Collections by Michelle Brown WSG Revisiting the Ruth Ellis Center

Earlier this year we introduced you to Jerry Peterson, Executive Director of the Ruth Ellis Center located in Highland Park MI.

The Center is named after Ruth Ellis,  an African-American woman who became widely known as the oldest surviving open lesbian, and LGBTQ rights activist at the age of 100 who died in 2005. The Center is a youth social services agency with a mission to provide short-term and long-term residential safe space and support services for LGBTQ youth in Detroit and Southeastern Michigan. Since incorporating in 1999, the Center has offered core services including Its residential housing program, the 2nd Stories Drop-in Center and Family Group Decision Making. Most recently it added integrated behavioral and primary healthcare services, allowing the Center to take a critical step forward to meet the ever-changing needs of the young people they serve.

More than a space and programs, The Ruth Ellis Center is people, a community that includes not only staff but the youth it serves.

Joining Collections by Michelle Brown are Amara one of the young people who has been coming to the Center for five years. She participates in many of the 2nd Story programs and is finding her voice as a youth advocate. From the staff side joining us is Pamela E. Alexander the Deputy Director of Programs at the Center. Alexander has been active in the LGBTQ community for many years before joining the staff at the Ruth Ellis Center.

They share a conversation about their experience with the Center and how their lives intersect.