NL: Today is July 7, 2015. This is the interview of Dr. Carl Lauter by Noah Levinson. We are at the Medical Office Building in Royal Oak, Michigan on the Beaumont Hospital campus, accompanied by Lily Wilson and Thea Lockard and this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Dr. Lauter, could you first tell me when and where you were born?
CL: I was born in Detroit, Michigan, December 30, 1939 at the original Providence Hospital, which was on West Grand Boulevard at that time.
NL: And where did you live growing up?
CL: When I was just a little baby, first born, family lived in an apartment on a street called Pingree. Pingree was near Twelfth Street. Twelfth Street is now known as Rosa Parks Boulevard. And when I was about a year or two old, my family moved into an up-and-down flat on Gladstone. And Gladstone was also between, which was only a block over from Pingree, between Twelfth and Fourteenth street. And I lived there until I was nine years of age, when the family moved to an area known as the Dexter-Davison neighborhood. And I lived on the street Burlingame. 3012 Burlingame. That was between Lawton and Wildemere, and a block and a half on either end was Linwood to the East and Dexter to the West. And I lived there most of my childhood and young adult life and my mother and my younger brother were actually living there still in 1967.
NL: Could you tell me where you were living and what you were doing in 1967?
CL: In 1967 I was a second-year internal medicine resident, that is a training physician learning to be an internal medicine physician, and I was at Detroit Receiving Hospital, which was the main teaching hospital of the Wayne State University Medical School.
NL: And where exactly was Receiving Hospital?
CL: Receiving Hospital at that time was in the city in the downtown area, not where it is now in the Medical Campus area, and it was basically in Greektown. It was right across the street from what was originally the main police station, and I wish I could remember the street address. I think the main address was a Saint Antoine address, and it was right on, just to the west of the Chrysler Freeway Service Drive.
NL: Can you tell me where you were and how you first
remember hearing about turbulence and civil unrest in the city in ’67?
CL: Yeah. Well, maybe a little background. I had started my residency in July of ’66, so I was technically done with that second year in June, but I was slated to join the Air Force. There was an obligatory draft, including doctors’ draft and I had joined a program called the Berry Plan where you get to choose your branch of service and defer until you finish some of your training, but I was called up to start duty sometime in early September. So I had asked my chief of the department, Dr. Richard Bing at that time, since I didn’t know what to do between June 30 and September, I asked if I could keep working as a third-year resident even though he knew I couldn’t finish the year for the next couple of months and he said yes, so I was in the very beginnings of a third year internal medicine residency. I’d finished a second year and I shouldn’t have been there anymore, I should’ve been somewhere else, but I was working at the hospital. I was off on the weekend that the riots started. I was off duty, and it was a Sunday morning that I first found out that there was something going on in the downtown area. I actually had been driving my mother grocery shopping. And since I usually got bored sitting around inside the market, so I was sitting in my car listening to the Beatles music and my mother was in the market. And I listened to the news and it described that some rioting was going on in the city of Detroit they said something about, I don’t remember the exact details, but there had been a police raid on a blind pig, that when they tried to arrest people, then a crowd gathered and then there was civil unrest, and shooting and fighting and throwing things, and by ten or eleven in the morning when I heard about it, it was quite a bit of problem going on in the city. So I took my mother home and when I was at the house I called Receiving and talked to some of my friends or colleagues that were working and I said “What’s going on?” And they said, “Pretty hectic.” And I said, “You need any help?” And he said, “Absolutely.” And I said okay. But they said, “But don’t drive your car, it’s hard to drive through some of this, it might not be that safe.” So I said, “How am I gonna get there?” Not gonna take the bus, it sounded worse. So they said, “Try and see if the police will bring you.” So I called the police and the police said, “We know you’re probably needed, Doctor, but we really are too busy to do this.” And they suggested that I call a black cab company. Now you have to understand that I didn’t know there was such a thing as a white cab company and a black cab company. But there apparently were two black-owned cab companies in the city at that time and the police gave me the numbers, they knew who they were, and I called and they said yeah they’ll come and get me, and they came to my house to pick me up. At that time, now I’m more grey than blonde, but I was blonde and very fair-skinned, and I walked out of my door and got into the cab and the cab driver was a really wonderful African-American gentleman and as we’re driving toward Chrysler Freeway to get on the freeway, I could see him looking at me, and he was starting to get nervous. And he said, “Doctor, it wouldn’t hurt your feelings, would it, if I asked you to scrunch down in the back seat?” Those were his exact words. And I said, “No, no problem.” He was afraid we might be a target. So we headed down the easiest way at that time from where I was living, which was in that Dexter-Davison neighborhood. So normally you would go down Chicago Boulevard where there’s an entrance onto the John C. Lodge or US-10 and then we ended up on the Chrysler. I think he took the Davison over and we ended up on the Chrysler, somehow. Somehow we got across to the Chrysler. And we’re driving down the Chrysler and it’s dawning on me that things are happening. You can hear a lot of gunshot wounds, gunshot noise, you can see fires already and that was just Sunday afternoon. And when we get the exit to get off into Greektown area where Receiving Hospital was Lafayette exit, which is still there, and we couldn’t exit the freeway onto Lafayette because there was a roadblock set up there by the police. So they wanted to know who we were, and [I] said “Doctor, going to the hospital.” And they let us through. When we got to the top of the ramp there was another checkpoint or roadblock and there were already state police there. And same thing, we had to say who we were, and they let us through. And then the cab driver dropped me off at the front door of the hospital, and he went on his way. I had the foresight, I guess, to realize that I might not be leaving in a while, so I had packed a small suitcase with shaving equipment and extra underwear and some shirts and so on. And it turned out to be a good thing that I did that because I was stuck there for almost seven days. At first I didn’t have a car, I couldn’t get out of there, and most people felt it was not a good idea to drive in the city of Detroit at that time, especially if you were white, you might be a target of snipers or things like that. So I ended up spending the week there at the hospital, there were a number of doctors there working really hard. Most of the activities, as you could imagine, were surgical rather than medical. There were gunshot injuries and knife wounds. I can say that after this all finished and I did go into the Air Force, I was in the Air Force for two years and I never saw anything in the Air Force two years like I saw in that one week at Receiving Hospital as far as those types of injuries. I’m a medical doctor so I wouldn’t normally see the trauma type of things, that surgeons were taking care of, but we were all chipping in to take care of that. The hospital, which I think at that time was much bigger and was probably 400 or 500 beds, basically by the time the week went on, every single patient almost in the hospital was a prisoner. You know, there was so much civil unrest and lawlessness, not just people shooting other people or trying to hurt other people, but all of the looting, and so a large number of people were arrested. Police had no place to put them, so if they had any injuries they obviously went to different hospitals and Receiving was the main hospital. But the Detroit Street Railway (DSR) Busses were parked all over the downtown area mostly surrounding the police station which was across the street from the hospital, and there must have been twenty or thirty of those busses filled with prisoners because the jails were totally filled. And so they would have to live in the bus and they would only get out of there to stretch or to go to the restroom and other than that they were in the bus for several days before they were able to process them all when things settled down. Well I think as you might know from reading the history or you’ve been going through all this, the police and the state police could not handle it and then the Governor, I’m trying to remember who it was at the time--
NL: Romney
CL: Romney, mobilized the National Guard on about the second day and then Lyndon Johnson, a day or two later, sent in the soldiers. So the city was under full martial law and by the third or fourth days when I would make my rounds going patient to patient to see how things were going, my typical doctor rounds, I was going around on rounds with four soldiers with me, dressed in full uniform—82nd Airborne—full dress uniform, carbine on their back helmet, that’s how I made rounds every day for the last three or four days of that week. And there were soldiers all over the city and my mom told me at her house, that was in that Dexter area, that one block over on Collingwood, there was a synagogue on the corner at that time called B’Nai Moshe, which is now out in West Bloomfield somewhere, and there was a tank, the military had a tank there to use to keep peace in that area and there were troops everywhere trying to maintain order. Back at the hospital, as you could imagine, mostly they were trauma—knife and gun, or people hit on the head with different things—but the medical patients that I was mostly involved with would be people like diabetics, who would run out of insulin and they couldn’t get to the drugstore because everything was closed. So they would come in, the police would have to bring them in because of that problem. We also had injured police and injured firemen, who were being shot at by snipers. The most amazing one that I was not in the emergency room when this gentleman came in but everybody was called down [because they] couldn’t believe this, was a fireman was brought into the emergency room, he had been shot right between the eyes. The entry wound was here and there was an exit wound here and he was absolutely normal. The bullet had apparently ricocheted inside around his skull, or the calvarium, and had not hurt him. It was like a miracle. So that was like one of these crazy stories that you hear. Wayne also ran the Veterans’ Hospital, which now is downtown, of course, in the Medical Center, but at that time was in Allen Park, and some of the surgeons were going back and forth so they were riding down I-94, and that was a disaster. One of the surgeons when he arrived said, “I’m not going again.” Because he said he heard a gunshot wound and a bullet went through his car. So people didn’t want to leave anymore, no matter what they were afraid. So this was the kind of activity that was going on at the hospital. At night we would sleep in the resident on-call room, so Receiving Hospital was just a little on the east side of the downtown so we were just a couple of blocks off of Gratiot. You could look from the eighth floor where the resident sleeping quarters were, where we would go at night and was dark at night and if you looked down Gratiot, as far as the eye could see, both sides of the street were on fire. There was fire all the way down, you couldn’t see anything but flames and we couldn’t even sleep because it was so bright, it was like daytime out at night because of the bright lights from the fire. And finally, when things calmed down, one of the other doctors who had been trapped there earlier, so his car was there, his name was, I guess I shouldn’t use his name, Felix Liddell, he was a resident with me, he was leaving and he drove me home. Felix went on to practice, and I think he might still be practicing if he hasn’t retired, he became a lung specialist later. None of us were specialists in anything, we were in training. When I got home I was still surprised to find that even in our neighborhood, there were still some issues. My mom had told me that, when I would call her on the phone, and for awhile you couldn’t call on the phone either because the phones were down, and we didn’t have cell phones in those days, and she told me that my mom and younger brother were sleeping on the ground floor or in the basement because they were afraid of bullets, turned out none came into our house luckily, but they were afraid of that, or they were sleeping under their beds, you know. Even after I got home, the power was out in a lot of areas and I was watching out my window, like the second day that I was able to get home and the Detroit Edison crew came to fix the electric system and they came and it was a convoy—four Jeeps with four soldiers in each Jeep, two in the front, two Jeeps in the back and then the Detroit Edison truck. The people from the Jeeps, the soldiers, would fan out and basically control the neighborhood, so that then the Edison people could safely climb up the poles and do their work. They were afraid to go out, because they were afraid someone might try to take a pot shot at them. So it was that type of a fearful environment. Now my father-in-law, who I didn’t know at the time, was a family practice doctor downtown in the city of Detroit, his name is Dr. George Mogill. He’s still alive, he’s going to be 98 at the end of July. He had an office in the inner city and he had a lot of African-American patients and he had a lot of suburban patients, he had a typical practice of that era for many people who had offices in downtown. His office was saved, or spared, from destruction because some of his black patients actually parked themselves in front of his office with a shotgun and wouldn’t let anybody loot it or break in. He was able to actually go down a few times, I thought later this is just insanity, and when things settled down he was able to go back and see that his office was in good shape. So that was the story and then, of course, I finished up that month for a few more days and I headed to the Air Force, and I spent the rest of ’67 in a place called Rantoul, Illinois. When I got my orders I thought that is was Rangoon or something, I’d never heard of Rantoul, Illinois. Turns out it wasn’t in Myanmar or Burma, it was right here in Central Illinois, surrounded by cornfields. So I spent two years in a place called Chanute Air Force Base. C-h-a-n-u-t-e. Which has since been one of the air force bases that has been closed by our government, cost-cutting. But I spent two years there, and as I said I didn’t need to go to Vietnam or Thailand, the only war injuries I saw were people who were well enough to be air evacuated from Vietnam, which we saw them within sometimes 48 hours—amazing—so I saw war injuries but nothing like the type of thing I saw in the city of Detroit during that seven days.
NL: I have a couple more questions especially about your time in the hospital during the riots.
CL: Sure, oh yeah.
NL: Are there any other specific injuries or treatments where you provided the medical or surgical care that you care to share?
CL: Sure, well we all had to help out with minor suturing even though generally internal medicine doctors don’t do that stuff. You know, so people had cuts and bruises, so we would take turns because people in the emergency room were exhausted and they needed a break. We all went down and helped with cuts that people needed sewed up and so on, we all did that. I didn’t deal with digging out bullets, I had no idea what to do, and things like that but, mostly medical treatment. We were treating pneumonia, heart attacks, diabetics, so things that were just routine but they were precipitated or aggravated by the fact that there was no way they could get healthcare anywhere else. They had to go to a major hospital, there were no doctors’ offices to go to. There was no such thing as walk-in clinics in those days anyway, you know like we have urgent care today. And so you had to go to a hospital if you ever had anything wrong with you, and many went to Receiving, which was the hospital of last resort anyway.
NL: What do you remember about the collective mentality of the residents and the doctors of staff there, as compared to any other time you went to Receiving?
CL: Interestingly enough, it was mostly upbeat. And I think that there’s a certain type of nervous energy and adrenaline that you work on when you’re not getting a lot of sleep and you’re very busy and you’re not really thinking too much about what’s going on, you’re just doing stuff that you need to do. There wasn’t a lot of time, maybe at night, we would think about it, but we didn’t even know the big picture that was going on outside of where we were locked in to this sort of protected environment. We were very safe, we had soldiers and military around us, as long as we didn’t go outside, it was like a fortress. So we were very secure and we were just doing our medical work and we didn’t even know ourselves the magnitude of what was going on outside. I’d get a little inkling when I talked to my mother on the phone or if we listened to the radio, but we didn’t really know until we went home and we started to really see the details of what had been going on. So at night when we were going to bed, or sitting up for a while and looking at those fires on Gratiot, is when we would say, “I can’t believe this, I can’t believe this.” You know that type of amazing, how can this be happening. Now the funny thing is, is it brought back some memories to me because my father was no longer alive, my mom was a widow at this point, but when my father was alive, when I was a youngster, he had told stories about a previous riot in Detroit that took place in the forties. I don’t know exactly what year it was.
NL: ‘43
CL: ’43. And then when he told me the whole story about it because he used to work in the city, so he was very much about them at that time and he said it started with some type of melee on Belle Isle, actually. And it exploded into the city and the city was also under martial law, and soldiers had to be brought in for a period of time, but I don’t think there were the deaths, there were forty people eventually who were dead, one way or another from the Detroit riots in ’67. I don’t think they had that type of situation earlier, people didn’t have guns in those days either, probably. So this was not the only time that this has happened in Detroit, but of course what had happened in Detroit in 1967, we know that this has happening around the United States. There was the so-called “Long Hot Summer,” there was a lot of racial tension, you know Newark, Watts, Chicago, a number of other places had riots of this type. Interestingly enough, the people doing the looting, we all find out later by the prisoners we saw, were not all African-American at all. Many white people participated in the looting, which was hard to understand what was [going on], they were just opportunists. They were just taking advantage of the unrest and trying to get free shirts and free clothes or a free TV and breaking in to the store fronts and so on.
LW: What was the function of the soldiers that follow you around during your rounds?
CL: Well I think they felt like they had to do something and they were doing their duties and they couldn’t just sit there all the time so they were assigned to the doctors. They were also there to protect us, because not all the prisoners were actually shackled to their beds. They had to be on a certain amount of good faith that they would behave themselves. Yeah, there were prisoners that were there for serious behavior, and they were shackled to their beds.
NL: Do you remember every seeing what you perceived as a difference in the care provided to somebody in the hospital based on their race?
CL: Never. That was never an issue. I’ve never seen it ever in my life. I don’t know if it ever occurs, maybe in other parts of the United States, you know where there’s more issues like that. I don’t know what people feel like in their personal life about who they want to date or who they want to go to a movie with or go to dinner with, but I can tell you, I’ve never ever seen that in the healthcare situation, where doctors or nurses ever differentiated. A sick patient was a sick patient. And I’ll tell you a vignette, since it’s about the same time frame, that had nothing to do with Detroit, but when I was in the Air Force, and here I won’t mention the name, but one of the doctors that was with me in the Air Force was from New York, and he happened to be a Jewish doctor. We had a number of other people from other militaries training at the base we were at, so we had Egyptian pilots that were at our base, and remember this was 1967 and there was the war in the Middle East, the ’67 war. And this particular doctor said, “Well, if any of them come to the hospital, I’m not gonna treat them.” We’re talking about Air Force, we’re in uniform, we’re doctors, and I said, “You’re absolutely full of baloney. Of course you’re going to treat them, and don’t say that out loud, you’re an idiot! You’re a doctor it has nothing to do with anything like that. You’re going to treat anybody who’s sick, and don’t open your big mouth and say stupid things.” You know, quite frankly. But almost never would you hear of people doing that. And we know for instance in Israel, the Israeli doctors take wonderful care of the prisoners that they capture, and so on.
NL: Do you remember how it was that food and drugs and supplies and things were shipped into the hospital during that week?
CL: That’s a really good question. I wasn’t really involved in that. I know that we had food, we did not run out of food. So somehow or another it was either arriving or we had a good supply. I can also tell you that the food at Receiving Hospital at that time was mostly inedible anyway. In fact one of the jokes we used to have, because the food was so bad, I used to carry a lunch because the food was just not very good, if you’d eat it, pardon the expression, and you’d get diarrhea half the time you’d eat the food. It was like traveling to Mexico, you know? Oh God, I can’t say anything bad about Mexico, I’ll get in trouble like Donald Trump. [laughter] So the big joke among us residents is if you stand out at Receiving, there was a big loading dock where things will be delivered and also there was garbage taken away and when food would be delivered and garbage was taken away, we always jokes about the food being delivered and we’d want to know if was shipping or receiving. [laughter] Because you couldn’t seem to tell the difference. But we had plenty of food to eat, you know regular food that was adequate to meet our needs.
NL: And the medical supplies were adequate?
CL: Yeah, generally we were fine. That’s a major hospital, major trauma center and we had all the bandages and needles and syringes. We had a good supply of medicine, so we were okay. Now I don’t know how much longer it might have lasted, but we were okay for the week.
NL: So by the time you were able to leave it had been almost fully a week later ahead that the frenzy and the excess of patients and beds and prisoners and things, had
that started to decline?
CL: Yeah, it was much better. The city was obviously much better, though there were pockets of misbehaving people. And there were still many, many hundreds, maybe thousands of prisoners. They were slowly being processed and most of them were just released because they were minor infractions but they just had to get them off the street and so it was a winding down, but of course there was major damage to the city. Many buildings were burned and destroyed and had to be cleaned up and quite a mess. And there are still some, as we know.
NL: When did you come back from Illinois?
CL: I was in the Air Force for two years and I didn’t return to Michigan, I actually went on to finish my residency in another city, in Philadelphia. So I didn’t come right back to Michigan at that time.
NL: Okay. What point did you come back to Michigan?
CL: I was in the Air Force between 1967 and 1969 and I left Philadelphia in July of ’69 and I returned to Detroit, pardon me, I left in ’70 and I returned to Detroit and I completed my specialty training in infectious disease, I have two specialties one is infectious disease, at that time right back at Wayne State at Detroit Receiving Hospital and the affiliated hospitals in that network which is Harper, Hutzel, and those hospitals for another three years and then I became part of the teaching faculty at Wayne Medical School for another six years and then I took a sabbatical year and did my allergy training at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and then after that I came to Beaumont in 1980 and I’ve been here ever since.
NL: So 1970 when you first came back in the summer, so that’s a full three years after the riot. What do you remember at that point, physically about how the city had changed? Obviously the fires had been put out by then. What was the difference?
CL: The city looked pretty much back to normal. The only difference was, obviously, there was an acceleration of the white flight that had been going on ever since the fifties, but had been more of a trickle over time, it had just moved very quickly. So a lot of people moved out of the city, a lot of businesses moved out of the city and it contributed obviously to the problems that eventually Detroit had to go through the next thirty years.
NL: And how did it compare to your visions of Detroit when you were growing up?
CL: Oh well, you know it’s very hard, when I try to explain to my own children, and to young doctors or students here at the teaching hospital or the Medical School that we’re part of, at Oakland University, you know if I try to tell them what Detroit was like in the fifties, they just can’t imagine it. And I say have you been to Chicago to the Miracle Mile? You know where all of the nice stores, the beautiful stores and high-rise department stores and high fashion, and I said well, Downtown Detroit was identical. It was identical. There were three major high-rise department stores: J.L. Hudson’s, Crowley Milner and Kerns. There were innumerable other stores. In fact, when I was in high school I worked as a stock boy in a men’s clothier called Harry Suffron, and then later there was a competing company called Hughes Hatcher. Their main office used to be right next door to where the Fox Theatre is, you know. I would work on Saturdays and sometimes after school for a few hours, unpacking pants, putting them up on the shelves, you know, stuff like this. I’d go to lunch, and if I’d go to lunch on a Saturday, I probably had 150 restaurants to choose from. And the library, which is still there, right behind where Hudson’s used to be, I used to go there and sit and read or, if it was a nice day, sit outside in one of the parks and it was such a beautiful downtown area. Of course there were fancy restaurants that I didn’t go to and there were bars and cabarets and stuff for nightlife. It was just an amazingly healthy and viable city. I would go to Saturdays sometimes when I was even younger and my mom would go shopping and she would drag me along, we would take the bus downtown, or even before that the streetcars, then they got rid of the streetcars, one of the hugest mistakes the city ever made, and here was a relatively low energy, clean form of transportation. I didn’t realize even then as a kid how extensive that Detroit Street Railway system was until when the Detroit Historical Museum reopened after they had been closed for a while, and my wife and I went down to see what it was like and there was a wonderful exhibit on the history of the Detroit Street Railway system, which you may know about. And what I didn’t realize as a kid growing up, because I lived in the city and I used it to a limited degree, I used to take that streetcar, there were two people there was a conductor and the guy that took your money, you know. And you’d get on, you’d get off, you know just like in San Francisco with the cable car, but it was a real streetcar, you know it was electrical stuff. But what I didn’t realize was that you could go up on a streetcar from Downtown Detroit to Port Huron. You could go on the streetcar from Downtown Detroit to Ann Arbor. You could go on a streetcar, I live out in West Bloomfield, and beyond me there’s an area called Keego Harbor with a lot of lakes, I was looking, I was shocked, that streetcar went out to Keego Harbor, people would go out to lakes for the day, you know, pack a lunch and they’d go to the lake. I mean it was an amazing, wonderful network where you didn’t need to rely on the automobile. And it was cheap, of course, in those days it was probably 20 cents or something like that for the whole ride. So, you know the automotive industry, are you familiar with a book called J’accuse?
NL: No.
CL: Emile Zola?
LW: No.
CL: You ever heard of that one? Alright, so the auto industry, J’accuse. I accuse you of being in collusion with the legislature, they ruined the bus system, got rid of the streetcars. Our streetcars still running in Mexico, by the way. And we were proud of having the best highway system in the world, and we did, at one time in Detroit because they wanted to sell cars. But look at ours now. We have no rapid transit, essentially, and we have the worst highway system because we haven’t’ been fixing it. So, I remember, as you say, going back, great highways and great public transportation. Clean and safe. And a downtown that was a beautiful place to visit. My mom as a treat would take me to, she’d get a cup of coffee after shopping at the Mayflower Coffee Shop, which is obviously no longer there, and I would get a glass of milk and a donut. You know, that was my treat. And, you know, there’s things you don’t forget, you know, there were just wonderful experiences growing up and, you know, when you see Detroit is coming back, you know, it’s making a wonderful comeback but it’s obviously slow and it’s gonna take a long time and there’s a lot of work to be done and there’s a lot less people there, so there’s a lot of space to figure out what do with, but the fact of the matter is that it’s very hard for people who didn’t see that when they were younger, growing up, to imagine how wonderful and viable and healthy the city of Detroit was as late as the fifties, when I was growing up. Now in 1924, I was reading about this, Detroit was not just the richest city in the United States, it was considered the richest city in the world. Could you imagine the change that we’ve seen in less than a hundred years? And the reason why I learned that is when the Book Cadillac reopened there was a lot of literature with that, and my son had his wedding at the Book Cadillac and they had a lot of reading material, so I was reading about the history of the hotel and the history of Detroit. And there’s also a wonderful book and I can’t remember the author, and I feel really bad about it, but my brother-in-law insisted that I read it. My brother-in-law is a teacher at Cranbrook Schools and one of the books that used to be mandatory reading for the middle school, he’s a middle school math teacher, is a book called Arc of Justice, and that book takes place in Detroit in the twenties, and it’s a true story, but the beginning of the book paints a picture, what was America like in 1910, 1920, talks about Detroit. Actually if you aren’t familiar with that book it’s an amazing book about Detroit history. And what really happens is later on after they set the stage and tell you all about Detroit, there’s the events of a black doctor, a young doctor who trains in the South and comes to Detroit and he marries the daughter of a successful black businessman and they buy a house in a white neighborhood, in the city, they were large [homes], mostly white. And they’re not accepted, and there is all kinds of turmoil and their house is surrounded and there’s some gunshot wounds, and one person is killed and one is wounded and there’s this huge trial of the century going on, not the Scopes Monkey trial, but almost as big because the NAACP, a fledgling new organization, this is all in the book [that] I learned [this], wanted to make sure to have the best representation for the black people who were being basically lynched on this because they were under attack in the first place, they were trying to defend themselves from the white crowd. So they were able to get the best lawyers in the country, they debated black lawyers and white lawyers, they debated this and they decided they’re going to forget the racial stuff, and they got the best white lawyer and they actually worked pro bono, or for minimal money, and Clarence Darrow, the same lawyer that was in the Scopes trial was in Detroit for almost two years with his whole team defending these black people because they were trying to put them up for murder. At first there was a hung jury and then there was another trial and they got everybody off. And when you read the book you realize this must have been the most exciting thing you could ever imagine, but in the meantime, it’s giving all this background about Detroit and what’s going on in the twenties, you know, in that time. The judge who presided over that was Frank Murphy, and the police station downtown and the courthouse is Frank Murphy Hall. He later became the mayor, he became governor, he became a justice, and he became a Supreme Court Justice. He distinguished himself in this trial by keeping it fair. And he was a great man obviously because he was under a lot of pressure to stick it to the black guys. It was a white city at that time, and you know the police were all white, everything was white at that time. So it’s an amazing story and if you really want a good background of Detroit, obviously not ’67, but the type of thing that Detroit was like before things changed, you read that book, it’s an amazing book.
NL: I’ll have to check that out. Do you have any other questions?
LW: I don’t, but is there anything else about ’67 that you want to share with us?
CL: Well, I’m trying to think. Obviously ’67 started, I was a first year resident at Henry Ford between ’65 and’66, July to June, so ’67 started and I was halfway through that second year of the residency and you know, I don’t think there was that much eventful, at that time, you know, the Tigers were playing pretty good baseball, I wasn’t a big Red Wings fan. Basketball, nobody watched. I don’t know when the Pistons arrived from Fort Wayne, but it wasn’t a very popular sport at that time.
NL: If they had arrived though, the NBA wasn’t really popular until the eighties.
CL: And NFL, the last time the Lions won a championship was 1957, so that was already ten years before. So that was it. Detroit was otherwise like any other big city. When I graduated high school in 1958, the population of the city of Detroit was 1.8 million, it was the fourth largest city in the United States, and it was just a few years after that, that we were passed by Houston. Remember when we went from four to five [in the rankings], now we’re like 20. Okay.
NL: Alright. Thank you.
LW: Thank you so much, that was great.
NL: Thank you for sharing your memories with us today.
CL: I hope this was something that can help you.
LW: Of course.
NL: It’s tremendously helpful and we appreciate your time and willingness to sit with us and share this.
LW: Thank you.
CL: Thank you.
**
LW: Today is July 17, 2015. This is the interview of Rosemary Konwerski by Lily Wilson. We are at the Polish Mission in Orchard Lake, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Rosemary, can you start by telling me where and when you were born?
RK: I was born in Hamtramck, Michigan at St. Francis Hospital October 7, 1947.
LW: And who were your parents and what did they do for a living?
RK: My parents were Roman Joseph Konwerski and he was a quality management specialist and instructor for the Army Tank Automotive Command in Warren and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. Her name was Dorothy Josephine Szafran Konwerski.
LW: And when did they come to Michigan?
RK: Both of my parents were born here in the Detroit area, both on the east side of Detroit. My dad, his parents were Joseph and Mary Konwerski, my mother’s parents were John and Josephine Szafran.
LW: How do you spell Szafran?
RK: S-Z-A-F-R-A-N
LW: Both sets of grandparents were from Poland?
RK: My paternal grandparents were born in Poland. My maternal grandfather was born here and I am not sure where my grandmother was born—that’s the stuff I’m looking for here.
LW: I see. Tell me about where you were living in July of 1967.
RK: July of 1967 my family—we moved—for the first 18 years of my life—’66, ’67—we lived in Hamtramck on Oliver Street. Half of the street was in Detroit, half was in Hamtramck. In April of ’67—the previous year, in 1966, my dad bought a house in Warren, in Eleven Mile and Hoover area. And so our family moved out of Hamtramck in April of 1967 and when the riots occurred three months later we were living in Warren already.
LW: And where were you going to school at that time?
RK: I was working. I graduated from St. Ladislaus High School in 1965 and started working at the Lafayette Clinic in Detour t in July of 1965 so I was, again, when the riots broke out I was already working at the Lafayette Clinic which is located at Lafayette and the Chrysler Freeway downtown Detroit.
LW: And what was your job there?
RK: At that time I was a typist in the Steno Pool, Medical Records Department.
LW: So what do you remember about July ’67 and the riots in particular?
RK: I was only 18 years old and it was an emotional time because I left Hamtramck, that was where our family was born and raised, we lived in a two-family flat that belonged to my grandmother and my dad’s younger brother and his two children lived upstairs and our family lived downstairs; there were four girls and two boys lived upstairs. So it was like leaving my two brothers behind. It was different moving out to the suburbs. It was new. I remember the ride downtown was longer for me before I would jump on the freeway and I was at work in five, ten minutes. This way coming from Eleven Mile and Hoover, I dropped my sister off in Hamtramck to finish her high school education and then drive downtown.
LW: Okay. So why did your dad decide to buy a house in Warren?
RK: My mom and dad never owned a home. They were always living in my grandparent’s—my grandparents owned the two-family flat. And my dad worked at Eleven-and-a-half Mile and Van Dyck—that was the Army Tank Automotive Command.
LW: I see.
RK: And so he finally he promised my mom that we were going to get a home and that was it. We didn’t move for any racial reasons.
LW: Okay.
RK: Hamtramck at that time was still very Polish predominately. So it was just that my dad promised my mother that one day she would own a home of her own because she lived in an orphanage when she was little—her mother died when she was only nine years old. So it was a happy move in that my dad was doing something better for his family.
LW: I see. So what do you remember about having to go downtown?
RK: The riots broke out early on a Sunday morning, my dad would not let me go to work on Monday. I was only 18 years old, just purchased a new car after working for two years—well, it was a year old but to me it was new but my dad was still very concerned about me driving downtown by myself. I didn’t go to work until Thursday of that week.
LW: Wow.
RK: So I was home Monday, Tuesday Wednesday. When I did finally drive downtown, I used to take Van Dyck to Gratiot and then Gratiot over, once I crossed and got south of Eight Mile Road and got closer to the downtown area, there was a high school there called Borroughs High, and the National Guard was set up with camp there and what struck me most of all was that they were standing all around a playground, sort of, with guns in their hand. And that was when it first hit me that this was something very, very serious. I remember seeing on TV, but we always thought it was so localized in one area, but to see the National Guard with machine guns and tanks and this was a school I had driven past hundreds of times, I used to walk there from my old neighborhood and to see it become a military base was upsetting and I was only 18 years old.
LW: Sure. So you brought some papers with you today. Can you explain what these are?
RK: At the time, when the riots started, there was money made available from the National Institute of Mental Health and researchers were clamoring to get applications—grant applications—to study the civil disturbance. So Dr. Elliott Luby, who was the author of this article that ended up in the William & Mary Law Review—Dr. Luby was chief psychiatrist on the adult inpatient service and he also was a lawyer and he had a practice and he was on staff at the law school at Wayne State University. Mrs. Hicks who was the supervisor at the time, they asked her to pick one person to be the secretary on the grant. They had one social worker who was going to be the coordinator, Dr. Luby was the initial administrator, there was another psychologist I think his name was Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, he was on staff at U[niversity] of M[ichigan] also and my supervisor picked me. She asked me, “Would you be the secretary on this research study?” It was exciting because I hated typing and I had the chance to do something different. So I was the secretary on the grant, Jackie Giering who was the social worker on the adult inpatient service, she was the coordinator so she and I were coordinating and I was responsible for doing all of the clerical things. Years ago when I was moving I threw out the actual report but when I went up online Dr. Luby did take as the basis for this publication in the [William & Mary] Law Review all of the data he collected from the Lafayette Clinic study. The only thing different in this report than from the original report is that he studied controls also. In the study that we did we had a year, and I think in about a year-and-a-half we published it. It probably went just to Lansing to the Department of Mental Health and I don’t remember there being a lot written about controls. It was simply what he found in interviews. We interviewed prisoners, we interviewed store owners, people in the neighborhoods that were affected by it one way or the other. Interestingly enough we interviewed prostitutes who were arrested at that time. And I remember going to the Detroit House of Correction and there was—but they don’t mention the prostitutes in this report for some reason—
LW: Interesting.
RK: But I remember going to the Detroit House of Correction with another psychologist who was—and I can’t remember her name and I don’t know if she wrote a report based on that. It was a hectic time. I remember I was being called in a lot on weekends because just to get the grant in, to get it written, and everyone was applying and all of the major universities in Michigan and really anyone that was affected by it was really trying to get a piece of the pie. I remember probably that following week my dad said, “No, I don’t want you going down there on a weekend because there are not—” As the week went on more and more of the businesses started to open and there were more people down there but like early on a Saturday morning and I didn’t feel that comfortable so I didn’t wanna argue. I put in a lot of overtime. We had questionnaires that were done over and over again, lists of arrestees. So it was a pretty hectic time but it was very, very interesting.
LW: When you would go to the Department of Corrections, when you would talk to people who had been arrested, prostitutes, what was being—what was the type of question that they were being asked?
RK: Well, I didn’t do the actual interviewing.
LW: Right. Dr. Luby was doing the interviewing?
RK: Well he had—they hired interviewers. There were staff members from the clinic that volunteer, some of the social workers but they also had people—I highlighted some of the things in there [Dr. Luby’s report] that were interesting.
LW: Okay. Thank you.
RK: I just can’t remember what the actual questionnaires were about. “Where were you when the riot started? Did you live in the area? Did you come from outside of the area?” And family demographics and so a lot of that is in there as far as the demographics that has to do with the individuals who were arrested.
LW: There were 233 subjects in this study?
RK: Right, for the purposes of this particular paper. What they did is we had a whole list of names of people who were arrested and we randomly selected so it was like— I can’t remember if it was every tenth or fifteenth person—until we had the number that he wanted. He didn’t take say like the first hundred so it was a random selection and I can’t remember—I can’t remember the number of—somewhere in here they list the number of people who were actually arrested and that was very high.
LW: Oh yeah.
RK: So for the purposes of this paper he had 233 subjects.
LW: Randomly selected.
RK: From a total of—there was 7,200 arrested.
LW: So when you heard these interviews taking place, because you were—
RK: I didn’t hear so much the interviews. I saw the interview questionnaires because I would type them up.
LW: Okay. I see.
RK: The only place that I went to was the Detroit House of Corrections where the prostitutes were. I did not go to the jails because they were in Wayne County Jail. Some that were arrested were kept in Burroughs High School and they were you know just kept in there. I did not go to any of the jails except Detroit House of Corrections.
LW: I see. So this was in late July, early August of 1967.
RK: August, September.
LW: So immediately following, while these people were still in jail. Waiting on some sort of hearing or sentencing or something?
RK: Mm-hmm.
LW: So what was the conclusion or the gist of what Dr. Luby found out about all of this.
RK: It’s in the paper here.
LW: Okay. Based on what you remember. It doesn’t necessarily have to be—
RK: Well, in the paper, and maybe it was me being young and naïve and in the area that I lived in, I didn’t see a lot of unrest around me. But Hamtramck at that time was Polish and white. And there were pockets of the area that there were black people living, some small amount of Chinese people or different—
LW: Okay.
RK: But I didn’t see that kind of animosity. Hamtramck High School, which was just down the street from where I went, St. Lads, had a large black population there. We used to play basketball against them sometimes, the schools, and I don’t remember there being fighting going on after that. I knew there were parts of Detroit that you just didn’t go into because certain areas, like Hastings Street and that, the buildings were run down and that’s in Dr. Luby’s paper that that disparity between what the white people had and what the black people had at that time was one of the major underlying causes for the riot. Again, being 18 years old I, you know, things didn’t bother me. And I wasn’t aware of the economic differences. Even in the paper it says that Detroit was looked at as almost a model city for racial balance. We had a very liberal mayor, Mayor Cavanagh, at the time and this really came almost like as a shock but as things started to unfold then you realized that that difference in economics, availability of jobs—even when I was reading this now—how many years later?
LW: Fifty.
RK: Fifty years later. Oh my gosh I’ll be 68. It just shocks me it really—it was very eye-opening reading this 50 years later. And again if I was at a point where—when I was still in high school I interviewed for two jobs, I got hired and I started the day after high school at Blue Cross Blue Shield I worked for six weeks and then the second job I passed the civil service test and I was hired at Lafayette Clinic. So I never had the problem of getting a job. And then you read that—I mean I was hired before I even graduated.
LW: Wow.
RK: I was overwhelmed by the amount of animosity from the black people at the clinic. That we worked with.
LW: Yeah.
RK: And these were some very, very educated people, some psychologists. And I guess that’s one of the things that—I’ve always worked with educated people. So there are educated blacks there are educated everything so I—to me, I’ve always grown up in my work environment where I was surrounded, working in the medical field, medical situations—Lafayette Clinic and then the VA then I was an account manager—the people that I dealt with mostly were very educated people. But some of the clerical staff were very, very upset that we were doing this research.
LW: Okay.
RK: And I remember when Dr. Luby presented the findings almost a year-and-a-half after the grant was closed and we had a formal report and we held it in the auditorium to release the findings to the rest of the staff.
LW: Yeah.
RK: And one of the chief accountants, a young black lady, got up and she just started crying and said, “I don’t know why you did this, it was a waste of time and I am tired of people putting black people under a microscope and analyzing us.”
LW: Now—
RK: That came to me as a real—because I was real proud of the work we did. But I’m a Polish, white lady—or young lady at that time—and to me it was a research study.
LW: So what types of findings in Dr. Luby’s study that you were a part of do you think would have upset her or somebody else who had a more similar perspective?
RK: One of the interesting things—and I wrote over here—most of the rioters came from outside the riot area. And the riot happened in an area, at a blind pig in downtown Detroit and we had arrestees that came almost from the Grosse Pointe area and same from the Dearborn area. And it’s much like when you have on a college campus today when they think somebody’s playing for a championship—
LW: Yeah.
RK: Say like Michigan State, it’s not the kids who riot from Michigan State and party and burn, but it’s the people that come there.
LW: I see.
RK: And that to me, I thought that was really significant.
LW: Sure.
RK: And even when you see riots on the television today, the people in that area—like in Ferguson, they had signs, the owners said “Please keep out.” I don’t think it’s the people that lived there that wanted that part of Detroit destroyed.
LW: I see.
RK: Interestingly enough at that time, my cousin Ed, who lived upstairs from us and he was like my brother, he was in Vietnam. And the news that was filtered back to Vietnam was that the city of Detroit—the city of Detroit was burnt to the ground. And my cousin Eddie—at that time there was no social media there was nothing it was whatever little bits and pieces of information were filtered there. So he had no idea what happened to his mother, his father his brother or us or any of his friends.
LW: That must have been difficult.
RK: I just wrote some notes here, it said here how the samples were collected. First we selected the eleventh, the twenty-first and the thirty-first so that was randomly.
LW: From the 7,000 arrestees?
RK: Right. There was a median age of 18 to 24. And you take a look at some of the areas—and there were older people were living in those areas.
LW: So it wasn’t people in those areas necessarily—
RK: It was the arrestees were younger ones that came in and started burning. The only thing, it must have been so ripe and ready to go and that’s what I was surprised at, just being me, was the little sheltered area that I lived in.
LW: So it looks like here most of the arrestees were married? Or most were single?
RK: 46 [percent] were single, 39 [percent] were married, and then divorced, separated or widowed. On here most of the arrestees were employed—which was very surprising. 16 percent unemployed and 13 percent—almost 14—were students. All of the arrestees were unskilled or semi-skilled workers. So they may have been young ones that worked in the factory.
LW: Okay.
RK: For whatever reason. That’s it, right here—“A large percentage of whom were working in the automobile factory and making on the average $115 a week.”
LW: Okay.
RK: As far as socialization—and that was one of the things that—most of them came, 61 percent, were from a large city. The arrestees, also were more likely to have spent their early developmental years in Detroit. I was very surprised, it still happens today, though, that you would want to burn down your own neighborhood. But then again if it’s not you, it’s going to be someone that comes from someplace else. Most were born in Detroit or came under the age of 11.
LW: I see.
RK: And then 36 percent migrated before the age of 11. So again the higher percentage of arrestees were actually born and raised in the Detroit area. So I don’t know if for so long they felt depressed and kept down.
LW: Did Dr. Luby ask the subjects of this study about that?
RK: It might be more in here.
LW: Why do you think he did this study?
RK: He was such a brilliant man, he’s still alive but he’s probably close to his nineties and his wife, unfortunately—I saw him a couple years ago at a funeral service for someone that we worked with whose wife passed away. Dr. Luby’s wife just passed away two weeks ago. And I went up to him, I said, “Dr. Luby it’s Rosemary Konwerski” and he goes, “Oh, I remember you.” I mean a smart man. And just—why did he do it? I think to bring—he was just such a smart and intelligent man and I really think that he did it not to offend anyone but really—because he worked with some really high level people and had an excellent reputation in the city of Detroit, still does, but the money was available and it also brought some prestige to the Lafayette Clinic. We were the only agency in the Michigan Department of Mental Health that got the grant. At that time Lafayette Clinic was a research facility, a state psychiatric hospital, and we were also the Department of Psychiatry for Wayne State University. So when [Gov. John] Engler shut the place down—I was there the day state troopers shut the place down, I was director of medical records at the time.
LW: What was that like?
RK: Very traumatic. Our acting director, Dr. Sullivan, who was my boss at the time was in New York visiting his daughter and that’s when Engler sent the state troopers in because he knew that Dr. Sullivan—we had a two-and-a-half -year court battle going on with the Department of Mental Health. And so he knew our leader was gone. And I was sitting in a meeting and they announced over the PA system it was two o’clock, it was a Friday afternoon, “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon the Lafayette Clinic is closing.” And you had patients, children, adolescents and adults and they had staff from Northville and a couple of other state hospitals and went up to the wards and they told our staff to leave and they had state troopers up and down the hallway. Now you have psychiatric patients who are very attached to their attendants, we had adolescents who—that’s their home, the average length of stay is six months and for children they stayed there for more than a year because you deal with family dynamics. And—I know—I was allowed to come back on Monday, you had to make an appointment to come get your—all you could do was take your purse out that day. And I was at the front desk and Cheryl Chodun was out in the lobby and she wanted to interview me and I said, “No Cheryl, I don’t want to go on TV.”
LW: Sure, sure.
RK: But I came back—you had to make an appointment to come back and get your personal belongings. I was allowed to come back on Monday morning because I was director of medical records. I could bring two staff with me. And I went up on the wards and the medical records were thrown around, patients were taken to Northville, they had no idea what medications they had.
LW: Wow.
RK: They had to wait in the back of the clinic for buses. Patients were lined up there for at least two hours with nothing to eat and we had appointments because I was also patient affairs officer and I was the court liaison and I supervised admissions—I was there for 27 years so I grew up there. We had medical appointments for patients and they were never kept. I took pictures of what the ward looked like and I gave them to the recipient’s rights officer but Engler had a couple of judges in his hip pocket. That stuff went nowhere, it went nowhere.
LW: How do you think that has impacted the City of Detroit today?
RK: The entire State of Michigan. We have no place for psych patients, not just Detroit. Engler came from—I tried to, I worked on his recall campaign—but he came from the Grand Rapids area, an area that is a very affluent area. When you take a look at Lafayette Clinic we had two adolescent units, male and female and we had a total of 40 beds I think, 20 and 20. The only family that most of those children knew were the attendants because they did not have a strong family structure; that’s why they were in there. And we had adult patients there, their average length of stay was usually three months. And some of their families would dump them there and never pick them up. A lot of them were sent to Clinton Valley, Northville and Ypsilanti Regional for long-term care and then when they would start closing the larger state hospitals down I testified before the Senate and House hearings because, not as an employee, I had family members, I had a cousin who was in there. And I had an uncle who had psych problems. So I told them, I said, I’m not here as an employee but I said I have relatives and unless you have someone who has mental illness in your family—it’s terrible. And the adolescents were just traumatized because these attendants—as clinics started closing down and there were threats of that, the staff members who were leaving always had to sign out in medical records so I had to clear them, I would sign out attendants that had 30 years seniority, 40, 25. Every day I would see over 100 years of experience going out the door. When I left there I had almost 28 years. So the clinic at the time that this study was going on was the jewel in the Michigan Department of Mental Health. The other hospitals did not have research and they were not the Department of Psychiatry—they were state psychiatric hospitals.
LW: In the sixties, when you were working there in the late sixties, and early sevenites, well, basically until it was shut down—what was the year that it was shut down?
RK: 1992. October of ’92.
LW: So before 1992, while you were there, what was the racial makeup of the patients.
RK: I think at beginning it may have been equal, maybe more white. But then being located in downtown Detroit, we serviced all of Macomb, Oakland or—it didn’t have real boundaries.
LW: I see.
RK: If there was an opening and unless you needed long time care for like a year or two then you would go to the larger state hospitals. But we had two adult wards, one was an admitting ward which was—all of our wards were locked but it was more severe, it was four south, and then as the patients progressed they were transferred to—it was still a locked ward but it three north which was preparing them to go home or into a halfway house.
LW: I see.
RK: And we had two adolescent units, we had a children’s unit that had 22 beds, we had 40 adolescent beds I mentioned and at one time we had two neurology units, one was adult and the other one when it was open was patients who were probably under the age of five years old that had such severe epilepsy that they couldn’t even sit up. And this is what Engler shut down. And what he kept reporting was that the census was so low, but he refused to let us admit. And so the things that you saw in the paper or news was that it was too expensive to keep Lafayette Clinic open, you told us we could not admit anymore. As I said we had a two-and-a-half year court battle going on and we were doing real well until he had a couple judges in his pocket for some—for whatever reason. And when you get into more affluent areas from where he came, people on the west side of the state don’t want to pay for someone to stay in a hospital. It was based on your ability to pay. We would bill insurance if we could but if you didn’t have any insurance, your liability to pay was zero and the state picked up the bill. But it wasn’t a freebie, I mean these patients—the Lafayette Clinic had just an unbelievable staff, such a dedicated—and if it didn’t close I would have retired from there.
LW: Do you visit Detroit today?
RK: Oh yeah, I love downtown Detroit.
LW: So having this perspective with a large sort of institution closing that would maybe have helped a lot more people had it stayed open, and then you go to Detroit today or we think about things that happened to Detroit from the nineties and the 2000s, do you think that the lack of mental health care has impacted the city negatively at all?
RK: I think it’s impacted the entire state not just Detroit. When I started working at the VA hospital in 1996, the Allen Park VA Hospital closed in June of ’96 and I interviewed in November of ’96 at the new hospital—I interviewed in September and I was hired in November. And when we had surveyors come to, you know, it was joint commission surveyors and then Council on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities who did our homeless programs and the surveyor said to us, she said, “You know your patients are so lucky, your veterans, because there is no inpatient psych anyplace anymore.” And when I started at the VA in’96 the average length of stay was probably close to two to two-and-a-half weeks, when I retired two years ago it was four to seven days. They get patients in they stabilize them on medication and they go out the door. And you had this revolving door syndrome. It’s not just the mental health—after the riots, as I said I used to take Gratiot, I used to take Van Dyck down to Gratiot, and when I was small my mom and I used to take the Gratiot bus downtown shopping. I saw the businesses on Gratiot close one after another and it was like driving through a ghost town, year after year it got worse and worse.
LW: This was in the sixties and seventies? Late sixties?
RK: Yeah, the seventies, right after the riots and I personally believe that Coleman Young buried the city for 20 years. When he told everyone to hit Eight Mile, people hit Eight Mile. He drove out businesses, there was no tax base in the city and where were people who had no education or transportation to get a job anyplace? I think Dennis Archer really tried, he was driven out and then we had Kwame Kilpatrick. I remember because I’m a big sports fan, and the fact that I said Detroit even to this day is like any other big city. You have to know where you can go and where not to go, you use common sense.
LW: Sure.
RK: But I’ve always worked downtown so I go to Tiger games, Red Wing games, football games. I still shop at Eastern Market, stuff like that. But I could see if after a sporting events even in the eighties and nineties you could shoot a canon down Woodward Avenue, you wouldn’t even hit anyone. And it is so nice to see that this stuff is starting to get so much better. One of my sisters—I have three sisters, and I’ll be honest with you, I’m the only one that will go downtown. I worked most of my life downtown. For two-and-a-half years I had a job in Troy, Michigan.
LW: Okay.
RK: I couldn’t stand it. I was on the road a lot, too, but that was our base, Troy. Sixteen Mile and Crooks and I was an account manager so I had eight hospitals in the Detroit area, downtown Detroit at Receiving Hospital, the Rehab Institute, then I had two in Pontiac, two in Grand Rapids, two in Muskegon. I didn’t like Troy.
LW: You liked the city more.
RK: And to this day, when I go down to baseball games I know enough to cut through Hamtramck so I don’t have to get on the freeway.
LW: So you know all the local secrets.
RK: You could really see after the riots the city just darkened. It just got—it lost its aura.
LW: Yeah.
RK: And I would go on vacation and people would say, “Well, where are you from” “I’m from Detroit” “Oh my god!” I go, “Well, where are you from?” “Milwaukee” I said, “I don’t consider that the garden spot of the world.” [Laughter] You know I was never ashamed to say I was from Detroit. And they would say, “Well, you carry a gun?” No, I don’t. And maybe it’s because I’ve always worked down there, the good portion, except for the two, three years I worked as an account manager. I was so happy to get back at the new VA hospital downtown and then it was in the early 2000s—you know, beginning in 1999 to 2000—you could just see the city just starting to wake up a little bit.
LW: So when you were at the Lafayette Clinic in the late sixties, seventies, and right during the time of the riots how did the riots impact the type of patients coming into the Lafayette Clinic—did it at all?
RK: No. Referrals were made from private psychiatrists from other hospitals. It really didn’t impact the type of patients. The patient care, I’m very proud to say, was not affected by that. We had a very, very dedicated staff of individuals. Again, I was in the administration part of it, I was a clerical staff, I didn’t have much to do with admitting at that at the time but I don’t remember patients suffering at all. The staff was very protective of the patients we had there. We were like a big family. And people have 35, 40 years of seniority and there was enough autonomy within the metal health system and even in civil service in Michigan you could go anyplace in the state. In fact I still keep in touch with Jackie Giering who was the coordinator and I was her secretary and a couple of the doctors I worked at Lafayette Clinic with. We’re all much older now but I have been very lucky that I had two jobs that I loved. I loved working at Lafayette Clinic. I grew up there professionally, chronologically, emotionally and the ties I had there for 27 years were unbelievable. Working at the VA hospital, I loved it. In fact when I went to the VA I was hired because of my mental health background. They were looking for a quality management coordinator for the mental health services. And Dr. [John] Grabowski who did his residency at Lafayette Clinic was the chief psychiatrist at the VA, so I was hired to work with him. And when I went on the wards half of the nursing staff was from Lafayette Clinic, four of the psychologists were from Lafayette Clinic, the chief psychologist was. When Lafayette clinic graduated at least 90 percent of the doctors or the professionals stayed in Michigan at the time. So I stayed and I worked at the VA, there were two—I just loved both—I was very, very lucky in my lifetime for 48 years to have two jobs that I loved.
LW: Thinking back to, you mentioned reading Dr. Luby’s report that you, you know, played a role in, you said that it sort of surprised you to go back and read it today. What do you think the most surprising thing about reading this report is for you today?
RK: That some of these things still exist.
LW: Like what types of things?
RK: I said to Ceil [Jensen] that there’s been some areas when I was reading this and some of the types of problems there are—some people still have a hard time getting a job, some people still have a hard time getting into school. When you take a look at some of the areas that are just what they called Black Bottom before, there are still pockets. When I worked at Southwest Detroit Community Mental Health, I was there right after Lafayette Clinic closed. I was hired there for three days, to work three days a week, they bumped it up to four, and then Engler cut the community mental health budget so they cut me back down to three. And I was teaching part time at Schoolcraft College at night. I was teaching Introduction to Allied Health and Quality Management and then I interviewed at the VA and I was hired a couple months later but it was just that there was the Mexican pockets, the Spanish down in Southwest Detroit and the only thing that down there—I saw so much that the areas in Southwest Detroit, even though it was very poor, you could see there was not a lot of money but the people took really pride in what their neighborhoods looked like. And you’d go to some of the areas for the African-Americans or blacks, whatever, and houses are burned down and stuff like that and that to me was such a big difference and I go, “Wow. These people in Southwest Detroit don’t have a heck of a lot of money either.” Some of these things that probably—that were the basis for the riot or the inequalities—a lot of them still exist 50 years today.
LW: I see.
RK: I can even see it in some of my family and friends. I mean it’s the prejudices. And I don’t know why. And like I said I worked with a lot of highly educated black people, Chinese people. I mean at one time we had so many foreign graduate residents at Lafayette Clinic, we had one English speaking one. We had so many foreigners one year when I was director of medical records somebody typed, dictated, that the patient—it was in the record that the patient said her husband had two heads. And the typist brought it up to me and she goes, “You know, Rosemary this doesn’t look right.” So we called the doctor and I called one of the supervisors down and said “You know this doesn’t sound right,” and I said, “Is the patient hallucinating you know, what is it? Because the typist was typing it.” And the patient said to the foreign doctor, “My husband is a two-faced son of a bitch.” While the foreign doctor thought her husband had two heads.
LW: Lost in translation.
RK: Right. And they had no idea when the adolescents would throw them the finger or somebody was throwing salt over their shoulder or the patients talked about where they came from. So we—Dr. Valerie Kling, she was a staff psychologist and I, we took the clinic bus, we put the foreign residents, doctors, on the bus and we took them around the Cass Corridor to show them where the patients came from. Because during the seventies—and then they finally put a limit on the number of foreign medical graduate students who could come into the country. But we had doctors that patients couldn’t relate to. I don’t even know what the question was.
LW: Well, I’m wondering, you know, looking back at this report today, how you mentioned it was eye-opening to read this again and I wondered what about it—
RK: Well, even here, back: the arrestees, zero completed college, zero had some college, 39 percent completed high school, 43 percent had some high school. These numbers have gone up. I think—
LW: I see.
RK: But today, these individuals who are more educated, these people still feel they’re being depressed and that they don’t have equal opportunities where the rest of us do. The other thing that was real important was talk about affiliation.
LW: I see.
RK: If some people, like the arrestees, were affiliated with a church or some kind of racial group, PTA or a block club. And if you take a look at the controls, most of the controls were—they felt if you belonged to some kind of a group it was important. And I think that sort of shows where if you think you’re a rebel, I don’t belong anywhere today, and today this is where you see the shootings. People don’t belong—feel like they don’t belong anyplace and so they’re going to take it out on someone. And that’s what happened at the blind pig and this thing snowballed—it really, really did.
LW: So this—what we’re looking at here, 39 percent of arrestees had a church affiliation.
RK: They did. But if you take a look at the control group, controls who—
LW: 42 percent.
RK: 42 percent and--
LW: What is a race group?
RK: Probably some kind of affiliation from either maybe NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] or something like that.
LW: I see. So eight percent of the arrestees belonged to a race group, but 27 percent of the controls belonged to a similar group
RK: Right.
LW: So the sense of not belonging or being an outsider—
RK: To me it’s you have so much in you that you want to get out.
LW: So Dr. Luby’s study, it would seem, supports the idea that people that are—feel isolated that feel like outsiders are more prone to civil disturbance or—
RK: Act out.
LW: Or acting out.
RK: Right. And I think you see that today in individuals more and more. You know, was this person a loner? And you know I guess even back when I was in high school, not everyone could be a cheerleader, not everyone could be—I mean I was a cheerleader in grade school but I didn’t make it in high school. But you know we were still at the games and things like that. But I belonged—there was a Future Business Leaders of America, you know, the library club, and as you go on more and more there are different groups. And it’s still very, very important to belong somewhere. After I retired I took a year off and I started volunteering here. I felt like, yeah, okay, I had enough to myself. I just want to go someplace. And I can’t imagine somebody not wanting to be that.
LW: To contribute.
RK: To belong to something.
LW: So the sense of belonging—
RK: It gives you a purpose.
LW: So the sense of belonging and you think that in the city today that one of the problems is that people feel like they don’t belong.
RK: No. Honestly, I think, to me—and I don’t want this taken the wrong way—it’s just the pendulum swings from one way to another and it’s going so far from the left to the right, and this sense of entitlement and not just by race but I think of groups. Young children, I can see it in some family members where, “What are you gonna give me.” You know, you work for it. I started working when I was 17 I had to go get working papers. I didn’t think anything of it. I started the day after I graduated. And “What are you gonna give me now?” And the sense of entitlement, it’s not there for the taking, you got to work for it. So I get a little upset, not with ethnic groups or whatever but anybody. And I think that is more and more in our society. I can’t see wiping out history—
LW: Okay.
RK: Of any kind. I mean, it was there, slavery was there, the labor camps were there in Poland and that and it’s part of history that we need to learn from, but not to say that “I think I’m entitled for you to give me something now.” And I don’t know, I just see that more and more today. And our government just gives stuff away to me—just gives things away. Instead of making people say, “Hey, it’s there, if you wanna work for it.” I always worked for it. Nobody ever gave me anything.
LW: Did you feel that same sense of entitlement or people feeling like they deserved something when you worked at the Lafayette Clinic?
RK: No. No, I didn’t. And again, I guess it’s because the people that I worked with were so professional. You know, not all the attendants were high schooled but they were dedicated people that really had a purpose in life. And it was like we had at one time close to a thousand employees in different shifts, you know, because we ran—I think it was on average 800 employees but we were like a family and we took care of each other. And I was there for 27 years. And I didn’t—when I got over to the VA in the late nineties I could see more of a divide in race groups. We had a group of black nurses who were very, very powerful in the hospital. Very powerful.
LW: So it was an incredibly diverse place to work.
RK: Yeah. Lafayette Clinic was just—it was just so different, it was just different. And during and after the riots patients did not suffer at all. They suffered when Engler closed it, they really suffered then. And I think they’re still suffering today because your homeless population is up.
LW: Well, thank you for sharing all of this with me. Is there anything else you want to add to the record?
RK: No, no. It’s just—I was surprised like, I said, when we presented our findings to the staff that there was so much animosity toward those of us that did work on it.
LW: Interesting.
RK: I just remember her first name was Alice and she just got up on stage and really tore into us. And I was like, “Woah.” But I never looked at is as if you were putting black people under a microscope and dissecting them. And again I was 18 years old, I was brought up in a nice Polish community and I was very sheltered. As time went on, like I said, when I started working at the VA I could really—it’s almost like things got worse over the years instead of better. And now I hope that with the things that are happening in downtown Detroit and in Detroit proper is that more people will start working together with groups and organizations and businesses that you don’t have that—I think you always will—you will always have—and for someone to say “I’m not prejudice,” that’s a lie. Because you are. In some form or another. I wish I could have gotten Dr. Luby to talk on it. But—that’s yours.
LW: Thank you so much.
RK: Thank you for the interview.
**
LW: Today is July 25, 2015 this is the interview of Cheryl Pierce-Reid by Lily Wilson. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project and the Detroit Historical Museum. Cheryl can you tell me, where and when were you born?
CPR: I was born in Detroit in Edith K. Thomas Hospital August 1, 1944.
LW: What neighborhood did you live in growing up?
CPR: Growing up until 1960, my family lived on Beaver Street on the west side of Detroit.
LW: What was the neighborhood like when you were growing up?
CPR: It was a nice neighborhood. It was still people moving up from down South, so there were people moving in and moving out. My grandparents actually purchased that house in the 1920s when they moved here from Tennessee and it was actually it was all Polish at the time. So I think they were the only blacks on the block. And my grandfather worked at, there was a name before Hygrade, it was a Hygrade meat packing place on Michigan Avenue, he worked there, my father worked there for a while. He eventually became a city of Detroit employee and that is where he stayed until he died. So I was influenced by that and that’s why I ended up at Receiving, I was a city employee.
LW: Wow. So tell me what you were doing in July of 1967?
CPR: July of 1967 by this time I was married. I had finished nursing school the year before and I was working at Receiving Hospital, midnights in the emergency room. I was living with my husband, with my father-in-law at 2252 Edison which was right between LaSalle and Fourteenth, and my mother and father were at Russell Woods on Sturtevant between Broadstreet and Livernois. So, I was going to cross all of the areas that were affected by it. So that particular day, I remember it being a very hot warm night, I don’t remember I don’t think we had air conditioning in the house, so I put my son in the car and we went out for a little ride. And my husband at the time was in school and was, I believe he was working midnights at Ford Motor Company and so we went out for a cruise I had a little convertible and we went out for a cruise.
LW: Sunday?
CPR: That night. Sunday night. That was the first night of the riot, I don’t remember what day it was, I do remember some of the events. But anyway we came through Twelfth Street on our way home about 12:30 and I remember seeing people standing around and I just thought to myself this is kind of odd because there were so many people out that time of night and there was nothing happening they were just milling around. So we went home and went to bed. My husband came in the next morning and he had to go back out to get something for the baby and he came back and when he came back he said someone had approached him and told him not to be out on the street. So I don’t know if they knew whether something was going to happen or not. I didn’t have the TV on so he went on, went to bed and then he went later on that day, he went to study or whatever he was doing I don’t remember now. But I kind of hung out at home until it was time to go to my parents' house because my mother kept the baby when I went to work. I got in the car packed up the car and I went Edison to Linwood. When I got to Linwood, I looked to my left and all I could see was smoke and fire trucks. I had no clue what was going on. So I went down Joy Road to Broadstreet, cut over Broadstreet to my mother’s house and I got there and nobody seemed to really know what was happening. So my brother and I, and I can’t remember if my sister was there, but my brother was still a teenager, he was still home, we jumped in his car and went down on Dexter which was two, three blocks away to see what was happening. There were a lot of people standing around, and we were there just as the bricks started going through the glass and we looked up in the rear view mirror my dad was there, "Get home now." So we had to turn around and go back. So didn’t know what else was going on. I got myself dressed later on that night and went to work, it was no big deal.
LW: To work midnights?
CPR: Midnights at Receiving.
LW: So tell me about that.
CPR: The first night I don’t remember anything too terrible. I do remember, I thought it was just a disturbance because this type of thing was happening everywhere. It was not common in just Detroit. The whole country was going nuts at that time; this was just one more incident, okay? And so I didn’t think too much of it. It was maybe two, three days into it that things were not resolving and by this time they had called in the National Guard and stuff and I remember I went down Lodge Freeway to downtown and having to stop at the check points and these were kids – I was about almost 23 – these were kids the same age I was, okay? But they were nice, they stopped me they asked me what I was doing I said, I was probably in a white uniform so they could see it, I said I was on my way to work and so they just let me go. I was young and stupid. It never occurred to me that there were snipers and things in the area that, you know I could have had my head blown off. Never thought about it. But anyway went to work. There were always a lot of – whenever you have an incident you have more police, you have more city officials, and I didn’t know who was who at that point. Subsequently I kind of got the gist of how things work. But at that time I couldn’t identify who was what, but there were people there. I remember people being injured during that week, more self inflicted injuries, seriously, than other stuff, because people were paranoid. There were people still going to work, they were pulling their guns out of the closet and leaving them out and subsequently getting injured. Well this is what we were getting in the ER because I never, when I tell you there’s conflict, with what I saw, and what I hear built up in the news was a little bit different.
LW: Okay.
I saw, I did see or had a couple of reports of bayonet injuries. There were a couple of guys that they brought in sometime during the week that shot at a tank – and these were white guys and the tank from what I understand blew up the house, they fell out of the house so they brought them in for us to put them back together. I just remember thinking, How stupid, how do you shoot at a tank? But anyway they did. I know that we were, this was the old Receiving that was across from Frank Murphy, I think it’s a parking lot now or something. But the front end of the hospital that faced Frank Murphy had big huge glass windows and we had blinds up there, and so police would call us periodically and tell us don’t look out the window, keep the blinds closed cause there would be snipers in the area.
LW: Oh wow.
CPR: But I remember more than anything the buses that were across the street full of people all night long. They would arrest anybody who was out on the street without a good reason and that’s where they’d house them, and so they had city buses and whatever else lined with people.
LW: Outside of the hospital?
CPR: No it was at Frank Murphy, it was across the street. Across the street at the court house or police headquarters, whatever is over there.
LW: So when you talk about self-inflicted things that you saw can you elaborate on that?
CPR: Accidental gunshot wounds, people shooting themselves in the foot, cutting themselves. I just – I remember the paranoia and the fear, everybody was afraid. Now I have to tell you about my neighborhood though. The neighborhoods that I was associated with, these were your middle class neighborhoods, these were not ghettos whatsoever. Twelfth Street, because I knew the fathers of some of my friends who owned businesses there, the businesses were destroyed. Same thing on Dexter, these were black owned businesses gutted, okay? Russell Woods, where I lived, was still probably 40% percent Jewish at the time. Most of my neighbors were Jewish and the rest were black; we had one Chinese family across the street. But these were doctors, lawyers other folks, they were not – and business owners and so you know this was the population that was effected because their offices and things were in this area. Now I do remember rallies, I do remember that there were rallies because I attended a couple of them against my parents wishes down there but it talked about economics, the condition of black people, what we needed to do to improve our state. There was no violent anything that I can remember and I just -- didn’t even know what triggered it for a long time. I thought it was just an uprising because of the heat, there was a lot of police brutality in the neighborhood up to this and I thought it was related to that. I didn’t know about this blind pig stuff for years, really, and I said, “Is that the trigger? Really? I never knew that.” So I had heard about some policemen and some sheriffs who played cards together, and things got ugly. Now whether that was the same incident, these were guys I work with at Receiving, they were through there all the time, you know so I was exposed to them all the time. But like I said there was just so much going on.
LW: Now I wonder, most of the people that you were treating at Receiving during those few days in July, would you say that there were more black patients, more white patients, same?
CPR: It was about the same. I would say that— because I do remember one guy who shot himself in the foot, he was a little frustrated but like I said there was a lot of paranoia. Everybody was nervous. It wasn’t just white people, everybody was nervous. And people – especially the older generation – they really didn’t know what was going on; they didn’t necessarily agree with what was happening but they were living in it. And so consequently people were setting their guns out; self-inflicted gunshot wounds, kids getting accidently shot, because these are people who don’t normally use firearms, and so when you set them out and no one knows the dangers of them somebody is going to get hurt or if you’re afraid that someone’s going to hurt you and you’re not used to using it you are going to hurt yourself and that’s what I saw outside a couple of bayonet stabs that came in. But I didn’t see any dead bodies. I know – I looked at something before I came in, I said, "Oh, that many people died?" Well maybe they brought them in on a different shift or maybe they went to a different hospital I don’t know what they did. But during my week there, I didn’t see a lot of that.
LW: Okay. So thinking about the neighborhood that you and your parents were living in you mentioned that it was predominantly a middle class neighborhood--
CPR: Very middle class.
LW: --hard working people, like yourself that were just trying to go to work and that didn’t really even understand maybe what was going on, so I wonder who do you think was sort of to blame them for the upheaval in those neighborhoods?
CPR: You know I don’t know. And I don’t want to influence what I say because I’m supposed to be saying from that point I was almost 23 I really wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the politics and stuff. I’ve read a lot since so I don’t want that to color what I say. Because I had my own theories but I do remember rallies, there were live rallies on Dexter in which there were people my age and younger out there, and I think there was a moment when H. Rap Brown came to the city there was a rally and shortly after some of the stuff took place.
LW: Now the rallies that you attended, those were going on leading up to?
CPR: Leading up to.
LW: And tell me where those took place.
CPR: Those were on Dexter, as I said there were a lot of establishments. I couldn’t tell you exactly where it was now, and they weren’t “ra ra ra” pep rally type things, it was more like a session where you go in, it was like a learning thing. We had a speaker and they would be speaking, but again it would be about economics and the state of African-Americans in this country basically and what you need to do: we need to own businesses, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, but I understood. I was aware, because I did lose, I’m not sure what year he died, a classmate that went to high school with me on Wayne State. This was during the time with the [Black] Panthers were very active, I was very sympathetic with the Panthers and what they were trying to do at the time, until they started executing them like crazy and then I wore my hair in a big fro and I had a Wayne County Sheriff approach me one day and told me I looked a lot like Angela Davis and so my mother was freaking out, so I had to change my hair style, you know, I mean because, because my neighbor three doors down, we had driven to high school together. We went to Cass Tech and he was killed, mistaken identity. You see during that time that’s what was happening. People were getting killed and then they find out later oh, it wasn’t the right person. And so he was a victim of that so you’re aware but not aware. I wasn’t participating in the active stuff, I was defiantly sympathetic but I was married with a small child. I couldn’t do all of that stuff with a job, and my family was pretty conservative so you’re kind of caught in the middle, so if my mother and father found out I was participating in stuff that wouldn’t have gone over too well, so, you know.
LW: When you were in the hospital July of '67 at Detroit Receiving, what were you being told if anything by the doctors and the patients that were coming in?
CPR: Nothing. Nothing, that was the trauma hospital, we were used to trauma so you go in, you get your room and your equipment set up for whatever may come through the door, and so we really didn’t talk about politics or what was going on; it’s like, you know, we would joke well you know, wonder what it’s going to be like tonight? you know, but in the processes you’re getting your IVs together, you’re getting everything set up so that whatever comes through the door, you’re ready. And that’s basically it. I don’t ever remember having any conversations with anybody because that was secondary, you know, we were just in a state of readiness all the time is what I remember.
LW: What else do you want to share about 67’ or about Detroit since then?
CPR: Um, Detroit since then - I think we are headed back that way, seriously.
LW: Back toward civil disturbance?
CPR: Yeah, I see some of the same conditions that triggered a lot of the unrest happening again not necessarily in the city but yes in the city, you know, indirectly.
LW: So like what?
CPR: I see some of the things like the tax issues, people losing their houses, the water being turned off, you know money going downtown not to the neighborhoods, but that’s not new that’s been going on. I feel an effort to move people further and further away from the city so that they can convert the city into this metropolitan area like some of the other cities, but the neighborhoods are not included in that, I just don’t see that happening. And I feel like you have people that are trying to fix it, people who are trying to organize. But since that time, we didn’t have the gangs and stuff 50 years ago like they have now, you’ve got another whole subculture out there that you’re dealing with. They’re not political, they’re not - they’re just there and I don’t understand the mentality of them. Maybe it’s a generation thing, but they’ll hurt anybody because you see an equal amount of black on black crime, which is wrong. I don’t know-- I feel bad about what happened in '67 because it was my neighborhood that was hurt; you go through there now it’s a wasteland. You know, all of those businesses, those men lost their business - these were my neighbors, these were my friends' fathers who owned those things and so they were the losers in this, you know and they were never able to recover.
LW: What happened to some of them do you remember?
CPR: Yes, they just folded up they couldn’t go back in business.
LW: Did they keep their homes?
CPR: Oh yeah they kept their homes. Many of them, many who could afford it moved. There was, they talk about white flight, there was black flight. When I say that my neighborhood was a mixture of-- I mean like ok, Dr. Lionel Swan lived across the street from me we went to the same, he did his internship where I went to nursing school so I got to know them, they packed up and moved out of the city.
LW: Where did they go do you know?
CPR: Well, I won’t say out of the city, I take that back because we were not allowed to move too far. They went to northwest Detroit over by Sherwood Forest and then the next stop would have been Southfield and then beyond. So we’re in Bloomfield and places like that now but they weren’t yet.
LW: You say that you weren’t allowed to move too far what do you mean?
CPR: You know this was the sixties, there were scandals about housing and stuff back then, I was, listen, I bought a house on Rutherford off of Puritan in 1969-ish, somewhere back in there, I bought it. My husband and I had separated so I bought my own house. They used me, the real-estate agent, to blockbust on that, I didn’t know, I was the only black on the block and so they used me there and then I started watching my neighbors move, they moved out one by one, they were gone. I even had one guy come over and said, “I’m not selling my house because of you.” And I’m like really? It was the kid across the street was horrible and he would terrorize the neighborhood, it was a white kid. And so he said “I can’t deal with him anymore.” Because there was a night we had to call the police he used a BB gun to shoot in several windows and so the parents would go out and leave this kid alone and he would terrorize the neighborhood. So my neighbor, his next door neighbor came and said, “I don’t want you to think I’m selling my house because of you, I’m selling because I can’t stand that kid anymore.” But there were still a lot of restrictions on where you could move to. And so Southfield, I don’t think Southfield was an option yet and I said my neighborhood was 40 percent Jewish at the time. Synagogues were up on Dexter. So they were in the middle of this mess. So they left and then the people who could afford it left, so we had like I said doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs there and they started to migrate further north. And so that Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest, places like that was the next jumping ground before Southfield and then after Southfield came Bloomfield and all the others. Because we weren’t allowed to get housing there because somewhere in there, HUD [US Department of Housing] was sued, somewhere between the late sixties and seventies, they were sued and then it opened up more things. Yeah.
LW: Wow.
CPR: Yeah.
LW: And where do you live today?
CPR: I’m in Southfield. I moved back to Southfield from Canton. I had moved to Canton in '78. '77,'78, we built a house. By this time I had remarried; me and my first husband had split up and I remarried, and my husband had lived somewhere around Chicago and Dexter in there. He had been robbed. He had spent some time in New York. In Harlem, he managed a supermarket and then came back. He said, “I’m not going into the city. I will not move there, we will go somewhere else.” So that’s why we ended up in Westland first and then we moved to Canton. We built a house there and I lived there for 22 years, raised my children there. Then I decided, he had passed away, I decided I didn’t need the subdivision anymore. I was still working midnights, my neighbors religiously cut their grass when I’m trying to sleep and stuff and the houses are close together, I said, “I have to go.” And so after he passed away my son and I actually flipped houses. I moved into - so he had restored this house in Southfield on an acre with trees, it’s all retirees around me, it’s quiet and then he took his wife and children out to Canton and that’s where they went to school out there.
LW: So you’ve lived all over Metro Detroit.
CPR: Yeah. I started out on the west side. I went to, I guess I don’t know if you call it northwest Detroit on Rutherford, it’s kind of northwest, then from there we went to Westland and then Canton and then I moved back to Southfield and that’s where I am now.
LW: Well I really appreciate you talking with me about your experiences especially in the sixties. Is there anything else you want to add?
CPR: Let me see. You know I went to nursing school in St. Louis, Missouri because I could not get in here.
LW: Oh, tell me about that.
CPR: I went to Cass Technical High School, pre-nursing. I was accepted at Highland Park General Hospital School of Nursing. Then I got a D and I was grateful for it my last year in high school, my graduating semester and so they sent me a letter and said that I would have to go to Junior College half way through the summer and said that I could not come there to their school. I applied at Henry Ford, we had to attach a photograph, and so that was an automatic, you know, Sorry, and I met a nurse from there who was in at the same time that I would have been there and said they were accepting their first Jewish students so they were struggling with that, let alone a black student, they weren’t ready for that. So, I tried Wayne State as a Cass Tech graduate with science and math behind me it was Greek to me, the entrance exam. It was Greek, and all I remember is this one problem they wanted me to calculate some weather and I said, Wow. So needless to say I didn’t get into Wayne State. So anyway, at that point, midway through the summer, too late to apply for anyplace right, I get this letter saying that Highland Park says no you have to go to the Junior College, so I’m heartbroken. My dad knew a graduate of Homer G. Phillips, he spoke to her, she called the school. They sent an entrance exam to her brother who was a teacher. I went to his home, took the exam, which was full of anatomy and physiology, and about two weeks later I got a telegram saying that I’d been accepted. So that is how I ended up in St. Louis in an all-black school.
LW: That was Homer G. Phillips?
CPR: Homer G. Philips, city No. 2. St. Louis Municipal Hospital No. 2. They had a No.1 and No.2. No.1 was the white hospital, No. 2 was the black hospital or the Negro hospital back then. Seriously, you’re looking at me like, “Really, for real?” It was.
LW: I believe you.
CPR: So a lot, well I don’t want to say a lot, some of the black doctors that I knew here had gone there to do their internship. I wanted to go to Maherity [unknown] and they stopped their nursing school the year that I graduated. While I was here, I did work at Kirwood General Hospital, you know about that one?
LW: No.
CPR: Kirwood General was a black owned and operated hospital right on Davison, used to be a Jewish Community Center and they converted it into a hospital, so I worked there for a while so I got to meet a lot of the black doctors, most of them are dead now, but Coleman Young was one of ours, all of your who’s who: James Del Rio was a congressmen I think I remember him as a patient, Dr. Claude Young was the physician for the mayor and he practiced there. All of the black physicians we’re connected in some way, so I got a chance to see some of them.
LW: How interesting.
CPR: It was.
LW: And you graduated from Homer G. Philips in what year?
CPR: 1965 was my graduation year and I actually finished in - I had to go back to finish up some time so I came out in '66. So I got my license in '66.
LW: And came right back to Detroit.
CPR: Oh yeah. I was married, got married my senior year and so my husband did not want to go to St. Louis and so I came back here. But you know he had gone to Fisk. He was at Fisk during the sit-ins and stuff. And something he told me that I didn’t know until his mother passed away a few years ago was that he had an incident with the Ku Klux Klan and that brought him back to the city. He had gone to a rally.
LW: Where?
CPR: In Nashville, and somehow was separated from his group and was walking back to the school at night when a pickup truck with some guys pulled up and he thought he was going to die and they let him go. And I know he went down there for one year, he came back, I never knew why he came back, that probably scared him to death. But I heard about it maybe four years ago at his mother’s funeral. Never discussed it with me. So yeah, those were some interesting times, so yeah.
LW: Well thank you so much for sharing this with me.
CPR: You are so welcome!
LW: Yes, it’s great, thanks a lot.
**WW: Hello, today is March 4, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan. May I ask you to please state your name?
KB: Katharine J. Burns.
WW: Thank you for sitting down with me today.
KB: Mmhmm.
WW: May I ask you first where and when were you born?
KB: I was born in Detroit in 1940, on the northwest side of Detroit.
WW: What did your parents do?
KB: My father was plumbing and heating at one point and a pharmacist at another. My mother was a housekeeper. Home.
WW: Homemaker?
KB: Yeah, homemaker.
WW: Where did you go to school growing up in Detroit?
KB: All Catholic schools, Precious Blood grade school, Immaculata High School for girls and Mercy College when it was an all-girls school for women.
WW: What were your experiences as growing up in the city?
KB: It was — there is something about it that I’ve always known, but this is kind of an opportunity to kind of put some light on it. I was the youngest of four children, and I knew somewhere along the line very early that it was a different kind of family. It was not my word but I know the word now, it is racist. And I can remember driving — the family would drive to Royal Oak to visit cousins, and when we get to Eight Mile it would be like, "Roll up with your windows," and it would be like just get through Eight Mile, you know. And I remember looking out and going why can’t they have pretty houses like mine? You know and it was just for me. And the language at home. I had an uncle who was very racist, so I knew pretty early that that was it. I didn’t have the words for it, and I didn’t know what to do with it, I didn’t know the meaning of it really until much later. But I think looking back I was aware of it, on some level, as a child. So after college I — do I just kind of keep going?
WW: How did that dynamic affect your childhood, like, going around the city?
KB: I was the youngest so it made me very— and I always knew that I did things that were different. I would go here by myself. I used to run away as a little child. I mean I am talking about five-year-old child, I used to run away. And it made me very curious. And somewhere along the line I became very, very independent. And I would take the bus and come downtown, you know I was probably 9, 10, 11, by myself, and go to Hudson’s and go to Sanders and have lunch and take the bus back home. And I had no associations with blacks. None. It was a very white area; nobody ever talked about it. Certainly didn’t talk about blacks. I mean, even other ethnic groups were not very well tolerated.
WW: And what neighborhood was this again?
KB: Northwest, like around McNichols, like I don’t know, it’s probably still called Northwest. Detroit used to be identified, if you were Catholic, by what parish you belonged to so it’s kind of like that. But I always knew that something was, well why can’t— you know— that was a Mexican family you know. They seemed nice you know, and it was just— it always kind of didn’t sit with me.
WW: And you said you have a lack of associations with blacks and other minorities?
KB: No. Never. Never met a black until I probably —certainly not in grade school. I think there was one black girl in high school, and I would have to ask some of my classmates, and none in college. So there was really no association until I went to work. My first job after college.
WW: What was that like for you?
KB: It was at Lafayette Clinic. It was a wonderful job. It was just— I still love it. My background was nursing, my degree was in nursing and I hated all the medical part of it but I love the psych part of it. I did a senior project on disturbed children and interviewed at Lafayette Clinic, and we spent some time in the kids' unit. And the nursing director was black, Dr. Kept[?]. Elizabeth, I think, was her first name, and she said if you need a job after school, give me a call. I didn’t even have to interview? It landed right into my lap, and I did. I called after I finished. She hired me. And it was 20 disturbed children. So I was a staff nurse the first year. And then I became head nurse the second year and then they created somewhat of a position or title for me as administrator of something of the unit.
WW: What year did you start there?
KB: 1962.
WW: How many years did you spend there in total?
KB: 6 years. I left in 1968.
WW: In the early Sixties, given your increased exposure to other people, did you sense any coming racial tension or anything hanging over to the city?
KB: Absolutely. I really did live in two worlds. I had a roommate after college and I got my own apartment, and we lived together, and so I lived in an all-white world, it was you know a nice, white world, I mean. Fancy clothes, you know, nice events. Never came downtown. It was always kind of in the suburbs. And then I would go to work, you know, at least 50 hours a week because I was in charge of this unit, so I was there all the time. And half the staff were black. So, there I was, living in this one life over here in this all white world, that I never talked about my work. I mean part of it was psych, so people don’t want to hear about disturbed children, particularly I guess. But the other part was I never, I think if my friends were sitting here today they would be shocked to hear me say: You know, the staff that and I went down the bus station, you know, for a drink after work on Friday when they would get their paycheck, and we’d be refused to be served. I was the only white one, and I was the youngest, and they were all black, and in their thirties and forties, and the waiter or waitress would refuse to serve us. I would be furious. Very specifically one occasion one of the—she was a licensed practical nurse—she just didn't have her identification with her, you know, they said we can't serve you, so we have to leave the bus station cocktail lounge. I don't remember where we went but we went someplace else. In the black world, not in the white world. And there were numerous occasions like that, numerous, out of, what was I there? Six years, I would say? Ten, twenty, thirty occasions of that. And you know, what to do with that it was just like, it would make me so angry, and I would want to stand up and start confrontation with whoever the person was. But you know, the staff just come and say, “Burns, sit down, we’ll find another place.” You know they were protecting me, for sure, but I mean there were incident after incident. We would take, sometimes the children down to Hudson’s, you know, because it wasn’t that far, just kind of walk and we would be walking through Hudson’s, and, you know, I’d be white and there would be one of the black staff and we’d have maybe two or three kids, not a whole bunch, because that’s tough. And you know some of the kids would be black although most of the children were white, and they came from all over. But people would literally — and I still can visualize one woman — would literally stand in the hall, you know, the thing of the ground floor of Hudson’s, and click their teeth at [us]. And you know, like, how dare you? You know, how dare you be with this black man? And with these two white children and this one black child. You know I don’t know I have no idea what they thought this was. But the fact that — and I had a white uniform on, you know. I was in little nurse stuff. It wasn’t like I had some hippie thing outfit on. But none of it made sense. Or we would take the children to the zoo, you know we did. We did day trips a lot, and you know, to the beach, I don’t remember what beach we went to. But to the zoo, or wherever we take some little children's zoo some place that we used to go. And there would be those kinds of things. And I felt like — I mean I didn’t think of it in this way then. But I knew that at work I never talked about my life outside the work, and my life outside the work I never talked about, you know, what was going on with my staff, or you know this or that. You know, everybody’s got problems, and I knew about all of them because they would confide in me. I never talked about that. I think the tension within me began to really increase. And a number of times, driving up Woodward, taking one of the black staff home for something, and I would get in the car and whoever, whichever one it was — and I won’t name them because that’s up to them — but I say “Ok, we’re going up Woodward so what’s the speed limit,” and I would go 25 miles per hour, and we would get stopped by cops. I’d be driving, and they would stop, and I remember one of the staff occasionally carried a gun, and you know, and I would just take the gun and put it in my purse because if he got caught with it, it would be, you know. And they would just stop and say, you know, “Are you okay?” And then they would follow us as far as we would go, until I dropped them off. You know, this – I never talked about it then. I began to talk about it when I went to New York, a little bit, about what took me there. It’s just kind of this period in my life that had parentheses around it, and it’s great to be able to share it.
WW: Where were you living in 1967?
KB: I was living in, I think the area is called Six Mile, Palmer Park. Like, Six Mile, Hamilton. The building is still there. The apartment building is still nice, still a nice area. Merton Road. It had a swimming pool, I remember. So it was Palmer Park. You just walk around the corner to the park.
WW: How did you first feel about what’s going on?
KB: My roommate at that time worked at Children’s Hospital, and I think she was supposed to be going to work that morning and got a call, and to this day I don’t know whether she went to work or not. She got a call that there was something happening downtown. So I remember, then, that afternoon all the stuff on the television and stuff.
WW: Did you see anything from your apartment?
KB: No. No. And I went to work every day.
WW: So you didn’t leave the city?
KB: I’m sorry?
WW: You didn’t leave the city? So you stayed put?
KB: No, I would never, never have done that. It was just — no. And I went to work. I mean I never thought about it. I never thought twice about where I was driving. It’s very vague, because some memories — I remember, like, picking up staff, but I can’t tell you who it was or where they were. But they couldn’t get out of the neighborhoods. And I don’t remember how many times that happened, or who it was—I just remember doing that.
WW: You spoke about being stopped by police before hand —were you stopped by police during that week?
KB: No. Never. No. And I have no idea why, because the curfew was pretty firm. I think it was seven o’clock or something like that. But no, I was never stopped. Which is kind of interesting. Especially because I was driving, you know, down around that area. I don’t remember. I remember seeing later, obviously, the destruction, but I didn’t see any burning buildings at the time, that I remember.
WW: How did your family react to your being in the city?
KB: At that time I didn’t have any contact with my family, for obvious reasons, and lots more, but, yeah, I didn’t have any contact so, it was just like, you know, I was doing what I did. You know? And I never thought twice about it. I never thought that I was brave, I never thought that I was, you know. It was just something — you know. I was in charge of this unit. I was responsible, I was a professional, and I think this is all wrong. I had a very sense of — as the story began to unfold about what happened, it made me increasingly more angry. And the two stories, after I got the email, I remembered two stories, and they came right back. And I hope this is true, I didn’t create it. But the two things I remember were the ads on television, because all the whites went out and bought guns. They all wanted to have guns. I’m never been a gun person; still to this day I’m not. But I remember the ads and the one ad was, I think, it’s a man hears something outside the window and gets his gun, goes to the window and shoots, and it’s a child. That was one of the TV ads, in terms of trying to get people to turn their guns back in. And that was just horrifying to me. It was just horrifying. That there were people just going out to get guns. I hope you can document this somehow; [laughs] I need to know whether this is all true. And I remember the other thing – I mean, everybody blamed the blacks, you know. They’re destroying their own property. And from the beginning I just thought, you know, it was provoked, it was absolutely provoked. And then I remember kind of thinking, well, why [are] all the buildings being burned, and stuff like that. And then there was some report — and I don’t know whether it came out at the time or came out later, but it’s done by—if my memory serves me correctly again—Sacred Heart Seminary, which is out in Plymouth. They had done some investigation, articles, or something about many of those buildings were white-owned, and they charged outlandish rents, they charged a loaf of bread three times of the cost, you know, up the road a piece, and I think that’s why the rage you know took the path that they took, and I thought, "Yay for the Catholics." It was one of those moments [like] “yay for the Catholics.” Now to this day if I had my friends I knew at that time sitting here, they would totally disagree with me I’m sure. And but that's what I put together.
WW: How did this city change from before that week in July and then after?
KB: That’s almost an impossible question because I don’t — it didn’t change anything. It really didn’t. I mean, I think the staff were more — I think the fact that the staff dramatically. Did we talk about it? No. And Lafayette Clinic had some role in this, and I didn’t have a direct role in this. I’m not sure what they did in terms helping people, or serving as a mental health center, I don’t know, because I was in the children’s unit, so that was much more remote. It was much more complicated with kids. But, I don’t think I saw any change. It changed me, though. It increasingly made it more difficult for me to live in two worlds.
WW: How do you interpret what happened there? Do you see it a riot? Did you see it rebellion?
KB: I see it probably even if you compare it today it, the same thing. You know, things that were happening in the cities, you know, whether, you know, even a rage outburst against the police or against the authorities. Or in New York, you know, when it has been— the student — you know, I leave Detroit then I go to New York and I’m in the middle of a student rebellion, you know. And within weeks I’m marching on Washington. So, I took my anger with me. I didn’t see at the time any change, really. The physical damage which is still apparent, you know, in certain neighborhoods – even though I don’t live down there, you know, I come down as long as I can, and that’s just me. I can’t get one friend to come downtown with me, not one.
WW: Can you talk about your decision to leave the city from New York?
KB: Yeah. It’s part of my job. We have annual conferences for nursing in the community and in 1967 — I think it was May — I presented a paper on separation anxiety in children and our keynote speaker happened to be the Dean of NYU [New York University] in nursing. She presented her paper – her dissertation rather — on separation anxiety. I didn’t know her, I’d never met her, I didn’t have any idea what she was going to present. She had no idea what my paper was about. It was just so interesting that we were on the same page about looking at children, the dynamics of children. And so I spent a couple of days with her, you know, hosting her while she was here for the conference. And you know, she said, “You ought to come to New York and do you graduate work.” You know, that just seemed so silly to me, you know. I had no intentions of going to graduate school. None. I had a pretty apartment, was dating a really nice man, and having a pretty nice life, you know. Skiing every weekend at Boyne, and, you know, I never thought about it. And a year later, I woke up one morning and I really had not thought about it and I said “I’m going.”
[Cell phone interrupts]
KB: Yeah, so I woke up one morning and went in to work and that was July, and a month later I was in New York to go to NYU for graduate school. And then a couple months there, I was with my little outfit from Birmingham and matching suit and then within weeks, months, I was marching on Washington for civil rights and woman rights. And, you know, Columbia was just up the road a piece, so I really became a part of the student rebellion, so to speak. I became a huge activist. Really, truth be told [laughter]. And I became a marshal in Washington, in the marches. Because one of my classmates was — I don’t know how well known it was, but she was a Black Panther, and so they had all the training force so, they had meetings and trained as a marshal to keep the peace in Washington, so it was great. I mean, that — I think my move to New York allowed me to breathe, that’s the best way to say it. I never thought about that way to express it but that really is the truth, and I really became who I am today as a result of that.
WW: And how many years did you stay in New York?
KB: Until five years ago. And I actually commute back and forth. I bought a condo here in Rochester Hills and I commute ten days a week [sic] back to my office in New York.
WW: Can you speak about your decision to come back here?
KB: It was – I wanted space. It was something about—I just wanted — I lived in — I love New York. I just, you know, I arrive and [mimics heart pounding motion] my heart just beats and I’m going. But just kind of the — I just wanted space; I just wanted bigger space than an apartment. And I didn’t want to live in the suburbs in New York. I kind of thought about it and kind of looked around and that’s not me. It just is not me. So somehow I kind of thought it through and found a place here and I thought “this is great.” And you know I just commute ten days a month. So I have a small office, in a different building, and – same neighborhood, Upper Westside, and that’s my life now. So now I’m involved in some a major project in Rochester.
WW: Is there anything else you want to share today?
KB: No, thank you for the opportunity.
WW: My pleasure.
KB: It was great.
WW: Alright, thank you for sitting down with me.
KB: Thank you. That’s it?
WW: That’s it!
**AD: My name is Alexis Draper and I am interviewing Mr. Ted Van Buren, docent here at the Detroit Historical Society on March 19, 2016. Ted, if you just want to start and talk about where you were in the events leading up to July of 1967 and your memories of that time.
TVB: Well, I think the riots started, I believe it was a Saturday, July 23, and it I think it started early in the morning on 12th and Clairmount. It was actually a celebration for a couple of people who were returning home from Vietnam. It was what they used to call a blind pig or private club back in the 60s. They were a lot of places like that where you could go and they used to call them blind pigs or after hours joints and there were a lot of them in the city back then. The police came and tried to break it up and it just escalated from there. They started throwing things at the police cars and they started assaulting the police. And then I think the first thing they did was they set the store next to the club on fire and that’s how it started. When I got to work Sunday which was at Hutzel Hospital, I was told I wasn’t going to be able to leave. They gave me an essential worker pass so I could come and go through the police lines because the National Guard hadn’t gotten there yet. Then Sunday, it escalated even more and I think the mayor of the city asked the governor to bring in the National Guard and the National Guard came in and it escalated even more. Then the governor asked Johnson to bring in federal troops. There was a big, I don’t know about discussion, but The Insurrection Act, the president really didn’t want to activate the Insurrection Act because both of them were up for re-election, but finally they actually did. They brought in the 82nd Airborne and the 101, Screaming Eagles, they were posted all over the city of Detroit. We had troops right in the hospital. Monday, when I went to work at Children’s Hospital, we actually had troops inside of the hospital. Everybody was put on freeze there, nobody went home, because if a fire had started in the hospital we would have to evacuate those kids there. So what we did was, at Children’s, they gave me another essential worker pass, and for me, I hate to say this, but it was a godsend. What they did is if you stayed there overnight, they paid you for the whole 24 hours. And I think my flat rate then for 24 hours was I think $100 a day. Because people weren’t making a lot of money back then and I was getting ready to get married in September.
AD: So you were able to cushion for your wedding?
TVB: I was getting a $100 a day and that money was going to go towards the wedding. And what had happened is that my wife was trying to save for the wedding and had taken a second job at Harper. She worked at Children’s, but took a second job at Harper. She dropped the second job because she didn’t need to go there. They gave her an essential worker pass too, because she was working at Children’s hospital too. It did escalate to the point that it was simply out of control. Most of the high schools that had a large playground, that’s where they troops bivouac was on the school grounds. There were a lot of snipers. It was not a good idea to go out into the street because people were shooting at everybody. There were tanks here. I know you hear a lot of rumors about there not being tanks here, there were tanks here.
AD: Where were they?
TVB: The tanks were over in the area on 12th street. The ‘67 riot was actually called the 12th street riot. It really wasn’t called the ’67 riot. It was called the 12th street riot because it started on 12th street. It really was not a good idea to go out, because people were randomly shooting at everything and a lot of people got killed. I think it was around 43 or 45 people that got killed. Not too many of the federal troops got shot at; it was the National Guard people that actually got killed. They had arrested so many people that they didn’t have space for them at the different precincts. So what they did is they took a lot of the prisoners up to Belle Isle and they held them in the Bath House out there. They just packed them in there. There were thousands of people in that Bath House. They didn’t have any facilities for them. I had a couple people that I knew that got arrested and they fed them two pieces of bread, two hot dogs, and a boiled potato. That was the meal. There is a rumor, I didn’t see it, but I did know about the Bath House, it’s a rumor that back behind where the soccer field is now on Belle Isle, they took telephone poles and built a stockade in a circle and put people in there also. I didn’t see that, but there was a rumor that that’s what they did.
We talk about police brutality, there was a lot of police brutality and it went on for the whole week. You gotta remember there weren’t too many blacks on the police force back in ’67. Most of the people who got arrested were Afro Americans. I have to say that. I hate to say this, but I don’t think this was really a race riot, because there were a lot of white people that were looting also. They didn’t put that on the news, but there were a lot of white people looting. You have to remember where Hutzel Hospital is, it’s right there on Forest and you can see people with the stuff they had stolen going down the street. And people would say, “Ooh look at that,” you got two people carrying a couch. It was different, it was really different.
AD: You were watching all of this from inside of the hospital?
TVB: You have to remember we were inside the hospital during the riot in ’67, especially Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital, segregation didn’t exist anymore. When I first came to Children’s Hospital in 1960, it was very segregated. When I first came there even though I was going to work in the lab as a lab technician, especially in the bacteriology section, I couldn’t eat in the cafeteria. That’s how bad it was. The segregation was kind of undercover. We had to go across the street to Ms. Thompson’s and eat lunch. Then in 1965 they integrated everything. I was there in ’65 when they integrated Women’s Hospital. The riots came in ’67, Women’s Hospital had just been integrated two years from when the riot broke out.
What happened, the people at Women’s, we would actually sleep in any room that wasn’t occupied by patients. They took one wing of the hospital, 3 West, and they turned it into quarters for doctors and nurses and then support people were over on the other side in 3 East and it worked out, everybody got along because everybody was getting paid for a 24 hour shift. I made a lot of money.
AD: How many days were you there?
TVB: I was there almost a whole week, so that meant I made about $700-800. In between the two hospitals was a place called National Laundry. They had troops in front of National Laundry. Everybody thought, “Why are they putting troops in front of a big laundry?” But that’s where we got the sheets and the scrubs and everything for the hospital and the area so that people could stay there, because you couldn’t wear the same clothes for a whole week. So they were washing and cleaning the sheets and the scrubs and they had a truck that would bring them into the different hospitals so everyone could have clean clothes. It was strange because everyone had on white. It looked like a festival. It was trying times. You have to remember a lot of the stores got burned and there was no place for you to go to shop. The buses weren’t running in certain areas so it was hard for you to get to work. I had a car at the time and they gave me a sticker to put on the window. It said “Medical Personnel.” All the people that worked in the hospital had the same sticker, it said “Medical Personnel.” Whether or not you worked in housekeeping, or whatever, it didn’t matter, it just said “Medical Personnel.” Police didn’t ticket you, you were able to come or go out of the different areas, and you could park just about wherever you could find a parking place. You have to remember when the buildings burn down and all that stuff had fallen into the street. So you might go down one street and then have to turn around and go back because you couldn’t get through all the debris that was there. There was a lot of debris. People were bringing in supplies from places like Flint, Inkster, River Rouge – all of those suburbs would bring stuff in to people they knew here, groceries and stuff like that. That was going on also.
This riot was—I was six years old when the ‘43 riot was in place. That one was a lot different. They talk about that one being comparable to the one in ‘67 but it wasn’t. Because you got to remember that in 1943 there were not a whole lot of Afro Americans in Detroit at the time.
AD: Right.
TVB: Not because of what you were thinking. They were away at the war. World War Two was going on. All the eligible young people that would normally be out there looting and rioting were away in the army. So, in ’43, most of the men who were here were usually older Afro Americans. That riot was small compared to ’67. It really was.
AD: Now when were you able to go home or leave the hospital?
TVB: Actually, after the third day they asked anyone who wanted to go home that they could go home. What they did was they took two buses and they escorted us to certain parts of the city and you got off the bus and you could actually walk. I took the bus from the hospital over to Cadillac Boulevard and then I got over at Cadillac and then walked over to my mother’s house. I stayed there for a couple of days. I wanted to really check to see whether or not my mother and father were safe. Then they had other buses that went in different directions. They would wait for you at a certain spot and then they would bring you and take you back home. There was a place where people would go if they needed a ride to a certain place -- that was the State Fair. They had soldiers out there that would take people to certain areas. It was well organized. The aid that came in was really well organized. A lot of people complained about the troops but they were needed. I’m serious. If the troops hadn’t come in when they came in, the city of Detroit would have been in much worse shape. It was moving toward downtown and that wasn’t going to happen. It was moving towards the DIA and other places down here and they didn’t want that to happen. So they had to really bring in the troops, they did. The Insurrection Act – I think is one of the only cities that have ever instituted the Insurrection Act – it’s more like Martial Law. When the troops come in, all other laws are gone. Marshall Law is a lot different. Then they saw curfew, they mean curfew. Don’t be on the street after curfew.
AD: Was there a curfew?
TVB: Oh yes. There was a very strict curfew. The curfew was 8:00, I think. When the curfew started everybody had to be off the street. That’s why we were central workers, we didn’t go in the street, we stayed where we were. That was a good idea also. Now we had a lot of kids that were really sick, like what you would call ICU or CCU now. At one time we had a power failure at Children’s Hospital. We had people that were assigned to go down and maintain the emergency generators. At first they had hospital personnel do it. Then the Army Corps of Engineers came in and they hooked up their own stuff. I mean they got some stuff. They brought in their own generators and hooked them up to the hospital. Our generators were old. We never really had to use them. So when they went out, they brought in their generators, hooked them up and supplied power. Those are things that people don’t think about. Also, they brought in a lot of water. I think between the 82nd and the 101 I think it was close to 10,000 troops. People don’t realize there was a lot of soldiers here. That doesn’t include the National Guard, the state police and the Detroit Police Department. Now you got to remember the state police was all white, back then it was all white. They caused a lot of problems too. The police department and the state police, they caused a lot of problems. You got to remember they were doing their jobs. They were actually trying to keep people from burning down your house. They were doing their job. They had to be kind of tough because it was a tough situation. A lot of people fought them for doing what they had to do.
Another thing: this was the first time you could see a riot on television in ’67. And ’43 you couldn’t see it because there was no television. But when I watched it on television in the lounge at the hospital I thought the whole city was on fire. Everybody thought the whole city was on fire.
AD: That’s the perception of what you were seeing.
TVB: Another thing too, in ’67 this was the first time they used helicopters that had cameras on them on them so they could fly around and show you. So when they went up high like this and you saw what was happening, it really looked like the whole city was on fire.
AD: And it probably looked a lot worse than it actually was.
TVB: Oh yeah. Another thing you got to remember, and this is why I said it was not safe to go out into the middle of the street: when the fire department came to put out a fire, the fireman got shot. I think three or four firemen got shot. Firemen were getting hurt because of electrical lines that had fallen down on the ground. People couldn’t get in and a couple firemen got electrocuted. Also, the fire stations were kind of under siege. Because they would go to the fire station and make sure that the truck couldn’t get out by laying in front of where the truck have to come out of those doors. They would lay down on the ground so the trucks couldn’t get out. When the Army came in they stopped that. You have to remember if you’re a firefighter, and you’re going someplace where you might get shot, you’re not going to be too anxious to go out in that fire truck and a lot of them did not want to go out but eventually when they finally got things quelled down, they actually brought in equipment from other areas, and they came in, because that was the first time I saw a green fire truck. I never knew that a fire truck could be green. They brought some in and they were actually there to help the Detroit Police Department. Women’s Hospital, on Hancock, we had a fire truck parked there, already hooked up to the hydrant that just sat there.
AD: Just in case?
TVB: Just in case.
AD: Anything happened at the hospital?
TVB: Yes. 1965 Hutzel Hospital changed over. They started letting men into the hospital. In ‘60 it was all women. That’s where you went to have your child – an OBGYN. But in ‘65 when they changed over and integrated they also brought men into the hospital. So in ‘67 it was pretty much a general hospital rather than an OBGYN. There were a lot of groups of whites and blacks mixed that were doing a lot of the looting. It wasn’t just blacks. That’s why I said I don’t know if you can really call it a race riot, because there were a lot of blacks and a lot of blacks got killed. I think it divided the city even more than it was already divided. The riot did. A lot of people said that they though it was a good thing because it let all of that aggression out but I don’t think it was a good thing. I really don’t. There were a lot of older people that were terrified. My grandmother was really terrified. She had a beauty shop down on Hastings and Theodore and they just came in and took what they wanted and they just left. I don’t know why anyone would want one of those big hairdryers. Just taking stuff. They didn’t rob anybody they were just taking property.
You got to remember you’ve got a lot of good people that never would have committed crimes that got involved in that crowd and they just followed the crowd. A lot of good people got arrested and a lot of good people got records now because of that too, from following the crowd. You have to remember the Afro Americans burned down their own neighborhoods. That was why it needed to be stopped. Once 12th Street was gone – it has never recovered. A lot of people said 12th Street should have been burned down because 12th Street had gotten to be kind of rough down there – 12th and Clairmount down in that area, it was kind of rough. But we didn’t have any place else to go. When they moved everybody away from Hastings and down in Black Bottom and those areas they had to go somewhere -- so they went west. That’s where they went; they went across Woodward and down toward Twelfth and Clairmount. Once the riot started that one area was a concentration of just black people. They just formed a group and they just started looting.
I was kind of lucky because all the hospitals – Harper, Grace – we had a lot of protection in that area. You got to remember that people got shot or people got hurt they had to go to the hospital. So they wanted to make sure that the troops, the National Guard and the people that were rioting actually had a place to go. It was segregated. I have to say that. If you got hurt and you were black – you went to Receiving. If you got hurt and you were middle class and you had money or insurance you went to either Harper or Hutzel, and Grace. There was another hospital right next to it, Old Grace and New Grace. Either one of those two hospitals. There were a couple of black hospitals in the area but they did not have the facilities to take on that kind of triage from all those injuries that were taking place. So they usually didn’t get any like Burton-Mercy, Edith K. Thomas – those were little hospitals and they didn’t have the facilities to take care of gunshots and things like that. They usually went to other hospitals. The other thing too is nobody paid. If you came in injured from the riot, they just did the work that they had to do. You didn’t have to pay. That was something that they should have continued.
AD: Now the hospital that you were at, did they take people in or was it for the women and children that were already there?
TVB: Oh no. They had patients coming in, they had patients coming in. There was some cases where people lived in a certain area they did not discharge them even though they were fit to go home. They just kept them there in the hospital. You got to remember you got a child and there’s no grocery store in your area, how are they going to eat? So they would just keep them there. Schools were closed so they didn’t have to go to school. This was in July, so they were out for summer vacation. The kids played. We had people come in and entertain the kids. A lot of TV celebrities came in and entertained the kids. We had 16mm movies for the kids. At Hutzel Hospital they had car clubs and chess clubs. They didn’t last long because it was only a week. They got through it, they got through it. You have to remember too back then at Hutzel Hospital even during the riot – if a woman is pregnant, she got to go to the hospital. So you got to have that open. That one side on Hancock, that entrance on Hancock, became an emergency entrance. The only bad thing about that is you have to go up a flight of stairs – I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the front of that hospital.
AD: Right.
TVB: They had people. If you came in and you were in labor, they had people there, they had soldiers there that actually carried you up so you could go in there. Because the Forest side – there was a lot of shooting and sniping going on over there. But Hutzel Hospital took in a lot of OBGYN because you got to remember whenever you have that kind of stress, that can trigger you into labor.
AD: I can’t even imagine.
TVB: If the next door house is burning, your house is burning – it triggered a lot of women started into labor just because of the riot. A lot of lab work. The other thing too is we didn’t really have any way of getting blood from … there was a place called Michigan Blood Supply. We didn’t have any way of getting any blood. In the lab, what we did is if we needed blood we would draw it from personnel or the soldiers. They gave us a list of all the blood types of every soldier that was here. If he was in the hospital and he was O negative, then we could draw him and we would have blood on hand in case somebody got shot. Normally when you go in to give blood, you give a pint, one pint – we drew two. If it was a guy and his hemoglobin was pretty good, we would draw two pints. It might make him feel a little dizzy, but you could get away with it, we would draw two pints. A lot of the soldiers donated blood. You got to remember that a lot of Afro Americans are alive today because white soldiers gave a lot of blood so they could get blood transfusions from being shot, cut glass and all that other stuff. It was as close to a war zone as you could get.
AD: Wow.
TVB: I have to say that. Also you got to remember too that when you’ve got tanks going down the street, you can’t drive down that street anymore -- tank tracks tear that street up. You might not be able to get out of your house because a tank came down that street and tore up that asphalt. It would be like a trench after those tracks went through so now how are you going to get to work? You can’t even get out of your house. They had people that formed little groups like carpools that would bring people back and forth to work. It only lasted a week. The worst part was the aftermath, not the riot. When people actually came out and see how stupid this was.
AD: Right. You have to put the city back together.
TVB: Yes. It was more than anybody ever imagined. Twelfth Street was wrecked. There were a lot of black businesses on Twelfth Street that never, ever recovered. They didn’t recover at all. It’s in history. The people that lived through it normally they don’t like to talk about it. A lot of people got hurt. But a lot of things really have not changed that much. There’s still a lot of racism in the city. I hate to say that but it’s true. People didn’t realize that in ’67. In 1967 there was still a lot of segregation in the medical center, a lot of it. After the riot things did change a little bit. They realized that blacks had a right to be angry but they didn’t have a right to be that angry. There was a lot of racial issues in the city of Detroit at that time. I can only speak for the medical center; I don’t know about the other areas of the city. But at the medical center – there were a lot of issues at the medical center. There were things like two different salary bases. If you were white and I was black, when I came in and worked in the lab your salary was different than mine. You started at the high end, I started at the low end. A lot of things like that. The reason I got hired at Hutzel in the first place in 1960 is to do all the indigent patients that were there. I was to do the patients that couldn’t pay -- the ones on welfare. I was to do the lab work on them. Now if I got a stat or an emergency, then I could do it on the other people. That’s just the way that it was.
AD: How long after the week of the riots were the troops here?
TVB: The troops started leaving on the 29th. Because I was at the hospital when the tanks were coming down – they were putting them on the big tank carriers. They had a truck they drove them up on and they didn’t want them riding down Woodward tearing up the street. So they brought in the carriers and they put them on the thing and they carried them out of there. They had machine guns – believe me. People don’t want to realize. They did. They had machine guns. I don’t know if they really used them or not. There was machine guns up on top of the bakery called Schaeffer Bakery. That was the machine gun that protected the hospital. It was up on the roof. You could look out the third floor and see them sitting up there. They were just sitting there. You got to remember: you’re sick, there’s nothing you can do about the riot. But if you’re laying there all hooked up with IVs and everything going into you. Once surgery was done there was no place for you to go. You had to stay in the hospital. They made sure that area was covered. A couple years after the riot Children’s Hospital closed and we moved to the new facility. It was trying times. It really was. A lot of people ask me about it. It was different. I think that’s why the lab became more integrated because of the riot because we were all in there together for a week and we found out, “Hey, he’s not so bad; hey, he’s not so bad.” We were forced to be together. We got to eat in the cafeteria. Oh, another thing – if you were a cook at the hospital, you were definitely an essential worker. They didn’t go home at all, I don’t think. Most of them stayed right there in the area where the kitchen was. Because not only do they have to cook for hospital personnel, they got to cook for the soldiers outside. The other thing too is that Hutzel Hospital was one of the places where civil defense – remember the sign that was a triangle like this that had “CD” in it? Hutzel Hospital was one of the places where – downstairs we had freezers and that was the civil defense food storage area. This is the Cold War—in case we got attacked this was one of the places that was going to provide food for that particular area. So we had tons of food. They had enough food to feed everybody. Anybody that came in there, they fed them. You could walk off the street, walk right into the cafeteria, pick up a tray and get something to eat because there was no place for you to go shop. That only lasted for a couple of days. After the 29th things started to quiet down. People started going out again. They lifted the curfew a couple of days later. People were in the street before the curfew was actually lifted. On the 29th the city was still smoldering. You could look out and see smoke everywhere. It was still smoldering because the fire department got overwhelmed. They couldn’t get to all those fires. So they just let them burn out. You’ve got to remember too: once one fire started, they couldn’t get in to do the next fire. The gas company couldn’t get in to shut the gas off so there were a lot of explosions. On television you could see the houses where the gas hasn’t been shut off and explosions would take place. It was like fireworks, it was like fireworks. It was different. It was really different. What else you need to know?
AD: I think that’s about it. That’s a great story.
TVB: I got a lot of stuff here that I got off the Internet. I got a list of all the people that got killed. You can look at them and see that a lot of them are white. Some of the soldiers – I have to say this – some of the soldiers that I saw that came into the hospital, the white soldiers, were terrified of being in a situation like this. You got to remember the Vietnam War was going on. A lot of these guys had just come back from the war. They don’t want to get killed doing this when they made it through the war.
AD: Right.
TVB: A lot of them were scared, they were terrified. Because we didn’t have any of the 82nd Airborne here, we only had the 101 Screaming Eagles in front of the hospital. The reason I know that is because I jumped with the 101 when I was in Korea. I didn’t know anybody that was in that group, but I had jumped with the 101. I knew these guys are pretty rough but they were scared they were going to get killed here and made it through Vietnam. I think I would have been afraid too. I think President Johnson he had to bring them in here though. Lot of people fault him for that but it had to be done. If it had gotten out of hand any more than it was, it would have been really, really bad for the city of Detroit. It was escalating, it was spreading. Also, they started having uprisings in Inkster, River Rouge, Flint. Any time there was a pocket – that’s another thing too. When it’s on television people can see they are rioting in Detroit – let’s do it here. It’s on television and they see it here and the copycat riots started springing up everywhere. I think when they have an insurrection like that it does not need to be televised. Because it is an open invitation for people to do whatever they want to do. Television was one of the reasons that it spread so fast. It’s because people said “hey, they’re burning down stores over here and getting all this good stuff.” They would leave the west side and come over here to the east side and they would riot and get in their cars and load up. There were cars just loaded up with stuff, just loaded with stuff just driving down, back and forth, especially down Woodward. When you think about it there were a lot of people that were good people that – like I said – just got caught up in it. Right now today, I don’t think that would happen. Because we’ve come a little bit closer together, blacks and whites. That’s why I said I don’t think this could be called an actual race riot.
AD: What would you call it?
TVB: I would just call it an insurrection because I think… there is a law called the Insurrection Law. That’s why they brought in federal troops because the president has the right to use them in the Insurrection Law. I would just call it a civil uprising rather than a race riot. Because you have to remember back then we weren’t called Afro Americans. We were blacks, negroes, whatever they wanted to call you. In ’67 no black man had a name. I was “boy,” you were “honey” or “baby.” We knew that. When you got stopped by the police, you had to go along with it or you got into trouble. That’s just the way that it was. People don’t realize that ’67 – this is 2016, that was half a century ago. A lot of things have changed since then. Blacks were fed up with the police abuse, being laid off first at the jobs. They were fed up with not having any jobs that they could do, even though they had the education. My father was a good example of that. My father had a degree. He graduated in 1935. But he was an athlete. Back in 1935 if you were an athlete on scholarship – because he played for DIT – when you finished school they gave you a degree in psychology. What can you do with a degree in psychology and you’re black in 1935? That’s the degree. It wasn’t a liberal arts degree. It was a degree in psychology. There was nothing you could do with it. He played four years and he was captain of the team but he couldn’t even shower with the team when he got ready to come back to the university – because it was right downtown there. A lot of things have changed. One thing that they did not burn down, that they did not hurt in the city of Detroit – there were fliers all around them – were the funeral homes. Diggs – I’m trying to think of some of the other ones – Cantrell, they didn’t touch the funeral homes. They didn’t even burn, set anything on fire anywhere near the funeral homes, which is kind of strange.
AD: Yes, it’s interesting.
TVB: You have to remember we have a real fear of death. Funeral homes are kind of sacred to us. We don’t do that enough.
AD: What about churches? Were the churches burned?
TVB: Some of the churches did get damaged. John Conyers came here on the first day. He stood on top of a car with a bullhorn and told them to stop, that this wasn’t the way to settle anything. They bricked him off the top of the car. I actually saw that, yes. He stood on top of a car and they threw bricks at him and knocked him off the top of the car. There’s one other person who came here, I’m trying to think who it was, that tried to quell it and just couldn’t. The name of the guy who started the whole thing and he took credit for it – I think I have his name in here somewhere— at the Blind Pig. I think there were close to 82 people at the party. It was a party for two returning Vietnam veterans. At a blind pig, at the time the law stated the last drink was at 2:00. They made their money after 2:00. It was an after-hours joint and you went there after 2:00. Everybody knew what they were, they’d been doing that for years. In fact, a lot of the entertainers that came here – Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald – once they finished their set they went to the after-hours joint and they did another set. Because we paid them pretty good so they could get some extra money. So everybody knew about it. It was just that the police—I don’t know what the reason was why they went there, just to bust up this particular one. It was upstairs over a printing company. It was a printing company downstairs and upstairs was the Blind Pig. It was upstairs, not downstairs. They probably went there to do what a lot of the police did – to take part of the profits. You don’t know about that. If you wanted a Blind Pig, you got to pay the pigs. That’s what cops used to be called. That might have been what happened. That was norm back then. Same thing on 12th Street—if you a working girl on 12th Street, you had to pay to be on 12th Street, otherwise you get picked up and taken downtown. That’s the way it was back then. We had the Big Four, we have STRESS – these were the police that were put in that area to try and control us. We knew who they were. They had a free hand to do whatever they wanted to do. Everything you see now about police brutality, that was every day, that was every day. That’s why when I left the hospital going from Children’s walking down Beaubien to Women’s Hospital, I always wore my lab coat out on the street so the police would know I was working at the hospital. In fact, most of the time they thought I was a doctor so they didn’t bother me at all. They didn’t bother me at all. They would wave and I would wave back and I would just keep on going. It was different. Is this still on?
AD: Mmhmm.
TVG: If you’re a nurse here, you’re a good girlfriend for a cop. You’re making good money, you keep yourself clean and healthy. I saw a lot of black nurses that had a white cop boyfriend. Certain perks came with that. You could park downtown, your car wouldn’t get ticketed. There was a lot of stuff. It was a different era, it was. When I left the hospital in 1980, a lot of things had changed. The riot had something to do with a lot of the changes that had taken place because they don’t want it to happen again. There was something else that came up a few years later but they stopped it. I can’t remember what it was. I got some stuff in here.
AD: I’ll make sure to look it over.
TVG: I was looking for a friend of mine’s name that was in there that got killed. I didn’t see his name on the people that got killed. He was a taxicab driver, Bradford Facing. He was a cab driver. I heard that he got killed during the riot but I didn’t see his name on the list. He and I went to school together. In fact, he was my best friend for a long time. Actually I would have married his sister but later on they found out she had sickle cell anemia and she died. Because when I came back from Korea I was trying to find out where she was. I was definitely going to – yeah. Because everybody just kind of expected us to get married because he was my best friend and when we went to the show and stuff it would be three of us. I take her—it really wasn’t a date then. She would just go with me because she was Bradford’s sister and then it turned out that she was saying it was a date. I didn’t want it to be a date but she wanted it to be a date.
AD: I appreciate you coming in today. I’m going to look through this stuff.
TVB: Okay.
HS: Hello, this is Hannah Sabal. I am in Detroit, Michigan. The date is July 11th, 2016 and I am conducting an oral history interview for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project with John Crissman. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
JC: It’s a pleasure.
HS: Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?
JC: I was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan.
HS: What neighborhood did you grow up in?
JC: I grew up in Charlotte, Michigan, out by Lansing.
HS: Out by Lansing, okay. And what did your parents do for a living?
JC: My mother was a housewife, and my father was a traveling salesman.
HS: What was your neighborhood like growing up?
JC: Small town, middle class.
HS: Was it integrated?
JC: It was a white town. Small town.
HS: Where did you go to school?
JC: I went to MIT for my bachelor’s degree, then I went to West Reserve for my medical degree, and then I went to the University of Michigan for my surgical internship, then I transferred down to Detroit Receiving Hospital, July 1, 1967.
HS: So you had just moved to Detroit in July of ’67?
JC: Correct.
HS: And what was it like moving into the city?
JC: It was Detroit. It was a segregated city; there were certain areas you couldn’t live in. I ended up living near Chandler Park. I commuted downtown, which was maybe four miles.
HS: When you moved into the city, did you notice any tensions?
JC: I talked to a lot of my patients at Detroit Receiving Hospital. I remember one old black lady. She took me under her wing, and she said, “Doc, be careful. There’s something going to happen this summer, and it’s not going to be good. So watch your step.”
HS: So this woman knew that something was going down.
JC: The undercurrent in the black community was there was a lot of unrest.
HS: Were you working when the riots started, or were you at home? How did you hear about it first?
JC: I went to a Yankee-Tigers double header, and when we were coming home after the came toward Chandler Park with a friend of mine, I saw the smoke and I wondered if something had started.
HS: This was on Sunday?
JC: This was on Sunday. I wondered if something had started or—there were a couple fires for sure. We got home, and we’re watching my TV, and we’re watching another ballgame, and I still remember this—this big section came across the TV: “Would the Pontiac National Guard please report to their armory.” And I knew what had happened. I knew the riots had started; had no idea where, when, how much, and then I got the phone call that, about an hour later, to come down to Detroit Receiving Hospital.
HS: When you heard about the events, did you think back to the black patient that you had who said something was going to happen?
JC: Not really. We knew something was amiss. I’d heard it from a number of patients, but I remember it from this one lady specifically.
HS: You went into work on Sunday?
JC: Absolutely.
HS: What was that like?
JC: Actually, it was pretty quiet. There was a paradox because the emergency room basically closed down, because there won’t any of the routine, ambulatory emergency room patients coming in. The first night was reasonably quiet until, maybe late in the evening. But the only things we saw were major trauma.
HS: What was the atmosphere in the hospital like? Was it tense? Nervous?
JC: Nothing. I mean, Detroit Receiving is a trauma hospital. There’s patients all the time. In fact, it was kind of ironic, as I said before, it was kind of a little more quiet. Then the major trauma cases started rolling in. Now I was a new kid on the block in surgery, so my responsibilities were not to go to the operating room, but to take care of all the post-surgery patients and all of the patients out on the wards. I did do some of the initial triage in the emergency room.
HS: The traumas that you received, were they mainly GSWs [gun shot wounds], or—?
JC: Most of them—there were a few gun shots, a lot of stab wounds, and all various kinds of trauma. One of the memories that I have that’s the strongest is that on one of the wards, we had all of these young, muscular black males. It was like 90 degrees in there, they were all sweating in there—glistening, actually—they all had had abdominal operations, and they had all had tape on their abdomen, and they were basically laying in bed. We had these little stomach pumps going, “Tch tch tch tch tch” and there are like 40 of them. It was an eerie kind of situation to be in. The patients were just great. They knew they’d been hurt, they knew they’d been operated on, they knew they’d been saved, and they were very grateful that someone was taking care of them.
HS: I’d imagine so. What else do you remember from that week? Did you work most of that week?
JC: I was at the hospital, I think, for four straight days. I have many memories of those four days. One of the burning memories is that so many people were arrested and the jails were full. You’ve probably heard this before, but they put buses on every corner, and then they would put a port-a-john over the sewer inlet, and you’d look out there, and I don’t think these guys got fed very often. But they were all out in front of the hospital, they were all through downtown. You’d look out there once in a while and see them, they’d be allowed off for handling the bathroom activities, and I guess they got some food, but they were basically incarcerated on the buses.
HS: Anything else? Any other stories?
JC: Oh yeah, I got lots of stories.
HS: Please just go for it.
JC: It was about the second or third night, we were in the recovery room where all the patients come after they’ve finished their surgery, and it was on the fourth floor of the old Receiving hospital, and it had frosted glass windows. We were in the recovery room, and we heard a funny noise, “Ping!” Didn’t think anything of it. I think I was the only physician in there with a number of nurses, obviously. Then we heard another, “Ping!” and everybody started looking around. “What was that noise?” When we heard a third one, we realized that someone was shooting at us from across in a parking deck. We immediately hit the lights and pulled all the patients out into the hall, then informed—they had a police command post on the first floor of the hospital—and we called down and told them that somebody was shooting at us from the parking deck across the way, and the police went out and killed the guy.
HS: Wow.
JC: Which was fine with me.
HS: Well, I mean, he was shooting at you, so…. That’s intense.
JC: Probably one of the most interesting parts of it was when it first started, it was all handled by Detroit Police force, and they became overwhelmed, obviously. Governor Romney called in the National Guard, and these guys looked like somebody off the street that someone had put in uniform. It was a mixture of characters. Some overweight, some underweight, not very military in manner or deport. They did the best they could. Then President Johnson shipped the 101, I think the—
HS: 82nd.
JC: The 82nd airborne, put them out at Selfridge, and we knew this! We heard about all this downtown! And he held them there for a day, just to embarrass, I think, Governor Romney. When they released the Airborne into the city, it just shut the riots down. These people used to come in, a number of the non-commissioned officers and some of the soldiers would come in and eat at the cafeteria of the hospital. So I got to know them, got to talk to some of them. Very impressive, very tough, very lean, and not somebody you’d want to—
HS: So they appeared more professional than the National Guard?
JC: They appeared frightening. They’d all just gotten back from Vietnam. They were obviously very, very controlled, commanding soldiers. We had one kid that got into the emergency room. He was about 18 years old, maybe 16. Can’t remember, overweight, and just scared out of his mind. We couldn’t figure out how he got in the emergency room until we talked to him. The story he related to me, who was trying to take care of him, was that his brother—these are two white kids—his brother had driven up from Ohio with his brother, found an apartment, and were shooting at soldiers. The airborne were running around town in jeeps with 50 caliber machine guns on the back, and if they had any fire from an apartment, they’d just start blasting the apartment. They killed the older brother, who was the sniper. This kid came running down out of there. They probably would’ve killed him, except that he stumbled and fell on the steps and knocked himself out. This kid was so scared that he was going to get killed, and he came very close to it.
HS: From your understanding, they came from Ohio specifically—
JC: This is what the boy told me, that the brother came up to kill some cops or army people.
HS: I don’t know what to say to that.
JC: Well, we just saw it in Dallas.
HS: Yeah, that’s true.
JC: There’s nutcases out there, there’s no question about it.
HS: That’s why this project is so relevant, you know? Any other experiences? Note-worthy experiences?
JC: Let me think. I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t remember them all.
HS: That’s fine. After the riots ended—I know Detroit Receiving is a trauma hospital, but did the traumas go down at all after that week, back to their norm?
JC: Well, everybody in the city was basically holed up, particularly in the black community. Anybody that got ill had no place to go because you couldn’t move. As soon as the riots ended, there became more normal movement, and we saw an upswing in emergency room routine traffic. That was, I guess, basically a sign that things were returning back to normal. Now, I lived on Dickerson right across from the golf course on Chandler Park. We were sort of at the edge of the black community. There was a public housing on the other corner, off of six mile. There was a big liquor store there, and that liquor store got hit and cleaned out. I came home, and I told my wife—and we had a young baby—I said, “If you have any problems, keep the car gassed, just go north.” I came home, I think, on a Thursday night and there were just lines of people sitting on their porches with deer rifles, waiting for someone to come across Chandler Park, so I felt comfortable that my wife and child were safe.
HS: So your wife and child didn’t have any problems then?
JC: No problems at all.
HS: Was your neighborhood affected at all?
JC: Well, the liquor store about 800 yards away was robbed. One of the funny things that came out of this was all the liquor stores were completely wiped out. And about six weeks after the riot ended, we started seeing alcoholics coming in with chronic pancreatitis, which is a complication of drinking, so the conclusion I reached is a chronic alcoholic, given all the alcohol he wants, will develop pancreatitis in six weeks.
HS: Yeah, that makes sense. How long did you live in Detroit for?
JC: Just that one year, ’67-’68. Then I went into the military. All male physicians were drafted in that era.
HS: Did you end up serving in Vietnam?
JC: I did not, I’m not sure why. I was a trauma surgeon at that time, even though in my first year, but that was the most popular medical specialty at that time, they wanted partially trained general surgeons. But I didn’t go to Vietnam.
HS: When you returned from the service, did you continue to live in Detroit, or did you move somewhere else?
JC: I went back to Cleveland, where I went to medical school. Then I returned to Detroit in 1981, and I’ve been at Wayne State since then.
HS: You are the Dean of the medical school?
JC: I was at one time.
HS: Okay, that’s awesome.
JC: Actually, 1999 to 2004.
HS: You were the dean during those years?
JC: Yeah.
HS: That’s great. You’ve been in Detroit a fair amount, then. Have you noticed any changes in the city?
JC: The blacks now provide a majority of the leadership in the community, and I just came from the DAC—The Detroit Athletic Club—and I know a lot of the prominent black, both politicians and entrepreneurs and business people. That certainly is a welcome relief, there’s a lot of black that have very prominent roles in the community. I drive through the east side almost daily. The ghettos, though not as heavily populated, have not changed a great deal. There’s still tremendous amount of unemployment, young blacks walking around with apparently no role in life, and that has not changed.
HS: Where do you see the city headed?
JC: I think that the rebirth of downtown and of central area, where we’re sitting today, is a huge step in the right direction. I think the real crucial element is going to be restoration of the public and charter schools. If that’s accomplished, I see Detroit resurrecting itself and young families moving back into the community. But I think it’s all going to be crucial as to how public and charter—I include charter under public education—I think it’s going to be very crucial to see how that does.
HS: If you had a message for future generations of Detroit, what would it be?
JC: Well, I think everyone has to continue to work in the direction they have. One of the saddest parts is so many, particularly the black male population, has been lost to society for various reasons, and I wouldn’t even pretend to be able to interpret those, but I think that’s really a sad element. If anything could be done to restore that, I think it would be a huge move in the right direction. I think Detroit—if it gets its educational program back together—people don’t realize, back in the ‘50s, Detroit Public Schools was an excellent organization.
HS: That’s what I’ve heard.
LC: Yeah, and they’ve lost all of that wherewithal and experience, so forth. But I think Detroit has a future. I think it’s going to be slow in coming, but I think it’s clearly headed in the right direction.
HS: Sounds optimistic. Do you have anything else you’d like to share with us today?
LC: I could go on for a long time, but I will end it at this. I probably fulfilled what you needed.
HS: Oh, definitely, yeah. Well, thank you for sharing your stories, we really appreciate it.
[End of Track 1]
[Beginning of Track 2]
HS: This is a continuation of John Crissman’s story.
JC: One of the patients I took care of in the intensive care was a fireman. He obviously was fighting a fire and he was on one of these elevated lifts, and they lifted him into a power line. He was essentially electrocuted. He had electrical burns in his frontal lobes and both of his eyes, and out his left arm. I took care of him for a number of days. As I mentioned before, I did all the scut work, because I was a young guy on the service, so I got to take care of all the patients after surgery. He lived for about five days, eventually died, and I remember his wife coming in. I can’t remember if they had any children; of course, they wouldn’t have come in. But it was a very sad situation. Subsequently I got to know some of the fire chiefs, and they remembered the incident very dramatically as the one fireman that was killed in the riots. That’s it.
HS: Okay.
JC: That’s the only story I forgot.
HS: Okay.
HS: Hello, this is Hannah Sabal. I’m here in Franklin, Michigan. The date is July 11th, 2016 and I am conducting an oral history interview for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project with Thelma Edwards. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
TE: Yes.
HS: Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?
TE: I was born in Detroit, Michigan. I was born July 22, 1934.
HS: Okay. And where did you grow up?
TE: I grew up on the west side of Detroit.
HS: What was your neighborhood like?
TE: I had a somewhat mixed neighborhood, with my first remembrance. Later, it became black.
HS: The white people in the neighborhood left?
TE: Yes.
HS: What did your parents do for a living?
TE: My mother was a housewife, and my father worked for Ford Motor Company.
HS: What were you doing in the ‘60s? At that point, you were about mid-30s or so.
TE: In the ‘60s I had children, and I was married and raising them. Eventually, I went back to school and I became a registered nurse. I worked at Detroit Receiving Hospital, was my first job at that time.
HS: When did you start there?
TE: Oh, I don’t remember the exact date.
HS: Do you remember the year?
TE: It was about ’62. Something like that.
HS: Were you still working there in ’67?
TE: Yes.
HS: Moving in to ’67, how did you first hear about the events in July?
TE: I first heard about it from people running down my street and telling about what was going on at that time.
HS: Were you close to the main incident at the blind pig at 12th and Clairmount? Did you live close?
TE: No, I didn’t live in that area. I lived off of Tireman Avenue, which was not too far from Northwestern High School, where I went to high school. I was there with my children and husband at the time. We didn’t have any particular incidents on that area then, but I had gone back to school, as I explained, and I became a nurse. We had just a few incidents, just a very few on that street, so I wasn’t really afraid. I looked at most of it on TV. Then, eventually, when I went to work at Receiving Hospital, which was downtown at that time on St. Antoine Street, I had some times at that time that they had to come and pick me up by ambulance because I was not going out, you know, at that time. My husband would be home at night and I would go down the street about half a block and catch the bus, but I just wasn’t going out, you know, at that time because I was afraid. I took the bus to work for a while, then it got a little bit worse at that time and they had to come and pick me up. They picked me up by ambulance and took me to work, because I worked midnights.
HS: What was the atmosphere like in the hospital?
TE: The atmosphere—it wasn’t too scary, but I worked, sometimes, in the emergency room and then sometimes in the room for the cardiac care. Some people came in with heart attacks and all of that. I worked there, because I know I worked with a couple of policemen that got shot. So it was kind of scary, but it wasn’t too bad because they had, at that time, they had soldiers walking the hallways, policemen and soldiers, because we became afraid from time to time. But we made it.
HS: Were you relieved when the National Guard and then the federal troops came into the city?
TE: Yes, I was, and some of them were also in the hospital.
HS: As patients or as guards?
TE: As patients and guards. It wasn’t too many patients that I saw, it was only about a couple. The rest of them were walking the hallways. They were guarding us, you know.
HS: Going back a little bit, you said that there were only two or three incidents that occurred on your street. Could you explain what those were?
TE: On my street, we had a big supermarket on the corner of Tireman and Hazlett, that’s where that was. A big supermarket called Spotlight. They broke in there and disturbed everything and took things, you know, out of the story, so the people had nowhere to shop unless they took a chance to go somewhere where they thought it was safe. So that was bad, because you worried about your food, and if you had kids, you worried about that.
HS: Worried about feeding the kids, or worried about kids getting into trouble?
TE: Worried about feeding the kids. I had a son at that time, and he got into a little bit of trouble. I didn’t care what was going on, I went to get him. I fussed and ranted and raved all the way back up the street. I said, “You are not to go out in this situation anymore, you know. Because I was afraid. He cried and said that somebody told him to go do it because we needed food, and this. I said, “I don’t care what we need. I don’t want you to go out in this situation again.” So he didn’t. He started crying and all of that; he wanted to be with his friends. But, he stayed home, I said, “Because you might get killed down there or something.” “Oh, I’m not going to get killed!”
HS: About how old was he at the time?
TE: He was 11, I think. He was 11.
HS: During the events, did your husband work, or was he staying at home?
TE: He worked. It was a bunch of them, I remember, it was about five or six of them in the car. He worked in Pontiac, and it was about five or six of them in the car and they drove up there every day.
HS: Are there any other experiences that you’d like to share with us?
TE: That was the most of everything, except that, I remember that a few people dropped us off food, because if you had foods you were worried about them getting fed and all of that. I remember that, so that was good. I know one night, an ambulance picked us up, and they were in such a hurry until they ran off the highway, sort of. I think that was 94—no, 75, and we ran sort of slightly up on the side of the highway. That was kind of scary. I don’t remember is someone was behind us, or shooting, or what. I do remember some shooting at the time, but not very much. But that particular night, I do remember that somebody was shooting at us and we fell on the floor.
HS: In the hospital?
TE: In the ambulance.
HS: The events as you see them, do you consider them a riot, or a rebellion, or a civil disturbance?
TE: I consider it a civil uprising. I really do. I wouldn’t say just “riot,” although later on, maybe it did, you know, because it started over there on Twelfth Street, and I lived a ways from there. But where I was, I would consider it a civil uprising, but it was still very scary and I thought you had to be careful, and I didn’t go out anywhere but to work. That’s all.
HS: How did you see the city change after that?
TE: To me, I saw some changes that were good, but it took a while. It just didn’t happen suddenly; it really took a while. But, when it did change, I thought it was for the good at that time. But see, now, thinking about that time and thinking about now, it’s gotten worse again, to me.
HS: In what ways?
TE: There’s all this killing, so many things. The killing, just thinking about how they’re doing about the kids and I think—I went downtown to school, to Wayne State. It was just hard, it was hard thinking about all the things that sometimes you worry about. Are all those things coming back to happen again? Because times are getting worse and not getting better, to me.
HS: What advice would you give to future generations?
TE: I would say, I don’t want people to just stay away from Detroit, but to try to do things to make it better, to work with each other. Not let this get so terrible that you can’t live here anymore. Because, I, myself, I was born in Detroit and I want it to become the best city that it can be for the future generation, for my kids—I have grandkids now, and, you know, I just want it to be the best it can be. Because it can be if they would just not mix things up and just let it be, as terrible as anywhere else. Like what’s going on now, like in Texas, which I hate.
HS: It breaks your heart.
TE: It really does.
HS: Is there anything else you’d like to share with us today?
TE: No. I’m glad that you came to do this!
HS: We are too! We really appreciate your stories!
TE: I’m glad. That’s really good. I haven’t thought about all these things in a long time, and it’s good to think about it and then have it out and over.
GS: Hello, today is July 7, 2016. My name is Giancarlo Stefanutti. We are in Detroit, Michigan, and this interview is for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am here with Mary T. Allor. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
MA: Thank you, very much.
GS: Can you first start by telling me where and when were you born?
MA: Yeah, I was born May 1st, 1946 in Highland Park, Michigan.
GS: What did your parents do when you were a child?
MA: My dad was the chief of radiology at Detroit Osteopathic Hospital in Highland Park. My mother was a nurse, but didn’t work very much at all, so she was more of a homemaker.
GS: Do you have any siblings?
MA: I have—had—my oldest sister is 13 years older than me, went off and became a nun, so she was at the convent when all this happened. She’s not a nun anymore. Then I had a brother who was 10 years older than me, and he’s passed away. Then I have a brother who’s 7 years older than myself. He’s alive and well, out in Metamora.
GS: What was your childhood like in Highland Park?
MA: Well, I grew up in Detroit. We grew up at 6 Mile and Livernois, [unintelligible] Parish, although I think they call it University District.
GS: So when did you move to Detroit from Highland Park?
MA: I was born in Highland Park.
GS: Oh, okay.
MA: At that time, they were, I think, pretty much interchangeable. Highland Park is in the confines of Detroit. I went to the Academy of Sacred Heart that was down on Woodrow Wilson and John R. until they moved out to Bloomfield Hills in—I was in fifth grade I think, or sixth grade—so my early primary years, I don’t remember a whole lot. I was in school most of the time. We had a woman who worked for us, her name was Jenny Goldsby, and she was black. Jenny came to work for us when I was five. I didn’t see any racial differences. She was like a mother to me. My mother was really sick when I was growing up, so Jenny raised me. Then we had another lady who worked for us, Bertha Little, then we lived across the street from Jack Adams, the general manager of the Detroit Red Wings. They had a houseboy, and his name was Joseph Adams. There was really only the three black people that I knew, so I didn’t know—I was pretty naïve—I didn’t realize that there was any racial conflicts. I was pretty isolated from them. When Sacred Heart moved out to Bloomfield Hills, I was even less in contact with black people. I just didn’t have any concept of the problems.
GS: So your school was also not too racially integrated?
MA: No, not at all, then. Not at all, then. I graduated in ’64. Then I went away for a year, then I came back and graduated from Mercy College. That used to be on Outer Drive and Southfield. I just don’t remember a lot of—I mean, I know there were Hispanic students, I’m sure there were black students but I don’t remember lots of them. I lived in the dorm. When I graduated, I moved back home for a while, then I got an apartment at Greenfield and Fenkell, I think it was. I really didn’t realize—I was just naïve. I guess I just didn’t see the racial problems coming up.
GS: That was in the early ‘60s?
MA: Yeah, I graduated in ’68 from Mercy College. Became a nurse. I’ll tell you that part after the riots, because that kind of played in then.
GS: So then, we can move towards the riots. Where were you when you first heard about it?
MA: Well, I was with him. I was 21. I had met Jim, like, two months before. I was starry-eyed and in love. We went to the zoo that day. Didn’t have the radio on, of course—I actually wrote about this—so we went to the zoo all day, no radio. I knew nothing about the violence—that was a Sunday—and I knew nothing about the violence the night before. I was just not aware of it at all. We went to the zoo and had a wonderful time, and my mother was in the hospital, Detroit Osteopathic. We were driving down to see her, we were driving down, I think it was 3rd Avenue, and it was just weird. There was no traffic. We didn’t have the radio on. We were just young and in love and oblivious to the world. We drove down to the hospital, Jim had a ’65 mustang, got to the hospital, and I was a regular there, seeing my dad or whatever. We drove into the circle drive and there were no cars there, and that was the first tip-off. There were no cars on 3rd, and there were no cars in the circle drive, then we walked into the hospital and there were National Guard all over the place. I was just totally stunned, frightened. I wondered what was going on. I don’t remember much about that day except we had to stay at the hospital. I slept on an x-ray table, and my brother was an intern at the time. I think my husband and my brother, I don’t know, went up on the roof and saw shooting, but I don’t remember very much. All I remember is that I was really frightened. We still didn’t know what was going on. It was really strange. We were right in the heart of it, being in Highland Park. The next morning, I remember a police ambulance came and took my mom, my brother, and myself home. Jim drove home. He lived in Royal Oak, and I remember the next few days he would bring us bread and milk because we couldn’t go to any stores or anything. We lived in a colonial home that was one block east of Livernois and north of 6 Mile on Warrington. Upstairs, my bedroom had a porch outside of it. I always loved to go out and sit there and look at the stars and whatever. I remember during the riots going out on the porch at my upstairs bedroom and I was like, it was such a stupid thing to do, but I remember I could see the shooting up and down Livernois and I could see military trucks, you know, going up and down. It was unreal to me. National Guard, police, ambulances—not ambulances, but sirens all the time. I just felt really terrified, really confused, and I felt like Anne Frank. It was really weird, like what’s happening? I just felt totally frightened and confused. Jenny Goldsby, I think I mentioned before, she was like our house help, she was like a nanny to me. She lived on Ewald circle and Livernois, or Davison and Livernois. She’d take the bus to work at our house, but my dad would drive her home at night. My dad had this white Cadillac convertible with a red interior. Usually had the top down, and I just remember being really frightened for both of them. So scary. A lot of my memories from those days ae blurred, but I do remember the sense of terror. Jerry Cavanagh was the mayor, and he lived right across the street from us. I don’t recall talking to him about it, but I guess that was my experience of it.
GS: How was your neighborhood reacting to it?
MA: You know, my family didn’t communicate a lot with other neighbors, so I don’t know. I felt real isolated in the whole thing. I don’t remember any violence on our street. I know there were no black people that lived in the neighborhood, so I can’t say, I don’t recall.
GS: Were you ever worried that the gunshots and violence that you saw would come towards your neighborhood?
MA: Terrified, yeah, I was terrified. I could see it right on the street, like as far as that building is. I was like in disbelief and fascinated, but I was also aware that someone was getting injured or killed out there. To this day, I can’t stand violence. I can’t stand gunshots. I can’t stand the terror of all that, that was awful.
GS: Moving toward the few years after the riot, did you notice any changes in the city?
MA: Yeah, I graduated in 1968 from Mercy College and I became a visiting nurse. My area was, like, Olympia Stadium and up and down Grand River. I was 22, naïve, loved the excitement of the whole thing. I had worked as a clerk for the NA all through college, I was very excited to be actually taking care of the people that used to call in for referrals. I don’t remember feeling afraid. I don’t even remember feeling caution to feel afraid. My supervisor was black; I loved her, she was wonderful. I remember one instance, I actually thought of their names today, it was Roy and Emma [unintelligible] and they lived someplace off of Grand River, and they were an elderly couple. I used to come once a week and do her medications and give her a bath and change her dressings and stuff. I always came the same time on the same day every week. I remember this one day I was in there giving her a bath and I had her in the bathtub, and her nephew, I believe it was, came running upstairs to their apartment and said, “Come on, nurse, just follow me.” I remember Roy saying, “Go ahead and go.” So I got my little black bag and went down to my little yellow mustang, and this nephew and a friend of his—one car was in front of me, one car was behind me, and they literally led me back down Grand River to where my office was. Then they turned off and waved me off. I still didn’t know what was going on when I got back in the office. We didn’t have cell phones. My supervisor was really upset about it. I guess the school across the street, there had been a racial incident where they were smashing out the windows and hitting any white people that were in the area. This young nephew knew that because I had such a regular schedule coming there, and he got me out of there safely. As far as other changes, I know a lot of houses in our neighborhoods went up for sale. Those changes happened. My parents still didn’t move until 1970. We were married in ’70 and my parents moved right after our wedding. I think my dad was more frightened because he still was driving around in his little Cadillac with his bald head up and down Curtis, and I don’t know if he told me that there was some taunting and yelling at him, but I know he didn’t feel safe. I couldn’t believe the whole thing. I just couldn’t believe it.
GS: So you generally felt less safe in the city than you did before?
MA: Definitely, definitely.
GS: Did you, yourself, ever consider leaving Detroit?
MA: When we got married, Jim was from Royal Oak, so we did move to Royal Oak. By then my parents had sold their home. Most of the friends that I had had already moved, gotten married and moved.
GS: How do you see Detroit today, with all this in mind? Do you think Detroit has improved since then, or has it stayed the same?
MA: I think it really went downhill, you know, drastically. I know where we used to live, we used to shop at that B. Seagull at the Avenue of Fashion. All of that, I can’t believe how it’s changed. I started to have some fear working as a visiting nurse because a lot of the areas that I went to then and in later years, I was doing homecare for another agency, and when I had gone to give a man his insulin, over at 7 Mile and Evergreen, I think. When I came down from giving him his insulin, which was like 8:30 in the morning, there had been a drug bust of a car parked right in front of myself and they had found a dead body in the car, in the trunk of the car near where mine was parked right behind it. I’m kinda slow to catch on, like this is dangerous, I can’t do this anymore. I’m happy to see what’s happening in Detroit now. I don’t think I’ll ever live in Detroit—we live in Plymouth now—but it’s just being so revitalized that I think it’s really exciting. I’m concerned about the homeless, you know, where are they going to put those people? It’s like in order to do the developing that they’re doing, what about the pockets of homelessness though? You can’t just pick those people up and ship them out. I don’t know a solution to it.
GS: Is there anything else you would like to add?
MA: I taught at U of M, I retired from the University of Michigan. I taught nursing there, and did a lot of multicultural teaching. I’ve often wondered where my passion for that comes from, and I think part of it is from Jenny. She was just so good to me. Part of it, I think, was living in Detroit and living through the riots. I guess that’s everything I can think of.
GS: Well, thank you for sitting down with me today.
MA: Yeah, thank you very much.
[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 15:06]
Giancarlo Stefanutti: Hello, today is July 23, 2016. My name is Giancarlo Stefanutti. We’re in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s 67 Oral History Project. I’m sitting down with Bob Tell. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
Robert Tell: Good to see you too.
GS: Can you first tell me where and when were you born?
RT: The full name is Robert. People call me Bob. I was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1937.
GS: When did you move to Detroit then?
RT: The end of 1963.
GS: Wow, so then growing up in Brooklyn, what was your community like there?
RT: Well, it was a New York City community. Brooklyn is a borough of New York City. It was great. I loved New York, I loved Brooklyn. I still do. I went to school there, went to high school there, went to college there, went to graduate school there. My undergraduate degree is from English literature from Long Island University. My graduate degree is a masters in hospital administration from Columbia, University. It was great. I grew up in Brooklyn but we lived – spent a lot of time in Manhattan areas and all the other areas around New York City. It was good.
GS: What did your parents do growing up?
RT: My father had a small factory mostly for leather goods – briefcases, optical cases, things like that; it was a small business type factory. My mother was the foreman. He was the brains of the business. She supervised the employees. They did that together.
GS: So was your community in Brooklyn very racially integrated?
RT: No, not much. Brooklyn, of course, was – we’re talking from 1937 through early 1963, integration wasn’t on the tip of anybody’s tongue in those days. There were black neighborhoods, there were Jewish neighborhoods, there were Italian neighborhoods; where I grew up there was mostly Jewish and Italians. There were a few black people around but no Asians or anybody else.
GS: Why did you move to Detroit then?
RT: I was offered a job as senior administrator at Sinai Hospital in Detroit, which was a very strong hospital in those days. It’s gone now for a lot of other reasons. I was recruited to be the equivalent of a vice president. They didn’t use those titles then but that was basically the job.
GS: So when you first came here, what was your impression of Detroit?
RT: You know what? Brooklyn was a dying city in those days. Young people don’t believe me now because it’s expensive and it’s the in place to be. My grandson lives there and thinks it is the coolest place on earth. But when we were leaving I thought the last person out should turn out the lights. We were moving to a place that was exciting; it was Motor City, cars were being built. It was a growing metropolis and big manufacturing town. I always liked cars and I was happy to get a job offer from a major Detroit area hospital. It was an adventure. It was exciting.
GS: Where did you move to in Detroit?
RT: Oak Park.
GS: Was that community similar to your community in Brooklyn?
RT: No, very little in Detroit is similar to what Brooklyn was like in those days. It was a nice, middle class, suburban city, a very comfortable city – great schools, great amenities, it was a good place to live. It was very nice.
GS: So could you sense any sort of tension growing inside? You were pretty new.
RT: We were new, but I’ll tell you, I was probably misguided. Our hospital was in Northwest Detroit, it was on Outer Drive. The community that we drove around in and I really studied the community because our hospital was part of it, was very integrated, it was black and white. Coming from Brooklyn where the areas were pretty segregated, I thought this was great. I didn’t sense any tension; I just thought this was wonderful. It’s an ideal, model integrated community – middle class people, whites, blacks living together, no problem, no tension. Little did I know! But it just looked peaceful; looked stable on the surface. Obviously, I didn’t get underneath it all but it looked very attractive.
GS: So when the events in July 1967, where were you when you first heard about the riots starting?
RT: Well, this is my story. It all has to do with the hospital. I was the administrator responsible on duty; the chief operating officers were off duty. We low level vice presidents had to take the administrative call. So I got a call from the nursing supervisor. “Mr. Tell, you really need to come in here.” That’s not something I wanted to hear, you know. Usually my calls were telephone issues. “Why, what’s going on?” I can’t remember her name. Nursing supervisors were pretty much in charge of the hospital while we were away. She said, “I can’t explain it just come on down here and meet me on the roof of the hospital.” “What?” She said, “Something is going on. Meet me on the roof of the hospital.” I said okay, so I drove down. So far all is well, no problems driving down and went to the hospital and went up the roof and met her. I didn’t have to ask her anymore because you could see it. She said, “Look.” You could look from the roof of Sinai Hospital you looked downtown and it looked like someone was bombing the city. The whole thing was ablaze. It was incredible. The sky was lit up. She said, “I don’t know what is going on down there.” I didn’t know, none of us knew what was going on. Something was going on. We figured whatever is going on is going to bring patients to our hospital. You better be alert to this and we better find out what’s going on. So, of course, we went downstairs and put on the radios and put on the TVs and it was pretty apparent that something was going on. A lot of it wasn’t all that clear, but there was a Blind Pig and the police raided it and, you know, something happened. People were mad; they’re looting; they’re breaking windows. It sounded awful. After a while we started hearing about – I may have my time sequences mixed up – police were involved, then the governor was involved. The National Guard was getting involved. Everybody was getting in on it. This really started to sound pretty bad. We started getting calls from employees. We had a large African American employee base. We started to get calls from employees due for the next shift saying they can’t get out. So here we are, there I am: I’m 30 years old in charge of the whole hospital for the first time being in a situation like this. I called my boss. They said, “Have fun! We can’t get out of here and there is a curfew coming on.” So they said, “It’s all yours!” Partly I was excited about it and partly I was scared out of my mind because all this is going on.
We knew we had to get employees in. Employees that were here started hearing about it and they were afraid they weren’t going to be able to get home. The question was how are we going to take care of the sick people and the patients – they were too sick, we couldn’t send them home. One of the first things I did was to arrange for bus transportation. We just rented a bunch of buses to ferry employees back and forth. A lot of people needed passes. We were hospital people; we didn’t need passes. I didn’t need a pass. Once the curfews went down, once the curfews were established, you couldn’t just be out on the street. We could get passes. We didn’t use it because I was there for days and days and days. I slept there for days and days and days. But the employees that came in and -- this is the story I really want to convey -- were wonderful. It was largely the black community that was rioting. These people somehow made their way into the hospital and wanted to show that not everybody rioting is looting stores. Not everybody living in that community is being violent. They wanted to make sure that sick people got care. This was very moving. They had to risk their lives to do that. I remember one guy – what was his name, I just remembered his name but I better not use it. He was the head of our messenger service, a black guy, an African American guy, very nice guy. I think he was also a deacon or something in his church, very well known in his community, and he said he’s going to ride shotgun on these buses because they have to go through areas where snipers are shooting and everything else. I’ll never forget the first busload he came back with our employees were pinned down on the floor of the bus in an area with snipers shooting and police shooting, everybody shooting, and they continued to come. They didn’t say we’re not coming in; maybe some did. But many, many employees came in and the ones that got really tired and couldn’t sleep at the hospital went home. So it was an incredible experience to see that dedication and commitment. These people were wonderful. Days went by. Most of us slept in the hospital. It was kind of an interesting experience from a hospital administrator’s point of view because hospitals are like any other big organization. People have their little fiefdoms and there’s territorial disputes and you are probably familiar with stuff like that. During a crisis everybody pulls together. Nurses were serving food to patients to employees. Department heads were sweeping floors and washing windows. Everybody was doing stuff without complaint to try and keep the hospital going and to make sure that sick people got care. That was really just the story. It got very scary. You could hear the helicopters overhead. You could see the tanks zooming by on the streets outside. There were big cannons going. My family – I was in touch with them by phone but I worried about Oak Park; Oak Park was very close to the city. They were hearing all the noises and scared for us at the hospital and didn’t know what was going to be happening. It was a frightening time but everybody pulled through. That’s basically it. That’s my story.
GS: Did you get a lot more patients during these few days?
RT: We couldn’t. We had to send them elsewhere where hospitals had room. We couldn’t send patients home and we really discouraged them from coming in to the city. There were hospitals in the suburbs that were probably more able to take care of them. There were always emergencies. Most people came to the emergency room, there were always some patients that came in. But what I call voluntary admissions – people who had choices about time or place -- did not come in during that time.
GS: You mentioned that National Guard with the tanks. When the National Guard and the Army came in, were you all relieved to see them there or were you more nervous?
RT: Stunned I think is the better word. This is America, right? What the hell is going on here? This is like a country at war, maybe this is like Europe during World War II. What was going on here? It was very frightening. I guess mixed. To some extent relief, because they were going to hopefully restore the peace. On the other hand, to see tanks in there and army helicopters and all of the equipment of war in our streets was sobering.
GS: Did your perception of Detroit change after 1967?
RT: Oh yeah. I learned first of all – my bubble was burst. The so-called peaceful neighborhood was not so peaceful. A lot of the action was not in our immediate neighborhood but what happened was “white flight.” All these nice white neighbors of the black people in Northwest Detroit took a look at what happened and said, “Oh, we’re getting out of here” and they did. By the time a few years went by it was like a 99% black neighborhood. All the whites had fled to the suburbs. The suburbs were growing and building and Southfield was developing. The suburbs were developing in all directions. Livonia was developing; a lot of places were developing. Farmington – Farmington was later. Obviously, what I saw was an ideal model integrated neighborhood so different from my segregated Brooklyn roots, it was a bubble that burst. It was probably never like that, it was just a façade. Suddenly I realized there were major racial problems in the city.
GS: So with all that in mind, a lot of people have called the events “riots” but also “rebellion” or “social unrest.” Would you call it something apart from riot?
RT: Well, I don’t know how you define riot. Rebellion and riot – there were people that were like in any civil disturbance, there were people who take advantage of it. There were good people who got hurt. There were people who ran honest stores. There were stores broken into and destroyed and looted. There were people who saw an opportunity for private gain. In all of that, there were people with legitimate grievances and had an anger that let it explode. It got out of control. Some of these employees that made a point of coming in and risking their lives to come in to the hospital wanted to make the point that maybe someone is calling it an insurrection, but from their point of view they wanted to show that not all black people are like out there looting and stealing TVs and things like that. A lot of them said that to me. There was some anger. I remember one housekeeping lady said to me, “Black people aren’t going to clean white ladies houses anymore.” She saw it as a revolution because a lot of middle class and wealthy whites used black people as maids in their homes. Even though that’s a source of income to those maids, it was demeaning to have to go clean their houses. That attitude seems to have gone today. But that was an attitude then among poor blacks that had to do that. She thought this was a revolution and that was not going to have to happen anymore. A lot of things happened in and around the city. New Detroit got started. A lot of other organizations I was involved with as a hospital administrator and we helped get started. It was part of some of the discussions that led to the renaissance and all the other things that came out of the riots. I’m not sure it did very much other than look good. I’m not sure they accomplished a whole lot. Maybe other people feel differently. I’m not sure that they did. Anyhow, yes, my perceptions of the city changed a lot at that time.
GS: How do you see Detroit today?
RT: Oh, I love it. It’s hard for me to convince my family and friends who don’t live here about how dynamic it is. It’s got problems. It still has problems. Downtown and the area around here is doing fine. The neighborhoods are still a problem. I’ve done some volunteer work in some of the neighborhoods, especially the East Side. There’s still a lot of big problems here. People who don’t know drive around and they drive through downtown and say “Oh, it was nice.” They go to the waterfront “Oh, it’s great.” They see Campus Martius and they go to the Sand and CompuServe. It all looks very nice. But if you go driving around or go up Grand River even Woodward or go through parts of Highland Park -- it’s terrible. People say to me, “How could you have done that? How can you say the city is booming?” You should have seen it before; it’s got to start someplace. We got here in ’63. It’s taken fifty years for the city to decline. I hope it doesn’t take fifty years, but it’s going to take a good number of decades for it to come back. You’ve got to start someplace. It’s starting. I’m very hopeful. I wish I was younger. I’d like to see it happen. If I was younger I would consider living in the city. There’s a lot of good stuff going on here. We always take out-of-town guests downtown to show them what’s happening. My kids live on the West Coast. When they’re here, they grew up here, they’re totally blown away by what they see. They’ve taken away an impression of the city as a place they never wanted to come back to. Wow, it’s really changing. So that’s all positive. The newspapers and the media are starting – it used to be all bad stuff – I’m starting to see more positive coverage. So your question was how do I feel about the city now? Very hopeful, very optimistic.
GS: Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
RT: I don’t think so. Let me look at my written notes. I didn’t leave anything out. No, this summarizes a lot of what I said too. This is a prose poem which also says it in more flowery language. I think that’s about it. Any more questions for me?
GS: Thank you for sitting down with me today.
RT: I think it was great, it was fun.
RT: Will I ever get a chance to see this?
INTERVIWEE: VK
INTERVIEWER: JW
JW: Hello, today is August 19, 2016. I am here at the Detroit Historical Museum recording an oral history for the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Would you say your name for me?
VK: Virginia Kelly.
JW: Alright. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?
VK: I was born July 4, 1943 in Detroit, during the ‘43 riot.
JW: Oh yeah?
VK: Yes.
JW: Well, that’s funny. So then you grew up in the city?
VK: I grew up in the city.
JW: And what was your neighborhood like growing up?
VK: I grew up in the Boston Edison area. It was a very nice area. You’d be out at night, you’d never, you didn’t have to lock your door, you could let your attic fan run and the front door was open and it’d cool your house in the summer. The neighbors were wonderful. The neighborhood when my parents moved in was predominantly white. It began to change, but it remained very middle class--people down the street were doctors, lawyers...And then they cut the freeway through, and it just—the dirt and the filth, it was just…
JW: When was that?
VK: The freeway went through, I know exactly when that was. They paved, they had it paved in ‘54. And that’s when I got my racer bike. We used to race downtown on the closed freeway that was paved and then ride all the way back.
JW: That’s fun. So did you mostly stay in your neighborhood? Or you said you used to ride your bike around--did you go to other parts of the city?
VK: I rode my bike around. I had a friend that lived on the west side of Detroit, the Schaffer-Plymouth area and I used to ride my bike over there and then spend the night and then either ride back or her dad would bring me back.
JW: And so you felt safe traveling around the city alone?
VK: I felt completely safe.
JW: Yeah. Did you like to go downtown?
VK: Yes, we took the streetcar or the bus. This dates me. [Laughter]
JW: Yeah. So was the feel of the city like when you were a kid?
VK: It was nice neighborhoods, nice neighbors. Nice, well-kept homes. There was an extensive Jewish community just to the south of us, and there were refugees from WWII living in there. Jewish bakeries in Schaap-Central Street...which was three blocks over from where we lived. We used to go up there on Sundays to get the New York Times and our ice cream.
JW: So then in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, did you notice any tension in the city at all?
VK: Somewhat. Our family moved out in ‘67, they moved to Grosse Pointe Park. So, not from our neighbors certainly, they were very, very protective of us. We were one of the last white families on the block when we moved. There was some tension, there was some tension south of us, on Clairmount in an area where the Jewish families had begun to move out and black families were moving in. There were a lot of poor people down there. There was a [...] hospital, they ran a large prenatal clinic for indigent patients, and we had some problems, there were some comments made to us, made to me when I would walk down to the store. I used to walk down to Wayne State, and there were a couple of times, a few times, no real threats, just some comments.
JW: What kind of comments?
VK: About my anatomy. [Laughter] We won’t use specifics.
JW: Okay. I get the idea then. So then in 1967, what were you doing?
VK: I was working at Detroit General Hospital, in the Collections department, actually in the hospital credit department. The job was to follow up on insurance information and family contact information that had been obtained when somebody came in, but sometimes that wasn’t possible. The person didn’t have information or came in through the emergency room. And then verify insurance information and see that it got sent to the billing office. So I would do interviews with patients on the ward or make contact with their families if they couldn’t give me the information.
JW: So then how did you hear about what was going on the week of July 23rd?
VK: Well then on the radio, on the tv, on the news. The riots started just three blocks from our house. It burned down the drug store that we used to use.
JW: Do you think that building was targeted, or did it just happen to be…
VK: I think it was in the way, it was black owned. It had been white owned, and then the man sold out. He retired and then he sold it to a black pharmacist who just kept all the customers. Nothing changed. It was the same store, the same ice cream, the same New York Times, the same pharmacy. And I think, I think it was just in the way.
JW: So, working in the hospital, what was that week like in the hospital?
VK: It was exciting. A lot of fun. A little different from what you see on tv...It was realistic. I didn’t work in the ER. Occasionally they would call us up to work the admitting desk if they were shorthanded there and there were a lot of people walking in, but generally I just worked in the office and on the wards. We got to know a lot of people, you know. A lot of the patients were repeaters, with chronic problems. A lot of indigent people would come in, making claims that their bellies hurt or whatever, when really they just wanted, you know, ‘three hots and a cot,’ basically, for the night, you know.
JW: So the week that the riots hit, you said it was exciting, but do you have any stories about people?
VK: Well, I didn’t go to work Monday, it just wasn’t safe to drive, you know, to go down to the hospital area. I went to work on Tuesday, my dad took me down, and it was safe to travel then. The city, on the east side, was pretty well blocked off by the police, so you could get through. And I had an absolutely wonderful supervisor. Everybody should have supervisors like Mr. Jones, I hope his family’s listening [laughter], and he talked to us, he said “Just go up there and be polite, don’t push. Just state your reasons for being there and collect the insurance information.” And I must have talked to 20 patients that day. Every single one of them had full coverage, good insurance, I was kinda surprised. And then later in the week, that started to dwindle, as you got more and more unemployed people, from, I’m assuming the riots. But that first day, every single one of them had insurance, and good insurance. They all verified.
JW: Were the people that came in, were they primarily one race or was it a mixture?
VK: They were, at that point primarily black. And they were injuries like broken glass, broken bones. I don’t remember any gunshot wounds. I know that was, I remember several years later when I saw a diagnosis that said GSW I didn’t know what it meant. It’s gunshot wound. It was mostly stab wounds, hit on the head with whatever, that kind of thing.
JW: Were they mostly patients who could be outpatient, or did most of them have to spend the night?
VK: These were inpatients that our office did, yeah. There wasn’t credit collections in the clinic, but we were inpatient, yeah.
JW: Okay. And were most of them serious enough that they had to stay for several days, or was it mostly just a one overnight?
VK: That I don’t know, because we got the information, and then we would just work on verifying it. When they discharged people at that time, then they came down through our office just for a last check to make sure, and whoever was at the desk would just pull a file and say “okay,” you know, “go ahead” or “we need this or that.” As far as how long they stayed, I don’t know.
JW: And then you mentioned that the National Guard was stationed at the hospital too. Did that make it less stressful or more stressful for the people at the hospital, do you think?
VK: I don’t know about the patients, but at least for the staff in our office, it was stressful. There were some racial issues with the National Guard.
JW: What kind of racial issues?
VK: Like I’m white, I look like I just got off the boat from Sweden, but...and they gave all the employees a letter of introduction, saying, basically, this is the, ‘let this person pass, they work here.’ And we could safely go to Greektown for lunch or just go out and sit on the park bench or something, just get out of the building at lunch time and come back. And supposedly you were supposed to show that letter when you came back. I had mine in my hand but I never was asked for it, whereas my black coworkers were always asked for their letters. Even if they were with me or clearly identified as doctors, with a group of doctors, with a group of other people, they were asked. So the white employees would kind of just take the letters and just shove it in their faces and say ‘Here, here, read it, make sure you read it now!’
JW: So in a group of people they would specifically target the Black employees and wouldn’t ask you?
VK: They would target...and they wouldn’t, they never asked me for my letter. Which is kind of disconcerting when you’re standing next to your friend who gets asked for her letter, you know, and she’s with you, you know.
JW: Wow. And so was it, do you think it was reassuring for the patients to have the National Guardsmen there? Or do you think that was anxious for them too?
VK: I don’t know...I don’t even know if they were aware of it because it was primarily around the building and at the entrances. The doctors would have had the ultimate say in who came in the back door and who else was there. Most of the patients that I talked to were prisoners—literally—they had their ankles shackled to the foot of the bed. They had these beds with wire...crib-like, they had these footboards and they were shackled to the footboard. They had all these big bruisers chained to the bed on the gynecology ward, it was kind of amusing, but…
JW: Do you think the hospital was prepared to handle an event like this, or was this unusual?
VK: I didn’t...what it looked like and what I heard was that it ran like clockwork. I mean, being receiving, they were obviously used to major trauma, but the volume was just incredible, obviously. And they had had a riot drill prior to this, the director, Mr. Henry, said that we were going to have a riot, and word was that nobody really believed him. All and all, you know, we don’t really believe that, let’s just have some other sort of a disaster drill, you know--a car accident or something benign. ‘Oh no, we’re going to have a riot, so we’re going to have a riot drill.’ And there was a photograph taken of him leaning on the hall in the Emergency Room looking like, kind of a very satisfied “I told you so but God I wish I’d been wrong” kind of look on his face.
JW: When was it that you had that riot drill?
VK: Probably about a month before...It was in the summer.
JW: And you said that he just had a feeling that a riot was coming?
VK: He just had a feeling that a riot was coming. I don’t know who he had talked to, or he had looked at some of the injuries coming in or where he got that, I don’t know.
JW: But you said that no one else believed him, that no one else thought that it was coming?
VK: I think there was just a general feeling of ‘No, come on, that’s just not going to happen.’ But he was like, ‘We’ve got to be prepared.’ And everybody was assigned certain tasks, like, I think I was assigned...I can’t remember but I think I was assigned to take paperwork from Point A and back or something, or something benign like that that wasn’t medical, but they just...had certain people assigned...A lot of doctors were just staying there 24 hours because they couldn’t leave, or because they were needed because people were just pouring in the back door.
JW: So I’ve heard you use the term “riot”...
VK: But it wasn’t really a riot…
JW: Yeah, that was my question. Was that how you’d characterize it, or what would you use…?
VK: It was a riot when I was, at the time I was born it was a riot, but a riot has to be two-sided. This was what I would call a rebellion or uprising, yeah.
JW: Why would you call it that?
VK: Because it was not Black on White or this group against that group, it was just tensions boiling over and exploding, and it was...it had to do with police contact, as things do now. The police had raided a blind pig and it set off that spark. And it spread.
JW: What do you think the lasting implications of that week have been in the city? Do you think that there are any?
VK: I think for a while you had people talking, you know, ‘we have to make things better,’ and now we are back to kind of, we still need to make things better and we have discrepancies now. We have all the building in downtown Detroit for young professionals, primarily White, and the neighborhoods are just--they’re not being attended to. And it’s nice that all that tax—phone’s ringing—
JW: Can we pause it for just a minute?
VK: Okay. With all the young people moving in downtown, I’m sure that they are a wonderful tax base for the city. And they don’t use schools and they have very little use for the EMS and other emergency services in the city because they are young and healthy and they don’t have children. And we need the money. But we still need, the rest of the population of Detroit needs the services desperately too. We’ve seen some increases of late with the new mayor, there’s, you know, newer EMS rigs that don’t break down every five, you know, every five blocks, and the new police cars. But there’s still tension, with just the complaints that the people aren’t getting their fair share.
JW: And you mentioned that your family moved to Grosse Pointe Park in 1967?
VK: In ‘66. December of ‘66.
JW: Was it just because you wanted to move or was there a reason?
VK: The neighborhood was no longer safe. We had our windows shot out with a slingshot. I went to Wayne State. I had a night class and took the bus home, my father had to meet me at the bus stop. It just wasn’t, they didn’t feel safe anymore. And actually, our Black neighbors were encouraging us to move!
JW: So they were looking out for you...We’re calling our project “Looking Back to Move Forward.” So where do you see the city of Detroit going today?
VK: I think we’re making progress. I think people need to be more honest, and they need to communicate their feelings. And people need to listen. Like I’ve always had Black friends, now I have, as you met downstairs, I have an interracial family. My father worked for the NAACP in 1953 and 1954, so I’m used to, I was brought up to listen and to talk. That needs to spread. There needs to be more of that. The city administration just doesn’t have to say ‘well, we’ll get to you when we have the money to get to you.’ You know, more has to be done. I know they’re working forward, they’re getting rid of the old houses. But still the city services in the neighborhoods...and I also think that people in the city need to step up and say, ‘We’re not going to tolerate this, I’m gonna pick up the phone, I’m gonna call the police.’ Yeah.
The police response has improved. My car was hit by a guy that ran the red light last fall, and the police response was not instantaneous, but I was surprised at how quick--it only took them 15 minutes to get there. Now two years ago, they would’ve said ‘Well, that’s nice lady, now go to the precinct and make a report.’ But they came out.
JW: Well that’s good.
VK: And they were very polite and non-judgemental. Just said, ‘Well, we’ll let the insurance company deal with this one.’ Here’s where the damage is, you know…
JW: So do you have any advice for the city of Detroit?
VK: As I said, maybe just listen. Talk to people. I like the idea of the city council, you know, being bi-racial, being broken down by precincts, what do they call them, by areas, that are representative. I think that’s a good idea, because people will have a greater say. And I think you saw that when Duggan got in on a write-in, because, you know, we’re not gonna let that happen, we’re gonna take care of this...So I hope it will continue to move forward, it’s got to have a school system, you cannot function without a school system. And that’s been the case since I was a kid. I went to a private school. My sister went to Highland Park, my brother went to a private school. It’s just, you’ve got to have schools, because you’re not—these people who live downtown—what is going to happen when they start marrying, wanting more space, wanting schools? They’re going to move to the suburbs. I live in Grosse Pointe now, and our property values are increasing, my two new neighbors across the street are young people, young couples, one with children. They take the bus downtown to work. There’s really no decent housing in the city, for, you know, safe housing in the city. At least in their minds [...] There are some safe areas, my nephew and his family live in Detroit, just right back there on Institute. So there are some good areas but there just isn’t enough family housing in the city and good schools.
JW: Well, is there anything else you want to add, or any other memories from that week in 1967?
VK: Well, I remember talking to a man, this was later in the week, of the riot, after the riot. As I said, that first day, it was primarily, well everybody had good insurance that verified, they were auto workers, primarily auto workers with the Big Three or auto suppliers for the Big Three. There was one man, I don’t know what he did, he had some sort of a good job, he was a little older than the other ones. He came in later in the week and I went up to ask for his insurance and he was very polite and he said, ‘Miss, I’m not going to give them to you.’ And I was very surprised when he said, ‘I was bayoneted in the back by the National Guard.’ And he said, ‘I was waiting for the bus,’ either going to or coming from work, I can’t remember which, ‘I was waiting for the bus, and they told me to move, and apparently I didn’t move fast enough and they bayoneted me in the back.’ And he had a knife wound to the back. And I asked my supervisor what to do and he said, ‘At this point, just let it go, collections can send him a letter and ask for it or we can call his employer and get it down the road.’ About six months later I saw in the paper, that he had settled with the National Guard and I thought, well, that was cool.
JW: Yeah, so he was telling the truth.
VK: He was telling the truth. I had a feeling when I talked to him, he was very polite. I just got the feeling that he wasn’t trying to run something on me. You know, he just kind of didn’t fit the mold of the other guy, ‘Yeah, baby, I work at Chrysler,’ you know, he called me “miss,” you know, very polite, you know.
JW: Were there any other interesting patients that you remember?
VK: Well, I remember one very sad story. There was a fireman who had worn--and this is written up in the book “Nightmare in Detroit,” I believe—I didn’t go back and reread it because I didn’t want to contaminate my memory. But I still have the book, and there was another one too about the Algers Hotel and Siddons [?]...But there was a fireman who had worn an old metal helmet, apparently with a spike on it, and he got up too close to a wire and got electrocuted, and he was brought into the hospital and I saw his wife after they told her that he had passed away, and it was just, the whole place, it was horrible. It still makes you want to cry, it was terrible. And he was just doing his job and it killed him, wearing his helmet just for fun and it killed him.
JW: That’s too bad.
VK: And I really think that that’s about it. I mean, and they still continue to have their little riot drills, for whatever. Or not riot, but some sort of school bus disaster or plane crash or whatever, and get the medical students to act like 5-year-olds whose bus got tipped over or something. But I doubt that too many of the medical people are still there, many of them I’m sure have passed away because they would’ve been in their 30s and 40s at that time. So if they’re around, they’re in their late ‘80s.
JW: Anything else you’d like to add?
VK: I just hope that people look at this exhibit and can learn from it, and with all this stuff that’s going on in other cities with the police, and it’s just, you know, we’ve got to come to some kind of a consensus that we’re going to live together and get along. You know, you don’t have to like me and I don’t have to like you, but don’t just dislike me because I’m Black or because of who you think I am. Get to know me, or just don’t make a snap judgment and pull the trigger. It doesn’t work that way. I guess that’s about it.
JW: Alright. Well thank you so much for coming in to sit down with us today. If you think of anything else, feel free to send us an email.
VK: I’ll give you a call if I find that--the Detroit hospital used to publish a magazine, I think it was called Detroit General Herald, DGH, and it was just kind of the inside newsletter, what’s going on, who’s new, who’s leaving, who’s retiring and that kind of thing. And there was, I believe that’s where the photo of Mr. Henry is, I’m not sure. But it’s kind of interesting, and I know I had saved it for a while, and also I had saved my letter, you know, of ID for the hospital. And if I can find them, I’ll let you copy them.
JW: Yeah, well we would love to have those. Well, thank you so much.
VK: Okay, sure thing.
[22:49]
[End of Track 1]
WW: Hello today is August 15, 2016. My name is William Winkel. We are in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History project and I am sitting down with Evelyn Sims. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
ES: You’re welcome. I’m glad to be here.
WW: Can you please tell me where and when were you born?
ES: I was born July 8, 1929 on Kirby Street in Detroit.
WW: Did you grow up in the city?
ES: Yes I did, I’ve been in the city all of my life.
WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?
ES: It was primarily the east side, called the east side, like Kirby, Rivard, Russell, near Hastings. That area. And I went to Northeastern High School.
WW: Was the neighborhood you grew up in integrated?
ES: Yes, we had some white people on our street. And as a kid, though, I didn’t pay too much attention to it as to whether it was good or bad. It just was, which was okay with me.
WW: Okay. What did your parents do for a living?
ES: Well, my father worked in a factory all of my life, I’ll put it that way. And he also worked in a hotel downtown so he had two jobs most of my life. See, I happened to be the fifth of the six children and my mother stayed home. She did not work until the second war. And then they were hiring everybody and she went out and they hired her and she really liked it.
WW: Where did she get a job at?
ES: I should’ve asked my other sister. It was at one of the plants.
WW: Okay. What was your childhood like?
ES: Well, when I think back, I never think of being deprived but now I’m told that yes, I was because I was black. I didn’t have advantages nor was I exposed but as far as I was concerned, I had a good life. I had a mother and father who were together until my father died at age 65 and they loved us. I had one brother and four sisters and we played together with each other. I played with my neighbors and as I said, I went to Garfield Elementary School and I stayed there, actually, until I graduated from there in the eighth grade. So I really didn’t have to move around like kids do today. And then from Garfield I went to Northeastern High School. And as children, we played mostly outside. Of course there was no TV, we didn’t have to have one. And then I also had cousins that lived in the neighborhood, about six or seven of them so we played together too and we played whatever was considered children’s games. Follow the leader, I spy, hide and seek, we’d ride on skate boxes that somebody might have tried to put together. We even had skates but the pavement was so bumpy that it was hard to skate so I really didn’t try too much. But as far as I can remember, I think I had a good childhood.
WW: Was Garfield integrated?
ES: Yeah, it was integrated. All the schools I went to was integrated. They didn’t have that many white there when I went there but when my older sister, who’s eight years older than I am, went there it was highly mixed with white. In fact, she was oftentimes one of the few black people in her class. But when I got there, I guess most of the people had moved out some place. However, my street had white children on it and they went to Garfield. If I can remember, not too many children went to private school at that time. They just marched on down to the public school.
WW: And growing up did you tend to stay in your own neighborhood or did you venture around the city?
ES: Well because of the fact that I was female, I more or less — no I think I went five or six blocks away from my house, which could be considered a lot. We had no car, my father never had a car in fact, so we didn’t have access to that but again, my cousins lived nearby so I’d go over to their house and play with them but then I’d go down the street to Hastings to the movie. Oh and sometimes we went down to Woodward, down to the Mayfair Theater. It’s still there I believe. We would walk, we walked every place, which didn’t seem to hurt. And then we also used the public library, which was in walking distance from my house and the art institute. And we loved the library. My younger sister and I would usually go together. We’d run down there and then run back home and we had a good time. We’d actually go to the art institute too but in those days, they had no children’s program so we’d just go in there and look around and then go down the winding stairs and run through there and once in a while, they would tell us, “Children are not supposed to be here.” I thought that was unusual. Of course, they’ve changed now. So that’s about it growing up. I liked school; I loved school, in fact. My whole family seemed to love it, my sisters and my brother because to tell you the truth, I’d rather go to school than stay home because there’s nothing to do at home. Except if you’re sick, my mother would say, “Go to bed.” So we hardly ever missed any school at all. And it was, again in walking distance. Garfield was about a block away down the alley. My sister and I would run and then we’d run back for lunch, which was good. And then we’d run back after lunch and grew up among what I thought was a secure situation. And I say I liked going to school because I always felt safe in school. Right now, I don’t think they do but I always felt safe. I was glad to be there. I liked the teachers; they seemed to like me. I got good grades. Because I was number five, I have to say this, I had all these people to precede me and my sisters got very good grades in school and I guess my brother did alright. He came out alright. But they got very good grades and whenever I would go to a teacher’s class that was new to me and they would find out who I was and what my last name was, they would smile and say, “Oh, we’ve got a good student!” So in a way, I had to live up to it which I tried so, I got good grades in school.
WW: Do you have any memories from the riot of ’43?
ES: Oh yeah, I was there.
WW: Would you like to share some?
ES: Well I lived next door to a boy, again this was on Farnsworth on the east side and I lived next-door to a fellow that attended high school there. I wasn't in high school yet, quite. I was going in the next — see that happened in May, I believe, because he was graduating and they did not have his graduation because of the insurrection, or whatever you want to call it. And because I was the age I was, 14 maybe, I didn't look at it as a real serious problem. I didn't think it was right and I wasn't too sure why it occurred. That ’43, I’m still not too sure why it occurred. I just know how it affected us and the boy next door. Northeastern did not have graduation exercise because of that. They mailed him his diploma and — what else happened? I know I went down on Hastings because Hastings was our commercial street when I lived on the east side. That’s where the stores and shops and the theater were. And my mother told me to stay home but I went down there and I saw people running around and running in and out of the stores and I was still kind of upset by what I was seeing because they were running in and out of stores and taking things. So I went home and I stayed there. I don’t remember how many days that lasted, do you? '43? No? But I know it was just as school was ending for the summer. So we were out of school and proceeded to play and be children.
WW: How did your parents react to what was going on?
ES: Well my father still went to work. He would walk to work, he worked at the Fischer Body Plant which was down on Marquette, I believe. And he would walk to work, he would go to work everyday that he was supposed to go to work. And being in the factory in those days, attendance was not the best because they laid off people left and right or they stopped a lot of things because of the changeover of parts and whatnot. In those days, the men were sent home, and women if they worked, but they didn't get paid for that time that they were out, that I can remember, I’ll put it that way. And my mother, as far as the insurrection was concerned, we stayed home and she told us to stay home. But I don’t know how else it may have affected her. Because she did not talk about it to me. No she didn’t, and I didn’t ask her many questions.
WW: Did what happened change the way you looked at the city growing up?
ES: At that time? No, the summer passed and I went on to high school. Northeastern. And so, I’m trying to think what was the fallout. I imagine a lot of people were out of business. Because on Hastings, that’s where the black people had their ownership of shops, funeral homes, stores and so forth. And some of those had to close. How many I don’t know. In fact, I didn’t pay much attention to the economics of it all but I’m sure there was some fallout as far as that was concerned.
WW: Growing up and as you’re going through high school, did you notice any tension in the city as you explored more?
ES: I do know there were certain places that black children didn’t go because they were not welcomed so they didn’t go. But we didn’t have much money anyway to do a lot of things. Whatever things we did were free. As I said, we did the library, we did the parade, because our father would take us. So we did the free things. And I don’t remember feeling unusually nervous or frightened. Because Northeastern was across Chene Street and it was in a Polish neighborhood. So consequently, when I was at that school, blacks were in the minority because there were a lot of Polish kids but I seemed to do alright. Again, my three sisters had preceded me and my brother and so they made their good grades and when I got there, I just continued to live off our name. Not that I didn’t do the work–please don’t think that–but they made it easier because they preceded me and they all got As. I don’t know what my brother got, he passed though. But my three sisters, one had been double-promoted. In fact, two of my sisters finished high school at 16. So over at Northeastern, I involved myself with the sports. Field hockey, basketball, tennis. And I made friends. They didn't have too many parties like they have today because people didn’t visit each others’ houses as much as they might do today. In fact, my mother would tell us as young children, “Don’t go into anybody’s house unless I know them. Because I don’t know what goes on in the house and I don’t want you to be caught up in anything. So you stay outside if your friends say they have to go in the house, you let them go and you wait for them." So we didn’t and in fact, when people had house parties, that was a no-no to my mother. She was our disciplinarian because my father was always working. And when he wasn’t working, he was looking for a job because things were not as steady as they are today for people who worked in factories. Because the union had not yet established itself. In fact, he was one of those who did a lot of the marching for the unions when they did strike for various reasons. I didn’t always know what they struck for but I do know he was on strike a lot. Because I said to myself, when I marry, I’m not marrying anybody that works in a factory because he was always out of work. It wasn't his fault, but he was. So I said, I’m not going to do that. Of course, things are better today. But he did have the other job at the hotel so that helped us also. And then, my mother worked and with the two salaries we finally moved out of this four family flat where we were in our own single house. Again on the east side though, we moved to Crane.
WW: After you graduated high school and moving through the Fifties and early Sixties, did you continue to feel comfortable in the city?
ES: I did because we still left our doors open at night, you see. We might have latched the screen door which anybody could have pulled it open, but we did because it was hot. We didn’t have air conditioning. And what other things? I don’t remember being frightened to be in the city. In fact, I was proud of the city from what I knew. And I did things around the city because when I got to high school, I took the bus a lot. And because we moved to Crane, which took me further away from the school. I had planned to go to Cass but Cass did not take the ninth grade when I was ready for it so I went to Northeastern and I enjoyed myself there and I did well and my homeroom teacher–I told her that I was going to Cass, that I wanted to–and she’d say, “You don’t need to go to Cass, Evelyn. We have good things right here that you can do.” And at that time, I knew I was going to be a nurse, too. I never had any other profession in my mind. Nurse or teacher maybe and I ended up doing both. So I didn’t go to Cass, I stayed at Northeastern.
WW: Going into ’67, had you moved out of your parents’ house by then?
ES: Oh yeah, by that time I was married a long, long time. Not a long time, but—I’ve been married 62 years.
WW: Congratulations.
ES: But when did I move out of our house? I did a lot of moving, I should say, I went to nursing school in New York when I was 17, I came back and worked a while here in the city. I found it hard, though, to get a job as a black nurse because I could not enroll in the city too readily for nursing school because they were not taking, or they did not open their arms to black students. I'll put it that way. They were beginning to take them here and there and I figured, say I don’t want to be the only one in the class, you know, it’s not a good feeling. And New York beckoned. Now how would you not go to New York? And it was cheaper, so I went to New York to nursing school. And then when I came back from there, I worked in Detroit and as I said, when I think back now to the couple of places I went looking for a job out of nursing school, because everybody said, “Oh you can get a job anywhere.” Well, I didn’t get a job at Children’s Hospital and when I think of it, I said, “I think it was because I was black.” Because I had a lot of experience in pediatrics. So I ended up going to Grace, that was my first hospital. Grace Hospital. It was over on John R. And they even had a school of nursing but I never applied to that school. But after that, I joined the service. They had an army nurse corps and I was stationed–and this is during the Korean War–and I was stationed in California, primarily San Francisco, for about a year. Then came back to Detroit and got married. That's when I got married, when was that? ’54. Yeah, we’re in ’54 now. And I got married. However, I got married, we had two children, and we proceeded to try and make it. My husband was working. He had gone to Eastern Michigan University so he–and then he went to New York, because he went to New York and took their program in physical therapy. It was a free program. It was financed by-what was that lady's name? I can’t even think of it now. She was the first woman to encourage use of hot packs for paralysis. And at that time, well you may not remember, but polio was rampant and so she had done a lot of work on that. What was her name? Sister —? I’ll probably think of it before I finish because she’s well known. But he went to New York for a year to do that and he came back to Detroit and we lived with my mother for a while and then we left Detroit so that he could go to medical school, because he didn't like – see I’m thinking of these things that you probably are asking because you’re asking if I felt comfortable. He did not always feel comfortable. In fact, you ought to have him here. He would be a good person. In fact, he said he’d come but we’ll talk about that later. But he was working over at Detroit Memorial in physical therapy and also teaching because he had gotten his teaching certificate from Eastern Michigan. Again, he was doing two jobs but he didn’t like the way he was treated at Detroit Memorial. When it came time to promote in his department, someone else of lesser skills were promoted before he was and that did not set too well with him. And it was a white fellow. And I was going to Wayne School of Nursing getting a Bachelors degree, I didn’t have that. So I was going for a Bachelors degree and I eventually got my Masters from Wayne State also. Very good school, all of my sisters went there and my brother went there. In fact, my whole family are college graduates. One has a PhD. However, they kind of worked their way through Wayne. There were so many programs. And I’m only giving you this information as hearsay because as I said, I wasn’t a part of it but I would hear it talked about in my house. They had a lot of programs at Wayne where a student could work-study. And so I knew my two older sisters did that. They would help the teachers and that would help to pay their tuition. And we lived at home, we still lived down there on Farnsworth at that time and so that made it easy. They were able to finish there. My brother, no my brother went to service, [perhaps talking off recorder] sorry sir! And my brother went to the service and came back and used his GI to go to college and he went to Eastern Michigan University, which it wasn't called then. It was called Michigan Normal. And my husband was there also. That’s how I met my husband, through my brother.
WW: After you came back from your service in the Korean War, did you see the city any differently or was it just as welcoming as it was to you before?
ES: No, I didn’t see it any differently. Let’s see, where did I go to work here when I came back? Oh, well I didn’t stay here too long before my husband went to medical school in Iowa. He went to osteopathic school, so that’s where he got his medical degree. And so we went there with two children and I worked most of the time there as a nurse, having gotten my degree and so forth. I was made director of a school of nursing. I was the first black person to have that job. This was Broadlawns Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. And I enjoyed being there, it was a smaller city than Detroit and I think that’s why I enjoyed it, because it was smaller. I don’t care for big cities even though I’ve lived here all my life. And now I just try not to go where there are crowds, if I can help it. Now, where were we, we were back here, I came back from the service, got married –
WW: Well, we can skip ahead a little bit to ’67. That summer, did you sense any growing tension in the city?
ES: Well that’s what made me call up and say I would come here because I started thinking about what I was doing then. I was at Wayne in the spring of that year, because I was getting my Masters then. And we had a professor of sociology and I remember two things he said, as well as the rest of the class. But he said—and we were talking about women having children and so forth and he said, “There are some people who should never raise children, no matter if they do have children.” And I’m trying to think what he said, because they’re not able to, they just can’t. No amount of teaching will make them good parents or parents, period. He didn't dwell on it too much but he said that to make me realize that his other statement, which was about Detroit at that time and he says, “There’s unrest here in the city.” Now, see, I was blind to it. I was kind of naïve, to tell you the truth, because I do not go looking for trouble, it has to come tap me on the shoulders then I’ll go turn around and say okay what’s going on? But anyway, that year he was saying, Detroit people, black people are upset because they cannot move any place, they cannot function as citizens of the country and they're upset so something may happen soon where they will show off how they feel. And that was in the spring, yeah. And that summer, '67 before the riot, so it was still that spring, this is what happened: I became a part of a project that was proposed by the University of Michigan. And what they were trying to do was to determine why black people had high blood pressure. That was it in a nutshell. It was a big project but that was it in a nutshell. Why they had so much, because the literature would say that black people, Negroes, or whatever they were called at that time, had more high blood pressure than any other group. And so they had gotten money from the government to do this research and they wanted nurses to collect the data. I happened to be one of them. And I remember my area was actually around Twelfth, Hazelwood, Elmhurst, Wildemere, and my husband had his office at Twelfth, Twelfth and Clairmount. But my area for collecting the data was around there. Most of these people lived in apartments, they had big apartments. I can’t remember all of the questions we asked them but I do know the upshot of the question was they wanted to know—I wrote something down—they wanted to know why they — just a minute. The project was to determine, as I said, why blacks seemed to have more high blood pressure, and was it related to diet, environment, and there were a lot of questions in this research project that would answer that when you talked to people. But what I can remember, and I’m doing this in a nutshell, at that time, and this is before July, when did the riots start?
WW: July 23.
ES: Oh good, you got the date [laughing.] Anyway, so I went to go see these people and what hit me at that time was that when I finished, and I was thinking about their answers to the questions, I said, “These people make good money, but they’re not living where they want to live.” Because most of them said, if they were treated more kindly, they would move into a single home. They did not like staying in an apartment. And downstairs parked would be some fancy car. They all had fancy cars. In fact, as you went down the street, you know, you’d see Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, Mercuries, all those things. Everybody had a car. A nice car. And they made good money because they were working in the factory at that time. And so, I don’t know, how old are you?
WW: Not that old.
ES: [laughing] Well, they were working in the factory making good money. They were making good money and they wanted a safe environment for their children and for themselves and a place to park their car. All of that. But at that time, they would go out to Warren or Sterling Heights. They didn’t want to go too far from Detroit or even in certain areas in Detroit. Because there was some areas in Detroit that would frown on black people trying to buy a house. Where I live, in fact, Sherwood Forest, Palmer Woods, University District, and then a couple other places, they would have a hard time. And all they wanted was the opportunity to buy a home in these places. They had the money and that’s what made me sad. I said, these people have the means to do this. And many of them had gotten, at least the wife had, gotten more than just high school education. So they would have been very good citizens, like we are anyway. But that wasn’t happening. And then the riots started, or the revolution, or the insurrection. What is it called?
WW: The two dominant terms are riot and then rebellion.
ES: Rebellion, yeah.
WW: How did you first hear about what was going on?
ES: Well, by that time I had moved by that time over in Sherwood Forest and married and had three children then because we brought a third child back with us from Des Moines when we left there after my husband finished medical school. I had taken them to a picnic at Kensington Park and on the way back, this was on a Sunday, I heard about something going on, that there was fighting and running around on Twelfth Street and Grand River and something had happened to upset people and that was the beginning for me. But I went on home and then heard more about it on the radio or TV. And the next day — see, my husband had his office on Twelfth Street and Clairmount. So he was there almost every night guarding it. But nobody ever broke in because many of the people where his office was knew him and nobody bothered his office, really. But he stayed there to make sure they didn't at night. But that’s how we did that and we had curfew, except I was out a couple times after curfew but nobody stopped me. I didn’t come down to the central area where they were having the problem. I just would just stay around my own house but nobody would ever stop me so I continued to do whatever I needed to do. However, the riot or the insurrection, rebellion, went on until it ended. What was it? Two weeks? One week? Five days? Oh, okay. I really don’t remember, do I? Anyway, but after that, do you have any questions that you want to ask?
WW: Yeah, I was just about to ask you more. Could you see the fires from your house? The smoke at least?
ES: Not from my house. I couldn’t see the smoke either. It was down on Twelfth Street and Clairmount and then over by Grand River, further out. So I never saw any smoke, I just saw it on TV.
WW: Were you shocked when you first heard about it?
ES: Well, I know why it was happening. That we were angry, and that’s how we respond. We tear up our own neighborhoods. It’s too bad it had to happen that way. And of course, a number of people died. My own husband went to jail over night because he was picked up, a late curfew with some other people, coming back from Martin Luther King’s death? Did he die then? Oh my god, Sixties were bad, weren’t they?
WW: I think he died the next year.
ES: The next year, yeah okay. It wasn’t that. Something else had gone on that he went to.
WW: Did you think about packing up your children and leaving the city during it?
ES: Oh no, never! I’m black. And what that means is I live that kind of life, all the time. It’s a part of me, every day, practically. I don’t expect to have people smiling at me and saying welcome, come in, because they don’t if they're white. In fact, I say we’re not going to leave Detroit. I said if we left Detroit, it would be to go to another city or someplace but we're going to stay in Detroit. Plus my husband’s business was in Detroit, too. Not that he couldn't move out, but he didn't want to either. So we stayed. We did not feel frightened. I have never felt frightened in Detroit. Not even now. Yes I do. I do now and I think it’s because I’m older [laughing] and can’t physically protect myself like I thought I could once upon a time. But I still participate. I go to Northwest Activities Center and participate in their programs in aerobics, yoga and those kinds of things. But I know we have to be more cautious. I really know that. And we sent our oldest daughter to Cass. She would have to catch the bus, we didn't take her to school. She would get out there at seven o’clock in the morning on Seven Mile and get the Hamilton bus down to Cass. And I never worried about that. I guess I should have, huh? But I didn’t. And she did alright. She went through school the four years. In fact, she became the president of her class, first female and black person to be president of a class and she had 900-and-some people in the class. So that was Cass Tech High School. The other two did, what did they do? They did public school, they did Bagley, Hampton, early on. And then they ended up at Roeper, Country Day, and Mercy. My middle daughter graduated from Mercy and my youngest daughter graduated from Country Day High School. However, I wanted to say this though: after the riots, they tried to do things to bring the city back into a productive entity, shall we say. And Father Cunningham spearheaded a lot of things. And my sister and I helped him in one thing he did. He met with a lot of us — we were there and the idea was to find out if Detroit black people paid more for their prescriptions and drugs than those did out in the suburbs. So the project was financed by the government because he had money to give to use to go out and buy certain things. I mean, it was really, it lined up fine, it was very well organized. In fact, that woman who became his assistant, she’s dead now, down there at Focus:HOPE—
WW: Eleanor Josaitis?
ES: Yep, she was in the same—I remember meeting her because I went over to the Mack office and she came over from—what do you call it? Not Birmingham, but she came from Grosse Pointe to help out and that’s where I met her. But the idea was to go out. They would give each person certain drugs to check on. I’ll just say an antibiotic of some kind and that same antibiotic, you would go out into the suburbs and see what it would cost there. And that’s how that was run. And after a year or so, it was found out that Detroiters pay more for their medications than the suburbians did. Now, that bothered me, I tell you that part, it did. Maybe because I was a nurse. Not only that, because many of the Detroiters were poor, many of them had diseases and conditions in which they needed medication and could not always buy it. But this was a project that Father Cunningham started and we finished it and that’s what we found out. I guess some of the Detroit stores tried to reduce their cost so that the people would—it probably lead to a lot of other things, too. Medicare, giving financial assistance for medications because those things happen. They all had different names, I can’t remember the names, but they did where they would help people with their medications and they would financially, they would issue some funds to them. And then, as I said Medicare—and then Medicaid was already a part. But its arms got bigger and it included more people. But those kinds of things might have grown out of that. And it’s too bad that Father Cunningham died of cancer. But he was doing a lot of great things.
WW: Just a couple of quick wrap-up questions. Are you optimistic for the state of the city today?
ES: Oh yes, I’m optimistic about life. I've got to be. I’m black! I shouldn't say I've got to be but if you woke up each day as a black person, your attitude about life would really change. It wouldn't get worse. I mean, a lot of us have positive attitudes about life. But our lives are different. Each day is different. Even if I don't go out of my house, I’m made to realize I’m black from TV, various things that happen on TV. When I say I’m made to recognize that, is because it’s usually something negative that’s happening on TV about black people. So everyday, everyday something’s going to happen. Then, of course, you go out shopping and those other things that happens too, but it’s become so much a part of me that I am not used to it, but I accept it. And wherever I can, though, I fight it. When Martin Luther King came through here, my brother was very active in the NAACP and I tried to help a little bit. But I had some small children, so I couldn't always do what I’d like to do. But I think Detroit, I don’t take it personally anymore. Since so many black people have gotten positions of power. But the attitude of a lot of white people has not changed and that’s what has to happen. And how that happens, I don’t know because some black people have to change their attitudes, too. So there you are. And every Sunday, you’ve got black people in this church and you’ve got white people over here. Biggest segregated group on Sunday morning and everybody’s being taught to love your neighbor. I sound cynical, don’t I?
WW: No.
ES: I don’t mean to. I’ve lived so long now, in fact, I’ve lived longer than a lot of people, except my sister. She’s 90 and she doesn't let this bother her. I do have a daughter that lives, and I should say this because I like visiting her. She lives in Texas in one of those communities that was kind of built-up and is primarily white. It was more white when she first moved there than it is now, but it was. It’s called the Woodlands. Nobody locks their door, no bank has — because you asked me, I’ve gotten so used to the Plexiglas in stores, which is really bad, you know? It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be, but they do it and they still get held up. But anyway, that’s not your problem. You can go in stores where she lives and you don’t have those partitions in front of you. The bank desk’s open, everything’s open. And you see, I even have a nicer feeling sometimes when I go there. You’re making me think of things that I don’t usually think of. I don’t want to be disenchanted by the happenings in Detroit because I live here but six months a year, my husband and I–well I don't do six months, I do it four maybe–are in Florida and again, it’s a place we leave our door open. In fact, I think we’re the only black family the complex where we live. And although Florida does have its black people, but where we live there aren't too many.
WW: Well, thank you so much for sitting down with me today, I really appreciate it.
ES: Okay.
MM: …was five years older than Lisa and had a nervous breakdown.
ON: Yeah, after her father—you know, they were killed in that accident.
MM: Oh, yeah. And then Lisa—
ON: Lisa was the one where they live, and she married Henry Ford.
MM: Well, I don’t know if she married him, but he’s in the movement.
ON: Uh-uh. They’re married, definitely married. I have their wedding things in here.
MM: Oh, really?
ON: Their whole article and whatever. Yeah, they’re still married. They sent them to Switzerland, over the Ford Auto in Switzerland, and they lived over there for years. That’s the way they kind of squashed that out. But no, she’s definitely still married to them. When I see Lisa, I just say, “Cornbread muffins and twins,” and she says, “Oh my goodness, where are my twins?” And I saw her in the clinic at Metropolitan Hospital, and I saw her on another occasion. And so that’s—she remembers the twins. But she’s definitely a Ford.
MM: How much younger were your daughters than—
ON: About two years.
MM: About two years younger? Now, your children went to Roosevelt School?
ON: That’s right, Roosevelt.
MM: And then what was the—was there a middle school over there?
ON: Durfee.
MM: And what was the high school?
ON: Central.
MM: So did your children go to Roosevelt?
ON: Not at all.
MM: No?
ON: They went to Roosevelt through the sixth grade, and then I changed them to Visitation Catholic School, in the neighborhood. They were the first black kids in Visitation.
MM: Where’s Visitation? Is it—
ON: Visitation is on Webb. It had a complete complex up there. It had a school from grade one to grade twelve, it had a recreation center full-time, it had a large church, and on the corner the nuns lived and the priest lived. That entire block and half of the other block was all Visitation.
MM: Now, why did you decide to move your daughters to Visitation from—
ON: Well, the expressway was cut, and the influx of the group—the people that were displaced by the expressways were pushed up here, and they lived in multiple dwellings and they overcrowded the school, so the school was just 40 and 50 kids in a room, and the behavior and the activities and the—everything about the school was just not a good school.
MM: Would you say that the building of the Lodge Freeway damaged the Boston-Edison area?
ON: Absolutely. And the buying out of the houses for cash caused the people to have money to buy these homes that were at a lower rate—a low rate. And they had no way of maintaining them. And the same thing happened to the schools. They were pushed up here so fast and the way Detroit runs, people come from the country part of the South, and then they are pushed into the city and they have a cultural shock from just that, and then they leave the slums of Detroit and immediately come here because they like the way it looks, but there’s not enough cultural change for them to accept this kind of neighborhood. And they don’t have an income, they just have a large sum of money from a small home, and they couldn’t maintain the property. And this caused the physicians, the professional blacks, and the professional people to just leave. And then they opened up Palmer Park—well, first they opened Russell Woods and Oakland Boulevard and Palmer Park and Southfield and Berkley and Bloomfield. And so everybody that had money except, you know, me of course, moved.
MM: So is it fair to say that the Lodge Freeway really began the deterioration—
ON: Absolutely. And every—I would tell you this, every corner on La Salle Boulevard had a physician on it, a wealthy physician on it. And every block had all the professional blacks of the city of Detroit. Even if they were in the plants, they were the foremen, the plant managers, whatever. And the income of the average person in here, white and black, was substantial to maintain these homes, with the exception of the older senior citizens or people who inherited the homes and were not of that cultural background to maintain them, no matter what color they are. We had some people like that. Then we had people who were old and didn’t have the income. Like, ghost houses, and the grass would grow up and neighbors would have to chip in and carry them along, and they would be left in a state where they couldn’t be sold. These were the problems. It was never perfect, but it was at such a minimum that it didn’t cause the neighborhood any blight at that point. So the first ten years, in the fifties and even the sixties, we had some problems with the estate houses or with—but after the sixties and the seventies, the general deterioration of the neighborhood was just devastating. Because here we got people who did not culturally understand these homes, nor did they have the means, the money to maintain these homes. They had the down payment. Then we got that aluminum all on there—the aluminum—
MM: Siding?
ON: Siding, we got the aluminum awning, we got the fence problem, the cultural problem. You could just look at it and see. And then with the exodus of all of the physicians and the professional blacks, I mean, that’s what we got. We got factory workers, we got people of a lower income, and they had no idea what it cost to maintain these homes.
MM: Let’s talk about it in decades. Starting back in the fifties, did you experience any discrimination by the Boston-Edison—then called the Boston-Edison Protective Association, or your neighbors?
ON: No, because this had been broken down by the Jewish people. The real problem was back in—if you look in your deed you’ll see that it was written that it was never to be. And then the Jewish people had broken that down in the thirties, and by the time we—in the forties, we got here in the late forties. It was integrated to the point that the hostility had gone. And the Jewish people do not wear robes and cause problems, they just move [laughs]. But while they’re here, you just go to their bar mitzvahs and the cultural things, and we ate their food and they’re in and out while they’re here, but they’re ready to go. But they’re very pleasant to live with while they’re waiting to leave so you can help them sell their house.
MM: Now, did you have the impression that the Jews began moving out when people—
ON: Oh, definitely. There was a flight, a flight of them. They definitely did a flight I would say. That would be my opinion.
MM: So it’s your opinion that Jews started moving out because the blacks were moving in?
ON: No, I would not say that. There are a lot of factors why people do that. There’s the fear of real estate values going down, which they did. So that’s the money part. And then there’s the cultural changes. And I have to admit, some people that moved in didn’t act like the physicians’ kids or the dentists or the professors at Wayne State and their kids, they did not. And so you had a cultural problem here. And some of them didn’t maintain the property, you know, they didn’t understand that. And the parties and the kinds of things they had were—I guess the culture that they were used to, it seemed alright, but it wasn’t what we had bought the house for, or—and when I say we, I mean professional blacks, and we had come to this point where we wanted to live this way. This was not what we had in mind. You know, the barbecue in the backyard business and the food and smoke and everything. And I mean, just to put it like it is, we really didn’t have that in mind. And they brought that with them, a cultural shock in here.
MM: When did that type of person start moving in? Was that in the sixties?
ON: Yeah, when they cut the expressways and they were able to get the money.
MM: Okay, so back to the Lodge.
ON: The Lodge Freeway really did it. It really definitely did. I would attribute all of it to the Lodge Freeway.
MM: When you bought your house it probably had a racially restrictive covenant in the deed, didn’t it?
ON: No, that had been broken down in the forties by the Jewish. When they broke them down for the Jewish, they broke them down for the blacks.
MM: Because I have seen deeds—
ON: I have mine upstairs, I can read it to you.
MM: Yeah, we would like a copy of that also for the archives.
ON: I have the whole thing. And it did start out with that in there, and then it was broken down. When it broke down for them, you know, it went a year, a few years, and then it broke down into the blacks moving in.
MM: Right. But your deed did not have a racial or restrictive covenant?
ON: The deed I have upstairs, which is the original, that goes back from when Joy Road was planted? It has it in it. Very definitely.
MM: The deed you got from Mrs. Pinot, though, did not?
ON: When I bought from Mrs. Pinot we bought cash. We collected our deed when my husband came out of the army. He went in the army a year, and when he came out we went down to the mortgage company and collected the deed, and I’ve had it ever since. It’s upstairs.
MM: Now, did he go in the army for the Korean War?
ON: No, he went because Meharry was taken over by the army, just like Tuskegee was. And he had to go back and pay 18 months at Fort Riley. So we moved, like, one day—we bought the house and he was drafted. They gave him a year for us to get in here, and then the next year he had to go serve 18 months and come back. So the twins and I were in here by ourselves with a live-in maid.
MM: You didn’t go with him to Fort Riley?
ON: I went that summer. I was a public health nurse and I went that summer.
MM: Was that before the children, or—
ON: I had the twins.
MM: So, you had to serve 18 months at Fort Riley, huh?
ON: Uh-hm. Fort Riley.
MM: Let me back up a little bit. You were talking about your husband, Doctor Robinson, and Doctor Going? Goins?
ON: Uh-hm. Goins lived on La Salle Boulevard here and we all three lived in the Boston-Edison area.
MM: Okay, Goins was on La Salle, was that—
ON: Right here on La Salle, and between—at Edison. Between Edison and Atkinson. And Doctor Robinson’s up here, and then we were at six something or eight something. I don’t remember the number.
MM: What was the maiden name of their mother? Their mothers? Their mothers were sisters, right?
ON: Yeah. Their name was Hill. And the capital of Alabama is on Hill Street, which is their farm.
MM: Oh, is that right?
ON: Uh-hm. They have a very lengthy history.
MM: But the boys were all born in Detroit?
ON: Uh-uh, none of them. All born in Birmingham, Alabama, where their farm was. And that Hill Street, that’s their farm, and the capital of Alabama sits on Hill Street.
MM: Where did your husband go to medical school?
ON: Meharry.
MM: Where did he go to undergraduate school?
ON: U of D. [University of Detroit]
MM: So he was already living in Detroit then?
ON: Oh, he came here when he was six months old.
MM: Oh, okay.
ON: They were run out of Alabama by the Ku Klux Klan.
MM: Why was that?
ON: He scrubbed and he used to work for Doctor Kinney of Tuskegee.
MM: That’s your father-in-law?
ON: My father-in-law and his wife. And they had a drugstore down there, and they were run out of Alabama and they came up here. They had a hospital down there and an office, and he operated at Tuskegee and the Klan ran them up here, and they opened that hospital in 1917.
MM: So what year was your husband born?
ON: In 1917.
MM: Same year that they opened the hospital?
ON: Uh-hm. He came here on a pillow. On a pillow on the train.
MM: Okay, now his—let me see, his mother was a Hill?
ON: His mother was a Hill. She’s an MD. She graduated in 1910. She would have been the first woman doctor at Michigan registered, but a white woman beat her by six months. So she is definitely the first black woman ever registered in the state of Michigan, MD.
MM: Where did she graduate from?
ON: Loyola Medical School in Chicago.
MM: In Chicago? And when did her sisters move here from Alabama?
ON: After she did. She probably sent for them.
MM: Was your husband the oldest of the three?
ON: No, his sisters were the oldest.
MM: No, I mean of the three doctors?
ON: Oh, yeah, she was the oldest. They’re flowers. Daisy, Rosebud, Lily [laughs]. Daisy is the oldest and Rosebud is next, and Lily.
MM: Okay, who’s the mother of who?
ON: Daisy is David’s mother.
MM: That’s your husband?
ON: Uh-hm. Lily is Remus’ mother, and Rosebud is Doctor Goins’ mother.
MM: Is Doctor Goins still there?
ON: No, they’re dead. The only one here is Doctor Northcross. He’s the youngest though.
MM: Who?
ON: Doctor Northcross is the youngest. And he’s still living, 82.
MM: Your husband?
ON: Uh-hm.
MM: Oh, I didn’t know he was still living.
ON: Oh, yes he is, very much [laughs]. He’s not near dead!
MM: So, you’re divorced then?
ON: Yeah, we’re divorced.
MM: Oh, okay. I didn’t realize he was living.
ON: Oh, definitely, he’s out at his lake place. His mom’s lake home she left him.
MM: And he’s 82?
ON: Uh-hm.
MM: Now, Remus Robinson, is he the father of [Diane ____ ?]?
ON: Absolutely. Now, in your history, Doctor Remus Robinson, when they had the rock in his house, he was the first black to be on the school board. Elected to the school board. He finished University of Michigan. He finished Central High years ago as an honors student and he went to University of Michigan. And he was the one that I was telling you wants to be up here, he had his boards and surgery, he was a very well-know community person in Detroit.
MM: When you were—well, let me end here. Who were your good friends that you socialized with in the fifties?
ON: Now, this neighborhood, every corner had a doctor on it. Giving you the picture. Every block had two or three doctors on it. And in black society, doctors had the most money and had the most of everything, the dentists and the MDs. And these people—the Boston-Edison Dinner was a social affair. I mean, everybody in here, every doctor, every whatever—lawyers and doctors were the top of the society, and the PhDs and the professors were at this cocktail party. And the social group, everybody knew everybody else, see. And that was the kind of thing that went on in here. This was a social neighborhood here. Old Bart Taylor, who later went to Washington, was in here, and used to run the block clubs, and he had—
MM: Was he a doctor?
ON: He was a lawyer. He was appointed by Johnson.
MM: And he was a representative in the House of Representatives, or—
ON: I don’t know what he was over there.
MM: He was appointed by Johnson to what?
ON: To some—whatever, that’s why he left here. Now, I’d have to look it up. I know some people who know Bart could tell me what he was—
MM: Is he still living?
ON: No, he’s dead. But Linette is still living, she was principal of the school. They were very active in the association and very good.
MM: Is Linette still in this neighborhood?
ON: No, Linette—they lived in Washington. See, when he was appointed, they would be Washingtonians over there.
MM: So they stayed in Washington?
ON: Uh-hm. No, this was the neighborhood of the fifties and the sixties.
MM: For black people?
ON: Absolutely. This was it.
MM: Did you know the Barthwells and the—
ON: Very well, very well. Barthwells owned two or three drugstores at [Dix ?] I understand. They made their own ice cream. She’s a pharmacist, he’s a pharmacist. They lived right there where they live now. They were the top whatever, you know [laughs]. Bridge parties, Kappa dances, from sorority, fraternity, whatever.
MM: Are you in that black sorority service organization? The Kappa Kappa—
ON: No. My husband is an Alpha, and my children are in it but I’m not.
MM: Well, we’re jumping around a little bit, but you had the twins and then nine years later you had another child?
ON: The little boy was born here.
MM: And what’s his name?
ON: Derrick.
MM: Derrick. Which one of your daughters was in the army?
ON: The doctor.
MM: That’s Gail?
ON: Uh-hm. She was army-trained and armed services. We’re all in the family, just about everybody who went into the army is an officer. My oldest stepson was an officer in the Marine Corps major, I was a second lieutenant, the doctor was a major, and she was a major.
MM: In the army?
ON: Uh-hm.
MM: Now, how old is Derrick now?
ON: Derrick is 40.
MM: And does he live—
ON: He lives in California. He’s married to a Dutch girl, so we have the interracial children.
MM: What does he do?
ON: A girl and a boy. He’s a builder. He came to the meeting to tell them why they should preserve the house, it’s more valuable, and he also told them the easy way to tell whether you’re getting the right thing on your house, because if it was after 1940—they didn’t make plate glass until after then, the plastic in the glass, with the wood and the metal, and he explained some of the things, so anything you look up and if its after 1940 it’s wrong [laughs]. That’s easy. I went and visited her, by the way. Took her a book and everything and sat down and talked to her, and I explained that to her, the lady that was so upset at the historical society—
MM: Oh, yes, I remember.
ON: And I said, “One easy way you can tell, if it’s invented after that, it doesn’t belong on this house. But you can feel free to call me and I’ll go and visit and sit down and I’ll explain it to you.”
MM: Oh, that was nice of you. When were you divorced?
ON: 1966.
MM: So you were divorced when the riots occurred?
ON: No, no, I was married—yes, I was! Yeah, I worked at Metropolitan Hospital, by the way. I had a special pass and I must have stayed up there about five days. Lived in.
MM: Where was Metropolitan?
ON: Metropolitan Hospital up here? You know, the casualties from it? I worked the casualties.
MM: Now, wait, Metropolitan. That was your husband’s hospital.
ON: Uh-hm. Oh, now that’s another thing that caused the white flight out of here. The riot. Because Visitation’s complex that I explained to you was bringing white Catholic families in here to get on that school and that rec center, and then they were busing their children down to their alma mater. They graduated from here and they were supporting that church and they were coming back, and the riot caused them to move. But we were getting new white residents, Catholic residents, in here. Quite a few, on the Monsignor Marquis.
MM: Well, you were living alone in the house in 1966 and you had children in the home. Were you terrified of the riot?
ON: No, not at all. No. It wasn’t that kind of a fright. I mean, the riot had its own intent. And it was a national thing. And they struck each city, and although it was supposed to not be planned, it was planned. And when they struck Twelfth Street, they intended it to strike the downtown areas where the Jewish people owned all the businesses and had control of all the money, and that’s what they burned down. So they would go through and mark the black-owned businesses, and they would burn down a store next door to a black business, and only by accident would they burn a black business.
MM: Is it your opinion then that the 1967 riot in Detroit was aimed against Jewish business?
ON: It was against the white economy, but the neighborhood where the Jewish person owned them—that’s what got burned down.
MM: But at that time in ’67 there weren’t a lot of Jews left living in Boston-Edison?
ON: Yes, there was. But they weren’t in the houses, but the entire of Twelfth Street and Fourteenth Street, all the businesses were owned by them.
MM: Right, but I mean we didn’t have Jews living in the houses in Boston-Edison.
ON: Yes, they were still here. Quite a few were still here. They had not all gone. They didn’t all go overnight either, it took like ten or fifteen years for anybody to rotate out of here, white black or any other color. They took a while. They didn’t go overnight. So it’s a rotating thing.
MM: Did you see a lot of for sale signs going up after the riot?
ON: Definitely. The riot feared people with children that were going to Visitation, that were back here, you know, and they definitely did leave.
MM: Did you see housing prices go down in the neighborhood after the riot?
ON: Definitely down. Definitely down.
MM: Now, it was my impression—see, we came here in ’72, and I lived here about five years before I figured out that the riot occurred just south of our neighborhood. Because--
ON: On Twelfth and Fourteenth?
MM: Yeah. I never would have known, I thought it was some other part of town—
ON: And it was confined there. Nobody came up here and burned your house up here. It stayed right there where they had intended it to be. They burned down every Jewish business on that street, and then they left every black business and hosed it down good and left it sitting there, and every church. Episcopal church is sitting there and not one spark.
MM: Why do you think they burned down the Jewish businesses? Were they unfair to the people who lived in the neighborhood?
ON: I think generally, and this is my opinion, is that the Jewish people are white when it’s convenient. Because they are white in color, and there’s no way except for their religion that you can identify them. So to be an opportunist, what they do is many of them don’t even practice their religion, so you can’t identify them, because it’s not expedient. And then when they live in the neighborhood, I found them to be very socially friendly. I mean, you went to their bar mitzvahs, you went to whatever. But when it’s time to vote or time to have any strength or time for—they are white. And in the business world, they run their businesses and they exploit blacks, and they know it. They will serve rotten foods and have dirty markets, and the Arabs are doing this now, and it’s going to backfire. And then they are blockers to anyone opening a business, and so they dominated Twelfth Street with their dirty markets and all their junk up there. And the blacks came in during the sixties, and they could open businesses. So they opened a barbecue rib and whatever right across from them, and it was an economic overtone to this. And it was not just here, it was all over the country. It was a restlessness.
MM: Would you say the 1967 so-called riot in Detroit was more economic than racial?
ON: Both.
MM: But it wasn’t really a race riot in the sense of what had occurred in the forties, was it?
ON: No one was actually doing anything to them, but they were finding it very difficult to economically unblock this Jewish dominance of the neighborhood, which we have again with the Arab. He’s coming in and all our filling stations have been sold to him. I don’t care why they did it or how they did it, they did it. And all of our stores and what not, if you notice, they’re being dominated by the Arabs. And so we have the same hostility growing now that grew over a period of long years against the Jewish merchant, that would not be a part of the neighborhood in any other way other than to run his store. And then he ran his store with rotten foods, and they’re dirty, they weren’t kept well, they were not a part of the community, and they lived generally out in another area. The ones that lived here had large businesses, were very rich, they were not merchants on Twelfth Street or Fourteenth Street, no. They owned large lumbar companies, and the Diamonds were very rich, had three homes. And Mr. Posner owned clothing stores out in another neighborhood, he was not into that. So it wasn’t against Boston-Edison residents, they were too rich for that. It was against the lowly merchant who kept these dirty stores down here, and exploited the poorer blacks who lived in those two-family flats and that moved down in here. It didn’t concern us. Because we were supermarket buyers, let’s face it. We go to better stores to buy, at Hudson’s and whatever and all that. It’s the people who live down in here who have to walk that were so hostile, and they were the ones doing all the burning, not Boston-Edison. Nobody in here knew anything about it except to go down there and look. Now, they burned Twelfth Street over here. I mean, Linwood was burned down, Grand River was burned flat to the ground. And Twelfth and Fourteenth was burned down flat.
MM: But they didn’t come north of Edison and burn in here at all?
ON: No houses were burned. There was no house burning. Only businesses. Only Jewish businesses were targeted. White or Jewish. But since most of them were Jewish, they’re the ones who got burned out. And there would be a filling station here, and they would mark it. They had an X, they marked it. And they would not touch that building. And then that drugstore burned down, and it was a man had a store—there was a filling station by a black guy, and that building on the end that still sits there, it was owned by a Chaldean that went to Visitation Church. And that man—to show you how they did it—that man had his NAACP life membership stuck up on the window, and he had his negro college fund checks—really, and he had a chair sitting there. And they didn’t burn nothing in his store. That man in that store right there. And they still own that store. And they lived on Chicago Boulevard, you know the house they just did over? The beautiful house across from the [Betty ?] house? In the front of it? That’s where those Chaldeans lived. And they went to church at Visitation Church, they were a very intimate part of this community.
MM: Do you remember their names?
ON: I can’t think of their names, but I know when Helen’s husband died I went way out somewhere to the funeral. And so this man walked up to me, this very attractive white man came up to me, and he said, “Hi, so you’re still pretty with your big dimples!” And I thought, who in the world is that? You know what I mean? And I said, “Why did they come way out here in Southfield, Berkley, whatever, to have a funeral? What’s the matter, Helen?” And so when they moved away, one of—the lawyer, the brother, he said, “You don’t even know who that is, do you?” I said, “I have no idea.” He said, “That’s that family that owns that store. Up there.” They grew up with my kids, that store right there.
MM: Linwood and Chicago?
ON: That’s the same people. And listen, I go to Grosse Pointe and there they are, “Hi, Mrs. Northcross!” I go to Bloomfield and there they are, “Hi, Mrs. Northcross!” [Laughs] See, they’ve grown up from Visitation, and they have those stores all over the Detroit area, and I see them, you know, and I say—and they did not touch that store. That’s what got me. To show you that was not a riot with no plan, see. And they had—they burned one and it could be, I mean, joined together, and they’d burn it and leave that whole.
MM: Well you mentioned Helen, that’s Helen Brown?
ON: Uh-hm.
MM: You know, you resemble Yvonne Fowler.
ON: Yeah, we do, most people think we’re relatives.
MM: Right. Now, Yvonne lived in here in the early fifties too.
ON: Yvonne did not, Doctor Shepherd owned that house. And later her husband finished med school—she’s about eight years younger than I am—and he bought it from Doctor Shepherd who fell dead on the golf course. And that’s where I met her, because her husband’s on the staff at my hospital. He was one of the first black interns at Receiving Hospital in residence.
MM: What’s his name?
ON: Doctor Thomas Ream. Very active in Boston-Edison, at every cocktail, a very community-oriented person.
MM: So Yvonne lived in here—
ON: He looked just like the husband she has now, only he was a little shorter. And I introduced her to that husband. And someone asked me, said, “Aren’t you--.” I said, “Listen honey.” [Laughs] I know you haven’t met him.
MM: Yeah, I know Ross.
ON: He has the most negative personality I’ve ever seen. I said, “No, no.” But Tom was a very personable—he was a surgeon. And he was a very community-oriented person.
MM: But he died?
ON: He’s Moroccan-Indian, so he looked like him.
MM: Oh, really?
ON: He was mostly Moroccan-Indian. That’s the father of the children. He was killed.
MM: Oh, he was?
ON: He was going on the underpass of Cobo Hall when a [Chevrolet] Stingray rammed into the wall.
MM: Oh dear.
ON: Uh-hm, he was killed.
MM: He was killed in a car accident.
ON: Uh-hm.
MM: I like Yvonne a lot.
ON: Now, Yvonne was married to him about 15 years before he died. And now they’ve been married about 27 or 28.
MM: And they have the two children?
ON: The two children. But Doctor Shepherd lived in that house before that, which was the cousin to Tom. And he died on the golf course.
MM: Was Doctor Shepherd black?
ON: Yes. Uh-hm. The cousin to Tom. The wife of the cousin to Tom, Bessie.
MM: Okay. I guess that’s how Tom came to buy the house.
ON: From the Shepherds, uh-hm. And she married another dentist and moved to New England.
MM: Oh, Doctor Shepherd was a dentist?
ON: Uh-hm. He was a dentist and Tom was a surgeon.
MM: Now, you knew the Bells of course.
ON: I know Iris, the Bells, Mendel. When I first came here they lived—the Bells lived on Boston Boulevard.
MM: On this side of the freeway?
ON: That’s right, in 1947. In the fall of ’46 I came here really, and I went to their house. The Burtons lived there, the Bells lived there. Cool B.L. Davis Jr. lived over there. Sugar Child, you know, the famous little three-year-old piano player lived over there, the Diggs who were the senators lived over there then. In other words, they had moved into Arden Park—the blacks had moved into Arden Park and Boston Boulevard, but they had not crossed Woodward. They didn’t cross Woodward, and I think that Earl Williams, the band leader-- she told me she came here in ’49, so she must have been one of the earliest ones. He was a famous band leader back then, when they had the bands like Ben Miller.
MM: Right. Earl Williams?
ON: Earl Williams. Was it Earl or Paul?
MM: Is his wife—
ON: Yeah, she’s still over there.
MM: Over where?
ON: Beautifully kept home on Edison.
MM: Is that Annie Williams?
ON: Is that her name? No, her name is—what is her first name? I can’t think of it now, but she helps me out over there. She calls up everybody.
MM: So Mrs. Williams is on Edison?
ON: Uh-hm. And I gave her a booklet and she does a nice job on there, replacing snowbrush and stuff.
MM: And she’s the widow of Earl or Paul—
ON: It’s Earl or Paul Williams, they had a band on television, you know, he was a very nation-wide—
MM: Do you think the Williams are one of the first black families here?
ON: That’s what she was telling me. I know she was here when I came, and I’m going to tell you, she was here, she and Sylvia were here first, and Doctor Goins moved before I did. Those three families were here.
MM: And who’s Sylvia?
ON: Because we had a bridge club. With Terry Snowten. Lived next door.
MM: Snowten?
ON: Uh-hm. And they were here before I got here. Actually in the houses. Because we had a neighborhood bridge club with these doctors’ wives and lawyers’ wives and whatever, called the neighbors. And I was not here yet, when I came out here.
MM: Was that bridge club an all-black club?
ON: Uh-hm. It was all black, and it was just professional people, wives and what not. Some people were in real estate or teaching or whatever. A lot of teachers lived in here, [unintelligible] teachers, professors or whatever.
MM: Did Ralph Osborn die?
ON: No, he’s not dead. He is in Mississippi.
MM: Is he?
ON: He built a home in Mississippi.
MM: Because I just realized I hadn’t seen him for a long time.
ON: Oh, they left about a year ago.
MM: Did he sell his house?
ON: Yes, he did. And the people that moved in, and don’t ask me who they are, because we’ve had—they were quiet, they left it neat, but nobody knows who they are, and they had something going on up there and all of them got upset. They’ve got a real big block club up there, and they called the police or something. It’s really quiet, whoever’s in there now, extremely quiet. And he lives next door to the man with the gun.
MM: Oh, yeah, yeah.
ON: So you get the picture. Down there. The one who had to walk—you know, Joe Louis’ nephew—the wife runs the block club down there.
MM: Oh, is that right?
ON: And she’s very good at it. And she had meetings and really has a real block club, between she and the Bonds and whatever.
MM: Right. Well, of course you know Wilma Bond.
ON: Yeah, Wilma had a house on the walk. She’s very good, she’s very active.
MM: She was my son’s preschool teacher, over at St. Agnes. What’s your church, Ophelia?
ON: None [laughs]. Haven’t you seen me down there at yours with Yvonne? I don’t go to church.
MM: Okay. Well you’ve got to come to Harrison.
ON: Now, I was a Methodist Sunday school teacher, and my family is split. We’re half Methodist, half Catholic. My sisters finished Zavier University and the Catholic Heart of Mary High, and I didn’t. I finished at public school in Tuskegee. So I’m Protestant more or less, but I don’t attend anything if you notice. I used to go with her.
MM: Well, I know, but—
ON: I was just going with her.
MM: Various people come to our church, so I didn’t know.
ON: And when she stopped going I didn’t go anymore.
MM: Well, she still comes, but we don’t meet in the summer.
ON: No, they have it in the parks, and I’ve been down there when he has that little skit he puts on. I find him very difficult.
MM: Who?
ON: Ross. I’ll put it that way. I like him, but I find him very difficult. I have to placate his personality, and it’s rather wearing, let’s put it that way.
MM: Well, Ross is kind of opinionated.
ON: Uh-hm. He’s got a lot of little things like that, and he’s difficult.
MM: How did you know Ross, to introduce him to—
ON: Well here’s something. I was a single person, and a dentist I know—when he got single, he was a friend of his, and he says, “You know a lot of attractive girls.” He says, “Give me the number of some of those girls.” And he says, “No, I’m not going to do that, I’m giving him your number.” So he actually gave me Ross’ number, and she wanted to go to Palmer Park to some big party or something, and she fell out with another guy, and I said, “Well, just take this number here and call this guy, he’ll probably take you.” And she did, and that was it. Just like that. Sight unseen. I didn’t even see him. Boy am I glad I didn’t [laughs].
MM: So you didn’t really know him, you just gave her a number.
ON: No, not at all. No, I just gave her a number and that was it. 27 years, so that was it.
MM: Why did you decide to move into Boston-Edison? How did you know about it?
ON: Actually—we never had a house other than this house. And for the first five years we lived—well, yeah, we lived in the hospital, except for that brief state--
MM: But I mean how did you know this neighborhood existed?
ON: See, I had gone, remember in ’46, to Arden Park.
MM: Oh, that’s right.
ON: And I had been a guest in those homes over there. See, I know Iris Cox. Now she’s Iris Bell, and Wendell and what not. They are socially—we were socially affiliated with them. So Iris moved over here. She should have been an early resident.
MM: Yes, I think she was.
ON: And in my age group the general trend was to move over here in this area, and as they speak in the United States, the neighborhood opened up or whatever. And I was looking near Woodward or looking near—the expressway wasn’t built then, you know, when I moved here this was a solid neighborhood, there was no expressway.
MM: Right.
ON: But someone said to me, “The houses are newer down near La Salle Boulevard. Go look down there.” And I came down here, and they are later built. And then we looked on Boston, and with him being drafted—the taxes were double on Boston. And the reason Boston was so well-kept was because you could be taxed for any flower or tree or anything on Boston Boulevard on the medians and you didn’t have any say-so, it was just put on your tax bill. And they were double what these are. And they still are quite double. Mine are 1250, the average tax over there is 2200. Yvonne pays 2200, I pay 1250.
MM: Per year?
ON: Uh-hm. So they’re still double. Now, with him going to the army and me having two kids, this house was sitting here and our radiologist lived on the corner. Doctor Mitchell, with that great lot. And we said, we’ll get the benefit of all this open space here without having that tax bill, in case my husband dies or something. He said, “Leave the money for this house so you can pay for it and raise the little twins here.” And I was an RN, I could run this house, but I couldn’t on Boston. The heating bills then, the oil furnace and the heating bills were astronomical. That and the median. You had to pay to keep that median like that. They weren’t joking. They changed those flowers and shrubs and whatever out there and it was put on you tax bills. So looking into that factor and the fact that I was an RN, I liked this house. This is an English house, and Mrs. Pinot always—only two owners, and this has been kept—the O’Connors stayed here six months and lost it, and Mrs. Pinot was an excellent housekeeper, and hers was decorated in Chippendale furniture, very well kept. And I liked it, I really like this house.
MM: Did O’Connor built the house?
ON: The O’Connors built it. And they lost it during the crash in 1922, they only stayed here six months.
MM: So they built it in 1920 or—
ON: That’s right. And Doctor Pinot and Mrs. Pinot—he was not a doctor then, she was a schoolteacher and she helped him through med school. And her family lived in here. And she had Karen who committed suicide. And the daughter committed suicide, she had one child. And she did my third floor over because he was a resident, and they did that to live up there. Then her son married [Tasty Brad ?].
MM: Oh really, Ms. Pinot’s son?
ON: Ms. Pinot’s son. And she used to explain all the beautiful weddings and showers, and the boy at Harper used to meet in this dining room. She had a Chippendale. And [unintelligible]. We were just friends. I would come over here, and I worked at Herman—I didn’t work at Herman Kieffer but I was a public health nurse and I worked out there and my kids went to Wayne State nursery school. So I would come through here and just talk to her about the house. And I didn’t buy any of her furniture, because this is the furniture we bought, the same furniture, I’ve never had any other furniture.
MM: He was the doctor who ran off with his nurse?
ON: He sure did. And she turned bitter. She was doing really good until that happened. And she turned so better, I said to my husband, I said, “What happened to Ms. Pinot?” And I’m a nurse, see. And then finally we found that he had run—she had run up in this house and asked Mrs. Pinot to divorce him. Oh, it was such a mess. I followed them in the paper. And then she had the tragedies, the resident divorced her daughter and they were never happy in Grosse Pointe, and she committed suicide. So she would come back and ring the bell and come in and cry.
MM: That’s too bad.
ON: She died. She’s dead and he’s dead.
MM: When were you a public health nurse?
ON: When I moved here I was a public health nurse.
MM: When you moved here, you mean to this house?
ON: Uh-hm. While he was in the army, see.
MM: I see. And you didn’t work out at Herman Kiefer or not?
ON: Uh-uh, I worked with [VistaNurse ?].
MM: Oh, okay. So while your husband was in the army for the 18-month period—
ON: Yeah, I went to Wayne State in public health and then I worked as a public health nurse.
MM: Did you get a degree at Wayne?
ON: Uh-uh. I just did—at that time—