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Black Bottom Paradise Vallley playing with Detroit: Not For Wimps
Long-time Detroiters refer to the old African-American districts of Paradise Valley and Black Bottom as if they were interchangeable, but the terms actually refer to two different inner east-side areas sharing the border of Gratiot Avenue. Black Bottom, proceeding south from Gratiot as far as the Detroit River, was the older of the two. Paradise Valley-which attained its identity in the twenties, thirties, and forties-spread north with the growing African-American population from Gratiot along the major thoroughfares of John R, Brush, Beaubien, St. Antoine, Hastings, and Russell, eventually stretching to the area known as the North End, beyond the northern loop of East Grand Boulevard.
Two well-known poets, Robert Hayden (1913-1980) and Dudley Randall (1914-2000), grew up in Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. Hayden, who was born in Paradise Valley, lived with his foster-parents in homes on St. Antoine, Beacon, and Napolean Streets, and East Vernor Highway, worshipped with his foster parents at Second Baptist Church, attended Detroit schools-graduating from Northern High School and Detroit City College (Wayne State University)-and worked as a reporter and columnist for the Michigan Chronicle, a radio host for CKLW, and a writer for the Federal Writer's Project before leaving the city to attend graduate school in Ann Arbor in 1940 (Williams 3-12). Randall, whose family moved to Detroit when he was five years old, lived on Joseph Campau Avenue and then on Russell Street, attending Duffield and Barstow Schools, graduating in 1930 from Eastern High School and, after serving in the army in World War II, Wayne University. He was a member of Plymouth United Church of Christ and worked at the Ford Rouge plant and as a mailman before leaving for military service (Boyd, Wrestling 35-39). As Melba Joyce Boyd relates, poetry brought the two young men together in 1937. Hayden and Randall became friends, discussed the writing of poetry, and shared political and cultural interests, "never seeming," Boyd says, "to lose sight of their aim to master their skills and knowledge of poetry." Boyd observes that even though Hayden left Detroit in 1941, the two stayed in contact throughout their lives (Wrestling 48-51).
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LocationLaw School Wayne State
471 West Palmer Street
Detroit, MI 48202
United States
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