By Miss Rosen on July 17, 2021
Fifth Estate editor, Peter Werbe, Deanna Clemage, 1960s
Black Panthers Meeting, Year Unknown.
Born Magdalene Arndt in 1940, Leni Sinclair grew up in East Germany listening to jazz artists like Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald on Radio Luxemburg. At age 19, Sinclair moved to Detroit to study at Wayne State University. She quickly became involved with the radical political and cultural scene, becoming one of the two members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the city.
In 1964, she met poet John Sinclair, and married him the following year. Together they set up the Detroit Artists Workshop, a network of communal houses, performance space, and print shop that became the center for the Detroit music scene, attracting the likes of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk, all of whom Sinclair photographed.