Highland Parkers have been telling WDET what they want people to know about their city as part of our Crossing the Lines series. Reporters have been listening to residents as well as people who no longer live there but still have deep connections to the city.

That includes Marsha Battle Philpot. She’s a writer, musician, and historian. And she was a Kresge Artist Fellow in Literary Arts in 2012. Her father, Joe Von Battle, owned Joe’s Records on Hastings Street in Detroit’s Paradise Valley before the thriving Black neighborhood was demolished.

Battle recorded all of Reverend C. L. Franklin’s sermons and was the first person to record Aretha Franklin’s voice. Battle bought a home in Highland Park when his daughter was about 2 years old.

“Marsha Music,” as many call her, tells WDET’s Pat Batcheller what growing up in that house was like.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Marsha Battle Philpot: It was a home with oak walls in some of the rooms, and pocket doors, and beveled glass, and a huge mantle that ran the length of the room. And it was a magnificent home, one amongst many magnificent homes in the city that were on akin to the homes of [Detroit’s] Boston Edison, but on a smaller footprint, making them, many of them more achievable for working class people. But it was a very, very affluent place to live.

Schools were jewels

MBP: “People were desperate to try to get their children into Highland Park schools. During those days of the 1950s and 60s, they were some of the best schools in the United States. I remember the schools that I went to were voted or deemed to be the best schools in state of Michigan. It was really an extraordinary place to live. Even our elementary schools had swimming pools. All Highland Park kids could swim. All of us who deigned to do so went to musical classes and band and all kind of extracurricular activities. There were two or three bands in Highland Park. It was just an extraordinarily prosperous place.

The City of Trees

MBP: And if you put that prosperousness on top of the physical lushness of the city, it was such a lush, verdant green atmosphere in Highland Park. The trees would create archways over the streets. So, I would come home from school, and if it was raining, I wouldn’t get wet, because the trees oftentimes bowed over the over the skyline, and they would protect you from some of the rain. It was just an extraordinary place to grow up.

Pat Batcheller: Where we’re talking right now is in your dining room, which is technically in Detroit. It’s just on the south edge of Palmer Park. Where were you before?

MBP: I had been married and lived in a couple of other areas of the city, and so I was very glad to be able to come back to Highland Park when my mom decided that she was not going to be able to keep the house.

PB: The house that your dad bought her?

MBP: “Yes, our family home. Because she was ill, and she went to live with her sister, who was helping care for her. And she finally made a decision, “would you like to take the house?” And so, I did. But in about 2007 is when I had an electrical fire, and it was caused—I learned later from the fire investigators— by a dehumidifier. It was in August of 2007 it was probably 90 degrees. It was hot, and air conditioning those big houses is very challenging. And our basement was always soaking wet, and I ended up with a dehumidifier there that apparently had been running. And the fire people later told me that that that scenario is the cause of many fires.  It’s still standing, but it destroyed the house.

The home of her heart

PB: You said you were happy to come back to Highland Park. What made you happy?

MBP: Because it’s my home. And even though it had experienced so many challenges over the years since I had been gone, it was the home of my heart. And I always loved Highland Park because of its separation, even from Detroit. We’re in our own world in Highland Park.

And there were so many of the elders that were still there since I was a child and had done their best to try to hold on to this city. It’s the essence of the Black experience of perseverance in Highland Park. These people had been holding on despite all manner of reversals and in their big homes, these big, beautiful homes that they’re trying to take care of as best they can. Even in a situation in which the actual light poles were repossessed. Come on, now! You take the light poles out? Oh, my goodness!

PB: You’re only about a block away from Highland Park, so you’re not far away. Do you go into Highland Park?

MBP: Every time I go anywhere, I have to basically go through Highland Park. And I call Highland Park my happy place. You know, I love Highland Park. Even when I’m up on Woodward Avenue and I’m just up there shopping, because I’m not going to get in my car and go to the suburbs and shop. I’m going to shop where I live.

And when I’m up there on Woodward, I literally can feel my mother. And she’s been gone for many years. But I think of her walking up to the stores in Highland Park or driving to the stores and shopping in the days in which we had Sears and Winkelman’s and the various national chains. I think of my people in Highland Park, because we’re very much embedded there.

More Crossing the Lines: Highland Park