Business & brands / Music / City history
Sunnie Wilson
1908–1999 · nightclub and hotel owner, promoter
Paradise Valley businessman and one of its first unofficial mayors, who ran the giant Forest Club and the Mark Twain Hotel and was Joe Louis's close friend and partner.
- Born
Columbia, South Carolina- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 90- Birth name
- William Nathaniel Wilson
- Also known as
- Mayor of Paradise Valley
- Detroit years
- early 1930s–1999
- Field
- Business & brands, Music, City history
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
William Nathaniel "Sunnie" Wilson came to Detroit from South Carolina in the early 1930s and briefly studied at the University of Detroit. He started as master of ceremonies at the Harlem Cave at Canfield and Brush, worked clubs in Chicago and New York, and ran rooms such as Mac Ivey's Cozy Corner and the Chocolate Bar on Hastings Street. In the mid-1930s he was elected one of the first unofficial mayors of Paradise Valley. He befriended the young boxer Joe Louis, and in 1937 the two opened the Brown Bomber Chicken Shack. In 1941 he bought the Forest Club at Hastings and Forest, a vast complex with a 107-foot bar, banquet hall, roller rink and bowling alley that served as a community center, and two years later the 50-room Mark Twain Hotel, which housed Black stars barred from downtown hotels. He later promoted boxing and stage shows, advised Coleman Young's mayoral campaigns, and published the memoir Toast of the Town. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery.
Highlights
- Elected an unofficial mayor of Paradise Valley in the mid-1930s
- Co-owned the Brown Bomber Chicken Shack with Joe Louis (1937)
- Owned the Forest Club at Hastings and Forest, 1941–1951
- Owned the Mark Twain Hotel, which hosted Black entertainers
- Spirit of Detroit Award (1987); memoir Toast of the Town
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 3
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.
Founded · 1941–1951
Forest Club
Demolished
Huge Paradise Valley entertainment complex with a 107-foot bar, banquet hall, roller rink and bowling alley, owned by Wilson until 1951; the district was later cleared for the freeway.
Buried here · 1999
Elmwood Cemetery
Michigan's oldest continuously operating non-denominational cemetery, where Wilson is buried in Section B.
Worked here · 1930s–1950s
Hastings Street (Black Bottom / Paradise Valley)
Demolished · 1960
The Paradise Valley and Black Bottom thoroughfare where Wilson ran clubs such as the Chocolate Bar and later the Forest Club.