Sandra Harris was born in 1952 in West Virginia, where her father was a coal miner. Her family moved to Ann Arbor when she was in second grade. Harris remembers being on the homecoming court at Pioneer High School and participating in student-led marches during the late 1960s.

Patricia Ashford Manley was born in 1945 in Ann Arbor, and she was raised by her mother. She remembers attending Jones Elementary School and trying out for cheerleading at Ann Arbor High School. Manley graduated from Western Michigan University in 1970 and later earned her master’s in counseling from Eastern Michigan University.

Mary Dyson Martin was born in 1914 in Dallas, Texas. Her grandmother had been enslaved in Tennessee, and she grew up conscious of that legacy. Martin graduated from Fisk University and got her masters in library science at the University of Illinois. She taught swimming lessons for the YWCA Girl Reserves during the summers. She was a high school librarian in Gary, Indiana and Detroit, Michigan for over thirty years. Her husband was a doctor and a World War II veteran.

Jacqueline Heubel was born in 1930 in Fond du Lac Wisconsin in the midst of the Great Depression. When her father regained his job on the railroad, her family moved to Eagle Grove, Iowa. She attended Iowa State Teacher's College and the University of Minnesota School of Dental Hygiene. After a few years working as a dental hygienist, she returned to teaching. Huebel taught in the Pontiac School District during the Civil Rights Era, and recalls the effects of integration on teachers and students.

David Griffis has lived in Detroit for his entire life except for two years of service in the military, when he went to Korea. He worked as a Personnel Technician for the Michigan Employment Security Commission and for Chrysler’s personnel department. He received a degree in business administration from Wayne State University, and went on to run two nursing home facilities in Detroit for over fifteen years. He has two daughters, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Audrey Monagan was born in Ann Arbor in 1941, and grew up in a close-knit, predominantly black neighborhood on North Fifth Ave. She remembers attending Bethel AME Church with her grandparents, spending time at the Dunbar Community Center, and helping raise her younger siblings. She attended Jones School and Pioneer High School before working for General Motors, where she was an inspector for eighteen years. Mrs. Monagan has been married to her second husband, Philip, for 48 years.

Gerald Edwards was born in 1950 in Cleveland, Ohio. He remembers being discriminated against as one of three African American students at his elementary school in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education. At Heidelberg College, he participated in sit-ins to help found a Black Student Union House. After beginning his career in automotive manufacturing with Ford Motor Company, Mr. Edwards started his own business, Engineered Plastic Products, in 1987. He and his wife Jada also started the Edwards Foundation, which was dedicated to philanthropy in Namibia.

Hortense Howard was born in Bloomington, Illinois in 1927. Soon afterwards, her family moved to Ann Arbor, where she and her sisters became known as the “Bacon Sisters” for their choral performances at sorority houses and other venues. Ms. Howard attended a music school in Detroit because she “wanted to sing like Sarah Vaughan,” and she met many African American singers while working at the Gotham Hotel. She ran her own daycare, Sitters Unlimited Family Day Care, in Ann Arbor for twenty years. 

Henrietta Edwards was born in 1919 and grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma before moving to Ann Arbor in 1941. She and her husband worked at the Willow Run Bomber Plant during World War II, and owned two filling stations—one downtown at N Fourth Avenue and E Ann Street, and one on Highway 23. She celebrated her hundredth birthday with family, friends, and former coworkers and patients from St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, where she worked as a pediatric nurse for 32 years.