Hazen Pingree’s Grave

They put up a statue that calls him “The Idol of the People,” and for once the plaque wasn’t exaggerating. Hazen Pingree was Detroit’s great reform mayor of the 1890s — a shoe manufacturer turned politician who battled the streetcar and utility monopolies and, when the 1893 depression hit, handed the poor vacant lots to grow food on, the famous “Pingree’s Potato Patches.” He went on to serve as Michigan’s governor, a Civil War veteran who’d survived the Andersonville prison camp besides.

His monument in Grand Circus Park still watches over downtown; the man himself rests at Woodlawn. On our list — a reminder that Detroit has always produced people willing to pick a fight for it.