In 1850, the United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, in an attempt to prevent escaped Southern slaves from finding safe havens in the Northern states. One of those havens was in Cass County, Michigan, thanks to local Quakers, and the new act threatened the slaves and those who sheltered them. Many of the slaves who thought that they had found freedom in the northern states decided to move to Canada and Detroit was an easy crossing point. There is a monument to them at the edge of the Detroit River, looking towards Windsor, Ontario, on the other side.
The Gateway to Freedom monument, Detroit, with Windsor opposite
Photo: J09345 (Wikimedia Commons)
Just over one hundred years later, Berry Gordy Jr. founded his Motown Records Corporation in Detroit, not far from this monument. He sold the company in 1981 for over sixty million dollars. Quite an impressive achievement!
But how did a small start-up record company owned by a Black songwriter, whose attempt to set up a record store had failed, manage to achieve this amazing feat, with an investment of just $800 from a family loan?
Berry Gordy brought together recording artists, producers, sound technicians, arrangers, songwriters, backing vocalists and musicians, all of whom helped to develop the definitive signature sound we now know as the “Sound of Young America”. Most of the Gordy family were involved in the various parts of the Motown enterprise, which quickly grew into the most significant international popular music brand of the sixties and seventies.
Listen to the music of Detroit from the 1960s and early 1970s and you will understand why the city has a special place in the development of American Soul and R&B.
