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There's solid gold in every newspaper's black-and-white photo archives, and those with resources to review, digitize and share vintage prints give us the gift of history.
The New York Times, which is far from failing, has "millions of photos in our archives," it says on Instagram. "As we digitize them, we’re sharing some favorites."
It also culls selected sets for print and online features in a Past Tense series, and the latest one is pure Detroit.
Freelance writer Alexis Clark weaves a 21-paragraph narrative around a dozen photos of formally dressed guests at a Grosse Pointe debutante party where three Detroit singers entertained 750 guests 54 years ago this June. What made it newsworthy then, and now, is that the hired trio was the Supremes.
The resurrected photojournalism by Allyn Baum is priceless. There on a low stage at the Country Club of Detroit on June 18, 1965 are Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard in high-waisted gowns, close enough for teen guests to reach out and touch. The occasion was a hometown coming out soiree for 18-year-old Christy Cole Wilson, whose formal debut was six months earlier at a cotillion and Christmas ball in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
The headline -- For One Night in 1965, the Supremes Brought the Two Detroits Together -- and parts of the text cast the presence of three black entertainers at a swanky suburban bash as a sign of "lurching progress" toward changed racial relations.
In fairness, Clark notes that GP "still had no black residents" at the time. She also observes that while the entertainers and many guests were "practically the same age . . . between the groups were also the realities of race and class — the distance between Grosse Pointe and the Brewster projects where the Supremes grew up, 10 miles and several worlds away."
The guest of honor -- daughter of millionaire Ralph C. Wilson Jr., owner of the Buffalo Bills -- tells Clark she picked the Motown stars for reasons of musical taste, not integration.
It wasn’t an intentional political statement to hire the Supremes to perform at her party, Ms. Wilson Hofmann said. She chose them because she loved their music, and she was from a family that could make her request happen.
Society page coverage 53 years ago.
Clark grasps for symbolism of racial harmony anyhow: "Pictures of the event tell a layered story of two groups connected, at least for the evening, by the music of that time and place."
Fast-forward to 2019 and the story remains layered. "Grosse Pointe Farms, where the Country Club of Detroit is, remains 94 percent white, while the city of Detroit is 79 percent black," the retrospective says.
In any event, the feature is worth a look because of captivating images by a photographer who worked at The Times from 1957-67 and died in 1997 at age 72. The Times printed five of his Grosse Pointe party photos two days later with Sunday coverage by society editor Charlotte Curtis, an influential journalist who rose to prominence during 25 years at the paper.
Curtis was 37 when she brought a notebook to the party more than a half-century ago, which may explain why she didn't mention the performers until paragraph eight and identified them as "a rock ‘n’ roll group called the Supremes."
