My name is Jerry Hebron and I am a community activist. When we came as a family to Detroit we moved into an area called the Black Bottom, which is where most African Americans lived. As a child I had everything… Mumps, Measles, Chicken Pox, Hooping Cough, Bronchitis, Scarlet Fever I had everything. I was about 9, 10 at the point that I started to heal, I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do. When it came to seeing things and going places I was very adventurous.
 
There was a lot going on with civil unrest, so you had the Black Power movement, you had President Kennedy was killed, we would see what was happening in the South in terms of the marches and how the Blacks were being treated and I couldn’t understand how this could be happening in the South but in the North, where I lived it wasn’t happening, so what is the problem here? What is really going on here? I could walk around and see Black people who were the pimps and the prostitutes then you had the gamblers and you had the Panthers, the Big Four – the Big Four was the police that would drive up and antagonize Black people, harass them for no reason. But people would talk and people would tell you about the unjust and the things that were being done that were not right. I became very conscious of what I though was just and what I thought was not-just. 

In the work that we do here and the future planning that we are involved in I had to stop and ask myself who are these plans for. They’re not really for me, but they are for the young people. Its not just about growing food, we cultivate people, food and community.