The history of highland park

It was a bright summer day in August of 1963. I was about six years old when our family moved from the east side of Detroit to Highland Park. Man oh man what a difference. It looked like a place right out of a fairy tale. Every street was lined with beautiful, leafy trees. There were trees in everyone's backyard. There were apple trees, cherry trees, plum trees, and peach trees.

I can remember walking down the alleys and gathering grapes from the fences of our neighbors backyards where grapevines were in abundance. My mom never had to buy fruit from the market. She would give us bags and tell us to go to a neighbor's backyard and get fruit there. Also, the city of Highland Park made sure that the streets were always clean. You would see the street cleaning trucks sweeping the streets and alleys twice a week. Highland Park was beautiful and growing up there was every kid's dream.

Before Highland Park became a city the area was undeveloped farmland. In 1818 the land was purchased by Detroit Judge Augustus B. Woodward and then by another Detroit Judge Benjamin F. H. Witherell who was the son of Supreme Court justice James Witherell. Neither of the two judges proved successful in building a city on the land. But later, in 1873 a Post office called Whitewood gained possession of the land and soon Highland Park was recognized as a community within Greenfield Township and Hamtramck Township.

When the construction of the Highland Park Ford plant was completed in 1909, the area's population grew considerably with the demand for employees. Henry Ford opened the first assembly line at the Highland Park Ford plant in 1913 and in 1918 Highland Park was incorporated as a city. By 1920 the population had grown from 4,120 residents to 46,500 residents. An expansion of this magnitude set records for increases in population and allowed Highland Park to resist takeover efforts from Detroit.

As business in Highland Park continued to grow, traffic from Detroit to Highland Park became congested. Davison Avenue was initially the only street linking Highland Park to Detroit. And by 1940 this became a problem since the streets were always over crowded. On March 17, 1941 the Highland Park City Council approved a proposal to rebuild Davison Avenue as a six-lane, limited-access highway. By 1944 the Davison Freeway was open and ran through the center of the city.

Many companies opened up shop in Highland Park and jobs were in abundance. Life was good for the residents of Highland Park until the late 1950's. During that time, Ford Motor Company closed its Highland Park plant and moved to other cities and took the tax base with it. Also, in order to live closer to their jobs, most employees of the plant moved out of the city and many others were laid off. Because of the layoffs street crime increased and the white citizens began to flee the city in droves.

Now, up until the late 1950's the residents of Highland Park were 90% white and they were leaving behind a beautiful city and their large gorgeous homes. Soon, Blacks began to populate this awe inspiring city. They were more than happy to move into these grand homes once owned by the upper class white folks. Most of the Blacks who migrated to Highland Park were from the South and had escaped from racism and inhumane treatment. This city known as the "City of Trees" was like paradise to them.

Thirteen years after the Ford plant closed, my family moved to Highland Park. I was a young boy and I knew nothing about Henry Ford or any of the problems that the city was having. I was just happy to be there. I was the third of six children whom my mother raised as a single parent. During her pregnancy my mother had been hoping for a girl since she'd already had two boys. She said that she was fed up with boys and wanted a daughter of her own. So when the nurse told her that I was a boy, my mother became upset. The nurse had then asked her if she had picked out a name for me and my dear mother replied "No Damn Mo". The nurse asked my mother if she really wanted to name me that. My mom replied "Yes! No damn mo!" The nurse then told my mother that she could not name this beautiful child "No damn mo".

My mother wanted a baby girl so bad that she didn't even want to look at me. But God fixed her. He made me the prettiest little baby she had ever seen. I had a head full of curly black hair, two big brown eyes and soft caramel colored skin. Once my mom finally decided to take me from the nurse, she fell hopelessly in love with me and forgot all about having a baby girl. At each holiday event after my birth my mother would tell that story to our family and friends, not realizing or caring that it was traumatizing me.

My mother was the type of mother who would love you to death but if you got on her bad side she would beat you to death. Like most black parents back then she taught us to respect our elders, teachers, neighbors and the authorities. We had to show respect or be liable to getting either slapped or knocked down. My mom really cared about us but strangely she didn't care about our feelings. She took great pleasure in our embarrassing moments and loved to humiliate us. However, she always taught us that family was everything and that we must stick together no matter what. She said that no one should ever come between family and that we should always love and protect one another.

My mother (Thelma Rivers) was born and raised in Detroit, Mi. However, her mother (Nettie Harris) was born and raised in the South where she saw slavery and the inhumane treatment of Blacks. My grandmother would gather my brothers and sisters and I together and she would tell us many stories of the injustices that Black people of the South had to endure. She said that we were lucky to have been born in the North. She taught us about racism and the prejudices in the world. My mother added that we might not be living in the time of slavery but we are and will always be living in a time of racism.

"Don't ever think that the white man will ever treat you as his equal or as a true friend," my mother would say. "They will smile in your face then stab you as soon as your back is turned. She said that whites have been taught by their parents that they were better than Blacks and they believed it. She also said that they were taught that Blacks should be serving or be subservient to Whites and are incapable of reading, writing, adding and subtracting. White parents teach their children that Black people are like animals-monkeys with tails and they believe that too. Ain't that a trip?" All black parents had these conversations with their children because as children we didn't understand prejudices,...