A ‘dark chapter’ in the city comes to its final ending

Wayne County officials hosted a press conference last week to showcase the last house built to finally put an end to the city’s decades-old housing discrimination lawsuit.

By Charles Sercombe
For those who have lived here for awhile, this may seem like déjà vu.
The city’s longstanding housing discrimination lawsuit has finally come to a close.
Really.
Although the final ending of this lawsuit has been touted several times in past years, this time the lawsuit is truly over, and in fact concluded back in May when U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth A. Stafford issued an order of dismissal, thus ending a lawsuit that began in 1968. The lawsuit has the distinction of being the longest-running federal lawsuit ever.
But last Friday, Wayne County officials hosted a press conference inside the last housing unit built to bring that discrimination lawsuit to its final end.
“It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing,” said Wayne County Director of Economic Development Hassan Sheikh.
The lawsuit goes back to the early 1970s when a couple of hundred African-American residents accused city officials of targeting their neighborhoods in the name of “urban renewal.”
Using federal money at the time, city officials razed dozens of houses to make way for development – development that never came.
That move by the city would come to haunt city officials for decades.
It’s a tortured history filled with bad intentions and false hopes. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are long gone, as in deceased, but some of their relatives are still alive and able to benefit from the eventual settlement agreement that required the city to build 200 housing units.
Although there was an agreement on the table, what wasn’t there was money, as in millions of dollars to build the housing units.
And so the issue remained unresolved for many years until federal and state funding kicked into place.
The federal judge overseeing the case for many years, the civil rights pioneer, Damon Keith, admitted this was a textbook example of “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Keith never got to see the final ending of this lawsuit, having died in 2019.
Sarah Sims Garrett was one of those people who were wronged, and, as the story goes, she volunteered to have her name used for a class action lawsuit filed against the city.
Garrett was among those who died long before the lawsuit was finally settled.
In honor of Garrett, the city created a park in her name, located on the southbound service drive of I-75, just north of Caniff.
At a ceremony for the park’s dedication, former Mayor Karen Majewski, who served as mayor for 18 years, welcomed the news that the lawsuit had finally been settled.
“Congratulations to the plaintiff families who waited so many decades for justice to be served in Sarah Sims Garrett et al. vs. City of Hamtramck case,” Majewski said.
City officials thought this case was wrapped up a few years ago when it was announced that all of the housing had finally been constructed.
But guess what?
Someone in the city apparently didn’t know how to count up to 200. The plaintiffs’ attorney, Michael Barnhart sure did, and discovered the city still owed the plaintiffs three more houses.
That’s when Wayne County stepped in with federal funding, to the tune of $1.4 million to once and for all finish the project.
At the last house built on Gallagher, a number of invited guests crammed into the living room, taking care not to scuff and muddy up the new floors, and listened to several speakers before touring the two-story house.
Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib also spoke, noting that this was a “historic moment” and the end of a “dark chapter” in the city.
“This darkness will be not be repeated,” Ghalib vowed.
Posted Nov. 22, 2024