Capturing the demise of Poletown
In 1981, Detroit lawyer and activist George Corsetti decided he would capture the demise of Poletown on video, directing the documentary film, Poletown Lives!
George Corsetti made Poletown Lives! 36 years ago. He’s now a recently retired attorney living on Detroit’s east side.
“They were up against the giants,” Corsetti told One Detroit last week, “General Motors, the city of Detroit, the Archdiocese, the UAW, probably Wall Street too and my sense was that they weren’t going to do too well.”
Poletown Lives! captured efforts by some Detroit east side residents to keep their homes as General Motors and the City of Detroit used eminent domain to take their property and build what would become the Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plant.
That plant made news late last month with the announcement it might close as the automaker restructures its operations. Thirty-seven years ago Corsetti followed residents as they searched for ways to stop their removal and displacement.
Thousands were displaced along with more than one hundred businesses, several churches and a hospital. Poletown Lives! shows the wrecking ball leveling the Immaculate Conception Church, the centerpiece of Poletown’s Polish-Catholic community.
The Immaculate Conception Church in Poletown before the wrecking ball – Image courtesy the Library of Congress
“These people responsible for this are worse than the communists in Poland,” Father Joseph Karasiewicz said in the film.
Someone asked him, “Including the Archdiocese, Father?”
“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Karasiewicz said, “because it’s a criminal act. You go down to a very basic definition of stealing, that’s simply taking somebody else’s property against their will, that’s all it is.”
“It was clearly over when the church went down.” Corsetti recalled.
Karasiewicz would die of a heart attack six months after his church was leveled.
This week One Detroit tells the Poletown story through filmmaker George Corsetti’s eyes.
See a screening of Poletown Lives! at the Wayne State University Law School Auditorium on December 18. Learn more >
I LIVED IN POLETOWN WENT TO IMMACULATE CONCEPTION SCHOOL AND CHURCH. HOW CAN I ORDER A COPY OF POLETOWN LIVES????
Betty,
I was born in Poletown in July of 1940. I grew up on the corner of Dane and 6455 Mt. Elliott streets…went to Parke School.
Later moved to 3501 Kanter and Moran… the Immaculate Conception Church was directly across the Street; between
Trombly & Kanter. My first girlfriend, Norma Hendry lived above her Dads store on the corner of Trombly & Ellery. She attended the I.C. School.
When we lived on Mt. Elliott we were directly across the Street from the 9 story Goodyear Building and Gemmer Steering Gear Co. The Main Gate of the now G.M. Property is located exactly where our house once stood. My Father worked at the Packard Motor Car Co. on East Grand Blvd until its closing. I spent many a day riding my Bicycle to Belle Isle to fish with a broom Stick. If interested, I have much, much more I can share!
Only two Michigan Supreme Court justices opposed G.M’s takeover of the neighborhood. Justice James Leo Ryan recently commented on G.Ms closing of the Detroit/Hamtramck facility.
https://jalopnik.com/a-part-of-detroit-was-destroyed-in-the-1980s-so-gm-coul-1830666242