Launched in June 2025, this website is designed to provide an accessible way of showing what existed in Detroit’s historic Black business community prior to the 1950s. This project brings together historical map research, business directories, advertisements, and digitized print media to illuminate the economic and personal impact of racialized urban planning policies in Detroit.
  
It has been challenging for historians to salvage this historic Black business community in a cohesive way due to the challenges of the archive. Beginning in the late 1910s, the Great Migration brought an influx of Southern migrants to Detroit, and the city’s Black business community experienced explosive growth in the following decades. But in the 1950s, the main area where this thriving business community was located was demolished, wiping away most evidence of the former urban landscape. There is no comprehensive reference guide to what businesses existed in this Black community prior to the urban planning initiatives of the 1950s and 1960s. The evidence that does exist is fragmented and scattered amongst various archives and in former residents’ memories. 

The first aspect of this project was creating a publicly accessible database that contains information related to the Black business community in Detroit. The database pulls from historical sources that Kendra Boyd compiled from disparate archives and newspapers while conducting research for the book Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit. The database reveals links between entrepreneurs, businesses, locations, and other community institutions (including churches and professional organizations).

The second aspect of the project was to visualize the historical data on an interactive map. Early twentieth-century maps and street guides were used to ascertain the geographical locations of addresses that no longer exist in Detroit. The interactive map provides a comparison between the historical landscape and modern views of the city. Over 1,500 locations are mapped, revealing the businesses, people, and primary sources connected with each pin on the map.

Acknowledgements

Dr. Kendra D. Boyd, Project Creator & Director

Dr. Jesse Bayker, Digital Developer

Research Assistants from 2018-2025: Joseph Williams, Catherine Grant-Wata, Amarri Smallwood, China Summers, Anaïs Faurt, and Arielle Wiggins.

Special thanks to: Susan Oldenburg, GIS Specialist, Rutgers University Libraries; Michael Siegel, Cartographer, Rutgers University Geography Department

The Detroit Black Business Map & Database received support from a Rutgers Research Council Award.