- [Announcer] Coming up on "One Detroit," we'll preview the upcoming PBS documentary series.

"Great Migrations of People on the Move," plus contributor, Stephen Henderson, reflects on his own family's migration to Detroit from the South.

Also ahead, music students at the University of Michigan prepare for a special concert in Detroit.

And we'll hear from the artist behind the James Baldwin exhibit at the Wright Museum.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

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(bright music) - [Announcer] Just ahead on "One Detroit," contributor, Stephen Henderson, traces his family's participation in the Great Migration from the South to the Motor City.

Plus, we'll tell you about an upcoming concert, titled "Lost in Ann Arbor," featuring University of Michigan musical theater students.

And we'll meet the artist whose works are featured in an exhibit about James Baldwin.

But first up, a new PBS documentary series from Henry Louis Gates Jr. examines the impact of Black migration on American culture and society.

The four-part series is titled, "Great Migrations of People On the Move."

You can see it here on Detroit PBS on consecutive Tuesday nights, beginning January 28th at 9:00 PM.

Here's a preview.

(bright music) (upbeat music) (train clacking) - My grandmother and her siblings were all cotton pickers.

They hated that life.

They picked up everything they knew and left to the North.

- My grandmother migrated to Philadelphia from Eastman, Georgia.

- My mother's family migrated to Los Angeles in 1924.

- My grandfather, he jumped on a moving train and headed to Kentucky.

(train squealing and clacking) - I think migration is freedom to Black America.

- That decision to migrate was everything.

It broadened Black life and what that life could look like.

To create a whole new life in these new places is what made the next generation possible.

(seagulls cawing) (bright music) - The African American Great Migration was, in fact, one of the most significant demographic transformations in United States history.

- The music that we associate with America, (upbeat music) the food wave we associate with America.

- [Cook] Doc, I got something for you.

- [Doc] Oh man, it look like it's out of a magazine.

(both laughing) - The North always had this connotation of the promised land.

It took on new meaning with the migration.

- I have seen this photograph a thousand times in every book or essay about the Great Migration, you see this photograph.

- There was a very tragic story as to why they moved.

(dramatic music) - If there's a Black American dream, I think it's to have the freedom to dream, freedom to imagine oneself and a future for oneself that involves both African Americans and immigrants.

- Why is it important for people to understand that Black people came through here too?

- It's like affirmation saying, "This is our dream too."

You don't see that.

You don't hear about it.

- We are still fighting for visibility around Black immigrants in the US.

- When did you become aware of the phenomenon of the reverse Great Migration?

- You could feel it.

If you lived in Atlanta, you saw our population growing year over year, decade over decade, and you realized something was happening.

- Movement is a really concrete way of measuring your freedom, realizing that I can make a choice to pick up and start up all over again elsewhere.

If that's not the most transformative decision that you can make, I don't know what is.

- [Announcer] As part of the PBS coverage of the Great Migration, "One Detroit" is collecting stories from local residents.

We start with "American Black Journal" host and "One Detroit" contributor, Stephen Henderson.

He sat down with "One Detroit's" Bill Kubota to tell the story of his family's migration from the South to Detroit.

(bright music) - Like many other people here in the city, and especially many African Americans, my family came from the South on both sides to Detroit at different times.

My mother's family came in the late 1950s.

My grandfather, her dad, was an auto worker and a union official in Cincinnati.

He had been born in Valdosta, Georgia.

His family moved to Cincinnati when he was a teenager.

He marries my grandmother, and they raised their kids there, and he becomes this sort of point of interest for Walter Reuther who founded the UAW and was running it.

And he needs my grandfather in Detroit to help him connect the union with the growing Black political class, among other things.

I mean, there's this growing Black population in the city in the late 1950s because of this big move from the South, and Walter Reuther is really interested in that, and so he recruits my grandfather and a guy named Horace Sheffield, whose son is still around and whose granddaughter is the current president of the city council.

- And that is why we're working today.

(crowd cheering) - Horace Sheffield and my grandfather, William Beckham, Sr., Were great friends and, and close associates who helped the union through that period.

- Segregation is wrong because it is nothing but a new form of slavery, covered up with certain niceties of complexity.

(crowd cheering) - [Stephen] The UAW is really instrumental in getting Martin Luther King here to do the March for Freedom in the summer of 1963 before the March for Freedom in Washington, he marches down Woodward Avenue and delivers his, "I Have a Dream" speech, the very first public deliverance of that speech at Cobo Hall.

- So because of the legacy of slavery and segregation, many Negroes lost faith in themselves and many felt that they weren't inferior, but then something happened to the Negro... - The UAW, with my grandfather and Horace Sheffield and lots of other people who were involved, that's how that happened.

I don't know all of the details of that story, but I know it was not an easy thing to pull off.

There was a lot of resistance to the idea of King.

He was seen by that point as something of a radical.

Lots of people didn't want this to happen in Detroit, and the UAW and Walter Reuther, in particular, stood up and said, "No, no, no, we've gotta make this happen."

(protestors chanting) I do remember, for instance, that they moved to Detroit, and they moved to Russell Woods, which is actually a place where if you just go down the roster of notable African Americans in this community in the last 50 years, a lot of 'em come out of that neighborhood.

Saul Green, who was the US attorney, Joann Watson, all kinds of people grew up in that neighborhood.

But when my family moved there in the late 1950s, it was a predominantly, overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood, and there were covenants that prevented African Americans from buying those houses for a long time.

And so my family was among the first families, African American families, to be able to live in Russell Woods, and I've heard lots of stories about what that was like.

The neighborhood was starting to change.

At the end of their block, there was a synagogue, and across the street from it, a Hebrew school.

By the time I was born in 1970, my memories of that block, that was a public school and a Baptist church.

That's how quickly the neighborhood changed once African Americans started moving in.

My father, whose story is different from my mom's family, he doesn't come until he is in his, I guess, late twenties, and he comes as an adult to escape, really, the Jim Crow South.

He's born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1933.

And that's a place that is kind of a pivotal place in the Antebellum South.

It is an important trading place for not just cotton, but also slaves.

It's also a center of human production of slaves after Congress bans the import of Africans in the early 1800s.

Some cities and some places in the South become breeders of human cattle, and that just is one of the places that was most prolific.

And so my dad's born 50 years, 60 years after the war ends.

In fact, he grows up and goes to serve in the Air Force during the Korean War and comes home and is not allowed to vote.

He can't get the GI Bill, which is in place for people coming back from that war as they were for others, because in Natchez, the schools that they would've paid for him to go to did not admit African Americans, the neighborhoods where he might have bought a house with a loan through the GI Bill, didn't sell property to African Americans.

And so his life was not going to develop, I think, the way he would've wanted it to if he stayed, so he moves north in, I think, the early sixties, I think it's a little later than my mom's family, to find that opportunity.

- [Bill] In Detroit though.

- [Stephen] In Detroit.

- [Bill] Why Detroit, do you know?

- You know, I don't know why he came to Detroit.

He's not an auto worker.

He never, to my knowledge, works in the auto industry.

He becomes a social worker and works at Lafayette Clinic, which is a pretty important mental health institution just east of downtown Detroit.

I don't know why he comes to Detroit.

Maybe he had a friend here, maybe he just heard about opportunity.

You know, Detroit was seen by African Americans in the South as a place that offered more opportunity than where they were.

Detroit and Chicago are probably the biggest beneficiaries, in fact, of that migration, but I don't know that story.

- [Bill] You haven't talked to him about it or you- - Well, my dad died when I was 14, so I never had the chance to have that conversation with him.

I go back to Natchez now pretty regularly.

I try to go once a year and try to reconnect the dots, like find more about our family, find more about him, but also learn more, I've learned a lot more about the city itself and its history.

I mean, it's a very different place.

I mean, it's very interesting.

Even in 2024, which is the last time I was there, it is a different part of the world.

- [Bill] Now would you say your story is pretty common, uncommon, unique?

How would you summarize what you've heard?

- I think this is a very common story is my sense, but it's a commonly unknown story.

I think there are tons of people, who, if they had the opportunity to go back and look at where they're from, they would find equally surprising, joyful, and painful things.

And most of us don't know, I think, past a certain point what all those things are.

So yeah, I don't think this is unusual.

I just think I'm getting this special opportunity, I guess, to look more deeply into it.

- [Announcer] Turning now to an annual concert given by students in the University of Michigan musical theater program.

It's called "Lost in Ann Arbor," and it features songs selected by the senior class members.

This year's show takes place on Saturday, January 25th at Detroit Opera's Black Box Theater in partnership with the nonprofit organization, Cabaret 313.

"One Detroit's" Chris Jordan attended one of the show's coaching sessions and has the report.

(bright piano music) ♪ 'Cause when I look to the stars ♪ ♪ Where once was a wall is now a door ♪ ♪ To everything I've been waiting for ♪ - In a performance environment, we are collaborators, even though we're professors with the students, we are actually collaborating with them in their journey and their development.

One of the things that tends to empower the students is giving them the tools to make decisions, which I think with this particular performance, giving them the option to pick the song that best suits them.

♪ When I look to the stars - This is particularly designed for the students to express themselves, so they're very personal choices.

♪ I've been playing out a lot of hypotheticals in my mind ♪ - [Chris] "Lost in Ann Arbor," an annual performance by University of Michigan musical theater seniors, which is something of a rite-of-passage tradition.

Thanks to a collaboration with Cabaret 313, the students get to perform the show in Detroit on Saturday, January 25th at the Detroit Opera's Black Box Theater.

- I think it's gonna be a big celebration, a celebration of music, a celebration of people that love music, both on stage and off stage.

- The musical theater seniors always have a showcase in New York.

- Showcase is an opportunity for musical theater seniors to be able to enter into the industry and to perform a part of what we do for mostly agents in the business.

- Some years ago, Allan Nachman, one of the founders of Cabaret 313, he had the brilliant idea to have the musical theater seniors performed their material prior to going to New York, perform their material in Detroit to get their feet wet and get themselves grounded and ready.

- Our students come from around the country, some from around the world, and they represent the best.

And so to have this opportunity for them to perform in Detroit, it's like a preview.

- It's one thing to be in the classroom and learn as much as you can about the craft, but being able to connect those dots between what you're learning in the space and how to apply that on a stage and with audience members, that's something that's incredibly invaluable.

♪ It turns me right on when I hear him say ♪ ♪ Hey baby, let's get away ♪ Let's go somewhere, huh - Historically speaking, when musicals were done in previous decades, they were often tried out in Boston where they would cut an add songs frequently, so the term "lost in Boston" became a thing.

- Professor Brent Wagner, who's the founder of the Musical Theater Department, he started his own version of that with "Lost in Ann Arbor," where all of the students performed songs that they considered for showcase but didn't end up ultimately choosing.

And these songs that weren't chosen for showcase are songs that we still love and sometimes have really strong emotional connections to.

And so we're super excited to still have the opportunity to perform these songs and to share them with an audience.

♪ I'm gonna shoot for the stars ♪ ♪ This poor (indistinct) kid has joined the race ♪ ♪ I'll write to you all from outer space ♪ - I think often for showcase, we pick what we feel will show us off the best in a casting sense, but for this concert, we get to just sing songs that we love.

♪ I don't need a roof to say I love you ♪ - My showcase song shows the very bubbly side of me.

It's a Disney song, so I knew that I wanted to show that other deeper side of me, because I do very much have that deeper emotional side to me that when I do characters is not always seen as often.

♪ I don't need a roof to feel you near ♪ - The program is designed to give each student the versatility that they need, so we focus on a wide range of musical styles, and we make sure that the students have that rigor in our performance classes.

- It will behoove you to be versatile in this world of the performing arts of musical theater, especially someone like me who specifically focuses on non-traditional musical theater, contemporary musical theater.

Because what you see on stage, whether it's Broadway, off Broadway, regional, you're seeing a ton of genre crossover, genre bending, and it's really, really exciting.

♪ I've been playing out a lot of hypotheticals in my mind ♪ - [Catherine] Yes!

♪ (indistinct) down next to mine ♪ - One of the biggest things that I am taking away from this university is the pop rock style singing and really the appreciation for it.

Because when I came here as a high schooler, I really was only singing golden age soprano things.

That was just the voice teacher I happened to have at home.

And so I showed up here and I was like, "I don't know how to belt.

"I don't know how to do any of this."

And so that was honestly because the school is so focused on diversifying our musical awareness and appreciation.

♪ I see us in the park (gentle piano music) ♪ Strolling in the summer days ♪ Of imaginings in my head - I ended up going with, "Knocks Me Off My Feet," by Stevie Wonder, which I actually feel really good about, because I love Stevie Wonder, I love R&B.

It feels like very me.

It feels relevant to us being here in Michigan and Detroit where he's from.

I mean, I think it's very special to honor one of the Detroit greats in Detroit and to sing one of his songs.

♪ That makes me weak and ♪ Knocks me off my feet Having the experience of being coached by them so many years allows you to be able to coach yourself also in the moment, so it's more of a dialogue between the teacher rather than like oh, them telling you to do this and fix this.

- [Maurice] That's what should happen here.

- That's what should happen.

I totally agree.

- I thought about it.

I was like, we should just be modulating.

- [Both] Yeah.

- It's always important to be part of the growing and the learning process of these students.

And not only are they absolutely fantastic, but you're getting to see a one-of-a-kind performance that Cabaret 313 offers.

It's gonna be great.

- Overall, for the people going to see Cabaret 313, I'm really excited for our whole class to just kind of bring their A game for all of the songs that are really, ultimately, they're passionate, like the songs they're passionate about.

- They will not know what to expect, and they're going to see the Broadway stars of tomorrow on that stage, and that's pretty exciting.

♪ I don't want to bore you with it ♪ ♪ Oh but I love you, I love you, I love you ♪ - [Announcer] An exhibit celebrating the life and legacy of acclaimed author and civil rights activist, James Baldwin, is at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History through the end of February.

It's called "Frontline Prophet: James Baldwin."

Last summer, "American Black Journal" host, Stephen Henderson, spoke with Sabrina Nelson, the Detroit artist whose works are featured in the exhibit.

- Thank you.

(bright music) - Tell me about "Frontline Prophet: James Baldwin," this exhibit at the Wright.

- Well, I can tell you the beginnings of it and how it started.

A lot of people will always ask, "How did you get so obsessed with James Baldwin," and I have to respond that I wasn't obsessed with James Baldwin, but I was invited by our Detroit Poet Laureate, Jessica Care Moore, to travel with her in 2016 to the James Baldwin Conference at American University of Paris.

I was on the plane with her, Melba Boyd, and Magdalena from U of M, and I just wanted to do as much reading as I could on James Baldwin before I got there, because I knew more about Beauford Delaney, who was his mentor, who's an artist, more so than I knew about James Baldwin.

And so, I was invited by Jessica to paint live during her plenary session.

So I'd never drawn Baldwin before, and I had done as much reading, and when I got there, and I started drawing his image, I felt something.

Now, I don't know how many people feel things spiritually, but I felt something, and my hairs raised on my arms that I had never drawn him before.

But I felt like he touched me.

He came to me and then I asked, after I experienced my Poltergeist moment, (laughs) I asked, I said, "If you're here, "I need you to teach me how to know you."

And sometimes I feel like the spirit has jokes, because it went deep and heavy, and I learned so many things about James Arthur Baldwin and his life and his activism and his artivism as well.

This is how it started, so it started off with small sketchbooks and drawing him during what we normally call Ectober.

I didn't like the word (indistinct), so I changed it to Black-tober, and I said, "Who can I draw?"

This is, of course, after I came back from Paris, can I draw every day for 31 days, which ended up into 91 days, 'cause I didn't stop.

- Wow, wow.

- So that's the beginning of this "Frontline Prophet."

And then with Ashara and Omo Misha, who are my co-curators, they came to my studio and said, "Hey, what are you doing "with these little sketchbooks, what are they?"

And I said, "Well, I did a study of James Baldwin," and she was like, "What are you doing with them?"

And I said, "Well, they're in my studio."

And she says, "We should do a show."

And I'd already talked to a friend of mine, named Mikael Rashid about it, but I wasn't really sure how I was gonna do it.

And with Ashara suggesting that she'll travel, we've traveled now to six cities, and now, after being home, we will go to Paris to make it a full circle.

And so, it's been a really amazing journey.

It's been a great journey with Ashara Ekundayo and also, Omo Misha McGlown from Irwin House Gallery for those listening in Detroit.

Both of these women, all of us are born in Detroit, raised here and live between Oakland, California and Detroit, or Harlem, New York and Detroit.

- And Detroit.

- Yeah.

So we are all here and this is how it started, and this is how it sort of spread into the... Ashara named the show, by the way, "Frontline Prophet: James Baldwin" that you can see now at the Charles H. Wright Museum up until February 28th.

(bright music) - [Announcer] For this week's "One Detroit Weekend," visit onedetroitpbs.org for a list of what's happening in and around town.

That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thanks for watching.

Head to the "One Detroit" website for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

- [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Announcer] Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

(bright music) - [Announcer] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations, committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Announcer] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(bright music) (bright music)