60 years after the Voting Rights Act was passed, the Jackson Home, a civil rights movement landmark, is coming to The Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI.

The Henry Ford in Dearborn —- which includes the Museum of Innovation and Greenfield Village, acquired the Jackson house in 2023. It was owned by Dr. Sullivan Jackson and Mrs. Ritchie Jean Sherrod Jackson and was the site of organizing for the Selma to Montgomery Marches that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Detroit Public Library is hosting a presentation by Amber Mitchell, Curator of Black History at The Henry Ford. She will discuss the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act being signed into law and the role the Jackson Home played in the Selma to Montgomery Marches. The discussion will be at the Main Branch of the Detroit Public Library, 6 p.m., Wednesday, August 6.

Guest: Amber Mitchell, Curator of Black History at The Henry Ford

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

Voters in Detroit face a defining choice in the August 5 mayoral primary election. But right now, fewer than 10% of registered voters have participated. Most of those ballots have been mailed in. In‑person early voting, which ended August 4, was minimal. The primary is Tuesday, August 5. The top two vote-getters will advance to the general election in November.

Voter accessibility has also been a question. During the 2021 election, disability advocates filed an ADA complaint saying key voting information, like where and how to vote, was inaccessible online for users of screen readers, affecting thousands of Detroiters. And, some polling locations across metro Detroit remain inaccessible to voters with disabilities.

Detroit’s top election official, City Clerk Janice Winfrey, joined Robyn Vincent to discuss.

The Metro has spoken with all of the candidates running for mayor. You can find those conversations in the podcast feed, or at WDET.org/voterguide2025.

What do Detroit voters want out of city's next mayor? This summer, the WDET News team has been hitting the streets for a new project, Citizen Vox, to help us get a clearer picture of what Detroiters want out of the next mayor.

Ahead of Tuesday's primary, WDET news director Jerome Vaughn joined the Metro to tell us more about what WDET reporters have been hearing from residents.

Detroit's mayoral primary is Tuesday, August 5, 2025. The top two vote-getters will advance to the general election in November.

Follow WDET election coverage at WDET.org/voterguide2025

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

For months, Detroiters and suburbanites have had their eyes on the mayoral race. That’s for good reason: Mayor Mike Duggan is running for governor, it’s the most competitive it’s been in years. It’s also very likely that the city will have a Black mayor once again.

But there are other races in Detroit that deserve attention. 22 candidates are competing in the Detroit City Council primary races. Those seats matter. The people who win those positions are the city’s legislators. They decide what ordinances get passed, what norms are established, and which ones aren’t. Bridge Detroit has been hosting town halls in every Detroit district leading up to Tuesday’s primary election. Two people have been leading those town halls.

Bryce Huffman is the Engagement Editor for Bridge Detroit. He, along with Malachi Barrett, a reporter for Bridge Detroit, are on The Metro this morning to give us more.

Being an artist can mean many things . There are many different art forms and you can specialize in one or be an artist with many different skills up your sleeve . We call them multi-hyphenates, multi-disciplinaries, a jack of all trades, a renaissance man. 

Samuel Nalangira is an artist who has honed his artistic craft and expresses it through whatever form he chooses. Samuel is a singer, a musician, a dancer and choreographer from Uganda. He happens to be one of the four musicians selected for the Sounds Like Detroit showcase in just a couple of weeks. WDET is hosting a showcase for their Detroit version of NPR’s Tiny Desk.

Metro Detroit’s Arab American community is large and has been through several waves of immigration. Long ago, the attraction was the $5-a-day Ford jobs that brought so many people here. Each of those periods brought new families, culture, and heritage.

From Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen, Metro Detroit is home. But the places people emigrated from will always be known as their original home. Part of what makes a place feel like home are the sights, sounds, and smells of the world around us.

Part of feeling at home is the simpler things, like food—the taste of home. Eating together as a family or with certain dishes your parents grew up making. The Arab American National Museum in East Dearborn has been building up a taste of home on the building’s rooftop.

The Al-Hadiqa Heritage Garden at the museum is hosting events like poetry readings and concerts. The next one is August 8, and events run through October 3, including a performance by Kasan Belgrave. Dean Nasreddine is a curatorial specialist at the Arab American National Museum.

Mental health crises too often land people in jail instead of hospitals.

That’s what happened in Traverse City, where this weekend, a man attacked 11 random Walmart shoppers. According to his family, he had suffered for decades from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and he “fell through the cracks” of the system again.

Meanwhile, in Manhattan, four people died after a shooter opened fire in an office building housing NFL offices. The gunman pleaded grievances in a note tied to suspected brain injuries and noted a mental health history.

These incidents remind us why reforming the system—and the people who interact with it—matters.

In Wayne County, nearly half of the people in jail are medicated for severe mental illness. And 911 received over 15,000 mental health calls last year alone.

Over the past decade, a coalition of groups has been working to change how we respond to things like mental health crises in Wayne County. It’s having an impact.

Since 2016, jail bookings in Wayne County dropped more than 50%.

Police now receive specialized training, social workers ride alongside officers, and mobile crisis teams sometimes respond without law enforcement.

At the center of this transformation is Dr. Sheryl Kubiak. She’s the founding director of the Center for Behavioral Health and Justice at Wayne State University and dean of Wayne State’s School of Social Work. Her team has led pilot programs, built shared data systems, and worked to break down silos.

She joined The Metro’s Robyn Vincent to share what’s working, what still needs to change, and how communities can respond before crisis turns to catastrophe.

Michigan’s Idlewild is the “Black Eden,” and it’s coming back. Long ago, Black people weren’t allowed to be in these beautiful and rich spaces during the summer. So they created their own Nantucket, Oak Bluffs, Sag Harbor, and many more hidden gems.

That’s what the people who spent their childhood summers there might say if you asked about the efforts being made to redevelop it. Idlewild is an unincorporated community that was established in 1912. The town was known as a safe haven for Black Americans who had few vacationing options and for Black entertainers who were barred from performing at white-only venues.

It was eventually dubbed “The Black Eden,” and well-known entertainers like Louis Armstrong, Della Reese, and Aretha Franklin spent their time at the resort. But after integration, fewer people visited Idlewild, and the community fell on hard times. Today, there are efforts to reinvest in the area.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation placed one of the resort’s hotels, the Hotel Casa Blanca, on this year’s list of 11 most endangered historic locations. Local leaders are working to develop the resort — people like Carmen and Kyle Grier.

They both grew up in Idlewild as kids. Last year, they opened the TEEM Center, a nonprofit that provides life skills for families in Idlewild who need it. The acronym stands for teaching, educating, equipping, and mentoring.

Today on The Metro, we talked to them about their time growing up in Idlewild, how they reconnected years later, and their plans for the TEEM Center and the people of Idlewild. We started by discussing their upbringing. Carmen’s family moved around a lot, and when her father got an opportunity to work in Michigan, he took it.

Right now, Michigan kids are struggling with something fundamental — reading. Over the last 20 years, the state dropped from 30th to 44th in 4th-grade reading scores. Last year, only 25 percent of fourth graders were considered proficient in reading.

What can Michigan do about this? Some suggest we should be looking to Mississippi, because that state has dramatically improved its math and reading scores for 4th graders, now ranking in the top 20 after it was at the bottom a decade ago. But Mississippi isn’t flush with cash — it’s America’s poorest state. So how did they do it? And what does Michigan need to do to change its rankings?

To discuss all that, we have Adrea Truckenmiller on The Metro today, an associate professor of special education at Michigan State University.

This summer is tracking to be the hottest on record… but it could be among the coolest summers we have for the rest of our lives. That’s the takeaway of a recent article from the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit made up of climate scientists founded at MIT in 1969. Scientists have warned of global warming for decades now, and the need for more urgent action. That’s because avoiding the worst effects of manmade climate change will require cooperation on a global scale.

But a large paradigm shift must involve city governments and local power players too. Detroit’s primary election for mayor and city council is this coming Tuesday, August 5, and whoever takes the reins as Detroit’s next mayor will be in a unique position to get Detroit ready for the climate that has already changed significantly.

Ellen Vial is the Detroit Program Manager for the Michigan Environmental Council. The council is a coalition of organizations that have created a thorough, 48-page environmental voter guide, and Ellen is on The Metro this morning to discuss the depths of our climate crisis and what Detroiters can do about it.