Before Detroit became known for its Renaissance, it was defined by Dr. Charles H. Wright’s collection of stories, legacies, and voices long forgotten:

A man that recognized that erasure is a kind of death, who spent his entire life attempting to construct a monument against forgetting.

Wright, a graduate of Tuskegee University and an OB-GYN specialist, gave birth to more than 7,000 babies in Detroit over the course of his career, but his true passion was history. Identity. Pride.

He believed that Black Detroiters had to see themselves not just as survivors of slavery and segregation, but as descendants of kings, inventors, poets, and revolutionaries.

In 1965, he opened the International Afro-American Museum in a house on Detroit’s West Grand Boulevard that was financed by his own money.

No grants.

No permission.

Just purpose.

He filled it with what could be salvaged: photographs, artifacts, oral histories, and dreams.

It wasn’t a project based in ego.

It was about anchoring.

Wright once stated:

“I wanted a place where children can come and discover who they are.”

In a city shaped by white flight, industrial decline, and cultural dislocation, the museum became a sanctuary during storms of assimilation and apathy.

By 1987, it moved into a new building close to Wayne State, eventually evolving into what is now the Charles H. The Wright Museum of African American History, a 125,000 square-foot cultural epicenter that rivals the Smithsonian.

The building was not just a building.

It was an intervention.

Dr. Charles H. Wright wasn’t a household name.

He didn’t chase attention or titles.

Yet behind the scenes, he mentored generations of Black doctors, curators, scholars, and civil rights leaders, helping to bridge the gap between medicine and movement.

He recognized that the trauma was not only personal, but historical.

That in order to heal people, you needed to give them their identities back.

Their complexity.

Their origin stories.

Dr. Charles H. Wright left behind a lot more than just exhibits.

He left behind a foundation of knowledge.

A place where a grandmother can stand beside her grandson and say of the mural on the wall, “I was there.”

He laid the foundation of a lineage that left behind blank pages for generations to come to tell their story across.

If Detroit is a place of pride, it’s because Charles H. Wright helped teach it how to stand.

Victoria Jackson (Editor In Chief)

Victoria Jackson is a lifelong student and sharp-eyed documentarian of all things Detroit, from its rich musical roots and cultural icons to its shifting neighborhoods, storied architecture, and underground legends. With her finger firmly on the pulse of both the city’s vibrant past and its rapidly unfolding future, she brings a deeply personal, historically grounded lens to every piece she writes.

Published on: August 18, 2025