AADL Talks To: Bev Willis
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Turn of the century newspaper accounts paint a vibrant portrait of Charles Henry Shoeman: "utopian high class entertainer", "colored poet of Ann Arbor", "barber", "the youngest Afro-American writer in Michigan", "photographer", "the excellency of his verses", "student", "humorist", "assisted by his colored boys quartette", "author of an interesting books of poems", "lecturer", "elocutionary entertainment".
His anthology A Dream And Other Poems was published in Ann Arbor in 1899. The following year, a second edition was published. His writing made national news and he toured the United States and Europe, entertaining crowds with his words. By 1910, he had disappeared.
Dr. Isaiah McKinnon, former police officer who became the chief of the Detroit Police Department and the deputy mayor of Detroit. He was one of the first African American officers in the Detroit police force and was almost killed by racist fellow police officers in an incident that was later covered internationally.