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Idlewild Listed as Historic Site

By Ericka Blount Danois on Aug 12th 2010 11:34AM
Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights

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Idlewild gets listed as significant historic site

Most of Generations X and Y know Idlewild from the feature film, a creative and visually stimulating sleeper starring Big Boi and Andre 3000.

But the actual town in Lansing, Mich., has a rich history that the National Register of Historic Sites has finally recognized as historic.

In a series of articles in the Lansing State Journal, reporters have documented that history.The idea for the town started when white developers began eyeing a market for black vacationers. In 1912, they bought almost 2,700 acres of overcut timberland, nestled between two lakes. They called it "Idlewild," a place to be idle in the wild. A vacant lot was $35, paid for at $1 a week.

Soon, blacks were taking over.

The town was visited by the likes of Madame C.J. Walker. "I consider Idlewild a great, national progressive movement," she wrote in 1918. She bought a lakefront lot and announced plans for a summer home and "a school for teaching hair culture."

The city had a large black population and a number of elite visitors from the black community, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Dr. Daniel Williams, Della Reese, Jackie Wilson and Sarah Vaughan.

At the turn of the 20th century, 16,000 blacks lived in Idlewild, more than the combined total for Cleveland, Detroit, and Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, Mich. There were juke joints, roller rinks and a dance troupe -- the Idlewild Revue -- that toured the country.

But eventually, integration split the black community and Idlewild lost some of its luster. Nightclubs and restaurants disappeared. Yet, as a rural community, the beauty remained, and many blacks still came on vacation or retired there.

But in recent years, redevelopment has begun. Federal enterprise zone incentives have helped, and a new theater opened. And now with its National Registry Historic status, more dollars will come in and new generations will know and perhaps visit the historic destination.

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