Marsha Music and Claire Nelson
Recorded
January 18, 2017
40:26 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id:
chd000749
Description
Marsha Music (62) tells Claire Nelson (40) the story of how her father's record store, a hallmark of the Detroit Black music scene, was burned down during the Detroit Rebellion of 1967.Subject Log / Time Code
Marsha Music (M) recalls the night of the Detroit Rebellion of 1967 to Claire Nelson (N): It was hot and her father got a call that something was going on on 12th Street.
M illustrates Detroit in 1967 as being "in the throes of its magnificence." Motown music was played everywhere, cars were coming off the assembly line, and there was diversity to be found in every corner.
M remembers accompanying her father to the Saks Fifth Avenue lingerie department, where the saleswoman told him he could not afford to shop there.
M speaks on the nostalgia that white people currently experience of the city when it was segregated. She describes the the J. L. Hudson Building, a department store that was unwelcoming to Black folks and did not allow them to try on shoes or clothing.
M describes the Black Bottom neighborhood, named for its rich black soil, where most of the Black folks arriving from the Great Migration were forced to settle. Her father's place was on Hastings Street.
M recalls that her father did a recording for Reverend C.L. Franklin, a preacher down the street, and became his sole producer. He later became the first person to record his daughter, Aretha Franklin, as well.
M says she sees the destruction of Hastings Street and Black Bottom as tantamount to the destruction of a generation of Black wealth.
M remembers accompanying her father to 12th Street, seeing scattered glass and smelling extinguished fires everywhere. Her father's collection and life's work were destroyed.
M shares that the folks that were displaced from Black Bottom found a new community in Lafayette Park. She has taken on the mission to preserve the spirit of Black Bottom in Lafayette Park.
Participants
- Marsha Music
- Claire Nelson