Who profits from Detroit’s “reinvention”?

In two incisive essays, historian Jamon Jordan and lecturer and labor activist Craig Regester dismantle the facile, corporate narratives surrounding Detroit’s past, present, and future.

Jordan reveals how racial hierarchy has consistently shaped the making and unmaking of the city. He traces a direct line from 19th-century laws requiring “negroes” to pay $500 just to exist in Michigan, through generations of White managers overseeing Black auto workers, to mid-century “redevelopment” plans that displaced and demolished thousands of homes and 350 businesses in Black neighborhoods—and into the present day, where a banner celebrates White capitalist saviors for rescuing Detroit from failure.

Building on this trajectory, Regester scrutinizes the upcoming University of Michigan Center for Innovation in Detroit, a foregone conclusion and joint venture between a public university and a pair of billionaires. Though funded with $100 million in taxpayer dollars, neither the university, the state, nor the developers seriously considered community visions for how the center should serve Detroiters. Regester exposes how the avarice and technocentric whims of the ultra-rich increasingly compromise the public service missions of major research universitie

Jamon Jordan is a dedicated educator, writer, activist, and historian who has researched African and African American history for more than twenty years. He is founder and CEO of Black Scroll Network History & Tours in Detroit, where he leads tours and presentations on African and African American history. Since 2021, he has served as the first official historian for the City of Detroit.

Since 2008, Craig Regester has been the Associate Director and senior lecturer for U-M Semester in Detroit (SiD), an urban studies experiential learning program for undergraduates across all three U-M campuses. Starting in fall 2026, Craig will serve as a senior lecturer for the U-M Marsal Family School of Education’s Detroit-based LEAPS Program, developing and teaching curriculum focused on Detroit and community-engaged learning.