onlynDetroit.com

This website is dedicated to the city of Detroit, and all things unique to it. Detroit has undoubtedly evolved into one of the most unique places in the world. The Motor City was once the 4th largest city by population in the United States. It was the mid 1950s, and at the time, Detroit was known as "the Paris of the Midwest" because of its French ancestry and architecture. The auto industry was at its peek. Muscle cars and the Motown sound enveloped American culture. Detroit was a thriving destination city.

By the late 1960s, Detroit's good days started to come to an end. White police, politicians, and big business increasingly oppressed the majority of the African Americans that lived in the segregated city. The auto industry was starting its inevitable spread outside of Detroit; the population started to leave the auto capitol with the lost jobs. In 1967 racial tensions reached the breaking point when massive riots erupted. The riots lasted five days, and in the course of the riots, 43 people were killed, over 2,000 buildings were burned; and 7,000 plus people were arrested as a result of president Lyndon B. Johnson's deployment of the National Guard to restore order.

The riot was started when police raided a blind pig (illegal after hours party) on the city's west side. An angry mob burned and looted white owned storefronts and neighborhoods. Brush Park, one of the most historic and upscale residential areas in Detroit was nearly totally destroyed. To this day the city has not recovered. The Archer and Kilpatrick administrations have been successful in tearing down burned out houses, but progress has been stifled by citywide corruption.

These were not the first riots in the city; in 1943 violence erupted because there was an increased demand for housing due to the wartime production of planes, tanks, and artillery. This created a massive demand for housing in the growing city. At this time, people from all over to country were arriving in Detroit to work unskilled positions in factories created for the war effort. Unfair lending practices made it nearly impossible for African Americans to secure financing for a home. Segregation was at its peek, making life even more difficult to the black man who arrived in Detroit looking for a good wage.

After the 1967 riots, the white population suddenly made a massive exodus from the city to the suburbs. In 1973, Coleman A Young was elected Detroit's first African American mayor marking a shift in local politics. With the decline and globalization of the auto industry, the population of the city dropped from nearly 2 million in the mid 1950s to less than 800,000 in present day. A shell of a once grand city has been left behind with nothing spared: skyscrapers, houses, churches, factories, schools, firehouses, marinas, police stations, theatres and stadiums. These relics are filled with artifacts from the past. It is estimated that 10,000 people move out of the city every month, and that is why they say "the last person out, please turn off the lights." Just recently the population of Detroit was revised by the Census department, marking an increase in population. Politicians don’t claim that that more people are moving into the city, but that errors were made calculating the population during the last census.

Although the future may seem bleak for Detroit, its history has transformed the city into the most unique city in the world. As the city has shrunk, the once grand buildings have been turned into charred shells, transforming the city into what it is today. Main roads through the city are lined with empty lots from where storefronts and homes once stood. These empty lots are a direct result of fires from the riots, and years of Devil’s night. Devil’s night is now known as Angel’s night. This volunteer campaign was the main driving force to stop arson on the night before Halloween. On this night, throughout the 80's and 90’s, city gangs and vandals started fires across the city on a massive scale. Business owners also took advantage of this as an excuse to burn their property down in efforts to collect insurance money.

Out of the downfall, Detroit has become the best place in the world for urban exploring with the abundance and selection of buildings. Graffiti thrives in this environment filled with blight. As a result the city’s culture is just as unique as the environment. All these factors including music to politics, blight, and karma have combined together to create a place that can only be described as
onlynDetroit.