Marsha Music, left, stands in the doorway of her father’s Hastings St. shop, 1960 — seven years before the Detroit Rebellion. Joe Von Battle inside his Hastings St. Shop in 1945 before the Urban Removal.
Photo Credit, Marsha Music collection, colorized.
*The Michigan Chronicle is discussing the Detroit Rebellion 1967 and its 54th anniversary in this three-part summer series. In this third installment, we highlight a local woman whose father owned a record shop that was destroyed during the rebellion, and a politician who captures how Black Detroit could move forward.
Everyone knows how civil unrest and racial tensions boiled over during five days during a violent Detroit summer in July 1967 impacted Black residents. The death of 43 people, 33 African Americans and 10 whites, were the pinnacle of the violent escalations.
The rebellion began at 9125 12th Street at a blind pig (a place illegally selling alcohol) on the city’s near Westside.
Michigan Democratic Black Caucus Chair Keith Williams said that Detroit has a historic racist past that has resulted in Black suffering, and it’s time for payback. He is working with some City of Detroit officials to grant reparations through an ordinance for Black residents in Detroit. The ordinance would help the city’s Black residents benefit financially, in the housing market and more.
“[We’re] trying to fund it through cannabis sales,” he said, adding that the demolished Black Bottom and later the Rebellion destroyed houses, businesses and the economics primarily of Black Detroit. “It’s a hand up, not a handout.”
Williams, born in 1956 and raised in Detroit, said that he lived near the Black Bottom area.
“I was one of 12 [children],” he said adding that one day he woke up to the happenings of 1967. “We woke up and Detroit was on fire.”
Another family was also touched by the Rebellion.
Highland Park native Marsha Battle Philpot, aka Marsha Music, born in the 1950s, grew up in her father’s record shop. Her father, Joe Von Battle, opened his record store on Hastings Street in the city in 1945.
“I wasn’t literally born in a record shop, but I might as well have been, growing up as I did, the daughter of a legendary pre-Motown record producer, Joe Von Battle – and working and playing in our record shops during all of my young years,” she wrote online at https://marshamusic.wordpress.com/.
Philpot said in her blog that she had a “unique view of America’s economic and musical explosion of the last half of the 20th century” with her growing up during the “green, prosperous days” of Highland Park where she studied Latin, classical music and literature.
“However, I spent a good part of my life around my father’s old Hastings Street and 12th Street record shops. I was witness to the intense ‘street life,’ and the excitement of music and life in the tumultuous 1960s,” she wrote online.
Philpot told the Michigan Chronicle that her father’s rich musical legacy would never be destroyed — even though his first shop, opened in 1945, was operating until Black Bottom’s urban renewal program, also known as “Negro removal.”
He then moved to 12th street.
“I witnessed the relocation of his business to 12th Street, due to ‘urban renewal,’ and I watched his business’ final demise in the ‘67 Rebellion,” she posted. “I’m a witness to the economic contraction that hit Detroit like a tsunami, and its profound effects on urban life.”
“He did not rebuild after the upheaval,” she told the Michigan Chronicle. “It was looted, then destroyed by authorities in the aftermath.”
On the third day of the Rebellion, she went to the shop and saw that the shop had been “looted and burned.”
Philpot told the Chronicle that her father had a tough time after his business was impacted twice – but his stories, through her, and what happened during that summer of 1967 live on.
“Today, I write and tell my stories,” she said.
About Post Author
