MorningSide 48224

In this episode, we meet the founder of the Detroit Artists’ Test Lab, the head of an African American podcast network called Audiowave, neighborhood activists young and old, a closet poet, and the woman who taught The Slide to a generation of skaters at Royal Skateland roller rink.

Have no pity on our souls, ‘cause we don’t want it.

We’re proud, and we flaunt it, like a badge of courage.

We’ve taken blows, but we’re not discouraged.

Been down but never out, and you better know it.

Got scars, warts, and wrinkles, and we ain’t afraid to show it.

Poet and MorningSide resident Derrick Gray

In this special episode, MorningSide 48224 teams up with WYPR's Out of the Blocks to share voices from MorningSide.

On the east side of Detroit, the streets of MorningSide are lined with stately, brick Tudor-style houses. But today, one in four of those houses is abandoned, boarded up, gutted, or burned out.

The foreclosure crisis of 2008 hit MorningSide like a tidal wave, and the neighborhood is struggling to sprout again from the rubble. There’s a lot of buzz about a new Renaissance in downtown Detroit, but the locals in this corner of town are wondering when – and if – the revival is going to make its way to them. In the meantime, they’re holding their own and looking out for each other.

Over three generations, grandmother Patricia Robinson, mother Tamiko Clark, and daughter DaTrice Clark have lived on the same street in MorningSide. Their family story doubles as a history lesson in the neighborhood.

Michigan Radio's Imani Mixon was on Detroit Public TV last weekend to discuss MorningSide 48224, the new podcast project by Michigan Radio and the Detroit Journalism Cooperative.

Watch below to get a tour of the neighborhood, and to learn more about the podcast:

There are a few basic steps journalists take when reporting. Pick a newsworthy topic. Track down the facts. And then talk to people out in the community what they think about it.

But what if you flipped that script?

This year, Michigan Radio is trying something new.

Instead of sending a reporter in to tell stories about MorningSide, we’re inviting the MorningSide community to tell their own stories.

From family histories to local happenings, we want to highlight narratives that feel true and honest to the people who experience the neighborhood every day.

What happens when community members lead the conversation about their community?

MorningSide 48224, a community-led podcast, will endeavor to find out. Instead of unearthing city stories from a distance, Imani Mixon, a Detroit-based and embraced journalist who grew up in MorningSide, will be embedded in the community working closely with residents to produce their own stories about their own experiences.