Archive

The archive is the project's scholarly core: a curated collection of badman figures from Detroit, the primary sources that document them, and the methodology that organizes both. Browse by figure or by source — the two views surface different aspects of the same material.

Figures

Sixteen badman figures across four modalities — Detective, Revolutionary, Superhero-Villain, and Gangsta-Pimp. Each entry includes a five-criteria evaluation, biography, network of connections, and source documentation.

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Primary Sources

Ninety-one primary and secondary sources — novels, films, court records, interviews, archival collections, and scholarly writing — filterable by figure, modality, category, and type.

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How the archive is organized

Every figure in the archive is evaluated against five criteria drawn from the project's theoretical framework: outlaw relationship, community authorization, violence as language, cultural preservation, and hypermasculine performance. Each criterion is scored 1–5 and the total badman score (5–25) appears on the figure's entry alongside the underlying scoring rationale.

Figures are sorted into one of five modalities — the analytical category that best describes how their badman heroism manifests. The current build is active across Detective, Revolutionary, and Superhero-Villain; Gangsta-Pimp and Folk Hero-Outlaw are part of the framework but are still being populated.

Every claim made in a figure entry is traceable to a primary source in the archive. Source records are independent objects — a single source (say, a Donald Goines novel or a 1971 newspaper article) can be linked to multiple figures, and each figure entry shows the full set of sources behind its analysis.