This dissertation provides a study of local Black media development in Detroit in the decade following the 1967 Rebellion, as Detroit became a majority Black city. I argue that Black Detroiters not only produced documentaries that challenged local white discourse within what George Lipsitz terms “a Black spatial imaginary,†but...
This dissertation considers the ways do-it-yourself (DIY) urbanism is promoted, taken up, and responded to by the black middle class. Using thirty-eight interviews and one year of ethnographic observation in the Northwest Detroit neighborhood of Bagley, I document the following findings. First, many DIY projects have come from government and...