In 1956 civic leaders launched a plan, using federal urban renewal funds, to remove “blight” and rebuild this mostly black neighborhood. Many buildings around you were proposed for demolition. Both black and white leaders disagreed among themselves whether the plan would improve the neighborhood or destroy the fabric of the black community. At least 500 residents would have been displaced, 400 of them black. In 1959 City Council narrowly passed the plan, but newly elected Mayor Cecil Creal vetoed it as too disruptive.

Other forces changed the neighborhood. City Council passed a fair housing law in 1963 and a stronger one in 1965. The neighborhood school, Jones Elementary (later Community High), was 75% black in 1965 when it was closed and its students dispersed by bus to other schools in an effort at desegregation. By the 1970s blacks were leaving the neighborhood. The churches moved. In that decade, black and white citizens working together defeated plans for a downtown bypass that would have split the neighborhood.

African Americans established a close-knit community in this neighborhood near their churches and the Dunbar Center, a gathering place for all blacks. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal and Second Baptist churches evolved from the small 1853 Union Church nearby at 504 High Street. Nineteenth century blacks were carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, barbers, and draymen, as well as domestics and laborers. They helped build the railroad and the university. In 1890, George Jewett, son of a blacksmith, was UM’s first black football player. He later owned a dry-cleaning business on South State Street. Katherine Crawford, an 1898 UM Medical School graduate, opened a medical practice in her family’s Fuller Street home.

Sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta Sororities; Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, and Omega Psi Phi Fraternities; Bethel AME Church and Second Baptist Church

Photos courtesy of Rosemarion Blake, the Ann Arbor Community Center, and the Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by Margaret Ann Riecker, Judy Dow Rumelhart, and Lynn T. White

Photos courtesy of Judy Dow Rumelhart, Elizabeth Brater, and the Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by Thomas and Eleanor Moore in Honor of Their Daughter Melinda Moore Kerr, Ann Arbor's First Woman Firefighter

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by the owners of Downtown Home and Garden and the Owners of the Schwaben Building

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by Friends of the Ann Arbor German-American Community

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by the Hutzel Company with Thanks to Washtenaw County Citizens for 150 Years of Business

Photos Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by Hooper, Hathaway, Price, Beuche, & Wallace

Photos Courtesy of Marilyn Wackenhut and the Bentley Historical Library

Sponsored by the Families of william G. and Andriana Skinner and Nicholas Banos

Photos Courtesy of Pauline Skinner and the Bentley Historical Library