URL: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/motorcityvoices/home

This interactive web exhibit sheds new light on an important chapter in Detroit history in the years following the uprising of 1967. Exhibit panels provide an overview of the political, social and economic landscape during a particularly vibrant and contentious period in Detroit’s history. Special focus is devoted to the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. A highlight of the exhibit is a collection of oral history video clips. Visitors can select from over forty video segments of oral histories conducted with some of the leading participants in the Detroit's labor and community struggles around issues of racism, class division, de-industrialization and community development. The oral histories also link the history of segregation in the U.S. during World War II, the civil rights movement and the movement for social and economic justice in Detroit factories and neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s.

The oral history portion of the project consists of videotaped interviews with key activists including: General Baker, founder and organizer of DRUM, Mike Hamlin, a founding member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Marian Kramer, community organizer and civil rights activist, Grace Lee Boggs, community activist and educator, and Jim Jacobs, former SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) leader and adult education specialist.

The exhibit was created by Professor Bruce Pietrykowski together with graduate students in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program and the UM-Dearborn Museum Studies internship program. In addition, Kae Halonen, Lecturer in History at UM-D, conducted the oral history interviews that were used in the exhibit. The exhibition was made possible with support from the Michigan Humanities Council.