Paradise Valley/ Black Bottom

[Cincinnati_Kid]

I'm doing a report in school on the Paradise Valley Black Bottom section in Detroit
during the 1920's thru 1950's until urban renewal eliminated the area. I wanted to know where could I find some good pictures of the area, and the boundaries with streets and businesses. Any pictures fellow DYes members have would be much appreciated, as well as web sites. Thx.

[Pam]

From the Detroit Links section:

http://www.paradisevalleyblues.com/t...ingsindex.html

[Detroit Stylin]

OMG that just pissed me off.....

[Detroit Stylin]

I SEE now why City COuncil felt that we should have renamed Harmonie Park into the new Paradise Valley. But even if that was to have happened from what we lost.....it would have been a very marginal gain at best. An entire bustling district gone for what.....that could have been our Beale street,,,,,

[drjeff]

From the Detroit Links section:

http://www.paradisevalleyblues.com/t...ingsindex.html

Thanks for this link- one of the more interesting things I've seen lately. It does make me sad to think of what was lost, though.

[RickBeall]

Detroit does not value its history, so when looking for historical places you are often just looking at dirt lots. Maybe a brick resurfaces from the yearly freeze/thaw cycle. That part of the city was once so densely populated, the alleys had names and mail was delivered to them.

[Cincinnati_Kid]

From the Detroit Links section:

http://www.paradisevalleyblues.com/t...ingsindex.html

Thx for the info Pam. Much props

[d'oh]

You might want to get this book, a great history of Paradise Valley, among other things:

http://www.amazon.com/Before-Motown-...1182117&sr=1-1

The only problem is that it'll totally break your heart..

[Pam]

Thx for the info Pam. Much props

Thank Rick Beall, it's his site.

[Pam]

I SEE now why City COuncil felt that we should have renamed Harmonie Park into the new Paradise Valley. But even if that was to have happened from what we lost.....it would have been a very marginal gain at best. An entire bustling district gone for what.....that could have been our Beale street,,,,,

Not really even a marginal gain, since they would be wiping out the history of Harmonie Park. Two wrongs don't make a right.

[Fury13]

Re-create Hastings along the service drive. It's a viable vision. It could still be our Beale Street.

[stinkbug]

In all the nostalgia what you're forgetting is that Paradise Valley was, by all accounts, an overcrowded, dangerous slum with decrepit and aging buildings not fit for human occupancy. It was a ghetto in the truest sense of the word, with African Americans being prohibited from living elsewhere. While its demolition, and the other "urban renewal" projects were follies in themselves, Paradise Valley was hardly a decent place to live. Any blacks who could escaped to the Black Westside, Conant Gardens, and Eight Mile Wyoming.

[RickBeall]

There was that side to it stinkbug. Also, if you want to know what it would probably look like today, well drive up Oakland N of East Grand Boulevard. Back in the day, that was considered the continuation of Hastings. Every year a few more commercial buildings fall down or catch fire. Today it is mostly fields. Or, maybe at best for Detroit, look at Chene street which runs parallel to Hastings. Chene is turning into fields pretty quickly now though.

The real Paradise Valley, or say the first Paradise Valley before they expanded the concept, was the area where Ford Field is now. That area survived for the longest time. It was right above Greektown. You would have thought if Detroit was to have a Beale street it would happen at least there. You could walk up from Greek town to Paradise Valley. But no. Once blacks were allowed to move out of the ghetto, they scattered like seed in the wind, leaving the old ghetto to crumble.

So, unfortunately, if Hastings Street had survived, it wouldn't have anyway.

But, on a more positive note, we have what we have, and it is up to us to make something of it.

[Cincinnati_Kid]

BTW Rick, thx for the link.

[ziggyselbin]

In all the nostalgia what you're forgetting is that Paradise Valley was, by all accounts, an overcrowded, dangerous slum with decrepit and aging buildings not fit for human occupancy. It was a ghetto in the truest sense of the word, with African Americans being prohibited from living elsewhere. While its demolition, and the other "urban renewal" projects were follies in themselves, Paradise Valley was hardly a decent place to live. Any blacks who could escaped to the Black Westside, Conant Gardens, and Eight Mile Wyoming.

Putting the over crowding aside you are almost describing much of Detroit today.

I am acquainted with an elderly black lady here is A2. She tells me that many of the black merchants learned business skills from jewish merchants in the valley. I think it is important to recognize that there were black Doctors, Lawyers. Pharmacists, tailors....the list goes on_ all in paradise valley.

Fortunately many of the people that experienced the area are still around ask them what it was like.

[English]

I am acquainted with an elderly black lady here is A2. She tells me that many of the black merchants learned business skills from jewish merchants in the valley.

My grandfather said the exact same thing. I wonder what happened to deteriorate Black-Jewish relations since that time. I'm thinking it was the post-Civil Rights Black Arts Movement, right?

I think it is important to recognize that there were black Doctors, Lawyers. Pharmacists, tailors....the list goes on_ all in paradise valley.

Fortunately many of the people that experienced the area are still around ask them what it was like.

Pretty much. Before "integration" African Americans were restricted to certain areas in many Northern cities, and all over the South. All classes had to live together, but the African American upper middle class always wanted acceptance from the larger White society. Many of that class are still seeking that acceptance, which is why I'm glad I have working class roots. I figure that I can treat people well as individuals and have great friends, but I'm never blindsided by racism because I know there's nothing that Black people can do to assimilate.

Black neighborhoods have always been seen as relatively dangerous, from the slave quarters to today. They are only treasured when historical, a phenomenon that's safely in the past, and neither able to move next door to you nor marry your child. 50 years from now, hip-hop culture and postmodern ghettos will be studied and glorified, while the culture, folkways and lives of the Black people who live then will be denigrated. I'd be willing to put money on it.

[Detroitej72]

My grandfather said the exact same thing. I wonder what happened to deteriorate Black-Jewish relations since that time. I'm thinking it was the post-Civil Rights Black Arts Movement, right?

I've often wondered the same thing myself. Jewish folks were some of the earliest proponents of the civil rights movement, and blacks historically integrated Jewish neighborhoods, yet today there is a rift between the two groups.

Perhaps people like Louis Farrakhan and the like are the cause?

[RickBeall]

I think the jews were a minority that was discriminated against in the US, forced to live in certain areas. The jews knew what discrimination and persecution was, and respected the black entrepreneurs following in their footsteps. So they jews would help, whereas the general white population would not. Hastings Street went from German to jewish to black to ... well to obliteration. All my info comes from somewhat dusty memories reading two great books on the subject.

Before Motown : A History of Jazz in Detroit by Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert

Toast of the Town : The Life and Times of Sunny Wilson by Sunnie Wilson and John Cohassey

I'm glad you guys enjoyed the Paradise Valley Blues website. I created that in 2001 right at the time when John Lee Hooker happend to die. A day after he died, I visited with his old neighbors and a lady who as a teenager used to baby sit his kids. Old John Lee sat on his front porch, watching the 1967 riots happening. Rock on John Lee.

[tallboy66]

I'm doing a report in school on the Paradise Valley Black Bottom section in Detroit
during the 1920's thru 1950's until urban renewal eliminated the area. I wanted to know where could I find some good pictures of the area, and the boundaries with streets and businesses. Any pictures fellow DYes members have would be much appreciated, as well as web sites. Thx.

"Urban renewal" if that's what it's called by remind me to stay far, far away.
The history of Detroit is to destroy occupied, vibrant, livable communities for freeways, parking lots, parking garages or just to tear stuff down, the more I'm gone the happier I am I left.

[mwilbert]

My grandfather said the exact same thing. I wonder what happened to deteriorate Black-Jewish relations since that time. I'm thinking it was the post-Civil Rights Black Arts Movement, right?

This is a pretty complicated question, and I don't think I could do it justice. Below is a quote from a description of the PBS series From Swastika to Jim Crow

"The separatist rise of Black nationalism was just one of the difficulties facing the Black-Jewish alliance since the end of the Civil Rights movement. The rapid decline of American anti-Semitism since 1945, combined with the nation's continuing pervasive racism, convinced Blacks there was an insurmountable racial gulf separating the two groups. Blacks no longer perceived the division as one between the persecutors and their victims - including Jews - but between those with white skin and those with black. Through the eyes of Blacks, Jews became Whites with all the privileges their skin color won them, regardless of alliances they had in the past.

As early as the first two decades after World War II, James Baldwin, Kenneth Clark and other Blacks encouraged liberal Jews to give up the "special relationship." This came in part from a fear that the Jews' determined belief in their bond with Blacks would eventually become offensive and, paradoxically, provoke Black anti-Semitism. The prospect of this shift was incomprehensible to Jews who believed that their own history, culminating in the Holocaust, defined them as oppressed and thus incapable of being the oppressor. And yet, as Baldwin pointed out in Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew, each time a Black person paid his Jewish landlord, shopped at a Jewish-owned store, was taught by a Jewish school teacher, was supervised by a Jewish social worker, or was paid by a Jewish employer, the fact of Black subservience to Jews was driven home."

[gnome]

If urban renewal killed Paradise Valley, what killed Idlewyld?

[ziggyselbin]

If urban renewal killed Paradise Valley, what killed Idlewyld?

Same thing. As blacks were allowed [[an ugly concept as if any person could allow another...) into white establishments and performers i.e. black performers were given the same amenities the need for idlewild diminished. So it was not so much urban renewal as assimilation flimsy as it may have been.

There are two area's that I can think of[[there may be others)where blacks and whites have always mixed... well three if you count sex.....the others are athletics and music. If one were an accomplished musician they would play with the top dance bands;Teddy Wilson with Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton with Goodman_ there are many examples. There are examples in other styles of music going back to Beethoven and perhaps earlier.

In sports there were the barnstorming Negro league teams that would play major league teams.

None of this is to romanticize history. There is no doubt blacks were categorically treated wrong. It is impressive to learn of the culture and accomplishments made in spite of that treatment. Again if you know anyone from the era ask them about it I always do whenever I can.

[gnome]

So if the freeway didn't kill Paradise Valley, if it was a self-inflicted wound, then the Strum and Drang related to renaming Harmonie Park is without merit.

Oh, btw, Paradise Valley has been gone longer than it ever existed.

[Danny]

Paradise Valley was destroyed by an all white Detroit City Council who didn't like the slum, crappy black ghetto. Chrysler FWY. was built and blacks have to relocate themselves to other Detroit neighborhoods. Paradise Valley was one big beautiful black community. Lots of black owned hot jazz clubs, ballrooms, barbershops, funeral homes, bakeries, grocery stores, Ed Davis was the first black Detroit car dealer at his time. The 606 Horsehoe lounge and Club 666 were booming at the time. The area even has its own mayor. Oh! those was a old days not some fake "Africantownesque" community at Harmonie Park.

[Jimg]

Cincinatti, if you email me at JamesJazz at comcast.net, I'll send you a street map which has PV boundaries.