Over the holidays…we’re sharing some of the stories Detroit Evening Report hosts produced for the radio. Today…we hear a story from Nargis Rahman.

The state health department hoped to register 500 doulas in its doula registry by 2028. This fall, it had more than a thousand. That includes doulas across the state with various specialties and most are able to accept payment through Medicaid.

Nargis spoke to Dawn Shanafelt the Director of Maternal and Infant Health for the Department of Health and Human Services about the registry and efforts to export birthing assistance services in Michigan.

Outro: This is just part of Nargis Rahman’s interview with Dawn Shanafelt from the Department of Health and Human Services. You can her the full story at wdet.org.

The city’s 30 foot tall Kwanzaa Kinara join Detroit’s official Hannukah Menorah and Christmas tree in Campus Martius Friday, Dec. 26. This first day of Kwanzaa celebrates the principle Umoja or Unity.

If you missed the City’s Kinara lighting, there are Kwanzaa celebrations throughout the city until the holiday ends on New Year’s Day. The Redford Branch of the Detroit Public Library has festivities tomorrow, including arts & crafts and African dance and drumming.

For more information visit detroitpubliclibrary.org/events.

The Charles H Wright Museum of African American History will host Kwanzaa events through Monday. Festivities include performances, speakers, family-friendly activities, a vendor marketplace and candle lightings.

Each day’s schedule is a little different. Visit thewright.com/events/kwanzaa for more information.

Source Booksellers is hosting a virtual celebration of cooperative economics on the 29th with author Ben Passmore, who will talk about his book “Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance.”

The event is at 5pm. To register look for Source Booksellers on Eventbrite.

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An area of very old trees at Independence Oaks County Park has been recognized as part of a national network of old-growth forests, drawing attention to both rare natural features and thousands of years of human history tied to the land.

Carol Bacak-Egbo is an Oakland County Parks historian. She says the newly designated old-growth forest lies within a landscape shaped by Indigenous peoples for 5,000 to 6,000 years. The park sits near historic Native American trail routes, and contains the headwaters of the Clinton River, once a major travel route for the Anishinaabe across what is now southeast Michigan.

“This history doesn’t start with log cabins and sawmills,” Bacak-Egbo says. “People lived with and cared for this land long before Europeans arrived.”

Artifacts indicate the area was likely used as seasonal camps rather than permanent villages. The park also contains one of only two remaining wild rice beds in southeast Michigan, a culturally and spiritually significant food source for the Anishinaabe.

The forest largely escaped widespread logging and farming in the 19th century, almost by accident.

In the early 1900s, a wealthy Detroit businessman purchased land around Crooked Lake but left it undeveloped. Later owners also did not farm the southern portion of the property, allowing the old-growth trees to remain intact.

Park naturalist Kegan Schildberg says the designation supports efforts to protect remaining natural areas in Oakland County, which has developed rapidly during the last century.

Bacak-Egbo encourages visitors to view parks as places where natural and human history intersect.

“When people walk these trails, they aren’t just connecting with nature,” says Bacak-Egbo.  “They are walking through the same forest people walked through hundreds and even thousands of years ago.”

This story is part of WDET’s ongoing series, The Detroit Tree Canopy Project.

Detroit Public Schools officials want Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release four high school students the government is holding, including a star baseball player at Western International High School.

Agents arrested Santiago Jesus Zamora Perez and his mother last weekend. Their lawyer says ICE is holding them in Texas.

At a school board meeting Tuesday, students and teachers described a climate of fear at the school in Detroit’s Mexicantown neighborhood.

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti says he and the school board will write a letter to ICE asking them to release the students it detained. 

Additional headlines from Thursday, December 11, 2025

Kronk Gym reopens

Detroit’s Kronk Gym officially reopened this month in the old rec center where Joe Luis trained. It’s now in the recently renovated Brewster-Wheeler recreation center.

Kronk Gym was Founded by Emanuel Steward and trained dozens of world boxing champions including Thomas Hearns and Lennox Lewis. 

Kronk Gym memberships range from $90 to $129 a month, with training and HIIT classes, or $35 a month for youth. 

Human Rights Day march

The social justice group CodePink Detroit will join a coalition of grassroots organizations for a Human Rights Day march this Saturday starting at Hart Plaza.

The groups are calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza and Military aid to Israel, abolishing ICE and ending National Guard presence in some U.S. Cities. The march begins at 2:00pm.

For more information visit codepink.org/detroit1213. 

Dearborn Heights tree lighting saved by local businessman

Dearborn Heights came close to canceling it’s annual tree lighting ceremony this year but a local business man saved the day.

City officials had ordered an artificial tree from China but the shipment ran into serious delays. The city decided to try to find a replacement tree, and businessman Sam Hussein helped pay for it. Hussein told Channel 7 he felt it was the right thing to do and was a great way to give back to his community.

The tree lighting ceremony will take place Friday at 6:30 p.m. outside of the Dearborn Heights City Hall. 

Season of Soul

The Charles H Wright Museum’s Season of Soul is back! The daylong event is Sunday Dec. 14 starting at 10 a.m. The event falls on Second Sunday.

The museum offers free admission on the second Sunday of every month. Activities include morning yoga, photos with Black Santa and Mrs. Claus, and a holiday silent disco.

For more information, check out the events page on the museum’s website at thewright.org. 

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Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan gave his exit interview at the Detroit Economic Club Monday.

He says he doesn’t plan to align himself with either party’s congressional races during his campaign for governor in 2026. Duggan was a lifelong Democrat until he decided to run for Whitmer’s seat. He says he’s not worried about how Michiganders vote in the U.S. House races.

“I am going to work with the people in both parties to get results that won’t get reversed every two years as the state flips back and forth. I’m going to try to do what I did in Detroit, convince people that actually solving problems is better politics than tearing each other down.”

Duggan says he plans to run his campaign for governor just like he ran his campaign for mayor—by meeting with voters directly.

His term as mayor ends in January. 

Additional headlines from Tuesday, December 9, 2025

Mayor-elect Sheffield gets married

Detroit Mayor-elect Mary Sheffield got married over the weekend. Her transition team confirmed social media chatter, saying she and Ricke Jackson, Jr. tied the knot in a private ceremony at The Godfrey Hotel on Sunday.

Jackson works for the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan. He runs a youth sports program. 

Menorah in the D

Hanukkah starts Sunday and that means Menorah in the D! This will be the 15^th annual lighting of the 26 foot menorah. The event begins at 4:30 p.m. with the menorah lighting at 5:30 p.m.

There will be musical performances, strolling street performers, the Detroit Pistons Extreme Team, a chance to take photos with the Chanukah Mensch and Dreidel Man & the dancing Dreidels, and free soup and hot chocolate.

Pontiac welcomes new businesses

The City of Pontiac will celebrate several new additions to its downtown business community tomorrow with a “mass ribbon cutting.”

Eight new businesses will be welcomed to North Saginaw Street with ceremonies starting between noon and 4:00 p.m. Several of the new offices are opening in the building at 91 North Saginaw Street, including an emergency health training services organization, a salon, and a multicultural community center.

At 4:30 p.m. there will be a celebration of the one year anniversary of interior design firm Designed Mindfully. 

Free admission to history museums

Admission to the Dossin Great Lakes Museum and the Detroit Historical Museum is free Sunday, Dec. 14 and Dec. 21 this month.

The Dossin on Belle Isle highlights the maritime history of Michigan and the U.S. The Detroit Historical Museum is focused on the comprehensive history of Detroit.

You can find information about exhibits at both museums at detroithistorical.org.

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The Detroit Red Wings have a long, gritty history that mirrors the city it calls home. To celebrate and commiserate the last 100 years, a new exhibition is on display at the Detroit Historical Museum. 

Detroit Red Wings at 100 will have a unique array of artifacts on display that capture the franchise from 1926 to today. The exhibition will be on display through 2026.

Jeremy Dimick is the lead curator at Detroit Historical Museum. Marcel Parent is the Director of Curation & Collections at Ilitch Holdings. Both joined The Metro to talk more about the exhibit and Detroit Red Wings history. 

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Evidence of colonization is embedded in the United States government. Through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or the U.S. territories that are governed by colonial administration models, like Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The place we now call Detroit, or, Waawiyatanong, the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Three Fires Confederacy, has a unique place in United States’ colonial history.

The people of the Three Fires Confederacy—the Ojibway, Ottawa and Potawatomi nations, or collectively Anishinaabe people, were subjects of colonialism, violence and displacement. First by European settlers, then by the United States government. That process was carried out and documented by bureaucratic process, what scholars call colonial administration.

Maggie Blackhawk is the Moses H. Grossman professor of law at the NYU law school. She’s an expert in colonial administration, law, and history.

She spoke to Metro producer David Leins about what we can learn today from the bureaucratic records of the past to better understand colonialism in the U.S. and Michigan.

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The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a tragedy that is remembered with reverence and intrigue across the Great Lakes every year.

Twenty-nine sailors lost their lives on November 10, 1975, and the exact cause of the sinking remains a mystery. Gordon Lightfoot’s epic retelling, “The Wreckage of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” firmly placed the story of the Fitz’s in the national public consciousness.

But, the Edmund Fitzgerald—the largest freighter on the Great Lakes at the time— was always part of Detroit history. It was built, christened, and launched in the Detroit River. It carried record-breaking loads of iron ore and was known as a workhorse in Great Lakes shipping. It’s intended stop before sinking was Zug Island.

This year marks 50 years since the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, and the ship’s Detroit connection took center stage at several events over the weekend.

Victoria Stewart is Assistant Director of the Humanities Center at Wayne State University.

She created a pop-up exhibition “The Gales of November, Remembered: Detroit and the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It was on display at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum and Mariners’ Church in Downtown Detroit to commemorate 50 years since the ship sank in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975.

Stewart spoke to The Metro about the ship’s Detroit connections and the timelessness of it’s story.

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The Carr Center is a hub for the visual and performing arts in Detroit focused on promoting and sharing the work of Black artists.  For the last 3 decades, it has thrived on collaborations with local community groups and organizations. 

The Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club is a local art enthusiast group that supports the fine arts in Metro Detroit. 

Recently, The Carr Center and Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club teamed up to present Bridges: Because of Them – Honoring the Past, Uplifting the Present, Shaping the Future. 

The show is curated by co-founder of Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club, Henry Harper, local art buyer Kendale L. Jones and multi-disciplinary artist Andre Reed Jr. 

Oliver Ragsdale Jr. is the CEO of the Carr Center and Henry Harper, the co-founder of Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club, and owner of Harper Galleries of Art and Interior.

Henry and Oliver joined The Metro to talk more about the exhibition and Detroit’s fine arts scene.

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The Masonic Temple is a popular a venue on the edge of the Cass Corridor that hosts events and concerts. It opened in 1926 after being designed by architect George Mason. In addition to being a venue, it serves as a meeting space for the Free Mason fraternity. 

Around this time of year, rumors typically begin to spread about the history of the temple, George Mason’s passing and whether the building is haunted. 

Rob Moore, the Executive director of the Detroit Masonic Temple Library, Archive, and Research Center joined the program to set the record straight.

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Cemeteries are the last place one might look for things to do over the weekend. But, if you appreciate reflection and history over busy bars and music, Elmwood Alight at the historic Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit might be the thing for you.

The immersive tours take place October 17-18. Tickets are $40.

Amy Elliott Bragg is director of the Historic Elmwood Foundation.

She joined Cary Junior II on The Metro to discuss the two-night event.

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James Boggs has the Detroit story. He was born into a sharecropping family in Junction, Alabama. He moved to the city and worked in the auto industry for over 20 years. His wife Grace was a Chinese American philosopher who was born in Rhode Island and lived in New York.

James and Grace Lee Boggs would go on to lead a movement of self-resiliency and working together as a community. They were instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement through the 60s and 70s and further into the eras with the Black Panther Party.  The two remained married for 40 years, until James’ death in 1993. 

Grace Lee Boggs carried their legacy and continued their work until her death in 2015 at the age of 100. She was an author, feminist, philosopher and social activist who inspired and changed the minds of so many, and made sure Detroit thrived with love and community. 

This month, The James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation is celebrating with a 10 year memorial of her death. The gathering will honor the life and legacy of the civil rights activist and take a look at how to move forward in this moment in time we’re in today.

Donald Boggs, son of James Boggs and Alice Jennings, J.D. joined Metro host Tia Graham to talk more about the 10-year memorial honoring the life of Grace Lee Boggs. 

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During the Great Depression, auto workers organized a march from Detroit to the Ford Rouge Factory in Dearborn. Thousands of people took to the streets to fight for jobs when nearly half of workers in Detroit were unemployed. The event is now known as the Ford Hunger March, and it was one of the most significant events leading to the creation of the United Auto Workers union. 

Friends of the Rouge and the Fort Rouge Gateway Partnership joined forces to construct the Fort Street Bridge Interpretive Park to celebrate those who fought for workers rights and commemorate that pivotal moment in labor history. 

The first phase of the park project was completed in 2020 and construction for the second phase of the project started in mid-September. 

Paul Draus, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a board member of the Friends of Rouge joined the show to discuss the importance of this park and the history it honors. 

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Detroit Outdoors has taken a group of students and teachers to Yosemite National Park for the second time.

The Detroit to Gloryland journey is designed to introduce youth to outdoor activities like camping and rock climbing and pick up on some history.

The group travels to Yosemite in late July so they are in there during National Buffalo Soldier Day, and within reach of the park system’s expert on the history of Buffalo Soldiers in the park.

Shelton Johnson is a native Detroiter, an alum of Cass Technical High School and a park ranger. He has worked to collect the narratives of the Black and other non-white soldiers who served as Yosemite’s first rangers and share their individual and collective stories.

WDET’s Sascha Raiyn got to travel with the students both years. You can hear stories from the first Detroit to Gloryland trip and learn more about Shelton Johnson in 2024 here.

‘Gloryland’ veterans speak

It was Cass Tech High School Junior Tiffany Orr’s first-time camping and first-time in Yosemite. She interviewed the three students who came on the trip for a second time: Jaiden Nedd, Cameron Thomas and Arcia Quinn.

Expressing Yosemite: a poet’s guide to being in nature

Poet and author Jacqueline Suskind traveled with the students. Suskind’s work focuses on her relationship to nature – and on teaching others to explore their own relationships to nature — through writing.

Students had an inside guide to Yosemite this year

Robel Fessehatzion is a landscape photographer who works at and with Yosemite National Park.

He met the students who traveled from Detroit to Yosemite on the 2024 trip.

This year, Fessehatzion introduced the students to the people, places and history that shape his relationship to Yosemite.

He also gave them a little lesson in landscape photography.

A look at how Detroit Outdoors gets it done

Moving more than 20 people across the country to camp — many for the first time — is a big undertaking. We take a look at the logisitcs of the trip.

‘Gloryland’ first-timers speak

Sascha Raiyn gave her recorder to Pershing student Eva Effinger and Hamtramck High grad Nora Algahaim. They interviewed each other — on the one night the campers had very loud neighbors. They talked about their first camping experience and starting the trip not feeling so well.

To learn more and see photos of the experience, check out the Detroit Outdoors Instagram account. 

The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation announced a new platform that will match entrepreneurs with the best fitting lender. 

The website is designed to help small businesses navigate financial options through partnerships with local Community Development Financial Institutions.   

Applicants visit the website, submit the criteria for the type of loan and amount they need, and the algorithm will match them with the best lenders.  

DEGC Senior Vice President Derrick Headd calls the hub a central command center for the city’s small business ecosystem.  “One place where you can find financing options, technical assistance, and service organizations. Everything you need to have a thriving company.” 

Lenders participating in the hub include ProsperUS, Detroit Development Fund, Invest Detroit and more.  

Eligible applicants must be located in the city, have documented cash flow, and cannot be affiliated with any business prohibited by federal law.  

 Additional headlines for Thursday, September 25, 2025

Pastors seek high voter turnout this mayoral election

Detroit voters will elect the city’s first new mayor in 12 years this fall. A coalition of pastors is working to educate and mobilize their flocks to decide between City Council President Mary Sheffield and Reverend Solomon Kinloch. 

Organizers say 12 churches took part in the Lift Every Voice and Vote campaign in the August primary. They want five times that number mobilizing voters in the general election. 

Al Williams leads Lift Every Voice and Vote Detroit. He admits its hard motivating voters in the city. “I think that the history of our mayoral elections, past two or three mayoral elections, have shown us that the excitement has gone down every single mayoral election. Yes, it has made it a challenge.” 

Less than 20 percent of eligible Detroit voters cast ballots in the August primary.

Proposed ordinance requires body cam footage be made public

A proposed Detroit ordinance would require police to release body camera footage within 30 days of police shootings and other incidents including the use of non-lethal weapons like tasers, pepper spray, tear gas, bean bags and rubber bullets.

Under the proposed ordinance, footage must be posted on a public website. Exemptions would be allowed upon written request from the Detroit Police Department or Wayne County prosecutor.

Exceptions apply to footage captured during federal or state task force operations, footage prohibited by court order and footage determined to be prejudicial to a civil matter. 

James Baldwin Sidewalk Libraries

The City of Detroit and the Detroit Public Library will be hosting the James Baldwin Sidewalk Libraries across the city. Detroit ACE and the Charles H. Wright Museum also partnered to launch the reading campaign.

Boxes designed to help residents find or donate books by and about author James Baldwin will be placed in Detroit neighborhoods. 

The initiative completes the work started by artist Sabrina Nelson, whose landmark exhibit on Baldwin debuted last fall.

The initiative is being launched during Black Reading Month in Detroit. 

Fashion business management degree now offered at CCS

 The College for Creative Studies in Detroit is now offering a fashion business management degree. The degree will take 90 credits and just over three years to complete. 

Students will learn merchandising, styling, marketing strategy, brand development, trend forecasting, and fashion communications. No portfolio is required for admission.

Visit the College for Creative Studies and look under the listing of undergraduate programs more information and to apply. 

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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, listener Martha Rotter asks the question:

“What happened to Chamberlain Bakery and their sour rye bread recipe?”

The short answer

A nostalgic walk through Chamberlain Street

On Detroit’s Chamberlain Street, people would wake up to the aroma of freshly baked sour rye bread from the Chamberlain Bakery.  

It was opened by Lithuanian baker Stanley Vasilauskis (who also went by Wasilauskis) in 1924. He brought the recipe with him when he moved from Chicago, where his family owned the Wasilauskis Home Bakery. 

Livonia resident Martha Rotter remembers eating the bread with her German husband’s family during gatherings.  

“Every time we got together, whether it was a potluck or just a regular family dinner, there was Chamberlain Bakery bread there… And they all agreed it was the best bread,” she says. 

John Micallef, the CEO of Oakland Macomb OBGYN, grew up in Southwest Detroit near the Chamberlain Bakery. He worked on a paper route in the 1980s, close to the bakery.  

“I remember stopping there on the way, doing the route, grabbing a snack. Sometimes in the morning, they would give you a cookie or something. We were really young back in the day,” he reminisces.

Micallef says the bakery was a gathering space where people knew you on a first-name basis.  

“It was just a great neighborhood type of bakery, the kind you don’t really see too much anymore, but the smell was always wonderful. People were friendly. They knew you by your name.” 

The bakery was sold again in 2002 to Alexander & Hornung, a sausage-processing company. Then-president Bernie Polen says the bakery was on its last leg and he purchased it to keep it alive.

At the time, they baked about 800 loaves of bread daily and distributed them to stores in metro Detroit. Polen says he closed the bakery around 2008 or 2009 because it wasn’t financially viable.

A second act for Chamberlain Bakery bread

David Alkevicius also grew up in Southwest Detroit on the sour rye bread from Chamberlain Bakery. He says many times he was the designated person in the family to grab loaves of bread for special occasions.  

When he learned the bakery had closed down, he decided he needed to learn how to make the bread.

“Honestly to begin with, it was more selfish because I wanted it and I didn’t know anywhere to get it,” he laughs. 

He began reaching out to people who formerly worked at the bakery to learn the recipe and make the sour rye bread.

It turns out the sour rye bread has a large fan following, in part due to how it was baked in a brick oven heated up to over 425 degrees. The coal burning oven stayed on practically all the time, until it was changed to a gas oven after Polen acquired the bakery. He says the oven would be turned off once a year to cool down and to allow a mason to patch the brick.

Alkevicius says the rye bread has a unique formula.

“Most rye breads that you buy from the store are 15% (rye). The sour rye from Chamberlain Bakery, they had a half and half, which was 50-50, and then their actual sour rye was 75%, and so it’s a heavy, dense bread, but still very soft,” he explained.

It took him about five years to perfect the recipe. He also made a few adjustments. 

“You’d mix the hot, boiling water with the rye flour, and once it cooled, you added it to the mother dough. And I think it just changed the whole, you know, the whole composition of the bread, because I tried making it the traditional way, where people just mix flour and water, and it never came out right,” he said.

Alkevicius says it’s hard to find a similar bread in stores.

He began selling his bread at the Wilson Barn farmer’s markets for two years. Then he opened Alkevicius Breads in 2016, a bakery in Livonia located on Five Mile and Farmington Road that operated through 2018. He hopes he can bake the breads again someday.

Although it’s been nearly two decades since the Chamberlain Bakery has shut down, many people still talk about it on Facebook and Reddit threads.

It holds a special place in people’s memories, with many hoping they can get another bite of the one-of-a-kind sour rye bread.

Lithuanians in Michigan

Algis Kaunelis is the cohost of the Lithuanian Melodies Radio Program on WMZK 690 AM. 

Kaunelis grew up in Southwest Detroit on 25th and Vernor Street. His parents moved to Detroit during World War II. He says sour rye bread is popular among Lithuanians in the area.

“My parents ended up at a displaced persons camp in Germany, like a lot of other Lithuanians, and then eventually had a godmother in Detroit. And so, they settled in the Detroit area, which a lot of other Lithuanians did, because there were good automotive jobs that they could get and start earning a living right away.”

He too grew up eating bread from Chamberlain Bakery, which his family purchased from a local Lithuanian store that carried the bread.

Years later, he and his wife Patt volunteered their time to deliver about 25 loaves to All Saints Church on Fort Street on Saturday afternoons. The bread was donated by the baker until it shut down.

Today, Kaunelis says there are about 30,000 Lithuanians living in metro Detroit.

About the listener

Livonia resident Martha Rotter remembers having Chamberlain Bakery bread with her German husband’s family during gatherings. She says it went well with different pairings. She hopes the bakery opens up again someday, or that someone sells the bread once again.

We want to hear from you!

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

During WDET’s on-air fundraiser, we continue to bring you the news and conversations that inform you, enrich your life, and connect you to the community. 

In this conversation, The Metro’s Tia Graham spoke with Satori Shakoor, host of The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers. Satori talked about the importance of storytelling and the importance of strong public media. 

This particular conversation also included information about an upcoming show at The Wright on the theme of colorism. It explored the effects of colorism across cultures and how people process related experiences. 

Hosted in front of a live audience, Satori helps create a space of vulnerability, honesty and compassion. 

Take a listen to the conversation and learn more about The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers and the impact of sharing intimate life experiences. 

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