When Pastor Robert Sherman McCathern looks around Flint’s historic Civic Park neighborhood, he sees visions of both the past and the future.
Established in 1919, Civic Park is sometimes referred to locally as America’s first subdivision – although that isn’t exactly true. But it certainly was innovative at the time, as homes were rapidly assembled to serve and attract talent to the growing General Motors presence here. The nearly 1,000 home neighborhood was built around a school, park, community center, and commercial area, all easily walkable for residents.
As GM jobs left the city, Civic Park suffered, but a vision for how it could once again be a thriving neighborhood in Flint has remained.
“In 2019, we celebrated the centennial of Civic Park,” said McCathern, who is the pastor at Joy Tabernacle and the founder and executive director of the Urban Renaissance Center. “We made a commitment at that 100-year (mark) that we would be the pioneers of the next 100 years.”
Ubuntu is a Bantu African word that loosely means “humanity.” It is often translated into the phrase, “I am because we are,” a concept that has been adopted by many grassroots groups and organizations nationwide focused on the collective care and wellbeing of communities.
In Civic Park, the Ubuntu Village idea is focused on restoration, transforming a historically significant neighborhood into a space for collective care, economic opportunity, and neighborhood-driven leadership. The Urban Renaissance Center uses a quote by Nelson Mandela to describe the concept: “[Ubuntu is] the profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world it will be in equal measure due to the work and achievement of others.”
“We mapped out a geographical area (in Civic Park) and named it Ubuntu Village,” McCathern said. “We want to bring back that sense of neighborhood and to bring back, in many ways, a lot of what occurred initially when the neighborhood was built, when General Motors was here, and there was that influx of new people and excitement. It is very important that we’d be able to give that to kids and people who worked for General Motors and retired and have to look at abandoned houses and no sense of neighborhoods. I thought it was very important to see if we could re-establish that kind of (thriving) neighborhood here.”
So far, the village already includes several enhancements from recent years, including a pavilion to host concerts and events in the park, an urban health and wellness house, a community garden, a recording studio, a children’s learn and play house, and more. Urban Renaissance Center recently announced an exciting addition is coming: the organization acquired the former Dort Meat Market at the corner of DuPont and Dayton streets and is about to launch a fundraising campaign to transform it into the Ubuntu Building, which will become the permanent home for community-led healing, learning, and neighborhood revitalization efforts in Civic Park.
“I’m very excited about the project, it’s long overdue,” McCathern said, adding that between fundraising and construction, he’s hoping it will be done in two years. “This building carries deep history in this neighborhood, and we are honored to steward it into its next chapter.”
The Ubuntu Building will serve as a central hub for URC’s growing number of programs and services, which include workforce development, youth leadership, family support, wellness initiatives, cultural convenings, and partnerships. The building is ultimately planned to be a shared, welcoming space where relationships can be built and resources and knowledge shared.
“This building is just pivotal to moving that neighborhood ahead,” McCathern said. “But more than just the physical location, it’s also imperative that we really rebuild human dynamics and become human again, that sense of community. With everything that’s happening in the country and the world, (we need) human dignity, human respect for one another, civility, and accountability to one another. It’s kind of the focus of the building, community empowerment, engagement, wellness.”
The building will also serve as space to expand partnerships with the Institute of Ubuntu Thought and Practice and Michigan State University’s College of Arts & Letters. Those partnerships help bring cultural programming, knowledge sharing, and access to resources many in the area wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach.
“They (the partnerships) are essential and are making that area an international hub,” McCathern said. “We had over 100 students from Africa, we had the Mandela Washington Fellows there. This summer, about 26 or 27 of the top young leaders in Africa came and spent time with the young people in our community. The key point is being able to bring people into Flint as well as helping us.”
McCathern said that they have plans to include an “immersive igloo” in the building, a 360 degree cylindrical projector space that lets people visualize different environments.
“Basically, you walk into it and you can see as though you’re in Africa,” he said. “Part of our goal is for us to be able to speak to the world and the world to speak to Flint. So we’ve been working to create that international connection. You can’t be what you can’t see. And so often, young people are limited by lack of exposure to anything outside of Flint or outside of North Flint. So that building will give an eye to the world.”
It will also connect with another recently announced expansion project in Civic Park. The Urban Renaissance Center received a grant from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that will support the expansion of the Fruits of Our Labor Program, an urban agriculture and youth workforce program, and urban farm space within the Ubuntu Village area.
“(These projects) give a sense of respect for that part of Flint that has been abandoned for years,” McCathern said. “It brings life. It’s almost a renaissance. And we are Urban Renaissance Center, so that’s what we set out to create, a new birth in that area. There’s not many places in our community that we can say are like Civic Park. You can’t name a lot of Black neighborhoods that really have identical names and boundaries. So it’s to bring that sense of neighborhood back, bring that sense of accountability, of violence prevention, and teaching kids that there is a safe place here.”
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