Ann Arbor: A Woman's Town
This website is a collection of video clips from two documentaries, "Ann Arbor: A Woman's Town" and "A Change Was in the Air." Both documentaries were produced by Lola Jones and her daughter Carole Gibson. Jones and Gibson, through their interviews of African American women in Ann Arbor, MI, cover the first half of the 20th century and the turbulent Civil Rights Era, from the 1950s to 1975. Through the documentary clips, visitors meet 13 women who vividly recount the history of Ann Arbor, MI. In the video clips, the women discuss various topics including growing up in Ann Arbor in the late 50s and early 60s, the Black Action Movement (BAM) at the University of Michigan, family life, church life at Bethel AME Church, the tight-knit African American community, discrimination against African American soldiers, the changing African American population during WWII, and the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s and 1970s.
The interviews are searchable by subject and by individual woman. Rounding out this site is a QuickTime movie, a seven-minute "collage" history of several of the women's stories that allows viewers a unique perspective of the lives of African American women in Ann Arbor.
