Conant Gardens is a historically Black neighborhood in northeast

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...

. The neighborhood was once the most exclusive Black neighborhood in that city, and residents of Conant Gardens comprised the most highly educated Black enclave in Detroit.Sugrue, p
41

History

The land where Conant Gardens now lies was once owned by Shubael Conant, an abolitionist and the founder and first president of the Detroit Anti-Slavery Society in 1837. In his will, he stated that, "blacks could purchase or build new homes on his northeastern Detroit property." The area was not densely populated until around 1920, as growth of everything in and near Detroit related to the automotile industry soared. Conant Gardens' lack of

restrictive covenant A covenant, in its most general sense and historical sense, is a solemn promise to engage in or refrain from a specified action. Under historical English common law, a covenant was distinguished from an ordinary contract by the presence of a s ...

s made it an appealing place for Black professionals to build homes. In 1942 and 1943, some in the primarily Black, middle-class community even protested against the construction of the Sojourner Truth Housing project, a federally funded

public housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, de ...

project, for fear that a public housing project near their neighborhood would bring down their 'exclusive' status. The residents of Conant Gardens allied with nearby white homeowners associations; Thomas J. Sugrue, author of ''The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit'', characterizes the alliance as "unlikely." Much like their white, middle-class counterparts, the Black residents of Conant Gardens created restrictive covenants to prevent multiple housing and other "undesirable" circumstances that could impact their status as the most exclusive Black neighborhood in Detroit. As late as 1966 the Krainz Woods Neighborhood Organization, a mostly-white organization posted, in an

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

newspaper, an advertisement asking for Conant Gardens residents to attend a meeting at an area church to protest proposed scattered-site housing and open occupancy. The white residents of Krainz Woods wanted to recruit middle-class Blacks in Conant Gardens to oppose public housing. In 2001 the Conant Gardeners Club wrote and published a book about the neighborhood.Conant Gardens produced talent
" ''

The Detroit News ''The Detroit News'' is one of the two major newspapers in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan. The paper began in 1873, when it rented space in the rival ''Detroit Free Press'' building. ''The News'' absorbed the ''Detroit Tribune'' on Februar ...

''. June 20, 2001. Retrieved on November 6, 2012. "It's a little-known and inspiring story and it's going to be told in a book. The Conant Gardens neighborhood near Pershing High School never had restrictive deed covenants limiting land parcels to whites only. So, the neighborhood -- from its beginning -- was a tidy enclave of working-class blacks in comfortable homes. Conant Gardens is bounded by East Seven Mile, East Nevada, Ryan and Conant. The Conant Gardeners club is busy writing a book about .. - Also in
Conant Gardens' inspiring past comes alive
" ''

''. June 28, 2001. Today, the

median household income The median income is the income amount that divides a population into two equal groups, half having an income above that amount, and half having an income below that amount. It may differ from the mean (or average) income. Both of these are ways ...

of the Conant Gardens neighborhood is $28,024, just over half of

's median household income.

Cityscape

Conant Gardens is in northeast

located just west of Detroit's

Krainz Woods Krainz Woods (colloquially known as Krainz and Krainz Park) is a neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan. The neighborhood was named after Captain John Krainz Jr., a World War II hero from Detroit. The neighborhood was once home to Malcolm X, who live ...

neighborhood.Sugrue, p
40
Houses were built in a variety of architectural styles including Tudor Revival and the

Craftsmen Craftsman may refer to: A profession *Artisan, a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative *Master craftsman, an artisan who has achieved such a standard that he may establish his own workshop and take o ...

style. It is located between Conant Street and the City of Highland Park, north of the City of Hamtramck. Seven Mile Road served as the boundary between Conant Gardens and a white working class area.Bjorn and Gallert, p
68
The neighborhood boundaries are Conant Street, East Seven Mile, Ryan Road, and East Nevada Street. It is located almost from

Paradise Valley In religion, paradise is a place of exceptional happiness and delight. Paradisiacal notions are often laden with pastoral imagery, and may be cosmogonical or eschatological or both, often compared to the miseries of human civilization: in paradis ...

. Due to its close proximity to

that neighboring community is sometimes mistaken as being within Conant Gardens. Pershing High School is located in Conant Gardens, in proximity to the residential area. Thomas J. Sugrue, author of ''The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit'', said that Conant Gardens was "more suburban than urban, surrounded by open fields and remote from the city's business and industrial districts." The neighborhood had single family detached houses, many of which had large lawns. The streets were lined with trees. Sugrue said that the houses were modern, the lawns were "well-manicured" and the streets were "quiet". The Double V Bar, a jazz hall, opened in 1942. The Club Deliese, a jazz hall which was owned by Jewish people and had an African American manager, opened in 1945. It changed its name to the "Club El-Morocco" three years after its opening. Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert, authors of ''Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit, 1920-60'', said that the club remained open until at least 1953 and that Deliese was "the more substantial jazz spot of the two."

Demographics

By the 1940s and 1950s, Conant Gardens was relatively well-populated. The residents were primarily Black businesspeople, lawyers, ministers, and teachers. In 1950, in terms of all neighborhoods with over 500 black people, the median income of black families and unrelated individuals of the tracts 603 and 604, respectively, were the highest in Detroit; the tracts correspond to Conant Gardens. That year, 60% of the residents owned their houses. Today, the neighborhood is 90.7% Black, 4.9% Native American, 0.9% White, 0.2% Hispanic or Latino, and 3.3% two or more races. 48.8% of today's neighborhood's residents live below the

poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...

, which is higher than the city of Detroit's percentage of the population below the poverty line.

Education

Conant Gardens is zoned to Detroit Public Schools. Residents are zoned to Mason K-8 School for elementary and middle school. All residents are zoned to Pershing High School, which has been ranked number 29 of 129 schools in Wayne County for athletics. The current Mason school was the former Farwell Elementary-Middle School. The previous Mason Elementary School closed in 2012 and consolidated into Farwell. Previously Conant Gardens was zoned to Atkinson Elementary School. At a later point it was zoned to Van Zile Elementary School.Elementary School Boundary Map
" '' Detroit Public Schools''. Retrieved October 20, 2009. Residents were previously zoned to Farwell K-8 for middle school.Middle School Boundary Map
" '' Detroit Public Schools''. Retrieved October 20, 2009.Middle School Attendance Areas
" '' Detroit Public Schools''. July 10, 2003. Retrieved on November 2, 2012.

References

* Bjorn, Lars and Jim Gallert. ''Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit, 1920-60''.

University of Michigan Press The University of Michigan Press is part of Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. It publishes 170 new titles each year in the humanities and social sciences. Titles from the press have earned numerous awards, including ...

, June 22, 2001. , 9780472067657. * Shaw, Todd C. ''Now Is the Time!: Detroit Black Politics and Grassroots Activism''.

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 ...

, September 4, 2009. , 9780822345084. * Sugrue, Thomas J. ''The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit''.

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

, August 1, 2005. , 9780691121864. *Rambeau, David, Ed., "Conant Gardens, A Black Urban Community, 1925-1950, By The Conant Gardeners" The Detroit 300 Fund, 2001. , 2001092511.

History

Cityscape

Demographics

Education

See also

References

Notes

Further reading