Engineer Cornelius L. Henderson helped connect Windsor and Detroit. Here's who he was

In Windsor and Detroit, efforts are underway to publicize the life and legacy of Cornelius L. Henderson, one of the engineers who helped design both the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

"He was responsible for helping with the design of these steel trusses that make up the Canadian approach to the bridge and the steel tubes in which the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel sits," said Irene Moore Davis, president of the Essex County Black Historical Society (ECBHS).

Henderson was born in Detroit in the late 1880s in a family that valued the importance of a post-secondary education.

"His brother was one of the earliest Black physicians in Detroit," said Rashid Faisal, department chair for the College of Urban Education at Davenport University and a member of the Detroit Historical Society. "His sisters became educators as well."

Henderson attended the University of Michigan, where he endured harrowing treatment from the school's administration.

"He couldn't sleep there and he couldn't eat there," said David L. Head, vice-president of the Black Historic Sites Committee (BHSC) in Detroit. "His fellow white classmates wouldn't study with him. He was basically ostracized."

Although he graduated with a degree in civil engineering in 1911, he was not able to find employment in his field. Faisal said that Henderson's inability to find employment in his field after graduating was reflective of what it was like to be African American in a time when society did not differentiate between educated and uneducated African Americans.

"He was walking the streets of Detroit in search of employment and the best offer he received was to work as a janitor at one of the buildings," Faisal said.

Eventually, he ran into a former classmate who graduated two years earlier. That classmate recommended he submit an application to the Canadian Bridge Company. That would begin a long career working on projects across the world.

"He worked there for 47 years," Davis said. "He started out just doing drafting, but eventually his skills as a structural engineer were understood."

Faisal said Henderson adds to the connection between Canada and the U.S. in terms of African Americans heading north.

"Canada has always been viewed as a New Canaan for Black Americans in terms of escaping from slavery via the Underground Railroad," he said. "With Henderson, his life speaks to that two-way relationship. He was a resident in the U.S. before working in Canada."

Faisal has two reasons why Henderson is not very well known.

"The field of African American studies is still relatively new," he said. "When you think of Dr. Carter G. Woodson instituting the study of Black history in 1927, that's not far removed from Henderson's legacy when you think of the Ambassador Bridge."