100 Years Ago, Today

The largest proportion of newspaper stories in my collection are from the 1920s, the historical focus of this blog. I aspire to paint a picture, through these articles, of the Detroit River corridor as it appeared a hundred years ago, as a way of calling attention to both changes and continuities between that time and our own. The 1920s were years characterized in our region by the rapid growth of industries (shipbuilding and auto manufacturing, in particular), the construction of what is now the Ambassador Bridge, and lots of rum-running across the river during Prohibition. I won’t give away too much more at the moment, but readers can keep an eye out for a visit from the Prince of Wales to Detroit, numerous attempts to curb bootlegging on the river, and renewed attention to the river’s key role, in the previous century, as a gateway to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Stay tuned!

Readers can expect to see a new blog post on this site roughly every two weeks, highlighting what transpired “100 Years Ago Today in Detroit River History.” Each post will include the actual historical article from a century ago along with my own commentary introducing the story’s topic. Of course, with any historical research project comes the need to navigate what can sometimes be scant archives and a fair amount of repetition. As much as I wish every article in my collection were published in the year 1925, I have given myself a margin of error of a few years on either side in order to provide a fuller portrait of the time. Perhaps a more fitting name for this blog, then, would be “100 (or so) Years Ago Today in Detroit River History.” To immerse my readers in the journalistic landscape of the river and position them as subscribers to/readers of the papers, I’m choosing to let the newspaper articles stand for themselves. Readers will get to bear witness to the images of the actual, archival papers, with an adjacent transcript, for both accessibility and ease of use among scholars and the wider public. These historical artifacts can also be seen as vantage points for thinking about current issues and concerns from a historically-informed perspective, which my introductions should help elucidate. Overall, I want to invite my reader into the worlds created both among and by the Detroit River, attending to the region’s history, politics, and its multiplicity of identities. I look forward to sharing my findings and hearing your thoughts and reminiscences!