The History of Detroit’s Corktown Neighborhood

Most Detroiters know that urban renewal in the 1950s wiped out Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, the historic African-American neighborhoods on the city’s Lower East Side. Less well remembered is that much of the Corktown neighborhood on the near west side suffered the same fate. The City of Detroit demolished entire blocks of Corktown in the post-War World II years, as a city government flush with money and feeling expansive razed what it dismissed as slums… read more >