Soon, a new generation will be able to see what life in metro Detroit was like in the 1980s and ’90s — or “What’s happenin’,” as the earliest issues of Detroit Metro Times phrased it.
On Tuesday, Wayne State University’s Walter P. Reuther Library officially announced it will digitize a significant portion of the Metro Times archives. The project was made possible by Metro Times co-founder Ron Williams, who donated his printed collection to the library, comprising the first 16 years of the alt-weekly’s run.
The project encompasses the debut October 16, 1980 issue through September 27, 1995.
“I am delighted to make this gift to the Reuther Library, home to so many significant labor and progressive collections,” Williams said in a statement. “These early volumes of the paper reflect the contributions of countless people who out of sheer determination and pure talent created something extraordinary. This gift is intended to honor them — it is so important that their work be preserved and safeguarded and not be lost when the history of Detroit is being told. I am grateful to the Reuther for making this material more widely available to the public and preserving it for generations to come.”
Metro Times and parent company Euclid Media Group give their full blessing to the project, with plans to integrate the archived issues into metrotimes.com.
The Walter P. Reuther Library was established in 1960 to collect and preserve original documents related to the U.S. labor movement, named for the eponymous progressive United Auto Workers organizer and president. Its mission also includes preserving records related to the civil rights movement, as well as material illustrating community life in metropolitan Detroit — both pillars of what Metro Times set out to chronicle.
“With progressive values embedded in the DNA of the paper’s editorial mission, we lifted up activists and organizations that were fighting for social, environmental, and racial justice,” Williams added.
Williams co-founded Metro Times with Laura Markham “armed with a business plan, a burning sense of idealism, a boundless sense of naïveté, and about $5,000,” as he once recalled while commemorating the paper’s 20th anniversary. At the time, metro Detroit was plagued by an economic downturn and intense segregation.
“From the very first issue we fought the divisive concepts of black and white, city and suburb, us and them,” he said. “Eight Mile Road didn’t exist in our vocabulary — we were committed to create a journalistic voice that would be respected and welcomed into every home. We published to our own mythological urban construct: the Detroit metropolitan community.”
He added, “For me, Metro Times was an act of love, a gift to the city that gave me so much, the city that I will always call my home.”
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