Learn About Detroit

DETROIT READING LIST AND VIDEOS

Books

Support your local library, check out these books!

• Babson, Steve with Ron Alpern, Dave Elsila, & John Revitte. 1986. Detroit Perspectives, Chapter The Tides Turn Wayne State University. (read at google)
• Boggs, Grace Lee. 1998. Living for Change: An Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (read at google)
• Boyle, Kevin. 2004. Arc of Justice, A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age. New York: Henry Holt & Company. (read at google)
• Dillard, Angela D. 2007. Faith in the City, Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit. University of Michigan Press. (read at google)
• Fuller, John G. 1976. We Almost Lost Detroit. NY: Ballantine Books. (details at OpenLibrary)
• Georgakas, Dan & Marvin Surkin. 1998. Detroit I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution, Updated. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. (read at google)
• Georgakas, Dan. 2006. My Detroit, Growing Up Greek and American in Motor City. NY: Pella Publishing Commpany. (details at OpenLibrary)
• Grandin, G. 2009. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City. New York: Metropolitan Books. (read at google)
• Hershey, John. 1968. The Algiers Motel Incident. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U Press. (read at google)
• Katzman, David M. 1975. Before the Ghetto, Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century. University of Illinois, paperback. (details at OpenLibrary)
• Keemer, Ed, M.D. 1980. Confessions of a Pro-Life Abortionist. Detroit: Vinco Press. (details at OpenLibrary)
• Lichtenstein, Nelson. 1995. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor. Basic Books. (details at OpenLibrary)
• Mast, Robert. 1994. Detroit Lives. Philadelphia: Temple U Press. (details at OpenLibrary)
• Meier, August & Rudwick, Elliott. 1979. Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (read at google)
• Oestreicher, Richard Jules. Solidarity and Fragmentation, Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875-1900. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. (read at google)
• Sugrue, Thomas J. 1996. The Origins of the Urban Crisis, Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (read at google)
• Thompson, H.A. 2001. Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell U Press. (read at google)
• Widick, B.J. 1972. Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence. Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, Inc. (details at OpenLibrary)

Videos

• Finally Got the News. 1970/2003. purchase (A Film by Stewart Bird, Rene Lichtman and Peter Gessner produced in Association with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers). (OneBigTorrent p2p sharing)
• Poletown Lives. (rent or buy) Check with Detroit filmmaker George Corsetti (<gcorsetti@ameritech.net>) about this film. It’s the story about the destruction of a working-class community in order to build a GM plant (Poletown.) He may also be a good contact for other Detroit films.
• Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power. 2005. (info via California Newsreel) (Detroit & Robert Williams) (read at google)
• Water Warriors. 2006. (info via Media that Matters, watch) (A film by Liz Miller about the struggle against water privatization in Highland Park, MI). (The Water Front OneBigTorrent p2p sharing)
• With Babies and Banners. (This film is about the GM Flint sitdown strike, told from the women’s viewpoint. This successful 43-day strike led to the first GM-UAW contract. (info from IMDB)

Novels

• Harriette Arnow. 1954. The Dollmaker, Avon Books, paperback. World War II historical novel revealing working-class life and the racial divide, particularly focusing on white and Black Southerners coming north. (Jane Fonda played the central role in a TV movie.) (read at google)
• Marge Piercy. 1987. Gone to Soldier, Fawcett Crest Books, paperback. Set in Detroit, this is a story of women’s changing roles during World War II. (details at OpenLibrary)