CHAPTER 1
State of Urban renewal and the Great Jim Brown
"I am going to shoot your ass!" These words emanated from the dark night and rattled around in my brain as my six-foot-three-inch frame with wild disco hair tensed up in anticipation of a sharp blow and the soft verbal response of "Oh God!" escaped my lips. The one open eye could not survey quickly an immediate escape route among the stacks of clutter in this garage lit only by the shadows in the snow.
I remember the year 1978 and how bleak it was. The weather was cold, and there I was hanging out with a friend named Greene Cutlass. We were both broke from factory layoffs, and the fuel gauges in both our cars were on near-empty as usual during the energy crisis of the 1970s. Sometime during the day, I had a dare from my brother, Glen.
There was an abandoned house across Grand River Avenue that was easy picking for pulling a "rip" — a street term associated with taking something that belonged to someone else. I was never any good at taking physical things that did not belong to me, just maybe a kiss from somebody's girl. But I told Greene about it, and we waited for dark to walk up the alleyway to the house.
The dark came, and we parked the car and walked up to the house through the alleyway. We entered the garage looking and feeling about in the dark for something of value. We'd started to pick over stuff when suddenly someone yelled out, "Who is out there?"
Greene and I were stunned. The house was supposed to be empty.
Then the person yelled, "I got a gun, come out with your hands up!"
Greene and I looked for an escape route, but there was no place to go. All we could do was slink slowly out of the shadows and into the moonlight toward the voice.
The man holding the pistol was angry and said he was tired of people ripping the house off. He told us that this night was going to be our worst nightmare. He planned to call a friend to help get the message out to leave this house alone, and the two of us would be the message-carriers.
Greene and I were subdued in our responses, because we did not want to fuel the man's anger any more than it already was and have the pistol go off. He held the gun and told us to go into the house so he could call his buddy for assistance in taking care of us. Of course, at this point, my mind was thinking the worse. It appeared that I was either going to get shot dead or pistol-whipped to a pulp. I was not happy. I was also afraid and angry at my brother for getting me into this mess. I calmly prayed and asked for God's help through the name of Jesus Christ.
The guy placed his call with the pistol still in his hand. When he finished the call, he started to ask us why we were in the garage. I told him that we'd heard the house was abandoned, and we were looking for something of value to take. He got upset again, shouting loudly that this house was not abandoned. Greene and I made our apologies, but the guy said he was waiting for his friend to determine the next step. The tone of his statement did not sound very encouraging to either Greene or me.
Shortly thereafter, there was a knock on the door. Another man entered carrying a pistol down at his side. As he walked into the room, the first guy updated him on what had been taking place in the garage. The situation did not look good for Greene and me. Again, Greene and I apologized for our actions, but the situation looked grim. The second guy said something to the first guy that I could not make out, but I could now see his face in the light. It was Cleve Childs, a friend from high school and the Big Boy Restaurant. It had been nearly nine years since I had seen that face. My only hope now was that he remembered my face from back in the day.
I gained his attention and told him that I thought I knew him.
He grimly muttered back, "Yep!"
I said from work and school.
He grimly muttered back again, "Yep!"
Cleve never said much, but when he did, people always seemed to listen. Cleve said a few words to the other guy; the guy put his gun away and then Cleve put his gun away. Now all the guns were put away, and the situation was becoming less tense. I think it is fair to say that when Cleve walked through the door that wintry evening, God had answered my prayer.
Now I was just waiting for word to take leave of my captors, because I was ready to get out of there and never look back. My first stop would be to find my sibling and wring his neck.
The evening had turned benevolent, as our captors suddenly became our hosts. They offered us some of their powdery stash. I was in shock; I partook of the hospitality, but I was still uncomfortable. I did not want the air to change back to hostile. Greene, on the other hand, was acting like he lived there, and in my opinion was getting too damn comfortable.
In my view, we'd literally dodged a bullet, so I thought it was time to go. They shared their stash, and Greene and I stayed about another thirty minutes. During the whole episode, Cleve and I did not say much to each other, and when Greene and I left, it was the last time I ever saw Cleve Childs. Finally, Greene and I headed to the car, and I was relieved. We had an unbelievable story to tell, and without a doubt we were grateful for the absence of malice in the hearts of our armed hosts.
My prayer had been answered, but I was still angry at my brother for planting the seed of thievery and angry at Greene because he wanted to hang around a volatile situation. I was not raised a thief. I received my "be safe" speech before I left the house. I am grateful that I survived this harrowing encounter, and I hoped that the rest of 1978 would not have so much potential for disaster.
The Second Negro Migration
"Ain't nothin' to do in the country but look in the mailbox!" That was the complaint of my Aunt Wadean during my interview with her, the youngest daughter of my maternal grandmother, Roxie. She headed toward the industrial north from Bolivar, Tennessee, looking for domestic work alongside her sisters and brothers in the 1940s. However, Wadean told me many years later that she was a bit bewildered because her journey started at age fourteen, much earlier than her older sisters'.
According to my Aunt Rubye and my mother, Lydia, Wadean was a rambunctious teenager running wild about the countryside instead of hitting the schoolbooks. The family was concerned because my grandmother, Roxie Jones Cheshier Sherley, was getting on in years and still raising children from a second marriage. As a result, she could not keep up with Wadean. The family was determined that since Wadean did not attend school, she needed to grow up and get a job in the real world of the 1940s just as her older siblings had to do.
Grow up Wadean did, first heading to Louisville, Kentucky, for a few years and then north to Detroit, Michigan. For my maternal family, Louisville, Kentucky, served as a stopover along the way under the mentorship of my great Uncle Maston Jones, the headwaiter at the famed Brown Hotel. Once Wadean reached her final destination of Detroit, she gained steady employment on the factory floor of the automobile industry and then rose to the position of foreman. At some point, Wadean earned the equivalent of a high-school diploma. Steady employment allowed her to become a homeowner and a car owner, living single and fancy-free. As a result of her good fortune, she sent money back home to her mother in Bolivar and helped her siblings in financial distress whenever she could. I am sure my maternal grandparents would have been proud of Wadean's accomplishments.
Although Wadean lived out her American dream, she died alone and in need of medical care. She had acquired material goods and personal freedom but had no husband and no children, just her legal guardian, my mother. From a religious standpoint, it was awkward at her funeral when my mother stood at the podium in front of the sparse group and wondered whether or not her sister Wadean was a Christian and had been saved. I was shocked when the question was raised in a public ceremony. Personally, I did not think that was an issue for others to question. For me, it was an issue to be discussed between the person and the Almighty, not a third party.
"Boy! When you get up to Cincinnati, you can sit anywhere you wanna!"
That's what my paternal grandfather, Ernest Davidson of Rocky Hill, Kentucky, shouted to his eldest son, O'Neil, to prepare him for the road north a few years short of the start of World War II. For the Negro rider using public transportation as a means of travel in the segregated South, whether to and from work or for a journey of leisure, it was understood that he would move from the front of bus to the rear in a timely manner as required. If it got to the point that the Negro rider heard the phrase "Get to the back of the bus!" it was too late to avoid rebuke.
It really did not matter that the Negro rider was exhausted from a tough day of physical labor, or heading off to church or to meet friends wearing his favorite suit of clothes. He was required to make way for others who had privilege. And if he didn't, the Negro rider was subject to penalty of mental or physical ridicule. If the Negro rider became uncooperative or belligerent about the law of the land, the Negro rider could ultimately face the rap of a white policeman's nightstick or, even worse, fines or jail time.
Now the Negro rider, scarred and exhausted of strength in free fall, knows if the flight is survived then he could make it back to the neighborhood. Once there, he could seek cover among the ethnic terrain, mend his wounds, regain his strength, and cling to life in the period of segregation. Most importantly, this lone survivor can preserve his personal dignity and fight another day.
O'Neil told me that he conformed to the travel conditions as he headed north. On the farm, it was O'Neil's job to pick up a small-caliber rifle each morning and head off into the woods seeking meat for the table. "A possum would do," he told me, "but a groundhog would be even better."
Like many young men of color in rural communities, O'Neil was ready to leave the farm and head to the big city during the Negro migration. In O'Neil's master plan, the target destination was Dayton, Ohio, a few hours north of Kentucky across the Ohio River, a way station for my paternal family. He had two aunts in Dayton who owned and operated a restaurant. So O'Neil headed north on segregated transportation during segregated times to seek his fortune.
After O'Neil crossed the Ohio River, his master plan began to take shape. He started doing chores in the restaurant and other odd jobs in the Dayton area When World War II began, O'Neil enlisted in the army as part of his investment as a citizen. As a black American soldier serving with the engineers in support of the predominately white military fighting force, O'Neil stated, he was treated as a second-class citizens on the battlefield and during garrison duty.
After the war, O'Neil returned to Dayton, where he worked on the factory floor of General Motors for the next forty years. He achieved his American dream, becoming a property owner and raising a large family. O'Neil passed on in his nineties with his large, loving family surrounding him.
Relative to life on the farm, the 1984 movie The Natural follows a mature farm boy — Roy Hobbs, portrayed by actor Robert Redford — following his dream of playing baseball. At one point, Roy asks Iris, the character portrayed by actress Glenn Close, the big question: did she sell the farm?
Iris's response to Roy was, "No, I will always have that!"
Roy replied, "Good. It's home!"
It should be noted that the lead characters in the movie are white, and this eloquent statement may be marked by sharp contrast with the African-American experience of farm life.
Although the ground is considered God's green earth and a gift to man, according to my father, Reuben Davidson, a man of African descent and a farm boy of the 1930s and 1940s, it still required material resources: livestock and machinery to work and keep the earth green and make things grow. Historically, few Negroes owned or had access to the resources needed to cultivate the land they owned, and as a result, thousands of them departed the land for the north.
During the first half of the twentieth century, thousands of Negroes migrated from the agricultural south to the industrial north looking for greater economic opportunity in metropolitan cities. It was not uncommon during the migration process for blacks to use cities, homes, and hospitality of friends and relatives who had settled from earlier journeys as a way station or rest area along the way to their final destination. This was a reality of the segregated times: the Negro of the South had to be self- sufficient, because many of the basic human services and products needed to live and raise families were not available to them outside of their own collective community.
According to Booker T. Washington, in the 1890s, the Negro of the South owned or operated nearly 22 percent of the farmland in the South Central states and 30 percent in the South Atlantic states. The Negro of the post-Civil War era had a huge political investment in the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, until the depression caused 30 million workers to become unemployed in the 1930s. Washington also cited that Negroes represented 19 percent of all homeowners in America during the time period, but with such affirmative statistics, why leave the South? The simple answer is probably that each new generation looks for something different from the generation of old. It appears that formal education could have been a contributor. Historian George W. Williams suggested that young educated Negroes in the post-Civil War era believed that farming was below their dignity.
The mass exodus from the South to the North took its economic toll on the white population in both agricultural cities across the South and industrial cities in the North. First, in the South, there was no longer a concentrated and controlled labor force to maintain the agricultural infrastructure. On the other hand, in the North, swelling populations consumed available resources, including food, water, and shelter.
In a "Raw Data" chart for the Detroit Free Press, Kristi Tanner cites a statistic that in 1914, the Detroit population was at 675,000 and then peaked to 1.8 million in 1950 before the drastic decline began that still continues. After the turn of twentieth century, the black population in the city of Detroit expanded more than thirty-five times, from a community of approximately four thousand people to a massive community of 150,000 people over a period of fifty years.
Looking at the surnames Davidson, Davison, and Davis, the 1900 US Census shows approximately fifteen African-American families with the surname Davidson or Davison living in Michigan, compared to the 1930 US Census which shows approximately thirty-six African-American families with those surnames living in Michigan. The 1900 US Census shows approximately 140 African-American families with the surname Davis living in Michigan, compared to the 1930 US Census showing approximately 1,753 African-American families with the surname Davis living in Michigan. The small sampling indicates an increase of more than double over a period of thirty years.
Detroit brought people together through mass production and music. The city was already an industrial center during the nineteenth century. In the twentieth, it became the epicenter of the automobile manufacturing industry. The city attracted people from different walks of life and cultures, and it steadily grew into the fifth largest metropolitan city in the United States, a figure displayed at the Detroit Historical Museum in Downtown Detroit. Ford Motor Company opened up the pay window and offered five-dollar-a-day wages for laborers. For the Negro, the thought of trading a job pushing a plow in the fields for a job on a fast-moving assembly line was inspiration enough to make the long journey from the South. However, discrimination was prevalent, and the general hiring rule was that Negro workers were hired in quotas and assigned to perform the most dangerous jobs as general laborers.
During World War II, additional manpower was required in mass production, so much so that women entered the labor market for the first time outside the home. Still, the heavy influx of Negroes caused a population shift in the industrial north that fueled both friction and fear in the white population. The first recorded race riot in Detroit occurred in. Fueled by the Civil War, the riots resulted in at least two deaths and the beating of a number of Negro inhabitants, as well as destruction of numerous properties. From the violent event, the role of Detroit's police force expanded to uphold the peace.
