About LastChocolateCity.com
Chocolate cities are important to America and to most eyes, Detroit is the Last Chocolate City.
Think back to the 1970’s.
A time when kids sat on the armrest, without seatbelts, in the front seat of rust brown cars. Hippies found themselves with responsibilities. Rotary phones. Heroin. Blaxploitation. Funk. Orange was the liberally abused color of choice. Black Arts. A pre-digital and post-civil rights time when the suburbs became the Shangri-La for the monied and the white.
That left the cities for Black folk. Detroit. Philadelphia. Newark. Gary. Washington, DC…to name a few. This was a time when the city was poor, colored, artistic and interesting. It was a time of self-determination and hope, Black mayors and schools where kids sang a different national anthem - Lift Every Voice and Sing.
Detroit’s own George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic amplified the Chocolate City funk. Released in 1975, Parliament’s “Chocolate City” album hailed Washington, DC and its black radio stations, businesses, parties and politicians as our “piece of the rock.” P-Funk countered the crazy mongering around white flight. Chocolate city became a nickname that stuck, not just for DC, but in all US cities defined by Black majority rule.
We won’t glorify all of it because it wasn’t all good. But the chocolate city was a real experience, and it had a positive and lasting effect on those who grew up in that environment. It is that certain something that most Detroiters who have left the city will recognize.
In the 21st century, chocolate cities just aren’t the same. Culture, economic opportunity and nightlife have made the city a destination. All those kids who grew up on MTV and hip-hop just couldn’t stay in the suburbs. Have you seen Washington, DC or Atlanta lately?
This isn’t true in Detroit… yet. Gentrification hasn’t quite caught on here. Unlike formerly chocolate Philly, DC, Atlanta, et al, white (and Black) flight from inner city Detroit is still the rule.
So we are writing this blog from tha D... A place most would like to forget and do. The city and the state are marred by a shitty economy, bad leadership, horrible unemployment figures, lack of vision, provincilism, economic and racial segregation. There are almost 30,000 homeless in the city where a winter day is a freezing 15 degrees. Almost half of the population is functionally illiterate. One third of the population lives below the poverty line.
Yet, there is something really special here. The city represents an opportunity for radical social, cultural and economic change. Our goal at LastChocolateCity.com and our parent organization, The Michigan Citizen, is to observe, analyze and help facilitate that change.
Our writers will comment on the issues that affect our community and the world. We offer a perspective that is shaped by the culture, the people, the funk of Detroit - The Last Chocolate City.
Background photos on the site are from The Michigan Citizen’s newspaper archives. Most were taken in the cities of Benton Harbor and Detroit, Michigan in the early 1980s.
