Submit a Figure

Know a Detroit badman who isn't in the archive yet? The archive accepts community submissions from anyone with knowledge to contribute — family members, neighborhood elders, scholars, fans, and anyone whose memory holds a story the archive should know. Every submission goes through a two-stage review before it joins the archive.

What we're looking for

The archive documents figures who embody the badman tradition. That's a specific kind of figure — not every person with a story gets in. The archive uses five criteria to evaluate every submission:

Outlaw relationship. The figure stands outside institutional authority in some meaningful way — criminally, politically, symbolically.
Community authorization. The figure's people recognize him as one of their own.
Violence as language. Force — physical, rhetorical, organizational — plays a role in how his story is told.
Cultural preservation. His story preserves something the community is at risk of losing.
Hypermasculine performance. His masculinity is staged, performed, or weaponized in a way the community reads as meaningful.

A figure doesn't need to score high on all five to get in. The criteria are a framework for reading the tradition, not a checklist. Read a full explanation of the criteria before you submit if you're unsure.

What to include

A strong submission includes as much of the following as you can provide:

The figure's name and any aliases, street names, or titles he was known by.
The years he was active in Detroit — even approximate dates help.
The neighborhood or territory most associated with him.
A short biography in your own words — who he was, what he did, why people still tell his story.
Sources — newspaper articles, court records, books, documentaries, or oral traditions that document what you know.
Your relationship to the figure, if any. Family connections, neighborhood proximity, scholarly research — all count.
Photographs, scans, or digital media you're willing to contribute. You retain rights to anything you submit.

Cultural sensitivity

Submitting a story means trusting the archive with something that might be personal, painful, or politically sensitive. The archive takes that trust seriously. Three protections are built into the submission pipeline:

Access levels. You can request that a submission be held at a non-public access level — restricted to institutional researchers, embargoed for a period of time, or gated behind explicit consent for each use.
Anonymization options. If your submission could identify a living person who hasn't consented to being documented, you can request that identifying details be redacted or the submission held until consent is obtained.
Community controls. You retain the right to request corrections, withdraw a submission, or restrict future uses of the material you contributed.

Review process

Every submission moves through two review stages before it joins the archive. The process is designed to be fast enough to be worth your time and thorough enough to protect the archive's integrity.

Stage one: screening and verification. The submission is checked for completeness, good faith, and obvious factual errors. An independent verification pass researches the figure beyond what the submission provided. Submissions that don't meet the five-criteria threshold are returned to the submitter with an explanation, not silently rejected.

Stage two: scoring and integration. Submissions that pass stage one receive a full five-criteria evaluation, a biography build-out, geographic and network work, and source documentation. Once the entry is complete, it's added to the archive and the submitter is notified with a link to the live page.

The review timeline varies with submission volume, but most submissions receive a stage-one response within 30 days.

Submit your figure

Submissions are collected through a short form. You'll be asked for the information described above, with space to attach documents or media. The form takes about 15–30 minutes to complete thoroughly.

Submit a Figure (opens in new tab)

Questions? Contact the project director.