The Hustle

hustle logo

Thank you to our sponsors!  The Hustle was made possible by the Gilbert Family Foundation, Toyota Motor North America, AAA-The Auto Club Group, Bank of America, PNC Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and Dykema.

Media sponsors: Michigan Chronicle and The LEE Group.

As of the 2012 census, there were more than 60,000 small businesses in Detroit and nearly 49,000 of them were Black-owned. These businesses and the people who run them are often anchors in their communities: providing neighbors with opportunities for employment, recreation, support and socializing; as well as access to quality goods and services and skilled care. Yet these cornerstones of Detroit’s community had never been highlighted in our museums. DHS launched The Hustle in 2022 to celebrate Detroit’s unsung entrepreneurs with a series of exhibitions, public programs and events.

Since then:
•    Nearly 800 crowd-sourced nominations submitted
•    34 Entrepreneurs were featured in a Detroit Historical Museum exhibit
•    More than 60,000 people have seen the exhibits
•    The project has garnered over 357,000 Media Impressions
•    2,468 people tuned in to 5 Virtual Programs
•    120 students participated in 4 Educational Sessions
•    925 entrepreneurs registered for the Hustle Resource Summit in November 2023

Still to come:

•    the Untold Detroit: Hustle podcast, April 2024
•    The Hustle virtual exhibit, April 2024

 

The following entrepreneurs were nominated by their communities and selected by a Community Advisory Committee who worked from an established rubric to choose honorees who truly represented Detroit Hustle. They were featured in exhibitions at the Detroit Historical Museum in 2022 and 2023.
 

Hustle Honorees:

Photo by Monica Morgan