"Town maps registered the street as Mains Avenue, but the only colored doctor in the city had lived and died on that street, and when he moved there in 1896 this patients took to calling the street, which none of them lived in or near, Doctor Street. Later when other negroes moved there and when the postal service became a popular means of transferring messages among them, envelopes from Louisiana, Virginia, Alabama, and Georgia began to arrive addressed to people at house numbers on Doctor Street. The post office workers returned these envelopes or passed them on to the Dead letter Office then in 1918 when colored men were being drafted, a few gave their address at the recruitment office as Doctor Street In that way, the name acquired a quasi official status. But not for long. Some of the city legislators, whose concert for appropriate names and the maintenance of the city’s landmarks was the principal part of their political life, saw to it that “Doctor Street” was never used in any official capacity. And since they knew that only Southside residents kept it up, they had notice posted in the stores, barbershops, and restaurants in that part of the city saying that the avenue running northerly and southerly from Shore Road fronting the lake to the junction of routes 6 and 2 leading to Pennsylvania, and also running parallel to and between Rutherford Avenue and Broadway, had always be known a Mains Avenues and not Doctor Street".
Though this quote might seem like an unimportant description of the name of a street in the town where the book takes place, it is actually deeper than that. This passage demonstrates that while racism looked different in the North and Michigan, it was still a reality for African-Americans who lived there. Black people move to Doctor street and they started sending and receiving letters to their relative in other places but some of their letter were sent back or never got to their destination because they still wasn’t named Doctor Street according to the white people that street didn’t exist for them.
The passage begins by explaining how the white people gives the street where the Doctor lives Mains Avenue, but the African American people know it and name it as “Doctor street.” They name it Doctor street because that’s where the doctor lives and because he's the only doctor that attends to black people in the city. Later on a lot of black people decide to move and live in Doctor street because they need a doctor close where they live this is demonstrating the times are changing African American people are living in better places they becoming more wealthy.
However this doesn’t mean that the people are giving them the respect they deserve because even though this people are living in better places they are still treated as less than white people because the street in not named “Doctor Street” even when everyone calls it and knows it as “Doctor street” they also sent out letters from to the street telling the black people to stop calling it Doctor Street. This proves the lack of support to black people they don’t care about their opinions is like they don’t have the right to express themselves in the society. The street was name Mains Avenue and it stays like that just because white people say so, is like the black people’s voice is not valid.
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