Long Ago In Detroit – The Brown Family from The Rucker Archive

When I first purchased a photo album from the 1880s, I did not know that the African-American members of that family were named Brown.  But I did know that they were extremely rich.  To a person, the father, mother, grandmother, sons, daughters were all dressed in the finest of fashions, the equal of any white family group I have ever seen.  The photographs were all made in Detroit, all handsomely presented, with as ostentation that such pictures were supposed to convey.  The lovely young Miss Brown that we show as a sample from the album, is jaw-dropping gorgeous.  Is this a Victorian Halley Barrie?  She looks like a stage actress of her day, but she was not.  She was probably the most desirable young black women in the city of Detroit, way back in 1885.Back in the days before our culture began its slow slide into hypocrisy and ignorance, there were cities of startling power and might.  These cities were dark and dirty and wealth.  These cities had coal smoke, grit and rank smells, but they also had art, great symphony orchestras, and lively, creative neighborhoods where life could be hopeful and surprising.  So it was in Detroit, a one-time engine of progress and power has become the victim of racism and incompetence, a mere shell of its former glory.