New '67 riot footage found.

[Gannon]

Good to see ya, PeachLaser.

That might not be the same building...why would they make those elaborate windows on the side only to have them covered by a neighbor?! Surely those were not added later. Plus, it is too close to the intersection. Five stories instead of four...and the roofline doesn't jag like the other. But those Masonic triple-slot fronts...curious how often they pop up.

[marshamusic]

I think it is this building which is on Woodward in or near Highland Park. It looks like the small building on the near side was torn down, another floor added and the windows bricked up. The sign is a bit ironic IMO.

Attachment 18671

It is not the building in Highland Park. This HP building is taller; and I grew up two blocks away and do not recall there being a building on its north side, certainly not in '67 [[it was a storage facility). Besides, the address would not be 4731, the addresses there in HP are about 10,000-11,000.

[PeachLaser]

Five stories instead of four...and the roofline doesn't jag like the other. But those Masonic triple-slot fronts...curious how often they pop up.

Hi Gannon! If you look closely, the top floor of bricks are different. Is it paint or a different type or year of bricks? You can see a slight line at the floor line of the top floor. IF, they added a top floor, then they could've added a zag to the roofline?

Always like the puzzles that get presented in these forums and then it's fun watching you folks solve them. Hoping I can get one right some day.

[PeachLaser]

It is not the building in Highland Park.

I would say that is definitive! I withdraw my submission.

[casscorridor1]

Thanks to all for the interesting footage and commentary.

Can anyone tell me anything about Hutchin's Middle School on Woodrow Wilson and Blaine [[near Herman Keifer)?

I taught at Hutchin's about 6 years ago and was always fascinated with the building and its history.

The principal at Hutchins was still alive 5-6 years ago and would come back to the school and help out. His stories were great. He said the National Guard took over the building because they needed a huge school [[4 floors) and liked the fact that the school has two gyms and two swimming pools. He stated the National Guard slept on the floor right in my classroom and did R&R in the gym and swimming in the pool. He stated that when they first took over the building they weren't sure who to call to shut the street light sout around the school, so they shot them out. lol

Anyhow, any stories or history about that school would be appreciated. The school was alma mater to many famous people including Aretha Franklin and Lily Tomlin. Thanks

[marshamusic]

He stated that when they first took over the building they weren't sure who to call to shut the street light sout around the school, so they shot them out. lol

That probably wasn't quite as funny to the neighbors.....

But thanks for sharing the principal's memories, another piece in the '67 Riot's puzzle.

btw, my cousin was a school nurse there for many years, retired about 5 years ago.

[EastsideAl]

Thanks to all for the interesting footage and commentary.

Can anyone tell me anything about Hutchin's Middle School on Woodrow Wilson and Blaine [[near Herman Keifer)?

Anyhow, any stories or history about that school would be appreciated. The school was alma mater to many famous people including Aretha Franklin and Lily Tomlin. Thanks

...and my mother. When she was there in the early '40s the school population was heavily Jewish. Rep. Sander Levin was a classmate.

[EastsideAl]

The early sequence of that film along Mack Ave. hit me like a ton of bricks.

The Salvation Army store shown briefly looted out and open was at Mack and Belvedere. My always thrifty mother used to buy school clothes for us there, on the theory that little kids outgrow and/or ruin most of their clothes quickly anyway, so why spend lots of money on them? I have vivid memories of sitting in the big plate glass windows there waiting impatiently for my mommy to be done picking through the racks. It was supposed to reopen after the riot, but I don't think it ever did.

Next door, and also shown, was Sloan's Hardware, where my father bought all of our hardware stuff for years. I remember Mr. Sloan mixing paint or measuring out a pound of nails, and the sort of oil/wood/metal smell of those old hardware stores.

The rather mysterious scene with the crowd at Crane and Sylvester was also interesting to me. I remember that area well and had friends who lived around there. So I was scanning the crowd to see if there was anyone familiar, but I didn't recognize anyone. Pretty much all of the houses shown there are gone now. There was an attempt to build a neighborhood of new houses in there a few years ago, but I think it foundered in the recession and many of the homes were never occupied.

The other school shown from above, after the shots of Southeastern, is I believe is the now-gone Northeastern High, which stood at the corner of Warren and Grandy.

[RickBeall]

John Lee Hooker was home when the riots occurred. He said a guy ran by and sold him a guitar for a $1. I wish I had John Lee's voice, but at any rate, I wrote a song about it [[which a lot of you have already heard).

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12024249

[EastsideAl]

I think Hooker was living over there on McClellan at the time. Not far away from the site of the Mack Ave. part of the film, or the stores that were looted and burned on Kercheval [[which was worse than what happened on Mack). I know he lived real close to a friend of mine and we used to see him around the neighborhood.

[RickBeall]

Hooker lived near McClellan, at 9346 Jameson Street, just north of Charlevoix St.
His house is gone. In the google map below, his house was where the narrow, empty lot you see with the truck parked in front.

https://maps.google.com/maps?safe=ac...ed=0CDMQ8gEwAA

Back in 2000, I talked with the lady who lived next door, who used to baby sit his kids.
http://www.paradisevalleyblues.com/tour/hook0060.html

The baby sitter said he used to sit on his porch and play his guitar for the little kids in the neighborhood. They would come running when they heard his guitar.


"I was sitting on my porch playing my guitar,
The kids come running from near and far,
They laugh and they jump like party balloons,
and they always dance when I play this tune
It's like this ...."

[RickBeall]

John Lee did write a song about it, but his was much starker than mine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBhaiJ5YNiM

I guess it is much more raw if you actually lived through it.

I was just a 10 year old in Southfield, so all I remember are the newscasts, talk about guns, and the adults' racist rants.

[EastsideAl]

I remember Hooker playing for kids. I also had relatives who lived not too far from there on Pennsylvania. I also seem to remember Hooker living on Benson. I know he used to visit another old bluesman who lived on Van Dyke next door to one of my best friends when I was a kid. Of course, the father of Marsha who posts here recorded Hooker back in the day.

Back to the topic:
I was 8 when the riot happened. We were over in Canada at my grandparents' cottage when it broke out. My Dad had to talk his way across the closed border at the tunnel to get through to our house. By the time I got there the army was arriving and the worst was pretty much over.

My most vivid memories are of the smell of the clouds of smoke arising from the burned stores on Kercheval, the sight of the dime store where I bought my school supplies and the barber shop where I got my hair cut totally burned out and collapsed, the nice Army men who let us kids climb on their "tanks" [[really armored personnel carriers) and ride up and down the block in their jeeps, and the wry amusement of my father at our black next door neighbors who painted "soul brother" in huge letters on the front of their beautiful red brick house [[the paint soaked into the brick and the shadow of the letters stayed there for years). And, when I returned to school, the inconsolable sadness of our science teacher, whose unarmed son was shot in the back and killed by the Army.

[black gold man]

The most tragic event of 67 68 unrest.

Massacre in Mexico city 1968 4 to 5 hundred
students gunned down by there government at one time not far from the
Olympics going on at the time. Took 30 years for the truth to be told.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw2KsKXrF5o

[jcole]

I think it was Northeastern High that was command central for the east side and is where my dad and the 82nd were stationed. It's been so many years and I was 11 yrs old that I'm not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure.

[marshamusic]

And, when I returned to school, the inconsolable sadness of our science teacher, whose unarmed son was shot in the back and killed by the Army.

My goodness.....

[marshamusic]

I would say that is definitive! I withdraw my submission.

It was fun though.:-)

[Django]

My step father grew up going to a Catholic school in GP with a lot of the kids of the mob back then. He told me many of the blocks where he lived were guarded by mob guys with shotguns. They were afraid the riot was going to spread to the N.E.

[stasu1213]

Observations... The arm patches in the opening street scenes are of the 82nd Airborne Division. So those scenes would have been on the eastside where they were stationed. I tagged along with a friend to visit with his friend in the 82nd at their bivouac on a public school grounds.


The 82nd never crossed Woodward to the westside, to my knowledge, which was patrolled by the inept Michigan National Guard.

When the 82nd arrived on the eastside, the hostilities subsided soon after. This was attributed to the fact that about a 3rd of them were African-American, unlike the Michigan National Guard the was nearly all Euro-American. The westside hostilities continued for two more days.

Another thing you can see is that the airborne were very spit and polish, lean and trim, all business and totally disciplined. Many had served in Vietnam.

The Michigan NG's by contrast were often slovenly, many overweight, looking as if they had been dragged out of a bar at closing time and thrown into battle and generally scared s***less.

I had heard that some of these soldiers had served in Vietnam. I find it hard to believe that soldiers were pulled off the battle field in Vietnam to be shipped over to Detroit to stop a riot. I know that the army did come but I felt that these men were on standby for Vietnam or were career soldiers.

[stasu1213]

I think it was Northeastern High that was command central for the east side and is where my dad and the 82nd were stationed. It's been so many years and I was 11 yrs old that I'm not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure.

That was Southeastern High School that was show at the beginning of the film. Especially when the filming of the flyover started. Northeastern was shown in the middle of the film next to a park where a walking path went through trees.

[stasu1213]

Most of the homes that were shown possibly on Crane and Sylvester as well as most of the eastside shown in the film were still standing years after the riot. The crack epidemic of the 80's and 90s with black flight had destroyed much of that area and most of the eastside

[jerrytimes]

It's sad to watch this. The day Detroit changed forever. From a busy populated city to what it is today. I was driving down Westphalia the other day and there are only one or two populated homes left. All the rest are burned or leveled. I look back at my great grandfathers old pictures and it makes me sick.

[black gold man]

I came across this today
http://www.annarbor.com/entertainmen...he-1967-riots/

[jcole]

I had heard that some of these soldiers had served in Vietnam. I find it hard to believe that soldiers were pulled off the battle field in Vietnam to be shipped over to Detroit to stop a riot. I know that the army did come but I felt that these men were on standby for Vietnam or were career soldiers.

When they served in Viet Nam they served a one year tour of duty and then were rotated out; some of them may have been in 'Nam and were completing their enlistment stateside and were sent to Detroit. I don't think they would have had to have been pulled out of 'Nam and sent to Detroit to have served over there.

[marshamusic]

It's sad to watch this. The day Detroit changed forever. From a busy populated city to what it is today. I was driving down Westphalia the other day and there are only one or two populated homes left. All the rest are burned or leveled. I look back at my great grandfathers old pictures and it makes me sick.

The power of those images - and of our memories and stories of those terrible days - still impact our perceptions of reality. Because the city had begun its significant drop in population at least a decade before 67.

If anything, the riots were an explosive exclamation point at the end of a narrative, not the beginning.

Not to say that you're saying so, but I doubt if many [[or any) of the homes on Westphalia disappeared as a result of the riots, but of the dessication that took place in the ensuing years. If I am wrong, I welcome correction.

That being said, you are certainly right about the tragedy of that week - a horrific, massive, tragic, nodal point in the changes of the city. The destruction of the city - in all of the forms that it took over the last half century - is sickening.