Sandra J. McCoy’s family came to Detroit in the 1950s from southwest Georgia. Her paternal grandmother, Mattie Isabel, arrived first. She was a single mother. After she settled in Michigan, she sent for her two sons, one of whom was McCoy’s father, Rupert McCoy.

McCoy recalled her grandmother came to Detroit to complete her college education and graduated from Wayne State University with a teaching degree. She taught for a little while before branching out into other work. For a time, she was a bus driver for the City of Detroit. In the 1960s until 1979, she was a matron in one of the women’s jails.

When Isabel first arrived, she settled in what was then Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood. In the 1950s and 60s, the neighborhood was being demolished. She relocated to the North End on Beaubien Street, then bought her own home in Boston Edison in 1955, where she lived until she passed away at 102 years old. McCoy said there weren’t many Black women who owned homes in the Boston Edison area in 1955.

McCoy remembers her grandmother as being quiet and thoughtful, with a plan to build a secure foundation for her family. She admires her grandmother for her courage and for doing what it took back then to survive.

McCoy’s father worked for Chrysler, making her a second-generation auto worker. McCoy started working in the city on the assembly line for General Motors in 1973, moving up to a union position in international UAW. She retired from General Motors in 2016 as an international representative with the UAW. She credits Detroit’s auto industry for providing her and her family with opportunities for work and a chance at stability, allowing her children to pursue higher education. She currently lives in Farmington Hills, but Detroit is never far from her mind.

“Detroit will always be my home, whether I stay inside the city of outside the city,” said McCoy.

This story is part of our Destination Detroit series, which shares the rich history of the people who have shaped Southeast Michigan. Watch more stories at onedetroitpbs.org/destinationdetroit.