Detroit is Different

  • Latest episode: “We Have Been Locked Away From Our History, Olayami Dabls Journey”
  • Latest episode: “Black Stories on the Big Screen: Inside the Detroit Black Film Festival with Marshalle Favors”
  • Latest episode: “Taste of Black Spirits is Building Black Ownership From the Bottle to the Shelf”

  • Latest episode: “We Have Been Locked Away From Our History, Olayami Dabls Journey”
  • Latest episode: “Black Stories on the Big Screen: Inside the Detroit Black Film Festival with Marshalle Favors”
  • Latest episode: “Taste of Black Spirits is Building Black Ownership From the Bottle to the Shelf”

“You carry this brilliance in you—this is something that’s in your DNA.” In this moving Detroit is Different conversation, Tiara Jones, owner of Black Beautiful & Brilliant, shares how love, grief, family, and purpose shaped her decision to continue the brand created by her late husband. Tiara traces her roots from Inkster to Alabama, connecting her family’s Great Migration story and the trauma of racial violence to the strength that generations carried into Metro Detroit. She reflects on meeting her husband during the COVID era, building a life together, and choosing to preserve his vision after his passing: “I’m going to pick this brand back up, because it can be bigger than what he envisioned.” More than clothing or a slogan, Black Beautiful & Brilliant becomes a lesson for their son and daughter about “what love looks like,” commitment, loyalty, and cultural pride. Tiara also speaks honestly about grief, finding her voice, supporting Black women, and reminding the community that brilliance is not something granted from outside—it already lives within us. This episode connects the past to the future by showing how ancestral survival, neighborhood memory, Black enterprise, and family legacy can become tools for healing, ownership, and collective possibility.