WDET’s CuriosiD series answers your questions about everything Detroit. Subscribe to CuriosiD on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of CuriosiD, we answer the question:

“How did Ann Arbor get its name?”

Ann Arbor is known for its tree-lined streets and vibrant university-town feel. But how did it get its name? One WDET listener wanted to find out.

Rhea Walden, a longtime WDET listener and social worker in metro Detroit, spent years living and studying in the Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor area. She says the question had been on her mind for decades. So, she wrote to CuriosiD.

The short answer

There are a couple theories about how Ann Arbor got its name.

The most widely accepted version — and the one Walden remembers reading — is that the town was named after the founders’ wives.

“Every time I went to Ann Arbor, I would always wonder, how did this place get its name?” Walden said. “I looked it up, and I swear it said that it was named after one of the founders’ wives. So when the question popped back up in my head some years later, I went to go look it up again — it was not there.”

To get an answer, we turned to Grace Shackman, a longtime Ann Arbor historian and writer for the Ann Arbor Observer, who confirmed the theory.

Meet the founders

Ann Arbor was officially founded in 1824 by two men: John Allen and Elisha Rumsey. But despite their place in the city’s history, Shackman says they weren’t community visionaries.

“These two guys met on the way here. They also knew that…the next year the Erie Canal was going to open. In which time it would be a lot easier for people to get here,” she said. “So they decided to pool their money, and they each, you know, equal to what they could put in, but bought this land.”

Allen and Rumsey were land speculators, looking to turn a profit. They purchased 640 acres of land along the Huron River and planned to subdivide it into smaller plots to sell to new settlers.

To make the town more appealing — and valuable — they lobbied to have it named the Washtenaw County seat.

“They got it because they offered free land to the government,” Shackman said. “And they offered to build a courthouse and a jail, and also a bridge across the Huron River.”

So why ‘Ann Arbor’?

According to Shackman, the naming of the city has a mix of romance and marketing behind it.

“John Allen was married to Ann Allen, and Rumsey — the woman that he was running away with — was Mary Ann Rumsey. So they decided on ‘Ann’s’… Ann Arbor.”

The word “Arbor” was likely a nod to the oak trees that once dominated the landscape, she said.

And then they left…

Despite founding the city, neither of Ann Arbor’s founders stayed very long.

“These two guys were just…it was just for money. And neither of them stayed very long,” Shackman said. “John Allen, he just… he was a wheeler-dealer, and he just kept moving. So he ended up, I think, on the West Coast, and then he died.”

Mary Ann Rumsey also disappeared from town history. And Ann Allen? She didn’t stay either.

“She was from Virginia, and she liked Virginia ‘civilized’ life better,” Shackman said. “When [Allen] left, she just went back to Virginia.”

The name (and city) endured

The city’s original spelling was “Annarbour,” recorded in Wayne County on May 25, 1824. Over time, it became the spelling we know today.

Despite its mercenary beginnings, Ann Arbor grew into a thriving and beloved city:

• 1837: The University of Michigan relocated to Ann Arbor, transforming it into an academic center.
• It became a hub for German immigrants, artists, musicians, and eventually a global destination for progressive ideas and innovation.

And through all that, the name continued.

“Even if the founders weren’t in it for the long haul, it’s kind of nice that the name stuck,” Rhea said.

We want to hear from you! 

Have a question about southeast Michigan’s history or culture?
Send it our way at wdet.org/curiosid, or fill out the form below. You ask, we answer.

More from CuriosiD:

• Does Gen Z know who Bob Seger is?
• What is the oldest bar in Detroit?
• What happened to the Cobo Hall Christmas Carnival?

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SELMA, Ala. (AP) — Charles Mauldin was near the front of a line of voting rights marchers walking in pairs across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965.

The marchers were protesting white officials’ refusal to allow Black Alabamians to register to vote, as well as the killing days earlier of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a minister and voting rights organizer who was shot by a state trooper in nearby Marion.

At the apex of the span over the Alabama River, they saw what awaited them: a line of state troopers, deputies and men on horseback. They kept going. After they approached, law enforcement gave a two-minute warning to disperse and then unleashed violence.

“Within about a minute or a half, they took their billy clubs, holding it on both ends, began to push us back to back us in, and then they began to beat men, women and children, and tear gas men, women and children, and cattle prod men, women and children viciously,” said Mauldin, who was 17 at the time.

Selma on Sunday marked the 60th anniversary of the clash that became known as Bloody Sunday. The attack shocked the nation and galvanized support for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965. The annual commemoration pays homage to those who fought to secure voting rights for Black Americans and brought calls to recommit to the fight for equality.

For those gathered in Selma, the celebration comes amid concerns about new voting restrictions and the Trump administration’s effort to remake federal agencies they said helped make America a democracy for all

Speaking at the pulpit of the city’s historic Tabernacle Baptist Church, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said what happened in Selma changed the nation. He said the 60th anniversary comes at a time when there is “trouble all around” and some “want to whitewash our history.” But he said like the marchers of Bloody Sunday, they must keep going.

“At this moment, faced with trouble on every side, we’ve got to press on,” Jeffries said to the crowd that included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, multiple members of Congress and others gathered for the commemoration.

Members of Congress joined with Bloody Sunday marchers to lead a march of several thousand people across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They stopped to pray at the site where marchers were beaten in 1965.

“We gather here on the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday when our country is in chaos,” said U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama.

Sewell, a Selma native, noted the number of voting restrictions introduced since the U.S. Supreme Court effectively abolished a key part of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to clear new voting laws with the Justice Department. Other speakers noted the Trump administration’s push to end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and a rollback of equal opportunity executive orders that have been on the books since the 1960s.

In 1965, the Bloody Sunday marchers led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams walked in pairs across the Selma bridge headed toward Montgomery.

“We had steeled our nerves to a point where we were so determined that we were willing to confront. It was past being courageous. We were determined, and we were indignant,” Mauldin recalled.

He said the “country was not a democracy for Black folks” until voting rights. “And we’re still constantly fighting to make that a more concrete reality for ourselves.”

Kirk Carrington was just 13 on Bloody Sunday and was chased through the city by a man on a horse wielding a stick. “When we started marching, we did not know the impact we would have in America,” he said.

Dr. Verdell Lett Dawson, who grew up in Selma, remembers a time when she was expected to lower her gaze if she passed a white person on the street to avoid making eye contact.

Dawson and Mauldin said they are concerned about the potential dismantling of the Department of Education and other changes to federal agencies.

Support from the federal government “is how Black Americans have been able to get justice, to get some semblance of equality, because left to states’ rights, it is going to be the white majority that’s going to rule,” Dawson said.

“That that’s a tragedy of 60 years later: what we are looking at now is a return to the 1950s,” Dawson said.

Reporting by Kim Chandler and Safiyah Riddle, Associated Press

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WDET and the Detroit Evening Report have collected Black History Month stories from listeners as a part of its Black History Listening Project.

Here are the stories we aired in February 2025:

Wyatt Tate made headlines in 1894

Detroiter Brenda McGadney grew up hearing stories about her great-grandfather.

Wyatt Tate, a farmer from Alabama, was made infamous after an incident with police arising from an animal being stolen from him while he was away on a business trip. After Tate successfully retrieved the animal, the town sheriff accused him of theft, and during his attempted arrest, Tate killed the sheriff, an assistant and one of the sheriff’s horses. After going on the run and evading police for months, Tate was eventually killed on May 12, 1894. 

Using the internet and genealogical tools for research, McGadney found the story was a very big deal at the time.

“He is documented in more than 80 newspapers in 1894,” she said. “So, it went viral.”

McGadney says growing up, it was important to her mother, Annie Tate McGadney, that they knew of Tate’s story. She had learned it from her own father, Felix Tate, who witnessed the events in 1894.

“My mother brought us up to speak up, not only for yourself, but for other people who are disenfranchised, who you see are being harmed,” she said.

McGadney also found references to Wyatt Tate in Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and in books about Lee who grew up in Monroeville. A cousin, actor and boxer Bill Tate, wrote a fictionalized account, “Little Wyatt Tate: Fiction Based on Fact.”

“When you travel in Africa, the question that Africans ask you, ‘Where do you come from?’” McGadney says, “I tell them that is a very painful question to ask an African American, and they don’t really understand it. We don’t know where we came from.”

McGadney says she has become her family’s griot, holding the stories of both sides of her family.

“This history is rich, and it covers both my mom’s side, which would be the Tates and the Clarks, and my dad’s side, which would be the Baldwins and the Jacksons and the McGadneys,” she said. “You need to be telling your story, and it empowers your children. It empowers our family.”

Iola Corbett witnessed the rise of Detroit’s Muslim community

Iola Corbett, also known as Sister Ameeda, was born and raised in Detroit.

Corbett’s family was a part of the Nation of Islam when she was a child.

Over the years she met Malcolm X, who visited her family’s restaurant in Detroit often.

“My mother was an excellent cook, so he had dinner with my dad every day, so I got to hear him, and I would serve him. He was a big influence in my family’s life,” she said.

Corbett says the Nation of Islam made her a part of something bigger.

“It…gave me a purpose of who I was, who I wanted to be…close with my community,” she explained.

Corbett would go on to become a union leader and to write the book  “Growing Up Muslim and the Journey Continues.”

Carolyn Clifford tells her mom’s story

WXYZ TV reporter and anchor Carolyn Clifford tells the story of her mother often. She says she wants to inspire women dealing with domestic violence to leave, and to prove to children in Detroit that they can succeed despite hardship.

“I always tell Detroiters, especially young kids, when you see me, you see you,” Clifford said. “ So if your mom was on drugs, or your daddy on drugs, or, you know, somebody’s drinking alcohol…don’t be ashamed. There’s always a way out of a crazy situation, as I learned from my own mom.”

“And she would always say, you know, with God on her side, she could do anything.”

Bruce Simpson remembers Barbara-Rose Collins

Bruce Simpson’s grandmother was the first Black woman to represent Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives. Barbara-Rose Collins served in Congress from 1991 to 1997. She also worked in politics at the city and state level.

But Simpson says he wasn’t really aware that Collins was the “distinguished lady from Michigan.”

“I always just looked at her as grandma,” Simpson said.

Simpson has also entered public service. He is the Ombudsman for the City of Detroit.

WDET listeners are invited to share Black history stories about their families, friends and neighbors throughout the year via email at detroiteveningreport@wdet.org or by leaving us a voice memo in the WDET mobile app.

Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

For many Arab Americans in Southeast Michigan, Dearborn is a point of pride. For decades, immigrants from across the Arab world have left an imprint on the suburb bordering Detroit that continues to widen and deepen.

Today, the city, which has an Arab majority, reflects the rich historical, cultural and ethnic diversity of the Arab world.

It is also home to the Arab American National Museum.

A new exhibit at the museum gives us a window into Dearborn’s Southend neighborhood. It is an area that Arab Americans fought to protect amid a zoning battle that lasted from the 1950s to the 70s. They fought against a city plan that would have turned the area into a major industrial hub. 

“Seeing the Southend” includes photographs by Tony Maine depicting Yemeni and Lebanese people living ordinary lives in the Southend neighborhood during the 1960s and 70s. In this way, there is beauty in the mundane, said Rasha Almulaiki, who will moderate a discussion during the show’s opening on March 6. The photos, she said, show Arab American life that is seldom seen but vital to unraveling persistent stereotypes.

Exhibit curator Dean Nessredine and Almulaiki joined the show to discuss what we can learn from these photos of thriving, everyday Arab immigrants and why the exhibit is important to view now.

Use the media player above to hear the conversation.

More stories from The Metro on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Detroiters will elect their next mayor later this year, and the stakes are high. The government should reflect the communities in which it plans to represent, and race is expected to play a role in the election. 

Throughout most of the city’s history, Detroit had white mayors. Coleman A. Young became Detroit’s first Black mayor in 1973, which changed the trajectory of the city. Current mayor Mike Duggan — the first white mayor of Detroit since Roman Gribbs 1970-’74 — inherited a city with bankruptcy and significant leadership instability, being the fourth mayor in five years. During his tenure, Detroit has witnessed noteworthy economic growth, a slight population increase after years of decline, and a reduction in crime rates. 

However, Duggan’s leadership also raises concerns about reinforcing the misleading notion that white leadership results in economic prosperity, while Black leadership is associated with turmoil.

Today on The Metro, we want to explore how the race of Detroit’s mayor impacts residents and how their efforts could continue to shape the city’s perception as a whole. 

Guests: 

• Jeff Horner: Professor of Teaching at Wayne State University.
• Kandia Milton: Chairman of the Black Slate (Detroit), associate pastor at the Shrine of the Black Madonna, and national policy director for the Justice program at Dream.org.
• Sam Robinson: Reporter covering the city of Detroit and author of the Substack Detroit one million.

We also asked listeners:

“Should Detroit’s next mayor be Black? And how vital is the race for Detroit’s next mayor?”

Listener Mama Jo said: “We should want somebody, I don’t care if they are purple, with gold and green stripes, we should want somebody that’s going to finish the job that Mike Duggan started.”

Use the media player above to listen to the full conversation.

More headlines from The Metro on Feb. 25, 2025: 

• Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell represents Michigan’s 6th Congressional District and has been sounding the alarm about cuts to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Dingell joined the show to discuss.

• Former Michigan Senator Curtis Hertel Jr. has been named the new chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. He joined The Metro to discuss Democrats’ overall goals and the lessons learned by the party in 2024.

• Angela Hanks is the former associate director of external affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). She was a Biden-Harris appointee and left the CFPB as part of normal administration transitions. Hanks joined the show to discuss what will happen if the nation’s consumer watchdog agency is gutted by mass layoffs. 

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.  

As WDET celebrated the end of its 75th year last Thursday, News Director Jerome Vaughn unveiled an audio history project that commemorates the station’s history and longstanding dedication to public news that serves Detroit.

“Having worked at WDET for more than half my life, I thought it was an amazing opportunity to dig into the history of the station and tell the rest of the world about how this amazing radio station got started,” said Vaughn, who narrates the audio history.

WDET was first created to share news and updates on the labor movement as one of several broadcasting stations managed by the United Auto Workers union. It aired its first broadcast on Feb. 13, 1949. The station strived to diversify its programming from the start, covering news relevant to working people, sharing music, and even broadcasting in other languages to better serve various populations in the area.

But running a nonprofit station demanded more resources than the UAW saw fit to spend. In 1952, the UAW transferred ownership of the station to Wayne State University, with the condition that the station would continue to use its broadcasting license to serve the public.

Watch the presentation below and take a journey through the first years of WDET’s existence, featuring historical photographs, logos, and newspaper clippings provided by Walter P. Reuther Library Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs.

Special thanks to the Walter and May Reuther Memorial Fund for funding this project.