Information is power. As long as they give you bad information, you have bad power. We have to show that the white folks can’t beat us upside the head, where it counts. There’s a lot of water in the ocean, but it can’t sink the ship unless it gets inside.
Dick Gregory, 1975, speaking at a Black History Month event organized through Delta College.
It is no coincidence that our local juco is at the heart of Saginaw’s history of Black History Month. Gregory’s Delta-sponsored appearance at St. Joseph’s Church in the First Ward took place only four years after Willie Thompson first got things going.
In 1971, Thompson joined an African American leadership team at the still-new Delta campus that already featured John Pugh and Lou Oates, among other notables. The history month reckoning, launched nationally by Carter Woodson, remained one week at the time. In addition to topical speakers, Delta featured entertainers who ranged from Ramsey Lewis and his jazz trio to Saginaw’s own Larry Reynolds with The Dramatics.
A full-page promo featured a sketch of an African American man, headlined, “Is he part of the American Dream? We think so.”
Professor Thompson, a Delta administrator who also was known as an off-campus professor of sociology, soon would join Ruben Daniels to begin integrating the Saginaw Board of Education:
He explained the focus of the special events.
“It doesn’t all have to deal with history.,” he said. “We also have to face up to all the current problems in the community.”
One factor that has remained the same, 1971 or 2023, is critics asking, “Well, then, all things being equal, why don’t we have a White History Month?”
Thompson anticipated this sort of backlash, and so he stepped beyond the standard “white people have all 12 months” response. He took note of events such as the Bavarian Festival, the Greek Festival, Cinco de Mayo and St. Patrick’s Day. He simply speculated, what’s the difference? To add emphasis, he explained that his own latest leisure book was a history of Frankenmuth being formed.
Patricia Caldwell, longtime director of Delta’s Ricker Center, entered the conversation.
“We hear so much negative said about African-Americans,” she asserted, “but we are a very positive group of people, and our contributions to this society are far greater than most people realize.”
Events soon expanded to a full month, which led to a sort of conspiracy theory, mostly in jest but with that ever-present edge. Had February been chosen because it’s the shortest month, even during leap years?
Most who took this tack were fully aware, of course, that Woodson’s framework had started with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12, 1809) and Frederick Douglass (est. Feb. 14, 1817 or ’18).
During the early years, many of Saginaw’s civil rights pioneers spoke and acted with special caution, careful not to offend the white power structure. But as Black History Month activities expanded, some felt they finally could express themselves with more forthrightness.
For example, Daniels recalled breaking the Board of Education barrier.
“Some of the whites (in 1967) tried to pin me down as a school busing advocate,” he said. “They just tried to crucify me, but I held my tongue. I was on the board for a number of years before I really unloaded on race issues.”
Like most in Saginaw of all races, he had opposed forced busing and favored open enrollment, a concept that would allow school choice across the river. His “unloading” took place when he noted that many black families took part in the voluntary integration, but only a handful of white families had done the same.
His statement may seem obvious in 2023, but it ruffled feathers in 1973.
This came in 1982. School administrators advised that a shutdown of Potter Elementary would only be the start of inevitable East Side closings, with some elementary enrollments dipping near only 100 total in buildings that had been full, prior to population shifts and open enrollment.
Daniels was director of First Ward Community Center, and he and Thompson both were Potter grads. They had moved the meeting from downtown to Tenth and Farwell, a gesture of respect for neighbors who filled the small gym, and both fought to control their emotions at the time of the official vote.
Delta College rescued the Potter building for a few years, but school officials opted out by the early ’90s. The final memory is activist Bobby Stitt, in Dick Gregory style, chaining himself to the entrance as a last gasp, blocking the demo crews for a few added days.
Daniels grew near the railroad tracks in the northeast area that was described by an early local leader, Rev. Cornelius Monroe.
The pastor of the original Christ Community Church spoke out: “The First Ward can’t help being branded a slum district, because we don’t get our share of improvements. We have been ostracized and kicked aside. We pay taxes and we want something for our money. Some streets look worse than a chicken yard. Don’t drive your own car. Get a truck.”
During the 1940s, Daniels was among the first officers to integrate the city police ranks. With new bride Elizabeth, he aimed to move to better conditions. His eye was on a green-sided two-story gem along Sixth Street’s bend onto Cherry.
Young Ruben was not naive. He asked his spouse, “sounding more white,” to phone the realtor.
“Liz promptly was provided the asking price, monthly payments and tax estimates,” he recalled. “Then she asked whether blacks would be allowed to move into the area. She was assured, ‘No ma’am, you need not worry about that. There will be no black families near Sixth and Cherry.’ “
Daniels in later years was regarded as friendly, with an easy sense of humor. He sometimes would chuckle while storytelling, and so many listeners were surprised to learn how severely the incident had hurt him. His wife had needed to talk him out of heading back to their birth-home in rural Oklahoma.
Of course, there are countless local black history tales similar to that encountered by Ruben Daniels, that relate to housing discrimination.
Henry Marsh, Saginaw’s ground-breaking first black mayor in 1968, waited for years before he revealed one of his long-held secrets. A sympathetic local banker and fellow councilman (Benjamin Marxer) had led him after-hours into Second National Bank’s upper offices. The First Ward was visible out the window, while a map on the wall showed the notorious red lines for no loans.
This was during a campaign for a local ordinance linked to the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, the closer of a landmark legislative trio that began with the better-known 1964 Civil Rights Act (from the March on Washington and the Birmingham bombings), and the 1965 Voting Rights Act (Bloody Sunday, Selma-to-Montgomery)..
Like Daniels locally, and like Dr. King across the country, Marsh was more militant than reflected in some local versions of history.
To 1968 fair housing opponents, for example, he didn’t hesitate to celebrate the ordinance referendum victory.
“Ten percent of the community has been forced to live where the other 90 percent say it should. Now the 10 percent will feel (equal rights) as the 90 percent always have felt.” the mayor told local media in his lawyerly manner.
Marsh also reviewed the first 1958 result of his organizing the Human Relations Commission. Plans were to segregate Daniels Heights public housing, with blacks on the First Ward Center side of the Fourteenth Street tracks and whites on the other, until the commission raised a public stir. (Sadly, the HRC has remained on ice during the new millennium, not from being challenged by anti-CRT types, but from lack of member attendance. However, a recently-formed group, Community Alliance for the People (C.A.P.), is exploring 2023 local housing, beginning with 1990s steps that led to the Daniels Heights demo. See our related report here on saginawdaily.com.)
