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AACHM Oral History: Phase Four of the Living Oral History Project
Compilation video from Phase Four of the Living Oral History Project, in collaboration with the Ann Arbor District Library and the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County. With Fred Adams, Audrey Lucas, Chuck Morris, Nelson Freeman, Johnnie Rush, and Janice Thompson.
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#28 Ann Arbor Stories: The Blind Pig
On February 23, 2017, Swisher Commercial listed the Blind Pig and 8-Ball Saloon for sale. 6,970 square feet, two stories, two half baths, no bedrooms, and no list price. Best offer only. Liquor license included. The origins of the building, the Blind Pig and how this isn't the first time Ann Arbor has freaked out about the future of the Pig.
Music by Lightning Love.
Parental Listener Warning: This episode contains references to alcohol, topless go-go dancers, Soundgarden, and blues music.
Learn more about this story in the AADL Old News archives.
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#27 Ann Arbor Stories: The Torch Murders
In the pre-dawn hours in August 1931, a farmer in Ypsilanti reported a car on fire at the edge of his property. When police and firefighters arrived and extinguished the flames, they found a grisly scene that shocked the state. Four bodies, burned nearly beyond recognition, were found inside the vehicle, which was intentionally set on fire.
They called them the Torch Murders, and the entire story—from the crime itself to the manhunt that apprehended the killers to the insane criminal proceedings, would forever change law enforcement and the justice system in the state.
For more on the the Torch Murders, visit oldnews.aadl.org.
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#26 Ann Arbor Stories: Henry Ford's Enforcer
The most powerful person ever to live in Ann Arbor was Harry Bennett—Henry Ford's right hand man, union buster and general enforcer. Bennett lived behind the walls of Bennett's Castle at 5668 Geddes Road, where he ran the Ford Motor Company security division by fear and intimidation. He employed murderers, gangsters, and bad men of all types, and he was a signature away from becoming the president of Ford so many years ago. This is his story.
Music by Chris Bathgate
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Author Tom Stanton Discusses His New York Times Bestseller: “Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression-era Detroit”
Award-winning author Tom Stanton weaves a stunning tale of history, crime, and sports. Richly portraying 1930s America, "Terror in the City of Champions" features a pageant of colorful figures: iconic athletes, sanctimonious criminals, scheming industrial titans, a bigoted radio priest, a love-smitten celebrity couple, J. Edgar Hoover, and two future presidents, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. It is a rollicking true story set at the confluence of hard luck, hope, victory, and violence.
Detroit, mid-1930s: In a city abuzz over its unrivaled sports success, gun-loving baseball fan Dayton Dean became ensnared in the nefarious and deadly Black Legion. The secretive, Klan-like group was executing a wicked plan of terror, murdering enemies, flogging associates, and contemplating armed rebellion. The Legion boasted tens of thousands of members across the Midwest, among them politicians and prominent citizens—even, possibly, a beloved athlete.
The book opens with the arrival of Mickey Cochrane, a fiery baseball star who roused the Clutch Plague’s hardest-hit city by leading the Tigers to the 1934 pennant. A year later he guided the team to its first championship. Within seven months the Lions and Red Wings follow in football and hockey—all while Joe Louis chased boxing’s heavyweight crown.
Amidst such glory, the Legion’s dreadful toll grew unchecked: staged “suicides,” bodies dumped along roadsides, high-profile assassination plots. Talkative Dayton Dean’s involvement would deepen as heroic Mickey Cochrane’s reputation would rise. But the ballplayer had his own demons, including a close friendship with Harry Bennett, Henry Ford’s brutal union buster.
Tom Stanton’s other books include the critically acclaimed Tiger Stadium memoir "The Final Season" and the Quill Award finalist Ty and The Babe. A professor of journalism at the University of Detroit Mercy, he is a former Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan.
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#25 Ann Arbor Stories: The Red Light District
There was a time in Ann Arbor’s not-so-distant past when a part of town was widely known as the red light district. Adult bookstores, topless massage parlors, prostitutes, hoodlums, and bums—all just blocks from City Hall and Ann Arbor police headquarters. Cops were raiding massage parlors every few months, rounding up a dozen massage workers at a time, but the arrests never made a dent. Crackdowns on prostitutes and the johns who solicited them didn’t make much impact either. The red light district regenerated. Persisted. Grew stronger.
How did Ann Arbor become home to this kind of brazen adult fare?
Music by FAWNN
Learn more in the AADL Old News Archives.
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#24 Ann Arbor Stories: Proud History of Punching Nazis in the Face
Police spotted the Nazis in their rented U-Haul at the edge of the city around 11 am— two hours before anyone expected them to arrive. Fifteen members of the S.S. Action Group out of Westland—sitting three in the front and 12 in the back, riot shields and jackboots bouncing over every pothole.
It was March 20, 1982, and a crowd of 2,000 anti-Nazi demonstrators were about to show the world what Ann Arbor thought of their Aryan visitors.
Music by Diego and the Dissidents.
Learn more about this story in the AADL Old News Archives.
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#23 Ann Arbor Stories: The Clairvoyant Physician
In a time of spirits, specters, and the people who could contact them - Daniel B. Kellogg fit right in. The good doctor could diagnose you in person or halfway across the country—see inside you and prescribe the perfect cure—despite having no formal medical training. He needed only his keen sense of the spirit world and the ghosts of two medicine men to help with long distance cases. This is the story of Ann Arbor's clairvoyant physician and the family empire he built right in Lower Town.
Music by Hollow & Akimbo.
Special thanks to Katie Reeves for suggesting this topic, and our enduring thanks to the Ann Arbor District Library archives staff for providing many of our research materials.
Learn more about this story in the Old News archives.
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#22 Ann Arbor Stories: For All the Marbles
That spring in 1936, seven years into the Great Depression, the entire city of Ann Arbor, age 14 and under, lost their marbles over the biggest sporting event the city had ever known. Hundreds of kids battled for 26 coveted spots in a tournament that could determine their futures. It was the 1936 Ann Arbor Daily News Marbles Tournament, pitting the best shooters in the best schools in the city against each other for an all expenses paid trip to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to compete in the Western Finals. The champion of the west would punch his or her ticket to the National Marbles Tournament on the Jersey Shore, and a chance at marbles immortality.
Music by Stepdad.
Learn more about this story in the Old News archives.
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#21 Ann Arbor Stories: Our Own Santa's Helper
Most of Santa’s helpers are great people - guys and gals - and, as it turns out, Ann Arbor used to have one of the best.
Our Santa’s helper was so good that four U.S. presidents praised his work. As did governors, senators, congressmen - essentially any elected official looking to shake hands and smile into the camera around Christmastime. Our Santa’s Helper had the keys to the city of Ann Arbor, Detroit and Washington, D.C. Our Santa's helper was in Life magazine in 1956. Our Santa's helper was one of the best.
Music by Ben Benjamin, made possible by GhoLicense.
Read more about this story in the Old News Archives.