In the early 1700s, as French colonial settlers discovered Detroit, they came across an area that was the source of the River Savoyard. The river’s overflow flooded the land, resulting in dark, rich, fertile topsoil. The bottomland soil led to the area being named “Black Bottom,” where before and during World War I, was populated by European immigrants, specifically Eastern European Jews. That name took on a new meaning after it became a predominantly black community following the war and during the Great Migration. A once lively neighborhood behind its culture and night scene was demolished between the late 1950s and early 1960s for the construction of I-375.
By the 1920s, Black Bottom became home to a majority African-American population. Redlining played a sizable role in this as adjacent neighborhoods passed ordinances restricting black people from buying and renting property, relegating black families to Black Bottom. This, along with the Great Migration led to the area being established by black-owned businesses, famously nightclubs. It took on the overarching culture of the Harlem Renaissance with an emphasis on jazz music and is credited with influencing the legacy of Motown music in the 1930s-1950s. Jazz icons such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sam Cooke and Duke Ellington performed in clubs within Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, a neighborhood often referred to as a part of Black Bottom.
Despite the vibrance associated with Black Bottom, urban poverty afflicted the neighborhood and was especially damaged by the Great Depression. At best, business owners in the area were able to rise to the middle class, but a majority of its residents were factory workers who suffered from layoffs in the 1930s. Because of this, many of the financially stable people in the community moved to better-developed neighborhoods in Detroit. Because of the redlining that victimized many in Black Bottom, they struggled to receive New Deal resources for the unemployed and Veteran benefits, which further contributed to the area’s crippling poverty.
In the early 1960s, the demolition of Black Bottom began for I-375. The Federal Housing Act of 1949 and the Federal Highway Act of 1956 funded the demolition and construction of the project. Detroit’s city council at the time cited that the area was a “slum,” to justify the destruction. Two-thirds of the buildings in Black Bottom were considered “substandard” following World War II. Rather than repairing the community, the city went along with the I-375 project. Thousands of residents were relocated as hundreds of homes and businesses were dismantled. Today, a historical marker on the intersection of Adam Avenue and St. Antoine Street sits where Black Bottom once was.
