Black Bottom, Detroit

Black Bottom was a predominantly black neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan. The term has sometimes been used to apply to the entire neighborhood including Paradise Valley, which reached from the Detroit River north to Grand Boulevard. In the early twentieth century, African-American residents became concentrated here during the first wave of the Great Migration to northern industrial cities. Informal segregation operated in the city to keep them in this area of older, less expensive housing.

The name of the neighborhood is often erroneously believed to be a reference to the African-American community that developed in the twentieth century. But it was named during the colonial era by early French colonial settlers for the dark, fertile topsoil (known as river bottomlands). The Black Bottom–Paradise Valley became known for its African-American residents' significant contributions to American music, including Blues, Big Band, and Jazz, from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Located on Detroit's near east side, both Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were bounded by Brush Street to the west, and the Grand Trunk railroad tracks to the east. Bisected by Gratiot Avenue, the area known as Black Bottom reached south to the Detroit River. To the north to Grand Boulevard was defined as Paradise Valley. The old, substandard housing of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley was eventually cleared and redeveloped for various urban renewal projects. The neighborhood ceased to exist by the 1960s.

Historically, this area was the source of the River Savoyard, which was buried as a sewer in 1827. The river's flooding had produced rich bottomland soils, for which early French colonial settlers named the area "Black Bottom".

The area's main commercial avenues were Hastings and St. Antoine streets. An adjacent north-bordering area, known as Paradise Valley in the twentieth century, contained night clubs where famous Blues, Big Band, and Jazz artists such as Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Pearl Bailey, and Count Basie regularly performed. In 1941, the city's Orchestra Hall was named Paradise Theatre. Reverend C. L. Franklin, father of singer Aretha Franklin, originally established his New Bethel Baptist Church on Hastings Street. Before World War I, Hastings Street, which ran north-south through Black Bottom, had been populated chiefly by European immigrants. They had taken over older housing left by more established native-born Americans who moved to newer housing.

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