Ypsi Stories

The Parkridge Community Center on Harriet Street opened in December 1945 as a recreation center for Southside residents. It was funded through a World War II program that built recreation centers for war workers and their families. But, the story of how the Parkridge Community Center came to be located on Harriet Street as a segregated facility for African American families has been mostly forgotten. In this podcast, historian Lee Azus recounts the struggle by residents of the Southside to build an interracial community center on what was called the "buffer strip" between white and black Ypsilanti near Michigan Avenue. Their story illustrates their vision and its limits as it came up against the power and the purse-strings of Federal bureaucracies and the Ypsilanti City Council.

For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories, including photos and bibliographies, check out ⁠⁠ypsilibrary.org/ypsistories

If you don’t want to miss any future episodes, you can always subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, AntennaPod, Escapepod, or wherever you find your podcasts!⁠

To keep up to date on this podcast, as well as all the great things the Ypsilanti District Library is doing, you can follow the library on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and of course, you can always check out our webpage at ⁠⁠ypsilibrary.org.

If you don’t want to miss any future episodes, you can always subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, AntennaPod, Escapepod, or wherever you find your podcasts!⁠

To keep up to date on this podcast, as well as all the great things the Ypsilanti District Library is doing, you can follow the library on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and of course, you can always check out our webpage at ⁠⁠ypsilibrary.org

The Ypsi Farmers & Gardeners Oral History Project (YFGOHP) is a new YDL digital archive sharing the stories of Ypsilanti’s Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and/or working class food growers. Based on community input, the project started by collecting oral histories from elders and including portrait photographs of each farmer or gardener. The initial interviews were completed in October and November 2023 with more planned to start with farmers and gardeners of all ages in 2024. In this episode, we have the opportunity to have a discussion with three of the coordinators of this local oral history project to learn more about it:  Dr. Finn Bell, Omer Jean Winborn, and Briana Hurt. YDL librarian Madelynne Rivenbark, our engineeress, also contributes. During this episode we will also feature clips of the oral histories themselves, as well as follow up questions. The full oral histories from this project, as well as other oral histories and historical materials are located at history.ypsilibrary.org 

For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories, including photos and bibliographies, check out ⁠⁠ypsilibrary.org/ypsistories

If you don’t want to miss any future episodes, you can always subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, AntennaPod, gPodder, or wherever you find your podcasts!⁠

To keep up to date on this podcast, as well as all the great things the Ypsilanti District Library is doing, you can follow the library on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and of course, you can always check out our webpage at ⁠⁠ypsilibrary.org

For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories, including photos and bibliographies, check out ⁠⁠ypsilibrary.org/ypsistories⁠

If you don’t want to miss any future episodes, you can always subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts!

To keep up to date on this podcast, as well as all the great things the Ypsilanti District Library is doing, you can follow the library on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and of course, you can always check out our webpage at ⁠⁠ypsilibrary.org

The 19th century in Ypsilanti, as elsewhere, was on the doorstep of the remarkable medical advances of the twentieth century. People who came down with even a minor illness could be dead in hours. Was that a cough or a death-rattle? The doctor might know or might not, and what was in his bag might help you or the undertaker.

In this episode, historian and clerk emeritus Jerome Drummond will discuss the reasons we should definitely be happy to see a doctor in the twenty-first century.

For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories, including photos and bibliographies, check out ⁠⁠ypsilibrary.org/ypsistories⁠

If you don’t want to miss any future episodes, you can always subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts!

To keep up to date on this podcast, as well as all the great things the Ypsilanti District Library is doing, you can follow the library on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and of course, you can always check out our webpage at ⁠⁠ypsilibrary.org

From 1997 through 2002, the LGBTQ community in Ypsilanti fought for their rights in the form of a Non Discrimination Ordinance for the City of Ypsilanti. The result of this struggle was one of the first Non Discrimination Ordinances in Michigan, with protections for LGBTQ Ypsilantians.

Seventeen years later, in 2019, Ypsilanti teenager Miriam Berman Stidd interviewed Non Discrimination Ordinance campaign veterans, and Normal Park neighbors, Lisa Bashert, Beth Bashert, and Lisa Zuber, for a podcast episode project for her Communications class at Washtenaw International High School.

Four years later than that, in 2023, Ypsi Stories hostess Shoshanna was able to work with Miriam Berman Stidd to unearth this podcast episode, which we are airing in its entirety, followed by a 2023 conversation with Miriam Stidd, Lisa Bashert, and Beth Bashert, facillitated by Shoshanna, about the original episode itself, and about changes felt between 2019 and 2023, as members of the LGBTQ community, in Ypsilanti.

For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories, including photos and bibliographies, check out ⁠ypsilibrary.org/ypsistories

⁠

To keep up to date on this podcast, as well as all the great things the Ypsilanti District Library is doing, you can follow the library on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and of course, you can always check out our webpage at ⁠ypsilibrary.org

In this season's episode we learn about the Shadow Art Fair, which was a local social, cultural, and interactive art experience that for many years in the 00s and 10s marked the peak of summer in July, while providing a warm, community-based, secular gathering each winter as well. We'll be speaking with some of the core organizers of the Shadow, including Mark Maynard, Jennifer Yates, and Melissa Dettloff.
For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories, including photos and bibliographies, check out ypsilibrary.org/ypsistories
If you don’t want to miss any future episodes, you can always subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your podcasts!
To keep up to date on this podcast, as well as all the great things the Ypsilanti District Library is doing, you can follow the library on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and of course, you can always check out our webpage at ypsilibrary.org

In this season's episode we learn about the history of the 2014 campaign to expand transit in Ypsilanti, the state of transit then and now, and the power that this work had in terms of connecting the community through movement organizing. We'll be speaking with some of those involved in the 2014 campaign, including Martha Valadez, Gillian Ream Gainsley, Tad Wysor, and Kathy Meagher.

Lee Osler is a musician who has lived in Ypsilanti almost his whole life, since he was two years old, and is most well known for his 1983 local hit, “Back to Ypsilanti,” released on his own label, Mustache Records. He started singing in fifth grade and has performed in parades, auditoriums, festivals, and cabarets.

Lee Osler is a musician who has lived in Ypsilanti almost his whole life, since he was two years old, and is most well known for his 1983 local hit, “Back to Ypsilanti,” released on his own label, Mustache Records. He started singing in fifth grade and has performed in parades, auditoriums, festivals, and cabarets.