Normally, when you think of Hamtramck history, it’s not unusual to focus on the high concentration of Polish people that used to set it apart as an ethnic enclave. “A Touch of Europe in America” was the old city slogan, and as late as the 1990s the city was still as much as 80 percent Polish.

And yet you’d be wrong to guess the city didn’t also have a wealth of African American history worth exploring.…