Twelve years after the Detroit Parks and Recreation Department entered into service, they proudly announced that they had become the “largest and most active [Department] in our City Government.” Originally created to prevent overlaps in event planning, the department expanded along with the booming city of Detroit. The total acreage of Detroit parks from 1940-52 jumped from 4163 to 5736 acres,...
Until the mid-twentieth century, the north-bordering area of Detroit's east side Black Bottom neighborhood was known as “Paradise Valley.” Its name referred to the high number of black-owned businesses that occupied Hastings Street and St. Antoine Street, the heart of the entrepreneurial neighborhood. At the time, it was the only place with businesses that would all serve blacks. In the 1940s,...
In January 1940, DC Comic debuted a comic following the fastest man alive. Creator Gardner Fox and artist Harry Lampert built the story of Jay Garrick, known as “Flash.” In the first edition of Flash Comics, readers are introduced to Garrick as a college student studying to become a scientist. During one of Jay’s science experiments, he unintentionally inhales hazardous fumes...
Jackie Kennedy sat down with historian, and friend, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., less than for months after his death, to discuss her life with JFK. The recordings of these conversations cover of the politics and the people she encountered during her marriage, as well as JFK as a person. While discussing the early years of her marriage to John, she states that “Daddy told him, keep her riding...
Much can change in the seemingly endless lifespan of a comic book hero, and as the culture surrounding a character's pages shifts, heroes adapt to stay relevant. “Improving the Amazing Amazon” of the 56th issue of the fan magazine Amazing Heroes contains fan advice for improving the DC superhero Wonder Woman as the writer of the series changes. In providing advice, the fan, Lon M. Rovner,...
At the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony held in 2010, Mo’Nique received her Academy Award for outstanding performance of an Actress in a Supporting Role. During her acceptance speech, Mo’Nique gave recognition to a woman who had won the same award seventy years earlier. She expressed her deepest admiration for this woman in these words: “I want to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring...
A painted picture from Mother’s Day issue of The Frauen Warte, a Nazi women’s magazine in 1940, reveals a light haired heavy set woman surrounded by her four children. This is the ideal Aryan, Nazi woman. She is not wearing jewelry and her dress is modest. She is not even wearing a wedding ring. Her four children each have light hair and blue eyes. The children each have a present for...
On May 1st, 1940, Left-Wing Labour Groups marched through the streets of New York. The estimated number of protestors was in the ballpark of 25,000 and 100,000 according to the organizing committee and police officials. The theme: Peace, Jobs, and Civil Liberties. The goal: exhort America to remain an observer to the growing European conflict. The sentiment among protestors was anti-Capitalist,...
The two photographs show very conflicting images. One is a flyer distributed by local white residents requesting assistance from other white people outside their neighborhood to help keep black Detroiters from moving into the newly-completed public housing project just north of Hamtramck and on the eastern boundary of Nortown. It encourages people to “Help the White People to keep this district...
On January 3, 1941, the “Emergency Shipbuilding Program” was announced by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The task was simple: “rapidly build simple cargo ships to carry troops and material to allies during World War II.”
The demand for war ships came in response to the dominance of German U-boats during early part of World War II. In an effort to gain American support to join the war effort,...