- [Thomas] If this image were in a museum, no one would doubt its importance to our shared history.

But history isn't just the artifacts in institutions, [camera shutter clicking] it's also the precious objects we hold in our hands and hearts, the ordinary family photos that people create every day.

- This is Family Pictures... - Family Pictures... - Family Pictures USA, action.

[jazzy music] - [Thomas] I'm Thomas Allen Harris.

Filmmaker, photographer, and host of Family Pictures USA.

We're traveling the country, inviting everyone to share their family photos, revealing a new history of our community, our country, and ourselves.

[jazzy music] Once you see America through family pictures, you'll never see this country the same way again.

[jazzy music] [gentle music] - [Thomas] Welcome to Detroit, America's Comeback City, and it's not the first time.

- I'm Jerome Cavanagh, Mayor, Mayor of Detroit.

There is a renaissance, a rebirth, the newness, renaissance in Detroit.

[upbeat music] - [Thomas] From its founding, Detroit has been a city of reinvention.

It created the auto industry, which fueled spectacular wealth and the growth of unions.

And throughout the decades, Detroiters reimagined music, art, and style.

At its high point in 1960, Detroit was one of America's most prosperous cities.

Then, in 1967, riots hit.

One of a series of blows that battered the city.

Culminating in 2013, when Detroit went bankrupt.

Can the secret of Detroit's resilience be found in the city's family photographs?

Today, we're here in the Detroit Historical Museum at one of our community photo shares, where we invited Detroiters to bring their family photographs.

- Why are we wearing gloves?

- [Thomas] Because these artifacts are important, not just to your family, but to our collective history.

- We just got an education.

- My great-great-grandfather came here from Prussia and he came to the United States and came right to Detroit.

He began working at a brickyard, they made bricks is what they did.

They made the bricks that built the city.

- This is my parents' wedding day.

My dad is looking terrified because the priest had taken him aside and kind of told him, look, you better treat this girl right, she's a special young lady.

And so daddy looks a little bit mortified in this photo.

[laughs] I love looking at it, because he's a really happy, genial person.

I think it was like, this is serious work I'm about to embark on.

- This is my father and he was a carpenter.

And he helped build the Model-T Factory in Highland Park.

And there he is.

[upbeat music] - [Thomas] Detroit has always called people to the city to reinvent themselves.

Jamon Jordan is a native Detroiter, who transformed himself from a teacher in the classroom, to an historian on the city streets.

- [Jamon] I'm trying to relay the history to the next generation, so that the children and the children of the children, can learn what they forgot.

- You have this beautiful album.

I want you to tell me about your relationship with American History.

- So that's me in Detroit, I've just graduated from high school.

By that time, I am thoroughly involved in hiphop and then I'm also beginning to immerse myself in African-American History and African-American culture.

You see me with the kufi on and African medallions on and I'm on my way to college.

After my college career, I was a teacher.

And these tours kind of began as field trips for my students.

Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who's considered the founder of Detroit, is really the Columbus of Detroit.

Most teachers, of course, teach their children, but a lot of times they don't know the connection of their own neighborhoods to those places.

I want them to know the historic sites, right here in the City of Detroit.

So I began to take them and then their parents, because it's always good to start learning and talking about the history with family.

Family history is really the entry point into learning about history in general.

The French give it that name Detroit, which is where we get the word Detroit from.

But there were people already living here.

There were Native Americans already here.

- [Thomas] Jamon takes us deeper into history, to show us the connection to our community.

In the same way, family photos can offer deeper understanding of our origins.

[upbeat music] There are no photographs in 1701 when the French arrive in what would become Detroit's East Side.

And indigenous people are already here.

Three of the largest societies include The Odawa, The Pottawatomie, and The Ojibwe.

Chantel Henry is Ojibwe.

An activist working to preserve the legacies of her family and her people.

- [speaks foreign language] - [Thomas] Chantel's family photos dig deep into her roots.

She's fought since childhood to make her heritage matter.

- When I grew up, in elementary school, they used to be like, you're not Native American.

They used to always think I was Mexican.

Native Americans are, they don't exist anymore, they're all dead, you're not Native American.

I'm like, how are you gonna tell me I'm not Native American?

I live it every day of my life.

My grandfather worked on the tallest tower on the Renaissance Center.

So it's about us just reclaiming who we are and letting people know the history of who we are, here in Detroit.

That my family was here and they helped build the city into what it is.

And that's very important for me to do.

- [Thomas] Chantel's family photos are vital evidence of an ongoing struggle for recognition and respect.

- We are the only race of people that has to have a card to tell you who we are.

Yeah, this is my status card, my Indian card.

When I cross the border, I have to show this to let them know that I'm Native American.

- These controversial status cards are issued by the Canadian Government and U.S.

Native Tribes.

They grant access to tax and health benefits and more.

For both countries, getting a card depends on family ancestry.

So this is the block that you knew really well when you were a kid and teenager?

- Yes.

- [Thomas] In the 50s, Chantel's grandparents lived here, on Longdale Street, back when the neighborhood was heavily Polish.

- We knew which blocks to stay at.

Just before my grandparents passed away, they told me another story and I had no clue, being in this neighborhood this whole time.

- [Thomas] And this, this photograph of them?

- Yes.

Hello.

- [Resident] So you used to live in this house?

- Yes, I grew up here, my grandparents move in in 1954.

And they lived here until 1977.

- Oh, we've been here five years.

- For five years?

They said that they had to petition the block club to buy the house, because it was a all Polish neighborhood and they were, they said they were like too brown to live here.

And I was like, "Oh my gosh, you never told me this."

My whole life I had no clue.

- I heard there was a house there and a house here, houses across the street.

- [Thomas] Chantel and her family are claiming their rightful place in Detroit's family album.

- My Detroit story would be about dancing.

It started when I was super young.

This is a pow wow in Hart Plaza, which is really awesome that I went to a pow wow in Hart Plaza, because I don't do that anymore.

- Kathleen is a quarter Mosquito Indian.

My grandma Nadich grew up with Ojibwa the Cree and she spoke Cree too.

- I still have this outfit, a few other ones that she saved for me.

- I have all the Native stuff.

I inherited moccasins that are like 200 years old that have been passed down in the family.

- [Kathleen] They've done a good job of keeping memories for me.

So I have a lot of pictures.

- [Thomas] Not every story is in the history books.

150 years ago, former slaves came to Detroit for freedom, to create themselves anew.

Gabrielle and Angela Bradby and cousin, Kimberly Cole are descendents of one of them.

- This is the original James H. Cole.

[upbeat music] He was born in 1838 in Yazoo County, Mississippi on a plantation.

So he was a product of a slave and a master.

- [Thomas] This is an older James H. Cole, sitting for a formal portrait.

His double-breasted tailored jacket displays affluence, but he started with nothing.

- The story goes that he was born enslaved, as his mother was literally on her death bed.

Her dying wish was to have her son freed.

And he made the trek north.

Now did he follow the Underground Railroad in his destination?

- Did he?

- It's hard to say, but I kind of suspect that he did.

- So you reach here at 18 years old, in Detroit and what he does, he comes to and finds his way to Historic Second Baptist Church.

- Which is where we are right now.

- Which is right where we are now, we're over here in the Second Baptist Church.

- [Thomas] Second Baptist Church in the heart of Downtown Detroit.

Founded in 1836 by former slaves, the church quickly becomes an important stop on the Underground Railroad, as African-Americans escape to the freedom of Canada, just across the Detroit River.

James Cole finds sanctuary here.

- Once he gets here and he gets established in the church, he's not satisfied.

- The major part of his fortune was done during the Civil War.

He became a supplier of grain and livery for the Union Armies.

- That is the livery stable.

- And is this him?

- No, that's the son.

- The son.

- The son.

- [Angela] The advantage of that led him into buying property and to becoming an entrepreneur.

The Cole Company, the moving company, and those other entrepreneurial things.

- When he made the money, he didn't go out and spend it on clothes or fancy things, he put it back into the tailoring, put it back into the community.

- They gave money and philanthropy to the different type of social organizations that helped the community.

My great-great-grandfather gave $20,000 to the Underground Railroad.

- [Thomas] These photographs of James Cole's descendants embody the Detroit spirit.

Reinvention, working hard to become prosperous, while improving the community.

By the mid-1800s, immigrants flood into the city.

They settle in their ethnic enclaves and these areas become neighborhoods.

Mexican Town, Corktown, Black Bottom, Pole Town.

They stick to their own areas, weaving opposition and racism into the very fabric of Detroit's neighborhoods.

Still, at our community photo shares, it's clear that Detroit became a place where entrepreneurs could thrive.

- So cool Uncle Jay.

- [Thomas] The city welcomed immigrants and self-starters and allowed them to flourish.

- That's my dad's Bar mitzvah picture.

He was a son of Jewish immigrants that came here from Russia after World War I.

- My grandparents came from Poland.

- Came from Italy.

- From India.

- Northern Mexico.

- From Iran.

[upbeat music] - This was my father's first store.

He migrated to Detroit when he was 16 years old from a very small town, Cordele, Georgia.

He had determined he would be a pharmacist because that's who the richest guy was in Cordele.

So he started his company and it grew to the largest chain of drugstores of any African-American in the United States.

- This is Eric Fromm, he came over from Denmark in 1906 and decided to do a career selling tools door-to-door.

- Our grandfather eventually had 13 Fromm's Hardware Stores.

- Our grandmother came up with the slogan, you will find it at Fromm's.

And it's so interesting to meet people, years later, who say, "I remember Fromms, "it was the first place I got a bicycle," or whatever.

- That's my father and mother.

- Right here.

- Yeah.

- And Uncle Jay.

- And that's me.

My father pushed a pushcart and finally he opened, actually he opened two stores.

- The family grew up above the store and they all worked together in the store.

I moved into the city 30 years ago and it was very rare for people to be moving to Detroit at that time.

And my experience of Detroit, I love the intimacy and sort of the scrappiness of it.

And it's frankly the only city that a person like me, with no business experience, could start a business and succeed.

So for me it's been a city of real richness and soul, whereas for other people it's a tough city.

So it's kind of, it's a complex city for sure.

- [Thomas] Detroit's complexity is embodied in some of its long-time entrepreneurs.

Like icon of Detroit style, Henry the Hatter.

We joined owner Paul Wasserman at their Downtown store.

- We've been in business for 124 years.

We're the oldest hat store in the United States.

- [Thomas] So tell me about the couple of these photographs.

- I'm fond of this one, this was at the grand opening of the store we're standing in now.

This is my father and mother and this was my father's Uncle Jack and Aunt Phoebe, who initially got my dad in the hat business.

[camera shutter] - [Thomas] So your dad was part of the business.

- Oh my dad was a major part of the business.

If my dad wasn't such a good teacher, I'm not sure we'd still be here.

- Wow.

- I owe my success to him.

[camera shutters] - Once a rare success, surrounded by shuttered stores, new investment in Detroit's Downtown is raising rents and bringing mixed blessings to Henry the Hatter.

Any challenges from the perspective of a small-- - Well we haven't moved since 1952 and at the end of the summer, we're gonna be forced to move again.

We're a victim of progress.

Our landlord has chosen not to extend our lease.

[upbeat music] But the outpouring of support from the people in the City of Detroit has just been overwhelming and gratifying and I'm confident when we find another location, it will still be in the City of Detroit.

- [Thomas] Their physical space may change, but Henry the Hatter will remain a monument to Detroit's resilience.

[upbeat music] [horn beeps] - This is my grandmother, who lived on Hastings and Willis.

Here name was Julia Gouzubska.

She was known as the bank, because when people couldn't get a loan from the bank, they would come to her and she would give them for 1% interest.

- She was a loan shark.

[laughs] - And then one day, Henry Ford came to her and asked her for money to put into the car business.

She said that would never progress into anything big, it'll never happen.

I guess my life story would be much different now had we given the money to Henry Ford.

- [Thomas] Ford transforms the city.

Opening factories and offering $5 a day, twice the typical wage.

This brings a surge of African-Americans from the south in what will become known as The Great Migration.

- This is an image of my Great-Aunt Ophelia and that's her only child, Joe Nelson.

So they come to Detroit around 1925.

One of the reasons why my grandmother leaves from Alabama and comes to Detroit is to join her older sister.

And this is a picture of my grandmother.

She was born in Besma, Alabama, which is a small town near Birmingham, Alabama.

She leaves Alabama in 1938 and comes to Detroit.

The story of The Great Migration, well my grandparents were a part of that and the story of Detroit's growth into an African-American city, my grandparents were a part of that.

- [Thomas] The African-Americans arriving in The Great Migration are restricted as to where they can live.

In one neighborhood, white developers actually build a wall, funded by U.S. Government loans to separate them from their black neighbors.

American apartheid, Detroit-style.

Today it's a mural, an image of hope for better times, and a stark reminder of Detroit's past.

- When they come to Detroit, although it's not the same as the south, housing was segregated.

There were certain areas where African-Americans could live and own property, including businesses.

And the major area that was, was the Lower East Side.

The residential area was known as Black Bottom and the business section was known as Paradise Valley.

- [Thomas] In spite of these barriers, a million new residents are drawn to the city.

And one of the few places everyone can mix is the factory floor.

The auto industry booms.

The city soon becomes home to visionary entrepreneurs.

Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Packard, and more, earning Detroit its nickname, The Motor City.

- So this is a visit back home.

So there's my grandmother next to my grandfather's car.

If I was a car guy, I would be able to just look at that and tell you that is a 1948 Oldsmobile.

But I'm not a car guy so I can't do that.

- Neither am I.

But here we are in the motor city.

- Right right.

- [Thomas] I'm sure someone in our audience can look at that and be able to say boom that's it.

- [Jamon] That's it.

So there's my grandmother taking a picture next to my grandfather's car.

- [Thomas] Photos with our cars.

We all have them.

A symbol of the American Dream.

It defined progress and meant we'd made it.

But in Detroit, with few lives untouched by the automobile industry, it meant even more.

- This is my dad, he was about 18 or 19 years old at the time.

And you might notice, right next to him is a Victrola and he would put on records and the ladies would sit down and recline right in the middle of the canoe and he would court them.

He ended up working at Packard Motorcar Company.

He really couldn't afford to buy the cars he was building, however, about 1948, Packards had an excessive amount of extra cars and so they lowered the price.

So one day I came home, I was in second grade, I turned the corner and there sitting in front of my house was this big, beautiful, black piece of metal and I said, "Daddy got his car."

Packard built this plant in 1903.

- [Thomas] So this whole place was Packard.

- [Arthur] This whole place.

- And your dad worked here.

- My dad worked at this plant for 20 years, from 1934 to 1954 he built cars here.

He was a tool and gage inspector.

He didn't work in an office.

There was a section right up there on the third floor.

- So your dad was up there.

- Up there.

He'd come in on the other side, come all the way through, and he'd work up there.

And you know what?

What you see here is trees, all this was a Packard parking lot.

- And do you have a picture of your dad?

- This is a picture of my dad.

This is his badge for him to get into the plant.

- This is his Packard ID.

- ID badge.

I just happened to find this in a box about 25, 30 years ago and I said, "Wow Pop, you saved this," so.

- That's funny because it's now part of your like family photo album.

- This is exactly it, this is exactly it.

- [Thomas] Packard and its plant shuttered in 1958, unable to keep with the larger and more dominant car companies.

- My grandmother was born in southern Illinois, coal mining father and stay-at-home mom.

And this is her.

And eventually, after she got married, they moved to Detroit.

Very quickly after they got here, they worked in the auto industry.

They heard that there was the $5 a day and they came up here and it wasn't the promised land, because of the conditions.

Then they just became so involved in unions, that was her life, that became her life.

My grandmother was in and out of prison a number of times, they thought that would stop her from her activities, but nothing stopped.

My grandmother was the feistiest person I've ever met.

In that time, it was so important, it was really human rights and I think Detroit was the perfect place for that to be happening.

She was just this radical person that found a place and that she was appreciated for her feistiness.

[upbeat music] - [Thomas] Detroit would also make significant cultural breakthroughs over the years.

Most notably, in music.

Barry Gordy's Motown is the most well-known example.

But Detroit was making music even earlier.

In Black Bottom on Hastings Street, another dream unfolds.

To satisfy uprooted southerners hungry for music from home, the place, the legendary record store of Joe Von Battle.

Marsha Music is a poet and performer and his youngest daughter.

When you see all these images, what comes to mind?

- When I see them all amass like this, it really touches me regarding the fullness of family and the journey of my family.

Well here is a photograph of my father in the early days.

That is the very year that he opened up the record store in 1945.

He was dedicated to selling near an area called Black Bottom.

And Black Bottom was the area of the city, particularly in the 1940s, largely made up of people who wanted to hear their southern music.

And that southern music was probably only the blues.

- The blues.

- They came to the north escaping segregation, ended up in the north trapped by segregation, and they had the blues.

♪ Hobo a long, long way from home, oh yeah ♪ - So this photograph of this little girl could this be you?

- It could be.

It could be me.

It is me.

I was apparently standing in front of my dad's record store on Hastings Street.

And it's years of the 1940s and early 50s, people walked up and down the street playing music.

And my dad began to record these people.

He captured the sounds of the time, in Detroit.

- [Thomas] Wow, so he would record people speaking or doing whatever.

- He would sometimes just record railroad sounds or street sounds.

He also recorded many, many people.

We didn't realize the significance of these people though.

They were just our dad's old friends.

We didn't realize that some of these people would become iconic artists.

John Lee Hooker, people like Della Reese.

He popularized the sermons of the Reverend C.L.

Franklin.

And then later on, his daughter with that amazing voice that she had.

He was the very first to record her voice and he produced her very first gospel records as she led the choir or as she sang along.

She would go to the record shop after church and hang around with my older brothers and sisters there.

So Joe's Record Shop was a place that was really, really teeming with creativity.

[upbeat music] - My friend Overton Loyd, who did the album covers for George Clinton, told me there was gonna be an audition for The Brides of Funkenstein in Detroit.

I brought my resume, my tapes.

- [Thomas] What kind of music were you sharing at that point?

- I was doing a little tape that I had, so it was like... ♪ Hey mister melody, you're on my mind constantly ♪ ♪ And I think of you the whole day long ♪ That's the stuff I was singing on the tape so I was like classical, I had these glasses, violin, nerdy girl in front of... [mumbles] And so I got the gig and I got to the rehearsal hall and they opened up the door and it was just musicians everywhere.

They looked like aliens, they had One Nation scarves on, they just, big boot, army boot, they looked like soldiers.

They just were funky and I was like wow!

And I immediately sat down, this was Wednesday, and we just rehearsed around the clock for one week and then I walked out on stage in Pittsburgh in front of 10,000 people.

And they looked like this big.

[mumbles] And George would walk by and I was just like a whole new world.

- [Thomas] Touring with P-Funk launches Satori and she takes a tistic flight around the world, leaving Detroit behind.

Doreen, Satori's younger sister, stays in Detroit and is a keeper of the family photos.

[upbeat music] We catch up with both sisters at United Sound Studios, where some of Detroit's iconic tracks were cut.

You know when I look at this picture of my mother and I look at her eyes, that's a story in there.

She was a maid, she came up from Holly Bluff, Mississippi, that was in Yazoo County, one of the most racist counties in the south.

She went to Barber Junior High School, but she was 17 in the ninth grade, because she picked cotton and she was ashamed, because she was so much older than the other kids, so she quit school and became a maid in Girl's Point.

My goal was to be like Diana Ross.

Mama said, "Diana Ross is special."

Because she thought Diana Ross was, Diana Ross was special, but I thought I was pretty special too.

I didn't think I was special, I just thought if Diana Ross did it, why couldn't I do it?

- So she was, in some ways, not a little obstacle, but she was-- - She was, I saw her as an obstacle because I wanted to live!

And she was like, "No, come back, don't, you gotta be safe."

- I have a different understanding, because I was mama's girl, she could do not wrong in my eyes.

She was my everything, because I felt like she sacrificed so much for us.

She cleaned houses so that we could take music lessons or go to the movie or learn how to skate.

And so she was everything to me.

- In the 50s it seemed that black life wanted to imitate Ozzie and Harriet and wanted to have that middle-class upbringing.

There were big picnics and once a month we would get in a car and go out to dinner and that was like a big deal.

And there was value, shared values, and we all knew what they were, from the church to the school to the people in the neighborhood, there was value of community.

Kindness, respect, those kinds of values.

- [Thomas] Detroit's economy was booming and the rising income created another radical innovation, the middle-class.

- This is my dad.

That's taken at the Sears and Roebucks that used to be in Highland Park and they took this picture.

It's one of my favorite pictures of my dad.

Okay, that's a real Detroit, I work at Chrysler Paint Plant picture.

Working at Chrysler used to be the thing.

My dad retired out of Chrysler at 60 years old and we had a really good life back then.

Owned property, when people could have a good life in Detroit.

- Living in the historic Boston Edison neighborhood, we had a lot of middle-class people.

Teachers and people who worked in the plant, all kinds of folks.

[upbeat jazz music] It was always a given that we would complete our educations beyond high school.

- Absolutely.

One of the stories that my sister tells is that when we were in like kindergarten, first grade, you may not have known what college was, but you knew you were going there.

- Yeah, I knew was a PHD was in kindergarten.

- There's just no question.

- During that time in Detroit, the black middle-class was definitely doing very, very well.

So and we were proud of that legacy.

- [Thomas] The middle class was thriving but there was still only a handful of places where the different ethnic groups could mix.

Who are these folks?

- This is my grandfather, Moses Ross, so that's him right there.

And this is my grandmother, Lucinda Ross and these are two of their friends.

And they're at the Club Plantation, which is one of the important historic clubs in Paradise Valley.

The clubs were known as black and tans, which means that they serviced both African-Americans and white patrons.

And they did not segregate them.

So African-Americans and whites could sit right next to each other at a Paradise Valley club but in most other places, African-Americans and whites could not sit together and many times, African-Americans could not even be in those clubs.

And they really start booming by the 1930s and 40s when the top music of that day was big band jazz.

- [Thomas] These photos are full of that good life, the clothes, the attitudes, the headliners.

Boxing champ Joe Louis is here, singer Cab Calloway.

- [Jamon] The Beyonce of the 1930s was Count Basie and Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday.

That's what you would've heard, mostly, on radio stations.

This is where you would hear about all the clubs, The 606 Horse Shoe Lounge, The Club 360, Club Congo, The Apex Bar, you would've heard it here.

And if you wanted to hear it every day, you came to Paradise Valley.

[jazz music] - [Thomas] But the tension from Detroit's segregation and racism was reaching a boiling point.

It's all right there in the images.

Eruptions of violence, whole neighborhoods obliterated in the name of urban renewal, even Joe's Record Shop is forced to reopen on 12th Street, when Black Bottom is destroyed by a new highway.

And in 1967 on the corner of 12th Street and Clairmont, Detroit's systemic policies of aggressive policing, discrimination, and overcrowding turned an altercation with undercover detectives, into an explosion.

- About the time the riots hit in July of 67, I was six.

I would never forget my mom saying, "Don't even think about leaving this house."

- When the Detroit riots hit I was 10, my dad was a firefighter.

I never really realized how dangerous his job was until that moment.

[sirens] - I said, "Damn, there's a riot going on.

"This is a whole black neighborhood "and you're living in a white apartment "they don't allow blacks in, you're gonna be in trouble."

She says, "I know but I'm not leaving this apartment, "because I got a brand new television."

- You could hear bullets.

We could hear da, da, da, da, da, da.

The troops were going up and down the street, down to the Boulevard, they would circle at the Boulevard and come up 12th Street.

The trucks and all the troops and you could hear them, they shot out the lights on the streets.

The troops were patrolling this whole area.

- [Thomas] Like once a week?

- Oh every hour on the hour.

I mean they were just going up and down.

So they had their M-16s on the back and their military things.

- [Thomas] For those who live through it, 1967 is a watershed experience.

And the photos are haunting.

- I remember during that time Detroit had a policing unit and they were out in full force.

And I remember my brother-- - This brother?

- That's him, Dale, Dale Whitney.

- He was out with some friends, probably weren't doing the right thing, and he said police began to chase him and they began running and shots were fired and he got hit.

He got hit in the shoulder, but he said he hid and just was like praying, please, let me live.

- This is, this brother.

This is the one.

He lived.

- [Doreen] But there was actual danger.

- The sad part about it was, is that you knew your business was down on 12th Street or some of the areas, and there were people that did go down with shotguns to protect their business, but the National Guard chased them out, they didn't want any other guns in the city.

And then folks came back and their businesses were all burned out.

- The 12th Street store was looted, initially.

- So even though it was a black business people still broke in.

- Yes.

There is a picture of looting.

It shows people kind of standing in line, very orderly.

My father was really broken-hearted because he felt that if he had been able to stay there and protect his store and stay with his store, it would not have been destroyed.

- After the riots ended, we drove up and down 12th Street, and for months, just seeing the charred buildings, the burnt buildings.

Almost like Rome has its ruins, it was almost like Detroit's ruins.

And those images forever have stayed with me.

- This is where my father's record shop was on 12th Street.

- [Thomas] Right here?

- Right here.

- So this is a picture of your dad and the store, the doorway of the store.

- In the doorway.

- And so where would this be?

- The doorway would be right about right here.

- I see, so about here.

- I just remember in the floor, all of this detritus, all of this muck and mire.

And I felt my father's defeat, it's a mixture of, almost an embarrassment to see your father defeated like that.

There was a lot going on in those moments when I saw my father hit that last straw on the camel's back.

Because it wasn't just looting, in my opinion, that killed him, it was all that he had gone through.

And that became too much to bear.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's difficult.

[gentle music] - [Thomas] So now here we are-- - In this bucolic, peaceful place.

You would never know that such a thing went on, that the city was so plagued by inequality, that it caused an explosion like that.

[gentle music] - [Thomas] All over Detroit, communities respond.

At the Sacred Heart Seminary, Jamon's family narrative connects with the story of the city, through an unlikely monument.

- My family lived in this neighborhood.

Members of my family, my great-aunt and her son, they were in this neighborhood in the City of Detroit and the house painter, Joe Nelson, was my cousin, came to the grotto, where this Jesus, this statue of Jesus, was painted white at that time, he painted it black.

I'm proud that my cousin painted this black.

Many people, particularly in a system that is racist, didn't believe that African-Americans are worthy enough to have a picture of the divine figure of Jesus Christ painted in their likeness.

The following morning, the Sacred Heart Seminary repainted it white and over a couple of nights, it was painted from black to white again, and then eventually, the Sacred Heart Seminary left it as black and they maintained it that way, as a symbol of their connection with this community.

- [Thomas] Who knew that this Madonna and child, Jamon's great-aunt and cousin Joe, would change the face of Jesus in Detroit's family album and become a symbol of how the city will change?

For the next 25 years, the demons of Detroit's past plague its future.

White Flight, abandoned buildings, arson, the decline of the auto industry, bankruptcy.

But The Comeback City can't be kept down.

Where some see ruins or garbage left for trash, others see raw material for their creative visions.

[upbeat music] Artist Tim Burke is transforming pieces of Old Detroit, right in his back yard.

- These terracotta pieces, this is from Eastown Theater, they tore it down.

I went and got pieces of it.

- Wow.

These bits and pieces of old buildings become part of Tim's story.

This is a much younger Tim.

- With this photograph here, stepdad was on the scene at that time, the violent, alcoholic stepdad.

So at a point I started to address the trauma in my life from the age of seven until I was 19, being brought up in a violent, alcoholic, drug addicted family.

I started addressing those traumatic issues.

And I addressed them through my art as well.

[upbeat music] So the stuff behind us, like this big flower, it's made with metal from the Packard Motorcar Company, The Studebaker Car Company, the J.L.

Hudson's Building.

I'm using broken-down material.

As much as I was building my inner self with art coming from a broken-down, thrown into the trashy kind of life.

- From out of the ashes, Tim gives these old buildings, even their discarded contents, a new life.

So where did you find this image from?

- This comes from 10,000 photo negatives, which came from Blair Photography Studio.

A lot of the negatives were strewn all over, curbside, in bags.

- [Thomas] So these images had been thrown out?

- [Tim] Yes.

- [Thomas] And you salvaged them.

- [Tim] Yes.

- [Thomas] So was the photo studio a Jewish photo studio?

- I believe so, yes.

There's Bar mitzvahs, there's weddings.

This was when Sammie Davis, Jr. was here for a Bonds for Israel celebration.

- [Thomas] And what is this photograph?

- [Tim] It was a Jewish bakery.

- [Thomas] Okay.

- [Tim] Star Bakery.

I went to the Star Bakery on Coolidge, I took the photos in and I asked the lady was this her family and she said yes.

She also worked in this particular bakery, so I gave her the photograph.

- [Thomas] So you're reuniting people with their family photographs?

- [Tim] Yes.

- When you gave that to her, how did it feel for you?

- I was happy to be of service.

- [Thomas] So you're learning about your neighbors and about your city and your neighborhood.

- Right.

- [Thomas] Thousands of family stories reclaimed and repurposed by Tim.

[camera shutters] Who saw in them a kindred spirit.

[upbeat music] That spirit lives on in the city's dreamers and organizers who use the raw potential of today's Detroit to forge their visions of a better future.

So this is also a family photograph.

Tell me the story of this.

- This is a picture of the grocery store where I was working.

My family is from Jordan.

I came in 1967 and this is where I start doing business.

- So this photograph symbolizes resilience to me and strength, because there wasn't a lot of people that my father knew when he immigrated to the country.

And so to me, if he can make it and he didn't know anybody, didn't really have community, then I can do anything.

So this photograph is of three young men from the Yemeni community that I have the pleasure to work with.

One of the many things I do is engage the community in advocacy, knowing their rights and the things that they should be involved in civically.

I love that I can be a mentor, but also learn from these young people and contribute to their growth.

- This plus size clothing company from Florida was like, you know what, you're dope, you're Muslim, you're plus size, we're gonna send you a bunch of stuff and we want you to model it.

This was the last outfit of them all.

I had some dollar store balloon [laughs] some dollar store balloons girl, and I was like, you know what, let me just be fierce, I'm hot, I'm sweaty, makeup like coming off my face.

It's euphorial, it's so powerful, it's so feminine and I felt so amazing being a plus size hijabi, act like a fairy angel or something.

And I just felt so powerful and beautiful at that moment.

These pictures mean a lot to me.

- This is how it should be, your face should be covered.

Your face should be covered.

This is my mom, Ramona.

My mom was probably the most important person to us as a child.

Even now, she's still central to our lives.

- This is my mom and her siblings right here.

This picture is important because it kind of represents their migrant story.

My mom did a lot of hustling, she did all sorts of jobs for the family, but we lived very poor, a very austere life because everything went into our education.

- Siblings Antonio and Ramona are second-generation Detroiters who are honoring their family narrative of sacrifice for the greater good.

- My mom's parents, they're from Puerto Rico.

- That's an image of their journey to Michigan.

- Yeah, I mean it's almost like their American Dream story, coming here.

This looks really fancy, but they struggled for sure.

And my father's side.

This is the Mexican family.

- The Mexican side.

- There was a lot of violence happening to Mexican folks in Texas in the 1950s and 60s, so they moved north, just seeking a better life.

- Wow, it's like a Great Migration story, but for Mexicans.

- Yeah, for sure.

So my parents both went to Detroit Public Schools and our public school system has been historically deeply underfunded.

- So they wanted more for us, they wanted more than their parents had, more than what they have, and for them throughout, it's an education.

- Literally every extra dollar went into our education.

This was beyond their means to send us to these schools.

So essentially they mortgaged their house to pay for our high school education.

- They mortgaged this house.

- This house, yeah.

- Take the rail off.

And what happened to the house?

- Well I received a call in 2009 from my mom saying, "Come home quick, the house is on fire."

And I remember coming home and there's smoke billowing out of the front.

There was guys who were throwing our family's goods into a dumpster.

It was like a shocking moment.

It just incidentally, the house happened to catch fire the day it was being repossessed, which is like this like strange symbolic thing that like this thing that represents so much of my parents' sacrifice, even just like the American Dream in so many ways, is like getting burnt up in this house.

Me and my brother were like digging through the dumpster to pick up some of these family albums that are here today.

That was a big wake up call for me, like in my growth, in my evolution as a person.

So I went really hard into activism.

I spend a lot of time educating communities, doing workshops at universities, I do workshops for free with youth.

I found a lot of healing in agriculture and gardening.

The big part of my work now is to take kids outdoors to engage them in nature.

- [Thomas] Tell me what was here.

- This is Brussels sprouts, that was collard greens, this is like various types of kale.

So these guys were actually here like when we started out.

What was this like before we took it over.

What was it like?

- Like messy stuff.

- It looked like a mess.

- So what gave you inspiration to create the garden?

- Antonio did.

- There's probably like, I don't know, eight to ten families who eat off of this land and there's like another like maybe like ten families who have gotten into the garden resource program in the neighborhood.

- And it seems like there's like this urban farming movement here in Detroit.

- Yeah, I mean you guys were, you've seen kind of like the resurgence of life and what's happening downtown and it's kind of like driven by the corporate side of things.

But there's so much beautiful things that are happening in the neighborhoods, like our Farm Project, there's so many projects like that all over Detroit.

It's kind of like local sort of resurgence that we're seeing, is like we're definitely one of the leading cities in terms of urban agriculture in the United States.

- [Thomas] The new activists of Detroit, motivating the next generation and tapping into their family legacies to cultivate new communities.

There's an energy in today's Detroit, sparked by locals, new and old, who are actively engaged in the city's biggest reinvention yet.

New artistic movements are taking hold and flourishing.

And Detroiters are transforming themselves and their city.

Detroit's Family Album, a tale of resilience, reinvention, and renaissance.

The spirit of Detroit.

- [Thomas] Next time on Family Pictures USA: - I was wondering who these other people are in this photograph and do you know?

- I know this one right here.

That's James Dallas, and he was one of the sons of Willaby.

- Wow!

- So, he was a half-brother?

- He was a half-brother to Nelson.

- Yes.

- This looks like Willowby, but I'm not sure.

- So, this is almost a family photograph?

- It's a picture of, maybe, all our uncles?

- Could be.

- Wow.

[jazzy music] ♪ [female announcer] Family Pictures USA is available on Amazon Prime video.

♪