Timeline of Anarchy in the 20th Century
[Fall '25 note from Ben: This page is unfinished due to technical issues at the time and is therefore not an example of a finished page. The intended finished product would arrange the written timeline in the scroll format above it and fully cite the sources I used for the timeline.)
1516 - Thomas More’s Utopia satirically originates term by imagining “New World” as utopia
July 24, 1701 - Detroit founded
1790 - Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men first published
February 21 1791 - Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, in part a response to friend and colleague Wollstonecraft, first published
January 1792 - Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, an expansion on her preceding work and one of the earliest anglophone works of feminist thought, first published
February 14, 1793 - William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, a response to Wollstonecraft and Paine and one of the first anglophone elaborations of philosophical anarchism, first published
1794 - Godwin’s Things as They Are first published, a rather transparent allegorization of his prior work in fictitious “propaganda by the word”
1805 - The Great Fire of 1805, Augustus Woodward tasked with planning new city
1817 - Territorial Governor Lewis Cass discards Woodward’s wagon wheel city plan for grid layout, although downtown Detroit still bears features of Woodward’s wagon wheel plan
August 26, 1817 - The Catholepistemiad (University of Michigan) founded in Detroit, in part by Augustus Woodward
1818 - Shelley’s Frankenstein first published, recombining her parents’ radical ideas with her father’s practice of “propaganda by the word” in a much less simplistic allegory
1824 - Ann Arbor founded
1837 - Michigan becomes state, Detroit becomes capital of new state of Michigan, UofM relocated to Ann Arbor
1840 - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's What Is Property? published
1844 - Max Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own published
1848 - Lansing made new state capital
April 18, 1850 - Joseph Labadie born in Paw Paw, MI
1865 - Detroit Public Library founded
December 3, 1870 - Agnes Inglis born in Detroit
1876 - Benjamin Tucker’s translation of Proudhon published
March 11, 1811 - Luddite movement founded in Nottingham, England
1835 - The first volume of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America published, inaugurating study of American individualism
November 17, 1866 - Anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre born in Leslie, MI
1867 - Das Kapital first published
1868 - John Stuart Mill coins term “dystopia” as antonym for “utopia”
December 1885 - Emma Goldman immigrated to USA
May 4, 1886 - Haymarket riot
1887 - Das Kapital first published in English
November 1887 - Execution of four charged in Haymarket Riot
July 1 – November 20, 1892 - Homestead strike
1892 - Peter Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread, foundational text of anarcho-communism, first published
June 4, 1898 - Laurence Labadie born
September 6, 1901 - President William McKinley assassinated by Michigan anarchist Leon Czolgosz, “newly inaugurated President Theodore Roosevelt declared, ‘When compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance’" ”Executed 45 days later, “Czolgosz's last words were: ‘I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people – the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime. I am sorry I could not see my father.’”
1902 - Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, a landmark adaptation of Darwinian theory against what we now know as social Darwinism, first published
1903 - “Tucker was responsible for the original publication of Byington's English translation of The Ego and Its Own in 1903, which Tucker considered to be one of the most significant accomplishments of his career.” (Welsh, 120)
March 3, 1903 - Immigration Act of 1903 (AKA Anarchist Exclusion Act) put into effect in response to Haymarket riot
June 16, 1903 - Ford Motor Company founded
June 27, 1905 - Industrial Workers of the World founded in Chicago
1907 - Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread first published in English
September 16, 1908 - General Motors Company founded in Detroit
1909 - Woodward Ave (M1), between 6 Mile and 7 Mile, becomes first mile of paved highway in USA
1910 - Goldman’s Anarchism and Other Essays first published
October 16, 1918 - Immigration Act of 1918 (aka Alien Anarchists Exclusion Act of 1918)
January 21, 1919 – April 1, 1920 - First Red Scare
December 21, 1919 - Emma Goldman deported to Russia for anarchism
April 15, 1920 - Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti kill two men in robbery of Slater-Morrill Shoe Company factory payroll transport
July 14, 1921 - Sacco & Vanzetti sentenced to execution
June 6, 1925 - Chrysler Corporation founded in Highland Park within Detroit
1932 - Frida Kahlo’s Henry Ford Hospital released
February 4, 1932 - Huxley’s Brave New World, portraying an explicitly Fordist dystopia, first published
1933 - Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry Mural, funded by Edsel Ford, debuts
October 7, 1933 - Joseph Labadie dies in Detroit
January 31, 1945 - In France, Dearbornite Eddie Slovik became only American executed by Americans during WWII
March 21, 1947 - President Harry Truman initiates Second Red Scare (later known as McCarthyism) with Executive Order 9835 demanding vetting of federal employees for “subversive” ideologies, grouping anarchists and communists with fascists and totalitarians.
1952 - Disclaimer posted on Detroit Industry Mural reading: “Rivera’s politics and his publicity seeking are detestable. But let’s get the record straight on what he did here. He came from Mexico to Detroit, thought our mass production industries and our technology wonderful and very exciting, painted them as one of the great achievements of the twentieth century. This came after the debunking twenties when our artists and writers found nothing worthwhile in America and worst of all in America was the Middle West. Rivera saw and painted the significance of Detroit as a world city. If we are proud of this city’s achievements, we should be proud of these paintings and not lose our heads over what Rivera is doing in Mexico today.”
January 30, 1952 - Agnes Inglis dies in Michigan
January 12, 1959 - Motown founded
January 30, 1959 - construction begins on what would become I-375, now officially recognized as a legalistic way of breaking up Detroit’s influential Black Bottom neighborhood
1960 - Frank Sinatra labeled Communist sympathizer for announcing intention to adapt story of Dearbornite deserter Eddie Slovik, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) founded at UofM
1962 - Ted Kaczynski enrolls at UofM, CLR James and Raya Dunayevskaya’s socialist libertarian Facing Reality group founded and then based primarily in Detroit
1964 - Labadie Collection founded at UofM, Kaczynski earns Masters in math at UofM, George Clinton moves Parliament-Funkadelic to Detroit
June 12, 1964 - I-375 opens and remains the nation’s shortest signed highway for over forty years after
1965 - Fifth Estate founded in Detroit
1966 - Black Panther Party founded in Oakland, CA
February 23, 1967 - Noam Chomsky enters public eye with “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” and remains in public eye throughout career as one of the most recognizable American anarchists
July 23rd, 1967 - 12th St Riots
1967 - Valerie Solanas’ anarcha-feminist SCUM Manifesto self-published, Kaczynski earns PhD in math at UofM
May 1968 - Black communist organization Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) founded in Detroit
June 3, 1968 - Solanas attempts to assassinate Andy Warhol
1968 - global (student) riots, Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto commercially published, Detroit chapter of Black Panther Party founded, LeGuin publishes A Wizard of Earthsea (the first novel in the anarchist fantasy series later plagiarized by JK Rowling)
November 1, 1968 - White Panther Party founded in SE MI by John and Leni Sinclair and Pun Plamondon (“first hippie to be listed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list”)
1969 - Sinclair arrested for marijuana possession, Weather Underground founded at UofM
January 10, 1969 - Star Trek episode fictionalizing race riots, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” airs, allegedly featuring footage of Detroit riots
June 1969 - League of Revolutionary Black Workers founded in Detroit by splintering from DRUM
1970 - Black & Red Books printed at the Detroit-based Detroit Printing Co-op between 1970 and 1980, last census reporting Detroit as majority white
December 12, 1970 - Black Workers Congress formed in Detroit by split from League of Revolutionary Black Workers, understood as the intellectual arm splitting from League’s more labor-side constituency
1971 - Written in Jackson State Prison, Goines’ Dopefiend published, argued by Vincent Haddad to inaugurate “the Detroit genre.”
June 18, 1971 - Hazelwood massacre, largest mass killing in Detroit history, galvanizes Detroit’s “Murder City” reputation as the city leads nation in murders through the 1970s
June 1972 - Motown leaves Detroit for Los Angeles
October 2, 1972 - Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 first applies the term “punk” to garage rock, with garage rock framed significantly as a southeast Michigan phenomenon.
August 7, 1973 - Detroit 9000 debuts in Detroit
May 1974 - LeGuin’s The Dispossessed first published
1975 - Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus Trilogy first published, elaborating and popularizing anarchist theology of Discordianism as well as “the 23 enigma” and Illuminati conspiracy theories
1976 - 12th Street in Detroit renamed Rosa Parks Boulevard, Trotskyist organization Revolutionary Workers League founded in Detroit
July 28, 1976 - KISS release “Detroit Rock City”
November 26, 1976 - The Sex Pistols release “Anarchy in the UK,” invoking Detroit radicalism via Detroit garage rock in “punk” term and other radical chic highlighting affinity between aesthetics and politics.
1977 - Renaissance Center opens
May 25, 1978 - First known bombing by Kaczynski
1980 - Census data shows Detroit’s population as majority Black for first time
October 19, 1981 - Journey release “Don’t Stop Believin’”
January 5, 1983 - Anarchism in America, featuring Dead Kennedys, released
1984 - DC’s Justice League comic line relocates superhero team to Detroit, “Normally, Detroit might have seen 50 to 60 fires reported over a 24-hour period. Yet in 1983, an astounding 553 fires were recorded during a 72-hour period around Halloween; in 1984, Devil’s Night saw a record 810 fires.” (Rossen)
December 5, 1984 - Beverly Hills Cop premiers across USA
July 17, 1987 - Robocop premiers
July 31, 1987 - People Mover opens
1988 - Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit draws international attention to local Afrofuturism
Autumn 1988 - first issue of Babyfish
February 1989 - The Crow comic debuts
July 20, 1989 - Ben is born at Henry Ford Hospital on W Grand Blvd
1991 - Anarchist infoshop 404 Willis opens in Detroit
1993 - Dwayne McDuffie founds Milestone Comics (portrays a Midwest-centered universe based in large part on Detroit area, origin of Static Shock and Ben 10), Trumbullplex founded
March 31, 1993 - Brandon Lee dies in Detroit while filming The Crow
May 13, 1994 - The Crow film debuts
April 24, 1995 - Last known bombing by Kaczynski
September 19, 1995 - Kaczynski’s Industrial Society and Its Future (aka the Unabomber Manifesto) first published under tenuous guarantee that publication would end bombings
1996 - Crimethinc founded, reasserting affinities between anarchism and punk rock for Generation X
April 3, 1996 - Kaczynski arrested, in part for similarities between his manifesto and a 1971 essay written under his own name, and begins donating ephemera to UofM for preservation
April 11, 2000 - Comerica Park opens, leaving Tigers Stadium to blight
May 27-29, 2000 - First Detroit Electronic Music Festival, then a free three day festival on the Detroit riverfront but later monetized and renamed Movement
2002 - Fifth Estate relocates away from Detroit
August 24, 2002 - Ford Field opens next to Comerica Park
November 8, 2002 - 8 Mile debuts
January 3, 2008 - T Baby’s viral “It’s So Cold in the D” posted to Youtube
August 2010 - After playing an instrumental role in the 2007-2008 mortgage crisis, Dan Gilbert relocates Quicken Loans to Detroit
August 23, 2011 - Montreal-made cyberpunk video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution debuts, offers one of the first open world game renderings of Detroit
September 17, 2011 - Occupy Wall Street begins in NYC
October 14, 2011 - Occupy Detroit
March 2013 - City of Detroit declares financial emergency, governor Rick Snyder announces that state will assume financial control of city
July 18, 2013 - City of Detroit declares bankruptcy, the largest city to ever do so
2015 - Motor City Muckraker reports on Gilbert’s companies illegally installing surveillance cameras on others’ property in downtown Detroit
May 12, 2017 - Q-Line opens
September 5, 2017 - Little Caesars Arena opens after controversies about displacements of residents and business owners and receiving over $1B in tax breaks from the city council and state
May 25, 2018 - French-made cyberpunk video game Detroit: Become Human debuts, intending to show a more utopian Detroit amid larger “comeback” narrative.
July 27, 2018 - Katheryn Bigelow’s Detroit (the first direct Hollywood adaptation of the 12th St Riots) debuts
December 4, 2024 - United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson assassinated, suspect Luigi Mangione subsequently reported to be inspired by Kaczynski’s manifesto for having left a favorable review of it on Goodreads.