Covert: the township that integrated America a century early
Beginning in the 1860s, Covert Township's Black and white settlers built a fully integrated community — schools, ballots, and public office — decades ahead of the nation.
Covert Township holds one of the most remarkable and least-known stories in American history. It starts in the 1860s, when most of the country enforced segregation by law or custom. The Black and white families settling this corner of Van Buren County simply built one community instead. The school was integrated from the mid-1860s. Black residents voted here before the Fifteenth Amendment required it. They were elected to township offices, too. William Conner, a Civil War veteran, became Michigan’s first Black justice of the peace right here in Covert. Neighbors farmed together, worshipped together, prospered together — by choice, sustained over decades.
Historian Anna-Lisa Cox spent years documenting how this happened. She told the story in her acclaimed book “A Stronger Kinship.” Her conclusion, more or less: Covert’s people decided that thriving together beat hating apart. Then they kept deciding it, year after year. Today’s Covert is a quiet lakeshore township of orchards, blueberry fields, and a town park on Lake Michigan. Its history asks a question worth living with: if they could do it in 1866, what’s everyone else’s excuse?
Where to see it
Covert today: the lakeshore at Covert Township Park, and the story itself in Anna-Lisa Cox's book 'A Stronger Kinship.'