The Detroit Tribune Archive 

The Detroit Tribune began publishing in 1933, promoting itself as "the leading Negro weekly in Michigan." It was written by and sold to Detroit's African American community. In 1933, the paper merged with another Black newspaper, the Detroit Independent, and was renamed the Tribune Independent of Michigan. The paper's name was changed back to the Detroit Tribune in 1935.

Bankrupt in 1952, the paper was put up for auction and purchased by Andrew Ferdinand Fruehauf (1892-1965), an heir to the Fruehauf Trailer Corporation who had left the family business to become a publisher. Freuhauf was a Christian Scientist who dreamed of making the Tribune the Black counterpart of the Christian Science Monitor.

In an article that began on the front-page, published May 3, 1952, he expressed his complete faith in Christian Science. "It is undoubtedly true that Christian Science is destined to become the one and only religion and therapeutics on the planet." If Fruehauf believed the paper had a spiritual mission, it also had a racial one. The banner under the paper's masthead made clear the paper's other agenda, "Crusader for the Invincible Triumphant Divine Rights of Man." Freuhauf served as the paper's publisher until his death on December 5, 1965. Immediately after Fruehauf's death, the paper began to run a banner "Watch for the New Detroit Tribune" above the regular masthead. It would continue Freuhauf's "dedication to the principle of human rights," but not his insistence that the paper also carry information about Christian Science.