Albert Cobo’s Grave

This is a complicated one, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Albert Cobo was Detroit’s mayor through most of the 1950s and, for decades, the namesake of the riverfront convention hall generations knew as Cobo Hall. But his record is inseparable from the harm of that era’s “urban renewal”: his administration cleared Black neighborhoods like Black Bottom and Paradise Valley for highways and development, and he won office on a platform of keeping public housing out of white neighborhoods. In 2019 the hall was renamed — now Huntington Place — precisely to stop honoring him.

He rests at Woodlawn. We include him here as history, not tribute: understanding what happened to those neighborhoods is part of understanding the city. On our list, with eyes open.