Urban Renewal and the Fight for Fair Housing in Ann Arbor

This photograph of Bethel A.M.E Church appears in a 1957 Souvenir Program provided by the Church in celebration of the religious organization’s centennial year.

Bethel A.M.E. was a stronghold of community gathering and action in the Black community of Ann Arbor's North Central area, hosting events like the Nursery School Parade pictured above.

Rev. David A. Blake, Sr. served as minister of Bethel A.M.E. from 1933-1937 and hosted events where multiple Black church congregations gathered to talk abaout community action surrounding racial discrimination in the area. He was eventually elected the first Black American to serve as Board Supervisor of the 4th Ward in 1951.

This newspaper clipping advertises an upcoming sermon by Lt. David A. Blake, Jr., son of Rev. David A. Blake Sr., who served as minister at Bethel A.M.E. from 1933-1937. Several notable community leaders came from the church, including Rev. David A. Blake Sr. and Rev. Lyman Parks, who later played a role in the desegregation of Ann Arbor public schools. 

This photograph depicts a racially-integrated school dance for students attending the Jones School in 1949. During this era, the school was involved in early attempts to integrate primary education by offering busing for white students from towns just north of Washtenaw county.

The Jones School, now Community High School, is a historically Black neighborhood in present-day Kerrytown. While it was open, the school served as a site for food drives, donation efforts, and recreational programs for Black students living in the area. In 1963, the Jones School was determined a "de facto'' segregated school by the Ann Arbor Board of Education and subsequently closed due to community pressure. 

Mirroring the history of the school district from almost exactly twenty years prior, the Ann Arbor Board of Education established a Committee on Excellence to reassess how racial disparities continued to pervade the system. Page 1 notes how the Board Of  consistently rejected proposed racial integration plans, and Page 2 describes the relationship between housing disparities and the educational system.

This 1964 article in the Ann Arbor News reveals the overwhelming segregation of Black students into the Jones and Mack schools (which reported that Black students comprised respectively 75.4% and 41.1% of their student populations), as well as the grade disparities between Black and white students. The publication of these statistics  led to broad support by civil rights groups and Black families in the North Central area to close the Jones School, as well as to restructure the city’s education system.

This newspaper clipping describes a demonstration by parents of students in the Willow Village school district, which covered an area developed in between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti alongside the World War II era Willow Run factory. Black parents of students in the system had organized themselves with the help of Rev. David A. Blake Jr. of Bethel A.M.E. Church to protest the potential move of Black students from the integrated Ross school to the segregated Simmonds school.

The 1963 Freedom Rally, sponsored by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was a march from City Hall to the First Method Church near the University of Michigan’s Central Campus. Preceding the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington D.C., SNCC was joined by demonstrators of the Ann Arbor Fair Housing Association.

This demonstration along Summit St in the Northeast Central area of the city was organized to protest city Mayor Cecil O. Creal's weakened fair housing ordinance. The community members in this photo carry picket signs pointing out the government’s hypocrisy in investing in a plan, but only one that would be unactionable.

This article describes a demonstration sponsored by the Ann Arbor Fair Housing Association - CORE in response to City Council’s support for a weakened fair housing ordinance at the end of July 1963. The protest mentioned was part of a larger summer of civic action to get the City Council to invest fully in the idea of a fair housing ordinance.

This is a flyer distributed by the Ann Arbor Area Fair Housing Association -- CORE to announce a vigil for housing that started on July 21, 1963. The document contains a list of action items for citizens to get involved in the push for a fair housing ordinance, ranging from contacting city councilmembers to influencing media coverage of support for such a measure.

This article from the Ann Arbor News offers the perspectives of sixteen community members who attended a demonstration to push City Council to adopt a fair housing ordinance.

This annotated document was created by the Ann Arbor branch of the NAACP to alert citizens about  demonstrations for a more equitable Human Relations Commission in city government. It includes an overview of the causes for the demonstrations, standards for involvement, and additional related facts about city governance. Annotations throughout the document come from an unknown source.