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Over the past 50 years, housing has changed dramatically in Michigan. In the next special
interview, John Duley recounts the history of housing as it relates to the civil rights
movement and how it led to important housing changes in the area today.
Well I came here in 1962 when there were problems in the city about housing for people of color,
and they couldn't live in East Lansing. So they'd have to go to the black churches in
Lansing and say, "Well where can we find a place to live?"
So I joined forces with a number of people who were concerned about that issue and we,
with some faculty from the university and graduate students and campus ministers, petitioned
the city council to establish a human relations commission. They did that, and then we petitioned
the human relations commission to recommend to the city council that they pass an open
occupancy ordinance so that it would be against the law to refuse to rent or sell property
to people of color.
And we had a fascinating time because we had a board, a commission of nine people. We knew
the four people who were going to vote in favor of recommending it to city council.
We didn't know who the fifth person was. Turned out to be the one real estate representative
on the board, and he earned for himself a shunning from the real estate community for
voting in favor of that recommendation to the city council.
That recommendation was made, and the city council received it and said, "Thank you very
much. That's very nice. We think that's a great idea." And they didn't do anything about
it. So students got interested and began to petition and show up at city hall when the
city council met, to try and encourage them. And one night they showed up in such forces
-- numbers -- that the police had to evict them, and when they evicted them there were
69 of them who sat down in Abbott Road and refused to move until the city council did
something about this issue.
In the interim time, one of the members of the human relations commission, Robert Green,
who was one of the three African American professors at Michigan State University at
that time. Well, I didn't know him very well. I'd been working on this open occupancy thing.
But I got a phone call in October of 1964 and Bob Green said, "Reverend Duley, this
is Robert Green. I just a call from one of my students who's down in Canton Mississippi
and wants me to come. You get the money, we'll go."
And all the time we were down there, he kept saying, "You know, Michigan State University
ought to be doing something educational for the movement." In the course of this he said,
"Well, you're a reverend. Call Martin Luther King and see if he'll come and launch this
program."
Well, we did that. We sold tickets at a $1 a piece to students to raise money for this
project. We filled up Fair Child -- the auditorium -- and they had to open the curtain between
the auditorium and Fair Child Theater to get all 4,000 kids in there in 1965, February,
when Dr. King came and launched the STEP [Students Tutorial Education Project] program.
So I tell you this story because the city council did not pass the open occupancy ordinance
until he was assassinated in 1968. Shortly after that, some of the people in the community
decided it was time to do something positive. So this [Edgewood Village] was created for
low- and very low-income families. All the families that are here, many of them are single
parent families. And some of them are unemployed; they don't pay any rent. Anybody else who
is employed in any way pays 30% of their income for rent. We have a waiting list that won't
stop. We closed down our waiting list for four bedroom apartments because it's three
years you have to wait to get in.
One of our transitions we help people make is when they leave here they'll transition
form being renters to being owners. Last summer six people left here, five of them owning
their own homes.
We're trying to honor and continue the legacy of Dr. King, which is his unfinished dream
of economic justice for all.