Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Toward a History of the Business of Black Power
- Part One Black Capitalism in Pursuit of Black Freedom
- Part Two Selling Women, Culture, and Black Power
- Part Three The Business of Black Power in City and Suburb
- Part Four Community Development Corporations and the Business of Black Power Policymaking
- Conclusion: Whose Black Power? The Business of Black Power and Black Power’s Business
- Epilogue: Whatever Happened to the Business of Black Power?
- List of Contributors
- Index
6 - From Landless to Landlords: Black Power, Black Capitalism, and the Co-optation of Detroit’s Tenants’ Rights Movement, 1964–69
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Toward a History of the Business of Black Power
- Part One Black Capitalism in Pursuit of Black Freedom
- Part Two Selling Women, Culture, and Black Power
- Part Three The Business of Black Power in City and Suburb
- Part Four Community Development Corporations and the Business of Black Power Policymaking
- Conclusion: Whose Black Power? The Business of Black Power and Black Power’s Business
- Epilogue: Whatever Happened to the Business of Black Power?
- List of Contributors
- Index
Summary
Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. … The French Revolution—what was it based on? The landless against the landlord. … The Russian Revolution—what was it based on? Land. The landless against the landlord. … So I cite these various revolutions, brothers and sisters, to show you. … Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.
Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,” November 10, 1963Black Detroiters understood all too well the historical significance of struggles between landlords and the landless when Malcolm X linked freedom, self-determination, and independence to land control and ownership during his “Message to the Grassroots” speech at King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit. Post–World War II urban redevelopment schemes—spurred locally by the 1947 Detroit Plan, and nationally by the 1949 Housing Act and 1956 Federal Highway Act—had since decimated Detroit’s historic “first ghetto,” Black Bottom; the area’s institutional epicenter, Hastings Street; and Black Detroit’s cultural capital, Paradise Valley. This area—the birthplace of the Nation of Islam, the former center of the largest concentration of Black-owned businesses in the country, the home of the religious and cultural institutions that nurtured the rise of the Motown sound, and the area in which a strong majority of Detroit’s Black population had resided since the Great Migration—laid in ruins, or was being prepared for destruction or gentrification by the time “Detroit Red” came back to Detroit to deliver the keynote address at the Northern Negro Grass Roots Conference in late 1963.
Many Black Detroiters had initially supported urban renewal, believing that slum clearance and urban conservation programs would improve services, living conditions, and neighborhoods by replacing the city’s oldest and most decrepit housing stock with new or refurbished housing. Their faith in the program, however, quickly abated as its implementation cut a broad swath through Black Detroit and destroyed far more low-income housing than it created.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Business of Black PowerCommunity Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America, pp. 157 - 183Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012
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