Owosso where we shopped at discount stores as a kid, went to the Capitol Theater or Skyway Drive-in, and ate at the Elias Brothers Big Boy while dropping coins into the at the table juke box.
Owosso, a very Republican town and home to the hospital where I was born, once was a Sundown Town. As expressed by a famous one-time Michigan resident:
"My father would drive in his old black touring car, sometimes taking me, to meeting places all around the Lansing area. I remember one daytime meeting (most were at night) in the town of Owosso, forty miles from Lansing, which the Negroes called "White City.". (Owosso's greatest claim to fame is that it is the hometown of Thomas E Dewey.). As in East Lansing, no Negroes were allowed on the streets there after dark -- hence the day time meeting "
- Excerpt The Autobiography of Malcolm X
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