Hastings Street Blues will explore the vitality and complexity of Detroit’s mid-20th Century African American life, its pre-Motown musical legacy, and the city’s transformation amidst unprecedented migration, racial turmoil, urban renewal, civil rights progress, and urban unrest. The story is framed around that of Macon, Georgia native Joe Von Battle who, in 1945, established a record shop on Detroit’s Hastings Street—the heart of business and commerce for Detroit’s burgeoning African American community. Through first person stories, literary expressions of the time, contemporary landscapes juxtaposed with historical images, and an electrifying blues narrative, the film contrasts the aspirations, social action and protests of a people with the gradual dismantling of their physical environment, and a community’s ultimate displacement as a result of urban renewal.

Hastings Street Blues will portray the life of a city beyond sensationalized headlines and illuminate the cultural, physical and spiritual significance of Black spaces as portals for innovation, creativity, excellence and self-empowerment. The film will provide a significant artistic record; an engaging story that invites Detroiters from all walks of life, and people across the nation and the globe, to visit a vital aspect of the city’s past and to work toward creating an equitable, inclusive future.