(Visionary industrialist, racist and philanthropist Henry Ford the First. Photo FoMoCo.)
Gentle Readers, I have had my fill of the vile aspersions cast on lovely Detroit, the city of my birth. I was working on the agenda for the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit Tour that I intend to conduct when we are there.
It is a tough line to walk, philosophically. I am filled with righteous indignation at what we have done to ourselves on the triple altars of Capital, Racism and Liberty. Seeing the fruits of the Great Abandonment of the city is, in my mind, a necessary thing. Others find it to be simple schadenfreude, taking perverse delight in the misfortune of those who cannot help themselves.
Screw it. I have my long-form birth certificate, and it proves that I was born at Detroit General Hospital, and so it is my city and partly my story, and I will tell it the way I feel. It is undeniable that the Motor City was in complete eclipse for nearly a half century. There are signs- portents- that the city will be reborn as something else.
Smaller, certainly, with the vast empty spaces offering up all sorts of possibilities for re-invention.
(Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Photo Detroit News.)
There is a lot that needs re-invention, and current Mayor and basketball legend Dave Bing has his hands full. The criminal antics of kleptocrat Kwame Kilpatrick as Mayor were entertaining to readers of the News and the Free Press out in the suburbs. The prickly relations between the Mayor’s office and the media has a legacy that goes back to Coleman Young, for whom White Flight cemented his electoral majority even if it killed the city tax base.
Young was never convicted of a thing, though his lieutenants were, and he left a complex legacy. Kilpatrick was much more clown-like in his apparently shameless conduct, which resulted in convictions on charges of corruption, perjury and obstruction of justice. He wound up in suburban Milan for violating probation.
There is no reason to single out Detroit on that charge. I mean, we have had decades of entertainment from DC mayor-for-life Marion Barry. He is still on the DC Council, being re-elected while serving time. He too accused the Post of racist treatment in the paper’s coverage of his administration.
While the great divide in Detroit is often depicted as one of black and white, there is far more to consider in the urban mosaic, and it may be surprising to you. It certainly is not surprising to red-neck know-nothing Pastor Terry Jones, the idiot who stirred up so much trouble when he burned a copy of the Quran last month.
Pastor Dumbass has announced that he is coming to suburban Dearborn on Good Friday to protest the imposition of Sharia Law at North America’s largest mosque, located conveniently near The Glass House in Dearborn, headquarters of the Ford Motor Company.
(Pierogis in the Socotra kitchen. These are from Emeril’s recipe. Ask me for it. Delicious!)
There are enclaves in Detroit that fought successfully to avoid absorption into the City Borg. Hamtramck and Highland Park might be the two most famous, the former being the home of some tough Polacks who refused to give up their houses, pierogis and kielbasa. At least they hung on for longer than one would think. The Poles are stubborn people, and proud. But even Hamtramck is knocked back on its heels these days.
Dearborn is another enclave, and was once a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Ford family. It is not now, and that is why Terry Ford is coming to town. But it is near to my heart. We had our tenth High School reunion there, and at the Dearborn Hyatt Regency I ran into a former classmate who would become my wife. That has nothing to do with Pastor Ford, but I will get to that in a minute.
(Dearborn Hyatt Regency. Photo Hyatt Corp.)
The history of Dearborn is a microcosm of the larger Detroit saga. The close-in enclave south of the big city was settled after the great expansion into the Northwest Territory after the Revolution. The Brits would be back to Detroit in 1812 (don’t get into who won with a Canadian), but farmers were already hacking down trees and planting fields with American energy, unlike their French predecessors who based their presence on the river on trade with the natives.
The newly-arrived settlers cleared them out- it would be worth a dive down the rabbit hole to talk about Chief Pontiac, who once was not an automobile, and “Mad” Anthony Wayne, who was not Detroit’s most prominent University. Maybe we can circle back- the war is an entertaining story.
Dearborn’s name came from a Revolutionary figure named Henry Dearborn, who also served as Secretary of War in the Jefferson Administration. The current configuration of the town dates to the Crash year of 1929, when the neighboring village of Fordson joined with Dearborn to maintain their independence from encroaching Detroit.
Henry Ford bought large parts of the city to construct his estate, Fair Lane, and the original World Headquarters of his company, and the Proving Grounds and the Henry Ford Museum, the Library and all the other stuff that went along with a company that was a global Titan. The commercial heart of Dearborn was the Fairlane Town Center, where Henry Ford’s favorite soybeans and sunflowers are planted to this very day.
The town became home to a series of wonders. One was the Ford Rouge River complex. We took a field trip there from school in Grabbingham to see it; no kidding, the long Lakes boats carriers (think Edmund Fitzgerald) would dump iron ore from the Mesabe Range into the hoppers that carried the red stuff to the blast furnaces, and at the other end of the plant they drove out brand-spanking new Mustangs.
120,000 people worked there. It was awesome. Amazing.
(The Rouge River complex and Rotunda at lower right. Photo FoMoCo.)
Across the street was the Ford Rotunda. Pity you never got to see it. The ultra-modern drum-like structure was a huge attraction to the metropolitan area, becoming the fifth most popular United States tourist destination during the 1950s. In fact, only Niagara Falls, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, The Smithsonian Institution, and the Lincoln Memorial were more popular. Yellowstone, Mount Vernon, the Washington Monument, and the Statue of Liberty all had fewer visitors.
During the period of time the Rotunda was open to the public, a total of 18,019,340 people toured the facility, and I was one of them. The Rotunda saw the introduction of the Lincoln Continental, the Ford Thunderbird, and both the introduction and discontinuance of the Edsel.
The Christmas Fantasy show at the Rotunda was a must-do for Detroiters and suburbanites alike.
It burned in 1962, accidentally, as opposed to all the other burnings that would scourge the great city.
The Nativity scene, for which Ford’s had received a commendation in 1958 from the National Council of Churches for emphasizing the true spirit of Christmas, and which the Council had determined to be the largest display of its kind in the United States, was a total loss.
I don’t want to lean too heavily on the metaphor, since that is a tricky business, but something else was happening in Dearborn, just as it was across the larger metropolitan area. That is what gets us to the matter of that asshole Terry Roberts, and the question of whether he is really going to turn up in Dearborn this Good Friday.
Even as the nation turned away from the public celebration of religious events, there were others who were building on their faith privately.
There are older mosques in Dearborn, but in 1963, the year after the Rotunda and its Nativity Scene burned, ground was broken for The Islamic Center of America.
Dearborn today has the highest percentage of Arab-American citizens in any city of its size in North America- more than 30%. The Mosque is also the largest, and that is why that jerk is coming to Dearborn.
More about that tomorrow.
(The Islamic Center, Dearborn, Michigan. Photo Islamic Center of North America.)
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocora.com