Movin' Up, Pop Gordy Tells His Story

Here, in his own words, is the story of an extraordinary black American, son of a former slave, and father of Berry Gordy Jr., who founded Motown Records. Pop Gordy’s story starts on his father’s plantation in Georgia, in an old house with enough chinks in the shingles to let in the fresh air. Whether scrapping with his brothers and sisters, fooling his momma, walking the crops with his Papa, or scufflin’ hard to make his living, Berry knew how to enjoy everything he did. When he left the South to build a new life in Detroit, he took his love of family, fun, and honest hard work with him. Berry Gordy Sr., and his wife Bertha Fuller Gordy, arrived in Detroit from Georgia in 1922. Starting with odd jobs and later a small grocery store, Berry ‘Pop’ Gordy established a succession of businesses, including a prosperous construction business. In the mid-1960’s, his son Berry, Jr., bought the business, fired his father, and immediately hired him to an executive position at the Motown Record Corporation. A churchgoing family, Mr. and Mrs. Gordy at first affiliated with The Church of God in Christ, and later became members of Bethel A.M.E. Church, for which Mr. Gordy served as trustee. Pop Gordy credited hard work in part for his longevity and, until his death, was working as a consultant to Motown Records. Completed before his death at the age of ninety in November 1978, Berry Gordy’s memoirs tell how he taught his family to make it in a white world—the lessons he learned from his father, his elders, and life itself. It’s warm, anecdotal style will draw readers of all ages to the story of this lovable man. Alex Haley contributed to Movin’ Up: Pop Gordy Tells His Story by writing the introduction.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.