In a short amount of time, members of the Flint City Wranglerz have made a lasting impression on the community through their participation in a wide range of community events, including backpack giveaways and back-to-school rallies, trunk or treats, Juneteenth and Back to the Bricks festivities, and more.
The group is a collection of Flint area-based owners of Jeep Wranglers, united in their love for the iconic vehicle as well as a desire to make a positive impact in the community. Latoyia Terry, the group’s founder, said there is just something magical and fun about the vehicle for kids.
“Driving it, I feel like it’s my Transformer,” Terry said. “We went to the first day of school last year at Doyle Ryder, and the kids were telling their moms, ‘We know them!’ because they’d seen us at other events. It makes you feel a little bit like you’re famous at times. You’re really just driving a car, but it just brings so much joy, and so many people have come up to me and said, ‘I just bought a Jeep because of y’all.’”
Terry is a Flint native and resident, but works in Detroit. That’s where she first saw clubs organized around Jeep Wrangler ownership that were also focused on inclusiveness. She bought her Wrangler in 2023 and met a Detroit club specifically for Black women who owned the vehicle. She was inspired by their grassroots community work in Detroit and wanted to bring that to her city.
“Working in Detroit is when I learned that Jeep clubs were a thing,” Terry said. “And so I hung out with them for a bit, and they were doing a lot of community service, feeding the homeless, giving out backpacks. They were just doing so many things in Detroit, and I was participating there, but I said, ‘We need this in Flint.’ I live in Flint, and I want to start a club in Flint. I just took a leap and built it. I always joke and say I built it brick by brick. I met like one person at a time, and it just grew legs and it’s been an established club since 2024.”
Since its establishment, the Flint City Wranglerz have grown to more than 30 members. Jeep Wranglers have famously inspired the formation of clubs and groups to celebrate the vehicle, which has historic roots as a military vehicle during World War II before it began being manufactured for consumers. Those clubs, however, have not always been welcoming to all members, and inclusiveness is a primary goal of the Flint City Wranglerz.
“We are a predominantly African American club, although we have a few members that are not African American, and our club is inclusive and open to every single person,” Terry said. “There is a humongous Jeep culture across the United States of America. But some of that is space that has not been for people that look like me and a lot of the people in my club, those have not always been welcoming spaces for us. There’s beginning to be a growing number of melanated people putting together organizations and clubs. And so for us, it’s a safe space and a community of like-minded people that look like us who also love to Jeep. That’s why I thought it was important for me to create the Flint City Wranglerz, for us to give back to the people who look like us in the communities that we grew up in. I wanted people to know that Flint has a Jeep community that matters and is trying to create change in the city as well.”
One way the Flint City Wranglerz are using their visibility to create change is by bringing a national Stop the Violence ride to Flint on Sunday, July 19. The ride was started by a Detroit Jeep Wrangler fan, Monica Murray, after her granddaughter was shot and killed in 2024. Terry said some of the members of Flint’s club participated in the ride in Detroit last year to show support, but wanted to bring it to Flint this year, especially after several young people have died in gun violence in the city over the past year.
“Every time the summer gets here, we pray and we hope nobody gets hurt, we hope nobody gets murdered, but it continues to happen in the city of Flint every summer,” Terry said. “And for Jeep people, the summer is our season. We take our doors off, we take our tops off, and we ride. The community is so happy to see us all the time, and we bring so much joy. But we want this violence to stop in the city. We are calling for every person, every Jeep, every Corvette club, every motorcycle, anybody with a vehicle, we’re asking to ride with us on that day and show our solidarity. We wanna stop the violence in Flint. The time to come together is now. We just cannot keep seeing people getting killed and murdered in the city. We want over 100 cars riding down on the route with us, just doing something to say, ‘We want to stop the violence in the city,’ and we wanna lead the way on that.”
The group will meet in the old KMart parking lot at 6105 Saginaw Street in Mt. Morris at 2 p.m. Vehicles will leave at 4 p.m. and follow a route that goes from Coldwater Road to Detroit Street, to Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, and eventually through downtown Flint ending at the University of Michigan Flint parking lot at the corner of Saginaw Street and 5th Avenue. The arrival time at the UM-Flint lot is estimated to be between 5 and 5:30 p.m. People riding or attending are encouraged to wear orange as a sign of peace and to honor lives lost to violence in Flint and nationwide. There will be a ceremony at the end of the ride that includes a balloon release and speakers sharing stories of loved ones lost to violence. More information about the event is available on the flyer and information about the club is on the Flint City Wranglerz Facebook page.
“This is a call to action to the youth, this is a call to action to everybody, to make a choice,” Terry said. “Pulling the trigger or harming someone, whether it be any means of violence, is a choice. We’re asking them to make a choice to do something different. Flint is not what people believe it to be. I’ve lived in Ohio, I’ve lived in Chicago, and I came back home to Flint, and we can do something better if we decide to. We are calling out every single person to participate throughout the city and join us.”
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