THE CRANBROOK ESTATE AND THE REGION'S INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

• Dr. John P. Bowes, Professor of History, Eastern Kentucky University
• Eric Hemenway, Director of Archives/Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Harbor Springs, Michigan

In the traditional history of Cranbrook, the community begins when our founders, newspaper publishers George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth, bought a “run-down farm” in 1904. That farm, however, was on land that less than a century earlier had been ceded by the Odawa (Ottawa), Ojibwe (Chippewa), Wendat (Wyandot), and Potawatomi Nations in the 1807 Treaty of Detroit. With a focus on reclaiming lost, forgotten, and stolen stories, this lecture exploreS the history of the Indigenous communities around the Great Lakes and in Oakland County and examines how the Cranbrook property and surrounding region were used prior to the arrival of white traders and settlers from Europe.

THE CRANBROOK JAPANESE GARDEN AND THE JAPANESE EXPERIENCE IN WORLD WAR II AND ITS AFTERMATH

• Dr. Bonnie J. Clark, Professor and Curator for Archaeology, University of Denver
• Dr. Mika Kennedy, Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Kalamazoo College

Cranbrook’s Japanese Garden serves as the point of departure for the story of Japanese Americans during and after World War II. This lecture tells the largely unknown story of the Japanese gardens of Amache—the U.S. government’s War Relocation Authority incarceration camp in Colorado where Japanese Americans were confined—as well as traces the development of Metropolitan Detroit’s Japanese community during the aftermath of the war. Although Cranbrook’s leaders distanced themselves from Japan during the war, renaming the Japanese Garden the “Oriental Garden,” by the early 1970s they had opened the campus to the Japanese community, offering Brookside School as the site of the first Japanese School of Detroit, and initiated a rejuvenation of the campus’s Japanese-style garden.

THE FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT SMITH HOUSE AND SEGREGATION IN METROPOLITAN DETROIT

• Dr. Thomas J. Sugrue, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History, and Director of the Cities Collaborative, New York University
• Gregory J. Fioritto, Attorney and Partner, Zelmanski, Danner & Fioritto, PLLC
• Representative Sarah Anthony, Michigan House of Representatives, Lansing, Michigan

When Cranbrook took ownership of the nearby Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House in 2017, it acquired more than a completely intact 1950 Usonian house and its surrounding landscape—Cranbrook became signatory to a problematic deed. At the very top of the list of restrictive covenants there is a note that the property in this subdivision may not be owned or rented by anyone that is not of the “pure, unmixed white, Caucasian, Gentile race.” While illegal and unenforceable, the Smith House Warranty Deed stands as a reminder of the enduring legacy of racism and housing segregation in America. This lecture examines the history of residential segregation throughout Metropolitan Detroit, including the role of property owner associations, and offers corrective solutions to these exclusionary practices.