Welcome to Black History Month.
Today we have a story of a Black leader in Detroit who found a way around some rules that tried to keep her from using her own property.
Her name was Rosa Slade Gragg; later, she would lead national efforts to preserve Frederick Douglass’s house in Washington DC as a national historic site, found schools, lead city agencies and advise three US presidents.
Before that, back in 1941, she was part of what was then called the Detroit Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, an organization that was looking for a new headquarters.
Gragg saw a home for sale near her own, at 326 East Ferry Street in Detroit.
She thought it would make a fine HQ for the group, so she made an offer on the place, even taking out a second mortgage on her own home to make the deal work.
The owner accepted the offer, which was interesting because this home had what’s called a restrictive covenant.
These were used in many parts of the US, and they were intended to keep Black people out of certain neighborhoods by banning them from buying properties there.
For whatever reason, the owner sold Gragg the house anyway, but the covenant system meant that she was barred from living in the property she’d just bought.
And right around the time she turned the deed over to her women’s club, backers of the covenants threatened lawsuits.
Which is when Rosa Gragg came up with a very impressive workaround.
This house was on Ferry Street, which had restrictive covenants.
But it was on a corner lot, and the other street, Brush Street, did not bar Black ownership or residents.
So Gragg had the entrance moved from the Ferry Street side of the house to the Brush Street side, and she got the city to give the place a Brush Street address since that was where the new front door was.
Problem solved, covenant evaded.
The house is still owned and used by the club, now known as the Detroit Association of Women’s Clubs.
It’s a historic site, and in 2019, the city designated the intersection where it stands Rosa L. Gragg Blvd.
Most of the players in the open world survival video game Valheim are out adventuring, exploring, maybe vanquishing enemies.
And then there’s Greg the Sorcerer, who spends his time in the game building Dollar General stores in Valheim space.
One exasperated user wrote, “I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY VALHEIM WITH GREG ANYMORE.”
Detroit street that rejected Rosa Gragg will wear her name (Detroit Free Press)
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Image via Newspapers.com
