Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century

In one of the first volumes to explore a nineteenth-century urban black community in depth, David Katzman shows that although slavery was abolished in Michigan in 1837, racial distinctions remained in the law and a caste-like social system locked most blacks into an inferior status. By analyzing the life-styles, occupations, institutions, residential patterns, class structure, and politics of the people and their community, he helps fill the gap between slavery and the ghetto in both urban and black history.