Day 6 The following is my account of the 1967 Detroit Riot, as excerpted from a diary I kept and I am now posting, in advance of each day, 50 years later.

Friday July 28, 1967
“It was another [curfew-shortened] four hour work night tonight. This time I had great difficulty getting home [from the Dearborn Engine Plant in the Rouge]. After catching a bus to Wyoming and Warren in Dearborn I was stranded with about 20 others on the corner as the buses stop coming.

“Finally [and luckily for me] a DSR [bus system] coordinator [[who was going my way) came by and gave me a lift to Woodward and Edsel Ford! Oddly enough I wasn’t really worried about being stranded for somehow, in the back of my mind, was the notion that somehow I would get home and I did.

“The peace continued tonight.”

Friday was the first quiet day. In retrospect it could be seen that Thursday was the last day of the riot. For those of us living amid it, the calm was anything but certain. Was it really over? Or was this just a lull?

All we knew was that it had quieted and we were under military occupation, like some German city that had been captured by the American Army. Soldiers in green uniforms and helmets with rifles were seen in all directions and rumbling by in transport trucks and armored vehicles.

Read: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5