This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Michigan Chronicle, Michigan’s oldest consecutive operating newspaper. In honor of 90 years of as part of the Black Press, we’re bringing you Chronicle Flashback’s honoring the paper’s history.
In 2005, Debora Higgins told Michigan Chronicle’s Dorothy Tene Redmond, “It’s not hard to meet nice men in Detroit, but it is hard to meet nice men who haven’t dated your cousin, friend or co-worker.”
Twenty-one years later, we’re wondering whether anything has changed?
Redmond’s report on the city’s mid-2000s dating scene highlighted speed dating parties targeted toward those having trouble finding love in Detroit.
“Detroit is filled with beautiful, intelligent, single women. The problem is they are not approached in the proper manner,” said Jamiel Martin, who said he has a hard time balancing a relationship while building a business.
The caption of the story’s featured image, an overhead shot captured by Monica Morgan inside Flood’s Bar and Grill, calls the restaurant one of the top 10 places to meet someone in Detroit.
The year before, Michigan Chronicle featured the ceremony of several couples who chose to be married by Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett on Valentine’s Day, the second year Garrett’s office held the special event for couples.
Digging through the archives during the first week of February reveals residents in decades past held fundraisers, small parties and “gigantic galas,” like one Valentine’s Day Gala at Cobo Hall honoring former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young.
More than 4,000 people packed Cobo Hall to honor Mayor Young as he completed his first full year in office.
The photo gallery from the event published the week after the event featured councilwoman Erma Henderson, Congressman John Coyers and Detroit’s “unofficial first lady,” Joyce Garrett, a longtime county official who led Detroit’s Bicentennial Commission, overseeing the city’s celebrations of America’s 200th anniversary.
And years later, on the city’s west side, a local youth organization providing recreational and cultural events held an annual late-night Valentine’s Day Disco at a church on Schoolcraft.
In 2003, legendary Detroit journalist Susan Watson dedicated Valentine’s Day to Rosa Parks, who Watson said she once saw reach down on the street from her newspaper office window to help a homeless person.
It was the same day the Detroit Opera House house hosted a 90th birthday celebration for Parks, titled, “For the Love of Rosa.” The civil rights icon’s birthday is 10 days prior.
Watson, who died in 2020, even gave readers instructions for sending Parks their own letters of appreciation.