African Americans, and particularly the more militant radicals, the ones on the left connected with socialist and communist organizations - they're also connected to the labor movement, and they continued that same kind of enterprise and struggle long after they're no longer affiliated with the union movement. They take that same kind of attitude into political formations in the city, and we see a more dramatic aspect of that in the 1960s and certainly in the rebellion of 1967.
Historian Herb Boyd traces the long legacy of African Americans in Detroit - as migrants seeking freedom from slavery, as organizers building and defending social welfare and labor rights in the face of White supremacy, and as industrial and cultural innovators influencing the world far beyond Detroit's city limits.
Herb is author of the book Black Detroit: A People's History of Self-Determination from Amistad Books.