Science & invention / Civil rights & activism
Marshall Rosenberg
1934–2015 · psychologist, mediator
Psychologist who created Nonviolent Communication; the Detroit race riot of 1943, which broke out a week after his family moved to the city, shaped his life's work.
- Born
Canton, Ohio- Died
Albuquerque, New Mexico
aged 80- Birth name
- Marshall Bertram Rosenberg
- Detroit years
- 1943–1950s
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Rosenberg was born in Canton, Ohio, in 1934, and his family moved to Detroit in June 1943, one week before the race riot in which 34 people were killed. Seeing that violence as a boy, and facing antisemitism himself at school, set him on a lifelong search for why people turn to violence and how they might avoid it. After his father bought a house in a better neighborhood, he attended Cooley High School on the northwest side and graduated as valedictorian in 1952. He began college at Wayne State University before transferring to the University of Michigan, and he earned a doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Wisconsin. From the early 1960s he developed Nonviolent Communication, a method of resolving conflict through empathy and plain statements of needs, and in 1984 he founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication, teaching it worldwide.
Highlights
- Developed Nonviolent Communication, starting in the early 1960s
- Founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication, 1984
- Book: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life
- Valedictorian of Detroit's Cooley High School, 1952
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · late 1940s–1952
Cooley High School
Closed · 1928–2010
The northwest-side high school where he graduated as valedictorian in 1952. Detroit Public Schools closed it in June 2010, and the Mediterranean Revival building no longer serves as a school.
Studied here · early 1950s
Wayne State University (then Wayne University)
He began his college studies here before transferring to the University of Michigan.