On Saturday, April 25, 2026, we will have the unique opportunity to grab our bikes, head to Detroit, and take a ride through some civil rights history as a sponsoring organization of the Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit’s annual Bikeathon!
Sharon and I have participated in this event several times and can assure you that it is a great event! Each year features a new route that takes the 100+ riders to various landmarks and sites important to the history of Detroit and the civil rights movement. In 2024, we started off at the Virginia Park Shopping Plaza, built in the 1960’s by the community’s residents who wanted to create positive change after the unrest of 1967. Next to the plaza is the 12th Street Memorial and Gordon Park, which commemorates the family and friends who lost their lives during the Detroit uprising of 1967 in protest of racist abuses by the city’s police department. A docent was there to share that history with us.
Other sites over the years have included the apartment where Rosa and Raymond Parks lived from 1961-1988, the New Bethel Baptist Church, Congregation Shaarey Zedek (with a tour and talk), the Ruth Ellis Community Center for formerly homeless and at-risk LGBTQ+ youth, the Detroit Association of Women’s Clubs, which fought racial zoning restrictions to build a home for 70 Black women’s clubs with over 3,000 member to focus on community development work, and an amazing Veteran’s Housing building that has become a national model for housing with supportive services.
This year’s ride will begin with a tour of the Ossian Sweet home. Dr. Ossian Sweet, https://ohsweetfoundation.org/, earned his medical degree at Howard University and then moved to Detroit to practice medicine in the Black Bottom neighborhood. In the early 1920s,he and his wife Gladys bought a home on the east side of the city. They were met bys ome 500 white men, women and children who surrounded the home and hurled stones at the house, smashing windows. The Sweets, with their family and friends, feared the escalating violence by the mob and fired warning shots into the crowd. When the dust had cleared, one man was dead and another injured. All eleven people inside the Sweet home were charged with murder. In 1925, Clarence Darrow defended the Sweets in a landmark trial followed by the entire country. The not-guilty verdict is seen as a turning point in our justice system.
Our ride this year—a leisurely 14 miles over several hours—will also take us through interesting stops in Grosse Pointe. The entire ride is escorted by the wonderful members of the 313 Cylones, a Detroit bicycle club that is part of a national association of bike clubs named for Marshall “Major” Taylor, who was the first Black track cycling champion in 1899.
Key Details:
Saturday, April 25, 2026, from 10 am to 1:30 pm, kick off at the Fair Housing Center’s office in Detroit:
5555 Conner Street, Detroit 48213.
(allow an hour+to get thereand unload yourbike.)
RAIN OR SHINE–so dress for the weather!
HELMETS ARE MANDATORY!
How do I sign up?
So glad you asked!
It’s a great family event, so consider bringing the whole mishpocha!
(I will be bringing my little dog Casper, who sits in a basked on the front of my bike.)
A member of the congregation has already provided the rider fees to cover 20 AARC riders.But times are tough for civil rights organizations like the Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit. Their federal funding has been severely curtailed, with significant limits placed on their core activity of systemic enforcement of housing rights. So, we ask that each AARC member also make a donation to the Fair Housing Center to participate in the ride.
To Sign Up:
1.Head to this web page to sign up as a rider. You do not need to follow the link to pay the rider fee, since your fee has already been paid.
2. Instead, go to this web page to make an additional donation to the Fair Housing Center. We suggest a donation of at least double-chai ($36) for each adult rider and chai($18) for each child. In the notes section indicate that you are part of the AARC group.
3.Email me at robin.b.wagner@gmail.com to let me know how many you signed up so that we can keep track of our group size and help coordinate carpooling to Detroit for the bike ride.
Let’s help the Fair Housing Center build back up their resources to investigate complaints of housing discrimination and help victims get justice and equal opportunities for housing.
