In nineteenth-century Detroit, blacks were not allowed to vote in 1850, but they were voting in the 1880s, and in the 1890s blacks were being elected to statewide offices in Michigan by a predominantly white electorate. The 1880 census showed that, in Detroit, it was not uncommon for blacks and whites to live next door to each other.55 The black upper class had regular social interactions with upper-class whites, and their children attended high schools and colleges with the children of their white counterparts.
