The Least Racist Town in Michigan

Covert — Long before the Civil Rights Act, before Brown v. Board of Education, long even before the Civil War, there was a place in Southwest Michigan where blacks and whites lived harmoniously together.

Covert, originally named Deerfield, officially became a Michigan town in 1855, just 18 years after the state itself was established. From the start, the schools in Covert were integrated. Black community members became business owners and were elected to official positions. Interracial couples existed happily just like everyone else.

What might seem like an impossibility looking back at history through today’s lens was completely real. And the people of Covert were proud of what they’d built.

Why exactly did this random little town in lower Michigan adopt such a progressive attitude toward race and integration—most notably all the way back in the 19th century when it would have been anything but the norm? As historian Anna-Lisa Cox puts it in her book chronicling the history “Covert, A Stronger Kinship: One Town’s Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith,” perhaps the question should not be why, but why not?

While it may be difficult to imagine now, Michigan was at one time the wild frontier. Largely unsettled, it was any man’s for the taking. Provided you could hack it, of course. As part of the newly minted Northwest Territory, Michigan land was plentiful and affordable. Furthermore, the Northwest Ordinance, meant to govern the new territory and establish new states, prohibited slavery and enshrined civil liberties.

Because that document never once makes mention of the word “white,” this ostensibly meant the authors intended those liberties for people of all races. And although it’s true that many of the rights were in practice bestowed only upon whites, the openness of the verbiage was enough to give hope to a growing black community in the Midwest.

Black communities didn’t only thrive in Covert. According to the 1853 state census, all but nine Michigan counties had African American residents, making the state technically more diverse than it is today. Most blacks were seeking refuge from slavery, either as escaped slaves or freedmen seeking to get as far away in proximity from slavery as possible. White settlers came mostly from New England and the South—many were immigrants; some were steadfast Abolitionists. Others were simply merchants or farmers seeking their fortunes in the West.

In any case, everyone who settled Covert had one thing in common: They wanted to succeed. They were enterprising pioneers seeking land and opportunity. They wanted to put down roots and help their families grow and thrive. And this, says Anna-Lisa Cox, is what ultimately made Covert prosper: The people wanted it to work.

If you’ve never heard anything about towns like Covert before, you’re not alone. Part of the reason is that the population has changed over time. Many farmers, for example (both black and white), left for the big city after finding farming to be terribly backbreaking work. Good-paying factory work seemed more appealing. Still, Cox says that information about towns like Covert has been lost to time on purpose as well—buried, as it were, almost as an implication that such a wonderful place could never have existed at such a time in history. There is, it seems, a suggestion out there that prejudice and racism is a given no matter what, and that achieving at least some level of racial harmony is nothing but a fool’s errand.

The truth is more complicated.

The reason Covert isn’t more well-known can’t be traced to the town’s name either. Although Covert implies that the town may have been secretive about their integrationist endeavors, that wasn’t in fact the case. The name has nothing to do with hiding the fabric of their settlement. In actuality, Covert residents were very proud of the way they chose to organize their community. An Emancipation Festival, put on every year and considered a major holiday, celebrated their unique way of living.

The town’s name appears, rather, to come from the book of Isaiah—a specific passage Anna-Lisa Cox says the faith-filled people of Covert “were almost certainly aware of”:

There shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day time from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain. (4:6) … a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as a shadow of a great rock in a weary land. (32:2)

Although it’s not so well-known today, the racial harmony of Covert was never intended to be a secret. Rather, the town was conceived of as a shelter, a hideaway from the storm of racial tension that was, at the time, plaguing much of the rest of the nation.

We can only hope that from Covert’s original message of hope and faith, security, and togetherness, more communities like it can blossom today and in the future. Covert shows us that it’s possible, and that where there’s a will among the people, there’s a way as well.