Could your family photos help tell Detroit's stories?

Ryan Patrick Hooper | Special to the Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption 12th and Clairmount – Official Trailer In 1967, Detroit erupted in one of the worst riots in American history, a rebellion against police brutality and racial inequality in a city where many said it couldn’t happen.

If a photo album of old family photographs could talk, the stories it could tell would be staggering.

That’s the concept behind the upcoming “Family Pictures: USA” television series filming in Detroit this summer. Thanks to the format of the show, Detroiters will have plenty of chances to have their story heard.

“Family Pictures: USA” borrows the format of “Antiques Roadshow” and merges it with the DNA of a storytelling event (think The Moth). It’s part personal family history, part oral history of a time or place told through members of the community that lived through it — or relatives that kept the family photos.

For “Family Pictures: USA” executive producer Don Perry, the concept is designed to facilitate a “bottom-up history” through stories incorporating family artifacts, photo slides and Super 8 film.

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“It’s a people’s history,” says Perry. “We want to activate these archives so we can better understand ourselves and our communities through the lived experiences of the people who were there.”

“Family Pictures: USA,” which is scheduled to air this fall on the World Channel and is produced by Digital Diaspora Family Reunion, will launch in Detroit on Wednesday at the Detroit Historical Museum with an information session. The Detroit Historical Museum is partnering on the project as part of the Detroit Historical Society’s ongoing “Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward” community engagement project, which has “captured the stories of hundreds of Detroiters for an oral history archive” and subsequent exhibition built around the events of the summer of 1967.

The exhibition “Detroit 67: Perspectives” is set to open June 24 at the museum.

“We’re happy to partner with Digital Diaspora because they’re doing amazing work collecting and preserving multicultural and multigenerational stories,” says Sarah Murphy, spokeswoman for the nonprofit Detroit Historical Society, which operates the museum. “All of our stories, as a community, are connected and we want people to know that the museum is a place where they can share them.”

The Detroit element of the series will wrap production at a grand finale event July 21 at Gordon Park (at the corner of what was formerly 12th and Clairmount, and is now Rosa Parks and Clairmount), a gathering tied to the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit riot/rebellion. The event will feature some of the best stories and photos “Family Pictures: USA” heard during its time in Detroit as well as live music and other activities.

Eight community photo-sharing sessions will be hosted at a diverse array of venues throughout Detroit this summer. Venues include the Horace L. Sheffield Jr. Center, the Arab American National Museum, the Church of the Messiah on East Grand Boulevard and more.

Additionally, the production team is working with Detroit-based storytelling groups like the Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers and Pedal to Porch as well as community partners like the Belle Isle Conservancy to reach out to residents.

At each session, residents are encouraged to bring their photos and talk about them with the “Family Pictures: USA” production team. Individuals or entire families are able to participate and may be filmed during their session for possible use in the upcoming series.

Additionally, scanning stations are set up at each venue to assist anyone looking to digitize their archives of physical photographs.

Sharing is global

Independent filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris started hosting events in 2009 as part of his Digital Diaspora Family Reunion, which heavily shaped the concept behind “Family Pictures: USA” and now acts as the production company behind it.

The project has hosted 50 events across the globe — from Brussels to Ethiopia, Rio de Janeiro to Toronto. The events mix community photo-sharing sessions as well as stage productions where people tell their family stories through photos and various multimedia.

Harris has seen attendees at his events bring thousands of photos to the sessions, including a literal truckload of images dating back to the 1850s during a stop in Atlanta.

Harris says the process of sharing these images — and digitizing them to hopefully carry them further in the future — can be therapeutic as well as help unravel some mysteries of the past.

“It’s a transformative experience on many different levels,” says Harris. “You might encounter a neighbor and share a memory together through a family photograph that never would have emerged had you just encountered each other in your normal day-to-day activity.”

Across a 25-year career, Harris’ films — most recently 2014’s “Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People” — have received critical acclaim for utilizing personal narratives to create a larger sense of history and purpose. “Through a Lens Darkly” will be screened as part of the launch event at the Detroit Historical Museum.

With this in mind, says Harris, Detroit proved the perfect fit to film the first “Family Pictures: USA” episode.

Harris says it’s not just about figuring out the role of the family photo album in the digital age, but connecting communities through a “new kind of family album of America” that unites through stories that might never be told otherwise.

“Every family has secrets and the secrets are found in the family album,” says Harris. “We want to bring people together across our superficial differences but also connect to the past and bring out stories that might have been discarded — women who own businesses, a gay uncle, a Native American ancestor or anything like that.”

An honest look

Some of those uniquely Detroit stories — like Chanel Henry’s — are already starting to emerge thanks to the project.

Henry’s Native American grandparents were born in Canada on the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation Reservation in southwest Ontario before moving to Lawndale Street in southwest Detroit in 1954.

Henry’s grandfather Arnold Henry was an iron worker who worked on the Renaissance Center in 1975. Her grandmother Freda helped create programming for the North American Indian Association, which was founded in 1940.

In a recent blog post for the “Family Pictures: USA” project, Henry described the process of sharing her story as a way of honoring the lives of her relatives — and hopes the tradition carries on to a younger generation.

“I hope that sharing these stories strengthens and encourages the younger generations,” writes Henry, who notes that many do not realize the Detroit-area connection to the Ojibway tribes. “Being able to remember and tell this story will hopefully give them the same sense of pride in who they are as it gives for me.”

For others, like Lamont Causey, the community photo-sharing sessions that are part of the “Family Pictures: USA” production offer a way to accurately represent moments in Detroit’s history by telling stories through the people that actually lived it.

Causey is the founder and president of Brothers Always Together, a nonprofit organization that directly services the community near Gordon Park with food and school supply drives, services for senior citizens and more.

Causey and his family moved from Black Bottom to the neighborhood in the early 1940s — one of the first African-American families, Causey says, to move into the predominantly Jewish area.

“I’ve been waiting for this for 50 years,” says Causey, 57, referencing the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Detroit riot/rebellion. “Some people call it a rebellion. Some people call it an uprising — it depends where you’re from.”

If you’re from the 12th and Clairmount area, says Causey, “you know what it was — it was a riot. We don’t dispute that. There are a lot of people who can’t tell these stories accurately especially if you weren’t over there.”

With the “Family Pictures: USA” production hosting the grand finale event at Gordon Park, Causey hopes the stories told at the event shed an honest light on the events of 1967 as well as bring communities together across metro Detroit.

“We want people to come out and hear this story we have to tell,” says Causey. “You can’t run from history and we don’t want to shove it under the rug anymore. We want to see our community move forward as one.”

Ryan Patrick Hooper is a writer and journalist in Detroit. Follow him on Twitter via @HoopingtonPost

‘Family Pictures: USA’ community photo sharing sessions

Sessions are first-come, first-served. Spots can be reserved by sending an email to 1World1Family.me@gmail.com (use “My Detroit Story” in the subject line) or calling 212-281-6002 (ask for the Detroit desk).

More info at 1world1family.me/.

Launch event: 3-5 p.m. Wed., Detroit Historical Museum.

10 a.m.-2 p.m. June 17: Detroit Historical Museum. Cohosted by the Allied Media Conference.

5-9 p.m. June 28, 5-9 p.m.: the Horace L. Sheffield Center Jr. Center for Organizational Development. Co-hosted by the Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers.

11 a.m.-3 p.m. July 1: Detroit Film Theatre Auditorium at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Co-hosted by the Belle Isle Conservancy.

11 a.m.-3 p.m. July 8: Church of the Messiah (231 East Grand Boulevard). Co-hosted by the Belle Isle Conservancy.

10 a.m.-1 p.m., 3-6 p.m. July 13: Arab American National Museum.

11 a.m.-3 p.m. July 15: Detroit Film Theatre at the DIA.

4:30-6:30 p.m. July 21: Gordon Park Grand finale event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit riot/rebellion (corner of Rosa Parks and Clairmount).