Welcome to the Bottoms

Ask one of Battle Creek's younger residents about the Bottoms and you will likely get a blank stare. The area, long erased from the city's social geography, has been forgotten by many Battle Creekers. Yet for nearly forty years, the Bottoms was the heart of Battle Creek’s African-American community, anchored by places like the Hamblin Community Center. For those who grew up there, the neighborhood’s rich cultural history live on in photographs, artifacts, stories, and memories.

Located at the confluence of the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek Rivers, the Bottoms was a neighborhood of factories, workshops, and working people. Immigrant families settled there early in the 1900s; African Americans moved from the U.S. South between the world wars. Flooding was a recurrent problem in the Bottoms. In April 1947, a particularly bad flood struck the area, inundating streets, cars, homes, factories, and warehouses.

In the following decade, the City of Battle Creek embarked on an ambitious flood control program. Houses and businesses were razed; most residents of the Bottoms were relocated; and a new river channel was constructed. For civic leaders and planning professionals, “the Cement River project” represented a way to protect Battle Creek’s industrial base and improve the standard of living for its residents. For many African-Americans of the Bottoms, it represented displacement of a kind that urban renewal brought to many American cities during the postwar years.

This website, “Memories From Hamblin,” is part of an ongoing community project to reconstruct the culture and history of the Bottoms. The project is a partnership of Heritage Battle Creek, the University of Michigan Arts of Citizenship Program, and former residents of the Bottoms. Together we have conducted oral history interviews, traced residential data, and gathered research materials and artifacts that tell the story of the community.
“Memories From Hamblin” is divided into three, chronological chapters:

“Memories From Hamblin” is divided into three, chronological chapters:

"The Making of the Bottoms" describes the emergence of the area over the course of the late-nineteenth and early centuries. It is the story of how the Bottoms came to be the African American neighborhood of Battle Creek.

"The Bottoms Community" explores the neighborhood’s rich cultural and social fabric. It is the story of the people, institutions, businesses, and organizations of the Bottoms.

"The Unmaking of the Bottoms" examines how the natural and social geography of the Bottoms was once again transformed after the 1947 flood. It is the story of urban renewal, population removal, and race relations in postwar Battle Creek.

Along with these historical narratives, “Memories From Hamblin” includes photographs, documents, maps, and other images. Click on them to get a larger view. The website also contains excerpts of the oral histories conducted for this project; click on the interviewee’s name to read portions of their interview and on the [ ] icon after their name to listen to audio clips from it. In the “Archive” section of the website, you can browse hundreds of visual images of the Bottoms; you can read dozens of interview transcripts; and you can consult timelines that help to place the Bottoms within the context of Battle Creek and American history.

This is the story of the Bottoms, as experienced by those who lived there.