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How It Happens follows the story of author Jean Alicia Elster's maternal grandmother, Dorothy May Jackson. Born in Tennessee in 1890, Dorothy May was the middle daughter of Addie Jackson, a married African-American housekeeper at one of the white boardinghouses in town, and Tom Mitchell, a commanding white attorney from a prominent family. Through three successive generations of African-American women, Elster intertwines the fictionalized adaptations of the defining periods and challenges-race relations, miscegenation, sexual assault, and class divisions-in her family's history. A continuation of the plots begun in Elster's two novels Who's Jim Hines? and The Colored Car, How It Happens continues the story for an older audience and begins with Addie's life before the turn of the century in the South as a married Black woman with three biracial daughters navigating the relationship between her husband and Tom Mitchell. Later the story shifts to Addie's daughter Dorothy May's experiences both as a child and later, as a teacher who, choosing between her career and marriage to a man she barely knows, moves to Detroit. The story moves along with Dorothy May's daughter Jean, who, with the support of her mother and the memory of her grandmother, confronts and comes to terms with her role in society and the options available to her as a college-educated Black woman in the post-World War II industrial North. While there is struggle and hardship for each of these women, they each build off one other and continue to demand space in the world in which they live. Written for young adult readers, How It Happens carries the heart through the obstacles that still face women of color today and persists in holding open the door of communication between generations.

Near the turn of the twentieth century, "e;Pine King"e; Justus S. Stearns was Michigan's largest producer of manufactured lumber and the owner of a prosperous coal mining operation headquartered in Stearns, Kentucky, a town he founded. Over the course of his career, Stearns would own at least thirty manufacturing businesses-making everything from finished lumber to kitchen utensils, game boards, and motors-as well as hotels, a railroad, and a power company. He was also an active member of the Republican Party who served one term as Michigan's secretary of state and a philanthropist who gave a great deal of his wealth to causes in both Michigan and Kentucky. In Justus S. Stearns: Michigan Pine King and Kentucky Coal Baron, 1845-1933, author Michael W. Nagle details Stearns's astounding range of accomplishments and explores the influence of both paternalism and Social Darwinism in his business practices. Nagle begins by addressing key events in the first few decades of Stearns's life and his initial foray into the lumber industry. Subsequent chapters explore Stearns's political career, his timber operations in Wisconsin, and his coal, lumber, and railroad operations in Kentucky and Tennessee. Nagle also details the ancillary businesses that Stearns founded or purchased in the early twentieth century, even as his Stearns Salt & Lumber Company served as the anchor of his Michigan holdings, while Stearns Coal & Lumber did the same for his operations in Kentucky. The final chapter offers an overview and analysis of Stearns's lifetime of accomplishments, including his impact on the town of Ludington, Michigan, where he maintained a residence for over fifty years. Nagle makes extensive use of primary source material from several historical archives as well as contemporary newspaper accounts, court documents, company records, and other primary sources. American history scholars, as well as general readers interested in Michigan's lumbering era and Kentucky's mining history, will enjoy this biography of an exceptionally influential businessman.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed legislation creating two federal districts in the state of Michigan: the Eastern and Western Districts. This book provides the first and only comprehensive examination of the history of the United States federal courts in the Western District.

The field notes of a pioneering folklorist who collected the songs, stories, and cultural history of Great Lakes sailors in the 1930s.

Presents a history of the Catholic Church and community in southern lower Michigan from the 1830s to the 1950s. More than a chronicle of clerical successions and institutional expansion, the book also examines those social and cultural influences that affected the development of the Catholic community.

The life and times of Sunnie Wilson reflected on the changes in Detroit over the last sixty years.

Examines the historical, cultural, and social history of the Canadian portion of the Detroit River community in the first half of the nineteenth century.

During the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and West, the local black church was essential in the making and reshaping of urban areas. In Detroit, there was one church and one minister in particular that demonstrated this power of the pulpit-Second Baptist Church of Detroit ("e;Second,"e; as many members called it) and its nineteenth pastor, the Reverend Robert L. Bradby. In Race, Religion, and the Pulpit: Rev. Robert L. Bradby and the Making of Urban Detroit, author Julia Marie Robinson explores how Bradby's church became the catalyst for economic empowerment, community building, and the formation of an urban African American working class in Detroit. Robinson begins by examining Reverend Bradby's formative years in Ontario, Canada; his rise to prominence as a pastor and community leader at Second Baptist in Detroit; and the sociohistorical context of his work in the early years of the Great Migration. She goes on to investigate the sometimes surprising nature of relationships between Second Baptist, its members, and prominent white elites in Detroit, including Bradby's close relationship to Ford Motor Company and Henry Ford. Finally, Robinson details Bradby's efforts as a "e;race leader"e; and activist, roles that were tied directly to his theology. She looks at the parts the minister played in such high-profile events as the organizing of Detroit's NAACP chapter, the Ossian Sweet trial of the mid-1920s, the Scottsboro Boys trials in the 1930s, and the controversial rise of the United Auto Workers in Detroit in the 1940s. Race, Religion, and the Pulpit presents a full and nuanced picture of Bradby's life that has so far been missing from the scholarly record. Readers interested in the intersections of race and religion in American history, as well as anyone with ties to Detroit's Second Baptist Church, will appreciate this thorough volume.

First published in 1958 by Charles Scribner's Sons, Independent Man is the only book-length biography of one of Michigan's most remarkable men. His many careers embraced both the business and political spheres. Couzens was a prominent businessman who helped shape Ford Motor Company, but he left the company when he and Henry Ford clashed over politics. Upon leaving Ford, Couzens began his political career, first serving as Detroit's police commissioner. He went on to a controversial term as mayor of Detroit and then represented Michigan in the U.S. Senate. This book reveals the life of a truly unique and inspirational man.

Tells the story of the struggle to shape green redevelopment in Detroit. Based on years of fieldwork, Alesia Montgomery takes us into the city council chambers, nonprofit offices, gardens, churches, cafes, street parties, and public protests where the future of Detroit was imagined, debated, and dictated.

A companion to Great Girls in Michigan History, this book explores the stories of twenty boys who did some amazing things before they turned twenty years old. Author Patricia Majher presents easy-to-read mini-biographies about both highly acclaimed and lesser- known Michiganders, all of whom have led remarkable lives that will intrigue and inspire.

The remarkable story of the spiritual search of one of Michigan's most successful entrepreneurs. John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age follows the spiritual sojourn of John E. Fetzer, a Michigan business tycoon and former owner of the Detroit Tigers.

Explores the relative prosperity of midsize Canadian urban areas (population 50,000 to 400,000) over the past two decades. While there appears to be no single economic development strategy that will lead to greater prosperity for every community, Sands and Reese explore the various factors that help explain why some work and others don't.

A vivd and detailed portrait of serial murder brothers Luke Karamazov and Tommy Searl.

Originally published in 1919, The Iron Hunter is the autobiography of one of Michigan's most influential and flamboyant historical figures: the reporter, publisher, explorer, politician, and twenty-seventh governor of Michigan, Chase Salmon Osborn (1860-1949). Making unprecedented use of the automobile in his 1910 campaign, Osborn ran a memorable campaign that was followed by an even more remarkable term as governor. In two years he eliminated Michigan's deficit, ended corruption, and produced the state's first workmen's compensation law and a reform of the electoral process. His autobiography reflects the energy and enthusiasm of a reformer inspired by the Progressive Movement, but it also reveals the poetic spirit of an adventurer who fell in love with Michigan's Upper Peninsula after traveling the world.

Bankruptcy law is a major part of the American legal landscape. More than a million individuals and thousands of businesses sought relief in the United States' ninety-three bankruptcy courts in 2014, more than twenty-seven thousand of them in the Eastern District of Michigan. In Adversity and Justice, Kevin Ball takes a closer look at the history and evolution of this court.

The story of one of America's first families of photography, documenting the history of the Goodridge studio for three-quarters of a century. It weaves photographic and regional history with the narrative of a family whose lives paralleled the social and political happenings of the country.