- [Announcer] Just ahead on "One Detroit."

The Detroit NAACP is unveiling a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during its June Jubilee celebration.

We'll talk with the artist behind the sculpture.

Plus, Detroit's Northwestern High School celebrates Juneteenth with a parade.

Also ahead, we'll tell you how the City of Detroit is planning to spend all of its pandemic relief funds by 2025.

And we'll share some ideas on events and activities to check out this weekend and beyond in metro Detroit.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

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(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Just ahead on this week's "One Detroit," we'll show you how students and staff at Detroit's Northwestern High School chose to celebrate the nation's newest federal holiday, Juneteenth (band members shouting) Plus all of Detroit's $827 million in pandemic aid is expected to be spent over the next two years.

We'll look at where the money is going.

And summer is finally here and there's lots to do this weekend and beyond.

Dave Wagner and Cecelia Sharpe of 90.9 WRCJ have the rundown.

- And there are so many.

- But first up, the Detroit branch NAACP is celebrating freedom at its June Jubilee from June 22nd through the 25th.

One of the highlights is the unveiling of a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Hart Plaza.

The sculpture commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Detroit Walk to Freedom, which featured Dr. King delivering an early version of his "I Have a Dream" speech.

BridgeDetroit's Orlando Bailey spoke with Stan Watts the artist who created the statue and City of Detroit Arts and Culture Director, Rochelle Riley.

(Rochelle speaking faintly) (gentle music) - Tell us this story because this is rather fascinating.

So you were at the event at the right and you had begun to think about and done some investigation about Dr. Martin Luther King's history here in the city of Detroit.

- So I was invited to this unveiling at the Wright Museum and that was my first time being there.

And while there I questioned, I said, did Martin Luther King ever do anything in this city?

The mayor was there and Rochelle Riley and then the curator of the museum.

And they said, "You know, as a matter of fact, don't you know, he gave the speech here first?"

No, I didn't know that.

So I just, I approached the mayor and I said, I would like to place a Dr. King here, and I believe I can get a donor if we can find a place.

- [Orlando] Rochelle Riley, the city of Detroit's Arts and Culture Director has worked closely with Watts throughout the process.

- He said, you know, I've got some other statues.

And I said, oh, really?

You got a lot of statues?

What have you got?

And he said, "You know, I've got this Martin Luther King statue and the person who owns it wants to donate it to some place very special.

Donate it to a city or to some spot."

And I said we want it.

We want it.

He said, "Oh, well, you know, yeah, we could do it in."

I said, no, no, no.

There's a very special reason we would want it.

Dr. King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech here two months before he gave it in Washington, DC and that historic moment that was seen by everybody, but we had 125,000 people who marched down Woodward and saw it here and heard it here.

- [Orlando] Talk a little bit about art being a documenter and a record of history.

- Thank you.

You only have so many statues.

Dr. King was one of those that I had the honor of doing.

Great men and great stories and they're untold from the Black community because they're still, they survived through the horrific situations to now.

And our job is to bring the horrific situations to light and honor the people that documented, that learned to read when you couldn't teach them to read because it's illegal.

- Stan Watts is an amazing artist.

We had the best conversations about African-American history which is a part of American history.

We had great talks about his aesthetic and what he likes to do.

And he likes to do a lot of statues of African-Americans who deserve their place in history.

When you see the statue, you'll see that not only does he know what he's doing but he really puts his heart into it.

These things mean something to him.

- I'm gonna say something that I believe in my heart.

The longest lasting form of medication for healing is bronze because it lasts for 4,000 years.

So when you honor somebody doing something good, that did something that changed lives, you can actually be a better person for having seen great artwork.

And we need great artwork done with respect.

- Normally artists are sort of commissioned in this kind of work, and you were not.

And you went out and found the funding to be able to do this.

I wanna ask you about, upon learning this history, what moved on the inside of you that prompted you to want to do this without being commissioned, but to ask to do this?

- Great artists need to understand why they're doing what they're doing and what they're doing.

And they're not doing it for money.

I'm not doing it for money.

I need to get paid but I'm doing it because it needs to be done.

- [Orlando] The statue of MLK will find its new home in the heart of downtown Detroit at Hart Plaza.

- As soon as we decided and as soon as they agreed to let us have it here there was no place else for it to be.

Hart Plaza is our community space in Detroit.

It's like New York's Times Square.

It is where, connected to the nation's best River Walk, the place for things to happen.

We have movement there.

We have the jazz festival there.

Everything big for our entire community happens there.

The placement of the statue is so important.

There is a transcending monument that's at Hart Plaza that people don't always pay attention to that represents labor.

No matter who's walking down that plaza they'll be able to walk right up to that statue, right on that plaza at Hart Plaza, our community space.

- What are you most looking forward to when you make your way here to the city?

- It's the unveiling and the humble opportunity to honor somebody of the magnitude of Dr. King and his purposes for just bringing the Constitution to fruition.

He had a mission to say, well, don't just say that.

Don't just change the laws, enforced it.

And so, and he was a great man and he knew the spirit, I believe, of our country.

Once everything was on exposed on television, the marches, that the spirit wouldn't allow our country couldn't allow ourselves to say something and then not back it.

And I think he said we were given a check that bounced, is how he described it.

- Yeah, he did describe that in the beginning stanzas of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech with the March on Washington.

He said that the check has been returned as insufficient funds.

- There you, yes, exactly.

I'm looking forward, humbly, to be in this event and to know that my talents were used for a good purpose and that people will be able to, 500 years later, they'll still know that this wonderful man had a dream and that we all are actually just from the same family.

- [Will] The sculpture of Dr. King will be unveiled on Friday, June 23rd at 10:00 AM.

Look for live reports from Hart Plaza on One Detroit social media pages and watch for our coverage of the Commemorative Freedom Walk on Saturday, June 24th.

Turning now to this year's Juneteenth celebrations.

Here in metro Detroit there were several events in recognition of the country's newest federal holiday.

One Detroit's Bill Kubota has the story of how students, teachers and administrators at Northwestern High School chose to commemorate the day that marked the end of slavery in the United States.

(gentle music) (people speaking faintly) - [Alex] I learned about Juneteenth when I was 19 and I was in undergrad then.

- Who?

- You heard me.

- I didn't hear you.

- When I come get the fourth hour people I want you to be there.

- Alex Nichols works at Detroit's Northwestern High School.

She's an organizer with Detroit's Juneteenth Parade.

It's new this year.

- Fill them in and learn the.

I knew it was something I wanted to keep celebrating but I moved around a lot.

But I didn't really seek any activities out until, hey guys, President Biden made the move soon as he got in office to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.

So it piqued my interest once it became a federal holiday.

Thank you so much for being here this morning.

We couldn't do it without you.

- We are celebrating what our ancestors have achieved, the equity, the sweat, the sacrifices that they made for us to be here, but also understanding that there are still disparities that exist today.

(upbeat drum music) - [Bill] Detroit loves a parade.

Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day, traditions.

Perhaps now it's time to include Juneteenth.

- I just knew parades coming up in my life and this was something I thought I may endeavor to recreate because of how much joy it brought me in my youth.

And knowing that the community comes out to support.

Juneteenth is an example of that.

Why not have a parade for Juneteenth?

(upbeat band music) - Juneteenth is about unifying the community and I think that's the best way we can say it.

- It's an important holiday to remember an important time in history on how slaves were freed.

- But today we've got Juneteenth and so we're celebrating the fact that we had the option to collectively celebrate on June 19th each year.

And the first Juneteenth celebrations have been going on since the late 1800s.

- [Bill] The Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, January, 1863, meant freedom for most slaves, but not some in Texas.

Not until June 19th, 1865.

That's Juneteenth.

- A lot of people, even though they told them that they were free, a lot of people were scared because they thought they were gonna get hung.

So it made them stay on their plantations even though that they were free.

- So they kept them for two and a half years?

- Kept them enslaved, in bondage for two and a half years.

- Like it was just ridiculous of what they did.

Like why would you do that?

- [Alex] Oh, you guys, maybe 13, maybe 14.

This is recent history for you.

So all of this stuff, like, this don't apply to me.

It applies to you.

- [Bill] President Biden's holiday making signature.

History, something so many of us didn't know.

History, some worry may be skipped over, forgotten in some schools.

- Fill in the blank answers which you guys know so well, okay?

It's much more important now that we're having this.

This is something that we need to carry on and they need to be educated so that they could take this mantle and move forward with when the time comes.

May not be right here, but it'll be wherever they are.

All hands should be up.

All hands.

If you're in this room, you're getting your training hours today.

(Alex speaking faintly) - [Bill] These students in Juneteenth training to be ambassadors to spread the word about the holiday.

- They learn about history and also they learn about being in the community, giving back to the community, volunteering.

- [Bill] Juneteenth for them, a paid position of sorts.

Southwest Solutions runs the program providing guidance as they enter the workplace.

- Wanna be a truck driver.

Anything you wanna do, we are here to help with that career.

- What do we want?

- [Group] Freedom.

- When do we want it?

- [Group] Now!

- [Bill] The parade east down West Grand Boulevard then north on Rosa Parks.

About a mile.

Northwestern and Central High School representatives walking together commemorating a summer holiday.

There's food and fun.

But for students, the mission is to make this day different.

- It's becoming more than just a cookout.

It's more than just sit around and laugh and joke.

It's an opportunity to begin a conversation so people can learn about themselves and the people that built this country.

- In my journey in learning about Juneteenth, I learned that Buffalo, a city of New York has, they're going on there like 40th year of a Juneteenth celebration.

So I started reading about why they do it and why it's continued to be such a strong program.

It's because of the programming that they offer.

- [Bill] In Buffalo, Juneteenth is really big.

Mayor Byron Brown and New York Governor Kathy Hochul in their parade.

Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Galveston, Texas, Juneteenth program's big there too.

- [Group] We are, we are!

- [Bill] Detroit's parade planners are thinking ahead.

- [Group] We are, we are!

- Next year I wanna talk about the CROWN Act and how African-Americans have been discriminated against for wearing their natural hair to work.

And this is a part of Juneteenth.

It's about a part of the Juneteenth training.

- [Bill] The CROWN Act, more recent history, signed into law this month by Michigan's governor.

- That you could be accepted as you are for who you are and enjoying the same freedoms as all folks.

(upbeat band music) - Thanks to Juneteenth, maybe this is an opportunity to begin for these students to not only just watch TikTok for the fun stuff but also begin to pay attention to things that will affect them in the future.

And so hopefully they'll be prepared.

And I'm going to use it, and I have been using it as an opportunity to guide our students to look within so they can determine who they actually are which takes a lot of work.

And you can do it in a celebratory way.

It can be done, but just the cookout isn't enough.

- Thank you for the red, the black and the green.

Did I mention we are free?

Free to change your mind.

Free to go most anywhere, anytime.

You are free to break the chains.

I'm not sure you understand.

The war is over.

(crowd applauding) Happy Juneteenth.

I love y'all.

Thank you so much.

- [Will] The city of Detroit is planning on spending all of its $827 million in federal pandemic recovery funds by 2025.

That's a year ahead of the US treasury's deadline to have the money fully spent.

I caught up with BridgeDetroit reporter, Malachi Barrett, to get the latest on how the city is using the money and the impact it will have on the lives of Detroiters.

(gentle music) - Bring us up to date.

What is this money?

Where did it come from?

Let's just start.

- Really, the ARPA funds, the American Rescue Plan Act, is dedicated for pandemic relief.

So, Detroit got $827 million from the federal government to address COVID impacts.

Pretty much everything that this funding is going to has to have some kind of tie to the pandemic.

Cities have been pretty, they've been pretty creative with how they've been able to spend the money.

Detroit has to spend all of its ARPA funding by the end of 2026.

Otherwise anything that's left over could be taken back by the feds.

So that puts us on kind of a tighter timeline to spend this money.

You know, much of 2022 was spent planning, trying to find out what the community's priorities were, what the Mayor administration's priorities were for spending this money.

There were different.

Now we've started to see in 2023 a more rapid ramp up of that spending.

A lot of the money that's been spent so far has gone toward demolitions, blight removal.

A lot of the funding has gone toward different police initiatives and kind of public safety programs.

There's been money put toward housing repairs and different programs to stabilize neighborhoods.

What's interesting is in this last month we learned that Detroit plans to spend all of its funding by summer 2025, which is ahead of that 2026 deadline.

The Detroit is saying that it's gonna spend its money faster than required.

- Where's this money gonna go?

- Yeah, so the city spent 95 million out of 827 million.

So that's about 12% of the money that's been spent so far.

Another 42% of the spending has been obligated in specific contracts that haven't yet been approved.

So that money has been essentially set aside.

So you put that together, that's about half of the funding has already been kind of dedicated for something specific and that leaves a little under half of the funding still available for the next two years.

But that doesn't mean that the city doesn't have a plan for how to spend that.

There's actually, you know, the vast majority of the funds have been dedicated for specific policies and programs.

Anybody can go on the city's website.

There's actually a breakdown of this online.

The different kind of spending categories between neighborhood improvements, safety, intergenerational poverty, these kinds of programs.

I think what we're gonna see before the end of the year, they're looking to spend about 97 more million dollars.

So basically like everything that we spent so far, they plan to match that spending before the summer recess which begins at the end of July.

- Oh wow.

- So that's, you know, just in a month basically.

And then another 148 million in contracts are expected to get approved by the winter recess in November.

The goal is by the end of this year to have 75% of the ARPA funding obligated, leaving only about a quarter of it to be approved in 2024.

And then that money would get spent through 2025.

And some of the programs that you can expect this to go toward, sidewalk repairs are a major one that's moving forward right now.

There are more police programs that are moving forward.

ShotStoppers was this new initiative that was announced.

Six different local community organizations are getting $10 million in funding between them to work on gun violence initiatives.

So that's a major source of funding.

A lot of this is going toward demolitions, eliminating the commercial blight that we've seen as well as now, the mayor's office is going after private property owners as well.

So, we're gonna continue to kind of see that.

- How's that going to hit the average Detroiter?

- So, you know, there's an ARPA program that's planting trees in neighborhoods, right?

So that's something that you could see a direct impact of.

There's an ARPA program that is doing alleyway cleanup.

There's an ARPA program for turning parks into art spaces, right?

So these are kind of like some basic quality of life improvements that you could see out of the funding.

You know, there's funding that's going toward major job training programs that are helping connect out of work Detroiters to the workforce for the first time as well as getting people, allowing people to transition into different careers, right?

So that's an impact.

- Is there anything in particular that you are going to be keeping your eye on as all of this unfolds as these projects start, as these programs get started?

What are you going to stay focused on?

- The community violence intervention programs that the city has funded.

Really the first time Detroit has invested like this in community based solutions to gun violence.

This isn't like a police program.

This is a program run by nonprofits throughout the city.

And there's gonna be a lot of study on how successful that's been and if it can be replicated.

I think another one is the parks improvements.

I didn't mention the Joe Louis Greenway which is another major source of funding through these ARPA dollars.

And that's supposed to create all kinds of side effects along the line.

It's supposed to better connect neighborhoods as well as like spur development along the route.

I think the workforce training programs are another big one.

I think it's $100 million is being put toward Detroit at Work and these adult literacy programs and these things that are supposed to improve the workforce.

Those are the major ones that I'm kind of paying attention to.

- [Will] The first weekend of summer is almost here and there's plenty to do around town to welcome this season.

Dave Wagner and Cecelia Sharpe of 90.9 WRCJ have some suggestions in today's One Detroit Weekend.

- Dave, it is officially summer.

- It is officially summer Cecelia and there are so many cultural and arts events in metro Detroit happening this season.

Like this favorite.

The Michigan Challenge Balloonfest held at Howell High School, June 23rd through the 25th.

It's amazing to see all of the hot air balloons floating through the air with their array of artistic designs.

- [Cecelia] Dave it's truly a vision seeing all of the colors flying with such majesty.

During those same three days the Detroit Symphony Orchestra will present the Black Panther in concert at Orchestra Hall.

You can relive the emotions garnered from the music during T'Challa becoming king to battling Killmonger and more.

- Oh, I love those movies and it's truly incredible how much the score brings to the cinema.

Do you have a favorite movie score?

- Dave, I like the music from the movie "Up."

- I like that too.

- [Cecelia] Yeah.

On Saturday the 24th at 10:00 AM people can be a part of a historic moment in Detroit as part of the Detroit NAACP's June Jubilee events.

The 60th commemorative Freedom Walk will take place.

60 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., along with 125,000 others, marched down Woodward in the fight for civil rights.

The walk starts at Woodward and Martin Luther King Boulevard and a rally at Hart Plaza will follow.

Also, we've got the famed Ford Fireworks.

Truly a some spectacular.

And make sure to check out all of the other fireworks shows happening around the states.

- [Dave] Very cool.

The Rocket Mortgage Classic is back at the Detroit Golf Club starting with practice rounds June 27th.

The tournament starts June 29th.

Wow, Detroit really does have incredible things happening for all tastes.

- And here are some more for our viewers to check out.

(upbeat music) - [Will] That will do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thanks for watching.

Head to the One Detroit website for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

(upbeat music) (crowd chanting) (upbeat band music) - [Group] No peace!

- No justice!

- No peace!

- No justice!

- No peace!

(upbeat band music) (people faintly chatting) (upbeat band music) - [Group] We are, we are, we are the chosen ones.

We are, we are, we are the chosen ones.

(parade goers cheerfully laughing) - [Announcer 2] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support for this program is provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV - [Announcer 3] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit DTEFoundation.com to learn more.

- [Announcer 4] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) (gentle music)