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Dakota DeRidder April 15, 2010 History 2510 Dr. Cafer Detroit According to Music Rock City, the Motor City, Motown, and Hockeytown are common names used to refer to the wonderful city of Detroit, Michigan. Two of those nicknames (Rock City and Motown) are used mostly in reference to the music of the city and one could argue that it proves just how defined by music Detroit has been over the years. Musicians of all genres have written of the Motor City and the events that have occurred within its boundaries or the lack of events that have caused despair to run through the streets and homes of Detroit. Through examining three different musicians over the span of a 40 years, a picture has been painted of Detroit that speak volumes of what the city was like from the late 1930’s to the 1970’s. The historical significance of such a story is to show where the city of Detroit has been in the past and why it is suffering the problems it is today. The artists explored were both from the city of Detroit and visitors. Victoria Spivey, the MC5 and Gil Scott-Heron all portray a different part of this city’s history that all tie together to show a common thread of disappointment and fear in the people who have lived there. Detroit in the 1930’s was not a happy place. The unemployment rate by 1932 was up to 50% due to the national depression and employers need to cut back (Boyle and Getis 1997, 19). If one was able to attain a job, it was most likely working in one of the factories since the city was so industrialized at that time with the assembly line for cars defining industry in the city (Boyle and Getis 1997, 13). All the factories caused Detroit to be coated in dirt and smoke which made for a dreary place to be. Victoria Spivey talks about the harshness of the city in her song “Detroit Moan.” She says, “Detroit's a cold, cold place,” in the opening line of the song to explain not only the weather in the city but the feel she gets from walking around and having to live there ("Victoria Spivey - Detroit Moan” 1936). Spivey also reflects on the poorness of the city and the people when she sings of not having a dime to her name. She says that she cannot bear to go to a shelter because she is too ashamed. This would point to the people of Detroit being too proud to get help or it may mean that they were at least hopeful that things would turn around before they got to the point where they needed places like shelters.  Spivey sings, “I been walkin' Hastings Street, nobody seems to treat me right,” in the second verse of the song ("Victoria Spivey - Detroit Moan” 1936). Hastings Street was the center of the African American community in Detroit at the time. The fact that an African American woman would be treated poorly in such a neighborhood is a testament to the feelings of everyone in the community. Everyone was looking out for his or her own best interests and not paying much attention to everyone else. There was hostility in the air from the economic troubles and decline in aesthetics of the city, which made it seem colder, as Spivey brings up again in the second verse. She states that she can survive in the day, but once the night comes it is hard to stand the all over coldness of Detroit ("Victoria Spivey - Detroit Moan” 1936). The third verse discusses how the only thing that was available to eat was chili, but since Spivey had to eat it so much, she did not want to have it anymore ("Victoria Spivey - Detroit Moan” 1936). Beans were probably cheap at the time and therefore the easiest thing for the poor to eat. In the fourth verse, Spivey says she needs to get out of Detroit and once she leaves she will never return. It is a cold and harsh environment and since it was not her hometown to begin with, it was probably a hard place for her to accept through all the fear, mistreatment and hardships. The 1960’s in Detroit are known most commonly from the race riots that occurred in 1967. With the riots came the acquisitions of police brutality, especially towards African American citizens (Bergesen 1982, 261). Although at the time, the issue of cruelty on the basis of race was not explored as fully as some say was needed, eventually it was discovered that 23 black people were killed during the riots of Detroit (Bergesen 1982, 262). Six of the said deaths were cases of civilians killing other civilians, but all the rest were at the hands of police officials or due to an accident (Bergesen 1982, 263). Officers who committed such crimes, committed them for many different reasons, such as “victims were (1) looting, (2) standing in crowds, (3) riding in cars, (4) in their homes, and what can only be described as (5) personally attacked by law enforcement officials” (Bergesen 1982, 263). MC5 is a band that identifies itself as being from the city of Detroit, Michigan and was largely a part of the rock culture of the city in the 1960’s and 1970’s. They wrote a song entitled “Motor City is Burning” about the race riots that they witnessed. This song it talking about the tension between blacks and whites in Detroit in the late 1960's as it escalated into the riots. “It made the pigs in the street freak out/the fire wagons kept comin’, baby/but the black Panther snipers wouldn’t let them put it out,” they sang (Smith). This suggests that the police of the city watched the buildings burn but decided against stopping them. There were the means to put out the fires with the fire trucks, but instead they just watched the city burn. MC5 paints a picture of bombs going off and chaos everywhere. They say that there were National Guard there and sirens going off, and yet there was not much done about the riots besides brutality (Smith). The lyrics in the middle of the song are in the voice of a man talking to his girl saying that her parents don not know what is going on because they do not understand the times. They just read the newspaper to try and find out the information, when they should be going out into the streets to see what is happening (Smith). This suggests that the youth of the city were more likely to be involved in the rioting and be more acute to the reasons behind such acts than the older people of the time. The end of the song says, “I may be a white boy, but I can be bad, too” (Smith). This almost points to saying that freedom can only be reached if one burns the town down with the others or at least joins in on the type of violence that occurred during the race riots in the city of Detroit. This can speak of the time by showing that the youth were afraid of not being cool or accepted so they were likely to do whatever necessary to fit in. In the end, the song suggests that there was mistreatment of the people and that this incident struck fear deep through the people of Detroit. In the late 1970’s, Gil Scott-Heron wrote a song entitled “We Almost Lost Detroit” to explain the small incident at a power plant outside of Detroit. The advances in technology over time allowed for cities all over the nation to be powered by nuclear energy and at this time, Detroit was no exception. At this plant, the machines picked up high radiation inside of the control panel (Fuller 1975). The public was purposefully misinformed on the threats of nuclear energy in order for them to allow plants to be built and the consequences of things going wrong in these plants was also kept a secret from the public (Fuller 1975). Scott-Heron’s song touches on this point of not keeping the people’s best interest in mind my saying that “no one stopped to think about the people or how they would survive” ("We Almost Lost Detroit - Lyrics"). He also says that the Sherriff of Monroe and other people (such as Karen Silkwood, a woman who died in a nuclear power plant) would have bad things to say about the plant being where it is ("We Almost Lost Detroit - Lyrics"). However, the plant was put up nonetheless. Scott-Heron’s reasoning for this was simple: money. He sings, "That when it comes to people's safety, money wins out every time" ("We Almost Lost Detroit - Lyrics"). This is suggesting that Detroit and the surrounding areas are threatened due to the greed in the area. After talking about the possible nuclear problems in Detroit and how it was nearly fatal, the song moves on to say that even though that was not the downfall of the city, eventually something else will be. Scott-Heron states, “Odds are/we gonna loose somewhere sometime,” before he says raises the question of people losing their minds in putting this plant so close to the city and suggests that even using nuclear power in general is reason enough to prove that the people have lost their minds ("We Almost Lost Detroit - Lyrics"). He also repeatedly asks the question of weather or not the rest of the world knows or cares that Detroit was almost lost to a problem at the nuclear plant. Overall, this piece brings up the fear that the people of the city should and do feel with having a nuclear power plant so close to their homes. It also touches on the disappointment that the lyricists has that people in power would allow it to go up without taking all things into consideration beforehand, but letting the money get the best of them and approving it. These three songs from Detroit history all showcase the disappointing times that have occurred throughout the city during the middle of the 20th century. Victoria Spivey sang of the disappointing economic times and the harshness of Detroit during the 1930’s and the Great Depression, as well as the fear of being a poor woman in the city at the time. MC5 talked about the race riots that occurred in Detroit during the 1960’s and how disappointed the people of the city were in the police who were overly cruel to citizens and appeared to let the city burn to the ground without stopping it. They also talked of the fear that these riots instilled in the people and how they could do nothing to stop it and therefore aided in it instead. Gil Scott-Heron wrote of the corruption of people in power who feel nothing but greed and how disappointing it was that they would put that before the interests of the people of Detroit and it’s surrounding areas. He talked of the fear that each human who lives in a small radius of the nuclear plant must feel due to the massive consequences such as losing the city entirely. The fear and disappointment throughout the history of Detroit runs deep and is long lasting, as showcased not only by the historians, but also musicians of the city. Works Cited Bergesen, Albert. "Race Riots of 1967: An Analysis of Police Violence in Detroit and Newark." //Journal of Black Studies// 12, no. 3 (1982): 261-274. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2784247 (accessed March 17, 2010). Boyle, Kevin, and Victoria Getis. //Muddy Boots and Ragged Aprons: Images of Working-Class Detroit, 1900-1930//. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997. Fuller, J.G.. //We Almost Lost Detroit//. New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1975. Smith, Albert. "Motor City Is Burning Lyric." LyricsMode.com. http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/m/mc5/motor_city_is_burning.html# (accessed March 17, 2010). "Victoria Spivey - Detroit Moan (1936)." YouTube.com. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKGuHCWWYU0 (accessed March 3, 2010).

"We Almost Lost Detroit - Lyrics." Malcolm X, Gil Scott-Heron and Stevie Wonder - Speeches, Discography and Lyrics. http://www.gilscottheron.com/lydetroit.html (accessed March 31, 2010).