The Detroit History Podcast

A reminder for all of our listeners, our new documentary "The Power of the Newspaper: Detroit in the 1960s" is now up on the Firelake Media YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@firelakemedia). If you didn't listen to our last update, this documentary is produced by The Detroit History Podcast team and is about how the Detroit Free Press covered the 1960s. Being that this covers the 1960s, part of our documentary shows how the Detroit Free Press covered the 1967 rebellion. The Freep's coverage of the '67 rebellion led to the Detroit Free Press receiving a Pulitzer Prize. To give our listeners a taste of the documentary, we thought we'd give you a small clip from the documentary on how the Detroit Free Press covered the Algiers Motel Incident. We talk with author Danielle McGuire, who's writing a book on the topic. You can find the full documentary here: https://youtu.be/cHzCzTpYbYo?si=YWSqQw2Y9sk7Z2p0.

Next month, on October 4th, on the Firelake Media YouTube channel, The Detroit History Podcast team will be releasing a documentary we've been working on ever since the last season of The Detroit History Podcast and it's called The Power of the Newspaper: Detroit in the 1960s. The premise for this documentary will be how Detroit's two major newspapers covered the 1960s. It's also about how the 60s were not just a pivotal time for Detroit, but also for the news industry, as the media revolution of local TV news took hold. We believe this shift in the media landscape gave us a foreshadowing to the current state of the news industry and media literacy.

It will be directed, produced, written, and edited by Eric Kiska and narrated, produced, and written by Tim Kiska, with assistance from associate producer and audio engineer Bob Koski. We will have a screening for this documentary on October 4th at 12 pm at the Bernath Auditorium in the David Adamany Undergraduate Library on Wayne State's Campus as well. So to give you a taste, here is the first 8 minutes of our documentary in audio form. Don't forget to subscribe to www.youtube.com/@firelakemedia for the documentary being released on October 4th.

RSVP to the film screening here- https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-power-of-the-newspaper-detroit-in-the-1960s-film-screening-tickets-2001030300495?aff=oddtdtcreator.

The Detroit Red Wings 100th season will begin soon, so The Detroit History Podcast team thought we'd revisit an interview we did 7 years ago with Detroit Red Wings all-time-great Ted Lindsay. Lindsay was a key part of the 1950s Detroit Red Wings teams that won several Stanley Cups, and was on the same line as Gordie Howe and Sid Abel, a line that Detroit media dubbed "The Production Line." On February 22nd, 2018, a little over a year before Ted Lindsay passed away at age 93, we sat down with the NHL Hall of Famer and talked about his hockey career. Reporters Bill McGraw and Bill Dow joined us for the interview. Although Lindsay was named "Terrible Ted" on the ice, he was an extraordinarily kind and thoughtful man off the ice. He had an old school hockey mentality about him that isn't around much today, as witnessed by his quote "there were 6'2 guys in the league, 6'3, they'd bleed the same as I do." This interview was part of the sixth episode of our first season "They Bleed The Same As I Do, The Detroit Red Wings in the 1950s."

In this special episode, we give an update on The Detroit History Podcast and tell you what we've been working on lately. And as a special bonus: Managing Editor Eric Kiska interviews documentary filmmaker Andrew Templeton who is screening his new film "1969: Killers, Freaks, and Radicals," a movie that covers "The Michigan Murders" (aka The Co-Ed Killings) in the late 60s. Up to today, most have attributed the crimes to one lone serial killer named John Norman Collins, but Templeton (and interviewees) propose that others may have been involved after investigating the case.

The Michigan Central Station reopening has given Detroit a great story to tell, specifically: how we took a wreck of a building and turned it into something glorious. The Detroit History Podcast takes a dive into how the place slid into such disrepair. Spoiler alert: maybe the station is a symbol of something bigger. Times changed. Automobiles and planes obliterated the railroad industry's vaunted position of getting people and things from here to there. A story with many moving parts, and that includes an explanation as to why only Ford Motor Company could have taken on such a vast project. Looking for more Michigan history to dive into? Managing Editor Eric Kiska is releasing a new YouTube series called "Tales of the Great Lakes." This docuseries will cover Great Lakes history such as "The Great Lakes Stonehenge," the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the creation of Thousand Island Dressing, and the haunting of the Fort Gratiot Lighthouse. The first episode is out now at: https://www.youtube.com/@FirelakeMedia

As a child growing up in metro Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s, Curtis Chin watched the world go by from an unusual vantage point. His family owned Chung's, a popular Chinese restaurant in the Cass Corridor, which enjoyed a 60-year run before closing in 2000. Chin, now a nationally recognized author, has written about that experience in his memoir, "Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant." He explains the pep talk he got from the late Coleman A. Young about the importance of anger. As Chin recalls the conversation: "Coleman Young, challenged me and said, 'there's nothing wrong with being angry.' It's a motivator. It gets you to do things, and it forces you to ask questions."

The Ford Motor Company had momentum going into the mid-1950s: a young Henry Ford II, who inherited the CEO job from his grandfather roughly a decade earlier, was reversing the company's fortunes. But then, the company laid the biggest egg in automotive history. It introduced the Edsel in 1957. Despite working with the best brains in the country, the project flopped and was scotched in 1960 costing nearly $2.6 billion in present-day dollars. Worse yet, it became a symbol for a badly-designed product. So what happened? Our analysts say the unusual front grille was the least of the problems facing the company.

On a fall day in 1830, convicted wife killer Stephen Simmons was hung in downtown Detroit. His execution was as public as anything could be. Bleachers were set up on three sides of the scaffold, as people came from miles around to witness the execution. Maybe they didn't like what they saw, because Michigan soon became the first English-speaking government to outlaw the death penalty.

We speak with legal scholar David Chardavoyne, author of A Hanging In Detroit: Stephen Gifford Simmons and the Last Execution Under Michigan Law. Lawyer Eugene Wanger tells us how the ban on capital punishment went through when the state's constitution was rewritten in the early 1960s. And historian Matthew Daley, of Grand Valley State University, explains why it never took hold in the state's early days.

Explicit content warning: audio of an execution.

Here's where Detroit was, art-wise, in 1917: a middling art museum on the east edge of downtown Detroit, with little to attract notice. We tell the story of the next 10 years, when the entire world began to pay attention. The magnificent Detroit Institute of Arts building on Woodward went up, with paintings by the yet-to-be-discovered Vincent Van Gogh. How did this happen? We tell that story by looking at Ralph Booth, the publishing scion who had a passion for art; and William Valentiner, the esteemed German art historian who oversaw the acquisitions. Marsha Battle Philpot, an arts aficionado and D.I.A. board member, tells us about Detroit's vibrant 20s.

Interviews:

Jeffrey Abt, author of A Museum on the Verge: A Socioeconomic History of the Detroit Institute of Arts."

William Peck, author of "The Detroit Institute of Arts, A Brief History."

The Blue Bird Inn was a cathedral of musical wonder in 1950s-era Detroit. This now-defunct west side club featured bebop jazz, featuring musicians such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Barry Harris, Thad Jones, and a longer list of jazz masters. The place was pretty much abandoned a few decades ago, but a local preservation group is taking up its cause, with some help from City Hall. We tell the story of a jazz club, including from the point of view of an archeologist who conducted a dig, yielding curious results.

Songs: Wardell Gray- Blue Gray

Charles McPherson- Nostalgia

Charlie Parker- Blue Bird

Miles Davis- Rocker

Wardell Gray- A Sinner Kissed an Angel

Wardell Gray- Twisted