Thank you to everyone who joined us at the @howardfamilybookstore for the Divining Freedom Book Launch ❤️📚
It was a powerful evening rooted in storytelling, reflection, and community.
We had discussion surrounding the creation of Divining Freedom, from our own Donna Givens Davidson. This multigenerational story explores the legacy of the Great Migration, the building of Black institutions, and the women who carried communities forward when systems failed them.
We also had the opportunity to sit down with bookstore owner and author @jerjuan.howard to talk about his writing journey, and what it means to create and share Black literature within Black-owned spaces.
The conversation reminded us that storytelling is not only an art form, but a way of preserving memory, challenging systems, and imagining new possibilities for our communities 💚.
#ECN
#DiviningFreedom
#HowardFamilyBookstore
#BlackLiterature
#Community
Imagining Freer Futures✨
Experience the livestream replay of a compelling book talk at the Charles H. Wright Museum.
Hosted by Orlando P. Bailey and Donna Givens Davidson, in conversation with two exceptional Detroit authors—Aaron Robertson, author of The Black Utopians, and Michelle Adams, Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and author of The Containment.
Both of these historical works uncover lesser-known Detroit history. The Black Utopians reflects on Black communities formed after the Civil War—including the Shrine of the Black Madonna as an urban expression of that vision—while The Containment examines the racial conflict and legal fight over school desegregation in Metro Detroit.
Together, they explored how history, place, segregation, and freedom shape the futures we imagine.
Link in bio for Livestream replay!
#Detroit
#BookTalk
#Events
#charleshwrightmuseum
#BlackLiterature
New @authenticallydetroit episode! Pathways Out of Poverty with Veronika Scott and Cheryl P. Johnson 🎧
In this episode, Donna and Sam welcomed Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Empowerment Plan, Veronika Scott, plus Chief Executive Officer of COTS Detroit, Cheryl P. Johnson, to discuss their 16-year partnership - centering a shared mission of providing emergency help for people experiencing homelessness and providing pathways out of generational poverty.
The Coalition On Temporary Shelter’s (COTS) dedication to the needs of homeless men, women, and children grew out of a meeting in 1981 between a group of church leaders and human service providers in downtown Detroit. Officially formed in 1982, they have a mission to address Detroit’s homelessness crisis by providing shelter and essential services that help participants achieve self-sufficiency.
On March 17th, Empowerment Plan - a Detroit-based, workforce development organization that produces sleeping bag coats for people experiencing homelessness - distributed its milestone 100,000th coat to COTS Detroit, its longest-running partner.
Started by Veronika Scott in 2015, The Empowerment Plan creates significant economic impact by serving as a stepping stone out of poverty into a state of stability. The core of their work stems from an intensive 2-year employment model focused on providing job readiness training and support services to their workforce.
Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts! 🎧
Imagining Freer Futures✨
Experience a compelling book talk at the Charles H. Wright Museum.
Hosted by Orlando P. Bailey and Donna Givens Davidson, in conversation with two exceptional Detroit authors—Aaron Robertson, author of The Black Utopians, and Michelle Adams, Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and author of The Containment.
Both of these historical works uncover lesser-known Detroit history. The Black Utopians reflects on Black communities formed after the Civil War—including the Shrine of the Black Madonna as an urban expression of that vision—while The Containment examines the racial conflict and legal fight over school desegregation in Metro Detroit.
Together, they explore how history, place, segregation, and freedom shape the futures we imagine.
📅 May 6, 2026 | 6–7:30 PM
📍Charles H. Wright Museum of African
American History
RSVP Today: https://bit.ly/blk-utopias
Link in bio for Livestream!
#Detroit
#BookTalk
#Events
#charleshwrightmuseum
#BlackLiterature
New @authenticallydetroit episode! Pathways Out of Poverty with Veronika Scott and Cheryl P. Johnson 🎧
In this episode, Donna and Sam welcomed Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Empowerment Plan, Veronika Scott, plus Chief Executive Officer of COTS Detroit, Cheryl P. Johnson, to discuss their 16-year partnership - centering a shared mission of providing emergency help for people experiencing homelessness and providing pathways out of generational poverty.
The Coalition On Temporary Shelter’s (COTS) dedication to the needs of homeless men, women, and children grew out of a meeting in 1981 between a group of church leaders and human service providers in downtown Detroit. Officially formed in 1982, they have a mission to address Detroit’s homelessness crisis by providing shelter and essential services that help participants achieve self-sufficiency.
On March 17th, Empowerment Plan - a Detroit-based, workforce development organization that produces sleeping bag coats for people experiencing homelessness - distributed its milestone 100,000th coat to COTS Detroit, its longest-running partner.
Started by Veronika Scott in 2015, The Empowerment Plan creates significant economic impact by serving as a stepping stone out of poverty into a state of stability. The core of their work stems from an intensive 2-year employment model focused on providing job readiness training and support services to their workforce.
Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts! 🎧
In this week’s episode, Donna and Sam introduce the latest segment on @authenticallydetroit , What’s Happening at ECN featuring Outreach Manager for the Housing & Economic Department at Eastside Community Network, Kevin Ashwood.
Kevin leads resident engagement, community outreach, and program education efforts centered on housing stability, wealth building, and neighborhood empowerment across Detroit’s Eastside.
They also introduce the latest addition to the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network, 482Forward Education Organizer, Arlyssa Heard.
Arlyssa is taking 482Forward’s mission and turning it into a podcast! Have You Heard? Is a podcast dedicated to addressing school reform from all angles. Whether it be students, teachers, parents, or administrators - Arlyssa wants to talk to them all and get to the bottom of one question - how can we produce better outcomes for our students?
Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts! 🎧
What do you think it takes to be free? @amplifyoutside episode 1, @cityofdetroit_sustainability director Tepfirah Rushdan speaks on moving from radical theory to radical praxis. Be sure to subscribe to Amplify Outside podcast on YouTube, Spotify, and all other listening platforms. Links in the bio.
Donna Givens Davidson — CEO of @ecn_detroit , co-host of the @authenticallydetroit podcast, and one of Detroit’s most trusted community voices — releases her debut novel, Divining Freedom, on May 11, 2026, published through Authentically Detroit Press, an ECN initiative. The launch reading will be held at Howard Family Bookstore, a new Black-owned Detroit bookstore founded by Jerjuan Howard, Director of Youth Affairs for the administration of Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield. Howard Family Bookstore opens its doors on April 25, 2026 — with Davidson’s Mother’s Day reading among its first author events.
Spanning 1898 to 2026, Divining Freedom follows Black families across five generations — from the red clay roads of the Jim Crow South to Black Bottom, through the rise of Detroit’s civil rights movement, the deindustrialization that hollowed the city, and the reckoning that follows. At its center is Rose Dunbar, a woman who must unlearn the silence inherited from the women before her in order to finally speak — and own — her truth.
The novel weaves together themes of liberation theology, generational trauma, displacement, faith, and the underground economies that have always sustained Black communities when formal institutions failed them. Davidson draws on the theological framework of Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited and on her own family’s Detroit history — making Divining Freedom both an intimate family portrait and a sweeping chronicle of a city and its people.
The book’s cover is an original oil painting by Davidson’s husband, Kevin Laman Davidson, Director of Design and Fabrication at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History — whose exhibit designs have shaped that institution for more than four decades. The collaboration places Divining Freedom in a tradition of Detroit-made art rooted in family, legacy, and community accountability.
Launch Event · May 11, 2026 · Howard Family Bookstore · Detroit, MI
Registration link:
/ev/reg/6109a5dd-6991-4915-b8dc-adf611248b56
The Authentically Detroit Podcast Network Presents... @amplifyoutside !
Welcome to the Amplify Outside podcast, a show with a mission of amplifying nuanced approaches to Intersectional Environmentalism centered in no other than Detroit, Michigan.
For our first episode we meet host Ian John Solomon and speak with the City of Detroit’s Director of Sustainability Tepfirah Rushdan about what makes Detroit green.
Follow along on Socials @AmplifyOutside !
#BlackPodcasts #DetroitPodcasts #DetroitHistory #DetroitCulture #DetroitNews
We’re Live!!! 🎉🥳 Episode 1 of Amplify Outside podcast is out now! You’ll meet the host, Ian John Solomon (@ian.outside ) and hear @cityofdetroit director of Sustainability Tepfirah Rushdan tell her story of sustainability in Detroit and why the D is the place to be for environmentalism! ✊🏾🌲
Launching tomorrow EARTH DAY 2026: AMPLIFY OUTSIDE — THE PODCAST! 🎉🌲
Hosted by @ian.outside on @authenticallydetroit network, Amplify Outside presents nuanced stories of intersectional environmentalism & centers DETROIT as the best place possible to do so. Our first episode we speak with local legend & @cityofdetroit Director of Sustainability Tepfirah Rushdan (@t._fyah ) to talk about what makes Detroit THE place to be for all things Black & Green ✊🏾🌳.
We are so excited to Amplify some much needed conversations, centering a city & people who have often been left out of environmental narratives. Comment “WE OUTSIDE” if you’re planning to listen in 🗣️
Be sure to follow & subscribe to our YouTube channel Amplify Outside (link in the bio).
