I grew up in Detroit, Michigan; Motown, USA, in a family deeply involved in the automotive industry. My dad, with a partner, owned a Chrysler dealership and there was always a new car in the driveway (he’s the one just to the right of the car door holding his pith helmet with his arm out in the Featured photo dating from 1966; a full-page ad in our local paper when the new cars came in. The Detroit Auto Show was REALLY something). He usually drove an Imperial. It was huge! One even had a record player inside. I remember lying down on the plush carpet in the back.

Dad worked hard; six days and two nights a week. Mom had one of the first Valiants off the production line, a silver beauty. She had a maid five days a week who did all the cleaning, laundry and most of the cooking. We lived in a three bedroom house. Thinking back, I’ve wondered how there could be so much to clean on a daily basis.

Detroit is divided by mile markers, starting at the Detroit River, heading north. The city limit is 8 Mile Road (as in the Eminen song). We lived a block away on the north end of town. We also lived a block from the huge Woodlawn Cemetery, now the final resting place of the great Aretha Franklin, as well as Rosa Parks. This has become a famous cemetery, but when I grew up, it felt vaguely creepy to me. On Halloween it was just plain frightening. The night before Halloween is called “Devil’s Night” in Detroit. Supposedly, the dead spirits came out of their graves to haunt all of us, and there were obviously an abundance of them in close proximity to me. It was a time of mischief in Detroit. Kids came out to egg or TP houses, or worse. I was not a mischief-maker, but Detroit was notorious for this.

I attended the Louis Pasteur Elementary School at 19811 Stoepel Street, which was K-8, a huge place, racially diverse at the time (more so as the years passed). It was a good school, though over-crowded. The above photo was probably the first and second grades. I think I was in second grade at the time. I was surprised when I looked up the address, as my parents’ first house was on Stoepel. It was taken by the city by eminent domain (my parents were compensated) to build a public parking lot. The school, and my classrooms, were large; typically 30-32 kids to a room. Because of over-crowding issues, if you were born between December 1 and February 28, you started school at the semester break, in February, which I did (my birthday is December 10), so I was always half way through with a grade in June. Before entering high school, which did not have that weird off-set, kids went to summer school to make up the half grade and enter high school (no middle schools in my area of Detroit), ready for 9th grade. We moved to a near suburb, adjacent to the Detroit Zoo, when I was half way through 5th grade. I was tutored for four weeks in math and just skipped ahead to 6th grade; now the youngest in my class; not socially or physically mature.

After their first house was taken, my parents moved to 20209 Briarcliff Rd, which is the only house I ever knew in Detroit. It seemed like a great place to live. Briarcliff was just three blocks long, full of playmates for my brother and me. My best friend lived next door with two older sisters. A boy about my brother’s age, with an older sister, lived on the other side. I’m still in touch with the older sister.

The Good Humor truck drove up the street, clanging its bell in the summer and we’d all run out to get our treats. We played games like the “kick the can” or “hide and seek” until the street lights came on. Then we knew it was time to head home. I learned to ride a bike, going around the block from Briarcliff to Renfrew. My friends Joanie, Patty and Julie lived there and I could visit them. The brilliant journalist and political commentator, Michael Kinsley also lived around the corner on Renfrew. He was a few years older, but his sister Susan was my age and in my grade at school.

We called “soda”, “pop”, most notably, Faygo Red Pop, a local brand. The best was Vernor’s Ginger Ale, also brewed locally. Sander’s made the best fudge sauce and cupcakes. We would sit at the counter for ice cream sundaes.

Our house was small but seemed ideal to me. My parents had an en suite master bedroom at the top of the stairs. Rick and I had our own bedrooms around the corner from each other. We shared a bathroom with a tub (my parents just had a shower) near the stairs landing. No air conditioning, my father would put out a big floor fan opposite my brother’s room on hot summer nights to ventilate the rooms. One of my windows overlooked the driveway. I’d listen for my father’s car to pull in at night. Then I could rest comfortably, knowing that he was home.

When my brother’s tonsils were removed and he was bed-ridden for a week, my parents got their first “portable” TV, a huge thing on a cart that could be wheeled around upstairs. With my brother in bed, I’d join him watching American Bandstand in the late afternoon. I loved Frankie Avalon songs and sang “Venus” to the stars after the lights went off (“Venus, goddess of love that you are, surely the things that I ask, can’t be too great a task’). I was a dreamy, romantic child. The house TV was in the paneled den, where Rick and I watched The Mickey Mouse Club earlier in our lives (I loved Bobby Burgess). I did that instead of practicing the piano. I was hopeless. Sunday night, the family gathered there, three of us on the couch, my dad in his easy chair, and watched Ed Sullivan and other family entertainment. The house had a formal living room, but that was for birthday parties and piano practice.

A small kitchen, breakfast room and dining room completed the downstairs. Off the dining room was a great screened-in porch where we spent hot summer nights. Dad listened to baseball games on his transistor radio. We could smell the flowers from the garden (as described in The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring (Tra la)). The basement had a finished room where Rick’s Cub Scout troop met. We carved the Halloween pumpkin in the scrub sink next to the washer/dryer. And there was a storage room under the steps where we huddled for safety against the fierce Midwest storms.

It seemed like an ideal upbringing. Until the millage failed. The millage was the part of the property tax that paid for the school system. I was only 10 so didn’t understand it all entirely, but knew there was a ballot initiative to vote for higher taxes to fund the school system. My girl friends and I made signs and wandered through the neighborhood, campaigning in favor of the initiative, but it was voted down. My parents knew this meant the school system, already over-crowded, would go downhill rapidly. I was already enrolled in Liggett, a good private girls’s school (Gilda Radnor’s alma mater), but instead, they quickly found land in Huntington Woods, and a cousin built us a new house. It wasn’t quite complete in September, 1963 when the new school year started, so I commuted for a few weeks. It was larger than our current house, a center-entrance Colonial with 4 bedrooms, still 2 1/2 baths, but deep walk-in closets and central air conditioning. Of course it was new and modern, but I was happy where we were.

We sold Briarcliff Rd and moved to Huntington Woods on October 1, 1963. It seemed to mark an end to a happy period in my life. I returned to the old house once, with my own children, as described in Family Defined by Place. I found the neighborhood still quite nice, full of happy memories. The gentleman who owned my old house was kind enough to let us in and show us around. The house had changed little and I was happy to share it with my own small children, who were 8 and 4 years old at the time. The owner’s name, like my brother’s, was Richard. The house had come full circle. After the turbulent years in Huntington Woods, it brought me peace to see it again.

 

 

 

I have watched the coverage over the past several weeks with fury and outrage. I don’t take to the streets for many reasons; arthritic toes, virus in the air, tendinitis in a hip flexor. Those sorts of long walks and demonstrations do not suit me. But I read and watch everything closely and think deeply about how things can and must change, how it relates to and affects me, our people and our country. What can I do to help the effort to bring about change, both in attitude and functionally, across every institution, large and small. I know that babies are not born with prejudice, it is not in their DNA. It is learned, from family, from peers. It takes a lot to unlearn those feelings and fears, but that work must be done now!

We have already donated to many Black organizations, both historical and new, that are making a difference, beyond just educating ourselves, as we struggle for the soul of America, for who we are and who we want to be. No one is above the law, not the president, not the police, whose motto is “to serve and protect”. Qualified immunity must go! This regime must go. Vote these people out in November.

In ways small and large, I personalize some of what has happened. No, I have never been stopped by authority figures, merely for how I look, much less been assaulted in front of video cameras, while the officer smirked, thinking that he was justified! Those feelings I can never know. But I have a huge capacity for empathy. I believe in trying to “walk a mile” in the shoes of others.

Yet I have known prejudice, as a Jew in a Christian society. Unlike in this current moment, I cannot be easily identified by skin color or other identifying features, but if any reader knows the story of Father Charles Coughlin, the “radio priest” of the ’30s, I went to school a few miles from his church, Shrine of the Little Flower. Royal Oak was his parish. He was an early and effective demagogue (think the Rush Limbaugh of his day, but much better looking and smoother) who thought that Hitler had the right answer. Actually, his thinking was more nuanced, and evolved, but it got to the point of support for Hitler and extreme anti-Semitism. Eventually, he was censured by the Church and removed from his post, but I’m sure some of my classmates’ parents listened to his broadcasts and were devoted to him, probably took communion from him.

Early in 9th grade, I missed two days of school for the High Holidays. It startled me when, the day after Yom Kippur, the boy seated next to me in Homeroom asked where my nose was…a not so obvious reference to my Jewishness (no, I don’t have the stereotypic look he thought all Jews should have). Later that year, backstage during a play rehearsal, out of nowhere, an 11th grade boy called me a kike. I’d never heard the term before. I thought he said, “kite”, but didn’t know why. I had to go home and ask my mother what the word meant before I could get angry with him. I was the only Jew in Girl’s Choir in 10th grade. I was accustomed to singing Christmas songs. I blended in. I could “pass”.

I remember writing papers on social justice and the need for common cause between the Jewish and Black communities in high school. Certainly during the Civil Rights movement, that coming together was evident. I always loved singing Spirituals, without thinking, or even knowing about their roots. Over the years, I learned much more about the meaning behind those songs I sang; many were coded instructions for slaves heading north on the Underground Railroad: to “follow the drinking gourd” (the Big Dipper) as a way to navigate toward freedom. Some were meant to uplift the downtrodden heart and strengthen their faith.

I learned of Julius Rosenwald, Chairman of Sears, Roebuck. Child of German Jewish immigrants, born in Illinois in the 1860s, he was upset by the news of the pogroms in Russia and linked that to the mistreatment of Blacks in the South. He befriended Booker T. Washington and donated money to his Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Shortly after Washington’s death, Rosenwald set up the Rosenwald Foundation and began funding the building of schools for Blacks in the rural south. But it was a joint project. He provided seed money, the community had to raise the remainder, taking pride in their own accomplishments, and maintaining, funding, and providing good teachers. Between 1917 and the time of Rosenwald’s death in 1932, 5,357 schools were built across the rural south; an incredible feat. A documentary by Aviva Kempner recounts this story and finds a few remaining students who were so proud to have attended a Rosenwald School. Education is often the key to success.

Three years ago, my chorus sang a song-cycle concert, rather than one large masterwork. It was the night I returned from the Venice Biennale; my Rose Art Museum represented the US Pavilion. It was an incredible five days, but I traveled for 24 hours to return, so did not plan to sing in the concert, even if I did return home in time. I just hoped to be there.

I did get back and was able to have the different perspective of being an audience member. The concert was entitled; “Songs of Love, Faith, Hope and Freedom”. I had learned all the music for the concert, so could really enjoy it. One song was “Precious Lord”, a favorite of Mahalia Jackson (she performed it at MLK, Jr’s funeral) and Aretha Franklin. Even Beyoncé has done a version. The lyrics in the current version date to the 1800s. “Precious Lord, take my hand, Bring me home, through the night, Through the dark, through the storm, to thy light. I have been to the mount, I have seen the Promised Land: Precious Lord, precious Lord, take my hand”.

I read those words, I sing those words. I say with humility, perhaps I have a tiny inkling of what those who gathered at Mother Emanuel Church prayed for. Music is powerful. It always speaks to me and I learn from it. It helps me internalize the message.

I learned more that night. Our Director invited Sheldon Reid, formerly a music teacher in Newton, but now a choral director of the Kuumunity Collaboration at Harvard, to bring his group and perform for and with us. Sheldon had come to our rehearsal once to teach us a call and response, typical in the African-American community. He ended his group’s set with that song: “One More Time”; “One more time, one more time, He allowed us to come/sing/ pray together, one more time”. We all participated, including the audience, with a wonderful soloist leading the response, verse by verse. They entered our concert hall, drumming their way in, marching down the aisle, singing in Swahili, then sang spirituals, including a powerful, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”. I remember Joan Baez singing that, years earlier.

Each segment of the concert began with a chorus member reading an appropriate poem of introduction. The “Freedom” section began with a friend from the tenor section reading an edited version of Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again” from 1936. Aaron’s voice broke as he dedicated the poem to his children. I sobbed as he read it. I share his edited version here:

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yes I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.

O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine-the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME-
Who made America,

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains, and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!

These words, written as Hughes rode in a train and gazed out at the passing landscape, in the midst of the Great Depression, couldn’t be more relevant today. Even three years ago, when I first encountered them, struck me like a lightning bolt. Recently, one of the news anchors had a young girl read a section of the poem at the end of the 6:30pm news broadcast. They implore us to learn, take action. They contain lessons for the ages. But will we ever listen?

Finally, a meditation, from my sister-in-law, Anne Arenstein’s last Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) letter, September, 2019:

If we must face sorrow, help us to learn sympathy.
If we must face pain, help us to learn strength.
If we must face danger, help us to learn courage.
If we must face failure, help us to learn endurance.
If we achieve success, help us to learn gratitude.
If we attain prosperity, help us to learn generosity.
If we win praise, help us to learn humility.
If we are blessed with joy, help us to learn by sharing.
If we are blessed with health, help us to learn caring.
Whatever the new year may bring, may we confront it honorably and faithfully.

Can I get an AMEN!

I'll let their stories speak for themselves, and for me.
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