From Accra to Kalamazoo

Part 13 of 13 in our journey from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo    
(Connecting Landmarks in Michigan and African History)

I am still convinced that nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice.  There is power and real power in this method. First it has a way of disarming the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses. It weakens his morale and at the same time it works on his conscience. He just doesn't know how to handle it. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Western Michigan University, Dec. 18, 1963

In the summer of 1963, during the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Youth Council summer job campaign, three African-American teenagers walked into a white owned pharmacy hoping to find summer employment. David Johnson, president of the local NAACP youth chapter, Walter Jones III, the group's vice president, and Lois James, the group's secretary, each requested a job application from the store Owner's wife, Mary Jean Van Avery. They were refused. They would be the only store to refuse to take applications.

The Van Avery Pharmacy was opened in 1935, which at that time was a solidly Dutch neighborhood, but by the early 1960s, the neighborhood's population was being transformed into majority African-American. As a Kalamazoo native, Donald Van Avery had never refuse to serve his Black customers, however, he had also never hired one. After visits from adult NAACP officials, Mr. Van Avery refused to change his position.

The picket lines went up on June 17, 1963.

The Civil rights movement had reached Kalamazoo, Michigan. After three weeks of picketing, the pharmacist signed an agreement with the NAACP. The boycott however continued until Van Avery hired his first African-American employee.

Van Avery Pharmacy (1951)

The store was sold a year later, but reverted to the Van Avery's after the death of the buyer. It closed permanently in 1967. The building was later occupied by the Powell Branch Library, which stayed there until it moved in 1985. The site is now the home of the Northside Ecumenical Senior Center.

But back in 1963, the same year as the boycott, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on December 18, would make an historic speech at Kalamazoo's Western Michigan University. The topic of his speech was appropriately titled "Social Justice."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Memorial in Kalamazoo, MI

In 1989, to commemorate his visit, a statue of Dr. King was erected in Kalamazoo's MLK park. Sculpted by Lisa Reinertson, the monument animates a slightly larger than real life Dr. King by depicting him striding, his eyes fixed forward, in a long flowing robe. The robe is adorned with scenes from the civil rights struggle. A black slave laboring in a field, a Montgomery city bus and a portrait of Rosa Parks, the Selma to Montgomery march, the bars of the Birmingham jail and a North Carolina lunch counter to name a few. As written by art historian Michael Panhorst, "The monument is an appropriate reflection of the man and the struggle for civil rights that was his life's work. King wore the mantle of the movement in life and his bronze posthumous portrait is shrouded with scenes of that struggle."

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah Memorial
in Accra, Ghana

In a park named Independence Square, within the heart of the city of Accra, Ghana, another bronze statue stands in memorial to a man Dr. King would meet in his only trip to Africa in 1957. The occasion was the inauguration of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as Ghana's (formerly the Gold Coast) first black African prime minister. The first African nation to declare its independence from British Colonial rule, Dr. Nkrumah would be the first to lead the new nation.

I can remember when Mrs. King and I first journeyed to Africa to attend the independence celebration of the new nation of Ghana. We were very happy about the fact there were now eight independent countries in Africa. But since that night in March, 1957, some twenty-seven new independent nations have come into being in Africa. This reveals to us that the old order of colonialism is passing away, and the new order of freedom and human dignity is coming into being. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Western Michigan University, Dec. 18, 1963

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

At midnight on March 6, 1957, on the same spot that his memorial now stands, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah announced Ghana's independence from colonial power. He would be a leading advocate of Pan-Africanism, a movement seeking to unify African people into a unified community. He would be a founding member of the Organization of African Unity. He would remain in power until a coup in 1966 forced his flight to Guinea. He would never return to Ghana dying in exile in 1972.

Dr. Nkrumah Memorial

That same year, a young Ghanaian architect named Don Arthur was in London, on break from his doctorate studies in Moscow. The idea of creating a memorial park was born when a letter authored by the African Students Union in London was sent to Guinea requesting that the body of the late president be returned to Ghana. It would take 24 years for the idea to come to fruition.

Dr. Nkrumah Tomb

The park attempts to blend the design elements of six monuments: India's Taj Mahal, France's Eiffel Tower, Egypt's pyramids, Babylon's Hanging Gardens, Berlin's Alexander Tower and Moscow's Mausoleum for Lenin.

One enters the park flanked by two reflecting pools, fed by kneeling pipers that entertain you as one paces 100 steps to a bronze statue of Dr. Nkrumah. Just beyond the statue sits the mausoleum which rises five stories in the shape of a truncated tree stump and symbolizes Dr. Nkrumah's incomplete vision for Ghana. Within the marble clad mausoleum, one finds the tombs of Dr. Nkrumah and his wife, Fathia.

Dr. Nkrumah Museum Frieze

Beyond the mausoleum, one passes over a drawbridge to arrive at a semi-subterranean museum faced with a white frieze dedicated to Fathia. The frieze incorporates traditional Ashanti symbols known as Adinkra. The museum exhibits a collection of photos, capturing moments in Dr. Nkrumah's political life. In the pictures of Dr. King and Dr. Nkrumah meeting, the symbolic connection between the struggles of African-Americans and Africans takes physical form.



University President James W. Miller
& Dr. King speaking a Western
Michigan University (Dec. 18, 1963)

During Dr. King's speech in 1963, he recognized the world was becoming flat. He repeated comedian Bob Hope's joke that in flight from Los Angeles to New York City, one could "hic" in LA and "cup" in New York. But more importantly, he spoke about living in a world where the diminishment of one man diminishes the achievement of mankind.
 

Dr. King and Dr. Nkrumah
meet in Ghana (1957)

As I look at pictures of Dr. Nkrumah, I can't help but see myself. I can't help but literally see his physical features in myself. And it makes me wonder if, by reading about his struggles, if his intellect and spiritual strength is also within me. There is a confidence to be found in seeing people that look like me achieving. And it generates a strength to find the best within me.
  
In Dr. King's words on that night in 1963 at Western Michigan University,

It is simply this, that through our scientific genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood. Now through our ethical and moral commitment, we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools. This is the great challenge of the hour. This is true of individuals. It is true of nations. No individual can live alone. No nation can live alone.

This is why I believe it's important to shed light on African history, especially to young African-Americans, for there is strength to be found this history. And through this strength, not only an individual, but a people, a nation and mankind can be uplifted.

From Sun City to the Motor City

Part 12 of 13 in our journey from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo
(Connecting Landmarks in Michigan and African History)

Palace of the Lost City

Centuries before tall ships were ever dreamed about and long before the dawn of a western civilization, nomadic people from northern Africa set out to seek a new world. Eventually they found a land of peace and plenty in a secluded valley, shaped by an ancient volcanic crater. The Gold these people mined brought them great riches and they built a mighty palace for their benevolent king, whose hospitality became renowned throughout Africa.

Palace of the Lost City

Sun City Resort

Billionaire developer Sol Kerzner's Sun City Resort was constructed for $260 million. It sits in the South African Northern Province in a region established by the former apartheid government as the black independent homeland called Bophuthatswana. Designed by the late American architect Jerry Alison, it reflects his and his design team's substitution of a fictional legend for local heritage in finding inspiration for the buildings they designed. As Louis Gates, Jr. explains in a conversation with Alison, unlike most other places he had worked at, such as Malaysia, "this area of Africa didn't have much of a heritage."

But on a terrible day an earthquake destroyed their homes, aqueducts, fields and mine shafts, sparing only the palace on its foundation of rock, and the people fled. Vegetation slowly concealed the ruins and all that remained was a memory, the legend of a Lost City… until 1991 it was "rediscovered" at Sun City and restored to its former splendor by the following year.

The 28 Legends of Sun City

The Bridge of Time

The four hotel complex is designed based upon twenty-eight fabricated legends related to each site at the resort, with the Palace of the Lost City at its heart. The palace is surrounded by the largest man-made forest ever created, complete with imported trees. Monkey Springs Plaza is designed based upon the story of monkeys that saved the village during a drought by going to the treetops to gather juice for the village people. The Bridge of Time shakes every hour to commemorate the disastrous earthquake that destroyed the "ancient ones". At the Valley of Waves, swimmers drop just over 55 feet down a chute from the Temple of Courage before splashing into the pool below. And boat rides are offered along the Lazy River.

Valley of Waves

The most painful aspect of Dr. Gate's story is his brief survey of tourists staying at the resort, who nearly all thought the designer's imaginary legends to be true. And to add salt to the wound, a few hundred miles away, lay the ruins of the Great Zimbabwe, believed to be the capital of the Shona Empire. Nearly 1,000 years old it was only discovered some 70 years ago. And yet, for the typical South African remains unknown.

Gary Player Championship
Golf Course

The true history of African people must not only be studied and reconnected with its descendants, but must also overcome popular pre-fabricated stories devoid of any fact, but sweeten with enough mis-information to make people believe them. As amazing as the architecture may be at Sun City, for all the riches it may generate for its owners, for all the tourist it may bring to South Africa, I can't help but believe that for the cause of raising people's awareness of sub-Saharan history, it is doing more harm than good.

1985 Sun City Boycott

Sun City is best known to Americans through the 1985 apartheid protest song. The collection of singers and actors who recorded the song pledged to refuse any and all offers to perform at the resort's Super bowl. Though the laws and physical barriers of apartheid have since been removed, the legacy of replacing the lies of African inferiority remains to be overcome. It is the same legacy that slavery has left for African-Americans.

Casinos come to Detroit

Wagner Bakery

Desperate to attract new sources of tax revenue, US cities began to grapple with the legalities of building casinos. For Detroit, the idea became earnest in the 1990s. And with the approval of Proposal E in 1996, the idea came to fruition when three casinos were licensed for construction. Motor City is the only locally owned casino and appropriately chose for its location the site of Detroit's Wagner Bakery, abandon since the 1970s. Unlike its competitors, it decided to incorporate the existing factory building into its new design. And unlike the Sun City Resort, its designers decided to blend the site's true history with the making of its future.

The Wagner Baking Company 

Continental Baking Company was founded as the Ward Baking Company in New York City in 1849. In 1921 William Ward, grandson of the company's founder, formed United Bakeries, which was renamed Continental Baking in 1925. In 1924 Continental

Baking acquired the Wagner Baking Company of Detroit, and in 1925 Continental Baking bought Taggart Baking and became the largest bakery in the United States. The company's products were sold under two widely advertised trade names: "Wonder" for its bread products and "Hostess" for its cake products. And in 1933, Continental Baking introduced to the world Hostess Twinkies. The original factory complex was designed by Walter W. Ahlschlager, who would also design two of the grandest buildings in the country in the late 1920's: New York City's "Cathedral of Motion Pictures" Roxy Theater and Cincinnati's 49 story Carew Tower.

Motor City Casino

Motor City Casino

Designed by Michigan architects Giffel/Norr with the help of hot-rod designer Chip Foose, the reborn building was completed in 2007 and meshes the old factory with the sleek and stream lined design of the 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, suked up with tail fins and chrome detailing. The hard corners of the brick factory are softened with aerodynamic metal panels that swoop along the building's cladded sides, cutting through the wind like the cars zooming along the Lodge Freeway below. At night, movement is again expressed through neon lights flickering in choreographed patterns along its elevation like the flickering high beams of a hot rod's headlights, looking for attention while cruising along Woodward Avenue.

1957 Chevrolet Bel Air

At times the clash between the weathered brick and modern metal panels can be abrupt and clumsy. But the overall idea of creating a hot rod out of an old wonderbread factory comes through louder than a Buick revving its 300 horsepower engine. I believe the design breathes new life into a once forgotten building. And instead of ignoring its history, pays respect to the past and creates something new.

Conclusion

New Housing in the
Shawdow of Motor City

With so many lifeless Detroit buildings, Motor City stands as an example of the architect melding an old spirit with the new life he or she breathes into it. Like a grandchild listening to stories told by her grandmother, the building speaks to a past as well as to a present. A rejuvenating architect uses an understanding of original intentions to create new innovative and unique solution. They allow the ghosts of the past to harmonize with life in the present.

But one shouldn't let the architecture blind one to the project's true goal.  Though we can easily debate the success of the architecture, it remains to be seen whether the project can breathe new life into its declining surrounding community.