I saw plenty white people looting and arrest records will show the same. Those choices had nothing to do with color and had everything to do with people making wrong choices when law and order temporarily broke down. If there is any apologizing to do then those who committed crimes are the ones who should offer apologies. Statistics will also show that a large majority of people did not break any laws and concerned themselves, as we all did, with safety and helping each other out.

I posted an account on the old board at http://atdetroit.net/forum/messages/...ml?#POST584920 and copied here.

I lived in an apartment at 70 W. Warren [Barnes and Noble today] that summer and rode the DSR bus out Warren to the Rouge where I worked on the Dearborn Engine assembly line.

On the first [Sunday] morning, some friends picked me up to visit their place in Southfield. On the return trip down the Lodge, we noticed numerous columns of smoke and learned of some “disturbances” but thought little of it.

My friend’s friend worked at muffler shop on Livernois, so she wanted check on her. We exited at Livernois and immediately at the top of the ramp, saw looters, white and black, joyously running across the streets, arms laden with loot. My friends continued to the down ramp and returned me home.

By Sunday night the rebellion was in full force. Increasing background gunfire could be heard, but nothing like what was to follow. Noticeable were the police cars returning to the 13th precinct station a block away. Their windows were shattered and fenders dented and from the start it was apparent that this was not a race riot but an anti-authority, particularly anti-police, uprising.

The following day I rode the Warren bus to work and noticed considerable devastation along the way, the “Soul Brother” signs on Afro-Am owned business, and surly armed merchants by others. Yet there was still an air of disbelief or denial, as if it would go away. That had changed by the time my overtime shift ended. When the bus got to around Grand Blvd. the bus driver had us get out saying curfew was on that was the end of the route!

So there I was, background gunfire increasing, the smell of smoke everywhere, sun setting on a sultry summer night and two miles from home. Luckily I flagged a cab on his way in and he got me back. You can be sure he got a good tip.

The National Guard had arrived in the meantime and that night machinegun fire was added to the growing crescendo of non-stop sirens and gunfire. If any of you have heard the New Year’s gunfire in Detroit at its peak, just add the sound of countless machine guns and imagine it not stopping all day and night and you get the picture. It was like some giant popcorn popper, popping at its peak but never stopping, accentuated by deep booms and the throaty ‘whump, whump, whump’ of 50 caliber machine guns.

By Tuesday all the corners around Warren and Woodward were occupied by National Guardsmen. They were a comical lot, slovenly dressed, guns at all angles, shirt tails sticking out, helmets hanging sloppily on their heads, some overweight and all looking like deer in the headlights. I remember talking to one, some skinny kid from way up north who had never been to the D and nervous as a Chihuahua.

Items like milk and other high turnover items ran out and gasoline could only be sold in limited amounts and not in containers.

We learned that during the previous night the NG and police had abandoned a 200 block area of the west side bounded roughly by the Lodge, Grand Blvd., Livernois and Davison. The city had fully exploded and Johnson had announced that troops from the Viet Nam hardened 82nd & 101st Airborne division had been ordered into the city.

Hornwrecker’s map does not show it all; a line should extend way out Warren and other avenues. Also there needs to be a sniper spark behind the DIA. I could hear him clearly from my apartment. Blam! Then five minutes of gun fire with at least four machine guns finally fading away, a pause, then Blam!, and another five minutes of the same as [we learned later] the NG freaked out and fired wildly in all directions. This went on for about three hours.

During that time my brother called me from Illinois wondering if it was as bad as it looked on TV. Just as he asked a flurry of machine guns opened up. So I just held the phone handset by the window and let him have his answer.

Meanwhile at the 13th Precinct, the battered police cars now only left in convoys of five or more cars, all with non-driver windows open and long guns protruding. This would continue for many weeks following the riot. Once often cocky faces were dour, tired and worried.

Life on the street was not what one might suspect. As happens in times of disaster [I saw this after the tornado that swept through Highland Park too] people pulled together, helped each other out, shared meals and looked in on the old folk. People of all races and differences were drawn together, not apart. There was no anger, nor was there an aura of fear. Instead there was an air of mild excitement, almost a sense of being in the midst of great history and change.

When the Federal Airborne troops arrived, the contrast with the NG was striking. Their arrival was almost like a flowers and kisses welcoming. I joined a friend of mine to visit a friend of his in the 101st. They had bivouacked on a school playground on the eastside. Not only was the force made up of about 30% minorities, it was all spit and polish disciplined pros right down to their shiny combat boots.

Wherever they took over, the riot ended almost immediately. People trusted them and felt [and rightly so] they would not carelessly open fire without order or reason and clear targets.

Unfortunately there were not enough of them for the Westside where the police and poorly disciplined NG’s were again driven out of the 200 block zone. The riot peaked that night and the full glare of the national and international media spotlight fell totally on Detroit – and stays with us to this day in many ways.

The smell of smoke was omnipresent making those hot hazy days even hazier. Like a massive snow storm everything came to a halt during that midweek but gradually and steadily it abated. By the weekend, it was over.

I went to work every day. When I look back I had to be nuts, but I needed the money. My afternoon shift kept being called off after four hours because of the 9 PM curfew and every day it was nip and tuck to make it home by bus. Sometimes I ended up walking several blocks or taking circuitous bus routes.

The devastation along my Warren bus route grew daily and was immense. The ashes of a huge furniture store lay smoldering on the SW corner of Grand River and Warren, a vacant lot to this day and only a short distance from the Fire Department Training station. Countless storefronts lay shattered and the remains of their contents littered the sidewalks while military patrols whisked by. Every liquor store along the way was looted and destroyed. The city was under military occupation.

But then life went on. The Tigers were in a pennant race, Motown was cranking out the hits and I was back to slamming pistons into hot selling Ford 390 cubic inch engines. And 1967’s shock wave still rolls on.