Politicians and Public Servants of the Boston-Edison Historic District
Hon. Trudy DunCombe Archer
Trudy DunCombe Archer received her JD from the Detroit College of Law. She married Dennis Archer and encouraged him to study law (Dennis later became a Michigan Supreme Court Justice, Mayor of Detroit, and president of the ABA). She has been a judge on the 36th District Court since 1989. She resided at 1642 Longfellow, along with her sister, Beth DunCombe.
Edward L. Baker
Edward L. Baker was born in Georgetown, Indiana on February 1, 1906. He graduated from the University of Louisville in 1931, and took courses in law at the Detroit College of Law and in engineering at Wayne State University. He worked for the American Mutual Liability Insurance Company, the Wayne County Bureau of Investigation, Fisher Body Corporation, and Westinghouse Electric Corporation before serving one term in the Michigan legislature in 1947/48. He was the president of the Michigan Society for Mental Health from 1950 to 1952. In October, 1953, Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield appointed Baker acting Postmaster of Detroit. He served until February 28, 1976, the second longest tenure as postmaster in Detroit history. He was named National Postmaster of the Year in 1964. Edward L. Baker lived at 803 W. Boston Boulevard.
Martin L. Bass
Martin L. Bass was born in Morgan County, Georgia in 1917. He was an insurance agent from 1935 until the onset of WWII, when he enlisted in the US Army. Upon discharge as first sergeant in 1946, he moved to Detroit and became a real estate broker, and married Mildred Amour. In 1954, Bass joined the Detroit office of the Veteran's Administration, becoming the first African-American appraiser-reviewer in the US; he later moved to the Federal Housing Administration, working as a labor relations officer. In 1958, Liberian president William V. S. Tubman appointed him as the first honorary consul to Liberia for Michigan, a post in which he served until 1979, when he was decorated as Knight Commander of African Redemption by Liberian President William R. Tolbert. Martin L. Bass lived at 826 Edison.
Read a Georgian legislative commendation of Martin L. Bass.
Hon. Vincent M. Brennan
Brennan was born in Mount Clemens and graduated from Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the bar in Detroit in 1912. He spent two years in the Michigan state senate from 1919-1920 and one term in the US House of Representatives (1921-1923). One year later, he was elected to the Wayne County Circuit Court, a position in which he served for 30 years. Vincent Brennan lived at 627 Edison and later at 2266 W. Boston Boulevard.
Read Vincent M. Brennan's Congressional biography.
Henry Butzel
Henry M. Butzel was born in 1871, in Detroit. He attended the University of Michigan and received both a Bachelor of Philosophy and a law degree (and one of the founders of the University of Michigan Daily). He was admitted to the Bar in 1892, and immediately began practicing law in Detroit at the firm of Butzel, Levin, and Winston. In 1929, governor Green appointed Butzel to fill a vacancy on the Michigan Supreme Court, a position he held until his retirement from the bench in 1955. He served as Chief Justice four times: 1931, 1939, 1946, and 1954. Justice Butzel lived at 101 Edison.
Read Henry Butzel's biography from the Supreme Court.
James Couzens
Born in Ontario, James Couzens moved to Detroit in 1890. In 1903, Couzens (then a clerk in a coal company) invested $2400 in a new venture started by Henry Ford. Couzens became vice president and general manager of Ford Motor Company, and the company prospered in part because of his business acumen. In 1919, he sold his shares back to Ford for 35 million dollars.
Couzens held other important financial positions, as president of the Bank of Detroit and director of the Detroit Trust Company. After building a home at 610 Longfellow in Boston-Edison in 1910, he went into public service. Couzens was commissioner of Detroit's street railways from 1913-1915 and police commissioner from 1916-1918. In 1919 Couzens was elected mayor of Detroit, a post he served in until he was appointed by Michigan's governor to the United States Senate in 1922 on the resignation of Truman Newberry. Couzens was elected to the seat in 1924, and then re-elected in 1930. His 1936 re-election campaign ended in a loss, attributed largely to Couzens' support for Roosevelt's New Deal. However, Couzens died in late 1936, while still in office.
Couzens also was a noted philanthropist, who established the Children's Fund of Michigan with a $10,000,000 grant, and gave $1,000,000 for relief in Detroit during the Depression. His son Frank also served as mayor of Detroit.
Read James Couzens' Congressional biography or a read a book about him.
Frank Couzens
Frank Couzens, the son of James Couzens, was born in Detroit in 1902. He started young in politics, winning a seat on the Detroit City Council in 1931 with enough votes to become president of that body. When mayor Frank Murphy resigned in 1933, Couzens replaced him. Later that year, Couzens ran for mayor of Detroit and was elected in his own right. He held the post for two two-year terms, from 1934 until 1938, after which he declined to run for re-election. He was an Army Colonel in WWII. In addition to growing up in his father's home in Boston-Edison, Frank Couzens lived at 2000 W. Boston.
Hon. Charles C. Diggs, Jr.
Charles Diggs studied as a mortician at the Wayne College of Mortuary Science and studied law at the Detroit College of Law. He was elected to the Michigan State Senate in 1951 (the first African-American Democratic state senator), serving four years. In 1954 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (defeating George D. O'Brien in the primary), the first African-American Congressman from Michigan. He was elected 12 more times, remaining in the House until his resignation in 1980. Diggs was the founder and first chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. He lived at 2522 W. Boston.
Read Charles Diggs's Congressional biography.
Harry F. Kelly
Harry Kelly was born in in 1895 in Ottawa, Illinois and received a law degree from Notre Dame University in 1913. He served in the US Army during WWI, losing a leg in the Battle of Chateau-Thierry and earning the Croix de Guerre. After the war, he went into public service, being elected as State's Attorney for LaSalle County, IL in 1920. In the meantime, his father, Henry M. Kelly, moved to Detroit and set up a law practice there with Harry's younger brother' the firm represented General Motors in Michigan. When Harry Kelly's term expired in 1922, he joined his father and younger brother in Detroit at the firm of Kelly, Kelly, and Kelly.
Kelly later became assistant prosecuting attorney for Wayne County and then was appointed as head of the Detroit area Liquor Control Commission. Soon thereafter, he was elected as Michigan Secretary of State, serving from 1939-43. In 1942, Kelly ran for governor, winning a tight race with the incumbent. He served as governor until 1946, when he did not run for re-election. He later served on the Michigan Supreme Court from 1954-71. Harry F. Kelly lived at 1128 Atkinson; when his father died, he moved to 2465 Chicago Boulevard.
Read Harry Kelly's biography from the Supreme Court or look at a family biography.
Franz C. Kuhn
Franz Kuhn was born in Detroit in 1872 and began practicing law in Mt. Clemens. He was elected Prosecuting Attorney of Macomb County in 1898, then Probate Judge in 1904. He resigned as judge to work as Attorney General of the state of Michigan. In 1912, he was appointed to the Michigan's Supreme Court, a post he held for seven years, acting as Chief Justice from 1917-1918. He finished his career as the president of Michigan Bell Telephone Company. Justice Kuhn lived at 112 Edison.
Read Franz Kuhn's biography from the Supreme Court.
Sen. Carl Levin
Carl Levin was born in Detroit in 1934 and graduated first from Central High School and then from Swarthmore College. He attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1959. He practiced law before embarking on a career in public service. He was appointed an assistant attorney general of Michigan and the first general counsel for the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, and worked to establish establish the Detroit Public Defender's Office. In 1969 he was elected to the Detroit City Council, becoming president in 1974. He sat on the council until 1977. The next year, was elected to the U. S. Senate, holding the same seat that James Couzens had decades earlier when Levin was born. He was re-elected four times, and is currently chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Carl Levin lived with his brother Sander Levin at 2055 W. Boston.
Read Carl Levin's Congressional biography and the bio on his Senate page.
Hon. Sander Levin
Sander Levin was born in Detroit in 1931 and graduated first from Central High School and then from the University of Chicago. He attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1957. He practiced law before embarking on a career in public service. He was elected to the Michigan State Senate in 1965 and served until 1970, acting as Senate Minority Leader for the last two years. He ran for governor twice, and was the assistant administrator for the Agency for International Development. In 1982, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, a position that he still holds. Sander Levin lived with his brother Carl Levin at 2055 W. Boston.
Read Carl Levin's Congressional biography and the bio on his House page.
Truman Newberry
Truman Newberry was born in 1864 in Detroit, the son of a wealthy businessman. He worked at a number of business ventures, working his way up to the position of manager of the Detroit, Bay City & Alpena Railway, and becoming president and treasurer of the Detroit Steel & Spring Company, along the way shrewdly investing his fortune to become a multi-millionaire. In 1902, he helped organize the Packard Motor Car Company.
In the late 1890s, Newberry served with the US Navy, including as a lieutenant on the USS Yosemite (with lifelong friend and brother-in-law Henry Joy) during the Spanish-American War. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1905-1908, and as Secretary of the Navy in 1908 and 1909. In 1919, he was elected to the United States Senate in a fierce contest with Henry Ford. There were some irregularities in the election, resulting in an investigation and trial. As a result, Newberry wasn't seated in the Senate for some time, and he eventually resigned in 1922.
In 1913, Truman Newberry and his brother John platted out the Boston Boulevard subdivision, stretching from Hamilton to 14th Street (now Rosa Parks), encompassing the middle third of the Boston-Edison neighborhood.
Read Truman Newberry's Congressional biography.
George D. O'Brien
George Donoghue O'Brien was born in Detroit on January 1, 1900. He served in WWI, then received an undergraduate degree from the University of Detroit and went on to graduate from the University of Detroit Law School and gain admittance to the bar in 1924. He was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 1936, eventually serving seven terms (not all consecutive) in Washington. In 1954, O'Brien lost the primary race to Charles C. Diggs, Jr., and became assistant corporation counsel of the District of Columbia. He passed away in 1957, and is interred in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Detroit. George O'Brien lived at 2475 W. Boston Boulevard.
Read George D. O'Brien's Congressional biography.
Jessie P. Slaton
Jessie Pharr Slaton was born in 1908 in Georgia, and came to Detroit at the age of eight. In 1933, she obtained a secretarial position in Detroit City Hall, becoming one of the first African-Americans in Detroit City government to hold a white-collar job. Despite the hostility, she excelled at her work, but left to enroll at Wayne State University, obtaining a degree in Special Education. She was involved in the civil rights struggle, and eventually took up law, graduating from the University of Detroit Law School in 1951. She worked for the City of Detroit and in private practice, concentrating on human rights. In 1972, Slaton was appointed as the first woman referee in the Recorder's Court Traffic and Ordinance Division. In 1978, she was appointed to the office of Common Pleas Judge in the City of Detroit, a position which she held until her retirement. She was killed on September 1, 1983, when Korean Airlines flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet missile. Jessie P. Slaton lived at 1232 W. Boston Boulevard.
Read Jessie Pharr Slaton's biography in the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
Hobart Taylor, Jr.
Hobart Taylor, Jr. was the son of wealthy Texas businessman Hobart Taylor, Sr. Taylor Jr. attended Prairie View A & M and then the University of Michigan Law School, where he edited the Law Review. After graduating, he stayed in the Detroit area, first in private practice and then as assistant Wayne Co. Prosecutor. In 1961, Taylor went to Washington DC to become special assistant the then-Vice President Johnson, and in 1964 (when Johnson was President) became an associate counsel in the White House. While working for Johnson, he headed up the Committee for Equal Employment Opportunity, and is credited with coining the term, "Affirmative Action." He left the White House to become director of the Import-Export bank; he eventually sat on the boards of Standard Oil, Westinghouse, A & P, Aetna, Eastern Airlines, and Burroughs.
Hobart Taylor, Jr lived at 2265 W. Boston Boulevard.
Read a short biography of Hobart Taylor, Jr.
Arthur Webster
Arthur Webster was born in Iowa in 1871. His family moved to Missouri, where Webster spent his early years. He attended the University of Michigan, where he graduated with a law degree in 1892. He entered private practice in Detroit, then spent five years as an assistant prosecutor. Afterwards he opened his own successful law firm, partnering with Edward Denby (who later became Secretary of the Navy). An early employee of the firm was Kim Sigler, future governor of Michigan. In 1919, he was elected to the circuit court bench, where he served until his retirement in 1956. Judge Webster lived at 1466 Longfellow.