I had a birds-eye view. I was flying in from NYC with my family and the flight path to DFW was across the 8 Mile/Woodward area. It was an Electra prop plane as I recall and we came in low. It was eerie to see numerous fires burning out of control with no fire trucks in sight. There was a new hardware store on Livernois just south of 8 Mile burning out of control; the pilot made no announcement that there was a riot in progress.

Driving from the airport to Green Acres we saw 1bout 40 State police cars gassing up at a station on 8 Mile and although there wasn't much news on the radio we did learn of the riot and where the center of activity was located. There had been a riot in Newark the week before the one in Detroit started, which lasted a week and I believe all,the publicity re that one sparked the riot in Detroit.

I had an office in the 5 Mile/Livernois area and spent a lot of time outside viewing the fires. There was a party atmosphere and there was no racial animosity at all between the whites and blacks milling around. In fact it was very friendly. It was definitely not a race riot as the one in 1943 obviously was.