache were treated by sending Dutch Reformed agents did not improve how the Apache fared.

Hutton's knowledge is incredible and his treatment of this war fair and unbiased.

Murder and Baseball in Depression Era Detroit

Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression-Era Detroit by Tom Stanton is a thrilling and terrifying read.

Stanton begins his narrative in 1933 as Frank Navin signs Mickey Cochrane in hope that his Tigers would finally win a championship under his watch. At the same time a series of unsolved murders in the Detroit area were ruled suicides. Stanton weaves the narrative thread of winning teams and murderous mayhem through 1936 when the Black Legion was finally identified.

Detroit became the "City of Champions" when wins by the Tigers, Redwings, the Lions, and Joe Louis brought together a city crushed by the Depression.

Detroit was also the 'automotive capital of the world', attracting workers from the South to factory jobs. The largest Catholic congregation met in the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, MI, now a national shrine. When it burned down in 1935 controversial Father Coughlin rebuilt it with money contributed by his radio followers. He preached a mixture of worker's rights, government control of railroads and major industries, Antisemitism, and he supported some Fascist policies. President Roosevelt finally shut his radio station down in 1939.

It was also a time when the Black Legion's reign of terror pressed men into membership on threat of death, flogged or executed backsliders, and assigned hit men to kill targeted 'enemies' of America: Catholics, Jews, Socialists, Communists, African Americans, liberal lawyers and newsmen. The leaders' ultimate goal was to depose President Roosevelt and take over the American government--to save it from Communism.

Reading about the Black Legion carrying out their meetings and activities in locales known to me was sickening. The group grew out of the ashes of the KKK. Men were invited to a club or gathering, but when they discovered what was really going on it was too late to back out. Pledges were signed at gunpoint and members given a bullet to remind them that betrayal meant death. It was a reign of terror. Bigwigs ordered regular 'joes' to carry out abductions and executions. At least one African American man was murdered just for sport.

Black Legion robes and guns found by police

Membership climbed into the tens of thousands across the Midwest, reaching into the ranks of police, courts, and elected officials. It was said all of Oakland County's government were members! I live in Oakland County!

When Captain Marmon came from Lansing to investigate he soon announced the Black Legion was responsible for at least 50 Michigan deaths. Old cases were reexamined; murders had been ruled as suicides. But his investigations were stymied. Cover-ups prevented following through on leads. J. Edgar Hoover ignored demands for action. The Ford Motor Company would not allow permission for the police to drain Ford Mill Pond, said to hold bodies. Major-General Bert Effinger of the Black Legion lived in Lima, Ohio. The local police would not execute a search warrant on his house. Effinger went missing.

Had it not been for a Legion member's confessions and telling police of activities and crimes no one would have been brought to justice. The downfall of the Black Legion was a relief for thousands who spent every day in fear.

I am not a sports fan myself but my limited knowledge did not prevent me from appreciating, or following, the book's saga of the Tigers. I now know who Schoolhouse Rowe, Hank Greenberg, Micky Cochrane, and Frank Navin are! I proudly can say I now know why Navin Field is important to my acquaintance who is involved in vintage baseball played there and why the Navin Field Grounds Crew are fighting the installation of artificial turf on the field. I do love when history books make one understand and appreciate the present! Stanton is able to bring these men to life.

This multi-layered book offers a full picture of Depression Era Detroit. It has always been a complicated city.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

"Once in a blue moon, a city bears witness to the best and the wort of times. Such was Detroit's fate more than a generation ago as the Tigers, Lions and Red Wings reached new sports heights while the Black Legion too often ruled the night. It's a great tale and Tom Stanton has done a marvelous job telling it." Tim Wendel, author of Summer of '68

Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression Era Detroit
Tom Stanton
Rowman & Littlefield
Publication June 1,  2016
ISBN 978-1-4930-1570-2 hard cover $26
          978-1-4930-1818-5 eBook $24.99

The Turner House by Angela Flournoy

Thirteen children were raised in the house on Yarrow Street in Eastside Detroit. In 2008 it stands empty. Their father Frances had come North for work and spent his life driving 18 wheelers for Chrysler. He struggled with alcohol, held his children in speechless love, and was buried in his Hudson's suit. Their aging mother Alice is living with her oldest son. The money owed on the house is more than it is worth, but to save it will cost $40,000. The kids can't agree what to do. Each has their own memories of the house, and their own demons.

The Turner House by Angela Flournoy is a story Detroiters will recognize as 'theirs': black migration from the South to Detroit hoping for work and the rewards of a home of their own, then watching the city fall into the slow ruin caused by white--and black flight to the suburbs, job loss, city mismanagement, crime, drugs, and the lure of easy money at the casinos. The author's father was from Detroit, and his stories informed and inspired her book.

It is the Turner family that makes the novel impelling and universal; Flournoy's wise and compassionate portraits of complex people struggling with human issues.

The Turner House iis featured in the Spring 2015 Paris Review. Flournoy says on her blog,

"There's an excerpt of my novel that I'm very excited about! It's called "Lelah," and on top of the obvious feelings of joy and humility I ahve for being in such an illustrious publication, I'm also happy that The Paris Review selected "Lelah" in particular. She is the first character I "knew," the one whose story came to me when it was well underway. She challenged me to figure our how she got to where she was in her life, and to develop where she needed to go next."

Trip Around the World; found at a flea market; by an Eastside Detroit quilter

I received a free e-book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Turner House
Angela Flournoy
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: May 21, 2015
ISBN: 9780544303164
$23.00 hard cover

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Michigan 101: Fort Wayne in Detroit, "Where No Shot Was Ever Fired In Anger"

This weekend we visited historic Fort Wayne in Detroit, Michigan. It was my first time at the fort.

http://www.historicfortwaynecoalition.com/fortabout.html

Some shots were fired, as these slugs embedded in the limestone facade of the 1848 Old Barracks reveal.

The building was part of the improvements made under command of Montgomery C. Meigs, completed in 1851, costing $150,000.

There has been a military site here since 1701 when Cadillac built Fort Detroit. The fort was surrendered to the British in 1760 during the French and Indian War. The Brits built a new fort and occupied it until 1796 when the Americas retook it and named it Fort Shelby. During the War of 1812 the fort was surrendered to the British without a fight. The Brits abandoned it, and the Americans moved back in!

In 1815 it was the site of the Treaty of Springwells bringing an end of hostilities between the Native Americans who had allied with the British during the war. In effect it absolved the Native Americans from 'taint of treason' for supporting the British during the war, and allied them with America.  Lewis Cass and future president General William Henry Harrison were present at the signing.  The interpreter was James Riley, brother of John Riley whose bible was passed down in my husband's family. See my post about the Riley family  here. 

The fort was named for General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, but a treaty was signed before the canon even arrived. The fort was then used as an infantry garrison, but was not needed until the Civil War. During WWII Italian prisoners of war were housed here. It became a primary induction center from the Civil War until Viet Nam.

http://www.historicfortwaynecoalition.com/fortabout.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Wayne_%28Detroit%29

The walk to the Sally Fort entrance.

 Entrance into the interior of the fort.

 

Inside the Star Fort is the original barracks.

Canon  mounts along the Star Fortification faces toward the Detroit River. It was built on a sand mound that was an Indian Burial Mound.

The view looks at the Detroit skyline in one direction, with the Renaissance Center (RennCen) seen behind the bridge in the distance.

Across the river is Ontario, Canada. A freighter was docked there.

 Industry along 'down river' can be seen.

 

The powder house, seen below,  is the oldest structure in the Fort.

Several boys in Civil War reenactment costumes were at the Fort. The boy holding arms told me all about the Fort's history and about the group of reenactors his father and he participated in.

The first floor of the New Barracks had this door to nowhere. It gives one a lot to think about.

The path up the hill to the cannonade is embedded limestone. How many feet have trod this land? 

The site has nineteen 1000-year-old Native American burial grounds. No wonder some think the fort is haunted. Events held at the fort include ghost hunts, war reenactments, vintage baseball games, Swing dancing, Civil War Days, Medieval Days, and an annual flea market.

Healing Quiltmaking and Jim Crow Segretation: "The Colored Car" by Jean Alicia Elster

Last weekend we visited Leon & Lulu's wonderful home decor store for their annual Books & Author's fair. We visited with 18 Metro Detroit writers of all ages and genres. 10% of the proceeds from book sales went to the Oakland County Literacy Council so of course we had to buy some books.

One of the books I found was Jean Alicia Elster's "The Colored Car" based on her own grandmother's experiences growing up in Detroit and traveling from Detroit to Tennessee in 1922. Ms Elster garnered stories and recipes from her grandmother.

The Ford family lives in Detroit where Douglas runs a saw mill and his wife May uses her home economics education to put up food, sew clothes, and run the household. Several family recipes are included in the text. They live in a working class neighborhood of immigrants. May grew up in Tennessee and has not been back in nine years. There had been a terrible flood in her hometown and May decides it is time to go home and see her family again. She decides to bring her young daughters along.

Her eldest daughter Patsy is 12 years old, just taking over her brother's family chores now he is helping in his dad's business. The train trip seems a big adventure. Her mother has sewn new clothes for the girls, and they wear white gloves for traveling. They sit in upholstered seats and are served delicate sandwiches. But in Cincinnati they must change trains to ride in the "colored car". It has no cushioned seats and a stove spews out smoke. Patsy resists getting on. She had never encountered the Jim Crow laws of the south before.

How Patsy deals with her collision with a new reality is the focus of the second half of the book. Her grandmother gives her fabric to start her first quilt, a Fence Rail quilt. She tells her granddaughter that she is to put all her pain into the quilt. When the quilt is completed she will be free of the bad memories.

Patsy has been profoundly disturbed by her experience. The family faces another crisis but things turns out okay. There is drama in the book, but nothing to give a child nightmares. Ms Elster explores serious issues in context of a charming family's life.

As I was talking to the author I learned that quiltmaking played a role in the book. How cool was that? She was not a quiltmaker herself, but her family had many.

To make the Fence Rail quilt Patsy's grandmother gave her fabric to cut into 1 1/2" x 6 1/2" pieces. Patsy was given a brass thimble and shown how to use a running stitch to sew the quilt. Once the blocks were made she set them together and quilted the with a running stitch. What happens to the quilt? Read the book and find out!

For an interview with the author visit SORMAG"S Blog.

As Ms Elster notes in the forward to her book, the history of civil rights can be traced through lawsuits against the railroads. One early crusader was the formidable journalist and activist Ida B. Wells who appears on my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet. Like Patsy, Ida resisted being sent to "the colored car" and started a campaign. Read more about her here:
http://www.biography.com/people/ida-b-wells-9527635#later-career
http://people.duke.edu/~ldbaker/classes/AAIH/caaih/ibwells/ibwbkgrd.html

On a personal note, my mother told me of her first train ride from Kane, PA to Albany, NY to see her grandparents. Mom was only five and had never seen a person of color before and the porters were African American. She asked my grandmother, "Why is that man brown?" My grandmother wanted to end the discussion and told her "Because he is made of chocolate." Well, my mom went up and bit the man on the hand! It was quite a shock to all involved.

Perhaps biting that poor porter taught Mom that we all have the same color blood; we all feel the same pain.

Americans carry a heavy legacy.

The Colored Car
Jean Alicia Elster
Wayne State University Press
ISBN-13:978081336069
$14.95

Flea Market Finds

I grew up in Royal Oak, MI in the Detroit suburbs. For over 40 years my family has been going to the Sunday flea market in downtown Royal Oak. Over the years we have discovered some real jewels there. A few years back we got five Mid-Century Modern bar stools for $50! Sometimes I get vintage hankies, or a great book. Some Barbie doll clothes found there became part of my Barbie quilt.

This week I found a pile of quilts from the Eastside of Detroit. The seller was clearing out a house for someone. He found an attic trunk full of quilts! He also had sewing patterns, dress forms, and various other items from the house.

Detroit is the poster child of Rust Belt decay. One writer called the Eastside an urbane prairie. All over Detroit you find empty houses, vast blocks denuded of houses, and areas of high crime and low hopes. You see the photos of these lovely bungalows from the early 20th century, abandoned and falling apart, and it breaks your heart. The Eastside has the highest crime rate in Detroit. Looking at these quilts I saw a woman's hope and dreams, joy in creativity and beauty, who made something out of scraps and loved them enough to keep them safe in a trunk.

I had already purchased a quilt indoors before I discovered this wondrous stash and was broke. He was selling the quilts for $25 to $40. So I ran to the bank and got some cash and ran back to the market.

I bought two quilts. One is a trip around the world and the other a scrappy Lemoyne Star variation. The quilts were all primitive in workmanship and the quilting consisted of large stitches in a fan shape.

Both had blocks that were hand stitched  There were many areas where the stitches were loose or broken. But there was no fading to the fabrics. I loved that they shared several fabrics in common: a red and white gingham, a pastel print with stripes and a wavy dark line, and a floral print with pink and white background and a purple flower.

I sewed up the loose seams and gave them a much needed washing.

The Lemoyne Star was different from what I have seen, as each arm of the star consisted of two fabrics. The blocks are riotous and discordant. Sometimes the fabrics make up a star, and sometimes they do not. Some fabrics were from dresses, others are pants or suiting weight. I adored the big strawberry print on gingham.

The first quilt I found and purchased was adorable, a Triple Sunflower with a prairie point edge and yellow sunflowers with blue sashing.

Some times the green stems met the flowers. Some times they did not!

All the quilts had muslin backing and cotton batting.

My previous trip to the flea market I found a $10 quilt top, a simple nine patch. The setting blocks have a small check with yellow centers.

The seller was going back to the house to find more treasures and will be back at the flea market next Sunday. I will be there! There is another quilt or two I hope I can get to first.