JP: Jim Peters.
JW: Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming in to sit with us. Could you start by telling me, where and when you were born?
JP: I was born in Detroit in 1940.
JW: What neighborhood did you live in, in Detroit?
JP: I lived in the Grand River/Livernois area, which was the Scottish enclave in Detroit at that time.
JW: Okay. So was it just Scottish, or was it also an integrated neighborhood?
JP: There was no integration as far as white/black, if that's what you mean. Basically Scottish.
JW: And so what was that like, living with - in a Scottish enclave?
JP: It was wonderful. It was wonderful, yeah. You know, it was - it was, you know - it was like Germans or Poles or anything else - the Scotch looked out for each other, and were all friendly, and had parties and great times together.
JW: Yeah. Do you have - so then, where did you go to school then?
JP: I was going to the local grade school in Detroit until the sixth grade, at which time we went to Royal Oak.
JW: Okay. What moved your family to Royal Oak?
JP: My father's progression in his career.
JW: What was his job?
JP: It was upgrading homes.
JW: Okay.
JP: He was a steel peddler.
JW: Okay. And did your mom have a job?
JP: No.
JW: Okay. Did you have any siblings?
JP: No.
JW: Okay. So when you lived down in the city, did you feel comfortable moving around the city, or did you mostly just stay in that Scottish community?
JP: I was totally comfortable - living in the city and living in Royal Oak. But, at that time, keep in mind, all activity was in the city, so as youth we went to the city every weekend. And we were totally comfortable.
JW: When you moved out of the city and into Royal Oak, did you note - was there a difference the community that you were part of, or did it feel the same?
JP: Different in what respect?
JW: I don't know. I guess in any respect. Was there - did you - did it feel different living out in the suburbs than it did in the city?
JP: The only difference was, there was all single homes and there was space between homes, and there was youth activities, you know, Little League and stuff like that.
JW: Yeah. So then, leading up into the early 1960s, maybe late fifties, did you notice tension in the city as you were moving around?
JP: I never saw or felt or experienced any tension whatsoever, through high school.
JW: And you went to high school in Royal Oak?
JP: No, I went to high school in Royal Oak until the tenth grade, at which time we moved to Birmingham.
JW: Okay. And was that for your dad's job as well?
JP: Absolutely.
JW: Very nice. So then in 1967, how did you hear about everything that was going on?
JP: Are you - you mean about the - I hate the word "riot" - I use other words. The conflict that was going on - is that what you mean?
JW: Yeah.
JP: How did I hear about it?
JW: Yeah.
JP: Well it - it flared up early, early that Sunday morning - let's say one - one AM.
JW: Yeah.
JP: Well I woke up that morning - Sunday morning - and went and played golf all day. And got home and my wife said, "Did you hear what's going on?" No. What's going on? She told me, which was five or six o'clock in the afternoon. We turned on the television and it became apparent that they were calling the National Guard, of which I was a member.
JW: Okay.
JP: That's - how and when I heard about it.
JW: All right. So when did you become a part of the National Guard, then?
JP: Oh, in '63.
JW: Okay. So then, being a member of the National Guard, you were then sent into the city?
JP: Yes.
JW: Okay. So what - where were you stationed?
JP: I was stationed at the Durfee School. I'm not sure now if that was a grade school or a middle school. But there were three schools on one large city block - there was Durfee, Roosevelt, and Central High School. And my battalion happened to go into Durfee.
JW: What do you remember about being in the city that week? Do you have some stories?
JP: [laughter] Yeah, I have - you know. There's a million stories in the big city, right? What - I could get on a real soapbox here, or a real rampage. When we got there, it was late Sunday night. Probably ten PM or later. And we all were milling around out in the schoolyard, not knowing what to do or where to go; we were given no direction. If I can back up a minute, we reported to the armory.
JW: Yeah.
JP: And all they told us on the telephone was to bring - be in uniform. Put a uniform on. Get to the armory and they were accumulating ten or twelve Guardsmen as they meandered in, and they were DSR - you know what DSR is? Detroit Streets and Railways - buses behind the armory. And after there were ten or twelve soldiers there, they'd put us on the bus and took us down to Detroit, to this school compound.
And going down there, we went down - we were on Eight Mile, the armory - we went Eight Mile, we went down Livernois, through Palmer Park, and across to the school, and about halfway down we recognized that there was a tank following us. Now we're just guys - you know, we're in the Guard to avoid the draft. And - "woah, a tank? Never saw a tank before." [laughter] When we got down there, and in the middle of the night, we're milling in the yard, and by the time we got there the Salvation Army had already been there. Was already there, already, with their lunch trucks. And they told us all to line up in a long line - there must have been a hundred or more guys lined up, and squad cars - police squad cars - were pulling up in front of us. And they were putting - there were two police officers in each car - they were putting two soldiers in the back of each car, and then you're gone. You're on the street.
No direction from an officer. No - no understanding of what we were supposed to be doing, and we were out there all through that night, through the next day, with - riding in this police car, eating Salvation Army baloney sandwiches, which was welcome at that time and coffee. We determined - and I knew that area really well, because I grew on up in that area, you know - I was comfortable there. But we were seeing, you know, smoldering buildings. We never saw any gathering of any blacks, except one call - radio call - we went, there was looting going on at a local ma and pa grocery store. Went over there, and there were like twenty people inside. It was the middle of Monday morning. You know, ten AM. The police went out and rousted all these guys out, and there was a couple - there were people from ten years old to sixty years old in that shop, and they were - they were gleaning. They were gleaners. Everything - the good stuff had already gone. And they lined them all out, there were a couple really nice cars out there, with these adults had driven up there – big 225 Buicks and Cadillacs, and the police took them all back - the cars - all back to the station.
And I hesitate to tell you. They didn't - they searched everybody for weapons. Little kids, they took their hats off, made sure there were no knives under their hats, this type of thing. Which was good procedure, I guess. But the police vandalized these vehicles, which I couldn't fathom. You don't - this is not necessary. But we're just guys. We don't - we can't talk to the police.
And the other call I remember going on that morning was a call to go to a jewelry store which was being robbed - looted - and about two blocks away from the jewelry store they turned on all of the sirens as loud as they could. We pulled up behind the jewelry store and the police said, "okay, stand out here." We had rifles, bayonets on them. "We're going in." So the police went in. Now in hindsight, I recognize that they turned their sirens on to let everybody know we're coming - get away. We don't want any confrontations.
The police came out, got in the car - "Nobody's in there." Started back down Grand River, and they - they had handfuls of costume jewelry. The good stuff apparently had already been stolen. "Do you guys want any of this?" No, no, we don't any. And we went on our way.
Back at the police precinct, which happened to be Precinct Six at that time, we went back for a couple hours. Police were coming in and out, every which way, and I only recall ever seeing one black policeman, in this whole two-week episode, and he was in the precinct. The neighborhood ladies had brought in some food for the police, and we got a little rest, and back on the streets. Let me refer to some notes here [papers rustle].
This went on for a couple days. Wednesday we got back to our school and found our way to our commanding officers, who had put us up on the - the school is a three-story building. Put us on the second floor, and Battery A in here, Battery B in this room, and we had - we had nothing. We had no towels, no soap, no bedding. We slept on the wood floor. No change of underwear. It was just - our uniform, that we had on. And they tried to get things organized by this time, and we went out on - I just happened to be the driver for the captain and the first sergeant, so when they went out, I was their driver. And we happened to do nights.
So I remember one - first night, we got a call on the radio. There was sniper activity on Oakland Boulevard. And I knew Oakland Boulevard, I knew where it was. And went over there and we noticed there was a lot of police, military activity down the street. And we weren't going to drive right into it, and so they said "park here." Well, this is like a block or two blocks away from the activity, right under a street light. And there was other - there were four or five Jeeps pulled up together there, under the spotlight.
Now, the rule - the law was - the driver stays with the jeep. Always. Wherever you are, that's your vehicle, you're assigned to it, you're responsible for it. You stay with it. And I'm looking up at this light, and I'm looking at all these apartment buildings around there, and I'm saying, I'm a good target. The only bullet I fired was to shoot out that light. Which I did. And nobody said anything about it. And while we're sitting there - now, keep in mind, there's a curfew, and there's no civilian cars on the street. And Oakland Boulevard is like two lanes in each direction. It's not divided, but it's a pretty big street.
Here comes this vehicle coming down the street, at five miles an hour. So we stopped it, and it stopped. And this black guy - really drunk - he was on his - "Where you going? What are you doing?" He was on his way to see Jerry. He was going to fix this thing. Jerry [Mayor Jerome] Cavanagh. He was going to see Jerry. I said, well, not tonight. One of the guys - we didn't know what to do with this guy. One of the guys ran down to where the activity was - which was - there was no shooting or anything going on, they were just milling around down there. A couple cops came back, with a car - with their car - and saw this guy. They went through his car and they found a shotgun. Unloaded. So they proceeded to use the shotgun on this man, and threw him in their trunk, and off they go. The last we saw of that guy. I don't know what happened to him.
I hope you're hearing what you wanted to hear - I mean, you don't like what you're hearing, but I hope it's what you wanted to hear, was that this - from a guy that was on the street.
JW: Yeah, we just want to hear your memories.
JP: While out there on patrol, backing up a step, with the police, we got a call that there was sniper activity on Grand River, which was my stomping grounds - I mean, I went to the Riviera Theatre there, I went to church there, I went to Sanders for - my grandparents were buying me cherry sundaes - big, big, you know, youthful memory. And it was the middle of the night. We pulled up, and these buildings across the street were two-story buildings. There was shops in the bottom and apartments above it. And we pulled behind this church, which I suddenly realized was my church, that I grew up in - went to Sunday school there - and I'm hiding behind snipers at my church - I - what's going on here?
It was really a shocker. And it is emotional, even today. Because even up 'til the church burned down, probably ten or twelve years ago, we'd even go down there for Christmas Eve services, you know.
But back to when we got back to our school. They decided that our battalion would patrol Twelfth Street. From Clairmount south to the Boulevard, which is - I'm not sure - it's probably about a mile. And they put two soldiers on each side of the street for one block, and you would walk to this corner, turn around, and come back, walk to this corner, and that's what you did for four hours. And there was two, on all these blocks, all the way down. And we - we got - the curfew was still on. It was like from - I don't know - six PM until five or six AM curfew - no selling gasoline or no - don't be on the streets, so on. And we never knew which - four hours, sometimes they fell at night, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon.
But the bars weren't touched on Twelfth Street. They were - the neighbor people didn't want to burn the bars. They burned everything else, for no - you know, how many people have preached on this, but it was stupid to burn your own house down, you know - figuratively speaking. The bar owners would see the soldiers on their block and say "hey," - and the doors were wide open - "You want anything, guys? Go get it. Just go get it. Whatever it is." They wanted us to watch their shops.
The hookers, after a few days, started coming out, and the - the real unattractive women would come out about five AM, six AM, to catch the guys who were either going to their first shift or coming home from the night shift. And the more attractive ladies would come out at like five PM, to catch the other shift changes. And we met - you know, we talked to them, and they were fun to talk to, you know. And the neighborhood ladies came out and set up card tables and offered us food and, you know, big coolers full of Kool-Aid and head cheese sandwiches - if you know what a head cheese sandwich is. Do you?
JW: Oh, I've heard of head cheese, yeah.
JP: It's everything within the brains and head and everything else, all mixed up, and put into a loaf, and made into a sandwich. Like a pate.
JW: Yeah.
JP: First time I'd ever had it. [laughter] But we'd get hungry.
JW: Yeah.
JP: So that was kind of interesting. And there was - you know, we never had a confrontation, ever.
JW: So, you felt like the community was okay with you being there?
JP: Oh yeah. The scariest thing were the dogs. And these dogs were let out, because their homes were burned, or houses - their apartments were burned, and they didn't - you know, they just let the dogs out so they didn't get killed. You know, and they were roaming around, looking for scraps, you know. And you never knew if it was going to be a nice dog or a bad dog. Some guys had bad experiences. I didn't, particularly. But as far as the people goes, it was no big deal.
After - after noon on that Monday, nothing. No bad activity. Smoldering buildings. No new fires. No new gunshots. If I can back up again - when we were in line, to become in those patrol cars - that was the line - and I think I was very, very close to the guys that got in the police cars - because I knew the guys - later, that got in those police cars - that went to the Algiers Motel.
JW: Oh, interesting.
JP: Okay. So I got very lucky there. [papers rustle] The first Saturday we got - they gave us like three hours to go home, to go somewhere. If you could make arrangements. Make a phone call, and if you could make arrangements, they'd take you back to the armory. But from there you were on your own. But you had to be back. You know, if you wanted to go get toiletries, or whatever, you know. I mean, and that was - that worked for me, because I was married and we were living in Royal Oak at the time, and that was ten minutes from the armory. And I called my wife, she left work, got me some stuff, you know, and met me. Had a chat and went back.
JW: So as someone who grew up in the city, and then in the surrounding area, how did it feel to then see all of this happening? I mean, you touched on the church a little bit, but -
JP: It felt sad. It felt sad, because I could - I had no - I never had a conversation with a black person before, you know. I never had any contact. But it was obvious that they were harming themselves. You know, I couldn't figure it out. Why do you harm yourself - the emotion I felt was sad, and I still do today, you know.
The second week after we got home and got some stuff and came back, it was just those walking patrols for another week and then we went home. They lifted the curfews. They relieved the curfews, and tried to get things back to -
JW: So you were stationed in the city for about two weeks, then?
JP: Oh yeah. Yeah, just - exactly two weeks.
JW: And were you at Twelfth Street that whole time or were you in other areas of the city?
JP: No. Other than - other than in the Jeep patrolling, we were always on Twelfth Street. Yeah. Yeah.
JW: And then earlier, you said you don't like the term "riot."
JP: I just - I just - to me, it just bothers me. Yeah, okay, maybe it was a riot - and it was a riot - probably, but I just like using other language.
JW: What words do you typically use, then?
JP: Confrontations, uprisings - I don't know. I'd have to think on that. I just - it's like certain words, I don't like to use.
JW: That's fine.
JP: I don't like to use the word "ain't!"
JW: So, after that two weeks, did you still like to come down into the city, or did you - did your attitude toward the city change after that experience?
JP: Oh, sure. We - when I say we, either with wives, or guys - we'd go to hockey games - we'd go down to restaurants. One of my wife's and my favorite restaurants was called Little Harry's, and it was like - and it was, it was an original 1920's restaurant, bar, eventually speakeasy, back to restaurant, with the grand old decor, and it was out on East Jefferson, and it was one of our favorite places. We didn't hesitate to drive down Woodward and come home. Because if you drive from Royal Oak to downtown, what is it? Fifteen, twenty minutes, if you really think about it. You know, so we didn't - so it was hockey games, and restaurants. A couple other restaurants we'd go to, but, as I said, Little Harry's was a favorite spot.
JW: But you still felt comfortable coming into the city?
JP: I knew where I was. You know, I didn't feel that I was going to go into a bad area. I could avoid them. "Bad" being where trouble might arise again, if you didn't know.
JW: Would you say that was pretty typical of the people you knew up in Royal Oak?
JP: Oh, sure. Sure. We still felt the blacks had their own areas, you know, and you just didn't go there. They didn't really come out of their areas, you know. Like, I don't know the percentages. Today Detroit's ninety, ninety-five percent black, and that's fine. I go down there. Not very often, because - not that I'm afraid to. There's just nothing for me down there. At my age, and my experiences, and my interests don't belong in Detroit.
JW: How do you feel about the state of the city today?
JP: I knew these were coming. I am thrilled with the mayor. I mean, I can't say enough about this guy. And the business leaders, what's happening. Yeah, every night we hear bad stuff on the news. Sometimes it's five things in a row that are bad. But there's an awful lot of good stuff going on. I'm delighted. The neighborhoods are never going to be what they were, you know. I do go Brightmoor quite often, if you know where that is. You look like you don't.
JW: I don't know if I know.
JP: It's okay not to know! Brightmoor is - the hood, an area - Lahser, Five Mile, Redford Theater, do you know where that is?
JW: Yes, yes.
JP: That's Brightmoor.
JW: Okay.
JP: I go down there for a couple reasons. The Scottish bakery is right down the street. The - right next to the Redford Theater there's a really cool coffee shop, and if you ever get a chance you should go there.
JW: Okay.
JP: It is really cool. A black lady owns it. She's married to a white guy. He is in charge of Blightbusters of Detroit. It's their headquarters. They have really a cool facility there. A big back - out their back door is a big courtyard area. There's a theater off of the courtyard area, it's just a swell thing going on there. So to answer your question, I think it's - a whole lot better than it was four years ago.
JW: What kinds of things do you think the city needs to do to continue to improve?
JP: Oh boy. I don't give these things thought, and I don't like shooting from the hip, you know.
JW: That's okay.
JP: I don't know. The only thing that comes to mind real quickly is more - more police activity in the neighborhoods. More good police activity. There's a lot going on, but there could be more. And there are certain areas that these guys don't want to go into. And if you drive down the streets - and when I go to Brightmoor, I drive the back streets. It's almost like sightseeing. It's almost voyeurism, and it's kind of shameful, but it's really eye-opening if you do it, and you see for real what they're talking about.
JW: Yeah.
JP: And you'll see wonderfully well-maintained newer homes, next to three that are burned out. So there's effort being made. But they all have bars on the windows.
JW: Yeah. Oh, something I forgot to ask. So how long - how long did you stay part of the National Guard?
JP: Six years. That was your obligation. So I was back in '68, on the street for a week. Detroit didn't flare up in '68. You probably know that.
JW: Yeah.
JP: But they put us back there as a show of force, because other cities started burning up. And they were afraid that Detroit would, so they put us there. And it was for one week. Same school, same everything. Same hardwood floors to sleep on.
JW: Yeah. And so you talked a little bit about, you know, working with the police. Do you think the police were relieved to have you there?
JP: Oh, absolutely. No question. No question in my mind. They pulled in federal troops. you know, eventually. Near the end of the first week. And these were 82nd Airborne troops that had been back from Vietnam for two weeks. They didn't - they were afraid to put these guys on the street. We never saw them on the street. They parked them down by - somewhere off of Jefferson - and they parked them - parking - they put them up at the state fairgrounds. They were afraid these guys were so conditioned to doing bad things to bad people - they were afraid of what they would do if they put them on the street.
That's - that's a personal opinion, because I never saw them. I know guys that were in the 82nd Airborne, and we've talked about it. They came to Detroit - one of my very best friends, for a long time, was in Detroit, right out of Vietnam. Never went out.
They put us in the backseat of these cars and they tell us "open those windows. Put your bayonets on your rifles and stick 'em out the windows." And this was a show of force, as they would say. That's what the police - in whose squad cars we were.
JW: Yeah. So, are there any other memories that you'd like to share with us today?
JP: I had an interesting personal thing. Right across the street from the school was a fire station. Now - rumors circulate in the military, and god knows where they start, but the thing we heard was that when a fire truck was going out on a call, they were being shot at. So, they're putting soldiers on the fire trucks. Now I didn't happen to go on a fire truck. And a couple of guys I know did and encountered no shooting.
But when - we could hear the alarms go off in the fire station. It was scary. Really scary. Now, when I got home - in Royal Oak - our apartment - my wife's and my apartment was half a block from a fire station. For a very long time, when that fire alarm went off at the fire station, I just stopped. I didn't have a panic attack, but probably close to it. And today, you would call it PTSD. That wasn't even heard of back then. The closest anybody came was out of the war, so they called it, the guy was shellshocked. Same thing. But - and I overgrew it.
JW: That's good.
JP: So - and the other thing I would share with you is that I - I promise you that there was absolutely no - zero - zip - consideration that anything like what happened could have happened. By the politicians, the police, or the military. Shown by our total lack of preparedness. Their total lack of - their total lack of preparedness. No plans. No food for the soldiers. No accommodations. No cots. No nothing. And it was - and all the emphasis was on Vietnam at that time. And we are - my battalion had been designated not long before the uprising to be a SRF - Special Reserve Force. And we started our training as a special reserve force, which really, ultimately meant going to Vietnam. They were calling Guard units to go to Vietnam, and a lot of them went. A lot of them. And we were scheduled to go not that long after. And I contend that because Detroit flared up like it did, they changed those orders for us, to keep us in Detroit. In case.
JW: Interesting.
JP: Nobody's ever said anything, but that's - that was my read of that whole thing. And of course '68 they were glad we were there, but nothing happened. That - that was – and [George] Romney, he was the governor, and he had no clue what was going on, you know. And he finally called the president and the president acted to call up the federal troops, which - it was all political. It was a show.
JW: Well, is there anything else you'd like to add today?
JP: I'm sorry?
JW: Is there anything else you'd like to add today?
JP: I think you allowed me to vent everything I wanted to vent!
JW: Well, good. Well thank you so much for coming in to sit with us. We really appreciate it.
JP: Okay, my pleasure. Okey doke.
HS: Hello, this is Hannah Sabal. I am in Detroit, Michigan. The date is July 11th, 2016 and I am conducting an oral history interview for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project with John Crissman. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
JC: It’s a pleasure.
HS: Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?
JC: I was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan.
HS: What neighborhood did you grow up in?
JC: I grew up in Charlotte, Michigan, out by Lansing.
HS: Out by Lansing, okay. And what did your parents do for a living?
JC: My mother was a housewife, and my father was a traveling salesman.
HS: What was your neighborhood like growing up?
JC: Small town, middle class.
HS: Was it integrated?
JC: It was a white town. Small town.
HS: Where did you go to school?
JC: I went to MIT for my bachelor’s degree, then I went to West Reserve for my medical degree, and then I went to the University of Michigan for my surgical internship, then I transferred down to Detroit Receiving Hospital, July 1, 1967.
HS: So you had just moved to Detroit in July of ’67?
JC: Correct.
HS: And what was it like moving into the city?
JC: It was Detroit. It was a segregated city; there were certain areas you couldn’t live in. I ended up living near Chandler Park. I commuted downtown, which was maybe four miles.
HS: When you moved into the city, did you notice any tensions?
JC: I talked to a lot of my patients at Detroit Receiving Hospital. I remember one old black lady. She took me under her wing, and she said, “Doc, be careful. There’s something going to happen this summer, and it’s not going to be good. So watch your step.”
HS: So this woman knew that something was going down.
JC: The undercurrent in the black community was there was a lot of unrest.
HS: Were you working when the riots started, or were you at home? How did you hear about it first?
JC: I went to a Yankee-Tigers double header, and when we were coming home after the came toward Chandler Park with a friend of mine, I saw the smoke and I wondered if something had started.
HS: This was on Sunday?
JC: This was on Sunday. I wondered if something had started or—there were a couple fires for sure. We got home, and we’re watching my TV, and we’re watching another ballgame, and I still remember this—this big section came across the TV: “Would the Pontiac National Guard please report to their armory.” And I knew what had happened. I knew the riots had started; had no idea where, when, how much, and then I got the phone call that, about an hour later, to come down to Detroit Receiving Hospital.
HS: When you heard about the events, did you think back to the black patient that you had who said something was going to happen?
JC: Not really. We knew something was amiss. I’d heard it from a number of patients, but I remember it from this one lady specifically.
HS: You went into work on Sunday?
JC: Absolutely.
HS: What was that like?
JC: Actually, it was pretty quiet. There was a paradox because the emergency room basically closed down, because there won’t any of the routine, ambulatory emergency room patients coming in. The first night was reasonably quiet until, maybe late in the evening. But the only things we saw were major trauma.
HS: What was the atmosphere in the hospital like? Was it tense? Nervous?
JC: Nothing. I mean, Detroit Receiving is a trauma hospital. There’s patients all the time. In fact, it was kind of ironic, as I said before, it was kind of a little more quiet. Then the major trauma cases started rolling in. Now I was a new kid on the block in surgery, so my responsibilities were not to go to the operating room, but to take care of all the post-surgery patients and all of the patients out on the wards. I did do some of the initial triage in the emergency room.
HS: The traumas that you received, were they mainly GSWs [gun shot wounds], or—?
JC: Most of them—there were a few gun shots, a lot of stab wounds, and all various kinds of trauma. One of the memories that I have that’s the strongest is that on one of the wards, we had all of these young, muscular black males. It was like 90 degrees in there, they were all sweating in there—glistening, actually—they all had had abdominal operations, and they had all had tape on their abdomen, and they were basically laying in bed. We had these little stomach pumps going, “Tch tch tch tch tch” and there are like 40 of them. It was an eerie kind of situation to be in. The patients were just great. They knew they’d been hurt, they knew they’d been operated on, they knew they’d been saved, and they were very grateful that someone was taking care of them.
HS: I’d imagine so. What else do you remember from that week? Did you work most of that week?
JC: I was at the hospital, I think, for four straight days. I have many memories of those four days. One of the burning memories is that so many people were arrested and the jails were full. You’ve probably heard this before, but they put buses on every corner, and then they would put a port-a-john over the sewer inlet, and you’d look out there, and I don’t think these guys got fed very often. But they were all out in front of the hospital, they were all through downtown. You’d look out there once in a while and see them, they’d be allowed off for handling the bathroom activities, and I guess they got some food, but they were basically incarcerated on the buses.
HS: Anything else? Any other stories?
JC: Oh yeah, I got lots of stories.
HS: Please just go for it.
JC: It was about the second or third night, we were in the recovery room where all the patients come after they’ve finished their surgery, and it was on the fourth floor of the old Receiving hospital, and it had frosted glass windows. We were in the recovery room, and we heard a funny noise, “Ping!” Didn’t think anything of it. I think I was the only physician in there with a number of nurses, obviously. Then we heard another, “Ping!” and everybody started looking around. “What was that noise?” When we heard a third one, we realized that someone was shooting at us from across in a parking deck. We immediately hit the lights and pulled all the patients out into the hall, then informed—they had a police command post on the first floor of the hospital—and we called down and told them that somebody was shooting at us from the parking deck across the way, and the police went out and killed the guy.
HS: Wow.
JC: Which was fine with me.
HS: Well, I mean, he was shooting at you, so…. That’s intense.
JC: Probably one of the most interesting parts of it was when it first started, it was all handled by Detroit Police force, and they became overwhelmed, obviously. Governor Romney called in the National Guard, and these guys looked like somebody off the street that someone had put in uniform. It was a mixture of characters. Some overweight, some underweight, not very military in manner or deport. They did the best they could. Then President Johnson shipped the 101, I think the—
HS: 82nd.
JC: The 82nd airborne, put them out at Selfridge, and we knew this! We heard about all this downtown! And he held them there for a day, just to embarrass, I think, Governor Romney. When they released the Airborne into the city, it just shut the riots down. These people used to come in, a number of the non-commissioned officers and some of the soldiers would come in and eat at the cafeteria of the hospital. So I got to know them, got to talk to some of them. Very impressive, very tough, very lean, and not somebody you’d want to—
HS: So they appeared more professional than the National Guard?
JC: They appeared frightening. They’d all just gotten back from Vietnam. They were obviously very, very controlled, commanding soldiers. We had one kid that got into the emergency room. He was about 18 years old, maybe 16. Can’t remember, overweight, and just scared out of his mind. We couldn’t figure out how he got in the emergency room until we talked to him. The story he related to me, who was trying to take care of him, was that his brother—these are two white kids—his brother had driven up from Ohio with his brother, found an apartment, and were shooting at soldiers. The airborne were running around town in jeeps with 50 caliber machine guns on the back, and if they had any fire from an apartment, they’d just start blasting the apartment. They killed the older brother, who was the sniper. This kid came running down out of there. They probably would’ve killed him, except that he stumbled and fell on the steps and knocked himself out. This kid was so scared that he was going to get killed, and he came very close to it.
HS: From your understanding, they came from Ohio specifically—
JC: This is what the boy told me, that the brother came up to kill some cops or army people.
HS: I don’t know what to say to that.
JC: Well, we just saw it in Dallas.
HS: Yeah, that’s true.
JC: There’s nutcases out there, there’s no question about it.
HS: That’s why this project is so relevant, you know? Any other experiences? Note-worthy experiences?
JC: Let me think. I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t remember them all.
HS: That’s fine. After the riots ended—I know Detroit Receiving is a trauma hospital, but did the traumas go down at all after that week, back to their norm?
JC: Well, everybody in the city was basically holed up, particularly in the black community. Anybody that got ill had no place to go because you couldn’t move. As soon as the riots ended, there became more normal movement, and we saw an upswing in emergency room routine traffic. That was, I guess, basically a sign that things were returning back to normal. Now, I lived on Dickerson right across from the golf course on Chandler Park. We were sort of at the edge of the black community. There was a public housing on the other corner, off of six mile. There was a big liquor store there, and that liquor store got hit and cleaned out. I came home, and I told my wife—and we had a young baby—I said, “If you have any problems, keep the car gassed, just go north.” I came home, I think, on a Thursday night and there were just lines of people sitting on their porches with deer rifles, waiting for someone to come across Chandler Park, so I felt comfortable that my wife and child were safe.
HS: So your wife and child didn’t have any problems then?
JC: No problems at all.
HS: Was your neighborhood affected at all?
JC: Well, the liquor store about 800 yards away was robbed. One of the funny things that came out of this was all the liquor stores were completely wiped out. And about six weeks after the riot ended, we started seeing alcoholics coming in with chronic pancreatitis, which is a complication of drinking, so the conclusion I reached is a chronic alcoholic, given all the alcohol he wants, will develop pancreatitis in six weeks.
HS: Yeah, that makes sense. How long did you live in Detroit for?
JC: Just that one year, ’67-’68. Then I went into the military. All male physicians were drafted in that era.
HS: Did you end up serving in Vietnam?
JC: I did not, I’m not sure why. I was a trauma surgeon at that time, even though in my first year, but that was the most popular medical specialty at that time, they wanted partially trained general surgeons. But I didn’t go to Vietnam.
HS: When you returned from the service, did you continue to live in Detroit, or did you move somewhere else?
JC: I went back to Cleveland, where I went to medical school. Then I returned to Detroit in 1981, and I’ve been at Wayne State since then.
HS: You are the Dean of the medical school?
JC: I was at one time.
HS: Okay, that’s awesome.
JC: Actually, 1999 to 2004.
HS: You were the dean during those years?
JC: Yeah.
HS: That’s great. You’ve been in Detroit a fair amount, then. Have you noticed any changes in the city?
JC: The blacks now provide a majority of the leadership in the community, and I just came from the DAC—The Detroit Athletic Club—and I know a lot of the prominent black, both politicians and entrepreneurs and business people. That certainly is a welcome relief, there’s a lot of black that have very prominent roles in the community. I drive through the east side almost daily. The ghettos, though not as heavily populated, have not changed a great deal. There’s still tremendous amount of unemployment, young blacks walking around with apparently no role in life, and that has not changed.
HS: Where do you see the city headed?
JC: I think that the rebirth of downtown and of central area, where we’re sitting today, is a huge step in the right direction. I think the real crucial element is going to be restoration of the public and charter schools. If that’s accomplished, I see Detroit resurrecting itself and young families moving back into the community. But I think it’s all going to be crucial as to how public and charter—I include charter under public education—I think it’s going to be very crucial to see how that does.
HS: If you had a message for future generations of Detroit, what would it be?
JC: Well, I think everyone has to continue to work in the direction they have. One of the saddest parts is so many, particularly the black male population, has been lost to society for various reasons, and I wouldn’t even pretend to be able to interpret those, but I think that’s really a sad element. If anything could be done to restore that, I think it would be a huge move in the right direction. I think Detroit—if it gets its educational program back together—people don’t realize, back in the ‘50s, Detroit Public Schools was an excellent organization.
HS: That’s what I’ve heard.
LC: Yeah, and they’ve lost all of that wherewithal and experience, so forth. But I think Detroit has a future. I think it’s going to be slow in coming, but I think it’s clearly headed in the right direction.
HS: Sounds optimistic. Do you have anything else you’d like to share with us today?
LC: I could go on for a long time, but I will end it at this. I probably fulfilled what you needed.
HS: Oh, definitely, yeah. Well, thank you for sharing your stories, we really appreciate it.
[End of Track 1]
[Beginning of Track 2]
HS: This is a continuation of John Crissman’s story.
JC: One of the patients I took care of in the intensive care was a fireman. He obviously was fighting a fire and he was on one of these elevated lifts, and they lifted him into a power line. He was essentially electrocuted. He had electrical burns in his frontal lobes and both of his eyes, and out his left arm. I took care of him for a number of days. As I mentioned before, I did all the scut work, because I was a young guy on the service, so I got to take care of all the patients after surgery. He lived for about five days, eventually died, and I remember his wife coming in. I can’t remember if they had any children; of course, they wouldn’t have come in. But it was a very sad situation. Subsequently I got to know some of the fire chiefs, and they remembered the incident very dramatically as the one fireman that was killed in the riots. That’s it.
HS: Okay.
JC: That’s the only story I forgot.
HS: Okay.
WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel. Today is June 15, 2016. We are in Sterling Heights, MI. This is an interview for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project and I am sitting down with Michael Krotche. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
MK: You’re welcome.
WW: Can you first tell me where and when you were born?
MK: 1941.
WW: 1941? And you grew up in Detroit?
MK: I grew up right on the border of Hamtramck and Detroit.
WW: What was your neighborhood like?
MK: Polish. Very Polish. I went to a great school that taught Polish, masses were in Polish—well, I say mass, sermons were in Polish, at that time it was still Latin mass. Very, very ethnic, very stable, everybody knew everybody. Just a great neighborhood.
WW: What did your parents do for a living?
MK: Dad worked at Plymouth automotive plant. My mother had a myriad of jobs. She worked at some factories, she worked at the Fisher building doing maintenance. We weren’t poor, but we certainly weren’t affluent. Both my parents worked to put us through parochial schools.
WW: What school did you go to?
MK: I went to Our Lady Queen of Apostles for grade school, then I went to Catholic Central for high school.
WW: What year did you graduate high school?
MK: ’59.
WW: ’59? What was it like growing up in the city? Did you stay in your neighborhood or did you venture out?
MK: Yeah, yeah, very much in the neighborhood atmosphere. I can’t say, other than the fact that—I started caddying when I was eleven years old—
WW: You started what-ing?
MK: Caddying, at the Detroit Golf Club. So I started caddying at eleven, and the fact that I went to Catholic Central, which was like a new neighborhood for me, it was Outer Drive and Hubbell. So I wasn’t very familiar with it, but we were pretty much neighborhood oriented, and that was just the times I guess.
WW: Throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, did your neighborhood become integrated or did it stay—
MK: No, it was an ethnic, Polish neighborhood. Most of the people there spoke Polish. Not in their daily lives, but they certainly were capable of it. Like I said, the parish was Polish. The schools were Polish. I wasn’t a Pole! In fact, my mother was Irish, but my father was born in Austria of Polish descent, but I certainly wasn’t being considered Polish.
WW: Are there any experiences you’d like to share from growing up in that neighborhood?
MK: It was just a great neighborhood. We had a lot of kids, we did things together. Probably my first really leaving of the neighborhood was when I went to high school. Ten of us took the test at Catholic Central—I didn’t want to go there, but my buddies did—and two of us made it. And I ended up going out there, and it was probably one of the best things I ever done. But I can’t say I had a lot of really outside exposure until I went to college. I went to Wayne out of high school for basically two years, and in the middle of my sophomore year, my dad died. I was nineteen, I was the oldest of four siblings, I had to go to work. So I quit in my sophomore year and I joined the police department as a cadet and I was in an administrative position for two years until 1963 when I turned 21 and I became a sworn officer.
WW: When you went to Wayne State, did you move down there or did you stay in your neighborhood?
MK: No, I lived at home but I drove myself to school every day. I was selected to play freshman basketball. That was probably my first exposure to African Americans. Cause half the team was white, half the team was black. The coach was black. So that was probably my real association because like I said, the neighborhood that I grew up in was white and Polish. It was a very ethnic neighborhood.
WW: What did you study when you went to Wayne?
MK: Early on, it was just general studies. I had intentions of becoming a cop, even though I was kind of forced into joining the department earlier than I had planned to, because of my dad’s death, but I had always envisioned myself as being a policeman. Always what I wanted to do.
HS [Hannah Sabal]: So would it have been a degree in criminal justice?
MK: They didn’t have a criminal justice program at the time. I went into the general studies with the idea that at some point in time, probably in my second year, I would start looking for a major to declare, but it would be something in the law end of it. In the back of my mind, there were times I thought about being a lawyer, but that didn’t really turn me on.
WW: And what year again did you join the police department?
MK: ’61. February of ’61.
WW: What precinct were you placed into after you joined?
MK: When I joined the police department as a sworn officer, it was February of ’63.
WW: Okay.
MK: And I went to the 7th Precinct, which was Mack and Gratiot. I was there for a year, and one of the precincts had a ticket strike of the officers, and as a disciplinary process, they transferred a bunch of them out and a bunch of officers that were in my particular class, academy class, had just completed their probation so they went out and said, “okay, we’re going to replace these guys with younger officers,” and I got transferred without any say-so, just got a phone call saying, “You’re going.” I was there from ’64 to 1970.
WW: At that time the Detroit police department was all white, correct?
MK: Well it wasn’t all white, we probably had—on my particular shift—out of probably fifty officers, we probably had four or five that were black.
WW: Okay.
MK: And there was nothing any different about them than any of the white guys. I mean, everybody got along. Nobody thought of them as black and nobody thought of us as white. I mean, we were all cops.
WW: Was that just the mode in your particular precinct or do you think that that was city-wide?
MK: I can’t speak for other precincts. You know, I can only speak to the precinct I was in. We had probably out of maybe—and again, I’m guessing—150 total officers in that precinct, we probably had ten that were black. There weren’t any problems. Everybody got along. They were all integrated crews: blacks work with whites, whites work with blacks. There weren’t any problems.
WW: For being a police officer in the 1960s, did you notice any tension growing in the city?
MK: Yeah. I think in our precinct maybe a little more than others, because we had a group—basically they were the Black Panthers, is what they were. They were over on Kercheval right near McClellan in a storefront. The year before the ’67 riots, they had created a little turmoil and it resulted in us—not us, but in the department bringing in extra resources. It was kind of tense. It was the prelude to the following year. And that particular group had some people that were known as Black Panthers, and at the very least had an allegiance to the Black Panther movement at that time. And they did some things to try to stir up the pot. There were a couple situations where they got involved in arrests, or they weren’t a part of it, but they intervened. But we had some broken windows, we had some stuff that lasted a couple days. It was kind of a prelude. I certainly never saw ’67 coming.
WW: You didn’t?
MK: No. I mean there were issues—obviously there were issues—but I don’t think, I think if you talk to most of the guys at that time, the vast majority would say they didn’t see it coming. I mean, there were some incriminations, you had some people that were obviously stir up the problems from both sides, but it wasn’t something that I would have forecast.
WW: Where were you living in 1967?
MK: In the area of 8 mile and Gratiot.
WW: On the Detroit side?
MK: Yeah, on the Detroit side. In fact, the very first block in the city limits.
WW: Were you on duty that Saturday night, Sunday morning?
MK: I sure was.
WW: Can you speak about that?
MK: [speaking at the same time] I was working midnights. I had requested a couple hours of comp time because my mother was going to have a little family get-together at my mother’s house. And my mother lived right on the border of Hamtramck and Detroit, where I grew up. About 5 to 6 that morning, we were driving into the precinct lot, and the dispatcher came on and said, “There was a little incident on the west side.” And that was all that was said. Nothing else. “Just a little incident on the west side.” So I went in and I said to the lieutenant, “What do you think?” in light of what we had just heard. He said, “If it were any big deal, we would’ve heard about it by now. Get outta here.” I said, “Okay,” and I left. I went home, I got my wife, got my kids, and I went to my mother’s. I was working midnights, so by the time that we got there, it was roughly ten o’clock probably, by the time we fed the kids. And my sister’s bedroom faced to the west, so that’s where I went to sleep. I went to sleep about ten o’clock, and about twelve-thirty, one o’clock my wife came upstairs and she said, “The station’s on the line.” And I said, “The station?” And she said, “Yeah!” So I get up out of bed and as I did I looked out the window and I could see big rolls of black smoke to the west. And I thought, there must be a hell of a fire somewhere. That’s probably why they’re calling. So I went downstairs, and I answered the phone, and the lieutenant’s on the phone, and the lieutenant says, “How fast can you get here?” I said, “What the hell’s going on?” He said, “We’ve got a big problem right now.” He said, “We need you to get in here as soon as you can.” I said, “Okay.” She took me home, dropped me off, I changed, got my uniform on, I went to work, and I got home the next day at three o’clock. So I was gone roughly twenty-four hours. And that was my introduction to it, like I said, we had no idea there was anything going on! Other than this thing coming on saying there was a little incident on the west side.
WW: Throughout that first day and into the second day, did the police department feel like they could control what was going on?
MK: Yeah, I think they did, but it was starting to escalate. On the east side, particularly, where I was. We started getting looting, little bit of burning, more looting of stores and so forth. There was a liquor store that I think was at Mack and—I think it was Bewick. The State of Michigan liquor store. That thing got cleaned out in no time flat. I mean, they went through the doors in, man, no time flat. It’s funny because I watched Baltimore and I thought, man there’s a repetition, same thing that we saw. We had some shooting, there was some sniper fire. Like I said, there was some burning but we didn’t have a lot of fires, it was more looting than everything else. By Monday it had really escalated. Monday, it took off. I think by the time I left on Monday, it had to be three o’clock, three-thirty, we knew we had our hands full. And we knew that we were losing it.
WW: Given that sense, was it a relief when the National Guard came in?
MK: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. They had some things—if nothing else, a show of force that we couldn’t exude. I mean they brought in certain vehicles and weaponry—just the sight of it had to be a deterrent in some respects.
WW: Was it the same feeling when the federal troops moved in? The 101st and the 82nd?
MK: Probably, at that point in time, I think we started to feel like we were getting a little bit of a handle on it, but yeah, without a doubt. I mean when you see army, when you see a tank driving up and down the street, yeah, it gets your attention. They had a command post set up at Southeastern High School. They had a fifty-caliber mounted on the, kind of a round-a-bout, on the lawn of the school. That got your attention. You see that big gun out there, you knew that people weren’t playing games anymore. But yeah, the Guard was probably the first big thing because we started to feel like we were getting some support. When the army came in, that was—I think once the army came in, things started to calm down real fast, whether it was because those that were involved in the damaging and the looting and the rest of it, just [16:04??] but now they’re serious. Now maybe we better pull our lines a little bit, but I’d say start of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, it was probably Wednesday before we started to get the feeling that maybe we’re starting to get a grip on this. More so on the west than on the east side, where I was at. The west side had a lot more burning, a lot more fires, we may have had more shooting. We had a sniper that somehow that got into an old abandoned show across from the 5th precinct, and he took some shots at the precinct. And there were some other sniper instances. We had one sniper from Kercheval and St. Jean. You knew he was a sniper because you could see the tracers coming in. We knew we were under fire. He was shooting tracers at us. It was a strange time because you were scared to death, I’m sure most of us were, you didn’t know if you turned the next block if someone would take a shot at you. People were running around carrying stuff that you know is stolen. But at the same time you could go after some of them, but you knew if you did, you’d be sticking your neck out. There could be a whole lot more waiting for you. So some of it was allowed to slide for the first couple days. But the liquor store, they hit that. It was a State of Michigan liquor store, and it got cleaned in no time flat. There was a market, they cleaned that out, and that one they burned. They burned it and it was robbed. Over on Willowbridge and Mack.
WW: After the federal troops moved in and the disturbances quieted down, was there a sense of relief or anger? How did the police department react?
MK: You know, I can’t speak for the department. I can only speak for myself. It was a feeling of frustration, in some respects, because we had seen the city terribly damaged. We were in the national—probably international—headlines. It was never going to be the same. 12th Street was never going to be the same. The east side was never going to be the same. Just the attitude in the city was never going to be the same. One of the godsends was the Tigers. That World Series in ’68 was a godsend because it created a kind of unified approach to something that everybody became a part of. That had a big, big impact on maybe lessening what could have been some really bad feeling after the fact. There was a sense of relief after it finally subsided, but there was also a sense of depression because we had seen so much done, so much damage. 12th Street was basically eradicated. A lot of people lost homes that shouldn’t have lost homes. Businesses that shouldn’t’ve closed. White and black. It didn’t matter. We knew then that it was never going to be the same. It was never going to be the same.
WW: You spoke about how your first shift lasted nearly twenty-four hours. What were the rest of your shifts like that week?
MK: I got off Monday around three o’clock, and I had to be back for the midnight to 12pm shift, so I worked midnights to noon for the next, I would say, week. I can’t remember exactly when we went back to an eight hour shift, but it was at least a week. Usually we would be busy from the onset, from around midnight until, maybe six, then there’d be a lull, and then it would start to pick up again around, after daylight, around nine o’clock. We’d start to get some incidents and some problems. The other shift, the guys that worked the noon to midnight, they caught bad times. Certainly much worse than we did. In part, because there was a curfew and you had to be off the street—and don’t hold me to the hours because it’s been a while—but it was like eight o’clock to eight o’clock, so we could be driving around at two o’clock in the morning and you wouldn’t see a soul. You wouldn’t see headlights, you wouldn’t see anything. Then all of a sudden you hear, “Pop! Pop! Pop!” The officers that worked the noon to midnight, they got their butts kicked at times.
WW: You spoke about how looting wasn’t heavily—arresting for looting was heavily done because you were sticking your neck out.
MK: We made a lot of arrests for looting, but there were a lot that you just didn’t have a choice, because number one, you were outnumbered. Severely outnumbered. We had four-man cars, and in a lot of cases, they would have caravans of three cars with four officers each. And still, if you pulled into that liquor store, you talk about being outnumbered. You’re outnumbered. There was a safety blanket that you had to maintain.
WW: Was the curfew heavily enforced?
MK: Yeah, and I think a lot of the arrests that were mandated during that time were because of the curfew. A lot. Some people just didn’t take it to heart at first, and when they end up in the bowels of the Bastille, they realize, yeah, I guess they’re going to enforce it. Oh yeah, we had, oh I can’t tell you how many people at one time in that precinct under arrest. 100? And probably at least 50% were for broken curfew. Because that was the one way they had to convince people that you had to stay off the streets. You have to get off. We were going to enforce it rigorously and they did. We arrested—myself, probably a dozen. And most of them were after midnight, and they were out there foolishly. Why would you be out there under the circumstances, unless you’re potentially up to no good? The precinct itself, we had upwards of a hundred prisoners at one time. In fact, we had to store them in the garage because that was the only place, secure place, that we could do it.
WW: How do you interpret what happened in July 1967? Do you see it as a riot? Do you see it as a rebellion?
MK: I’ve always referred to it as a riot because in my connotation of a riot, it’s where public law has been allowed to be trampled on and it was. I mean, there were some individuals that came out that thought that they could talk to the group that started the whole thing, which was the blind pig, and there were some public officials that found out quickly their voice wasn’t being heard. Now I wasn’t there, but I’ve read enough about it that I know that’s what happened. It was a warm night, blind pigs were a dime a dozen. Every precinct had them, every neighborhood probably had them. Certainly in the black community, they were just a social entity. They were illegal, but they were there. It was just a fact of life. And I had done some raids on blind pigs, and we never had any problems. People knew that what they were doing was wrong, you weren’t after the people that were the party-goers; we were after the people that were running it. So maybe two or three people would go to jail, all the stuff would be confiscated. Some of the customers might or might not get a ticket, life went on and they’d be open the next weekend. I mean, seriously, they would! But that particular night, whatever the mood was over there—and I wasn’t there, so I can’t speak to it—must’ve got a little out of hand, and once it got out of hand, six o’clock on a Sunday morning is probably the weakest time for law enforcement. You’ve got the fewest resources. And that’s what happened.
WW: Backtracking a little bit, when you were with the police department, what was your primary work? Just a moment ago you said you did a couple raids, were you on the vice squad?
MK: I was a patrolman from ’63 to ’70, to ’71, and ’71 I got promoted to sergeant. And that entire time I spent in the precinct on the street. Then I was a sergeant on the street for about a year and a half, and I was asked if I would take over the Police Athletic League program, which at the time was miniscule. It was very, very small, but they had visions of advancing the program, and they had an agreement with Chrysler Corporation to come in as a big sponsor and really expand the program. I had a reasonable background in athletics. I had some experience in buying equipment and that. And they asked me if I would come in and take it over as a sergeant. I had bosses above me, but basically I was running it for a time. Chrysler came in and that thing took off. They started spending money, they started sponsorships, it went from a very small program to where it’s at today. I mean, they’re renovating the site of the old Tiger’s Stadium. They’re going to put their new offices down there. So it really took off. And I was there for almost two years, and I was ready to be a cop again. I was an athletic director, but I was ready to be a cop again. So I went back to a precinct and I stayed there, and then I got promoted to lieutenant. Basically I spent my last fourteen years on the street.
WW: And when did you leave the police department?
MK: I left there in April of 1987. Chrysler made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. They came to me and offered me the job as Lee Iaccoco’s body guard. Driver/bodyguard. I really didn’t want the job, but they recruited me, recruited me, and I took it as a one-month trial. I was there two days and said, am I nuts? What am I thinking about? So I left the department officially in April of ’87 and I was with him for eight and a half years. And then I did internal investigations for Chrysler for eight and a half years, and I retired, and just before I retired, they made me another offer I couldn’t refuse, which was a part-time position doing kind of what I was doing towards the latter part of my career, which was investigating people that were out on disability and on workman’s comp that were suspect. They gave me that position. I ran everything from Boston to Vancouver. What I did basically was manage the cases. I contracted out a lot of surveillance work, I reviewed all the surveillance work, and if I thought that there was a basis for discipline against an employee, I would take it to the higher-ups and they would make the decisions, and then I would go interview the employee after he’d been interviewed by our doctor. It was a fun job, probably the most fun job I ever had. You really got a sense of the human psyche. Some of the people…we had one that was blind, couldn’t see; she could drive everywhere better than me! I spent almost 25 years with the department and my only regret’s probably the last couple years, because it got to be so political. It really, really became political. I went through Affirmative Action, I was one of those passed over, bitter about it. I’m probably a little bitter about it to this day. I had to go back and retake, retest. I was 22 on the promotional list, and they promoted about sixty, but I didn’t get it. Because what they did is take one white male, one white female, one black male, one black female. So if you were 22 on the list, are you number 10 white male, or number 22? Cause that’s how it went. But later on, the union took it to court, and because of a labor issue about a year and a half before, the commissioner then made the comment as Affirmative Action was being invoked that if there were any openings in any rank, we’ll fill them. Well here come like twelve openings for the rank of lieutenant and he wouldn’t fill them because they had promoted all of the black males, all of the females, white and black, there was nothing left but white males, so he didn’t want to promote. They gave him another test. Next test came along, they couldn’t pass me because I got so high up. I actually got promoted, and they went back and went to the union, I ended up getting 10 months of back seniority and 10 months of back pay. That was kind of an after-effect in the long run of the change in the city. Because when Coleman came in, things changed dramatically. Particularly the police department. Particularly the police department.
WW: When did you move out of the city?
MK: 1988. I had three cars stolen in a period of nine months, three of my cars. And at the last one I said, okay, I had a new car that I had purchased for my wife got stolen and torched, and I said, “Okay,” I told her, “Go find us a house,” and she did a rock star job and here we are.
WW: Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
MK: Like I say, in some respects I kind of had a sheltered life until I went to college because that was just the neighborhood I was raised in. The city, to me, the real change came with Coleman Young. That’s when the real change came. Even after the riots, STRESS, which came in under John Eccles, probably a major factor in Coleman’s election. But after he came in, everything started changing dramatically. Certainly, certainly with the police department because we went from, probably we had 85% male white, maybe even more than that, to suddenly we were getting a large influx of recruits that were blacks and females both, a lot of females. And that caused some problems, a lot of problems. Did the riots affect the city? Oh, absolutely, no question about it. The election of Coleman I think was probably the major factor. In fact, I’m convinced it was the major factor. Because things were turned upside down. His vision of the city was much different from previous administrations; pretty much different than probably the populous as a whole.
WW: How do you see the city going today?
MK: You know, it’s funny I see a turn-around that I didn’t think I would’ve saw three years ago, four years ago. My biggest fear for the city yet remains the residential aspect of it. My wife and I lived, like I said, near 8 mile and Gratiot. I drove through there about a month ago. It was enough to make me sick to my stomach. I mean, it was a bedroom, bungalow kind of community. Brick homes, nice. You drive down the street, they’re burned out, they’re vacant, they’re abandoned. That’s probably the one area that’s going to take the longest. Until people feel safe to come back. Downtown—I love what I see downtown. I’m glad to see that they’ve finally got the M-1 Project going, I’m glad to see the arenas, the casinos, the housing down there. You’ve got Gilbert, and the Illitches, and other people who have committed their resources to bring that area back, but until the residential areas are brought back, Detroit as a whole is not going to come back. We had 1.7 million people living there in Detroit, when I graduated from high school in ’55, to 700,000 now. That’s where it’s at. It’s in the residential areas. The east side of Detroit is decimated. I mean, absolutely decimated. When we got married, we lived on a street called Lindhurst which was basically 6 mile, well maybe between 6 and 7 Mile on John R. street. You can’t drive down those streets. They’re so strewn with garbage, you literally can’t go through them. You don’t know what street you’re on because there are no street signs. Until that gets turned around, individual homes, people wanting to live back in the city, they’ve got a long haul. Downtown, magnificent. Some of the business areas I’m really pleased to see come back. My granddaughter goes to Wayne. She lives off of Ferry and Cass in one of those 120-year-old apartments, and we go down there occasionally to pick her up and we’ll go have breakfast. It’s amazing to see what Wayne State’s done. I mean, I started out there, but in a different era. To see where that’s come, to see the medical center. My wife was an RN down at Harper Hospital for years. She’s only been gone ten years, but in ten years it’s amazing how much has changed for the good. I’m optimistic for the city. I hope that they continue on the same vein that they’re going on right now. The mayor is a former graduate of my old high school, so I got a little special place for him, but I think he’s done a good job. But he’s got the Gilberts, he’s got the Illitches, he’s got the big money that’s willing to invest, and that’s what it’s going to take. You didn’t have that ten years ago. That’s why, if you drove down Woodward, it looked like a ghost town. It was funny because one night, Mr. I and I were driving home one night from the ball game, we’re driving down Woodward, and there was nothing. He said to me, “My God,” he says, “You could shoot a cannon down these streets!” Yeah. And I said, “This isn’t unique. This is the way it is.” But some of that is starting to turn around, we’re starting to see some of those buildings being renovated, businesses coming into it, so I’m optimistic for the city. I think it’s got a hell of a start to come back. But the residential area, that’s got to be the key. Number one, the biggest reason I think the residential area has to come back, taxes. You don’t have that revenue right now that the city desperately needs. And that’s where it’s going to be. The tax base in the city has been totally eroded, totally. Business can support a lot of tax, but until they get the residential areas up and running, get that and the schools. The school system is pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. I can remember one night when I was still with the department, we had to go up to Northern high school, which was on Woodward; they’d had a break-in. And for whatever reason, they had a bunch of papers, essays, term papers that were outside the building, outside the window. I’m certainly not a professor of English, but I picked them up, starting reading them, and they were horrific. I mean the English, the spelling was horrific! I thought, my God, these are kids that are getting cheated. They’re getting short changed if this is acceptable. They’re getting cheated. I went to Wayne, I’ll never forget. We had a guy who was a professor, he was a Hungarian Freedom Fighter, and he’d come here in 1957, I think. He taught a class and one of the subjects in this day was schools, public schools versus parochial schools. And he made the comment, “I can tell by reading a paper who went to public school and who went to parochial school.” Some of the kids that went to public school took offense to it. He said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a paragraph. All I want’s one paragraph. I’ll grade them and I’ll tell you which is which: who went to public and who went to private.” He missed on two. And I’m not downgrading public education, don’t get me wrong. But that night at Northern, I read some of those papers and I thought, oh my God, how can you accept this? We’re cheating these kids! These kids are being cheated if that’s acceptable! They’re being cheated.
WW: One final question that I did miss earlier: Of the arrestees, were they primarily black or a solid mix?
MK: I would say probably 90% of those arrested—maybe I’m a little off, maybe 80% of those arrested were black. The area that I patrolled was probably 90% black. I can think of one Hispanic that we arrested and the only reason I think of him was because to this day, we’re convinced he was one of the snipers. Couldn’t prove it, but we knew damn well he was.
WW: All right. Thank you very much for sitting down with us today!
MK: Thank you. I don’t know what I’ve contributed, but…
WW: Greatly appreciate it.