Several readers have sent me links to this great image taken forty years ago in a Detroit suburb. It reminded me of a picture from my personal collection of old press images (found at a local book store). A cropped version of this image appeared in the Detroit News sixty years ago (September 13, 1953), accompanying a story on the Jeffries Housing Projects in Detroit:
Unlike the lovely candid photo linked above, this one appears posed. But that makes it even more interesting to me. This was a full ten years before the March on Washington and MLK's "I have a Dream" speech (". . .
one day. . .little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."). The kids may have been chosen to represent the different races and ethnicities living in the new housing project. The children aren't just standing there: they are each mid-step, moving forward. There is a powerful idealism in this photo, a bit unexpected for 1953. It has always haunted me.
The kids are identified on the back, from the left, as Reginald Dozier, Tommy Gairick, Joanne Grañio, and Susanne Delangy. The photographer was Peter MacGregor. The Jeffries projects were mostly demolished between 2001 and 2008.
