Motown blues by Christian Burkert (38 images)

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"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
President Barack Obama, inaugural address, 20th January 2009.

There is perhaps nowhere in America more in need of renewal than Detroit. A town that became famous for cars and music is now blighted by poverty and urban decay. Motown Records, the label that transformed the sound and the face of popular music, has long since abandoned the city that gave it its name.

In the first half of the last century Detroit was a boom town. After Henry Ford built the first car production line there in 1913, it became the centre of the global automobile industry. Ford, General Motors, Chrysler and a host of other contenders now long defunct made Detroit a wealthy and prestigious town. Detroit put the country, and much of the world, on wheels.

The tide began to turn with the recession of 1958. Following the devastating riots of 1967, racial tensions and fear of crime spurred the 'white flight', as thousands of white middle-class families fled the city centre for the suburbs. By the end of the century, the population had halved. The slow strangulation of US automobile manufacturing by increased foreign competition combined with a failed model policy and high labour costs killed many of the jobs in the area, helping to make Detroit the country's poorest big city.

In early December of 2008, one of Detroit's largest churches played host to a rousing service. Several thousand congregants, many of them employed directly or indirectly by the auto industry, gathered at the city's Greater Grace Temple. Three hybrid SUVs, a Ford Escape, a Chevy Tahoe and a Chrysler Aspen, were parked at the altar. In front of these gleaming icons, the people offered up prayers for divine intervention.
Six months later, they were still waiting for an answer.
In June 2009, GM followed Chrysler in filing for bankruptcy protection. It was the biggest failure of an industrial company in US history.
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