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Ruth Bell’s story began when a retired schoolteacher taught her how to bake as a child. What started as a casual side business has grown into a full-time commitment to keep up with demand at Chugga’s Main Street Bakery, which she has owned and operated for more than 10 years.Customers line up early to grab Chugga’s homemade rolls and jalepeno c...

Let it be known that there is opportunity for the entrepreneurial spirit in Detroit. Black-owned IT firm IC Datacom recently secured a $50,000 small business loan from the First Step Fund. IC Datacom, which houses its office inside of Tech Town, Wayne State University’s business accelerator, is a full service IT company that markets and d...

Apparently, when Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Roy Roberts under Public Act 4, the state law that allows the governor to appoint emergency managers with nearly unlimited power to run struggling cities and school districts, he knew what he was doing.Roberts came before the Black Chamber of Commerce last month at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African...

Michael Burton learned the alphabet by repeating the letters stamped on the back of the automobiles he saw driving down street in his native Lansing, Michigan. “B-U-I-C-K” “F-O-R-D” “O-L-D-S-M-O-B-I-L-E” “C-H-E-V-R-O-L-E-T” Both his parents worked blue-collar jobs at Oldsmobile, his father in the forge....

Highland Park is currently undergoing its own Cinderella transformation. Benefitting from the Obama administration’s stimulus package, Highland Park is wrapping up construction on its Neighborhood Stabilization Program II. The $6 million housing development project is a partnership between the City of Highland Park, MSHDA and HUD. Bank Trivium P...

The proposed ATEC facility, located in Warren, Mich., adjacent to Macomb Community College (MCC), will involve the renovation of an existing structure on the 3.5-acre site at 14601 East 12 Mile Rd. The new ATEC facility will offer students in Macomb County the opportunity to attain four-year degrees in marketable academic...

The Defender has confirmed that First Lady Michelle Obama will attend the funeral service for slain teen Hadiya Pendleton. The 15-year-old was gunned down Jan. 29 at a park located one mile north of where the First Lady and the first family live in the Kenwood neighborhood on the South Side. Hadiya's father, Nathaniel...

During the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) and U.S. Census Bureau released new data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2007 Survey of Business Owners showing that the number of African American-owned firms in Detroit grew to more than 32,000. In the entire United Sta...

Life is a succession of fortunate circumstances. And when former Governor Jennifer Granholm issued an executive order, just before the 2006 campaign, calling for the creation of a “21st Century Energy Plan for Michigan” — the mission being to find alternative energy sources and greater energy efficiency — Louis E. James knew he had to...

Once rejected, now connected, Detroit is making a unique footprint on defining urban culture. With the announcement of the M-1 rail system, the city of Detroit is not only on the edge of becoming the business address of 25,000 new downtown residents, 200 new storefront businesses along Woodward Avenue and 20,000 new workers, but of...