This building on Cass Park was the home of the Michigan Chronicle, the nation’s oldest surviving Black newspaper, for more than half a century.

But it began its life as part of Detroit’s movie theater business. In 1936, William F. Voigt erected this structure along Cass Park to house local branch offices of major film studios, with Paramount Pictures leaving the Laskey Film Exchange Building at 2949 Cass Ave. and moving in shortly after the building's completion. It replaced a brewery that later became a detective's office on the site. The building was a significantly scaled-down version of the Film Exchange Building on Cass Avenue, right down to also having its own screening room for films.

Voigt was president of the Voigt Land Co. and son of E.W. Voight, founder of the Voigt Brewery. It is unclear who the building’s architect was, though construction engineer Herbert G. Winter was the builder. It is possible that he also designed it. The building was given a decidedly Art Moderne appearance, with a limestone front facade and brick cladding on the sides.

A brief history of Black newspapers in Detroit

The first Black newspaper in Detroit – and one of the first in the country – was The Plaindealer. Its first issue hit newsstands on May 16,1883. Its offices were located at State and Shelby streets, and the paper was edited by four African-American men, William H. Anderson, brothers Benjamin B. Pelham and Robert Pelham Jr., and William H. Stowers. Robert Pelham was perhaps the best-known Black political figure in Detroit in the late 19th century, and had started his journalism career at the Detroit Daily Post, a paper founded by abolitionist U.S. Sen. Zachariah Chandler. Also noteworthy about the Plaindealer was the fact that the Pelham brothers hired their sister Meta Pelham, making her one of the first, if not the first, Black woman to work as a reporter in the city.

However, Detroit was still small at this point – only about 116,000 strong – and there were only about 2,800 African Americans among them, accounting for only 2.4% of its population. By 1890, the city’s Black population grew to about 3,400, but didn’t keep up with Detroit’s overall growth, falling to only 1.7% of its total population of about 206,000.

Nevertheless, the Plaindealer was an important voice for this small community and promoted civil rights and exposed the horrors of Jim Crow in the South. In 1893, the paper reported that its circulation was 3,142, meaning almost every Black resident of the city read it. But the circulation was still small, and The Plaindealer went out of business in 1894, citing financial issues.

The site of the Plaindealer received approval for a state historical marker in 1977, but it would sit in a box at a Detroit Historical Society warehouse until Oct. 15, 2020, when it was finally hung on the Book-Cadillac Hotel.

In the wake of the Plaindealer, a number of other Black newspapers would step up to fill the void. They included The Detroit Informer (1897-1900), the Detroit Independent (1907), The Detroit Herald (1916), The Detroit People’s News (1925), The Detroit Tribune (1933-1966), The Paradise Valley News (1937), the Detroit Sun (1944) and The Michigan Citizen (1978-2014).

The Michigan Chronicle would join them in 1936 – and outlast them all.

The importance of Black publications cannot be understated. For context, the major daily papers were entirely white until 1953, when the Detroit Free Press became the first mainstream paper to hire a Black reporter, Collins C. George, a Howard University- and Harvard-educated journalist and former war correspondent. In 1950, George ran for Michigan's 13th Congressional District. At the time, he was the managing editor of the Detroit edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, a widely read Black newspaper. He previously taught at LeMoyne College in Memphis, Tenn.

The Detroit News did not integrate its newsroom until 1962, when it hired William C. Matney Jr., who had been The Chronicle’s managing editor. A year later, he was recruited by NBC News to become its first Black correspondent. Over his more than 30-year journalism career, he also worked at ABC News, and his assignments included Capitol Hill and the White House.

Even then, the Free Press and News did not cover Black life to any truly meaningful degree until the 1960s, meaning it was up to the African-American newspapers, like The Chronicle.

Birth of a Black institution

The Chronicle’s roots can be traced back to 1905, when Robert Sengstacke Abbott founded the Black newspaper The Chicago Defender. That paper would grow to have a national audience, with a circulation of more than 500,000 at its peak.

Meanwhile, the Great Migration was bringing African-Americans by the thousands as they sought to escape Jim Crow segregation and find work in the city’s booming factories. In 1910, Detroit's Black population stood at about 6,000, but by 1930, it had grown an incredible 1,900 percent, to more than 120,000. By 1936, Abbott’s nephew John Sengstacke was operating the Defender, and looking to expand into this new thriving Black community, Sengstacke founded the Detroit Chronicle. He sent Lucius Harper to Detroit to set up this new weekly newspaper, and its first issue rolled off the printing presses on April 14, 1936.

That June, Sengstacke summoned Harper back to Chicago and sent 23-year-old Defender staffer Louis E. Martin in his place. Martin would become the Detroit Chronicle’s first editor and publisher, overseeing production out of a one-room office at 1727 St. Antoine, which no longer stands, in the heart of Paradise Valley. This building also was home to boxer Joe Louis’ offices, one of the biggest figures in Detroit’s number racket and several Black lawyers, all of which helped the Chronicle gain popularity.

In an article published for the Defender’s 50th anniversary in 1986, Sengstacke said that “the first issue of the Chronicle was 5,000 (free) copies, using newsboys to handle distribution. Lucius Harper turned over to Louis Martin a paid circulation of 900 (subscribers) per week and unpaid circulation of twice that much.”

He was also sent with just $135 to make it happen, about $3,200 in 2026 money, but Martin said he also had “a million dollars’ worth of nerve.”

The paper’s name was changed around a year after its launch to the Michigan Chronicle.

By 1940, Martin had gotten the paper’s circulation up to 15,000, and five years later, it hit 25,000. He would stay at the Chronicle for until 1947.

The year 1944 saw The Chronicle’s most legendary figure arrive. Longworth Quinn Sr. came over from the Chicago Defender to join the staff as its business manager, rising to editor, then general manager, and finally publisher and president in 1968. This was a critical time in the paper and the city’s history, as it was only a year removed from the racial unrest of the previous summer. He retired in 1978 and became The Chronicle's publisher-emeritus in 1986, the paper’s 50th year of business. Nevertheless, he came into the office every day from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

He became the first African American inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame, in 1985.

Quinn "spoke of the paper as a 'voice of protest,' and as a training ground for Blacks who later made their mark in general circulation daily newspapers, magazines and television," the Detroit Free Press wrote in his obituary, published Jan. 23, 1989. "Under his leadership, the Chronicle reflected the Detroit Black community's frustrations against a white city establishment and sounded the need for change."

Another legendary Chronicle journalist was Albert Dunmore, who served as its managing editor from 1963 to 1968. “Dunmore's arrival coincided with the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement in Detroit and across the United States,” wrote the NABJ Journal, the publication of the National Association for Black Journalists, in its Summer 2018 edition. “He used the power of his pen to write columns pushing for strong civil rights legislation, including the abolishment of segregation, voting rights and equal education. He also urged Detroit's African-American community to get involved in the movement.”

The home of The Chronicle

By the 1940s, the Chronicle had left St. Antoine Street, and was operating out of an office on Vernor Highway before relocating to a former house at 208 Eliot St. in Brush park.

On Feb. 24, 1961, the Detroit Free Press reported that The Chronicle was "due to move shortly into new quarters in the former Paramount Film Distributing quarters, 479 Ledyard." The Chronicle would call it home for the next 54 years. To mark the paper's 25th anniversary, an open house was held May 21, 1961.

From this building, it would cover a number of key moments in the city’s history. Among them:

• The City of Detroit’s 250th anniversary celebration in 1951.
• The demolition of historic Black neighborhoods like Black Bottom and Paradise Valley in the name of “urban renewal” in the 1950s and ’60s.
• Charles Diggs becoming the first African-American congressman from Michigan in 1955.
• The 1963 Walk to Freedom March, which saw more than 125,000 people take to Woodward Avenue in what was the nation’s largest civil rights demonstration up to that time. It culminated in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at what was then-Cobo Hall and delivering an early version of his famed "I Have a Dream" speech.
• The racial unrest of 1967, which would see 43 people killed and 342 injured.
• The 1973 election of Coleman A. Young as the city’s first Black mayor.
• Erma Henderson becoming the first Black woman to the Detroit City Council in 1972.
• The creation of the Renaissance Center in the mid-1970s.
• The Republican National Convention being held in Detroit in 1980.
• The opening of the Detroit People Mover in 1987.
• South African leader Nelson Mandela’s visit to the city in 1990.
• The 1992 death of Malice Green, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of white Detroit police officers during a traffic stop.
• The voter-approved measure in 1996 to allow casinos to open in Detroit.
• The City’s 300th birthday in 2001.
• The return of the Detroit Lions to the city in 2002.
• The reopening of the new and improved Campus Martius Park in 2004.
• General Motors’ filing for bankruptcy in 2009.

On Aug. 13, 1981, The Chronicle Building was riddled by 10 bullets in the early-morning hours. No one was at the building at the time. Quinn told the Detroit Free Press for a story the following morning that "I went back through the paper for the last several issues and couldn't find anything that might have provoked someone," adding that police told him it was likely "cranks, just riding around looking for something to shoot."

On July 12, 1982, a Detroit man was charged with placing a bomb made of dynamite through a mail slot at the Chronicle Building, though it didn't explode. Earl S. Bruton was also charged with attempting to send two other bombs with threatening notes, one each to The Detroit News and then-President Ronald Reagan. Bruton, who was African American, seemed to have a grudge against the paper because it wasn't doing enough for Black people, Radford Jones, agent in charge of the Detroit Secret Service Office told the Free Press for a July 16, 1982, article, on Bruton's arrest. Bruton was sentenced that October to 12 years in prison.

A new home in a neighborhood with an old name

The Chronicle was bought in 2003 by a group of investors being the country's largest chain of Black newspapers, Real Times Media.

On Feb. 2, 2005, The Chronicle Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Cass Park Historic District.

Eight years later, in 2013, Real Times Media announced that it was moving its corporate headquarters and The Chronicle into 1452 Randolph St., a neighborhood that was renamed Paradise Valley in honor of the lost Black neighborhood where The Chronicle got its start. This brought to an end more than half a century of the paper calling Cass Park home.

“The Michigan Chronicle has been an integral part of the Detroit community for more than 75 years so it is only natural that we center our operations in the heart of the resurgence of Detroit,” said Hiram E. Jackson, CEO of Real Times Media and publisher of the Michigan Chronicle, told the paper for a Feb. 19, 2013, article about the move, which was completed in 2015.

With Little Caesars Arena under construction a few blocks away, the Ilitch family bought The Michigan Chronicle Building on May 17, 2015, for $1.7 million. No plans have been announced for the building, and it has sat there empty since. It can only be hoped that this prominent site of Black Detroit history is preserved and finds new life and is not turned into another parking lot.

Though its name has been removed from the front of the building, a faded ghost sign on the building’s west facade still proclaims it “home of the Michigan Chronicle,” as it will always be in the minds of many of its readers.