Draft:Jamon Jordan

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Jordan in 2022

Jamon Jordan

Jamon “Baba Jamon” Jordan (born January 19, 1971) is an American historian and educator and is the official historian of the City of Detroit. He is also the founder of the Black Scroll Network, a Detroit-based organization which offers tours of African American historical sites throughout the city, and is also a lecturer at the University of Michigan, teaching a course in the university’s Semester in Detroit program called “From the Underground to Motown: A Course on Detroit’s History.”

Biography

Early Life and Education

Jordan was born and raised in Highland Park and developed an early interest in Detroit’s Black architectural history through stories his grandmother told as a child. He learned about places such as Black Bottom, Paradise Valley, Gotham Hotel, Forest Club, and the Flame Show Bar, all of which weren’t well-documented at the time, though the stories gave him a vibrant picture of the places and people that inhabited these spaces. He was also raised in a household that valued reading, being introduced to works such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which furthered his interest in Black history.

He became engaged in the intersection between activism and education during his time at Highland Park High School, where he and other students recognized the inadequate education they were receiving from their teacher. He and this contingent of students would protest, claiming that there was no difference between barring Black people from attending school and being denied adequate education within school. As a result of this experience, he realized that he wanted to be more proactive as a student.

He triple-majored in Black Studies, American Studies, and Sociology at Western Michigan University, gaining a more comprehensive view of Black history in the United States and Detroit’s role in it. Outside of class, he challenged racism on campus, joining clubs involved in African American culture and African American resistance to white supremacy, and began a newspaper called The Black Scroll.

Career

Jordan's first teaching job after returning to Detroit, following a brief stint in Kalamazoo, was at the Ben Carson Academy, a charter school within the Wayne County juvenile detention facility. He described the experience as "one of the most powerful teaching experiences" he'd had in his teaching career, realizing years worth of education had been deprived from many of the students. Despite this, he managed to meet the students where they were, and was able to teach in a way resonant with the students, tailoring his lectures to their reality. The position was short-lived though, as he and everyone else who worked there lost their job after the privately-owned school lost their contract with the county.

After working briefly at another charter school in Inkster, he turned to the Nsoroma Institute, an African-centered school. Having read about it in the Michigan Citizen in high school, he saw Nsoroma as a natural fit as he thought his own approach to education was similarly African-centered. While there wasn’t an opening at the time of his interview, he returned two weeks later to follow up, and after teaching a class for another instructor who thought he already worked there, he quickly earned himself a position as a teaching assistant, with a job as a full-time instructor following shortly after. Both Jordan and Nsoroma's African-centered education philosophy sought not just academic success of the individual student, but the uplifting of the entire Black community. He worked at the Nsoroma Institute for 12 years until it closed in 2013.

Jordan founded the Black Scroll Network, History & Tours later in 2013 after providing years of educational tours to students and parents, offering the general public the same personal experience with African American history in Detroit that his students received. The Black Scroll Network provides guided, educational tours, in bus or walking form, to sites important to Black history in Detroit. These sites often hold either deep historical or cultural significance, with popular visits like Black Bottom, Paradise Valley, the Berry Gordy House, the Motown Museum, and the homes of Aretha Franklin and Rosa Parks. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jordan contracted COVID and lost his mother, promptly ceasing in-person tours. It later shifted to a virtual format, with in-person tours returning in mid-2023.

Jordan has been part of the University of Michigan's faculty since the Fall 2021 semester, teaching the course “From the Underground to Motown: A Course on Detroit's History," part of the Semester in Detroit program.

Historian of Detroit

On October 25, 2021, former Detroit mayor Mike Duggan and City Director of Arts, Culture & Entrepreneurship Rochelle Riley announced that Jordan would be named the first official historian of Detroit.

As city historian, he has been appointed with the job of scouring the archives of Detroit's history and educating people about the stories that haven't been told, as well as reminding the citizens of the importance of the city's history.

He has delivered annual lectures in celebration of Black History Month since 2022 among other formal appearances, and is often heavily involved in projects related to Detroit's history. Jordan was the historical consultant for the 2021 film No Sudden Move and also appears in the documentaries Highland Park 100 Year Anniversary and Legacy Lives On.

Personal Life

Jordan has been married to Annamarie Jordan since 1997.