Michigan--Grosse Pointe

Kathy Groehn Cosseboom El-Messidi Papers

drice — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:28:09 -0400

Kathy Groehn was born in 1946 and grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She graduated
from Grosse Pointe High School in 1963, then from the University of Michigan (B.A.
1967) and Southern Oregon College (M.A.). During the 1960s she was a reporter for the
Grosse Pointe News and used her experiences as a basis for research on her book, Grosse Pointe, Michigan: Race Against Race, by Kathy Cosseboom (Michigan State University Press, 1972). The book deals with racial and social attitudes in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe as revealed in education, school-community relations, housing
discrimination, and religious institutions. It won the American Pen Women’s first prize
for information books in 1974.

As Kathy El-Messidi, she earned a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Oklahoma. Her Ph.D. dissertation was published as The Bargain: The Story behind the 30-Year Honeymoon of GM and the UAW, by Kathy Groehn El-Messidi (Nellen Publishing Co. 1980). This book deals with the history and politics behind the 1948 collective bargaining agreement between General Motors and the UAW. As the daughter of Thomas Groehn, former news relations director for GM, El-Messidi had special access to materials and individuals at GM for this study.

In the 1990s, Dr. El-Messidi was associate director of the Center for Research on Parallel
Computation at Rice University in Texas and more recently has worked as an education
consultant and market intelligence specialist in Texas.

This collection contains the files and research materials for both of Kathy Groehn
Cosseboom El-Messidi’s books.

Podcast: Halloween Spooktacular - Supernatural Stories from Detroit Folklore

teller — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 14:47:33 -0400

Archivist Elizabeth Clemens shares spooky stories from the Reuther Library's Folklore Archives about Le Loup Garou, or the Werewolf of Grosse Pointe; the Ghost of Tanglewood Bridge on Detroit's Belle Isle; hauntings at home; and a helpful witch on Detroit's McClellan Street who fetched groceries and hung her skin on the wall. Archivist Bart Bealmear reminds us of Gundella the Green Witch, a local personality with an advice column in Detroit-area newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s. read more »

[Podcast] A "Most Conscientious and Considerate Method": Grosse Pointe’s Gross Post-War Housing Point System

teller — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 11:42:13 -0400

Emma Maniere describes how homeowners associations in Grosse Pointe, an affluent suburb bordering Detroit, developed a point system following the Second World War to rank and exclude prospective homebuyers to maintain the community’s Anglo Christian whiteness and affluence. The point system, which ranked nativity and ethnicity, accent, skin tone, and occupation, among other measures, was dismantled in 1960 but left a pernicious legacy that continues to reverberate in the community today. Maniere is a doctoral candidate in the history program at New York University. read more »