The Story of Detroit: One Family History at a Time
Photos Courtesy of Detroit PBS
For generations, Detroiters’ resilience and ingenuity helped transform America. Our region’s history is part of the nation’s evolving story as Detroit has been a magnet across generations.
Ahead of America’s 250th anniversary, Detroit PBS will premiere its new one-hour documentary, “Destination Detroit,” on Monday, June 22, at 9 p.m.
This documentary explores the histories of people who helped shape Southeast Michigan, starting with the arrivals of their families in the region.
“The film was our effort to bring a new and clearer lens to the legacy of the people who built this city,” said Bill Kubota, the film’s director and a senior producer at Detroit PBS. “They were eager to share their family histories but also their hopes for the future.”
The documentary captures the roots of the city and the lives of its people, spanning their history from Detroit becoming a city in 1701 to the settlers of the 1800s to the Great Migration from the South in the 1900s to more recent neighbors from Africa, Asia, Europe, Canada and Latin America.
Watch the trailer here.
“Destination Detroit” features interviews with more than 60 people, representative of the region’s diverse communities, including:
- Mary Sheffield, the newly elected mayor of Detroit, discusses her family’s legacy. Her grandfather, Horace Sheffield Junior, came with his family from Georgia in 1918. He was integral to the Civil Rights Movement working with Martin Luther King Jr. on the Freedom Marches in Detroit and Washington, D.C., and instrumental in African Americans gaining leadership roles in the UAW.
- Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud recounts how his family settled in this city, the home of the Ford Motor Company, a mosaic of Middle Eastern nationalities and the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the U.S.
- Genealogist Karen Batchelor, while exploring her ancestors’ history, learned one of them fought in the American Revolutionary War. She became the first African American member of the Daughters of the American Revolution nearly a half century ago.
- Restaurateur Mamba Hamissi, the co-owner of Detroit’s Baobab Fare specializing in East African cuisine, describes how he came to the U.S. as a refugee from Burundi and the success he achieved as an entrepreneur.
- Historian and author Ken Coleman explains that there has been an African American presence in Detroit since the 1700s, the phenomenal growth in the Black population in the 20th century and some of the opposition faced over the years.
- Radio host and musician Vaughn Masropian tells the story of neighbors hiding his grandmother from the Armenian genocide. She survived, and his parents made their way to Metro Detroit, where their community still sings the praises of those who sacrificed so they could build a life in this country.
- Sandy Fatt of the Detroit Chinatown Vision Committee describes how many of the first Chinese came to Detroit at the turn of the last century, the legacy of the city’s Chinatown and how she wants to preserve and revive the neighborhood.
- Polish and Mexican American documentarian Len Radjewski Fraga created a film about his grandparents’ journey to Michigan from Mexico based on an audio tape recorded more than a half century ago.
Detroit PBS launched its Destination Detroit project last year. The station invited the public to share how Detroit became their families’ destination. People explained why their relatives came to Detroit and recounted the lives they built once here. The initial interviews took place at the recently renovated and reopened Michigan Central Station — the iconic landmark train depot that greeted new arrivals in Detroit for nearly 75 years before closing in 1988.
The filmmaker took those stories and added dozens of others recorded throughout the community to create “Destination Detroit.”
After its Detroit PBS premiere, the documentary will be made available to public television stations across the nation, through APT (American Public Television).
“These remarkable stories are as rich and diverse as the individuals who tell them,” Detroit PBS President and CEO Rich Homberg said. “To listen to their tales is to truly understand our community, past and present.”
Watch the “Destination Detroit” documentary on Detroit PBS
Premiere: Monday, June 22, at 9 p.m.
Also showing:
- June 23 at 2 a.m.
- June 24 at 5 p.m.
- June 30 at 11:30 p.m.
- July 2 at 7 p.m.
- July 9 at 10 p.m.
Watch on demand: Learn more about the Destination Detroit project and viewthe one-hour special anytime starting June 22 at 9 p.m. by visiting www.detroitpbs.org/destinationdetroit or the PBS app.
