Roughly a half mile long, the Birwood Wall was built in 1941 specifically to separate black and white homeowners on the west side of Detroit.

While white residents were incentivized to move into homeownership through FHA loans, the government refused to loan them the money due to this Eight Mile neighborhood because of its close proximity to the African Americans already living nearby. A developer proposed the erection of the wall to separate the neighborhood and help keep property values on the white side high. 

The wall still stands to this day as a reminder of Detroit’s painful past of racially segregated housing, though local community activists have painted it with colorful and education murals.

During the Great Depression, a black couple named Orsel and Minnie McGhee moved into a rental property on an all-white block on Seebaldt Street. The property was rented to the McGhee’s because Orsel could easily pass for white, however, when neighbors saw Mrs. McGhee working in the yard weeks later, they sued on the basis of restrictive covenants.

The McGhees were represented by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in the trial. The case made its way to the United State Supreme Court, who in favor of the McGhees. 

Years later, a book written by their granddaughter, The Color of Courage, would go on to become a network feature film. 

On the corner of Virginia Park and Windermere sits the home where civil rights activist,Rosa Parks lived for 30 years. The Civil Rights icon moved to Detroit after living in Montgomery, Alabama where she ignited the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott. 

In Detroit, Parks continued her activism career. She worked for Congressman John Conyers and raised money for the legal defense for activist Angela Davis. 

Parks lived in Detroit longer than she did in Alabama, and remained interested in civil rights until her death. She is buried in the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Due to its proximity to Canada, the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act made Detroit a key part of the Underground Railroad. St. Matthews Episcopal Church, founded in 1846 by William and Julia Lambert, would become a stop on the Underground Railroad. The son of the founders, Benjamin Lambert, founded the Detroit NAACP in 1912.

The church was initially located in Paradise Valley, an all-black enclave in Detroit, which was razed for the construction of I-75. St. Matthews Episcopal Church is now located in the North End on Woodward Avenue. The interior of the church is adorned with twenty scenes depicting the life of Christ and the floor of the church is Pewabic tile. The stained glass windows, including three Tiffany windows, make the interior of the church as magnificent and the exterior.

The Detroit Association of Colored Women’s Clubs was founded in 1921 by eight women’s clubs for the purpose of fostering educational and philanthropic programs. In 1941, club president Dr. Rosa Gragg and the organization bought this mansion to use as its headquarters on the corner of Ferry and Brush streets. 

A restrictive covenant, however, prohibited Blacks from owning property on Ferry. Dr. Gragg had the ingenious idea to close off the Ferry Street entrance and created one on Brush, making the house no longer a part of the covenant. The Detroit Association of Colored Women’s Clubs paid the mansion off in just five years. Today, the club is known now as the Detroit Association of Women’s Clubs as still headquartered on Brush. 

Named after the historic abolitionist, these homes were one of Detroit’s earliest affordable housing neighborhoods, built in 1942 for African Americans to live while they worked in a local factory that had a defense contract. Protests ensued from the white neighbors in the surrounding neighborhood, and surprisingly even some black homeowners from nearby middle-class Conant Gardens,

Ultimately, these protests became increasingly violent. Combined with the challenges of the housing projects, more African Americans working at auto factories, and likely, the collective stress of World War II, a race riot erupted in 1943 with Sojourner Truth Homes as an epicenter. 

The Sojourner Truth Homes were later nicknamed, “Slum Village.” A Detroit hip-hop group by the same name featuring producer J Dilla would become internationally famous. 

Born in Virginia in 1840, Fannie Richards moved to Detroit in her youth and eventually became the city’s first black public school teacher. In 1863, she opened a private school for black children—two years before the legal end of enslavement in America. 

Later Richards was the sponsoring plaintiff in a lawsuit against segregation in the Detroit’s public school system. In a landmark decision, the Michigan Supreme Court sided with Richards and integrated Detroit’s schools. The decision came nearly a century before Brown v Board of Education.

A Michigan Historical Marker sits at this location, marking the site of her home.

When Dr. Ossian Sweet moved onto Garland Street in 1925, he was soon under protest from his all-white neighbors. Dr. Sweet, his wife, and nine of their friends moved into the house with the assistance of a police escort. 

The next night, a crowd of more than 100 gathered outside the Sweet house and began to throw rocks and bottles through the windows. As the riot escalated, people rushed the house in an attempt to enter. In defense, someone inside the home fired shots from the second story and killed one man, wounding another. Police charged Dr. Sweet and all of his companions with first-degree murder

But in a landmark decision, Judge Frank Murphy (future Governor of Michigan) released Sweet and his companions and declared a mistrial. The verdict illustrated that African Americans too had the right to protect their home and property. 

Today, the home is the site of a Michigan Historical Marker and efforts are underway to preserve and turn it into a museum.