Where were you during the 1967 Detroit Riot?

[Buy American]

The black community wasn't the only one burning and looting.

Really? What other group rioted?

[Hermod]

Really? What other group rioted?

Must have been all of them Lithuanian and Ukranian DPs who came to Detroit in late forties.

[SCS_Scooter]

I was about 10 years old at the time. We lived on Faust and I remember my Dad, Mom and little brother driving over to my Grandma's house on Ferguson to stay with her. My Grandpa was a DPD Reserve Officer that went out to "Protect and Serve" and that would have left Grandma all alone. Papa was all dressed in his uniform with his gun and I remember my Grandma begging him not to go. Not something a kid should have to witness. I do remember it like it was yesterday. My other Grandma was living in Alden Park at the time. 7th floor, city side. She could have worked for CNN with that view! The stories she told...geeze.

[Bobl]

g: Your quote:
"...The woman told of Leni Sinclair standing outside shouting to get into the store because she needed milk for the baby. I hope someone gave her some milk..."
That would be Parker Brothers Market, I believe. Henry Drugs, down the street at Third & Prentis closed, with Henry's janitor, an old German guy known as "Ted" perched on a chair in front, a double barrelled shot gun in his lap and a Luger strapped to his side.
The small store at 2nd @ Prentis sold out all stock in a couple of hours.

D: I have never read Them. Might pick it up...

[preserve]

Worked at WWJ at the time, they put a camera on the roof of the building - but WXYZ on Second sent out Barney Morris and Ken Thomas and they won hands down for the coverage. Drove in from Ferndale everyday, straight down Livernois to Lafayette. Didn't see any real action except for what was on TV. It was a surreal experience, almost like it wasn't happening blocks away - except for all the inconvenience of the curfew and all the favorite haunts being closed. I still cringe when I hear the names of streets like Pingree and recall the awful stories of unarmed youths being shot. Oh well.

[Bobl]

Really? What other group rioted?

There were many "white" people looting stores. Nobody stopped them to find where their parents and grandparents were from...

[Ravine]

The following spring, the nuns warned us to be alert during summer vacation, because the word was that "they" might come out to the 'burbs, this time.
I'm not sure who they meant. The nuns, themselves, were the ones what scared me.

[393Bird]

At the time of the Riot, I was in the Army in Vietnam. When I returned to the States in August, I drove from Tennessee to Michigan to pick up my Wife, who was staying with her Mother and Aunt in Bad Axe. When I was in the Detroit area, I needed gas. While filling it up, I asked the guy what happened? I was needing some new tires, so decided to get a set of aluminum wheels also. He referred me to a wheel/tire shop in the area of the rioting, and I was just shocked at seeing what people had done to there own neighborhoods.

[Downriver Gal]

D: I have never read Them. Might pick it up...

I highly recommend it. The poor white family in the book lives in southwest Detroit, first on Twentieth Street and later on Labrosse. The character of Jules lives around Warren and Woodward and gets caught up in the anarchy of the riot.

[tallboy66]

barely a year old

[oladub]

Really? What other group rioted?

I ran into a despicable white guy who claimed to have participated in the looting with other whites. His rationalization was that the stores were already in the process of being looted and "we weren't going to let the ------s get it all".

In some situations, the theme was anarchy and looting rather than race although the stores marked 'soul' weren't usually looted until after the white owned stores.

[stasu1213]

I had told you that the blacks weren't the only ones who were rioting and looting

[bobby wobby]

I just turned 17,It was a hot night and along with 2 friends walked up to the corner of Washburn and Grand River we sat for an hour in utter silence,there was a curfew and that's why normally bristling Grand River was silent .My one friend who just got a railroad job lit a railroad fuse and tossed it out on Grand River. Out of no where a Army jeep started chasing us ,I jumped behind a bush ,the Jeep stopped right there and a southern voice shouted "Boy I'm counting to 3 and shooting right in that bush", I came out and they beat the crap out of me, I spent the next 2 days on the couch because I couldnt walk Thats my riot Story.

[Buy American]

There were many "white" people looting stores. Nobody stopped them to find where their parents and grandparents were from...

Did you witness this? I remember the riots very well since I worked for the Detroit Fire Department at that time. I don't remember seeing or hearing of whites looting and burning.

[unclefrank]

I was ten and living in GPW. I remember my dad placing an M1 Carbine on the mantle though.

[Cass1966]

Whatever the problems were that the black folks had with the city or the police on that night in July of 1967 were, it’s nothing compared to the screwing they got everyday over the next over forty years during the Coleman Young, Archer, and Kwame Kilpatrick administrations. You can try to revise history, lie to yourself, or just go into denial, but the truth is the truth. We should all look back on the Mayor Cavanagh years as “the good old days”.

[9936Sussex]

I was 17, going to Mackenzie High School for summer school [[I was taking my senior lifesaving class), living at Plymouth and Greenfield. I remember watching a lot of TV newscasts, and pretty much staying in the house. My best friend, who lived on Mendota and Grand River saw quite a bit more activity in her neighborhood.

For me, the changes began in fall of that year, when school started up. The whole atmosphere was different to me. People had changed, whites a little more distrustful, African-Americans became more militant. We had not had a lot of serious trouble at Mackenzie, but that following year, there were lots of things going on. Violence stepped up, some protests over different things [[the draft, for one thing). People looked at each other in a different way. It was very sad and kind of scary. I remember staying late working on the DIAL [[our school newspaper) and I was told that I couldn't walk around the building by myself, that it wasn't safe. I had always felt comfortable in that building, before and after classes. To me the riots changed the way white people and black people related to each other.

[Magnatomicflux]

I’m still waiting for an apology from the black community for the damage they did to the city

....and then..........what? Then you'll pick up a hammer and start swinging it at some nails in the core? Houses, block after block spring up? Who is to do the appologizing? ONE black guy? The whole community? Who's appology is good enough? Appologize to you personally or at some media event?
The black community of Detroit today, have nothing to appologize for. Just like us white folk of today, have nothing to appologize for the things our race has done to countless others in the past. You remember those things right? Me neither, it was generations ago. What I'm getting at is your city, will NEVER be the place this forum strives for with half assed, 40 year old grudges. You can't seriously say that white people wern't looting too. Just because there are no "eye witness'" on this board right now, then that's it? Nah......people arn't built like that. A riot is a riot is a riot. Everyone gets in on the mix.
oladub said it perfectly:
"His rationalization was that the stores were already in the process of being looted and "we weren't going to let the ------s get it all". "

you can't see white people doing that??? No, white people arn't capable of participating is something so primal. Get real. I can't even beleive people still choose to think that way. Those comments arn't going to get you any "i'm sorry" s from anyone anyways. It just antaganises black people. What do you want them to say?
"sorry, but when all you white folks abandonned the city after the riot there wern't enough of us to maintain it, or ourselves and things went to shit" ????
I never want to jump into these race threads because they get nasty here on DYS, anywhere for that matter, and all it does is piss people off. Maybe I'm nieve, I don't come from a city with these kinds of tensions. But I do come from a city that watched another city burn to the effing ground as a result of this crap. And maybe, juuuuust maybe, that's why those tensions arn't so thick here.

I can only hope that you havn't spread that poisonous garbage to your children.

sorry...that's probably the first and last time I talk race here. That was just a stupid comment. I honestly hope I didn't offend anyone, you too Cass1966. I don't think your dumb or stupid, but that way of thinking certainly has to go. I only mean to say that this race garbage belongs in the history books. Keep this crap up and you're doomed to repeat it.

[Philbo]

Buy American: I saw at least 1 white person with a looted lamp in the Harper/Van Dyke area during the riot. I know for a fact that whites and other non blacks looted in the 2nd precinct. I am suprised you did not see it, maybee you were not in the more racially mixed areas at the time.

[Lowell]

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.

[Zacha341]

Yep, it's reasonable that there were some whites looting along with everyone else. The percentage of whites living in Detroit was much higher then [[a forgotton fact)... and the breakdown affected everyone in the city and some responded -- taking advantages as they were available.

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.

My account can be read here http://atdetroit.net/forum/messages/...ml?#POST584920.

[Jimaz]

I don't remember much of the details except the Detroit News wasn't available to me for a few days for my suburban paper route customers. The most disturbing thing was the lack of information about the game plan. Nobody seemed to know what was going to happen which seemed very surreal in that otherwise well-planned era. By contrast, today we're accustomed to surprises.

At that time my parents were returning from an out-of-state trip and were unaware of the situation. They were surprised to be stopped by an armed National Guard soldier on [[I think) I-94. He advised them not to leave the freeway until out of Detroit.

Preemptive disclaimer: We were always taught to never think badly of Detroiters [[or anyone else). The sincerely-held sentiment of our family at that time was sorrow for the many innocent victims of that violence in the mother city. It never had to happen.

[carlscomputers]

Thank's for all the personal observations & memories of the '67 Detroit Riot. I'm sorry that I injected Race into this thread, even though I mentioned it, I never intended it to get some people angry. Let's face it, there are Black people that don't like White people, there are White people that don't like Black people. Arguing on this Forum will not change that! I have White friends & I have Black friends, but the most important part of that statement is I have friends, not because they are Black, not because they are White, but because they are my friends! If more people felt that way, then maybe we wouldn't have had a Riot in 1967 to talk about!!!!

[Magnatomicflux]

carlscomputers, no need to appologise. Its a subject that needs to be talked about, its not something people should forget, or pretty up. It was a devestating event that people need to be aware of. You can't get away from the topic of race when talking about the riot. I think what's important is people DO think like you now, and we're all better for it. Its hard to talk about race in this case without people getting upset and why? EVERONE in Detroit lost that battle. And that's understandable. All races will point fingers, all will be offended even if they know accusations are correct. But what counts is everyone understands that its the past, and the past is always an excelent tool in defining your future.

[lalynch]

We were living in Summit, New Jersey. I was 7 years old. The focus there was the riots in Newark, NJ. I remember seeing the news reports on TV and being worried about my Dad who worked in Newark. After about that period, his office was moved to NYC.