Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” Speech at Detroit’s Walk to Freedom
Detroit’s civil rights movement highlights the city’s history of political mobilization and empty promises from city officials
By Alex Klaus and Megan Wilson
Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech in Washington D.C is one of the most famous in history. But did you know that King gave an earlier version two months prior in Detroit?
On June 23, 1963, King led the Detroit Walk to Freedom, a massive march of 125,000 people, demanding an end to the discriminatory policies targeting Black residents.
It’s long been believed that violent segregation only existed in the south. Unfortunately, that was not the case; northern cities, including Detroit, were guilty of similar practices. Jim Crow, excessive redlining (this is the Detroit redlining map), and other segregationist policies significantly reduced Black residents’ housing, education, and employment options. Federal, state, and local policies used redlining to confine Black residents to certain parts of the city, creating a “color line” of increasingly segregated Black and white neighborhoods.
Banks and saving loan associations typically refused to issue mortgages to Black residents while simultaneously issuing mortgages to blockbusters. These were speculators who bought properties in white areas, persuading white families that their neighborhoods were turning to Black slums and therefore their property values would drop. Blockbusters would then purchase homes from the panicked white families below the market value (a phenomenon known as “white flight”), and later rented and sold these properties to Black families at inflated prices.
Agents sold installment plans because most Black families couldn’t qualify for mortgages under FHA and bank policies. Installment plans stated that ownership would transfer to purchasers after 15–20 years. The catch? Buyers accumulated no equity from monthly payments and a single missed or late payment meant owners would get evicted and receive no equity on their investments.
Black buyers knew how easily they could lose their homes, forcing them to find solutions. Even a dual income was not enough, and the long hours residents had to work meant that property neglect was almost inevitable. Many buyers subdivided apartments to help cover exorbitant monthly payments, leading to overcrowding of houses and schools. The overcrowding of schools led to ‘double-shifting’ students, meaning school days were divided amongst students, depriving children of a full day of school.
These circumstances led to the quick deterioration of properties and neighborhoods, creating unsafe and unreliable living and schooling conditions for many. Frightened white residents could quickly sell their properties and leave, while Black residents would lose all of their investment if they left before the end of their installment plans, forcing them to stay. The Detroit Police Department rigidly enforced this color line– resulting from the segregation from redlining and white flight–through mass racial profiling and illegal investigative arrests.
In an attempt to pressure the state of Michigan to pass fair housing laws, civil rights groups like the NAACP organized protests against housing discrimination. They staged mass civil rights demonstrations, school walkouts, hosted public lectures, and formed political parties. In 1963, the NAACP began conducting marches into Detroit’s all-white suburbs, picketed apartment complexes and real estate agencies in the city that refused to rent to Black residents, and mobilized white Detroiters also seeking an end to segregation.
These mobilizations caught the eyes of law enforcement officials in Detroit; in their eyes, the civil rights movement was an enemy of public order and a threat to the operational power of officers on the street. The DPD and the Wayne County prosecutor threatened activists with arrests for picketing law violations. DPD’s ‘Red Squad’ (also known as the Special Investigations Bureau/Criminal Intelligence Bureau) was a secretive unit that surveilled, investigated, and documented most civil rights leaders, including (but not limited to) those in the NAACP. The DPD sought to restrict their ability to bring about social change as they protested racial discrimination in housing, schools, and workplaces.
King demanded an end to discriminatory policies across the nation, not just in the south. He prioritized addressing racial discrimination in housing, schools, and employment. During the Walk to Freedom, King said the best way for northerners in Detroit to support the movements in Mississippi and Alabama was to target discrimination in the north. He declared that “we’ve got to come to see that the problem of racial injustice is a national problem,” addressing racial discrimination in housing, schools, and employment in the North:
“I have a dream this afternoon that one day right here in Detroit, Negroes will be able to buy a house or rent a house anywhere that their money will carry them and they will be able to get a job.”
King asked his listeners in Detroit to “work with determination to get rid of any discrimination in Detroit”.
“[Segregation] exists in three areas: in the area of employment discrimination, in the area of housing discrimination, and in the area of de facto segregation in the public schools. And we must come to see that de facto segregation in the North is just as injurious as the actual segregation in the South.”
The Detroit Council for Human Rights (DCHR) was the local co-sponsor and played a key role in mobilizing Black Detroiters for the Walk to Freedom. The DCHR had a clear goal to supplant the more middle-class NAACP as the voice of Detroit’s Black community. Radical Black activists like the DCHR hesitated to include white liberals like Mayor Jerome Cavanagh in the march. Frank Joyce, the founder of the Northern Student Movement (NSM) Detroit Chapter, said, “the awareness grew that the more appropriate task of whites was not in helping blacks but rather in taking the antiracist struggle into the white community.”
Despite these wishes, white liberal mayor Jerome Cavanagh marched alongside Black activists, claiming the city of Detroit would no longer stand for prejudice. Cavanagh could have acknowledged the systemic issues mentioned by King and solved them during his time in office, but instead, he framed the problem as one of personal beliefs about Black people:
“[The March]… is evidence that the unsavory traditions of prejudice are being shaken to their roots. Those who still cling to these discredited beliefs in inequality have only to open their eyes and their ears to learn that theirs is a shrinking minority — and perhaps the only minority for which there is no room in America.”
City officials, the media, and even King himself praised DPD for acting with professionalism during the march. On June 24, the day after the march, Police Commissioner Edwards said he had “been receiving congratulations on the work of the Police Department from all walks of life in the City of Detroit.” He praised his officers for their discipline and professionalism.
King told Edwards that he “was both uplifted and consoled to be with a police force that proved to be a genuine protector and a friend indeed.” Media outlets like the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News wrote multiple articles praising DPD’s operations to “maintain public safety, to prevent violence, and to refrain from using force against the demonstrators.” The ACLU credited the DPD, perhaps excessively, with having “maintained order gently but firmly.”
But after the march was over, the mayor’s support and DPD’s professionalism quickly faded away. Past some short-term and superficial reforms, they doubled down on their existing violence towards Black people through law enforcement and other discriminatory policies.
Cynthia Scott
DPD was arguably more violent against the Black community after the march. For example, Officer Theodore Spicher of the DPD killed Cynthia Scott, a 24-year-old Black woman, only twelve days after the march.
News outlets like Detroit News and Detroit Free Press didn’t focus on the brutality she faced at the hands of a Detroit police officer, but on her status as a sex worker and her larger build. DPD officer Robert Marshall helped cover up the murder, claiming she attacked the officers and ran away from their attempted arrest. Non-police witnesses, contradictory statements from both the officers, and physical evidence in Scott’s autopsy are evidence of DPD’s attempt to cover up her murder. Wayne County later ruled Cynthia Scott’s death a “justifiable homicide.” This blatant murder and coverup is only one example of the violence police inflicted on Black residents despite their supposed professionalism at the Walk to Freedom.
Black radicals took center stage during the July 13th mobilization after Cynthia Scott’s murder. This was also co-led by a few organizations: The DCHR, the Group on Advanced Leadership (GOAL), UHURU (Swahili word for ‘Freedom’), and regular working-class Black people, especially women.
Attorney Milton Henry of GOAL, who obtained a court injunction to prevent the DPD from interfering with the rally, declared, “We don’t need the white liberals to lead us in our fight. . . . We must also get rid of our Uncle Toms, “ while the crowd chanted, “Cavanagh must go, Olsen must go”–referring to the mayor and the county prosecutor who had ruled Cynthia Scott’s death a “justifiable homicide.”
DPD’s Red Squad also surveilled organizers who led protests in response to Scott’s death, including General Gordon Baker, a well-known radical Black activist in Detroit.
Cavanagh and the City
The resistance to white liberals interfering with or co-opting Black radical organizing is understandable: most white liberals–including Cavanagh–supported policies that came at the expense of Black lives and communities.
In December 1963, only months after the Walk to Freedom, Cavanagh appointed Ray Girardin as Police Commissioner of Detroit. Girardin shared philosophies with Cavanagh, including the presumption that the lower classes are inherently prone to criminal behavior, an idea which was behind policies that targeted Black Detroiters. Girardin promised to put more police officers on the streets and brought 90 officers directly into public schools, making school more dangerous for Black students. Girardin was instrumental in launching the Community Action for Detroit Youth (CADY). CADY was billed as an antipoverty social program that sought to supply inner-city youth with responsible outlets for free time, socializing, and community-based learning. Unfortunately, as part of the war on crime, CADY largely functioned as a crackdown team which targeted young Black males in poor Black neighborhoods in the name of quelling “criminal” behavior among youth.
Girardin and Cavanagh also both hailed ‘slum removal’ and ‘urban renewal’ plans as “directly tied to economic development.” Girardin envisioned urban renewal as part of a “vast mission to curb criminal activity in impoverished communities.” In reality, these policies displaced thousands of Black Detroiters from their homes. For example, the Black Bottom neighborhood encompassed the main commercial corridor for Detroit’s Black communities. However, the neighborhoods were known for overcrowding, ramshackle housing, exorbitant rents, and health issues leading the city to label the neighborhood a slum. Black Bottom was demolished in the name of slum removal and later replaced with Lafayette Park and Interstate 375. This made housing options even more scarce for Black Detroiters who already faced significant housing discrimination.
To make matters even worse, only a year after the Walk to Freedom, two-thirds of white voters in Detroit approved an unconstitutional ordinance that would have guaranteed them a right to discriminate by race in the sale and rental of property.
Where We’re At Now
Martin Luther King’s speech in Detroit and the Walk to Freedom as a whole is only a single example of the larger history of Detroit’s civil rights movement. The Walk to Freedom, King’s speech, and the hard work of Detroit’s Black radical activists and civil rights organizations highlight the discrimination Black residents had to contend with. And the repercussions continue to this day. While Cavanagh and the DPD paid lip service to civil rights at the Walk to Freedom, in fact, inequality and violence toward Black residents increased after the march. City officials made it clear that Black residents were not valued, as evidenced by blatant housing discrimination, displacement of Detroiters from their neighborhoods, and brutalization of Black people at the hands of Detroit police officers.
Black Detroiters made up the bulk of the city’s civil rights activists and political organizers. When we honor Dr. King, let’s also remember his vision for us: to build a Detroit where Black residents can “buy a house or rent a house anywhere that their money will carry them and they will be able to get a job,” and that “justice will roll down like waters” in a city where, perhaps, shutoffs are a thing of the past. When we honor Dr. King today, let’s honor all the work that remains to be done and commit ourselves to fulfilling that vision.
Detroit Under Fire, published March 2021, is the pilot project of the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab, an affiliate of the Carceral State Project at the University of Michigan.
