Ypsi Stories

In this episode, we’ll be in conversation with Danielle Schwerin, who once helped run Café Ollie, a staple of Ypsilanti brunch life and secret concert life in Depot Town, in the place where Miller’s Ice Cream, Schramm’s Deli, and Café Luwak once stood, and where Wax Bar now stands, kind of. It’s complicated! For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories, including photos and b...

In this episode, we’ll continue learning from renowned historian Matt Siegfried about the histories of different Native American communities in Michigan and Ohio, with some special focus on Southeast Michigan and the Huron River valley, including where modern day Ypsilanti stands and where Maguago’s town once stood. We’ll be looking at the communities who thrived around the Great Lakes, through th...

In this episode, we’ll be learning from renowned historian Matt Siegfried about the histories of different Native American communities in Michigan and Ohio, with some special focus on Southeast Michigan and the Huron River valley, including where modern day Ypsilanti stands and where Maguago’s town once stood. We’ll be looking at the communities who thrived around the Great Lakes, through the lens...

In Episode 4 of Ypsi Stories, titled "From Here to There by Land and Water," we saw evolving ideas about how to move people and commerce across the United States and its territories. The country at first could not agree on the financing of national transportation with some states unwilling to help finance projects that only involved some states and not others. Then came the railroad. It...

ypsi experimental space was started by accident on January 1st, 2016, at the site of a former drugstore turned black box theater (8 N Washington Street) and ended by eminent domain on January 1st, 2023. While it remains a mystery as to why "yes" came into existence and little is known about the perpetrators who were said to have started this madcap venture, the main premise was ostensibly to cause...

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 forgott...

For all of us there comes a day which is the end of the line, but how we are dispatched changes with the times. It would be unusual for a person in Ypsilanti today to die in a boiler explosion or to be run over by a train, but such events were common in the nineteenth century. Nobody in either time period would likely be crucified or fall on their sword as might have happened in the first century...

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...

In the months that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941, the United States began the transition from a peace economy to a war economy. Production of household items such as refrigerators and cars had to change to tanks, trucks, guns, and planes. It was not an easy transition. Eight months later, President Roosevelt in Washington was receiving reports on the failure of t...

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 discus...

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 c...

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...

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. For more infor...

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. In Part 1, we’ll be learning about Mr. Osler's childhood growing up in Ypsilanti, h...

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. In Part 1, we’ll be learning about Mr. Osler's childhood growing up in Ypsilanti, h...

In this episode, Lee Azus looks at the effect of Federal Housing Administration underwriting policies, Home Owners’ Loan Corporation risk maps, also known as redlining maps, and racially restrictive covenant agreements, on communities like Ypsilanti. By focusing on policies and policy discussions at the federal, state, and local level, he is able to show how discriminatory housing practices can tr...

In this episode, we will be learning about the work of the Washtenaw County African American Genealogy Society from founder and Co Chair, Cheryl Garnett. Ms. Garnett will also be discussing special issues regarding genealogy for people with African American ancestry, sharing some of her experiences in the African American genealogy community, and recounting some of her ancestral history. For more...

The Kiwanis Club of Ypsilanti celebrated its 100th birthday on April 13, 2021.  So, what is this service club all about and what has it done during this past century? In this episode, we'll be speaking to long time members of the Kiwanis Club of Ypsilanti, Bill Nickels and Jerry Jennings about the history of this service club. For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories...

Unless a town was founded for reasons other than the pursuit of agriculture, as was the case with lumbering or mining towns, the first industry established in most towns of the Upper Midwest were mills. Ypsilanti was no different and the first mill recorded was established by Benjamin Woodruff on the Huron River in 1824. No one then could foresee how this industry would blossom in the Age of Steam...

Highland Cemetery is perhaps the finest example of the garden cemetery in Michigan, which intended to make cemeteries beautiful. Highland Cemetery is a place of peace and nature, the perfect place to take a troubled soul for a walk. In this episode, we are going to be learning about the history of Highland Cemetery, and of previous cemeteries in Ypsilanti, from local historian James Mann. For more...

In this episode we'll join historian Matt Siegfried as we learn how the UAW-CIO came to Washtenaw County at the end of the Great Depression, and through a victory at Ford led the workers at Willow Run during World War Two, transforming the social landscape of Ypsilanti and bettering the lives of tens of thousands of people. We will dispel some myths about the "Arsenal of Democracy" as we look at t...

In this episode we'll join historian Matt Siegfried as we learn how the UAW-CIO came to Washtenaw County at the end of the Great Depression, and through a victory at Ford led the workers at Willow Run during World War Two, transforming the social landscape of Ypsilanti and bettering the lives of tens of thousands of people. We will dispel some myths about the "Arsenal of Democracy" as we look at t...

Hey there Ypsi Stories listeners! This month’s episode is going to be coming a little later than usual, and it’s going to be a two parter! This month, in honor of Labor Day, we’ll be learning about how the labor landscape changed in Ypsilanti and Willow Run in the 1930s and 1940s with the arrival of the United Auto Workers union from Matt Siegfried. Matt has so much knowledge to share that we just...

When settlers set out for the northern Midwest, it was more than loading the kids and a picnic basket in the family van. Having established in Episodes 1 and 6 how land to settle was purchased and how news was transmitted between the American frontier and the East Coast, there was the trouble of transport to be solved. In Episode 1 we saw that some settlers actually walked to Ypsilanti from New Yo...

The city of Ypsilanti has the most often misspelled and mispronounced name of any community in the state of Michigan. To add to the fun, the city is named after a man, who not only had nothing to do with its founding, but was never even in North America. Local historian James Mann shares the story of how this came about. For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories, including...