2
20
561
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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I was 5 years old. I remember lots of noise outside our apartment window. I looked outside. I saw lots of people running in and out the corner store. I saw people taking thing out the store like potatoes chips and bread etc. without a bag. I heard the police cars. I saw the police put lots of people in the big police wagon. Later on that day, it was quiet no one could go outside. I saw army trucks and army men. My parents told us to stay away from the window. I remember our lights were off and I felt afraid. We could not watch television. My father was the only one who would leave the apartment to go to work. He worked at the Fisher Building as a security guard his name was Earnest Smith. I loved my father and mother for taking care of us.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Angela Smith
Submission Date
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03/13/2016
Search Terms
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Looting, Michigan National Guard
Dublin Core
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Title
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Angela Smith
Date
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03/13/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society
Description
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Angela Smith recalls being a child and witnessing looting and later National Guardsmen in Detroit in July of 1967.
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Detroit Historical Society
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Text
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en-US
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Childhood
Children
Growing Up In Detroit
Looting
Michigan National Guard
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https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/c904cf6730173b7a56d00c7e8b027aef.jpg
bce8ca7fb0b587ac9538f4f0dbad11fc
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
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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What inspired me to paint this particular painting? One day in 2013, in a discussion with several Detroit artists, I brought up the question: Has anyone painted the 1967 riots? I remembered that time well. The images came back. I was eleven years old.
I was going to the supermarket with my mother on that hot day. The supermarket was Bi-Lows and we were going there to purchase milk for my baby brother. The trip that day was different from all other days. On that day, we had to be careful walking, as on the earth was millions of pieces of shards of glass. White soldiers gripped fearsome-looking M-14 carbine rifles. Then I caught sight of a black face. The man was wearing army-green and he also gripped a rifle. At the sight of the black man, I felt relief. He was one of us. Everything would be okay. As he stood there guarding what was left of a burned-out pet store, I looked at him with admiration. He was a hero.
But the sight of the pet store troubled me. When my family moved into the neighborhood, the second black family on the block, that pet store was alive with puppies that we children loved to play with; a tap on the window, and the little spider monkey acknowledged you with delight. Kids of various races stopped in that pet shop or bought and discussed comic books or candy elsewhere. Now, I could not believe what was there. Busted widows, angry mobs and an atmosphere of fear and hatred. I heard and saw new words: Burn, Baby, Burn, Black Power, Die Pigs, and Soul Brother, which was spray-painted on store front windows—a codeword supposedly letting rioters know that a store was black owned. That eleven year old boy that I was learned the word “sniper” and what a sniper does. I heard “loot,” and “looter.”
At night, mom watered the roof of our house down in a preventive measure in case the flames of the riot reached our neighborhood.
Those images and others were in my head, and with paint I captured that chaotic time in both my past and Detroit history. Maybe not a race riot as some have referred to it, but a time of angry rebellion at the status quo. A Revolution.
Angelo- David Sherman
Original Format
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Painting
Submitter's Name
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Angelo Sherman
Submission Date
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08/05/2016
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Angelo Sherman
Description
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A painting and explanation from Angelo Sherman who was a child in 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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08/26/2016
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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Image
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en-US
Type
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Painting
Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Childhood
Children
Growing Up In Detroit
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Snipers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/a8560dae513d1aa0d6254d4a6bb42c6a.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
Written Story
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Text
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Detroit 1967
July, 1967....It was a really hot day. The men that lined our streets facing in opposite directions were called national guards, and their weapons, bayonets. Who had ever heard of this kind of police? Their eyes watched for snipers that they claimed were on our rooftops, giving them an excuse to force us inside to our cold, wood floors for cover, while they (then) shot at violators, like animals.
In the mornings, having heard the echoing of gunshots on and off all night, even the dew still had gun-smoke in its mist...the smell of dying flesh wreaked in concert with, and amongst the smell of gunfire.
Gun shells riddled the streets and shop owners would attempt to rinse the blood from the sidewalk and doorway where someone's child may have been ducking and trying to get home before curfew...
A cherry bomb lit up the pawn shop on the corner of 12th and Taylor. We could feel the heat from it, all the way past the diner by the alley and the other businesses that lined their way up to the corner, that was, 12 Street. Where MLK and an (orange colored), RFK had ridden by on flatbeds in protest, before I ever knew what a 'movement' was...
The summer of 1967, It was truly a ball, of confusion...
"SOUL BROTHER", written in soap to detour looters, just taking advantage, so as to brag of their 'take' the next day....
Doorbell rings. "Are your parents home?", a voice comes from the front door that is down the steps from the upper flat. The eldest child speaks, (hollers down the steps) and tells them no. The youngest child, buzzes them in. It's the police. They 'briefly' search while asking questions. The youngest child begins to speak, but is quickly hushed by the middle child. The police leave.
EVERYONE MUST VACATE.
Leaving your home in the middle of the evening with the rage and mayhem of buildings on fire around you--- imagine that at seven. Leave and come back when told to do so. That's what we had to do LEAVE. No warning, no waiting.
Now.
Fifty years later, the Riot almost feels as if it has returned. Men are being shot down in the street, like animals, just as they were in 1967.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Anita Gibbs
Submission Date
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09/23/2016
Dublin Core
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Title
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Anita Gibbs
Description
An account of the resource
Anita Gibbs was a child in 1967 and remembers the atmosphere and confusion of the city while the police searched her house.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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09/30/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Childhood
Children
Curfew
Detroit Police Department
Growing Up In Detroit
Michigan National Guard
Snipers
Twelfth Street
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/b3ddf43fdeb245ec7926f23cc23b5285.JPG
dde0ebaa8a6e938f8ad5578ce7e64aca
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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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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Anita Hadley
Brief Biography
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Nita Hadley was born in 1955, Mount Clemens, Michigan. Her father worked for General Motors in Pontiac, and her mother stayed at home. She has seven siblings. As a child, she enjoyed spending time in places such as Belle Isle and various shops. She was at home when she and her family first heard about the unrest.
Interviewer's Name
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Giancarlo Stefanutti
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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07/05/2016
Interview Length
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00:36:00
Transcriptionist
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Giancarlo Stefanutti
Transcription Date
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07/28/2016
Transcription
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<p>GS: Hello, today is July 5, 2016. We are in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project. My name is Giancarlo Stefanutti and I’m with Nita Hadley today. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>NH: You’re welcome dear.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, where and when were you born?</p>
<p>NH: I was born October the seventh, 1955 in Mount Clemens, Michigan.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, so do you have any sibling?</p>
<p>NH: Yes, it’s seven of us, sisters and brothers. I have four sisters and I have three brothers, one is deceased.</p>
<p>GS: Oh wow. What did you parents do?</p>
<p>NH: Well, my father, he worked for General Motors Auto Company in Pontiac, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom.</p>
<p>GS: Okay. So what was your neighborhood like? Was it racially integrated?</p>
<p>NH: Well, when we first moved in the neighborhood, we lived in the vicinity—it was one block over from East Grand Boulevard, we lived on Helen Street, between Vernor and Charlevoix. And when we first moved there, it was in the early ‘60s, because I went to elementary school not in that area first, I went into elementary school—I’m trying to think of where was it—we were in Dubois, a school called Duffield, and then we moved after my dad had got the job and we moved over to this new area and I started elementary school there at a school called Barry. During that time, the neighborhood was mixed. We had about half and half. There were Italian people living in the neighborhood, Greek people, black people, it was fairly mixed. But as the years went on, people that were not black were moving away, and more black people were moving into the area.</p>
<p>GS: Was your school you went to integrated or no?</p>
<p>NH: I started first grade at Barry and when I started there, it was a mixed group of children there when I started elementary school. The school was fairly mixed. It was like, maybe, three-fourths black by then though, and about one-fourth other groups of people.</p>
<p>GS: Did your siblings go to the same school?</p>
<p>NH: Yes we all went to the same school; we all went to Barry Elementary, started school there then we all went to Butzel Junior High, and then I went to King, Martin Luther King High School.</p>
<p>GS: What was your childhood like? Was it just kind of a normal childhood growing up?</p>
<p>NH: Well, I had a great time because I went to school, waited for summer vacation, had a great time on summer vacation, we had the same kind of rules most kids did. You know, you had to be home by a certain time, you played within the neighborhood. We looked forward to the summer because the summer time, there were a lot of things to do. The school always was open for summer recreation during the summer, and we would go to another school that was down the street from us that was called Marcy in the summer, and they would have a bus come and pick up all the kids and take us to day camp. And the day camp, they would bus us and take us to a camp that was in River Rouge, and we would go swimming there because the other schools didn’t have, we didn’t have swimming pools, and so we went out there. We would sometimes do a two week camp that busses would come and meet the school, they’d take us to another camp for about a week camp that was called Green Pastures. And then if we didn’t do that, we stayed so close to Belle Isle Park, we’d walk to Belle Isle because we stayed just that close because Boulevard was one block over from us and we would all get together so kids and stuff and we would walk to Belle Isle. We would go there for bike riding, fishing, canoeing, and just a day at the park.</p>
<p>GS: Nice. I’m sorry, where did you say you moved again? From Mount Clemens?</p>
<p>NH: Well, I was born in Mount Clemens, then my family had moved—during the time I guessed they used to call it the “Black Bottom” area, and they lived on a street called Duffield, then I went to elementary school over there, and by the time I started like first grade, we moved over into the area Helen.</p>
<p>GS: Helen.</p>
<p>NH: Yeah, Helen. The street between Vernor and Charlevoix.</p>
<p>GS: So then, kind of moving towards the early sixties, could you sense any tensions growing within the city, or no?</p>
<p>NH: Well, at the time I was only eleven when all this started happening, but at the time I was growing up, everything went, from the way I looked at, you know, seemed alright. I just noticed that some of my friends that weren’t black friends were moving away, they were moving. But other families were moving in, most the families that moved in, they were larger families like ours. They had quite a few kids, you know, like maybe three or four, five kids. Most of the men, fathers, worked at the auto plants, and mostly all the moms were stay-at-home moms. And we had a block club, we used to have a thing every May that was called The May Festival, where all the houses were judged on how nice you kept your yard up. You got a prize and everything, they used to block off the streets for us in the summer time too and they used to have a thing come around where you could swim called the Swim-mobile, and they would block the streets off and bring this big thing where you could swim in it and it was called Swim-mobile. And then as time’s going on, a lot of these things that we were doing activity-wise, they stopped. The Swim-mobile wasn’t coming as much anymore, so we start the day camp thing, but everything still looked the same to me. We never had any problems, we walked to the store without any problems, and back then, kids just went and did everything together. No problems.</p>
<p>GS: Okay. Where were you when you first heard about the riot then in 1967?</p>
<p>NH: Well, actually, it was the day after the riots happened, it was on the news. In the morning, I know my mom was worried about my dad, because he worked the afternoon/late shift and he worked in Pontiac and he had to get home, back to Detroit, and she was worried because at the time, it wasn’t on our side of town, but she was still worried about him. We watched a lot on television and at the time, we had relatives visiting with us that were here for the first time from California when it happened. And we had heard about years before, few years before, they had riots in California, and this was a couple years later and now it was like, we were having a riot, and we were just looking at the news, watching with my mom the next day. And everything in the neighborhood seemed, in our area, still seemed fine.</p>
<p>GS: So the rioters were kind of away from your neighborhood?</p>
<p>NH: Right, because we heard the riots where we were on the East Side of Detroit. And these riots had happened on the West Side, but my mom was worried about other relatives because they lived over in that area. I heard them conversing on the telephone, they were saying that everybody lost their mind, they weren’t able to get to us, so I watched my mom’s reaction. My dad did make it home, and then they didn’t let kids around adults talking, so they—“Go outside and play,” and that’s what we were doing outside, playing. And then, we noticed all the neighbors going back and forth to each other, talking on each other’s porches and everything, and I remember my dad discussing with the other neighbor that lived next door, they were the Whites, that was their name, the White family. And Mr. White and my dad were talking and he was saying “Are we gonna be able to work, still?” Because they both worked at auto plants. He worked at Chrysler, my dad worked at Pontiac with GM. And later on in the evening that night, it’s like, you start hearing explosions, and it lit up all around us like toward Mack Avenue, was like maybe a few blocks over. And behind us, you started smelling smoke, and as usual, kids now we’re, “Go down into the basement, adults are talking.” And we were down there, and they were looking at television, and next thing you know, other neighbors were there knocking on our door and they’re outside talking and everything, and my mom was wondering about my dad going to work, and he did go to work. But it was a problem that happened—I remember we were discussing because like, by then, we didn’t know it until like, two or three days later—all this is still going on. There’s no police around, but we’re just seeing all these fires happening. You can’t see actually where they’re burning at. My mom, she would always send us—my dad, he drove a Rambler Station wagon, and that was the only vehicle we had, so she would always send us kids up to Mack Avenue and on Mount Elliot and different places, the shops. She’d give us a list, and we would pick up certain things, put them in the wagon, bring them home. We would go to the bakery, go to the meat market, to the grocery store, to the pharmacy, everything, and she wasn’t letting us do that this day, and that was unusual, because we always would do that. She said “You can’t go.”</p>
<p>GS: Oh wow.</p>
<p>NH: And in the meantime, we’re getting these calls, she’s talking to my cousins that are with us from California. I hear she’s on the phone talking and they wanna talk to their moms to let them know they’re alright and everything, because they’re also I guess watching on TV where they are and what’s unfolding, she said “Well, we really don’t know what’s happened over this way, we started smelling smoke and see fires, and it looked like it’s coming our way. But I haven’t let the kids, leave the block.” And they couldn’t stay on the phone long, because long distance costs a lot of money. And my father, I remember when he came home that evening and he had a hard time getting home because by then—I don’t know if the next day or the third day, National Guards were there, that’s I guess what they called them then, and we noticed that jeeps were coming down the area, guys were walking the block and everything, with guns and up and down the Boulevard and then, my dad was talking about how they had set up a station at the school at the corner, Mack and the Boulevard, a school that was called Eastern High School at that time, and they had set up camp there, and there were tanks up there. We actually saw tanks and jeeps and everything riding around, and we were informed, that there’s a thing—we knew about our curfew with being kids, we had to be home at a certain time—if there’s a curfew for everybody, and we couldn’t go anywhere. And it spoiled our summer, because we as kids, we wanted to go to Belle Isle, we wanted to go to our rec center, we wanted to go, to day camp, but we were just confined to just right in front of the house. And at night time, my mom would have us all go to the basement, because we heard noises, and they said there was shooting, you could hear all types of shooting and by then, it was so much fire and smoke surrounding us because later we found out that they had burnt down everything on Mack and they had burned down things on Jefferson, and we’re so like in the middle of this, where our blocks are located and everything had gotten burnt on Mount Elliot, that was behind us, and it got pretty scary for us, as kids, because we actually didn’t understand what a riot was, all we knew was that we couldn’t go anywhere and there were a lot of fires everywhere around us. And my mom and dad were—the first time I’ve seen my parents—I could tell they were scared. And of course, that scared us, and I remember my mom and dad discussing—the thing, he had to have a written permit to come in and out from work, back and forth in the city. I think that they gave it to him at work, showing that he could come back, because they were telling people that, you couldn’t come in and out of certain areas, and he had to go all the way to Pontiac. And he also, at the time, started—he had the station wagon, I remember he had loads of food and different stuff when he would come back and give stuff to neighbors and stuff, because no one could go out and buy anything. We had a corner store that was on Vernor, and they were owned by some Italian people, and they were very good to everybody. They would let you buy stuff and pay for it later, and I remember that my dad and a lot of people got together to protect the guy’s store, and said “We’re going to take care of Al’s store. We’re not going to let anybody, burn or mess with his store.” But Al himself was limited on what he could get because he couldn’t get in and out. He stayed there. I remember a lot of the guys, my dad and other neighbors went there and sat, and protected his store, and after about four days—four or five days, we didn’t see the sky lighting up with fires or anything, but we were told that curfews were lifted, but actually it wasn’t, for a lot of people in the area, because when we went out, my dad, we’d try to go and do things, the National Guard were still there, and there was nothing to go to because they did—after a few days, we took a drive in the area and it was just devastating because our grocery stores were gone, the pharmacy was gone, and some of the churches were burnt, and everyplace we shopped and did business at in the area was gone. Mack Avenue was just devastated, there was nothing left. And people were still going in and out of storefronts, getting things out of there, and I think a lot of it might have been out of necessity because some of them probably was—and, I’m just saying from my viewpoint—there was no stores left, so people were going in stores that were already broken in, getting food and canned foods and different things. And my mom said, “No, nobody in our house is going to be doing that,” because they were still shooting people for doing it. And it was a bad summer for us kids, it’s like we only could listen to what was being said, but it was a nightmare because like, you walked down—everything you knew that was familiar was gone. It was just gone. The drug store, and we used to go to the drug store on Mount Elliot, the hardware store was gone, the dry-cleaners, the grocery stores, meat market, and everything was just burnt and gone. To this day it’s still gone. It never came back. One of the places that we used to go to, a little restaurant, we’d walk up there after we’d shopped and get us a hamburger or stop and get some ice cream, or soda, all those places were gone. And then my mom and dad said, “Well, maybe we can go get something at Easter Market,” because on the weekends, we as a family would all get together in the station wagon, we would go to Eastern Market and shop, for vegetables and things. And because prices were cheaper, you could buy in bulk, we were a lot of kids, we were a big family. And it was sort of sad because like, when we went to Eastern Market even, most of the vendors didn’t show up, because they were scare to come down. And so a lot of vendors, there wasn’t a lot you could even buy at Eastern Market because the vendors that were selling the produce stuff didn’t even want to come.</p>
<p>And it’s sort of sad because like, all these things that happened, like you see right now the neighborhood still never came back, and it was always so nice because these people that we shopped with and stuff, they knew us kids, they knew us by name, and a lot of them were white. Italians, Jewish people, most the people that owned the businesses were white people. But, it was sad to see that—we wouldn’t see them again, they wouldn’t see us. We didn’t understand, but everything that we knew that was familiar wasn’t there anymore.</p>
<p>GS: So, after the riot, you said a lot of these shops were burned down, what was the general atmosphere in Detroit like?</p>
<p>NH: A lot of sadness. A lot of people seemed very depressed. We did more television watching than ever because there was always something on the news and we never watched a lot of TV. Only weekends and stuff, we watched television, on Saturday and Sunday—Saturday morning and stuff, but we weren’t big TV watchers back then. But the TV was always on, and we were watching all the things and the news were showing all the different homes and all the different area that were burnt out and gone, and they were reporting on how many people were shot and killed and they visually showed a lot of people that were—I saw people that were lined up on the news at gunpoint against walls and things and it looked like it was the army, like it was war. And we know what war is, and it just looked like it was war going on in our area. And I didn’t know what to make of that because this is America, we’re not at war, what’s going on. But it seemed like it was war because there were tanks and jeeps and men with guns and army in uniforms. And these were just regular people that once upon a time were my neighbors. I didn’t know them personally, but these people I see all the time in my community, at gunpoint lined up buildings, and on the news. I didn’t know why.</p>
<p>GS: It’s crazy.</p>
<p>NH: Yeah.</p>
<p>GS: So moving forward to Detroit now, what are you opinions of the city at present day?</p>
<p>NH: Well, I recently moved from the city. I always lived in the city, I moved about three and a half years ago. I lived over in the vicinity of Harper and Vandyke and it was our family home, my mom and dad since then had been years had divorced everything, and this was my mother’s home, and she had passed and I had taken the home and I lived there for like nineteen years in that house after she had passed, raised my child there. I had to leave because the neighborhood had changed so much. They had closed down the high school that I went to in the area—it was Kettering High School closed up, and they had closed up the junior high school, they tore down the elementary school, the theatre was gone. That whole area was changing, all the stores that used to be—the drug store wasn’t there anymore, there used to be a United Shirts there, it was like everything that was there that was available was leaving, and the homes were being, you know. As soon as somebody moved out of a home, junkers would come in there and destroy it and take everything out of homes. We still had a block club even there, and it’s like one, two blocks in the area are block be nice. Everybody owned their homes, took care of their problems, but then you go two blocks over and it looks like you’re in a warzone, little Beirut. You know, you’re surrounding the perimeter of your neighborhood, where everything is demolished, and homes are vacant and overgrown, weeds everywhere and businesses are gone and everything’s just getting empty. And I’m by myself, I don’t drive, and I’d catch the bus and all of a sudden they’re no street lights anymore everywhere, the kids are out there catching the bus stops—the school’s not there anymore, and you see posters up in different gas station areas where women are missing, up and down Harper Avenue, it was known as like, you see suburbanites come and getting off the Smart Bus at Harper and Vandyke because that area become a drug zone all around, nothing sold but crack cocaine. You see prostitutes up and down, you couldn’t even walk to the store and the gas station that area, me thinking I was trying to go to work, but they’re stopping, thinking I’m a woman prostituting myself, because prostitutes are all up and down there early in the morning, and late at night, and crack. People are on crack and my family told me that “You have to leave. You know, you can’t stay here anymore, Mom. It’s just not safe for you.” But I hated leaving my home, my neighbors, we were all, close. We would get a bus together and every year take—they still do it to this day because I didn’t go on the trip—they still get two buses together and take the whole neighborhood to Cedar Point. But outside around, it’s just you can’t live there anymore, it’s just dangerous. And I moved and I moved into an apartment. I moved all the way in Saint Claire Shores. My daughter lives in East [unintelligible] Village and my other—sisters live near Harper Woods. Everybody, we all moved out of the city practically, and I don’t like apartment living. I miss my neighbors, I miss my garden, I miss a house. And right now, what’s happening is that the areas downtown, I see them reviving a lot downtown and everything, but the city itself where I just left is just going all to hell. And that’s all over Detroit. You got two, three blocks where people are still keeping up their homes and things, but you got other blocks where it’s just horrible, it’s just scary what’s going on in other areas, and it’s still like that all over the city. And a lot of black families, they’re moving into the suburban areas now because in the three years that I’ve been living where I’m at, I’ve seen a lot of change, because like, there’s a Kroger grocery store near me and it used to be racially mixed with a lot of people going into the grocery store. But I see the change. I see the people that used to be in the neighborhood that I left in the grocery store now. And that’s because a lot of the stores out there aren’t available and a lot of them moved out toward my way. A lot of people now live in Harper Woods, which is just next door to Saint Claire Shores and a lot of people are living in Saint Claire Shores now too, in apartment buildings and homes and things, and it’s just changed. It’s just like they said before, it’s the urban flight. You can see it happening. Everything’s becoming black out in the suburban areas. All my friends, now they live in Warren Michigan, or they live in Saint Claire Shores, or they live in Sterling Heights—some of them—and they live in Harper Woods. And all the young people I know, friends of my daughters and everything, they’re moving downtown, in the Midtown area. You feel like you’re not included right now—at least I feel—downtown Detroit because like, I’ve always worked Downtown. I worked for the Fox Theatre, and I worked the Music Hall, and right now I do office cleaning at the D.A. Building, and I see like we would stop at certain restaurants in the morning, I’d get a breakfast burrito at this one particular store called Grillworks, and it used to cost me $2.95. It’s the same place now, same food, $4.95. For the same breakfast burrito. But everything that you used to eat down there, back when I was working at the Fox and Music Hall, you could throw a bowling ball down Woodward Avenue. The only time you would see white people really come down there was if they were going to a hockey game, or to one of the games of baseball. I go to Eastern Market now and it’s like, “What Eastern Market is this?” It’s so cultured now, they have everything going on at Eastern Market now. But prices have changed. A little bit unaffordable, a lot of things downtown for a lot—I love all the new stuff that’s going on. But, I’ve seen actual things happen. Like a lot of people that worked downtown, they’re in maintenance, they clean a lot of these buildings and stuff, and most of them are black. And you can see the difference when, like, when they have the security and stuff around, they almost make you feel like you don’t belong there. There’s some particular person, someone in general, if you go downtown, you look on a lot of buildings down here, some graffiti person writes notation all over the city that says “Vote N.C.P.” If you look, it’s everywhere. And we know what it means—it means “No colored people” downtown, and it’s graffitied on a whole lot of stuff. It’s “Vote for no C.P downtown.”</p>
<p>GS: Wow.</p>
<p>NH: And it’s graffitied everywhere. And the people that clean up know that’s what it—this graffiti person is doing this everywhere. I know Mr. Gilbert, he’s got a lot of surveillance going on, I wish they find out who’s doing that, because it’s everywhere. And it’s actually funny that you can see the racial divide in downtown everywhere because, like, there’s the transit center on one side, on the corner where I catch my bus at. On the other side of the street is where the Smart Buses come. And the Smart Buses take—a lot of people still live in suburban areas and they take the bus in an out of the city instead of paying for parking, and on this side, you can see black people standing over 40, 50 deep sometimes, waiting on buses. Smart Buses always on time, I’ll ride a Smart Bus now, because I live in Saint Claire Shores. Bus is always on time, and all on this side is white people leaving, a few black people going to catch the bus, and it’s like you can just see the divide. And when they have different things that happen down there, like if there’s special events going on downtown, we used to go downtown to all the Waterfront events used to be free at Hart Plaza. Everything would be free in the summer. You have to pay for everything now. All the summer events, when they do the river thing, the fireworks are still free but if you want to do river walk events, you have to pay to get into that. I even heard on the radio our soul music rib festival that they do every year, you’re going to have to pay for that. I was here when that techno festival first started, it used to be free, now you pay two or three hundred dollars a day to go to that thing.</p>
<p>GS: I paid 70 bucks to go to it actually it was way too much money!</p>
<p>NH: It used to be free!</p>
<p>GS: Yup.</p>
<p>NH: I used to go, it used to be free! So one way that downtown is not inclusive, because everything is priced where you can’t afford it. Really, you can’t afford it to be downtown if you’re black, certain districts the way you used to be, because—it was a relief that Belle Isle even, you just went to Belle Isle. But they weren’t taking care of it. People didn’t appreciate Belle Isle anymore. And if they’d had more security and things out there and ran it the way they should, they could’ve stopped a lot of things that were happening at Belle Isle before the state took it over, because nobody was policing young people out there at the island. I love the way that it’s clean out there now and everything, but you have to pay. And it makes you feel like everything we used to do, and you didn’t have to pay for, don’t group everybody into like, everybody’s bad, and everything’s going to happen, but it feels like you’re not wanted down there. You just don’t feel like you’re wanted down there, “Just do your job and leave.” Because a lot of people go out to lunch and they go out in groups, you just see this constant presence of the special security and everything. You know, pulling people over, too many in the car, you’re a certain color down there, and it’s embarrassing to see that they make them get out of the car, and it’s almost like the way it was back in the sixties because “Too many of you in the area and we don’t know going on with you. Let’s see and stop you and—” They’re just in the car going to lunch or something, and they’re getting pulled over by the security, the security on the bikes. And it’s like they have what they call the transit police down at the transit center, and it’s my opinion, that the transit police are just there to keep you down there in that transit area. If they don’t do what they’re supposed to do in that transit area, they let everything go on there as long as you keep it down in that area. Because there are people down there, they’re selling drugs in that transit area, every kind of thing is going on over there. And the only time the real police seem to show up is when they’ve done something stupid, somebody’s gotten shot. Like a few weeks ago, somebody got shot. They made the police presence known in that area because they’re shooting for a few days, then they disappeared again. And I heard those guys get paid, like, they sit there and they get paid like 16, 15, 18, dollars an hour, and they don’t do anything. They just walk around or sit in their office and stuff, and they have guns, they have licenses to carry guns but they don’t stop anything.</p>
<p>GS: Wow.</p>
<p>NH: They’re just like “Keep it down this way, and we alright in this perimeter.”</p>
<p>GS: Well is there anything else you’d like to add?</p>
<p>NH: Well, right now, I love the way things look downtown. I really do. I just wish that people wouldn’t judge, because someone’s color when you’re downtown and everybody’s black or something’s going to be doing something bad or up to no good, because I always enjoyed before everybody came down—when Campus Martius first was open, I’d bring my grandchildren down here to watch the movies, on the theatre screen, when it was mostly black people coming down, because there weren’t a lot of white people coming down because they weren’t working down here as much, they didn’t live down here. But now, when I come down here doing these things, they look at you like you don’t belong here now, and I was doing this before you were coming down here. But you get that feeling. I went down to lunch and met my daughter—she works down here too—and I met her for lunch, and we walked over to Campus Martius, and the area we used to go where they set up the beach area at and everything, they made it, like, “Oh, you can’t sit over on this area and this area unless you’re going to be buying food,” which is high end food. It’s the summer time, you’re not going to pay five dollars. Some people will pay five dollars for a French fry, a pack of French fries to sit over in that area, but they made that area where they know some folks are not going to pay five dollars so “If we make this price, you won’t be able to sit up over in this area of Campus Martius by the beach, in these chairs.” Because we got something from the food truck and we went over there, because we already sat anywhere down there. We went there the other week to sit in this area, “Oh, you can’t sit over here, unless you’re buying food from this particular place at this area, so you can’t sit over here.” Feeling not inclusive, you know what I’m saying? I hope it doesn’t stay that way because we’re not going anywhere. We just want to enjoy just like you and just don’t judge everybody the same, because I’ve lived here, and I’ve stayed—I love this city and I’ve always been here, and I like to partake, I enjoy things Downtown, you know? But in my opinion, if it keeps on going on this way, it can happen again. I can see it, because I saw it, and it can happen again. And I’m not the only one that feels this way.</p>
<p>GS: Well thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>NH: Thank you.</p>
Original Format
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audio
Duration
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36min 00sec
Interviewer
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Giancarlo Stefanutti
Interviewee
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Anita Hadley
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zcJqhs8Ga0U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
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Title
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Anita Hadley, July 5th, 2016
Description
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In this interview, Hadley discusses her childhood in Detroit, and her feeling of safety within the city. She then discusses her experience during the unrest, and how her entire family was fearful for their safety. She emphasizes that many of the shops and stores she enjoyed visiting as a child were burned to the ground and never rebuilt. She also explains why she moved out of the neighborhood and her issues with Detroit today.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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07/29/2016
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
Arson
Belle Isle
Black Bottom
Childhood
Children
Growing Up In Detroit
Michigan National Guard
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/9f20d50b72827125d48353747d19ac11.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
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
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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Living two blocks West of the Southfield freeway in an original farmhouse on a hill, we sat higher than our neighbors in the surrounding bungalows of the newer subdivisions and had a bird's eye view of the freeway.
Us kids had spotted the tanks from the West Eight Mile armory rolling South on the the not quite five year old freeway. We called our Mom up to see this oddity. Mom had brothers serving in Vietnam so we had to be very quiet when there was news coverage of the war on our tiny black and white TV.
Also being not quite five years old I knew what I knew with a child's clarity. I knew that tanks and soldiers meant a war. I had seen that and the news so I asked my mom why we were having a war too. She explained the difference between a riot and a war but I wasn't buying it a war was a war and I knew one when I saw one.
Mom was a bleeding heart liberal who taught us Joanie Biaz protest songs on our bike rides and excursions on Dad's poker nights. She also taught us about Dr. King and the Movement. Viola Luizzo had attended our same parish.
So somewhere within a week either side of the tanks I was out in the garage singing "We Shall Overcome" at the top of my lungs when Mom came out to quiet me. She told me the neighbors were on edge etc. And my very tan, half Italian, nearly five years self protested, " but Dr. King said..." And as Mom was dragging me from the garage into the house she said "yes, that's right and when you're 21you can join whatever protest you like; but right know you look like the only millstone kid in this neighborhood and I'm have to keep you alive until you're 21 so get inside and hush.
Between shutting down my protest songs and splitting hairs over war vs riot my mom and 1967 erroded my childhood innocence and a lot of the trust I had in adults to do the right thing in the face of crisis.
My uncle had graduated from the Detroit Fire Academy in June and had been assigned to the Engine Company at West Chicago and Livernois just before the riots. He was a changed man and bitter racist after that who told stories of all the stupid things he saw the "N"words do during the riots.
As I grew into an adult I met black friends who had lived through it in the same area my uncle's engine co. served. One such person was my friend, Tyrone, 12 years my senior. He told me how upsethis neighbors were with the fools burning down the neighborhood and how frustrated they were that the fireman kept having to back off because they were being shot at (this was before the National Guard had arrived) Tyrone and several other young men of color took up arms, went to the fire house and rode shotgun on the trucks so the fireman could do their job. This was a story my uncle never mentioned of course. Years later I had the distinct pleasure of reintroducing Tyrone to my Uncle and watching the ackwardness that comes years of bitter bigotry justifying the telling of only part of the story.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Ann Byrne
Submission Date
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01/17/2017
Dublin Core
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Title
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Ann Byrne
Description
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Ann Bryne was a child in 1967 and remembers watching the adults around her react to what was happening that summer.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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02/17/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Childhood
Children
Detroit Fire Department
Eight Mile
Growing Up In Detroit
Livernois
Tanks
Viola Liuzzo
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/a2a28a81c0ff2448e14f707b627b090f.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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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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Ann Crimmins
Brief Biography
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Ann Crimmins taught at St. Charles School on Detroit's east side before and after the events of July 1967. During the summer of 1967 she was at Marygrove College.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Monroe, MI
Date
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02/07/2017
Interview Length
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00:08:01
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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05/23/2017
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello. Today is February 7, 2017. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I am in Monroe, Michigan. I'm sitting down with —</p>
<p>AC: Ann Crimmins, IHM.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AC: You're welcome.</p>
<p>WW: Would you like to share your story?</p>
<p>AC: Yes. It's been interesting, since the invitation that I'm finding things come back. In 1965, I went to St. Charles in Detroit to teach grades four, five, and six. St. Charles, still actually, the church is still located about three blocks east of Grand Boulevard, and between Lafayette and Kerchival.</p>
<p>We had probably, the student body was about 50 percent black, from right around the neighborhood, and a significant number of white families living in Indian Village, which is about six or seven blocks away. My sense - I enjoyed teaching. I enjoyed teaching there. I enjoyed the mix of students. I wasn't real aware of racial tension. Most of us wanted to be there and then we were very connected with the Church of the Messiah, which is over on Lafayette and the Boulevard. That's an Episcopal church, where we had like an ecumenical group that met around racial questions and concerns for the neighborhood.</p>
<p>We also had a small group of students from the Chaldean community, who owned a number of small stores on Kerchival. So, when it got to be the summer of 1967, I was at Marygrove for graduate studies, for teaching certification, and that was on the outside edge of what was going on, but we could go up to the fourth floor of the residence hall and look out and see the clouds of smoke coming up. And heard about it mostly through the news: radio, TV, some pictures. It was pretty startling to see the neighborhood where I'd spent the last two years really going up in flames. And being very aware of some of the people who owned those small stores, and how much they had sacrificed to make that business go.</p>
<p>I don't - there were all kinds of stories about how they didn't treat people well, and all that kind of thing, but it was - because we knew both sides, we knew both populations pretty well. It was really very disconcerting to watch all of this happening.</p>
<p>During the time - and I can't - I have no memory of when all this happened, or how - but once things began to settle down a little bit - of course the National Guard was around and driving up and down the streets. I don't think they were tanks, but they were big trucks and there was a curfew and of course there were a lot of curfew violators.</p>
<p>There was quite a group at Marygrove that summer - of people. We were all in our twenties at the time getting classes for our permanent teaching certificate. And so we were asked to go different places, and I can't remember exact - the thing that stays in my mind is Recorder's Court, which I don't think exists anymore, but we were to go down and meet people who were being brought in. Mostly the family members of people who had been arrested. So they were - they wanted some reassurance. Of course, we were dressed in our medieval garb at the time so we rather stood out in the crowd.</p>
<p>And I remember feeling that was a really good; it was a way where we could contribute positively. I remember talking to my mother on the phone. She lived in Port Huron and she did not like that I was anywhere near the place. I told her by mistake that I was going down to Recorder's Court. Well, she just about came down and got me. [laughter]</p>
<p>I said, Mom, I'm fine. I'm fine. I never had the feeling of being frightened. Of course, we went in groups and people were very glad we were there, so they were very careful that nothing too bad would happen. And I know different groups went different places. But at least my experience of it was the whole sense of being kind of a reassuring presence to people who were in really stressful situations.</p>
<p>I went back to St. Charles in August after summer school ended, and it was really - in fact, I was just there a couple weeks ago, for something else, and drove down Kercheval and around and back up Lafayette, and down Townsend, was where the school building is actually still there, it's all boarded up. Reminisced about where my classroom was, and all that good stuff, so it was kind of fun to reconnect.</p>
<p>But that third year, from '67 to '68, things were different, and part of it was back in the really old days each parish had a high school and a grade school. And at that time we had - the parish decided that they really couldn't keep all these high schools going. So we closed the high school, and the four high schools on the east side merged into East Catholic, which was open for a number of years. I can't remember – it’s closed some time in the last ten years. And so that was different, in that we had a lot more room in the building, and the big kids were gone. They were the ones that made all the noise. And so there was a feel, that way, that was different.</p>
<p>But the other - certainly a lot of the families from the Middle East, who had owned these stores, were gone. And the - so there was - and that wasn't a huge group, but there were several families that we knew, and certainly cared about. So they were gone. But the rest all came back, including a number of these families from Indian Village, and their attitude, as I can remember one of the mothers saying to me one day, "I really think we - I think we can get past this, and I want to be part of, and I want my kids to be part of, an integrated society."</p>
<p>So that next year - and then I left, at that point, was reassigned somewhere else in '68, so I didn't get beyond that first year. But it was a very challenging time, and a very - in a lot of ways, a good time. There was a lot of good energy in the Catholic community and the Episcopal Church around the corner. And there were other churches, too, in the area, that were - came together with the idea of supporting and developing the community, and working with racial challenges in the area. So, I think that may be enough. Anything I missed?</p>
<p>WW: No, I do believe you covered it.</p>
<p>AC: Okay.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AC: You're welcome!</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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8min 1sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Ann Crimmins
Location
The location of the interview
Monroe, 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
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Ann Crimmins, February 7th, 2017
Description
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In this interview, Crimmins discusses her impressions of the events of July 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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06/09/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit Michigan
Format
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Audio/mp3
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Catholic Community
Chaldean Community
Clergy
Recorder's Court - Detroit
Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/cdf857fbc9d2cee8bff515a8f6ddf8be.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
The topic of the resource
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
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.
Ann Currier
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Sister Ann Currier was at Trinity Church in Detroit during the events of July 1967.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Monroe, MI
Date
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01/31/2017
Interview Length
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00:03:28
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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03/01/01
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>WW: Hello. Today is January 31, 2017. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I am in Monroe, Michigan. I am sitting down with -</p>
<p>AC: Sister Ann Currier.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AC: Thank you.</p>
<p>WW: Would you like to tell your story?</p>
<p>AC: I'm not sure what you want. First of all, I worked in Detroit. And my main reason for coming is because of the people I worked with. Trinity was always noted for the poor, and when the riot broke out, Father Curran opened up the church and the school for anyone that needed help. And they stayed there until they were - police cars were all over the place, and we went back and forth. The curfew was six o'clock for us, but we didn't abide by it. [laughter] We did as we pleased.</p>
<p>And we took care of them. We fed them. We did whatever we could for them. And I kind of think - I think the pastor at St. Agnes, Father Granger, must have called Father Curran - I think - and so people were ushered down that way, because we were noted for opening up our doors for anybody at any time.</p>
<p>We saw the fire, we saw the smoke, we saw the whole shooting batch, but the important things were the people. They came into the church, they came into the school, and we took care of them.</p>
<p>WW: About how many people?</p>
<p><br /> AC: It's hard to say. Enough. They filled the place. But it was hard to say. We weren't thinking of numbers, we were just taking people as they came, and whatever their needs were, and helping them make telephone calls. If someone came for them, they went. Others came. That was it.</p>
<p>WW: What was the atmosphere like inside the church? Were the people in there afraid or anxious?</p>
<p>AC: Not at Trinity. Because it was called a port of entry. Trinity was a port of entry for people from all over the world. And people took care of Trinity, in the sense of the poor would not let anything happen to Trinity. I was there for 45 years, so I know.</p>
<p>WW: Did you expect any outbreak of violence in Detroit that summer, or did it surprise you?</p>
<p>AC: No. I didn't expect it, and I was probably surprised, because I think people should be peaceful.</p>
<p>WW: Did it change the way you look at Detroit?</p>
<p>AC: No. No. I stayed there. [laughter] After all that was over with, I stayed there. I was there until I came home - here. And that's only 10 years ago.</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you'd like to share? Any stories from that week?</p>
<p>AC: No. I think you've heard them all.</p>
<p>WW: All right. Thank you so much.</p>
<p>AC: You're welcome. </p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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3min 28sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Ann Currier
Location
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Monroe, MI
Dublin Core
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Title
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Ann Currier, January 31st, 2017
Description
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In this interview, Ms. Currier discusses her work at Trinity Church during July 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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03/22/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/Mp3
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Catholic Community
Curfew
Detroit Community Members
Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/be582aafcc320293318cc28364111700.JPG
296aa19127ca73e48e35bdece3e84e10
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
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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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Ann Kraemer
Brief Biography
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Ann Kraemer was born in Detroit, Michigan and during the summer of 1967 was a student in the School of Social Work at University of Michigan. Her time spent helping the people of Detroit influenced her decision to continue working with young adult groups and support groups and later working with Coleman Young in the Neighborhood Town Halls.
Interviewer's Name
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Bree Boettner
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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06/18/2016
Interview Length
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00:28:31
Transcriptionist
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Julia Westblade
Transcription Date
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07/14/2016
Transcription
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<p>BB: This is Bree Boettner with the Detroit Historical Society Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Today is June 18 and we are at the museum and I am sitting down with Ann Kraemer. Thank you, Ann, for sitting down with us today.</p>
<p>AK: I am glad to be here, Bree.</p>
<p>BB: Okay, we’re going to start. Can you please tell me where and when you were born.</p>
<p>AK: I could tell you that. I was born in Detroit, Michigan in July of a long time ago.</p>
<p>BB: You don’t have to put a year, that’s fine. [laughs] “Of a long time ago.” I love it. You were born here in Detroit so your parents lived here. What did your parents do? What were their occupations?</p>
<p>AK: My Dad worked for Internal Revenue Service.</p>
<p>BB: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>AK: And my mom was a homemaker and mother to we five children.</p>
<p>BB: Wow. Older siblings, younger?</p>
<p>AK: Younger. I am the eldest.</p>
<p>BB: You’re the eldest. Fantastic. Where did you live in July 1967?</p>
<p>AK: At 10210 Second Avenue. At the corer or Glen Court a block from Chicago Boulevard, I believe.</p>
<p>BB: What were you doing in 1967?</p>
<p>AK: In 1967, I was a student in the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan. During the summer, from approximately May until August I was assigned to a field work experience at Moore Elementary School on Oakland and Holbrook.</p>
<p>BB: And what did you do in that position?</p>
<p>AK: I worked as a school-community agent in their program.</p>
<p>BB: How old were your siblings? You have four younger siblings; how old were they at that time?</p>
<p>AK: Oh dear.</p>
<p>BB: IF you can’t think of specific ages, roundabout ages is fine.</p>
<p>AK: Like 24, 22 –</p>
<p>BB: Okay. So, older adults.</p>
<p>AK: 19, and 16.</p>
<p>BB: Sounds good, sounds good. What do you remember about Detroit in the 1960s? Before 1967, describe how the city looked and how it felt.</p>
<p>AK: Oh, I liked the city. Yeah. Even when I grew up, I have fond memories of taking the street car down to Hudson’s. Everything revolved around going down to Hudson’s. I loved it.</p>
<p>BB: The toy floor is infamous. I’ve heard stories.</p>
<p>AK: The Christmas one. Oh, it was just unbelievably beautiful. And then as a teenager slash young adult, Detroit was the happening place to be -</p>
<p>BB: [at the same time] I can imagine.</p>
<p>AK: -I truly enjoyed it.</p>
<p>BB: Along with visiting Hudson’s, what other fun activities did you and your siblings do in the city? What occupied your time?</p>
<p>AK: The library. We spent a lot of time at the Detroit Public Libraries. Going to the movies, that kind of thing.</p>
<p>BB: Did you –</p>
<p>AK: And dances. I went to a lot of dances.</p>
<p>BB: Did you feel any racial tensions in your early life and in your 20s?</p>
<p>AK: No, not really. I attended Wayne State before I went to U of M and that was a somewhat diverse campus, so.</p>
<p>BB: So it wasn’t something new for you.</p>
<p>AK: Right, right.</p>
<p>BB: I just wanted to clarify that. What was your community, the area – You grew up on Second Street.</p>
<p>AK: No, I did not grow up on Second. That’s where I was in 1967.</p>
<p>BB: So where did you grow up?</p>
<p>AK: In far Northeast Detroit near Seven Mile and Meringue.</p>
<p>BB: Can you describe your neighborhood and community for us?</p>
<p>AK: It was a kind of a blue-collar neighborhood. All single family homes. The area was predominately Catholic, heavily Italian and Polish.</p>
<p>BB: How would you describe the relationship between your community and the government? So your community and the city of Detroit or were there any tensions of any sort that you saw?</p>
<p>AK: As I grew up? Yeah, a couple of things. With one exception, there was never anyone from the Detroit City Council who lived on the East side. They were all Northwest siders, or lived on the Northwest. And that was always a sore spot. You know, why do we vote but not have any representation. That was one thing. The other thing was that it was not the most welcoming area for African Americans. It was not.</p>
<p>BB: So we’re going to come up to ‘67, how did you first hear about the riots? When they first broke out, how did you hear about them?</p>
<p>AK: I received a phone call because I was working at Moore Elementary School, the school system called the school community agent and she then called – there were two of us assigned to work at the school with her. So they called and they wanted to know what we had heard or had we heard and if so what had we heard. And because both the other student and I lived in the area where the –</p>
<p>BB: Where the riot broke out. And being somebody that was in that area when it broke, how would you classify the event? Some people like to call it a riot, some call in an uprising, others call it a rebellion. How did you perceive the event?</p>
<p>AK: More of a rebellion.</p>
<p>BB: More of a rebellion. Can you tell me some accounts of what happened or what you saw?</p>
<p>AK: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>BB: That’s okay. You can take your time.</p>
<p>AK: We were asked by the school system, I guess it was called School-Community Relations Department - Go into the community surrounding our schools and try to get an estimate of how many homes needed baby formula, any kind of supplies for little ones because the stores in the area had been burned down or looted. And then likewise on the other end of the spectrum, any disabled or elderly person that might need oxygen replacement, anything like that where they could not leave their home to go to another part of town and get it. So with the single exception of July 24, we were, I think at least ten straight days, we were on the streets talking with people, finding what the needs were. And through my wonderful boss and the fabulous principle, trying to make plans to meet the needs, it was good. The school had a very good relationship with the community so we were asked if some of the kids from the community, teens, could be of assistance to us. So they did, they’d come up, “Miss Kraemer, [laughs] we’re taking care of you.” Kind of thing. The kids were absolutely marvelous in reaching out to us. The other thing, oh nuts, I forgot what you had asked. Alright, this is what we did for ten or twelve days because the community was so tight. On a Saturday, I went back to Ann Arbor to spend the night because it really was very hot here. There was lights out every night. The helicopters – I was on the top floor of the apartment building where I rented – the helicopters were right on top of us so when we finally weren’t going to go to work, I went to Ann Arbor. Low and behold, about eight in the morning, didn’t I get a phone call from the Public School Office, the central office of School-Community Relations saying where is your boss? The actual employee. And I said, oh, she went fishing with her husband in Canada. Where is your colleague? The other student from U of M. I forget where she had said she was going. They said, Well, the federal government has declared you a disaster area and Chrysler is coming in with its trucks in an hour or two to bring all sorts of food and supplies. We need you to go over to the school and open it up and round up some kids to help Chrysler unload all of these supplies. So I believe one of the maintenance crew came in as well as me. I worked again with these wonderful teenagers from the area and we unloaded the trucks. I got the school open and we unloaded the trucks.</p>
<p>BB: Wow.</p>
<p>AK: It was something.</p>
<p>BB: Did you see any – there are so may various accounts of 67 but did you see any of the actual uprising? The rioting, the looting. Any memories of actually seeing that or were you more on the front lines of aid?</p>
<p>AK: More on the front lines, however, what I did see. I went out early in that week, the week of the 23. I went out on Oakland surrounded by the teens to see what was going on and what the needs were. The National Guard was driving their tanks down the street and I saw this young guardsman shaking his rifle like this as he went by and then it went off.</p>
<p>BB: Like, by accident?</p>
<p>AK: Yeah. By me. By accident but by me.</p>
<p>BB: Did he hit anybody that you know of?</p>
<p>AK: He hit the building but there was –</p>
<p>BB: Surreal.</p>
<p>AK: Yes, it was quite surreal. And I also remember on the 23, backing up a day. The day that it started. I was taking one of my godchildren to the zoo that day. It was his birthday and I said we’ll go to the zoo and when I came home is when I received the phone call about what’s going on. Well, I then went to church. It was the Sacrament Cathedral and the pastor was a chaplain. An army or a guard chaplain, and he said from the pulpit, This is a very – I’m trying to think of how he put it – a unique experience because I’m here and all around us on Woodward, everything was devastated. And he said, And I will be leaving to go and work as a chaplain to the guard that has been brought in to assist with this. It was those kinds of experiences I had rather than actually watching somebody. I saw some of the loot, don’t get my wrong. Kids would come in and they all of a sudden had shoes and several of our kids were missing and I went down to police headquarters to find out. Gee, the family is not able to locate their son James, can you help? And being Caucasian, and I was carrying a briefcase, they thought I was a lawyer so the police were very kind to me in terms of. They did help me to locate the boys and girls that we could not find. So it was more that kind of thing.</p>
<p>BB: So, just a few more details. Because you did have five younger siblings, were your siblings living in the area at the time?</p>
<p>AK: They were all living in Northeast Detroit. I take that back. One of them was married. One, maybe two were married, but one was living in Roseville.</p>
<p>BB: Do you know of any accounts they may have had in relation to the riots? Did they call you to be like, Oh my goodness, what’s going on? Or anything like that?</p>
<p>AK: Right, my dad was quite upset. He knew exactly where I was living and Second to Twelfth is -</p>
<p>BB: Yeah, very close. Dad was worried, huh.</p>
<p>AK: Right.</p>
<p>BB: That’s good to know. There was, after the event, how did you see the city of Detroit change?</p>
<p>AK: Immediately after the event, there was such a coming together of the community. It just strengthened us. Strengthened it even more so immediately after. Also, shortly thereafter was the development of New Detroit and then some more community based organizations designed for Caucasians to work with Caucasians to understand that we also had a big part in creating the tensions that lead to the rebellion.</p>
<p>BB: How did your position at the school pan out after the event?</p>
<p>AK: That was -</p>
<p>BB: Cause I could imagine that would be an interesting transition.</p>
<p>AK: It really was. A week or two after the event, we were called back to Ann Arbor. There were lots of students placed but most of them were dealing with what most social workers to is therapy. None of them worked and my colleague and I and, like, two others were sitting there and we had worked through it every single day. They gave us As and we said, for what? We did was social workers are supposed to do. We did respond because we really were in the middle of the situation both in our living situation and in our fieldwork.</p>
<p>BB: Some serious experience you got on that resume quite early. [All laugh]</p>
<p>AK: It really changed the whole – people were like, “You were there?” Yeah, we were.</p>
<p>BB: So I have to ask, how did that affect your work after? Because you were a student and you were learning about social work at that time and you were faced with an event that dramatic in the city of Detroit, did it affect how you went forth in your career and how you worked with the community?</p>
<p>AK: I think so. I think I got such a good grounding in what to do through the person I reported to and the principal. I had such a good ground in the community work so that I wound up being hire to do that kind of work in subsequent years.</p>
<p>BB: What was your position afterwards once you graduated?</p>
<p>AK: I worked organizing teen groups. I’m sorry, young adult groups after that and then I worked with a program to organize church people to support poor people through the – friends offer rides. We organize groups of men and women, primarily women, to support poor people involved with the welfare system. So I did that for a number of years.</p>
<p>BB: Fantastic. You’ve got some notes. Anything imperative we need to discuss?</p>
<p>AK: Well eventually I worked with the Neighborhood City Hall. I worked for Coleman Young. I was the manager of the Neighborhood City Hall. </p>
<p>BB: And how what was --</p>
<p>AK: The mini mayor.</p>
<p>BB: Yeah, and what did that entail? What did that work entail?</p>
<p>AK: That entailed working again with the community responding to all of their concerns. Representing the mayor if there was something coming up that he was not able to attend.</p>
<p>BB: Just a few more questions to wrap up. What was the impact of the unrest in July 1967 on you and your family?</p>
<p>AK: I would say, it was challenging for some people in my family.</p>
<p>BB: Do you want to elaborate on that?</p>
<p>AK: I went to my parents’ home one night. Neighbors – in those days you didn’t move 93 times. You bought a house. You stayed there. This was your neighborhood. Everybody’s kids were your kids. What you probably heard as a younger woman is that when you went out, if you did anything wrong, there were three neighbors to tell your mother. It was all the time. I went home, I saw these same people with guns. “Let them come into our neighborhood. I’ll get ‘em.” Kind of thing. That was awful. That was devastating and it was made kind of more devastating and difficult for some members of my family because they knew I didn’t feel that way so I was kind of the oddball. It was a challenging time for everybody for different reasons but you grow through it. And everyone changes appropriately, positively. </p>
<p>BB: Fingers crossed.</p>
<p>AK: No, I mean, they did.</p>
<p>BB: Oh, they did, okay.</p>
<p>AK: Oh yeah, oh yeah.</p>
<p>BB: Good. It was a good change.</p>
<p>AK But it takes time for all of that to happen.</p>
<p>BB: So we talked a little bit about how the city changed but one of the facets of this project is trying to educate the next generation about this topic, right. So, is there a message you’d like to leave for future generations about Detroit before, after, and during 1967 and how they can grow from that information?</p>
<p>AK: One thing is I felt that the field placement that I had was, I was so fortunate to have that because the principal at the school where I had worked had made a decision to have a school that had a bell shaped curve of students. It did not, it was kind of a flat curve and so he set in motion a number of changes in the school that would help the kids learn and become stronger, better educated members of society. And it was working in the school community program by involving the parents of the children and the community around really backed that up. We had so many programs working with that community. And if I could say anything to the next generation, it would be that. It’s most difficult to enter any place without a preconceived notion of what you will experience and what the people there will be like. Once you get through that, if you can get through that, and see that goodness and strength of people, you will be able to help to develop a strong community. Strong communities lead to strong cities and I think that would be the message that I would like to leave. I am not saying that I did not know people who acted inappropriately, people who destroy other people’s property and businesses but I am saying that the goodness and strength of the community far outweighed that. They just couldn’t see it. All you could see was the destruction. The fires and everything. It was awful. A few days ago I went to lunch with a woman who I only knew from one situation from church, period. And something came up about, I don’t know how it came up, “Where did you used to live? Where did you used to go to church? And I said, “Oh well.” And when I said, “In ‘67 I went to the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament,” and she said, “Well I did, too, Where did you live?” I said, “Second.” Well she lived just a few blocks away in Highland Park and she said, “Oh yeah, the blackout, the helicopters, the tanks.” She said, “I could never forget it.” That’s not the kind of message I want to send forward but it is something I will go to my grave remembering.</p>
<p>BB: That’s kind of all the things that I wanted to discuss.</p>
<p>AK: Not.</p>
<p>BB: Not anything you can think of:</p>
<p>AK: Not that I - well, I’ll say one thing and you can decide whether to leave it in or not, but the day I was called in Ann Arbor to come back to Detroit and open up the school I stopped at this one young man’s home because I knew that if I could get him on board, the others – he was like the leader of the group and he’s a big guy. Real big. Well this was early on a Sunday morning when I went knocking on his door and I knocked and knocked and banging and the police came up and they “What are you doing?” They thought I was a prostitute. So I will remember that time, too.</p>
<p>BB: Did you have to turn and be like, I’m just trying to get a muscular guy to do some lifting?</p>
<p>AK: They’d heard everything at that time.</p>
<p>BB: I’m sure they had. Well that’s a fun little snippet. Well, I did give you my contact information so please don’t hesitate if you have any further stories you’d like to add to your oral history, please just email them to us. We’ll definitely add them to your profile and I will end this for us. So thank you so much for sitting down with me.</p>
<p>AK: Thank you. </p>
Original Format
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audio
Duration
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28min 31sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Bree Boettner
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Ann Kraemer
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rA1royug0zc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
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Title
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Ann Kraemer, June 18th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Ann Kraemer discusses her role as a field work student at the School of Social Work for the University of Michigan. Kraemer and her coworkers went through the neighborhoods making sure families, children, and the elderly had the supplies they needed and then organized the distribution of supplies.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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07/19/2016
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
Ann Arbor
Community Activists
Gun Violence
Michigan National Guard
Moore Elementary School
Volunteers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/80070e08943577e81a71a9c495768f99.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
The topic of the resource
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
Written Story
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Text
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I was in my sophomore year at Southfield High School. My immediate family never lived in the City of Detroit, but both sets of grandparents and many other relatives did. Mom and Dad took us to the city to visit the grandparents, go to the DIA and the Detroit Public Library main branch. I remember staying at the Book Cadillac and going to see The Music Man in about 1964.
In high school I studied violin with a woman who played in the DSO. She was on the faculty at Wayne State and she suggested that I could continue lessons with her if I attended WSU. I wanted to go to school out of state but I realized that it would save my parents a lot of money if I followed my teacher's advice. After 1967 though, there was no more talk about Wayne State. I got my wish of attending college away from home.
I had a boyfriend in 1967 who fancied himself a journalist and somehow got a press pass and a first-hand view of what was happening only a few miles away. I cringe now thinking of this, because my boyfriend seemed to view the riots as something contrived for the entertainment of bored white suburban kids. But I had no more of a clue than he did.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Ann Liska
Submission Date
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07/16/2017
Dublin Core
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Title
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Ann Liska
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07/21/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Southfield--Michigan
Teenagers
Wayne State University
-
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.
Anthony Benevidas
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Anthony Benevides was born in 1956 in Detroit and grew up in Hubbard Farms. He moved away for a few years but ultimately came back to his hometown where he currently lives.
Interviewer's Name
The first and last name of the interviewer.
Amy Anderson
Interview Place
The place where the interview was conducted.
Detroit, Michigan
Date
The date of the interview in MM/DD/YYYY format.
10/19/2018
Transcriptionist
The first and last name of the transcriptionist.
Amy Anderson
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
[Start of track 1]
Amy Anderson: I am sitting here with Anthony Benevides. Um, would you like to say a little bit about yourself, where you work, um where you live specifically?
Anthony Benevides: hI my name is Anthony Benevides! I live at [redacted] in the city of Detroit. I have three children, um which are two twin boys which are 22 years old and a daughter who is 24 years old. Brianna, Zach, and Brett are the names of my- and I'm also married uh to a woman named Amy Amador we've been married for about...
AA: That might get you in trouble.
AB: Give me...eh about 10 years. Uh, that might get me in trouble.
AA: um so
AB: we can leave some of that alone.
AA: um so, you live in Hubbard Farms
AB: ok
AA: that is your neighborhood, right?
AB: mhmm
AA: How long have you lived there?
AB: yes. I live in Hubbard Farms, um I've lived three times in Hubbard Farms now. Moved out, I lived in Hubbard Farms as a child, I grew up in Hubbard Farms actually. I lived on west grand boulevard [redacted] west grand boulevard. It was our family home. Moved out of Hubbard Farms in- when I was about 6 or 7 and moved across the city to the Pann? Park area and then I moved back to Hubbard Farms when I went to Wayne State University. I needed to get a little closer to Wayne State and I um lived in Hubbard Farms from 1981 to about 1991 about 10 years. I moved to Dearborn for a while because of the- I would've stayed in Hubbard Farms but this was during, you gotta understand, during the 80s was a real bad time in Detroit and in Hubbard Farms it was the crack epidemic in this area and Clark Park was affected uh call making you know calling it Crack Park. because you'd buy your crack, go do it, rob a couple people, break into a couple cars, anyways, I had, I had enough. My house was broken into, cars were broken into and I felt I needed to move out and uh, I did. Moved to Dearborn for about 10 years stayed there, maybe a little less than 10 years, and I moved back to Hubbard Farms in 1999 and I've been here since, so I'm going on my 20th year soon enough. So I'm glad to be living back in Hubbard Farms again. Past 20 years has been great um neighborhoods changed somewhat uh for the better and I see a lot of people out there fixing up and repairing houses which is a great sign and I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be in my neighborhood.
AA: so um when you were growing up would you say it was a diverse neighborhood or was it pretty like white? Was it like integrated or how would you explain the ethnic makeup?
AB: well, ok, well my earlier years I wouldn’t know, i- from what I hear during when I first uh you know when I was a kid it was very a neighborhood in transition. The uh the neighborhood was very, at one point, it was probably very Lithuanian and then the Latino people, coming from Corktown, moving from Corktown to Hubbard Farms and um so the neighborhood started getting- started, more Latinos started moving in and um, it was very diverse. So I saw a lot of Latino people here. Still some Lithuanians, but the Lithuanians were moving out slowly but as the years went by, more and more, more of my neighbors uh even when I moved back in ‘82, ‘81 um there was a lot of...lot of Latinos. It was mainly Latino back in ‘82, ‘81 and then um once I moved out in 1991 I believe it was ‘91 it was still predominantly Latino. When I moved back in, in 1997 it was still predominantly latino but I had, you know, but now it was sorta integration of um of Caucasians coming in I can tell back in 1997, or 1999 I should say, um there was more caucasian moving in the neighborhood. Yep.
AA: um
AB: I wanted to say something to that.
AA: oh. Go ahead.
AB: um with the latinos- uh with the Caucasians moving in the neighborhood in 1999 there was a lot more Latinos out. Selling there houses very cheap and going to the “promised land”. And the “promised land” was Linkin Park. They could only make it in Linkin Park. They could only make it to Allen Park. they can make it to Dearborn, but Dearborn had a little racial thing going on with mayor Hubbard so Linkin Park was the latino promised land. If you can get your goods and, you know, get out to um Linkin Park you were doing well. Well we know what happened to Linkin Park um its no big thing but I always told people”stay with your house” “keep your house, don't move out” Linkin Park is just a real basic city
AA: alright um so when you lived in Hubbard Farms when you were a kid what do you remember that you did for fun?
AB: well I remember um going to Clark Park. that was our recreation, that was our fun. Uh Clark Park was just a short walk, two blocks to Clark Park were- we could rent bikes, there was all kinds of activities happening at Clark Park they had those, they had the spray- the spray pool where in the summer it would operate and all the kids and all the parents would sit around the spray pool getting wet on an August hot day, and it was it was just nice to picnic. I remember picnicking out there with my grandparents and parents uh walking, um playing baseball, playing tennis, ice skating as a as we got older we went ice skating on the original rink which has now been replaced with a new upgraded rink but we uh Clark Park was the place, so was belle isle, riverside park, that was another park that was just walking distance from the house wed go fishing there and um play on the swings. So we really used the parks back in the day. Parks were a big part of our life.
AA: um so where did you go to school? And tell us a little about that.
AB: Well I started out at Cass Tech um back in the day the goal was to go to Cass. Nobody wanted to go to Southwestern. Everybody wanted to go to Cass. So I started out, I got accepted to Cass and I stayed there 2 ½ years and um in my twelveth grade I got a job at a restaurant, London Chophouse, and that kind of threw my grades off. Uh ‘cause it was a it was an evening job and I thought I could handle it and um it just didn't work out. I didn’t have-I didn't study enough so I ended up uh I ended up uh going to western for my senior for half my senior year because you had to have a B average at that time and maintain your grades, and my grades had slipped and ended up going to western to finish graduation. And I ended up graduating from western which was not a bad thing either, I like western and it had some great teachers and met some great friends there but unfortunately I was only there for six months and um so I look back at it, looking back at it maybe I should've went to western right from the get-go. I did graduate from western high school in 1975.
AA: um what did your parents do? Where did they work?
AB: my dad um was a laborer. He uh he came from the south. He came from Texas, and he was in search of a factory job. That was- you come to Detroit to find a factory job. Tie in with the big three: Ford, Chrysler, or General Motors. He ended up at Chrysler for awhile and uh he didn't like it and he ended up getting a, going to a a school to learn how to weld and he was able to become a a certified welder for dana corporation and he worked there for his 30 years and uh retired and he- and he provided all of us enough for my four brothers and my sister to go to school and graduate from different colleges.
AA: um any stories from your childhood that you'd like to share?
AB: yea once again we really used to parks a lot, you know, my family was a big uh they would love to go out to different parks in the city. We would go to Rouge Park um go tobogganing, skating, uh play hockey, we used all the parks. The parks were a big part of our life. Uh my dad ended up buying a Winnebago motorhome when we were about 13 and we drove all over the country with that thing it was a beautiful way to travel actually we drove all the way to Belize uh in that motorhome one summer and he worked for the big three, he worked for a company that would- you could take off like a change over where they'd give you like a weeks change over plus it was vacation so we took about a month off and traveled all the way to Belize uh way down in uh South America. And uh that was a very memorable vacation.
AA: so um, growing up it sounded like you ventured out of the city a bit like you went to all the different parks around the city, did u feel safe? Was there any point in time where you didn’t feel safe or was it mostly just like a family area?
AB: No, back then I grew up the parks were really safe I mean people just had a different vibe. You- you go into a different neighborhood and um Detroit at that time was uh you had you ST. Hedwig ice rink or park and it was a lot of polish people there you'd go down to northwestern ice rink or park and there was more of an African American uh area and you felt safe. I never felt fearful and I would go across the city to the eastside to Heidleman um or O’Shae and these were all ice skating rinks. I played a lot of hockey when I was a kid and um we would- we were part of the Detroit
Recreational League that was a hockey league that traveled all around the city playing at different ice rinks um and we would go to all these ice rinks and play with uh- play against the kids that were there and um just spend the afternoon there at different parts of the city. We never had fear, I never had fear of anyone. Um you know if you had a disagreement you know it would be settled very quick with the coaches and um but since then you know all those ice rinks and those recreation centers are all closed which is unfortunate I think back on it now you know, Northwestern’s gone, O’ Shae’s gone, Heidlemans gone, uh St. Hedwig is gone.
So its, so those opportunities are lost which I feel is really a shame ‘cause a lot of our young kids will never experience that unless something happens or there's an investment into recreation into the city.
AA: and that’s happening at Clark Park, right?
AB: yea, yea. So it’s uh, we leave Clark Park open. And that's why we keep the dream alive because we still have fond memories like myself, but others that help there, uh, others that work there, uh Ziggy Gonzales and all the others that grew up in the neighborhood they always had these fond memories of the park system in Detroit and we wanted to keep it alive with our Clark Park Coalition efforts and hopefully those efforts will transfer over to other parts of the city and there's other people that will take the, take the, take the torch and carry on in their neighborhood.
AA: um so would you ever think about moving out of Hubbard Farms at this point? Or do you just want to stay here?
AB: you know I'm very comfortable in Hubbard Farms. People asked me that yesterday they go “Well, maybe, you thinking about moving out?” and I’m like “no I want to stay here longer” um if Hubbard Farms gets too gentrified maybe ill move out. But I don't think it’s going to happen. I hope that it remains what it is and everyone can own a piece of property whether black, white, latino, whatever nationality you are, I think Hubbard Farms is a real mixing ground or people, there's a lot of opportunities here
AA; So do you think that’s how it’s changed over the years?
AB: uhh it has changed. I've seen more people from out of state buying property here now. New York, I see a lot of New York license plates um and that's a little bit disheartening you know, id rather, I prefer if it was Detroit people buying these houses but New Yorkers they see an opportunity, they see they see money and they see the neighborhood and they’re like “well hey, I could, with the rent I pay in New York, I could buy a building.
AA: yea
AB: you know, one year’s rent would pay for this [unintelligable] so I prefer if the neighborhood or if the Detroit people were buying these buildings, not the New Yorkers.
AA: so how do you feel about the state of your neighborhood right now?
AB: uh the state of the neighborhood is good but I feel like there always needs improvement. Uh there's always a lot of improvement, uh you know, you're never happy with what you got and um our neighborhood needs um you know just more, however you want to put it, police presence or more walkable, more people looking out for each other. There's always, you know, its not a perfect setting, Hubbard Farms, there's always a little crime that takes place so we need more of the abandoned or unoccupied- there's not really that many abandoned but there's probably more unoccupied building on Hubbard Farms that need people in them. The more eyes you have in a given block the more uh, the less crime your going to have. We also need better alleys. That's another thing there's
AA: that's what Kate said too. I said “if there's one thing you could change,” she said “better alleys”
AB: yes, better alleys. Our alleys are horrendous. There's, there's standing water and uh there's poor lighting uhh the alley has standing water because there's giant holes in the alley, the water has no place to go, but collect. So it would be nice to have some alley infrastructure put in place.
AA: um so how do you feel about the state of the city, of Detroit, today?
AB: I think it's going in the right direction. We have a good mayor and I think that uh the state of the city its going to become healthier. More tax base, more people that are, more people that are moving into the city brings taxes. That what the city really, really needed was people working here, paying their share of taxes to the city because for a long time people were just moving out in droves and the taxes would go wherever they went whether its outside to suburbia, but now I think we’re- the shape I just heard today, or last night, that the police uh received a 2% raise. Which is great. Which I think they should probably get a 10% raise to replace what they lost during bankruptcy was 10% and they lost their healthcare, they lost a lot, they lost their vacation days. So I think in order to keep the city safe we have to really invest in the police. Give them what we took back, what we took during bankruptcy because otherwise they're, just they're like anyone else they're gonna go onto the next suburb and work after we trained them after we paid for them to go to training for 9 months at the academy and then they just they take themselves and there's recruiters and they take them somewhere else where their making $50,000 more for the same job and less headache, less paperwork. So uh I think we need to really um provide more for policemen and we need to fix up our parks. Clark Park, for example, may look it on the outside but there's a lot of need, there's a tremendous amount of need in Clark Park that we need help with. And any other park I'm sure- I drive around the city there's Palmer Park, parks have been a disinvestment. There's just been a disinvestment in parks for so long that we’re not even close to meeting the park needs yet. So there needs to be a really, a grand effort to really stabilize our parks and neighborhoods.
AA: anything else you would like to add about Clark Park or Hubbard Farms or Detroit in general?
AB: well I think Hubbard Farms and Detroit are going the right direction. I think Hubbard Farms is thriving. I know there's a big push on Vernor to fix up Vernor street here that's gonna take some bright minds and I think they have the bright minds now but they really need um community input to see what the people want and always uh be inclusive of whatever we do here. Be transparent and um try to make it a walkable neighborhood.
AA: perfect. Thank you so much!
[20:05]
[End of Track 1]
Search Terms
Topics mentioned in the story which may be of larger social interest. Put general search terms in plural form (e.g. horses not horse). All items should have: "1967 riots, riots, interviews, oral history (or written history)". Some possible additional terms might be: "Detroit Police Department, police officers, Detroit Fire Department, firefighters, mayors, Clairmount Street, 12th Street, looting".
Detroit, 1967 riots, interviews, oral history, Hubbard Farms, Clark Park
Interviewer
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Amy Anderson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Anthony Benevidas
Location
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Detroit, Michigan
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WqZf1f3OtJU?si=jnkakZQCVUmFZuzg" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" 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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Anthony Benevidas
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Benevides recounts his childhood experiences in
Hubbard Farms, and talks about what has changed, and what needs to
change.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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10/19/2018
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society
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en-US
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/a8928d4d38b0042a9ef7605a4fd260f5.png
db9c584602637b92c45565d09dfc1e60
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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Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iTTGZjZmPYg" frameborder="0"></iframe>
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Anthony Fierimonte
Interviewer's Name
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Ric Mixter
Date
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10/10/2014
Interview Length
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00:51:35
Brief Biography
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Anthony Fierimonte joined the Detroit Police Department at age 17. In 1967 he was working vice, and was involved in the raid on the blind pig on July 23. Fierimonte took advantage of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration programs to attend college, eventually earning a doctorate. As a professor, Fierimonte taught racial and ethnic diversity-related courses, sociology, and criminal justice. Fierimonte now resides in Florida.
Search Terms
Topics mentioned in the story which may be of larger social interest. Put general search terms in plural form (e.g. horses not horse). All items should have: "1967 riots, riots, interviews, oral history (or written history)". Some possible additional terms might be: "Detroit Police Department, police officers, Detroit Fire Department, firefighters, mayors, Clairmount Street, 12th Street, looting".
Detroit Police Department, undercover, 12th Street, blind pig, STRESS,
Interview Place
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Detroit Historical Museum, Detroit, MI
Transcriptionist
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Bree Boettner and William Winkel
Transcription Date
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02/15/16
Transcription
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<p>Ric Mixter: Tony, can you tell me first your first and last name? So I have it on tape. <br /><br />Anthony Fierimonte: I’m Anthony Fierimonte. <br /><br />RM: How do you spell that? <br /><br />AF: I was born Antonio Luigi Giuseppe Fierimonte. My mother thought I was going to be the Pope. She was mistaken [laughter]. Anthony Fierimonte. F-I-E-R-I-M-O-N-T-E. <br /><br />RM: Tell me about your folks. Your dad did what? <br /><br />AF: My dad, Pasquale Fierimonte, worked for the city of Detroit. The Department of Street Railways, which was the bus line. Streetcars and the bus line.<br /><br />RM: What was his job specifically? What would he do? <br /><br />AF: He was a mechanic and unfortunately one of his jobs was grinding brake drums that were made of asbestos and that’s what killed him. He died of —but I gotta tell you a story about my dad. When he retired – it was in the sixties – he retired and got a job somewhere else and then he retired again, but he wanted a new house. And he informed me that because the city of Detroit hired him and gave him a job for all those years, what he’s gonna do is build a new house in Detroit. So in the sixties he built a new house in Detroit. And he told me, “Son, you’re a policeman now and you've got to do exactly the same thing. You've got to live in Detroit.” So, I bought a house about eight blocks from him in Detroit. And he was so dedicated to the city, it was amazing.</p>
<p>RM: I’ll bet.</p>
<p>AF: Really, really nice. <br /><br />RM: What age was it where you thought, “I want to put a badge on.” When did you become – <br /><br />AF: Well, I went to Pershing High School and I got so many tickets from speeding and stuff. I really said, “Boy, I’m in trouble.” And there was a police cadet program that you could start at age 17 and then you worked in different police stations, in downtown and headquarters. And you answered switch boards and bank alarms and all kinds of stuff that came into the switchboard. And I said, “Well maybe if I became a police cadet I’ll quit getting all these tickets" [laughter]. But my buddy’s father worked in a cruiser called “the Big Four” and there were three plainclothes officers and one uniformed driver and he told us stories about the Big Four. And they had DeSotos or Buicks, while all police officers had Fords. So I thought, “Boy, this is great!” So that’s really what— It was Mr. Jepson. I remember his name and I applied for the police cadet program and I made it, and I started 17 in the police department. <br /><br />RM: Woah. <br /><br />AF: Right out of high school. <br /><br />RM: Now, you took it very seriously, because I saw you were first in your class when you – <br /><br />AF: Yeah, I was scholastically and that was a lot of fun. <br /><br />RM: Why was it so important for you to achieve like that? <br /><br />AF: I just – I wanted to be the best at whatever I did. And I said, “If I’m gonna be a policeman—” Oh! I gotta tell you another story. So there was an Italian inspector, Pete DeLuca, and he used to live with my dad in a rooming house. And he said to me, “What precinct would you like to go to? I can send you anywhere you want.” And I said, “It doesn’t make any difference.” And he sent me to the tenth precinct and I worked the area where unfortunately the riot started. But I said that and so, therefore, that’s where I ended up. <br /><br />RM: Describe the city at that time, what was happening? <br /><br />AF: Oh my god. Great! It was the biggest single family residential city in the United States of America. And there were probably between 1,400,000 and 1,600,000 people at that time, so vibrant. And the black community came in Detroit [during] World War II because there were jobs here in the factories and stuff. And that’s how Detroit became a terrific city to live in and I just love Detroit, it was great. J.L. Hudson’s downtown, the toy department on the twelfth floor [laughter] and we’d take the street car down there. And it was just a great place to live. <br /><br />RM: What was the department like was it becoming more integrated at that point?</p>
<p>AF: That’s really interesting because I actually became a police officer in 1962 and they just started integrating [squad] cars. So having gone to Pershing, where [it was] half black and half white, I didn’t understand this integration as being a problem. Yet, a lot of white police officers really fought it. They didn’t want to be part of the integration. Some police officers quit and I just didn’t see any problem with it. So, we got integrated and it was a slow process, but it worked. It worked because later in the ’67 era, the Federal government started having civil rights classes for police officers. Plus, the Law Enforcement Assistance Act (LEAP) started paying for college if any police officer wanted to go to school. And then when you went to school, they taught police service in the community and race relations and slowly it broke the ice. And I was so excited; I signed up for the first class and went for 16 years until I got my doctorate [laughter]. And I really appreciate the federal government. What they did and it was just wonderful. And it really helped break the ice for the police department. <br /><br />RM: And still in the city there were dark sides, where you needed a VICE team. And you kind of gravitated towards that didn’t you? <br /><br />AF: Yeah what happened, I had about 40 or 50 days on the police force and a sergeant, Gus Cardineli, pulled over one day – I was walking the beat on Twelfth Street, no PREP radio, by myself, no problem. And he said, “Hey kid, you want to go undercover?” I couldn’t believe it! I had 50, 40 days on the job. I said, “Absolutely!” So he took me under his wing and he says, “Show up. You’re going to be arresting prostitutes, going at the illegal gambling casino, blind pigs where the illegal liquor is sold, and you’re going to do that kind of stuff. And oh my god, I went home just jumping up and down with joy. It was just great. We worked every other month nine at night till five in the morning and then on days, we looked for numbers men. Do you know what numbers men–? Numbers men is just like when you go in and play three numbers. It was illegal then and the people would go around and say, “You want to bet today?” and they would give them a quarter or fifty cents and they would bet three numbers and then at a certain time, based on horse races, they would calculate different horse races and come up with a number. Now, the number was the mafia number. The Italian community ruled that. They ruled that for probably about 15 years, but half way through that there was the black Pontiac number. There was a black number and a white number and the numbers were different. It was supposed to be the same scenario [laughter]. I think when too many bets came in on a certain number, they changed it. I don’t know. But anyway, that was on the day shift and on the night shift we did the other thing and it was really exciting. <br /><br />RM: Was there a bigger crackdown when Cavanagh came into office? <br /><br />AF: No. I've got to correct something. Every precinct had a “clean-up crew” that did this type of thing: liquor enforcement, beer and wine stores selling to minors, bling pigs. Every precinct had one, white community and black community. It wasn’t singled out for just the black community at all. And I've got to admit to you, working in the black community was twice as much fun as working in the white community and I’ll tell you why. Because as we made these raids and stuff, they would go along with it and say, “Hey, you busted us. This is it.” And I did eventually go into the white community and do the same thing, and they always had a friend who was a judge and a police commander or lieutenant and “you can’t take me in. It’s going to be the end of my life,” and I said, “What B.S.” You know? It was much more fun in the tenth precinct. And that’s the true story. <br /><br />RM: Can you explain the Blind Pig, what’s the origin of the name? <br /><br />AF: Yeah, it started during prohibition because you couldn’t get booze anywhere, so people – oh I don’t know where the world started “blind pig” but that was the nickname they gave it in the prohibition days. And this is what’s happening with Detroit which was really kind of exciting. The Baptist ministers, especially the black Baptist ministers they were all tight with any administration it was, Cavanagh, Cobo. Who was the Italian mayor? Miriani. And what they would do, they would say, “Hey you've got to stop these people from doing, going drinking all night, you know, we’re the church.” And so they made sure all the bars closed at 2:30, liquor quit being served at 2 o’clock, so you got this element saying, “This is it, come to church tomorrow” then you got this other element saying, “I’m not ready to quit drinking I want to have some fun.” I always wondered what would have happened if the city would have allowed bars to be open until 4 or 5. Las Vegas of course does, some other cities, Florida allows – you buy a longer license so you can stay open till 4. But they didn’t, the Baptists were strong, so you had this dichotomy. And so we were told to enforce the law, and that was the law. You couldn’t do anything in that venue after 2:30 in the morning and you had to be licensed. And now a blind pig you could, mostly to sell liquor, then a step up there was prostitutes and you could go in a room and do whatever you wanted the prostitute to do. Then there would be dice tables and you would gamble and you could do all that stuff in a blind pig. Any time somebody took a cut of the money it became illegal and that gave us the right to break in to rescue the undercover officer that was inside the place. So we would give him, after we saw him walk in the door, we’d give him five minutes to make a wager or buy a drink and see the guy accept money, see him take his cut, gambling table take his cut, and then we would raid the place. And it was, from ’62 when I started, to the riots, the night of the riots July 23, 1967, a crowd would gather when we made a raid it was something to look at, you know. But we never had a problem. But the country was getting tense and things were happening all over, and a lot of the black community was unhappy [with] what was happening. Because they felt they were segregated and they couldn’t get employment that they wanted, and they were stuck in, apartments that had been cut up and one apartment became two. And just a few people had air conditioning in the hot summer nights and they would go out on Twelfth street and Linwood and Dexter and they would go out to see what’s happening and it got out of hand. <br /><br />RM: You sent in two officers in to the one that happened in ’67? <br /><br />AF: Yes, yes, we had a Sergeant Howison who told me he would kill me if he ever saw me again [laughter] he was a relief sergeant, he was a patrol sergeant but he was filling in for the night. I was the crew leader and we had two black officers, Charles Henry and – my mind just went blank.</p>
<p>RM: That’s okay.</p>
<p>AF: So, Charles Henry and [flipping through notes] I’m not going to tell you ever [laughter]. Joseph Brown. Charles Henry and Joseph Brown. And Charles Henry ended up becoming a commander, and he was a really, really nice guy – and I don’t know the career of the other officer. Sergeant Art Howison stayed in the patrol. But I've got to tell you a side issue, so now Congress calls the police commissioner in Detroit, I’m guessing Ray Girardin—no it wasn’t Ray Girardin. Anyway the police commissioner, the number one guy, he was an appointee, and Sergeant Art Howison went with him to Washington, DC to testify in Congress and Sergeant Art Howison was really clever on the way back I believe on the train, he asked the commissioner if he could have permission to live out of the city, because at that time nobody could live out of the city, police or fire, and he gave him permission. So I was always, wondering what if I would have gone along, I could be living on a lake somewhere, in a cottage but anyway. He was a fine sergeant, and all the guys were great, really great. <br /><br />RM: The day you went in, what was the cue that you guys could come in then? Did you have wireless? <br /><br />AF: I had an informant, and the informant, I would, he would give me stuff, you know, you work with informants and you gave him breaks because you've got to barter. And he says, “I got a hot party going on tonight at 9123 Twelfth Street, Twelfth Street just north of Clairmount, two buildings, upstairs,” and so got together with Henry and Brown, and I says, “Hey, let’s give it try, you go down there and see if you can get in.” They did and they couldn’t get in so then they came back and I says, "You know what, wait ‘til some beautiful ladies go up to the door and go in with them." Sure as heck, they got in. So then it was real simple, all we had to do was wait five minutes and they knew they either do it or come back out, you know. And they actually were able to get up there and make an illegal buy and so I says, “Hey this is easy we’re going to break the door down," so we went up and we, just four or five of us, because we had no problems with blind pigs, and we couldn’t get the door down. We couldn’t break the door down. And you know, now they have all those [gestures a ram], but then we didn’t. And the fire truck happened to come by and says, "You wanna borrow our ax?" and I says, "No, you do it," and they were able to break the door down. So we went up these tall flight of stairs and we go into the room. We expected 15 people, 20 people. There were 85. 85 in a room that fit, tops, 40. And we went in and announced, “Police, everybody calm down it’s a raid, dah dah dah dah dah.” And they started throwing cue balls at us, there was a pool table. So I grabbed my police officers to pull them out of the opening into the hallway and other blacks held onto the black police officers. "You’re not taking anybody to jail!" [laughter], they meant well. Anyway, we got them out there, we closed the door and they started throwing things out the window. Chairs, throwing cue balls and they drew a crowd so then we had a PREP – I think we had a PREP by that time, PREP radio – and I called for a paddy wagon, you know to take the prisoners in. And I says, "I think I’m gonna need two or three paddy wagons," I says, "They’re really a fight in there." I could hear them fighting. And the dispatcher says, "We don’t have enough personnel in the city,” honest to god truth I can’t believe this, “to send you the paddy wagons.” We have 204 – I learned later, we had 204 police officers working the whole city of Detroit, 1,600,000 people. And we had 5,000 police officers at that time, but it was a weekend and all kinds of people got time off. I don’t know, I don’t know. So, they had a special patrol force, these are people just out of the academy that are being trained and the sergeant that is in charge of the patrol force heard my calls and he came with the men, and then the cruiser, remember I told you about the cruiser, they pulled up and a crowd gathered and somebody broke the back window out of the cruiser, the Buick—great looking car—and it got out of hand. We finally got paddy wagons and we loaded the paddy wagons and took them into the tenth precinct, which was brand new on Livernois and Elmhurst, brand new police station. We were at Joy and Petoskey before in a building that was built around 1900. So this was such a nice improvement and I told one of the police officers, go into the deli on the corner and call us on the phone every once and a while and tell us what’s going on. And I go into the police station with the prisoners and Lieutenant Ray Good, I’ll never forget this guy loved him, older gentleman, and I says, "Boss, you better get out there. There is a big problem brewing." and he said to me, "Fierimonte, you’re always exaggerating, every time you do something you exaggerate." I said, "Boss, I’m telling you, go." He says, "You know what I’m going to 5 o’clock mass, I’ll stop out there and take a look, but you know Tony, I’m wasting my time." Half hour later he comes in he’s bleeding from his forehead, [laughter] somebody threw a stone at him, "Fierimonte, I’ll never talk to you again! What did you do, you dumbass? What the hell is going on?" Anyways, he then started the ball rolling for MO4, which means calling all police officers in. A huge crowd had gathered and they started to break in to these stores. Now what was interesting, I consider it a riot; I don’t consider it anything else, because unfortunately they broke into black businesses, they broke into white businesses, they started stealing everything out of the stores and then the mayor was notified and he went out there with Senator, god who was it, state Senator. I think he’s still a state senator. <br /><br />RM: Levin? <br /><br />AF: No, no, no, black senator. <br /><br />RM: Oh. <br /><br />AF: Conyers! Could have been Conyers. I’m almost positive. And they gave the order, don’t shoot, be cool, just let it go. That was the order they gave them, and word got out. Word got out, and suddenly there’s, you know, 50,000 people on Twelfth Street just helping themselves to everything. I think part of what they said was okay, but part of it was not, because people started dying. They got into a fight in a meat market, looting the meat and they hung one of the guys on a meat hook, and killed him. Then on Seward and Twelfth was a liquor store, and while they looted the upstairs, some guys went down to get the cases of booze downstairs and the guys upstairs put the place on fire and everybody in the basement died. And that really started to escalate, and the most – I’m jumping ahead a little bit because this was a 14-day situation. I’m jumping ahead a little bit, but picture this: when the fire department came out, they would shoot at the fire department. So on Linwood – and I have pictures of this for an eighth of a mile – on Linwood they were breaking into the stores on Linwood and then they would set the stores on fire and then they would go down Pingree to put the stuff they’d taken into their homes. Now you gotta understand, this is very important, this was probably ten percent of the people in the community. This wasn’t everybody. I mean all kinds of blacks came up to us, saying, "Please help us" and ten percent of the rioters, easily, were white. It was a festive occasion but it was deadly. Then every single house on both sides of the street for an eighth of a mile burned to the ground, and I have the pictures and everything. And it was just mind boggling. <br /><br />Now I want to lighten this up. So two guys stole a Munzt TV with a stereo and a radio. These were really long – you probably got them in the museum here, and they got into a fight. One guy split the damn thing in half and the other guy called the police. So, that was the easiest two arrests ever made. [laughter] Another thing, they went into a carpet store and stole a ream of carpeting and put it on the roof of a Volkswagen and all four tires splayed out and it was just funny and tragic at the same time. Now you've got to remember the majority of the black community wasn’t involved in this but then you've got to look at it another way, they were destroying the stores in their neighborhood that they had to shop in and a lot of people in the neighborhood – it was a poorer neighborhood – didn’t have cars and they had no place to shop to. And this lasted for years after all this fire and everything. I became an anti-sniper, working 12 midnight to 12 noon and I got that silly police car that I loved with no back window. And we put a piece of plywood under there and we put a Thompson submachine gun on the trunk and we were supposed to shoot back at the snipers. Trust me, I couldn’t hit anything with that machine gun, if I had thrown it at them, maybe I would have hit it. That thing danced all over the place, it was a .45 and it was a joke, you know. Then a company called Stoner lent us weapons that could go through brick, and they brought in a special squad, dressed in all black who – they would go out, if somebody shot out a window they’d shoot back. 47 people died during the riots in 1967, but what really stopped it was not us. The State Police couldn’t stop it, the National Guard couldn’t stop it, the 101st Airborne came in from Vietnam and they brought tanks and the tanks went down the street, and I only have one story about the tanks that I was involved in. We had somebody shooting out of a church steeple and we were at Davidson and Woodrow Wilson, and south was the church steeple, we could see the flashes. And the guy opened the lid on the tank and said, "Block your ears," and he shot the steeple right off the church [laughter] with the gun and once that started happening and, there was you know, military in there and they treated it very aggressively, everything stopped. Now if I can go aside for a minute there was something else to think about, a year later unfortunately, Martin Luther King got killed and the instructions from the police department – I was 28 when that happened – was to take enforcement action immediately and within two or three hours everything had stopped and nothing happened. There was no problems, but for the first two or three hours there were. They were looting on Grand River and everybody’s coming home from downtown Detroit out Grand River to the Redford area and everything stopped. So, you know, it’s easy to Monday morning quarterback, do you go back and say, "Well we shoulda done that," you know. But Cavanagh was feeling for the community, you know, and they were suppressed and they note they had problems with jobs and a lot of it exists today unfortunately. You know it amazes me that there isn’t even good bus service to the suburbs so people can take a bus and get a job in the suburbs, a lot of people would like to do that. Now I know Detroit’s making a comeback and I love it and the community, it’s going to be strong and great but it’s going to take time. I went on to become an adjunct professor at Wayne State University and I taught Police Service in the Community and some race relation classes and when they put my name on the syllabus they would say police officer and I’d get 98 students because what police officer could say anything about race relations? We had a ball. We had a ball. We did a lot of role reversals and all kinds of really neat things and it was so much fun. And when I got my doctorate, I had retired, and I started helping troubled police officers. I worked with a physiatrist in St. Clair Shores and then when the patients would not show up, because police officers have a tendency to not show up because they don’t want to deal with the problems they have. I started investing in real estate and that became my third and final career, I have a Fierimonte Street in Clinton Township, we built a couple hundred condos, I was a small partner —25 percent— shopping centers, built a restaurant called Tony Pepperoni’s and retired from there moved to Florida and now I buy condos on the intercostal, fix them up and sell them. I’m on my twenty-ninth one. <br /><br />RM: Wow. <br /><br />AF: I did volunteer work in Broward County, Florida, which was really really nice, it was in a major crisis situations I worked with the families of the deceased. And I’m also on the Pension Board for the City of Deerfield Beach and three other organizations. I don’t wanna bore you to death. <br /><br />RM: No, you’re not. <br /><br />AF: But, I’m 74 years old and the police department was the greatest job I ever had. Really the greatest <br /><br />RM: Tell me a little more about when the tanks rolled in. What did the Police Department feel? What was the feeling of this massive military force was coming in? What were you feeling? <br /><br />AF: Great relief, really great relief. It was, we needed it. We couldn’t handle it, it’s just sporadic shooting and you’re driving down the street and suddenly somebody’s shooting at you from a window and they came in. Now, there was a Lieutenant Bannon, he retired as I think a deputy chief, now he could hear radio communication between people. The Panthers, you remember or have you ever read about the Panthers? So there were groups and they’re organized to do the shooting and everything. And I always wondered what did they think it was the end of the world? Now the flip side of that was there were some police officers, I know one that got fired, who thought it was gonna be the end of the world, who thought we were gonna rule the community with, you know, all force. But the Black Panthers were a big issue with the sniping. <br /><br />RM: Let’s talk about once the tanks came in, you said you saw the one steeple get blow up? <br /><br />AF: Yes <br /><br />RM: Did you see that it was starting to calm down at that point? <br /><br />AF: Yes, it really calmed down quickly, in a matter of I think three or four nights. <br /><br />RM: Wow, and then what happened? How did—? <br /><br />AF: Everything got back to normal, it just ended. And that’s how they happen that way today. They just end. You know the Rodney King thing in California, they do 3-4 million dollars’ worth of damage and then it ends. And, did Rodney King deserve to be beat up that night, you know? It’s up to the courts, that’s the court’s decision to make not a policeman’s. That’s how it goes. <br /><br />RM: Was there a grudge by the police then because of what had been happening?</p>
<p>AF: Yes, after the ’67 riots there was a grudge, and that’s when the Federal government came in and there was some great reports, the Kerner Report on the riots and all kinds of instructions of how to quell – how to improve the relationships between the police departments and the community. Now, I gotta tell you an interesting story, when Coleman Young became mayor in 1974, the black community was seventy percent of the population and in the police department they were thirty percent of the population, so I mean something to think about. I had the honor of working for Deputy Chief Frank Blount, who is deceased now, and he became one of my best friends, and he wanted to make that right. I proposed to him and the mayor at a meeting that we hire – they were laying off at Chrysler Corporations in ’74, the gas crisis and everything – I said, "Let’s go after the black community those people that worked at Chrysler for 5, 10, 15 years, let’s hire them as policemen." I says, "You know they’ve got a proven track record and everything," and the mayor said – it was his call – "I got elected by the people of the City of Detroit and I don’t care if somebody was arrested once, let’s lower the qualifications, let’s hire the people off the street, that’s the people who voted for me," and I always think that was a problem because why not go for the best? But he felt we’re going to hire black people that live out of Detroit? Should we do that, shouldn’t we do that?’ And he made it clear we’re not doing that. And I got involved – if I can go for a minute – I got involved in Boston Bussing, Judge DeMaso ruled that they had to cross district [bus] in Detroit. So they sent me to Boston with Deputy Chief Frank Blount, Sergeant Vivian Edmonds and two other officers and we talked to the police department there, how did it go, what problems did you have? And one police officer that was on a motorcycle between buses as they were being crossed district, somebody threw a brick out of a window. It didn’t hit him, but he died of a heart attack and so the Boston Police Department was up in arms a little bit. But, Boston is segregated. The Italians, the blacks, and the Irish, they’re segregated geographically because there’s water between the neighborhoods, and there was a third way. And I’ll never forget this as long as I live, I went up to an Irish superintendent, I mean he was like number one, and I says, “How do you feel about blacks being cross district into your schools and your neighborhoods?" He says, “Blacks? We don’t even want the Italians!” [laughter] I thought this is great, you know when I teach college, this is going to be great. You know, it was a great response. It brings back a lot of memories.</p>
<p>RM: I’ll bet. What happened right after the riot?</p>
<p>AF: They decided they had enough of me at the tenth precinct. I don’t know why. [laughter] So they sent me to the fifteenth Precinct on Gratiot and Connors and there —<br /><br /> Oh I've got to stop for a minute. So, my mother was from the old country and my dad, and my mother didn’t want me to be a policeman. So I told my mother because I took business in high school, and I knew how to type, I’m a clerk in a police station. [mimics Mother] “Bless you son, bless you. You have this wonderful job, don’t go outside. You could get hurt. You can get hurt” And then the riots broke out [laughter, mimics mother] “I should spank you like I used to when you were young!” But I got transferred to the fifteenth precinct and I worked plain clothes, I was a patrolman still, I applied for a job as Chief of Police of Clinton Township, MI and I came in number two and there was an inspector in the police department that didn’t get accepted and nobody could believe it. Anyway, I didn’t take the job, I had no choice. But interesting how I didn’t get the job, there was a black constable working the black community in Clinton Township, this is a good lesson, and they says he’s been there forever, we’re going to become a police department, would you make him a police officer and he’s really good with the community. And I had been reading managers associations on police departments and how to organize them and everything and I say, "Yes, I definitely would, but he’s got to pass the basic test." And I didn’t get the job because of that answer, they wanted me to say, "Of course I’ll make a policeman out of him." What I should have said is, "Yes, let me train him, let me talk about how to pass the test, let me work with him, and we can get him through, once he qualifies." I made the wrong answer. And they told me why I didn’t get the job and that was why. They hired a Police Sergeant from Grosse Pointe who ended up stealing from the property room, you know where evidence is stored. He lost his job. I then applied for Chief of Police in Lighthouse Point, FL and I came in number one. 300 applicants. I was a Lieutenant and came back and I told them I’d accept the job and I hired an attorney to do the negotiating, Calkins was his name, and they started calling me at the Detroit Police Department. I was Head of Staff for Deputy Chief Frank Blount, and somebody cut out an article in the Sun Sentinel and sent it to the Chief that I had accepted this job and Frank Blount got wind of it. Oh my god, between him and my mother! My mother: "You can’t move, you can’t leave, you’ve got two sisters here to take care of. This is terrible how can you do this!" I says, "Ma, come to Florida it’s a great place, you’ll love it down there." “No, no, no. You can’t go.” I turned the job down, but I got two more promotions from Coleman Young, I became an Inspector and then a Commander. So I was number 3 out of 5,000 men. That wasn’t bad. But there was a lot of Commanders, it’s not. But, I went to the fifteenth precinct and suddenly they asked me if I wanted to work white rackets, clean up, morality, or whatever you want to call it. And I said sure. But it wasn’t as much fun like I said previously. Everybody, "You can’t do this to me I’m important,” you know, “I’m this, I’m that.” But I did it there, then I was sent to research and development as a writer and I stayed there a year and a half and I became a detective and got transferred to the fifth Precinct. Then three months later I became a sergeant – you had to take tests for this. And sure enough, they put me back in morality in charge of this crew and then I became a lieutenant of special operations which included all that stuff. Then I went to work for Deputy Chief Frank Blount, then I went to the FBI Academy, I did three months there, session 112 they call it. That was an honor. And that’s about it.</p>
<p>RM: How about the police department itself in ’67 did you see a big change? You mention all this stuff coming from the federal government to kind of change the mentality a little bit? <br /><br />AF: It was a very slow process. Very slow process. <br /><br />RM: What did you see? <br /><br />AF: When affirmative action started, they would take an exam. People would take an exam, and if you were an officer in the first ten then they would pick an officer that was 40 and promote him over you it became embitterment, really, really — you know. And Frank Blount used to always say, “I got all my promotions by being on top of the test and I earned them” but the mayor had a point because we gotta get supervisors of the black community as supervisors to even out the score card because every time somebody called the people it was all white. So it’s a tradeoff, and it was a slow process. Let me ask you a question, what do you think of the police department now? <br /><br />RM: It’s tough for me because I’m from Saginaw, I don’t follow this close.</p>
<p>AF: Oh are you? [laughter]</p>
<p>RM: Yeah, I’ve got family members that are officers. <br /><br />AF: Do you?<br /><br />RM: Yeah, so I guess I’d be a little more jaded. Do you think it could have been done different? Would you have done anything different during that blind pig or during the time that you were there? <br /><br />AF: Well, we made a raid, a crowd gathered like always, but suddenly they started breaking into windows and stuff and stealing, and they never did that before. So how can you do anything different, you know? And when we made raids after that, it was totally different. There were a lot of police at the raid and – we didn’t even have uniformed policemen when we made the raid. There was nothing to it, just nothing to it. It was just a "hey you’re drinking, you got caught, you’re running a blind pig" and we would normally take the engagers to court, the ones running the place. <br /><br />RM: A lot of the same faces then? Would you see a lot of the same people? <br /><br />AF: Yeah, mostly in the numbers rackets you’d see a lot of the same people. And, I was working with a guy nicknamed Harry the Horse and we caught a guy with a stash of numbers and money and stuff. And he says, “Hey you can’t arrest me I know Harry the Horse” and he was talking to Harry the Horse [laughter] stuff like that, you know. We had great cooperation, remember, all of our information was coming from the black community, so they wanted these places closed down because they couldn’t sleep at night and it was in residential neighborhoods, with the exception of the one on Twelfth Street, but still there were houses right behind it, you know.<br /><br />RM: People might think that riots are inevitable, if you look at what’s happening in Ferguson. What are your thoughts on that? With people and all the studies you’ve done. <br /><br />AF: You know that’s a good question and that’s one I don’t have the answer too. I really don’t. Now there saying that the Ferguson Police Department is too white, you know, but how many black citizens applied for a job to be a policeman. That’s another way to look at it too. And can you pass the qualifications? <br /><br />RM: Do you think the police are under fire? <br /><br />AF: Oh! [nods head] <br /><br />RM: Do you see that at once every kind wanted to be an astronaut, a cop, or a firefighter? Do you think that’s true today? <br /><br />AF: No, not at all, it’s dangerous. Not because black or white, because of dope. You get people on drugs and they need a fix. I mean they kill you even though you start to give them the money, they’re so jittery they’ll kill you. And that’s the biggest problem. You know, forget about race. In Detroit the crime is high, Flint is higher, right by where you live in Saginaw and it’s the drug issue over and over and over again. I always wondered if we would legalize this stuff in some kind of orderly way so they can get it, would it really make a big difference and stop a lot of these crimes, it’s an interesting issue. <br /><br />RM: Tracy mentioned, when I first started talking about you, that you came to the museum and said, "I started the riot!" How do you fit into all of this, what do you feel? <br /><br />AF: I was sitting at home flipping through my scrapbook for the first time in ten years and I says I wonder if anybody would be interested in hearing my story” and I went to — I forgot where I went. I was talking to somebody and he says, "Go to the Detroit Historical Museum. They’re really down to earth and nice people, and they’d like to hear it." So I called and I talked to Adam Lovell and suddenly they were interested because they were going to do this presentation in 2017 and I met them with Joel Stone and we talked for an hour until they got sick of me and they says, "We’ll get in touch with you." <br /><br />RM: Why do you think it’s so important to preserve this, this piece of our history? <br /><br />AF: Well, to learn from our lessons, of course that’s always the case and we gotta put all these civil disturbances all together and come up with a way to put a stop to them. Because the end result: nobody wins, nobody wins. Communities are destroyed, businesses are gone and nobody wins. And that’s why I’m here.<br /><br />RM: What did I miss? Is there anything else, I mean what’s the number one thing I can’t miss when we tell this story? What do you want, I guess you kind of put it in a nutshell right there. <br /><br />AF: Yeah, don’t forget the comedy part, because there was a lot – Oh! I got another one but I don’t think you want to tell it. [Laughter] <br /><br />RM: Well, let’s hear it! I’ll be the judge of that. [Laughter] <br /><br />AF: We were, there was an African Antiquities place and they broke in and as I’m running down the alley after one of the guys he turned and threw a spear at me [laughter] and I still have the spear! [laughter] Course it was funny at the time but I felt sorry for the business owner, they had destroyed the place, and it was a black owned business, you know<br /><br />RM: It’s hard to put any kind of, I guess any kind of reason, into a lot of that isn’t it?<br /><br />AF: No, it is. They’ve – all the fires, you know. The fires have been a big thing in Detroit, at least the day before Halloween it’s kind of subsided, you know. And everybody loves this new mayor, so I think if he tears the burned out houses down —and look at the renaissance of the Grand Boulevard area and Downtown and its exciting, you know. <br /><br />RM: So you think something was learned in ’67? <br /><br />AF: Well, it never happened again. Never happened again. Wait let me knock on wood [laughter, knocks head].<br /><br />RM: That’s awesome.</p>
**
People
List any relevant people (interviewers, interviewees, important people mentioned, etc). Please use "Lastname, Firstname".
Cavanagh, Jerome
Girardin, Ray
Duration
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51:35
Interviewer
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Ric Mixter
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Anthony Fierimonte
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit Historical Museum
Dublin Core
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Title
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Anthony Fierimonte, October 10th, 2014
Description
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Former Detroit Police officer Anthony Fierimonte discusses his experiences on the force--including his role in the raid on the blind pig at Twelfth Street and Clairmont Street on July 23, 1967.<br /><br /><strong>NOTE: This interview contains profanity and/or explicit language.</strong>
Subject
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1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan, Detroit Police Department—Detroit—Michigan
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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MP4 video
Language
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en-US
Type
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Moving Image
101st Airborne
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Blind Pig
Detroit Police Department
STRESS
Tanks
Tenth Precinct
The Big Four
Twelfth Street
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Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Arietha Walker
Brief Biography
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Mrs. Arietha Walker was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1982 and moved to the Grand River and West Grand Blvd. in November of 1986. She continues to live in the same neighborhood and has seen how it has changed in the last 22 years. She currently works at the Detroit Historical Museum in the Human Resources department.
Interviewer's Name
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Jacob Russell
Interview Place
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Detroit, Michigan
Date
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10/21/2018
Transcription
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Interviewer: Did your mother grow up in the neighborhood too?
Mrs. Walker: My mother grew up in the Ohio/Wisconsin area right off of grand river, so not far from where we live now but it may be one neighborhood over. It’s straight down Grand River it’s a straight shot.
Interviewer: Where and when were you born?
Mrs. Walker: I was born in [inaudible] Brooklyn New York in 1982.
Interviewer: When did you move to the Detroit neighborhood?
Mrs. Walker: So my mother was born here she had my brothers and I so mid 80’s maybe 85 or 86. We moved into that house the day after Thanks Giving 1987.
Interviewer: so you were about 5 years old?
Mrs. Walker: yes
Interviewer: what was the neighborhood like when you grew up there?
Mrs. Walker: It was a place of senior citizens and kids. You saw a lot of kids on my block and the surrounding blocks. I’m one block up from west grand Blvd. which was very family centered as well. So a lot of senior citizens and kids.
Interviewer: What were the demographics like of that neighborhood?
Mrs. Walker: It was definitely one race, African American.
Interviewer: and what is it like now?
Mrs. Walker: There is a growing Hispanic population among black. Most of the house were burned down/torn down or vacated. So of the people that still live there there are a lot of renters, not a lot of family’s that were there from 10-20 years ago. Just a couple of us.
Interviewer: when did the houses start being torn down?
Mrs. Walker: More recent this happen in the last 10-15 years that blight that happened. Kind of around the time of Kwame Kilpatrick.
Interviewer: What did you do for fun?
Mrs. Walker: I was a nerd I read books stayed around the home stead but my brothers would get on their bike go with their friends they would go everywhere. We are talking back in the day of ding-dong ditch, basketball. My family was really big into go-carts. My uncle would come and bring go-carts. There’s a school right behind us we would go in the lot or even in the streets and ride us around in go-carts. But really we had swings in our backyard so a lot of kids would come to our house and play on the swings and with the basketball hoop. Id stay by the homestead but my brothers would venture out and do ridiculous things.
Interviewer: What school was that? North Western?
Mrs. Walker: North western is across Grand River. The school right behind me was an alternative school for like if you injured your self, needed more time to finish, or even handicap accessibility that’s where kids went back than.
Interviewer: what were the stores like? Did you go shopping a lot?
Mrs. Walker: oh man all of them are all of the stores in that kind of one to two block radius are like gone now. There was a store on Grand River maybe three blocks down next to the fire station there and within the last five years it was robbed and the owner was shot so he sold it. No he didn’t sell it. They burned it down and probably took the insurance pay out on it. But I guess his family wanted him out of the neighborhood for a really long time now. It was a small liquor store where you could get snacks in it. There was a grocery store on the Blvd. that we shopped at for years because that was like our neighborhood store. And that went through ownership different owners and finally that burned down as well. Typically that seems to be the trend. We had a candy store that was right down my street maybe two blocks down and I think they tore it down within the last couple years. Its been vacant for about 10 years.
Interviewer: Do you think that closing of the stores caused a lot of the residents to move out?
Mrs. Walker: I think a lot of the residents moving out caused that. When family’s left the neighborhood. I don’t want to sound like my grandma but when the family’s left a lot of the rift raft came in. Living in a neighborhood where there are a lot of senior citizens. Those folks bought their homes. They owned them. When they left if their family’s or if they didn’t have kids or if the kids didn’t care about their property it became vacant so vacancy so folks are stealing, stealing property, taking pieces off the houses and reusing it. Than there’s broken windows there’s an infestation of rats. So there going to beg the city to come tear it down. So I think that’s what happen. People died and their family’s didn’t care about the houses or the houses went to the city. That ownership left with that generation.
Interviewer: Where did you go to school at? Was it in that neighborhood?
Mrs. Walker: Yes I did. On Tiremann there’s a school. James B Weber middle school was what it was called. Its called Weber Samson school of technology now and its still open there’s an elementary school right behind it but I think that’s been closed since I been in high school. But I went to weber from third grade to 8th grade and than I went Cass for high school.
Interviewer: Was North Western open?
Mrs. Walker: yes it was. It was different because now its called North Western prep or something I think it became a charter school. It was open. But it wasn’t a school my mother was going to send her kids too. It wasn’t the best school to go to.
Interviewer: did it close for a while?
Mrs. Walker: I think it might of have. From age 18 to 27 I was in the U.P. but I think they may closed down and than they put a lot of money into it and now it became a charter school I think. They have a football team and everything though. During the school year you know kids are attending the school cause you see them in the neighborhood. You see them everywhere.
Interviewer: Do you have any stories fro your childhood?
Mrs. Walker: It was a community so we could be walking home from school if we were fighting or just being loud and obnoxious when we got home my mother would know because folks called. We see your kid’s they’re doing whatever or just even you just got that sense of community. You could get a spanking from someone else’s mom. It definitely was a community. I remember one of the few times I went out with my brothers this is how I realized they played that lovely ding dong ditch. We ha d a Yorkhee dog. I was walking her I was with my brother and their friends. We were on a side street one of our side streets. We are walking and all of a sudden they are on this persons porch and I’m like what are you guys doing they are knocking and ringing the door bell and all of a sudden everyone takes off running and im a heft woman now and I was pudgy girl than and I had this dog and I was not going to go running what was I suppose to do so I just kept walking my dog and one of the people in the house got in their car and was driving around looking for the kids who did it which makes me think they did it often. He stopped by and said hello miss. He thought I was older I always looked older than I was so I probably was 10 or 12 and looked like I was in high school. So he was like miss have you seen any kids running this way and I was like nope just out walking my dog. We use to curse like sailors so I cussed my brothers out for that. Other than that it was just safety my brothers were normally. There was this huge house a lot of the house along west grand Blvd. are either really big two to four bed room flats. So there was a family right behind us next to the high school on the Blvd. there were siblings and there were cousins so it was a lot sides of the family in the house. We were all friends and I actually babysat a lot of there little kids when I was in high school. That’s where my brothers would always be or they would be in our back yard. It was a good environment to raise kids whether those kids were bad or not.
Interviewer: Was there a strong police presence in the neighborhood?
Mrs. Walker: No it was rare to see police and it was rare to see white people. If something happened my mom would throw block party’s where the old school way where they would cut off the ends of the blocks with trucks. And there would be games and just food and things people could play. Well it was nearing the end of the party and the trucks have been moved and someone came down driving really fast and hit a kid cause the kids were still playing in the street. So that was one of the few times I remember the police being in the neighborhood cause we just didn’t see them that often.
Interviewer: How has the neighborhood changed through the years? Has it slumped down and started to come back up?
Mrs. Walker: one of the areas I remember my mom driving around because it is very close to us is Dexter Blvd. and as a kid I remember thinking the houses are huge the grasses are green were just mowed. We were good with it but they were just great. I remember thinking kind of just how the grass was greener on the other side. That to were a lot of older not like the older people on my block but more people who were working and maintaining there home and you saw the kids and it was just a different world. Now you drive down there and it just different city its just like if its not ours they just don’t care for it. That’s what I see going around the city. Where before we owned it was ours and if it looked like crap we didn’t want it to look like that. Now they jus don’t care.
Interviewer: have you ever thought about moving away?
Mrs. Walker: I am prime location in the city. I wouldn’t mind being mid town adjacent I don’t want to be in midtown. I don’t feel like its welcoming to people I feel like I’m treated like I’m new here when actually I grew up here. I’m treated like I’m the visitor instead of a lot of the owners in their businesses now there the visitors so the (inaudible) is happening which doesn’t make me want to be in mid town but adjacent. But the house I grew up in and live in I’m close to all major freeways I’m centrally located its just great place. My friend’s come to visit and there just like this is awesome. Your not directly in the thick of it its just right off the city but you know its safe. The other side of the Blvd. we didn’t venture Toeben when we were kids. Its right across but not across the freeway its still on our side. Where they sold a lot for drugs they weren’t older they were younger on that side. Where you would be like in your mid 20’s with 6 or 7 kids. I’m not being generic I’m actually this is legit that was the setting it was kind of like mid town in the 70’s like you knew it was nothing but pimps and hookers they sold drugs over there. We weren’t allowed. We didn’t cross the Blvd.
Interviewer: what do you consider the perimeter of your neighborhood?
Mrs. Walker: so when you get to Tireman which is so I am two block up from Tirman. Two full blocks o our street so if you go up 5 blocks and than if you go up Tireman if you go up maybe three block that would be kind of like you knew the people living in those house you see them everyday. That sense of community if they saw you walking down the street and look like you have been beaten up they would pull you into their house and call the police. They knew you even if they didn’t always see you. So that sense of community as far as I am aware it might even be farther than that. The kids we associated with the senior citizens we knew id say that span.
Interviewer: How do you feel about the state of your neighborhood today versus when you grew up there? And what would you change?
Mrs. Walker: I feel that definitely with more community growing up that ownership was there. I feel like in the past couple years when I say about senior citizens I am like minded with them since coming back from college iv noticed that younger folks moving into the neighborhood because its affordable for them to rent, where something I never experienced before even as a kid some neighbors a few houses down at 4 a.m. their riding around in their car screaming and drinking I remember going what the hell what do we pay our taxes for I lived here for 20 years and never experienced this like its degraded its water down. Its not a neighborhood that family’s look at and want to move to and that’s what I wish would change. The American dream 20 years ago was to have a picket fence two kids and a dog and even though I feel like that might not have been the minority American dream it wasn’t a reality for them. I feel like that would be where I would like it to go back to. Where that owner ship goes back too.
Interviewer: So where would you go now to go grocery shopping? What is required of you to get groceries?
Interviewee: Actually its right straight off the boulevard more down by Rosa Parks area so right where the start of 67 happened there is a family foods is the closest that’s where I go. It’s a little market.
Interviewer: How far is that away from your house?
Interviewee: I think like a mile away. I’m not very good with that kind of a thing but I don’t believe its more than two miles. There is a true value hardware store on Grand River. I don’t frequent the gas station on grand river because they are ridiculously expensive. And they sell expire foods to you which is a big issue I notice in the city. I actually go off of warren that probably one of the safest places to go to.
Search Terms
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Detroit, Michigan, West Grand, neighborhood
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ElPdCVR2dhM?si=bV5fCDf8pWKlpKgJ" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Title
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Arietha Walker
Description
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During this interview Mrs. Walker describes her childhood growing up in the West Grand and Grand River neighbor hood since she moved there in 1986. She discusses how the closing of local business and grocery stores has negatively impacted her neighborhood. She also discusses specific childhood memories that she experienced.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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10/21/2018
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Detroit Historical Society
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https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/3feeecd96feb0e49146870c27be115b8.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
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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
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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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Arlene Niskar
Brief Biography
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Arlene Niskar was born in Detroit in 1944. In 1959, she and her family moved to Oak Park. She was married on July 23, 1967 and still lives in the Detroit area.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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08/04/2016
Interview Length
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00:14:55
Transcriptionist
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Julia Westblade
Transcription Date
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11/29/2016
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello, today is August 4, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am in Detroit, Michigan and I am sitting down with –</p>
<p>AN: Arlene Niskar.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AN: Thank you.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please tell me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>AN: I was born in Detroit. I lived on Dexter Boulevard until I was 14 years old and then we moved to Oak Park.</p>
<p>WW: What year were you born?</p>
<p>AN: I was born in 1944.</p>
<p>WW: What was your Dexter neighborhood like before you moved away?</p>
<p>AN: Oh, it was lovely. It was just beautiful. You could walk anywhere to buy anything. There was bakeries and fish markets and fresh poultry stores where you could go in and pick out a chicken and there was the Dexter Show and dime stores where they give away goldfish on Saturdays. Half-dead goldfish to the kids that would come in. Oh, that was a big deal. There was a lot of drug stores. There was a malt shop called Danny’s. We hung out there when I got a little older. It was a lovely neighborhood.</p>
<p>WW: Was the neighborhood all white?</p>
<p> AN: Yes. Mostly Jewish.</p>
<p>WW: While you were still living there, did it integrate at all?</p>
<p>AN: When the first black family moved in to my neighborhood, everybody was in a panic. My father was so mad at the man that sold his house to the first black family. And everybody put up their signs and started moving and the whole neighborhood just changed in a short time. My junior high school, because I was on the Broad Street side of Dexter was already integrated. There were kids from Grand River and Elmhurst and farther down so it was all kinds of kids that I went to junior high school with.</p>
<p>WW: Do you know why your father and the other neighbors were so upset?</p>
<p>AN: I hate to say it but my parents were terribly prejudiced. I never realized it. They never said it to me until I brought a black girl home from school one day and my mother said to me after, “Don’t you ever bring that girl back into this house again. We’re trying to stay away from them.” It was terrible. It was just terrible. We had a black cleaning lady and, oh, my mother used to put her sandwich and drink on separate dishes and it was like the book <em>The Help</em>. That’s what it was like. It was unbelievable then.</p>
<p>WW: Did you witness any other signs of racism across the city?</p>
<p>AN: Did I witness any other sign of racism? Yeah, when I moved to Oak Park and they were going to move and it was all white again and then they were going to move people from Eight Mile on Meyers and integrate them, the kids, into the Oak Park High School and oh, everybody was all upset about that. Then, must have been in the Sixties where integration started and, yeah, to tell you the truth, I didn’t know what to think because you heard the news and it was all negative about integration. And then we had horrible governors in the United States, Wallace and — that were saying “We’re never going to integrate.” And then we started seeing on the news these poor kids. The Sixties was horrible. That’s all I can say. It brings back a lot of very bad memories. I’m so glad that my kids don’t feel that way and they were never raised that way.</p>
<p>WW: Going into the Sixties in Detroit, from moving around so much, did you sense any growing tension in the city?</p>
<p>AN: We moved in 1959. We moved –</p>
<p>WW: To Oak Park?</p>
<p>AN: Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: So while you were living in Oak Park did you come to visit Detroit at all?</p>
<p>AN: Oh yeah, I used to come back and visit my friends that hadn’t moved yet that lived off of Twelfth Street and Linwood.</p>
<p>WW: How did your parents feel about you doing that?</p>
<p>AN: Well, I used to go on – I was about 14 and I got on the bus and came back here and stayed at my cousin’s house and we had all kinds of friends then.</p>
<p>WW: Going into 1967, were you still living in Oak Park then?</p>
<p>AN: Yes.</p>
<p>WW: And how did you interact with what was going on?</p>
<p>AN: You mean when I was downtown here?</p>
<p>WW: Yes.</p>
<p>AN: In shock. I mean, really, talking about the day of my wedding.</p>
<p>WW: You can tell the story of your wedding.</p>
<p>AN: Okay. I moved in 19 – I believe ‘58 or ‘59 to Oak Park and graduated from Oak Park High School in ‘62. People stopped going downtown. They just stopped going downtown and we always would go down to Hudson’s and it was wonderful. I maybe was too young in my teen years to realize what was going on but the city was getting more and more integrated because my uncle lived on Glendale and nobody could understand – he lived there until the day he died and that was years later after everybody else moved and he loved his neighbors. But everybody out in the suburbs thought he was crazy and that was the mindset at that time. Thank God, it’s changed, I hope.</p>
<p>WW: What were doing on that Sunday the first day?</p>
<p>AN: Oh, that’s the day I got married. We were at the Book Cadillac. I was married at noon and everybody got downtown just fine but about 2:30, after the ceremony and the lunch, I went up to change and I came back down with my bouquet to throw it out to people and there wasn’t anybody left there. [laughs] It was crazy because my brother-in-law was running around telling everybody, “You’ve got to go! The whole city is burning down.” And then when we were driving out to Chicago and we were driving past Grand River in the downtown area, everything was in flames. And we just couldn’t believe that it could possibly be happening. It was just a shock and then driving to Chicago there were all kinds of National Guard trucks coming, racing to Detroit with State Police and we kept saying to ourselves, “Oh, it can’t be. It just can’t be.” But we had a lot of Canadian relatives that were just terrified because some had to come back through the city to go across the tunnel and people were in such panic going across the tunnel, my sister said they were driving on the sidewalks and cutting each other off to get in front of other people to get out of Detroit and you could go over to Canada but you had to be born in the United States to get back. They heard gunshots. She said it was so loud, the noise level was so loud driving down to the tunnel that they couldn’t believe it. My cousins were all crying. There was fire everywhere and screaming. And she said it was like being in a war zone. That’s basically what she said. And then my other relatives they wouldn’t even let them through the tunnel. They had driven so they drove through the Blue Water Bridge up in Port Huron.</p>
<p>WW: How do you identify what happened in the city? What do you call it? Do you call it a riot, do you call it a rebellion?</p>
<p>AN: It was riots. It was riots because my husband’s grandparents lived on Seven Mile and Livernois in a small bungalow and they could not believe their neighbors that were looting and bringing all this stuff into their houses. They just kept saying to us, “They’re schlepping things into their homes.” And they loved their neighbors and couldn’t believe they were a part of this. Nobody had a mindset like this. We couldn’t believe it was happening in Detroit. But then I found out that there was a previous riot that was horrible in 1920s?</p>
<p>WW: ‘43.</p>
<p>AN: ‘43? Oh. Okay, yeah. So, I just hope it never happens again.</p>
<p>WW: Did this event change the way you look at the city of Detroit?</p>
<p>AN: We were all terrified to come back down here. And we didn’t come down for years.</p>
<p>WW: Did it make you want to move away?</p>
<p>AN: Well, I felt safe in Oak Park. And then they integrated the Oak Park schools from Meyers and Eight Mile there was a group of homes where the kids went to Detroit schools but then they brought them to the Oak Park schools.</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you’d like to share today?</p>
<p>AN: I think that’s exciting enough for me.</p>
<p>WW: Then, final question, how do you see the city today?</p>
<p>AN: Oh, it’s fantastic. It’s fantastic and I just wish that people would learn to get along and I think eventually, hopefully, when the crime level starts to go down –it’s still frightening. It’s still frightening to think that if you’re not in the downtown area where you feel rather safe, that there’s still all these things happening with gangs. Like, I think of that little girl that was with her friends and just drove down near I think it was Eastern Market and somebody shot them. He was never caught. This was a couple years ago. She was supposed to go away with her brother and decided to come with her friend and these miscellaneous shootings, you hear about them all the time and it’s very scary. And until people get educated, I don’t think things are going to change that much until the schools become better and the economy becomes better.</p>
<p>WW: Well, thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AN: You’re very welcome. </p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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14min 55sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Arlene Niskar
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LwWWXzdfggM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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Title
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Arlene Niskar, August 4th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Arlene Niskar discusses her family’s decision to move when a neighbor sold a house to a black family. She also talks about her memories of her wedding day on the Sunday that the unrest began as well as her Canadian relatives’ difficulty getting back across the border.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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12/02/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Community Members
Looting
Oak Park
Wedding
Windsor-Canada
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/80ca952c72b99a2703af7a9dd802caed.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
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
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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I have three very vivid memories of the summer of 1967.
The first was awaking that morning at our family home in northwest Detroit. I was scheduled for a football conditioning class at 7:00AM at the school gym. My mother told me that I could not go as there was something happening and I could not leave the house. I remember arguing with her that the school was only two blocks away and what could possibly happen. Of course I lost the argument. As the day unfolded the uncertaintities and worries mounted. Rumors were rampant but facts were few.
The second memory was my father returning from work that evening. I remember thinking that he looked very grey and ill. He and my mother downloaded their day longer than usual and dinner was late that night. Over dinner dad talked about standing on top of the Edison building, where he worked, and watching so much of his beloved city burning around him. He was very concerned about many of his coworkers that lived in the hardest hit neighborhoods. We also found out that dad needed a National Guard escort to get home that evening and had to be diverted off his normal route via Grand River Avenue.
The third memory to relate was our family vacation to Ontario, Canada in August. Traveling down Grand River early that morning I recall seeing for the first time the damage that had been done. It was overwhelming and I cried for awhile which was very embarrassing for a 13 year old.
The Canadian family that owned the cabins where we stayed had a son my age and we had become friends during previous visits. I still remember him asking me where near Detroit I lived. When I told him that I lived in the city itself he asked me what happened when our house burned. His perception from the media reports was that the entire city had been razed. It was hard for me to comprehend and even harder to convince him that our house, and several areas of the city, had not been damaged. To this day I am not sure if I convinced him.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Art Lorenz
Submission Date
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01/15/2017
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Title
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Art Lorenz
Description
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Art Lorenz was 13 years old in the summer of 1967. He remembers that he was unable to attend his football conditioning class. He also remembers a conversation a few weeks later with a Canadian friend who had only seen media reports of what happened.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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02/17/2017
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Canada
Grand River Avenue
Michigan National Guard
Teenagers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/c0798b80056709d73987d5b8fdfe3988.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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Arthur Bryant
Brief Biography
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Arthur Bryant grew up in Detroit and later moved to Grosse Pointe Park.
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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00:33:17
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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06/13/2017
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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. Arthur Bryant. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AB: Thank you for having me.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>AB: Yes. I was born in Ames, Iowa, in 1944, and I only lived there a short time.</p>
<p>WW: And when did you come to Detroit?</p>
<p>AB: Well actually, my folks always lived in Detroit, and I guess you could say I came here in 1944. But it was during the war, and my folks went out to Ames, Iowa, because my dad, who had gone back into the service in 1942, was assigned out there to the ROTC unit in Ames, Iowa, to be the yeoman for the captain who ran the ROTC branch. So I was born there, in 1944, and six months later my mother and I came back to Detroit. When my dad was— changed assignments and was shipped out to the Pacific, and he was on the USS New Orleans.</p>
<p>WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in, in Detroit?</p>
<p>AB: I grew up in the area— well, I'm not sure what they call it— today it's called English Village, I think, but I grew up at the corner of Drexel and Frankfort, on the Eastside of Detroit, which is, for purposes of identification, closer to Alter and Warren.</p>
<p>WW: What was that neighborhood like for you growing up?</p>
<p>AB: Well, we lived in half a duplex, so that's a very small home, when you look by today's standards. I once went back and looked and kind of estimated that the house size was probably about seven hundred and fifty to eight hundred square feet. That's really small. But as a kid I didn't really notice that at all. It was the house I lived in, and a fine size for me. The neighborhood was nice. There was kind of a lot of room around the homes, and our street, Frankfort, even thought it was a side street, was actually quite wide, and it was very nice. And down one direction was Chandler Park, so there was a lot of space there, although I didn't go there a lot, but a lot of space. Going the other direction there was a nice big park near Alter and Frankfort. So it was a nice place. Nice friends. It was a good way to grow up.</p>
<p>WW: Was the neighborhood integrated then?</p>
<p>AB: No. I'm very sure it wasn't. As a matter of fact, later on in my life I bought a home— a half a duplex— just about three or four blocks from that house I grew up in. And one of the things I noticed, at the closing, was that on this long list of deeds and old papers, there actually was a clause, very specifically, excluding people— well, I don't know how the words went, but excluding people of the Negro race from owning a home there. I mean, it was written right into the deed. Very interesting. Very disturbing.</p>
<p>WW: A restrictive covenant.</p>
<p>AB: Is that what it's called? Yeah. Okay.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up, did you tend to stay in your own neighborhood, or did you venture around the city?</p>
<p>AB: No, I really stayed in my own neighborhood, and the elementary school that was there, until I moved at age ten, a little ways away, and between there and the fact that we went to St. Columba Episcopal Church, which was, I guess it would be about a mile and a half away, up at Jefferson and Alter, roughly— Jefferson and Manistique. And you know, it's kind of— my life revolved around those particular places. And you’ve probably heard this from people before, but there was another aspect of it and that is, you asked, did we move around or see other parts of the city. There was this, like, line that went up Woodward Avenue, and you were either an Eastsider or a Westsider and you didn't go to the other side. You had no need to go, and you didn't go. And I laugh about it today, and my friends do, because that's the way it was. We didn't go to the Westside. As a kid, the only times, for many years, the only thing that we ever went to the Westside for was to pass through it to head down south out of the state. My grandparents— my dad's folks— lived in Marion, Ohio. So other than passing through to go down into Ohio we never went to the Westside of Detroit. We did go to upper Michigan for vacations and stuff, but, you know. We just didn't go.</p>
<p>And I still remember that the people who lived next door to us, the Hopkins, and I still stay in touch with the woman now, at that time the kid who lived next door, Jan Hopkins, she was younger than my brother and I— but my folks were very good friends with Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins. And later they moved away, and they moved over to the Westside. And I still remember the street they lived on was Donald. And that is the only reason we went away from the Eastside of Detroit. At least in my mind, that's all I can remember going away for— away from the Eastside.</p>
<p>WW: What schools did you attend growing up?</p>
<p>AB: I went to Hamilton Elementary, named after Alexander Hamilton, and that was not more than about, I guess it would be five blocks away. It was at Lakewood and Southampton. And I went there 'til fifth grade, and then we moved to Buckingham— a block off of Mack. And that might have - I think that's probably three miles from there. And— a bigger home— and that was only a couple of blocks away from Clark School. Clark Elementary. And I went there for a couple years and then went on to Jackson Junior High School, which was near Alter and Waveney, and then from there, after junior high there, I went to Southeastern High School at Fairview and— Fairview and Mack, roughly. You want just the schools in Detroit? I mean, I went to college.</p>
<p>WW: Oh yeah. For now, yes. So when you're going to these schools, were any of the schools integrated?</p>
<p>AB: Yes. To be honest with you, I can't— first of all, Hamilton wasn't, and Clark was not. But Jackson, I honestly can't remember whether it was or wasn't. But Southeastern was. Probably about twenty-five percent black, seventy-five percent Caucasian. Pretty close to that.</p>
<p>WW: So growing up in the fifties, did you sense any tension, whether it be societal, or racial, or did the city seem to be—</p>
<p>AB: Honestly, it seemed okay to me. I did not sense that at all. And I had black friends as well as white friends at Southeastern. If there were any black kids going to Jackson, the junior high, I didn't realize it. Just didn't even think about it one way or the other. But I don't think there were— but I honestly don't know. I suppose if I could find a picture of a class from back then I could look through and see. But I don't remember that there were.</p>
<p>WW: Okay.</p>
<p>AB: And I don't— really, when I was going to school, if there were tensions amongst people at school, it sure didn't register with me. That's the word. It didn't register with me.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. So what year did you graduate? You graduated in?</p>
<p>AB: From Southeastern?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah.</p>
<p>AB: In sixty-two.</p>
<p>WW: Sixty-two?</p>
<p>AB: January, ‘62.</p>
<p>WW: And after that you joined the service?</p>
<p>AB: Well, no. I had a very unusual thing along that line, and let me cover the whole thing right now. I wanted to go to the Naval Academy and I wanted to go to the navy. There had been a lot of people— there had been people in our family that had been graduated from the Academy, and spent years in the navy— careers. My mother had two cousins who graduated in roughly— from the Naval Academy, in ‘33 and ‘34, or ‘32 and ‘33; I can't remember right now. And then one of them later became a captain and then a rear admiral when he retired. The other was a captain, very high ranking. So I wanted to go there, and knowing that it's hard to get in and you need, in most cases, you need a congressional or senatorial appointment, there was another way around that, and that was— which I knew about— if you joined the Naval Reserve, or the regular Navy, you could take a competitive exam, and if you scored high enough you could get an appointment without having to have the congressional appointment.</p>
<p>So although I tried those routes, and didn't get them— other people got those appointments— I did, when I was in the eleventh grade, about to go into the twelfth grade, I joined the Naval Reserve. And so I was actually in the Navy then, and I took the competitive exam, and passed, did very well— I think I was sixty-sixth in the nation, the way I remember. And so I got in. I got an appointment through the Naval Reserve, from belonging in the Naval Reserve.</p>
<p>Now what later happened was that I left, what I say, for some medical reasons, but the thing is, my girlfriend and I conceived a child and so I left. You can't be married and be at the Academy, and I felt it was right that I should get married. So I left the Academy to get married, and then just reverted back to my status in the Reserves. And also, when I left the Academy, I was told that the time I spent at the Academy, which was roughly two and a half years, counted for my active duty for my reserve obligation. So I went back home, rejoined my unit— my reserve unit— and spent the last years of my required time as a reservist going to Monday night meetings. And summer, two-week tours where I'd travel out.</p>
<p>WW: And when you left the Academy you came back to Detroit then?</p>
<p>AB: Yeah. Yeah, came right back to Detroit. Got married and got a job, which was with Chrysler, and started back at Wayne. And I say "back" because, being a January graduate from the Detroit system, where they had the half grades, when I graduated in January of ‘62 I wouldn't be leaving for the Academy until roughly July. You start in the summer— you have your plebe summer— so I wouldn't start until July, so I went to Wayne for half a year. For one semester.</p>
<p>WW: Gotcha.</p>
<p>AB: And so when I came back, when I came back here after my time at the Academy, I just came back down, re-enrolled at Wayne. Had already been accepted.</p>
<p>WW: And where did you live when you moved back to the city?</p>
<p>AB: For a very short period of time I lived on Wayburn in Grosse Pointe Park, but that's because my wife and I were living with her grandmother, just actually only long enough to find a place. And I think, it's hard for me to say, but maybe that was four months or maybe it was six months. I'm not even sure if it was that long.</p>
<p>And then we found a place and bought half a duplex, similar to the way I had grown up, in this half a duplex on Frankfort. And it was on Frankfort, but it was just about four blocks away from there. And a slightly larger duplex— the size of the individual unit.</p>
<p>So lived there fo— just to go over my history of where I lived— lived there for I believe it was two years, and then we moved from there to a home on a street called Lenmore, just outside of Belleville, Michigan. And at the time I had moved to Ford Motor Company, where I spent the rest of my career, actually. And it— I was as far from Ford on the East side of Detroit as I was eventually in Belleville, having to drive back.</p>
<p>But we spent about three years out there in the Belleville area, and then kind of realized that we just kept driving back to the Eastside of Detroit all the time 'cause both our families lived over here, and so why not be back here. So we moved back and moved into Grosse Pointe Park and lived there for about ten years, and then I moved to Grosse Pointe Woods. And that's where I live today.</p>
<p>WW: Grosse Pointe Park, if I have it right, was ‘67? You were there in ‘67?</p>
<p>AB: No no. In sixty-seven—</p>
<p>WW: Were you still in Belleville?</p>
<p>AB: Well, obviously in ‘67 I was in Detroit. I know that, because that's where all the— I lived here during the riots. So I guess it was maybe a year after— maybe somewhere around ’68— ‘69! I think, ‘68 or ‘69 I moved to Belleville.</p>
<p>WW: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>AB: Yeah, ’68 or ’69 I moved to Belleville. Was there maybe three years, and then we bought a home in Grosse Pointe Park.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. Got it. So in ‘67, then, you were living in English Village.</p>
<p>AB: Yeah. Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Did you sense any— you said you didn't have any tension in high school, but did— going into ‘67, did you sense any growing tension in the city?</p>
<p>AB: No, I didn't. I may have heard of stuff, but other than hearing about it, I just didn't encounter it. I mean, I already was working in Dearborn, at Ford, and I had some black friends at that time, at work. I worked with people there. I can't remember how many, but I can remember some specific people. And I didn't— I didn't notice any tension.</p>
<p>WW: Do you have any memories of the Kercheval incident in ’66?</p>
<p>AB: Kercheval incident?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah.</p>
<p>AB: No, I honestly, I don't know— I have some memories, I guess, in ‘67, the big riot, but I don't know what the Kercheval incident was. I'm sorry.</p>
<p>WW: No worries.</p>
<p>AB: Consider myself— where— that was Kercheval and what? Kercheval and—</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember how you first heard about what was going on in ‘67?</p>
<p>AB: I don't remember, other than I have to assume that it was a combination of— I suppose hearing it on the radio, reading it in the newspaper, and I think, probably, seeing it on TV. Yeah. I don't remember a specific thing where it was, oh my god, this is happening, you know, and it sticks in my mind. I don't have that recollection.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. Are there any stories you'd like to share from that week? Were there any specific instances you'd like to share?</p>
<p>AB: Well, the one thing— no, two— I guess I have two or three recollections. The first one is that one day I went outside my house and there was a couple— one or two, I think it was two— army vehicles— National Guard— driving down Frankfort. I was surprised. I thought that what was going on was further downtown – and it was— but I didn't know it at the time, because, here were these vehicles out front, well, I wonder what's going on.</p>
<p>But I didn't realize at that point in time what I'm going to tell you now, and that is the National Guard was camped out at Chandler Park, which was at one end of Frankfort. Frankfort dead-ended into Chandler Park. And at the other end of— well, not the other end of Frankfort. Frankfort went on further. But at Frankfort and Alter there was this large park, and— surrounded by chain-link fence. Typical. But across the street from that park was a fire station. And at some point in time, they evacuated all the firetrucks from the inner city areas and they parked them. They tore down the fences and parked them in this park across the street from that fire station. And that was then used as the dispatching point for them to go fight fires, 'cause that's when the fire trucks were being shot at on occasion. And the firehouses were being shot at. So they said, Well, let's evacuate them all, and let's put a whole bunch of these things here and the National Guard's nearby and they can watch them. So the one thing I remember is, for a number of days, every now and then, every four hours or something, a couple vehicles going up and down the street, exchanging the guards at the park. And they would be coming from Chandler Park, where the National Guard was stationed.</p>
<p>So that was one thing. The other thing, and it was close— right close on this time when these vehicles were coming along occasionally, and going down and changing the guard down at that park— there was a night when we had been out, several neighbors and stuff had been out, we'd been walking around and we saw smoke on the horizon, so to speak. Looking down, in the direction from where I lived, towards Connor and Warren. And at the time, our judgment as we looked at it— we thought, Oh my god, that's right at Connor and Warren. Well, turned out it wasn't. It was further downtown. Not a lot, but I later found out it was like near St. Jean and Kercheval. Somewhere further down like that. It just was our perception was wrong on where it was coming from.</p>
<p>But, so we saw that that night, and there was a curfew— I believe it was a nine o'clock curfew— and we all left and went back to our houses. And, you know, with this thought that we'd seen this smoke and fire and that night the— we started hearing alarms. I mean, car sirens. And we thought it was the police, probably, going up and down Warren, which was only a block away, and I was really quite concerned that maybe things were on fire around us, but we couldn't— other than looking out the window, and it was already dark, couldn't tell for sure. But it was very scary. All these sirens. Well, we found out later that what it was, was all the fire trucks being dispatched to go fight fires in other areas. But they were going up and down Warren with these sirens going all the time and we just had this feeling like, oh my god, is it burning down around us? We didn't know.</p>
<p>At that point in time, my folks were living at the house I'd grown up at, on Buckingham near Mack. And so I called and talked to my folks. I said, “Look, before I go to work tomorrow—.“ I said, “I don't know what's going on. And before I go to work tomorrow, I want to bring my wife and daughter over and have them stay with you, because I'm afraid that we're being burned down around here.”</p>
<p>Well, it wasn't true, but you get the— with a lack of information, you wonder what's going on. And so in the morning, probably before it was even light out, because I needed time to get to work and everything, I packed up my wife and daughter, took them over to my folks' house, and then went on to work. That's another interesting thing— there was all that trouble going on, but there was never a problem getting from the Eastside to the Westside on the expressway. If you're driving on the expressway, it's like you didn't even know there was a problem. Traffic was freely moving.</p>
<p>I guess the— another example— I had another story of something that went on.</p>
<p>WW: How was your family reacting to what was going on? You talked about how you were nervous. Were your parents nervous as well?</p>
<p>AB: Yeah. Yeah. They were, and it's partly because they didn't know what was going on any more than I did. For instance, when I called over and said, “Hey, you know, sirens up and down the street all night, I don't know what's going on, and maybe they're burning the area down, I'm not sure—.” And they kind of had the same feeling. Yeah, you better bring Sheree and run over here before you go to work. But other than that, I don't want to say there was somewhat— well, maybe I should say it. We were somewhat detached from it. I mean, it wasn't happening right around us. And we just knew there was this stuff going on, from what we heard on the news. But we didn't really— we didn't have a tremendous amount of involvement.</p>
<p>WW: You referred to it as a riot a couple times.</p>
<p>AB: Yes.</p>
<p>WW: Is that how you interpret what happened in ‘67?</p>
<p>AB: That's just the word that got attached to it.</p>
<p>WW: Okay.</p>
<p>AB: I never saw it. So I can't really say what the proper description would be. But to us it was the ‘67 Riot.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. And did it play a role in your decision to move your family to Belleville?</p>
<p>AB: No, really not at all. No. It's funny, a minute ago when I was telling you something and it almost occurred to me for the first time, I thought, Is that why we moved? And I thought, No, that wasn't it at all. It was— the real impetus— I mean, just to show you how strange things can happen. I was doing some work on the genealogy of my family at the time, and among other things, I knew that part of my wife's family had come from the area of Belleville, and there's another city down there— well, Brownstown Township, in that area, and we had talked about, should we— let's move out, let's get out in the farm country, wouldn't it be nice to be out there? Get a place with a little bit of land, and stuff.</p>
<p>So one time when I was heading to Chicago for work, I pulled off at the Belleville exit, just to look at this town of Belleville, and it was a nice little town and everything. I stopped in and looked around at a real estate place, what was for sale, what were the prices, and went home and talked to my wife. We went back and looked and we thought, this is not a bad place to live. So we ended up finding what we thought was a really nice house, and moved. So it was really unrelated to the riots.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. After you had spent three years in Belleville and you came back to move into Grosse Pointe—</p>
<p>AB: Park.</p>
<p>WW: Park. Had you been— you said you'd been traveling to the city from Belleville during that time?</p>
<p>AB: Oh, through the city? Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Did you notice any considerable changes in the city after ‘67?</p>
<p>AB: No, I really didn't. I mean, I hate to say that I was not involved, but I wasn't. And at the time, I was working, I was bringing up two kids, by that time, and involved in church stuff, and I just wasn't involved. I mean, we just— yeah, it went on, and there were repercussions, I guess, and you heard about this or that going on, but most of the time, was— this is our family and this is what we're doing and— there wasn't a lot going on on the Eastside, at least not— I'll call it the far Eastside.</p>
<p>WW: Are there any other memories you'd like to share?</p>
<p>AB: I guess I really don't have— well, the only thing that I can maybe comment on, and I don't know if this is what you want in there, but I continued to live in Grosse Pointe Park for about, I think it was nine years. Then I moved to Grosse Pointe Woods and I've been there forty— almost forty years, thirty-eight years. And I’ve continued to see the area that I grew up in diminish. For instance, that first home that I grew up in, on Frankfort at Drexel— it's gone. It was abandoned and then it was torn down. And I know that the other house I lived in is not in good shape. And the area doesn't look good. It's saddening. It's saddening. But I've come to terms with it, I guess. I think things are turning around in the city, and I'm happy about that. I think things will get better. We eventually had to close that church that I grew up in, just because the congregation moved away, and I was one of the last ones to be in charge there, and closed it down. I'm glad the building still exists, even though it's been bought by some people who are going to turn it into something else. But it's a beautiful building. For many, many years, up until 2004 when we closed it, it was the one constant, you might say, in my life, was the church— St. Columba Episcopal Church, because it was there, and I'd always gone there and such. I certainly hope, desperately, for the city to come back. I see good things on the horizon. Very happy with what's going on now.</p>
<p>WW: Those were my final two questions, actually.</p>
<p>AB: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>WW: That worked out very well. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today, I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>AB: All right, thank you.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Track 1 ends; track 2 begins.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>AB: I wanted to add, as far as the city coming back, I've always been tied in, of course, with Wayne State, and I do a lot of stuff down here and I'm so happy to see Wayne State be the anchor for this Midtown growth, I mean, along with the hospitals that are here. And the fact there's almost a shortage of apartments and housing space. Things are just— they're like starting from this area and the downtown, and starting to move out. You can almost see it exploding out in waves, and it'll eventually totally, I think, encompass the whole city.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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33min 17sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Arthur Bryant
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rQpR7hX3okw" 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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Arthur Bryant, December 13th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Arthur Bryant discusses his impressions of growing up in Detroit. He shares his experiences during the events of July 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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6/13/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/Mp3
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Community Members
-
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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Hustle: Black Entrepreneurship in Detroit
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society
Language
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English-US
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Arthur C Davis
Brief Biography
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Arthur Davis was born and raised in Detroit. He went through the Detroit Public School System and eventually graduated from Cass Tech.
Interviewer's Name
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Lily Chen
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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8/10/2022
Interview Length
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23:08
Transcriptionist
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Taylor Claybrook
Transcription
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DavisArthurAudio.mp3
Lily Chen [00:00:01] Testing. All right. Hi, everyone. Today is Wednesday, August 10th at 10 a.m.. And this is Lily Chen completing an interview for the Hustle Project. We are so excited to be interviewing our nominees. And, yeah, do you want to go ahead and introduce [yourself]. Tell us your name and go ahead and spell it out and then go from there.
Arthur Davis [00:00:33] Good morning. My name is Arthur C. Davis. Do I need to spell it out?
Lily [00:00:39] Mm hmm.
Arthur [00:00:39] A r t h u r c davis.
Lily [00:00:44] Awesome. Okay. And, Arthur, what is the name of your business?
Arthur [00:00:48] The name of my business is security. A Work of Art—Executive Protection.
Lily [00:00:52] Okay, awesome. And it is obviously in Detroit. Do you have a brick and mortar or are you, is it just, uh, the security business?
Arthur [00:01:05] Just a security business I have in Detroit. And basically I work out of different venues, so I use my home as my address.
Lily [00:01:15] Okay, cool. All right. So before we get into the business, I'm going to ask you just about a little bit about yourself. So what year you were born and where you were born? And tell us a little bit about growing up.
Arthur [00:01:29] Okay. I was born in Detroit. How many years ago?
Lily [00:01:33] Many.
Arthur [00:01:34] Many years ago. Raised on the west side of Detroit. And I grew up attended all Detroit public schools. I graduated from Cass Tech.
Lily [00:01:45] Oh, wow.
Arthur [00:01:45] And then I attended the Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where I earned my bachelor's and master's degree.
Lily [00:01:53] Okay. So you went to the best high school in Detroit?
Arthur [00:01:56] Yes, I did. Okay, let's take the best high school in Detroit.
Lily [00:01:59] That's awesome. Um, just checking our volume levels. Okay. And so you said you're from the West Side. Are you still on the west side right now?
Arthur [00:02:09] Oh, currently I'm living in the Southfield area.
Lily [00:02:14] Okay, cool. And what was it like growing up in Detroit?
Arthur [00:02:19] Uh, in those days, it was great. We knew everybody in the neighborhood. You knew all your neighbors. We played in the streets. I don't know what kids are doing today, but we played in the streets. And yeah, I attended schools. The schools was a fun place to be, you know, and staying outside until the lights went out. That was the best part of it.
Lily [00:02:38] Yeah, well, you must've been... You must have had a lot of fun and then also clearly studied hard. And you ended up at Cass Tech.
Arthur 00:02:45] Yes.
Lily [00:02:46] Yeah. Um. All right, well, let's get into the business, so go ahead and tell me, like the public elevator pitch version. So if you were introducing the business to somebody who had never heard of it before, what would you say?
Arthur [00:03:03] What I would say is you have to start somewhere. So I started off basically at Oakland University as a security for a dorm. And from that, that led me to. Training in the martial arts that we had at the school at that time. And because of that, we were hired by Pine Knob because I didn't have security when I first opened in. I think it was 1972.
Lily [00:03:30] Oh, wow. So the resort.
Arthur [00:03:32] The Pine Knob amphitheater.
Lily [00:03:34] Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, cool.
Arthur [00:03:37] So from there, you know, because of my I'm only 5’9 weigh like 150, I was not impressive. So I decided I've got to learn some martial arts, you know. So from that point I started training for different arts and learn how to protect myself. Defend myself. And again. Because of my small size. I just kept training and training and training.
Lily [00:04:08] Yeah.
Arthur [00:04:10] After that, I left Oakland University. I began work. I started working as a security guard with Singleton's security agency. And again, it was uniformed security. But I wanted more. So I figured out I better learn more about this business. And therefore, I went through the Yellow Pages figuring out what's better than a security guard. And I looked at the different options corporate security, retail security. Then it was entertainment, and it was executive protection. I said, Oh, I want to take it to the highest level. And from that point on, I started to work in different venues as a bouncer in the clubs. And because of my small size, I had to use everything I learned in martial arts to become, you know, a certain sort of set of skills that made me like the perfect weapon.
Lily [00:05:17] Wow. That's such a cool story. So from the beginning. So you, you know, you graduated high school and went to Oakland University and then directly from Oakland. Did you start doing security right away?
Arthur [00:05:36] Yes, I did. By working at Pine Knob. I was working at the Meadowbrook. Meadow Brook Hall providing security there. And I became. Like I said, a bouncer. Then I
started working different venues. Yeah. And in a city as a bouncer, like the Majestic Theater, the Warehouse nightclub, several other venues like that.
Lily [00:06:06] Yeah.
Arthur [00:06:07] And at that point, you know, I wanted to become more than just a bouncer in a club. So I went out to the premier center in Sterling Heights and started doing stage and backstage security at the Premier Center. I left there, went to the Crystal Gardens in Mount Clemens. And from that point, I met several people that hired me in to the Palace of Auburn Hills. And that's where I got started as a security guard working at the Palace of Auburn Hills.
Lily [00:06:42] Wow. You've been so many places. You must have seen so many cool things.
Arthur [00:06:48] So many things. And at the Palace of Auburn Hills, as when I met working with the Pistons, I met a lot of players and met John Salley. And when I met John Salley and all of the altercations they got into at the arena, you know, at the stage or at the games, and he says, I want to hire you. I said, To do what? To be my personal security. Wow. And from that point on, he became my first client, and he was the one who pushed me into opening my own company.
Lily [00:07:27] Wow. What year did you start working for him?
Arthur [00:07:32] Probably I will say 1989. Right? Right. During the championship years.
Lily [00:07:38] Oh, wow. And how long? How long were you? His personal security guard?
Arthur [00:07:43] I work for John the entire time he was with the Detroit Pistons. I stayed at it. You know, he was only Piston that lived in Detroit, so I would live at his carriage house in back of his mansion. I provide a security for his wedding. And as again, I was his personal security. I trained him at the powerhouse gym, trained him in martial arts in his home. And we became like the best of friends. But he was the first person to suggest I start my own company. And because of him, I started a company and went back to the palace. As a company, you know, the Palace started hire my company as the first African American company to provide stage protection for artists. Wow.
Lily [00:08:35] That's amazing. What year did what year did you start the company?
Arthur [00:08:41] Probably had to be 1988, 1989, you know, because I didn't start it too, after John encouraged me to start my own company. But prior to that, you know, I was working in the clubs as a bouncer, and I had a team of people that worked with me. So once John Salley encouraged me to start a company, I felt, Oh, I gotta get some formal training. So that's when I started taking all the classes in executive protection and personal firearms. Defense tactics stick and knife fighting. And I just wanted to learn more and more about the business. So I went to every class that the executive protection offered me out there urban terrorism, airport security, hotel security. And I just learned basic stuff through the state of Michigan, like techniques and alcohol management. You know, I was part learn CPR first aid.
Lily [00:09:41] Yeah.
Arthur 00:09:42] And so by doing that, I was a loner because nobody else had those skills. Yeah. So I gather a team of 12 people and I encouraged them. Let's go as a team and learn all these skills. And again, we did it out of our own pockets. Oh, wow. We traveled to Virginia, traveled to New Orleans, traveled to Chicago. I went to Toronto for training. I went to Montreal. I became a part of the International Federation of Personal Protection Agents, you know, and that was a plus for me. So with the certification behind us and the formal training that took us out of I never wanted to be in a uniform security. I wanted to stop being a t shirt security. So now my uniform is the black suits. Yeah. People used to think of us as the men in black. No, we are a work of art.
Lily 00:10:37] Yeah, well, you're looking very dapper today. Thank you. Yeah. So you. It sounds like you learned so much over your journey.
Arthur 00:10:48] Yeah, absolutely. I learned a lot, and I'm still learning. And I met Ron Fleming. He was a former commander of Detroit Police Department of the Executive Protection Unit. He was one of my mentors. And from him, I learned basic things about personal protection and executive protection through Ron Fleming. And I also encouraged another friend of my who worked under me to start his company and. He started a security company. Basically, security guards work doing venues. His name was Charles Muhammad. And we established a partnership where he took care of the security part and I took care of the entertainment part.
Lily [00:11:32] Cool. The he was one of the 12 people that joined you originally. Yes. Okay. And how did you find your team?
Arthur [00:11:40] Basically. You know, by working in the clubs, people have come to me, ask me, I do this, you know, what? Do you need any more help? Yes, I need a lot of help. So I have men and women. And again, to get out bouncers mentality, I suggest that everybody let’s everyone get formal training. Well, you know, we've got to step it up. We've got to step it up. And like I said, John certainly encouraged me to step it up, be better from that point on. I started meeting other people through John Salley. I started working for the radio stations here in Detroit, the local race, the Shelby Hour FM 92.3. I work for them and provide security, matter of fact, for John Mason when he first came to Detroit to provide a security for John Mason, Franky Darcel. So it was very interesting to meet all of these people. And through WJLB, I was able to do security for all the classes that came into the city. Yeah. So I have met everyone. Everyone. I have met everyone. Wow. I started off with Aaliyah Was one of my first clients. Yeah. She was one. And a lot of Detroit people. Norma Jeane Bailon are stars with me. Mildred Scott and Kimmy Hall. Matter of fact, it was my first group that I worked with.
Lily [00:13:02] Wow. Um, it's it's so crazy to hear you name all these celebrities, and they trusted you with their life, you know, to protect them.
Arthur [00:13:14] And that's it. I'm very proud of, you know, my professionalism, my work ethic and my integrity. And again, I'm not on social media. So basically everything I got was to word of mouth.
Lily [00:13:26] Yeah.
Arthur [00:13:27] You know, and referrals. And I've always been that way, you know, through all these years, 35 plus years and never been on social media. I also met Tom
Joyner. I provide security for him over the past 20 years for his fantastic voyages. We've been to every country, you know, every island. And I've traveled a lot through him. I've met a lot of entertainers. I met the Isley Brothers to him. I traveled with the Isley Brothers. I worked for them for six years. I worked with Charlie Wilson and the Gap band, work for them for six years. They are personal protection agent and we have traveled all over the world. I have been over to Europe minimum ten times several countries because of these entertainers. It's been a great trip and the NFL I work for Daniel Snyder. The Detroit Lions hired me to be his personal protection when it comes to town. And I sit in the owner's box and that was a thrill.
Lily [00:14:33] That’s so cool. Wow. So, you know that original 12, obviously you didn't start with 12. You started just by yourself.
Arthur [00:14:44] Yes.
Lily [00:14:45] How long did it take to get to that bigger team?
Arthur [00:14:47] That bigger team? We got bigger and I got up to a minimum. I think 35 people. Oh, wow. And out of the original people that worked with me, one of them, one of them became the police chief of Flint. Wow. I had a lady that became a federal marshal. I
had another lady that became part of Detroit Police Department's executive protection team when a Kwame Kilpatrick was mayor.
Lily [00:15:17] Wow.
Arthur [00:15:18] So everybody. And these four guys have formed their own companies after leaving me is amazed and I'm so proud of them guys. Again, it was Charles Muhammad. He became the X-Man Protection Agency. Dale Brown became Vipers, France Johnson Openness Company. Roy Muhammad opened up courtesy crowd control. So these individuals, I'm proud of them. What they have accomplished since leaving my organization.
Lily [00:15:50] Oh, that's so cool. One of the things that really sets you apart is that you've been mentoring kind of people under you, people that used to work for you. You've seen them grow, you know. And it's so beautiful to see how much you've given in that direction to not just in your service as a security guard, but also as a as a mentor to these people.
Arthur [00:16:12] Yes. And I think that was I'm really proud of the fact that we hired. Detroiters. Yeah. Each of these companies, we have always hired Detroiters, and they was able to get, you know, to meet these national stars. My team was able to travel. You know, we got passports. Everybody got the CPR training and got the executive protection training. So we were able to travel around the world. And the greatest thing for me was that these people grew with me.
Lily [00:16:42] Yeah.
Arthur [00:16:42] And other people, they took it to another level. I'm so proud of them. But. And it's been a fantastic journey. And I'm still growing. I'm still growing. I just joined. Well, four years ago, the Wayne County Sheriff's Department through Ray Washington and Benny Napoleon, I became a part of the Wayne County Emergency Community Emergency Response Team. Okay. So I'm giving back to Detroit in that way, you know?
Lily [00:17:13] Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's and you know, it's something that people have incorrect about business owners is that they're always competing, you know, and that you would be competing with people that are starting new businesses. But that's not true, because in your case, you are supporting them and mentoring them.
Arthur [00:17:34] Yeah, there's no competition out here. I look at it as a network and encourage everybody to come together. The city is big enough for everybody to achieve their goals. And like I said, a matter of fact before people that started, companies from me, we network on bigger events. You know, we work at Hart Plaza, we work to auto shows. So we come together because I don't have a hundred man team. We even worked a Super Bowl when it came to Detroit. We had a 200 man team, but I had to encourage everybody to come together and make that work for us. Yeah. So I did a Super Bowl with several of the companies.
Lily [00:18:11] That's very cool. Yeah, it's a very different story about how business works, where you are collaborating, and especially because they are fellow Detroiters, their fellow black Detroiters that you want to support and you want to see them flourish.
Arthur [00:18:25] Absolutely. And I think that's key in this business for me, is that we all come together, you know, for the bigger picture, because myself, I couldn't do it alone. I couldn't do it alone. So I encourage everybody just come together, work towards a goal or towards your own goal, but be a part of a network. And that's that's was key to me being part of a network and look out for each other, look out for the community. Again, we're pulling people from the community into this.
Lily [00:18:53] Yeah. Yeah. So it's like you play two major roles. One is that you run this hugely successful security business. And the second is you're also a big Detroit employer, right?
Arthur [00:19:07] Yes, that is still true. And I'm still trying to employ people because they are staff shortages everywhere. And we're still trying to employ people, you know, as so many venues we have to cover. I have an opportunity to meet with the people at not Joe
Louis. I mean the Little Caesars Arena. To meet with them, see how I can help them. Assist them with their security challenges. And it's just been great. I do the Aretha Franklin Ampitheater. I work with Brother Charles and X-Men there so we could pull a team together and make that successful. And again, the Hart. We do the festivals at Hart Plaza. So it's been a journey.
Lily [00:19:48] Yeah, it's been. It's like 30 years, right?
Arthur [00:19:52] 30, 35.
Lily [00:19:53] Years.
Arthur [00:19:54] 35 years. 35 years.
Lily [00:19:55] So in 35 years, what are some of the hardest things that you ever had to encounter and what are some of the best things?
Arthur 00:20:04] The hardest thing is making sure you're protecting the patrons that come to these venues. You protect the artists. The safety of the artists is important and then the safety of our employees, because you're understaffed, you're undermanned. And when
you're working with crowds of that magnitude, our safety comes first. Right. Safety comes first. So those are our biggest challenge. Then the challenges as working with the different artists, entourages that come into the city, you know, they come with their own their own agenda. And as we know, it’s not their agenda, it’s own agenda. And you're in our house. You know, you got to abide by our rules. But it's never the artist is always their entourage that causes the problems. But a beautiful side of it is the traveling that we get, the media and a different artist. You get to meet them. Personally, I have worked with Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson when they're. When we leave the castle, I'm there 24 hours with them at the hotels till they leave. You know, as I get you know, I sit with Janet Jackson, I sat with Gladys Knight, you know, and it's just. Wow. That's interesting.
Lily 00:21:23] I mean, that's that's amazing.
Arthur 00:21:26] Well, I've been with when Whitney Houston was alive, I was with her and rode in a limo. We just laughed and joke. You know, those things I think are so much fun. But it's still about work. It's still about work.
Lily 00:21:38] Right.
Arthur 00:21:38] And still about your profession. It's cause I tell everybody we're not there to be entertained. We're there to work and provide a service. Yeah. You know, I'm not trying to become your buddy. I will protect you. I'm here to protect you. And you know, that thing of, you know, take a bullet for me and know I will keep us both from taking a bullet.
Lily 00:21:56] Yeah, that's a really good point. Why does anyone need to take a bullet? Just avoid a bullet.
Arthur 00:22:02] Avoid a bullet.
Lily [00:22:04] Yeah. So, I mean, over those 35 years, um, growing the business must have been such a crazy journey.
Arthur [00:22:14] It is growing a business again. Try and get people to step up as friend element, because that's what it costs us to take this form of training and occurs to take the training. That way we won't be reckless security. Guys, you want more money? We can get more money. I can charge a client more money. We can show him my paperwork. We're. I have certification in all of these areas. That's why you're going to pay me this money. So getting people to buy into that? No, the security is not for everybody. And to encourage them that we're not bouncers anymore. We're not bouncers. We're not trying to fight every night. So it's just get people to join in and figure out, invest yourself. I'm going to invest in you. That's what I would tell my staff. Invest investing instead of just in you.
Lily [00:23:05] Yeah. So they've learned with you.
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
Arthur C Davis, August 10th, 2022
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Arthur Davis talks about his security business, Work of Art Executive Protection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society
Language
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en-US
Black Business
Detroit
Entrepreneurship
The Hustle
-
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
Hustle: Black Entrepreneurship in Detroit
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society
Language
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English-US
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Arthur C Davis
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Arthur C Davis was born and raised in Detroit. He went through the public school system, graduated from Cass Tech, and went on to start his own business.
Interviewer's Name
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Lily Chen
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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8/10/2022
Interview Length
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23:08
Transcriptionist
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Taylor Claybrook
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Lily Chen [00:00:01] Testing. All right. Hi, everyone. Today is Wednesday, August 10th at 10 a.m.. And this is Lily Chen completing an interview for the Hustle Project. We are so excited to be interviewing our nominees. And, yeah, do you want to go ahead and introduce [yourself]. Tell us your name and go ahead and spell it out and then go from there.
Arthur Davis [00:00:33] Good morning. My name is Arthur C. Davis. Do I need to spell it out?
Lily [00:00:39] Mm hmm.
Arthur [00:00:39] A r t h u r c davis.
Lily [00:00:44] Awesome. Okay. And, Arthur, what is the name of your business?
Arthur [00:00:48] The name of my business is security. A Work of Art—Executive Protection.
Lily [00:00:52] Okay, awesome. And it is obviously in Detroit. Do you have a brick and mortar or are you, is it just, uh, the security business?
Arthur [00:01:05] Just a security business I have in Detroit. And basically I work out of different venues, so I use my home as my address.
Lily [00:01:15] Okay, cool. All right. So before we get into the business, I'm going to ask you just about a little bit about yourself. So what year you were born and where you were born? And tell us a little bit about growing up.
Arthur [00:01:29] Okay. I was born in Detroit. How many years ago?
Lily [00:01:33] Many.
Arthur [00:01:34] Many years ago. Raised on the west side of Detroit. And I grew up attended all Detroit public schools. I graduated from Cass Tech.
Lily [00:01:45] Oh, wow.
Arthur [00:01:45] And then I attended the Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where I earned my bachelor's and master's degree.
Lily [00:01:53] Okay. So you went to the best high school in Detroit?
Arthur [00:01:56] Yes, I did. Okay, let's take the best high school in Detroit.
Lily [00:01:59] That's awesome. Um, just checking our volume levels. Okay. And so you said you're from the West Side. Are you still on the west side right now?
Arthur [00:02:09] Oh, currently I'm living in the Southfield area.
Lily [00:02:14] Okay, cool. And what was it like growing up in Detroit?
Arthur [00:02:19] Uh, in those days, it was great. We knew everybody in the neighborhood. You knew all your neighbors. We played in the streets. I don't know what kids are doing today, but we played in the streets. And yeah, I attended schools. The schools was a fun place to be, you know, and staying outside until the lights went out. That was the best part of it.
Lily [00:02:38] Yeah, well, you must've been... You must have had a lot of fun and then also clearly studied hard. And you ended up at Cass Tech.
Arthur 00:02:45] Yes.
Lily [00:02:46] Yeah. Um. All right, well, let's get into the business, so go ahead and tell me, like the public elevator pitch version. So if you were introducing the business to somebody who had never heard of it before, what would you say?
Arthur [00:03:03] What I would say is you have to start somewhere. So I started off basically at Oakland University as a security for a dorm. And from that, that led me to. Training in the martial arts that we had at the school at that time. And because of that, we were hired by Pine Knob because I didn't have security when I first opened in. I think it was 1972.
Lily [00:03:30] Oh, wow. So the resort.
Arthur [00:03:32] The Pine Knob amphitheater.
Lily [00:03:34] Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, cool.
Arthur [00:03:37] So from there, you know, because of my I'm only 5’9 weigh like 150, I was not impressive. So I decided I've got to learn some martial arts, you know. So from that point I started training for different arts and learn how to protect myself. Defend myself. And again. Because of my small size. I just kept training and training and training.
Lily [00:04:08] Yeah.
Arthur [00:04:10] After that, I left Oakland University. I began work. I started working as a security guard with Singleton's security agency. And again, it was uniformed security. But I wanted more. So I figured out I better learn more about this business. And therefore, I went through the Yellow Pages figuring out what's better than a security guard. And I looked at the different options corporate security, retail security. Then it was entertainment, and it was executive protection. I said, Oh, I want to take it to the highest level. And from that point on, I started to work in different venues as a bouncer in the clubs. And because of my small size, I had to use everything I learned in martial arts to become, you know, a certain sort of set of skills that made me like the perfect weapon.
Lily [00:05:17] Wow. That's such a cool story. So from the beginning. So you, you know, you graduated high school and went to Oakland University and then directly from Oakland. Did you start doing security right away?
Arthur [00:05:36] Yes, I did. By working at Pine Knob. I was working at the Meadowbrook. Meadow Brook Hall providing security there. And I became. Like I said, a bouncer. Then I
started working different venues. Yeah. And in a city as a bouncer, like the Majestic Theater, the Warehouse nightclub, several other venues like that.
Lily [00:06:06] Yeah.
Arthur [00:06:07] And at that point, you know, I wanted to become more than just a bouncer in a club. So I went out to the premier center in Sterling Heights and started doing stage and backstage security at the Premier Center. I left there, went to the Crystal Gardens in Mount Clemens. And from that point, I met several people that hired me in to the Palace of Auburn Hills. And that's where I got started as a security guard working at the Palace of Auburn Hills.
Lily [00:06:42] Wow. You've been so many places. You must have seen so many cool things.
Arthur [00:06:48] So many things. And at the Palace of Auburn Hills, as when I met working with the Pistons, I met a lot of players and met John Salley. And when I met John Salley and all of the altercations they got into at the arena, you know, at the stage or at the games, and he says, I want to hire you. I said, To do what? To be my personal security. Wow. And from that point on, he became my first client, and he was the one who pushed me into opening my own company.
Lily [00:07:27] Wow. What year did you start working for him?
Arthur [00:07:32] Probably I will say 1989. Right? Right. During the championship years.
Lily [00:07:38] Oh, wow. And how long? How long were you? His personal security guard?
Arthur [00:07:43] I work for John the entire time he was with the Detroit Pistons. I stayed at it. You know, he was only Piston that lived in Detroit, so I would live at his carriage house in back of his mansion. I provide a security for his wedding. And as again, I was his personal security. I trained him at the powerhouse gym, trained him in martial arts in his home. And we became like the best of friends. But he was the first person to suggest I start my own company. And because of him, I started a company and went back to the palace. As a company, you know, the Palace started hire my company as the first African American company to provide stage protection for artists. Wow.
Lily [00:08:35] That's amazing. What year did what year did you start the company?
Arthur [00:08:41] Probably had to be 1988, 1989, you know, because I didn't start it too, after John encouraged me to start my own company. But prior to that, you know, I was working in the clubs as a bouncer, and I had a team of people that worked with me. So once John Salley encouraged me to start a company, I felt, Oh, I gotta get some formal training. So that's when I started taking all the classes in executive protection and personal firearms. Defense tactics stick and knife fighting. And I just wanted to learn more and more about the business. So I went to every class that the executive protection offered me out there urban terrorism, airport security, hotel security. And I just learned basic stuff through the state of Michigan, like techniques and alcohol management. You know, I was part learn CPR first aid.
Lily [00:09:41] Yeah.
Arthur 00:09:42] And so by doing that, I was a loner because nobody else had those skills. Yeah. So I gather a team of 12 people and I encouraged them. Let's go as a team and learn all these skills. And again, we did it out of our own pockets. Oh, wow. We traveled to Virginia, traveled to New Orleans, traveled to Chicago. I went to Toronto for training. I went to Montreal. I became a part of the International Federation of Personal Protection Agents, you know, and that was a plus for me. So with the certification behind us and the formal training that took us out of I never wanted to be in a uniform security. I wanted to stop being a t shirt security. So now my uniform is the black suits. Yeah. People used to think of us as the men in black. No, we are a work of art.
Lily 00:10:37] Yeah, well, you're looking very dapper today. Thank you. Yeah. So you. It sounds like you learned so much over your journey.
Arthur 00:10:48] Yeah, absolutely. I learned a lot, and I'm still learning. And I met Ron Fleming. He was a former commander of Detroit Police Department of the Executive Protection Unit. He was one of my mentors. And from him, I learned basic things about personal protection and executive protection through Ron Fleming. And I also encouraged another friend of my who worked under me to start his company and. He started a security company. Basically, security guards work doing venues. His name was Charles Muhammad. And we established a partnership where he took care of the security part and I took care of the entertainment part.
Lily [00:11:32] Cool. The he was one of the 12 people that joined you originally. Yes. Okay. And how did you find your team?
Arthur [00:11:40] Basically. You know, by working in the clubs, people have come to me, ask me, I do this, you know, what? Do you need any more help? Yes, I need a lot of help. So I have men and women. And again, to get out bouncers mentality, I suggest that everybody let’s everyone get formal training. Well, you know, we've got to step it up. We've got to step it up. And like I said, John certainly encouraged me to step it up, be better from that point on. I started meeting other people through John Salley. I started working for the radio stations here in Detroit, the local race, the Shelby Hour FM 92.3. I work for them and provide security, matter of fact, for John Mason when he first came to Detroit to provide a security for John Mason, Franky Darcel. So it was very interesting to meet all of these people. And through WJLB, I was able to do security for all the classes that came into the city. Yeah. So I have met everyone. Everyone. I have met everyone. Wow. I started off with Aaliyah Was one of my first clients. Yeah. She was one. And a lot of Detroit people. Norma Jeane Bailon are stars with me. Mildred Scott and Kimmy Hall. Matter of fact, it was my first group that I worked with.
Lily [00:13:02] Wow. Um, it's it's so crazy to hear you name all these celebrities, and they trusted you with their life, you know, to protect them.
Arthur [00:13:14] And that's it. I'm very proud of, you know, my professionalism, my work ethic and my integrity. And again, I'm not on social media. So basically everything I got was to word of mouth.
Lily [00:13:26] Yeah.
Arthur [00:13:27] You know, and referrals. And I've always been that way, you know, through all these years, 35 plus years and never been on social media. I also met Tom
Joyner. I provide security for him over the past 20 years for his fantastic voyages. We've been to every country, you know, every island. And I've traveled a lot through him. I've met a lot of entertainers. I met the Isley Brothers to him. I traveled with the Isley Brothers. I worked for them for six years. I worked with Charlie Wilson and the Gap band, work for them for six years. They are personal protection agent and we have traveled all over the world. I have been over to Europe minimum ten times several countries because of these entertainers. It's been a great trip and the NFL I work for Daniel Snyder. The Detroit Lions hired me to be his personal protection when it comes to town. And I sit in the owner's box and that was a thrill.
Lily [00:14:33] That’s so cool. Wow. So, you know that original 12, obviously you didn't start with 12. You started just by yourself.
Arthur [00:14:44] Yes.
Lily [00:14:45] How long did it take to get to that bigger team?
Arthur [00:14:47] That bigger team? We got bigger and I got up to a minimum. I think 35 people. Oh, wow. And out of the original people that worked with me, one of them, one of them became the police chief of Flint. Wow. I had a lady that became a federal marshal. I
had another lady that became part of Detroit Police Department's executive protection team when a Kwame Kilpatrick was mayor.
Lily [00:15:17] Wow.
Arthur [00:15:18] So everybody. And these four guys have formed their own companies after leaving me is amazed and I'm so proud of them guys. Again, it was Charles Muhammad. He became the X-Man Protection Agency. Dale Brown became Vipers, France Johnson Openness Company. Roy Muhammad opened up courtesy crowd control. So these individuals, I'm proud of them. What they have accomplished since leaving my organization.
Lily [00:15:50] Oh, that's so cool. One of the things that really sets you apart is that you've been mentoring kind of people under you, people that used to work for you. You've seen them grow, you know. And it's so beautiful to see how much you've given in that direction to not just in your service as a security guard, but also as a as a mentor to these people.
Arthur [00:16:12] Yes. And I think that was I'm really proud of the fact that we hired. Detroiters. Yeah. Each of these companies, we have always hired Detroiters, and they was able to get, you know, to meet these national stars. My team was able to travel. You know, we got passports. Everybody got the CPR training and got the executive protection training. So we were able to travel around the world. And the greatest thing for me was that these people grew with me.
Lily [00:16:42] Yeah.
Arthur [00:16:42] And other people, they took it to another level. I'm so proud of them. But. And it's been a fantastic journey. And I'm still growing. I'm still growing. I just joined. Well, four years ago, the Wayne County Sheriff's Department through Ray Washington and Benny Napoleon, I became a part of the Wayne County Emergency Community Emergency Response Team. Okay. So I'm giving back to Detroit in that way, you know?
Lily [00:17:13] Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's and you know, it's something that people have incorrect about business owners is that they're always competing, you know, and that you would be competing with people that are starting new businesses. But that's not true, because in your case, you are supporting them and mentoring them.
Arthur [00:17:34] Yeah, there's no competition out here. I look at it as a network and encourage everybody to come together. The city is big enough for everybody to achieve their goals. And like I said, a matter of fact before people that started, companies from me, we network on bigger events. You know, we work at Hart Plaza, we work to auto shows. So we come together because I don't have a hundred man team. We even worked a Super Bowl when it came to Detroit. We had a 200 man team, but I had to encourage everybody to come together and make that work for us. Yeah. So I did a Super Bowl with several of the companies.
Lily [00:18:11] That's very cool. Yeah, it's a very different story about how business works, where you are collaborating, and especially because they are fellow Detroiters, their fellow black Detroiters that you want to support and you want to see them flourish.
Arthur [00:18:25] Absolutely. And I think that's key in this business for me, is that we all come together, you know, for the bigger picture, because myself, I couldn't do it alone. I couldn't do it alone. So I encourage everybody just come together, work towards a goal or towards your own goal, but be a part of a network. And that's that's was key to me being part of a network and look out for each other, look out for the community. Again, we're pulling people from the community into this.
Lily [00:18:53] Yeah. Yeah. So it's like you play two major roles. One is that you run this hugely successful security business. And the second is you're also a big Detroit employer, right?
Arthur [00:19:07] Yes, that is still true. And I'm still trying to employ people because they are staff shortages everywhere. And we're still trying to employ people, you know, as so many venues we have to cover. I have an opportunity to meet with the people at not Joe
Louis. I mean the Little Caesars Arena. To meet with them, see how I can help them. Assist them with their security challenges. And it's just been great. I do the Aretha Franklin Ampitheater. I work with Brother Charles and X-Men there so we could pull a team together and make that successful. And again, the Hart. We do the festivals at Hart Plaza. So it's been a journey.
Lily [00:19:48] Yeah, it's been. It's like 30 years, right?
Arthur [00:19:52] 30, 35.
Lily [00:19:53] Years.
Arthur [00:19:54] 35 years. 35 years.
Lily [00:19:55] So in 35 years, what are some of the hardest things that you ever had to encounter and what are some of the best things?
Arthur 00:20:04] The hardest thing is making sure you're protecting the patrons that come to these venues. You protect the artists. The safety of the artists is important and then the safety of our employees, because you're understaffed, you're undermanned. And when
you're working with crowds of that magnitude, our safety comes first. Right. Safety comes first. So those are our biggest challenge. Then the challenges as working with the different artists, entourages that come into the city, you know, they come with their own their own agenda. And as we know, it’s not their agenda, it’s own agenda. And you're in our house. You know, you got to abide by our rules. But it's never the artist is always their entourage that causes the problems. But a beautiful side of it is the traveling that we get, the media and a different artist. You get to meet them. Personally, I have worked with Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson when they're. When we leave the castle, I'm there 24 hours with them at the hotels till they leave. You know, as I get you know, I sit with Janet Jackson, I sat with Gladys Knight, you know, and it's just. Wow. That's interesting.
Lily 00:21:23] I mean, that's that's amazing.
Arthur 00:21:26] Well, I've been with when Whitney Houston was alive, I was with her and rode in a limo. We just laughed and joke. You know, those things I think are so much fun. But it's still about work. It's still about work.
Lily 00:21:38] Right.
Arthur 00:21:38] And still about your profession. It's cause I tell everybody we're not there to be entertained. We're there to work and provide a service. Yeah. You know, I'm not trying to become your buddy. I will protect you. I'm here to protect you. And you know, that thing of, you know, take a bullet for me and know I will keep us both from taking a bullet.
Lily 00:21:56] Yeah, that's a really good point. Why does anyone need to take a bullet? Just avoid a bullet.
Arthur 00:22:02] Avoid a bullet.
Lily [00:22:04] Yeah. So, I mean, over those 35 years, um, growing the business must have been such a crazy journey.
Arthur [00:22:14] It is growing a business again. Try and get people to step up as friend element, because that's what it costs us to take this form of training and occurs to take the training. That way we won't be reckless security. Guys, you want more money? We can get more money. I can charge a client more money. We can show him my paperwork. We're. I have certification in all of these areas. That's why you're going to pay me this money. So getting people to buy into that? No, the security is not for everybody. And to encourage them that we're not bouncers anymore. We're not bouncers. We're not trying to fight every night. So it's just get people to join in and figure out, invest yourself. I'm going to invest in you. That's what I would tell my staff. Invest investing instead of just in you.
Lily [00:23:05] Yeah. So they've learned with you.
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
Arthur C Davis, August 10th, 2022
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Arthur C Davis talks about his security business Security a Work of Art Executive Protection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society
Language
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en-US
Black Business
Detroit
Entrepreneurship
The Hustle
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/c644af5265e2d1bf8a92c7125c381c5f.JPG
2fa301472178b0ffec78ae7ab71a90b4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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.
Arthur Divers
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Arthur Divers is an African American male and was born December 12, 1962 and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. His family moved to 7 Mile after the civil disturbance. Divers joined the Detroit Police Department after graduating Ford High School.
Interviewer's Name
The first and last name of the interviewer.
Giancarlo Stefanutti
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
The date of the interview in MM/DD/YYYY format.
07/26/2016
Interview Length
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00:13:29
Transcriptionist
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Ciaran McCourt
Transcription Date
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08/04/2016
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>GS: Hello, today is July 26, 2016. My name is Giancarlo Stefanutti and this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s 67 Oral History Project, and I’m sitting down with Arthur Divers today. Thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AD: Thank you.</p>
<p>GS: So where and when were you born?</p>
<p>AD: December 12, 1962.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, where were you born?</p>
<p>AD: Here in Detroit, Michigan.</p>
<p>GS: Okay. So where did you grow up as a child?</p>
<p>AD: My first residence was 9362 North Martindale.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, and what did your parents do growing up?</p>
<p>AD: My father was a retired educator and my mother’s a homemaker.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, do you have any siblings?</p>
<p>AD: Yes I have a brother and a sister.</p>
<p>GS: Okay. So what was your neighborhood like then, growing up? Was it very racially integrated?</p>
<p>AD: At that time – in that area, there was Joy Road – Joy Road, the Jeffries Freeway, Dexter, all that pretty much was black. However the businesses over there were white, and there were Jewish people. And you had business of all type of variety you could think of on Joy Road. You know, now it’s nothing but vacant lots, but you had businesses back to back there were no gaps and vacant lots. No, it was businesses on both sides of the street.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, where did you go to school?</p>
<p>AD: Oh at that time, I started kindergarten at Keiden School, which is two blocks south of that location on Martindale.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, was that very racially integrated?</p>
<p>AD: That was mostly blacks. Yeah, at that time, yeah.</p>
<p>GS: So you were born in the early 60s, so I don’t know if as a child you could sense any tension, but could you, you know?</p>
<p>AD: You know, at that time I couldn’t sense any racial tension, but I saw a lot going on, but I didn’t get a connection on it until I got older and – quite naturally after I joined the police department, saw life from a completely different perspective, but I had no understanding that whites and blacks had these deep-seeded issues. But I did see a lot of stuff, now as I’ve got older I said ‘oh, I see how that happened, I see why that happened’.</p>
<p>GS: Could you describe what one of those things were?</p>
<p>AD: Well, that whole area there was the epicenter for that riot. That riot sprawled all up and down Joy Road, Warren, Michigan, they burned all of Grand River up in there. That’s the area that I lived in – but like I said that was a heavy business district, you had a variety of thriving businesses in that area, but again at that time they were primarily run by Europeans or Jews – and then there were a few Middle Eastern people, but it was primarily Europeans and Jews that ran those. They had drycleaners, beauty shops, we had dime stores back then – that was a dollar store now– Shoe shops, place to get your haircut, they fixed cars; there was a variety of things. And the funeral home – the funeral home is still there.</p>
<p>GS: So moving to the riot itself, where were you when you first heard about it?</p>
<p>AD: Okay, my experience with the riot was this: my dad he’s a retired educator, at that time he was a regular teacher, and we frequented that Joy Road area to go home. And my grandparents lived on Gladstone right off Twelfth Street. And Twelfth Street was where the riot was, and that area there again was heavily – it was stores, businesses, clubs. What happened specifically, the nights of the riot, we pulled up on Joy Road to, Petoskey, the intersection now has a liquor store on the corner, and there’s a house there. The house’s address is – 4209 Joy Road – that house is still on the corner. That house still stands there today because that was a Michigan State Police National Guard Command Center for that area. So you had officers changing shifts, you had tanks coming in and out of there, you had soldiers in formation, they were having roll call there, I became aware of that because we pulled up there, you have to pass Petoskey to get to Martindale, and the soldiers, they had everybody stopped. And, I had never seen a rifle. I’m 53 and at then my parents didn’t own firearms. So I’m a little guy, looking out the back seat of the car, and my dad says “You sit here, I’ll go talk to them,” and it was two white soldiers from the National Guard, and he had a rifle and a bayonet. I had never seen a rifle or a bayonet, and I’m like “boy, that thing looks sharp!” And he talked to them, they talked to him, and he got in the car and we pulled off, and we went through this everyday. They knew him and he knew them. And you had the state police there and you had the National Guard there. They exchanged gunfire between the authorities and the black residents; they had ran all night and all day, particularly all night. It got so fierce one night until, my mother, she forced all our bodies on the floor, and she threw her body on top of us and she started praying. The fighting was just that intense that night, yeah. And it was tanks up and down Joy Road, you had tanks, you had soldiers, you had Detroit police out there, and the place burned. Everything burned. The houses burned, all the businesses down there burned, the only ones that didn’t burn were, you had some people that had their own armed security, you had several business guys who were out there with their shotguns standing in front of their stuff so it didn’t burn. But a lot of it burned. A lot of people lost their homes, and they just gutted – that’s why you don’t have a Warren - young people like your age asking “Well, what was here?” Well, all that was there prior to the riot. That’s why you don’t have a Joy Road, a Twelfth Street, Harper burned on the East side; Jefferson – what’s the other big one over there – Dexter, Linwood, Woodrow. All those were businesses on both sides of the street, and the reason why they’re vacant lots now is because they either burned them down or in later years the city came and demolished that property.</p>
<p>GS: With the National Guard being there did you and your family feel more secure or were you more concerned?</p>
<p>AD: Well, we felt more secure because the local authorities couldn’t handle that. You know, you had the state police coming in, you had the National Guard coming in, then you had the military come in, but it was needed. But the place burned and burned – it looked like it wouldn’t stop burning and it wouldn’t stop shooting.</p>
<p>GS: How was your neighborhood reacting, similar to your family?</p>
<p>AD: Yeah, yeah. Everybody was on lockdown in the house. And they had what they call a curfew, you couldn’t come out by a certain day at a certain this – you had to drive way out to get groceries and come back. You know, yeah.</p>
<p>GS: So moving towards, you know post riot, could you sense any changes in Detroit? You were still pretty young.</p>
<p>AD: After then my dad moved us, it had to be about ‘69, he moved us from that area out to the John Lodge and 7 Mile. Due to schools, the crime, and then that riot situation, and the decline in the quality of life. After that riot happened that area down there, there was a serious decline in the quality of life after they burned everything down. He moved us - that was either ‘68 or ‘69 - he moved us over on Morrow and Margarita, 7 Mile Lodge area. And then that’s why I subsequently went to Winship Elementary School, and then I went on to Ford High School from there, and then after that I joined the Detroit Police Department.</p>
<p>GS: Could you just provide an example of how your old neighborhood, you know, lowered in way of life and quality of life?</p>
<p>AD: Well, there’s nothing down there anymore, all the stores are gone, and they had every kind of store down there you could sit here and make a list. Joy Road had every kind of store you could think of, and all that’s gone after that riot. So there’s no place to shop, they had theatre there – The Riviera – which used to be there on Grand River and Joy Road, it’s gone, it’s a federal facility now, social security administration’s in there now they tore the place down, that used to be a theatre, we used to go to that theatre all the time there, yeah, it went out of business because of the lack of population in the area, they couldn’t make money.</p>
<p>GS: So a lot of people call the riot using different terms like ‘ rebellion’ or ‘uprising’ and you were very young, but looking back now would you call it one of these terms or would you still call it a riot?</p>
<p>AD: I’d call that a riot. Because the whole city was on lockdown for five to seven days, and Romney and Cavanagh – from video footage that I saw – they were doing the best they could to handle that situation. I personally don’t believe that Cavanagh thought that, the black community would rise up like that and have that much going on. From what I’ve read, and people I’ve met, he was trying to mend that, trying to have some order, some respect, amongst the races in the city of Detroit.</p>
<p>GS: So how do you see Detroit today?</p>
<p>AD: Well I see Detroit today struggling to get all in line with all the other big cities that have nicer facilities than we do, you know. And that’s probably one of the major reasons why we don’t have a thriving business district is because of that riot. We had one at one point, and after that the whole business thing went in the tubes, and we’re trying to come out of that. They’ve done a lot of work down here, Midtown; and they’ve done a lot downtown, but okay what about the neighborhoods? We had nice stuff in the neighborhoods prior to that riot; they had every kind of store, or restaurant, that you could think of. You know like they have out in the suburbs, well Detroit was like that at one time. You go out to Farmington Hills, Novi, West Bloomfield; Detroit was like that! We had stores and theatres and clubs like that, prior to that riot, but that riot sucked the commercial life out of the city, and then a lot of the blacks left – the whites they had been leaving anyway– they accelerated that. And then I know it’s one thing, after all that the Middle Easterns came in and they bought all the liquor licenses, so they have a lock on all the liquor stores now, they have a lock on a lot of the grocery stores now, those people weren’t that prominent in that liquor industry or that grocery industry, that was run by Europeans primarily and some Jews. Arabs didn’t have that kind of influence, but they have it now, they’re some hard working people. Yeah, they work twelve, sixteen, eighteen hours, yeah.</p>
<p>GS: Well is there anything else you would like to add?</p>
<p>AD: Well, you know, the interesting thing about this, you know, the focus at that time of the riot – the grievance, I’ll say – was mistreatment of the citizens by white male officers, and I guess that’s what we’re coming back to now, you know. That’s just the funny thing about it. After that riot, Cavanagh left, we had [Roman] Gribbs in there, and then Coleman [Young] came in, and what he did with the department, he went to Washington, he got federal money, and he dismantled the white male leadership. And he forced that agency to hire blacks like myself, and minorities, and females of all races on that job, and integrate that job, and then they created a thing called crime prevention where the officers actually go out – you say Community Policing – it was crime prevention back then. I worked there before I got promoted, and mending this [unintelligible] relationship with some friendship with these people, everybody wants to see somebody that looks like them in an authority position. And you know he changed a lot of that, to the point where it is now. I kind of benefitted from it in that kind of way, but I work with some very good white male officers, I worked with some that were openly prejudiced – but I worked with some that say ‘I’m not with that, I’ll work with you, alright this is my first year or so on the job I’ll work with you.’ And they showed me some of everything that I needed to make it out there on that street, to deal with the citizens, the bosses, and stay alive out there, so you know. And there’s good and bad in that profession, I worked internal affairs for six years, I’ve dealt with blacks that weren’t that good, that were shady, and I’ve worked with whites that weren’t that good and shady and I had to deal with them. But those are things that paused a fallout from that riot or some people say rebellion, I say it was a riot because it was extremely violent, extremely dangerous, and the city almost burned down, if they hadn’t done that inter agency thing with the state police, the National Guard to come here because the Detroit Police couldn’t handle that it was too much. Cavanagh and his people they couldn’t handle it.</p>
<p>GS: Wow. All right, well thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AD: Okay, sure.</p>
<p>GS: Thank you.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 13:29]</p>
<p class="Normal1">[End of Track 1]</p>
<p class="Normal1"> </p>
Original Format
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audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
13min 29sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Giancarlo Stefanutti
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Arthur Divers
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit, MI
Video
A link to the video
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S74zwoTQvs8" 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
A name given to the resource
Arthur Divers, July 26th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Arthur Divers describes what it was like living in his black community during the disturbance. He discusses the various businesses that existed before the disturbance, and how it has drastically changed the community since then. He also explains racial relations within the city as well as the Detroit Police Department, and how that had an effect on him personally.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
08/05/2016
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
Childhood
Children
Detroit Police Department
Governor George Romney
Growing Up In Detroit
Mayor Coleman Young
Mayor Jerome Cavanagh
Michigan National Guard
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/c2427983a92442a346b481190a7c7d9b.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
A language of the resource
en-us
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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I was born in Detroit at Hutzel Women's Hospital, attended Roosevelt Elementary, Durfee Junior High, and Cass Tech High School. I also attended Wayne State University, graduating in 3 years in 1966. My husband and I got married in Detroit in 1965, and our first baby was born in March of 1967, at Sinai Hospital in Detroit. I was a Detroiter all the way - my entire life...
Suddenly, in July of '67, everything changed! The Riot made me afraid to go outside. Someone shot a gun at our small apartment bldg, at 7551 Pilgrim, leaving a bullet hole in the front door. We became so frightened for the safety of our infant son, that my husband and I grabbed him and a few baby items, and quickly left to stay with my in-laws, who had recently moved to Southfield.
A few days later, when we made a trip back into the City to fetch more of our belongings, we were stopped at 8 Mile road by National Guardsmen, who asked where we were going, and wanted to see proof that our address was indeed within the city boundaries, but not in the actual vicinity of the rioting. They let us go home, and we retrieved essentials (including our wedding album and family photos, which seemed so important to us at the time). We were concerned that our apartment building might burn down.
I don't remember much about the next few days and weeks, except that we followed every bit of news about the riot on radio and television. We went home when the authorities assured us it was safe to do so. But we never got over feeling afraid.
Shortly after that, we borrowed money to make a down payment on a starter house in Southfield, and we moved out of our apartment in Detroit by September. We've been suburbanites ever since.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Avra Weiss
Submission Date
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08/11/2016
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Avra Weiss
Description
An account of the resource
Avra Weiss lived with her husband and infant son in July of 1967 when the disturbances made them feel unsafe.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
08/12/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Community Members
Gun Violence
Michigan National Guard
-
https://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
A name given to the resource
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
A language of the resource
en-us
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10/20/2019
Oral History
An audio or video resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/quiI3Wvhui0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Barbara Aswad
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
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
The place where the interview was conducted.
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
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Amina Ammar
Interviewee
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Barbara Aswad
Location
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Dearborn, MI
Dublin Core
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Title
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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
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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 Arab-Israeli War
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Community Members
Michigan National Guard
Vietnam War
Wayne State University