I'M Going to Detroit

The hardscrabble town of Marianna, Ark. (pop. 6,200), near the Mississippi River, has no movie theater but plenty of boarded-up storefronts. Summer work for teenagers can mean wrenching labor in the rice and soybean fields. Young black men know that if they want something better, they have to go elsewhere.

Enter the four Chambers brothers -- Larry, Billy Joe, Willie Lee and Otis -- who blew into their old hometown driving gleaming BMWs and Camaros, sporting gold chains and fancy clothes. When they offered ambitious young men $2,000 a month to return with them to Detroit, they had no shortage of...