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http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/eb439f04c056ccf7752c8a85be822691.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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I am a white male, now 67 years old. When the violence broke out on July 23, 1967, I was 17 and in Ann Arbor for Freshman Orientation at the University of Michigan. I was sitting in the cafeteria of one of the dorms after a late dinner, pretty much by myself. I remember it was beginning to grow dark outside. The music streaming into the cafeteria was The Doors' “Light My Fire”. All of a sudden, the music was interrupted with an announcement that National Guard troops were being ordered into Detroit to quell the uprising. It was eerie.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Sid Groeneman
Submission Date
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08/14/2017
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Sid Groeneman
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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08/25/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Ann Arbor
University of Michigan
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http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/fea631c5387e91b5b9238981ca19c638.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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I, Kathleen L. Hanlon, was a Senior at the University of Michigan majoring in French and English with 20 hours to obtain a teaching certificate. In January '67, I requested culturally disadvantaged students-I was assigned to a school on 12th and Myrtle, Pelham Junior High. The student population was mixed-Mexican, White and African American: all were poor, but very well-behaved. My roommate Shelley McCormack did such a good job , we were offered full-time teaching jobs on Monday. The last Friday of the semester, we invited six female students to spend a weekend in Ann Arbor. Our apartment was by the Law Quad. We took them on a tour of that and U of M's campus. When we returned to Detroit, the riots had begun. When we reached Livernois, armed tanks were lined down the street and armed soldiers were on every corner. We had to ask permission to return the students to their homes-it was granted. We felt badly after we dropped them off-what kind of life were they going to experience! My roommate and I taught in Detroit at Webber Junior High for three years.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Kathleen Gapa
Submission Date
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07/04/2016
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Kathleen Gapa
Description
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Kathleen Gapa was a University of Michigan student working in the Detroit School System the summer of 1967. She and a colleague had taken students to Ann Arbor for the weekend and came back to tanks and soldiers.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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07/05/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Community Members
Pelham Junior High School
University of Michigan
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http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/417a09168e24a0d4ab4e5b1e4a6568f2.JPG
dfbae43c234129fee1d70da918af78e2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
A language of the resource
en-us
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10/20/2019
Oral History
An audio or video resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Jackie DeYoung
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Jackie DeYoung was born in Detroit, MI where she lived during the 1967 disturbance. DeYoung spent 35 years with the Detroit Police Department. She currently lives in Detroit, MI.
Interviewer's Name
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Bree Boettner
Interview Place
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Grosse Pointe
Date
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04/05/2016
Interview Length
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00:46:50
Transcriptionist
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Danail Gantchev
Transcription Date
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5/11/2016
Transcription
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<p>BB: This is Bree Boettner with the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. I am sitting down with Jackie DeYoung today at her home in Grosse Pointe. Thank you Jackie for sitting down with us today.</p>
<p>JD: Oh you’re welcome.</p>
<p>BB: If you could start by telling me when and where you were born.</p>
<p>JD: I was born in Detroit at the old Providence Hospital on East Grand Boulevard. At the time my parents lived at 3010 West Chicago Boulevard. It was an apartment building between Wildemere and Lawton.</p>
<p>BB: Did you have any siblings?</p>
<p>JD: No, I’m an only child.</p>
<p>BB: And what did your parents do?</p>
<p>JD: My father was an attorney. My father was born in Detroit in 1904 in the middle of the Eastern Market on St. Antoine and Winder. My mother was born in New York, came through Cleveland, and settled here. My father went through Detroit Public Schools. He went to the Bishop School in the Eastern Market area. Then he went to what was Central High School, which is now on the campus – well it was Forest — what is it called — Old Main. That was Central High School and my dad went there. When he graduated, which must have been about 1918 or 1920, it became part of Wayne, which wasn’t a state university at the time. So he went to Law school there, same building.</p>
<p>BB: Okay, wow.</p>
<p>JD: You did not have to go through [an] undergraduate degree at that time; you just went to law school. So he graduated before he was able to become a member of the bar. He wasn’t twenty-one yet.</p>
<p>BB: Oh wow, high achiever. Awesome, okay. Just to preface your parents and you lived on Chicago?</p>
<p>JD: Yes, in an apartment building.</p>
<p>BB: Explain your childhood growing and living in the Detroit area.</p>
<p>JD: Well, it was a very good childhood. My mother and I – my mother didn’t drive until much later. She learned to drive probably when I was in school, [when I was] five, six, seven. So we took buses everywhere. All over downtown, wherever we had to go. You could walk anywhere. We had accessible shopping on Dexter Avenue. It was a very easy childhood. There were very few security fears, or crime, or anything like that.</p>
<p>BB: Do you remember where you went to school in the area?</p>
<p>JD: I went to Brady School.</p>
<p>BB: For all grades or?</p>
<p>JD: I went there until third grade. Then we moved to Manor and Seven Mile, which is on the northwest side, near Meyers Road. After that I went to McDowell school to the eighth grade. And then I went to Mumford High School through graduation. At the time the school system had started an advanced, sort of like an AP program, but they were only running it at Cass Tech. My mother and a group of parents who were active in the PTA did not want us taking the bus down to Cass every day. So they petitioned the school board, and the board opened the program at Mumford because there were so many students in the neighborhood who would have qualified for it.</p>
<p>BB: What year did you graduate from high school?</p>
<p>JD: 1961 I graduated from Mumford.</p>
<p>BB: And was your school integrated? Was it strictly white?</p>
<p>JD: My grade school was very integrated, as was Mumford. The black population at the time lived closer to Eight Mile, but they lived on the same streets we did. Manor, Monte Vista, just further west toward Eight Mile North.</p>
<p>BB: What’d you do after high school?</p>
<p>JD: Then I went to the University of Michigan for four years. I graduated. I came home and I was living with my parents on Manor.</p>
<p>BB: Okay.</p>
<p>JD: I got a job with the city of Detroit, which was a little interesting because at the time, I don’t know if you know this, they had a general entry level job for college graduates called Technical Aid. And at the time I applied, they were divided into Technical Aid Male and Technical Aid Female. The only difference was you had to pass the same test, but the females had to be able to type forty-five words a minute. So the first time I took the test I failed it because I can’t type. [Laughter] By the time I went to take it three months later when I was eligible again, they had taken away that requirement because the Civil Rights movement had started and they were trying to equalize all of the positions. Then I got the job with the city. I had worked for Wayne County several summers while I was in college. They hired me when I graduated, so I had a job with Wayne County until I got the job with the city.</p>
<p>BB: What’d you do with Wayne County?</p>
<p>JD: Oh, I had a number of different jobs. I worked for the road commission for a long time and in the summer I would relieve people in the accounting division who wanted to go on vacation. So they would teach me their job. I would do it for two weeks and then somebody else would teach me their job and I’d do that. That’s how I spent my summer.</p>
<p>BB: Wow, the Jackie-of-all-trades.</p>
<p>JD: Yeah, exactly. [Laughter]</p>
<p>BB: Interesting.</p>
<p>JD: I learned about a lot of Wayne County systems by doing that: the parks, and the airport, and everything that the county ran, highways.</p>
<p>BB: Tell me about your city position. What’d you do for the city of Detroit?</p>
<p>JD: Well, when I was hired in August of 1966, I was assigned to the housing department. I was sent to a field office on Grand River and Grand Boulevard. And we were relocating families from the right-of-way of the Jeffries and the Fisher freeways which were just being built.</p>
<p>BB: That’s right. Okay.</p>
<p>JD: I liked the job, but it involved a lot of social work. My parents were really concerned because I was so involved with some of the families that I was trying to relocate, that I’d be going down to the area at night and taking them food, and money, and blankets, and things they didn’t have. So they said you’ve got to find something else. The other thing was that all of the Edison people, the utility peoples, were all out there in pairs. And I was out there by myself, which my parents didn’t think was real safe. Although, I must say, all the people I worked with did a good job at protecting me, but there were a couple of minor incidents. I went down to the civil service commission and said I’d really like a transfer. They sent me to a couple of different offices. In February of ‘67, the police department had formed a research and development unit. Maybe sometime in ’65; it was pretty new. They were putting personnel in it. They were looking for people. They absolutely did not want a woman. They told me that.</p>
<p>BB: Really? How’d you get the job?</p>
<p>JD: Well, They got desperate [laughter].They had to have somebody. It was a little awkward at first because I say that I worked in the men’s locker room for 35 years. The atmosphere before civil rights and sexual harassment was just incredible. I mean I know young women like yourself find it hard to believe what some of us went through, but the office reported directly to the deputy superintendent of police. He was as much a male chauvinist as the rest of them, but they needed the help badly. And he knew I was going to Wayne at night to get a master’s. He was going to get his bachelor’s degree. And I think in a way he used to send me out to pick up his books or assignments and things like that.</p>
<p>BB: (laughing) Oh goodness.</p>
<p>JD: So I had a lot of interesting assignments at the beginning. The office answered his—it was a commissioner at the time, commissioner of police—all of his correspondence. So it could be very serious from a citizen complaining about something, to the commissioner saying to me, “Write my mother a Christmas letter.”</p>
<p>BB: Gotcha.</p>
<p>JD: We also – the police department operates on the system of general orders that are written. We wrote all those orders and kept track of them, and so forth. Also, at that time, the federal government began the Office of Law Enforcement Assistance and began giving out federal grants to police departments, and we wrote those grant applications. Detroit was probably one of the first five in the country to receive one if I recall correctly. We had people coming in from the police executive research forum and other research organizations. Detroit was a big city at the time. We had a fairly large force. I was once asked to figure out how many blacks were on the job and I think at the time I did it, it was about five percent of the force.</p>
<p>BB: Okay, because at one time, if I remember correctly, there was almost what, 5,300 police officers?</p>
<p>JD: Yes, exactly.</p>
<p>BB: Okay.</p>
<p>JD: And we were pretty modern. We had the first traffic lights here. We had a lot of firsts. There was interest in the department. I also did things like, made center pieces for the Women Who Work Luncheon when some woman from the women’s division was being honored.</p>
<p>BB: Aww.</p>
<p>JD: Things, little tasks. I never knew what the job was going to be on any given day, but it was very interesting. So I was able to learn a lot about how the department operated. You know, I certainly knew all of its rules and regulations because I wrote a lot of them. [Laughter] That’s about it.</p>
<p>BB: At that time in ‘67, you know ’64 when you received this position, how was the city? Had it changed from what you had perceived it when you were child growing up? Had it changed in any way beyond you know the civil rights movement? How was the feeling?</p>
<p>JD: People were starting to move out to suburbs, but not for any particular reason other than you could get a newer house. Some of the jobs were moving. They weren’t all downtown anymore. But, it was pretty much the same city that I grew up in, you know I don’t recall. Our neighborhood started to change a little bit. When we bought our house in 1952 on Manor, my father had to break a restrictive covenant that didn’t allow Jews. We were a Jewish family. Those were outlawed by the Supreme Court subsequently. My father had a case of one of his clients, Orsel McGhee, who lived on Seebaldt Street, who wanted to buy a house on Seebaldt. And my father broke a restricted covenant at that time to get him the house. That case became combined with the cases that Thurgood Marshall eventually argued before the Supreme Court that struck down those restrictive covenants. They’re still in deeds but they can’t be enforced.</p>
<p>BB: Wow, I never knew that. That’s amazing. Leading up to—</p>
<p>JD: So we were the first Jewish family or maybe the second Jewish family on our block.</p>
<p>BB: As I’ve done this project I have not heard of that. That’s amazing. Kudos to your father (laughing). So leading up to the summer of 1967, obviously there’s reports of more civil unrest. How did you perceive that summer and then how did you learn about the event of the blind pig?</p>
<p>JD: Well, I got a call on Sunday night. Must have be what, July 23, from my office, saying there’s been some disturbances. They weren’t sure whether they wanted me to come into work on Monday or not, but they would send a car because I took the bus to work. Usually a Hamilton bus or there was an Imperial Express that ran down James Couzens, what is now the extension of the Lodge Freeway; that wasn’t built yet. So I just waited to hear from them and they said come on in. I went in. The men in my office, the sworn officers, it was a combination. The only other woman was our secretary. They did not have her come in for a few days. But the sworn officers were detailed to the roof of police headquarters with rifles.</p>
<p>BB: Oh wow. What happened?</p>
<p>JD: So I was the only one in the office a lot of the time except for our boss. They asked me to start clipping articles, any newspaper magazine, anything I saw that mentioned what was going on, to cut it out, and then we had this huge scrap book. Big, like, art-size paper, and I pasted these articles on it. Finally it was put together in a book and I hope it’s in the Burton Historical collection.</p>
<p>BB: Okay.</p>
<p>JD: I’ve never looked for it, but I assume that’s where it went.</p>
<p>BB: When we received your notes, that’s one of the things were going to look for next.</p>
<p>JD: They did make smaller copies of it. They shrunk it at some point. I thought I had one but I don’t. Anyway, then I understood that there were fires and looting, and things going on. It wasn’t like I wasn’t affected by it. I realize now that I had to travel through it to get home. Went right through one of the areas, but it just wasn’t anything in my experience that there had been a Kercheval incident but the year before. It was quieted down pretty easily. I knew that an officer had gone into a blind pig and that’s what started things going, and I heard about some of the people I knew in headquarters going out to the scene to try to calm things down. They were standing on trucks in the middle of the street with bullhorns, trying to get people to go home and so forth. Somehow it just didn’t seem real to me until maybe day two or three when the Army showed up, and there were tanks downtown. I used to walk to Hudson’s or Crowley’s for lunch, and there were tanks sitting there. And I thought, “This is silly,” you know, “There’s nothing happening down here. What are they doing?” They were sleeping on cots in various offices in police headquarters. When they first arrived they had no place to put them. And another interesting thing that I remember is that people were bringing food down to headquarters because the officers were on long shifts. It never occurred to us in a million years not to eat it. It certainly would today but back then no. We just accepted it, thanked the people. So it was sort of normal in a way. I mean it was weird watching TV or listening to the radio. You knew what was happening in those areas, and I had worked for the housing commission in the part of that. And some of it was the old neighborhood where I grew up around Chicago Boulevard. But it just never seemed quite real and then things started to escalate. We had the incident at Reverend Franklin’s church. Aretha’s father’s church. And then the Algiers Motel. I was keeping track of how many casualties there were, and officers injured, and things like that. I had all kinds of statistics. I also had all the utilities, Edison, and the gas company, and AT&T were headquartered in our office. Getting updates on where we needed them to guard their own facilities, where we couldn’t handle. The department did what it could to guard their facilities, but they had to put people out. So, we were keeping them apprised of where incidents were occurring and what was happening. It seemed to kind of be contained maybe within a week or ten days.</p>
<p>BB: What was the atmosphere because you did work with cops and deputies? How was the atmosphere with them coming from the scene to the office? Did you hear anything in particular about what was going on from them or did you just get most of your information from news clippings and TV?</p>
<p>JD: Well you heard a lot of racial animus. Some of the black officers on the department were out trying to do what they could to help. Also, black council people and, church reverends, and so forth. Everybody was pitching in trying to help. We couldn’t quite understand and I couldn’t, why people would, if you want to protest something, and maybe the department had been. I don’t know, and of course it never happened to me. But I’m sure they were probably hard on black people. But, if you want to protest something, why burn your neighborhood down? Why hurt yourself? That’s why when people call it a rebellion; it’s hard for me to use that word. You know I know people were angry, but what do you gain by chasing all the merchants out of the city? People who’d run businesses in those areas for years, and just were burned out. It was unthinkable.</p>
<p>BB: Yeah it’s hard. That’s actually my next question. How do you do you perceive the event? Do you see it as a rebellion, do you see the civil unrest, or do you see it as a riot? How would you classify what happened?</p>
<p>JD: I think the Kercheval incident was probably civil unrest, but I think what we had got in July '67 was big enough to be a riot. It was kind of contained to one or two areas, but it was spreading pretty quickly. The police department didn’t seem to be able to stop it, so it was a good thing that we got the National Guard and the Army in here to help. I don’t even know if the department had enough, I mean the officers wore side arms. There might be a rifle in a scout car or two, but I don’t believe we had enough rifles to handle any major disturbances. And there were discussions I heard about you know, "Should we pull everybody back? Is it worth risking police officers, or must we be out there trying to arrest as many people as we could." The other thing was, they didn’t have place to put them. They were bringing them to the garage of police headquarters, which prior to that, I used to walk through to get into the building but they closed it off, took all the cars out of it, and they just had people down there. There were no bathrooms. I mean it was horrible. And finally, Judge George Crockett from recorders court, one of the first black judges, came over and started holding arraignments right in the garage because the people couldn’t get processed fast enough. I don’t remember how long that went on, but a good probably the first week at least. They just didn’t have place to put the people.</p>
<p>BB: Yeah I’ve heard of locations like Belle Isle was used, and I believe the fairgrounds were used so, I’m not surprised. That’s amazing.</p>
<p>JD: They were housing people every because they were just sweeping anybody who happened to be—I mean I guess you could be innocently walking down the street, although, I don’t know why you would be.</p>
<p>BB: Yeah (laughing).</p>
<p>JD: There were curfews and there just were areas where you wouldn’t go.</p>
<p>BB: You say you remember the National Guard and the Army coming in through, do you remember working with them at all, or seeing police officers work with them?</p>
<p>JD: Yeah, I know police officers worked with them. I did not have much to do with them. I was really sitting in an office answering phones and trying to get information from here and there and collate it and get it to the people who needed to have it.</p>
<p>BB: Gotcha.</p>
<p>JD: My office was on the second floor of police headquarters and the executive floor was three. So I would just run up and down the stairs all the time, taking stuff up and I’d see them, pass them in the corridor. But I didn’t have anything to do with them really.</p>
<p>BB: Gotcha, gotcha. So after the event and the days following, how did you perceive your neighborhood and Detroit in general after that, after the event happened?</p>
<p>JD: Nothing happened where we were. My parents had been wanting to sell our house. I think it was August or September of 67’, they were able to sell it and we moved down to the Jeffersonian. It never occurred to any of us to move outside the city. They wanted an apartment. They didn’t think I’d be with them that much longer I guess. Although, in those days if you were a single woman you just did not go out and get an apartment. So we moved to the Jeffersonian. It was a pretty much brand new building at the time. There were very few tenants. I could take the Jefferson bus down to work. So you know I still wasn’t noticing much. Some of the areas that were involved in the Kercheval incident, I would pass on the way to work. But, they’d gone pretty much back to normal. I mean, there were still houses in all those vacant lots that you see today. People took care of their property. They were cutting their lawns. Life was pretty normal for me.</p>
<p>BB: When would you say that things changed?</p>
<p>JD: I won’t say the election of Coleman Young. I think it was before that. Would it have been 1970, or ‘69? Richard Austin ran for mayor against Roman Gribbs. I was kind of a smart mouth, running around telling people that if you voted for Austin, we’d have a reasonably competent black mayor who could perhaps gain the trust of some of these citizens who didn’t trust the government any longer. I didn’t quite understand why they didn’t, but I mean I knew why. It’s just that it wasn’t in my personal experience. I understood their point of view. I lived in a pretty white world. And police headquarters was a very white world, and city government was too. Anyway, Roman Gribbs won. Things started to change during his administration. But Coleman Young’s election was a real flash point, I think. And I think if he had served for two terms, he would have been the greatest mayor Detroit ever had. He served too long. But when he came in he made everything half and half. If he appointed a black department director, then the deputy was white, and vice versa. He made some excellent appointments. He started really pushing the police department to integrate. Other departments too, but police particularly. And they needed pushing. You know, the civil rights laws helped because I don’t think without that the department would have ever—he could have done whatever he wanted to and they would have sat there and said, “Well you’ll be gone and we’ll be here.” They had their own little culture. You know, for the most part the policemen that I worked with were very good people. They wanted to help the community. They didn’t want a bad reputation. The ones I knew weren’t out there beating people up. I heard more, and more, and more about that as I went through my career, because in 1983, at that time I was in charge of the department’s budget, which was about 350 million dollars. I was getting bored. Michael and I were married. He came home one day and he said, he was in the personnel department, “You know you can’t do personnel work anymore without being a lawyer. And I said, “Well if you want to go to law school,” – I tried to go to law school when I graduated from U of M [University of Michigan]. They were only taking one or two women per class at that time. And I could not get in. My grades at U of M weren't that good. I just forgot about it. But when he said that we decided we would go to law school. We both worked our full time jobs and went to law school at night for four years at Wayne and got our law degrees. When I got my law degree, the department put me in their legal unit.</p>
<p>BB: Okay.</p>
<p>JD: There was a high turnover in the unit, so at some point I became the head of it.</p>
<p>BB: Wow.</p>
<p>JD: Just longevity.</p>
<p>(laughing)</p>
<p>BB: You stuck through. You stuck through.</p>
<p>JD: [Cough] As a lawyer for the department and looking at the procedures we had from a little different perspective, when I was writing them, I was writing them for efficiency of operation. We had lawyers review them of course, but there just weren't that many – We could pretty much do what we wanted. By the time I became a lawyer, there were so many statutes and restrictions. We had to check a million different things before we made a rule. [Coughing] And we didn't know if it would conflict.</p>
<p>BB: Okay, so you had gotten your law degree and you were working with the budget and doing more human resources. So after you got your law degree, what did you end up using it for in the department specifically?</p>
<p>JD: Well I worked in the legal advisor section, and we were responsible for reviewing all the orders to make sure they were legal. We taught the legal curriculum at the police academy.</p>
<p>BB: Okay.</p>
<p>JD: There's a big portion of the recruit training that's legal training, naturally. We're liaisons with the attorneys who are defending the cases against the police department.</p>
<p>BB: Okay. What had changed when you were brought on to review policies and things with police officers? What had changed while you were in that position either policy wise or other?</p>
<p>JD: There was a lot of, kind of what's happening now. A lot of protesting about the way police treated citizens, and wanting to make it less confrontational. I know when I taught at the academy [Coughing] they would laugh at me. [Coughing] But I would tell the officers, if you just practice this, "Please, sir, cooperate", instead of saying you know, "MF get down on the ground, assume the position" or whatever. But, like I said, they laughed at me. We had so many lawsuits being brought, and so many citizen complaints [Coughing], that were going to bankrupt the city, which they [Coughing] helped to do. I kept trying to advise people [Coughing], let's do it this way, not that way. [Coughing] I was sent by the department various times to places like New York and Chicago to study how they were doing things. They're trying to modernize, neutralize I guess [Coughing]. I'm going to get some more water. [Coughing] I don't want to make it sound like—I certainly empathized with members of the community. [Coughing] I knew about the amount of prejudice [Coughing] that there was. When I say it didn't affect my life, I did a lot of academic research [Coughing] into what had happened. The causes and so forth. So intellectually I understood it, but I still couldn't understand how burning down your own neighborhood accomplished anything.</p>
<p>BB: Yeah, it's hard.</p>
<p>JD: And when you look at what's happened to Detroit. Now to my mind the, the worst thing, worse than the riot, was the threat of cross district bussing. L. Brooks Patterson was an attorney for a woman named Irene McCabe out in Pontiac. They were fighting the idea of cross district bussing. But that was the thing, when people thought that [Coughing] their kids [Coughing] were going to neighborhood schools with neighbors, that's one thing. But when you're taking white children and trying to integrate them into schools in the black neighborhood, it was a whole other story. I think that did more damage than anything. And probably, people were pretty predisposed to hate Coleman Young. [Coughing] He was, I think thought to be uppity, and he wasn't going to stand for anything. And he didn't. So he made a lot of changes but a lot of people's lives were affected and they didn't like it. I personally think the amount of racism was just, on both sides. Couldn't be overcome. Still hasn't.</p>
<p>BB: Yeah, It's still prevalent for sure. Where do you see Detroit going? Well you’re still in the area, so [Laughing].</p>
<p>JD: I'm glad to see it's coming back. Nobody would like to see it come back more than me. [Coughing] I lived in Detroit for what, [Coughing] more than fifty years. I would still be there, but, we wanted a condo and we weren't able to find anything. Where we are now is about twelve blocks from where we lived in the city, and it didn't seem like I was crossing that big of a line. Although Grosse Pointe has its own connotations. But, the thing – I lived on East Outer Drive [Coughing]. We had our own neighborhood snow removal, neighborhood police patrol [Coughing]. The only thing you can't hire is EMS. And that's what started to scare us. We were getting up there and we thought if we need an ambulance [Coughing], we’re not going to be able to get it. Because we thought a lot about moving downtown, which we lived in when we first got married and we would love to do that. Maybe we will be able to again sometime, but, the services just weren't there. And we’re paying very high taxes. We don't have children so we didn't have the school problem.</p>
<p>BB: Yeah, but you have positive hopes for Detroit?</p>
<p>JD: I do, yes. It was a great city. It is a great city. [Coughing] It has a great history. My family’s been here more than a century. I'm pretty tied to it. Did everything I could, working for it to try to make it better. But there are a lot of other outside forces [Coughing]. Oh my god, it just won't quit.</p>
<p>BB: Yeah I know. Well I know I don't want to make you suffocate here. I know coughing kind of gets to you after a while. One last thing. Is there anything you would like to add that I didn't cover with you in regards to before, after, during, or any advice you have for the younger generation coming in hoping to make the city great again?</p>
<p>[Laughter]</p>
<p>JD: Well, I hope people can get along with each other better [Coughing]. I never understood the divisions. I wasn't brought up to them. I didn't know what the differences were. I always try to get along with everybody and I don't understand [Coughing] why we can't all get along. And maybe the younger generation didn't grow up with all this stuff that can bring it about. I think Mayor Duggan is doing a great job and working at it, but you know it's a working process. It's going to take a long time. I drive around the neighborhoods all the time. I'm in Detroit a lot. It's so sad. [Coughing] But I don't know, I'm sure I'll think of a million other things later.</p>
<p>BB: Well if you do think of anything else, you've got our email address. Please don't hesitate to email me again or give us a call. We can always add your written transcription to this. Because I know you're sick so I really don't want to [Laughing] bug you a little bit more. I really do appreciate you letting us come in and sit down with you guys and getting your story. We appreciate it.</p>
<p>JD: I'm pleased to do it.</p> **
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Recording
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Bree Boettner
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Jackie DeYoung
Location
The location of the interview
Grosse Pointe, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aKRRlMM-M7M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Jackie DeYoung, April 5th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, DeYoung discusses her experiences of the 1967 disturbance and how it affected her life. Additionally, she speaks about her 35 year career at the Detroit Police Department and how the department, and the city, operated and changed before, during, and after the 1967 disturbance.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Date
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05/24/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-US
Type
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Sound
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Curfew
Detroit Police Department
Government
Kercheval Incident
Mayor Coleman Young
Mumford High School
Public Servant
Tanks
University of Michigan
Wayne State University
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http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/8c4f9327c08b090df579e9e312202e7f.JPG
98493ddff967eec4fabacab799a6a13e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Mike Hamlin
Brief Biography
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Mike Hamlin was born in Mississippi in 1935 and came to the Detroit area in 1947. In Detroit, Hamlin was a leader and member of black militant and other left-wing organization throughout the city.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit
Date
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12/22/2015
Interview Length
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Part 1: 01:06:27
Part 2: 00:48:26
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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04/27/2016
Transcription
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PART ONE:
<p>WW: Hello my name is William Winkel and I am with the Detroit Historical Society. And it is December 22, and we are in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s 1967 Oral History Project and I am here with Mike Hamlin.</p>
<p>Thank you very much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>MH: I’m delighted.</p>
<p>WW: Can you tell me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>MH: I was born 1935, October 17, in a rural area on a plantation near Canton, Mississippi. My father and his family—my family were sharecroppers on that plantation. They worked farms and divided the products for the production of cotton with the owners. And it was a very exploitive kind of situation. My father was the youngest of three. And he had been abandoned, his family, he and my grandmother, and my aunt and uncle had been abandoned by his father when they were teenagers and they had to scrape through to adulthood under very dire circumstances. My mother was a product of a plantation owner’s son. And her mother died when she was 33 and left her as an orphan. And she couldn’t stay on the plantation where she was born with her father and his family so she was kind of shunted around from one black relative to another because, you know, they were rural folks and if you understand about the thinking of peasants, agricultural workers. You could say that in my view they were seen as peasants. They — it makes you selfish, working like that, working like that. So she had a very difficult time, and I think she – at 15 she married my father who was a real bad guy. Irresponsible, reckless, and could be brutal. And I was born — she married him when she was 16. So she and I kind of grew up together, I tried – I did the best I could to protect her but he was very abusive and all of this is shaping my thinking as I'm growing up. On the place that we lived, there was a — you know, we lived in a shack. No running water, an outhouse. On the farm we made vegetables, he hunted, we raised vegetables, they would hunt rabbits, possums and squirrels and birds and fish. So we had enough to sustain us but, you know, at the same time, my father started bootlegging whiskey, he started making whiskey and he made a lot of money but he blew it all. He was very — I said he was reckless and irresponsible so [laughter]. He would — He was just a wild man. And so this had to do with my shape, I mean, this shaped my view. I was always trying to make my mom’s life better, so I used to go with her when she would go to work at the plantation owner's house and the plantation owner tried her — tried to get my mother to give me to her. And she wouldn’t do it. But she did that because I could do a lot of things even though I was a child. At some point my father, who enjoyed police protection from the sheriff, who supposedly protected him from — his operation — from the IRS or whatever its equivalent was at that time, raided his still and destroyed it all. So the sheriff came. (I don't know if you want all this kind of information.) But the sheriff came to the house to collect his monthly, a $75 payment. My father told him we didn’t have any money. He told him — this was in 1944, he told him, “I’ll be back here tonight and you better have it.” Now we — I have seen two mobs riding through our place watering their horses and dogs and themselves at the pump that we had, on their way into the forest looking for blacks they were going to lynch. They caught one, the other one got away. So after my dad had the encounter with the sheriff he took off and he made it to Kansas City where I had an aunt. My aunt had moved. And shortly thereafter my mother moved to Kansas City with him. And my grandmother and I and my sister moved — my younger sister — moved into Canton, the town. And I think I was nine years old and I got a job in the store.</p>
<p>By the way in terms of school, I did not go to start school until two years after when I was old enough. Because I was babysitting my sister as my mother worked in the cotton field. I’d be sitting on a blanket on the edge of the field and she’d be out there picking cotton and I’d be entertaining my little sister. So when I - we ended up - I started school about the third grade and I had a lot of catching up to do but, I handled that. We went to town, we moved to Canton and lived in a house there that my aunt had lived in and I went to school there for two years, I got this job in a liquor store. Almost got killed, because the owners, a young white couple, had me doing all kinds of things. You know, I could do any job in the store including cash register, meat counter, stock, whatever. And they enjoyed watching me. They were just amused. I was big for my age, 10 years old. And they had a nephew about your size, 17 years old, he was a high school football player. He didn’t like me, because they liked me and so he worked there during the summer when he was out of school so one day I went back to the back of the store [laughter], to get something out of the meat cooler. And he was standing there in the door with a sharp knife, a butcher's knife. And he was coming at me with it, and it slipped out of his hands [laughter] and stuck into his foot. [Laughter] And he howled, and of course I didn’t laugh, but that probably saved my life because, he could have killed me and they would have been nothing said about it. But anyway, eventually my father, he had gotten run out of Mississippi, but then he got ran out of Kansas City, Missouri, because he was — he got in some argument with a guy in a bar, probably over a woman or something, and he opened fire on this man point blank and shot him once in the leg [laughter]. So he had to flee from Kansas City and came here. And after he came here, he — this was in 1946. In ’47, he brought me and my sister here. And my mother and grandmother went to Kansas City. That brought me to Detroit. That was in August of 1947 and we started the school in September.</p>
<p>WW: Where did you move to in the city?</p>
<p>MH: Ecorse.</p>
<p>WW: Ecorse?</p>
<p>MH: Yeah, in Ecorse, which was an industrial town with a lot of people from the South, a lot of people from Mississippi – people that my folks knew. And – and it was divided by railroad tracks, and there were blacks on one side and whites on the other, but we all went to the same high school. We went to segregated elementary schools. And the junior high school was attached to the high school, so beginning in the seventh grade, we were in, we begin integrated school. Interestingly enough, we didn't have any problems. Now – I had a very interesting experience my first – I don't know whether this is relevant to what you're —</p>
<p>WW: It all is. [laughter] Keep going.</p>
<p>MH: The – I can't – my first – I remember, I said, we came here in August of '47. Took the train in to Grand Central Station. I think that's what it was called at the time?</p>
<p>WW: Michigan Central?</p>
<p>MH: Michigan Central, yeah. And took a cab to Ecorse. And in September, which was the next month, school started. I went to school, and my first day of school the teacher and the whole class laughed at me because [laughter] of my accent. So you know, one other thing about being born in Mississippi, is you develop deep feeling of humility. So rather than being crushed, you know, I just felt that I was behind and I had to catch up. And so boy, did I catch up. This was an interracial experience from seventh grade on up, and by the time I was a sophomore, I was – for the next two years – a leading athlete in my school. Basketball and football. Tennis. And – because I had never played tennis, had no idea, but I had a friend who was a year younger than me, but he was kind of – he was like a mentor. And I studied him. His father, interestingly enough, he was a graduate of Colgate. He had a mechanical engineering degree, and the first job he got was as the principal of a high school in South Carolina. But when Ford started paying $5 an hour – or $5 a day – he moved here, and moved his wife here. And he worked at the Rouge in the foundry for 43 years, and became an under – a part-time undertaker.</p>
<p>So anyway, I used to spend a lot of time at his house. And I learned from them, you know. I became — So by high school – I didn't – I mean – nobody in my house had even gone past eighth grade, much less going to college. As I was approaching graduation, most of my friends were going into factories. Great Lakes Steel – Are you from here?</p>
<p>WW: I'm from downriver.</p>
<p>MH: Great Lakes Steel, and Ford. And my father told me - I was working. I started working when I got here, ten years part-time at a liquor store – at a grocery store. And then later a liquor store. And my father told me, don't go to college, you know. Stay where you are with that liquor store. So, I usually did the opposite of whatever he told me. [laughter] I thought that was a good rule. So I – Gunnar, my friend, my mentor, was going to U of M [University of Michigan]. He had a full scholarship, was going to be a doctor. So I had – I was probably in the top five, academically, by then. Thought I may try playing basketball. So I decided to go to U of M with him. That summer, the basketball coach, Mr. Rilly, got me a scholarship – not a scholarship, got me a job, rehabbing a school in Ecorse that was, you know, needed work. So I worked with that and got — made pretty good money. So I paid for my first year. Second year I got a job at Ford during the summer, and I worked there for 89 days and they laid me off, but I did have enough to go back and finish two more years.</p>
<p>And the summer after that – this was in 1956 – I couldn't get a job. That was the – during the Eisenhower recession. I couldn't get a job so I – you know, I didn't go back to school in September, but I continued to look for a job, and the only job I got was in February, I – doing the – on days when it snowed – my aunt comes back, got a job in Wyandotte in a car wash. I spent one day in that job. [laughter] And I told my uncle the next day I wasn't going back. And I left home, coming to the federal building, looking for the Marines, and got conned into going into the Army.</p>
<p>Now all this time, I'm trying to make up my deficit of knowledge and I really went and learned. I studied the classics, I was the teacher's pet. You know, the teachers that everybody was afraid of, I found out they had a sense of humor and I could relate – a person like me [laughter] has to have a sense of humor. A person who has certain [unintelligible]. So I did quite well. But I – learned – I took Spanish in high school. And Latin. And at U of M – at U of M it was interesting. I passed – I got As in Latin, you know, Bs – but I was almost failing English. So – and one of the professors told me that I was wasting my time, I should go back down south to one of the Black colleges. So I mean – I wasn't – you know, if you're in a position where you've been through what I've been – you couldn't hardly hurt my feelings and insult me with something like that.</p>
<p>WW: Was the teacher that – was that your English teacher who said that?</p>
<p>MH: Yep, at U of M. Professor Huntley was his name. But – I'm telling you, I was learning the world. I did not know what – and I knew it. And I knew that I – so I was a reading fiend. I read – I loved <em>Macbeth</em>. I read all Shakespeare, Eugene O'Neill, et cetera, et cetera. Matter of fact, when I was in the army, me and this buddy of mine, we used to quote long passages from <em>Macbeth</em>, <em>Hamlet</em>. I knew the soliloquies from <em>Hamlet</em> and <em>Macbeth</em> and the poetry and stuff like that. So I was learning, because I was filling an empty tank.</p>
<p>WW: Did you – after you graduated high school did you start exploring the metro area? You said you started going to U of M – did you go to U of M-Ann Arbor?</p>
<p>MH: U of M-Dearborn didn't exist at that time.</p>
<p>WW: Oh, okay. Was there a difference between the Ecorse neighborhood you grew up in and spending time in Ann Arbor?</p>
<p>MH: Oh yeah, oh yeah. There were 33,000 students there, 300 of them were black. They were a different class. I'm a sharecropper, and these are doctor’s, lawyer’s, teacher’s kids, there amongst the blacks. I got along with them all but I knew I was different. Again, when we were with the whites. Matter of fact, in high school, a very interesting thing happened. I didn't know anything about sports, but we played street football. And so one day on the playground, the professor – not the professor – the coach saw me throw a football, and he saw how far I could throw it and how my side, he called me over, told me he wanted me to come out and play football for him. He wanted me to play quarterback. And because the quarterback he had could not see over the linemen. He wasn't tall enough. And so I agreed. And I did well for – my two years in high school I was the quarterback for the football team and the captain of the basketball team. Which, you know, I'm just going through – I was kind of like Forest Gump. I was just doing things. I was learning, and appreciating, but I didn't have much ego at that time. I don't think.</p>
<p>But anyway, at U of M I was there among the middle class folks. And you know, they treated me nice, like we were all in the same boat, except that I – like I said, I was different. But they were good. My roommate was my mentor, he was a year younger than me, which – we're still the best of friends, all those years. He has more infirmities than I do. But after that car wash day, I entered the Army. I went -</p>
<p>WW: What year was that?</p>
<p>MH: That was 1957. And I went to Missouri, to a military base there, where I was – I began my training, but then they shipped me to Ft. Lewis, Washington – state of Washington – where I spent 13 months. And I had a first sergeant who abused me terribly. I have no – this day, I don't understand why this man didn't like me. And if you know about the military, the punishment that they mete out is KP – kitchen police. So he would frequently put me on KP for some excuse. Which meant I'd have to get up at four o'clock in the morning, peel potatoes, and wash pots and pans. And you know – very frequently.</p>
<p>But we were in a special class – our unit – experimental unit. Testing equipment, testing men, to determine who got – who had the best – what region of the country the best soldiers came from. And the people who make best soldiers – and that was Midwest, south, and southeast. And so we went through a number of experimental things. I learned – we had to learn to ski, with a backpack, wearing 90 pounds, pulling like – two-men, three-men teams. Two pulling a sled and one guiding it – that had 250 pounds of equipment on it. Plus weapons. You had a tent, you know, supplies and different things. And we had to ski through – we went to – we left for three months and went through the mountains, and had to maneuver out there.</p>
<p>My enemy – Sergeant Vargas – I – one night – I mean, one morning, we start climbing in this mountain, on skis with the backpack and the sled and the weapons, and at midnight we got to the top. It was pitch black up there. And the first thing out of his mouth was “Hamlin, you got the first watch.” Now it's pitch black and you're on the mountain, and you could fall off and it would probably take you ten minutes to hit the ground. But I had the first watch – had to go around the perimeter. Plus the first night, I mean – we got there, there was – they had hired a hunter because there were bear tracks through the area. But he got me.</p>
<p>So when we spent that three months testing equipment, we were testing the equipment – both the motorized equipment and what we wore, and the weapons and so forth. Then we left there and came back and that was three months. Then we spent three months in the desert. And – which basically consisted of sitting out on top of a mountain. And – I don't know if you know the state of Washington – there's a desert called Yakima, in eastern Washington, near Spokane. And we were sitting in this – we'd sit down on this mountain for three months, in foxholes. You know, that heat. There's rattlesnakes. And they supposedly fired an atomic bomb in the area, in proximity to us, and when we came back from each one of these exercises, they interviewed us all individually. A psychologist from Columbia and somewhere else. They interviewed us and that was the end of that, fortunately after that. I got shipped to Korea, which took me away from Sergeant Vargas, and I excelled over there, and I became a sergeant. But Korea was kind of what made – what awakened me. You know, I began – we're over there, and Emmett Till happened, Little Rock, SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference], Montgomery. A lot of that happened. And our first night over there we had a racial fight. There were three of us and there was nine whites, most of them from the South: Louisiana and Oklahoma and so forth. And we were in a 12-man quonset hut divided into three parts. We were placed alphabetically. There were three blacks – me, Hightower, and Hawkins. Hawkins was from Benton Harbor, I forget where Hightower was from. So the first night there, we were – This is probably not what you wanted, right?</p>
<p>WW: Oh yeah, this is all good.</p>
<p>MH: First night there, we were – me, and Hawkins and Hightower were sitting in the middle room, which is where we were, and all of the whites are gathered in the room next to us. And they were talking, and we were talking, and we kept hearing the word “nigger” thrown around. So finally one of us – I guess it was me, “Man, you guys hear what I just heard?” Said, “Yeah, man, we heard it.” I said, “We got to put a stop to that.”</p>
<p>So the three of us marched over there. They were all sitting around, you know, on their bunks and chairs and so forth, and we say, "Hey man, you guys – we been sitting over here listening, hearing that word 'nigger' being thrown around. You're not going to be able to do that around us." And this big guy who was about six-two, about 230, Harlan, from New Orleans, said, “Well I don't know what I'm going to call you because that's all I've ever known.” And we said, “No, you ain't going to call – you're not going to use that word here.” So he said, “Well, maybe we better take this outside.” And they, Yeah, yeah!</p>
<p>So Hawkins, who was about six feet, about 170 pounds, said, “Well man, I'll fight you.” And so they decided that the two of them would go at it. Harlan weighing 240 pounds. [laughter] I'm worried to death about Harlan. So we go out there, they get on one side, and three of us on the other side, and Harlan stepped forward. And Hawkins stepped forward. And so Harlan lunged at him, and Hawkins hit him with a left hook and then hit him with the right and staggered him, knocked him back, and Harlan made a bull rush and Hawkins grabbed him in a headlock and rammed his head into a car – the grill – and he was bleeding all over the place. Said, “Hey, next time, we got to stop, this got to stop now.” So they stopped it and we went back and never had that incident again.</p>
<p>So, that – you know – but – and aside from that, see, I maintain that all Americans, since they're so warlike, they like wars – they ought to do two things – enlist, and number two, before they do they need to go to France, to Normandy, and see that graveyard, with ten thousand crosses in it. It's eerie. We have a son who lives in Paris and we were visiting him quite regularly. Now he comes here all the time. But we went – the first time we went, we went over and stood at the – out there amongst those crosses. There's ten thousand of them. Names on them – name unknown – and they go on and on; you can't see the end. And you can't see – and that way. If you stand on one side, you can't see. You stand here, you can't see the end. And it's the most eerie feeling. It's a very spiritual thing. So I think all these warmongering people need to, you know, put up or shut up.</p>
<p>But anyway, that is what – see, I was angry. This was the era of the black man. Angry black man. And when I came back – well, a couple other things. You could see, in Korea, the effect of that war. Which we didn't win – but we killed a whole lot of people. In North Korea, they destroyed every building that existed. People were living in caves. They were – I can – they drove – they fly a B-52 over a rice paddy, see a guy down there with an ox and a plow and drop one on him. Because a lot of times they come back – like right now, they go on bombing runs in the Middle East and they come back with their bombs. But there you see somebody down there, a peasant – so it kind of effected me, plus what was going on here. There was a lot of, lot of racial hostility building. George Wallace hadn't started, but he was on his way.</p>
<p>So when I came back I was — </p>
<p>WW: What year did you come back?</p>
<p>MH: In '60. In March of '60. And got a job – that's when I got the job at the <em>Detroit News</em>. I had U of M credits and I had military, so they hired me. I worked there ten years. Teamsters claim that I was one year short of a pension. I think they probably cheated me out of it. But that's water under the dam. But anyway, I worked there and I got married. Married an upper middle class girl from St. Louis, and it didn't work. You know, because I was beginning to move left, and she was from – she was a society girl, and her friends – they used to have parties all the time. We all – you know, and the party was usually at our place. I lived on Boston and Lawton, which is right over there near Central High School, where the National Guard was located.</p>
<p>But anyway, she was from St. Louis and her family – it was a Boston Episcopalian family her mother came from. And, you know, I was born in the low classes. We gave it a go but it didn't – it lasted about four years. And we got a divorce, and it was very crushing for two weeks, and then I became a counselor, ultimately. I always tell people who divorce, who are coming through the week, well you can grieve for two weeks, but – and the other party is going on to a better life for themselves. You better take care of number one! Two weeks. That's a good rule of thumb. If you ever decide to get divorced, you can grieve. I was sitting up in my house with a fifth of Jim Beam Red – scotch – a fifth of it – and then a pint of Martin BPO scotch. Listening to Ray Charles, Country and Western album, in which he had “Born to Lose” on there, and “I Can't Stop Loving You,” and I did that for two weeks. But then one day a light bulb went on. Up here, like a fool, she went and took everything out of the house while I was at work. I worked a double shift on Saturday. She got a van and took all that, took all the money, including money we had invested in a bank out in – a black bank in Los Angeles, that my brother-in-law was a vice president, and left me there.</p>
<p>I start – you know, I started having a good time. I started dating. Every single teacher in the school – my friend who went to U of M, who was derailed in his drive to be a doctor because his girlfriend got pregnant – more than likely tricked him – and so he had to switch and go into teaching. But anyway, she was his cousin. He moved in with me, because he had got divorced. He was teaching in this school, and he was introducing me to all these women.</p>
<p>WW: So he was working at Central High School, or —</p>
<p>MH: No, this was in Inkster.</p>
<p>WW: Oh, Inkster.</p>
<p>MH: Yeah, he worked at – he became principal – superintendent of schools, ultimately, in Inkster. But you know, I was just having a good time. Like a fool, I – with all the women – one of them I got pregnant. She was a teacher, and she was crazy. She would have killed me. So I had to leave, running. This is during the movement, because my politics involved me – had me around a lot of women. But I didn't cheat when I was married. But my politics were – these women were not prepared for this. They were into being successful, middle-class, blacks. And I was angry.</p>
<p>You know, that's what drove – that's what drove '67. That's what drove Black Power. That's what drove the movement. The urban black, you know – the working class black reached a point where he could not take it anymore. I told people many a time, then, and since then, that during that period I didn't care whether I lived or died, but I was going to live or die with some feeling of freedom. And you know – in my mind. And I understood oppression - our oppression. I understood our exploitation. I had not only seen it, I experienced it. And I saw the family, how they were abused, in the community, the neighborhood. You know, I was – I used to do income tax for the older people in the neighborhood. I used to help them negotiate with some of these crooked furniture companies, like I forget his name – one down in Wyandotte, I think it was called Muskins or something. Where – downriver were you?</p>
<p>WW: I'm from Lincoln Park.</p>
<p>MH: Oh, you're right around the corner! Yeah, yeah. We used to play you guys in football.</p>
<p>WW: You probably won. Really quick, before we get to 1967, what did you do at the <em>Detroit</em>—</p>
<p>MH: <em>News</em>?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah, <em>Detroit News</em>.</p>
<p>MH: I started off as a jumper, which was assisting the drivers. We'd take papers to stations and unload them, where the newsboys were, or we were the guy who drove around downtown and put papers in the – and shortly after we – after I got hired there, which was 1960, they bought the <em>Detroit Times</em>. And all of us had seniority over all these people from the <em>Detroit Times</em>.</p>
<p>So I got to be a driver, and I drove for a while. And I took over a station, over on Cass, the Cass corridor. And I ran that for a while. And then I started going back to school at Wayne State, so I went back to the truck driving job because that was more compatible with – I had the GI Bill, so I started going to Wayne, and that's when I got involved. I had gotten involved with Ken and John at the <em>Detroit News</em>. I would drive Ken to work – I mean, to law school, on my way to work. And he would join me later – you know, part time, when he'd come to work. Some time he'd ride with me when we delivered papers. And John was working there, and going to school, and together, you know, we engaged in – on the dock, in repartee with all – we dominated the docks with the kids – with all the other guys that were there. Tossing their intellect and their capacity – their analytical capacity. Ken was like a machine gun, if you heard him talk, he sounded like a machine gun. And John would bring it. They both were geniuses. It's a rare case, where they were both geniuses, and I was very privileged and honored to work with them. But they were good friends, you know.</p>
<p>John, who graduated from Cass at 17, was the one who introduced me to Marxist analysis, and I introduced Ken, and we studied together, and we had good times together, and we analyzed the society, you know, and grew angrier and angrier, and had to do something, which brings us to – well – the Civil Rights movement started. And first of all, I had already seen enough outrages while I was in the Army and overseas, at that - but what – we wanted to do something. John went down, attended Nashville, to see if he could participate in with SNCC [Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee] but he couldn't take those ass-whoopings, he wouldn't do it, so he came back. I didn't even go, and neither would Ken. We wouldn't even consider that, because Ken and I had been in the military – he was in the Air Force, I was in the Army, and John had not – he was too young, he wouldn't go, in general.</p>
<p>But anyway, we were angry. And we were, you know, by that time, in that period, there was – we had gone through a flowering of the art in the black – among the black artists. Cultural people, individuals. And there were books, key books that came out that affected us. James Baldwin's writing, or Ralph Ellison's <em>Invisible Man</em>. Richard Wright. Leroy Jones, etc. We were studying, we were rapping, we were talking. We were pretty profuse debaters. And we also realized we had to do something. So we started working with some people. We raised money and goods for people in the South who had been – like in Tennessee, there was a place called Fayetteville, I think, that had, where all the farmers had been kicked off the land. All the sharecroppers had been kicked off the land, and they set up a tent down there, called Tent City. So we worked with the Clagues and the Boggs and SNCC raised money and goods and shipped them down there to the people that lost their homes. All these things were making us further – right, by the way – at the time, in 1960 there was a <em>Time </em> magazine cover – I guess, something like the Man of the Year was the Angry Black Man, and they had a picture of a black guy with bandoleers, you know, across his chest, and a rifle. So this thing was building, these – it was building up to Watts, '67 Detroit, Newark, and so forth. And in, within us, something was going to explode one way or another. I mean, I had some very nefarious ideas at the time. But anyway, you know, our folks had endured humiliation and abuse and so on that, you know, there was rage within the young black man. The older people were prepared to keep going, you know, waiting – as Malcolm said, waiting patiently. But we begin — they begin to say we do now, matter of fact, in Detroit, in the early Sixties, there was a party founded by Clagues and the Boggs and the Henry Brothers called Freedom Now Party. John Watson was part of it. But you know, we emerged as a more militaristic approach.</p>
<p>WW: Who is “we”?</p>
<p>MH: The group that eventually came together to form DRUM [Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement] and the League, well, the Inner City Voice was the beginning.</p>
<p>WW: Okay.</p>
<p>MH: You know, we wanted a pound of flesh, because the humiliation – I mean, we had worn a uniform, we had been good citizens, and the police brutality – they think it's bad now, they should have been here in the Sixties, in Detroit, it was really bad. And other places too. And it's fundamentally the catalyst for all of these rebellions and riots in the city. It was the overreach of the police, and this is going to happen again, based on what's being done right now. The rage – there's a book called <em>Black Rage</em> that you ought to check out some time. I think it's by Grier and Price. [William Grier and Price Cobbs] Like two psychiatrists, two black psychiatrists. And you can get a feeling of the pain that we experienced. You know, people who had some intellectual capacity. Because if you understand the true nature of this country, you have to – you deal – you either become angry or you're in denial. Or you deny it.</p>
<p>And so if you bought the idea that it was – it was okay for U.S. to invade Vietnam, based on the false premise of the Gulf of Tonkin by LBJ [President Lyndon Johnson], that there was justification for going to kill millions of Vietnamese. Or if you are presented with the proposition that somebody as dumb as George Bush has the right to order shock and awe and the killing of millions of Muslims – and still killing them, still going on – if you believe that that is right and just – or as they say in the church, mete and just – then you're in denial. And that's where we are. It's not a question of – you know, I don't feel good with that. I don't wake up every morning feeling good about shock and awe, because you know that they – these fools – well, or if you think it was all right, it was a great thing that we dropped the atomic bombs on Japan – [laughter] you got a different kind of thinking. But that's the way we are. And so we go along, with things. I mean, if you're smart, you're strong, and sometime if you're without morals, you can succeed. Look at Donald Trump. You know, you could – you could fly high. Whenever I had a political – a polemic against somebody, I'd quote Cyrano – he says, “he flew high and fell back again.” [laughter]</p>
<p>WW: Going into 1967, did you feel that this rage was also felt outside your core group of colleagues?</p>
<p>MH: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Did you feel that this rage was across the city? Across the nation?</p>
<p>MH: Across the nation. As Bill Wilderman, but you see there's a lot of things that came together. There's the war experience, and if you study history, every time something cataclysmic happens, the outcomes are usually different. For example, World War II ended colonialism in the form that it was, where you had these superpowers dominating colonies, going way back to World War I and Two, where they divided up the colonies between the British Empire, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Italians, the French, et cetera. They divided, you know, and Britain had most of Africa. Had control of China. French had Vietnam, who defeated them, actually, on the battlefield. But the fact of World War II – One and Two – where they were fighting over the issue of who was going to control those colonies, get the resources and the market – weakened those countries. And the thing about it is that the U.S. came out as number one, along with Russia.</p>
<p>So all of a sudden, England and – which had been the dinosaur, the giant on the world stage – had to begin falling back. And then after World War II, Mao was able to free China. The Soviet Union had been invaded a number of times by several countries, including the U.S., three times, they invaded the Soviet Union after 1917, but they didn't win. It's such a big country, it's complex, the temperature is — it makes it difficult and the mountains make it difficult to fight there. So those – for a reason the Soviet Union by a lot of countries, after the revolution in Russia all failed. So, it gave rise, after World War I and World War II, gave rise to the independence movement. And we used to quote the slogans, you know, like: The people want revolution. “Countries want independence, the people want revolution.” I forget what the other parts of it were. And that happened.</p>
<p>Like I said, Vietnam defeated the French and drove them out. Mao led the Chinese in '49. Imagine a country that big being controlled by British – by British governors. And the rationalization for it was they were civilizing these – bringing them to God. You know, South Africa ultimately brought down in the aftermath of a breakup of colonialism. The Africans begin to fight. Are you running out of battery?</p>
<p>WW: Just double-checking.</p>
<p>MH: Okay. If you want to speed up, we can —</p>
<p>WW: Let's get to 1967, that week. Where were – where did you first hear about what was going on? What did you first see?</p>
<p>MH: I was coming from my mother's house, about ten o'clock in the morning. And – on Fourth – coming up Fourth Street. I lived on Boston and Lawton at the time. And I – like I told you — I was talking to somebody, anyway – I first begin to see – I didn't have a radio on, so I begin to see a lot of frantic activity in terms of people driving. And as I came forward, I begin to see smoke and I knew something was wrong. I turned the radio on to WWJ and they were talking about it. And so I knew – this had happened before in these other cities. I knew the nature of it, and I knew that there were certain people that were going to be under scrutiny during this time, amongst who included me.</p>
<p>So I figured that I had to find a scurrilous way of getting home from Fourth Street all the way down to Linwood and Boston. And so I – since I drove a truck throughout the city – throughout the whole region – I'd done this for ten years – I knew all the ways to get around. So I started cutting through streets so I didn't go on main roads that were blocked. And finally I made it home. Well, when the National Guard came in, which was at Central High School, which was about a quarter mile from my house – I mean, my apartment – all of a sudden, I'm at home, shades pulled, but keeping an eye out – and across the – Boston has an island in the middle there – and out there, sitting in the island, the berm, was the jeep with a machine gun pointed at my apartment. And so I didn't know – I mean, I knew what was happening – so I stayed, and I went down in the basement, I called different people. Called General and he was in the same kind of situation. And they stayed there for that day and night, so I was pinned down during that time.</p>
<p>I couldn't go anywhere, because they were all – the National Guard was right there. In the midst of our area. We were occupied. And General lived on Gladstone, I lived on Boston so we weren't that far from each other. And I knew for sure that he was going to be one of the ones that was being watched, and I lived close to the Algiers Hotel, so, you know, there was a lot of action in our area. I was anticipating it. I knew there were people getting fed up, and I knew it was going to happen eventually. I didn't know what – you know, it was going to be – you know, it's always a thing letting off steam, but it also destroys the community. It's destructive to the community. And – lives were lost. You know, a lot of people were killed.</p>
<p>WW: Were you afraid of being arrested, as General Baker was?</p>
<p>MH: You know I was kind of fatalistic. I – you know, I could think – I know it's hard for you to realize this, but – I could think that my life – I mean there are some things better than living that way, living in fear, living, you know, afraid and especially out of the Army. A man – [laughter] the military experience is really, really educational. I mean, they – they can order you in a minute to kill somebody, or you can get killed, and some other guy, your equivalent on the other side, opens fire on you, kills you. So I – I've never been afraid of death. But what's happened to me – only thing that kept me from doing a monumental destructive thing was that I thought I'd found a way that I could make a difference. And that was through politics, Marxist politics. That's through organizing. John and I believed that we could start something. John had been involved in a lot of start-ups, but they did not have the maturity, in my mind — this is my belief – to keep it together. They were always vulnerable to an attack, for example. One of the key people who was part of the group – you know, there was group loyalty – but every time this, they would form an organization, basically based around Wayne State, there was this black woman who's part of the group, who would raise the issue that John Williams had a white wife, so they could not keep going with this organization as long as John Williams was in it. So they break up. [laughter]</p>
<p>WW: Before we get into your political activities afterwards, what would you consider – what term best describes, for you, what happened in 1967 in Detroit? Would you consider it a rebellion, or a riot, because you talked about that it ultimately failed.</p>
<p>MH: It was clearly a rebellion. It was rebellion against oppression and exploitation, but more so against – it was a police state, you know, and that's what happened in police states. Looks like the way things are happening now between cops and blacks, we might be headed toward that kind of – I mean, I felt – I knew I was in a police state, you know, growing up in Ecorse. The police used to mess with us, you know, used to try to provoke us and things. Plus they was raiding peoples' houses, that kind of thing. So there was rage and rebellion, in my mind. There were – obviously there were elements who rioted. But it was an expression of that rage, and they – and it was a fight. It was demand for change. Change or die. And I understand that, I mean, you can get to that place. It's very dangerous, what's going on now. Trump is going to get what he's asking for if he keeps going on with stuff, because I – you know, I know some Muslims, and they're not going to, you know – they're not going to let folks mess over with them. I know a number of Muslim men in the community down here, and like – that crazy preacher? Was going to burn the Quran? He best not do that. [laughter]</p>
<p>WW: End of part one.</p>
<br /><br /><br />PART TWO:<br /><br />
<p>WW: This is William Winkel. This is part two of my interview with Mike Hamlin. How did the events of 1967 impact your political activities?</p>
<p>MH: Well, prior to 1967, we had, John Watson and I, had begun to discuss and build – go through the process of starting a newspaper, based on a theoretical concept. And so what it meant was, that we had to get the money, and we had to get training. So John, who was a genius, who could sit down with a very complex machine, take it apart, and put it right back together, approached Peter Werbe, who was publishing the <em>Fifth Estate</em>, and asked him to show him how to produce a newspaper. And Peter showed him how to do it, and what he needed in terms of equipment. </p>
<p>I borrowed money from the Communications Workers Credit Union to buy the machine – it's called a justifier, which is, you know, sets type. I mean, which is what you type, you know, it justifies the copy. And we rented a place over on Warren and right behind St. Paul's Church. And we started a newspaper called <em>Inner City Voice</em>. And it was not difficult to attract people. The first thing that happened, though, we published – we published a first edition, and we had a lot of nationalists – what do you call it – cultural nationalists. Poets, artists, dancers, actors, who hung around. We had rented a house that the newspaper was housed in and some students – high school students – and they would help. For example, like there was an artist, and I would give him an idea, and he would make a cartoon. Very sarcastic, more than likely attacking Uncle Toms. And we had poetry – poets, and we published their poetry. But after the first edition, you know, John and I did most of the work. John did most of the typing, I did a lot of the writing, in fact the first article – front page articles – one on the migrant farm workers down in the Monroe area where they were raising cucumbers and tomatoes and stuff like lettuce. And that was the first front page headline. And you know, we, you know, published something by Ho Chi Minh and by Che Guevara. Well, after we produced it, and started distributing it, the artists told us that, “Well listen, fellas, you can't have nothing but black writers in this newspaper. We can't have Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, et cetera.” We said, well, you know – [laughter], you know, that's bullshit, we're not going for that. Well, we had a meeting to decide, well, you know, we know who owns this place and bought this stuff, and after they left I said, “John, John, what are we going to do?” He said, “Well, I'm going to go get General and he'll chase them away.” So [phone rings in background] the next day, the next time, I mean the next day that I came in the office – they were gone, and General was there. And he and I bonded immediately, and he began to work on – you know, like me and John, on the paper. And John could work all night, because he couldn't sleep anyway. You know, he would – he'd get up in the morning, smoke a joint, drink wine throughout the day, ten o'clock, around ten o'clock, he'd start drinking hard liquor. And by three, he may take a pill. But, you know, he worked – he wouldn't do it by himself. I had to stay there with him.</p>
<p>So, now, interestingly, before we got to the first edition, we were organizing, and we thought we would set up a fund-raiser. Now this is after '67 – this was in '67. The rebellion happened in July. In September, we – I – see, the cry for black power had activated us, had caused us – we joined the movement, you know, in a sense. And we – it seemed like something we had been waiting for. The idea of self-defense. And so I begin a correspondence with Jim Foreman, and I asked him if we could get Rap Brown – this is right after '67 – to come to Detroit and speak. And he was a fiery orator who was going around saying, “If Detroit don't come around, we're going to burn Detroit down.” And he was delivering that message all over the country. So Foreman said yeah. They came. Rap came with another guy, and we had him at there was an abandoned theater - I don't know if it was abandoned or what – over on Dexter. But we held a rally there, and it was an overflow crowd. So after he spoke, and they took up a substantial collection, we had to go – took him up on the roof and he, with a megaphone he spoke to the crowd down there on the – standing around out there. And all of a sudden some reporters started coming in. “Here come the reporters! The reporters are our enemy!” And he – the mob started chasing them. [laughter] Chasing them down Dexter. Man, were they fleeing! It was a very inflammatory thing.</p>
<p>And that was before the first edition. Shortly after that, we published the first edition, and it drew more and more people, especially young people, to the newspaper. Because it was hard-hitting, didn't pull any punches, was extreme, but it – you know, spoke the truth. And the people – things people wanted to say, and had not said.</p>
<p>WW: Were you a member of DRUM in 1968?</p>
<p>MH: Yep. I was a founding member. Yeah. General had been fired from Chrysler and he – one of the guys who was out there – would come by to visit General and tell him about the outrages going on in the plant, and how black workers were treated differently, and you know, how there was, you know, public abuse. Now, remember, a lot of these workers had come from the South, and they would tend to be deferential to whites. But these were young workers, this was a new generation. But the Kennedy economic program had brought more into the plants, and so they were talking, you know, I think once a week, Ron would come by there – Ron March – and so soon, I started joining. And Ron and General pulled together, I think there were nine of them, and we would interview them. I interviewed them separately and write down the incidents that had taken place at a plant, and put it in the paper.</p>
<p>And then we would distribute the paper at Dodge Main and into the store. But we started a newsletter for DRUM, and it was hard-hitting and you know, spoke to what was going on in the plant, and it had – you know, newsletter is even easier than a newspaper to do. It had enormous impact; it began to rouse these young workers. And you know, it was attacking not only the company but the union too. And you know, and really hitting the union hard, and they felt it. But we – you know – we were young, we were angry, and so neither union nor the company wanted to mess with us. Plus we had about thirty lawyers supporting us. We had interesting relationship with the young lawyers. A lot of young lawyers came here, to neighborhood legal services, and I did the orientation for them when they came to town. I oriented them to Detroit, to the community. And Ken, you know, met a lot of them, so his – he and Justin's work influenced them. So when we, for example, struck Dodge Main, we had thirty lawyers willing to take depositions, to do whatever needed to be done. It was a different time, you know. We weren't – the blacks were not the only people who were angry and motivated. A lot of, as you know, a lot of young professionals came here to work with us. But anyway, it took – the newsletter took off like wildfire and then we started doing them in other plants. At Eldon Plant, you know, at Cadillac, Ford. You know, we had some outrageous stories. The woman that Chrysler forced to come back to work in a wheelchair and they told her she had better come back to work. She said, “I'm on sick leave; I'm in a wheelchair.” “So we'll meet you at the gate, somebody will push you in.” So they did that. And I think – I'm not sure, but – I don't know whether she died or not. I think she might have. But there were outrages.</p>
<p>So anyway, it attracted more and more, and then I got involved with these students. We had so many kids in these high schools, and they had their own issues, and helped them get organized. I was their advisor, and helped them get organized, and they began to – they had already struck, on their own, at Northern High School. Chuck Cole. And so we – we incorporated them and gave them the support – a place to meet, newsletters, they did a newsletter, the group was called the Black United Front – the Black Student United Front. But it was a good time for organizing.</p>
<p>WW: Can you talk about the transformation of DRUM into the League of Revolutionary Black Workers?</p>
<p>MH: Well, we had all these components that developed. There was the newspaper, there were the read – we printed, published pamphlets and books – there was – we were involved with the fight over the decentralization of schools with Coleman Young. We had the Black Student United Front. We had groups at Chrysler Eldon, Dodge Main, we had a group at Ford, and I personally was involved in helping organize the welfare workers organization. Welfare workers were not in a union, and we formed the welfare workers organization. They eventually ended up in AFSCME [American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees] but we got them organized. I personally was involved in organizing the secretaries at Wayne State. And we did a lot of that kind of stuff. Helped unions – groups trying to get organized. We were involved in an attempt to organize Ford Hospital, but it failed. It failed every time, because the ethnic makeup over there. Filipinos, I'm told, Filipinos are not interested in unions. Have no history. I guess Ford terrorizes them.</p>
<p>But you know, we had all these components – publishing, film-making. And so we had to find a way to link them together. And we did. That was the League, and we had a central staff and an executive committee. And we had great success. But you know, ideology – you see, people don't talk about American ideology, or even know what it is – but it's capitalism, which is individualism. Hm?</p>
<p>WW: That'll pick up on the recording.</p>
<p>MH: What will, that noise? Oh, okay. You know, and – it's a funny phenomenon, understanding – see, in my view, America is a fraud. And if you do understand it, and – you have two choices. One, you try to expose it and fight it, or two, you go into denial. And so what happens is that there's a constant striving for, you know, for success, for glory, for power, in the individual. And you know, you can be engaged in a great cause, and people might end up looking at you as a hero, or as some powerful figure, and that can easily go to your head. [laughter]</p>
<p>Or if, for example, you're part of the effort, and you don't feel that you're getting the glory that the other people are. You know, we tried to downplay individual plaudits. In fact, we understood that enough in the beginning to state that. But at a certain point, I mean, people want to enjoy their successes. You know, you haven't accomplished a whole lot but, you know, people think you – I mean, people appreciate what you've done. So that's the problem with putting together an organization like the League. It was undeveloped politically, and so, people come in, didn't take the educational process serious – we had an education unit – they thought the class – some of them thought the classes were boring. They wanted action. </p>
<p>So, you know, that was the beginning of the League. We expanded as a result of our successes. Foreman came here because he had – SNCC had shut down, based on the Black Power – the students had got tired of taking whippings. And he had gone out, and couldn't make it with the Panthers. And he opted to come here. Some people had told me in advance, you know, Foreman is the kind of guy who wants to control or destroy. </p>
<p>Well so he came here and lived with us for a year and a half. That didn't work too well. But a part of it – you know, I don't want to blow my horn, but one of the roles I played was keeping it together. Because I had some very powerful egos around me. And brilliant people – John Watson, Kenny Cockrel, General – General had humility. You know, he never lost his focus. You know, John Williams, Luke Trip, these were all smart folks. And they – like I said, they kind of understood what I was talking to you about, in these kind of organizations. But anyway, we put it together and immediately there was clashes of egos. There were all kind – you remember, we had relationships – I had helped organize the Motor City Labor League. I asked these young and these whites to come together, and overcome some of their differences in forming this organization. And because it could do – I could see a lot of potential for it. And they agreed. You know, I think I had about six or seven of them there, and people who had influence and had practice, were good people and that took off, and, you know, we could work together. They could give us support, you know, we – because I didn't want us to be isolated. We were having some internal shenanigans that caused me to worry – that trouble – you know – we were playing dangerous – with some dangerous things – some people were – and becoming irresponsible. And so, I organized the Motor City Labor League, I organized an organization called the Alliance, which was a group of religious figures – men and women – good people. And you know, we got involved with the Black Workers Congress, which was an attempt to force the churches to face their history – their history of exploitation, and role in slavery, and Jim Crow, and all of the other evils of the country – and they responded – a lot of them.</p>
<p>WW: And that's when the Black Manifesto was written?</p>
<p>MH: Mm hm. And that was the basis. We issued it – we would walk in the church during the service, and pass them out, and read them. And that was happening all across the country. We did it in about nine churches in this area, including one black church. Of course the pastor was in on it, and part of it. But that's where the BWC came about, and you know, we were getting – we had all this growth, but it – the consciousness and the understanding did not keep up with the development. So if I would say – if you would ask me, what brought about the demise of the League and the BWC - and I do believe there have been some false narratives put out – but it had to do with two things.</p>
<p>People's ideological weaknesses that made them want – first of all, they argued for being part of leadership - there's a problem with that. The problem is that there are secrets that the organization has that you cannot share with everybody. So they – they're offended you're withholding information from them. But rationally – now they should tell you, that in an atmosphere like that, the police is not far away, that's number one. But people wanted to be part of the decision making process, and wanted to know everything that was going on. This is a dangerous game. Okay, the other thing about it – that's called relative democracy, by the way. The other thing about it was that there's a class thing involved. Because Americans don't understand a class analysis. Each class has certain characteristics. There's the upper class, capitalist class, bourgeoisie, whatever you want to call them. There's the middle class, which has, I would say, three strata. The upper [middle] class, the middle class, and the lower middle class. And the poor, and in an agricultural society there would be peasants, farmers, individual farmers. </p>
<p>And then there's what Marxists called “de-classed” elements. And that would be – well, he's much harsher than – he talks about “scum of the earth.” But you talk about – you know, itinerant people who don't have employment – perhaps can't have employment – in a country like this, if you have a handicap, you know, homeless, you're born into terrible circumstances, you get abused as a child – that's a difficult thing for people. </p>
<p>And those – anyway – what that's called is “de-classed” folks. Now, what does that mean, concretely? Well, I tried my best to establish a moral standard within the organization, because we were attracting people's kids – people's teenage kids – including teenage girls, on the one hand. On the other hand, we were attracting this “de-classed” group that I was talking about. In some cases, thugs, in some cases, maybe people who were a little mentally unstable, where it's not apparent – thugs. Not — we didn't knowingly have any addicts, but I'm sure we had drunks. And they engage in reckless behavior as a result.</p>
<p>One teenager was killed at a high school dance. Two – one sixteen year old girl, who was a very high honor student – may have been tops in her class – got pregnant by – you know, a guy with very little going for him. Three, there were a couple of rapes that took place in the office. So those were things that brought about the disintegration of our organization. Now the particular splits – the split with General was over those issues. The split with Ken was they wanted to go into electoral politics and we always had a policy against that. But that's where [unintelligible]. It – it's a difficult thing to do, to hold something like that together. You know, these guys – if I hadn't have been in between all these guys, they would never have hung together that long. You know, their egos were too big. And if we approached it differently, they wouldn't have – that would have come to the fore. </p>
<p>WW: So after – and John Watson left the league with you?</p>
<p>MH: Yeah. John just walked away because he told me – I only saw him once after that – he told me that the FBI had told him that he better get out of town. You know, before it was too late, or something to that effect. So he disappeared. And as I recall – as I understand it – he went to work at IBM, out in Pontiac or somewhere. Remember, I told you, he was a genius, so he was very – one of the very earliest understanding computers.</p>
<p>WW: And after you left the League, what did you – did you continue your activism in the early Seventies?</p>
<p>MH: No. What I told the group that left with me – we had meetings, I said look guys, the movement has come to an end. You don't want to go where these other guys are going. Because they were going into rote Marxism and you know, really heavy authoritarian – what you need to do, and what I'm going to do, is find something where I can help people and I can feel like I'm helping mankind. Even if I have to do it one at a time. And from then, I went on to a glorious career. I have awards. I have all kind of plaques and rewards from UAW [United Auto Workers]. I'm a retired member – honorary retired member of two UAW locals. Local 600 sponsored my retirement. I continue to have a relationship – a great relationship with UAW – and this is after we had gone through a period where we shouted at UAW meetings, “You ain't white,” but I had – I became – what I did was I went back to school, got a masters in social work. Became a clinical social worker. Worked with troubled workers at Ford, GM, and Chrysler, but mainly with Ford. I probably had face-to-face meetings with 10,000 auto workers, face-to-face over a sixteen-year period, where my job was to diagnose them and find a program that would rehab them, and go back to work. The company had accepted the idea that it's better to rehab a good worker who has, you know, succumbed to alcohol or drugs – than to hire somebody off the street. And there is really a generational work ethic difference, and I see it very clearly. [laughter] </p>
<p>I had a glorious job, so did all of the people who worked with me. They loved it. I became the manager of this group of clinicians who served the workers, mostly in this region, but I did work out of state – I became a crisis manager – the shootings at Ford, I managed – I had the workers, to get them back to stability after the shooting. The one at Wixom, the same thing. There were others. Ford Sheldon Road. Even at some 7/11s and banks. So I had a glorious career. I feel good about it. About a month ago I had – on the 17 of October I had my 80<sup>th</sup> birthday. There were 112 people there, and they were all the people that I had been involved with – plus my family – in the movement. Black and white. Labor, lawyers, doctors, you know, all the progressive – not all of them – but all of the progressives that were close to and available to me. And we had a great time. We had it at this restaurant down on Jefferson – off of Jefferson – called They Say. We had a good time. </p>
<p>I said at that time, that it was time for us to have a collective hug of appreciation for what we all had done together. And that – I tried to get them to stay off of my birthday, and focus on us – what we had come through because a lot of people, you know, when they got involved in the movement, their parents were very much opposed to it. Family – angry, isolated sometimes, for a while. Paid the price. We all paid the price. Some people went to jail. But we did good, you know. I'm very proud of the two watches I got from Local 900, which is the Wayne Assembly, the big plant, and Local 723, which was [my most happy ?] plant, and 600 – which I'm like a member there. So it's been a glorious life.</p>
<p>WW: Just a couple wrap-up questions. How do you feel '67 affects the metro Detroit community? Do you think it still does?</p>
<p>MH: Hm mm. Oh yeah. First of all blacks have always been – there's a couple historians – what's your discipline, by the way?</p>
<p>WW: History.</p>
<p>MH: Okay. —Named J.A. Rogers – J.A. Rogers and James Baldwin – who's not a historian but he does cover history – who says that blacks are a despised people. And that's true, because the – if you know – since you know the history of this country – when they found it, with all these resources, and all this land – the ideal land for raising cotton – they needed a labor source. Couldn't make the Indians do it – eventually committed genocide on the Indian. They had – they had emptied all the prisons in Europe to populate here and Australia. And so when they found the African, they found what they needed, and what they wanted. And so as they began commerce, selling cotton to the world market, other countries had ended slavery, including Britain, and they would say to the Americans, “How in the world are you – why do you treat these slaves so bad? Nobody in history has ever treated slaves like you do.” They said, “Well these slaves are not human. We think they're somewhere between a man and an ape.” And from 1850 – I mean from 1800 to 1850, leading researchers, led by the great Samuel Morton of Harvard, were trying to prove this hypothesis. Are you familiar with it? They collected these skulls – a thousand skulls – a thousand black skulls, a thousand ape skulls, and a thousand white skulls – and tried to prove the size of the black brain was in between the two. And Morton gave up, and said it's not true. He was an honest researcher. The South refused to accept that. They continued to propound that idea and still do. So I forget what the original question was.</p>
<p>WW: How do you believe – if you do – how does 1967 continue to affect the metro Detroit area?</p>
<p>MH: Okay. So what happened in this area was – the rage, which you see now among white males – because, and remember – we all came from the South. Guess what? There were a lot of whites who came from the South. We brought out culture with us. Guess what? They brought their culture with them. So there are a lot of people with a Southern background in this area. And one of the things that they do, they have great contempt and hatred for us. And it's not just them. If you know – you're a historian. Brooks Patterson, for example, has been – you know, Coleman Young like to drove him crazy. He hated Coleman Young, and he hated – and in fact, it's in writing, where he said he don't give a damn about Detroit – he hopes it burns down. It's in this book by this Israeli called Zeb Shepherds or something like that.</p>
<p>And he's – they also have a quote from <em>Rolling Stone</em>, from Brooks, and interview with him, where he lets Detroit have it. And so the movement to the suburbs had begun before '67. Part of it was they're making more money, wanted more space. But part of it was to separate. And there are areas like Macomb County where a lot of racists – Patterson, I was saying – that they're also, you know the history of the Irish in this country, and how they were treated when they first came. It's also true of Poles – I have a lot of friends who are Polish, including one that I see all the time downstairs, my buddy – we talk – because I used to work with him at the <em>Detroit News</em>. So they have to separate themselves, so there's been a lot of hostility between the blacks and Irish, and to a degree, with Poles. And it comes from both sides.</p>
<p>So Detroit – that escalated the flight. And I'll let you in on a little phenomenon. I was just telling my Polish friend the other day, because he brought up his – I asked him if he was proud of his Polish heritage, he said yes, and he's one of – you know – I worked with guys at the <em>Detroit News</em> – three brothers, two of them changed their name, and the other one kept the name, and the one who kept the name, the father disinherited the others and gave him everything– but anyway, so what you do is – you want to join the majority culture. So for example, the white worker was turning against the slave who should have been his ally, because he was made white, and therefore was not on a level with these animals, with these sub-humans. </p>
<p>So anyway, what happened was '67 accelerated the flight, and intensified the hostilities, and it not only just created hostility that's there, politicians continue to use it and they're beginning to escalate it at this point. Notice Charleston, South Carolina. Can you imagine something like that? That's where the nine people got killed in the church, in a Bible study. And the man – 20-year-old man who was doing it, was trying to bring about a race war. So anyway, '67 accelerated white flight and widened the gap between the races in this area. Even though the young people have not bought into that, you know, and come back – oh, the thing I was going to tell you about – funny thing about that period – I worked for an organization called Geriatric Screening for five years.</p>
<p>WW: Who?</p>
<p>MH: Geriatric Screening. And what our role was, we had to go into these elderly people's homes who had dementia or Alzheimer's and were slipping – like, for example, these women, old Polish women – all kind of ethnic women – living on the east side. Their kids move away to Macomb County or somewhere, left mama there. Dad's dead, or he's working in the plant – and these elderly ladies are in those houses and they begin to deteriorate. And they drive out to Eastland, and then they don't know how to get back home. Eastland police would pick them up and call us to come see them. I'd go out and see them, get the family together, we'd work out a plan to get them into an assisted living facility of good quality. But there's a bunch of them on the east side, because the kids had just walked away. I don't think they understood what they were doing to mama, because, like I said – the women outlive the men.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you very much for sitting down with me today. I greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>MH: I appreciate your – what do you call it – willingness to listen.</p> **
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Mike Hamlin
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Detroit
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ctwoV222AiI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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Mike Hamlin, December 22nd, 2015
Description
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In this interview, Hamlin discusses growing up in Mississippi, his time at the University of Michigan and in the military, and his role as an organizer with the Inner City Voice and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
</p>
<b>***NOTE: This interview contains profanity and/or explicit language</b>
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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05/23/2016
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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WAV
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en-US
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Black Nationalism
Civil Rights Movement
Community Activists
Detroit Police Department
Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement
Ecorse
League of Revolutionary Black Workers
Michigan National Guard
Unions
University of Michigan
Wayne State University
White Flight
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http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/9688279e943cc73afec5adcb8b0c8296.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
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Detroit Historical Society
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
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My name is Sandy Livnat (formally Shmuel Livnat) and I was born in Detroit on December 4, 1948. <br /><strong><br />Describe the neighborhood(s) you lived in. Socioeconomic and/or racial and ethnic demographics as well:<br /></strong> <br />At the time of the riots, my family lived in Southfield, MI, where we had moved in 1964, I grew up in several middle class/upper middle class neighborhoods in Detroit. From birth till 1952 we lived on Burlingame off of Dexter. From 1952-1959 we lived at 3359 Leslie just off of Dexter (first house my parents bought). From 1959-1964 we lived at 17586 Wisconsin in the 6 Mile/Wyoming area. There our next door neighbor happened to be Jerry Cavanagh who became Detroit’s mayor as of 1962. When we moved out of the city in 1964, I was 15 years old and in high school (11th grade). When we moved in to the above two Detroit neighborhoods, they were almost exclusively white and predominantly Jewish. My first elementary school McCulloch (where I spent K-4th grade) was comprised primarily of Jewish children though there were always several black kids in my class. My 2nd elementary school, Bagley (where I spent grades 5-6) was predominantly Jewish children and was less integrated than McCulloch. I seem to recall that in my 5th and 6th grade class, we had 3 non-Jewish students, one of whom was black. I attended Post Junior High School for grades 7-9 which, because of its drawing from (at least) 3 elementary schools, had a larger number of non-Jewish as well as black students. I began high school (half of 10th grade only) at Cass Tech, a magnet school downtown which was highly integrated, although my class (in the Science and Arts Magnet program) was highly predominantly white. I have a distinct memory of one black classmate at Cass Tech, the daughter of city councilman William Patrick. I remember her as being whip-smart, outspoken and rather sarcastic, and I felt respect and fondness for her! Within 2-3 years of our moves into the above two Detroit neighborhoods, black families began moving in. I have no personal recollections of any serious racial disharmony. I do recall a bit of tension between white and black students at Post Junior High – though these mainly surfaced in Gym class when competitive sports and physical contact were involved. What I do remember is that the “for sale” signs began appearing on the lawns of Jewish homes once the influx of black families was in progress. While my parents were not among those who rushed to move out in response to these demographic changes, I do recall hearing talk at home that property values would fall as more black families populated the neighborhood. Based on their personal experiences with such loss in value, my parents in fact counseled me against the purchase of my first home (in suburban Seattle, WA. which we knew would be for a short period). It turns out that not making that purchase would have been a big mistake financially, as the property value almost doubled in one year! <br /><strong><br />What do you remember about Detroit in the early and mid 1960's?<br /></strong> <br />My memories of Detroit in during that period were positive and happy. Not being familiar with places like La Jolla Beach in California, I thought Detroit was a “nice place” to live. In hindsight, Detroit was a perfectly good place to grow up. As a kid, I didn’t have the same feelings towards the long and difficult winters as I do as an adult. My parents (along with maternal grandparents who lived with us) were survivors of the Holocaust who immigrated to Detroit in early 1947, coming directly from a displaced persons camp in Austria because my grandfather had an older sister who had settled in Detroit many years earlier, and such displaced persons needed a sponsor in the U.S. at that time. My grandfather and parents opened a tailor shop in Detroit which eventually grew to two stores and ended up in the suburbs. I recall as a youngster being proud of being a Detroiter, in large part due to the success and power of the auto industry (more so than the status of the Tigers and Lions in sports standings – which were not terribly strong in that period). I recall joking with schoolmates that Detroit would be a major target of the Soviet Union were a nuclear war to break out, given the presence of so many manufacturing facilities that produced military vehicles, airplane engines, etc. When considering and discussing racial problems around the country, as a kid I distinctly recall having the (mis)impression that racially, all was well in Detroit, in particular because the auto industry and its related industries provided “full” employment for black people. Personally, my family was excited about the fact that our next door neighbor, a young attorney of no particular note, Jerry Cavanagh, ran for mayor in 1961, survived the primaries in 2nd place, and then defeated the sitting mayor in the general election. <br /><strong>Where were you living +what was your occupation in July 1967?</strong> <br />As noted, we were living in Southfield, about 1 mile outside the city limits. I was a college student at the University of Michigan between my freshman and sophomore years. I had attended summer courses in Ann Arbor the first part of the summer, and, in July, I was working as a camp counselor at a sleep-away camp in upper Oakland Country. How did you first hear about the unrest that became the riots/rebellion/uprising? I recall hearing radio reports (from camp, where we had no access to TV) about a police raid at a “blind pig” at the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount and the surprising result that this led to unrest and protests in the surrounding neighborhood which was predominantly, if not completely, black. I was unfamiliar with the term “blind pig” at that time and found it interesting. What was very interesting to me personally was the fact that this was a mere few blocks from the place my parents had lived when they first arrived in the United States (i.e., it had been a “Jewish neighborhood” in the 1940’s.) Consequently, as I was aware, a number of store owners in that neighborhood were Jews, as were a fair number of landlords who owned rental properties there. Our family knew some of them personally.<br /> <br /><strong>How did your family and friends react upon hearing this news?<br /></strong><br />I recall primarily feeling “disappointment” that my sense of the tranquility as to race relations in Detroit was so wrong, particularly after the L.A. Watts riots in ‘65 at which time many of us thought, “this would never happen in Detroit.” I seem to recall my parents being both angry and fearful, and it brought out various anti-black sentiments that they held. I recall fearing for those business and rental property owners whom we knew when looting and burning in the “12th Street area began and spread. I had a day off from camp during that week and was shocked by the sights I now saw on TV. My fear became more widespread, for everyone who lived in the affected areas as well as the police and National Guard troops that were brought in. I also recall feeling very sorry for Mayor Cavanagh, our acquaintance and former neighbor, that this happened on his watch and that he had to face a situation for which he (and others like him) were certainly ill-prepared. I also felt bad in the coming years that this effectively damaged his ability to run successfully for higher political office, both governor and U.S. senator. <br /><strong><br />Historians often describe this events as a “riot”, what term would you use to describe this time?<br /></strong> <br />I have no disagreement with the use of that term to describe what went on. It certainly fit my view of what a “riot” was. <br /><strong><br />Any particular moments or memories that stand out from that summer?<br /></strong> <br />My parents owned a clothing store/tailor shop in Oak Park, at 9 Mile and Coolidge. While there was obviously no geographical nexus between that location and the location of the riots, the fear of destructive activity hit us when we could see smoke rising in the distance from the area which known as “Royal Oak Township”, located in Oakland County, just north of 8 Mile Road and west of Meyers Rd, one mile west of Schaefer/Coolidge, namely, rather close to our store. We understood (correctly or not) that area to be populated by blacks and to be somewhat impoverished. I recall that these concerns of riot-like activity there were confirmed by news reports of some fires. That triggered a flurry of activity on the part of my family, at which time I (taking an extra day off from camp) and my brothers, helped board up the front windows of our store, and transport the more expensive items of clothing from the store to our house several miles west (in Southfield, near 9 mile and Evergreen Rd.). This activity occupied the better part of a day. On the following day, I returned to camp, “way far away”. It turned out that nothing happened in the area of our store. As the rioting in the city waned and ended, the clothing items were returned to the store, the windows were unboarded, and life went on as usual. <br /><strong><br />How did these events impact the rest of your life?<br /></strong> <br />These events clearly disabused me of any incorrect notions that race relations in Detroit were good or even intact, certainly not better than anywhere else. I left the U.S. and lived in Israel from 1968-1976, and the whole issue of U.S. race relations became much less salient to me than the immediate issues of safety and security in Israel, where I witnessed from various distances several terrorist bomb explosions and lived through the 1973 war (albeit not on the “front”, though in Israel, the front was not far away, and I lost a brother-in-law and several friends in that war.) So during those years, I admittedly did not pay particular attention to race issues in Detroit or the U.S. in general. I married in Israel and my wife and I returned to the U.S. in early 1976. We lived in Seattle, WA (1976-78) which had an extremely small black minority population. I was therefore surprised to learn how much racism was evident among whites who had little or no contact with black people most of the time. We, and our children, lived in the South for several years, in Durham, NC (1978-1981) when we were both employed at Duke University. During that time, I reached the conclusion that race relations in Detroit and other industrial cities of north were, in fact, worse than those in the South, maybe because the South had undergone forced desegregation – and had come to terms with it, or at least a majority of the white population had. In contrast Detroit and other northern urban areas had not gone through such a process. I also came to believe the depth of the anti-black attitudes of certain ethnic groups in Detroit were held by those whites who had worked hand in hand with black people in the auto plants; when that industry came upon hard times and suffered large layoffs, these whites thought employment of blacks came at their expense.<br /><strong> <br />What changes if any did you notice to the metro Detroit area after 1967?</strong> <br /><br />In the years following the 1967 riots, I was sensitized to the extent of anti-black sentiment in the Jewish community in Detroit, who didn’t have the excuse of the “employment competition” angle, and whose racist views seemed to emanate more from fear (rational or irrational) of black people. I hadn’t felt this as much earlier – maybe because of my age and naiveté. From a distance (Israel from 1968-76; other cities in the U.S. thereafter) with regular visits to Detroit, at least once a year if not more, I noticed increasing racial polarization in the Detroit area, highlighted by continued white flight to the suburbs that effectively depleted Detroit of white residents. This was coupled with what one might call “urban rot” with the city limits. Rightly or wrongly, I feel that part of this was induced or promoted by Coleman Young’s long tenure as mayor of Detroit and what I viewed as his “f--- the whites” attitude. I often felt that had Detroit’s black community had a strong clerical leader (not one of Rev. C.L. Franklin’s ilk) or a black mayor not from the hardscrabble labor movement like Young but from the church i.e., one who shared more views with the Rev. Martin Luther King, race relations in Detroit might not have gone downhill in the way in which they did. <br /><strong><br />You have lived all around the US; did you consider returning to Detroit and/or consciously choose to live elsewhere? If so, how and why?</strong><br /> <br />Other than during a very brief period in 1992, I never gave any thought to returning to live in the Detroit area, certainly not the city itself. The reasons for this were more organic than conscious. I cannot attribute that attitude to race relations in the Detroit area, but rather primarily to specific professional considerations (my profession having transitioned abruptly beginning in the late 1980s from biomedical academic research to patent law specializing in the life sciences). Other than distance from family, I have no regrets about not living in the Detroit area. I’ve lived in the Washington DC area since 1988, an area that is certainly not free from difficult race relations – maybe more difficult than in Detroit. So again, it is clear in my mind that this lack of regrets does not stem from anything related to race issues or connect in any way to the events of July 1967.
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Noah Levinson and Sandy Livnat
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07/15/2015
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University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Oak Park
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Sandy Livnat
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Sandy Livnat was a student at the University of Michigan in July 1967. He was working at a summer camp in northern Oakland County and returned home to help secure the family business in Oak Park.
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Detroit Historical Society
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07/16/2015
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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document
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en-US
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1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Ann Arbor
Detroit Community Members
Looting
Oak Park
University of Michigan