(gentle electronic music) - Just scoot into the chair just a little bit forward.

(indistinct) - Yeah, I'm telling the story now at PBS.

(person shushing) - Testing, one, two, three.

- Can you hear me correctly, or...?

Is it good?

- It's my favorite thing.

(clapper clicking) (person laughing) (clapper clicking) (person clapping) - [Interviewer] What area do you currently live in?

- I live in Detroit, Michigan.

- Detroit.

- Shelby Township.

- I currently live in Southfield.

- Madison Heights.

- I live in Indian Village.

- Ann Arbor.

- Grove Field, Michigan.

- I live in Detroit.

- Currently, we reside in Harper Woods.

- My parents both came from Georgia separately, my dad was about a year, a year and a half, he was born in Valdosta, and my mother came up... She was born in Forsyth, Georgia.

- They were from, you know, Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky, and they came up in the early '20s.

- Both of my grandfathers felt that it was imperative to get somewhere that was hustle-and-bustle.

- My family migrated to Detroit in the '70s from the Dominican Republic.

The story goes, we had one uncle here who just really loved the city, and the way he described it made my grandparents curious enough to take that chance and just see what it was about.

- When my father came to Detroit, what he did for work, he worked at... (indistinct) Because he was coming from North Carolina.

- My grandfather immediately got hired at Ford.

- Well, my dad, he came to Detroit, Michigan and began employment at the Chrysler Corporation.

Now, he tells us he had the most dirtiest and filthiest jobs, but it paid the bills.

- My father is originally from Vicksburg, Mississippi.

- My father lived in Huntsville, Alabama, and came to Detroit to work for Ford.

- As a sharecropper, he had got into a situation, and so, they had to flee in the middle of the night to Detroit area.

- So you gotta remember in those days, everybody was coming from Kentucky, everybody was coming from Alabama, everybody was coming from West Virginia, and so, a lot of their friends from the South settled in the same neighborhood.

- My mother came from Fairfax, Virginia to go to Wayne State, she wanted to study medicine.

- My father was from Champaign, Illinois, and my mother was from Carroll, Illinois.

- So my family's actually from Jamaica.

They had moved to all over the United States, so I have family in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, and I am the first person here in the Midwest, in the city of Detroit.

- My dad was born in the Upper Peninsula, in Newberry, Michigan in 1940 to a mixed mother whose family was from the South and moved up to Michigan, and my dad's father was from Finland.

- Well, my family's originally from Honduras, I was born there, but I was brought up in Detroit, so we moved when I was nine years old.

- When I was eight years old, our family got... (indistinct) From a refugee camp in Thailand, and then, long story short, I graduated from Binghamton University and I got married, and that's when I moved to Michigan.

- I just hope that all of the history I'm uncovering is something that's remembered, and try to embrace the past and the future, and come together.

- They're all from South Carolina.

My granddad moved here for work.

He married my grandma, moved here, he was, like, a painter for Ford.

- [Interviewer] What did your grandmother do?

- Waited for him to come home with his check from Ford so she could go... (person laughing) - [Interviewer] Is there anything else that you wanted to share that you haven't touched on yet?

- No, this is a wonderful idea.

I think, maybe one day, my kids will look back and see this and smile.

- [Interviewer] I hope so.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, we really appreciate it.

- You're welcome, it was nice to meet you.

- [Interviewer] Yeah, nice to meet you, as well.

Thank you so much.

(no audio)