Season 5, Episode 4- The Native American Origins of Detroit

10/24/22 • 28 min

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The beginnings of Detroit are inaccurately pinned to the arrival of Cadillac on these shores in 1701, but there were various Native American tribes in the area for centuries before that. Thousands of years ago, people came over on a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. The earliest indigenous people around Detroit were suspected to have come here for sturgeon in the Detroit river. They even left something that is still around to this day: a burial mound at Fort Wayne, on Detroit's southwest side.

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Season 5, Episode 3- The 1863 Civil War Riot

Smack in the middle of the Civil War, Detroit experienced a riot that was characterized as "the most brutal and bloody riot that ever disgraced any community." A local bar owner, Thomas Faulkner, who was thought to be African-American (he wasn't) went to trial in March, 1863 on sexual assault charges. The accuser was a 10-year-old white girl who later recanted her story. A riot broke out as Faulkner was being escorted to the jail house following his conviction. Two people died. It also set local African-Americans fleeing into the wood and across the Detroit River to Canada. We tell the story with the help of historians Martin Hershock and Ken Coleman.

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Season 5, Episode 5- The Michigan Democratic Social Club Triple Beheading

It was horrific, even by the low standards of the urban drug trade. Three dead bodies found in a van on Detroit's east side one night in 1979. All three had been decapitated. We explore the street politics that led to the massacre. And we tell the story of Frank "Nitti" Usher, a crime lord of the era. Former Detroit Free Press reporter Joe Swickard says people were forced to pay attention to details of the crime, as "this was just too much, and I think a triple beheading and bodies found because of blood leaking out of a van was just you know, it was totally in-your-face. And you got to do something about it." Caution: explicit language and extreme violence.

Interviews: Joe Swickard, former Detroit Free Press Reporter; Ric Bohy, former Detroit News reporter; Scott Burnstein, author and co-founder of https://gangsterreport.com/.