Where were you during the 1967 Detroit Riot?

[carlscomputers]

If you got a half hour watch this http://vimeo.com/5337314

Thank You so Much jfk! That video really hit home, the scenes with the woman driving down the street with her pistol in hand, the wounded being loaded onto stretchers, the raging gun battle, the Funeral processions & the reporters commentary at the end... I wish I personally knew some film makers that could do a big budget movie. I know many would say that it would open old wounds, but I feel the whole story, whatever it may be, needs to be told!

[English]

That is an interesting analogy English. Traveling through the South as a kid, I noticed you could buy a Civil War hats and swords everywhere. But in the North there was nothing. I always thought this was because the losing side has a hard time forgetting about a war because they lost. The winning side is vindicated and can move on. Maybe, in Detroit, no one can forget the riot because no one won.

Very well put.

And Susan, I'm definitely going to add your novel to my book collection. Can't wait to read it.

[Kathleen]

Another novel that is set in Detroit during the late 1960s and has scenes of the Detroit riot is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Pulitzer Prize winner!

FYI...Susan's novel Grand River and Joy was picked by the U-M Honors Program for their 2010 Honors First-Year Book:
http://www.ii.umich.edu/umich/v/inde...004701010aRCRD

[kryptonite]

The majority of whites in Detroit in 1950 were not uneducated migrants from the south. The majority of them were European immigrants and their descendants who had come to the US during the period 1880 to 1930 plus the postwar DPs from Europe. These people did not "bring their prejudices with them" when they came to Detroit.

Thanks for that post. my entire family is from the deep South and most of them worked in the Detroit factories in the 50's and 60's. They were extremely poor and few had more than a few years of school. They worked with black people and never said anything negative. However, my relatives encountered a great deal of anti-southern sentiment. Racism was heavily entrenched in Detroit before the Appalachian migration after WWII. Plus, southern whites and Europeans encountered their share of discrimination.

And my white southern relatives stayed in Detroit until long after the riots before moving to the suburbs.

The original posting was very unfair to southern whites and quite biased, thanks for defending them against such a derogatory blanket statement. Nobody brought racism here to Detroit. Few people are migrating here any longer and there is still plenty of racism and bias against all groups.

[Stosh]

Thanks for that post. my entire family is from the deep South and most of them worked in the Detroit factories in the 50's and 60's. They were extremely poor and few had more than a few years of school. They worked with black people and never said anything negative. However, my relatives encountered a great deal of anti-southern sentiment. Racism was heavily entrenched in Detroit before the Appalachian migration after WWII. Plus, southern whites and Europeans encountered their share of discrimination.

And my white southern relatives stayed in Detroit until long after the riots before moving to the suburbs.

The original posting was very unfair to southern whites and quite biased, thanks for defending them against such a derogatory blanket statement. Nobody brought racism here to Detroit. Few people are migrating here any longer and there is still plenty of racism and bias against all groups.

There are always exceptions to everything. Your family is no different. They may not have voiced their predjudices, but they were there. Everyone has them.

Let me reiterate. EVERYONE.

Lots of people stayed after the riots. What makes your family so different?

Oh, not the southern whites, no.. handwringing at it's finest. I implicate everyone, and you seem to cherrypick what you want. Classic...

[Susan Messer]

Thanks, English. And, again, to you Kathleen, for mentioning the honors college thing.

The question of why Detroit didn't recover in the same way that other cities did is way beyond complex, with roots in history, sociology, economics, and so on. I have a friends who tells me that after the Detroit "riots," people in his neighborhood started having meetings [[mixed race) in each others' living rooms, to try to get to know each other, understand each other, talk through their concerns, build community. More of that might have proven fruitful. But economics--profit motive of real estate developers and so on, residents' instinct to protect their investments [[sell your house while it's still worth something)--are pretty powerful. Also, at one of my book events a woman said that it's one thing as an adult to decide to take a stand, stay put, work for change, and another to subject one's children to schools that one fears may be dangerous for them or substandard. Even rumors that a school may be dangerous or substandard can scare parents away.

[pffft]

Stosh,
Much of the blockbusting going on in the '60s was in comfortable middle and upper middle class neighborhoods in NW Detroit, where the residents were far from being uneducated...

Educated people are capable of being scared out of neighborhoods too, alas.

[Stosh]

Stosh,
Much of the blockbusting going on in the '60s was in comfortable middle and upper middle class neighborhoods in NW Detroit, where the residents were far from being uneducated...

Educated people are capable of being scared out of neighborhoods too, alas.

Comfortable middle class neighborhoods in NW Detroit are still there, for the most part, arent they? You don't have the devastation leveled in other, less affluent and educated neighborhoods, do you? They may have blockbusted, but targetted the same demographic in the replacement residents.

[gazhekwe]

Susan Messer: Even rumors that a school may be dangerous or substandard can scare parents away.

In my experience in different neighborhoods in two different cities, that is the biggest catalyst. One person leaves for whatever reason, and gives the excuse that the school is "going down" so they won't look like a racist. The rumor takes hold and flies, and all the parents start packing to move. Last to go are the elders who have seen their community dissolve.

[English]

I don't understand why there were such fears about school desegregation in the North, especially in metro Detroit. My grandfather attended integrated Detroit schools in the 1920s and early 1930s, and graduated from Cass Tech at age 16. [[Of course, the guidance counselors discouraged him from attending a four year college, but he enrolled in U of D anyway.) I figured from my relatives and their friends' stories that there were always black kids in majority white city schools.

Seriously, what do people think that we're going to do to them? Do folks think that their K-12 education or their university degree is devalued just by the very presence of black folks? I am being serious -- one of my qualifying exams was about school segregation in the South and how it influenced curriculum development, so I have read a ton about this topic. Few things about our nation confuse me more. I understand the economic incentive behind slavery, and the resentment that fueled Jim Crow and de jure segregation, but the Greatest Gen's behavior post-Brown was inexcusable.

On a raw and visceral human level, I don't get it. Maybe I never will. From my perspective, there is no other explanation for decisions like Milliken v. Bradley, which declawed Brown.

Anyway. Back to the riots.

[gazhekwe]

I don't have a clue about that, but I saw it happen more than once. I came from an integrated school up north, where I was among the minority group. When I came to Detroit, I first went to Cody, where I was extremely uncomfortable, then switched to Mackenzie which I really liked. The discussion was always somewhere around, 25% still OK, 35% time to watch out, 45% the school's going down. Mind you, it was always stated that the academic standards were going down, but I somehow didn't read it that way. Still, I had a wonderful time at Mack, but my brother and sister who followed me there reported a completely different, hostile experience. So I guess, in some cases, the prophecy came true.

Adding this: The schools did make a difference. I subsequently entered a career in civil rights, where, into the 70s, I found employers who discarded apps from people who listed schools like Mackenzie or Central or Northwestern. Academic standards? Not so much, I think.

[Detroit Stylin]

The majority of whites in Detroit in 1950 were not uneducated migrants from the south. The majority of them were European immigrants and their descendants who had come to the US during the period 1880 to 1930 plus the postwar DPs from Europe. These people did not "bring their prejudices with them" when they came to Detroit.

Now thats a bunch of Bull. When the "Great Migration" of Southern Blacks from the rurals areas of the south came up to Detroit for the plentiful factory jobs, law enforcement agencies [[in particular DPD) INTENTIONALLY reached out to white southern lawmen becuase they knew how to deal "with them". Read it in the the Detroit 300th anniversary book for yourself. So yes there was very much a large prescence of Southern Whites PRIOR to the 50's and whole lot of their prejudices and hatred that came with them...

[Detroitnerd]

Now thats a bunch of Bull. When the "Great Migration" of Southern Blacks from the rurals areas of the south came up to Detroit for the plentiful factory jobs, law enforcement agencies [[in particular DPD) INTENTIONALLY reached out to white southern lawmen becuase they knew how to deal "with them". Read it in the the Detroit 300th anniversary book for yourself. So yes there was very much a large prescence of Southern Whites PRIOR to the 50's and whole lot of their prejudices and hatred that came with them...

Well, to be fair, what Hermod says is partly true. Yes, there was a HUGE immigration from the South to Detroit in the early 1940s. As some have observed, that was the last "boom" that finished off the old Detroit as it was known. And, yes, many Southerners came up here with either dreams of freedom or the same-old racism. All of that is true.

But they were in the minority.

[Hermod]

Now thats a bunch of Bull. When the "Great Migration" of Southern Blacks from the rurals areas of the south came up to Detroit for the plentiful factory jobs, law enforcement agencies [[in particular DPD) INTENTIONALLY reached out to white southern lawmen becuase they knew how to deal "with them". Read it in the the Detroit 300th anniversary book for yourself. So yes there was very much a large prescence of Southern Whites PRIOR to the 50's and whole lot of their prejudices and hatred that came with them...

When I was going to school in Detroit [[1945-1954), southern whites were extremely rare. My classmates all had names like Gruebner, Salzwadel, Fleisher, Wyck, Brissom, Kuhn, Bernhardt, Oleczak, Jung, Wetzelberg, Kramer, Bohr, Gustafson, Schick, Steffan, Hernalsteen, etc. I can remember one kid coming into the school who got called "Hillbilly" by the other kids.

[Hermod]

I figured from my relatives and their friends' stories that there were always black kids in majority white city schools.

No, I went to three schools in Detroit from 1944 to 1954 and never went to school with a black kid. The only "non-whites" in the schools were a handful of Maronite Christian Lebanese. I never went to school with a black kid till we moved to Rochester and I went to Rochester High School 1954-1957.

The janitors and lunch room staffs in the schools I went to were all white.

It was called de facto segregation.

[Stosh]

No, I went to three schools in Detroit from 1944 to 1954 and never went to school with a black kid. The only "non-whites" in the schools were a handful of Maronite Christian Lebanese. I never went to school with a black kid till we moved to Rochester and I went to Rochester High School 1954-1957.

The janitors and lunch room staffs in the schools I went to were all white.

It was called de facto segregation.

Christ. No wonder you never encountered any kind of racism. 1954? Really? Sheesh.

That's like comparing Detroit today to the 1920's for what it's worth.

Here's an interesting site:
http://faculty.washington.edu/gregor...ora/photos.htm

Also this one:
http://www.bentley.umich.edu/researc...ration/ch1.php

[English]

Interesting hearing your experiences, Hermod. My grandfather was a generation older than you, and his folks were on the leading edge of the northern migration. He was a founding member of the Brewster Old Timers. The legendary Brewster Rec Center opened when he was 13 years old:

http://detroit1701.org/Brewster-Wheeler%20Center.htm

Reading that page makes me really miss my granddad. He was truly one of the best people I knew.

[kryptonite]

Bigotry is something that builds up over a lifetime. Small children don't seem to notice color, ethnicity, religion, etc. Those biases develop as a person ages.

Some people develop the same attitudes toward anyone different from them that their parents displayed. Others seem to make a conscious break from their environmental background and determine instead to be as open as possible.

Prejudice to me seems almost like a choice, not a matter of what state you come from, what religion you follow, what ethnic background you are composed of, etc.

The 1967 riots in my opinion were the result of a few violent individuals that initiated an act of violence followed by the phenomenon of group psychology. You as an individual might not be inclined to protest something, but if a substantial protest occurs in proximity to you, you may just join along. Riots are not rare, historically they have been common. run of the mill protests frequently turn violent, despite the fact that the organizers had no intention of violence. In Detroit's case the blind pig party break-up by the police, combined with a national trend toward violent protests at the time. Few large cities escaped some amount of racial unrest from 1965-1968.

[EastsideAl]

When I was going to school in Detroit [[1945-1954), southern whites were extremely rare.

It depended a lot on what neighborhood you were in though. My mother lived as a kid during WWII in the area around Trumbull and Forest [[just south of what would today be called Woodbridge) and that area was full of southern whites, both families and single men. with many more arriving every day due to all of war work.

Actually, a lot of people who had lived in that area for a long time were not happy with this influx and saw the newcomers as disorderly, loud, hard-drinking, and potentially violent. Especially the single men. There was a line of bars on Trumbull that my mother was told to stay away from because of this clientele.

But a lot of men from the south also hired on as cops. Many kids my mother went to school with had fathers who worked for the DPD, which needed a lot of new men during the war. They may not have hired on with the express purpose of mistreating blacks, of course, but many did bring with them certain attitudes from their places of origin.

It should be remembered that the main focus of the 1943 riot was Woodward Ave., which formed the border between a neighborhood with a lot of southern whites in it on the west [[what we would call the Cass Corridor today), and primarily southern black Paradise Valley to the east. As hard as it is to believe today looking at the relative emptiness of those places, that entire area had become extremely overcrowded at that time due to the labor needs of war production and the large influx of people it brought.

[Susan Messer]

Seriously, what do people think that we're going to do to them? Do folks think that their K-12 education or their university degree is devalued just by the very presence of black folks?

English, I just want to acknowledge this part of your earlier posting. Great questions. Hard to answer. I went to Halley, MacDowell, and Mumford in the 50s/60s, and these were integrated schools by all appearances. But as I've come to understand, it was an odd definition of integration, as within the school, stark divisions existed: reading groups separated people out early, as did later honors classes, and college prep in contrast with vocational. At Mumford, the college prep courses were in one wing of the building, while vocational/trade were in another. As a college prep student, I never set foot in that other wing. As I say, odd notion of integration.

I don't know how to answer your questions. I'm glad you raised them though. Part of it might be that whites don't like being in the minority. Racial fears/attitudes are also central. The town where I live now [[Oak Park, IL) is consistently trying to find an answer to the "achievement gap"--the difference in test scores between white and black students.

[birwood]

Growing up in the Wyoming/Schoolcraft/Davison neighborhood all we could see was smoke in the sky. A close friend that I attended Mackenzie HS with lived in the Joy Rd /Grand River area called me and simply said "We Got a Riot". He happened to have a radio that could monitor Fire and Police calls and he adjusted his phone so we could both listen in on the DFD Radio traffic and reports from the fire companies that were being shot at or bricked as they tried to extinguish the fires It wasn't until nightfall that we could hear the constant stream of sirens from the fire rigs and gunshots. My father worked for the DSR and happened to be the Station Master at the Coolidge Terminal, when he got home he told my brothers and me to stay put and told us that they had soldiers guarding all city buildings and that the big Mich Con Gas Tank at Lyndon & Schaefer had an Army Tank protecting it. We did see a couple of small convoys of troops going up and down Schoolcraft and venturing up to Grand River at one point we did see numerous military convoys, fire apparatus and polce vehicles moving about.
After we got back into the schoolyear, my Senoir Year at MHS, one of our teachers produced a few Black & White photos he had taken while flying over the city during the riots. Mr Cheronzy was a Major in the Mich Air Nat'l Guard and flew RF-84F's on photo recons during the riots. That year at Mackenzie and even back where we lived, I never witnessed or heard of and racial problems, nor did I ever felt threatened. I did have numerous African-American friends at that time period, in fact several helped my family throw a surprise going away party for me the following July when I left for the USAF .

[Stosh]

I have been looking through some photos on E-bay. What was the riot in Patton Park about in 1959? Here is a link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/1959-Police-Arre...-/290458208871

Or this one from 1951?

http://cgi.ebay.com/1951-Riot-Detroi...item415181c3bb

[reddog289]

never heard of either.

[Jman]

The second photo is a lot older than 1951. All of the cars in the photo are from the thirties.

[jcole]

Scroll down and look at the back of the second one. It says 'Labor Riot June 10, 19[[2)7
Could be [[3)