Saginaw, Michigan: Stevie Wonder Rock

Seems like Stevie Wonder uses his vision more often than sighted people. Stevie's 1973 "Innervisions" album is considered one of his best!

Stevland Hardaway Judkins was born in Saginaw in 1950. He later became famous as Little Stevie Wonder, and then just Stevie Wonder, but Saginaw seemed to ignore him. That didn't sit well with Lula Briggs-Galloway, a Saginaw County black history preservationist. She opened a Juneteenth Creative Cultural Center and Museum in 2003 and, two years later, in its parking lot, she unveiled the Stevie Wonder rock. The rock sits on a brick base and has a plaque that says that the parking lot was once the site of "The Big House" where Stevie "spent some of his early childhood years" (He was born in a hospital about three miles south). Despite its young age, however, the monument is falling apart. Lula Briggs-Galloway died in 2008, her Cultural Center is abandoned, and Saginaw again seems not to spend much time thinking about Stevie Wonder -- who hasn't visited his hometown since the 1980s.