The Blight of Indecency: Antiporn Politics and the Urban Crisis in Early 1970s Detroit
Abstract
This paper examines the history of early 1970s antiporn politics through a case study of the protests of one neighborhood in northwest Detroit against an adult bookstore that had opened in its midst. In the months after the Adult World Bookstore set up shop in the neighborhood of Redford, residents mounted a campaign aimed at stamping out the adult business, inundating the offices of the mayor and city councilmen with hundreds of letters calling for the city to take action against the spread of pornography. Rather than using traditional religious-inflected and morality-based antiporn rhetoric though, residents wrote letters steeped in seemingly more mundane concerns surrounding declining property values, neighborhood deterioration, and white flight. In so doing, antiporn advocates managed to adopt and adapt the color-blind rhetoric that had become central to white racial politics of the era. This paper therefore argues for the need to situate antiporn politics of the early 1970s within the context of urban history and contemporaneous battles over racial integration.References
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———. Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right. Columbia University Press, 2011.
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Allegrina, Charles D. Letter to Mel Ravitz, October 21, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 42, Folder 1. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Banks, James O. Letter to Roman S. Gribbs, October 12, 1972. Roman Gribbs papers, Box 333, Folder 6. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
Black, Gregory D. Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
———. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940-1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Bronstein, Carolyn. Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, 1976-1986. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Bronstein, Carolyn, and Whitney Strub, eds. Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: American Sexual Representation in the 1970s. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016.
Carmen, Ira H. Movies, Censorship, and the Law. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966.
Comstock, Anthony. Traps for the Young. Funk & Wagnalls, 1883.
Conheim, Maryanne. “Council Hears Foes of Pornography.” Detroit Free Press, October 21, 1972.
Darden, Joe T., Richard Child Hill, June Thomas, and Richard Thomas. Detroit: Race and Uneven Development. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.
Delmont, Matthew F. Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2016.
Doherty, Thomas. Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Edgecomb, Diane J. “News Bulletin,” July 1, 1968. Jerome P. Cavanagh Collection, Box 426, Folder 7. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Fink, Karen L. Letter to Mel Ravitz, October 18, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 42, Folder 1. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Freund, David M. P. Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America. University Of Chicago Press, 2010.
Gelt, Myron. Letter to John Nichols, Mel Ravitz, and Roman S. Gribbs, October 11, 1972. Roman Gribbs papers, Box 333, Folder 6. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
Geltzer, Jeremy. Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures: Film and the First Amendment. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016.
Gilligan, James. Letter to Mel Ravitz, September 15, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 41, Folder 7. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Gilligan, Mrs. James. Letter to Mel Ravitz, September 28, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 42, Folder 1. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Ginn, Evelyn. Letter to Roman S. Gribbs, October 18, 1972. Roman Gribbs papers, Box 333, Folder 6. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
Gribbs, Roman S. Letter to Mrs. Virginia Fuller, November 1, 1972. Roman Gribbs papers, Box 333, Folder 7. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
———. Letter to Mrs. Betty Hedeen, November 1, 1972. Roman Gribbs papers, Box 333, Folder 7. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
Heins, Marjorie. Not in Front of the Children: “Indecency”, Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth. New York: Hill & Wang, 2001.
Higonnet, Anne. Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1998.
Hixson, Richard F. Pornography and the Justices : The Supreme Court and the Intractable Obscenity Problem. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.
Houslander, Mr. and Mrs. Letter to David Eberhard, September 25, 1972. Roman Gribbs papers, Box 333, Folder 6. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
Irvine, Janice M. Talk About Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Kendrick, Walter. The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1997.
Kincaid, James. Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2000.
Kruse, Kevin M. White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Lassiter, Matthew D. “The Suburban Origins of ‘Color-Blind’ Conservatism: Middle-Class Consciousness in the Charlotte Busing Crisis.” Journal of Urban History 30, no. 4 (May 2004): 549–82.
Lenhausen, Don. “City Tightens Anti-Smut Laws.” Detroit Free Press, October 25, 1972.
Lewis, Jon. Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Created the Modern Film Industry. New York: NYU Press, 2000.
Mayer, Mr. and Mrs. Michael. Letter to Mel Ravitz, October 11, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 42, Folder 1. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton University Press, 2002.
Mitchell, Marie. Letter to Mel Ravitz, October 13, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 42, Folder 1. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Morgan, Mrs. Naomi, and John R. Morgan. Letter to Mel Ravitz, October 17, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 42, Folder 1. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Morris, Julie. “5,000 Show They Care About City.” Detroit Free Press, August 11, 1969.
Murphy, Mrs. Wm. D. Letter to Roman S. Gribbs, September 26, 1972. Roman Gribbs papers, Box 333, Folder 6. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
Nickerson, Michelle M. Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014.
Overly, Mrs. Harold. Letter to Roman S. Gribbs, October 10, 1972. Roman Gribbs papers, Box 333, Folder 6. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
Papayanis, Marilyn Adler. “Sex and the Revanchist City: Zoning out Pornography in New York.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18, no. 3 (2000): 341 – 353.
Russell, Ronald L. “Detroit Council to Vote Tuesday on Smut Curbs.” Detroit News, October 21, 1972.
Schaefer, Eric, and Eithne Johnson. “Quarantined! A Case Study of Boston’s Combat Zone.” In Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, edited by Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane Shattuc. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
Schanenberger, Mr. A. Letter to Roman S. Gribbs, October 26, 1972. Roman Gribbs papers, Box 333, Folder 6. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
Sides, Josh. Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Skinner, James M. The Cross and the Cinema: The Legion of Decency and the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, 1933-1970. Praeger, 1993.
Stein, Irene. Letter to Mel Ravitz, October 15, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 42, Folder 1. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Strub, Whitney. Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013.
———. Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right. Columbia University Press, 2011.
Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Revised. Princeton University Press, 2005.
Sullivan, Ann M. Letter to Mel Ravitz, October 17, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 42, Folder 1. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Taylor, Bruce. “Ask a CDL Attorney: Is ‘Zoning’ the Solution?” National Decency Reporter XV, no. 2 (April 1978): 3, 8.
Taylor, Mrs. Stanley. Letter to Mel Ravitz, November 13, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 41, Folder 7. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Walsh, Frank. Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent; The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth. Rinehart & Co., Inc., 1954.
Wilcox, Mrs. F. H. Letter to Mel Ravitz, October 8, 1972. Mel Ravitz papers, Box 42, Folder 1. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Williams, Linda. Screening Sex. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.
Williams, Ralph E. Letter to Roman S. Gribbs, September 23, 1972. Roman Gribbs papers, Box 333, Folder 6. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
Woodford, Frank B., and Arthur M. Woodford. All Our Yesterdays: A Brief History of Detroit. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1969.
Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., United States Supreme Court Reports (United States Supreme Court 1976).
