Where were you during the 1967 Detroit Riot?

[FormerDetroiter]

Interesting that the shooting happened in 1967 and the shooter got out of a 1969 red Olds....

[Honky Tonk]

Interesting that the shooting happened in 1967 and the shooter got out of a 1969 red Olds....

It was a prototype.....

[Dumpling]

I don't have the book handy here but St. Brigid's Roman Catholic parish [[closed now)
in Detroit may have a mention in Sugrue's "The Origins of the Urban Crisis" as a place
where the church fathers were preaching against white flight whilst their parishioners
were all leaving for the suburbs. I was baptized at St. Brigid's some while before major
white flight. Fast forward to 1967...I am nine years old, living in the St. Mary's of
Royal Oak parish. Mom keeps all of her children inside and we watch riot footage on
TV. We are somewhat concerned whether it will reach our neighborhood, since the
area of the riot is increasing at least at first, but it never does. My parents were
Roman Catholics of the social justice flavor best typified by Father Gumbleton, and
were very perturbed by the riots, and bought a large number of paperbacks about them,
which stayed in the house library for years, until they fell apart. One of the St. Mary's
priests in that era was Father Cunningham and in the aftermath of the riot he would
stop by at my parents' house and have dinner from time to time and regale them with
the volunteer opportunities available at Focus:Hope. For years also we had a Focus:Hope bumper sticker on the family station wagon too. Others were far and away better volunteers
than my folks were but my Dad did go down to help install doors at the Oakman Ave.
Focus:Hope food warehouse which had previously been a Mario Olives factory and had
concrete worn down by brine inside.