The Nankin Township Historical Society

Here's a 1959 postcard of Satellite Lanes in Inkster. It was located at Michigan and Gulley. It had a space age look and apparently a coffee shoppe where the author of this card, Maggie, had breakfast on August 28th before sending this card to her parents Mr/ & Mrs. Harry M. Frost? in Akron, Ohio.

Merry Christmas Elva Brockmiller of Dearborn from Elsie of Inkster, Michigan.

Detroit Free Press , June 5, 1959 Nothing spices up a summer carnival like a little nude dancing from some southern gals. Or so thought two members of the Wayne County rackets squad (tennis? I guess that I should have read this better since one was a cop and the other a prosecutor) who treated 16 teenage boys to the show at the Harris-Kehrer post of the VFW in Inkster. Which sounds like a grooming ritual of sorts and one father, after hearing of the episode from his son, thought so, too, and c alled the cops. The men, Alfred A. Goldfarb, assistant prosecutor, and Harry Sparks, deputy sheriff, I'm assuming, were sent to DeHoCo (or did they claim that it was a sting?) along with the dancers and others involved in the illegal activity. The arrested dancers and their accomplices are listed as Nellie B. Jones, Gastonia, North Carolina, Dorothy Gentry, Maryville, Tennessee, Lucy Jude, Stirrat, West Virginia and Robert E. Miller, Tampa, Florida were all sent to the Detroit House of Corr...

I've posted several photos previously concerning Fellrath's Lumber in Inkster and came across more today. Shopping fatigue likely kept me from finding these months ago since I have searched the same vendor's booth before and came out with other photos from Fellraths but somehow skipped past the others. This photo shows the company truck parked in front of the office or outbuildings on Inkster Rd. between Michigan and Carlysle. I'm horrible at determining automobile models but I'm assuming that its current to the year the photo was taken give or take a few years.

Detroit Free Press , September 24, 1958 We live such strange lives, especially myself, and for some the weirdness continues after death. For Bertha Heiden it was likely less anomalous than our hectic lifestyles but when death came to her she found a pleasant resting spot in semi-seclusion on a hill at Bell Branch Cemetery in Redford, Michigan overlooking the future dead in the back lots of the graveyard. Detroit Free Press , September 25, 1958 Some twenty years after she was laid to rest in 1930 a thrill-seeker or deviant robbed her stone from its perch ing spot off Telegraph Road and absconded with it. In the spring of 1958, 7 years after the heist, the stone suddenly appeared at the Inkster Police Station, nearly 10 miles away. There it sat leaning against a cell block wall for half a year before somebody decided to find out where it came from. A newspaper article in the Detroit Free Press solved the matter within a day when Heiden's granddaughter, Geraldine Watson of 26305 F...

It's common knowledge that Henry Ford lent a helping hand to residents of Inkster who were living in squalor in the 1930s by not only employing them but also helping to rebuild parts of the city. The housing project included new schools, refurbished homesteads, discount (price wise, not quality) food pantries, soup kitchens and a re-payment plan that would make the Inksterites self-sufficient with some aid from their benefactor. The plan nearly paid for itself with only 3% of the nearly $1.75 million loaned out paid back. Ford, of course, paid the difference. Detroit Free Press , February 27, 1938 In the book Detroit Divided the authors claimed that Ford's housing project, as beneficent as it was, was not merely an act of charity but one of political bias. Not against the people that he was helping but rather Jewish merchants whom Ford thought would take advantage of the poor blacks and keep them indebted. Ford's antisemitism was well-known--he had an admirer in Adolf Hit...

scroll through the pages with the arrows at the middle edges of the book See what happens when I have time to organize things! An article on the DUR interurban system that ran through the area between Detroit and Jackson and locales in-between as featured in the Winter 1971 edition of The Dearborn Historian . Of course, the various rails traversed the entire country but our main concern is the immediate Detroit area. Note the photos of the Westwood stop in Inkster and the few of Eloise among the mostly Dearborn stops.

scroll through the pages with the arrows at the middle edges of the book If you do enough research on any interesting topic, person or place you eventually stumble onto 50 equally or more interesting subjects. Through that meandering of semi-related topics you stumble into exactly the thing you were seeking. Such is this find. Years of research on the Eloise Asylum and Ganong Cemetery led me to an interest in Inkster. The fact that Inkster does not have an historical society made it an even more appealing subject to delve into. While I am not black I am interested in preserving all history. Folklore included. A random search a few months ago led me to seek out this title and a placed request through the MELcat library system brought it to my hands. Without even considering that Inkster would be included in the volume (I am pretty mindless about such things at times!) I requested it and was pleasantly surprised when I found its mention in the first chapter. That depiction of Inkster and...

I'm going to file this post under Inkster because that's where I found this 1977 booklet for the Twenty-Seventh Debutante Ball of The Cotillion Club of Detroit which took place at Cobo Hall on June 11th of that year. The 27 young women of color who showed promise towards "making noteworthy contributions to humanity." are presented in this program along with a short bio. I'm not sure whose home I found it in but it was from a basement in Inkster which looked like it had suffered some flooding. I also found the photo below of a Frankie or Francis Sims and Carol Sims: Since there's a Leslie Sims in the booklet I think it's somewhat safe to assume that they are all related in some way to the homeowner, whoever they may have been. Although the scan isn't one of my better ones it will suffice for the purpose. Ditto with the entire booklet above that I scanned and uploaded before becoming proficient in the practice. Regardless, Leslie M. Sims is (or was) the ...

Detroit Free Press , September 9, 1965 The other day I decided that I needed myself a postcard, envelope or anything with a NANKIN postmark so I did a little research on the matter, having found no example on eBay or its ilk. It turns out there may be a reason why such a specimen is so scarce. Up until 1964 the towns within the township--Wayne, Garden City, Inkster and Plymouth (Livonia must have already had their own; then again I didn't even know that Plymouth fell within the boundaries of Nankin)--were getting mailed stamped with their respective town names. Obviously, this didn't last long since Nankin went kaput in 1966 so it's obviously going to be quit difficult to locate one. Old Nankin, on the other hand, might be the easier prospect of the two. More specifically East Nankin, which I believe existed into the early to mid 1900s.

Muhammad Speaks, October 3, 1969 ( enlarge ) Years after Malcolm X left Inkster, the Nation of Islam and this mortal plane his former sect attacked him mercilessly with excoriating harangues. Foolishly so. From an outsider's vantage point it makes one suspect that Malcolm was not only right in his estimation of Elijah Muhammad and the accusations against him but dead-on. In the October 3, 1969 issue of Muhammad Speaks John Ali, then National Secretary for the Nation of Islam, exclaimed that both the Whiteman and hypocrites love Malcolm. Which, I believe even in the loosest terms was and is a complete falsehood. I would say that both entities, the group and the man, were maligned though I would guess that Malcolm X became the more sympathetic figure after his execution. Personally, I have issues with each side in terms of general philosophy, being that I am not a Marxist or a sectarian, but I also agree with both sides on certain aspects. One being that forced integration was...