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Riots destroyed my old neighborhood
My parents left after the 1967 riots because our old neighborhood was very hard-hit. Thats me in the buggy.Attachment 34473
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'Farm Flight' before 'White Flight'-
For me the story starts with my great grandparents and 'Farm Flight', with both grandfathers moving to Detroit about 1910. My mother's grandfather with the bakery wagon, Oil City, PA and one below that, with the two horses, also in Oil City, farming and sawmill work. The one with the wagon and all the kids, my dad's grandfather, with his 'city' kids visiting. And the bottom one, the only one already in Detroit, with his 1910 Cadillac, no farming background- he worked on the lake freighters first then at the Detroit Dry Docks running the pumps a few years after Henry Ford worked there.
So for 3 out of 4, it was 'Farm Flight' first- and Detroit was a great option for my two grandfathers who both came from farming backgrounds, only my dad's mom already from the 'city' [[Detroit).
Attachment 34486
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Dad's parents and their story
On my dad's side this is the story of so-called 'White Flight' and I only say that because it wasn't so much that as that the neighborhood was becoming unsafe as home values fell and the new neighbors weren't keeping their homes up and it wasn't as safe as with the old neighbors they knew. In fact it was a single white mom who bought their place, too many kids to control and no money to keep it up. Almost all the homes around their place on Lenox are gone. Grandpa had come from Pennsylvania to Delaware with family then moving out on his own, came to Detroit around 1910. [[the photo of two guys on motorcycles is of grandpa, right and his brother-in-law, left c. 1917 behind the Gauss home on High Street. That entire street is gone now.
Attachment 34487