In 1920, General Motors was a company in trouble. Its founder was fired – for a second time. Henry Ford was eating GM’s lunch with his Model T. But a decade later, GM had revamped itself into the model of a big business, and would remain so for decades, largely by following the same playbook…

The topic of busing proved to be one of the most volatile issues in metro Detroit during the early 1970s. This came to a head in the case of Milliken v. Bradley. Two federal court orders mandated the forced busing of children to remedy segregation in metro Detroit. The reaction: The KKK dynamited buses in…

It’s been more than 60 years since the Detroit Lions won an NFL Championship. In the 50s, the Lions were one of the most dominant dynasties in the league, winning three championships in six years. It was a season of comebacks with their coach quitting weeks before the season and star QB Bobby Layne going…

Bluesman John Lee Hooker’s recording career spanned more than 40 years — from his hit record, Boogie Chillen’, which was recorded in Detroit in 1948, to his Grammy Award-winning LP The Healer. Hooker is a total product of Detroit’s Black Bottom, the city’s African-American neighborhood. We track his career, with help from John Lee Hooker’s…

For two days in 1943, Detroit erupted into a flat-out race war. Thirty-four people died as whites and African-Americans battled each other in the streets. People were ripped from street cars and beaten senseless. Of the 25 deceased African-Americans, 17 were killed by police.  It ended only as the U.S. Army came in with rifles…

Before radio, TV, and the internet magician Harry Houdini was described as the world’s first rock star. So when he died in Detroit after a performance here in 1926, people around the world took note. We unspool Houdini’s death, and his various Detroit connections. That includes his 1906 leap off the Belle Isle Bridge. Veteran…

The Anchor Bar, situated on the western end of downtown Detroit, was once one of the country’s best-known newspaper bars. As one of the city’s most notorious watering holes, it was also the site of a federal raid because the feds thought one of its patrons was running a $15 million-a-year bookie operation (uh, it…

Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent newspaper published a series of anti-Semitic articles in the 1920s. They gained wide traction, were translated into several languages and gathered together in a four-volume series, The International Jew. Nearly 100 years later, the Dearborn Historian, an obscure quarterly publication, released a story examining the anti-Semitic propaganda. Dearborn’s mayor mothballed the…

In the season finale of The Detroit History Podcast, we partnered with The Detroit Historical Museum to talk about the 1968 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals. The Detroit Tigers had Denny McLain, with his 31 victories that season, an accomplishment that will probably never be equaled. The Cardinals had…

If Detroit was a sound, what would that sound be? Although some would say Motown, others say that sound would be Techno music. In this episode of The Detroit History Podcast we explain the birth of Techno in the 1980s, why its popular around the world — particularly Berlin… and why it’s as relevant now…