 
Gpcharles
Member
Username: Gpcharles
Post Number: 2
Registered: 01-2008
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 10:44 am: |    |
Parents moved out of Detroit in the late 50s because they needed a larger house for our big family and there weren't any large homes available on the east side of the city. Off to Grosse Pointe we went. |
Ferntruth
Member
Username: Ferntruth
Post Number: 344
Registered: 11-2006
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 11:30 am: | |
You can live in the airport? That's crazy!"
Not only crazy, but boy is it tough to sleep! |
Ferntruth
Member
Username: Ferntruth
Post Number: 345
Registered: 11-2006
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 11:33 am: | |
didn't lock your doors? On what planet did you grow up?"
May seem foreign to you, but yes my folks also felt perfectly comfortable leaving the doors unlocked - not when they would be gone for a day or two, but certainly while sitting at home or if they ran to the corner store. I can't imagine doing that now. |
Wanderinglady
Member
Username: Wanderinglady
Post Number: 28
Registered: 10-2007
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 12:30 pm: | |
I left because after going to school in Ann Arbor and Chicago, and spending a summer in Washington, DC, Detroit became smaller and smaller. I wanted to experience "bigger ponds", even if I was just a small fish.
I left because of Detroit's bad economy, as well as the social conservatism, the provincialism and the pessimism of the people who live in the metro area. I wanted to do more than get married, go to church every Sunday, have a bunch of kids and go to a boring job until I hit retirement age. I didn't see anyone in Detroit (in my opinion) doing anything new, exciting, creative or progressive. I just wanted to experience more in life than what I grew up with.
A heck of a lot of people in Detroit and the suburbs (not necessarily including posters on this board) still think that it's 1970. That applies to attitudes about the economy, crime, development and yes, race relations.
[As an aside, growing up as a Black child in Detroit in the 1970's, when the busing controversy was brewing, to say that your family moved out of the city because of busing (which was imposed to combat racial segregation in schools) IS to say that your family moved out of the city because you didn't want to be around Black people. It may not be politically correct to say so, but at least people are being honest here, despite the use of euphemisms.]
Given that things really haven't changed very much in my opinion (and I left 25 years ago), and the fact that I have a family here in California, I wouldn't move back to Detroit. I'll come and visit, and I'll still care, because Detroit is my hometown. |
Newport1128
Member
Username: Newport1128
Post Number: 164
Registered: 05-2007
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 2:04 pm: | |
Eastsiderules, looks like you're the one equating blacks with crime. Wonder why so many blacks are moving into suburbs like Harper Woods and Warren. Are they racist, too? Or could it be the crime and decline in city services in Detroit, like everybody else who's moved.
I lived in Detroit until 1976, when I was 25. I moved because of my car getting vandalized on the street in front of my apartment, and people breaking into the mailboxes in the lobby. I don't care what color the perpetrators were, I just wanted to get away from them. |
Iheartthed
Member
Username: Iheartthed
Post Number: 2624
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 2:34 pm: | |
quote:A heck of a lot of people in Detroit and the suburbs (not necessarily including posters on this board) still think that it's 1970. That applies to attitudes about the economy, crime, development and yes, race relations.
I think that's why a lot of people leave Detroit and Michigan. |
Fury13
Member
Username: Fury13
Post Number: 3762
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 3:19 pm: | |
My family moved out of the city (Vernor/St. Jean area, eastside) in 1961 because they wanted to get out of their two-family flat and get a single-family home with a bigger lot. Schools were a major consideration, too -- the public schools in that part of town already had a mediocre reputation.
Later, in 1997, after living out of state for many years, I moved back to Detroit -- the far eastside near Grosse Pointe. I lived there until 2003, when my wife and I decided we needed a central location between our two workplaces, one that would minimize both of our commutes. That turned out to be Royal Oak. |
Pamequus
Member
Username: Pamequus
Post Number: 151
Registered: 07-2005
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 3:39 pm: | |
Wanderinglady....In the early 70s there were meetings about where our kids would be bused to. I met and spoke with many Black mothers who felt exactly as I did....we simply did not want our young children bused miles from home and completely out of our control. It had nothing to do with race whatsoever. I lived in Redford Township and they were talking about busing my son to a school near Tiger Stadium. He was five years old. It never came about but as a good parent I too would have left the area in order to secure my son's well being. It had nothing to do with the fact that he'd be schooled with Black children. (actually he was and now teaches them also) I'm not a racist nor should anyone else, black or white, facing the same circumstances, be accused or tagged racist. |
Fury13
Member
Username: Fury13
Post Number: 3769
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 3:42 pm: | |
The problem with busing in the '60s-'70s is that it destroyed the concept of neighborhood schools. If only they'd had charter schools or magnet schools then. |
Eric_c
Member
Username: Eric_c
Post Number: 1159
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 3:47 pm: | |
What exactly was wrong with sending kids to school across town? Why was this so hard for people to swallow? Wouldn't they have been "safer" anyway on a bus rather than walking?
If you were comfortable enough to entrust your kids to the neighborhood school, what would have been different about sending them to another?
Why would the people who claim they weren't basing their decisions to move on race be so opposed to integration?
I don't get it at all. |
Fury13
Member
Username: Fury13
Post Number: 3771
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 3:53 pm: | |
Eric_c, one of the reasons people moved to certain neighborhoods (and still do, for that matter) was so they could send their kids to certain schools. Schools, then as now, had reputations in academics, extracurricular activites, and sports.
Parents also wanted their kids (especially at the elementary level) nearby. There's comfort in knowing your child is in school right in the neighborhood.
I'm surprised that's all difficult for you to understand. |
Fury13
Member
Username: Fury13
Post Number: 3772
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 3:56 pm: | |
And, some kids were even being bused from INTEGRATED schools, not just from schools that were mostly black or mostly white. The whole issue wasn't approached very well. |
Eric_c
Member
Username: Eric_c
Post Number: 1161
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 4:05 pm: | |
"I'm surprised that's all difficult for you to understand."
Number one - BACK THE FUCK OFF - I asked a fucking question.
Number two - thank you for your insight. |
Harpernottingham
Member
Username: Harpernottingham
Post Number: 327
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 4:15 pm: | |
Because someone fired six shots through my front window on Bedford Road. Those were the straws that broke this camel's back. |
Treelock
Member
Username: Treelock
Post Number: 267
Registered: 03-2005
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 4:19 pm: | |
My wife and I lived for more than three years in Woodbridge Farms and loved it. Life was rarely boring, the neighbors and people we came across were relentlessly interesting and life had a certain authenticity and immediacy about it that stood out from anything you'd find in the 'burbs. We could walk to stores, restaurants or bars, even if our commutes to our jobs were long.
After we married, and started talking seriously about buying a home, my wife and I were at odds over whether to buy in the city, with me as the idealist. I gave in, however, not after someone smashed the vent glass window in my car out on the street one night, nor after it was stolen while having dinner at the Majestic Cafe. It was after each one of our neighbors were broken into and our next-door neighbor suffered a home invasion at gunpoint. She lost virtually everything, even though the perpetrators supposedly were targeting someone who lived down the block. This was 2005, and while the state was already well mired in its slump, you could sense that things were turning for the worse. We felt like sitting ducks, waiting helplessly for the inevitable.
We bought a house in Ferndale. I like the city, its politics and walkability, but I'm not as passionate about it and in many ways wish I were still downtown. And last summer we were broken into. But that's another story. |
Eric_c
Member
Username: Eric_c
Post Number: 1162
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 4:22 pm: | |
It's not really another story then, is it?
Glad you "feel safe", though. |
Gannon
Member
Username: Gannon
Post Number: 11463
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 4:24 pm: | |
quote:What exactly was wrong with sending kids to school across town? Why was this so hard for people to swallow? Wouldn't they have been "safer" anyway on a bus rather than walking?
If you were comfortable enough to entrust your kids to the neighborhood school, what would have been different about sending them to another?
This can only be asked by a non-parent in a modern house with multiple cars. (or someone who might benefit from additional car sales, I guess, heh!)
Back in the day, with only a one-car household, it would be much harder for mom to get one of her children out of school if they were bussed across town.
Plus, it was normal to have your children walking less than a mile, or about fifteen minutes, from home...that 'seems' to have been about the comfortable distance from schools, stores, church.
Nah, resistance to bussing was perfectly logical...for a 'conservative' human, merely resistant to change that we mostly all are!
Doesn't make it logical or good for society at large...but understandable for people from that time. |
Wpitonya
Member
Username: Wpitonya
Post Number: 57
Registered: 08-2005
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 5:46 pm: | |
First of all, I'm from the burbs (Rochester Hills), but I moved out of Michigan for college (College of Charleston, SC). I'm glad I did b/c it made me appreciate MI and Detroit a whole lot more. Now I'm here in NYC because of the economy in MI, and I chased a girl here. I would definately move back if I could find a job in my field and if my girlfriend wanted to. |
Fury13
Member
Username: Fury13
Post Number: 3776
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 7:23 pm: | |
"Number one - BACK THE FUCK OFF - I asked a fucking question."
You know, I wasn't trying to antagonize you... your reaction was pretty extreme. I simply thought you could guess why parents might object to sending their children across town to school.
But you got some answers to your "fucking question," didn't you? Shee-it. |
Ggores
Member
Username: Ggores
Post Number: 16
Registered: 10-2007
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 7:55 pm: | |
I left Detroit in 1984, after graduating from high school, because things were getting bad over here in brightmoor. Family members and friends were ... it's a long story.
Twenty years later, I come back.
Remember the candy called "Black Jacks"? Or "Zots"?
My Detroit News Paper Station is gone and overgrowed with weeds, all remains is the cement foundation.
One day my friend and I were walking down the sidewalk and I could not get off my mind how the sidewalks were cracked and broken, and how we spent most of our time walking the streets and looking downwards because you always had to be on the alert for what you might be stepping on, or what you might have to jump over. And I said to my friend, "I'm getting out". That's why I left. Now, as I have become aged... the reason I left has become the reason I have come back. Sure, it sucks. Heh. But the alternative proved to be even worse. Basically, there were no jobs in 1984. |
Dannyv
Member
Username: Dannyv
Post Number: 86
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Friday, February 01, 2008 - 8:25 pm: | |
I moved out two years ago because of a gang situation that moved in next door to me. I felt my safety was in jeopardy. I didn't want to be on some punks learning curve. I have no regret nor guilt for moving. The person that bought my house, as an investment, has not been able to sell it nor have anybody even look at it. Last year, while I was visiting with my former neighbors, someone broke into the house. It's on the far northwest side, south of Grand River, two blocks east of Redford Twp. Put your money where your mouth is. |
Jjw
Member
Username: Jjw
Post Number: 514
Registered: 10-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, February 02, 2008 - 9:11 am: | |
What exactly was wrong with sending kids to school across town? Why was this so hard for people to swallow? Wouldn't they have been "safer" anyway on a bus rather than walking?
If you were comfortable enough to entrust your kids to the neighborhood school, what would have been different about sending them to another?
Why would the people who claim they weren't basing their decisions to move on race be so opposed to integration?
I don't get it at all
Eric, I will try to answer your question. For as long as I can remember, the public schools in the city were pretty diverse. Some were great, some were so-so, some were not so good. People lived in neighborhoods expecting to send their children to neighborhood schools. That attitude has not changed. So, when bussing occured, they were disappointed. Many of them did not want to send their children to "Black" schools and were in fact racist. Most of them were just concerned about their child's safety and didn't want to try to get somewhere to deal with an issue. Also, Gannon brought up a very valid point. Most people did not have two cars. Many did not have a car so having to get somewhere for an emergency was an issue. To top it all off, I always saw bussing in Detroit as a non-issue. The true issue was that ALL city schools got less funding then their suburban counterparts. |
Gnome
Member
Username: Gnome
Post Number: 641
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, February 02, 2008 - 9:53 am: | |
Eric-
I grew up in Lansing, so I can't speak with any authority about Detroit, but the bussing issue was nation-wide and it was also an issue that effected Lansing.
In the olden days almost all neighborhood activites surrounded the neighborhood school. Most of the kids walked to school and only those who were rich had their dads drop them off, moms were at home in those one car-per-house days.
We went to school, after school we played sports or went to Scout meetings, the parents had PTA meetings and dances in the gym ... in short the school was the central gathering place for the neighborhood. It was the glue that kept the neighborhood together.
Then bussing came and kids we didn't know showed up.
We didn't know them, they didn't know us. We didn't go over to their houses for peanut butter sandwiches, we didn't know their families and they didn't know ours.
Kids you use to see everyday, all day, simply disappeared until the weekend. Kids you use to have something in common with were now strangers too.
Since a lot of the school kids had to get on a bus, they didn't play on the ball teams, and the teams didn't have enough kids.
Since the sport teams died, the parents weren't hanging out on the sidelines so their friendships withered as well. The PTA became less a social group and more of an advocacy group so the bake sales and dances stopped.
In short the school was no longer the glue for the neighborhood. Neighbors drifted off, the school fell into disrepair because the neighbors weren't there everyday watching over it.
All for a forced social experiment that had great intentions, but horrid results. Bussing killed the neighborhood school, not all by itself, but it was a huge and often overlooked cause.
I lot of people attribute racial fear as the main reason people were anti-bussing. In part yes. But the other reason is simply a desire to keep the lives they had and they opposed having "big brother" telling them what was best for them. |
Thoswolfe
Member
Username: Thoswolfe
Post Number: 13
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, February 02, 2008 - 9:59 am: | |
I can HONESTLY say I am committed to neighborhood schools and THAT was the reason I opposed bussing.
As they said in other posts, yes some families had only one car. (my mother did not drive)
And also the neighborhood school is one of the 'plusses' used with real estate listings.
The children may or may not have benefitted in their education by attending a school 'away' from home. I haven't heard much feedback on the educational results of that 'social experiment'. It would seem though that those kids lost out on extra-curricular activity and an opportunity to 'bond' with the school by having to board a bus home after school.
But the neighborhoods lost their 'anchor' and those results are evident now.
Put in another way- When I lived in NW Mich, our school district decided to close our town's elementary. My kids then had to ride the bus 3 hours, school was 25 miles away. They and all the kids from our town were NOT welcomed by the other students. Teachers, yes.(Oh goody, more state aid)
Our town lost more than 1/2 its population within a year, including us. We welcomed all who moved to our town. If it had been other way around, I think our kids would not have been too welcoming to an influx of outsiders not committed to their town bussed in either.
That was in a rural northern town.
We did not have a race card to use in our opposition nor did the school board in their final decision.
We moved from that town because it was a hardship for our children to attend school AND we missed the hub of our town. Even the seniors supported all the school activities and events.
Just in the last few years look at the controversy choosing which schools to close in Detroit. The value of a nearby school is not unrecognized, and noone can say the schools picked to close recently were for racial reasons. |
Frankg
Member
Username: Frankg
Post Number: 177
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, February 02, 2008 - 11:22 pm: | |
My family moved out of Detroit for Lansing when I was 10 years old, in 1971.
It was a real shame in a lot of ways. We lived on the East side, near the City Airport, at 12121 Wilshire, in the best neighborhood in the world. Both sets of my grandparents lived within 3 blocks of us, with numerous uncles, aunts, great relatives, etc., living in the same neighborhood. My one grandpa ended up moving there in the mid 1940's, from 6108 Crane, and prior to that, 2163 Antietam (corner Dubois). My other grandpa ended up moving there in the mid 1950's, via 4528 Baldwin, 9128 Holcomb, and 3754 Field. Both sets of grandparents had large (7 and 11) families and most of my uncles and aunts also settled in the neighborhood, often marrying other neighbors.
We moved out because my Dad got transferred on his job. The neighborhood was all white then, although there was a black family living two blocks away on Longview Street. Shortly after we left, the neighborhood went through a large transformation, literally white to black, in the period of only 10 years.
My one set of grandparents moved to the suburbs in 1974 I think. My other set of grandparents hung on until 1984 I believe - after a home intruder pushed my grandma down the stairs, they moved to an assisted living facility in Centerline.
I don't think busing had much to do with our family leaving, as most of us were going to school at St. David's anyway.
I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why a whole neighborhood would pack up and leave like that, especially when every person who has ever lived there, to a person, says it was the greatest place in the world to live. I have come to the conclusion, through studying good books (Sugrue, etc.), interviewing people, and my own recollections, that racism was a component of that displacement. But racism was only one component; a necessary but not sufficient condition for the displacement. There were numerous other things going on at the time and I believe racism was only a trigger and an accelerant - a cog in a huge machine.
I would like to move back into the city someday. I will retire from GM in a couple of months, and I have my application in at WSU for a faculty position. Ironically, though, I just signed a lease today for an apartment in Rochester - as I am teaching at OU part-time and want to minimize my commute while I am retired. This might sound anti-American but I would really like to be able to live without a car, at least for a while. Living in Rochester I'll be able to walk or bike anywhere I need to go for basic living. But hey, cross your fingers for me, maybe I'll get that WSU job and move back to the city! |
Meaghansdad
Member
Username: Meaghansdad
Post Number: 225
Registered: 07-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, February 02, 2008 - 11:27 pm: | |
I'll cross my fingers for you.....and hope you stay in Rochester. |
Mackinaw
Member
Username: Mackinaw
Post Number: 4389
Registered: 02-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, February 03, 2008 - 12:00 am: | |
What's that supposed to mean, MD? You don't want him to get the job he wants and move to the city he wants to?
this is DetroitYES!
There's nothing anti-American about making a sound economic decision, Frankg. |
Dannyv
Member
Username: Dannyv
Post Number: 87
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Monday, February 04, 2008 - 2:01 am: | |
MD, good answer. I got a chuckle out of it even if you didn't mean it.
Frankg, I hope you get the job out in Rochester. You'll live longer.....by riding your bike or walking to work.
I lived at 11485 Sanford from October '76-March '82. My block probably reflected the transition going on. Most of my Caucasian neighbors were of Italian descent, including my landlord, and were moving out or renting their former homes. One of the new neighbors, a couple in their 50s, fenced stolen property, and were found murdered in their home. You can read about the general deterioration coming up from the lower eastside as a result of the crack trade via the Chambers family in the book Land Of Opportunity. When I left in '82, the new tenants were Hmong, who had a short-lived community on the east side until they too could afford to move out of the city. |
Sumas
Member
Username: Sumas
Post Number: 18
Registered: 01-2008
| | Posted on Monday, February 04, 2008 - 7:17 am: | |
i moved out of the city in 1988. the reason ,schooling for my kids and scary crime. we moved to northville. great schools! then we moved to macomb township, great schools. we then moved to GPP. also great schools. however we never mentally left the city and its needs. we stayed involved with mostly eastside issues and organizations. two years ago, we moved back to detroit. schools are no longer an issue. our kids are now adults. Detroiters are #1 in my estimation. i am and continue to be amazed by the level of neighborhood involvement. suzanne bishop, an eastside activist, resently deceased, will be missed so much. the people on this site seem to be eastsiders. please, step up to the plate. Get involved. the city is unable to provide core services to our communities. we need to express that our city is more than downtown. we need to let cc and the mayor know that the neighborhoods are the real detroit. |
Exmotowner
Member
Username: Exmotowner
Post Number: 450
Registered: 06-2005
| | Posted on Monday, February 04, 2008 - 8:42 am: | |
CRIME!•• |
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