Quote Originally Posted by Neilr View Post
In 1900 there were 4,111 Black people in Detroit. In 1910, 5,741. As reported in David Katzman's Before the Ghetto, 1973.
Yes, that roughly tracks with 1.2 to 1.4 percent. The percentage actually went down during the flood of European immigration and the growth of the nascent auto industry in the '00s. The Great Migration begins in earnest with the First World War.

In any event, I sometimes hear African-Americans disdain these views of old Detroit, because they don't see "anybody who looks like me." So it's kind of nice to see this detail "filling out the picture," so to speak.