DETROIT (WXYZ) — Here at Lafayette Central Park, a Historical Marker now sits. It reminds people of where Black Bottom used to be, and although that neighborhood is now gone, it's history lives on.
"This would have been just before they had to move to 12th street," said Marsha Philpot.
Pictured above at just six years old, Philpot, better known as Marsha Music, says she has fond memories of her father's record shop.
“It’s probably illegible because our jobs were to go over there to the record shop and write these labels on these shelves," Marsha said with a chuckle.
The small store sat the tip of Hastings Steet in what used to be known as Detroit's Black Bottom Neighborhood, from 1945 until the 1960s.
“Him owning this record shop and owning it in the place that he did, do you think that helped shape who you are today?” I asked Marsha.
“I’ve never been asked that question," she responded. "I truly believe it has because it allowed me to grow up in an atmosphere of music and of the musicality of not only my father’s record shop but to absorb this tremendous history and musicality of Detroit itself.”
Her father, Joe Von Battle's record ship, as well as the rest of Black Bottom, ended up being destroyed around 1960, when the City of Detroit began an 'Urban Renewal Project', which resulted in what we know today as Lafayette Park and I-375.
"I remember my father's despair," Marsha said.
That sadness shared by many who not only lived and worked in the predominantly Black working class neighborhood in the early to mid-1900s, but also had deep roots to the area, says Historian Ken Coleman.
"They looked at it is urban renewal means negro removal," Ken said.
He says thousands of people were displaced from the East Side of Detroit, and now that the Michigan Department of Transportation is proposing to get rid of 375 — the freeway that wiped through Black Bottom, replacing it with a Boulevard that will reconnect streets in the area — Coleman's hoping history doesn't repeat itself.
“What I’m concerned about and continually concerned about is preserving that history and even with the new residents who live in Lafayette Park and Elmwood Park, the old Black Bottom Community, that they understand the land on which they live, they understand the history," Ken said.
Helping more people to understand this deep and compex history is Lex Draper Garcia Bey with the Black Bottom Archives at the Detroit Historical Museum.
"It's really, it's really powerful," Lex said.
For the next nine months, her non-profit's work will be on display here.
“I’m a fourth-generation Detroiter and I’m raising fifth-generation Detroiters and it’s important to preserve our stories," Lex said.
The exhibit is sharing stories just like Marsha Music's.
“It has been very important for me personally to return my father’s name to his rightful place in the public domain as an essential person in Detroit music and I feel very gratified that I have done that," Marsha said.
