When Detroit burned during the summer of’ 67, Eleanor Josaitis didn’t run.

She leaned into the smoke, the grief, the racial wounds that the city kept trying to bandage over without ever truly healing.

She wasn’t a politician.

She was a suburban mom who decided that moral outrage wasn’t enough.

The only acceptable move was action.

Eleanor Josaitis was raising five children in Inkster in the early 1960s, a time when she was struggling to make sense of a world that seemed to be slowly unraveling at the seams.

Segregation. Injustice. Vietnam. Watts. Detroit.

Eleanor wasn’t content to simply watch it all unfold on the news.

In 1968, she joined forces with the infamous Father William T. Cunningham, a charismatic priest as well as a visionary orator.

Cunningham helped Josaitis found Focus: HOPE, an organization that started as a food program and quickly evolved into a national model for anti-racism, workforce training, and community rebuilding.

Together, Josaitis and Cunningham believed that access to opportunity should be determined by intelligence and character, not by race.

They then went on to build factories. Computer labs. Training centers. As well as making sure that single mothers, low-income citizens, and young Black men had paths to jobs and dignity.

That said, the hard backend work was all handled by Josaitis.

The grants.

The unglamorous day to day grind.

She managed it all like a well-oiled machine.

Following Father Cunningham’s passing in 1997, Eleanore took over as the public face of Focus: HOPE, though she had always been its spine.

Her Catholic faith was more than a decoration.

It was the main reason behind her fire.

She faced down the governors, pressed CEOs, sat with grief-stricken mothers, and strolled crumbling sidewalks that public funds never made it to, all while out negotiating any senator in the state with her hair in a bundant and a rosary in hand.

Through Focus: HOPE, Josaitis helped feed tens of thousands of people, educate thousands more, and plant the seeds for what Detroit’s comeback could look like – not from company boardrooms, but from local neighborhoods.

She constructed an alternative to the system.

A multiracial, multi-faith, multi-class coalition that worked not because it was idealistic, but because it was necessary.

Eleanor Josaitis was not a martyr.

She was a proud community servant.

Not for pity. Not for politics.

She simply refused to abandon the city she loved.

She showed up for Detroit until the day she took her final breath, not because she thought she could fix everything, but because she understood the price to be paid if she didn’t at least try.

In short, Eleanor Josaitis was the heartbeat behind a city marked by its battle cries and survival anthems.

A builder of hope – one step at a time.

Victoria Jackson (Editor In Chief)

Victoria Jackson is a lifelong student and sharp-eyed documentarian of all things Detroit, from its rich musical roots and cultural icons to its shifting neighborhoods, storied architecture, and underground legends. With her finger firmly on the pulse of both the city’s vibrant past and its rapidly unfolding future, she brings a deeply personal, historically grounded lens to every piece she writes.

Published on: August 18, 2025