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Colorful artwork adorns the six-foot high, half-mile-long wall at the Alfonso Wells Memorial Playground on Birwood in Northwest Detroit near Wyoming and 8 Mile Road.
It looks innocent enough.But in 1941 the wall, which had no art, had a much different meaning.
A developer built it to segregate blacks so the federal government would approve a housing project for whites. Without the wall, the project would have been deemed too risky.
The wall, which has its own Wikipedia page, is often referred to as the Detroit Wall, the Detroit Eight Mile Wall, Detroit's Wailing Wall, Berlin Wall or the Birwood Wall.
Robin Schwartz reports on the wall for the Detroit Jewish News and Detroit Journalism Cooperative in a piece for Detroit Public TV. Watch below.