Black Bottom

This article refers to the neighborhood. For the dance, see Black Bottom (dance).

Black Bottom (also known as Paradise Valley) was a predominately African-American neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan where Black migrants from the South were forced to live because of deed restrictions that made it illegal them to own or rent property in most of the city.

It was demolished in the early 1950s as part of urban renewal, and was replaced by the Chrysler Freeway (Interstate 75) and 'Lafayette Park', a mixed-income development designed by Mies van der Rohe as a model neighborhood combining residential townhouses, apartments and high-rises with commercial areas. Black Bottom was located on Detroit's East Side, was approximately 0.5 mile&sup2 (1.3 km&sup2) in area, and was bounded by Gratiot Ave., Brush St., Vernor Hwy., and the Grand Trunk railroad tracks. Its main commercial strips were on Hastings St. and St. Antoine St.

Black Bottom – the name was given to the area in the nineteenth century for its rich soil -- was the cultural and economic heart of the Black community in Detroit from the 1920s through its demolition. Most of the residents who were displaced ended up in gigantic public housing projects such as the Brewster Homes and Jeffries Homes (also the result of urban renewal.)

Hastings Street, which ran north-south through Black Bottom, was the center of Eastern European Jewish settlement before World War I, but in the ensuing years it was transformed into a vibrant African-American community with business, sociability, night life, and underworld activity. It became nationally famous for its music scene: major blues singers, big bands, and jazz artists – such as like Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Pearl Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie -- regularly performed in the bars and clubs of Paradise Valley entertainment district.

Before the Civil Rights Movement began to change Northern segregation in the 1960s, "Negroes" could be thrown in jail if they were seen by the police west of Woodward Ave. – Detroit's main street, which divides the east and west sides of the city. Hastings Street had one of the highest concentrations of black-owned businesses in the United States, and the neighborhood was full of run-down and expensive apartments and multi-family homes owned by Caucasian landlords, with a mix of classes and backgrounds so typical to the urban Black communities of the time.

Black Bottom suffered more than most areas during the Great Depression since so many of the wage earners worked in the hard-hit auto factories of Detroit. During World War II both the economic activity and the physical decay of Black Bottom rapidly increased, and in the 1950's, the City of Detroit conducted an urban renewal program to combat what it called "urban blight" that bulldozed Black Bottom.

Other historical Detroit black neighborhoods include Conant Gardens , Russell Woods , and Elmwood Park

External links

Categories: Detroit history