About this episode
Our story begins not with sequins but with a housing project.
Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard both grew up in Detroit’s Brewster-Douglass projects, one of the first federally funded housing developments for Black families. Diana Ross, who grew up nearby, joined that same orbit.
Detroit in the 1950s and early 60s was a complex place:
Automobile money and factory work.
Northern promise and stubborn segregation.
Church choirs, street-corner harmonies, jazz clubs, rhythm & blues, gospel pouring out of radios.
Music wasn’t a luxury; it was a language.
The three girls—at first part of a broader group of friends—found each other through that language. They called themselves The Primettes, designed as the “girl group” counterpart to a rising male group called The Primes (who would evolve into The Temptations).
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