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Dublin Core
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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
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.
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Lonnie Peek was born in New Jersey in 1942. After attending college in West Virginia and spending time in the military, he arrived in Detroit in 1965. Peek worked briefly as a teacher in the Detroit Public Schools before attending graduate school Wayne State University, where he was a student organizer and headed up the Association of Black Students during the aftermath of the events of the summer of 1967. He's still active in the Detroit community today, sitting on the boards of many organizations.
Interview Place
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Detroit Historical Museum, Detroit, MI
Date
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04/05/2016
Interview Length
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00:46:22
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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04/17/2016
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel. Today is April 5, 2016, we're here in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is the for the 1967 oral history project. I'm sitting down with Reverend Lonnie Peek. Thank you for taking time with me today.</p>
<p>LP: Thank you, William. Thank you, thank you, thank you.</p>
<p>WW: Would you mind telling me where and when were you born?</p>
<p>LP: I was born in 1942 in Asbury Park, New Jersey.</p>
<p>WW: And how did your family come here? And when?</p>
<p>LP: They didn't. I did. I was raised up in Asbury Park. Asbury Park is a seaside city, a mile square. Back in those days it was classic. Railroad track ran down the middle of the city, black folks on one side, white folks on the other side. I had a good childhood. My father was a minister, and – well this is interesting. One day he got a call from my seventh grade teacher. His name was Mr. [Grappi ?], and his brother was over at the Boys Club, and the two of them wanted to meet my parents. So I got – I didn't know what was going down then, all right. So they came back and I was sitting there man, shivering. And I said, “what, what, what, what did I do?” He said “Nope, you didn't do anything. The Grappi brothers suggested that we move out of Asbury Park, because you had a lot of potential, and they didn't want Asbury Park to swallow you up.”</p>
<p>Within three years we had moved. My father found a church about twenty miles away. I grew up on three acres of land, nice big house. My bedroom overlooked – I could look and see the harbor in New York. That was my basic capsule of my childhood. I went to school, Middletown High School, 1400 students, 27 black. Oh, that's interesting, all right! It was an interesting trip, for want of a better term. My sophomore year, junior year, I stayed on their honor roll. My biology teacher, who was my counselor, told me to learn a skill, because boys like me didn't go to college. So I told my parents what he said. That didn't go over too well. "Boys like me." Well, once I got accepted to several colleges I came and showed him my acceptance letter and I said, “Boys like me do go to college.” I had one interesting experience, and we can move on. I went in there, interesting experience, our school was part of a large convention, and we were there during the time it was being debated that should federal funds be used for segregated schools in the South. And we were in this big auditorium, six or seven thousand folks there, and you could line up pro and con. I wanted to go up on the stage. My history teacher, Mrs. Feeger was her name, “Well, no, no, honey, you really need to be able to talk to go upstage.” So I said okay. Some other – my friends – got in line. I said, “What the heck?” I went and got in line. And I got up on the stage, I gave my position as to why federal funds should not be used for segregated schools. And when I finished, for about five or ten seconds, you could hear a pin drop. Then all of a sudden, everybody started clapping and standing up. I said, “Wow, this is deep.” My teacher apologized to me. She said, “I should not have told you not to go up there.” The reason I'm telling that story, is that story let me know that I was able to speak in public. So, there's that.</p>
<p>WW: And where was that again? Was that in high school?</p>
<p>LP: That was in high school. That was in high school. We moved from Asbury Park to what was known as Atlantic Highlands, and I went to Middletown Township High School.</p>
<p>WW: Where did you go to university at?</p>
<p>LP: I went to the university at West Virginia State. West Virginia University. That particular time, it was an integrated school, and black students were on campus and other students commuted. Since then, it's changed over completely now. It's about an 80 percent white school. My college days were great days. My father told me, “These will be the best four years of your life. Enjoy it, but also learn.” I was involved in a lot of stuff in college. Matter of fact, when I graduated, I was voted the most versatile student. I wasn't sure what that meant, but when I looked at my pictures and at other folks' pictures, I got to see that I did a lot of stuff. I was involved in a lot of stuff. So I enjoyed it. My father told me that – my freshman year was okay. My sophomore year I was pledging, my grades went down. So my dad said, “Look, Lonnie, I'm going to tell you something. If you get on the Dean's List I'll buy you a car." “Whoa! Why did you wait so long to tell me that?” Stayed on the Dean's List from that point on. And he bought me a car. Bought me a sportscar.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Your position seemed pretty clear in high school. Did you expand on that when you were at University?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yeah, I think that what happened was, because I was involved in a lot of things, I knew – I come to understand that the Lord had given me some gifts. And those gifts were to be able to juggle a lot of balls at the same time. So high school showed me that I was able to communicate. College allowed me to be diversified in the lot of different things that I was involved in. Particularly going to a black college, then, that gave me entree in to different endeavors, different programs, so that was a good choice for me to go to that school.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: So you were going there between 1960 and 1964, roughly?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: I was going there from 1959 — good question — 1959 to 1963. Back in those days you graduated in four years. It wasn't no ifs, and, or buts. Wasn't no five years, six – no, four years. So I graduated in four years.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: During your time at university the Freedom Rides were going on, other civil rights marches. Were you involved in any of them?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Because we were down south – Charleston, West Virginia, we were outside of Charleston, West Virginia, the reality of segregation and bigotry, were real, were real. You go downtown, you're liable to be called the n-word on any given day. One particular day I was going back to campus, I was chased by a group of white guys in a car, it was a Friday night, I'll never forget. And when I got on campus, they – they left. They left. So yeah, we were – we were involved in various aspects of the Civil Rights movement, and I studied it very closely. I was – I was very drawn – drawn to the struggle if you say, if you will.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: What did you graduate with?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology and education. That's how I got to Detroit, okay. I was – and also ROTC. I also – I was commissioned as a lieutenant. My father couldn't go in the army when I was born because back, you know, in that time, your wife had to sign, and my father and his friend went to sign. My mother, “Hell, no, I'm not signing.” “What?!” So my father and his friend, they decreed that their sons would be officers in the Army. So I always knew two things. I was going to college, and I was going to be an officer in the Army. So when I graduated, I – I never forget, this day was probably one of the most traumatic days in my life. It was right during the Vietnamese era. So you're home, you're graduated, had my degree and all that stuff, and you're waiting for your orders. And I remember my mother, “Lonnie, your orders are here,” and I was upstairs in my room. Pshew! Went upstairs, closed the door, opened it. And as I glanced, I was looking for – and I did not want to see – the words "Viet Nam." I glanced, didn't see them the first time. Glanced a second time, and I saw Ft. Knox, Kentucky. That was a big relief. All right. Not going to Vietnam. I lost more friends than I can count in the Vietnamese War.</p>
<p class="Normal1">So I was down in Ft. Knox, I was Company Commander for a training company. I trained people from Detroit and Chicago. And they were some rough folks! “Well, I ain't ever going to Detroit or Chicago!” Well, never say never, because I came up here on Easter. My aunt says, “Lonnie, they're looking for biology teachers down there. Why don't you go down there?” So I went down there, I had my transcript. Lady gave me a contract, right there. She says, “Would you sign this contract?” I was married then. My wife – she was from New York, she didn't particularly want me to come to Detroit. But I decided, I wanted to kind of step out on my own, so that's how I got to Detroit.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: What year was that?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: That would have been nineteen sixty – [thinking] five? Sixty five. Sixty six... Fifty nine... Sixty three... Sixty five. Got to Detroit in 1965, yep.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: And was that a job in DPS [Detroit Public Schools], or—</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: DPS. Kettering High School. I taught biology at Kettering High School for one year and the second year I taught biology at Northwestern High School.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Were those integrated schools then?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yeah. Yeah – well – yeah, there was some white folks around, but mostly black schools. Mostly black schools, yes.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Coming here in 1965, did you notice any – what was your first impression of the city? Because you said, the people you had interacted with before were rougher folks. So what was your first impression?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Well, that was a stereotype. You know, these are young dudes, you know, in the army, so —but my impression of the city was that it was Detroit, the Motor – the Motor – the Motor Capitol. I was kind of in awe at being here. Had no idea if you'd asked me two, three years ago. And oh, what I found out when I was in the service was that if you decided to become a teacher, you could get out early. So I got out four months early, to come here – to come here to teach. And I'll never forget, this one lady I met at Kettering. Thelma Jones was her name, she was a counselor. And she says, “Lonnie, you seem to have a lot on the ball. Learn the structure of Detroit, and also take a look at grass roots involvement.” I'm quoting what she said. I did not exactly know what that meant, but I came to know what it meant later on. So I was at Kettering, went over to Northwestern the next year, and the principal, Jessie Kennedy approached me and she told me – she says, “you know, you need to go get a master’s degree in social work. Because you get a master’s degree in social work, you can do anything with that.” So I said, oh, okay. I applied, got accepted. And so in 1967, I was on the way to Wayne State University, and that summer is when we had the rebellion.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Where did you live in the city, when you moved here?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: I lived on Taylor for a minute, then I got a flat, rented a flat on Columbus Avenue, then I moved over to Courtland, and from Courtland I bought a house on Santa Barbara. So [unclear] you know, Santa Barbara was out. And I presently live in Sherwood Forest. </p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: You were living in the Santa Barbara house in 1967?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yep.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Okay.</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: No. I was still on Courtland.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Courtland?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Still on Courtland. I remember, during the rebellion, bringing some stuff home to Courtland. Ah. That was fun.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Going into 1967 then, you refer to it as a rebellion. May I ask why?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Because I saw it really as a rebellion, as opposed to, you know, some people call it rebellion, riot. '67 was a turning point in my life. We had the – as you're aware, we had the Peoples’ Tribunal, and along with a buddy of mine, Dan Aldridge, I can't remember exactly how we got thrust into it, but we became the organizers for that. And that was to put together a trial for the police officers who killed the three young black boys in the Algiers Motel incident, which is – Algiers is torn down. And that was quite an experience, in August. We probably – we didn't know that we really had a tiger by the tail, but we did. It was an overwhelming success. We had it over at Reverend Cleage's church, over there on Linwood, Shrine of Black Madonna. You couldn't get in. There were hundreds of people out in the street. You couldn't get in. On a hot August night, we had put together a jury, prosecuting attorney, judge. Milton Henry – he was the prosecuting attorney. Brilliant lawyer, brilliant lawyer. We had asked several other people to be the judge. First they said yeah but then they said no, because they saw how this thing was unfolding. So we went to Kenny Cockerel, “oh, you want to be the judge? Okay.” Kenny Cockerel was the judge.</p>
<p class="Normal1">We had certain people serve on the jury, one of them being Rosa Parks, bless her heart, she served on the jury. And we presented the case. Three police officers and they were found guilty. And we emphasized that this was a mock trial, and that we don't want anything to come out of this except information, and that's what happened.</p>
<p class="Normal1">Now the reason that story ties in is because that's the September I went here, Wayne State University. First day of class, School of Social Work over here at McGregor Center, I walk in, there's hundreds of people. They have – forging a boycott. The college itself, the university was embarking upon a symposium — an urban symposium —- and the community was up in arms because they weren't involved, in the planning. So when I got to school the first day, it was like whoa, a protest. Oh, this is fun.</p>
<p class="Normal1">So I'm just standing there, watching what's going on, and a friend of mine who I'd met over the summer, during the rebellion – Frank Joyce was his name, he was head of SDS, Students for Democratic Society – and they were interviewing him, from, you know, from the white perspective. And they ask him, who represents the black students? And he looked around, he saw me, and he said, “He does.” All the cameras — I mean, it was like, that was another turning point, like the cameras, mics thrust in my face. Said, “What's your name?” I gave my name. “Who do you represent?” I said, “uh, the Association of Black Students.” The rest is history. Because then I went out, organized the Association of Black Students, my social work placement had me up in the Dean's Office – Dean Sellars was his name – he allowed me to use my case work to organize the Association of Black Students. That's what I did. You know in that particular era, I did not perceive of the impact I was making, with the notoriety I was involved in. I was having fun, you know what I'm saying? Today people still tell me about those days. I mean, literally, I will hear during the course of a week. “Man, I remember you when—”</p>
<p class="Normal1">So, we made – I like to think we made a great impact. One of the turning points, also in that, is my second year you got a placement. And Congressman John Conyers, who I met during that whole symposium piece, requested I be placed in his office. Whoa, I was getting placed in a congressman's office. First day I walk into the office, I open the door. There's Rosa Parks sitting behind the desk, and she says, “Mr. Peek, we've been waiting for you.” Oh, wow, Rosa Parks. So for three days a week I'd sit out there and talk to Rosa Parks. And the Congressman comes in, “Lonnie, you got work to do! Leave Rosa alone!” I say, okay, okay. But every day I come back and talk to her. That was one of the benefits I got out of that.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: How did the symposium end up then, given the protest? Was the framework of the symposium changed, due to voices from the community?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Very good question. Yeah. Yeah. They changed. They allowed us to organize our symposium, and what we did is that really was a rallying point for the Association of Black Students. It gave us something to do. And I'll never forget, we had these black signs, and we had a big fisheye that said “Symposium,” that's all it said. We placed them on campus. We had our phone number at the bottom. People would call us, it was a type of symbolism. Well we structured the symposium. It was an overwhelming success. We had people like Hubert Locke, we had Coleman Young, was on one of the – ran one of the panels. Came up to me, said, “Boy, I like your spunk. You got spirit!” and he hit me in the chest, almost knocked me down. He says, “Stay in touch with me.” Well, he became one of my best friends, for the rest of my life, until he passed. Matter of fact, I had a show on WJLB where I interviewed people. Coleman had gone on, retired as mayor. I'll never forget, it was Fourth of July, I went down to his place on the riverfront, I took my son. And I interviewed him for the show. It was a glorious time, just me and Coleman just chit-chatting. Talking about all the stuff we had been through. So that was that – you asked, I'm giving you the professional side, and also the personal side, what came out.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Love to hear it.</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Okay.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: The first symposium was supposed to be in September. When was your symposium held?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: I believe it was probably like around, let's see, probably Novemberish.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Okay.</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yeah, November. November, we got it together real quick and it was – it was another one of those things where you're involved in life situations and you really don't cherish the moment until it becomes a memory. Then when it becomes a memory you're able to flash back and see the value that it was. But it was – We organized it, we had recorders, something that I came up with. We had different students assigned to different workshops. We invited people, the university gave us a budget, bless their heart, gave us a budget, and we pulled off the symposium.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: It's amazing.</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: It was, it was. We didn't know that then, but it was. It was, it was. One of the good things that came out of the Association of Black Students, that was during the Black Studies era. And just interesting, because Dr. Melba Boyd just had a series of workshops over there. She's head of the Black Studies department. Anyway, Africana Studies department. I went to President William Keys. We had a good relationship. I was the campus militant, he was the president – white guy who was the president — but we both had common sense. And we both understood that it would be good to have a relationship that was – it's a good working relationship. So I went to him, I said “Dr. Keys, you know, this is Black Studies. I'd like to take some students to California to assess the Black Studies department.” And he says, “Give me a budget.” Wow! So Benson Manlevel was a brother, worked in this department, a good brother, good brother. That night we worked on a budget, took it to William Keys, next month, six of us were on our way to California. We studied four universities, four colleges, that had Black Studies programs. Came back, I made a presentation before the Board of Governors, and that's how we eventually got to the Africana Studies department here now. So that was a turning point, that was one of the benefits of the black student movement.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: You mentioned that you were the “campus militant” so we'll be coming back to that, but jumping back, to July 1967, where were you – where were you when the rebellion began?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: At home, over on Courtland, and my brother-in-law, who lived across the street, named Chuck Russell, said “man, they – they – they,” — no, I'm sorry. My aunt. Aunt Olive. She called me, Sunday morning. And she said “Lonnie, they're tearing up Twelfth Street.” What? So my brother-in-law and I went down to Twelfth Street and it was like, “Look at this, look at this.” So that's where we were, and I'll never forget that Sunday was just — it was chaos. It was – it was chaos. It was – had a dramatic impact, on seeing this unfold in front of your face. But it also was scary, too.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: You said earlier that you took a couple things home?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Has the statute of limitations run out here?</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: I do believe it has.</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, but you know what, man? We were just petty thieves. I wasn't in to televisions and stuff. It was like, I was just, you know—</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Caught up in the moment?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yeah, caught up in the moment. Took some clothes for my kids, you know, I – it was just one of those things, but — some food — was caught up in the moment, but my – I – I - really, my conscience, the spiritual side of me really was not motivated to go out and just steal stuff. Because it's stealing, it's stealing. So I gave – I gave – I gave the stuff away. I gave it away. But that's how I got caught up in the rebellion.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: When you first saw what was going on, you described it as chaos. Did you first interpret it as a rebellion, or did your opinion change over the course of that week?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: It changed, of course, it changed. At first it was just a riot, but then I think the frustration of folks came out more, and more, and because of their frustration, that's when I saw it really as a rebelling. Who do you rebel against? Well, you rebel against whoever's in front of your face, based upon how you feel. So that's how. Plus, as I transgressed or transferred, transformed into the campus leader, there was certain dialogue and things that you said, because that's what you say. So that's how I captured the concept of the rebellion.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: How did you feel as the National Guard came in and later the Army came in?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Scared. Very scared. It was scary, to see the tanks. It was scary. And it also caused me to cool out a bit, because I was married, and I had a family, two little kids. So I couldn't be stupid, and, so, my involvement in the street activity was limited, probably just to that – it was really just that Sunday when it broke out. Rest of the time I watched it on TV, but I wasn't involved in that, because I didn't feel right.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Did the rebellion change your political views at all?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Well—</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Were you a militant before 1967?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Aw man, boy that's— You remember Martha Jean McQueen? Do you know who that was?</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: No.</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: She owned her own radio station. WQBJ. Before that, she was on WJLB, and she interviewed me during my militancy days, and she says, “Well, Lonnie, you seem so angry, why are you angry?” Well, don't get me wrong, I'm not angry because of my childhood. I was blessed. I had a good childhood. My mother didn't work. My father worked two jobs and they took care of me and I went to college. But I'm angry when I look around and I see the condition of my people. That's what makes me angry. So there was a coming together of a platform that I had, and the ability to raise issues, from being the president of the Association of Black Students. So yes, it entrenched me in a particular level – a philosophical level. Which I still have today.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: After 1967 did you do any other work with Kenneth Cockerel or Mike Hamlin?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. From that point on, we was like bond together, you know what I'm saying? Kenny and I were good friends, Actually, Kenny would be the type of person, man, you call him on the phone and he start talking, for five minutes, and he say, “Okay man I'll see you later,” I say wait a minute, Kenny, I called you! “Oh, yeah, what's up, man?” So yeah. We became close friends. Matter of fact, one day on campus, for whatever reason, Kenny found himself locked up, over here, you know, there used to be a precinct right up here on Woodward and Hancock. And we were all in the student union, that's where we hung out, and I got news that Kenny Cockerel been put in jail. Oh, wow, so they was going crazy. It was about two or three hundred of us, just hanging out on Friday afternoon. So we go up to the police thing and we block off Woodward. They brought out the horses and surrounded us and stuff. We said we wasn't going until you let Kenny go. The sergeant came out and says, “Okay we got him in here, we're going to process him, going to take about two or three hours.” But we want to know how he doing? Y'all beat him up. “If two of y'all want to come in here, talk to him for about two minutes, you can do that.” They said well, “Lonnie, why don't you go?” Why I got to go?! Well, because I was the leader. So I went in with a friend of mine, Homer Fox, we talked to Kenny, he said “we good, we good, we good.” And they let him go in about an hour. An hour. Yay, free Kenny, free Kenny. So –</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: When was this? When was this?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: This would have been '68. This would have been in '68. The spring of '68 because it was starting to turn warm.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Okay.</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Okay. Now, which ties into the assassination of Martin Luther King. That was a terrible day. We were on campus and people just going crazy. Crazy. Never forget, I was in the student union and they said “Well Lonnie you got to make a speech, tell them what to do.” That was one of the few points in my life I wasn't sure which way to go. You could be pragmatic or you could be militant. And as I stood up on the table, I said, first of all, it's horrendous that Dr. King was killed. Obviously, real sad, and mad about that. But. We had to be practical here. Don't know – how many of y'all own a tank? How many of y'all own a bazooka? Well they got tanks and they got bazookas. If you go out there and get stupid, they going to use it against you.</p>
<p class="Normal1">Well, the crowd kind of dissipated. We went over – we decided we wanted to do things to keep things calm in the neighborhood. So my brother-in-law and I we went over to Dexter. They running up and down Dexter acting stupid. So we're stopping them from breaking into buildings and stuff like that. All of a sudden, eight to ten police cars pull up. Surrounded me and my brother-in-law, had our backs up against the wall of the building. Had their guns pulled out. Called us every type of M-F and N-word you could think of. I really thought we was going to die. So, after about – seemed like eternity, maybe seven – five to seven minutes – I noticed they just kept surrounding us. So my brother – I told Chuck, I said – let's just walk through. So we started walking. Chuck had this hat on; they told him to take that hat off. He took the hat off. We walked, around them, through them, started walking Dexter. I expected to be shot in the back. We walked to our car and drove off. That was one of those turning points in your life where you know, the Lord had you – had found favor on you. Because we could have been killed, and they could have made up some dastardly story. So that happened in that era too. [phone rings]</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: When I asked you at the time, you were gonna say something about Mike Hamlin, I'm sorry I cut you off.</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yeah. Mike – Mike organized – he was involved – I'm trying to get it right – with the workers at the plants.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: The Dodge Revolutionary Union movement?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it, you got it. Dodge revolution. Along with General Baker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it was different – segments – of militancy. You had the students, that I was part of, you had the brothers at the plants, you had people like Kenny who were involved in the whole legal stuff, but we all were interconnected, we all knew each other, and that – there were really – there really was no – no – no competition. Unless I missed it. You know, we were all – we was cool. We was cool. We would meet at different times, different places, and we would support each other and what they were doing.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Were you involved in any of the follow-up racial clashes? In 1968? Say, like Cobo Hall One or Cobo Hall Two?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: No, I wasn't. By that – sixty – what did you say, sixty what now?</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Sixty eight.</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: No. Because I was still in, I was still in – so was down here. Wayne State, '68. So, no. Well, that's a good point. Several times I had gotten calls to be involved in things. But certain things, I just – steered away from. And I could always frame it in – because you know, I had to take courses, I was in school, too, you know what I'm saying? So, I was – I picked and chose. I didn't – I didn't have the need for the limelight, even though I was cast in the limelight. I didn't go seeking it. I just did what I needed to do. I knew in two years I was going to be out of here, and I wanted to prepare for – I needed a job once I graduated. So that's how I answer that question.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: During this time you were 28 – you were 28 years old, right?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Close to 30 – yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Was that the average age of like, the major activists, say like Kenneth Cockerel Senior, Mike Hamlin—</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well – well, yeah, yeah. In our mid-twenties. In our mid-twenties and I think that— See, I had a unique situation. I was not from Detroit. When I got here, and since I was teaching, I didn't know a lot of folks, at that level, so whole ABS thing was like, I was a newcomer. That was good, and bad. It was good because I hadn't pissed nobody off, because I didn't know nobody. You know, it was bad because, “Who is this guy?” But I had the type of – I like to think I had the type of personality that got along with folks. The girls liked me. Always get the women on your side. You get the women on your side, you will be successful. So, I had good female support. So, the point I'm asking you, is that I was on a particular course. And that course was the – the '67-'68 piece was happening but I was on a course that you know, I have a life – an adult life to live after this, and I got to start getting prepared for that. And when I graduated, Gil Maddox – I don't know if you remember him – he had a television show called Profile of Blacks, and he hired me for three months just to help him write some scripts and stuff. So that gave me a little income and then – but I didn't know what I was going to do. Got this master's degree. Just a little bit of notoriety, I didn't have no job. I get a call from Murray Jackson, who was the first president at Wayne County Community College. And Murray and I had met over the course of the year and he said, “Well, look, man, I want to start up a Black Studies department. At the college. Would you be willing?” Well yeah, man. Yeah. He brought me over in about two months. Started the Black Studies department. There are still courses at the college that I created back then. That's something, man. I worked at the college for five years. Went out, on my own, as a business person. But the college has been a constant contact in my life. Based on my business and I work now, work very closely with its chancellor, Dr. Curtis Ivery, a great guy, but I've worked with every president of that college. That was, once again, one of the paths that the lord puts you on that you could pray or ask for. See, in life, your best blessings are blessings you don't ask for. Because you can't form the concept when asking for that blessing. So that was a blessing. And I got over to Wayne County Community College, and that's where I sat for five years.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Well, given your relatively short time in the city before 1967, did you feel or perceive a shift in the atmosphere of the city?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It went from a position of feeling powerless, to seize the opportunities. And I think that – when Bill Patrick, the first African American to get in with City Council, the formation of New Detroit, these things started giving folks a different slant on this. And when New Detroit was formed, with the governor, and the mayor, all the bigwigs. I'll never forget, I went to the press conference down in City Council. I said, this is – this could be a good organization. This is a – this is different. You know, white corporate people, black community people, educators coming together. And I got a – about a year or so later I got a call from Bill Patrick who was president of New Detroit, asked me to come down, appear before the board, I came down and gave a speech while I - next year they elected me to the board. I've been on the board ever since. Matter of fact, I've been on the board so long, they just put me in emeritus. I've been on that board since 1969. So I've seen it. But getting back to your question, Coleman Young's election was a turning point for the city. Because they believe in Coleman, a brilliant man, a community-oriented man. So he gave black folks, if you will, not only hope, but realization that, if you vote, put people in positions, you can make a difference. And Coleman made a difference. And you'll say he made a difference. He'll tell you, what he told you, he said the biggest mistake he made was staying in office too long. Should have got out. He said, “I should have served two terms, maximum three. I shoulda got out.” But one of the things about Coleman Young, when they were looking for corruption and all that stuff, I'll never forget, he says “They keep looking. They're wasting all that money, looking for corruption to put me in jail. I ain't got no money!” They never found nothing on Coleman Young. But people around him fell. But he was one of the turning points in the city.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Is there anything else you'd like to add?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: No, man, you had me cover my whole life! Where I am – where I am today, I've been blessed. I'm still active in stuff. I serve on several boards. The Belle Isle Advisory Board, I serve on that board, I'm vice chair of that board. Detroit Economic Growth Corporation Board. Detroit River Fund Conservancy Board, and I'm probably leaving out a couple but that – New Detroit – so I'm still active on that particular level. In 1991-92, — 1985 to 1993 – were the hell years of my life. I had two companies that were – eventually went into bankruptcy. I had a wife, she was the police commissioner, her name was Susan – Susan Mills Peek – she contracted MS. It eventually killed her. I saw her die in front of my face. Those were some hell years. I told the Lord, if he gets me through this, I will go into the seminary, which I did do. Went into the seminary, became an ordained preacher, became involved in the religious community, which I am now. I'm now serving as the interim pastor at New Concord Baptist Church. I've been involved in politics, religion, the community ever since I've been here. So it's been a blessing. It's been a labor. But when you are blessed to have a specific labor, when you recognize that, you give the Lord your best, he will find favor on you. I've had favor found on me in my life.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: One more quick question. How do you feel about the progress the city has made in reconstruction and resurgence?</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: Good, excellent, superb. It was due. I think that the whole bankruptcy piece was a blessing in disguise. Who ever saw a city go into bankruptcy and out in 18 months? I think Kevyn Orr was brilliant. I had the opportunity to work very close with him. I think that he set the city on a path, get certain debt forgiven, certain things happening. I think that the current mayor we have, he's a good mayor. Mike Duggan is a good mayor. Now I was in Benny's camp, but Mike Duggan won, so there that is. I think he's moving the city forward. I think investments downtown, the Gilberts and the Ilitches, history will show you that where you have the Rockefeller, and the Mellons, and these people involved in civic affairs, that the urban areas flourish, so it's good that we have business people involved. It's good that we have people coming in to Detroit. I see it turn around, see it stabilizing. The communities can't be left out. We find – I mean, we welcome what's happening downtown. No problem. But we also got to take care of our communities. I work very closely with Jimmy Settles, who is UAW [United Auto Workers] vice president, great guy. Great guy. We formed what is known as the Church-Labor Summit. So we brought together labor and churches working together on a variety of projects – a variety of projects.</p>
<p class="Normal1">So, I think it's good, and – in my neighborhood, man, shoot! House go up for sale, in a week it's gone! Gone. A lot of white folks is moving back in my community. Matter of fact, I did an article in the Chronicle [unclear], I did an article in the Chronicle, couples years ago, called, “They're Sneaking Back Into the City.” Well, they ain't sneaking no more, know what I'm saying? That's good for the city. It's good for the city. Detroit is, and will be, the place to be. If you try to rent a place downtown or – or buy an apartment or something, a loft, whatever, you can't get it! On weekends there's too much traffic! Traffic jams downtown Detroit. So I feel very good about where the city is going. I feel blessed that I can see it as it makes its transition. I'm glad that Gil Hill was alive long enough to see it starting to make its transition. He was a good guy. I'll never forget Gil Hill, man, and then I'll be quiet. He was running against Kwame, Gil was a friend. Kwame came to me and said, “Look, man, I want you on my team.” I thought about it and said okay. I called Gil that night and said, “Gil, I'm going to be on Kwame's team, and you're my friend.” He says, “Lonnie, I understand. We will always be friends.” We always were friends. So friendship is very important in your life. Abraham called God his friend, so. I'm blessed to have a lot of friends.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p class="Normal1">LP: All right! So when will the check be in the mail?! [laughter] You say, “Go home and sit and wait!” I appreciate it, man, thanks.</p>**
People
List any relevant people (interviewers, interviewees, important people mentioned, etc). Please use "Lastname, Firstname".
Cockrel, Kenneth
Hamlin, Mike
Parks, Rosa
Conyers, John
Original Format
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Recording
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00:43:22
Interviewer
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William WInkel
Interviewee
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Reverend Lonnie Peek
Location
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Detroit Historical Museum, Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ieg-Nk4NCFs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
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Title
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Reverend Lonnie Peek, April 5th, 2016
Description
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In this interview, Peek discusses growing up in New Jersey and the early encouragement and prejudices he experienced, attending college in West Virginia, and his time in Detroit during and after the events of July 1967. Reverend Peek discusses his extensive activism in Detroit
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Detroit Historical Society
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05/18/2016
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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WAV
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en-US
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1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Algiers Motel
Association of Black Students
Civil Rights Movement
Community Activists
Detroit Public Schools
Martha Jean "The Queen"
United States Army
Vietnam War
Wayne State University
-
http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/1236d968d7146fa868f3dd067a9fab59.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
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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
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Donald Lobsinger
Brief Biography
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Donald Lobsinger was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1935. He spent his life working for the city of Detroit and fighting communism with his group, Breakthrough.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
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St. Claire Shores, MI
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06/23/2016
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01:16:56
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Hannah Sabal
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06/27/2016
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello, today is June 23<sup>rd</sup>, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I’m in St. Claire Shores and I am sitting down with Mr. Don Lobsinger. Thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>DL: Pleasure.</p>
<p>WW: Can you tell me where and when you born?</p>
<p>DL: Detroit, Michigan, 1934.</p>
<p>WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?</p>
<p>DL: Northeast side, in the vicinity of Chandler Park. Chalmers and Harper, in that area.</p>
<p>WW: What was that neighborhood like for you growing up?</p>
<p>DL: It was a great neighborhood, and that’s the only way I can describe it. Many houses. Detroit was pretty well known at that time for its tree-lined streets, Dutch elms, and of course they got the disease and they had to get rid of them a number of years later. But Detroit was known for that because you had cities like Chicago known for tenements and apartments and so on, but not Detroit. Detroit was known for its tree-lined residential streets. Very well known for that. That was my neighborhood. Park nearby, played ball in that park as kids. Make-up ball as kids growing up. Street hockey, growing up. The neighborhood was tremendous. The young people living today, they can’t possibly imagine or understand how great it was to live in the city of Detroit. I went to De La Salle High School, I went to St. John Burkman’s grade school, which was at Warren and Lakeview. That was eight years. Then I went to De La Salle High School, which was over by the city airport. The De La Salle sports teams are called the pilots because of that airport. Those planes—those two engine planes—would fly over the school and rattle the windows. [Laughter] I remember the first year I went to De La Salle as a freshman, got up one morning and heard that a plane had crashed into a house several blocks away from the school and I remember a number of us going there afterwards and I can still see, as I’m sitting here talking to you, I was a freshman at De La Salle, and I can still see that plane sitting on that house. I can’t remember if anybody was killed, but I do remember seeing that. Right by the city airport. That building is no longer there, and De La Salle has moved out to Warren, it’s in Warren now. And then I went to the University of Detroit and graduated from the University of Detroit in 1957. So that’s my educational experience. All private education, Catholic. That education, being brought up Catholic, and being brought up on those particular years, is what laid the foundation for me to form an organization in the 1960s after I got out of the army to fight the communists.</p>
<p>WW: Let’s go back. Did you join the army before or after you graduated—</p>
<p>DL: I didn’t join the army, I was drafted. I was drafted out of college. I had a college deferment. I was drafted in 1957 and, I don’t know if I should, or if you’re interested in this, but all I know is that I prayed that I would go to Germany because I didn’t want to spend time in the states, and I knew I’d never get to Europe. We went to Ft. Knox, it’s where they broke all of us up into two groups: one went to Korea, one went to Germany, and we went to Germany. And so we trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, infantry training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and went over to Germany as a company. Part of an entire division, an infantry division went over to Germany, and we stayed together as a company that entire two years. We were sixteen months in Germany, and we were able to have a reunion because of that some forty years later. My experiences while I was in Europe were a major factor in my deciding that when I got out of the service, I would fight the communists. At that time I didn’t exactly know how, but it wasn’t long after I got out of the service that I knew.</p>
<p>WW: Could you share a couple of those experiences with us?</p>
<p>DL: You mean when I was in Europe?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah. The things that drove you—</p>
<p>DL: Well, these were—it wasn’t the military training that did it, although we were stationed in Vanburg, Bavaria, maybe forty, fifty miles from the Soviet sector. The two experiences that really impacted me—I’m convinced that this was meant to be—I went to Berlin twice, and you got on an American military train in Frankfurt, and you had to go through 110 miles of soviet sector to get to West Berlin. And of course the army knew that I was on leave and that I went to Berlin, but I went there. But what I didn’t know was that while there, I went into East Berlin, which was the communist sector of Berlin. So the army did not know I went in there. The American soldiers could go into the communist sector as a result of the Potsdam agreement so that American soldiers could go over there. But I really doubt that American soldiers stationed in Berlin went into Berlin alone. I did, and when I look back on it, I think I had to be crazy because I could have been picked up so easily on any pretext. We were told that if you get on the subway on the elevated trains and you go into East Berlin—because you go into East Berlin—but the last stop was outside Berlin and in the soviet zone of Germany and you would be arrested and picked up by the soviets and have to be turned over to the American military, and they’re the ones that would really take it out. But I remember reading that if the stars and stripes appear in Berlin, get off before that last stop. Well I went into East Berlin, and I walked around, and just that experience, having seen West Berlin, how the thriving city that was Berlin was, as opposed to East Berlin, it was like night and day. It was unbelievable. I visited the Soviet war memorial in West Berlin and I visited the soviet cemetery in East Berlin on a tour. So that was part of it. But the thing that really made me decide, without question, that I would devote my adult life to fighting the communists, was I was on leave in Vienna, Austria, when a communist youth festival, sponsored by Moscow, was being held in Vienna. And the first time the soviets held their youth festival, their international youth festival, in a free country. They never did again after that because the Austrian students put up such resistance against that festival that the soviets never again held it in a free country. I met a number of those students. They knew I was an American soldier. I became friendly with them. My experience during that festival is what impacted my decision to fight the communists when I got out of the service but the main thing was the attendance at the opening rally. The opening rally was in an open air stadium and I walked among the groups that were there—these were groups from all over the world, including North Korea, Communist China, and they were all lined up outside of that stadium to go marching in when the rally started. And I was in that stadium. First of all, I walked among the delegations, and I went into that stadium, and I remember sitting there and I remember as these groups entered, flying communist flags, each group flying a North Korea, Communist China, the second largest delegation was the Communist Chinese and they came into that stadium. The largest delegation was the Soviet Union. And they were the ones that came in last. And when the soviets came in, they released hundreds of doves into the sky, symbolizing peace. And they chanted in German, constantly, through that rally, so that it had a tremendous impact on everybody who was attending this rally. It was similar to the Nazi rallies. It has a psychological effect on you. If you see any of the Nazi rallies in documentaries, I mean, the impact that it had on the people attending those rallies—the communists did the same thing, and I witnessed it and experienced it in Vienna. And they were chanting, [unintelligible German], “Peace and friendship, peace and friendship.” That had such an effect on me that it lasted for at least two to three days, and I concluded communism is the wave of the future. The only way it will be defeated if it isn’t opposed by their enemies who have a greater dedication than they do, and on the train back to post, I thought to myself, if this festival had been held in the United States instead of in Vienna, Austria, would the American students and American youth have opposed it to the extent that the Austrian students did? And I concluded in my own mind, no, because American students didn’t know a thing about communism. The Austrian students experienced it because Austria was under soviet domination for several years. The Hungarian revolution took place in 1956, which was three years before the communist youth festival that I attended. So the Hungarian revolution was very fresh in everybody’s minds. And those students sponsored bus tours to the Hungarian-Austrian border for anyone who wanted to go, four times a day so the people attending that festival, the people in Vienna, could see with their own eyes, the barbed wire fences and the gun towers separating Austria from Hungary, raising the question, who was the fences there to protect? To keep the people going from free Europe into communist country? No! To keep the people in the communist countries from going into Western Europe. And anybody who tried, there were mine fields on the other side of those fences, and gun towers. When I went to Berlin, the Berlin Wall had not yet been put up, but once the Berlin Wall was put up, I believe it was in 1961, a number of people were shot down at that wall, I remember very well the one German student, Peter Fechter, who was shot down at that wall. And the communists let him lie there in his own blood until he died and then they came and removed him. Even in the “decadent west,” according to the communists, if we would’ve shot somebody down at that wall, we would’ve gone and taken them to the hospital; not the communists. They let him lie there in his own blood. Only yards away from an American guard post separating East and West Berlin. And I have often thought that if I had been a guard, an American soldier guard in Berlin when that kid was shot down at the Berlin Wall, I would have risked my life to rescue that kid and let the communists do whatever they wanted to do. Whether or not they would’ve shot an American soldier, I don’t know. But I do know myself. And I don’t believe I could have, even as a soldier or a guard, I don’t believe I could have stood there and tolerated that. I believe I would have gone to rescue that kid. Who knows what the consequences would have been. The simple fact of the matter is I’m simply saying this because this is how strong I was against the communists. So in Vienna, the experience that I had at that festival, the experience that I had with the Austrian students, they had set up booths with materials to hand out to people, people from all over the world were in Vienna for this. They had set up booths and those experiences—there’s more that I could tell you, you don’t have the time here. But that, especially the rally, that opening rally, impacted me to the point when I was on that train, I decided no, American students would not have imposed a communist festival like the Austrian students did. To defeat the communists would require a dedication equal to theirs or greater. And I decided right then and there, on that train on the way back to post, that when I got out of the service, I would fight the communists, and I have done that all my adult life.</p>
<p>WW: That’s a good segue. When you came back to Detroit, did you see the city any differently than when you had left?</p>
<p>DL: Not really.</p>
<p>WW: Not really?</p>
<p>DL: No, it was the same neighborhood as when I had left.</p>
<p>WW: What year did you come back in?</p>
<p>DL: 1959.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. What did you do upon your arrival back home?</p>
<p>DL: I went back to the job that I had with the City of Detroit. I worked for the City of Detroit recreation department, and I had an office job doing clerical work. I had that job before I went into the service, and so when I came back I just went back to that job, and I ended up staying there. I worked for the City of Detroit recreation department, doing mostly clerical work, there was some other assignments during that time, but I worked for the City of Detroit for thirty-six years. So that was until 1992. So I was an employee of the City of Detroit when Coleman Young became mayor of the City of Detroit. So Coleman Young really was my boss.</p>
<p>WW: We will get to that! We’re not really there yet.</p>
<p>DL: Well, anyway, that’s what I did when I got out of the service. I returned to my job at the City of Detroit and I stayed there. I was a civil service employee. Which was convenient for me to engage in the activities that I did against the communists in the Detroit area, especially during the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>WW: Another good segue. What efforts did you undertake when you got back? And in 1963, you founded Breakthrough?</p>
<p>DL: Yes.</p>
<p>WW: Can you talk about that please?</p>
<p>DL: Breakthrough is, we named it “Breakthrough” in ’63, but ’63 was when we became active as a group, yes. When I first got back, I saw in the paper a meeting showing the movie <em>Operation Abolition</em> and by the way, you can see that documentary, put out by the House Committee of Un-American Activities. The US House Committee of Un-American Activities put out a documentary in, I believe it was 1961, called <em>Operation Abolition</em>. And it had to do with the communist-organized protest against the House Committee of Un-American Activities investigating communist infiltration of the educational system in California. And it documented and showed communist leaders of these demonstrations. That was a real awakening for me in terms of how the communists operated and so on and so forth. So I met people there at this meeting, and as a consequence of that it led to my eventually founding Breakthrough. By the way, there was a communist bookstore on Woodward Ave. called Global Books. It was on Woodward Ave. right near Warren, near the Wayne campus, deliberately so. And I went there a number of times because I could pick up announcements of communist meetings, communist front meetings, and I went to them. This was before I had become active, so they had no knowledge of me. I was a potential recruit to them. So I saw a number of people who I later saw active with the communist, active with the NA Ordinance Regents <a name="_msoanchor_1" id="_anchor_1" href="file://server/Public/1967/Projects/Oral%20History%20Project/Histories/Audio%20Histories/Second%20Batch/+Lobsinger,%20Donald/Lobsinger,%20Donald.docx#_msocom_1">[JY1]</a> [18:18??]. And so then later, as I said, I had Breakthrough, I became public. But that was beneficial to go to some of these meetings, actually attending communist front meetings, and seeing how that worked. So that was part of it too. Also, after seeing that movie, <em>Operation Abolition</em>, I joined with a woman whose name I’m not going to mention here now—</p>
<p>WW: That’s fine.</p>
<p>DL: —to oppose the lifting of the ban of communist speakers at Wayne State University. And we circulated petitions throughout the Detroit area to reinstate that ban. And the Board of Governors at Wayne State University would not do so, and so as a consequence, Wayne University was now open to open communists to come in there and speak. That petition drive was, I think, 1961, and then by 1963 I had Breakthrough and the Vietnam protests were starting. Having gotten out of the army only a few years before, knowing that these were pro-communist demonstrations, I found people of a like mind and we opposed them in the streets.</p>
<p>WW: Did you find that metro Detroit, or Detroit specifically, was a large basin for communist support or was it localized individuals, or was the support far more widespread?</p>
<p>DL: No, there was communist party organizations, there was also the Socialist Workers party, which was a communist organization, based on the teachings of Lenin and Trotsky. They were very active on the Wayne campus, Wayne State University campus, and I knew a number of those people and they were very active in the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, and the leadership of those demonstrations. And two professors at Wayne State University at that time were major instigators of the anti-war protest at Wayne State University that ended up downtown in Detroit. Dr. David Harishov and Adolf Einstein. Those were the two major leaders of the anti-war demonstrations on Wayne State University campus, as part of the faculty. Their names were in the papers constantly. There was a Dr. Fitzhov Bergman at University of Michigan who was also very active in the anti-war demonstrations. And Helen Winter, who ran the Global Bookstore that I just mentioned, was the wife of Carl Winter, who was the head of the Michigan Communist Party. And at these anti-war demonstrations, Helen Winter would be there distributing her literature, and so on and so forth, I saw her a few times. Most of the people most visibly active were Socialist Worker’s Party, young people, a number of students. Please understand that the majority of the demonstrators are not communists. They’re just lured there against the war, they’ve been incited against the war by their professors or someone. A lot of them didn’t want to be drafted, a lot of them didn’t want to go to Vietnam. They were also lured there by the music. They were lured there, later on through the years, by the drugs, the music, revolution, because the ‘60s were a major turning point in the United States. The 1960s were a communist-inspired revolution that overturned most of the values in this country. It definitely was a revolution that took place in the 1960s. It turned this country upside down. And Breakthrough, my group, I can proudly say that we opposed that revolution. It turns out today, when I look at it, we’re pretty much the losers. So much of what I experienced back in the ‘60s and ‘70s is being repeated today right in front of my very eyes! Black Lives Matter, groups like this. This is all communist inspired. You can go right back to the ‘60s, it’s the same thing, same pattern, same slogans, same everything. And you see the leaders and the members of the Black Lives Matter movement wearing red shirts with a clenched fist on the red shirts. The clenched fist, anybody who knows anything knows that the clenched fist is a communist salute. New York Times even had an article on that. The New York Times is not a right-wing paper, and they had an article showing the Nelson Mandela marching with the head of the communist party in South Africa at an open-air rally, giving the clenched fist salute with Joe Slovo. Joe Slovo was head of the South African Communist Party, and Nelson Mandela was head of the African—I forget the name of it—</p>
<p>WW: National Congress.</p>
<p>DL: African National Congress. And he was what we would describe as a terrorist today, when he was arrested. That African National Congress that he was part of, I don’t know if it was that named group then when he was arrested. But when he was arrested, their group, they were famous for doing this to their enemies: putting a gas-filled tire around their necks and setting it on fire! We would call those people terrorists today! That’s what Nelson Mandela was! Nelson Mandela was no innocent freedom-fighter, he was a hard-core communist! And after he got out, he was marching around with Joe Slovo giving the clenched fist salute! And the New York Times had a picture of it, a picture of him marching with Slovo, and identified it as the communist salute. The black power movement adopted the communist salute as their own, at the Olympic Games with their arms in the air, giving the communist salute. And today, it’s being repeated all over again. We’re going to see the ‘60s again, especially during, I believe, this political campaign. I believe that the convention in Cleveland will be Chicago all over again, 1968.</p>
<p>WW: Bringing it back to the ‘60s. What were some of the activities that Breakthrough engaged in between the founding in ’63 and, say, ’67? What were some of the activities you engaged in?</p>
<p>DL: Oh, my. [Laughter]</p>
<p>WW: Little snapshots.</p>
<p>DL: Well, numerous clashes with the anti-war movement here in Detroit. Numerous clashes. Which resulted in arrests several times.</p>
<p>WW: On both sides?</p>
<p>DL: Well, I remember my own being arrested.</p>
<p>WW: That’s fair.</p>
<p>DL: For disorderly conduct, I mean these silly things. They’d get rid of you, and I mean, it was nothing serious, you understand, it was these little misdemeanors. So clashes with the communist-led demonstrations here in Detroit during that time period, and opposition to soviet cultural groups that came into the city. The Moscow Chamber Orchestra. There was another orchestra—I forget the name of it right now—but that was early ‘60s. We had several demonstrations against the communist orchestras when they came into Detroit, and the purpose of those demonstrations was to alert the people going to those concerts just who it was that was entertaining them. People who were financing the war in Vietnam against our soldiers, that was number one. And also to inspire people behind the Iron Curtain who might learn what we were doing here in Detroit through BBC or whatever. So there was that. We also had—see, I don’t really know what this has to do with the Detroit riot, but we also had a parade in downtown Detroit in support of victory in Vietnam. We had floats, we had marchers, we had a permit for that parade. I remember how the police rushed us through it. They rushed us through that, and I’ll never forget. Cavanagh was mayor at that time. They never did that with the anti-war demonstrators, only us. And our parade got hardly any press coverage. So what that told me was, the only way that the opponents of the anti-war, rather the supporters of victory in Vietnam and those opposing the anti-war protestors—the only way you’re going to get any public exposure is by opposing. We had a parade, it was blacked out by the press. Virtually blacked out. We had floats, people marching, it was a tremendous parade! Virtually blacked out! So here’s what we were confronted with, my organization: if you don’t oppose the anti-war protestors, it looks as though there’s no opposition against them. If you do oppose them, the press makes you the villain. So either way, the communists win. And so with that as the—I forget what you would call it, it’s like a double-edged sword—if you do this, you lose; if you do this, you lose. My attitude was we’re going to oppose them, and there will be enough people out here who will see through the propaganda, who will see through the news reports, and see the truth of what it is that we were trying to do. We also had demonstrations during that time against communist meetings at various locations. And the principle meeting place was the communists and their fronts in the Detroit area in the 1960s, the time that you’re asking me about, was Central Methodist Church in downtown Detroit and still is! Central Methodist Church is right next to Comerica Park. Anybody going to the ballgame, you’ll see Central Methodist Church. That was a major meeting place of the communists and their front groups during the Vietnam war, outright treasonous organizations. One of the groups that met there was a Fair Play for Cuba meeting. I remember attending that. It was pro-Castro, and one of the speakers, two of the speakers, Cleague—I can’t remember his name—</p>
<p>WW: Albert?</p>
<p>DL: Albert Cleague, he was a black power leader. At that time, I think he had the Church of the Black Madonna, I believe it was at his church where the Republic of New Africa had a meeting. And they were brandishing weapons and the Detroit Police encountered them. One police officer was killed, another police officer was wounded. Robowsky, I think his name was, and Chopsky, I think the other one was.</p>
<p>WW: The church that happened at was New Bethel Baptist.</p>
<p>DL: Okay, my memory can fail me here on some of these things.</p>
<p>WW: Not to worry. What was the size of Breakthrough during this time? What was your scope?</p>
<p>DL: In terms of activists, I would say anywhere from fifty to a hundred. In terms of supporters, I would say in the hundreds. You have people come and go, the left wing, the same way. So you have people come, and they go, and then there’s new people. So over the years, I would say, and I don’t believe I’m exaggerating, counting the people who would come and they go, over the years, people who were supporting Breakthrough, I would say hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. I’m positive to that. We had a lot of people supporting us. We had no financial backers. I financed a good part of Breakthrough. And it was people who just sent in small donations. We would get a mailing list and we had a mailing list, we’d send out appeals. We’d get $10, $25, that’s how it worked. Our attorney pretty much worked for free. Just the publicity would get him clients. So he pretty much worked for us free.</p>
<p>WW: Did you start a newsletter by this time, or was that later?</p>
<p>DL: We didn’t start the newsletter until after the riot, and it was called “Battle Line” newsletter. And that lasted from about 1967 until about 1972. Also during that time we allied ourselves with a group in Toronto called the Edmund Burkes Society. It was a group similar to Breakthrough who were clashing with the communists, especially the Maoists, in the city of Toronto. They had far more violent clashes than we did. And we formed an alliance. The problem that happened there was the Edmund Burkes society was infiltrated by Nazis and that pretty much brought the group down. This new group called themselves the Western Guard, and it was pretty much pro-Nazi. So we no longer had anything to do with them. The alliance just completely collapsed. But for some time, we were allied with that group in Toronto. There was one other thing, though, in the early ‘60s that you asked me about—oh yes, I want to emphasize—I really want to emphasize—the number of meetings that took place at Central Methodist Church that were communist. And we had quite a few demonstrations outside of Central Methodist Church. The minister there was James Laird. He had a column for the Detroit Free Press. We put so much exposure on that church, he was eventually transferred to, I think, Pennsylvania. And the pastor emeritus at that time of Central Methodist Church was Reverend Henry Hitt Crane. Henry Hitt Crane was one of the individuals cited by the US House Committee on Un-American Activities as one of the top communist party front people in the United States. So that’s Henry Hitt Crane. And when you belong to that many communist party fronts, believe me, you are a communist. There’s no question about it. You’re just hiding behind all these front groups. Henry Hitt Crane was a communist, no doubt about it. And he formed the group, which is now, today, the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion. That group, they will tell you, was founded—it was a different name then—by Henry Hitt Crane, a communist. And they are very prominent in this area now, especially here in St. Claire Shores, operating under the radar in our schools. And they have established a youth group called the St. Claire Shores Youth Diversity Council. That’s a creation of the Michigan Roundtable. I’ve opposed them here in the city in front of the city council, but it doesn’t do much good, because there are very, very prominent people associated with this group. But what I’m saying here is that that group will tell you that initially, it was founded by Henry Hitt Crane, a communist. And they’re proud of it! So when you ask me what we did? Yes, demonstrations at communist meetings, especially Central Methodist Church, and clashing, opposing, the anti-war protestors. Because if you read their literature—this is very important. If you read their literature, it’s not really the war they were against. They were against American victory! They were marching for a communist victory and American defeat! That is treason! They were burning the American flag! They were carrying the communist flag! And one thing that I want to really emphasize here is that when asked about burning the American flag, here’s what they said: “It’s just a piece of cloth.” But that communist flag they were carrying wasn’t just a piece of cloth, I mean to tell you. And when they flew the communist flags here, we tore them down, because my attitude was, they’re not going to take pictures of these demonstrators carrying communist flags to show our P.O.W.s in Vietnam or Korea or anywhere else. They’re not going to do it anywhere here in Detroit because we’re going to stop them from doing it. And I firmly believe that our opposition to the anti-war demonstrations here in Detroit resulted in a lot less numbers than they had in other cities. Our opposition to those demonstrations did that. And then, of course, there was also our involvement in exposing certain individuals in the Archdiocese of Detroit. I am Catholic, and so consequently, when I saw this, I thought the Archdiocese of Detroit would be on our side. I was anti-communist mainly because of my Catholic education. And I find out, from experience, that the Archdiocese of Detroit, under Cardinal Dearden was not only not on our side, they were actually collaborating with the enemy. We put out leaflets to that effect. And that was right, especially, after the riot. Especially after the so-called “riot” in 1967. Because the Archdiocese of Detroit gave money to these black militant, black power groups, the Association of Black Students at Wayne State University, they gave them $100,000, $64,000. The Ghetto Speaks, Eastside Voices, they had been in Detroit led by Frank Ditto. They gave them money. And this group called for violent revolution, killing the pigs, meaning the police. Violent revolution. And the Archdiocese of Detroit gave them thousands of dollars. And the Black Panther Party, which was a Marxist, Leninist party, I read in some government document, I can’t remember what it was now, but that the Archdiocese contributed $100,000 to the Black Panther Party. And so, where was the Archdiocese getting this money? From Catholics contributing to the Archdiocese in development fund, that’s where the money was from. So consequently we exposed that with leaflets all over the Archdiocese of Detroit, at churches on Sunday mornings. And as a consequence, the Archdiocese and development fund was—they got rid of that, and now it’s the something else. But that was all a consequence. And then of course there was Bishop Thomas Wimbleton, who—that’s a whole other story. But Wimbleton supported the communists throughout the Vietnam War, we had a number of clashes with him.</p>
<p>WW: Were you still living in the city of Detroit during all of this?</p>
<p>DL: Yeah, I was at my parents’ home as a matter of fact, because I had a room upstairs so it was cheaper living for me. So I was living there, and my city job was civil service really enabled me to engage in these activities without getting fired. If I had been working for a private company, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. I had vacation time, I didn’t go on vacations. I used my vacation time to engage in these activities and to defend myself in court numerous times. So what I’m trying to say is that by being a member of civil service, I was able to engage in these activities without fear of being fired, unless I was arrested for some serious crime. The reason they’re not going to do that—get rid of me—is because they would have had to get rid of a number of leftists as well, who were in civil service. So they didn’t. I had the press ask me many, many times, “Don, how do you get away? How come you haven’t been fired?” Especially after Coleman Young became mayor. I don’t know. They asked the director of my department: “He does his job, we can’t fire him. He does his job.” So in addition to working 40 hours a week for the city of Detroit, I was involved in that. I didn’t have very much time for anything else, I’m telling you. Because leading an organization like Breakthrough required all of my free time.</p>
<p>WW: Going into 1967, how do you interpret what the events were? Do you see them as a riot? Because you said “so-called riot.”</p>
<p>DL: No, I see them the way the black militants see them, a black rebellion. That’s how they call it. A rebellion. To this day, they call it that, the black militants. You’re asking me how did I see it at the time? Very truthfully, it didn’t turn out the way I saw it. You must understand that at that time there were major violent disruptions. I refuse to call it a riot, it was not a riot. If it was not brought about by subversives, if it wasn’t brought about, it was that police breaking up that blind pig, if that’s something that just happened, it was exploited and taken advantage of by subversive groups to promote their ends and their goals. And at that same time, you had it going on in Watts, Newark, there were several other cities, so this happened just by coincidence? Oh no, it looked pretty organized to me. Same thing with Black Lives Matter. This isn’t just some local group, this is a national organization. Then you’ve got Sharpton’s group, that’s a national organization. They are national.</p>
<p>WW: Bring it back.</p>
<p>DL: Bring it back? Okay. No, wait a minute, at that time, you had Rap Brown, you had Stokely Carmichael, you had these black power militants who were promoting revolution—revolution!—and so I thought, the way I saw this, these were dry runs. This wasn’t just an ordinary riot. These violent in Newark, Watts, Detroit, other places—this was how I saw it at the time—were dry runs for a major violent revolution in this country that would maybe bring about the communist conquest of the United States. Now time has proven that that view that I had at that time was very, very premature. But please understand, that you had these black power militants preaching violent revolution and overthrow of the American government. And you had a group set up at Wayne University, the Association of Black Students promoting that very thing. Lonnie Peak was one of the leaders of that, Dan Aldridge was one of the leaders of that. Lonnie Peak later became a city official, and I believe he became a minister later on, in later years. But at that time he was very active. And the Association of Black Students, they held a symposium at Wayne State University, I believe it was in 1968. It was either ’68 or ’69. They had a symposium, and I have the program from that symposium. There’s a poem in there, in which they call for the murder of the police. Kill the police, murder the police, calling for violence. This was the Association of Black Students at Wayne University. Then you had the Eastside Voice of independent Detroit which was headed up by Frank Ditto. They had a publication called The Ghetto Speaks. This was all after the riot, all this was the aftermath of the riot. These were militant organizations. Are you wanting me to talk about the riot right now, the aftermath of it?</p>
<p>WW: I was just about to bring you back to that.</p>
<p>DL: Because that’s really where I became very much involved. But right now you’re asking me how I viewed it at the time, and so I think I just answered that.</p>
<p>WW: Yes.</p>
<p>DL: I saw it as dry runs for the big push that would result in the takeover of the United States by the communists.</p>
<p>WW: And now, just a couple of small questions. How did you first hear about what was going on in the city?</p>
<p>DL: You mean how did I hear of the violence?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah.</p>
<p>DL: I was at a friend’s—a Breakthrough member’s—he and his wife were visiting his parents. They lived in Detroit right by the City Airport. I happened to be there that Sunday when all of this broke out, and I remember we heard the—there were like helicopters, I think, that went over the neighborhood—and then we later on, we heard about what was going on. And also, this might sound really stupid, but it is a fact: I thought that—seeing this as I did, which I just described, I saw this as an opportunity on the part of the left wing in the city of Detroit to use it as a cover to attack my place of residence. I had members of Breakthrough there. We were armed in case anybody attempted to burn the house, attack the house, all under the guise of the riot. Never happened, but I was prepared for that. That’s pretty much how I saw it. Dry runs.</p>
<p>WW: And before we move to the aftermath, did you see the violence? Did you anticipate violence that summer or was it a surprise to you? In Detroit. Because you mentioned that Watts and Newark, did you say to yourself, “It’s coming here”?</p>
<p>DL: No, I told you, I saw the Detroit so-called riot as part of this. This was not something that just happened like the riot in the ‘40s. That was a genuine riot. This was, if it was not an organized rebellion from the beginning, it was seized upon to become that.</p>
<p>WW: Yeah, I’m asking if you saw it coming to Detroit.</p>
<p>DL: Saw what coming? That particular riot, did I see that coming? No.</p>
<p>WW: Did you anticipate a rebellion or an attempted—</p>
<p>DL: No, no, no, no, no. But when it happened—</p>
<p>WW: You knew it.</p>
<p>DL: —the way I saw it—as I said, dry runs. And then, well I’m getting ahead of myself because we had rallies afterwards, I mean public meetings afterwards. We’re getting into the aftermath of it now.</p>
<p>WW: Yep, we can get into that now. Well, did you have any experiences from that week you’d like to share?</p>
<p>DL: You mean the week of the riot?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah.</p>
<p>DL: I just shared one of them. I did not go to work for three or four days. I felt it was far too dangerous. A number of people didn’t go to work, I wasn’t the only one. And I had members of Breakthrough—several members of Breakthrough—at my place of residence in the event that my enemies would use the riot as a cover to attack my residence, maybe burn it down. I was prepared for that. Thank God it didn’t happen. But I was prepared for it. You’re asking me how I viewed it, that’s how I viewed it. I was probably the only one in the entire city that viewed it that way, ‘cause the people in the city of Detroit are viewing it the way the news media are reporting it to them. Not me. I’m viewing it with the knowledge of communist activity in the city of Detroit. That’s how I’m viewing it. Other people are not viewing it that way. I’m probably one of a very few that view it that way.</p>
<p>WW: Now moving into the aftermath. How did the rebellion affect Breakthrough? Did it?</p>
<p>DL: Oh, it sure did! I mean our major focus was to promote victory in Vietnam, an American victory, a communist defeat, and to oppose the anti-war movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, which I have just said was really to end the war with a communist victory and an American defeat. That was the whole purpose of it. That’s what we were opposed to. The riot—I hate to use the term, because the militants call it a rebellion, and that’s what I believe it was, so I’ll refer to it as the “rebellion” from here on—</p>
<p>WW: That’s perfectly fine.</p>
<p>DL: The rebellion changed course for us. And if you want to tell me what happened that brought that about, I think I’ll do it right now—</p>
<p>WW: Go right ahead.</p>
<p>DL: Because no one you talk to is going to tell you what I am now going to tell you because there’s no one that even knows about it, or will recall it. I do, because I experienced it first-hand. Immediately following that rebellion, the white leadership, government, of Detroit, Mayor Cavanagh—it was pretty much white, and there were white neighborhoods in Detroit. I lived in a white neighborhood. And so, the black power leaders, the black leaders of the city of Detroit, they took advantage of this rebellion to now flex their muscles politically and they called on the mayor of Detroit—it’s so important to understand here, I didn’t mention this, the mayor of Detroit—they had the police out there, anybody that experienced this out there on the television news—the police stood by and let them burn and loot, they did nothing to stop them, nothing! And then after 24 hours, the governor sent in the National Guard, and I’ll never forget it. He said, “Well, the rioting has now become intolerable.” And, publically, I scorched the governor for <a name="_msoanchor_2" id="_anchor_2" href="file://server/Public/1967/Projects/Oral%20History%20Project/Histories/Audio%20Histories/Second%20Batch/+Lobsinger,%20Donald/Lobsinger,%20Donald.docx#_msocom_2">[JY2]</a> making that statement because what he was saying was that for 24 hours, all the burning and the looting was tolerable. Just imagine that, it was tolerable. Now if I had been mayor of Detroit, that looting would have ended in a big, big hurry because they would have all been arrested and some of them would have been shot! And that would have been the end of the riot in the city of Detroit. But Cavanagh, no. Police stand by and let it all happen. And then the National Guard did, too, for a while, before they really put it down. So naturally the black leaders in Detroit, they’re flexing their muscles. The city government isn’t going to do anything, so now we’re going to take advantage of this, so here’s what happened: about a month after that rebellion, it’s reported in the paper that these black leaders in Detroit—I can’t name them right now, I don’t know their names, I just remember reading it in the paper—that there’s going to be a black rally, a black power rally, in the city council chambers at the city county building, approved by the mayor of Detroit, Jerome Cavanagh. So I thought, “Oh, I’ve got to be at that. I’ve got to see that. I have to see where this is going.” So I went through with a Breakthrough member, and we were in the auditorium of the city county building, where the city council held their meetings when they expected large members of the public in attendance. When we got there, this Breakthrough member and I, we stood in the side aisle by the wall, just observing—that’s all we intended to do, was just observe, just observe what was happening—these black leaders—I can’t name a one of them—they were already sitting in the chairs of the city council members, ready for the rally when I noticed that this woman went up to them and pointed me out to them. Now the woman, I happened to know, was Naomi Komarowsky. Naomi Komarowsky was the wife of Conrad Komarowsky who was a member of the communist party and a writer for the communist publication “The Worker.” She was his wife. They were both communists. Now I didn’t see Conrad Komarowsky there, but I did see Naomi Komarowsky. And she is the one, a communist, who pointed me out to these black leaders. Several of them came up to me and here is what they said, I remember it as though it happened just yesterday: “Lobsinger, don’t even open your mouth because we’re running things now.” Those are the exact words that were said to me. And I said to myself, I looked right at them, and I said to myself, Okay, you win this round. You win this round. I’m not going to open my mouth, but you sure as hell are going to hear from me. So I got Breakthrough together, the Breakthrough leaders together after that, and I said, “We’re changing direction right now from the Vietnam War to opposing the black power movement in the city of Detroit” and holding public meetings around the city, at halls, telling the people what happened at the city county building, who was behind these riots, what was likely to happen again, what they should be prepared to do if they did happen again. In other words, if there was another rebellion, what would happen, we believe, was that there would be entire neighborhoods unprotected by the police and so consequently they should have weapons to defend their lives and their property and food to last for a number of days, in case all the power went out. We held these meetings across the city, in various parts of the city, and we couldn’t find halls big enough to accommodate the people that came, and these meetings were almost totally blacked out in the media! No reporting in the media! Maybe a little paragraph. I mean, this is big news! There was a rally on the northeast side of Detroit, cars were coming from every direction! There wasn’t enough parking space for them! The hall accommodated 300-400 people. There were so many people we had to set up speakers outside. So then we rented a bigger hall over on 7 mile by Gratiot, the Flamingo Hall, a much bigger hall. Accommodated 800 people. More people came, then even more people came, and we had to put up speakers outside to address the people at this meeting. And I’m telling you what we told them, “Be prepared for another one.” Be prepared for something far greater: neighborhoods unprotected by the police that will have to defend your own property. That was the gist of our message. Blacked out by the press. This is a big story! This is a big, big story! Then we had meetings on the northwest side. Some of those meetings were cancelled under pressure from the mayor of Detroit, I’m positive. Every instance, we couldn’t find halls big enough. Then, when the rallies were over, these public meetings were over, then the Detroit Free Press ran a feature article in which they made it look like we were just a bunch of crazies overreacting to something that never really happened, as we described it. That’s what the article amounted to. So it was a smear article in the Detroit Free Press, even though they blacked out all these meetings before hand, and they did not tell the truth at all as to what we were saying to the people of these rallies. By the way, part of the reason we got people to come to these rallies in the numbers that we did was that in the neighborhoods surrounding the halls where we were holding the meetings, we saturated the neighborhoods with leaflets and flyers telling them, “Will you be prepared for another riot if there is one?” And that’s why people came. They came walking—it’s unbelievable the response that we got to those leaflets. Each instance in the area where the meeting was going to be held, we saturated the area with flyers, and that’s why we got the numbers that we did. Now, this is a meaningful, in my opinion: at these meetings I scorched the mayor of Detroit for having the police stand down while these stores were burned and looted. I scorched the mayor for this. I scorched the governor for this. For twenty-four hours, the rioting was “tolerable,” according to Governor George Romney, because, “it’s now become intolerable.” Those were his words. And I reminded the people at the rally what the governor said and what Cavanagh said, and we put out leaflets: Wanted for…whatever. Malfeasance of duty or whatever, against Cavanagh and Romney. 1969 comes, and Cavanagh is running for mayor—no, ’68 comes. Early 1968. We had a huge demonstration at Grosse Pointe High School when Martin Luther King was invited to speak there. That gymnasium was packed. It was a cold winter night and it was snowing. We had about two to three-hundred people outside that school protesting Martin Luther King. Because Martin Luther King and his communist associations and his communist background, Martin Luther King was no patriot! He was an enemy of the United States! He supported the communists during the Vietnam War! All of his loyalists and supporters will admit it! Will admit it, that he supported the communists during the Vietnam War! We knew that. That’s why we opposed Martin Luther King. And we had a huge demonstration outside Grosse Pointe High School in early 1968. And inside, too, to the point where Martin Luther King had a press conference the next day and said that never in his experience did he experience anything like this opposition at Grosse Pointe High School at an indoor meeting. Those are King’s own words. Well, then King was assassinated a couple weeks later, and the mayor Cavanagh immediately imposed a curfew in the city of Detroit. A curfew. And the only reason that he imposed that curfew was because he knew that if he didn’t stop things right in its tracks, right there, that we would’ve come after him. And he was up for re-election next year, so he imposed a curfew. And we did not have the violence in Detroit that other cities had because there was major violence in other cities in the United States after King was assassinated, but not in Detroit, and we’re the reason for that. We’re the reason for that. And then after King was assassinated, oh brother. After King was assassinated, at the time, he was organizing a poor people’s march on Washington, then he was assassinated and Ralph Abernathy, his chief aide, took over. He resumed the poor people’s march. So they came to Detroit. This was in 1968, not long after King was assassinated. Abernathy picked up the Poor People’s March but they came to Detroit first, and they had a march here in Detroit. Oh gosh, I remember this like it happened yesterday. They had a march here in Detroit. The Poor People’s March, as a prelude to the one in Washington. Father James Groppi from Milwaukee, an agitator, a priest agitator from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee who was very well-known at that time, was one of the leaders of that march, along with Ralph Abernathy and a number of others. The march got to Cobo Hall where they were going to have a rally and then, there was violence that broke out—I can’t remember exactly what the circumstances were, but the mounted police had to go in to try to calm it. There was a clash between the Mounties—the mounted police—and the Poor People’s March. When they left, before they left, they demanded that Cavanagh, Mayor Cavanagh, punish those mounted police for their actions at that Poor People’s March gathering, I believe it was at Cobo Hall. And they demanded that those police officers be punished and as a consequence of that—and they also said they were going to come back to Detroit after Washington, they were going to come back to Detroit. I remember that distinctly, that they promised that they were coming back to Detroit. As a consequence of that clash, between the Mounties and that group. I told you about the public meetings we had to tell people about the riots, the rebellion, what they needed to do to prepare in the event there was another one. Now, we held public meetings again and we put out leaflets telling people to come, and so on, in defense of the police and in defense of the Mounties. We held only one meeting, I think, at that time, at the Flamingo Hall in northeast Detroit at 7 mile and Gratiot. We packed the place, it was 700 people. And I remember, before I went there to speak that night—I was always the main speaker at these meetings—Mayor Cavanagh was on television news and said he was going to get rid of the mounted police. He had already suspended the Mounties that were involved in that clash. He had suspended them. And I heard him say in the news he was going to get rid of the mounted police. And at the rallies, I’m going to tell you right now one of the things I said to the people at that rally, “Mayor Cavanagh was on television tonight—” and, let’s see, how did this go? Okay. I said at that rally to these people, I quoted the mayor, I said, “I know there’s a representative of the mayor here in the audience tonight. I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re here.” And I said, “The mayor made a statement tonight that he’s going to get rid of the mounted police because they have outlived their usefulness.” And I said to the people there and to the mayor’s representative who I was sure was there, I said, “I want you to take this back to the mayor for me, tonight. It’s not the Mounties who’ve outlived their usefulness, Mr. Cavanagh; it’s you!” And that about brought the roof down. Then, as an individual, I gave my public support to George Wallace of Alabama who was running for the President of the United States on the democratic ticket and he won the primary in Michigan. And the roof came down when I said that too, that I believed that George Wallace should be the next President of the United States. That was in 1968. So in 1969—by the way, Cavanagh reinstated the Mounties as a consequence of our meetings. He reinstated the Mounties and he never did get rid of the mounted police. I worked downtown and I am telling you, when I walked downtown on my lunch hour and the Mounties would see me, they practically saluted me, because they were still in existence. Cavanagh was definitely going to get rid of the mounted police. We saved the mounted police in the city of Detroit. 1969 comes, mayoral election, Cavanagh made this public statement: “Since Don Lobsinger is so critical of my administration, why doesn’t he run for mayor against me?” Yeah, that’s kind of a good idea. So I announced that I would run for mayor of Detroit against Jerome Cavanagh. And by god, if a couple weeks later, he didn’t drop out of the race. Now the heavies got into it, Roman Gribbs and Mary Beck and others whose names won’t even come to me now, Richard Austin…and then there was another man who was an instructor at Wayne University. The press blocked out my campaign. They just blacked it out. They blacked it out and they mentioned four major candidates: Austin, Gribbs, Beck, and this other man whose name will not come to me right now. Well there was something like 31 candidates for mayor, and there were only four major candidates, according to the press. And when that primary election was over, I came in fifth, and I almost beat the fourth one. No publicity. I was a major name in the city of Detroit. A major name! Press blacked that out. They just blacked it out. As I said, Cavanagh dropped out of the race, and the winner of the election turned out to be Roman Gribbs who became Mayor of Detroit, then later, Coleman Young. Have I answered your question?</p>
<p>WW: Yes.</p>
<p>DL: You wanted to know how I saw the rebellion at the time? The aftermath? The major, major event was that black power rally in the city council chambers which I witnessed and was told, I’m repeating this, was told by the black leaders who had me pointed out to them by a member of the communist party, I was told by them, “Don’t even open your mouth because we’re running things now.” That experience, that event, led to Breakthrough, kind of postponing our opposition to the Vietnam War, and taking on the black power movement in the city of Detroit. And not just right after that, almost forever after that. Black Panthers and everybody.</p>
<p>WW: You said Battlefield ended in ’72—</p>
<p>DL: Battleline.</p>
<p>WW: Battleline, sorry, ended in ’72. How long did Breakthrough keep going for?</p>
<p>DL: With reduced numbers, at least until early ‘90s.</p>
<p>WW: Wow, that’s very long.</p>
<p>DL: Because we went to the support of Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn, most people don’t remember that. In 1992 they were prosecuted for murder in the killing of that black druggy, Malice Green and along with the number of others, we went to back their support. So with far less numbers, Breakthrough was still in existence in the early ‘90s. But I want you to understand, now, that I always said, and I still say it to this day, that so long as I have breath in me, Breakthrough lives. So even if I’m the only one, Breakthrough still exists. And we’re sitting here now talking.</p>
<p>WW: What year did you leave the city?</p>
<p>DL: 1992. I was pretty much forced out by that time. Coleman Young was mayor. I was pretty much forced out by that time because I was no longer protected by civil service. It was now unionized. And they were able to work it in such a way that they were able to lay me off. I took a demotion and a transfer to another job in the same office building, but another job. So then they laid me off again. So then I just simply put in for retirement. That was in late 1992. As a consequence of having been demoted, all the vacation time and sick time that I had accumulated on higher pay was reduced to my salary at that time. So I lost quite a few thousand dollars because of it. But remember, Coleman Young was mayor at the time, so it was time for them to get rid of me.</p>
<p>WW: You refer to yourself as a refugee from the city of Detroit.</p>
<p>DL: Well, I didn’t in this interview.</p>
<p>WW: Not today, but you have.</p>
<p>DL: Yes, I have. As a matter of fact, when I addressed the Board of Commissioners here in Macomb County, almost for an entire year, month after month after month, in opposition to the Black Ministers’ Alliance, which was out here in Macomb County, inciting, opposing the county government on accusations of racism, I read that in the paper, and I thought, I’m not going to let you get away with that! So I went in front of the Board of Commissioners, meeting after meeting after meeting, in the mid-90s, and yes, I identified myself as a refugee from the city of Detroit. Which I was. Which I was. The blacks took over the neighborhood and simple fact of the matter is, this is a fact, if it makes me a racist, well, I plead guilty, because facts are facts. And the fact is there was no crime in the neighborhood in which I lived until the blacks moved in, especially when they moved in in large numbers. I mean, there were people murdered on their front lawn just a few doors away. We didn’t experience that kind of crime. There was no crime like that until the blacks took over the neighborhood. Once I left the city of Detroit, at that time, you had to be a resident of the city of Detroit in order to be employed. So once I was no longer employed by the city of Detroit, I moved out to St. Claire Shores. But the neighborhood had become black, and I remember coming home one night and the black neighbor saying to me, “Your kind is not welcome here.” And I thought to myself, this is my neighborhood. How dare you talk to me like that! That’s all I could think of. Now I want to make something very, very clear in this interview right now: I am not against black people and never have been. I worked with black people, I got along with them, even during these years of activity, I got along with the black people at work. They knew me personally. They knew I was not what the press was branding me. They knew that. And I got along with them very well. So I’m not against black people. What I am against is the black leadership because it’s communist and socialist, and Martin Luther King, who was made a hero, who all the blacks worship as their hero—well, unfortunately, Martin Luther King, back in the ‘60s, conservative groups had a photograph of him at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, which was a communist training center. And pictures of Martin Luther King at that training center were in conservative publications across the country. And Carl Prussian, who was a member of the FBI, said Martin Luther King belonged to a number of communist front organizations. And a woman by the name of, her name will not come to me right now, it will not come to me right now—Brown was her last name—she exposed Martin Luther King in a book that she wrote saying that she identified him as working with the communists. Then when Martin Luther King was killed, the communist press eulogized him, they would never eulogize an enemy like they eulogized Martin Luther King. The reason being because Martin Luther King took the side of the communists during the Vietnam War. He supported the North Vietnamese communists, he praised Ho Chi Mihn, and he identified the United States as the greatest perpetrator of violence in the world when we shared the planet with the Soviet Union and communist China, how dare him accuse his own country of being the most violent nation in the world when we shared the planet with, as I said, with the Soviet Union and communist China! He displayed his sympathies for all to see, at that time! Martin Luther King was a traitor to the United States and a monument in his honor in Washington is a national disgrace, and I will say that publically ‘til the day I die. I don’t care if I’m the only voice in the land that says so. But that does not make me against the black people. I am not against the black people. What I am against is their leadership which is misleading them.</p>
<p>WW: That is all I have. Thank you very much for sitting down with me, Mr. Lobsinger. Greatly appreciate it. I’m glad we were able to make this appointment. </p>
<p>[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 01:16:56]</p>
<p class="Normal1">[End of Track 1]</p>
Original Format
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WAV
Duration
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1hr 17min
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Donald Lobsinger
Location
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St. Claire Shores, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V7Q12qHk-AE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
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Title
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Donald Lobsinger, June 23rd, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Lobsinger discusses his experiences in the Korean War and how that led him to start his group, Breakthrough, to fight communism in Detroit, as well as his experiences of and viewpoint on the unrest in 1967
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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06/28/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society
Format
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audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Communism
Community Activists
Martin Luther King Jr.
Vietnam War
-
http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/6790a051060047741b55bbe6f52a824a.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
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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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Jesse Davis
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Jesse Davis was born in Benham, Kentucky in 1944 and moved to Detroit when he was two years old. He had nine brothers and sisters and grew up in the Davison neighborhood. He served in the army for two years and still lives in Detroit.
Interviewer's Name
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Celeste Goedert
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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011/29/2016
Interview Length
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01:04:44
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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01/27/2017
Transcription
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<p>CG: So today is Tuesday, November 29, 2016. My name is Celeste Goedert and I'm here at the Detroit Historical Museum. This interview is for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project and today I'm sitting down with Jesse Davis. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>JD: Mmkay.</p>
<p>CG: Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>JD: Okay, I was born in 1944, on Mother's Day, May 14, in Benham, Kentucky. Coal-mining country.</p>
<p>CG: Okay. And -</p>
<p>JD: In the Appalachian Mountains.</p>
<p>CG: All right. What was it like growing up there?</p>
<p>JD: Well, my family - my father didn't want us to be in the coal mine. So there was ten of us - six brothers, four sisters - so he moved us to Detroit. I got here when I was two years old.</p>
<p>CG: Okay. So most of your memories -</p>
<p>JD: So most of my memories are the city of Detroit. And I was raised up on Davison, at the end of the underpass, you know, the first expressway in Detroit. It was a full neighborhood, you know. I can say it was integrated, you know, like - or segregated - they had different spots of the neighborhood - we had Hamtramck right there, a lot of Polish people, then on the other side of Joseph Campau a lot of white people, then our section, was separate - where the underpass start - it was a neighborhood called Davison - it was a lot of - full neighborhood - everything, three or four movie theaters in the neighborhood, grocery store, everything. Everything you needed was right there in the neighborhood.</p>
<p>This was before Chrysler Expressway came through. You know, then when they start building on the Chrysler Expressway kind of tore the neighborhood up. You know, a lot of people moved out, this and that. Even today we still - the old timers and stuff - because we learned a lot - there was a lot of black-owned business and stuff there, and they taught us a lot of stuff, you know, like - when my father died I was young. I was about six years old. When I was about eight, guys in the barber shop knew my father so they gave me a job there and stuff, you know. That was - you know - because they knew my mother had a lot of kids. [laughter] We had a large family, you know. Every little bit helps.</p>
<p>CG: So you were eight years old when you started working at the barber shop?</p>
<p>JD: Yeah.</p>
<p>CG: And what was that like?</p>
<p>JD: I wasn't doing too much. Sweeping up hair off the floor. Going to the store for people, stuff like that. But they taught me a lot, you know. Taught me a lot about life and stuff. Because they knew my father, so they took to me. They taught me how when I go to the store - that little change, don't give the change back. [laughter] Keep that in your pocket. Break the five dollars down into singles and stuff, so if they want to give you a tip, they'll give you a tip. They don't, they don't. So they taught me how to respect money and stuff, you know. They took their time teaching me little stuff, how you got to respect money and money will respect you. Always keep your job, do the best you can on your job and stuff.</p>
<p>I grew up with some - when I said, a lot of morals about life. And like a lot of the things I learned back then stick with me now. And then my mother, you know, she knew how to deal with all those kids she had. Lady of few words.</p>
<p>CG: You said there were ten of you?</p>
<p>JD: Beg pardon?</p>
<p>CG: There were ten of you?</p>
<p>JD: Ten of us. And then she - we had three cousins stay with us too, so we had a lot of people in the house. And then my older brothers and sisters going back and forth, they were in the military and stuff like that. So everybody helped out at the house and stuff. We was a close family, you know. Still is. Life wasn't that bad. We didn't have much but we didn't know that. We didn't know we was poor. [laughter] Everything's, you know, everything.</p>
<p>CG: Do you have any other memories of growing up in that area?</p>
<p>JD: Sure. You know, like, the area was a full area. We had recreation and stuff, before Motown and all like that, we had a recording studio, we had a baseball team, a football team, basketball team, swimming team, boxing team, all from this recreation - Elizabeth Recreation Center on Davison. Before the expressway came through there. So like - again, it was today, we have a luncheon once a year for the elementary schools and the junior high schools because everybody was close, everybody knew everybody, you know, from house to house, we all knew each other.</p>
<p>So Davison, Cleveland, and Washington. Cleveland was a junior high school, Davison and Washington was elementary schools. It was today – we have a luncheon once a year, you know, so all the old-timers and stuff get together. We also - that neighborhood today is depleted. A lot of vacant lots, this and that. But we get - we got a club, about two hundred of us and stuff. We get a picnic once a year. Four or five thousand people there at the picnic. We cut the grass at the vacant lots, have DJs out there, but the tents up, have horseback riding. These are the people from the old neighborhood, trying to teach the new ones how close we was. A lot of us still close, we're still good friends and stuff, and that's fifty, sixty years. But like, we just try to keep things going so the younger people - you know, there's more to life than at each other's throats</p>
<p>And then a lot of them that moved out of town, they come back in town just for the picnic or for the luncheon. They come back as far away as California, Colorado, different places. New York. Those people have moved out. They doing their things. Then we find out who's no longer with us and stuff - they read obituaries and stuff on the people in the neighborhood. Like I said, it was a close-knit neighborhood.</p>
<p>And then the expressway came through there and - Chrysler Expressway, 75, they kind of divided everything, scattered everybody out.</p>
<p>CG: Do you remember when that happened?</p>
<p>JD: Yeah. You know, it was before I went into the service. I went into the service when they drafted me, in 1967.</p>
<p>CG: They drafted you in 1967.</p>
<p>JD: Yeah. May 1. The same day Mohammed Ali posted - went to the draft. And we supposed to go to the same place, Fort Knox Kentucky. I was there, you know, but he didn't show up. [laughter] You know, they had started on the expressway when I left for the military. So it was in the middle Sixties, I guess, when they started the expressway. Then when I came back in '69, they still was working on it.</p>
<p>CG: Had you noticed how things had already changed at that point?</p>
<p>JD: Yeah. Started changing because they tore down a lot of the businesses and stuff, because they came straight down Davison. A lot of the black-owned businesses were no longer there, because - it was different. It was different. And before then, Detroit had - we had some millions of people in Detroit. We had a lot of stuff, that a lot of the young people could go to, like they had dance places and stuff, they had roller-skating rinks, they had all kinds of stuff. They had Belle Isle. Everything, you know. You could - life was okay.</p>
<p>And then things started changing. Especially like - okay. I went into the service in 1967. Okay, had basic training. And you asked me about the riot and stuff. I finished basic training, they gave us a 24-hour pass. We wasn't supposed to go but about a hundred miles, so I could have went to Louisville, Kentucky, this and that, but I had made a little money playing poker. And a friend of mine that I knew from Detroit, we both was from Detroit, we say, we can make it and get back in time. And so I pay for him and me. Plane ticket, to get to Detroit. We was going to come right back. Stay overnight, catch a flight out that morning, so we would be back.</p>
<p>CG: Was this in July?</p>
<p>JD: Yeah. In that 24-hour period, that weekend pass we had, we could have made it in time. But the people running us from the airport, they dropped us off on Twelfth, because I knew quite a few people on Twelfth and stuff, that was on Twelfth. We had our uniforms on. And then - in the evening, later on at night - we was enjoying ourselves, we went to a couple clubs, this and that - enjoying ourselves. And then chaos broke out on Twelfth and Clairmount. A lot of people was - police was - running these people out of this building. Somebody told me it was an after-hours place. They was arguing with the police, police trying to keep order and this and that. There was a couple police, so they call for some more police. So another car - police car - pulls up. And then this lady - because the police was manhandling her boyfriend or whatever it was - somebody seen it - she argued with the police, got up in his face, and he hit her with a flashlight.</p>
<p>CG: Where was this?</p>
<p>JD: On Twelfth and Clairmount.</p>
<p>CG: Do you remember where - which establishment you were at?</p>
<p>JD: Well, I was in the street, with the crowd then. Because the crowd had got big, because there was a lot of people coming out the after-hours place. And then cars of police was coming up, and they was - the crowd was unruly, the police got rougher. Like, they hit the girl with the flashlight - they hit the police. Throwing stuff at the police cars as they pulled up and stuff. But the crowd was so big. Chaos broke out. The crowd was big. That's when they started breaking windows and stuff and pawn shops and all kinds - clothing stores, everything. Because Twelfth Street was a full street. There was quite a few streets in Detroit had all kinds of stuff. They got to breaking windows and taking stuff out of the buildings and stuff. It got real rowdy and stuff. So me and my friend, I stayed a little bit too far. He stayed closer. He stayed in the projects, in Brewster Projects. So me and him left and went there. But so much trouble in Detroit had got to breaking out. Fires and all kinds of stuff, all parts of the city, so it was like a curfew, and I couldn't get from his house to my house. So I was stuck down there a couple days.</p>
<p>CG: And what street was your house on?</p>
<p>JD: On Fleming, right off of Davison. You know, like - I called my people and stuff. Let them know I was in Detroit. They wanted to come get me but it was so much stuff happening in Detroit. In the daytime, a couple days later, or a day later, my family came down and got me, because the curfew wasn't in the daytime, it was in the evening. And then like, stuff was all over the city. But so much stuff going on, the police let the people do what they wanted to do. So they was - it wasn't no race riot. It was like - people just getting stuff, breaking windows, furniture, TVs. It was everywhere, because the police be right there but wasn't doing anything, I guess they had orders not to do anything. And then it got so bad then the military came in.</p>
<p>CG: Were you still there when the National Guard was called in?</p>
<p>JD: I couldn't get out the city. I tried, man - my friend -</p>
<p>CG: You were stuck?</p>
<p>JD: Allan Trice, the friend of mine - was the next day, trying to get a flight out of there, but they had shut all that down. I couldn't get out of there. So I called my base in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and tried to tell my commander that I couldn't get out the city - "You got no business being there, that's over a hundred miles!" Said I'm sorry about that, but this is what the truth is, this is where I'm at. I let him know, so I knew I was in trouble, so he told me, said like, "What I want you to do is bring me some newspapers from Detroit." So that's what I'll do, bring some newspapers, as soon as I can get out of here.</p>
<p>It took me ten days to get out of Detroit. Before they opened up the airport, before they opened up the streets. I got back to Fort Knox, had three or four newspapers for him and stuff, let him know that this is where I was at. And then they had it on - they shut the city down, and all like that. So I didn't get in too much trouble and stuff, but I had to do a whole lot of extra work.</p>
<p>And then when I got back, Detroit was different, because they had burned down a lot of stuff.</p>
<p>CG: Just to go back really quickly - you were there just before everything broke out?</p>
<p>JD: When it broke out.</p>
<p>CG: Were you near the after-hours joint?</p>
<p>JD: I was right on the street, a couple blocks away, and hurried up to see what was going on down there. And was right outside the building where they was coming out, so I was right there. It was just - had been in the military, this was the first time I had got a pass - a weekend pass - and this is what I run into. But like before I went into the military, it was a lot of unrest in a lot of different cities, and Detroit got to feeling it too because we had - to be truthful, we had a police force that had - what they call it - STRESS -</p>
<p>CG: Or the Big Four.</p>
<p>JD: The Big Four. And they had a special force called STRESS. We called it STRESS, because they used to set a lot of people up, that wouldn't even be thinking about a crime. And come to the crime, and then - the way I believe, in the neighborhood, if they set you up and would kill you, or hurt you and put a weapon on you, you know. Because, like I witnessed this white guy going into this club, acting like he was drunk, flashing money, dropping money all on the floor, acting like he's unstable, then when he went outside, a couple guys, I guess they was going to rob him, when they went out there and confronted him - STRESS or the Big Four, they surrounded these guys, beat them pretty bad. So it was a lot of unrest.</p>
<p>CG: Do you remember what year that was? Around what time?</p>
<p>JD: Well, okay, I was in the military - I went to Fort - it was like in the early '68 because I was in New Jersey, came home on a weekend pass, went to this club. And I witnessed that. It was a club - kind of a little club, it was on Woodward and - Woodward and Collingwood, something like that. And then when we come outside to see what was going on, four, five police cars, unmarked - had the two guys, beating them. Because back then, slowly turning your head - what they call it, black power, everybody stuck together. So there was so much stuff happening, that wasn't right with the police and the communities and stuff. We stopped everything and gathered around. We wanted to know what they did, this and that. Don't be beating them and stuff like that. If they did something wrong, you ain't got to beat them like that. Lock them up but don't be beating them all out here in the street and stuff.</p>
<p>So there was a lot of unrest, not only in Detroit, a lot of other cities and stuff. When I was up in New Jersey, I'd go on leave, I’d go to Philadelphia, I'd go to New York, Boston, everything was right there near Fort Dix, New Jersey. You know, didn't take long to get to - there was a lot of unrest in a lot of big cities, you know.</p>
<p>I believe that's where a lot of stuff came from - Vietnam. Then the military - I was glad I was in the military because a lot of this stuff was going on and I didn’t have to be a part of. You know, when I went to Germany in '68, that's when Martin Luther King got killed. Even over in Germany was a whole lot of unrest and stuff. You know, in the military, black soldiers - and we didn't take it out on the white soldiers, but it was like the establishment, you know. Like something needed to be did. The only thing our people can do is black power. We stuck together. We wasn’t trying to do this and that. We just stuck together with each other. We're in this together, you know. And it was like that across the country. I was out of the country, but I had letters and you know, all kinds of stuff was going on, including in my neighborhood and stuff. That things had changed. In Detroit, all these burned out buildings, this and that, there was a lot of businesses got wiped out - the expressway wiped a lot of stuff out - but after the riot, a lot of business owners, they moved out of the city.</p>
<p>And then Coleman Young, when he got elected - he dismantled STRESS and all like that, because that's what the people wanted. They wanted the police to be from Detroit. Not the suburbs. So it was a lot of unrest in a lot of places. But to me, Detroit was never a race riot because the neighborhoods - we might have stayed in another neighborhood but we played sports together. I played basketball, I used to go down to Hamtramck and play basketball and stuff, with the guys, no problems. No problems. And we went to school together. No problems, no problems.</p>
<p>I could never say it was a race riot. Because to me, I didn't see it. It was just like - when that broke out, it was like - people just took stuff they thought they needed, or it was there so they took it. They had to break a window or run into a store, whatever, because there wasn't nobody there to stop them. The police - they was - until the military came in, and the military, they put their foot down. So they came in with some rules, with the curfew, with the set down, with everything. And I was glad I was in the military so I could get out of there as soon as they opened up the airport. And that's what I did. I was here ten days.</p>
<p>CG: Do you remember seeing the National Guard and the federal troops around?</p>
<p>JD: Yeah. It was everywhere. It was everywhere. And they - the word was, that they had just come from Vietnam, so they was combat-ready. You can hear some of the tanks, because they had tanks and everything. You could hear, every now and then, one of those tanks firing. And they were saying on the news and stuff it was snipers in the building. They evacuated the building, they got the snipers out, they let off a few rounds from those tanks and stuff. Then they had opened up Belle Isle - the people they were arresting and stuff, the jails were so full. They were just packing them all in Belle Isle. Like a camp or something. So I'm glad - right. A lot of stuff was going on those ten days I was here. My family wouldn't let me go out there.</p>
<p>CG: Did they mostly stay in the house?</p>
<p>JD: Well, in our neighborhood, because we knew everybody. And we even knew the police and everything. Because when I was younger, you're standing out, hanging out, the police tell you to go home, and then they come back, you're still there and stuff. They wouldn't take you to jail. They'll snatch you up, might slap you upside the head, but they take you home and throw you on your front porch because they was part of the neighborhood.</p>
<p>It's a lot different now. And then, that's why I was telling you earlier - it's a lot of unrest in the country now. I hope things don't get back like that, because everybody lose. Don't nobody win. So why should you tamper your own stuff? Because that's what they did. A lot of the businesses left Detroit, so Detroit been hurting a long time, so I'm glad it's coming back. Because I hadn't witnessed a lot of it - you know, for two, three million people down to seven thousand - that's a lot of people left here. And it hurt the city. But now, there's hope. There's hope, because people coming back - they're building and stuff. You can see some kind of hope, some kind of future for Detroit.</p>
<p>Always been the Motor City. Motown, Motor City and stuff. To me, like, I love Detroit. We put the world on the road. World War Two, we helped turn these assembly lines in. So we had a big hand in winning World War Two. Turning the assembly lines into making tanks and jeeps and stuff, airplanes and everything. The assembly line helped a whole lot of businesses, so I'm kind of proud that Detroit was the first one with the assembly line, the first one with the expressway. A lot of stuff. So Detroit has a lot of history. A lot of history.</p>
<p>CG: Could you talk a little more about - you said you came back in 1969. And you saw that your neighborhood had changed because the freeway had been built and changed things. Was the barbershop still there?</p>
<p>JD: Yeah. Not - not the one that I was raised in, but some of the barbers that worked there did open up their own shop. They had to move locations and stuff, what was still left there, like the service drive - the service drive. I was older, I was doing my own thing - I had worked in the factories, so I went back to the factory.</p>
<p>CG: Oh, you did work factory.</p>
<p>JD: Okay, I started when I was like 18 at the forging plant - that was General Motors. I worked there four years. And then I got drafted. I was trying to get out of the draft. And then back then they had unemployment offices at the plants. So I took a friend of mine over to the Chrysler plant on Jefferson, so he could fill out an application, so I got hired there too. So I was working at General Motors and Chrysler. And so, like, it was the wrong time for me to get drafted.</p>
<p>CG: You got drafted while you were working at GM.</p>
<p>JD: Right. They gave me a notice - okay, back then, they had the draft cards. And you know when it's getting close, because you'll start off with one number, like 4-F or whatever it is, but when you get down to 1-A, you know it's getting close for them to draft you. Because they had Vietnam War going, and didn't nobody want to go there, because we didn't even know where Vietnam was. And then we thought it was political. That was another unrest in the country. Because - the same - okay, they had it, so if you go into school, then college or something, you didn't have to get drafted. And if you had a felony, you couldn't get drafted. But if you weren't in school at a certain age, you're going to get drafted nine out of ten times. And to be truthful - I tried to get a felony. Because I didn't want to go to Vietnam. Because in our neighborhood, it was like - it seemed like - every eligible black guy there was drafted.</p>
<p>CG: You knew a lot of people in your own neighborhood.</p>
<p>JD: Yeah, they was getting drafted, so I tried to get out of the draft, because I'm working at General Motors and Chrysler. Got my own apartment, had a brand new car. Didn't want to get drafted, so I tried to get a felony. So me and this friend of mine, had a convertible car. We go to the Brookside Motel. He get a room, I get a room. He 1-A, he had a draft notice too. So we took down pictures, lamps, all kinds of stuff. Put it in the car, so it could be seen. He had the top down. So we sit and waited on the police.</p>
<p>And so when I went to court, I had one of those mammas went the court with me. Told the judge, “He ain't never got in trouble in his life. Always had a little job, since he was eight years old. He got drafted, that's why he did this. He didn't want to go in the military.” So the judge gave me a choice. Go in the military for two years, or go to jail for five years. So my mama made my mind up for me. "He's going in the military. All his brothers were in the military. He's going in the military." And that's - okay, my mamma has spoke. I can't go against her. Went into the military.</p>
<p>CG: Your older brothers had already gone?</p>
<p>JD: Yeah.</p>
<p>CG: Were you the youngest?</p>
<p>JD: Out of the boys, I had one younger brother. He's deceased now. I had one younger brother, younger than me. But all my older brothers, the four were already in service, or had been in service. Two in the Marines, one in the Air Force, one in the Army. So they drafted me in the Army.</p>
<p>CG: And so you - just to go back a little bit, can you describe a little more what things looked like when you came back in 1969?</p>
<p>JD: When I came back in '69, I stayed about a half block off the street - Fleming off of Davison. They had started building the expressway, and I had worked at the barbershop. That was gone. I had worked at a little small grocery store after the barbershop. That was gone. Cross Davison, across the street, I worked at the supermarket called the Twin Store. He hired people in the neighborhood, so there was about three of us teenagers that worked there. This is before I went to General Motors. That was gone. They were still building on the expressway, so all this was tore up. The recreation was gone. That we had all the sports activities at. Everything was gone. The black-owned businesses and stuff, they was gone, because there was about three cleaners there, they all was gone. Barbershops, grocery stores, black-owned businesses and stuff, all them was gone. The shoe shop. Everything. The pawn shops. Everything. The movie theaters, they was gone. And then - I look at it today - on Davison it just was an extenuation of the underpass, they used to call it. They didn't have to tear that down, but they was building the Chrysler Freeway and tore up the whole neighborhood that I was raised up in.</p>
<p>And so like, everybody had moved out and that's why we give those little things once a year, so - it's like our reunion. Neighborhood reunion, because we was that close. Everybody on the street, in every house, I knew everybody. Same with everybody. We knew everybody in every house. The neighbors - my mom would be at work, I know not to do stuff in front of my neighbors, because they're going to come out there and get me. It's like that's the way it was. You didn't have to lock your doors. You could sleep on your front porch. Wasn't anybody going to mess with you.</p>
<p>And then like - kids played together, we all knew each other. And then the schools and stuff. And then that was another thing in Detroit. Different neighborhoods had a lot of stuff. Boxing team, swimming team, baseball - we challenged each other. Get track meets and stuff. Different neighborhoods and stuff. And then like there wasn't no time for no trouble. We had stuff to do. We had to train, so we could beat them swimming, or beat them boxing, or beat them playing basketball. It would just be another neighborhood that we'd be playing, but everybody got involved. The kids and the parents and everything else.</p>
<p>When I came back, a lot of that stuff was changing. Because we had all those burned out buildings, tore up buildings, burned out houses, vacant lots. A lot of the businesses moved out and stuff, that would hire the young people, kept them busy and stuff. A lot of them sponsored us, made sure we had uniforms, just to challenge other neighborhoods. These was the businesses and stuff. All this was gone.</p>
<p>So I'm grown to it now. But the people that was coming up behind me, they didn't have what we had. So it's a big difference. It's a big change in Detroit. A lot of people moved out, got to moving into the suburbs, moving out of the state, you know. Just getting away. After '67. They slowly started - as soon as they was able, they got up out of here. That's why, for millions to a few hundred thousand. You can see part of it now - a lot of these buildings that was occupied with businesses and stuff, factories and stuff like that, they're just vacant.</p>
<p>And then a lot of big businesses left and left their debris. Left their garbage and stuff. Didn't clean up their area. Just left. Big difference.</p>
<p>CG: Do you still live in Detroit now?</p>
<p>JD: Yes. Yeah, I'd say on the north end. Down right off of John R. Down Woodward, right across the Boulevard, they're building all this stuff, so we the next neighborhood from where they're building the rail and stuff at. But me and my wife, we're neighborhood activists. My wife, she's the president of the block club and stuff. I used to be the treasurer but it was like a conflict of interest so I stepped back. I'm just my wife's supporter now. We've got committees and stuff. Have a lot of volunteers coming in. We clean up a lot of blight and stuff like this. And we help the senior citizens, we get their porches fixed, get them painted and stuff like that. We do a lot of stuff. At this church down on Woodward, 8000 Woodward, that's where we have our meetings and stuff, once a month. And we - third Wednesday of the month - six o'clock. We deal with the City Council. We deal with the city. We do what we can.</p>
<p>And then she knew how I was raised, so she knows it's in me, because I kind of get upset when I - but after I take a second look at it because a lot of people wasn't raised the way I was raised, didn't have the family that I had, because I had a large family and we all stuck together then, the neighborhood stuck together and stuff. When I see people don't want to stick together, don't want to work together, I get upset. So a lot of times in the meetings I have to be quiet, because I will say something, you know. But my wife, she handles it pretty good, she run a pretty good meeting, and she has the right people and stuff there. And then when we need dumpsters and stuff, she's got people she can call from the city and get dumpsters when we're cleaning up the blight and cleaning up the neighborhood and stuff.</p>
<p>Then we've got senior citizens and stuff - it works out. Just ain't a lot you can do, but every little bit helps.</p>
<p>CG: So have you lived in Detroit your whole life?</p>
<p>JD: Well, I did a lot of traveling in the military, and then when I got out, me and my wife traveled a lot when we first got married and stuff. Vacations and stuff. We went to California, San Francisco, Miami. A lot of places and stuff and then I got a lot of family - family reunions, we have them in different spots, so we still go places.</p>
<p>CG: So is your family, are some of them still in Detroit? Are you guys -</p>
<p>JD: Well yeah, basically my immediate family is in Detroit. I lost two brothers and a sister, so there's seven of us. We all stay in Detroit. We keep in contact with each other and stuff.</p>
<p>CG: Then just to go back, you said - you said, it definitely wasn't a race riot. But I know some other people will call it the "uprising" or the "rebellion." Do you -</p>
<p>JD: It was like a rebellion. But I don't know if it would have started - but it was like a ticking time bomb. When that happened on Twelfth and Clairmount, it was like it lit the fuse. And then just spread it, because once they start knocking out windows and taking stuff, it's like somebody had poured gasoline on the fire. It just spread it. But it went on - because every nationality in Detroit, out there taking stuff because it was there. And then - I said it was like a rebellion against the establishment. And then I guess they joined the other part of the country because a lot of stuff was going on in different cities and stuff. And they might have been race riots - I don't know. Because I couldn't see it in Detroit. We had a lot of different nationalities in Detroit, but we all worked together.</p>
<p>I look back at it now. When I was growing up and stuff I played basketball with Davey Bush and Rockets Coach Tomjanovich and stuff. And they stayed in Hamtramck. Let's go down there and play ball with them and stuff. All kinds of stuff, like play football together, be on the same teams and stuff. A couple blocks, I want to be on y'all team. Yeah, you can play, we want you on the team. The only thing we wanted to do, could they play, you know. Yeah, you're on our team. A lot of - you know - a lot of stuff you can do. But like now, it ain't that - there's stuff out there but it ain't like it used to be. We had pool rooms, we had all kinds of sports, all kinds of everything. But people - something for somebody to do at all times.</p>
<p>Now they ain't got - they going to get in trouble. They have a attitude. We didn't have no attitude. I, how do you say it, idle time is the devil's workshop, you know. You got to - these kids, coming up, you've got to keep them busy and stuff. You got to keep them something to do. If you don't give them something to do, they going to find something to do.</p>
<p>And the same way with grown folks. They need something to do. Keep their mind occupied. Otherwise you end up doing the wrong thing. But if you're doing some of the things you're supposed to be doing, okay - but then, you know - ever since the day I worked in all these factories - but I've been taught a lot of stuff. I've got a lot of trades and stuff. That I learned when I was a kid. I learned landscaping from my mother because she knows the way, all us ten in the house, she wanted the house straight. So I worked with her with planting flowers and this and that. But she wanted it like a picture. They used to call our house - all us stayed in there - called our house "the doll house," because we had the little picket fence and stuff, you know. Wasn't no grass growing between the sidewalk. Line up perfectly straight because if it wasn't, she's going to make us do it over again. She was the kind of mom and stuff like, me and my brother arguing and stuff, she'd just walk past and say "Okay. The one with the most sense, shut up." Keep on walking, keep on walking. We'd be looking at each other. She'd know how to deal with all of us, with very few words because we'd know she was serious. And then we'd have stuff right. I learned how to make a bed up from my mama. Because she made me make it up about ten times, until I got the corners tucked in right, with the forty-five degree angle at the ends. All kinds of stuff.</p>
<p>So when I got into the military, I already knew how to make a bed up. And I do it now, because I been raised this way. Okay, we spoil a lot of kids, our next generation, because we got in those factories and was making money. Pretty good money. See, back then, we had to earn everything, what we had to do. We had to earn it. But we want our kids to have more than what we got, so we gave them. They didn't have to earn it. But we didn't know they wasn't learning nothing because you're just giving them. Back then you had to earn everything that you did. And you had to do it right. It was like we call "old school." There's a big difference in attitudes and stuff now, because a lot of kids got spoiled. They didn't have to do nothing. But then you look at some of them now, they don't know nothing, neither.</p>
<p>But then, I had like uncles and stuff, taught me home improvement. Learned landscaping from my mama because they used to take me to work with them when I was a little kid. "Pass me this, pass me that," but I was learning what tools was. A Phillips from a flat-head screwdriver, stuff like that. I know landscaping, I know home improvement, I know a whole lot of stuff. So they - I used to hate to go but they used to tell me like "We're trying to teach you something so you ain't got to go look for a job. People are going to look for you." You know, because my uncle, he had all kinds of licenses. When he died, he had an accident in his car coming from school, learning some code on electrical work.</p>
<p>I know electrical work, I know welding, I know brick work because he knew all of this stuff, and he taught me. And then when I went and stayed with grandfather in Alabama, he built houses. So I've been blessed, and had the right people in my life. Although my father died when I was young. I had a large family, my grandfather, my uncles and stuff. And then we taught each other stuff. It was in my family - I used my GI Bill for tailoring, because I took up tailoring in high school. You know, so I used to make a lot of my own clothes, until me and a couple other guys opened up a little business and stuff. But after we split our money up, went four different ways, then had to pay bills and stuff, sometime I didn't get paid. So when I got a chance to go back in the factory I went back in the factory. But I know how to do that too. Anything with a pattern and stuff, I know what to do.</p>
<p>So folks back then - attended high school, I learned how to read blueprints in junior high school.</p>
<p>CG: Which school was that?</p>
<p>JD: That was Cleveland Junior High School on Conant and Davison.</p>
<p>CG: And which elementary?</p>
<p>JD: Elementary, I went to Davison Elementary on Joseph Campau and Davison. We had everything in our neighborhood. They used to call it "drafting" in junior high school, cause they -</p>
<p>Okay, another thing I see in Detroit, we had a lot of trade schools in Detroit back in the day. You get in trouble in school, instead of kicking you out, they'll send you to Jacoby. We used to call it Jacoby College. It was an all-boys school. But they'd teach you trades, or they'd send you to mow. Or Washington Trade, they taught auto mechanics. They didn't send you to Juvenile or lock you up because you got in trouble in school, or kick you out of school and you're idle that year. They made you go to these special schools. They was hard on you, but when you come out of them, because the teachers get on your case, but now it's against the law for teachers to chastise a kid. Sometimes you have to when you're teaching.</p>
<p>So there's a lot of things have changed. They think you're doing - they think they're doing society good by taking some of the rules, but a lot of those old rules worked. It's a big difference.</p>
<p>CG: Definitely. So just to wrap it up and to go back a little bit, what you were saying before, you said you do have hope for the city moving forward? But you also were talking about how you don't want to see things that happened in '67 repeated.</p>
<p>JD: The reason why I said I don't want to see that, because in different parts, in different cities, in different - you know, like there's a lot of unrest with young people and the police. And that's the way it started before. A lot of unrest in different spots. You don't want all of this connected, because it's like a bomb with a fuse, and sometimes it don't take much to light it. You can see now that a lot of the stuff that happened back then to lead up to some of those riots in the cities and stuff, is getting close to it now. They ain't looking at the whole picture so it don't take much for - they might not even know the fact, of what happened, but it's something - there they go again and they're all out there again. And what they're protesting about, they might be on the wrong wavelength. They might be wrong. That all of this was justified for this to happen, but you just don't agree with it. And so -</p>
<p>CG: Which protests are you thinking about?</p>
<p>JD: Okay. Okay. The one that comes to mind is Black Lives Matter. Black lives do matter. All lives matter. But some of these young people, they're ready to protest, they're ready to join the crowd, and don't know what they're protesting about. And some of them, they're justified on doing it, but some of them, if they was to know the facts, they wouldn't be out there. But they're so uptight, it don't take but a little bit, they jump to conclusions. Instead of learning what they're protesting about.</p>
<p>This situation might not be the same as this other situation. It might be a different situation. Know what I'm saying? I might not be explaining it right, but I'm trying to say it the way I feel about it because all lives matter. But there's a whole lot of other times the police be wrong. But it's a whole other time, they be right because this is their job. And they're doing their job appropriately. But there's a lot of them don't do their job appropriately because sometime, in the police’s head, their culture might be different than where they're patrolling at. Might be a different race or different financial situation, or whatever it is, and they ain't understanding what's happening there.</p>
<p>Okay, for instance, the security guard that killed Trayvon, because he had a hoodie on, you know. All kids with a hoodie on ain't bad. So, only thing I'm going to say is back in the day, we had some leaders of people that talked to people in masses. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, he wasn’t all the way right, but he was still - people listened to him. There's still leaders out there but they, a lot of them ain't listening to them. We had Obama. And then Trump won because people don't trust the government, they don't - they don't trust nothing no more.</p>
<p>The country morals, it ain't the same. So we need real educated people that can communicate with people, then understand it, and put it out there in layman's terms so people can understand. And sit back. Because we're all in this together whether we believe it or not. We're in this together. This is our country, this is where we live. And then I look back the way it used to be. Christmastime, Hudson's downtown. It was like a party, you know. Everybody enjoying themself. You go on down to Hudson's. Eat lunch and stuff at Kresge's, like that. It's the attitude. It's different. And you can't blame people, because just like yesterday, day before, Ohio State, at the college because a person mad, he's going to take it out on some people that got nothing to do with this.</p>
<p>And there's a lot of them out there, because I don't believe there's a lot of terrorists in this country. Most of the time it be an individual with an attitude, and they take it out on people.</p>
<p>CG: Just to wrap it up, did you want to share any last thoughts on the future of Detroit?</p>
<p>JD: Well, not really, but I'm looking at Detroit. You can see a lot of hope.</p>
<p>CG: You're hopeful.</p>
<p>JD: Yeah. You know, the housing thing is coming back and stuff. People moving back into the city and stuff. They building the city up and stuff. Then the Pistons coming downtown, you know, and I'm a basketball fan. So there's a lot of hope for the city, you know, and you can see it, and I feel good about it. And then like, I don't care what nationality is. We need more people in the city with more stuff to do. People need people. Whether they believe it or not. Because I believe, how they say it, because I was a substance abuse counselor and I used to talk to people and stuff. God works through people so you need people. Because a lot of times, you be all bent out of shape, this and that, and you look up, the right person will come right there. Because God will send them.</p>
<p>So you have to have a balance in your life. Life ain't that hard. A lot of people just try to go through it without thinking. First they go to know who they is. Their dos and their don'ts and stuff. And treat - I used to have rules and stuff - they say, how you do this? It spells it out, how. H: Be honest, be truthful to yourself. Be honest with other people. The O: be open-minded, because a closed mind can't learn nothing. And that W: Be willing. Be willing to go to any lengths. Education, or whatever it is that you need, be willing to do it. And then add three more things to it. Talk to people the way you want to be talked to. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Give respect, then you can demand respect. If you forget any of those you're in trouble. You need them all. So you need people and stuff. So that's about the only thing I can add to it. But the city got a lot of hope. It's coming. You can see it.</p>
<p>So only - and then like we don't have the problems that a lot of cities have, because I believe the police is working with the public. Working with the people. I used to coach Little League football a few years ago, and we dealt with the police. In the PAL unit, there's a lot of police involved in that, a lot of these Little Leagues. So Detroit is okay.</p>
<p>CG: Well thank you so much for sitting down with me.</p>
<p>JD: Okay.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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1hr 5min
Interviewer
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Celeste Goedert
Interviewee
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Jesse Davis
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vntTcN2VRf8" 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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Jesse Davis, November 29th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Mr. Davis discusses growing up in Detroit's close-knit Davison neighborhood and the effect the Chrysler Freeway had on the area. He was drafted into the military and was home on a two-day pass on July 23, 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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01/27/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Belle Isle
Black Business
Blind Pig
Curfew
Detroit Community Members
Mayor Coleman Young
Michigan National Guard
STRESS
Twelfth Street
United States Army
Vietnam War
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http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/e1de8a8d67dd87e842788a6a9b69480c.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
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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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Darryle Buchanan
Brief Biography
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Darryle Buchanan was born July 28, 1955 at Hutzel Hospital in Detroit. He grew up in Conant Gardens, Highland Park, and Virginia Park between Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets, right at the epicenter of the unrest. He characterizes the events of the summer of 1967 as a “rebellion” primarily in response to police brutality. Buchanan still resides in the city, and is concerned with the contemporary issues facing the black community.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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12/13/2016
Interview Length
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00:54:26
Transcriptionist
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Emma Maniere
Transcription Date
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02/03/2017
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello. Today is December 13, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I am in Detroit, Michigan. I am sitting down with Mr. Darryle Buchanan. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>DB: Thank you for having me.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when were you born?</p>
<p>DB: I was born in Detroit on July 28, 1955 at Women’s Hospital, which is now Hutzel Hospital.</p>
<p>WW: Did you grow up in the city?</p>
<p>DB: Yes I did.</p>
<p>WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?</p>
<p>DB: I lived in several neighborhoods. When I was born, my father was in the military, so my mother–single woman, 20 years old, she was living with relatives–at one point we lived down on Hastings and Canfield. It was kind of interesting going back and remembering that because that whole area has been replaced by I-75. We lived there for a moment, and for the most part though I remember growing up on the Northeast Side in Conant Gardens, that’s where I first started school. We moved from there to Highland Park, which I absolutely loved living in Highland Park. My parents divorced and we moved onto Virginia Park which probably is where I would say where I grew up.</p>
<p>WW: What were some of the differences between those neighborhoods? Do you remember them being staunchly different or kind of along the same lines?</p>
<p>DB: Highland Park was probably the most different of any of the communities that I lived in. It was very integrated, and very viable in those days because Chrysler Headquarters was still in Highland Park, and a lot of management and executives lived in Highland Park. I would actually see them walking to and from work everyday. It was interesting because even at lunchtime, they would leave, go home, have lunch, and then go back. It was just a very different time. This was the early Sixties, ’61 to’63 is when we were living there.</p>
<p>WW: Are there any other memories you’d like to share from growing up in either Virginia Park or in Conant Gardens?</p>
<p>DB: In Highland Park, I was eight years old, and we were practicing for my first communion. I was raised Catholic.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p>DB: I went to Blessed Sacrament, which is not too far, Belmont, where we were in Highland Park. During the rehearsal, I remember one of the nuns running into the church and telling us all to get on our knees and pray, that the president had just been killed. That was something that you never forget, I don’t care what age you are, I was eight years old, and that’s a day that I remember like yesterday.</p>
<p>WW: Wow.</p>
<p>DB: Especially being Catholic, all of the excitement around having a Catholic president, what he meant to that. In that time period, that was the thing that stuck out most to me.</p>
<p>WW: Wow.</p>
<p>DB: Funny thing: you know how little boys are, especially back in the early Sixties, we’re just coming out of World War II and Korea, we all had army helmets and guns and we played war and did all that stuff. You don’t really know the difference between ethnicities or anything like that. Going to a Catholic School, you have a lot of Chaldeans, a lot of Filipinos as well as white and black students, and I had this one Filipino friend, and we were all just kids, we weren’t shy, you know, we’re walking down the street and he said he was talking about, “What are we going to do? What’s going to happen to us?” Then he said, “What if the Japanese attack us?” All the little boys looked at him like, “What are you worried about?” you know? Because we didn’t make distinctions, we just know that he looked Asian, and that was it. We just said, “You should be okay.” That’s the most memorable thing about that time for me.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm. Given the diverse community that you grew up in, both in your neighborhood and at your school, did you tend to stay in your own neighborhoods growing up or did you venture around the city? And if so, did you feel comfortable venturing around the city?</p>
<p>DB: That’s the one thing that caused me a lot of problems when I was a little boy: I had wanderlust. I just, for whatever reason, I had no problem walking around the city, catching the bus around the city.</p>
<p>On the east side and west side of Woodward, streets have different names. I knew that my favorite cousin lived on Glynn, and Glynn is Belmont, where I went to school, on the other side. So I just happened to look over there one day, and seriously, I was about seven years old, Friday afternoon, I looked over there and I said, “Glynn? My cousin lives on Glynn.’ So I just started walking down Glynn, and I walked down Glynn all the way, got to the expressway, had to go around, come back on the other side and keep going down Glynn. Eventually, I got to my cousin’s house and walked in and they were sitting down getting ready to have late lunch, so I sat down and next thing I know it’s Friday evening and we’re just running around playing, and my mom is panicking, she’s calling looking for me, and my aunt was like, “What are you talking about? He’s sitting at the table with us right now.” That’s just how it was for me. It was just an adventure. I just loved growing up then. It was a different time. It was just easy just to get around. I mean a seven year old on the bus? I’m talking about getting on the DSR [Department of Street Railways] bus and you can’t event imagine, people worry about their kids getting on school buses now, let alone getting on DOT [Department of Transportation] buses. East side/west side, and it’s funny because even now my sons are always asking me, “Dad, how do you know this?” I say, “I grew up here. I know everything about Detroit.”</p>
<p>WW: [Laughter.]</p>
<p>DB: Just drop me off and I guarantee you I can find my way back home. It was a good time, a very different time.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up, do you remember any tension growing in the city? Either economic, racial­ – ?</p>
<p>DB: Until I moved on Virginia Park, I never really noticed anything. I was friends with, as I said, Filipino kids, Chaldean kids, white kids, I would go to their house, we would visit with each other. I didn’t notice anything different until I moved onto Virginia Park. Then some stark realities started to set in for me that I wasn’t ready for but I lived through and it was just a stark difference going from one environment to the other. Not to say that it was bad, it was just different.</p>
<p>WW: Would you mind elaborating on some of those differences?</p>
<p>DB: Well, one, just the number of people that lived in the community. We moved in with my father’s parents, and they owned a two-family flat on Virginia Park, and right next-door was an apartment building, and up and down the street, there were all two-family flats, multi-level and multi-unit dwellings. So small apartments, big apartments, four units, and that kind of thing. So there were way more people living in that area than I had seen either growing up in Conant Gardens or in Highland Park. But it was good, a whole lot more people to play with for sure, and a whole lot more people to get into trouble with as well.</p>
<p>Along with that, I noticed differences just in poverty rates and things like that. I had really never seen people that were struggling financially, families struggling. It wasn’t like I separated myself from them, they were my friends so it was no distinction in terms of me versus them or income or those kinds of things, but I did notice just the difference there.</p>
<p>The other thing that I noticed was the police presence that was in that community. I barely ever saw the police before in my life until I moved over there. And then it was just a regular occurrence, seeing police. You know, I think my first time being involved with the police or the police saying anything to me, we were little boys, we found a pack of cigarettes and we’re running around trying to find matches so we could light them up. We were in the alley–because we used to play in the alleys, the alleys were actually pretty nice to play in then–and then these police rolled up on us, and, “Hey, what are you doing?” and started chasing us because we were smoking cigarettes. I was scared, for sure, but couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. It’s like why go to those extremes when you could have just as easily said, “Put those down” or “Give them to me” and they’ll throw them away? But to chase us, I thought it was a little bit extreme. So, just from that aspect, I noticed there was a difference from being a little boy kind of naïve growing up in Highland Park, now I’m a young man–not even young man yet, I’m still nine, ten years old growing up over there. All of the sudden, I started seeing that it’s a little different over here.</p>
<p>WW: Going into ’67, were you still living on Virginia Park?</p>
<p>DB: Yeah, yeah. I actually, from ’63 until adulthood, that’s where I lived. Grade school, high school, and college, that was the base for me living there. So yeah, in ’67 I was right there. I actually, I turned 12 that week. I turned 12 that week. It’s one of those things that you’ll–like the assassination, this is burned in my memory. Sights, smells, sounds, things I just, I have flashbacks of them.</p>
<p>WW: Where in Virginia Park where you?</p>
<p>DB: Right on Virginia Park between Twelfth and Fourteenth Street. Yeah, right at the epicenter. Our house was – it now is on the corner of Fourteenth because they tore down the apartment building that was next-door. So I got to see and feel the entirety, the intensity of the whole event.</p>
<p>WW: Did you and your family go onto Twelfth Street at all growing up? Was that your main thoroughfare?</p>
<p>DB: When I first moved over there my mom was telling me, “Now, we’re moving to a different neighborhood, you stay off of Twelfth Street.” You know that’s the worst thing you can tell a little boy, what not to do, because I started going on Twelfth Street. I didn’t have a choice really because the school I went to, St. Agnes, was right on the corner of South La Salle Gardens and Twelfth Street. It didn’t make sense to walk all the way back to Fourteenth a lot of days when I can just walk right down Twelfth to Virginia Park and come home.</p>
<p>I’m going to tell you, man, there were so many things that I saw, it was just alive. It was alive. There were stores, there were theatres, there were restaurants, I mean, it was a fully self-contained area. There was no reason for you to ever leave that neighborhood to do anything. Just think about on my block, on Virginia Park, just Twelfth Street between Virginia Park and Seward: just in that strip, in my block, there was Dr. Maben’s Pharmacy, there was Hope Brothers’ Barber Shop, there was Fishman’s Hardware, there was the Chit Chat Lounge, there was a beauty shop in there, but then there was Picnic Barbeque, and then there was actually a dairy on the corner where we would go and buy milkshakes, Boston Coolers, ice cream, all that, and then a market on the opposite corner right there. There was no reason to ever have to leave the neighborhood to do anything. You could just go up and down Twelfth Street: clothing stores, you name it, gas stations, everything right there. I thought it was probably the best time of my life in terms of growing up and being able to see life from every aspect. There were church people, there were hustlers, there were regular, everyday folks, families, just doing what they do. It was – economically, there was a way for everybody to do something, make some money. I remember as a little kid–just because of the way the neighborhood was, the people that lived there, I was a little boy that never, never had to go without money. All I had to do was walk down the street and just ring the doorbell: need somebody to pull your weeds, cut your grass, shovel snow? I would even make money just walking up to the store and I’d ask people, “I’m going to the store, you need anything?” And they would say, “Yeah, bring me back whatever.” And I’d bring it back, and they’d give me a nickel, a dime, or whatever. That was good money. If you had a quarter back then, you could buy a pop and a bag of chips. For a little boy, that was good. I saw jitneys, I don’t know if you know what a jitney is, but a jitney is, they’re the original Uber drivers. So you go to the market and not everybody had a car, and so the jitneys would see you shopping, and a lot of them just had regular folks and would see you coming, and say, “I got you on your way out.” No problem. So they would load up your groceries, take you to your house, unload them, and go back to the market and get the next one. When I saw the Uber thing, I said, “Seriously? That’s nothing but a jitney. That’s wild.”</p>
<p>WW: How did you first hear about what was going on on Twelfth Street that night on July 23?</p>
<p>DB: Well I told you I went to Catholic School. At St. Agnes, I was an altar boy, a safety patrol boy, I did all that stuff, right? So, throughout the summer, you still had a schedule as an altar boy and I remember getting up to do 8 o’clock mass and my mother was an emergency room tech at Henry Ford Hospital. So she knew I was getting up to go, and I was actually up and ironing my cassock. So I was up ironing, and I could hear activity, and I said, “Man, wow, people are partying early today.” I could smell some smoke, and I was thinking people are barbequing or something. So when my mom called, she said, “You’re not going to church this morning,” I said, “Mom, I have to. What are you talking about?” She said, “There’s a riot going on on Twelfth Street and you’re not going to be able to get to the church anyway, so just stay, I’ll be home in a minute.”</p>
<p>Immediately, I went out to the front porch, and I noticed that all the noise that I was hearing was people milling about and going up and down the street. The looting really hadn’t started yet, but it was just a matter of time before all that broke out. My grandparents were there, we woke, and then we were just on the porch for the most part just looking up and down the street, neighbors milling about, talking about what was going on. Then my mother came home in a police car, and I was like, this is interesting she always caught the bus. But I guess bus service was disrupted, so the police brought her home in a car.</p>
<p>Now, my social consciousness is starting to come about, and by the age of 11, now I’m about to turn 12, and it concerned me seeing my mother in a police car because now I’m trying to get a feel for what’s going on up there but then seeing the police bringing my mother home, I was worried about how the people in the neighborhood were going to see our family because later, as my parents, my grandparents got away – well I got away from them, and of course you know I went right up to Twelfth Street just to watch everything. It was really something to see. It was really something to see. So many people so angry all at once. But I understood what was going on, because, as I told you, I had been dealing with this whole police presence for quite some time. What I’m saying is when you grow up in that neighborhood, you learn to play cops and niggers when you are young. The story about the cigarettes, that was typical of the kind of things that happened to us in that neighborhood.</p>
<p>For the older guys, I could see that it was even worse. There were guys that were teenagers that I saw growing up, and I just thought they were the coolest guys in the world; they used to wear their crisscross sweaters and their mohair slacks and their gypsy split shoes–that’s how they dressed going to high school. I was like, “Man, when I grow up, I want to be just like them.” Well, in the interim, a lot of those guys ended up going to Vietnam, and so they’re coming back from Vietnam about the same time that this is going on and they weren’t the same. They weren’t the cool people that I knew when I was little. They were dark, they were disturbed. You could tell something was wrong with them. They’re in the mix now too, coming home to have to deal with those same conditions. I remember seeing a guy that lived in the apartments that I told you were next-door to us, and just hearing all that going on that night, he just clicked into survival mode, and I saw him with his gear on jumping out the side window of the first floor of the apartment. I don’t know where he went, and I don’t think I ever saw him again. But I just remember seeing that and I was thinking, “Man, this is way worse than anything I could have ever imagined.” All that happening at the same time that we have this police presence in our neighborhood, and naturally knowing all these things, we’re now wearing naturals and we’re talking about Black Power.</p>
<p>I remember my mom used to, I said she worked at midnight, so in the daytime, she would sleep and certain things had to be done, and she would put me on the bus to go–and I mean, again, you know, it’s no big deal – go downtown, pay the Hudson’s bill, pay the light bill, take these light bulbs and exchange the light bulbs–that’s when light bulbs were actually free. That was part of my growing up, that was my responsibility as the oldest boy in a single-parent household. Inevitably, every time when I’d catch the Fenkell bus, they’d either be somebody from the Nation of Islam, or somebody from the Black Panther Party who would be there talking to me, telling me, “Young Brother, this is how you need to conduct yourself. And when you’re stopped by the police, you need to know how to answer, how to respond. You need to know these things in order to survive. Young Brother, do not wear your hair so long, you won’t be able to escape the pigs. Don’t wear bellbottom pants and do not wear platform shoes, you will not be able to get away.” These are things that were engrained in us as little boys in that neighborhood. Then, when I would have a conversation with somebody form the Nation of Islam and they started talking to me about how I should I take care of my body, and how I should eat, and how I should dress, and how I conduct myself in public. It was a different time in that I really feel like most of the young men of my generation, we were kind of raised up to be soldiers in terms of the Civil Rights Movement and just all of the turmoil of those times. This was all just a part of that. So seeing my mom get out of that police car caused me a little bit of concern.</p>
<p>That night, we’re now moving into where the National Guard and the Federal Troops were coming in, and there was basically martial law, so the curfew, lights out, and at night, they came and picked my mother up again to go to work but this time they picked her up in an unmarked police car, I had never seen one of those before. Totally blacked out, no insignia on it whatsoever, and when they came and knocked on the door, and she left out with them. They left and they didn’t even turn on the lights in the car and I mean they shot down Virginia Park so fast, it was kind of shocking to see.</p>
<p>You look at all that and my concern now is how’s that going to be taken in the neighborhood, how are they going to feel about us? Because I had seen black businesses on the corner of Virginia Park and Twelfth Street was Dr. Maben, he was a pharmacist, and I couldn’t believe that they actually broke into Dr. Maben’s drugstore and looted it because it was a black business. So right then I knew that black, white, Jewish, whatever, none of that mattered right now. That’s just how out of control the situation was. So my concern for my mother was real. Okay?</p>
<p>Then you add to that, the next morning when they brought her back, she came home – this armored personnel carrier came down my street ‘ding, ding, ding, ding,’ it’s like making this noise and you can’t help but notice that, right? So I run to see what is all that, and the thing pops up, the soldier pops out, and here comes my mom, popping up out of this armored personnel carrier, like, “Okay, thank you,” came on in the house, and I was like, this is unbelievable, totally unbelievable. But I think because most of the people in my neighborhood knew my mother and my grandmother. They were both nurses, and they just knew them as healers, so I don’t think that they looked at them as being compliant with them. They’re just healers, that’s what they do. We didn’t really have a concern, but I’m 11, I don’t know that.</p>
<p>WW: After your first trip up to Twelfth Street, did you go back at all, or did you, after what you saw the first times, did you stay hunkered down at your house?</p>
<p>DB: You couldn’t keep me off of Twelfth Street, and I just kept going back. Each time I went back, there was less and less of Twelfth Street than I remembered. I actually saw a building, and if you’ve ever seen a building on fire, the building’s on fire, when it collapses, there’s this rush of cool air that comes out of the basement–because remember this is in July, so you’re thinking everything is just hot–but when the building collapsed, you can actually feel this cool air rush all the way across the street. So I’m standing on the corner of Virginia Park and Twelfth and this cleaners was on the opposite side of Twelfth Street, and when that building collapsed it was weird. I actually saw rats running out of the building on fire down the street. I saw some things that day, I saw some things. Just the smell of the burning building, and then it was just everywhere; that smell was everywhere.</p>
<p>One thing that I always think about is back in those days, the police sirens now, they kind of give you like a ‘whoop-whoop’ kind of sound, back then it was like a long drawn out ‘wwrrrr-wrrrrr’ and normally you would hear it and it would be a police car, fire truck or something going by and that was it, but it was constant, it never stopped. It was like a constant drone of sirens that just never went away. After a while, it just started to sound like wailing, like crying. It’s almost like the city was dying and it’s that crying sound that you heard. It was eerie, you can’t forget it, you never forget that. The worst thing is that, as I said, it was probably the most vibrant neighborhood community and then it wasn’t. It was like it just died, and it never, ever came back. There’s been attempts trying to rebuild. I know my grandfather was part of the Virginia Park Association, and they put in a Community Center and a little shopping area right there, and that was a source of pride, but it was nowhere near as robust as Twelfth Street was on its own.</p>
<p>WW: That week, was your house threatened by fire at all?</p>
<p>DB: No. We were far enough away from Twelfth Street that there was really no–and there were no fires on my block. The buildings were looted, but none of them were set on fire.</p>
<p>WW: Oh.</p>
<p>DB: The fire I was telling you about was across Twelfth Street, so it was between Twelfth and Woodrow Wilson. So it wasn’t on my side. Actually, that was separated because it was a trailer rental lot that was next-door to it, so when it burned, it just kind of burned on its own, separate from anybody’s community. There may have been a house that was behind it, that was I think it was singed, and I think it may have had some fire damage, but on my side of Virginia Park, nothing really happened. So, no, there was no threat of any fire.</p>
<p>The one thing that I did see a lot, was a lot of just the police presence more so. Living next-door to that apartment building was interesting because on the roof there was an antenna on the roof, with everything blacked out, the lights out. I woke up to the entire apartment building being surrounded by state troopers and federal troopers and they all had their guns drawn pointing at the top of the apartment building. There was a state trooper in our backyard that was next to a tree that was in the yard, and he had the gun drawn on the top of the building, and I remember crawling all the way to the window and peeking up and trying to see, look up there, and the guy looked over and he said, “Get out of that window”. I got away from the window and crawled back. We slept in my grandparents’ dining room that entire week under her dining room table. There’s no air conditioning, so the windows are up, so you see and hear everything that’s going on, so when that happened, I immediately started running toward the windows to see what was going on. That’s another one of those things that you don’t forget.</p>
<p>WW: Were you, granted you were really young, did you understand what it meant for the National Guard to be coming in?</p>
<p>DB: Well, I knew that–</p>
<p>WW: Or did you see them any differently as you saw the police?</p>
<p>DB: Well, yeah I did. As I got older, then I found out that there was a huge difference between where I was and other portions of the city. See where I was, on the west side, we were at the epicenter of everything; I mean Virginia Park is only like five blocks from Clairmount, where it originated, and so the federal troops were the ones that came there. Now the interesting thing about them is that they don’t spook easy, man. I mean, they would talk to us. They were stationed on the corner, and we would just go and stand there and talk to them and the guy would talk to us; he was just mellowed out. He wasn’t in Vietnam, and I’m sure he’d been there, so he wasn’t sweating this very much. I just remember sitting there, talking to him, he took his helmet off, put it on the ground, and he sat on his helmet, and we just sat there talking to the guy. Just mellow. Now, what I heard is that my cousins lived on the east side, and they said the guys that they were dealing with were nothing like that. Now, I didn’t know at that time that that’s where the National Guard was, so those are Reserves that are pulled up and these guys are being called up to duty and being put into this situation; they’re coming from wherever in the state of Michigan and they just, they didn’t know, whereas the federal guys they were like, “This is not a big deal.” I mean it’s a big deal, but they’ve seen worse, just the way they responded was totally different. I did know that there was a level of seriousness and concern for safety and everything else, but I didn’t feel like these guys were a threat, like something was going to happen. If anything, I felt like they were going to stop things from happening. And it did, it did really settle things down in the neighborhood for the most part. And then it just seemed like from there, it spread out from where we were–which it had to do because they had to calm that area down first –but it spread out the other areas of the city, and I think that’s what prolonged the whole rebellion.</p>
<p>WW: Awesome segue: how do you refer to what happened in ’67? Do you see it as a rebellion?</p>
<p>DB: When I was younger like everybody else, we called it a ‘riot,’ and as I got older, I started to understand it more, because, as I was telling you, the confrontations that we had with police, and actually confrontations Ihad with the police made me change my opinion about it, that it wasn’t a riot. Because typically when you think about a riot, you’re looking at people going after each other. In ’43, people were going after each other, okay? In ’67, nobody was attacking anybody. They were against the police and there was some economic tensions that were going on so people were looting, stealing, doing all that, but it wasn’t like people were being attacked. No specific group was targeted, so it couldn’t really be a riot in the classic definition of a riot because there were no groups going at each other other than people going after a system that was very oppressive for the people in my neighborhood, myself included.</p>
<p>I remember once my mother, when she did get a car, she got this Olds 88 which was like a tank, I think it was like a ’66, just an absolute tank. She picked me up from basketball practice, and my brother and sister were in the car. She said, “Stay in the car.” This is right on the Boulevard and Twelfth where there was a Cunningham’s and an A&P. She said, “Stay in the car, I’ll be right back.” I said, “Okay.” She gets out, and I’m coming from basketball practice, I’m thinking, “I’m cramping, I need to stretch,” I got out the car. And when I got out the car, my brother and sister locked the door, so now we’re playing. I opened the door, so I jumped on the bumper of this tank and I’m jumping up and down on the bumper and I’m telling my brother, I’m yelling, “Open the door! Open the door!” They’re laughing, saying, “We’re not going to let you in! We’re not!” I didn’t notice out the corner of my eye that an unmarked police car had pulled up on me while I’m jumping up and down on this car. I turned and looked, and it’s The Big Four. They got out, and they started walking toward me, and this is when my Black Panther training kicked in, and I’m standing there and talking to them and I had my hands where they could see my hands and I’m telling them, “What’s the problem, officer?” So this one cop walked up and grabbed me by the lapels of my coat–this is how small I was and how big this guy was–he picked me up by the lapels of my coat, my feet were dangling, and he was shaking me, and he was saying, “Where’s your knife?” I said, “Officer I don’t have a knife. Why are we doing this? I haven’t violated any rules, I’m playing with my brother and sister. What have I done, officer?” I’m just trying to humanize this whole thing, I’m not, “Where’s your knife? Where’s your knife?” My mom came out of the market, she has on her work clothes and she looked at them, and they looked at her: they knew each other. Remember, she was an emergency room tech. These cops had brought in some young men before, and she recognized them. The words that started coming out of my mother’s mouth right then, I couldn’t believe it. The officer looked over there at her, they eased me down back on the ground, got back in the car and drove off. So I was standing in that parking lot, looking at their car pulling off, I was like, whoa. Then I looked over at my mother, and I started thinking, “I think I want to go with those police officers.” That’s just how it was. I was playing.</p>
<p>I was a little boy playing with his brother and sister, and my brother and sister, they’re in the car, now they’re crying, it’s a mess, and it’s for no reason whatsoever. Because a little boy was playing in the parking lot. That’s just the kind of stuff that was going on until it got to the level of S.T.R.E.S.S. [Stop The Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets] – and this is after the riot but the riots didn’t stop that. If anything, it intensified it. Those are the issues that we had to deal with, that I had to deal with, from the age of eight ’til the age of 18 when I left and went away to college. Those are the things that were going on. So, looking back, I can’t say that it was a riot, it was a rebellion. Because being a rebellion, it did result in some changes being made. The Big Four, S.T.R.E.S.S., all of that, they were abolished, and it had to be, otherwise, we would’ve lived in constant fear of the police. We just didn’t have a good relationship with the police department in my neighborhood. It was not, it was not a riot, it was a revolt; it was us saying to the system, “Get off our backs.”</p>
<p> WW: Earlier you said children of your generation were raised to be soldiers. Do you think that was a benefit?</p>
<p>DB: It should have been. It should have been. I say that because we were raised with a certain consciousness about what we were supposed to be doing to advance the civil rights movement. The doors opened wide, opportunity started coming our way, and I was up at MSU [Michigan State University] and there were more black students at MSU at that time than they’d ever had. Clifton Wharton was the president then, and there was intentional work on recruiting and graduating black students through MSU. So when I say that the doors opened wide and the opportunities came, we got caught up in the me-ism of that time. When I look at a lot of the things that go on, and what’s happened since then, I really feel the personal responsibility that it was my generation that dropped the ball on this because we were raised with a certain mindset, a certain consciousness, and then we bought into the me-ism of the Nineties and the corporate life and all of those things. We forgot about the movement. I jokingly say to people all the time, “We went from ‘It’s Nation-time’ to ‘Hey baby, what’s your sign?’” We weren’t doing what we were prepared to do in terms of community building. Yeah, we were successful, corporately, and things like that, but we took our eye off of how we got there, and how we got there is that those in front of us, when they paved the way, they made sure that they brought us in behind and said, “Okay, this is what you need to do.” That didn’t happen. So that generation of young men who started to fill prisons and get caught up in all of the drug trade and all of those things, those are my sons. These are my grandchildren that I’m working now trying to save. That’s why I do what I do, and it’s more, not personally failing, I mean I’ve got two sons who are doing exceptionally well, but overall we forgot what we were supposed to be doing. Yeah, there were challenges, but there’ve always been challenges. There are challenges now. What are you going to do? So that’s my motivation when I get up in the morning: just to remember that I was called upon to do something, and how do I do that now?</p>
<p>WW: Very nice. Is there anything else, any other stories you’d like to share from either that week before we move on, just to go past it?</p>
<p>DB: I had never seen that kind of madness before in my life in terms of it just seemed like there was everybody just kind of lost their compassion, they lost their soul. To just go and just destroy property like that, especially–I mean I was standing in front of Dr. Maben’s Pharmacy, and I was begging people, I was crying, I was like, “What are you doing? Dr. Maben is a black man. What are you doing? He serves our community.” But the madness overtook everything, and it destroyed which was once a very viable, strong, black community. Strong in terms of, we weren’t quite there politically, but economically, for the most part, we were self-sufficient.</p>
<p>My uncle, when I was talking about Hastings earlier, he was a pharmacist. When I was a little boy, I used to think all the time about my family was rich, I just thought we were the richest people on earth because my Uncle Smitty was a pharmacist, my Uncle Joe down the street was a barber, he had his own barber shop, and my Uncle Clement was a mechanic and he ran his little mechanic shop out the back of Digg’s Funeral Home. Diggs, they had a funeral home that was around the corner on Canfield, but in the back, my uncle said, “Hey, let me rent that out, and I can fix cars back there and I’ll fix you cars.” They were like, “Cool.” That’s what he did. But the one I loved the most was my Uncle Bunch, and I didn’t know Uncle Bunch delivered coal in the winter and ice in the summer and he picked up junk but Uncle Bunch had a horse, and for a little boy, a horse is like the coolest thing in the world; I just used to think, “Uncle Bunch has a horse.”</p>
<p>So I saw all of that, and then I also saw, when I-75 came through there and it just wiped out all of that. Then we moved into the other areas, onto Twelfth Street and then like that, and then I watched how just the madness made us destroy our own economy. It just changed a lot of things; I think it changed our own perceptions about who we are. And it was really nobody that could stand up and speak in a way to help understand what we were doing, and how that was going to impact us.</p>
<p>So, here we are, 50 years later, we’re seeing a resurgence here, Midtown, downtown. Twelfth Street’s not coming back. Anybody that lived on there and saw that, they know what I’m talking about. Just being over there, you didn’t have to go anywhere else. Northland was like an overnight trip as far as I was concerned. There was no reason to go to Northland, didn’t have to. We were totally self-sufficient. We don’t have that anymore, we don’t have that self-sufficiency. Our neighborhoods are dominated by other people who – I’m not blaming anybody, it’s the way it is but we don’t have a viable black economy anymore, not like we had then. When I was talking about Dr. Maben and my uncle, they were pharmacists, there was a group of black pharmacists who would get together and have fundraising events, big dinner dances, those kinds of things – they were real big back then – and they raised funds, they had scholarships and all kinds of things. There’s no black pharmacist group like that now. So a lot of those things don’t exist anymore since 1967. That was kind of, when I talked about that wailing, those sirens, truly was the death of our community and our economy. It just kind of cast us out to the winds.</p>
<p>So we see that now, and it’s like we casts dispersions on people who live on the other side of Eight Mile and all these kind of things, and it’s like we’re caught up in things that had nothing to do with how do we bring back what we once had? How do we do that? So if I want to leave on anything, that’s probably it. That’s my biggest concern because now I have two sons who are capable, they’re educated–I mean my oldest son graduated in four years from college, and he’s working, my youngest son is about to graduate from college–in these times, a lot of people say, “Well, that’s it, I’ve done it,” but I haven’t. Because there’s so many young men that they interface that need the same opportunities, that need to be able to do the same things. How do we make sure that we do that? Not to the detriment of anybody else, that’s not what I’m saying.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p>DB: I’m talking about me, just like anybody else would be concerned with themselves.</p>
<p>WW: Thanks so much for sitting down with me today, I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>DB: It was a pleasure, man.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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54min 26sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Darryle Buchanan
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A-_XWCrs4jE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
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Title
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Darryle Buchanan, December 13th, 2016
Description
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<p class="Normal1"><span>In this interview, Buchanan discusses his experiences growing up primarily in Virginia Park during the 1960s. He notes the escalated police presence in the community, and details several anecdotes of police brutality he experienced as a child. During the unrest, his mother was transported to and from work by the police and National Guard, once in an armored personnel carrier. He recalls the events in great detail, remembering the smell of burning buildings “everywhere” and the constant police sirens which sounded like “wailing.” Buchanan discusses the importance of Twelfth Street as a site of black economic self-sufficiency, which he claims no longer exists, and will not exist in the near future despite the revitalization of Midtown and Downtown Detroit.</span></p>
<br /><strong>***This interview contains profanity and/or explicit language</strong>
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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02/03/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral history
101st Airborne
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
82nd Airborne Division-US Army
Arson
Black Business
Black Panther Party
Childhood
Children
Detroit Police Department
Growing Up In Detroit
Highland Park
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Nation of Islam
STRESS
The Big Four
Twelfth Street
Vietnam War
Virginia Park
-
http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/bb84e4315ec762dc643112bf01a35ba1.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
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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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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/quiI3Wvhui0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Barbara Aswad
Brief Biography
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Barbara Aswad was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended Bucknell University where she received a grant to study in the Middle East. She transferred to Edinburgh University where she chose to study Anthropology. She briefly worked for Senator Phil Hart in Washington, D.C. before she her doctorate from the University of Michigan where she specialized her research on the Middle East – specifically in Turkey and Syria. She began teaching at Wayne State University in 1966 and currently serves as Professor Emeritus of Anthropology. She has also served with many organizations that promote Arab-Americans. She and her husband Adnan currently live in California.
Interviewer's Name
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Amina Ammar
Interview Place
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Dearborn, MI
Date
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03/25/2017
Interview Length
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00:41:10
Transcriptionist
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Julia Moss
Transcription Date
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07/25/2017
Transcription
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<p>AA: So today is March 25, 2017, my name is Amina Ammar, this interview is for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am currently sitting with—</p>
<p>BA: Barbara Aswad.</p>
<p>AA: Okay. Ms. Aswad, where and when were you born?</p>
<p>BA: I was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1937.</p>
<p>AA: Okay. How did your family get to Detroit, or how did you get to Detroit?</p>
<p>BA: How did I get to Detroit—they didn’t. I actually—they moved to Philadelphia when I was seven years old, and we really lived in sort of an Italian community and I thought most Americans were Italian until I found out I wasn’t. But anyway, that was a wonderful experience, I’ll say, to Mediterranean people, and I think it to some degree helped me when I lived in villages in the Middle East and married an Arab from Damascus because I was used to big extended families.</p>
<p>AA: So where did you live in July of 1967?</p>
<p>BA: In ’67 we were in Ann Arbor, my husband and I. We were commuting—I was commuting to Wayne State and we’d both gotten our degrees from University of Michigan, our doctorates. And it was quite a volatile period, the sixties, as you know. I mean, civil rights and anti-Vietnam War period. And I had just started my teaching at Wayne State in 1966. I had just started—in fact, I hadn’t finished my dissertation but I had done my research in the Middle East, I’d studied Arabic and Turkish and lived and done research for a year in the villages on the Turkish-Syrian border inside—just inside Turkey near Antakya. The Hatay it’s called, near Aleppo. And it used to be Syria but the French gave it to Turkey to keep the Germans out of the Dardanelles in 1936, but most of the rural population were Arab speaking.</p>
<p>AA: So what do you remember about Detroit before 1967?</p>
<p>BA: Before ’67? I wasn’t really teaching here. I was more in Ann Arbor and doing research in the Middle East, so I didn’t know a lot about Detroit until I started my job in ’66.</p>
<p>AA: Okay.</p>
<p>BA: So I do remember it was ’67 and the uprisings in Detroit. I remember I had just started teaching and I looked outside my window and I saw armored guards coming down the streets with their guns and thought it was sort of back in the Middle East where I’d seen guards with guns on the streets, and it was very shocking in the uprising period. It was a period certainly of African American uprising, civil rights movements which we all felt in this area, and I was involved definitely in the anti-war, Vietnam war movement. Started when I started teaching. Started teach-ins against the war. I lived in peasant villages and taught peasant society at the university and I saw how much Agent Orange we were killing the Vietnamese populations with. And so we started teach-ins, which got us in some trouble. As I mentioned before, I ended up on the Red Squad list because, probably, of that. I don’t know, maybe other things. My associates, I’m not sure. But that was sort of a scary kind of thing, and we couldn’t find out for ten years until the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] won the case and opened those lists up, and then in those lists which I saw in about 1980 I guess, I found that there was nothing— it was all whited out and I couldn’t figure out what they had found. And the guy said, “Well”—the police department said, “Well, did you talk about anything foreign?” And I said, “Well, of course, I teach Middle East anthropology at Wayne State.” He said, “Well, that’s why it’s all crossed out.” But I did find that they had followed me to various people’s houses and my license plates—in those days we didn’t have the updated surveillance systems, but apparently they were following a number of us here in this area during the anti-war period, and that was pretty scary. And of course I remember ADC [Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee] being organized which was wonderful, in ’67 after the ’67 War. And my husband was the treasurer for a while. I had been married by that time to Adnan Aswad from Damascus, and he was doing his doctorate in engineering at University of Michigan and he was also my Arabic TA [laughs]. That’s how I met him.</p>
<p>AA: So how did you first hear about the uprising?</p>
<p>BA: Which uprisings? The Detroit?</p>
<p>AA: Oh, the ’67. Yeah, Detroit ’67.</p>
<p>BA: Like I said, I was teaching in the city when they happened. And of course, some of my co-professors wouldn’t come down to Detroit because they were scared. I came anyway. I sort of—maybe because I’d lived in the Middle East I wasn’t really afraid of things. And so I came in—at that time I was still living in Ann Arbor. And it was very obvious what was happening. I mean, I could see it happening in Detroit, and it was worse in Detroit. You have a high percentage of African American consciousness and everything. It was sort of a scary period in the uprisings here.</p>
<p>AA: So how did—you said you were teaching around that time. How did students react and what did you see in Detroit?</p>
<p>BA: They were scared too. I mean, it was a scary period. You had—like I said, the National Guard was called in so they were all over the place, all soldiers all over, which we’re not used to. And students were afraid; we were afraid. And we had been involved in demonstrations against the war, so they were also photographing—they had cameras on campus at the university, so they were photographing us. So it was sort of a very fearful period. And I kept teaching for some reason. I guess I’m not afraid of things. And so I kept teaching, but students were afraid. But I had many Arab American students too, some from Dearborn, some from Algeria and the Middle East, and I think some of them had been used to some conditions. But everyone was pretty much afraid during the period of the uprisings. They’re often called riots, but wrongly. They were uprisings.</p>
<p>AA: That was actually going to be one of my questions, was how do you refer to this event? Would you refer to it as a rebellion, an uprising, a riot?</p>
<p>BA: It’s a rebellion. And many of the people who were in it from what I remember had come back—they were African American soldiers who had come back from Vietnam and they didn’t like the way they were being treated in Detroit, so some of them who were spearheading this knew some military tactics. And that’s from what I remember, organizing, the early organizing of the rebellion. And I don’t know what else to say except, you know, driving in and out of Detroit and there was fear among many people, but most of my faculty and my department didn’t come in to teach. They were in the suburbs and they wouldn’t come in.</p>
<p>AA: Okay, let’s switch gears a little. Let’s actually talk about the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. So how did you first hear about those events that led up to the war?</p>
<p>BA: Well, I was finishing up my dissertation, which I finished in ’68, and we had our whole living room full of Arabs and Arab-Americans talking about the war, and I was trying to finish my dissertation at the same time. And I just remember all the conversations and all the discussions and, you know, the—what else—anger at the war, the results of the war. And, of course, I had been in the Middle East, I came back in ’65. So it was very close and very personal to me because I had traveled earlier in ’56 all throughout the Middle East. Five Arab countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and then Palestine and Israel, so I had been there and I knew the area. And so we were following it, of course, very closely, and were—you know, I think everyone was humiliated by the results of it. And my husband was Syrian and they had gone into Israel I guess. They were the one army that had sort of gone into the Golan Heights and that area, and they felt sort of proud that Israel didn’t get to Damascus. But it was—for the Egyptians, they were very angry, and one of the professors that I had helped hire at Wayne State, Doctor Rushdi, to teach Arabic, I know—later—but her husband at that time was a doctor in Gaza, and Israel had gone in and lined up all the doctors and nurses and shot them, and had shot her husband. She later married Hani Fakouri, an anthropologist, but—and she didn’t know about it for a year. I mean, I didn’t know her then, but later I met her and—so many of the experiences were pretty horrific that we were hearing about. And, you know, it was pretty horrible. The war was very terrible. And the fact that, you know, this was—okay, why it was also—that was earlier of course. When I was there in ’56 in Egypt, we had an appointment with Nasser—we were in villages and as a student group of eight of us, went around the Middle East, and we had been in villages and then we had an appointment with Nasser, and he had to cancel it. He said, “I’m sorry, I’m really busy,” and he nationalized the Suez Canal, so we sort of forgave him, if you will. He was busy. But by the time we got to Israel after going through the Arab countries, in ’56 this is—okay—we saw these French troops in Israel in ’56, and we wondered why the French were doing maneuvers with the Israelis. And then we had to leave, and shortly after we got back to America, Israel and Britain invaded—and France—invaded Egypt to take back the Suez Canal. That was in ’56. So that was an interesting experience right then. So I had been at a young age, when I as 19, I had been into the area and, you know, familiar with quite a few of the politics in the area, ever since I was 19. I am now 80 years old, okay [laughs]. So I have a long history of involvement in Middle East politics. Also I might say that because my husband is from Syria originally, Aleppo and then Damascus, we went back often to visit his family as well as doing my research in Turkey and Syria near Aleppo. We went back to Syria many times to visit his family over these years. So we loved Syria and we’re very, very upset over the tragedy that is hitting Syria now.</p>
<p>AA: So do you remember how the larger Arab community or the Detroit community reacted to the ’67 War?</p>
<p>BA: Well, there were different approaches depending what countries people came from I think. The ones that were involved directly and—probably the Yemeni, for example, weren’t as affected because it wasn’t in Yemen. But certainly the Palestinians, I mean, this had a huge effect on Palestinians. Because they were conquered and then of course the Golan Heights of Syria was conquered and Egypt was conquered. So it depended what countries they came from, but certainly I think the whole Palestinian issue got more and more dominant in it, and that really consolidated a lot of things which led to AAUG, Arab American University Graduates, which my husband was one of the founders of. And I had always sort of criticized them at the beginning. I, of course, wasn’t Arab American, but that wasn’t my point. My point was I thought they should let students in and they didn’t want to. I thought it was rather elitist to just have us academics as part of it. I became an associate, because now I’m Arab. But I always thought that was a little elitist. In some ways maybe they were right, because the students were also divided and they were very political and it may have disrupted AAUG. I don’t know. They did allow them to give papers if they weren’t members, and that bothered me. I was very happy that they—one of the reasons for AAUG though was that we who were trying to publish on the Middle East, especially on Palestine, found it very difficult in academic circles to get our publications at that time. And AAUG provided a publication and the first book, really, I published on Arab Americans and—on Arab Americans was co-published by AAUG. So it allowed us to get publications which allowed us to get tenure eventually. You had to have publications or you couldn’t get tenure. So an important part of it certainly, of the elitist, academic part of it was publications. And Ibrahim Abu-Lughod very definitely pushed that aspect of it, and he was right. He was the head of the publications for AAUG for a long time, so I appreciated that because it did help me. And I had much—I had many problems teaching on the Middle East. I changed the name of my course eventually from Middle East anthropology to Arab Society because I had trouble with the Jewish community—the Zionist community, I shouldn’t say Jewish. The Zionist community who really didn’t want me teaching on Palestine and Israel. And with Arab society, I could include Palestinians in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza and not necessarily teach a whole lot on Israeli society or Jewish society. So, I changed the topic, because I had—I had resistance, but when I had been in Israel, when I was 19 at the end of our trip, we had talked to Ben-Gurion and we had talked to Martin Buber who was a wonderful philosopher in Israel, who said he was a Zionist but not a state Zionist. He didn’t believe in the state of Israel, and he’s very famous in Jewish circles, philosophical Jewish circles. And we had worked on a kibbutz for a couple weeks, so I would tell the rabbis who called up to get me out of my position at Wayne, I’d say, “Have you talked to Ben-Gurion? Have you worked on a kibbutz?” And of course none of them had. And I said, “Well, I have.” I had something. I was glad I had been to Israel myself and talked to some of the people there, because it—and we had been to Nazareth, talked to the Palestinians there, and we knew sort of what was going on. Saw the refugee camps. So at a young age I had some background that I could use to keep my position at Wayne. But I think also where I had worked was Turkey, and with Arabs in Turkey, but I said I worked in Turkey, and that’s how I kept my position for a couple years, because my chair was an ardent Zionist and did not want me teaching on that, and probably would not have hired me if he’d thought I’d studied Arabs. So I did study in Turkey, on Arabs. But I said—and my husband’s mother was Turkish, and I spoke Turkish to her, and he introduced himself to my chair as a Turk and it worked for a few years until I got tenure. Then we told him that no, he really was an Arab, because he saw himself—his father was Arab from Aleppo and—anyway, interesting history of the pressures of trying to teach on the Middle East at Wayne State. And by the way, my positions has not been fulfilled for the last ten years and I’m very upset about it. I did get—I’ve been retired for about 15 years, and I managed to get a very successful young man named Tom Abowd to fill my position in 2000, and he wrote a wonderful book just recently called <i>Colonial Jerusalem</i>, and he did his work in Jerusalem. And I told him to try to keep his head down a little while, which he couldn’t do. But there were a number of reasons I guess, but he didn’t get tenure, and since—then they hired somebody for a couple years, but since ’07 there has been no position on Middle East anthropology at Wayne State, which is very distressing considering the largest community in the United States in Dearborn and what’s going on in the Middle East today. I told the president that-- Wayne has gone down in population, he said the state was not—had reduced the funding. They have a new president who impresses me, I like him, but I said I didn’t see that as an excuse. But seven years without teaching Middle East culture or Arab culture I think is inexcusable. I’m so glad that U[niversity] of M[ichigan] Dearborn here is starting Arab studies. I mean, they have had it and it’s good, but we have a graduate program and they don’t and it makes a difference of—in academics.</p>
<p>AA: So do you remember any particular moments about the war and its coverage in the United States?</p>
<p>BA: The ’67 War?</p>
<p>AA: Yeah. That you’d like to share?</p>
<p>BA: Well, it was pro-Israel. What can you say. We were supporting and have been and always have been supporting Israel in this country, with millions and billions of dollars. And our media was that way. There was not an objective view that I could find in our media then. I really couldn’t. It was very one-sided. And it always has been until today. One of the facts which a lot of Americans are not aware of is that you can get members of the Jewish community, typically also, many of them—give money to Israel and it’s tax exempt. It’s the only country in the world that you can give—only foreign country you can give money to and take it off your taxes. You may not have known that. A lot of people don’t know that. And it’s unbelievable. I mean, the power, the political power is incredible. I even worked down in Washington for a short time after my B.A. in anthropology. Couldn’t find really a job, so I worked for Senator Hart, Phil Hart from Michigan who was a wonderful man and had Senate Hart office buildings named after him because he had such a conscience and he read all his legislation, which many of them don’t. A wonderful man. But, you know, on Israel, he had worked in World War II—fought, and was pro-Israel. Wasn’t Jewish, but was pro-Israel, and we would have these discussions and I just couldn’t—at that time, ate with Kennedy before he was president—and, you know, it just seemed to go nowhere. And I was very glad to come back to academia, because the politics in Washington I didn’t like. And I was mistaken in not knowing the politics of universities, I thought that this would be merit—you know, a merit, and didn’t realize how political universities can become too. But that was a very short time actually that I worked in Washington. Came back, did a doctorate. But it was an experience and I didn’t like it. But just to show at that time the feelings, even of very sensitive, very liberal kinds of people were just pro-Israel. It was, you know, from World War II. Hangover, really, for many of the older people, and understandably because the Holocaust was so horrible. And then, of course, many of them got very rich and they could put their money into supporting Israel, and it just got worse and worse until we have today, with Palestinians getting, what, 23 percent of the land or something that they had in ’48. I went back to Israel and Palestine about seven years ago with a group of older people from California, and the director was—he’d been head of the YMCA in Jerusalem for 40 years, he was Palestinian Christian, and of course knew Hebrew and Arabic and everything, and about thirty of us went from a retirement center out in California. And, you know, having been there earlier and then coming back, showing the differences. We were driving on Jewish-only roads, all these apartheid situations that separated Arab towns and villages that used to intermarry and could hardly do that anymore. Went to Bethlehem and the Wall. I mean, it’s just outrageous what I saw, and that was seven years ago and it’s gotten worse, much worse, even since seven years ago. And I had a very hard time getting out of the airport because of my name Aswad. And the lady didn’t want to let me out. She said, “Where did you get your name?” I said, “My husband.” She jumps up, looks around, goes, “Where is he?” I said, “He’s in Los Angeles.” “Well, where was he born?” And I said Turkey, which was true. It was Syria, and he was born in Antioch, but I said Turkey. “Well, what languages do you know?” I said Turkish. I wouldn’t say Arabic, I do know Turkish. “Why? Why do you know Turkish?” She knew my name’s Arab. I said, “Because I studied it in college.” She’s sitting there with her machine gun, she said, “I’ll take it to my commander,” and she runs off. And the rest of my airplane is getting on the plane and, oh boy, here I am, stuck in Israel. Finally she comes back and sort of throws it at me and says, “Go on.” But it’s just, you know, it’s the harassment, even for someone who’s Anglo like myself, with that name. I might mention my Anglo name was Black, which if you’re an Arab, Aswad means black. So Adnan said he married in the tribe [laughs]. Sort of an unusual combination. But it was a very scary period, and those of us who knew the Middle East, had lived there, it was scary and just horrifying the way America supported Israel. I was very happy in ’56 when Israel invaded Sinai with France and Britain, because—it was Eisenhower, I think, then, and he wouldn’t go along with it. America did not defend Israel on that, and he said they should get out. And they had to get out, primarily because we did not—Eisenhower would not support them, and they did have to leave the Suez Canal in ’56. But certainly in ’67 we supported them, with military—our military, what do we give? Six billion now? Something like that. Military the highest of any country in the world, and they don’t need it because they have the nuclear weapons, two or three hundred of them. When I was in Israel the first time too, we did go to Dimona which is their nuclear area with the Weizmann Institute. We went way down and saw the nuclear things. That was ’56, they were doing nuclear things then. And people here never talk about it, and they don’t talk about it today. You will not find in newspapers anything about Israel being a nuclear power, and that it hasn’t signed the nuclear proliferation treaty. And neither have we, and we’re forcing, of course, Iran to do that. And so much of our politics is still run by Israel. [President] Obama and much of the Democratic party, they gave in to this. Certainly Hillary [Clinton] did, she didn’t say a word about it. She’s highly funded by AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. Good thing for me, anyway, as an older person that’s seeing groups like JVP, Jewish Voices for Peace, which I belong to and support heavily. Just to see the young Jewish people coming and being on campuses, things like this, it’s wonderful. J Street, another Jewish sort of moderate organization had a meeting just recently. They still won’t let Jewish Voices of Peace come to their conferences, which I think is very interesting. So, obviously within the Jewish community there are a lot of different views, and certainly not—they’re not all Zionists. And in Israel they’re not all Zionists either. I mean, I was glad and still am I have relations with Israelis. Jeff Halper who has ICAHD, which is Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, takes Jewish and Palestinian young people out and they rebuild home after Israel has demolished them. He’s an anthropologist like myself and he’s a good friend and he’s been in jail 13 times. And of course they’ve only managed to rebuild one percent of all the homes that Israel has damaged, but it’s a wonderful effort to bring the two groups. And then the Women in Black, and I have friends in Israel who are Jews who are very progressive. So it’s a country like any country, where you have progressives and fundamentalists. But we are supporting their policies. They couldn’t do it without us. They couldn’t do what they’re doing now. They couldn’t be the threat, they couldn’t be the nuclear threat. We didn’t give them—France, I guess, they got their nuclear weapons from. But, well, we support them militarily. And now they’re having relations with Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, so things are changing. And not for the good, because those are very not progressive states.</p>
<p>AA: Is there anything you feel we haven’t discussed, or should be added to the interview?</p>
<p>BA: Well, I know you were wondering maybe where I get my radicalism, and I mentioned before my mother was very much part of this. She was a feminist which, in the twenties, was somewhat unusual for a woman, although not totally but that’s where it started. But it was—and she was a history teacher, and I always described her as a closet socialist because she would—I mentioned we were raised Baptist. Her mother had died when she was 23 and she went to the Baptist church. Before that had never been anywhere, but she needed help. Emotional help. And so I was raised, and she would take us to black Baptist churches in the forties which, believe me, no whites did this. And she’d take us out to farm workers who were picking pickles and all this to show us different classes, and my father went along with all this. And so I grew—I was very lucky in growing up, and she showed us models of Indira Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt when we were young girls to, you know, sort of say look what women can do. So that helped me, always gave me strength. She always—my family always supported me. And then as I said, I got into—went to a place called Bucknell University because I had a Baptist scholarship and I really wanted to play field hockey. That was my main interest in going to college, which doesn’t sound very good, but we had moved from Philadelphia to Michigan again and there were no girls’ sports and I’d played field hockey in Philadelphia and I loved it. And so I came back East to go to college, and I had some money as a Baptist, and Bucknell is a horrible school. It’s quite a good university, but they had sororities and fraternities, and my roommate was Chinese. I got invited to all the sororities, she got invited to none. So I started fighting the sororities and then—what am I doing at the university? I’m not supposed to – I came here to learn something. And I don’t know, some of us got in trouble, and a Soc[iology] prof then said, “Would you like to apply for this grant to go to the Middle East?” Which I knew nothing about except the Bible. And I said, “Sure.” And landed, of course, in Midan Tahrir in the villages of Egypt, and it was quite a tour. It changed my whole life, and I ended up—didn’t want to come back to Bucknell so I went to Edinburgh University, met a bunch of anthropologists there, some of whom have become very famous like Talal Asad, and thought, well, that’s a good profession. I can study the Middle East and do something interesting. And sort of became a Quaker in Ramallah I remember, gave up this Baptist business and became a Quaker, because Ramallah has a big school, big Quaker school, and that impressed me that they didn’t talk much but they did a lot of work. And—but then I have ADD and I couldn’t sit for an hour without people talking, so I sort of quit the Quakers too. Later became a Unitarian, who are often called noisy Quakers [laughs]. Unitarian, and then of course I married a Muslim, and they will take people of any faith in Unitarians, or no faith or whatever. But—so my background has been fairly progressive and had wonderful experiences abroad meeting different people, and that’s what anthropology’s all about. Studying other cultures and respecting most of them [laughs]. Not all of them, but having respect for them. So I consider myself lucky in many ways, even though it was a fight trying to teach objectively on the Middle East at Wayne State. But it worked. Had wonderful students, and now you can see all these wonderful papers being produced, which weren’t then—we didn’t have something like the Arab American Studies Association. I did join MESA, Middle East Studies Association, in ’92 I was president of Middle East Studies Association. And that was quite an experience. Initially we couldn’t—well, that’s why AAUG was founded really, because we tried to present papers at MESA and we couldn’t on Palestine, so that really is what pushed AAUG to get publications and everything and a place we could talk about Palestine. And I think that was the first paper I ever published—no, second one, that had to do with Palestine. And it was published in an AAUG book by Naseer Aruri who was one of the presidents, and it was really refreshing for Arab-Americans to be able to have their own organization where they could say what they wanted. So it’s always been a struggle with Zionism. I won’t say Judaism, but Zionism. And now in California where my husband and I are retired for the last 16 years, in a way because of the horrible bigotry and discrimination going on under the Trump administration, it’s very interesting because we now have—we are close to San Bernardino where there was a very bad tragedy. And there’s a lot of fear of Muslims, and the mosque in Clairmont was threatened. There are three mosques threatened with bombs in California, southern California. And what has been wonderfully amazing, it has brought the Jewish and Christian communities together with Muslim communities. A couple weeks ago, about a month ago we had rabbis at the Friday one o’clock sermon in the Islamic mosque. We’ve had Muslims going to the synagogue. This would never have happened before this administration that I know of. I mean, maybe it did, I don’t know. I’m on some interfaith committee, and maybe that did happen but not the way it is now. And we’ve had marches. And in 2012 – when the bombing in New York —and the mosques were again threatened, the Christian ministers formed a blockade around the mosque and said, “Any attacks on the mosque is an attack on our churches.” So in a way these crisis kinds of things do bring groups together, and there are marches, interfaith marches, and it’s wonderful to see. So there is some counter—counter Trump things going on. And Bannon, the push on white Christian nationalism that’s going on today, which is very scary. I don’t know what’s going to happen right now, but it’s a very fearful time to me. It’s a very dangerous time. Emphasis on militarism. As an anthropologist studying way back in many civilizations, all empires have ended. Maybe this is the beginning of ours. I don’t know. But I will say one thing: I have always been critical of much in this culture, especially the genocide among, I guess, Native Americans and of course the way we treat African-Americans and other minorities and now Muslim-Americans. But I have now after all these many years begun to realize we really have some really good things in our democracy, and the free press is so important. Not that it’s always free, but there is Rachel Maddow and some of these people who are still wonderful people, and we’re able to say these things. So I almost—it’s like, wow, we really do have wonderful things here we have to support. And unfortunately the contemporary budget has cut—seeming to cut all those good things. Evening affecting this museum we’re in here. NEH [National Endowment for the Humanities], NEA [National Endowment for the Arts], UN [United Nations], all these things that are, you know, being cut by our country, by our regime, or are trying to be cut. The health benefits. California’s a little more—it’s nice to be out there, because they’re trying to go for single-payer now, health [insurance], which I don’t know if they’ll get there but it’s been there before and it may go. They want to be a sanctuary state. I don’t know if that’ll happen, but the pushes there are very progressive. Very progressive Governor Pratt and the Senate and the House are all very strong in California against—they’re pushing back against the administration very strongly now. I don’t know the outcome, but it is good to see organizations like this, Arab American Studies Association, all these papers and all the real pushback against the current administration. That’s about all I have.</p>
<p>AA: Well, thank you Doctor Aswad for sitting with me today.</p>
<p>BA: You’re welcome, and thank you for the interview.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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41min 10sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Amina Ammar
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Barbara Aswad
Location
The location of the interview
Dearborn, MI
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
Barbara Aswad, March 25th, 2017
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Barbara Aswad discusses her life as a professor of Anthropology and the Middle East. She recounts a trip through the Middle East as a 19-year-old and how that changed the course of her life and how relations have changed on subsequent trips. She talks at length about the relationship between Zionists and Arabs and the War in 1967. She also discusses her memories of the summer of 1967 in Detroit as a professor at Wayne State and similarities between the situation in the United States and the Middle East.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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10/13/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 Arab-Israeli War
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Community Members
Michigan National Guard
Vietnam War
Wayne State University
-
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
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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
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.
Willie Horton
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Willie Horton was born in Virginia and came to Detroit as a boy. He attended Detroit Northwestern High School and signed with the Detroit Tigers in 1961. He made his major league debut in 1963. After retiring from professional baseball, he worked with the Detroit Police Department and was active in the formation of the PAL program.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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12/07/2017
Interview Length
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00:30:44
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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1/23/2018
Transcription
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WW: Hello. My name is William Winkel. Today is December 7, 2017. I'm in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and today I'm sitting down with Willie Horton. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. </p><p>
WH: Thank you.
</p><p>
WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when you were born?
</p><p>
WH: I was born in 1942, in a small town: Arno, Virginia. My parents came north when I was about nine or ten, and I went back down south so I could play baseball down there for a year, and then I came back, been here ever since - before my early teens. Raised up in Detroit. Jeffries Projects. And, matter of fact, this is our old neighborhood. We used to run around over here at Wayne State.
</p><p>
WW: Why did your parents leave Virginia for Detroit?
</p><p>
WH: Well, my dad's mine got shut down, and that's when he came back up this way. You know, they closed down all the mines down there in Virginia, where we were living at at the time.
</p><p>
WW: When you came to Detroit for the first time, do you remember your first impression?
</p><p>
WH: Well, when I first came to Detroit, I was about five or six. My mom's people lived here. I was coming down today, I was thinking about the streetcars I used to get on and ride down Grand River. And then I - that's the first time. Then after that, just come back here, getting raised up in the neighborhood around people, and raised up around the Jeffries Projects. And you know, what fascinated me, everybody thought it was all black, but there were just as many white people in the Jeffries Projects. A lot of people went to Wayne State and stuff like that. But it was a very experience - helped me in my life - coming through that era.
</p><p>
WW: When you came up to Detroit to live, did you feel comfortable when you went around the city and hung out?
</p><p>
WH: When you're a young man you just didn't - you didn't worry about it. You just did things. I tell people, I came up during the time - my first five years in the big league were racial. And that's many years after Jackie Robinson. But our neighborhood, you know - and I talk about this a lot - was churches and schools. We need to get - them two things need to get back together. You had drugs. Drugs been here, but churches and schools, whether your race was black or white, they was your community. And that's what I think about. We did things together - maybe didn't go to school with, but we did everything in the community - neighborhood - together, so I think about that a lot, through my life, as I travel. And it helped me as I started in baseball.
</p><p>
WW: And you said you went back South to start playing baseball again?
</p><p>
WH: Well, when I was younger I went back, and for some reason they wanted to play tee ball or something up here, I forgot, and I'd always been advanced. I went back down to Tennessee and I used my brother Billy's birth certificate so I could play in a higher league. So, I stayed down there one year with my brothers and then after that Mr. Thompson was going to Wayne State - which he was, got drafted by the Rams, and he got hurt, and he was over at Wayne getting his degree, and he came by [Poe ?] School ground, and one day he stopped, and he asked you guys, do you want to play baseball? So, he said, meet me back here next Monday.
</p><p>
So, all the kids in the community, we met him back over there. That's how we got started and actually I talk about how he started the Ravens, from the Ravens to Brown Insulation to the west side clubs. And that's all that started years ago, but thanks to Ron Thompson and people like that, that's the reason I'm here speaking today.
</p><p>
WW: What year did you head south to play ball?
</p><p>
WH: I really don't know. It had been early - I'd go back - I was about nine years old, so you go back - I'm 75, so you can kind of go back in the years and figure that out, but right off, I can't say.
</p><p>
WW: No worries. When you were away from the city did you stay away, or were you coming back intermittently?
</p><p>
WH: I came back at the end of the summer. I'd go back, that first time I played baseball in Kingsport, Tennessee, and actually we had a tournament up in around Louisville, Kentucky, that area, and that's the first time I met Pete Rose as a young man - kid - and Eddie Brinkman. And we all started, the first time I ever laid my eye on them, and later on in my career, playing in Detroit, going to a tournament where I met him again. But I think if you look back, what kept me going in life, I always wanted to do try to do something. I didn't know what at the time. I'm very fortunate my parents got Judge [Damon] Keith at the time to become my legal advisor when I was 13 years old. And what I learned from him, between thirteen and seventeen I signed on - I don't think I could have gotten that learning from eight years in college. But I'm just thinking - today he's still my dad. I call him dad. And he went on - been a famous judge in this country and - but he was a lawyer and people don't realize he was the first black firm to come across Woodward. At the time, you know, on the west side.
</p><p>
WW: As you're coming back to the city and growing up, through the fifties, do you see any rising tension in the city?
</p><p>
WH: Naw, not really. You didn't think - when you were a kid, a young man - you didn't think about it. A lot of things you heard were going on, but, you know, adult, whether you're black or white, they kept a lot of things away from the kids. And we didn't know the difference. Probably a lot of things going on we didn't know - all we looked for, going out to school, going out to the playground and play, doing things together, walking out to Belle Isle and stuff like that. I think as I heard about these things, coming up a kid, I guess when I got involved and paying more attention to it, is after I signed the contract.
</p><p>
WW: Similar question. When you were in the South, did you see the Civil Rights Movement in action?
</p><p>
WH: Not really. We - like I said, down there we only - it was the neighborhood. We always did things together and - you didn't go to school - but I've been around white people, down in Virginia, in Arno, just as much as I've been around black people. Only thing was different - you noticed you just didn't go to school with your best buddy. When I did my first book, years ago, I reunioned with a kid I ain't saw since we were little kids. His name is Munson, in Virginia - but all you did, you would go fishing together - and I mean, we used to - we called them creeks, and we used to catch these fish, we called them suckers – they were like catfish – with our hands, in the creek, and I think about that, and I met him walking to go downtown to play baseball. I cut through their neighborhood, where he's living. We start walking and then I got more involved in baseball, and he did too, and I think what he learned from sports he went on and became a great man in the political world.
</p><p>
WW: Aside from baseball did you play any other sports in the city?
</p><p>
WH: I played - well, you know, I played football. I played basketball. I boxed. Boxing gym was not too far from here - I see they should put a historic site over - used to be Kelsey Recreation Center, but they're going to put some kind of power plant there. They should put some kind of historic name - a lot of people came through there, went on and had fame in life. But you know, we just kept it together. You know, my boxing coach, matter of fact, he got to be up around 90, he's still living. He's still sitting on the boxing committee on Parks and Recreation, the city now. Martin Gillgate.
</p><p>
It just - it kept us busy. You know, you get out of school, you go do one thing. You kept busy. But I think where they learn you - I'd like to see kids get involved in more than one sport. I think it helps your decision skills when you play more than one sport. You might not be good in all of it, but it helps your decision skills, where you can make better choices in life.
</p><p>
WW: Throughout the 1950s and going into the sixties, did you continue living at the Jeffries Projects?
</p><p>
WH: Back and forth. My mom and daddy had a two-room - actually, a two-room apartment, but Jeffries Projects was close to where my mom then, I stayed with my sister, Faye Griffin, and from that, I used to go home, back and forth. It just - you know, in our community, actually, your house - your door - for the people in the community, the door was open for anybody. They'd help you, feed you. I don't think - I don't think I ever went hungry, because you can eat at anybody's house. But I think - I think about that - I go by all the community where I was raised up, now they got new condos and houses over there, they just put a new baseball field several years back, at the playground where we started playing ball as a kid - and usually on the way down to the ballpark I usually drive through there. I usually drive down there two or three times a week.
</p><p>
WW: Going into the sixties, you, of course, joined the Tigers in '63?
</p><p>
WH: No, I came up. I signed in '61. I signed a hardship case to help my parents. And from the hardship case, Judge Keith got involved. There was still racial problems in baseball and stuff like that. And actually, my dad requested that I stay at home with the Tigers, because he let me - 1961, before I signed, to go see Jake Wood, the first black player - African American player - 12 years after Jackie Robinson came through this organization. And that's the reason I signed with the Tigers. I thought I was going to sign for the Yankees, Baltimore, I'd been working out with them. But going down Trumbull towards the ballpark, I asked Papa why we're going that way. He said, “I decided, young man, let you see play baseball, back in June - I mean in April - I think the eleventh or tenth - that I think you can stay home, maybe you might make it different for more black players in the future.”
</p><p>
WW: As you're now on an MLB [Major League Baseball] team, and you're growing in national significance, do you become involved in the national civil rights discussion, or do you focus on baseball?
</p><p>
WH: Well yeah, I got involved, to tell you the truth, go back when I left home. I talk about this a lot - I probably experienced what Mother Parks - Rosa Parks - experienced on the bus - but at the time the bus was full, and I went to the back anyway, but in Lakeland, I got out at the bus station, I want to get a ride to Tigertown - and I thought that - he said he can't take me. You know, at home, I see Yellow Cab, Checker Cab, I said I want to go to Tigertown. He said "I can't take you." And I - to me, I thought - thought he was playing a joke. You know, you leave away from home, you hear about people playing jokes on guys go to college - freshmen and stuff like that - I get my duffelbags, I walk six miles - between four and six miles to Tigertown. And it's funny, after I got there, it still didn't sink in until there was a white kid - I forget his name - we played baseball against each other in Detroit, and we wanted to room together, and I couldn't room together with him.
</p><p>
So, from all the hardship case that I experienced, got me where I went beyond the field. I think to Ernie Harwell and George Kell kind of helped prep me, what I was going to have to go through when I come up with the Tigers. Actually, I used to go eat at Ernie's home on Sunday, to have dinner with him and his family. And they kind of got me into doing that, and I kind of got ready for what I would have to come toward in the future.
</p><p>
And after spring training, we left, and then here going to Duluth, Minnesota my first year, and I have highest respect to [Al Lakeland ?], our manager - that we couldn't stay at the hotel and he took the older guys, and they drew - driving all the way to Duluth, Minnesota, so I think about him in life, and he kind of - people like that help you get where you want to go out and try to make a difference for everybody. And through Ernie Harwell I met Bob Hope. I got involved with the military bases and I'm still involved with the military bases. I've been overseas with Bob Hope for a time, and six other times, and you know, I just - from that, it makes you say - things that you appreciate, that you can reach back and try to put some things together to help all people. Through the military, and I think it helped me get more involved in the community. You know, if you get exposed - standing out in the woods with them at night, not just going there to say hi and goodbye, but you got totally involved. And actually I'm still doing that today with the Tigers. We've got a partnership with Fort Benning. We bring soldiers to spring training, and the families. I go down in November to graduation, et cetera.
</p><p>
WW: Were you in town in '63 for the march down Woodward?
</p><p>
WH: I was out playing in '63. My dad was a part of it. He called me, and Papa, he was part of it, when Dr. King did the march, and I learned through Judge Keith, as a lawyer, that was going to happen. Then I had the opportunity later on meeting Dr. King through Judge Keith, and that's when I said I met a lot of famous people: presidents, entertainment and movie actors through Judge Keith, but I never forget that. But I had opportunity of meeting him before I got home down in Memphis, Tennessee, when he gave a speech down there and I never forget that. And things like that keep you growing. And through life, I look back, and I think that's what keeps me going now, and I try to carry myself according to that.
</p><p>
WW: Getting closer to '67, did you feel any rising tension in the city, or sense anything coming?
</p><p>
WH: Nope. And I remember, it's a funny thing about that. Jake Wood, after he got involved, and I hear his story, and Jake – I got him back involved with the Tigers now, and Jake, he's 80, 81, still playing 72 games of softball. But to hear him speak, he didn't realize that was going on. And I - you'd think, but he'd been hearing about it, he came from New Jersey, and to hear him speak, he said he looked up to me, I looked up to him, because that's the reason I signed with the Tigers, because of him, but he made a statement many times - he didn't realize until he started reading about it.
</p><p>
And I guess because your mind is playing baseball and being part of the fan base, which I call my extended family, and I learn how to play through the fans and made them part of my game, and listen to him say that - I would do the same thing over again because I learned an important benefit of being a professional athlete is going to play the game - and I never put the game before the fans.
</p><p>
WW: In '67, were you still living near the Jeffries Projects?
WH: No. I - actually, Jeffries Projects, I got out of Jeffries Projects years before. Judge Keith became my league adviser when I was 13 years old. And he lived on Woodrow Wilson. I was going back and forth, staying at his place. And I actually, after I signed my contract, got mother and them a nice home out near Highland Park, and I set up a pension for my dad for ten years or so, and I think - I still didn't get away from the Projects because I never get - when I went off the first year, '61, I had met a guy that - like my mentor, that I looked up to, was Gage Brown, I talked him into coming home with me. I introduced him his wife, Norma Sterling at the time, and she was in the Projects. We were raised up together, and - but - I think about that. The connection, through people, and actually, I used to stop by there all the time. And I was in the big league and I used to stop, before they started building - developing that new development over there. But I used to stop through there and see people from the past. And that's - I never forgot where I came from. I'm very thankful and humble through God, that he kept me humble. That I never got away from that.
</p><p>
WW: Going into the start of the week, on Saturday night, late Saturday night, Sunday morning, how did you hear - how did you first hear about what was going on?
</p><p>
WH: Well actually, it was Sunday. I didn't hear about nothing like that until actually, I got involved. We had a doubleheader, I think, with the Yankees. Second game, they called the game off, they told us they wanted all of us to go home, and for insurance purposes. And I ended up putting all my clothes in a duffle bag and I end up in the middle of the riot and try to bring some peace to the people. I used to wonder why I did that, but I had no control. I think God had control over that, through the people that I mentioned in the past - Judge Keith, Ernie Harwell - they got me where I was - got involved in things like that. I think about the riot, you know, down there, seeing all this looting and burning, and I talk - try to bring peace - but I mean, the people that kept me going back - they weren't about my security. Go home, Willie, get out of here, and stuff like that.
</p><p>
But I didn't do that. I went home and I come back, and when I told I got involved in the city, government, trying to make it better for people in the city, and one of my pet [inaudible] in life is the PAL [Police Athletic League] program, that Mayor Greer, I think, started that after the riot. Started developing that in 1969 - 1968 - started developing the PAL program and they opened up in '69.
</p><p>
WW: Can you correct the mayor?
</p><p>
WH: It's Mayor Griss.
</p><p>
WW: Gribbs, okay.
</p><p>
WH: And it started for a program that I'm very proud of, that I came back part of that program for many years after that, after playing sports and retiring, that Coleman recruited me to come back and work through the city government, through the police department. Then I came to be a Deputy Director and a Secondary Chief, that Detroit PAL kind of helped spearhead Philadelphia PAL and other PAL around the country, and all the bylaws that they do in PAL today, that we was involved putting that together, and they still use the same bylaws through the schools and PAL around the country, that we had - Inspector Bowham, that got involved in that, and went to the national PAL convention. And they still use the regulations and rules that we established back that many years.
</p><p>
WW: Going back to '67, you mentioned that you were going from near the epicenter, or the scenes of violence, back to your home, and back and forth. Did you run into any issues going to and from your house -
</p><p>
WH: No -
</p><p>
WW: Or did you see anything?
</p><p>
WH: Actually just a few days ago, we left going into Baltimore, playing that weekend, so I didn't see anything like that. But after we came back off the road I was able to have meetings, certain meetings and stuff like that, and I started going to some of the meetings and things like that, but I'm just - and I think that's the beginning of me kind of appreciate the good Lord gave me the ability to do something, that I can get involved doing other things, far as human era of people, that I can try to make a difference in their life.
</p><p>
WW: Did any of your family members have their property damaged, or -
</p><p>
WH: No.
</p><p>
WW: That's good.
</p><p>
WH: No. We - actually, my sister and them, actually still staying living in the Projects and stuff like that. And I know some people down Twelfth Street, that's the only problem got messed up a little bit. I seen a lot of history things - and last year they did a book, a story on the riots in '67 and I never would ask. I used to wonder why I never asked to be part of that, because I was very incidentally involved in that, but I think I've seen a lot of people say the bad things about the riot, but I seen some good things come out of the riot. I seen Detroit grow at the time - whether you want to admit that, or people to admit that, you know, most black people was in the Black Bottom. And through the riot, that's when we started branching out. You might call it a hardship at the beginning when you branch out into the community, but I think that was opportunity. And I seen Detroit grow in the minority area.
</p><p>
WW: You’ve referred to '67 as a riot a number of times. Is that how you frame what it was?
</p><p>
WH: I don't know what time, we was just playing. I don't - I can't say. All I seen was black smoke, look across, over the right field stands. And I didn't have a general idea what was going on until they called the game off.
</p><p>
WW: Oh no, I'm sorry. I mean - do you see it as a riot? Do you see it as an uprising, as a rebellion?
</p><p>
WH: Well, I was concerning, to me, in life, arise - you know, you do it, but don't get away from the meaning. I was telling the people, don't burn your own stuff down. Don't be looting, taking stuff. You defeat what the purpose was. And I'm just - we're just very fortunate they didn't get away from that, because they got busy trying to handle the problem with our own, tick that off, and try to correct it for the future. But sometimes you get - you get out there, defeat the purpose, and people thing you're out there just to start a riot, looting, it wasn't about that. It was about what went on with the police officer and some private people at a club or something.
</p><p>
WW: The police are routinely cited as a major force in inciting '67. How did you feel later on when you joined the police department? Did you think it had changed by that point?
</p><p>
WH: Well, that's many years after I played. You know, I came back - Coleman had a person named Charlie Pringman recruited me. I was living in Seattle, came back and got involved through that, and through the PAL organization. And I had opportunity to get involved with the Police Academy and stuff like that, understand all the bylaws and responsibilities, respect the uniform. I got totally involved. I'm very fortunate, I ended up as Secondary Chief, but that was many years after I retired from baseball.
</p><p>
WW: You mentioned that you became much more - not more involved, but you stayed involved in the community after '67.
</p><p>
WH: Well, actually, I started back in the community involvement back after I signed in '63 - '62, '63, when I met Bob Hope and et cetera. Actually I went back down in 1968, and had the war going on, went back down - and what's the name -
</p><p>
WW: Vietnam?
</p><p>
WH: Vietnam War. And I went back down there after the World Series and I'll never forget Mr. Fessie called, so what are you doing down there? You know. And they're concerned. I came back. But it's something that through that relationship with the military, and I think, working in the community, what got me today doing the same thing in the community, down in Florida now, is through churches and schools.
</p><p>
WW: Did anybody question that? Did anybody else - did anyone wonder why you were becoming so involved when so many people were leaving?
</p><p>
WH: Not really. I didn't - you know, I did things, and my heart's always been about Detroit. And the state - the people of the state of Michigan. I never been questioned why I did, right to today, and I just did things. And you know, I think that's one reason I'm back doing things now and thanks to Mr. Illitch and his family got me involved many years ago, and - but he got me back, not only in baseball, got me involved with the people in the community and their concern of treating people right.
</p><p>
WW: Going into '68. The '68 World Series win was really big for Detroit, and many people cite it as a moment of Detroit coming together. From your personal experience, what do you think it did for the city?
</p><p>
WH: I think it did a lot for the city. It started after we lost in '67, one game, and going into the winter, going into spring training, and started to open the season. People don't realize, newspapers were on the strike then. And I think playing good baseball, and people listen to Ernie Harwell's voice, I seen people - start getting more people at the ballpark and I seen black and white people sitting together, talking together, cheering us on, and a lot of times you need that support when you're with the newspaper, but we didn't have that. I think this town grow closer, because the newspaper's on the strike. I think sometimes, political-wise, things you read might keep you separated. But I seen where we went on, I think that's one of the reasons we won. I think - I always said to myself, I think on the plat down on the ballpark, I think the good lord put us here to win, to heal the city of Detroit. So I think it played a big important role, but I think it helped us as people, the guys that are playing this game - supporters are - we didn't think about it. We started taking, leading in baseball. And I think it started from the riot, and we went to spring training, so we knew we had the best team, we're going to win. And I think that newspaper on the strike, and Ernie Harwell's voice, I seen this city kind of grow together.
</p><p>
WW: Are there any other stories you'd like to share today?
</p><p>
WH: Well, I can talk all day when it comes to people and stuff like that. You know, I'm just very fortunate, back involved, and still involved, like I said, Mr. Illitch got me involved, and his family. And I think about - I go back many years ago, and what's going on in the city now, thanks to Mr. Illitch and his commitment through Coleman Young, that things that are going on, there's been a commitment for him to move downtown, which you see going on, and I think, if you go down there now, you see things growing every week, every day. And I'm 75, and I hope, I envision, I see - I know I won't see Hudson's back, because I used to love to do downtown around Christmas time to see them light up the Christmas lights on the side of the Hudson's building - but now he's got other things down there, and I really enjoy looking at the pictures of downtown at nighttime now, you see a lot of life.
</p><p>
But I think it goes back to - thank Mr. Illitch's family for doing that, for his commitment with Coleman, what's going on now, downtown, but I always think about uproar and the riots and stuff. Most young people don't realize what's going on. It's just like, you go to college, they see things going on in college, you start one of them. I'm following this kid. I'm following this one. They don't have an idea what's going on, they're just following the crowd. But - and that's why I said a couple years back, when Baltimore was having a problem. I said, if they get the people together, the people are going to heal that. And that's what I saw. Political wise, they kind of keep you far away, getting to the truth. But if you listen to the people in the community, that's who heals things like that. And primarily I think, that's what I'm still doing. Doing here, and I'm involved in a program down in Florida in spring training and Polk County and Lakeland and it's something that it's all - the story what we're doing down there is all about what I just explained to you. Go back three years ago and Mr. Illitch told me to go for it. You know, and this thing is growing across Polk County and I hope one day it might be a model for this country, what started when our childhood, coming up in Detroit, and my vision of the future, and Mr. Illitch's support, that right now we - I think we've got over 2200 foot soldiers in the Polk County community. And it's started from incident. But the key to this is churches and schools, and I'm - it's - if you look at life, sometime in the last 50 years or so, I seen churches and schools got separated. We lost a lot of faith in our schools. But you bring them two back together, I think they'll teach you about - remind you how you know your next door neighbor's name and stuff like that. But that's what I like to see. How many more years I've got left, thank the good lord, that I can see that come together, and I think that'll be nice for here in Detroit and for this country.
</p><p>
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
</p><p>
WH: Thank you.
</p><p>
WW: I really appreciate it.
</p><p>
WH: Thank you.
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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30min 44sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Willie Horton
Location
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Detroit, MI
Dublin Core
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Title
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Willie Horton, December 7th, 2017
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Willie Horton discusses growing up in Detroit in the 1960s in the Jeffries Housing Projects, his impressions of the city, his actions during the events of 1967 as a member of the Detroit Tigers, and his ongoing work with the community both in Detroit and in Lakeland, Florida.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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05/18/2018
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
1968 World Series
Detroit Community Members
Detroit Police Department
Detroit Tigers
Jeffries Housing Project
Looting
Martin Luther King Jr.
Mayor Coleman Young
Vietnam War