Hastings Street

Last night I went to a play at the DIA. The play was called "Hastings Street" and was put on by the Mosaic Youth Theater of Detroit. This group is a bunch of high school kids and the performance is definately world-class and very professional. These kids can sing and dance like pros! I saw them several months ago for their history of Motown performance and now I am hooked. Anytime these kids have a play in the future, I intend to go to it!

This play was about life in the "Black Bottom" neighborhood in Detroit in the mid-1940's. This was black neighborhood east of downtown, west of St. Joe's Church, and on the other side of Gratiot towards the DIA. These Mosaic Theater kids interviewed several hundred former residents and put the play script together. Having talked with many people who used to live in Detroit about my blog, I get the idea this play was very accurate in the protrayal of both good and bad points. For instance, there were those in the play who were demanding that other blacks stand up to injustice; there were also those who accepted the way things were and didn't want to make waves. There were many examples of great injustice; yet at the same time there were very fond memories about belonging to the black community. Likewise, everybody I talk to seems to have very fond memories of the old neighborhood, express regret that it isn't like that anymore, yet still seem to be glad they moved out.

The neighborhood in the play was named "Black Bottom" by the French settlers because of the fertile soil that was black, somehow related to the bottom of the river black. The name had nothing to do with being a negro neighborhood.

One of the first scenes was about this kid who got bored and started throwing rocks at a dog behind a fence. An old lady caught him and came out and gave him a whuppin. The lady asked the kid what his name was so she could tell his Momma. The kid gave a fake name. When he got home, his Momma had already received several phone calls from other neighbors who witnessed the kid's behavior. So his Momma gave the kid a double whuppin: one for throwing rocks at the dog, and another whuppin for giving the lady a fake name. I can relate to this story because that's the way my old neighborhood was in Detroit when I was a kid. My Dad had a "little birdie" that told him everything, my Mom could see and hear behind walls, and anyplace we went in the nieghborhood, "somebody" was there to see any errant behavior on our part. So when Sister Jean told us in first grade religion class that God knew everything we did, I sure believed her!

The play for the most part takes place at the "Y-Gee" building, at the corner of St. Aubin and Gratiot. Y-Gee stands for Youth Group, apparently a group from Miller High School, which was 70% black at this time. The Y-Gee building used to be Schiller Hall, and prior to that it was the "House of the Masses," a building for european socialist immigrants. In 1920, the police busted a big party on the site, and deported several hundred illegal european immigrants. Apparently the police didn't like socialists then. [But Socialism is "in" these days - I am going to be participating in an envelope-stuffing party for the Bernie Sanders for the US Senate campaign on Wednesday!]

I learned alot about the riots in Detroit on June 20, 1943. For some time, there were groups of black teenagers and white teenagers getting into little scuffles at Belle Isle. On June 20, some white sailors on leave got involved, and a fight broke out on the Belle Isle bridge. Word got out to the blacck community that the whites tossed a mother and her baby over the bridge into the water. Word got out to the whites that a black man raped and killed a white woman. Riot ensued. The police seemed to be against the blacks. Tens of thousands of whites were amassing to destroy the Black Bottom neighborhood. Finally, Roosevelt sent federal troops into to break it all up. The rumors about the throwing the baby off the bridge and raping the white woman were later proven to be false. But they point out in the play that those rumors aren't really what started the riots anyway. Yes, these rumors may have sparked the riot, but they certainly didn't cause it.

I was suprised at how segregated Detroit was back then. I knew there were designated places where black people could live, but I didn't realize that movie theaters, resturaunts, train cars, etc., were so segregated. I was also shocked and sickened to hear that a man who was beaten by police and suffered a crushed spine and two broken legs was denied admittance to the emergency room at a hospital because he was black.

The play was named Hastings Street, after one of the streets in the Black Bottom neighborhood, and the site of much of the destruction of the 1943 riots. The street still has two blocks left (closer to the Fischer Building/GM plant), but the rest of it was torn up when they built I-75 and I-375.

One of the characters in the play was Langston Hughes. He was a famous black poet and activist who actually visited the Y-Gee in 1943. All the kids in the play knew who he was but I had never heard of him before. I guess they just didn't teach about him at St. David's elementary school when I was a kid.

Anyway, the play was awesome. If you miss out on thier next performance you are really missing out on alot.

I was suprised at the ratio of blacks/whites who attended the performance. I did expect it to be mostly black. But there were only a handful of whites, and I think most of them were somehow associated with the DIA or Mosaic Theater Group. When I went to the Motown performance there were alot more white people there. And when I went to the opening day of the Rodin Exhibit at the DIA and the "Wings" (silent movie) perofrmance at the DIA, those were both about 99% white. I guess that just goes to show that Detroit is still segregated. There are places white people go to and other places black people go to.

http://www.mosaicdetroit.org/