1967 Detroit riot

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The Detroit 1967 race riot, also referred to as the Twelfth Street riot and the 1967 Detroit rebellion ^[1][2][3][4] was a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan that began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967. The precipitating event was a police raid of a blind pig on the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount on the city's near westside. Police confrontations with patrons and observers on the street evolved into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in U.S. history, lasting five days and surpassing the 1943 Detroit race riot. To help end the disturbance, the Michigan National Guard was ordered into Detroit by Governor George Romney and President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in United States Army troops. The result was forty-three dead, 467 injured, over 7,200 arrests and more than 2,000 buildings burned down. The scale of the riot was eclipsed only by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The riot was prominently featured in the news media, with live television coverage, extensive newspaper reporting, and an extensive cover story in Time magazine and Life on August 4, 1967. The Detroit Free Press won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage.

Contents 1 Social conditions 1.1 Policing 1.2 Employment 1.3 Housing and neighborhood segregation 1.4 Mistreatment by merchants 2 Chronology 2.1 Death toll 3 Aftermath: Riot or rebellion? 4 In popular culture 5 See also 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Social conditions

Detroit was regarded by many in the United States as a leader in liberal race relations during the early 1960s. The election of Mayor Jerome Cavanagh in 1961 brought reform to the police department led by new Detroit Police Commissioner George Edwards. Organized labor led by UAW President Walter Reuther planned major redevelopment for inner city slums. ^[5]. The New York Times editorialized Detroit had “more going for it then any other major city in the North.”^[6]

Detroit had a large and prosperous black middle class; higher then normal wages for unskilled black workers due to the auto industry; two black congressmen- half the total black representation in Congress; three black judges; two blacks served on the Board of Education; forty percent of the Housing Commission were African-American and twelve blacks were representing Detroit in the Michigan legislature.^[7] Nicholas Hood, the sole black member of the nine member Detroit Common Council praised the Cavanagh administration for its willingness to listen to concerns of the inner city. Several weeks prior to the riot, Mayor Cavanagh proudly stated that you did not “need to throw a brick to communicate with City Hall”. ^[8] Moreover, Detroit had acquired millions in federal funds through President Johnson’s Great Society programs and poured them almost exclusively into the inner city. The Washington Post claimed Detroit’s inner city schools were undergoing “the country’s leading and most forceful reforms in education”. Housing conditions were not viewed as worse then other Northern cities. In 1965, the American Institute of Architects gave Detroit an award for urban redevelopment. The city had mature black neighborhoods like Conant Gardens as Detroit had always absorbed new arrivals in areas founded around ethnicity. As Paul Wrobel states in Our Way: Family, Parish, and Neighborhood in a Polish-American Community ethnic communities like Poletown, Chaldeantown, Corktown, Mexicantown, and Greektown are ubiquitous in Detroit^[9]. African-Americans were no different and according to an aide to President Johnson, in May 1967, the federal administration ranked housing for blacks above that of Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago and Cleveland. Finally, the Department of Justice's Office of Law Enforcement Assistance designated Detroit as the “model for police-community relations”.^[10]. Fortune, Newsweek, Christian Science Monitor, Look, Harper’s, U.S. News and World Report, and The Wall Street Journal all published positive articles on the city; Mayor Jerome Cavanagh was so highly regarded nationally, he headed the Conference of Mayors and National League of Cities after earning 69% of the votes in his 1965 reelection campaign. Although Cavanagh alienated many when he ran a failed attempt to earn the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate in 1966, the city was proud of diverting a possible riot situation on Kercheval Street in 1966 and felt police were capable of defusing potential riot situations.

However, according to Violence in the Model City by University of Michigan’s Sidney Fine, African-Americans felt dissatisfaction with social conditions in Detroit before July 23rd, 1967. After the riot, the Kerner Commission reported that their survey of blacks in Detroit found that none were “happy” about conditions in the city prior to the event. The areas of discrimination identified by Fine were: policing, housing, employment, spatial segregation within the city, mistreatment by merchants, shortage of recreational facilities, lack of quality of public education, access to medical services, and “the way the war on poverty operated in Detroit”. ^[11]

[edit] Policing

The Detroit Police Department is administered directly by the Mayor according to the City of Detroit Charter. Prior to the rebellion, reforms were attempted by Mayor Cavanagh’s appointees, George Edwards and Ray Girardin. Police Commissioner George Edwards tried to recruit and promote blacks, but he refused to establish a civilian police review board, which angered African-Americans. Although, he actively worked to expose and discipline police officers guilty of brutality, ultimately he turned the rank and file officer against him and angered many whites in Detroit who saw him being too soft on crime.^[12] The Community Relations Division of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission undertook a study in 1965 of the Police and published its findings in 1968. It claimed the "police system" was at fault for racism. The police system was blamed for recruiting "bigots" and reinforcing bigotry through the department's "value system". Moreover, a survey conducted by President Johnson's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration found that prior to the riot, 45% of police working in black neighborhoods were "extremely anti-Negro" and an additional 34% were "prejudiced". ^[13].

By 1967, only 5% of the force was non-white.^[4][14]. Although there were many instances of police using unlawful physical force on civilians, police brutality included psychological harm to African-American's sense of security and safety. It was a common practice for police to talk down to blacks, using language of the Jim Crow South like "boy" to address males and "honey" and "baby" to address females. Groups of young men were also targets of unlawful street searches, and single women complained of being called "prostitutes" for simply walking on the street.^[15]. People who could not produce proper identification were often arrested. Several questionable shootings and beatings of blacks by officers were reported by the local press in the years before 1967.^[16] Yet African-Americans also complained that the police did not respond to their calls as quickly as white citizens'. There was a common opinion that the police profited from vice and crime taking place in black neighborhoods. Claims of corruption and connections to organized crime also weakened trust in the police. According to Sidney Fine, "the biggest complaint about vice in the ghetto was prostitution." Black leadership thought the cops did not do enough to curb white Johns from exploiting local females^[17]. In response to this issue, in the weeks leading up to the rebellion, Police had started a campaign to aggressively curb prostitution along Twelfth Street. On July 1, a prostitute was killed and rumor spread the police had shot her. The police claimed she was murdered by local pimps.^[18]. Detroit police used Big 4 or Tac Squads, each made up of four police officers, to patrol Detroit neighborhoods, and these squads were employed in the attempt to combat soliciting.

The raiding of after hours drinking clubs was also seen as racially biased policing by many Detroiters. Blind pigs were important parts of Detroit's social life for African-Americans. They had a history dating back to Prohibition, but were also a response to discrimination in service to African-Americans in Detroit restaurants, bars and entertainment venues during the 1940s, 50s and 60s.^[19] After the riot, a Detroit Free Press survey showed that residents reported police brutality as the number one problem they faced in the period leading up to the riot.

[edit] Employment

A number of factors, including increased productivity and automation, consolidation of the auto industry, the end of World War II, taxation, and a need for manufacturing space, had caused the city to lose jobs to the suburbs, 134,000 from 1947 to 1963. Major companies like Packard, Hudson, and Studebaker, as well as hundreds of smaller companies, went out of business. In the 1950s, the unemployment rate hovered near 10 percent. Between 1946 and 1956, GM spent $3.4 billion on new plants, Ford $2.5 billion, and Chrysler $700 million, opening a total of 25 auto plants, all in Detroit's suburbs. As a result, many left Detroit for jobs in the suburbs, most of which were white-only at that time. In the 1960s, the city lost about 10,000 residents per year to the suburbs. Detroit's population fell by 140,000 between 1950 and 1960, and another 100,000 residents by 1970.^[20]

Unemployment among black men was more than double that of white men in Detroit by the time of the riot—15.9 percent of blacks were unemployed, but only 6 percent of whites were unemployed in the 1950s—partially due to the seniority system of the unionized factories and the racism throughout trade unionism. Except for Ford, which hired significant number of blacks for their factories, the other automakers did not hire blacks until World War II resulted in a labor shortage. Blacks were the first to be laid off after the War. Moreover, African-Americans were ghettoized into the "most arduous, dangerous and unhealthy jobs".^[21] When the auto industry boomed again in the early 1960s, only Chrysler produced vehicles in the city of Detroit, the blacks they hired got "the worst and most dangerous jobs: the foundry and the body shop."^[22]

Although there was a prosperous black educated class within traditional professions- social work, the ministry, medicine and nursing- blacks working outside manufacturing were relegated to service industries as waiters, porters, or janitors. Many African-American women were further limited to work in domestic servitude.^[23]. Certain business sectors discriminated notoriously against hiring blacks for even entry level positions. Arthur Johnson and the Detroit chapter of the NAACP picketed First Federal Bank until they agreed to hire their first black tellers and clerks.^[24] One of the biggest changes after the riot-rebellion was the lowering of entry-level job requirements by automakers and retailers. A Michigan Bell employment supervisor proclaimed in 1968 that "for years businesses tried to screen people out. Now we are trying to find reasons to screen them in."^[25].

[edit] Housing and neighborhood segregation

Even with Detroit's high home ownership rates, affordable housing became an issue, with unemployment, misguided urban renewal, and deed restrictions. By 1967, the neighborhood around 12th Street had a population density that was twice the city average.^[26] Black schools in the city were overcrowded as well as underfunded.^[27] After the riot, respondents to a Detroit Free Press poll listed poor housing as the second most important issue leading up to the riot, right behind police brutality.^[28]

In order to construct Interstate 75, "Black Bottom" (Paradise Valley) was demolished, displacing most residents to the 12th Street area, changing its demographics dramatically.^[29] Black Bottom was the focus of the black community. Its loss resulted in racial tensions due to the loss of community as well as of housing.^[28]

Many homes which were privately owned were bought on land contracts at high interest rates and very short foreclosure schedules.

[edit] Mistreatment by merchants

Complaints about the price and quality of the commercial trade in inner-city retail stores was prevalent before the riot-rebellion. Customer surveys published by the Detroit Free Press indicated that blacks were disproportionately unhappy with the way store owners treated them compared to whites. In stores serving black neighborhoods, owners engaged in "sharp and unethical credit practices" and were "discourteous if not abusive to their customers."^[30] The NAACP, Trade Union Leadership Council (TULC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) all took up this issue with the Cavanagh administration before the riot. In 1968, the Archdiocese of Detroit published one of the largest shopper surveys in American history. It found that the inner-city shopper paid 20% more for their food and groceries then suburbanites.^[31]

[edit] Chronology

In the early hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967, Detroit police officers expected to find only two dozen individuals in the blind pig, but instead there were 82 people celebrating the return of two local veterans from the war in Vietnam. Despite the large number of people, police decided to arrest everyone present. A crowd soon gathered around the establishment, protesting as patrons were led away.

After the last police car left, a group of men, angry after having observed the incident, began breaking the windows of the adjacent clothing store. Shortly thereafter, full-scale rioting began throughout the neighborhood, which continued into Monday, July 24, 1967, and for the next few days. Despite a conscious effort by the local news media to avoid reporting on it so as not to inspire copy-cat violence, the mayhem expanded to other parts of the city, with theft and destruction beyond the 12th Street/Clairmount Avenue vicinity.

Michigan Governor George Romney and President Lyndon Johnson initially disagreed about the legality of sending in Federal troops. Johnson said he could not send Federal troops in without Romney declaring a "state of insurrection". Romney was reluctant to make that declaration for fear that doing so would relieve insurance companies of their obligations to reimburse policyholders for the damage being done. As Historian Sidney Fine details in Violence in the Model City, partisan political issues also complicated decisions. George Romney was expected to run for the Presidential Republican nomination in 1968 and President Johnson did not want to commit troops solely on Romney's direction.^[32]

The violence escalated throughout Monday, July 24, resulting in some 483 fires, 231 incidents reported per hour, and 1800 arrests. Looting and arson were widespread. Black-owned businesses were not spared. One of the first stores looted in Detroit was Hardy's drug store, owned by blacks, and known for filling prescriptions on credit. Detroit's leading black-owned clothing store was burned, as was one of the city's best-loved black restaurants. In the wake of the riots, a black merchant noted "you were going to get looted no matter what color you were.^[33] Rioters took shots at firefighters who were attempting to fight the fires, possibly with some of the 2,498 rifles and 38 handguns that were stolen from local stores. It was obvious that the Detroit and Michigan forces were unable to keep the peace.

On Monday, U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan), and Arthur L. Johnson of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP who were against Federal troop deployment, attempted to ease tensions by driving along Twelfth Street with a loud speaker telling people to return to their homes.^[34] Reportedly, Conyers stood on the hood of the car and shouted through a bullhorn to one of the mobs, "We're with you! But, please! This is not the way to do things! Please go back to your homes!" But the crowd refused to listen. One civil rights activist (whom Conyers had once defended in a trial) allegedly responded, "Why are you defending the cops and the establishment? You're just as bad as they are!" Conyers' car was pelted with rocks and bottles, one of them hitting a nearby policeman. According to reports, as Conyers climbed down from the hood of the car, he remarked to a reporter in disgust, "You try to talk to those people and they'll knock you into the middle of next year."^[35]

Likewise, Detroit Tigers left-fielder Willie Horton, a black Detroit resident who had grown up not far from the blind pig, drove to the riot area after his game and stood on a car in the middle of the crowd while he was still wearing his uniform. However, despite his impassioned pleas, he could not calm the angry mob.

Shortly before midnight on Monday, July 24, President Johnson authorized use of Federal troops by using a law from 1795, which stated that the President may call in armed forces whenever there is an insurrection in any state against the government.^[36] The 82nd Airborne had earlier been positioned at nearby Selfridge Air Force Base in suburban Macomb County, along with National Guard troops who were federalized at that time. Starting at 1:30 AM Tuesday, July 25, some 8,000 National Guardsmen were deployed to quell the disorder. Later their number would be augmented with 4,700 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne, and 360 Michigan State Police.

There is some discussion that the deployment of troops incited more violence, although the riot ended within 48 hours of their deployment. The discussion might hinge on the type of troop used in various locations. Most of the Michigan National Guard were white, while many of the Federal Army troops were black. As a result, the National Guard troops faced a more violent reaction when deployed to the inner city. The National Guard and the Federal Army troops were engaged in firefights with locals, resulting in deaths both to locals and the troops. Of the 12 people shot and killed by troops, only one was by a Federal soldier, possibly because the Federal troops were ordered not to load their guns except under the direct order of an officer. Indeed, the actions of the National Guard troops were called into question in the Cyrus Vance report.^[37]

Tanks^[38] and machine guns^[39] were used in the effort to keep the peace. Film footage and photos that were viewed internationally showed a city on fire, with tanks and combat troops in firefights in the streets, thus sealing Detroit's reputation for decades to come.

By Thursday, July 27, order had returned to the city to the point where ammunition was taken from the National Guardsmen stationed in the riot area, and bayonets ordered sheathed. Troop withdrawal began on Friday, July 28, the day of the last major fire in the riot. The Army troops were completely withdrawn by Saturday, July 29.

The Detroit riot ignited similar problems elsewhere. National Guardsmen or state police were deployed in five other cities: Pontiac, Flint, Saginaw, Grand Rapids, and Toledo, Ohio. Disturbances were also reported in more than two dozen cities.

An estimated 10,000 participated, with an estimated 100,000 gathering to watch. Thirty-six hours of rioting later, 43 were dead, 33 of them black, 17 of those by police action. More than 7,200 were arrested, mostly black. Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, lamented upon surveying the damage, "Today we stand amidst the ashes of our hopes. We hoped against hope that what we had been doing was enough to prevent a riot. It was not enough."^[40]

[edit] Death toll

Over the period of five days, forty-three people died, of whom 33 were black. The other damages were calculated as follows:

• 467 injured: 182 civilians, 167 Detroit police officers, 83 Detroit firefighters, 17 National Guard troops, 16 State Police officers, 3 U.S. Army soldiers.
• 7,231 arrested: 6,528 adults, 703 juveniles; 6,407 blacks, 824 whites. The youngest, 4; the oldest, 82. Half of those arrested had no criminal record.
• 2,509 stores looted or burned, 388 families homeless or displaced and 412 buildings burned or damaged enough to be demolished. Dollar losses from arson and looting ranged from $40 million to $80 million.^[41]

List of deceased

Name	Race	Age	Date	Comment
Krikor “George” Messerlian	white	68	7/27/67	Killed while defending his shoe repair shop.
Willie Hunter	black	26	7/23/67	Found in the basement of Brown's Drug store, believed to have been asphyxiated while store burned down.
Prince Williams	black	32	7/23/67	Also found in the basement of Brown's Drug store asphyxiated.
Sheren George	white	23	7/24/67	Shot while riding in the front seat of a car driven by her husband.
Julius Dorsey	black	55	7/25/67	Worked as a security guard and was shot by a National Guardsman under questionable circumstances.
Clifton Pryor	white	23	7/24/67	Mistaken for a sniper and shot by a National Guardsman.
John Ashby	white	26	8/4/67	Firefighter with the Detroit Fire Department; was electrocuted by a high-tension wire that had fallen.
Herman Ector	black	30	7/24/67	Shot with a rifle by security guard Waverly Solomon, while intervening in a dispute between a group of youths.
Fred Williams	black	49	7/24/67	Killed by stepping on a downed power line.
Daniel Jennings	black	36	7/24/67	Broke into Stanley’s Patent Medicine and Package Store and was shot by the owner, Stanley Meszezenski
Robert Beal	black	49	7/24/67	Shot by a Detroit police officer at a burned out auto parts store.
Joseph Chandler	black	34	7/24/67	Shot by police while engaged in looting at the Food Time Market.
Herman Canty	black	46	7/24/67	Observed loading merchandise from the rear door of the Bi-Lo Supermarket. Police fired several rounds at the truck until it stopped, and they found Canty dead inside.
Alfred Peachlum	black	35	7/24/67	As A&P supermarket was being looted, Peachlum was inside with a shiny object in his hand. Police opened fire. The object turned out to be a piece of meat wrapped in shiny paper.
Alphonso Smith	black	35	7/24/67	The police version was that Smith and four other men were cornered while looting the Standard Food Market. Other sources state that an officer fired through a window.
Nathaniel Edmonds	black	23	7/24/67	Richard Shugar, a 24-year-old white male, accused Edmonds of breaking into his store, and he shot Edmonds in the chest with a shotgun. Shugar was convicted of second degree murder.
Charles Kemp	black	35	7/24/67	Took five packs of cigars and was observed removing a cash register from Borgi’s Market. He ran, police officers gave chase, and shots were fired.
Richard Sims	black	35	7/24/67	Shot after he attempted to break into the Hobby Bar.
John Leroy	black	30	7/24/67	A passenger in a vehicle which National Guard and police opened fire upon. Police stated that the vehicle was trying to break through a roadblock.
Carl Smith	white	30	7/25/67	While attempting to organize firefighter units, gunshots were fired. At the end, Smith was lying dead.
Emanuel Cosby	black	26	7/25/67	Broke into N&T Market; police arrived just as he was making his escape. Cosby ran and was shot while running away with the loot.
Henry Denson	black	27	7/25/67	Passenger in a car with two other black males which came upon a roadblock erected by National Guardsmen; the vehicle was fired upon for trying to break the roadblock.
Jerome Olshove	white	27	7/25/67	The only policeman killed in the riot. Olshove was shot in scuffle outside an A&P supermarket.
William Jones	black	28	7/25/67	Broke into a liquor store, was caught and attempted escape. Police orders were given to halt, but he continued to run and the officers opened fire.
Ronald Evans	black	24	7/25/67	Shot with William Jones in liquor store looting.
Roy Banks	black	46	7/27/67	Banks was a deaf mute and was walking along the street when he was shot by Guardsmen who mistook him for an escaping looter.
Frank Tanner	black	19	7/25/67	Broke into a store with his friends and was shot while making an escape from a National Guardsman.
Arthur Johnson	black	36	7/25/67	Shot inside looted pawn shop.
Perry Williams	black	36	7/25/67	Shot with Johnson inside pawn shop.
Jack Sydnor	black	38	7/25/67	Shot a policeman investigating a potential sniper. In response, police fired a barrage of bullets into in the apartment.
Tanya Blanding	black	4	7/26/67	Died as a result of a gunfire from a National Guard tank stationed in front of her house. Guardsmen stated that they were responding to sniper fire from the second floor.
William N Dalton	black	19	7/26/67	Police report stated that he was an arsonist and was attempting to flee from the police.
Helen Hall	white	51	7/26/67	Hall, a native of Illinois, was visiting Detroit on business. The police report states that she was shot by a sniper while staying at the Harlan House Motel.
Larry Post	white	26	7/26/67	After an exchange with a car with three white men, Post was found with a gunshot wound to the stomach. Post was a Sergeant in the National Guard.
Aubrey Pollard	black	19	7/26/67	Killed after a group of policemen and National Guardsmen stormed the Algiers Motel in search of snipers.
Carl Cooper	black	17	7/26/67	Killed with Pollard at the Algiers Motel.
Fred Temple	black	18	7/26/67	Also killed in the Algiers Motel.
George Tolbert	black	20	7/26/67	Killed as he ran past a National Guard checkpoint at Dunedin and LaSalle Streets, when a bullet fired by a Guardsman hit him.
Julius Lawrence Lust	white	26	7/26/67	Lust and his friends decided to steal a car part from a junkyard and continued to run despite being told to stop by police.
Albert Robinson	black	38	7/26/67	The police report stated the guardsmen came under fire from snipers and returned fire. At the end of the exchange, Robinson was dead.
Ernest Roquemore	black	19	7/28/67	Hit in the back by an Army paratrooper and declared dead on arrival at Detroit General Hospital.

[edit] Aftermath: Riot or rebellion?

Blacks and whites in Detroit viewed the events of July 1967 in very different ways. Part of the process of comprehending the damage was to survey the attitudes and beliefs of people in Detroit. Sidney Fine’s chapter “The Polarized Community” cites many of the academic and Detroit News financed public opinion surveys conducted in the wake of the riot-rebellion. Although Black Nationalism was thought to have been given a boost by the civil strife, as membership in Albert Cleage’s church grew substantially and the New Detroit committee sought to include black leadership like Norvell Harrington and Frank Ditto, it was whites who were much more likely to support separation. One percent of Detroit blacks favored “total separation” between the races in 1968, whereas 17% of Detroit whites did. African-Americans supported “integration” by 88%, only 24% of whites did. Residents of the 12th Street area differed significantly from African-Americans in the rest of the city however. For example, 22% of 12th Street blacks thought they should "get along without whites entirely".^[42]. Nevertheless, the Detroit News survey of Black Detroiters in 1968 showed that the highest approval rating for people were given to conventional politicians like Charles Diggs (27%) and John Conyers (22%) compared to Albert Cleage (4%).^[43]

One of the criticisms of the New Detroit committee, an organization founded by Henry Ford II, J.L. Hudson and Max Fisher while the embers were still cooling, was that it gave credibility to radical black organizations in a misguided attempt to listen to the concerns of the “inner-city Negro” and “the rioters”. Moderate black leadership like Arthur L. Johnson were weakened and intimidated by the new credibility the riot gave to black radicals, some of which favored “a black republic carved out of five southern states” and supported “breaking into gun shops to seize weapons.”^[44]. The Kerner Commission deputy director of field operations in Detroit reported that the most militant organizers in the 12th Street area did not consider it immoral to kill whites.^[45] Adding to the criticism of the New Detroit committee in both the moderate black and white communities was the cynical belief that the wealthy, white industrial leadership were giving voice and money to radical black groups as a sort of “riot insurance”. The fear that “the next riot” would not be localized to inner city African-American neighborhoods, but include the white suburbs was common in the black middle class and white communities. White groups like Breakthrough started by city employee Donald Lopsinger wanted to arm whites and keep them in the city because if Detroit "became black" there would be "guerrilla warfare in the suburbs".^[46]

Detroit Councilperson Mel Ravitz said the riot-rebellion divided not only the races- since it "deepened the fears of many whites and raised the militancy of many blacks"^[47], but it opened up wide cleavages in the black and white communities as well. Moderate liberals of each race were faced with new political groups that voiced extremist solutions and fueled fears about future violence. Compared to the rosy newspaper stories before July 1967, the London Free Press reported in 1968 that Detroit was a "sick city where fear, rumor, race prejudice and gun-buying have stretched black and white nerves to the verge of snapping".^[48]. Yet ultimately, if the riot is interpreted as a rebellion, or a way for black grievances to be heard and addressed, it was partly successful.^[49]. The black community in Detroit received much more attention from federal and state governments after 1967, and although the New Detroit committee ultimately shed its black membership and transformed into the Detroit Renaissance, money did flow into black owned enterprises after the rebellion. However, the most significant black politician to take power in the shift from a white majority city to a black majority city, Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor, wrote in 1994:

“

The heaviest casualty, however, was the city. Detroit's losses went a hell of a lot deeper than the immediate toll of lives and buildings. The riot put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earnings taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money. The money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the white people who fled as fast as they could. The white exodus from Detroit had been prodigiously steady prior to the rebellion, totally twenty-two thousand in 1966, but afterwards it was frantic. In 1967, with less than half the year remaining after the summer explosion—the outward population migration reached sixty-seven thousand. In 1968 the figure hit eighty-thousand, followed by forty-six thousand in 1969.[50]

”

[edit] In popular culture

• Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot commented on the rioting in his song "Black Day in July". After Martin Luther King's assassination a year later, Lightfoot's song was banned from American radio stations.^[51]
• John Lee Hooker wrote "The Motor City Is Burning" based on the 1943 Detroit riots; the song was adapted to the '67 riots by Detroit's MC5 and appears on their debut album.
• The riots are also featured prominently in Middlesex, a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003.
• Canadian rock singer-songwriter Sam Roberts wrote "Detroit '67", the closing song on his album Love at the End of the World, based on the 12th street riots. With a nostalgic Motown feel, Roberts sings of the riots directly: "Somebody call the riot police, there's trouble down on 12th Street".
• 12th Street was renamed "Rosa Parks Boulevard" in 1976, but is still referred to as 12th by residents of the city.^[52]
• The 12th street riots were depicted in the film Across the Universe during the song "Let It Be".
• The book Nightmare in Detroit (Henry Regnery Company, 1968) offers a detailed account of the events.
• The lyrics in "Panic in Detroit" by David Bowie give a fictionalized recounting of the events
• The riot is showcased in the HBO sports documentary A City on Fire: The Story of the '68 Detroit Tigers showing the state of the city and the events leading up to the Detroit Tigers 1968 World Series Championship.
• The 2008 record "Det.riot '67" by house music artist Moodymann refers to the riots, including a spoken recount of the events in the title track.

[edit] See also

• The Algiers Motel Incident
• Kerner Commission
• Urban riots
• Focus: HOPE

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Coordinates: 42°22′35″N 83°05′58″W / 42.3763787°N 83.0995375°W / 42.3763787; -83.0995375

• Website about riots with victims list and survivor stories
• Report of federal activities during the Detroit riots by Cyrus R. Vance
• CBC Archives: Gordon Lightfoot's "Black Day in July" banned

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