WW: Hello, today is October 17, 2016, my name is William Winkel, this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I am sitting down with Mr. Roger Manilla. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
RM: Sure, my pleasure.
WW: Could you please start by telling me where and when were you born?
RM: I was born in Detroit in 1942, November 16th, and I grew up in Detroit—a couple different neighborhoods.
WW: What neighborhoods were they?
RM: Well, my earliest memories were living in the Dexter-Davison neighborhood, which was a Jewish neighborhood at that time. I lived on Elmhurst and attended Winterhalter School, although my parents told me that before that we lived on Sturtevant, which is in the same neighborhood. So that was a very rich community and time, you know, in my childhood. I lived there until I was seven. I then moved to Northwest Detroit, so I lived on a tree-hurst, Elmhurst, we moved to Pinehurst, another tree-hurst, and we were basically around the corner from Schulze Elementary School and a couple blocks away from the newly-constructed Mumford High School, so those were the schools I went to at that time.
WW: Growing up in the Dexter-Davison and Northwest, were those areas integrated, or were they all white still?
RM: Well, integrated. The Dexter-Davison area in my childhood up to around the age of seven was integrating. It was still a largely Jewish neighborhood and a lot of black people were moving in. In fact, my grandfather died, my father inherited a block of stores on Dexter, and he rented a couple of them out and later sold them to an African American guy who was quite radical. Not sure if he was a Muslim, but he was certainly radical, and a lot of people of the day who were askance at that. Many years later I saw him distributing political leaflets. I can’t remember his name, but he was kind of running as an off-party candidate for mayor, and I introduced myself and he gave me a big hug and a big kiss on both cheeks, and he said that my father was the only one at that time way back then that would rent to him, and that his politics didn’t matter, his race didn’t matter, and my father was willing to sell him the building later on. He thought that was, you know, amazing.
My parents were always liberal, radical, union supporters. My mother organized the first union of welfare workers for the welfare department in Detroit. Before they were married they hitchhiked to Boston to protest the Sacco-Vanzetti trial. They made sandwiches and went up to Flint and passed them into the sit-down workers. So it was that kind of an environment that I grew up in.
BW: Wow.
RM: Wow. It’s continued to today, that kind of political involvement.
WW: Growing up in Detroit, did you tend to stay in your own neighborhoods or did you venture around the city?
RM: Well, it depends on at what age. When I was young and we lived in the Dexter neighborhood, probably up unto my teens, I would go places with my parents. We would go downtown. There was an automat—I think it was called Greenfield’s or something—my mother liked to go there, you know, take me there for lunch. She worked for the Jewish Family Agency, she was a social worker as well, and they were located right here on Woodward at one time, so we would come down and sit in the front office window and look out and watch the Thanksgiving Parade from her office. So I had a feeling for downtown Detroit, but mostly the Westside. Detroit seems to be an East-West split city. You grow up on the Westside, or Northwest, you know the Westside but you are not really familiar— that familiar with the Eastside. It always seemed like another city to me as a kid. And we would go to Hudson’s, we’d go to Crowley’s, shopping. I remember getting my first haircut at Hudson’s. They had a, like, a chair that looked like an animal, sort of like you would ride on a merry-go-round, for the kids, and that was interesting. Detroit had a very sort of rich mercantile life at that time—downtown Detroit did. And my family took me around there. And later when I was in high school and was living out in Northwest Detroit, so sort of near Curtis and Meyer’s, I would come into Detroit and go—there was a jazz club that didn’t serve alcohol but brought really great headline acts—Miles Davis, Cozy Cole, top local people like Youssef Lateef, and really good jazz. It was sometimes so packed that people would line up around the block to get in. You could only get in when somebody left. And they weren’t an alcohol-serving place so the music would go on until two in the morning, so in high school I used to go down there a lot and come into town.
WW: Do you remember what the name of the bar was, or the venue was?
RM: Yeah, the Minor Key, it was on Dexter. And there were a group of us that were kind of hip, you know, followers of jazz music, writers, artists, you know, at least we thought of ourselves as that at the time. So we would come into the city for that. And I found that, you know, cross-racial stuff was very friendly about that. There wasn’t a lot of hostility. You know, these white teenagers coming in from the suburbs. People would talk to us, we got invited up to some after-hours gigs at people’s apartments, there was no fear about going anywhere. You know, people treated us very well. Plus, I started to get involved with kind of a left-wing group of people, and that was very integrated, you know, black and white and talking about revolutionary things. That had some implications for what happened in ‘67 also, so it’s a background.
WW: Was it just a loose formation of people, or did you have a name?
RM: No, later on I got involved with Students for a Democratic Society and anti-Vietnam War protest and, in fact, I dropped out of school for a while and became a community organizer for them in Roxbury, Boston, and would go around and speak on different campuses. And was involved with people like Tom Hayden. And some of my close friends were involved in SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]. A woman that I met in Ann Arbor, who’s actually grown up to be a fairly well-known historian, Martha Prescott. She was a major people in SNCC, major figure in Mississippi voter registration in the summer. But that was later, that was when I was in college. We were really good friends, and we’ve remained friends—not close now, because of distance, but over the years whenever we see each other it’s like old-home week, we hug and, “What have you been doing.” Some of her family are buried in Ann Arbor in a cemetery that’s around the corner from a house I own in Ann Arbor, so, you know, there’s a lot of connections there. One of her sons is a doctor and she comes back to Michigan to see him. So that’s interesting.
WW: So being at the Minor Key and meeting these left-wing people, did you—
RM: Well, I knew them before, I didn’t just meet them at the Minor Key. I met some pretty famous musicians through the Minor Key, but.
WW: And when you went to U of M Ann Arbor to go to school, it amplified?
RM: Well, here’s how my education went. I got admitted to U of M late, okay, like the end of October. But before then I accepted a place at Michigan State, so I spent my freshman year at Michigan State, and given my family background I kind of gravitated towards sort of leftish-leaning groups, philosophical discussion groups and stuff. Then, I had always had my eye set on U of M, so for my sophomore year I transferred to U of M, and I met some people. We used to hang out in coffee shops and discuss—there was a guy from England who had gone to the London School of Economics, he got a first, he had come to Ann Arbor because a fairly famous economist, Kenneth Wilding from England, was teaching in Ann Arbor, and his name was Jim Arrowsmith. And I was majoring in philosophy at the time and there was a woman I knew who had applied to go to London for her junior year, and I thought, what the hell. So I talked to Jim, I sent away to London School of Economics. It was almost impossible to get into, it’s like getting into Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge, it was one of the top schools in the world. And I got admitted. So I left and went to the London School of Economics for my junior year and studied political philosophy and political theory.
WW: And what year was that?
RM: Let’s see—so—
WW: Sixty-three?
RM: Sixty-two and sixty-three.
WW: Okay.
RM: Yeah. The school year.
Here’s an aside, okay? I went to high school with a guy named Richard Wishnetsky. Have you heard of him? Richard Wishnetsky was a straight-A, brilliant student in high school and a straight-A student at U of M. He was also nuts. He ended up assassinating a rabbi—what’s his name—I don’t remember his name, but a famous, famous, famous case. He went onstage and blew his head out, and then committed suicide in front of the congregation. He was very upset.
But we were close friends, and when I went to Europe I met a French woman, and then when I came back here I told him about her, and then he went over there for some reason—some internship or something—and looked her up, and then years later I went back and saw her and she said that he had been such a nice guy. And then I told her what he had done, and she was appalled. And then some years after that I was sitting in a coffee shop in Ann Arbor and I was talking to this girl and I said I was from Detroit and that I’d gone to Mumford, and she asked if I knew her brother. And that she had changed her name and had a completely different identity, and I said yes, that I had known him, and then she sort of broke down and talked about what a disaster it had been for the surviving members of the family, you know, based on what he had done.
So there were a lot of tumultuous—you know—I mean, it’s a life, you know, you go through life and stuff happens. But he was absolutely brilliant, never got anything other than an A or an A plus. Got admitted to Harvard to study, you know, philosophy, but instead—Jewish kid—he took a position for graduate school at the University of Detroit. You know, Catholic school. And, you know, he was very troubled about religion and its role in people’s lives and God and morality, and then, you know, he ended up committing one of the most immoral acts one could imagine.
WW: Yeah.
RM: So that was another thread of people I knew. I was also sort of a budding artist and sculptor at the time, so I hung out with people in high school who were under the tutelage of our art teacher at Mumford, his name was Raymond ________ (??). And he was a member of the Scarab Club down here, so sometimes he would bring his students on sketching trips into Detroit, and we would go to the Scarab Club and he got us into exhibits that were there and stuff. So that again brought us out of the suburbs into the city and stuff.
WW: Once you returned from London, did you continue your community activism?
RM: Well, that’s interesting, because when I got back here, one of the first people that I sort of saw was an old friend of mine—in fact, our parents had been friends forever—named Peter Werbe. You know who Peter is? Peter Werbe is the publisher—the editor of The Fifth Estate. He also has a radio show in Detroit. In fact, he would be a great person to interview, because he was all involved in all of this stuff. So through Peter—he was going up to Ann Arbor. Tom Hayden and a guy named Todd Gitlen(??) and I think somebody else were living in a house on Arch Street in Ann Arbor, and had, you know, a big radical poster, you know, on the door—in fact it was glued on the door, it stayed on the door forever. I ended up buying that house later on, just to preserve the door. Later I sold it, they painted over the door, they took the door away. But I got involved with a group of them who were the sort of core of SDS, Students for Democratic Society, and through them I met Al Haber, who started SDS, and his father later became Dean of the Lit School in Ann Arbor. And who I’m still very close with, who’s moved back to Ann Arbor from living in San Francisco, in Oakland for a while, California. And at that time there was a debate within SDS about whether we should be involved in community organizing, or whether we should be mobilizing against the war in Vietnam. I didn’t see it as an either or, but people lined up on both sides of that issue. And I had family in Boston, I had an aunt who had become a Dean of Social Work at Simmons, I had an uncle who teaching at Harvard, and I used to visit them as a child. I used to visit them in the summers. And—not the whole summer, a few weeks here, a few weeks there. So I had an affinity for Boston and they started a community organizing project in Roxbury. So I actually went—you know, I got into social work school and after my first year I took time off and went to Boston, and worked as a community organizer in Roxbury. And it was pretty much through this contact with these SDS people. You know about SDS, right? It started in Ann Arbor.
So during that time also was my undergraduate years. I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on the IWW [Industrial Workers of the World], and the Wobblies. So that also got me involved in doing labor history and labor research, and very interested in the songs of the time, you know, Joe Hill and, you know, the organizers. And years, years later, the IWW still has a little hip pocket office in Chicago, and I went there. There on the shelf of all the books that had been written about the Wobblies was my undergraduate honors thesis. I thought, where the hell did you get that. They said, we got every word that’s ever been written about the IWW. So they had—I used to hang out at that office and just reminisce with them and read through stuff.
At the time that I was writing my undergraduate honors thesis, I was also working part-time at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations. In fact, Al Haber worked there too, we would edit _______ (??) of articles for a journal about labor economics. And there was a woman who was also affiliated with the institute named Joyce Kornbluh, and she wrote the sort of definitive history of the IWW at the same time that I was writing mine. And so we would exchange notes and talk and stuff, and she was a noted labor historian.
So this is all kind of preamble, you know. This is my background. These are things that I was doing. I came back from Boston, got my masters in social work, was in a doctoral program, so I found myself working for UCS with these kids in Detroit.
WW: And what does UCS stand for?
RM: United Community Services. It’s a—there was a subdivision of it but I don’t remember what it was called. But it was located right over here on—I think on Warren. Was it Warren or Forest? Anyways, it was right near Wayne. And I think they still have that same building. But it was basically, you know, the red feather agency, it was an umbrella of a number of different agencies, community agencies.
WW: And what was your work here? Oh, I should say, when did you first arrive here to do this work?
RM: Well it isn’t a question of arriving, I mean, I’ve just—I’ve always sort of been here. My parents continued to live in Detroit until, you know, a few years after this, when they moved to Ann Arbor to be closer to me, I guess.
WW: When did you start working for United Community Services, then?
RM: In the summer of ‘67.
WW: Okay.
RM: Yeah. And the people I hung out with at that time in Detroit—Peter Werbe, Frank Joyce, you know who he is? Okay. Really? So I was just at this conference, they had—the Sound Conservancy had a conference, and—so I’m talking to this woman, her name was Marsha and she has a radio program, you know, music program. And so we’re talking about—you know, and she asked me a little bit, like you did, about your background, so I mentioned some of the people I know. So I said that I used to hang out with Frank when he lived over here on Prentis and stuff, and she said, “Oh my god, I was married to Frank. And we have a 40 year old son.” And that was pretty funny.
So Frank Joyce was living over here on Prentis, Peter Werbe and his wife Marilyn was living over there, it was an apartment building where everybody lived in. And when I would come into the city—and I was working down here, so I would see them. And they were involved with some pretty radical people. Especially some very revolutionary black people, you know. And they were far out, even for me, I mean, they were out there, they were armed, and they really expected insurrection to take place.
So a little aside, when the riots broke out—not that that they started them, but a couple of them piled all their guns into the trunk of their car, and they were stopped by the police—if I got it right, they were stopped by the police, and they found all these guns, and I think a couple of them ended up in jail. There was a guy I liked very much, good-looking guy, very nice, his name was Will McClendon. I think—you know him?
WW: Yep, he was with ACME [Adult Community Movement for Equality].
RM: Yeah. Well, he was involved with these guys. Another offshoot that I had was through my working at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, I met a guy named Dennis DuChez(??), who worked at Chrysler at the time. And he was—he was an inside employee of Chrysler, but he was a big supporter of DRUM, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. So I met some of those people. So it’s—you know, it’s like loose associations, you know. The only group I was ever really—ever formally part of was SDS. But Frank organized the Northern Student Movement, that was his organization. I can’t—I was at a party with him and some woman, I can’t remember her name, but she was—she’d been drinking a little bit, but she’d pushed me up against the wall and, you know, was like right in my face and was asking me all these questions about how radical was I really, or was I just a white dilatant down here from the suburbs that was slumming, and what had I ever done for her people. And you know [laughs], it was very confrontational. That’s the only time I think that anybody ever, you know—all my time in Roxbury, and other times in Detroit. But times were changing, you know, people were now much more openly angry, and—
WW: And what was the work you did with United Community Services?
RM: Like I said, I rounded up these kids, recruited them, got them involved with the police, took them around the precincts, taught them about how the police department worked. And sort of took them into the neighborhoods, staked them out in a two or three block area and let them do basically an inventory of the neighborhood. Abandoned houses, abandoned cars. You know, just to get a general—and they would write up a few paragraphs about the neighborhood, and list these things, and they would get paid. They got paid pretty well, you know, for then. I think they might have gotten 7 dollars an hour, and they were late middle and early high school age kids. So that was pretty good money for them back then.
WW: How did working for the Detroit Police Department impact your friendships with these left-wing activists?
RM: Well, I wasn’t really working for the Detroit Police Department, I was working with the Detroit police. I was working for United Community Services. But I’ve always been sort of circulating in different worlds. I’m a sociologist, you know? In fact, one of the country’s top social scientists—sociologists of police, Albert Reese, wrote a couple books about police—was one of my professor’s at U of M. And then later when he got to be chairman of sociology at Yale I went and visited him. I think it’s important to just understand all the institutions of society. My own political beliefs and feelings—you know, I don’t have a lot of animosity towards the police. I think that there’s a—the police in function in society is, by its nature, sort of oppressive. I mean, you’re basically looking for things that people are doing, and some of the things they’re doing, and telling them they can’t do it, and if they continue to do it you arrest them, that’s not very nice. I remember when I was a kid, I was driving down Linwood with my father—I must have been about 12, 13—and a couple young black kids—15, 16—were walking down the street. And a police car was driving by, and it pulls over, drives up on the sidewalk, and pushes these kids up against the wall and starts frisking them, and just hassling them. And my father’s driving by, he slams on the breaks, jumps out of the car, and goes up to these cops, writes down their badge numbers and starts shouting at them, and saying, “What are you doing to these young men? What have they done? I saw them just walking down the street, and you basically have assaulted them, and I’m going to report you, not only to the police department but to the newspapers. What are your names?” You know, these are big cops, white cops, and my father—five foot six, little Jewish man, screaming at them. And they were intimidated. They were really intimidated by him. And they kind of apologized to him, and he said, “Don’t apologize to me, apologize to them and let them go on their way.” And the cops did. And man, I was so, so proud of my dad, and also scared for him. So that, you know—stuff like that in Detroit.
WW: So as your working that summer, do you sense—is there like a feeling in the air that there’s something that’s going to happen in the summer?
RM: Well, you know, I was involved with people that are talking about revolution, insurrection, this that and the other. But it was like—I didn’t think it was—they thought—a lot of them thought it was real. I didn’t think it was real. I mean, I’d go back to my parents’ house in the evening, I didn’t live in the city and I didn’t have my finger on the pulse of what the inner city was going through. And I was aware of the economic gulf, I was aware of the people in DRUM being dissatisfied with the union and with their contracts. But I was always sort of on the edges of things watching stuff go on, rather than being in the center of things, as, you know—
Later when the Vietnam War was happening I got more involved. I organized about eight busloads of people to go to Washington, and I recruited a guy who became my life-long friend, Carl Ogalsbee?, recruited him to SDS. He was a technical writer for Bendix at the time, basically working for the military-industrial complex, and I confronted him about his principles and his life and how they were out of sync, and he actually quit his job. He had two little kids—three little kids at the time, his little boy was a baby, and he walked out of a good-paying job to work for SDS.
WW: So going into that week, how did you first hear about what was going on, on Twelfth Street and Clairmount?
RM: Well, our kids were out there. Inventorying cars, and it was on the news and we got a call to get the kids off the streets. They were wearing T-shirts that said Detroit Police Department, they were wearing bright yellow helmets. And there wasn’t really anybody else there. I was at the office, and they said, “Take our station wagon and go get those kids.” So I drove in and started rounding up the kids, okay? So I’ve got these black kids that I’m picking up off the street, with their T-shirts saying Detroit Police Department and their bright yellow helmets, and the buildings around us are on fire, and people are breaking in the front windows and walking out with TVs, and burning the files, so if they owe any money that stuff will be destroyed. And it was like—well, it was like Mardi Gras, it was like a street party. Nobody was stopping them, there weren’t any police on the street, and some people had guns but nobody was shooting anybody. It’s just—it was kind of pandemonium. So I’m driving and then people are in front of me on the street, so I stop. I’ve got these kids in the back, you know. I’m white, they’re black. And a guy comes up to me and says, “Roll down your window.” So I roll down my window, he says, “Are you fucking crazy? What the hell are you doing here?” I say, “Well, I’ve got to get these kids off the street, I’m with this program blah, blah, blah.” He said, “Get in the back, get down, don’t let anybody see you. I’ll drive you out of the neighborhood.” So he gets in, I get in the back, get down. He drives the car out of the neighborhood, and gets away from what’s happening on Twelfth Street.
And—so we take the kids back to the office and they’re waiting for their parents to pick them up, and then I kind of turn to him and say, “Well, where do you want to be?” He said, “Well, I certainly don’t want to be here. This ain’t no place for a black man to be.” And I said, “Well.” He said, “I’ll tell you, take me as close to back where I met you as it’s safe for you to be, and then, you know, you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine.” And, you know, we never saw each other or talked to each other again. But that’s my most vivid memory, the buildings burning—oh, I was taking pictures, too. He said, “Are you crazy, taking pictures of these folks walking out of those stores with those TVs?” And it was—it was an interesting experience. I wasn’t really afraid, but I had never—I had never been encountered around racial issues or about being white or anything, in a way that would make me afraid. And I had really amicable relationships with everybody, so it just, it wasn’t on my radar. Looking back on it, it was probably fairly dangerous, at that time, to be taking pictures of people robbing stores. But it didn’t seem to me to be at the time.
WW: Did you have any other experiences during that week? Or did you hunker down?
RM: Well, I wrote up all my thoughts and reflections for a report to the agency I was working for. And they wrapped it around a description of the program and its goals and then, you know, a sort of an evaluation of the program at the end, and brought it out as a kind of, like a white paper, you know. Bob Potts wrote a piece, and the director of the agency, his name at that time was Emerick Curtagh(??)The assistant director of the agency was a guy named Harold Johnson, who later became dean of social work at U of M. So, you know, these were people that were—you know, became significant in their field.
I had another friend that worked there, a black guy named Madison Foster, and he was an interesting character. When I first met Madison, let’s see—I was in graduate school in social work, and so was he, and he wore, like, a tweed jacket and smoked a pipe and was affecting an east coast accent. And then a year or so later he was involved in the Black Student Movement in Ann Arbor. And then a year or so after that he was selling marijuana. And then a year or so after that he and a couple partners had started a really great soul food restaurant in Ann Arbor. And then the restaurant failed. And a year or two after that he was a professor at Morgan State. And then a year or two after that he was at another college. So my thoughts about him and the transition he went through—you know, the different lives he led, and then the different people I met through him who were his friends at different stages of my friendship with him. It’s sort of a fascinating chronicle of the kind of evolution of a black person’s experience and self-concept and, you know, and all of that.
The other thing I was involved with, I was really peripherally involved in the drug culture in Ann Arbor. My roommate, lovely guy named Ned Shore, was probably one of the biggest marijuana dealers in the United States. And he did it for years, out of the apartment I was living in. So when he got arrested and they were investigating him, just like this only it was the FBI sitting across the table from me—but what happened was the last—and he owned Ned’s Bookstore, first in Ann Arbor and then it was a major off-campus bookstore in Ypsilanti. So he had a viable business. And his brother was also involved. His brother was absolutely brilliant, I think he got his PhD at nineteen in nuclear engineering. So, you know, I mean, they were very unique people. Good businessmen. So they had farms and planes and fleets of cars and everything. But they had a big ship that they filled up with bales of marijuana wrapped in plastic, and I think that it was some kind of hurricane or typhoon—maybe it was the perfect storm that they made the movie of, the Perfect Storm. But the ship was destroyed. Broke up. It was coming up from South American and it broke up, and bales of marijuana washed up on the Atlantic coast, from Maine to Florida. And people were driving out on the beaches with Dune Buggies and jeeps, just picking these things up, just collecting them off the beaches. And so the federal government said, we’ve got to find out who’s at the root of this. And they found out, and I think he spent seven years in jail.
WW: Coming back to Detroit, how did you interpret what happened in Detroit? Did you see it as a riot? Did you see it as a rebellion? An uprising?
RM: Well, you know, for the people that were politically involved, it was an uprising. I don’t think it was a rebellion because it didn’t really have, like, a set of concrete sort of goals and a program, you know, demands. It didn’t—I didn’t see it—now, maybe it was, but I didn’t see it as a group that was, you know— used it as a stepping stone of the halls of power, that would bring about any kind of major changes in this city. I think some things happened in the wake of it. But I think that the thing that attracted most of the attention was the part of it that was a riot. The looting, the burning. I mean, it wasn’t—that part wasn’t organized. It didn’t take the form some of the protests of police shootings of black people today. It didn’t take the form of people in the streets or shutting the city down, or a movement like Black Lives Matter coming out of it. So I think that the notoriety and the fear that was engendered by it was more by people who saw it as a riot. I saw it as a riot, I didn’t see it as programmatic. I could be wrong, Frank might have a completely different idea than I do. Maybe that’s my liberal rather than radical leanings. But it didn’t seem unified, it didn’t seem programmatic, and it didn’t seem to lead to something that would be ongoing. Taking over a wing of, say, city government or the Democratic Party, or a third party, you know, or something that would have a lasting—be a lasting political force. Even DRUM, for the time that it existed, had some influence at Chrysler, but it never could take the next step. Never. And the fact that they were really left-wing—they didn’t use their leverage to really influence the UAW [United Auto Workers]. So it—a lot of that stuff didn’t have any ongoing political consequence. I mean, it might have had social consequences, you know, in terms of the quiescent liberal white community being woken up. It probably had some consequences in terms of speeding up white flight from the city, although that had pretty much happened already.
WW: Do you think that the events of ‘67 still hang over the metro area?
RM: Yeah, in a way, in a way. I think that—I think that a lot of the things that people were dissatisfied about then, they’re dissatisfied about now. The wage gap, you know. Even though we have black people in political power, and we did have—we had Archer and Young and black mayors and stuff, I don’t think that the left wing had much influence. It’s the builders and the developers and the people who bided their time until now and then can pick up—they can buy Detroit for pennies. I don’t really see any kind of major economic developments. I mean, you know, the jobs were starting to leave and then they accelerated. You know, they went down south and then they went to Mexico and they went overseas. So the drain of good-paying job just left people more economically troubled, economically depressed.
WW: Are you optimistic for the city moving forward?
RM: Now I am, because it’s sort of hit bottom. People were talking about a new industry for Detroit being urban farming. It’s such a radical, radical shift from manufacturing industries that could employ ten, twenty, thirty thousand people, you know, and give them good paying, 40, 50, 60,000 dollar-a-year jobs. Well, where’s that economic base going to come? Growing eggplants? I don’t think so. It’s going to be a whole cultural shift. Detroit’s never going to be a manufacturing powerhouse again. The people that are buying up the factories are converting them to condos. They’re not turning them into manufacturing plants. And the new economy—Google, where did they locate? Ann Arbor. Six thousand new jobs in Ann Arbor, not Detroit.
I’ve seen Pittsburgh. One of my daughters got her master’s degree in Pittsburgh, and I saw the sort of transformation of the steel industry, so now there are computers and medical research and education. And that seems to be a viable rebirth of Pittsburgh. Waiting to see what the configuration for Detroit is.
I’m working for a construction management company now, where I’m doing strategic planning and project management—I worked for the Detroit Public Schools for twenty-four years as a school social worker. I got an award, top school social worker in the state of Michigan, blah, blah, blah. I retired, you know, a year ago—well, June. And I’d been a consultant to this company, and as soon as they found out that I was retired, they asked me if I wanted to come and work for them part-time. So I’m involved, I’m involved in sort of overseeing the DuCharme Project. You know what that is? And we’re involved with Sachse, they’re the general contractor there, we’re involved with Monaghan, some of the top builders around here. We just bid on doing a few buildings on Bagley and Trumbull.
So I see that kind of thing. But these are—these are residential and small store buildings. They’re not going to be major employers. I’m involved in trying to raise the money to restore the Grande Ballroom right now. We just did a tour of the Grande and we have the 50th anniversary concert for the Grande, so I’m involved with a guy named Leo Early, who wrote a book about the Grande. So I’m sort of spearheading the fundraising to try to at least stabilize the Grande so it doesn’t deteriorate anymore, and to try to raise the money to put it together. Still involved, seventy-four, still try to stay active, you know.
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today, I really appreciate it.
RM: Sure. I mean—was it interesting?
WW: Oh, it was good.
ZS: Okay. My name is Zachary Shapiro. Today is November 19, 2015 and today we will be interviewing Reverend Wendell Anthony for the Detroit Historical Society’s 1967 Oral History Project. We are holding the interview at Fellowship Chapel in Detroit, Michigan.
Can you please start by telling me where and when you were born and when you moved to Detroit?
WA: Originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Was born in St. Louis in 1950 and I moved here with my mother in 1958. Went to Detroit Public Schools — Central High School, Durfee, Roosevelt — and joined the St. Marks Presbyterian Church and the rest is history.
ZS: Why did your family decide to move to Detroit from St. Louis?
WA: My mother did. I stayed in St. Louis with my grandmother. I didn’t want to come to Detroit so I stayed, all my cousins, relatives, friends were there. My mother remarried. She came to Detroit so naturally I had to come with her.
ZS: Would you like to briefly describe your parents and family?
WA: Well, I have a great family. As a small boy I was raised by my grandmother in St. Louis in a small town called Kinloch, a lot of relatives. We were not middle class. We were kind of poor economically, but rich spiritually. I don’t regret any of my childhood experience. I wish my own kids could have experienced some of what I experienced as a child because I enjoyed every moment of it. My cousins and I lived in a little red house on the hill down in the basement and we had a very good life. So that’s where I got a lot of values. Church being a part of that all day experience and then coming to Detroit later on when my mother remarried and meeting a guy by the name of Jim Wadsworth. She joined the St. Marks Presbyterian Church and I followed that and connected with him. He was very much involved in the community. As a matter of fact he was president of the NAACP, back in the middle-sixties and was instrumental in helping Coleman Young become the first African-American mayor. So, that was a part of that. I used to come up here on the train. My grandmother would give me a shoe box filled with food — pound cake, pie, chicken — and with a note "Wendell Anthony for Detroit," pocket full of change, so I could get some pop. We called it soda on the way. And then when I stayed up here, my mother would, when I went back to St. Louis in the summer she would do the same. Put a note on my chest, "Wendell Anthony St. Louis," shoe box of food, pocket full of change. My grandmother and cousins would be waiting on me and that’s how I spent my summers and school time period so for me it was a great learning and growing experience.
ZS: Alright. Could you talk about where exactly you grew up at in Detroit and describe what living in that area was like while you were growing up and what the neighborhood was like and everything?
WA: Two areas basically. When I first came in we lived in an apartment over on LaSalle and Elmhurst near Central High School, near Tuxedo. Apartment life was good although there wasn’t a whole lot of play space, but I had a few of friends over there and then we moved to Linwood and LaSalle to West Buena Vista near Davison. I remember going to the old Avalon Theater, which used to be at Linwood and Davison. I used to go there every Saturday basically at that time. I used to go in the show for fifty cents and I would take bags full of goodies and you have two movies, cartoons and previews and we would stay in movies all day basically. So, Linwood I went to McCulloch elementary over there and nice neighborhood a lot of trees played running, football, baseball in the streets and on playground. There was a time period in which folks could sit on their front porch and you could do what you want to do until the street lights came on. Street lights come on everybody had to be at the house. So Linwood, LaSalle, pretty much in the Dexter area.
ZS: Dexter area, alright. Could you talk about where you went to college and what you studied in school and why you decided to study that?
WA: I went to Wayne State University from Central High School. Met a guy by the name of Noah Brown Jr., who was the first African American vice president at Wayne State. He was very much committed to young people. He got me in school, gave me a job helped me to go to Africa. My first trip to Africa was in 1970. I was not quite sure what I was going to study. I wanted originally to be a lawyer because at that time period Ken Cockrell Sr. was the preeminent lawyer around here and every young brother who was thinking about anything wanted to be like Ken. Ken was so brilliant in terms of his articulation of issues and his use of the king’s language and he bamboozled so many people by his wit and his brilliance so we all wanted to be like Ken. I thought that’s what I wanted to do. But then I was always in the church. I was with Reverend Wadsworth and I did not know how strongly that was weighing upon me but the church seemed to be able to give me everything. The church really helped me to go to Africa. We raised money — we were originally gonna go to Africa in '70 through university, but the trip fell through.
ZS: What country?
WA: We were going to go to East Africa we were going to go to Tanzania and Kenya but that trip — and Wayne State University was planning that trip — Brown was going to send us but the university could not — something happened and that trip fell through, but Noah Brown said, “Y’all still going,” Talking about me and Ron Massey, a guy that came through school with me. I was president of the student council at Central High School. He was president of the senior high class. We graduated together and so we were very close and we also got involved and we went to Wayne State. We were in Project Fifty at that time. Came in in the summer worked and all of that. So he said, “Y’all still going,” so he called all his friends he said I want thirty dollars from you, thirty dollars from you, thirty dollars from you. Talking about that time was like Horace Sheffield, it was Judge Wade McCree, it was Blaine Denning, it was used-to-head-of-the-Urban-League; I’m looking at him and his name will come to me: Francis Kornegay. All those guys gave us thirty dollars and then the church Rev. Wadsworth raised the rest and so we got binoculars, we got tape recorders, and some friends over here contacted some people over there and instead of going to East Africa we went to West Africa. We went for a month. It was the best experience I ever had. I’m so glad that Wayne State’s trip fell through because we went to Ghana and to Liberia for a month. That trip was only two weeks, Wayne’s trip, but this trip was for a month. We had a chance to stay in the homes of the poorest to the the mansions of the president of the country. And so we were really hot on Black activism back then, because this was in '68, '69, '70. We graduated in '68 right after the rebellion and so we were still talking about Black history classes and Black folk needed to be a part of everything that went down and we needed power and economic — the same thing folks talking about today. And so to be able to go to Africa and to see all of this was mind blowing for us. And so that was a part of it those were the countries and that experience really has mirrored this experience.
ZS: Did you say what you studied, what your major was?
WA: What I majored in was political science. Originally I was going to law school, but having met Wadsworth I decided to go into another law, this law, His law, which is higher than that other law and so I decided to go into the ministry because the church was doing everything. It’s where I learned how to speak publicly. It’s where I first met my wife. They supported me in school. They did everything and so it just seemed that no matter which way I turned there was a church and that’s why — let’s see I went to Wayne State, I went to Marygrove college, majoring in pastoral ministry. I have a master from Marygrove and I also went to the University of Detroit [for] advanced studies in black political theology.
ZS: Great. Okay, so again what year did you say your family moved to Detroit?
WA: Fifty-eight
ZS: Fifty-eight, okay so —
WA: Well, that’s when I moved here. My mother I think she came maybe in, I would say '55, '56 and then I settled here because I stayed in St. Louis. She came, started working and got remarried and then I came maybe three years later. Because I mean, I was still coming up here, but I didn’t come to live until 1958 because I didn’t want to come here. I wanted to stay in St. Louis but had to go where mama went.
ZS: And how old were you roughly?
WA: I was eight.
ZS: So I guess from 1958 through the sixties we’re talking about now, can you just describe what you observed as the relationship between the city of Detroit, your community, and the city government and the police?
WA: Well, it was a rocky relationship obviously because I grew up under the “Big Four.” You familiar with the “Big Four”?
ZS: I’m not.
WA: Yeah you probably wouldn’t be. The “Big Four” was four big burly white police officers that would ride around in a big black car, a or blue car and they would tell you to get your ass of the street and they would beet down Black people. And we would call them the “Big Four” because that’s who they were. You didn’t have a lot of Blacks on the police department — basically none back in those days, fire department same way. And so you didn’t have a lot of ownership of Black folk. So it was a trying time. Plus it was the sixties, fifties and sixties, era of Dr. King, you know, Civil Rights, voting rights back in that day we would see the Civil Rights marches and dogs biting folk on TV every day. Vietnam was popping and kicking and so it was a real activist time. Motown was strong. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," Stevie Wonder, 4 Tops, Supremes and all of that. So it was really hopping in Detroit and a lot of people had come and migrated to Detroit, Black people, for obviously for economic relief. So we were here, saw all of that. We wanted more Black history in our schools. Because I remember when I first started Central High School in '64 protesting about the fact that we didn’t have Black history, Black studies, like we should. We did walk-outs. I was a part of walk outs, which is a part of the reason I was matriculated to the student council.
ZS: Because they weren’t teaching about Black history enough?
WA: Not the way we wanted and they weren’t — It was not emphasized. And the sixties, that was a time when all of this going on like what you see going on at the colleges, Living Out, MSU [Michigan State University] and Howard and Mizzou, that was going on back then because the same thing you see going on now was going on then. Sit-ins shutting down universities; this is not new. It’s almost like reliving what we went through back in the sixties, which is a good thing because it shows this generation of young people ain’t dead, ain’t oblivious to what’s going on, that they are paying attention that they are in it and now it's their turn, so they going to make their own mistakes, their own gains, but it’s their time, so do something with it. So, that’s what was going on at the time and which propelled us to the — I guess moving us towards ;67 and —which should not have been a surprise for anybody. Because if you couple what was going on with Dr. King, his assassination, his march in Detroit in '63, Detroit being the first place where he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech downtown, and birthplace of the labor movement, UAW [United Auto Workers] and I can remember the excitement around that, and John F. Kennedy being president, I mean, which gave us some new hope and insight that maybe here’s a guy that’s going to come in and change some stuff, which he tried to but he didn’t live long enough to really effectuate change. And when you saw all the things that were going on down South it affected us and so being up north, it was no bundle of joy because we had our issues to: Detroit, Chicago, New York, California. So, a lot of issues were happening in cities all around this country, not just in the South, but here too so all of that impacted what we were going through.
ZS: Could you talk specifically about your memories of the events that took place in the summer of 1967?
WA: I remember seeing the smoke, the streets with tanks coming down them. I’ll never forget that I saw the corner stores — we lived on Linwood and Buena Vista near Davison. I remember the curfew and all of that and burning up on Twelfth Street because our church, St. Marks Presbyterian Church, was up on Twelfth and Atkinson and I had friends that lived over there who were right kind of in the thick of all of it. But I remember seeing the tanks come down Linwood. I remember Governor Romney and I think [Mayor Jerome] Cavanagh on Linwood. I remember Romney coming down with his sleeves rolled up — not his son, the daddy, his son was totally different than the daddy. I had a lot of respect for his father, because his father, former Governor George Romney, had a sensitivity. As a matter of fact, he started the HUD [Housing and Urban Development] program, he was the governor that helped initiate that and I think when he went to DC. And he started the Michigan Civil Rights Commission. So he was very sensitive, unlike Mitt; I don’t know what — he didn’t fall of the tree; well, he fell off but he might have fallen off on his head or something, I don’t know what the hell happened to him. But at any rate, his father was much more sensitive than he is, appears to be. So I remember seeing them comedown Linwood.
ZS: They were giving a speech or what was it?
WA: They were trying to calm, just being out there showing that they were concerned, telling people to kind of calm down, just their presence I think was demonstrative of the fact that they were not oblivious to what was happening, because you had these police officers with real long guns. I remember them standing out in front of stores because people had broken windows and they would get out of these cars and I guess trucks and stand in front of the doors. I remember because we had a curfew and I was looking out of my window over at 2683 Buena Vista, it was the address of the house, and I was looking out the window to see what was going on and I remember this officer, this police, taking this long gun and he turned it and he pointed it right at me and I immediately closed the curtains because I didn’t know if he was going to shoot me or not.
ZS: Was it a police officer or the National Guard?
WA: It was a police officer. He had a long, long gun. Different than the kind of gun they have today, I don’t know what kind of gun it was, but it was just a long-ass gun and he was pointing it at me. I will never forget that. And that came as a result of discontent and folk called it a riot, others called it a rebellion, to us it was more of a rebellious in terms of what was going on as opposed to just riots for the sake of riots and out of that it emerges a new Detroit to address some of the economic social ills in the community and I think the following year, the next year, the year that I was graduating from Central, and being a part of that and having experienced that, that heightened my level of consciousness to the degree that I began to focus in on the social economic needs of our community.; I remember in '68 Reverend Wadsworth asked me to do a youth day at Fellowship Chapel. Our church had split in 1966. St. Marks. He was a pastor at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church; that church split. I went, we went, my family went with Reverend Wadsworth. It split over his activism in the community. People didn’t like him being active with the NAACP. Interesting. And they didn’t like the way he related to the community. Because Twelfth Street was real popular; you had Twenty Grand, you had all these black businesses, you had pimps, prostitutes. He didn't have a problem talking to the pimps prostitutes, but the Presbyterian church in those days was very conservative. And everybody couldn’t get with that. And but he was his own man, and so it split eventually and so we went with him and Fellowship Chapel was formed in 1966 and he and I were very, very close and as a result of that I began to be more and more in tune with the church and all of that. The way that happened was he would give us tests. I was in his Sunday school class. He would give us tests like, you know, who was this character? What’s this person’s name and how do you spell this? And one Sunday he asked. “Who in the class can spell Nebuchadnezzar?” and so I was the only one I raised my hand and I spelled it and he was so excited and was like, “How did you know that word?” Because you know Nebuchadnezzar isn’t an easy word and so he gave me a little gold cross with a metallic base and I thought that was the end of it. Well, during the service in worship he said, “Before we leave today I just want to tell you all something, Wendell Anthony,” I was sitting there with my mother and I was like what did I do? Because I thought I had done something. “Wendell Anthony” and so he said, “Stand up Wendell.” and so I stood up and I was what in the world, he said, "We had a test today and Wendell Anthony spelled Nebuchadnezzar and you all know that’s not an easy word, give Wendell Anthony a hand.” And everyone the whole church I was blown away from that one word from that moment on we were like this together for 28 years. My point on that is that you can never know what you can say to a young person or someone else that’s going to make a life changing difference and it did, because from that point on there ain’t nothing you can tell me about Jim Wadsworth, he was the man. And so we continued to grow together and there was a group of us that kind of hung with him but I would walk to church and walk home in the winter from Linwood and Buena Vista to Twelfth Street and Atkinson, which is a little ways. My mother would sometimes go with me, drop me off, we would come together. She would leave and I would stay until the end of the service just to be around him and that continued when we split and he said we going to have a you know our first youth day in '68 and I want you to be the youth day speaker. Well, my theme was the Black church in revolutionary times. Dovetailing off what had happened, dovetailing off Dr. King had been assassinated and all that and my thing, was the NAACP wasn’t really as relevant as it should be. And so I remember that and so I spoke and some people left the church when I got through and because I’m 18, I’ve got fire. I’m throwing the stuff out there. I used to wear a leather dashiki and a bullet in St. Louis and that was my M.O. and so but on that Sunday I wore a black suit and a white shirt but I didn’t change my dialogue and so when I got through some people left the church. I never knew that until years later Reverend Wadsworth and I were having a conversation and some kind of way it got on the early days of the church and he said you know, “Remember Dr. Smith,” I said “yeah” he said, “You know he left the church back then,” and I said, “Yeah, I knew he left him and his wife and his family." He said, “They were big donors,” I said, “Yeah” and he came to me and said and he wasn’t the only one who said, “Either him or me.” “What you mean either him or me?” Meaning he said, “That young man that you had in the pulpit here, he said some things that kind of disturbed me and Jim”, that was what they called him “Jim, either he’s got to go or we going to go," meaning they wanted me to get out the pulpit and never have nothing else to say. And so the Rev said, “Well, you know the church is a place where I think young people, even though we may not agree with them, should be a foundation, a platform, for them to speak and to be raised up and I know we don’t always agree with what they say or how they say it, but I think that it should be something where they’re able to come and do that and therefore I think Wendell is going to stay.” So, they left. I never knew that until years later. Now, if he had eaten chicken and said, “Oh, I didn’t know he was going to say it. I ain’t going to never have him up there again because I don’t want to lose you all as members and certainly the ties and offerings that you bring,” you and I would not be sitting here today, but he didn’t eat chicken he stood up, and as a result of that we’re here and now I’m president of the NAACP, which I used to be twelfth term, 24 years, which I never thought I’d be doing.
ZS: Going back to something you mentioned a little bit ago you talked about how you called the events of 1967 a rebellion as opposed to a riot. Can you talk about why you would refer to it as that?
WA: Because it was a response to what many folk felt. The only way you can get certain folks' attentions is to do things of that nature and it was now some people might have used it for their own means, but other used it for means of expression. It’s interesting because back in that day there were — when Dr. King was having his marches in various cities and a news person asked him, “You know, Dr. King, you are having all these non-violent marches and then you see these riots.” The press called them riots. Rebellions places like Detroit, LA, Chicago. There were 125 cities that went up in flames during the time King was having his stuff. And so he said, “you know,” Dr. King response to that was, “Yeah, I understand that and I still believe that peaceful non-violent assembly is the best way to do this but it would be contradictory or hypocritical for me to talk about non-violent protests over economic issues if I don’t at the same time talk about the root causes of why they occur. So riots are really the language of the unheard." That’s what Dr. King said and I think that’s the way many of us view the rebellions, the language of the unheard. You’re not necessarily getting at the — by having a press conference the attention of folk that will make a difference because as a result of that New Detroit was created, structure with business people, political people, community people to address the social, economic, and political concerns of the city of Detroit. Funds were created to do economic development. Race relations were then beginning to be talked about. The whole issue of police controlling the city being an occupying army. And as you know that’s what certainly lead to the propelling of Richard Austin to run as — you may not know — as the first black mayor for the city of Detroit. I remember wearing a button saying “Black Mayor 1969.” We wanted Richard Austin, who was the Secretary of State, first Black Secretary of State for Michigan, real good guy ran but unsuccessfully, but that’s who we wanted. And then a few years later you have Coleman Young. We move from the “Big Four” to S.T.R.E.S.S., Stop the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets. That was the decoy unit that was formed by the police department. They killed about 19, 20 people and they were decoy units set up to trap Black folk and community people into criminal behavior and in most cases they would have folks guns were planted on the people they would have folks in certain positions where they had to make certain moves and then they could take them out, so it was a very detonating unit. And Coleman Young came in vowing to eliminate S.T.R.E.S.S. and to integrate the police department and the fire department and to make Detroit much more representative of the community in which it exists and a lot of us support it. That’s how he became mayor, he rode that horse into public office and so that’s why.
ZS: You mentioned viewing the police as an occupying force. Were the police viewed that way prior to the rebellion?
WA: Absolutely. Yes. Totally. That’s part of what led to it. And most of them don’t live here. Didn’t live here. The sad commentary in all of this is that we are going back to that. Residency means something. Residency means that you have a stake in the community. Well, the police were white for the most part. They came in in the morning and they left in the afternoon, meaning you didn’t see them and so they didn’t have no stake in the community. They would view us as like folk they had to control and contain not citizens or people or neighbors or friends or Mr. Jones' children or Mrs. Smith’s daughters. These were just indigents that they had to contain and control. So that’s why residency was so important and it’s interesting that the Kerner Commission report that came out 60 years ago in that time period says that residency is most important and we’re losing that. Now we don’t have residency, so what we fought for we fought for affirmative action. We don’t have that anymore to the degree that impresses upon the community and the police department in that those things are good but the president’s commission twenty-first century policing now says that we should have that, that it’s important for police officers in a community to have relations through the report following the situation in Ferguson where they oppose a board of police commissioners. Now they say they want a board of police commissioners controlled by the local people and so we go through these circles. On one end we saying we shouldn’t do it and were saying we coming back to doing it. The Kerner Commission also stated that the police should not be utilizing these militarized equipment and looking like they are on patrol in Beirut or the West Bank or in Syria, because these are American citizens, these kids don’t have no bazookas and tanks. I mean they had rocks and most of them ain’t even doing that and so we’re simply saying that and they didn’t follow the edict of the Kerner Commission report. It was not forced. President Johnson did not push it like that. It was done most folks didn’t read it. But we’re repeating the same stuff in it. And unfortunately we’re going back now and so things changed and things remained the same, so that’s my response to your question.
ZS: Alright great and you also mentioned what was the unit?
WA: S.T.R.E.S.S. (Stop the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets).
ZS: Yeah and you said they were setting people up planting weapons on people and things like that.
WA: They was killing people basically.
ZS: And this was a very well-known thing in the community?
WA: Oh yeah everybody knew it.
ZS: You think that this was a factor that led to the rebellions for sure?
WA: Well they had the decoy units, the “Big Four.” All of that. The lack of African American involvement and representation in the police department, in the fire department, Black business, the fact that you had folk who felt that they were being exploited in their own communities, the high prices, a lack of jobs, all this all these factors led to this. It was not just one, but it was several factors that had a piling on effect and so at some point it’s like water behind a dam and there’s a crack in it. Pretty soon the pressure is going to bust the whole thing wide open and that’s what happened here.
ZS: Now I guess switching over to after the events of 1967. Could you talk about what you think were the effect of 1967 on the city in the years after and even leading up to today?
WA: You said after '67? I think — well, after '67 there was a heightened sensitivity on the part of some that we needed to do some things in Detroit that we had not done before. That there was great division between the races, that the leaving, the exiting from the community, the lack of economic empowerment was a factor and it coupled with that — and you still got all of this stuff going on in the country. You still see the lack of opportunity for Blacks, the demonstrations, the lack of voting, capability and access, so all of those are still factors, national factors, that weighed in on the city of Detroit, it’s no different. You had King coming here, you had the fact of his death, his assassination and what that meant to a lot of people. You had [John F.] Kennedy’s assassination, you had Robert Kennedy’s assassination. So all of those were things like saying and you know who ever is standing up seems to be taken out by certain people and so all of those are factors and I think with Coleman Young’s election that certainly changed some things in Detroit because he began to build a coalition of people and the first thing he said is I’m going to have an administration that’s going to be fifty-fifty. Fifty percent white folk, fifty percent Black folk. Now it’s interesting, no white man ever said that before. Coleman Young said and that pissed of a whole lot of Black people too. “Like man they ain’t never said that why you coming at it like that?” So that’s what he did and so a lot of folk forgot that he said that and he did that which, you know, saying that all of us should partake in this, unlike his predecessors. And things began to happen: the police department began to be integrated, S.T.R.E.S.S. was eliminated, economics began to develop, later on the Renaissance Center began to emerge, up until the time I think he called Reagan “prune face” and then stuff kind of went south because we didn’t get a whole lot of development from funds from DC. He had to go through his friends Max Fisher and Al Taubman and those guys. Coleman had a great relationship with Bill Milliken, who was a former governor, republican, and a lot of us supported Milliken. He was a very fine guy, different than these guys today, these Republican governors I mean they’re off the chain, but he was reasonable. I mean I voted for Milliken because he was a good man, he is a good man; he is still with us. And he was a good governor and they don’t make them like that too much today unfortunately.
ZS: I know you touched on this a little bit earlier, but you just explain again how and why you became involved in the NAACP?
WA: Well, a lot to do because my mentor Reverend Wadsworth was a part of it. We used to sell tickets for the Freedom Fund dinner we used to sit out there in the audience with my mother from the church we had a table see the big fellows up there on the stage and it just matriculated. Joanne Watson, who lived next door to me on Buena Vista, she was head of the Central High School NAACP and I was head of the student council, we used to argue all the time about the relevancy about it and she used to tell me all the time, “You ought to get involved and join it.” And I said “I don’t want to do all of that because you all are a regressive organization and all of that,” but Ernie Lofton came to me and he used to be — he was with the NAACP in Detroit, and he came to me because of stuff we were doing in the community. He came to me because I was a very active minister. We did a campaign called “Detroit is Better than That” when the Detroit News, when the Detroit Free Press was really writing bad stuff about the city all the time and so we had a boycott of the paper and sometimes the Free Press seemed to be writing better than the News, sometimes the News writing better than the Free Press; I mean it’s so you can take your pick depending on the time and so we had a boycott and wore pins that said “Detroit is Better Than That” we started that and Ernie knew of my activism along with other and so he came to me and asked if I would consider running. I had been recognized by then Arthur Jeffery Johnson, who was the president of the NAACP, he and I were friends. And I had friends in the organization they gave me the key, gave me his President’s Award, and I said, “Well, you know Arthur is president but if he don’t run then I might consider.” And they said, “We don’t think he is going to run.” So I wrote him a letter certified Art Johnson, saying, “If you are a candidate, I will not run and therefore I am just letting you know.” He didn’t respond. I know he got the letter, certified and all, but they didn’t respond and soon enough they start announcing that a guy named Charles Wash was going to run. But I had made no commitment to him; I didn’t know him so I told Ernie and them that I would run, that I’d be a candidate. And so the rest is history. We ran in 1992, they changed the election — the first time that ever been done. They cancelled election nationally did Ben Hooks, William Penn in conjunction with the local people here because they knew we were going to win and they had more votes than them. They did their best to postpone the election to give them more time which we knew, but so it was postponed until I think February of '93 and we had that election and we won. And that’s how I got involved and I’ve been president since that time period.
ZS: Alright, could you share some of your knowledge of the history of the Detroit branch of the NAACP and I don’t know if you have anything to say about its involvement with the 1967 events too?
WA: Well, I don’t know if it was involved with the '67 events, I know—
ZS: Just a general history then.
WA: Well, the Detroit branch is obviously been around a while. It came in around 1912, I believe. The Ossian Sweet case was a very prominent case. This was about an Ossian Sweet who moved into a certain housing area and he fired and his house had been attacked by white folk who didn’t want him to live there and shots were fired he was arrested and all of that. Clarence Darrow, the great lawyer, was retained to deal and defend him and that’s how the NAACP Detroit really began to get on the map. The NAACP Detroit through its Fight for Freedom Fund dinner began to grow and to expand and this year was its sixty-first year starting way back in the mid-fifties and I think that through the work with the Fair Banking Alliance, which comes out of NAACP in Detroit to get banks to do more banking with this community, working. We also had champion issues like Affirmative Action are folk lead that coalition, I led a coalition, a few years ago a governor’s task force for a new beginning education committee in Detroit. We had 150 folk creating a document and now we’re doing it again with regards to the Detroit coalition feeding Detroit school children with the Skillman Foundation. We did — when I first came in, I wanted to do a tribute to Dr. King, the march in 1993, celebrating the first march in 1963, which the NAACP by the way opposed, they did not support his original march in '63, there was a lot of folk who didn’t support it. We were one. They though first of all that he would take all the money raise the money and go take it South. He was a little militant; they didn’t really understand. Now everybody supports Dr. King. But in '63 they didn’t. Now at the last minute they did come out. I’m talking about Detroit. They did come out they had signs and all of this, but they were not really supportive of his march. That was through Reverend C.L. Franklin, James Del Rio, the Reverend Albert Cleage, Walter Reuther the UAW, Tony Brown at the Detroit National Black Journal — those were the people in Detroit — the Human Rights Coalition — those were the people that really helped to bring Dr. King here C.L. Franklin because they were friends and what I did and what we did in '93 was have a tribute to the march. We had 250,000 people in the streets of Detroit in June of 1993. So we celebrated the thirtieth anniversary and then the fortieth anniversary and in 2003 we had about 50,000 people and then we did the fiftieth anniversary to Dr. King in 2013 and again 200,000 people in the streets of Detroit. So I think we more than made up for the lack of support that we did not give him in '63. I was not a part of the NAACP then but those are some of the things. The whole “Take Your Souls to the Polls” campaign — you may have heard that term used — comes out of an idea that we had, I had. I wanted to get the hip hop community involved in the elections and so over — it’s probably been about twelve years now, I asked a young lady to design me a flyer, a poster, that would appeal to the hip hop community, young people, put some gym shoes on it and a cap. “Take your Souls to the Polls” and soles was on the back of the shoe, so S-o-l-e and then take your souls, S-o-u-l-s, or the church community and the faith based community, so sole for the secular, soul for the spiritual. That campaign comes out of right here and so that’s gone all over the country now but it comes out of Detroit a lot of people don’t know it but you’ve heard that term?
ZS: Yeah.
WA: But that’s your looking at the originator.
ZS: That’s interesting.; Could you talk about your thoughts on the state of the city of Detroit today and how it compares to the 1960s?
WA: I think it’s moving in the right direction. I think that Detroit’s best days are still in front of us. Downtown is going to be fine, Midtown is going to be fine; it’s the neighborhoods. That’s why we’re doing housing development right here. That’s why when Kevin Orr came here I had him here at the church and I told him, the emergency manager, that “Your job don’t mean nothing if it don’t benefit the community here.”; And I said “What do you hope to leave here? First of all you got a lousy job.” As a matter of fact I used some other language that I won’t use on your tape and he laughed and I said, “I wouldn’t want your job, but you know you’re a nice guy, but it ain’t about that. When you leave here what do you hope to leave?” And he said, “That’s what I got to figure out, that’s my challenge.” And I said, “Well, if all you do is sell all the assets, cut, slash and burn and sell, it ain’t helping us. If you don’t move into the neighborhoods it’s of no benefit.” He said, “I agree.” Well, he has not moved into the neighborhoods. He has opened the door through the bankruptcy process forced on us. So, we’re trying to absorb the benefits of that and eliminate out of this lemon that we’re left with. And so I can see certain things happening. I think we’re doing more to emphasize the neighborhoods now. I think that city council and the mayor are starting to emphasize that. I think some of the business people are starting to see that they got to spread this out, because you can’t build a moat around Detroit and say you can’t come in, because this is our city, too. I tell people all the time, “Don’t move, just improve” right where you are, because obviously we have a stake in it we have to act like it and let’s take advantage of it.
ZS: Well, so you kind of talked about it there, but do you have anything else to say about how you see the future of the city turning out?
WA: No, I’m optimistic about it. I think that I see a lot of young people who want to do something significant, both Black and white, but I think we all have to be around a common table, it can’t just be one group, one segment. I think the business community has to do more in terms of partnering and in terms of building like bridges, providing incubators for economic development and for opportunities. It cannot just be the downtown. If Detroit is really going to have a renaissance, it’s got to be a renaissance that involves all the people not just some.
ZS: And one thing that I wanted to ask you before we wrapped up pretty soon is you mentioned the Human Rights Coalition. Can you talk about that a little?
WA: That was something that was formed by Del Rio and [C.L.] Franklin and folk back in the day. Tony, Brown, they were part of that, because that was the group that helped to facilitate bringing Dr. King up here. Because there was no other [unintelligible] to do this. Preachers weren’t going to do it. So they formed that kind of coalition basically to address that issue and to address issues in the city of Detroit which the other institutions weren’t. That was before New Detroit, that was before some of these other coalitions that you see. That was an adjunct outside of the NAACP because a lot of people had issues with the NAACP at that time period, so they didn’t see it as moving in the direction that they wanted, so they formed the Human Rights Commission back in the day through those preachers and some labor folk.
ZS: Well, do you have any other additional thoughts that you would like to share?
WA: No, I just think that from '67 to 2015 we have come a long way. I think the hope of our city and really our nation is going to be people who are going to think beyond themselves and willing to take certain risks and do some stuff that’s different. And you’re not going to make everybody happy. You are going to make some people unhappy. But if everybody is happy that means you’re not doing nothing, so somebody got to be unhappy. Just like your granddad, I mean he was a hell of a man. Which I’m sure you know and he made a lot of people unhappy, but Nate spoke truth to power he didn’t give a damn who it was and he was the same no matter who he was talking to. That’s why I loved him. That’s it.
ZS: Thanks Reverend Anthony, I appreciate it.
**WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel. Today is April 5, 2016, we're here in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is the for the 1967 oral history project. I'm sitting down with Reverend Lonnie Peek. Thank you for taking time with me today.
LP: Thank you, William. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
WW: Would you mind telling me where and when were you born?
LP: I was born in 1942 in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
WW: And how did your family come here? And when?
LP: They didn't. I did. I was raised up in Asbury Park. Asbury Park is a seaside city, a mile square. Back in those days it was classic. Railroad track ran down the middle of the city, black folks on one side, white folks on the other side. I had a good childhood. My father was a minister, and – well this is interesting. One day he got a call from my seventh grade teacher. His name was Mr. [Grappi ?], and his brother was over at the Boys Club, and the two of them wanted to meet my parents. So I got – I didn't know what was going down then, all right. So they came back and I was sitting there man, shivering. And I said, “what, what, what, what did I do?” He said “Nope, you didn't do anything. The Grappi brothers suggested that we move out of Asbury Park, because you had a lot of potential, and they didn't want Asbury Park to swallow you up.”
Within three years we had moved. My father found a church about twenty miles away. I grew up on three acres of land, nice big house. My bedroom overlooked – I could look and see the harbor in New York. That was my basic capsule of my childhood. I went to school, Middletown High School, 1400 students, 27 black. Oh, that's interesting, all right! It was an interesting trip, for want of a better term. My sophomore year, junior year, I stayed on their honor roll. My biology teacher, who was my counselor, told me to learn a skill, because boys like me didn't go to college. So I told my parents what he said. That didn't go over too well. "Boys like me." Well, once I got accepted to several colleges I came and showed him my acceptance letter and I said, “Boys like me do go to college.” I had one interesting experience, and we can move on. I went in there, interesting experience, our school was part of a large convention, and we were there during the time it was being debated that should federal funds be used for segregated schools in the South. And we were in this big auditorium, six or seven thousand folks there, and you could line up pro and con. I wanted to go up on the stage. My history teacher, Mrs. Feeger was her name, “Well, no, no, honey, you really need to be able to talk to go upstage.” So I said okay. Some other – my friends – got in line. I said, “What the heck?” I went and got in line. And I got up on the stage, I gave my position as to why federal funds should not be used for segregated schools. And when I finished, for about five or ten seconds, you could hear a pin drop. Then all of a sudden, everybody started clapping and standing up. I said, “Wow, this is deep.” My teacher apologized to me. She said, “I should not have told you not to go up there.” The reason I'm telling that story, is that story let me know that I was able to speak in public. So, there's that.
WW: And where was that again? Was that in high school?
LP: That was in high school. That was in high school. We moved from Asbury Park to what was known as Atlantic Highlands, and I went to Middletown Township High School.
WW: Where did you go to university at?
LP: I went to the university at West Virginia State. West Virginia University. That particular time, it was an integrated school, and black students were on campus and other students commuted. Since then, it's changed over completely now. It's about an 80 percent white school. My college days were great days. My father told me, “These will be the best four years of your life. Enjoy it, but also learn.” I was involved in a lot of stuff in college. Matter of fact, when I graduated, I was voted the most versatile student. I wasn't sure what that meant, but when I looked at my pictures and at other folks' pictures, I got to see that I did a lot of stuff. I was involved in a lot of stuff. So I enjoyed it. My father told me that – my freshman year was okay. My sophomore year I was pledging, my grades went down. So my dad said, “Look, Lonnie, I'm going to tell you something. If you get on the Dean's List I'll buy you a car." “Whoa! Why did you wait so long to tell me that?” Stayed on the Dean's List from that point on. And he bought me a car. Bought me a sportscar.
WW: Your position seemed pretty clear in high school. Did you expand on that when you were at University?
LP: Yeah, I think that what happened was, because I was involved in a lot of things, I knew – I come to understand that the Lord had given me some gifts. And those gifts were to be able to juggle a lot of balls at the same time. So high school showed me that I was able to communicate. College allowed me to be diversified in the lot of different things that I was involved in. Particularly going to a black college, then, that gave me entree in to different endeavors, different programs, so that was a good choice for me to go to that school.
WW: So you were going there between 1960 and 1964, roughly?
LP: I was going there from 1959 — good question — 1959 to 1963. Back in those days you graduated in four years. It wasn't no ifs, and, or buts. Wasn't no five years, six – no, four years. So I graduated in four years.
WW: During your time at university the Freedom Rides were going on, other civil rights marches. Were you involved in any of them?
LP: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Because we were down south – Charleston, West Virginia, we were outside of Charleston, West Virginia, the reality of segregation and bigotry, were real, were real. You go downtown, you're liable to be called the n-word on any given day. One particular day I was going back to campus, I was chased by a group of white guys in a car, it was a Friday night, I'll never forget. And when I got on campus, they – they left. They left. So yeah, we were – we were involved in various aspects of the Civil Rights movement, and I studied it very closely. I was – I was very drawn – drawn to the struggle if you say, if you will.
WW: What did you graduate with?
LP: I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology and education. That's how I got to Detroit, okay. I was – and also ROTC. I also – I was commissioned as a lieutenant. My father couldn't go in the army when I was born because back, you know, in that time, your wife had to sign, and my father and his friend went to sign. My mother, “Hell, no, I'm not signing.” “What?!” So my father and his friend, they decreed that their sons would be officers in the Army. So I always knew two things. I was going to college, and I was going to be an officer in the Army. So when I graduated, I – I never forget, this day was probably one of the most traumatic days in my life. It was right during the Vietnamese era. So you're home, you're graduated, had my degree and all that stuff, and you're waiting for your orders. And I remember my mother, “Lonnie, your orders are here,” and I was upstairs in my room. Pshew! Went upstairs, closed the door, opened it. And as I glanced, I was looking for – and I did not want to see – the words "Viet Nam." I glanced, didn't see them the first time. Glanced a second time, and I saw Ft. Knox, Kentucky. That was a big relief. All right. Not going to Vietnam. I lost more friends than I can count in the Vietnamese War.
So I was down in Ft. Knox, I was Company Commander for a training company. I trained people from Detroit and Chicago. And they were some rough folks! “Well, I ain't ever going to Detroit or Chicago!” Well, never say never, because I came up here on Easter. My aunt says, “Lonnie, they're looking for biology teachers down there. Why don't you go down there?” So I went down there, I had my transcript. Lady gave me a contract, right there. She says, “Would you sign this contract?” I was married then. My wife – she was from New York, she didn't particularly want me to come to Detroit. But I decided, I wanted to kind of step out on my own, so that's how I got to Detroit.
WW: What year was that?
LP: That would have been nineteen sixty – [thinking] five? Sixty five. Sixty six... Fifty nine... Sixty three... Sixty five. Got to Detroit in 1965, yep.
WW: And was that a job in DPS [Detroit Public Schools], or—
LP: DPS. Kettering High School. I taught biology at Kettering High School for one year and the second year I taught biology at Northwestern High School.
WW: Were those integrated schools then?
LP: Yeah. Yeah – well – yeah, there was some white folks around, but mostly black schools. Mostly black schools, yes.
WW: Coming here in 1965, did you notice any – what was your first impression of the city? Because you said, the people you had interacted with before were rougher folks. So what was your first impression?
LP: Well, that was a stereotype. You know, these are young dudes, you know, in the army, so —but my impression of the city was that it was Detroit, the Motor – the Motor – the Motor Capitol. I was kind of in awe at being here. Had no idea if you'd asked me two, three years ago. And oh, what I found out when I was in the service was that if you decided to become a teacher, you could get out early. So I got out four months early, to come here – to come here to teach. And I'll never forget, this one lady I met at Kettering. Thelma Jones was her name, she was a counselor. And she says, “Lonnie, you seem to have a lot on the ball. Learn the structure of Detroit, and also take a look at grass roots involvement.” I'm quoting what she said. I did not exactly know what that meant, but I came to know what it meant later on. So I was at Kettering, went over to Northwestern the next year, and the principal, Jessie Kennedy approached me and she told me – she says, “you know, you need to go get a master’s degree in social work. Because you get a master’s degree in social work, you can do anything with that.” So I said, oh, okay. I applied, got accepted. And so in 1967, I was on the way to Wayne State University, and that summer is when we had the rebellion.
WW: Where did you live in the city, when you moved here?
LP: I lived on Taylor for a minute, then I got a flat, rented a flat on Columbus Avenue, then I moved over to Courtland, and from Courtland I bought a house on Santa Barbara. So [unclear] you know, Santa Barbara was out. And I presently live in Sherwood Forest.
WW: You were living in the Santa Barbara house in 1967?
LP: Yep.
WW: Okay.
LP: No. I was still on Courtland.
WW: Courtland?
LP: Still on Courtland. I remember, during the rebellion, bringing some stuff home to Courtland. Ah. That was fun.
WW: Going into 1967 then, you refer to it as a rebellion. May I ask why?
LP: Because I saw it really as a rebellion, as opposed to, you know, some people call it rebellion, riot. '67 was a turning point in my life. We had the – as you're aware, we had the Peoples’ Tribunal, and along with a buddy of mine, Dan Aldridge, I can't remember exactly how we got thrust into it, but we became the organizers for that. And that was to put together a trial for the police officers who killed the three young black boys in the Algiers Motel incident, which is – Algiers is torn down. And that was quite an experience, in August. We probably – we didn't know that we really had a tiger by the tail, but we did. It was an overwhelming success. We had it over at Reverend Cleage's church, over there on Linwood, Shrine of Black Madonna. You couldn't get in. There were hundreds of people out in the street. You couldn't get in. On a hot August night, we had put together a jury, prosecuting attorney, judge. Milton Henry – he was the prosecuting attorney. Brilliant lawyer, brilliant lawyer. We had asked several other people to be the judge. First they said yeah but then they said no, because they saw how this thing was unfolding. So we went to Kenny Cockerel, “oh, you want to be the judge? Okay.” Kenny Cockerel was the judge.
We had certain people serve on the jury, one of them being Rosa Parks, bless her heart, she served on the jury. And we presented the case. Three police officers and they were found guilty. And we emphasized that this was a mock trial, and that we don't want anything to come out of this except information, and that's what happened.
Now the reason that story ties in is because that's the September I went here, Wayne State University. First day of class, School of Social Work over here at McGregor Center, I walk in, there's hundreds of people. They have – forging a boycott. The college itself, the university was embarking upon a symposium — an urban symposium —- and the community was up in arms because they weren't involved, in the planning. So when I got to school the first day, it was like whoa, a protest. Oh, this is fun.
So I'm just standing there, watching what's going on, and a friend of mine who I'd met over the summer, during the rebellion – Frank Joyce was his name, he was head of SDS, Students for Democratic Society – and they were interviewing him, from, you know, from the white perspective. And they ask him, who represents the black students? And he looked around, he saw me, and he said, “He does.” All the cameras — I mean, it was like, that was another turning point, like the cameras, mics thrust in my face. Said, “What's your name?” I gave my name. “Who do you represent?” I said, “uh, the Association of Black Students.” The rest is history. Because then I went out, organized the Association of Black Students, my social work placement had me up in the Dean's Office – Dean Sellars was his name – he allowed me to use my case work to organize the Association of Black Students. That's what I did. You know in that particular era, I did not perceive of the impact I was making, with the notoriety I was involved in. I was having fun, you know what I'm saying? Today people still tell me about those days. I mean, literally, I will hear during the course of a week. “Man, I remember you when—”
So, we made – I like to think we made a great impact. One of the turning points, also in that, is my second year you got a placement. And Congressman John Conyers, who I met during that whole symposium piece, requested I be placed in his office. Whoa, I was getting placed in a congressman's office. First day I walk into the office, I open the door. There's Rosa Parks sitting behind the desk, and she says, “Mr. Peek, we've been waiting for you.” Oh, wow, Rosa Parks. So for three days a week I'd sit out there and talk to Rosa Parks. And the Congressman comes in, “Lonnie, you got work to do! Leave Rosa alone!” I say, okay, okay. But every day I come back and talk to her. That was one of the benefits I got out of that.
WW: How did the symposium end up then, given the protest? Was the framework of the symposium changed, due to voices from the community?
LP: Very good question. Yeah. Yeah. They changed. They allowed us to organize our symposium, and what we did is that really was a rallying point for the Association of Black Students. It gave us something to do. And I'll never forget, we had these black signs, and we had a big fisheye that said “Symposium,” that's all it said. We placed them on campus. We had our phone number at the bottom. People would call us, it was a type of symbolism. Well we structured the symposium. It was an overwhelming success. We had people like Hubert Locke, we had Coleman Young, was on one of the – ran one of the panels. Came up to me, said, “Boy, I like your spunk. You got spirit!” and he hit me in the chest, almost knocked me down. He says, “Stay in touch with me.” Well, he became one of my best friends, for the rest of my life, until he passed. Matter of fact, I had a show on WJLB where I interviewed people. Coleman had gone on, retired as mayor. I'll never forget, it was Fourth of July, I went down to his place on the riverfront, I took my son. And I interviewed him for the show. It was a glorious time, just me and Coleman just chit-chatting. Talking about all the stuff we had been through. So that was that – you asked, I'm giving you the professional side, and also the personal side, what came out.
WW: Love to hear it.
LP: Okay.
WW: The first symposium was supposed to be in September. When was your symposium held?
LP: I believe it was probably like around, let's see, probably Novemberish.
WW: Okay.
LP: Yeah, November. November, we got it together real quick and it was – it was another one of those things where you're involved in life situations and you really don't cherish the moment until it becomes a memory. Then when it becomes a memory you're able to flash back and see the value that it was. But it was – We organized it, we had recorders, something that I came up with. We had different students assigned to different workshops. We invited people, the university gave us a budget, bless their heart, gave us a budget, and we pulled off the symposium.
WW: It's amazing.
LP: It was, it was. We didn't know that then, but it was. It was, it was. One of the good things that came out of the Association of Black Students, that was during the Black Studies era. And just interesting, because Dr. Melba Boyd just had a series of workshops over there. She's head of the Black Studies department. Anyway, Africana Studies department. I went to President William Keys. We had a good relationship. I was the campus militant, he was the president – white guy who was the president — but we both had common sense. And we both understood that it would be good to have a relationship that was – it's a good working relationship. So I went to him, I said “Dr. Keys, you know, this is Black Studies. I'd like to take some students to California to assess the Black Studies department.” And he says, “Give me a budget.” Wow! So Benson Manlevel was a brother, worked in this department, a good brother, good brother. That night we worked on a budget, took it to William Keys, next month, six of us were on our way to California. We studied four universities, four colleges, that had Black Studies programs. Came back, I made a presentation before the Board of Governors, and that's how we eventually got to the Africana Studies department here now. So that was a turning point, that was one of the benefits of the black student movement.
WW: You mentioned that you were the “campus militant” so we'll be coming back to that, but jumping back, to July 1967, where were you – where were you when the rebellion began?
LP: At home, over on Courtland, and my brother-in-law, who lived across the street, named Chuck Russell, said “man, they – they – they,” — no, I'm sorry. My aunt. Aunt Olive. She called me, Sunday morning. And she said “Lonnie, they're tearing up Twelfth Street.” What? So my brother-in-law and I went down to Twelfth Street and it was like, “Look at this, look at this.” So that's where we were, and I'll never forget that Sunday was just — it was chaos. It was – it was chaos. It was – had a dramatic impact, on seeing this unfold in front of your face. But it also was scary, too.
WW: You said earlier that you took a couple things home?
LP: Has the statute of limitations run out here?
WW: I do believe it has.
LP: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, but you know what, man? We were just petty thieves. I wasn't in to televisions and stuff. It was like, I was just, you know—
WW: Caught up in the moment?
LP: Yeah, caught up in the moment. Took some clothes for my kids, you know, I – it was just one of those things, but — some food — was caught up in the moment, but my – I – I - really, my conscience, the spiritual side of me really was not motivated to go out and just steal stuff. Because it's stealing, it's stealing. So I gave – I gave – I gave the stuff away. I gave it away. But that's how I got caught up in the rebellion.
WW: When you first saw what was going on, you described it as chaos. Did you first interpret it as a rebellion, or did your opinion change over the course of that week?
LP: It changed, of course, it changed. At first it was just a riot, but then I think the frustration of folks came out more, and more, and because of their frustration, that's when I saw it really as a rebelling. Who do you rebel against? Well, you rebel against whoever's in front of your face, based upon how you feel. So that's how. Plus, as I transgressed or transferred, transformed into the campus leader, there was certain dialogue and things that you said, because that's what you say. So that's how I captured the concept of the rebellion.
WW: How did you feel as the National Guard came in and later the Army came in?
LP: Scared. Very scared. It was scary, to see the tanks. It was scary. And it also caused me to cool out a bit, because I was married, and I had a family, two little kids. So I couldn't be stupid, and, so, my involvement in the street activity was limited, probably just to that – it was really just that Sunday when it broke out. Rest of the time I watched it on TV, but I wasn't involved in that, because I didn't feel right.
WW: Did the rebellion change your political views at all?
LP: Well—
WW: Were you a militant before 1967?
LP: Aw man, boy that's— You remember Martha Jean McQueen? Do you know who that was?
WW: No.
LP: She owned her own radio station. WQBJ. Before that, she was on WJLB, and she interviewed me during my militancy days, and she says, “Well, Lonnie, you seem so angry, why are you angry?” Well, don't get me wrong, I'm not angry because of my childhood. I was blessed. I had a good childhood. My mother didn't work. My father worked two jobs and they took care of me and I went to college. But I'm angry when I look around and I see the condition of my people. That's what makes me angry. So there was a coming together of a platform that I had, and the ability to raise issues, from being the president of the Association of Black Students. So yes, it entrenched me in a particular level – a philosophical level. Which I still have today.
WW: After 1967 did you do any other work with Kenneth Cockerel or Mike Hamlin?
LP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. From that point on, we was like bond together, you know what I'm saying? Kenny and I were good friends, Actually, Kenny would be the type of person, man, you call him on the phone and he start talking, for five minutes, and he say, “Okay man I'll see you later,” I say wait a minute, Kenny, I called you! “Oh, yeah, what's up, man?” So yeah. We became close friends. Matter of fact, one day on campus, for whatever reason, Kenny found himself locked up, over here, you know, there used to be a precinct right up here on Woodward and Hancock. And we were all in the student union, that's where we hung out, and I got news that Kenny Cockerel been put in jail. Oh, wow, so they was going crazy. It was about two or three hundred of us, just hanging out on Friday afternoon. So we go up to the police thing and we block off Woodward. They brought out the horses and surrounded us and stuff. We said we wasn't going until you let Kenny go. The sergeant came out and says, “Okay we got him in here, we're going to process him, going to take about two or three hours.” But we want to know how he doing? Y'all beat him up. “If two of y'all want to come in here, talk to him for about two minutes, you can do that.” They said well, “Lonnie, why don't you go?” Why I got to go?! Well, because I was the leader. So I went in with a friend of mine, Homer Fox, we talked to Kenny, he said “we good, we good, we good.” And they let him go in about an hour. An hour. Yay, free Kenny, free Kenny. So –
WW: When was this? When was this?
LP: This would have been '68. This would have been in '68. The spring of '68 because it was starting to turn warm.
WW: Okay.
LP: Okay. Now, which ties into the assassination of Martin Luther King. That was a terrible day. We were on campus and people just going crazy. Crazy. Never forget, I was in the student union and they said “Well Lonnie you got to make a speech, tell them what to do.” That was one of the few points in my life I wasn't sure which way to go. You could be pragmatic or you could be militant. And as I stood up on the table, I said, first of all, it's horrendous that Dr. King was killed. Obviously, real sad, and mad about that. But. We had to be practical here. Don't know – how many of y'all own a tank? How many of y'all own a bazooka? Well they got tanks and they got bazookas. If you go out there and get stupid, they going to use it against you.
Well, the crowd kind of dissipated. We went over – we decided we wanted to do things to keep things calm in the neighborhood. So my brother-in-law and I we went over to Dexter. They running up and down Dexter acting stupid. So we're stopping them from breaking into buildings and stuff like that. All of a sudden, eight to ten police cars pull up. Surrounded me and my brother-in-law, had our backs up against the wall of the building. Had their guns pulled out. Called us every type of M-F and N-word you could think of. I really thought we was going to die. So, after about – seemed like eternity, maybe seven – five to seven minutes – I noticed they just kept surrounding us. So my brother – I told Chuck, I said – let's just walk through. So we started walking. Chuck had this hat on; they told him to take that hat off. He took the hat off. We walked, around them, through them, started walking Dexter. I expected to be shot in the back. We walked to our car and drove off. That was one of those turning points in your life where you know, the Lord had you – had found favor on you. Because we could have been killed, and they could have made up some dastardly story. So that happened in that era too. [phone rings]
WW: When I asked you at the time, you were gonna say something about Mike Hamlin, I'm sorry I cut you off.
LP: Yeah. Mike – Mike organized – he was involved – I'm trying to get it right – with the workers at the plants.
WW: The Dodge Revolutionary Union movement?
LP: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it, you got it. Dodge revolution. Along with General Baker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it was different – segments – of militancy. You had the students, that I was part of, you had the brothers at the plants, you had people like Kenny who were involved in the whole legal stuff, but we all were interconnected, we all knew each other, and that – there were really – there really was no – no – no competition. Unless I missed it. You know, we were all – we was cool. We was cool. We would meet at different times, different places, and we would support each other and what they were doing.
WW: Were you involved in any of the follow-up racial clashes? In 1968? Say, like Cobo Hall One or Cobo Hall Two?
LP: No, I wasn't. By that – sixty – what did you say, sixty what now?
WW: Sixty eight.
LP: No. Because I was still in, I was still in – so was down here. Wayne State, '68. So, no. Well, that's a good point. Several times I had gotten calls to be involved in things. But certain things, I just – steered away from. And I could always frame it in – because you know, I had to take courses, I was in school, too, you know what I'm saying? So, I was – I picked and chose. I didn't – I didn't have the need for the limelight, even though I was cast in the limelight. I didn't go seeking it. I just did what I needed to do. I knew in two years I was going to be out of here, and I wanted to prepare for – I needed a job once I graduated. So that's how I answer that question.
WW: During this time you were 28 – you were 28 years old, right?
LP: Close to 30 – yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
WW: Was that the average age of like, the major activists, say like Kenneth Cockerel Senior, Mike Hamlin—
LP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well – well, yeah, yeah. In our mid-twenties. In our mid-twenties and I think that— See, I had a unique situation. I was not from Detroit. When I got here, and since I was teaching, I didn't know a lot of folks, at that level, so whole ABS thing was like, I was a newcomer. That was good, and bad. It was good because I hadn't pissed nobody off, because I didn't know nobody. You know, it was bad because, “Who is this guy?” But I had the type of – I like to think I had the type of personality that got along with folks. The girls liked me. Always get the women on your side. You get the women on your side, you will be successful. So, I had good female support. So, the point I'm asking you, is that I was on a particular course. And that course was the – the '67-'68 piece was happening but I was on a course that you know, I have a life – an adult life to live after this, and I got to start getting prepared for that. And when I graduated, Gil Maddox – I don't know if you remember him – he had a television show called Profile of Blacks, and he hired me for three months just to help him write some scripts and stuff. So that gave me a little income and then – but I didn't know what I was going to do. Got this master's degree. Just a little bit of notoriety, I didn't have no job. I get a call from Murray Jackson, who was the first president at Wayne County Community College. And Murray and I had met over the course of the year and he said, “Well, look, man, I want to start up a Black Studies department. At the college. Would you be willing?” Well yeah, man. Yeah. He brought me over in about two months. Started the Black Studies department. There are still courses at the college that I created back then. That's something, man. I worked at the college for five years. Went out, on my own, as a business person. But the college has been a constant contact in my life. Based on my business and I work now, work very closely with its chancellor, Dr. Curtis Ivery, a great guy, but I've worked with every president of that college. That was, once again, one of the paths that the lord puts you on that you could pray or ask for. See, in life, your best blessings are blessings you don't ask for. Because you can't form the concept when asking for that blessing. So that was a blessing. And I got over to Wayne County Community College, and that's where I sat for five years.
WW: Well, given your relatively short time in the city before 1967, did you feel or perceive a shift in the atmosphere of the city?
LP: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It went from a position of feeling powerless, to seize the opportunities. And I think that – when Bill Patrick, the first African American to get in with City Council, the formation of New Detroit, these things started giving folks a different slant on this. And when New Detroit was formed, with the governor, and the mayor, all the bigwigs. I'll never forget, I went to the press conference down in City Council. I said, this is – this could be a good organization. This is a – this is different. You know, white corporate people, black community people, educators coming together. And I got a – about a year or so later I got a call from Bill Patrick who was president of New Detroit, asked me to come down, appear before the board, I came down and gave a speech while I - next year they elected me to the board. I've been on the board ever since. Matter of fact, I've been on the board so long, they just put me in emeritus. I've been on that board since 1969. So I've seen it. But getting back to your question, Coleman Young's election was a turning point for the city. Because they believe in Coleman, a brilliant man, a community-oriented man. So he gave black folks, if you will, not only hope, but realization that, if you vote, put people in positions, you can make a difference. And Coleman made a difference. And you'll say he made a difference. He'll tell you, what he told you, he said the biggest mistake he made was staying in office too long. Should have got out. He said, “I should have served two terms, maximum three. I shoulda got out.” But one of the things about Coleman Young, when they were looking for corruption and all that stuff, I'll never forget, he says “They keep looking. They're wasting all that money, looking for corruption to put me in jail. I ain't got no money!” They never found nothing on Coleman Young. But people around him fell. But he was one of the turning points in the city.
WW: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
LP: No, man, you had me cover my whole life! Where I am – where I am today, I've been blessed. I'm still active in stuff. I serve on several boards. The Belle Isle Advisory Board, I serve on that board, I'm vice chair of that board. Detroit Economic Growth Corporation Board. Detroit River Fund Conservancy Board, and I'm probably leaving out a couple but that – New Detroit – so I'm still active on that particular level. In 1991-92, — 1985 to 1993 – were the hell years of my life. I had two companies that were – eventually went into bankruptcy. I had a wife, she was the police commissioner, her name was Susan – Susan Mills Peek – she contracted MS. It eventually killed her. I saw her die in front of my face. Those were some hell years. I told the Lord, if he gets me through this, I will go into the seminary, which I did do. Went into the seminary, became an ordained preacher, became involved in the religious community, which I am now. I'm now serving as the interim pastor at New Concord Baptist Church. I've been involved in politics, religion, the community ever since I've been here. So it's been a blessing. It's been a labor. But when you are blessed to have a specific labor, when you recognize that, you give the Lord your best, he will find favor on you. I've had favor found on me in my life.
WW: One more quick question. How do you feel about the progress the city has made in reconstruction and resurgence?
LP: Good, excellent, superb. It was due. I think that the whole bankruptcy piece was a blessing in disguise. Who ever saw a city go into bankruptcy and out in 18 months? I think Kevyn Orr was brilliant. I had the opportunity to work very close with him. I think that he set the city on a path, get certain debt forgiven, certain things happening. I think that the current mayor we have, he's a good mayor. Mike Duggan is a good mayor. Now I was in Benny's camp, but Mike Duggan won, so there that is. I think he's moving the city forward. I think investments downtown, the Gilberts and the Ilitches, history will show you that where you have the Rockefeller, and the Mellons, and these people involved in civic affairs, that the urban areas flourish, so it's good that we have business people involved. It's good that we have people coming in to Detroit. I see it turn around, see it stabilizing. The communities can't be left out. We find – I mean, we welcome what's happening downtown. No problem. But we also got to take care of our communities. I work very closely with Jimmy Settles, who is UAW [United Auto Workers] vice president, great guy. Great guy. We formed what is known as the Church-Labor Summit. So we brought together labor and churches working together on a variety of projects – a variety of projects.
So, I think it's good, and – in my neighborhood, man, shoot! House go up for sale, in a week it's gone! Gone. A lot of white folks is moving back in my community. Matter of fact, I did an article in the Chronicle [unclear], I did an article in the Chronicle, couples years ago, called, “They're Sneaking Back Into the City.” Well, they ain't sneaking no more, know what I'm saying? That's good for the city. It's good for the city. Detroit is, and will be, the place to be. If you try to rent a place downtown or – or buy an apartment or something, a loft, whatever, you can't get it! On weekends there's too much traffic! Traffic jams downtown Detroit. So I feel very good about where the city is going. I feel blessed that I can see it as it makes its transition. I'm glad that Gil Hill was alive long enough to see it starting to make its transition. He was a good guy. I'll never forget Gil Hill, man, and then I'll be quiet. He was running against Kwame, Gil was a friend. Kwame came to me and said, “Look, man, I want you on my team.” I thought about it and said okay. I called Gil that night and said, “Gil, I'm going to be on Kwame's team, and you're my friend.” He says, “Lonnie, I understand. We will always be friends.” We always were friends. So friendship is very important in your life. Abraham called God his friend, so. I'm blessed to have a lot of friends.
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
LP: All right! So when will the check be in the mail?! [laughter] You say, “Go home and sit and wait!” I appreciate it, man, thanks.
**WW: Hello, today is June 22nd, 2016. My name is William Winkel. We are in Detroit, Michigan at the Detroit Historical Museum. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am sitting down with Reverend Dan Aldridge. Thank you for sitting down with me.
DA: My pleasure.
WW: Can you tell me where and when were you born?
DA: Yes, I was born in Harlem, New York—sometimes called the Village of Harlem—on February the 23rd, 1942.
WW: What was it like growing up in Harlem?
DA: Well, Harlem was, as a young man, it was dynamic. It was crowded. There were lots of personalities always around Harlem. For example, I palyed little league – played at the YMCA – and one of the people I was very close to was Jackie Robinson. Roy Campanella, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he owned a liquor store in town, nearby. Monte Irvin, who played for the New York Giants, he was a rye-and-go beer salesman at the corner store. On my corner was Mal Whitfield, who just died, who won a gold medal in the 1948 Olympics. I lived across the street from Althea Gibson, who was a well-known tennis player. There were musicians, there were singers, Harlem was very down with cultural people. My pastor was friends with J.A. Rodgers who was a historian. I had the opportunity as a little boy to meet Jack Johnson. Harlem always had that kind of artistic energy, athletic energy, and I was also in junior high school with John Carlos, the fellow who stuck his hand up in the ’68 Olympics. I went to the seventh grade with Franky Lymon, who made “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?” There was artistic energy and there was athletic energy. Harlem was crowded. It may well have been dangerous—you thought there was danger around you. You saw danger, at least I saw some. People also used drugs. I was familiar with people who were smoking marijuana and using what I came to know as heroine. But there were positives and negatives. I went to the Apollo all the time because my mother, she lived nearby, she took me. They tell me that I saw every single show at the Apollo from 1943 until 1953. I’m not clear about that, but that’s what they tell me. But I do remember meeting all the Duke Ellington, Count Bassey, Phelonius Monk. White musicians like Woody Herman and Woody Herman’s band. There was an artistic energy in Harlem. There was an athletic energy. There were lots of people. It was busy. I had a lot of friends. There was some danger but I really was much too young to be really impacted by it. We lived in the Polo Grounds (where the Giants played). There was a racial dynamic seeing overweight white men, at that time in Hawaiian shirts, which was popular in the ‘50s, walking, getting off the subway train and had to walk from where they parked their cars to the subway, making the Polo Grounds, watching the Giants play baseball games. Harlem was a very black place then, not like now. But compared to now, for example, in my neighborhood, we had one white police officer, Murphy, who pretty much ran the whole neighborhood. He didn’t involve himself in day-to-day matters, but if he saw you doing something, he’d walk by and say, “Hey, look, fellas, when I walk by, I’d like this corner clear, or something like that.” He was never an issue. “Okay, Murphy! By the time you get here we’ll be gone, or we’re quiet down,” or whatever. We had one white guy in the community, he was a pharmacist. I forget his name. Everyone loved him. Harlem was an interesting place. The entire country has changed. You can’t imagine one police officer, I don’t care how big he was, what color he was, just walking around the neighborhood, saying, “Hey fellas.” But people had more respect for each other in general. We were a far more civil society. Harlem was a tough place to live. It was tough relative to other places. It was not tough compared to generally how it is now, in most big cities.
WW: Growing up in Harlem and going into the ‘50s and early ‘60s, were you increasingly exposed to, say, the Civil Rights Movement or any of the social movements of the day?
DA: I was very much aware then because my aunt is Dorothy Hite, who is president of National Council of Negro Women. She is my mother’s sister. She lived nearby. I lived on 149th Street, and Aunt Dorothy lived on 150th Street, and she was involved in everything from Marcus Garvey all the way up to the Civil Rights Movement. She was a ghost writer for Marcus Garvey. She was the assistant to Mary McCleod Bethune, she was one of the best friends of Eleanor Roosevelt. She used to come by and take her out to lunch together. Just imagine how different, how much has changed. My mom had a job at the YWCA. She and Eleanor Roosevelt were friends. Eleanor Roosevelt would drive her own car to Harlem, park out in front of the YWCA, go in and get my aunt, and they would go out to lunch as girlfriends. Now, we couldn’t even imagine the wife of the president driving her own car, right? On any street! Just going to dinner. No guards, no threats—“Who was that?” “Well, that was Mrs. Roosevelt.” No one wanting to get her autograph, no one harassing, bothering, or threatening her, she and my aunt—they would just go, my aunt’s friends were Eleanor Roosevelt and Lena Horne. Nobody bothered or harassed any of that. The notion that Mrs. Roosevelt could drive herself in Harlem and pick up her black friends, and they would go eat the way girlfriends eat now without any—at that time, it was just amazing. I was aware of that. I was aware of black nationalist movements because I lived near—well, first of all these movements were in the city. If you were a kid, and you went to the barbershop and got a haircut, you heard all this stuff buzzing around. You may not have known what to make of it, but you were cognizant of something going on. I live also near—I went to Frederick Douglass Junior High School for one year with John Carlos, and near there was a store on 125th Street and Lennox Avenue called the African National Memorial bookstore, which is a store where you’d normally see Malcolm X taking pictures out front of the store. That man was Mr. Micheaux. Now Mr. Micheaux is the brother of Oscar Micheaux, the great film maker. That was his brother. His name was Louis. Back when I was in the seventh grade, I had a project to do. I was supposed to write something on Negro history. Among that group, you couldn’t use the word “Negro.” You had to use the word “black.” I’d always go to Mr. Micheaux’s store to get some materials for my project. I said, “Mr. Micheaux, do you have any—I want to write something on Negro history. Can you help me out?” He said, “We don’t have any Negro history materials.” I’m in the seventh grade, I’m looking at all this stuff all around me, right? I went home and my father says, “Danny, did you pick up your materials for homework?” “No daddy.” He said, “Why not?” I said, “I went and asked Mr. Micheaux about some Negro history materials so I can do my project and he said he didn’t have any Negro history materials. But I saw them all around!” He said, “Oh, next time you go to the store son, you’ve got to say ‘black.’ You’ve got to say ‘black.’” So I go back to the store the next day and I said, “Mr. Micheaux, do you have any black—” “Oh, yeah, we got a bunch of those!” In those ways, I was aware. Plus there was the racism and discrimination against blacks in stores, mostly by what I think were Jewish merchants. I think there was some tension in that regard. Also, my father worked with the transport workers’ union. He was a motorman. And so they were fighting against, fighting to have the unions recognize that he was falling behind this Irishman named Michael J. Quill. I will never forget, he would say, “This is Michael J. Quill. [unintelligible].” We had to listen to all his speeches on the radio and my father made us read the special union papers and be aware of stuff, so I was aware in the sense that I had parents that were aware. My parents, you know, made me aware as much as an eleven-year-old boy can be aware of what’s going on. You know there’s something happening.
WW: Did you increasingly become more involved, say, throughout high school and right after high school?
DA: No, not in high school. What happened, we moved to a place called Corona, New York, which is—there are two communities which are right near each other. They’re called Corona and East Elmhurst. They’re separated by a street called Norland Boulevard. When I oved there, they were predominantly—well Corona was predominantly Italian community with some Irish and a small group of Jews, and blacks moving in. Blacks were beginning to move into East Elmhurst. Those who lived on that side of Norland Boulevard made more money than my parents made. That neighborhood flourished because of the nature of segregation. A number of folk went forth and lived together who today wouldn’t. For example, down the street from me lived Calvin Buss, who is now the minister of Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, the big Abyssinian church. Nearby was Eric Holder and his family. I lived right near Harry Belafonte. I lived on 94th Street, Belafonte lived on 97th Street. Malcolm X lived on 97th Street, Willy May lived on 98th Street. 105th Street was Louie Armstrong. 107th was Dizzie Gillespie. 112th was Cannonball Adley, his brother Nat Adley. Ella Fitzgerald, her husband Ray Brown. All over, there were musicians and artists and the like who—athletes—that was like their first move out of Harlem. They wanted out of their apartment and wanted their own homes. In fact, I still own that home today. My brother and my son, I’ll never forget. We moved to Corona in 1953, and then we moved to East Elmhurst in 1956. It was only six blocks away. It was essentially the same neighborhood, although as kids, you know, you divided the neighborhood based on what side of the street you lived on. It’s essentially the same neighborhood.
WW: What year did you first come to Detroit?
DA: I first came to Detroit in 1965. I had a—I participated in the Civil Rights Movement when I was in college, and I was thought to be a threat. I don’t think I was much of a threat, but at that time, in small historically black colleges, particularly those that were state-run, state-funded—they were funded by the state—so the administration was deathly afraid of anything that raised any kind of voice because they thought it threatened their funding. I got kicked out of school.
WW: What school?
DA: Tennessee A&I State University. I was in school with [unintelligible] Rudolph, that’s where I first met Cassius Clay. We were both 18 together. He was exactly five weeks older than I am. He and Wilma were dating at the time, and I was friends with Wilma. We were 18, and all of us were just kids. That was in 1960. He had just returned from the Rome Olympics, as had Wilma. [unintelligible]. We were classmates. Anyway, I went to Tennessee State. I participated in the first movement and marches, demonstrations. In 1960, as soon as I got there really. The National sit-ins. The second wave, not the first wave. The first wave happened before I came to school, in early 1960. I didn’t come until August, so I got involved later, in the second wave. I helped to successfully integrate—me and a bunch of other people—but the movie theatres and the restaurants, and that would’ve been 1960 and 1961. I first saw Dr. King in 1961 at Fisk University, which is another historically black private college, which was down the street from Tennessee A&I. They call Tennessee A&I, Tennessee State now, but then it was called Tennessee Agriculture and Industrial State University. Now it’s just Tennessee State University. It’s highly integrated. The only white person on campus at that time was one accounting teacher that I remember. Anyway, I participated in the Civil Rights Movement. At some point, I was thought to be problematic, and I got put out of school in 1965 for something I had nothing to do with. I was accused of leading a panty raid, me and another fella from Detroit named Carl Stone. Neither one of us were involved. We were coming back to campus while the raid was going on. We didn’t understand what was going on. So we walked up and they said, “Oh, they’re the two leaders!” Leaders of what? At that time, particularly in black schools, there was no democracy. You can forget students’ rights. That was a fiction. They put us out of school, both myself and [unintelligible]. He finished as a teacher at Osbourne, I think. So then, but he thought I was a bright student, so one of the administrators called Henry Henny who was a lawyer here, said, “We’ve got this bright kid, he got in trouble, but we think he’s worth saving.” He said, “Well I can get him a job here in the factory.” Then I had another classmate named Felix Matlock, Jr., whose father, Felix Matlock, Sr., was the assistant to congressman Diggs. He said, “Well, since I’m in school, I won’t need my room. You can stay in my room.” So I went to go stay with him. And Henry Henny, the lawyer, got me a job at [unintelligible] Engine working the midnight shifts. I worked here for seven months, and then the fellas at the plant, at [unintelligible] Engine got together and put me out, told me that I was too smart to be in a plant, and we know school is starting, and you getting out of here. You’re not staying here. So I went back to school and finished Tennessee State in June of ’66. I came to Detroit because, having lived here before, I knew Detroit. I didn’t know anywhere else. I was not anxious to go back home and live under my parents’ roof. I had gotten accustomed to a certain amount of freedom. My mother did not believe in freedom or liberty at all. That was not doable. So I came to Detroit.
WW: What were your first impressions of the city?
DA: Oh, to me, Detroit was a dynamic place. It was different because first of all, I used to like to go down to Washington Boulevard and just walk. They had so many nice, lovely stores. Just walk in the stores. I used to like to eat, on occasion, at the Statler Hilton, just eating something nice. They had a lot of jazz here. I fell in love with the jazz music. I used to go to Drome Bar every Sunday and listen. That’s on the corner of Lesley and Dexter. I don’t think I ever missed a show there for years. It was called the Drome Lounge. It was basically a bar, a jazz club and a bowling alley too. I liked that, I didn’t drive. I found the city very easy to get around in terms of transportation system, the bus system. So Detroit was really a dynamic, energetic city. It was my first time really hanging out with older men, folks in the factory. I was not accustomed to all of the prostitution and the gangsterism. Now one can say they had that in New York, but I wasn’t around it, and if there was, I was too young to know anything about it. I was shocked at prostitutes on 12th Street, looked like hundreds of them. And down on Columbia Street and Elizabeth, at what is now basically Comerica Park, in that area. I’d get off at night and the guys would take me there, and they would frequent prostitutes who would just be in windows, just like you see in Harlem. I was 23. I was totally surprised by all that kind of stuff, because once again, we moved out of Harlem into Queens. I never saw any of this kind of stuff before. It was all totally shocking and brand new to me. I also liked Wayne State University. Met a lot of nice people [unintelligible]. He became friends, I met Kenny Cockrel there, and I met Lonnie Peek there. Then there were a lot of good people—I met Elliot Hall. There were a lot of good people around. Also, in terms of white guys, I became friends with Frank Joyce, who had led People Against Racism, who worked for the UAW. I had lots of friends here. I got involved with Reverend Cleage’s church here, what was first called Century Now Church of Christ, which evolved into the Shrine of the Black Madonna. I had a lot of very good friends there who were very much interested in the community and what’s going on and helping people out and talking about Black Nationalism and reading books, everything. Frank Vaughan had just opened up a book store on Monterey and Dexter. I liked Detroit very, very much. I could have easily gone back to New York. But I like Detroit. I prefer Detroit to New York.
WW: When you first came here, did you sense any tension in the city? Or when you came back in ’66 to stay, did you sense any tension?
DA: You know, I didn’t really sense any because I didn’t really know anything about the history of the city. People who lived here weren’t talking about it. When I first came back, I really tried to groove on what they’re talking about. My consciousness was more in terms about what was happening nationally and what was happening in the south. I was not altogether clear about Detroit. I didn’t know anything about the Negro movement here, those developments. I had what I would call a Black Nationalist consciousness, but most of mine was fueled by my experience in the south and the civil rights movement of the south, and what was going on nationally. I wasn’t totally attuned to what was happening in Detroit, and as such I became so over time, but I wasn’t initially.
WW: By 1966, you’re firmly in the Black Nationalist camp, would you say?
DA: Yeah, I would say that. I was influenced by Stokely Carmichael’s call for black power, which my sense of black power was there was not black power against the white people—though that’s how many white people heard it—it was really about self-determination and having control over your community and the institutions in your community. I was attracted to that. I was well-read. I had read all of Marcus Garvey’s stuff, probably most of the things by W.E.B. Dubois, I had read Lerome Bennett, I had read John Frankman, I’d read [unintelligible], so I had read—I was what you could consider well-read in history. I read all this stuff about Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright. I had what I would call a literary consciousness. A lot was formed by stuff I had read.
WW: When you came to Detroit to stay, where were you living?
DA: Initially when I came to stay, I was living at a little place on Pigree and Linwood. Eventually, I was married when I came here, to my first wife, and then we had a very nice flat at 2736 Fullerton. I’m sorry, Glenwood. 2736 Glendale.
WW: In ’65 or ’66?
DA: ’66.
WW: Were you still living there in 1967?
DA: Yes.
WW: In the year that you were here or so, from 1966 to 1967, did you become involved in any organizations? And what did you do after college here?
DA: Well, I came in. I was hired on the campus by Chrysler Corporation as a Personnel Manager Trainee to work in Highland Park at the main office, which was at 341 Massachusetts Avenue. I worked there and then I moved around. They had like an apprenticeship, so, like, I worked—it helped me learn Detroit, too—I worked at Mack Avenue Stamping Plant, which was like on Mack and Alter Road. Not quite Alter road, but out that way. I worked at Mack Avenue Stamping Plant, which is now called Chrysler North, or something like that. I worked at Mack Avenue Stamping Plant, I worked at Huber Avenue Foundry, I worked at [unintelligible] Engine, and those were the primary places where I worked. And also, I worked at Highland Park Assembly Plant. I did small stints, three or four month stints at those different places.
WW: Going into 1967, did you sense anything coming?
DA: No. I was very involved in what I would call the Black Nationalist movement. People talked about something happening, but I didn’t sense anything. I wasn’t attuned to it. We read books, we talked a lot about the movement, we talked about racism, we talked about the kinds of things we would do to help ourselves, to help the community. We talked about racism, but nobody ever talked about violence. That doesn’t mean somebody didn’t say something every now and then, but it was not predominant part of any conversation. We talked about the history of Black Nationalism, the history of African American history and culture, African history and culture, sometimes European history. Philosophy. People like [unintelligible]. That kind of thing. European philosophy. One of the young guys who was studying it would prepare this, you know. We did that. I was in college at Wayne. I was working in the management, training position. But I was working on my MBA, which I hated, by the way. I never got it.
WW: During this time, was that when you became friends with Kenneth Cockrel Sr. and Reverend Lonnie Peek, you mentioned.
DA: Yes. Lonnie Peek. Herb Boyd and I were closer, because we read a lot together. We compared stuff together, which we do today. I knew Kenny Cockrel, we weren’t friends. Honestly, we never cared for each other, or I never cared for him. It appeared to me the feeling was mutual. That’s the best I can return. We knew each other. We were cordial, cordial but distant. Kenny did not like—he dated white women exclusively, and he said that he had never met a black woman who was worthy of being married to a black man of intelligence. He would tell me about all the black men who had made something of themselves who were married to white women. He would name Richard Wright, he would call off all the people, African leaders, and I was simply appalled by that. I said to him, “What about your mother and your wife?” He was dating white women, but he was married to a black woman (who was the mother of his son). Kenny always said disparaging things about black women, and about all women. Some of the white women got included in the fire. He’s like Donald Trump. He may start off with one point, but sooner or later, he got around to everybody. Which was amazing to me because the dynamics of white people, they loved Kenny. Sometimes the worse he talked about em, the more they, “Isn’t he something? Isn’t he something?” It’s an amazing thing to me. But I worked with him, we worked together on some projects like the Algiers Motel tribunal. Herb Boyd, Lonnie Peek and I were friends. Lonnie Peek and I were practically inseparable at one point, you know. Herb Boyd was at my house every single day. We spent hours and hours together. Now, Lonnie was my friend. Lonnie was not a well-read person, so I had a different relationship with him. He and I were just friends. We just liked each other. We were just friends. Herb and I were both friends, and I would say we would intellectual soulmates. We read books, compared stuff, dreamed stuff, talked about the bigger stuff. Just like anything else, you have different relationships with different people for different reasons. Lonnie and I, at one point, were just inseparable. I like him. He was warm, he was friendly, he was serious. We worked on projects together. I was friends with Jim Ingram. All the people in the movement, I became pretty much friends with. And the center of a lot of our activity was around Century Divine Church of Christ, which eventually became the Shrine of the Black Madonna.
WW: How did you first hear what was going on July 23rd?
DA: Well, on July 23rd, I was in Newark, New Jersey at the Black Power conference that weekend. I didn’t know anything about what was going on. Someone in the hotel stopped me and said, “Aren’t you from Detroit?” I said, “Yeah.” “You gotta get outta here.” I said, “Why?” “Haven’t you heard about the riots in Detroit?” I was in a hotel with a television. I said “No,” and went back to my own room and turned on the television. Everybody thought of themselves as a revolutionary, and so, how could you be in Newark when the revolution was going on in Detroit? I got out of there and came back to Detroit to see what was going on. My family was here, too. That’s how I heard about it.
WW: So you came back on Monday, I’m guessing? Or late Sunday?
DA: I came back either Sunday or Monday. No, you know what, I think I came back that Sunday night. Because what happened was I flew in, and at that time, Detroit was racially segregated, and the young white fellas had commandeered I-94. They were just riding up and down with rebel flags, waving a machete, like that. I was picked up from the airport by Dorothy Duberry, and we were trying to get in, and we couldn’t figure how to get in. She was raised in Detroit, particularly she was raised in southwest Detroit, so she knew how to get off of the I-94 and find the place that we stayed that night until things were calmer. Then we came in that Monday morning. Didn’t take the highway. Took what she called the backway. I imagine, we must’ve come out on Jefferson or something, I have no idea. But we came in the backway and came into Detroit. I got a chance to see what was going on. I called Lonnie Peek who at the time was my compadre, and he and I, you know, drove around to see what was happening, observing the curfew, of course. But to see what was happening.
WW: What were your first impressions?
DA: I was shocked, stunned. Community was burning and on fire. There were people looting. None of which we were a part of. I can say I was scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know what to do. Should you go to work? Can you catch the bus? The police ran around wild, engaged in mayhem. You were unsure. I was unsure.
WW: After you and Peek went driving, you just hunkered down? How did you spend the rest of your week?
DA: Well, one of the things—and we observed the curfew because we thought that we would be targets—there was no need of us to bother with the curfew. During that time, we went around trying to discourage young people from looting. Try to tell them, “This is not what it’s about—and staying inside, having conversations about what was going on. In a multitude of places, Lonnie’s house, his house was kind of like a senate because he had his wife Brenda, he had a sister here named Patti and a cousin Chuck. He had other relatives, other cousins, he had several cousins. His place became the place—please he had little children—where you would go and sit and talk for hours on end. I spent a lot of time at Lonnie’s house on Courville Street.
WW: What was your reaction to the National Guard coming in, and later the federal troops?
DA: Well, like everyone else, I was afraid of them because once again, they had tanks and huge military weapons, and you had some idea of the kind of damage they can do. So, yes. Most interesting about that is that James Boggs, who I knew later on, told me that one of the soldiers in the National Guard who was on his front lawn was Mickey Lolich, who pitched for the Tiger’s. He was posted on Jimmy’s front lawn. Everyone was afraid. First the National Guard, because you knew they were untrained, so you got all the young guys, white guys in a predominantly black city who were scared and frightened. I would say we were probably much more frightened of them than we were of the traditional army who we thought was disciplined. A lot of the young National Guard guys were scared, and you could see they were scared. You want a frightened guy with an M-16 bayonet, you know? The younger soldiers from the 82nd division—I don’t know where they were from, 101st—a lot more discipline. The National Guard were frightening because they were young guys, mostly about our age.
WW: I do believe I know the answer to this, but how do you interpret the events in ’67? Do you see them as a rebellion? Do you see them as a riot?
DA: Oh, I’m going to define it as a rebellion. I think because it came from authentic grievances that people had, which had been long-standing in terms of their mistreatment by the police. I get from some people, I tend to not see rebellion as positively as others do because I think that there’s no real benefit when you tear up and burn up the place where you live, the place where you shop, so I think that misguided expression was not good. Certain parts of Detroit still haven’t been done yet. It provoked a certain fear in certain white people, and people left their homes and making irrational decisions about what was going on. A lot of times, people weren’t against individual white people, they were against conditions. But once again, if you’re a white person, I don’t know to what extent you’re able to discern all that. You’re looking at yourself, you’re not looking to make something out of analysis. I understand it as a rebellion, an authentic cry. Like most of those things, they’re misguided. People wind up tearing up their own places, where they live, where they shop, where they work. That was not good and has not been remedied to this day.
WW: Where were you when you first heard about what was going on at the Algiers Motel?
DA: Well, by that time, Dorothy Duberry and I had married, and she was Dorothy Duberry-Aldridge. She worked at 903 West Grand Boulevard. [unintelligible]. I forget where I was working. I might have been teaching. I taught at Wayne State University, I taught at U of D, and I taught at Wayne County Community College. So I might have been teaching somewhere. She had the phone call because through marriage, one of the boys that got killed, Carl Cooper, was her cousin. So Carl’s mother called, Margaret, and said, “My son has been killed by the police at the Algiers Motel. I need some help.” So I called Lonnie Peek and Kenny Cockrel and we went over and met with the family. I got Kenny because Kenny was in law school, and he knew, in my mind, how to take proper notes. So we went down, we interviewed the family members of the boys who got killed. That’s how I got involved. But I first was informed by Margaret, who was Carl Cooper’s mother.
WW: How did you proceed from there?
DA: What we tried to do is we went down, we tried to interview witnesses. We also knew some of the boys in the Algiers Motel with Carl Cooper, Aubrey Pollard, and the third boy’s name was Temple. One of the boys was named James Thorpe, he was the one who got away. They beat him up, the police did, and they didn’t kill him. So he and one of the other boys who I don’t’ remember right now told Kenny, Lonnie, and I what the experience was. We got involved then, trying to put together a case of trying to say that the police had murdered these boys. This whole notion there was supposed to be some fake gun wasn’t part. Then I learned, Carl Cooper may have had a cap pistol, he was playing with. They’re in a hotel, they don’t understand all that’s going on outside of there. They’re playing. The police, I understand, hear the gun, “Oh, they’re shooting at us!” They were in there playing with each other. They were not shooting at any police.
WW: That’s when the three of you planned the mock trial?
DA: Basically, the mock trial was my idea. Well, sort of. What happened, during that time, Dorothy and I brought Rap Brown to town. He spoke at the Dexter Theatre on top of the roof. We complained that these boys had been killed by the police. So Rap says to me, “Hey, man, why don’t you have a tribunal? Educate the community.” We brought Rap Brown to speak at the Dexter theatre. We had no idea that he was going to have the crowd we did. Rap and I are walking side-by-side, talking like two guys talking. We turn the corner, and we’re totally overwhelmed by the crowd. We knew we couldn’t have it there, plus the theatre was owned by the great Harper’s Dorothy Ashby, and her husband, the playwright John Ashby. They won’t let us have that place. So I said let’s take it to Cleage. Let’s go to the reverend Cleage and ask if we can put on the mock trial there.
WW: When did you bring Rap Brown to Detroit?
DA: I don’t exactly know, but that can be looked up. I don’t know. It was in between—
WW: And the trial. Okay.
DA: So, Reverend Cleage said yes. It was basically my idea to develop the thing, though Lonnie Peek came with me. He and I probably put it together. I picked the people who would be involved. For example, I wanted to make sure that white people were involved. Justin Ravitz was the judge. Judge Justin Ravitz.
WW: I thought Kenneth Cockrel was the judge.
DA: No. Justin Ravitz was the judge. Kenny was one of the attorneys. There were four attorneys involved: Kenneth Cockrel, Milton Henry, Andrew [unintelligible name], and Lee Mollett. Justin Ravitz was the judge. He and Kenny were law partners. Had to pull together a jury, so I picked Rosa Parks, who I knew because she was close friends with my wife, Dorothy, at the time. Ed Vaughan, he owned a bookstore and was active in the community; Frank Joyce, I wanted to make sure the jury was integrated with people against racism. The writer John O. Killens, who was in town to speak for some other reason. I asked him would he be open to being on the jury, he said, “Yes.” There were other people on the jury, but that’s who I remember.
WW: What made you want to go through with the entire tribunal? What was your driving force?
DA: The driving force was the police were not doing anything. We had been to the trial, and we had been thoroughly shamed by the police. At that time, you come into a trial, and the whole front section of the courthouse was nothing but police in uniform. Thoroughly intimidating. Plus with me, they would do things like this [draws finger across throat], make the sign of wanting to kill you. They had some record of having done this, so, you know, it should be taken seriously. We were young, we said they’re not going to make us back down at all. Then we had also some people who said if you’re holding a trial, and you find them guilty, we will execute them. That’s what they said. Never happened. Nothing. It was just talk. Our job was to hold the tribunal and to expose them. We wanted to bring out the total truth because we thought that the truth did not come out in the first trial. We wanted to bring out all the facts and the truth about what actually happened. That was our primary motivation.
WW: How did the tribunal end?
DA: It was interesting. Before that, Kenny Cockrel knew a lot of people in Detroit. He was born and raised here—I don’t know if he was born here, but he was certainly raised here. He was a magnetic personality. People were just drawn to him. He knew all kinds of people. He was friends with William Saren [??], who later became head of the Free Press. And he said, “Dan, if you do this, give us unrestricted access. We’ll make it a big story.” That’s another reason I wanted to do it, because I was promised by the head of the Free Press to make it a big story. We let the Free Press in, Michigan Chronicle, Detroit News. Free Press had full staff there to cover the story. We saw the newspaper, and it wasn’t there. I was so angry, I charged down to Free Press and got in Bill’s face and he told me, he said, “Dan, the editors would not let us put it out there. I got the full story, had my full staff, and the editor said that they were going to squash the story,” and they did. There was nothing I could do about it.” He told me he was awfully embarrassed and gave me his word. I gave him access and it didn’t happen. I was very upset by that. The other thing that happened regarding that later is that John Hershey, who wrote the book, I was writing an article on the tribunal for the Michigan Chronicle. John Hershey came by Dorothy’s office and stole my manuscript and published it in the book as his own. Subsequent to that, I went to the Random House in New York and complained at him, they didn’t know anything about it. But later, Daniel Maguire, in doing a story, she got ahold of his archives at Young University. When I told people I wrote it, I wrote the one chapter in that book, they told me, “John, the only thing he put in there was ‘Dan Aldridge said…’” I never met John Hershey. Most of the people didn’t believe me. Or they didn’t believe strongly. Because [unintelligible name] went down to Yale and saw Random House had been with Hershey about me coming up there and protesting. They said, “John, what is this?” She said, “Dan, I was stunned.” Yeah, I said, I’ll tell you what happened. He stole the thing off of Dorothy’s desk and went and wrote it. If you read that chapter, I think it’s chapter 41, it’s called Fuel for the Fire Next Time, you’ll see for yourself it says, “And Dan Aldridge said…” It’s nothing of his in that entire chapter but me. I never met John Hershey. Random House offered me, they wanted to give me three books as compensation, but I refused to accept it. At the end of the tribunal, I would say that people felt good and people felt joy. There was celebration. There was ecstasy. Because they heard the truth. About three thousand people there. The church was packed. Not only was the church packed, it was packed in the street, the sidewalk outside of the church. It was packed on the other side of the sidewalk. Packed with people. Cleage said, “Well, we’ll maybe get three hundred people here.” And about three thousand people there, I’m told, people who estimated those kinds of things. So the community felt, they were proud that something like that went on. They were also proud in that I didn’t take any cheap shots. I hired good attorneys on both sides and said, “Let’s just hear the evidence.”
WW: What was the verdict?
DA: Guilty, because there was no question. Before they had a testimony of James [unintelligible] who talked about how they made those boys, shot them up against the wall, how they put them across the bed and beat them. The other thing is while we were getting ready for the trial, the police were trying to find the witnesses to keep them from testifying at the tribunal. They caught Lonnie Peek and I out on Euclid one night, and tried to shoot us, but we were young and fast. Also funny about it, I was on the track team. We’re walking down Euclid, near Grand River, and I see four white men sitting in a car with suits on at about three in the morning. We had to hide the witnesses. They’d take various messages to try to get rid of them, to find them. I said, “Lonnie, I think those police out to get us.” He said, “Man, you just so paranoid.” I said, “I’m just going to take off in a light jog, see you later.” As soon as they saw me start running, we heard the car doors open. Pow! Pow! Lonnie, we’re laughing, I told him I turned on Grand River, he said, “I was so low to the ground, I had to scoop sand out of my pocket to keep my balance. I was striding, full stride.” He said, “Danny, Danny, wait up!” I said, “No, no, I told you to come before.” It’s part of interplay, laughing between us. We’ve always had the ability to kid with each other, we tease each other. We do the same thing now, tease each other back and forth. I think the community was proud because it was done professionally, it was done well. They were proud that there were white people involved, which at that time was like, you know what I mean? I said, “Look, everybody, let’s just get all the facts that we know and see where it goes.” We did that. It was a proud moment. The community was very proud. Everybody was nothing but proud. I had some people now, Caroline Cheeks’ sister, Caroline Cheeks, Kwame Kilpatrick’s mother. Today, she said when she thinks about it, she just cries, it was just so beautiful. First time I’ve ever seen justice. Just listening to the facts, that’s all. That’s how it went.
WW: Wow. After the rebellion, as you’re organizing the mock trial and bringing H. Rap Brown to town, how did you see the city? Did you see it in a new light?
DA: Oh, yes, in a new light. Things changed rapidly. First of all more white people now wanted to become involved. People like Joseph Hudson. They wanted to move to form the New Detroit, what became the New Detroit had another name earlier. I was invited to be one of the early members of the New Detroit Committee. I was the only person at the time—this is not recorded in any kind of history, but it’s definitely true—who refused to be on the committee. Lonnie Peek was on it, Orville Harrington, Frank Ditto. My position was I could not see the difference between the new Detroit and the old Detroit. We’re the same people all messed up before. The same people again! Why aren’t we calling them in to help solve the problems? I never worked with the New Detroit community as a consequence. These other guys did and got funding for their projects. I was sort of punished for not following suit. I don’t have any regrets about that. Then I got involved with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I had a group called the All African People’s Union around the shooting of New Bethel. I organized the Black United Front, which all the black lawyers came together to try to deal with what happened as a consequence of the police shooting up New Bethel Baptist Church. I was in the church that night, by the way. People were acting so crazy. There was a couple of them. One guy stepped inside, Rafael Vera, stepped inside of an M-16, he fell on the floor. I saw and thought, “I gotta get out here,” and I left. By the time I got home, my wife said, “Dan, you gotta get back, you gotta get back.” I said, “Why?” “The police are shooting up New Bethel!” And Mark Bethune, who later was the Mark Bethune who was involved in Bethune and Boyd, who got killed down in Atlanta—it was a major, major case.
WW: How do you spell that last name?
DA: Bethune. B-E-T-H-U-N-E. First name is Mark. His nickname was Ibo, after the African tribe. But he spelled it wrong, E-I-B-O, but you know young people, man. E-I-B-O. Me and a friend named [unintelligible], we went down to see what was happening. They had the place surrounded. They took all those folks to the jail. There was excellent coverage of that. You can check the archives at South End Press. Wayne State University.
WW: Who was the judge that released all the—
DA: Judge Crocker.
WW: Did you see the state of the Black National movement in Detroit growing or shrinking after the rebellion?
DA: Growing. I mean, there were more—for example, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers became more active. Everybody who had a black consciousness began to spread, to energize. There were lots of new groups and lots of people began to have various expressions of Black Nationalism. Reverend Cleage’s church, they were very active. The Shrine of the Black Madonna developed after the painting of the Madonna in the sanctuary. There were lots of movements, all over, probably hundreds of them all over. Then there were a lot of white groups that wanted to—you know, like Focus: HOPE came into existence. Father Cunningham, Eleanor Josaitis. Father Cunningham was trying to bring everybody together across racial lines. I would say it energized the community, those who wanted to be. But you also had white reactionary forces too, like Don Lobsinger, I don’t know if you know that name. I knew Donald. Don and I both worked for the city. He would have demonstrations at lunch time.
WW: Oh, yeah, I know Mr. Lobsinger. Before we move past ’67 too much, is there anything else you’d like to add?
DA: No.
WW: Okay. Going like to the ‘70s and ‘80s, do you think that those decades were directly affected by what happened in ’67?
DA: I think everything, I think Detroit has totally been affected by what has happened. First of all, the population changed. White people left and you had a high percentage of black population. Schools changed. Whites went to Denby, Osbourne, Finney, trying to hold on to a majority white. At some point, they passed a tipping point, they just left. Young whites left the schools, young whites who want to have children moved out. Young blacks—I don’t know if we had a big migration, but because the whites left, you had a different balance in the numbers. So it changed the city. The city began to be seen as a black city. The white corporations disinvested in the city. [unintelligible]. For example, this rail line we see here. This is Coleman Young’s idea. But it doesn’t come to fruition until Mike Duggan become mayor. A lot of the things in the city could’ve been done when there was black leadership, but those white people in power with money refused to do it until they feel more comfortable with Duggan. So there’s things being done now that could’ve been done decades ago. These same buildings that people are renovating? They could’ve been renovated years ago. All the rail way? It could have been done years ago. The Cass Corridor could have been midtown years ago. You’ve also got just blacks and a broad base of white Appalachians and wanted to clear some them out of here too.
WW: How do you see the city of Detroit today? Do you still believe we’re still affected by ’67?
DA: I think we’re still affected by ’67, yes, because a lot of the development has not taken place. We have vast edges of the city that are just wastelands. We have the city being made without understanding the consequences for black people. We have all these young white people coming into the city now, getting the best jobs, having the best housing, and you have to wonder what that feels like to other people who’ve been here all their lives and they’re watching these things take place. I don’t have any issue with young white people coming in the city and doing as well as they can. My issue is that we’ve got to figure out a way for the resources and the benefits to be shared. That’s healthy for everybody. We’ve got to find ways that have cross-racial, intersectional collaboration. There’s no reason why—they have these coding classes downtown. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have higher percentages of blacks in the coding classes, that you find ways, you have to orchestrate ways for people to come together in ways that everybody can benefit. It’s going to be 100%, it’s going to be 50/50, no. But you’re also talking about good faith efforts. Detroit’s a great city. It’s a big city. It’s an international city. We don’t have fires, floods, hurricanes, or earthquakes. We do have some terribly inconvenient weather on occasion. But I don’t see enough effort being made to have us share in the benefits. We don’t pay attention to our Latino community, which I think is a vibrant community. I think Detroit ought to move to become bilingual because we are a city that’s a border city, and we’re also near water. It’d be wonderful if we took Spanish seriously and we became a bilingual city. We had a lot of young women moving to the city. I would like us to take up the issue of male violence against women and girls and rape and become the first city to make this a real program for the city. You see this organized group called Black Men’s Coalition to Eradicate Rape. I think male violence against women is a serious national crisis, and nowhere have we taken that seriously. In terms of the whole gay issue, Detroit was always seen as homophobic, and I suspect class-wise, that may be so. But I have not seen the expressions of violence. People talk, they say nasty things, obviously, that’s inappropriate. But Detroit’s way ahead of a lot of other places on that issue. People either ignore it, or it’s not a problem, or there’s a lot of things about Detroit. Detroit’s working class, Detroit’s bad, but we don’t have that kind of violence in Detroit. We have very little black and white violence. Very little. I’ve seen none since I’ve been here. Not like Chicago. So Detroit’s a great city. I think it has an enormous future. My issue is that particularly the white leadership don’t understand they failed one of the crucial lessons of ’67, and that is that they do not enough to deal with the issue of income inequality. You’ve got to find ways to do that, because people are forever going to be envious of other people’s joy. They want some joy themselves. And you don’t attend to that, and somebody’s going to act nasty. It’s amazing that we’re talking about foreign countries. They say, “What do you want to do about Syria? What do you want to do about—” No! You’ve got to give the young men jobs! But no one sees that. You go overseas, and the very same thing they describe overseas will be a thing working here. You’ve also got to find ways to get the kinds of jobs, people who work with their hands, because this is a working class town. We have lots of people who have working class consciousness. We can model ourselves after a place like Germany, where they give enormous education for the skilled trades. There are a lot of things we can do. Detroit can be a great city. But I don’t think it really isn’t attaining some of what I would call crucial issues that I would do if I were the person who was responsible. We have a little growing now, and we’ve got enough land in Detroit to have a whole farm. Not like [unintelligible name]’s farm, not like what he’s doing. What he’s doing with all his trees. He’s got all these trees on the east side where I live. How’s the city going to develop? Where’s new housing going to be? Where’s the new schools going to be? Where’s the new stores going to be? Nothing there on these trees. I don’t see that kind of forward thinking. I don’t see that. But I’m optimistic about the city. I like the city very much. A lot of the people are upset about gentrification. I don’t think gentrification is good, but on the other hand, I’m excited by some of the young whites I see coming in now from other places who, I don’t think, are part of gentrification in their minds. They’re coming, those in the occupy movement, those here supporting Bernie Sanders, many of them are coming to try and contribute and to work with people to make Detroit a better place. We just haven’t figured out a way to facilitate that. There’s no need for these groups to be off each other. We have too many needs. People who need to learn Spanish, people need to learn mathematics, and we’ve got a whole group of people who know how to do all those things. Technical literacy (computer literacy). We’ve got people who know how to do all these things. Why don’t we bring them together, get them to collaborate together, make this a better place for everybody. I think we’ve lost since—the group of white people coming in now, they’re not the same folk from the ‘50s and ‘60s. They don’t have the same consciousness. They don’t have the same goals and intentions, in general. I don’t see the kind of creative thinking that can do that and make that happen, and bring people together. If they don’t, all people are going to do, we’re just going to recreate the income inequality and [unintelligible] somewhere down the line. And say, “What happened?”
WW: Is there anything else you’d like to add today?
DA: No, that’s it.
WW: Thank you very much for sitting down with me today, we greatly appreciate it.
DA: My pleasure.
WW: Hello my name is William Winkel and I am with the Detroit Historical Society. And it is December 22, and we are in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s 1967 Oral History Project and I am here with Mike Hamlin.
Thank you very much for sitting down with me today.
MH: I’m delighted.
WW: Can you tell me where and when you were born?
MH: I was born 1935, October 17, in a rural area on a plantation near Canton, Mississippi. My father and his family—my family were sharecroppers on that plantation. They worked farms and divided the products for the production of cotton with the owners. And it was a very exploitive kind of situation. My father was the youngest of three. And he had been abandoned, his family, he and my grandmother, and my aunt and uncle had been abandoned by his father when they were teenagers and they had to scrape through to adulthood under very dire circumstances. My mother was a product of a plantation owner’s son. And her mother died when she was 33 and left her as an orphan. And she couldn’t stay on the plantation where she was born with her father and his family so she was kind of shunted around from one black relative to another because, you know, they were rural folks and if you understand about the thinking of peasants, agricultural workers. You could say that in my view they were seen as peasants. They — it makes you selfish, working like that, working like that. So she had a very difficult time, and I think she – at 15 she married my father who was a real bad guy. Irresponsible, reckless, and could be brutal. And I was born — she married him when she was 16. So she and I kind of grew up together, I tried – I did the best I could to protect her but he was very abusive and all of this is shaping my thinking as I'm growing up. On the place that we lived, there was a — you know, we lived in a shack. No running water, an outhouse. On the farm we made vegetables, he hunted, we raised vegetables, they would hunt rabbits, possums and squirrels and birds and fish. So we had enough to sustain us but, you know, at the same time, my father started bootlegging whiskey, he started making whiskey and he made a lot of money but he blew it all. He was very — I said he was reckless and irresponsible so [laughter]. He would — He was just a wild man. And so this had to do with my shape, I mean, this shaped my view. I was always trying to make my mom’s life better, so I used to go with her when she would go to work at the plantation owner's house and the plantation owner tried her — tried to get my mother to give me to her. And she wouldn’t do it. But she did that because I could do a lot of things even though I was a child. At some point my father, who enjoyed police protection from the sheriff, who supposedly protected him from — his operation — from the IRS or whatever its equivalent was at that time, raided his still and destroyed it all. So the sheriff came. (I don't know if you want all this kind of information.) But the sheriff came to the house to collect his monthly, a $75 payment. My father told him we didn’t have any money. He told him — this was in 1944, he told him, “I’ll be back here tonight and you better have it.” Now we — I have seen two mobs riding through our place watering their horses and dogs and themselves at the pump that we had, on their way into the forest looking for blacks they were going to lynch. They caught one, the other one got away. So after my dad had the encounter with the sheriff he took off and he made it to Kansas City where I had an aunt. My aunt had moved. And shortly thereafter my mother moved to Kansas City with him. And my grandmother and I and my sister moved — my younger sister — moved into Canton, the town. And I think I was nine years old and I got a job in the store.
By the way in terms of school, I did not go to start school until two years after when I was old enough. Because I was babysitting my sister as my mother worked in the cotton field. I’d be sitting on a blanket on the edge of the field and she’d be out there picking cotton and I’d be entertaining my little sister. So when I - we ended up - I started school about the third grade and I had a lot of catching up to do but, I handled that. We went to town, we moved to Canton and lived in a house there that my aunt had lived in and I went to school there for two years, I got this job in a liquor store. Almost got killed, because the owners, a young white couple, had me doing all kinds of things. You know, I could do any job in the store including cash register, meat counter, stock, whatever. And they enjoyed watching me. They were just amused. I was big for my age, 10 years old. And they had a nephew about your size, 17 years old, he was a high school football player. He didn’t like me, because they liked me and so he worked there during the summer when he was out of school so one day I went back to the back of the store [laughter], to get something out of the meat cooler. And he was standing there in the door with a sharp knife, a butcher's knife. And he was coming at me with it, and it slipped out of his hands [laughter] and stuck into his foot. [Laughter] And he howled, and of course I didn’t laugh, but that probably saved my life because, he could have killed me and they would have been nothing said about it. But anyway, eventually my father, he had gotten run out of Mississippi, but then he got ran out of Kansas City, Missouri, because he was — he got in some argument with a guy in a bar, probably over a woman or something, and he opened fire on this man point blank and shot him once in the leg [laughter]. So he had to flee from Kansas City and came here. And after he came here, he — this was in 1946. In ’47, he brought me and my sister here. And my mother and grandmother went to Kansas City. That brought me to Detroit. That was in August of 1947 and we started the school in September.
WW: Where did you move to in the city?
MH: Ecorse.
WW: Ecorse?
MH: Yeah, in Ecorse, which was an industrial town with a lot of people from the South, a lot of people from Mississippi – people that my folks knew. And – and it was divided by railroad tracks, and there were blacks on one side and whites on the other, but we all went to the same high school. We went to segregated elementary schools. And the junior high school was attached to the high school, so beginning in the seventh grade, we were in, we begin integrated school. Interestingly enough, we didn't have any problems. Now – I had a very interesting experience my first – I don't know whether this is relevant to what you're —
WW: It all is. [laughter] Keep going.
MH: The – I can't – my first – I remember, I said, we came here in August of '47. Took the train in to Grand Central Station. I think that's what it was called at the time?
WW: Michigan Central?
MH: Michigan Central, yeah. And took a cab to Ecorse. And in September, which was the next month, school started. I went to school, and my first day of school the teacher and the whole class laughed at me because [laughter] of my accent. So you know, one other thing about being born in Mississippi, is you develop deep feeling of humility. So rather than being crushed, you know, I just felt that I was behind and I had to catch up. And so boy, did I catch up. This was an interracial experience from seventh grade on up, and by the time I was a sophomore, I was – for the next two years – a leading athlete in my school. Basketball and football. Tennis. And – because I had never played tennis, had no idea, but I had a friend who was a year younger than me, but he was kind of – he was like a mentor. And I studied him. His father, interestingly enough, he was a graduate of Colgate. He had a mechanical engineering degree, and the first job he got was as the principal of a high school in South Carolina. But when Ford started paying $5 an hour – or $5 a day – he moved here, and moved his wife here. And he worked at the Rouge in the foundry for 43 years, and became an under – a part-time undertaker.
So anyway, I used to spend a lot of time at his house. And I learned from them, you know. I became — So by high school – I didn't – I mean – nobody in my house had even gone past eighth grade, much less going to college. As I was approaching graduation, most of my friends were going into factories. Great Lakes Steel – Are you from here?
WW: I'm from downriver.
MH: Great Lakes Steel, and Ford. And my father told me - I was working. I started working when I got here, ten years part-time at a liquor store – at a grocery store. And then later a liquor store. And my father told me, don't go to college, you know. Stay where you are with that liquor store. So, I usually did the opposite of whatever he told me. [laughter] I thought that was a good rule. So I – Gunnar, my friend, my mentor, was going to U of M [University of Michigan]. He had a full scholarship, was going to be a doctor. So I had – I was probably in the top five, academically, by then. Thought I may try playing basketball. So I decided to go to U of M with him. That summer, the basketball coach, Mr. Rilly, got me a scholarship – not a scholarship, got me a job, rehabbing a school in Ecorse that was, you know, needed work. So I worked with that and got — made pretty good money. So I paid for my first year. Second year I got a job at Ford during the summer, and I worked there for 89 days and they laid me off, but I did have enough to go back and finish two more years.
And the summer after that – this was in 1956 – I couldn't get a job. That was the – during the Eisenhower recession. I couldn't get a job so I – you know, I didn't go back to school in September, but I continued to look for a job, and the only job I got was in February, I – doing the – on days when it snowed – my aunt comes back, got a job in Wyandotte in a car wash. I spent one day in that job. [laughter] And I told my uncle the next day I wasn't going back. And I left home, coming to the federal building, looking for the Marines, and got conned into going into the Army.
Now all this time, I'm trying to make up my deficit of knowledge and I really went and learned. I studied the classics, I was the teacher's pet. You know, the teachers that everybody was afraid of, I found out they had a sense of humor and I could relate – a person like me [laughter] has to have a sense of humor. A person who has certain [unintelligible]. So I did quite well. But I – learned – I took Spanish in high school. And Latin. And at U of M – at U of M it was interesting. I passed – I got As in Latin, you know, Bs – but I was almost failing English. So – and one of the professors told me that I was wasting my time, I should go back down south to one of the Black colleges. So I mean – I wasn't – you know, if you're in a position where you've been through what I've been – you couldn't hardly hurt my feelings and insult me with something like that.
WW: Was the teacher that – was that your English teacher who said that?
MH: Yep, at U of M. Professor Huntley was his name. But – I'm telling you, I was learning the world. I did not know what – and I knew it. And I knew that I – so I was a reading fiend. I read – I loved Macbeth. I read all Shakespeare, Eugene O'Neill, et cetera, et cetera. Matter of fact, when I was in the army, me and this buddy of mine, we used to quote long passages from Macbeth, Hamlet. I knew the soliloquies from Hamlet and Macbeth and the poetry and stuff like that. So I was learning, because I was filling an empty tank.
WW: Did you – after you graduated high school did you start exploring the metro area? You said you started going to U of M – did you go to U of M-Ann Arbor?
MH: U of M-Dearborn didn't exist at that time.
WW: Oh, okay. Was there a difference between the Ecorse neighborhood you grew up in and spending time in Ann Arbor?
MH: Oh yeah, oh yeah. There were 33,000 students there, 300 of them were black. They were a different class. I'm a sharecropper, and these are doctor’s, lawyer’s, teacher’s kids, there amongst the blacks. I got along with them all but I knew I was different. Again, when we were with the whites. Matter of fact, in high school, a very interesting thing happened. I didn't know anything about sports, but we played street football. And so one day on the playground, the professor – not the professor – the coach saw me throw a football, and he saw how far I could throw it and how my side, he called me over, told me he wanted me to come out and play football for him. He wanted me to play quarterback. And because the quarterback he had could not see over the linemen. He wasn't tall enough. And so I agreed. And I did well for – my two years in high school I was the quarterback for the football team and the captain of the basketball team. Which, you know, I'm just going through – I was kind of like Forest Gump. I was just doing things. I was learning, and appreciating, but I didn't have much ego at that time. I don't think.
But anyway, at U of M I was there among the middle class folks. And you know, they treated me nice, like we were all in the same boat, except that I – like I said, I was different. But they were good. My roommate was my mentor, he was a year younger than me, which – we're still the best of friends, all those years. He has more infirmities than I do. But after that car wash day, I entered the Army. I went -
WW: What year was that?
MH: That was 1957. And I went to Missouri, to a military base there, where I was – I began my training, but then they shipped me to Ft. Lewis, Washington – state of Washington – where I spent 13 months. And I had a first sergeant who abused me terribly. I have no – this day, I don't understand why this man didn't like me. And if you know about the military, the punishment that they mete out is KP – kitchen police. So he would frequently put me on KP for some excuse. Which meant I'd have to get up at four o'clock in the morning, peel potatoes, and wash pots and pans. And you know – very frequently.
But we were in a special class – our unit – experimental unit. Testing equipment, testing men, to determine who got – who had the best – what region of the country the best soldiers came from. And the people who make best soldiers – and that was Midwest, south, and southeast. And so we went through a number of experimental things. I learned – we had to learn to ski, with a backpack, wearing 90 pounds, pulling like – two-men, three-men teams. Two pulling a sled and one guiding it – that had 250 pounds of equipment on it. Plus weapons. You had a tent, you know, supplies and different things. And we had to ski through – we went to – we left for three months and went through the mountains, and had to maneuver out there.
My enemy – Sergeant Vargas – I – one night – I mean, one morning, we start climbing in this mountain, on skis with the backpack and the sled and the weapons, and at midnight we got to the top. It was pitch black up there. And the first thing out of his mouth was “Hamlin, you got the first watch.” Now it's pitch black and you're on the mountain, and you could fall off and it would probably take you ten minutes to hit the ground. But I had the first watch – had to go around the perimeter. Plus the first night, I mean – we got there, there was – they had hired a hunter because there were bear tracks through the area. But he got me.
So when we spent that three months testing equipment, we were testing the equipment – both the motorized equipment and what we wore, and the weapons and so forth. Then we left there and came back and that was three months. Then we spent three months in the desert. And – which basically consisted of sitting out on top of a mountain. And – I don't know if you know the state of Washington – there's a desert called Yakima, in eastern Washington, near Spokane. And we were sitting in this – we'd sit down on this mountain for three months, in foxholes. You know, that heat. There's rattlesnakes. And they supposedly fired an atomic bomb in the area, in proximity to us, and when we came back from each one of these exercises, they interviewed us all individually. A psychologist from Columbia and somewhere else. They interviewed us and that was the end of that, fortunately after that. I got shipped to Korea, which took me away from Sergeant Vargas, and I excelled over there, and I became a sergeant. But Korea was kind of what made – what awakened me. You know, I began – we're over there, and Emmett Till happened, Little Rock, SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference], Montgomery. A lot of that happened. And our first night over there we had a racial fight. There were three of us and there was nine whites, most of them from the South: Louisiana and Oklahoma and so forth. And we were in a 12-man quonset hut divided into three parts. We were placed alphabetically. There were three blacks – me, Hightower, and Hawkins. Hawkins was from Benton Harbor, I forget where Hightower was from. So the first night there, we were – This is probably not what you wanted, right?
WW: Oh yeah, this is all good.
MH: First night there, we were – me, and Hawkins and Hightower were sitting in the middle room, which is where we were, and all of the whites are gathered in the room next to us. And they were talking, and we were talking, and we kept hearing the word “nigger” thrown around. So finally one of us – I guess it was me, “Man, you guys hear what I just heard?” Said, “Yeah, man, we heard it.” I said, “We got to put a stop to that.”
So the three of us marched over there. They were all sitting around, you know, on their bunks and chairs and so forth, and we say, "Hey man, you guys – we been sitting over here listening, hearing that word 'nigger' being thrown around. You're not going to be able to do that around us." And this big guy who was about six-two, about 230, Harlan, from New Orleans, said, “Well I don't know what I'm going to call you because that's all I've ever known.” And we said, “No, you ain't going to call – you're not going to use that word here.” So he said, “Well, maybe we better take this outside.” And they, Yeah, yeah!
So Hawkins, who was about six feet, about 170 pounds, said, “Well man, I'll fight you.” And so they decided that the two of them would go at it. Harlan weighing 240 pounds. [laughter] I'm worried to death about Harlan. So we go out there, they get on one side, and three of us on the other side, and Harlan stepped forward. And Hawkins stepped forward. And so Harlan lunged at him, and Hawkins hit him with a left hook and then hit him with the right and staggered him, knocked him back, and Harlan made a bull rush and Hawkins grabbed him in a headlock and rammed his head into a car – the grill – and he was bleeding all over the place. Said, “Hey, next time, we got to stop, this got to stop now.” So they stopped it and we went back and never had that incident again.
So, that – you know – but – and aside from that, see, I maintain that all Americans, since they're so warlike, they like wars – they ought to do two things – enlist, and number two, before they do they need to go to France, to Normandy, and see that graveyard, with ten thousand crosses in it. It's eerie. We have a son who lives in Paris and we were visiting him quite regularly. Now he comes here all the time. But we went – the first time we went, we went over and stood at the – out there amongst those crosses. There's ten thousand of them. Names on them – name unknown – and they go on and on; you can't see the end. And you can't see – and that way. If you stand on one side, you can't see. You stand here, you can't see the end. And it's the most eerie feeling. It's a very spiritual thing. So I think all these warmongering people need to, you know, put up or shut up.
But anyway, that is what – see, I was angry. This was the era of the black man. Angry black man. And when I came back – well, a couple other things. You could see, in Korea, the effect of that war. Which we didn't win – but we killed a whole lot of people. In North Korea, they destroyed every building that existed. People were living in caves. They were – I can – they drove – they fly a B-52 over a rice paddy, see a guy down there with an ox and a plow and drop one on him. Because a lot of times they come back – like right now, they go on bombing runs in the Middle East and they come back with their bombs. But there you see somebody down there, a peasant – so it kind of effected me, plus what was going on here. There was a lot of, lot of racial hostility building. George Wallace hadn't started, but he was on his way.
So when I came back I was —
WW: What year did you come back?
MH: In '60. In March of '60. And got a job – that's when I got the job at the Detroit News. I had U of M credits and I had military, so they hired me. I worked there ten years. Teamsters claim that I was one year short of a pension. I think they probably cheated me out of it. But that's water under the dam. But anyway, I worked there and I got married. Married an upper middle class girl from St. Louis, and it didn't work. You know, because I was beginning to move left, and she was from – she was a society girl, and her friends – they used to have parties all the time. We all – you know, and the party was usually at our place. I lived on Boston and Lawton, which is right over there near Central High School, where the National Guard was located.
But anyway, she was from St. Louis and her family – it was a Boston Episcopalian family her mother came from. And, you know, I was born in the low classes. We gave it a go but it didn't – it lasted about four years. And we got a divorce, and it was very crushing for two weeks, and then I became a counselor, ultimately. I always tell people who divorce, who are coming through the week, well you can grieve for two weeks, but – and the other party is going on to a better life for themselves. You better take care of number one! Two weeks. That's a good rule of thumb. If you ever decide to get divorced, you can grieve. I was sitting up in my house with a fifth of Jim Beam Red – scotch – a fifth of it – and then a pint of Martin BPO scotch. Listening to Ray Charles, Country and Western album, in which he had “Born to Lose” on there, and “I Can't Stop Loving You,” and I did that for two weeks. But then one day a light bulb went on. Up here, like a fool, she went and took everything out of the house while I was at work. I worked a double shift on Saturday. She got a van and took all that, took all the money, including money we had invested in a bank out in – a black bank in Los Angeles, that my brother-in-law was a vice president, and left me there.
I start – you know, I started having a good time. I started dating. Every single teacher in the school – my friend who went to U of M, who was derailed in his drive to be a doctor because his girlfriend got pregnant – more than likely tricked him – and so he had to switch and go into teaching. But anyway, she was his cousin. He moved in with me, because he had got divorced. He was teaching in this school, and he was introducing me to all these women.
WW: So he was working at Central High School, or —
MH: No, this was in Inkster.
WW: Oh, Inkster.
MH: Yeah, he worked at – he became principal – superintendent of schools, ultimately, in Inkster. But you know, I was just having a good time. Like a fool, I – with all the women – one of them I got pregnant. She was a teacher, and she was crazy. She would have killed me. So I had to leave, running. This is during the movement, because my politics involved me – had me around a lot of women. But I didn't cheat when I was married. But my politics were – these women were not prepared for this. They were into being successful, middle-class, blacks. And I was angry.
You know, that's what drove – that's what drove '67. That's what drove Black Power. That's what drove the movement. The urban black, you know – the working class black reached a point where he could not take it anymore. I told people many a time, then, and since then, that during that period I didn't care whether I lived or died, but I was going to live or die with some feeling of freedom. And you know – in my mind. And I understood oppression - our oppression. I understood our exploitation. I had not only seen it, I experienced it. And I saw the family, how they were abused, in the community, the neighborhood. You know, I was – I used to do income tax for the older people in the neighborhood. I used to help them negotiate with some of these crooked furniture companies, like I forget his name – one down in Wyandotte, I think it was called Muskins or something. Where – downriver were you?
WW: I'm from Lincoln Park.
MH: Oh, you're right around the corner! Yeah, yeah. We used to play you guys in football.
WW: You probably won. Really quick, before we get to 1967, what did you do at the Detroit—
MH: News?
WW: Yeah, Detroit News.
MH: I started off as a jumper, which was assisting the drivers. We'd take papers to stations and unload them, where the newsboys were, or we were the guy who drove around downtown and put papers in the – and shortly after we – after I got hired there, which was 1960, they bought the Detroit Times. And all of us had seniority over all these people from the Detroit Times.
So I got to be a driver, and I drove for a while. And I took over a station, over on Cass, the Cass corridor. And I ran that for a while. And then I started going back to school at Wayne State, so I went back to the truck driving job because that was more compatible with – I had the GI Bill, so I started going to Wayne, and that's when I got involved. I had gotten involved with Ken and John at the Detroit News. I would drive Ken to work – I mean, to law school, on my way to work. And he would join me later – you know, part time, when he'd come to work. Some time he'd ride with me when we delivered papers. And John was working there, and going to school, and together, you know, we engaged in – on the dock, in repartee with all – we dominated the docks with the kids – with all the other guys that were there. Tossing their intellect and their capacity – their analytical capacity. Ken was like a machine gun, if you heard him talk, he sounded like a machine gun. And John would bring it. They both were geniuses. It's a rare case, where they were both geniuses, and I was very privileged and honored to work with them. But they were good friends, you know.
John, who graduated from Cass at 17, was the one who introduced me to Marxist analysis, and I introduced Ken, and we studied together, and we had good times together, and we analyzed the society, you know, and grew angrier and angrier, and had to do something, which brings us to – well – the Civil Rights movement started. And first of all, I had already seen enough outrages while I was in the Army and overseas, at that - but what – we wanted to do something. John went down, attended Nashville, to see if he could participate in with SNCC [Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee] but he couldn't take those ass-whoopings, he wouldn't do it, so he came back. I didn't even go, and neither would Ken. We wouldn't even consider that, because Ken and I had been in the military – he was in the Air Force, I was in the Army, and John had not – he was too young, he wouldn't go, in general.
But anyway, we were angry. And we were, you know, by that time, in that period, there was – we had gone through a flowering of the art in the black – among the black artists. Cultural people, individuals. And there were books, key books that came out that affected us. James Baldwin's writing, or Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Richard Wright. Leroy Jones, etc. We were studying, we were rapping, we were talking. We were pretty profuse debaters. And we also realized we had to do something. So we started working with some people. We raised money and goods for people in the South who had been – like in Tennessee, there was a place called Fayetteville, I think, that had, where all the farmers had been kicked off the land. All the sharecroppers had been kicked off the land, and they set up a tent down there, called Tent City. So we worked with the Clagues and the Boggs and SNCC raised money and goods and shipped them down there to the people that lost their homes. All these things were making us further – right, by the way – at the time, in 1960 there was a Time magazine cover – I guess, something like the Man of the Year was the Angry Black Man, and they had a picture of a black guy with bandoleers, you know, across his chest, and a rifle. So this thing was building, these – it was building up to Watts, '67 Detroit, Newark, and so forth. And in, within us, something was going to explode one way or another. I mean, I had some very nefarious ideas at the time. But anyway, you know, our folks had endured humiliation and abuse and so on that, you know, there was rage within the young black man. The older people were prepared to keep going, you know, waiting – as Malcolm said, waiting patiently. But we begin — they begin to say we do now, matter of fact, in Detroit, in the early Sixties, there was a party founded by Clagues and the Boggs and the Henry Brothers called Freedom Now Party. John Watson was part of it. But you know, we emerged as a more militaristic approach.
WW: Who is “we”?
MH: The group that eventually came together to form DRUM [Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement] and the League, well, the Inner City Voice was the beginning.
WW: Okay.
MH: You know, we wanted a pound of flesh, because the humiliation – I mean, we had worn a uniform, we had been good citizens, and the police brutality – they think it's bad now, they should have been here in the Sixties, in Detroit, it was really bad. And other places too. And it's fundamentally the catalyst for all of these rebellions and riots in the city. It was the overreach of the police, and this is going to happen again, based on what's being done right now. The rage – there's a book called Black Rage that you ought to check out some time. I think it's by Grier and Price. [William Grier and Price Cobbs] Like two psychiatrists, two black psychiatrists. And you can get a feeling of the pain that we experienced. You know, people who had some intellectual capacity. Because if you understand the true nature of this country, you have to – you deal – you either become angry or you're in denial. Or you deny it.
And so if you bought the idea that it was – it was okay for U.S. to invade Vietnam, based on the false premise of the Gulf of Tonkin by LBJ [President Lyndon Johnson], that there was justification for going to kill millions of Vietnamese. Or if you are presented with the proposition that somebody as dumb as George Bush has the right to order shock and awe and the killing of millions of Muslims – and still killing them, still going on – if you believe that that is right and just – or as they say in the church, mete and just – then you're in denial. And that's where we are. It's not a question of – you know, I don't feel good with that. I don't wake up every morning feeling good about shock and awe, because you know that they – these fools – well, or if you think it was all right, it was a great thing that we dropped the atomic bombs on Japan – [laughter] you got a different kind of thinking. But that's the way we are. And so we go along, with things. I mean, if you're smart, you're strong, and sometime if you're without morals, you can succeed. Look at Donald Trump. You know, you could – you could fly high. Whenever I had a political – a polemic against somebody, I'd quote Cyrano – he says, “he flew high and fell back again.” [laughter]
WW: Going into 1967, did you feel that this rage was also felt outside your core group of colleagues?
MH: Oh yeah.
WW: Did you feel that this rage was across the city? Across the nation?
MH: Across the nation. As Bill Wilderman, but you see there's a lot of things that came together. There's the war experience, and if you study history, every time something cataclysmic happens, the outcomes are usually different. For example, World War II ended colonialism in the form that it was, where you had these superpowers dominating colonies, going way back to World War I and Two, where they divided up the colonies between the British Empire, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Italians, the French, et cetera. They divided, you know, and Britain had most of Africa. Had control of China. French had Vietnam, who defeated them, actually, on the battlefield. But the fact of World War II – One and Two – where they were fighting over the issue of who was going to control those colonies, get the resources and the market – weakened those countries. And the thing about it is that the U.S. came out as number one, along with Russia.
So all of a sudden, England and – which had been the dinosaur, the giant on the world stage – had to begin falling back. And then after World War II, Mao was able to free China. The Soviet Union had been invaded a number of times by several countries, including the U.S., three times, they invaded the Soviet Union after 1917, but they didn't win. It's such a big country, it's complex, the temperature is — it makes it difficult and the mountains make it difficult to fight there. So those – for a reason the Soviet Union by a lot of countries, after the revolution in Russia all failed. So, it gave rise, after World War I and World War II, gave rise to the independence movement. And we used to quote the slogans, you know, like: The people want revolution. “Countries want independence, the people want revolution.” I forget what the other parts of it were. And that happened.
Like I said, Vietnam defeated the French and drove them out. Mao led the Chinese in '49. Imagine a country that big being controlled by British – by British governors. And the rationalization for it was they were civilizing these – bringing them to God. You know, South Africa ultimately brought down in the aftermath of a breakup of colonialism. The Africans begin to fight. Are you running out of battery?
WW: Just double-checking.
MH: Okay. If you want to speed up, we can —
WW: Let's get to 1967, that week. Where were – where did you first hear about what was going on? What did you first see?
MH: I was coming from my mother's house, about ten o'clock in the morning. And – on Fourth – coming up Fourth Street. I lived on Boston and Lawton at the time. And I – like I told you — I was talking to somebody, anyway – I first begin to see – I didn't have a radio on, so I begin to see a lot of frantic activity in terms of people driving. And as I came forward, I begin to see smoke and I knew something was wrong. I turned the radio on to WWJ and they were talking about it. And so I knew – this had happened before in these other cities. I knew the nature of it, and I knew that there were certain people that were going to be under scrutiny during this time, amongst who included me.
So I figured that I had to find a scurrilous way of getting home from Fourth Street all the way down to Linwood and Boston. And so I – since I drove a truck throughout the city – throughout the whole region – I'd done this for ten years – I knew all the ways to get around. So I started cutting through streets so I didn't go on main roads that were blocked. And finally I made it home. Well, when the National Guard came in, which was at Central High School, which was about a quarter mile from my house – I mean, my apartment – all of a sudden, I'm at home, shades pulled, but keeping an eye out – and across the – Boston has an island in the middle there – and out there, sitting in the island, the berm, was the jeep with a machine gun pointed at my apartment. And so I didn't know – I mean, I knew what was happening – so I stayed, and I went down in the basement, I called different people. Called General and he was in the same kind of situation. And they stayed there for that day and night, so I was pinned down during that time.
I couldn't go anywhere, because they were all – the National Guard was right there. In the midst of our area. We were occupied. And General lived on Gladstone, I lived on Boston so we weren't that far from each other. And I knew for sure that he was going to be one of the ones that was being watched, and I lived close to the Algiers Hotel, so, you know, there was a lot of action in our area. I was anticipating it. I knew there were people getting fed up, and I knew it was going to happen eventually. I didn't know what – you know, it was going to be – you know, it's always a thing letting off steam, but it also destroys the community. It's destructive to the community. And – lives were lost. You know, a lot of people were killed.
WW: Were you afraid of being arrested, as General Baker was?
MH: You know I was kind of fatalistic. I – you know, I could think – I know it's hard for you to realize this, but – I could think that my life – I mean there are some things better than living that way, living in fear, living, you know, afraid and especially out of the Army. A man – [laughter] the military experience is really, really educational. I mean, they – they can order you in a minute to kill somebody, or you can get killed, and some other guy, your equivalent on the other side, opens fire on you, kills you. So I – I've never been afraid of death. But what's happened to me – only thing that kept me from doing a monumental destructive thing was that I thought I'd found a way that I could make a difference. And that was through politics, Marxist politics. That's through organizing. John and I believed that we could start something. John had been involved in a lot of start-ups, but they did not have the maturity, in my mind — this is my belief – to keep it together. They were always vulnerable to an attack, for example. One of the key people who was part of the group – you know, there was group loyalty – but every time this, they would form an organization, basically based around Wayne State, there was this black woman who's part of the group, who would raise the issue that John Williams had a white wife, so they could not keep going with this organization as long as John Williams was in it. So they break up. [laughter]
WW: Before we get into your political activities afterwards, what would you consider – what term best describes, for you, what happened in 1967 in Detroit? Would you consider it a rebellion, or a riot, because you talked about that it ultimately failed.
MH: It was clearly a rebellion. It was rebellion against oppression and exploitation, but more so against – it was a police state, you know, and that's what happened in police states. Looks like the way things are happening now between cops and blacks, we might be headed toward that kind of – I mean, I felt – I knew I was in a police state, you know, growing up in Ecorse. The police used to mess with us, you know, used to try to provoke us and things. Plus they was raiding peoples' houses, that kind of thing. So there was rage and rebellion, in my mind. There were – obviously there were elements who rioted. But it was an expression of that rage, and they – and it was a fight. It was demand for change. Change or die. And I understand that, I mean, you can get to that place. It's very dangerous, what's going on now. Trump is going to get what he's asking for if he keeps going on with stuff, because I – you know, I know some Muslims, and they're not going to, you know – they're not going to let folks mess over with them. I know a number of Muslim men in the community down here, and like – that crazy preacher? Was going to burn the Quran? He best not do that. [laughter]
WW: End of part one.
WW: This is William Winkel. This is part two of my interview with Mike Hamlin. How did the events of 1967 impact your political activities?
MH: Well, prior to 1967, we had, John Watson and I, had begun to discuss and build – go through the process of starting a newspaper, based on a theoretical concept. And so what it meant was, that we had to get the money, and we had to get training. So John, who was a genius, who could sit down with a very complex machine, take it apart, and put it right back together, approached Peter Werbe, who was publishing the Fifth Estate, and asked him to show him how to produce a newspaper. And Peter showed him how to do it, and what he needed in terms of equipment.
I borrowed money from the Communications Workers Credit Union to buy the machine – it's called a justifier, which is, you know, sets type. I mean, which is what you type, you know, it justifies the copy. And we rented a place over on Warren and right behind St. Paul's Church. And we started a newspaper called Inner City Voice. And it was not difficult to attract people. The first thing that happened, though, we published – we published a first edition, and we had a lot of nationalists – what do you call it – cultural nationalists. Poets, artists, dancers, actors, who hung around. We had rented a house that the newspaper was housed in and some students – high school students – and they would help. For example, like there was an artist, and I would give him an idea, and he would make a cartoon. Very sarcastic, more than likely attacking Uncle Toms. And we had poetry – poets, and we published their poetry. But after the first edition, you know, John and I did most of the work. John did most of the typing, I did a lot of the writing, in fact the first article – front page articles – one on the migrant farm workers down in the Monroe area where they were raising cucumbers and tomatoes and stuff like lettuce. And that was the first front page headline. And you know, we, you know, published something by Ho Chi Minh and by Che Guevara. Well, after we produced it, and started distributing it, the artists told us that, “Well listen, fellas, you can't have nothing but black writers in this newspaper. We can't have Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, et cetera.” We said, well, you know – [laughter], you know, that's bullshit, we're not going for that. Well, we had a meeting to decide, well, you know, we know who owns this place and bought this stuff, and after they left I said, “John, John, what are we going to do?” He said, “Well, I'm going to go get General and he'll chase them away.” So [phone rings in background] the next day, the next time, I mean the next day that I came in the office – they were gone, and General was there. And he and I bonded immediately, and he began to work on – you know, like me and John, on the paper. And John could work all night, because he couldn't sleep anyway. You know, he would – he'd get up in the morning, smoke a joint, drink wine throughout the day, ten o'clock, around ten o'clock, he'd start drinking hard liquor. And by three, he may take a pill. But, you know, he worked – he wouldn't do it by himself. I had to stay there with him.
So, now, interestingly, before we got to the first edition, we were organizing, and we thought we would set up a fund-raiser. Now this is after '67 – this was in '67. The rebellion happened in July. In September, we – I – see, the cry for black power had activated us, had caused us – we joined the movement, you know, in a sense. And we – it seemed like something we had been waiting for. The idea of self-defense. And so I begin a correspondence with Jim Foreman, and I asked him if we could get Rap Brown – this is right after '67 – to come to Detroit and speak. And he was a fiery orator who was going around saying, “If Detroit don't come around, we're going to burn Detroit down.” And he was delivering that message all over the country. So Foreman said yeah. They came. Rap came with another guy, and we had him at there was an abandoned theater - I don't know if it was abandoned or what – over on Dexter. But we held a rally there, and it was an overflow crowd. So after he spoke, and they took up a substantial collection, we had to go – took him up on the roof and he, with a megaphone he spoke to the crowd down there on the – standing around out there. And all of a sudden some reporters started coming in. “Here come the reporters! The reporters are our enemy!” And he – the mob started chasing them. [laughter] Chasing them down Dexter. Man, were they fleeing! It was a very inflammatory thing.
And that was before the first edition. Shortly after that, we published the first edition, and it drew more and more people, especially young people, to the newspaper. Because it was hard-hitting, didn't pull any punches, was extreme, but it – you know, spoke the truth. And the people – things people wanted to say, and had not said.
WW: Were you a member of DRUM in 1968?
MH: Yep. I was a founding member. Yeah. General had been fired from Chrysler and he – one of the guys who was out there – would come by to visit General and tell him about the outrages going on in the plant, and how black workers were treated differently, and you know, how there was, you know, public abuse. Now, remember, a lot of these workers had come from the South, and they would tend to be deferential to whites. But these were young workers, this was a new generation. But the Kennedy economic program had brought more into the plants, and so they were talking, you know, I think once a week, Ron would come by there – Ron March – and so soon, I started joining. And Ron and General pulled together, I think there were nine of them, and we would interview them. I interviewed them separately and write down the incidents that had taken place at a plant, and put it in the paper.
And then we would distribute the paper at Dodge Main and into the store. But we started a newsletter for DRUM, and it was hard-hitting and you know, spoke to what was going on in the plant, and it had – you know, newsletter is even easier than a newspaper to do. It had enormous impact; it began to rouse these young workers. And you know, it was attacking not only the company but the union too. And you know, and really hitting the union hard, and they felt it. But we – you know – we were young, we were angry, and so neither union nor the company wanted to mess with us. Plus we had about thirty lawyers supporting us. We had interesting relationship with the young lawyers. A lot of young lawyers came here, to neighborhood legal services, and I did the orientation for them when they came to town. I oriented them to Detroit, to the community. And Ken, you know, met a lot of them, so his – he and Justin's work influenced them. So when we, for example, struck Dodge Main, we had thirty lawyers willing to take depositions, to do whatever needed to be done. It was a different time, you know. We weren't – the blacks were not the only people who were angry and motivated. A lot of, as you know, a lot of young professionals came here to work with us. But anyway, it took – the newsletter took off like wildfire and then we started doing them in other plants. At Eldon Plant, you know, at Cadillac, Ford. You know, we had some outrageous stories. The woman that Chrysler forced to come back to work in a wheelchair and they told her she had better come back to work. She said, “I'm on sick leave; I'm in a wheelchair.” “So we'll meet you at the gate, somebody will push you in.” So they did that. And I think – I'm not sure, but – I don't know whether she died or not. I think she might have. But there were outrages.
So anyway, it attracted more and more, and then I got involved with these students. We had so many kids in these high schools, and they had their own issues, and helped them get organized. I was their advisor, and helped them get organized, and they began to – they had already struck, on their own, at Northern High School. Chuck Cole. And so we – we incorporated them and gave them the support – a place to meet, newsletters, they did a newsletter, the group was called the Black United Front – the Black Student United Front. But it was a good time for organizing.
WW: Can you talk about the transformation of DRUM into the League of Revolutionary Black Workers?
MH: Well, we had all these components that developed. There was the newspaper, there were the read – we printed, published pamphlets and books – there was – we were involved with the fight over the decentralization of schools with Coleman Young. We had the Black Student United Front. We had groups at Chrysler Eldon, Dodge Main, we had a group at Ford, and I personally was involved in helping organize the welfare workers organization. Welfare workers were not in a union, and we formed the welfare workers organization. They eventually ended up in AFSCME [American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees] but we got them organized. I personally was involved in organizing the secretaries at Wayne State. And we did a lot of that kind of stuff. Helped unions – groups trying to get organized. We were involved in an attempt to organize Ford Hospital, but it failed. It failed every time, because the ethnic makeup over there. Filipinos, I'm told, Filipinos are not interested in unions. Have no history. I guess Ford terrorizes them.
But you know, we had all these components – publishing, film-making. And so we had to find a way to link them together. And we did. That was the League, and we had a central staff and an executive committee. And we had great success. But you know, ideology – you see, people don't talk about American ideology, or even know what it is – but it's capitalism, which is individualism. Hm?
WW: That'll pick up on the recording.
MH: What will, that noise? Oh, okay. You know, and – it's a funny phenomenon, understanding – see, in my view, America is a fraud. And if you do understand it, and – you have two choices. One, you try to expose it and fight it, or two, you go into denial. And so what happens is that there's a constant striving for, you know, for success, for glory, for power, in the individual. And you know, you can be engaged in a great cause, and people might end up looking at you as a hero, or as some powerful figure, and that can easily go to your head. [laughter]
Or if, for example, you're part of the effort, and you don't feel that you're getting the glory that the other people are. You know, we tried to downplay individual plaudits. In fact, we understood that enough in the beginning to state that. But at a certain point, I mean, people want to enjoy their successes. You know, you haven't accomplished a whole lot but, you know, people think you – I mean, people appreciate what you've done. So that's the problem with putting together an organization like the League. It was undeveloped politically, and so, people come in, didn't take the educational process serious – we had an education unit – they thought the class – some of them thought the classes were boring. They wanted action.
So, you know, that was the beginning of the League. We expanded as a result of our successes. Foreman came here because he had – SNCC had shut down, based on the Black Power – the students had got tired of taking whippings. And he had gone out, and couldn't make it with the Panthers. And he opted to come here. Some people had told me in advance, you know, Foreman is the kind of guy who wants to control or destroy.
Well so he came here and lived with us for a year and a half. That didn't work too well. But a part of it – you know, I don't want to blow my horn, but one of the roles I played was keeping it together. Because I had some very powerful egos around me. And brilliant people – John Watson, Kenny Cockrel, General – General had humility. You know, he never lost his focus. You know, John Williams, Luke Trip, these were all smart folks. And they – like I said, they kind of understood what I was talking to you about, in these kind of organizations. But anyway, we put it together and immediately there was clashes of egos. There were all kind – you remember, we had relationships – I had helped organize the Motor City Labor League. I asked these young and these whites to come together, and overcome some of their differences in forming this organization. And because it could do – I could see a lot of potential for it. And they agreed. You know, I think I had about six or seven of them there, and people who had influence and had practice, were good people and that took off, and, you know, we could work together. They could give us support, you know, we – because I didn't want us to be isolated. We were having some internal shenanigans that caused me to worry – that trouble – you know – we were playing dangerous – with some dangerous things – some people were – and becoming irresponsible. And so, I organized the Motor City Labor League, I organized an organization called the Alliance, which was a group of religious figures – men and women – good people. And you know, we got involved with the Black Workers Congress, which was an attempt to force the churches to face their history – their history of exploitation, and role in slavery, and Jim Crow, and all of the other evils of the country – and they responded – a lot of them.
WW: And that's when the Black Manifesto was written?
MH: Mm hm. And that was the basis. We issued it – we would walk in the church during the service, and pass them out, and read them. And that was happening all across the country. We did it in about nine churches in this area, including one black church. Of course the pastor was in on it, and part of it. But that's where the BWC came about, and you know, we were getting – we had all this growth, but it – the consciousness and the understanding did not keep up with the development. So if I would say – if you would ask me, what brought about the demise of the League and the BWC - and I do believe there have been some false narratives put out – but it had to do with two things.
People's ideological weaknesses that made them want – first of all, they argued for being part of leadership - there's a problem with that. The problem is that there are secrets that the organization has that you cannot share with everybody. So they – they're offended you're withholding information from them. But rationally – now they should tell you, that in an atmosphere like that, the police is not far away, that's number one. But people wanted to be part of the decision making process, and wanted to know everything that was going on. This is a dangerous game. Okay, the other thing about it – that's called relative democracy, by the way. The other thing about it was that there's a class thing involved. Because Americans don't understand a class analysis. Each class has certain characteristics. There's the upper class, capitalist class, bourgeoisie, whatever you want to call them. There's the middle class, which has, I would say, three strata. The upper [middle] class, the middle class, and the lower middle class. And the poor, and in an agricultural society there would be peasants, farmers, individual farmers.
And then there's what Marxists called “de-classed” elements. And that would be – well, he's much harsher than – he talks about “scum of the earth.” But you talk about – you know, itinerant people who don't have employment – perhaps can't have employment – in a country like this, if you have a handicap, you know, homeless, you're born into terrible circumstances, you get abused as a child – that's a difficult thing for people.
And those – anyway – what that's called is “de-classed” folks. Now, what does that mean, concretely? Well, I tried my best to establish a moral standard within the organization, because we were attracting people's kids – people's teenage kids – including teenage girls, on the one hand. On the other hand, we were attracting this “de-classed” group that I was talking about. In some cases, thugs, in some cases, maybe people who were a little mentally unstable, where it's not apparent – thugs. Not — we didn't knowingly have any addicts, but I'm sure we had drunks. And they engage in reckless behavior as a result.
One teenager was killed at a high school dance. Two – one sixteen year old girl, who was a very high honor student – may have been tops in her class – got pregnant by – you know, a guy with very little going for him. Three, there were a couple of rapes that took place in the office. So those were things that brought about the disintegration of our organization. Now the particular splits – the split with General was over those issues. The split with Ken was they wanted to go into electoral politics and we always had a policy against that. But that's where [unintelligible]. It – it's a difficult thing to do, to hold something like that together. You know, these guys – if I hadn't have been in between all these guys, they would never have hung together that long. You know, their egos were too big. And if we approached it differently, they wouldn't have – that would have come to the fore.
WW: So after – and John Watson left the league with you?
MH: Yeah. John just walked away because he told me – I only saw him once after that – he told me that the FBI had told him that he better get out of town. You know, before it was too late, or something to that effect. So he disappeared. And as I recall – as I understand it – he went to work at IBM, out in Pontiac or somewhere. Remember, I told you, he was a genius, so he was very – one of the very earliest understanding computers.
WW: And after you left the League, what did you – did you continue your activism in the early Seventies?
MH: No. What I told the group that left with me – we had meetings, I said look guys, the movement has come to an end. You don't want to go where these other guys are going. Because they were going into rote Marxism and you know, really heavy authoritarian – what you need to do, and what I'm going to do, is find something where I can help people and I can feel like I'm helping mankind. Even if I have to do it one at a time. And from then, I went on to a glorious career. I have awards. I have all kind of plaques and rewards from UAW [United Auto Workers]. I'm a retired member – honorary retired member of two UAW locals. Local 600 sponsored my retirement. I continue to have a relationship – a great relationship with UAW – and this is after we had gone through a period where we shouted at UAW meetings, “You ain't white,” but I had – I became – what I did was I went back to school, got a masters in social work. Became a clinical social worker. Worked with troubled workers at Ford, GM, and Chrysler, but mainly with Ford. I probably had face-to-face meetings with 10,000 auto workers, face-to-face over a sixteen-year period, where my job was to diagnose them and find a program that would rehab them, and go back to work. The company had accepted the idea that it's better to rehab a good worker who has, you know, succumbed to alcohol or drugs – than to hire somebody off the street. And there is really a generational work ethic difference, and I see it very clearly. [laughter]
I had a glorious job, so did all of the people who worked with me. They loved it. I became the manager of this group of clinicians who served the workers, mostly in this region, but I did work out of state – I became a crisis manager – the shootings at Ford, I managed – I had the workers, to get them back to stability after the shooting. The one at Wixom, the same thing. There were others. Ford Sheldon Road. Even at some 7/11s and banks. So I had a glorious career. I feel good about it. About a month ago I had – on the 17 of October I had my 80th birthday. There were 112 people there, and they were all the people that I had been involved with – plus my family – in the movement. Black and white. Labor, lawyers, doctors, you know, all the progressive – not all of them – but all of the progressives that were close to and available to me. And we had a great time. We had it at this restaurant down on Jefferson – off of Jefferson – called They Say. We had a good time.
I said at that time, that it was time for us to have a collective hug of appreciation for what we all had done together. And that – I tried to get them to stay off of my birthday, and focus on us – what we had come through because a lot of people, you know, when they got involved in the movement, their parents were very much opposed to it. Family – angry, isolated sometimes, for a while. Paid the price. We all paid the price. Some people went to jail. But we did good, you know. I'm very proud of the two watches I got from Local 900, which is the Wayne Assembly, the big plant, and Local 723, which was [my most happy ?] plant, and 600 – which I'm like a member there. So it's been a glorious life.
WW: Just a couple wrap-up questions. How do you feel '67 affects the metro Detroit community? Do you think it still does?
MH: Hm mm. Oh yeah. First of all blacks have always been – there's a couple historians – what's your discipline, by the way?
WW: History.
MH: Okay. —Named J.A. Rogers – J.A. Rogers and James Baldwin – who's not a historian but he does cover history – who says that blacks are a despised people. And that's true, because the – if you know – since you know the history of this country – when they found it, with all these resources, and all this land – the ideal land for raising cotton – they needed a labor source. Couldn't make the Indians do it – eventually committed genocide on the Indian. They had – they had emptied all the prisons in Europe to populate here and Australia. And so when they found the African, they found what they needed, and what they wanted. And so as they began commerce, selling cotton to the world market, other countries had ended slavery, including Britain, and they would say to the Americans, “How in the world are you – why do you treat these slaves so bad? Nobody in history has ever treated slaves like you do.” They said, “Well these slaves are not human. We think they're somewhere between a man and an ape.” And from 1850 – I mean from 1800 to 1850, leading researchers, led by the great Samuel Morton of Harvard, were trying to prove this hypothesis. Are you familiar with it? They collected these skulls – a thousand skulls – a thousand black skulls, a thousand ape skulls, and a thousand white skulls – and tried to prove the size of the black brain was in between the two. And Morton gave up, and said it's not true. He was an honest researcher. The South refused to accept that. They continued to propound that idea and still do. So I forget what the original question was.
WW: How do you believe – if you do – how does 1967 continue to affect the metro Detroit area?
MH: Okay. So what happened in this area was – the rage, which you see now among white males – because, and remember – we all came from the South. Guess what? There were a lot of whites who came from the South. We brought out culture with us. Guess what? They brought their culture with them. So there are a lot of people with a Southern background in this area. And one of the things that they do, they have great contempt and hatred for us. And it's not just them. If you know – you're a historian. Brooks Patterson, for example, has been – you know, Coleman Young like to drove him crazy. He hated Coleman Young, and he hated – and in fact, it's in writing, where he said he don't give a damn about Detroit – he hopes it burns down. It's in this book by this Israeli called Zeb Shepherds or something like that.
And he's – they also have a quote from Rolling Stone, from Brooks, and interview with him, where he lets Detroit have it. And so the movement to the suburbs had begun before '67. Part of it was they're making more money, wanted more space. But part of it was to separate. And there are areas like Macomb County where a lot of racists – Patterson, I was saying – that they're also, you know the history of the Irish in this country, and how they were treated when they first came. It's also true of Poles – I have a lot of friends who are Polish, including one that I see all the time downstairs, my buddy – we talk – because I used to work with him at the Detroit News. So they have to separate themselves, so there's been a lot of hostility between the blacks and Irish, and to a degree, with Poles. And it comes from both sides.
So Detroit – that escalated the flight. And I'll let you in on a little phenomenon. I was just telling my Polish friend the other day, because he brought up his – I asked him if he was proud of his Polish heritage, he said yes, and he's one of – you know – I worked with guys at the Detroit News – three brothers, two of them changed their name, and the other one kept the name, and the one who kept the name, the father disinherited the others and gave him everything– but anyway, so what you do is – you want to join the majority culture. So for example, the white worker was turning against the slave who should have been his ally, because he was made white, and therefore was not on a level with these animals, with these sub-humans.
So anyway, what happened was '67 accelerated the flight, and intensified the hostilities, and it not only just created hostility that's there, politicians continue to use it and they're beginning to escalate it at this point. Notice Charleston, South Carolina. Can you imagine something like that? That's where the nine people got killed in the church, in a Bible study. And the man – 20-year-old man who was doing it, was trying to bring about a race war. So anyway, '67 accelerated white flight and widened the gap between the races in this area. Even though the young people have not bought into that, you know, and come back – oh, the thing I was going to tell you about – funny thing about that period – I worked for an organization called Geriatric Screening for five years.
WW: Who?
MH: Geriatric Screening. And what our role was, we had to go into these elderly people's homes who had dementia or Alzheimer's and were slipping – like, for example, these women, old Polish women – all kind of ethnic women – living on the east side. Their kids move away to Macomb County or somewhere, left mama there. Dad's dead, or he's working in the plant – and these elderly ladies are in those houses and they begin to deteriorate. And they drive out to Eastland, and then they don't know how to get back home. Eastland police would pick them up and call us to come see them. I'd go out and see them, get the family together, we'd work out a plan to get them into an assisted living facility of good quality. But there's a bunch of them on the east side, because the kids had just walked away. I don't think they understood what they were doing to mama, because, like I said – the women outlive the men.
WW: Thank you very much for sitting down with me today. I greatly appreciate it.
MH: I appreciate your – what do you call it – willingness to listen.
**WW: Hello today is August 15, 2016, my name William Winkle. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s “Detroit 67” oral history project and I am in Detroit, MI. This interview is with Mr. Michael “Doc” Holbrook. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today
MB: Well thank you I am honored that you asked me to be a part of this because I feel like I have a lot to say about, you know, 67 and prior to that. I feel as if I one of the few people that kept a very optimistic attitude about Detroit, throughout, you know, bad times, good times. Detroit’s a great city.
WW: I’m glad you’re sitting down with me today
MB: Thank you
WW: Can you please tell me where and when you were born?
MH: Born in Detroit in 1949. Mother and father separated. She moved back to her hometown, Franklin, TN, and my sister was born a few months later, so I was back in Tennessee in 1950 and my sister was born a few months later and I was there until 1961. My mother wanted to get away from the, the old segregated southern town. All of her siblings were up here and so we left. She came up here. She was a nurse. She came up here and got a job so…
WW: Came back to Detroit?
MH: Came back to Detroit, yeah
WW: What was your first impression of the city?
MH: Well, I had been here, again, her older siblings were established, well-established here, they were raising their families already here. So we would come up to visit. So, as a youngster, we would come up to visit, say every other year. So I had a feel for the city. Knew it was VASTLY different than my little small town that I lived in. And the culture was different. And people and their attitudes and just the fact that most of the people that I had counted on, I’m talkin’ about when I came to visit, they were all, upward mobility type and they were, many of them were educated, all of them were working. Everybody, I mean, at that time was working. Had a job. Raising families, that sort of thing. So, but, when I came here to live, now I’m going to be here, it was, I saw, I moved into a neighborhood Woodward and, Woodward and the North End – Northern High School. Right there at, at Claremont on the west side of Woodward and Owens on the east side. Northern High school’s right there. So that’s the neighborhood I came to when we moved back here and it was different than the neighborhood where my mother’s siblings lived. They lived in Conant Gardens, Boston Edison, that sort of thing and it was just different, you know, and I had a rude awakening. First, one of the first things that happened to me was just getting in a little scuffle with a guy, you know, boys, you know, having a little disagreement. And I was able to wrestle this guy down to the ground, put my knees on his shoulders thinking he’s going to say “uncle”. I look back on it and say that was so goofy at the time. They did not think like that. Someone kicked me in the side, course I doubled over and once I was open then they just started kicking, kicking and there’s this, the two of them, stomp this so-and-so, stop em’, stop em’, and so that changed my mentality from that point on. It was like, unfortunately I didn’t have a father to go to, no older brothers, no one, and I had just been here a couple a weeks, so I had no one to turn to, so I had to fend for myself. I had a younger sister, mother and a grandmother and they did not condone violence and fighting. So I was wrong, even for getting my ass whipped I was wrong, you know, was just crazy. But, that, that was my first impression of, you know, the level of violence that, you know, existed here. And they, my peers, they were like, some of em’ I thought were just out of control. Totally out of control. I mean they were using foul language and just doing things, and saying things, they just, you may have seen that a little bit in Franklin, TN but not much, you know, if somebody did it was reported and they got in trouble because everybody knew everybody. So…
WW: The neighborhood you moved into at Woodward and Claremont, was that integrated?
MH: No, no. There may be, there may have been a smattering of whites here and there, maybe. -`But not, nothing that you could say, you know, was representative of anything. No.
WW: Coming from the south to the north, did you notice any tension in the city?
MH: I can’t say I noticed tension. The only tension, and of course I guess that’s pretty much everywhere in America but, you know, when the police, you know are, cuz’ boys gonna to do what boys do, and so but, it wasn’t anything real overt, like they weren’t every time you saw the police they’d run after you, you know, that wasn’t the case. But I did understand that the police here in the city of Detroit, they had a different mentality than the southern police. Southern police and, and blacks, well at least, what I can remember, there was an understanding, ok, there was this, well in a small town they knew you. So, but even in the town, the big city Nashville, which was less than 20 miles away, I think, I’d have to check on this, but I think black men for the most part were treated better in those situations than they were here, because these were all, you know, communities, mostly black, you know, communities these were. And these parts of Nashville and my little town, you know, blacks and whites lived together. There were, you know, houses, different, you know, and you wouldn’t expect that, you just, you wouldn’t think, now I don’t know if that’s indicative of most settings in the south, I don’t know, I just, I just don’t.
WW: Did you experience any racism when you came to Detroit?
MH: Well you have to elaborate on that when you say “experience racism”.
WW: When you first, when you came here to live in ‘61, and moving around the city, did you feel comfortable freely exploring the city and going into different areas?
MH: Well,
WW: Or did you feel shut out?
MH: No, I mean I was, I was, you know ‘61, I was 12 some 13 years old. I knew that there were neighborhoods that, cuz my cousins and others would tell me “that’s an all-white neighborhood, be careful” that sort of thing. So if you’re on your bike as a boy and, you know, you don’t go into that neighborhood. And there was, that situation did exist in an area of Joseph Campeau, Conant as it goes north and goes into 7 Mile east, 7 Mile Rd. On the south side of 7 Mile there were, there was Conant Garden and black neighborhoods and what not. And on the north of E. 7 Mile Rd. were all white neighborhoods. And I can remember distinctly, on 7 Mile there was a Wrigley’s I think it was, A&P, it was an A&P supermarket and other, you know, well places where you have to, you know, you do business, and you could go, it was okay for me to go there but I didn’t go any farther north than that or there would be trouble. One time I did, I ventured out, I was curious about something and I went down Conant I think it was, and turned down one of the side streets and, sure enough, sure enough, just because I’m on my bike in there, said nothing to anybody, didn’t do anything wrong, and so they told me to get my ass out of there, started throwing rocks. I was lucky not to have been hit. I just didn’t do that again. So, I mean that, that’s an eye opener. That tells you right there, okay, you say what you want about the segregated south but, to give you a good example of it, older men have said to me, even here, that when they were in the south if they were to break down in a white area, and wherever they were from, more than likely white men would help them get the car and, you know, and be on their way, right? Here as it is, and white communities outside of New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, or even in some of those cities, you’re going to meet some, some resistance just for being there. They’re not going to help you so….these are some of the contradictions we would deal with in America
WW: Did you expect that when you came to the north?
MH: Absolutely not. Nope. I mean, everything that I had been told, everything that I felt about the north, like I say, I came up here to visit but my visits were all in, you know, pretty decent neighborhoods and my family, my mother’s brothers and sisters, we went to Metropolitan Beach, even Kensington. Kensington was brand new then. Metropolitan Beach wasn’t, you know, real old in the 50’s. We went to, you know, they, they went anywhere they wanted to go and I didn’t realize it until I got here, and was here a while, that my family was a little unusual. Most black families didn’t do that because I know when we would go to the beach, we’d be the only coloreds, we’d be the only coloreds at that, at that spot, at that day. And there were many, many times, even as a teenager. So I thought “well I can go anywhere and this is, this is the north, you know, I’m free to go where I want”. I would many, many, many times, for many years, I would be the only black person in certain settings. And I don’t have what’s called, I don’t have white-itis. You know what white-itis is?
WW: No
MH: Well, I know it, it sounds silly but white-itis is really a condition a lot of black folks are afflicted with. They can only see good coming from somebody white, or in those situations where whites are an authority, so they have white-itis. They see through their, their own distorted prism. They see whites as the only way in which they can feel like “ok I’ve, I’m above the fray here. I have white friends”… and maybe they live, you know, have white neighbors and on and on and on and on. I was in those situations just because nobody is going to tell me where I can go and where I cannot go. That’s for the segregated south. This is the north. And I came here and I, it’s, the lines of demarcation are different here than they are there. You understand down there, everybody understands and you kind of, well you work with it. Here, it’s like you don’t know. It’s supposed, you’re supposed to able to go into this res.., there were restaurants in Detroit in the, in the 60’s when I came here, you could walk in but you wouldn’t get served. You know, you could walk-in, and I’m talking about downtown Detroit, you could walk-in but you wouldn’t get served. Now, there were those exceptions and those were the, the term that we used, of -course it’s a distortion of the, the actual word, we say “e-lite”. “The e-lite Negros”, and it’s, you know, a distortion of the word “elite”, you know you, so, they had privileges, you know, it’s like “oh come here”, you know, “you’re so-and-so and so-and-so”, you know, and that’s just to show that we’re not, you know, we don’t discriminate, we’re not racist, but you had to be, you know, part of that little group of accepted Negros, you know, that’s what I, you know, you know, some of Malcom X’s rhetoric right? Well can you imagine what Malcom would say in that situation, it’s like, you know, “These Negros have lost their minds. They think because white folks let them sit down at a counter, or let them sit down in a restaurant and eat with them, somehow they are on equal footing”. They are, that whites actually see them as their equal. So, Malcolm would deride all of that, and so that was the great thing about being, being here. I don’t think I would have been able to even listen to a Malcom X if I was still in the south. Because what is so, I mean just so pervasive in the south is the whole church of Christian Ethics, you know, and black folks, that’s what we have to live by, you know, I mean that is just, you, you don’t, you don’t deviate from that, you know, you turn the other cheek so that, but, you look at the Civil Rights leaders, and 90% of them came from the south, not the north, the south. So, when you look at your more militant types where they come from? The north. So that’s, you know, that’s the difference. So I, I felt fortunate to be here in Detroit where I could at least hear that, and hear it from, from others who they were all-in. I was not because I didn’t understand the whole Muslim thing. I had no understanding; what is a Muslim? You know, why? What are they talking about? But what Malcolm was saying to em’, you know, you don’t turn the other cheek. You don’t let somebody, you know, just beat the crap out of you, you know, you say, give em’ the, I thought I was insane then. But that’s, you know, that’s just where things were at that time and if you wanted to, you wanted to feel as if you could make it, you kind of, you, you kind of, you know, go along to get along you know
WW: Well speaking about MLK and Malcolm X, growing up in the 60’s did you get caught up in any of the social movements that were going through the city?
MH: My, my stepfather took me to be a part of the march down Woodward Ave. Dr. King. And so I was, you know, we were at the starting point and I think that was up near Northern High School, I’m not, don’t remember exactly but I think it was. But so, you know, Ralph Abernathy and others were there and I didn’t get to, you know, shake hands with Dr. King or anything but I was close enough, you know, as close as I am to you, and, but here’s something and I don’t know if this means anything to anybody but me. Crowd control, here’s what they did with crowd control at that march, I was there, I was 14 years old when this happened. They had cattle prods. This is how, you know, these are black men with cattle prods, not the police, black men with cattle prods, you know, telling, and I just thought “wow” this…. I thought that was a little extreme and that, you know, that had a profound impact on me because I later saw black men with, had a little authority in places and, you know, maybe, maybe had a Billy club or, a night stick, you know, a baton, call it what you will. I saw them using it on people unnecessarily, on black folks, and I’m thinking “that was just, it’s just cruel”, just, you know, barbaric. I mean, what they were doing it was, it was uncalled for but I, you know, I saw this. So when I hear about, you know, the viciousness of white police officer, I’m like, I’ve seen some things on, on a smaller scale. But it’s something in the human psyche that makes people go to those extremes unnecessarily to cause injury or harm to a fellow human being just because you can. You have the authority and you have the, the tools to do it. So, but yeah I was a part of the, that was, that was about, you know, that was about the extent of it. Again, I’m 14, 15, my parents weren’t involved in any kind of way and no one in my family that I knew of was involved. I mean, they were all, again, trying to, you know, you know and, I will say that, say this in context to all that; back then, if would just obey the law, go to school, get a good education, do your job, work, you know, do your job, you’ll be fine. Shouldn’t be any problems. I heard a gentleman, well he was talking directly to me, he said to me, regarding all the, the, you know, the incidents with the police, he said to me, and this is a white gentlemen, he said “If, these things wouldn’t happen if, if blacks just learned to comply and they wouldn’t be so non-compliant”.
WW: Is this back in the day or present?
MH: No. This is present. Presently. I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear. And he said if you would just, you know, and I’m talking, you know, just, just a few weeks ago, he said just comply, you know, cooperate with the police and they wouldn’t have those problems. And I looked at him, I knew he was nuts and he didn’t know what he was talking about but in his mind he did. And do you know it was just a week, or two weeks, later that the gentlemen with the autistic kid, when he was on the ground hands-up and the policeman shot him anyway and said “I don’t know why I shot you”. So, I relate all this right now back then. You can go to school and you can, I mean, get your whatever degree you want to get, you still have to fight in order to have a position. A, a white American with not the same level of education, not the same level of smarts, not the same level of sophistication, can get the job before you. Because why? Well it’s just a whole racist thing. And yeah, it’s there, and a lot of times people don’t want to, you know, address that. We in America, we will never get to a point where we view one another as human beings first until we look at the system in which we have to operate and that…. Capitalism. I think it helps to create a lot of these negative situations because you have to compete and when you have to compete, especially in business, you want to knock your competitor out of the box. And now if you’re competing just for jobs, well why do we want jobs, most people, was going to say most people want jobs to have an income. Well why do you want to have income? So you can have some things, you know keep a roof over your head. And that’s natural. That’s normal, right? But when you look at why some people do what they do and they will suppress other people and deny them the right just to have a decent living so that they can have even more. And the, I mean Bernie Sanders he helped to, you know, bring this out even more. I mean it’s been all over the internet for a while. But, you know, you can’t, you know, we just can’t continue this system where 1% is controlling the rest. You just can’t. Can’t happen
WW: Going back to 67
MH: Ahh 67
WW: Growing up in the 60’s, going to 67’, did you feel any growing tension in the city? Did you expect any violence that summer?
MH: No. No. No not at all. I can’t say that I sensed or expected anything, I saw anything that would lead me to believe that, you know, oh this city’s going to explode. Nothing that, you know, there’s nothing that comes to mind when, I’m pretty sure as an 18 yr. old I was really just trying to enjoy what there was to enjoy as an 18 yr. old. You know you’re, you’re feeling your oats. You’re coming into manhood and you’re just trying to discover who you are and what you’re about as a person. So no, I just, because it was two different cities. I mean, it was a black Detroit and a white Detroit. Detroit was, well wasn’t, today what is Detroit? I don’t know, 70%, 75% black, you know, it’s being gentrified so that’s changed, but then I think it was like 70 white, 70% white, 30% black. I forgot the exact figures, but something like, somewhere around there 60/40 or something but, no, I didn’t, I didn’t see that. What I did see though, what I did understand in ‘67 is that now you have more black groups, organizations, individuals, speaking out against racism. Against the racist institutions. There these voices, they, you know, they’re power. They’re on the radio, you know, they’re in, in a, you can, you can go get, you know, albums by, you know, certain militant groups and, and there’s all kind of, you know, print material and the books are [inaudible] “Malcolm X Speaks” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm” and then, then others start coming and just, I got, you know, for me it was like an education. Well, it wasn’t like an, it was an education. I wasn’t aware. I didn’t know it was like that. I didn’t, you know, again I didn’t see that, I didn’t feel that in Detroit. I didn’t personally. Now there may have been other 18 yr. olds that, that had different exposure. They may have seen it or felt but I, I can’t honestly say I felt that
WW: Where you living in 67? Were you still on Woodward and Claremount?
MH: No. I was at that time, I was on north, kind of NW Detroit. Grand River more, let’s see, Wyoming and, let’s see, Fullerton, near Wyoming, Fullerton and Wyoming where, where you know where the, where 96, I-96 goes, it goes across Wyoming? Well I, I was living just south of, yeah, just, just south of, of, where 96 is now and just east of Wyoming
WW: Oh ok.
MH: Yeah
WW: How did you first hear about what was going on that Sunday?
MH: I was in Ann Arbor, MI partying with my cousin, who was attending University of Michigan at the time and, again, just trying to enjoy life, just having fun, that sort of thing, and I think it was probably about 2 in the morning and, you know, we were still having a good time partying and somebody said “Detroit is, a riot has broken out in Detroit and fires are everywhere”, you know, “Detroit is burning”. Of course, you know, it’s all exaggerated, you know, and we thought “well ok, hmm, I wonder what that’s really all about?” And we don’t have cell phones at that time, you know, and you don’t, you don’t call and wake anybody up at 2, 2:30 in the morning, you know, to ask something that may not even be true anyway. So, so ok, well, instead of staying there for the night we decided to head into Detroit. I guess we were there a couple 2-3 hours more before we headed into Detroit. My cousin was at the University of Michigan for, he wanted to be a photo, was studying photo journalism, so he was going to be a photo journalist. So, I think he had a camera, I had a camera, and so we were taking pictures. We were, you know, it’s like we were covering “The Riot”, you know, so that was, and I saw some things, I mean I saw some bizarre situations like, you know, people literally carrying a sofa, you know, a couch on their back, you know. TV’s that were bigger, you know, women with TV’s bigger than them self cuz’, you know, they had just, you know, took TV’s at that time, just, I, I mean people were risking their lives trying to get material things. And of course police was present. National Guard wasn’t at that point in time, I mean that was, that, I’m talkin’ that, that, night or early that morning. And of course our parents admonished us for being out and doing all that crazy… “you could have been killed”… no we, we, no, we were a little more savvy that. We weren’t going to get caught up in anything. But what I didn’t realize is that there were National Guardsmen that wouldn’t think twice about putting a bullet into a black person, wouldn’t think twice about it…“They’re out here rioting. They’re stealing. They’re breaking the law. They’ll get what they deserve”. And I’ll say this, I don’t know if you’re going to keep this in or not. but a friend of mine that I had, you know, a relationship with as far as we would hang out and we went to, you know, the Calvary, and we went to parties together, you know, just, we had a, both had a mutual friend and he became our friend, I knew him in high school and I knew him in Junior High School, so were talking ‘67, we’re both out of high school now and he was, he was working with a singing group in Detroit, they weren’t very well known then, “The Dramatics”, he was working with them, he kind of handled equipment, and did things, his name was Fred Temple. Fred Temple was the name, you know, from “The Algiers Motel Incident”, the book that came out? And I read that of course and I just knew, I said, Fred was not someone who would handle a gun. He wouldn’t, Fred wouldn’t, nothing to do with guns. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. National Guardsmen, I don’t know if it was National Guardsmen or was it the Detroit Police? Okay, I kind of forget who, who has done what but if it was, yeah, it’s like, ok Detroit Police. I don’t know, somehow in mind I’ve got it, you know, got it jumbled. I thought it was the, I thought it was the National Guard. That, that, that shifted my consciousness because I said, I knew this, I don’t know about the rest of them, but I know his, his crime, his sin, was he was there with white girls and, and I know how that could go down - because I was in a situation similar to that but had the smarts to leave. Wasn’t going to stick around and say “Well we’re not doing nothing. We have the right”, no. See that’s the type of thing where a lot of people they get in trouble. And they can easily lose their lives if you don’t understand the situation. And when you’re looking at someone who has a weapon that can take your life and they have the authority, there’s no reasoning, no rational discretion, if they are of the mindset that you are something less than. What’s the point? You could lose your life. I’ve known that for a long time. I knew that before 67. So, I’m alive today because even when I was down in Ft. Knox, Kentucky, I was drafter in 69 I think, yeah 69’.They didn’t like us from Detroit because “Oh, you so-and-so’s, oh you like to start a riot and you think you’re a tough”. “Ah, no sergeant, I just happened to live in Detroit at the time. I wasn’t….” ”Don’t tell, we know you out there stealing, you steal anything here boy you’ll be in the stockades”. You know, so I had to deal with that, and it was like, “ok”, but going, when we got a leave to go, leave Ft. Knox, leave our base to go into Louisville, I was with someone that wasn’t from Louisville but his cousin lived in Louisville and he came to pick us up and, anyway, so there was 5 of us I think, we were going into Louisville, and we were pulled over by the highway patrol and I wasn’t driving but I was the one who spoke up because I know that 2 of my buddies that were with me, 2 of em’, they were real militant, and they weren’t going to take, so I was “yes sir”-ing and, you know, I was doing, you know, doing my best that this guy, you know, be calm and be at ease because I’m not going to, I’m not going to go out like that. So….
WW: Do you have any other, did you venture out of your house anymore during that week in July?
MH: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We…
WW: Are there any other stories you would like to share?
MH: Other than so many people couldn’t, or wouldn’t, believe that I didn’t take anything. I didn’t get anything. They just wouldn’t believe it, it’s not that they couldn’t
WW: Well, you took pictures
MH: I took pictures yeah, I took pictures here. The, there was a tank, I lived on a street called Northlawn, it was just a regular residential street and there was actually a tank that came down our street. So, you know, that’s not something you see every day. And I know that there’s, you know, there’s this disturbance going on and the National Guard is all over the place, but I remember my step-father just saying, ordering everyone “Get down on the floor. Get down”. Now I don’t think they were going to shoot into the house but, you know, if I was wrong and I’m at the window and they think it’s a gun, they think they see somebody with a gun and, you know, so, I mean, like I say, you have to be smart. So, I’m 18 years old and I’m feeling like I’m a man, I’m tough and all that, but I’m down on the floor, my step-father says, “Get down”, we all were down on the floor and we stayed there until we heard a faint rumbling of the tank and said “Ok it’s gone now”. But there were actually tanks rolling down residential streets and that’s, you know, that’s, you know, that was about the extent of it for me. Again, I wasn’t trying to steal anything [inaudible], you know, I just, I wasn’t in, it just, that wasn’t the way I was, I was raised, so it has paid off for me in my life. Because I’ve been in situations where others have done it, I did get caught up one time, I did, I wasn’t the one stealing, but happened to be with the wrong crowd and so I got, got accused
WW: Did, how do you refer to the events of July 1967?
MH: Until recently I would say, you know, “The 67 Riot”. There was a riot in 43’. That was a true race riot. You know, you know the details of it. I mean that was black on white, white on, I mean that was, you know, just one, some, in, something to cause those who felt one way, a, a black woman threw a baby off the Belle Isle Bridge, and downtown some black men beat up, this, I’m just thinkin’ “Okay, that was just, that was, you know, a real race riot”. But 67 was not a “race” riot. 67’, I don’t know if you know this insight, there are those that confirm what I’m saying that were actually, well I don’t know if they’re still alive, there were some brothers, black guys from Vietnam, had returned from Vietnam, and they were, like so many others on that particular Saturday night, Sunday morning, they were at an after-hours joint, they were just having, you know, hanging out. When they came to break-up, you know, the after-hours thing, you know, which they, you know, would occasionally do, they [inaudible] “Why don’t you go to…?” Again, at that time Detroit was predominantly white, or mostly white, “Why don’t you go to an after-hours joint in the white neighborhoods? Why you, you know, messing with, why….?” You know we just said, you know, that’s, you know, and of course one thing lead to another and then they’d start grabbing people and what they did was they’d grab some of the black women that were there, they’d grab them by the hair and were dragging em’ out. That’s when these brothers, and others, that’s when they just lost it and they attacked the police. They lost it. Now, I know of someone, well, I knew, he’s no longer with us, and there’s one other, I don’t even know if he’s still alive, that was there and they, they said that’s the way that went down. So that was 12th and Blane or Claremount
WW: Claremount
MH: Claremount. And, you know, what you saw was over here, over, it wasn’t black folks tackling whites it, it was a riot in the sense that, you know, yeah they were looting, there’s no question about that, the looting was real and there was just people grabbing what they could grab but, I mean, 6 months, a year, 2 years down the road what do you got, you know. You got, you know, a lot of things that, you know, all of the alcohol is just long gone now and some of the jewelry that you, you got, you know, somebody end-up stealing that from you and the TV that you got, it’s not working now and on, and so it was like “Okay, I’m happy that, you know, I -`didn’t have that mind set. “ gotta go out here and loot to have something”… just wasn’t a part of my thinking.
WW: So instead of a race riot do you just see it as a riot then?
MH: I see it more of a rebellion
WW: Okay
MH: Because the, now you asked me earlier in the interview about tension, “Did I feel any tension”? I did see the, I could, it was obvious to me you see a city with a large black population but most all of the police are white and it’s like they, they don’t live in our community, they don’t, we don’t interact with them any other way except when they are showing their authority over us. And, again, as a, you know, teenage, a black teenager I was assumed to be doing something that I shouldn’t have, shouldn’t be doing and, yes, I would run sometimes from the police when, cuz’ I didn’t want to be in that squad car and get the crap beat out of me for, you know, just because. Many did. So, many years of being brutalized and now here is, you know, something that’s jumped off, “Well, we are going …”, again, it’s not my mentality but some people say, “We are going to destroy”. Or, “We’re going to take, we’re going to ruin…”, so how do you, how do you justify that? Well you, you really can’t in that manner. But you can understand something about human behavior, you know, you push somebody so long and to a point where they lose all sense of rationality, they lose it. It’s like nothing they do now makes any sense. They just, they’re in a riotous mode of thinking. You know, “Let’s, let’s destroy this, let’s do this, let’s take this, let’s”… but that’s not the way, it’s just not. That’s why this “Detroit 67’”, as it says, “Looking Back to Move Forward”, I think that’s brilliant because we have to lay a good foundation for 2067. What kind of city are we going to have? Most likely I won’t be here but let’s face it, you know, I have an expiration date. I don’t know when that is, but I won’t be here. But, though, you, Billy you’ll probably be here and the work that you’re doing now, this could be something that will be so instrumental and shaping, molding and shaping, a way in which we can live in a society where people look at one another as people first before they look at, well, there’s a, “Those are Mexicans and they’re rapists”. Oh, wait a minute, that’s Donald Trump’s line, I’m sorry, that’s his line, but, you know, we have to look at, begin to look at one another, human beings first and them everything comes after that. Until then, we’ll get to, if it doesn’t happen we’ll get to 2067 and we’ll still be talking about some of the same issues and fundamentally, though, capitalism may not allow us to do that. And so, yeah, I’m going to speak against, not against, I’m not like saying “capitalism is evil”, but this form of capitalism that we are presently living under, I’m all for the, you know, free market and, you know, you take, you take your, your goods, your services, to the marketplace and see what happens but this, this greedy capitalist way of thinking is, you know, I will take FAR more, VASTLY more than I’ll ever need but I want to try and secure something for my family so they’ll have vastly more than they’ll ever need while these poor suckers over here they are just scraping to get by, scraping to get, water shut-offs in Detroit that’s inhumane, and they’re, they’re all over Detroit. They’re places where water’s gushing up out of the streets and they can’t even fix it. There’s institutions and some of the stadiums, they owe hundreds of thousands of dollars for their water but, again, if you’re a part of that class, you know, you’re ok we’ll settle up with you later.
WW: Couple more quick questions. Did your family ever think about moving out of the city because of what happened?
MH: Oh no.
WW: No? And do you still, do you, well do you believe that, you just alluded to it, but do you believe 67 still has a shadow over the city of Detroit?
MH: Well, in this respect it has a shadow because many people they don’t look at the de-industrialization of Detroit prior to 67’. The Packard plant closed in 55’. 12,000, 15,000 employees. 55’, that’s, all right, Packard plant and MANY others, big industries, you know, moved to the south, you know, shut, whatever. Detroit was on a downward trend in the 50’s. This, so the, the shadow of 67’ is that “the riot”, the riot forced, or was, influenced many good white people to move out. White people were already in the suburbs. Black folks, you know, you couldn’t get houses out there. So, you know, it was like that trend had already begun. You can’t, but today people will say, “Well, you know, my family moved, you know, after my white friend, we had to get out”… Why? Black folks didn’t go into white neighborhoods burning or looting, or anything, that didn’t happen. This is not like Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921.
WW: Yep
MH: That’s a, now if white America, a lot of white Americans knew that history then they’d say “Well, wait a minute, so that was a thriving black community?” They even called it “The Black Wall Street”, 1921. So, what happened? Whites come in [inaudible] and wiped out, I mean 30, 30, 30 block area. Wiped em’ out. Many people were killed. Many, [inaudible] for their lives. White communities were not being attacked. White communities, blacks didn’t, but there were those on 8 Mile, on, on 8 Mile Rd. over in Hazel Park, and Warren, and, and they were there with their shotguns and rifles. Now I did see that. So, they’re saying, they’re saying “if you so-and-so’s come across here we’ve got somethin’ for you”. Well that wasn’t going to happen anyway. Wasn’t, you know, wasn’t, it wasn’t a race riot
WW: Do you, are you optimistic for the state of the city?
MH: Oh yeah. I’m very optimistic for Detroit. I mean, Detroit has gone through a horrific period where everything was pretty much like nobody cares, you know, and you look at what it, what happened when Coleman Young became Mayor. There was, there was another phase where there was white flight. And, you know, you look at, you know, if you don’t have a great tax base, but, but again, this started in the 50’s. It didn’t’ start with the, in 67, or with Coleman Young. It, it was in, it was in place starting in the 50’s and the build-up of Suburbia. All that was in place in the 50’s. So Detroit, I mean with all the, you know, blight, and it is scary in this regard, I didn’t see that when I was, as a youngster, as a teenager in Detroit, I didn’t have to walk by all that and see all that going to school. And the school system was, system was still pretty good then. So. I mean, Detroit has gone to that point where, I mean, you hear people say “Yeah I had to get out. I had to leave”, you don’t question that, you don’t say “well, why would you leave?” No, if you felt, didn’t feel safe, yes, by all means, leave. So I have no problem with those who did leave, white, black or otherwise. But now Detroit, they say Detroit is coming back. Coming back and it’s coming back to what and for whom is it coming back? Now if it’s being gentrified, you know, you can have upper-middle class blacks that, you know, come in, make investments, and do this, and do that, and do that. But, what I’m looking at, and what I’m seeing, and what I know to be a fact, is you have a lot of yuppie-type whites who are now in position to get something on the cheap, and they are doing that, why, because a lot of blacks that, entrepreneurs, and this and another, they can’t get the credit, you know, their credit is jacked, you know that’s... we laugh at that but that’s a series thing. Unfortunate. I have almost an 800 credit score. Why? Because I understood the system and I knew how to work to get to that point and I wasn’t always that way, but, since I’ve been single now and know how to manage money, and how to do things, I, one credit score a few months ago had me at 801 and a, so I’m saying, I can, but a lot of, you know, brilliant minds, you know, they can’t get, because, or, they have a criminal background. And what was their crime?...selling marijuana, using marijuana. Not violent criminals. So you’d have, now, like so many things will disqualify you. So they, you know, they can’t, they can’t do the same thing. I know of a white couple and they told me, well the husband told me, he said city officials, others came to him and was asking him to, well, to do such, do, become this, and do, “we can extend a loan to you”. He was living in the Eastern Market area, you know one of those little lofts, you know, nothing extravagant, you know, on the cheap side, but they said “you know, this is open, we have these programs” and, and he said he was amazed that, it’s like the, the world’s opening up for him. And he’s an activist in Detroit and he says “I want to share this with you guys, I want to tell you, because this actually happened”. Now he’s not one to make up things to, you know, just to kind a stir things up. He’s not that type at all. And I said “well, that’s, that’s the way it is”. And I said, “10 years from now you’re going to look at, you know, the New Center area, and the Medical Center, and downtown Detroit, Wayne State” and I said “it’s going to be vastly different than what it is now”. And if blacks and others don’t, you know, wake-up and see what’s happening and try, you have to fight through it, you just have to fight to get some of these grants, get, be a part of this program, be, you have to fight. It’s not going to be given to you. It’s just not
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me and sharing your thoughts
MH: Well, thank you Billy
WW: I greatly appreciate it
MH: Thank you very much
GS: Hello. This is Giancarlo Stefanutti and Hannah Sabal. Today is June 21, 2016. We are here in Detroit, Michigan. Thank you for sitting down with us today.
Could you first start by telling us your name?
LW: My name is Lucille Watts.
GS: Okay. Where and when were your born?
LW: I was born in Homeville, Virginia in 1920.
GS: Awesome. What was your childhood like?
LW: My childhood? Oh it was a happy childhood. When I was small I lived in with my grandparents. Of course Virginia at that time was segregated. No different I guess [laughter]. It’s segregated in Detroit, so, not a big deal [laughter].
GS: What did your parents do?
LW: My parents?
GS: Mm-hmm.
LW: My father died before I could remember. But they were people who were in farming. My mother moved to Ohio. I went to Ohio, I guess, when I was very small and then I went back to Virginia because my mother married again and my grandparents did not think that was such a good idea for me [laughter].
GS: Gotcha, gotcha. So then when did you move to Detroit?
LW: I came to Detroit in 1952.
GS: Oh wow, okay. What were the reasons of coming to Detroit?
LW: Nothing special. I had a friend here, and she seemed to have been reasonably happy [laughter]. I decided that this was the place that I wanted to be.
GS: Okay. So when you moved into Detroit in the 50’s, what were your reactions to the city? What were your opinions of the city at the time?
LW: I beg your pardon?
GS: What were your opinions of Detroit when you first moved there?
LW: Well it was firmly segregated, which I was surprised because I had come here from Ohio, and it wasn’t quite as segregated as Detroit. But I adjusted to the situation.
GS: And where in Detroit did you live?
LW: I lived in several places, but most of the time I lived in Arden Park & Brush.
GS: Okay. And did you have a job at that time?
LW: Yeah, I was in the fashion field. I had been trained in modeling and fashion.
GS: Oh, very nice. And how was your job?
LW: It worked out fairly well for me, but it wasn’t very challenging.
GS: It wasn’t? [Laughter.]
LW: [Laughter.] So I went back to school.
GS: Oh, okay, and where’d you go to school?
LW: I went to the University of Detroit to get enough credits to go to law school.
GS: Wow. Very impressive. So you went there. After school, where did you go? What did you do?
LW: Well, after I got out of law school I practiced law.
GS: Right. Right, yes. [Laughter.]
LW: Until I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and I realized that the kind of practice I was in, I was not going to be able to do it too well because I was working out of Wayne County Circuit Court and Oakland County Circuit Court and there was way too much for somebody who had arthritis. So I decided to run for office.
HS: Which area of law did you specialize in?
LW: Mostly real estate. Well I did a lot of domestic relations.
GS: This is kind of backtracking a little bit. But when you came to Detroit, you said it was a fairly segregated area compared to Ohio. I’m just wondering what in Detroit was more segregated than in your experience in Ohio?
LW: Well when I came here, black people were not really going to downtown restaurants and things like that, and I had been accustomed to doing that kind of thing where I had lived. As I say, I adjusted, let me put it that way.
GS: Okay, so moving into the 1960’s, so the early 60’s–could you sense a feeling of tension in Detroit?
LW: No.
GS: No?
LW: No.
GS: Okay.
LW: Actually, I was the most surprised person in the world.
HS: Really?
GS: Really?
LW: I was downtown meeting with a client in a downtown hotel, I don’t remember now exactly which one it was. But in any case it was a Sunday evening. And I came out and saw all these people running around, smoke. I was really frightened, I couldn’t imagine what was going on. I lived at Seven Mile and Birchcrest at that time, which was pretty far out of the ghetto. I went home, and my husband was away on business, so I went home and locked the door [laughter], and stayed home until–I don’t know how many days, maybe it was a day or two. I don’t remember. I had a motion scheduled for two o’clock in the afternoon in the Flint Circuit Court. I got up and got in the car and went toward Flint, and I saw the National Guard coming in, which also surprised me. [Laughter.] And I went to the Court in Flint, and they told me that they had adjourned my motion because they heard about all that’s going on in Detroit and they was sure that I wasn’t coming. [Laughter.]
HS: Wow.
GS: Wow.
HS: So the first that you heard of the riots was when you came out of the hotel after meeting with your co-workers?
LW: Yeah. I didn’t know and I didn’t even understand what was going on. I was frightened and I didn’t really understand anything about what was going on.
HS: I’m sorry, go ahead.
LW: Go ahead.
HS: At the time of the riots, you were still practicing law, you had gone into office yet?
LW: My office was in the Great Lakes building which was on Woodward and–what is that?– Pingree The Great Lakes Building took up a block on Woodward.
HS: So you were still practicing then?
LW: Yeah. Because I represented Great Lakes Land and Investment Company, Great Lakes Mutual Insurance Company. I was not practicing law for fun, I was practicing for a living.
HS: Mm-hmm.
LW: [Laughter.]
HS: Yeah.
LW: So when I came back, I came back home because the house I lived in at that time was in a white neighborhood and I wasn’t really afraid, but I was home alone, because like I said my husband was away on business. I stayed there until the President of Great Lakes called me and said one of our agents–Great Lakes insurance agents–had been picked up by the police, and that I should go and see about him. So I went–he was at Fort and Green –that was the police station. I was never a criminal lawyer, but it was my job for the company, so I had to go see about him. And when I got to Fort and Green, National Guard was in front of the building with their bayonets across the walkway. I just parked my car at the head of the walkway, got out and walked and went. I went up to the walkway, and they just open up. [Laughter.] And I went on it and took care of my job and got my client out of jail. [Laughter.]
GS: Oh wow.
HS: That’s awesome.
LW: Then, I realized that I had an obligation to do something more than stay home with my head covered up. [Laughter.] So basically I joined with other black lawyers in the community to try to get folks out of jail because they were picking up black men in the street for reasons and no reasons.
HS: For being black men.
LW: They picked up so many of them that they would them in pens down in Belle Isle like cattle. We worked to get them out. And that was about my experience with the riots.
HS: Did you have a lot of clientele after the riots?
LW: Huh?
HS: Did you have a lot of clientele after the riots?
LW: It had nothing to do with the riots. My clientele was not that kind.
I’d like to show you a picture.
GS: Great.
HS: Oh, yes.
LW: Of the founders of Great Lakes Insurance Company because I happen to have things fairly well together because somebody’s working on a book about me.
GS: Uhhm.
HS: So you said that you got together with other black women in the community to try to help the black men out of–
LW: Black, black lawyers
HS: Black lawyers.
LW: Yeah. It wasn’t that many women because when I went to law school, there wasn’t a whole lot of women going to law school. In fact, there were only two at DCL in the daytime when I was there. One of them washed out. [Laughter.]
HS: Ooh. So you were the only one who made it through?
GS: When you were doing this, how were the police reacting to you?
LW: Hmm?
GS: How were the police reacting to you and the other lawyers trying to help out the black men that were being arrested?
LW: I never had any problem with police. But women usually don’t I guess. [Laughter.]
GS: And how did your neighborhood react during the Riot? How were they feeling?
LW: Well the neighborhood where I lived, they were all white anyway. So nobody was concerned. We was so far–at Seven Mile and Birchcrest–we were way out of the area where there was anything going on. If I hadn’t had to go downtown I wouldn’t have known anything was going on.
GS: Oh, I see.
HS: You said your husband was out of town on business.
LW: Yes.
HS: Did he contact you? Did he hear about the riots when he was out of town?
LW: I don’t remember him being that concerned. No.
HS: For the same reason that you were so far out of it anyway?
LW: Yeah. I’m sure he called, but I don’t remember anything special about it. Because he was an international rep for IUE on Walter Reuther’s staff.
GS: So thinking post-riot, could you sense a change in Detroit after the riot?
LW: A lot of things changed. But most of them didn’t affect me in most ways that I can think of. And there were a lot of promises made and a lot of committees formed, and most of it didn’t happen, as you already know.
GS: Yeah.
HS: Do you think racial tensions got worse after the riot?
LW: No, I don’t think so. But I think you’re dealing with a perspective. I guess I’m a person who kind of lives my life without getting too far into other people’s business. [Laughter.]
HS: That’s a great way to live life [laughter].
GS: It is. It is. [Laughter.]
LW: I always say I don’t want to know your business unless I’ve got you on the clock [laughter].
GS: [Laughter.]
HS: Great.
GS: That’s good. So we’ve interviewed a lot of people and they’ve had a lot of different terms for the unrest: you know, some people call it a “Riot,” but other people call it “Rebellion” or “Unrest” or “Uprising.” Do you have a term for it that you would call it, or would you just call it a riot?
LW: I go along with the idea of an uprising. There’s always been a lot of tension I guess with the police and the people on the street. And that hasn’t changed all that much. It’s still a problem. And maybe not as much in Detroit as some other places. And a lot of the reason for that is Coleman Young, I think. Coleman Young made a big change because it was a lot of tension with the police before he took office.
HS: Mm-hhmm.
GS: Mmm.
LW: And Coleman was very close to my husband at that time, and the reason I say “at that time” is because after he died I married someone else. But I still carry the name. His name was James Watts. And that name may come up because he was the DPW under Coleman Young.
HS: I think I may have come across his name–I think I’ve come across his name and someone else’s.
GS: Wow.
LW: He took a leave of absence from the UAW and went to work for Coleman when Coleman got elected.
HS: Mmm.
GS: M-hm. So just kind of looking at Detroit now, what are your opinions of Detroit at present day? Do you think a lot has changed?
LW: I think Detroit has an unfortunate situation going into the bankruptcy. We were lucky to get the kind of turnaround team that we got. Unfortunately, this is not going to work too well unless they can get the education system under control. I don’t think we can do that unless we can get it from Lansing, can’t get it local, because Lansing has taken over and has been in charge for too long. And unless you have a good education system, you’re not going to be able to attract the kind of people you need, because those kind of people have children going to school.
GS: Mm-hmm.
LW: [Laughter.]
HS: Aside from education, are there any other factors that you think the city needs to work on to return to how it used to be?
LW: Well, I suppose housing, but we’re not in desperate need of housing I don’t think. I think we’re in desperate need of education reform. That’s the way I’m seeing it.
HS: Mm-hmm.
GS: Do you have anything else you would like to add, or any points you’d like to make?
LW: Not particularly.
HS: Okay.
GS: Alright. Well thank you so much for sitting down with us today.
HS: Yes, thanks for inviting us here. We greatly appreciate it.
LW: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
HS: Okay.
[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 17:38]
WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel. Today is April 8, 2016. We are in Detroit, Michigan. This is the interview of Kathleen Straus for the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Thank you very much for sitting down with me today.
KS: You're welcome.
WW: Can you please tell me, where and when were you born?
KS: I was born in New York City in 1923.
WW: And when did your family come to Detroit?
KS: In 1952.
WW: Why did they come?
KS: My late husband got a job here, so we moved. We had been married in 1948. We had a toddler – a year and a half old son, and we moved here and my husband had a job – not in the automobile industry – in the cigar-making business, which I don't think exists in Detroit anymore. And then he – unfortunately, he died in 1967. That's part of the story, actually.
WW: Oh, okay.
KS: Yep. So, well -
WW: What neighborhood did you move into when you came here?
KS: Northwest Detroit. Near – west of Livernois and near Seven Mile.
WW: What was your impression of the city?
KS: I just was amazed. Well, first of all, he – he drove me up Livernois because they had all these used car dealerships and dealers – automobiles, automobiles, automobiles. And then we drove on Outer Drive – beautiful houses. I grew up in New York where there were all big apartments. I lived in Manhattan – big apartment buildings. And these were all individual houses. It looked like the suburbs to me. I thought, wow, it's really great – looked like an overgrown small town. And I met people right away – was very – very – very easy to get to know people in Detroit. We didn't know anybody when we came. And the company my husband worked for had rented – they had found an apartment for us, and it was a garden apartment – two stories – and had lots of young couples with young children, so it was a good way to meet people, and well, we did.
WW: Did you find work when you came to the city, or what did you do?
KS: No, I stayed home with my son at that time. But I wanted to learn about Detroit and Michigan, so I looked up the League of Women Voters in the phone book and found out that there was going to be a meeting right near where we lived, so I went to it. And that got me involved in Detroit from the get-go. I met some wonderful women, became lifelong friends, and one thing led to another.
WW: The neighborhood you lived in in Northwest – was it integrated at the time?
KS: No.
WW: No?
KS: It was – it was completely white at the time. Became integrated later.
WW: While you were still there?
KS: Yeah. I was there for a long time. That – well, that's a whole other story, I'll tell you later. You can ask me if you're interested.
WW: Go right ahead.
KS: We lived there – my husband died in '67, and I stayed there for another – in the house – for another seven or eight years, and then I moved up to an apartment, but not far from there – at Wyoming and Outer Drive. And was – was there almost thirty years. We were in the house almost twenty years – thirty and fifty years. And now I live in – on East Jefferson in the East side, in another apartment by the river. It's really nice.
WW: That's beautiful.
KS: Beautiful. Great view. Right across from Belle Isle. It's -
WW: Do did you become political after your trip meeting with the League of Women Voters?
KS: Well, in a sense yes. The League is a non-partisan organization. But we got involved – I got involved with the millage campaigns for the schools, and all kinds – the Constitutional Convention, and this League supported the calling of the Constitutional Convention. By that time I was president of the League. It wasn't hard to become president – anybody that was willing to take the job, I think. So I met a lot of people through the Constitutional Convention. And one of them was – was Jack Faxon, who later – I think he was the youngest delegate at the time. He had been a social studies teacher in Detroit, and he later ran for the House and then for the Senate, and in 1976, I – he hired me to be the – he was then Chairman of the Senate Education Committee, and he hired me to be the staff director of the committee. So that was, you know, fifty years later, we had become friends through the convention and remained friends, and still are, for that matter. And I got involved in politics.
WW: Proceeding through the 1950's, did you sense any growing tension in Detroit, or was everything calm?
KS: Well, yeah, started to integrate – and we were working hard to keep the neighborhood – keep – have an integrated neighborhood – we really wanted to do - that would be a great step forward, we thought.
WW: Who's “we”?
KS: My husband and I. And by that time we had another child, and a family moved in our – an African American family moved in – I went down to – to welcome this family, and the woman said “oh, I met your daughter, she was here already.” She was about three or four [laughter] and she had already gone down to meet everybody. So it was very friendly – we – we had nice neighbors moved in. The school – the school system had become – they had – people could move their child to – school of choice arrangement – so there were some African American families that brought their children. And my daughter and a couple of these children became good friends.
So at that point, it was fine where we were. And we started a community council – the Schultz Community Council, we were in the Schultz School area – tried to keep everybody happy. It didn't last that long. [laughter] Yeah, so – '67, if you want to call it the riots, or the rebellion, or whatever you want to call it – had a great effect.
WW: Well before we get there, moving to the 60's, with the different social movements, how did you see that affecting Detroit?
KS: With the Civil Rights movement, and the whole – that - all of that – well, I was involved with that too. I was active and worked with the NAACP, and the League was very supportive of integration and that kind of thing. People were getting more – people had started moving out.
WW: Do you know why they were moving out?
KS: I think they – they were – I think they did – they were concerned about integration. They – some people didn't like that idea. [laughter] And they – and some people were concerned about the schools, I think, that they would become – they would have too many African Americans, black kids in it – and they didn't want that. That's the way I figure it. Yeah, so, it was unfortunate, I think.
WW: Did working in the Civil Rights movement lead you to become a member of the Commission for – what was it again?
KS: Well, when I was president of the League of Women Voters, I met Jerry Cavanagh when he became mayor, and – we invited him to be the speaker at our annual meeting. It was held at the McGregor Building on Wayne's campus. And he came, with his wife, and it was – I got to know him. And then the League supported the city being able to levy and income tax, and he thought that was - had been very helpful, to get – building support for it, 'cause it – we always needed revenue in Detroit. [laughter] One thing led to another, and he asked me to co-chair his campaign for re-election, in '65. And so I had to resign from the League board because I couldn't support a candidate. But he said to me, “your life will never be the same after this. You're really involved in politics now.” He was right. [laughter]
So when the campaign was over, and the co-chair, the other co-chair was a close friend of his. I was not a close friend – I had met him. We became good friends, but we hadn't been – and I made a lot of good friends at that campaign, like I did with the League – some of whom are still around and we're still good friends. So I wasn't looking for a job – I had this young child still at home. Two children, one was still pretty young, and he asked me – and he knew I had been involved in these efforts to maintain the neighborhood, so he asked me to become a member of the Commission on Community Relations. That's how that happened.
WW: Okay. Can you speak about your time on the Commission?
KS: Pardon me?
WW: Can you speak about your time on the Commission?
KS: Well, that was interesting. It was quite a high-powered group, as a matter of fact. The members were Ed Cushman, who was vice president at that time, of American Motors, he later became vice president of Wayne State University. Stanley Winkelman, whose family owned the Winkelman Stores, which was a women's fashion store – I think Jim Wadsworth was on that. He was an African American minister. Several – a couple of other African American ministers. And I'm trying to think – Golda Krolik, who was an interesting woman whom I had met – well, that's how – I met her on the Commission. She had been appointed to the original interracial committee that was set up after the riots during World War II.
WW: The 1943 riots?
KS: 1943. And she was a wonderful woman. We became very good – very close. So it was a very impressive and committed group, to – to maintain good racial – race relations and make everything positive – keep everything positive, that was the whole idea – to promote good relations and help people – help people maintain integrated areas. So that's how I got to be on that. Another one who was on it was – I can't think of his name – he was a Catholic priest. I know him so well. It'll come to me.
WW: Not to worry. What year was this again? 1966?
KS: Pardon me?
WW: That you became a member of the Commission.
KS: 1966, yeah.
WW: Were you on it when the Kercheval event happened? The incident on Kercheval?
KS: I – if – if – I don't think so, because I really was not involved in that at all.
WW: Oh, okay.
KS: I just knew – found out about it after the fact.
WW: Okay.
KS: So it must have been after that. I don't remember the exact date.
WW: What work did you focus on when you were working with the Commission?
KS: Well, it was interesting – some of the things that we – you know, you're asking questions – I haven't really thought about this in a long time. [laughter] One of the things that just appalled me was – the city owned the two clubhouses on Belle Isle. The Detroit Boat Club and the Detroit Yacht Club. I think it was a dollar a year, they rented them to these clubs. And these clubs were – discriminated – they only accepted white people. And not – they didn't accept – not only all white people – they didn't accept blacks. They didn't accept Jews either. And I thought that was absolutely wrong. I mean, the city was leasing – the city owned these properties. And that was one of the issues that we considered at the – encourage the city to require that these clubs became open to anybody. So that was one of the issues. That was – it seems so amazing now, you know.
When I was in New York – I went to college in New York – we had – we had our prom – we went around to hotels to see if we wanted to use their facilities. The first question we asked was, will our Negro colleagues – classmates – be welcome in this hotel? That was, you know – it's hard to believe. Major hotels in New York City. And it took us – it took a long time to find one that said yes! So that's the kind of atmosphere I grew up in. In the north, things were segregated too. Not just the south. And it just – it's hard for me to realize that things have changed that much, and they still need a lot of improvement – but so many things were taken for granted, sixty or seventy years ago – and now they're taken for granted the other way. So that's – I guess that's progress. [laughter]
WW: Moving to 1967, you're still living on the Northwest?
KS: Yes.
WW: How did you first hear about what was going on?
KS: Well, it was very interesting. My husband had been in the hospital on Friday, for – for tests. He had had a heart attack seven or eight years before. And they had told him to come back Monday for a stress test, and so – Sunday, he was taking it easy – staying in bed – they told him to take it easy so he was lying in bed reading, and – we had television on in the bedroom, and I was up in the bedroom with him a lot, and it was quiet. No news on television.
I got a call from a friend of mine who was in Toronto on a vacation and she called, says “What's going on?” I said what do you mean, what's going on? She said “There's a riot in Detroit!” I said you gotta be kidding. I said there's nothing on the news here – there can't – that can't – must be a mistake.
WW: This was early Sunday?
KS: This was Sunday afternoon. And then my son, who was a student at Mumford High School – he was a member of a club there, and he was the only white boy in the club, all the others were African Americans, and he left to go for a meeting of the club, down in the area where the riot was going on – which we didn't know was going on – and I had heard this from my friend – I said well, be careful, maybe – we didn't know anything.
So he went down there and within an hour he was back. And he said “this is – there's no riot – didn't seem like a riot to me.” I said what do you mean? He said “seemed more like a – a - ” What did he call it? It was fun. He said there were people sitting in the middle of the street trying on shoes! He said they were looting the stores, but they wanted to make sure the shoes fit! [laughter]
So he said his friends in the club had told him “you better get out of here. It's not a good idea for you to be here right now.” So he came home. But that's how he described it. He said it seemed more like a carnival to him, than a riot.
Then I got a hold – the Commission – director of the Commission called, and they set up a meeting for the next day. And my husband went back to the hospital for his test, and he didn't want me to go by myself, so my son who was then sixteen drove me down to the meeting, and driving down the Lodge was eerie, because there was no traffic. We saw a little smoke coming up from the sides of the freeway – but it was eerie. We were the only vehicle on the freeway.
And we had a meeting and we – I – you know, it's interesting. I can't remember – I can't remember exactly what we did. We didn't do that much – it was very frustrating. I made the comment that I thought, well, if we had done a better job, maybe this wouldn't have happened. And they said “oh, it wouldn't have made any difference.” Something like that. They didn't want – they didn't agree with me, what I said. My colleagues.
But I still think that we might have been able to do something. Instead of worrying about the clubs on Belle Isle we should have been doing something more critical. But I – you know, the mayor's office, because they handled the incident on Kercheval the year before, successfully, by keeping it off the news and keeping it from spreading – they tried to do the same thing in '67. And it didn't work, unfortunately. And it spread – of course, in '67, Detroit happened after, I think after Newark and other places -
WW: Watts.
KS: Pardon me?
WW: Watts.
KS: Watts. Yeah, Los Angeles. Right. And it was a different – it was a year later – it was a different time, and it just spread really quickly. So the – it was pretty close. There were stores on Seven Mile and Livernois that were – that were looted – and attacked – but that was very close to the two nicest neighborhoods in the city, Sherwood Forest and Palmer Woods. And we were to the west of that – where we were wasn't as – the houses were much smaller, and it was much different. But it was still – still like the suburbs to me, with individual houses. So I – my friends had gotten involved in starting a food bank – services – to help the people whose houses had been burned out. It was at the Barth Hall at the Episcopal Cathedral. And they set up a hall – it was really a terrific operation, and I went down and helped at that too. But I had a friend who was involved in organizing it and setting it up. So there was a lot of – there was a lot of activity on the part of people to try to help the people who were affected by the – what was going on.
And there were – there were all kinds of meetings afterwards. The democratic party had – I was active at the seventeenth district – was then the seventeenth district – maybe it was the fifteenth then – I'm not – it was the fifteenth when we moved in, and then it might have been the seventeenth – and going to meetings and I – became, you know – became friends with some well-known African American professors and people, and I remember one – one of my friends bringing me home from one of those meetings and saying “have you got your gun?” and I said got my gun, no, I don't have a gun! He said “you should have a gun.” I said why would I want a gun? I'd be scared to have a gun. He thought I was crazy, but we never did get a gun. I've always been of the opinion if anybody's going to attack me, by the time I got the gun and got it loaded and got it, I'd be too late anyway, so – [laughter] Anyway, I was – I was just stunned that he had a gun and thought it was the right thing to do. He still does.
So – so those are some of my experiences with the – with the actual – but then the after-effects – the people, within a year, maybe two – all the white people except one neighbor across the street, and us, moved. And they had – they had been slight movement before, but it happened very quickly after the '67. So that happened all over the city. So -
WW: Did your work with the Commission continue after 1967?
KS: Well, it was interesting. I told you my husband died – he – Thanksgiving Day of '67. And then I wanted – I had to go back to work. I was a stay at home mom. Actually I had – I had, in '66, I had been hired to manage a millage campaign. I don't know if millage is part of your thing. For the schools, they had had several millage campaigns that failed. And the schools – a lot of the schools were overcrowded and they had double sessions. Mumford was on a double session. They needed to – we were trying to get another school built – a junior high, which we finally did – Beaubien Junior High – to relieve the overcrowding. And – but – but Mumford was – was not the only high school that was on double sessions like that. Anyway, we had a millage campaign, and they usually had been run by the school district. An education campaign. This time, the business community – business and labor both – thought it should be run outside the school district, and the chamber of commerce really helped fund it, and the UAW and the unions, and I was hired to be the executive director. And so that was a full-time job for a few months, and we won. That was the last one in a long time after that. [laughter]
And – but I had – that was the only paying job I had, and that was over. So when my husband died, Mayor Cavanagh called me and said – the way he put it was – “when you're ready, I'd like you to come down and help me out.” Which was a very nice way of giving me a job. So I went – after – after the first of the year, first I went to New York with my children to be with my husband's mother, we took a month – when I came back I started working for the city. I had worked as an economist for the Treasury Department in Washington and the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, so I had experience and was qualified. And I was – the job I got was the assistant director of what was called the Community Renewal Agency, which was, in effect, the grant-writing organization within the city. They developed the grants for all the different departments. So that's how I got back into the workforce.
And it was very nice to have the connection with the mayor – that certainly helped. [laughter] So – and my husband had – a year before he died, had quit his job and started a computer service bureau with a couple of his colleagues from the company he left. He was the business guy who organized it and the other two were the computer experts. The systems guy and the programming guy. And he had taken a sizable cut in income to do this, so I had thought I was going to go back to work anyway. And little did I think he was going to die six months later. So – so I was back to work, so that's how that happened.
And of course when I worked for the city, I was involved with a lot of activities to try to - the city to recover from the - the '67 – uprising, whatever you want to call it. This – this friend, I told you, he had the gun – I called it the riots a couple of years ago and he said don't use that word, that's not what it is, it was a rebellion. He corrected me.
WW: Aside from the white flight you spoke about, did you notice a different atmosphere in the city afterwards? Did you notice a change in attitudes, or anything like that?
KS: I think there was – yeah. It seemed like our efforts to keep people together were not working very well, and there was a lot of resentment, I think on the part of African Americans and also on white people. It – and it – we'd been working at this for many years. Working, trying - I have good friends – we worked – black and white – and we worked diligently, trying with the schools, we wanted to desegregate the schools. We originally wanted to integrate the schools, but we ended up with desegregating them. Now of course they re-segregated them. So so much of what we tried to do seems to have not worked. And it's been very discouraging and frustrating. It doesn't mean we stop working. We still push for these things, but it's – the mindset of people is very different. They're not that eager to integrate, I don't think. And I think that's unfortunate.
It's – it's interesting, what's happened. Nationally there's so much hostility, in so many different places. And still, and it's really interesting – we elected Obama twice – which was, I thought, a great accomplishment, but it didn't seem to help race relations – it might have made it worse. I don't know if that's a good conclusion or not, but – there are some - some people in the country who are so upset by it, and antagonistic, that the division seems to be almost worse than it was before. I can only hope that people get my way of thinking, more sensible.
WW: Do you have anything else you'd like to share?
KS: I think there are a lot of people of goodwill, who still are working to try to bring – build bridges, get people working together for the benefit of all of us. And I just hope and – I guess I'm the eternal optimist. I hope and think that people will see the light and will get – will work together. We are doing it now, in a sense, 'cause the city is really rebuilding a lot since the bankruptcy. And it was interesting that Mike Duggan was elected mayor, and he won that primary with a write-in vote, which was really tremendous. So that was a good sign of cooperation, and so things are – some things are, you know, are looking optimistic and good in the city. Young people – you know, it's interesting because young people are moving in from the suburbs – a lot of white people – and now there's concern that they're taking over – they're forcing black people out of the neighborhoods that are good. So that's – so it's got both good points – good things and bad – every – every, what do they say – every good program has a reaction and vice versa.
So I'm optimistic that Detroit will be – will come back big and strong. I don't know if there will be two million people again – they certainly don't need as many people to build cars as they did ten years ago. You know, all the things – the economy – everything that's happened in Detroit – the economy tanking, and the automobile industry going through such difficult times – and losing 250,000 and 300,000 jobs – now they can make as many cars with maybe 25,000 people. They don't need all those couple hundred thousand, so a lot of them left. Ones that are left can't find jobs. So that's a major problem. So we've got a lot of, still, big challenges in Detroit but it is encouraging to see all the activity here around here – around the Historical Museum, the midtown, and downtown is bustling, and the people – a lot of people – it's really nice to see, because when I worked down there in '66, '67, '68, '69 - there was a lot of – a lot of activity on the street at lunchtime, you know, people. There were a lot of workers. And then they – a lot of companies – law firms, a lot of different companies moved out to the suburbs. And they – it sort of fizzled. But now it's coming back, and it's exciting to see all the activity now there, and all the things that are going on. New restaurants, new businesses. So that's good.
So I'm optimistic that things will get better. I'm hopeful. There will always be people of goodwill who'll try to do – do this kind of thing. And there'll probably always be people who will fight them. [laughter] Unfortunately. Seems like people haven't learned very much from the early days of civilization. [laughter] So I think that's all – I don't think I have any more to add.
WW: Thank you very much for sitting down with me.
KS: Well, I enjoyed it. I hope this helps.
WW: It does. Thank you very much.
KS: You're welcome.
AA: Today is October 28, 2016. My name is Amina Ammar. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 oral history project. I am currently in Dearborn sitting with—
JB: Joseph Borrajo.
AA: Mr. Borrajo, could you begin by telling me where and when you were born?
JB: I was born June 3, 1941, in a house in Detroit. I still remember the address, 6002 Plainview. It’s on the corner of Paul and it is right across from the field—when at the time was a wheat field. But it is now across the field from many Churches, large Mosque, Eastern Orthodox Church and other Churches. I was born in a good environment.
AA: How did your family get to Detroit?
JB: My parents— my father came to the Detroit Area from Yemen as a teenager. He actually falsified his age to be able to get employment. But he came as a result of the disruptions in Yemen and he came for the jobs that Ford Motor Company was providing. My mother’s family, she came as a baby to America from Bosnia-Herzegovina before it was Yugoslavia. And again, they came because of the disruptions created by the wars in Europe. They said she settled with her parents in the Dearborn Area and her father was a barber. When he took seriously ill, my mother was the oldest of five children: three sisters and a brother. She had to quit in the seventh grade at Salina school and take a job to bring money in for the family. My father had nothing more than, I would say, a sixth-grade formal education. And they both met when my mom worked to prepare sandwiches at Miller Road and Dix. It would be trained in by small train and pulled by a car to the main Ford complex for the workers. They, just like so many others, notably the immigrant community I grew up in— 45 nationalities and spoke 52 languages, were really centered in South Dearborn and East Dearborn. East Dearborn had a unique makeup too. It was predominately Catholic, large Polish, Italian and Irish communities. Then of course there was the West end which was basically White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. And in the commercial area of, you would say jobs and things of that sort, there were the white-collar workers basically. So, Dearborn was subsequently a unique setting. The experiences I had growing up in this immigrant community, and I think I mentioned to you before we started taping this, has been more valuable to me than my formal education. And growing up in such a mixed community, the guys I hung out with and we close friends were Mexican, Romanian, Italian, Lebanese, Southern boys. They all came to this area for the good jobs at Ford Motor Company. We all had that common linkage. As for religion, you had every kind of church you could think of in the south-end including the mosque. And I’m told through my own history research that there was even a Synagogue in the south end of Dearborn in the late nineteen-teens, nineteen-twenties. Quite a wonderful background to come from, one that I’m near and dear in terms of making me who I am as a person and what I do in society and what I do in life.
AA: What do you remember about Detroit in the mid-sixties?
JB: In the mid-sixties, Detroit first of all, was a vibrant city. One of the things I really relished as a kid taking Baker streetcar Downtown were all the businesses- very vibrant Woodward Ave. But as a young man, fascinating me was stopping at the magazine and newspaper stands and standing there and looking in front of all these publications that came in from all of over the world. All over the world. Detroit was a very vibrant city at one time. It was a hub of commercial activities. The lumber industry—I forget the man’s name. The Whitney. The Whitney family. They have the big building on Woodward Ave. By the way, it was made from rose stone that came from Minnesota. He was big in lumber. But you had other prominent names. I always try to share with people that [phone rings in background] one of the things that is unique to me is that Detroit has the finest pre-depression architecture in the country. Buildings that are absolutely beautiful. Thank God today they are going through a renovation process.
But getting back to the 1960s—vibrant city, lots of activities, a lot of wealth, a lot of recognition even on the national scene. Even at that time there was a degradation of the social structure in the City of Detroit that started. Everyone thinks Detroit fell apart instantaneously but no, it took decades and started, I would say, in the late 1950s. And one of the distinguishing things for me was the isolation of the African American community. It was along the Hastings-John R. Corridor. They were sort of a segregated community, separate from the rest of the community. I understood the dynamic because as a teenager we were always investigating things and driving to different areas. So, I recognized that issue and understood the dynamic that there was a disparity there˗˗a situation of unequal status. I remember in early sixties one night, not knowing what to do with myself. So, I said I’m going downtown and take the Boblo Cruise. I bought my ticket and got aboard. It was an interesting perspective with regard to understanding the dynamic of the black community in a white dominated race. The boat was chartered by a black organization. I got aboard and I melded pretty good. I blend pretty well. My complexion is taken for a lot of different things. I had a wonderful time and this was weeks that preceded the ’67 riots. I befriended a number of people that wanted me to come along for a soiree or party afterwards. I never took them up on the offer. But this was weeks before the ‘67 riots.
One of the things—I’m a reader. I love reading. I love history. The consequential matter of the ‘67 riots, one of the principal consequential matters was that the law enforcement knew of a blind pig. The early days they called them, speakeasies—illegal after hours drinking setup. They knew of this setup in January of that same year in 1967 but did nothing and to my consternation—did nothing until a hot July summer night to raid the operation You know, July. Hot. People are on the streets. It’s not contrary to what you would find in January. They took an opportunity. There were a lot of instigating factors. I was really upset at the time. I remember dealing with the Detroit Police Department force. It was specialized called S.T.R.E.S.S. These were plain clothes man that operated. They would profile people in the black community. I remember this one serious incident that happened. A police officer undercover, plain clothes, that killed an African American. And then planted his own knife in that person’s pocket. Forensics found out from the lint on that knife that it came from the police officer and not the person he shot. That was one of the compounded incidents of many incidents: the Algiers Motel issue, where the police went in it was a motel on Woodward Avenue in the northern area. And it was an operation of prostitution with black and white mix. The officers killed a few people in that set up. That was another trigger. There were a lot of incidents that happened like this—separate from each other but when you looked at them on the bigger picture, they were compounded in terms of bringing high intensity feeling in the African American community. In 1967 when the riots first broke out, I remember there was an insinuation that it was called a race riot. I didn’t go along with that.
The second day of the operation of the police intervening with regard to the outbreak of violence throughout the city, I actually took a tour. I drove into Detroit myself, along Woodward Ave and commercial areas. I remember distinctly the J. L. Hudson building. The National Guard had it ringed with rifles and bayonets fixed. They really guarded that particular piece of commercial property. I drove that corridor. I never once felt threatened and intimidated in any capacity. Then I drove down to Grand River and drove the commercial area in that area too. And I saw, which discredited the whole idea of initially saying it was a race riot, black people, brown people, and white people, shoulder to shoulder, going into stores and pilfering things. They finally dropped this whole issue that it was a race riot and qualified it as a riot essentially. So, those were my first experiences—my personal experience. You know the whole idea- I’m from Missouri, you got to show me and I want to see firsthand.
Adjunct to that was that I lived in south Dearborn next to General S. Patton Park. That became one of the staging areas for the National Guard and Detroit Police. I would go over and watch the activities. And particularly toward the evening at dusk, things would really get out of hand and be magnified. There were a number of snipers in Detroit: 44 people were killed and that was like a battle zone. I watched the National Guard assemble in convoy vehicles and they would be led into the city by Detroit Police who knew the geography- where they needed to go. And this happened every night for a number of nights—the staging grounds at general George S. Patton Park. It was very moving for me, it was certainly moving for the loss of lives along with the property- very, very damaging. It was certainly damaging to the image of the city of Detroit which I never really ever felt totally recovered. It’s been on a downhill slide since then. It wasn’t precipitated by that. There were dynamics that played with regard to social and economic issues.
I sat for a number of years on the Urban and Governmental Affairs Committee in New Detroit Incorporated. New Detroit Incorporated was founded in the aftermath of the Detroit riots of 1967. And I sat under the leadership of two very dynamic men: Attorney George Bushnell who was a very popular, had a strong notoriety as far as his legal skills were in the Detroit metropolitan area- he was one of the chairman. And then David Adamany, he was then president of Wayne State University. I could remember the various issues that would pop up. This was in the 1980s dealing with Detroit and the aftermath of that 1967 riot. Crime was an issue, education was an issue, jobs, all these things and transportation. The strange thing for me dear, was that the things that we talked about in in the late 1980s dealing with the aftermath of the ‘67 riot are the same things that we are talking about today. The same problems that still exist today. And I shake my head in wonderment saying, “How is this?” Why haven’t we made progress in these areas that were precipitating factors in creating the conditions and circumstances that sparked the ‘67 riots.
One of the things I was really, really concerned about was the breakdown of the family structure in the city of Detroit. To me it’s a very important component for children in terms of their quality of life and more notably, their education and being a support system for their education. Horace Mann, he was a great educator. He had a quote to the effect that education is the great equalizer in society it levels the ground. And I’ve always believe that whole heartedly. I was very upset that the family unit in the city of Detroit broke down to the point where you had grandparents providing the basis of a stable social structure for children. And now these people are gone. You have children that are not getting what they need in terms of an education. This is coupled with the fact that the economic opportunities of the family structure are not there—which is a fundamental factor in the destabilization of the family unit which impacts the child. And you have this ugly sequence of events that are perpetuated in a continual basis with regard to children without education and bringing children into the world—some at a very young age, teenage age. I know teen pregnancy was a big issue. It has fallen back somewhat but seems to be a resurgence in it. This vicious cycle, social cycle is tied to economics that are responsible for creating the kind of conditions that sparked the ‘67 riot and still haven’t been dealt with constructively.
So, these are things I was very much tuned in to. My experiences on the days of the ‘67 riot, going into the city by myself and looking at the conditions and then watching the mounting of the convoys that went in at night deal with the disruptions. I hope that’s helpful for you.
AA: It definitely was. So, I know some people describe the event as a riot and others refer to it as a rebellion or an uprising. How would you describe it?
JB: Good. Good. You know, that’s a fine distinction. It really is. Like I said, early on it was even qualified as a race riot—which I didn’t buy. It was nothing to compare with the 1943 riot, which was a race riot in Detroit. It was very deadly too. It pitted black against white and white against black. A lot of people were seriously injured and killed. I eliminated immediately that no, this was not a race riot. I eliminated the word race. But you bring up a good point, rebellion. Given the circumstances facing the black community in terms of isolation, the second level citizen status of the black community almost reminded me of the Dred Scott case in which blacks were considered, I think, 3/4th’s of a citizen basically. The same kind of mentality that still is pervasive.
Personally, my own personal experiences in regards to race and I have to bring up my own in this too. This brings me close to the issue of the black community and identifying with it. When I was fifteen years old, a friend of mine from a Southern family from western Kentucky invited me to go with him to a family reunion with him to Kentucky. That was my first time as a fifteen-year-old out of the state. My mom used to always chastise me when I was a kid saying, “Stay out of the sun, you’re getting too dark!” How can you keep a kid out of the sun, you know? So, I went down with him and spent a week. Here’s the enlightenment that really made me sensitive to black issues—a number of experiences but the first of which was visiting with some nieces of his. They wanted him to come visit them at their house. There’s a family gathering at a central location. He said he would like to do that if he could bring me, his friend, with him. They stood there and looked at me. Scrutinized me up and down and said, “It’s okay as long as he behaves himself.” This was nuanced, the progression really gets deep here. It was a day after that, we went to a drive-in movie concession. We always liked drive-in movies. Intermission, I’m walking back to the concession stand. At the door was probably an eight-year-old girl holding back her four-year-old sister and said, “Wait.” She used the word wait with reference to me, “let the nigger by.” I was rattled, I was rattled. I get my concessions and go back to the car and tell my buddy from the South what had just happened. I tell him, “my gosh” you know if it’s like this in Kentucky, I don’t want to go any farther south. And two days after that, we went to a bowling alley. We got kicked out because I was too dark complected. That rattled me too. My buddy was shaking his head and said, “Oh my god I can’t believe this is going on.” And then we were the focus of that drive-in. You know how young teens always gathered for burgers and pop we were hassled at one of these stands. So, I came back from Kentucky and that family gathering, with really a different outlook on life. It was a transformational outlook because of my personal experiences. And I closely identified with black issues after that and understanding it.
Going back to the word rebellion, I understand that as being a probably a valid use of the term. There was a rebellion in terms of the place the black community was placed in with regard to isolation, with regard to the lack of job opportunities that only allowed them in certain areas- women. Women go through this kind of craziness. You know, a generation just before you and you still have the disparity with regard to wages. Women were always lower expectations. Women could be secretaries, women could be nurses, isolating women with these different things in terms of what their potential provides. I could see this with the black community too—only service oriented jobs, and a lot of those would be considered by the white community as being inferior and demeaning. So, rebellion. Rebellion is a word I think has a practical application here. There’s a lot of discontent created by the social economic conditions that were forced on the black community. And I could relate to that.
And dear I can tell you, I’ve experienced what it means to be called the N—word but I’ve also experienced what it means to be called an H—word, Honky. I’ve been called that by some black guys. I made this point one time, you know, if ever there’s a big rebellion in this country; white against black and black against white, I’m heading for the mountains because I’m not sure I’ll be claimed by either side [laughter]. So, I have a firm belief. It’s a consequential thing, and transformational in a way growing up in a diverse immigrant community. All sorts of people from different walks of life, and different religious backgrounds. That was the gem that was embedded in me and imbued in me, with regard to a cohesive and all-inclusive world. And what I saw happened, I still see happening to the black community doesn’t fit into that all-inclusive world. It’s not only that group. I look at the kind of diatribe coming out of Donald Trump: anti-immigrant, anti-minority. And I’m saying, “oh my gosh”, anti-women. All these groups. This is not an inclusive America. And people need to stand up and speak out against these types of injustices.
I watched last night on TV, Jane Fonda, she was giving the Upfront story to The China Syndrome. A movie that dealt with the nuclear reactor in America going down to meltdown. She became an activist in the Vietnam War. But she also came to Detroit and worked with the activists in Detroit. Ken Cockrel, who is a prominent name in Detroit, a man I have a lot of respect for and a lot of respect for his son, Ken Cockrel Jr. He told her when she wanted to drop out of being an actress and become an activist, he says, no, no. We have enough activists. You need to stay as a Hollywood actress where you could use your voice in that forum to promote the kind of things we can’t do acting as activists on the streets. That was last night listening to her talk. Very valid point. She took a lot of flak for her anti-Vietnam war stance.
But in retrospect when you think about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Wayne Morris was the only U.S senator who voted against it. In hindsight, we learn that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was based on a lie, based on a lie American warships were attacked in non-territorial waters by the Vietnamese government. Which wasn’t true. Those American warships were in their territorial water. We see the same kind of thing going on recently: the lies that were fabricated that took us to war in Iraq. The consequences, the deaths, the dislocation, the human suffering, the civilian suffering, the refugees. I remember reading a piece just recently—General Wesley Clark. Top ranking American general who, by the way, was really fascinated to know is the father of Steven Clark, who was a local channel 7 news anchor. He made the point that Washington in 1987 constructed a strategy- crafted a strategy to make war in southern Middle Eastern countries to destabilize the Middle East. I see this play out and I’m very disturbed by that. I’m a veteran, served three years in the United States Army. And I’ve attached myself to Veterans Against War and the kinds of things we see going on to the Middle East that’s caused so much disruption. It’s the same kind of mindset dealing with the people of the Middle East, it’s the same kind of mindset that deals with the black community in America, the minority community in America and as far as I’m concerned, with the women’s issue in America. They’re all related. You have a situation in which a program is promoted at the expense of many, many people. I think I’ve finished there.
AA: We know ‘67 was also a big year for Arabs because of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
JB: Yes.
AA: So, I do have some questions about that. How did you first hear about the events that led up to the war and the war itself?
JB: I followed Middle East issues for many, many years. And naturally because of my Arab- American background. I have to tell you a little story about this. People ask me, “When did you start with your activism?” I said well that’s a good point. My dad loved to go see movies that dealt with the Middle East. And he and I would walk together to the movies and walk home. One day, I was probably eight old, eight-nine. We left the movie. We’re walking home and I asked my dad, “Dad, why are the Arabs always the bad guys in these movies?” He looked at me and chuckled and said, “You know, when you get a little older, I want to tell you more about this.” I tell people that my raising that question was the moment of my beginning activism. Raising that question.
So, I followed events very closely in the Middle East. Nineteenth sixty seven war was a war that was precipitated by the Israelis and it was for land expansion. One of the notable things about it was the USS Liberty, it was an American intelligence gathering ship. It was operating in the eastern Mediterranean and monitoring the events. And the Israelis actually did this—it’s in a book written about the USS Liberty. Painted their warplanes to make them look anything but Israeli markings, attacked for hours that USS Liberty ship, American sailors killing and wounding scores scores. They were getting ready to board the ship. The USS Liberty sent out a mayday call. The mayday call was taken by a U.S. Sixth Fleet taken by the Western Mediterranean. They launched warplanes to go to the aid of the USS Liberty. Before they reached their destination, they were called back to the aircraft carrier. They did not assist. Their whole goal to assist, they knew where these warplanes came from- they knew they were Israelis. The objective was initially to bomb every runway that those planes had taken off from and then to go after the Israeli warplanes. That had strafed and shot up the U.S. Liberty. They were called back to U.S. Sixth Fleet aircraft carrier and nothing was done. There was a Russian ship in the area that offered assistance, the U.S. intelligence people denied it—this was a very sensitive ship with intelligence gathering. The reason the Israelis did this was because they did not want the US government to have any knowledge that they actually precipitated the war or were responsible for creating the war. And it was all for this idea of what they call Greater Israel and taking lands from Lebanon, from Iraq—the border places, Syria. All the border Arab countries that bordered the state of Israel as we call it today. I have the book by Ennis, Captain Ennis who was aboard that USS Liberty, read it and I’ve recommended others to read it. There was an organization that was formed for the survivors of that ship that really promoted a better awareness to the general population of what just happened there.
One of the ironies of it was that when the Israelis finally got caught up with this, they payed reparations to the families of those sailors that were wounded or killed on that ship. The irony of it is, is the U.S. tax payers through Washington’s money given to Israel— Israel gave that money back to these people. These are the things that kind of drive me up the wall basically.
Other issues like the Johnathon Pollard’s theft of very sensitive U.S. military secrecy. He was a U.S navy intelligence guy in the 1980’s. He stole volumes of U.S. very sensitive secrets and some of those secrets that were sent to Israel were actually sent by Israel to Moscow. One of the sensitive pieces was the identification of 200 U.S secret operatives in the Soviet Union. You know what happened to those guys. They were summarily with great measure executed. Casper Weinberger, Secretary of Defense at the time, said that what Johnathon Pollard did with Israel was compromise U.S security in a way that was never compromised before. Last year, Johnathon Pollard was given a pardon from his prison sentence here in the United States, with a requirement that he would not leave America and go to Israel. Another thing that should be noted about that is that all these documents that were stolen, U.S government made a number of request to return those documents and those documents never returned. These are the dynamics that play with regard to our relationship with Israel the kind of relationship that precipitated the ’67 War. Here’s an interesting piece for you too; the Mossad, the secret service agency in Israel, wasn’t always called the Mossad. It was initially called the Modiin. M-o-d-i-i-n. Modiin was caught red-handed in 1952 firebombing American military instillations in Egypt, to blame it on the Egyptians and drive a wedge between the U.S government and Cairo. They were caught red-handed. The had to fess up to it. They changed the name from Modiin to Mossad but still continue their way of dealing their relationship with the United States. So, yes. ’67 was a big war that allowed the Israelis to expand their land base to fulfill what they call Greater Israel.
AA: How did you and your family react to this event?
JB: Well ‘67 War was soon to be followed by the Arab oil embargo. My dad kept close. We did everything we could. We listened to the newscast. We read publications that were outside of mainstream publications in America- which is a valuable lesson even for students in today’s society. Alternative areas to gather your information is very, very important. Especially today because the media in American society today has become a wing of the governing rulers. So I spend a lot of time listening to Al Jazeera, BBC, PBS, NPR, CBC- other news agencies. We didn’t have that kind of valuable alternatives back in ‘67 and the seventies. But the news media then was much more independent than it is today which makes this alternative news agencies much more valuable much more needed today let’s put it that way. We kept abreast of what was going on.
I went to the second year of the reunification of Yemen, my father’s country. That was in 1992. I went with a tour group of 22 people that met with government leaders: presidential, parliamentary, vice president, news media. Today, Yemen is in such disarray that famine is widespread. The bombing from Saudi Arabians with the armaments provided by Washington has been nothing but criminal. And I ask my extended family there how they are doing. They live in the rural areas, which is distant from the big cities which takes a lot of the brunt of what is going on by the Saudi bombardment using white phosphorous cluster bombs, things deemed illegal by international law. I am very distraught about what is going on in Yemen. The children are dying from famine, lack of food, lack of medicine and lack of water.
I am very distraught about the refugee problem in Syria that seems to be an issue with regard to the Trump followers. Waterford [Township] just recently voted not to allow Syrian refugees in their city. I am very active on Facebook and Dearborn Patch. I do write a lot of letters to the editor. Many of them get printed. Just recently on Facebook I made the point that if these communities do not want refugees to come to their communities, then they should be calling their representatives in congress and Washington and tell them to stop the military adventurism in the Middle East that is causing this refugee problem. Go to the source of why these refugees are running from this chaotic craziness that is going on. Going back, how did we respond? My dad was very in tuned and very frustrated by the events. And likewise, I was as well. My mom not really. She was working hard to make ends meet for the family. She was a hard-working woman. Both my dad and her were very hardworking people. My mom worked as a waitress for most of her life, bringing money home for her family. She was not as interested as my father and myself were in what was happening in ’67. And from that point on even.
AA: Do you remember how the larger Arab community responded to this event?
JB: Yes. There was always this understanding because of close contact. You know, the family is not that far away even though they are on the other side of the world. And that’s one of the lovely, wonderful things about the Arab American and Muslim community, close knit. I remember my dad sending over a large sum of money back home to his village and they sent him back a little note of what they did with the money in terms of buying livestock and increasing the water infrastructure in the village. So, you’ve always had this strong connection, it still is today. And it’s become even more profound today because when I was an activist in the 1980’s, our community was little merchants and store owners.
One of the things we really promoted back then is our role was to groom a new leadership, young leadership. You’re one of them. To take the place. I am so proud that this is what I see today. We’ve got young people in all of the professions: pharmacology, medicine, engineering, journalism. This is the thing that we looked at and worked for. And because we had this real professional group in place, it has created a larger input in terms of events going on in the Middle East. There are a lot of organizations that take on the craziness that we see going on in the Middle East. We didn’t have that kind of thing. It was pretty individualized within the family structure- to make comments, to have opinions about the events in the ‘67 during the aftermath about during the Arab oil embargo. So, much more involvement today in our community and in very constructive ways. I have to tell you really, the backlash of 9/11 would have been much more profound against the Arab American and Muslim community had it not been for Arab American organizations, for Imams of the Mosques, that created a networking arrangement, building bridges that brought greater understanding. That really dampened down a potential for backlash against our community. Particularly this area because—we still have very bad things that still happen to small communities in the east coast and west coast where women would be spat on and physically abused after 9/11. That type of thing. Which is repulsive. But had it not been for all the work of Arab American organizations and leaders in religious area, during the time period after, I would say notably the Arab Oil Embargo in the 1980s, we would have suffered a much severe backlash against our community. Much severe. So, young people like you, you get the baton now. You are our leaders for tomorrow. You’re going to help clean up some of the mess my generation helped create.
AA: I just want to touch up on that coverage back in ‘67. Do you remember any particular moments or memories of how Arabs were displayed in the media during that time?
JB: Jack Shaheen. He’s a professor out of University of Southern Illinois, wrote a book, the TV Arab. I met him. I love the man. He’s a good person. The portrayal of Arabs in mass media, the Hollywood entertainment industry has been very negative for a long time. And not without purpose and by design. What I always draw comparison to is that some of the same portrayals of the typical Arab face—the long hook nose, the bulging eyes. These were a lot of the same kind of portrayals of Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The sad thing about it, these are the same things perpetuated by Zionist Jews in this country who have forgotten, basically forgotten where the hell they came from with regard to the same kinds of persecution and projected stigmas. Like the point I made earlier from the movie with my dad asking, “Dad, why are the Arabs always the bad guys in these movies?” That was the kind of thing we were exposed to. Blazing Saddles. It was a parody of the Hollywood industry. And if you remember in that sequence, all the bad guys that were lined up: Arabs in Arab dress, Native Americans, they had Nazis in uniforms. They had all these typical bad guys that Hollywood portrays. All the bad guys are going to attack this town and straighten it out. It was a parody. It was criticism of Hollywood and what Hollywood has done to mold the perception and perspective of the general American population with regard to the Arabs in general in the Middle East and by extension, the Arab Americans here on the home ground.
This is something that should be mentioned too; the point that Arab Americans made contributions to various candidates during the election time. Hart was one of the prominent candidates and there were other candidates like him too- the Kennedys were too. Prominent Arab Americans would send contributions and they would have those contributions sent back to them saying, “We don’t want to get involved in the Middle East situation.” I made this point on this interview with the Dearborn Heights TV. The Arab American community is not a single-issue oriented community. We were not only concerned with what was going on in the Middle East related to our family by extensions, we were concerned as a community about education in this country, about medical issues in this country, about transportation issues, about job opportunities. We are not single-issue oriented; we never have been. And one of the big things the Jewish community has been criticized for within their own community, is that they have been too single-issue minded with regard to the interest of Israel. But you could see the dynamic playing.
There was this whole picture and it was a conservative one and by design, within print media and within the Hollywood industry, to degrade Arabs in general and Arab Americans by proxy and for the purpose that the Zionists felt threatened by us gaining a voice to make level ground, political ground in this country. And that’s what they were worried about and that’s why they projected this image of disparagement towards Arabs in general and Arab Americans entirely. So, uphill fight. Uphill fight.
AA: Is there anything you feel we haven’t discussed or should be added to the interview?
JB: Let’s see. I just touched on it. And one of the joys for me—it was always talked about. We always got voter registration and we always did voter information. We always promoted knowledge for people that ran for our community who ran for political office. But we always talked and it was never ending, about the need to groom new leadership within our community. And it makes me very, very proud that people like you—and that is the asset in the Arab American community—education. Our families, my family—I was the first to graduate from a college or university. They provided, my mom and dad, seventh and sixth grade education, they provided all the resources I needed to get where I did in graduating—like your parents have done for you and your family. So, it makes me proud. I was at a function the other night, AAPAC, dinner, rewards, I am a member of the League of Women Voters and they recognize the work they do in the community. You know, we go into the high schools every spring in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, all the high school, and register seniors before they graduate in June. I had a few students I remember as young people on the street. One lady came up, she’s a teacher at Lawrence Tech University, she’s a consultant, she has her own business, with the old background. I told her, I said, “You make me proud and the very things we look for to accomplish in our society and our community and our group”, and it’s come to fruition. And its people like you, I love it. That’s the big joy for me in this life. The new passing the baton in terms of leadership. And that’s a qualified leadership. Like I said, when we first got started, most of our community was small merchants. Now it’s a whole different perspective.
AA: Well thank you Mr. Borrajo for sitting with me today and having this interview.
JB: Thank you for having me and I hope it has been helpful.
Born in 1937 and raised on the west side of Detroit, Joann Castle is a retired healthcare professional and former labor and community activist. As part of a radical Catholic network challenged by the civil rights struggle, she and her first husband moved from Taylor Township back to Detroit in early 1967 to provide charitable services in the area surrounding Blessed Sacrament Cathedral as well as to raise their children in a diverse environment. She took in several foster children. After the 1967 civil disturbance she cofounded Hourglass and later helped to create a group named Control, Conflict, and Change. When the movement died down, she and her second husband Mike Hamlin, co-founder of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, focused on serving people through other avenues in the community.
WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel. It is December 16, 2015. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. And this is the interview of Joann Castle. Thank you very much for sitting down with me today, Joann.
JC: Thank you for having me.
WW: You’re more than welcome. My pleasure. Can you first tell me where and when you were born?
JC: I was born in Detroit, Michigan, in May of 1937.
WW: Where did you grow up?
JC: In Detroit. I lived in Detroit until I got married in 1957. We moved briefly to Taylor Township because we needed to find an affordable house for our growing family, then we moved back to Detroit.
WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?
JC: When I was born we lived on Larchmont near Grand River and West Grand Boulevard. I lived there with my mother and then we moved to Wisconsin Street, where I spent my preschool years with my dad’s family. Once I started school we lived on Meyers Road, between Schoolcraft and Davison. When I was in seventh grade, we moved farther west, near Southfield and Joy Road. So all those years, I was in the city.
WW: Very nice. What did your parents do for a living?
JC: Well, my mother was a housewife. She never worked outside the home until after I was married. My father was a clerk at Chrysler Corporation, until after the war, at which time he started selling cars. He loved cars, and he sold cars until he retired.
WW: And who did you marry in 1957?
JC: I married Don Castle, who was also from Detroit. He was in school at GM Tech, on track to become a manager at the Ternstedt Plant, which is in southwest Detroit.
WW: And what prompted you—you said you were expecting children—so why did you move to Taylor?
JC: Because we needed a house. And Don found a house that was foreclosed on, that we could move into without putting any money down. We didn’t have much money and we were having a child that year, so we needed some space. We just walked in and start making payments. No approval necessary. We stayed there, probably seven years. We birthed six children while we were in that house.
And by that time, the civil rights movement was taking some shape. We had a priest at our parish who you’ve probably heard of, Father Bill Cunningham. Father went to march at Selma, and he walked across the bridge with Martin Luther King on that second attempt to cross the Edmond Pettis Bridge. He gave a sermon about it the following Sunday. I remember him holding up this picture in Time magazine that showed him and his friend, Father Berg in the group on the bridge. He gave a stirring sermon on why Catholics needed to be witnesses for Christ, and that we needed to live and represent our beliefs.
This was also the period of Pope John XXIII, who—very much like Pope Francis today—encouraged people to get involved in society and seek more just humanity. So, we got involved in working with Father Cunningham, beginning with mentoring college students at Eastern Michigan University.
Fr. Cunningham was an activist. He developed a program where Catholics from the suburbs—Taylor Township was a suburb—that encouraged whites from the suburbs and blacks from the city to pair up and get to know each other. He believed that in getting to know each other, we could overcome some of the antagonistic beliefs that were being expressed at the time. Our family was paired up with a black family in the city who lived close to the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral. They invited us to come and spend time with them.
Ultimately, through these activities and what was going on in the broader environment— Emmitt Till, Little Rock, the Sit-ins, Martin Luther King, Birmingham, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Malcolm X—a group of radical Catholic families and Catholic clerics came together to discuss what could be done in the Detroit area to bring people together. And it was during those conversations that I decided I wanted my children to be exposed to what I would call the “real world” and have them grow up in the city.
WW: Was the group integrated? Or was it—
JC: [Speaking at same time] No, not at that time. But what happened—I don’t know if you are familiar with Eleanor Josaitis, who worked with Father Cunningham in starting Focus Hope—Eleanor was a neighbor of mine in Taylor, and as our efforts began to take shape, she and her husband put money down on a house near the Catholic Cathedral. Her family planned to move to Detroit so that she could work on Focus Hope with Father Cunningham. But it happened that their family’s reaction was so bad—her mother expressed that she was going to take her children away if they actually made this move—and her father’s business partner, who was his brother, said that he would put him out of the business if they moved. So here they had put money down on a house and they were going to lose that money if they didn’t move.
We were spending a lot of time in the city. In Taylor, we felt isolated from meaningful activity so we expressed that we would like to buy the home that the Josaitis’s were losing. A priest who heard us mention this offered to loan us the money if we wanted to move. The whole purpose of the move was to be in the city and advocate for making things better. We took the money from Father Berg, and bought the house.
WW: What year was that?
JC: That would have been early ’67 because we moved in near the end of May. We got to know our neighbors, who were all very welcoming to us. This was a big old house in the Boston-Edison neighborhood—it was almost 100 years old. In those few blocks in Boston-Edison there were a handful of white families that stayed even though white flight was underway, but the surrounding area was totally black. We made adjustments to life in the surrounding area and put our children in the parish school that was primarily black—with white nuns as teachers. It was a new cultural experience for all of us but my husband and I agreed that it was important for the children to experience other people and to understand that there were other aspects to the world.
We had moved from a 900 square foot house into this three-story hulk of a home where we planned to continue our community work. Within a couple of weeks, I took in three extra children when a friend of mine died and I kept them for a month or so. Others would come.
WW: What did you and your husband do for a living at the time?
JC: I was a housewife and he was working at General Motors at the Tech Center. So—I had six children and the oldest one was seven, something like that— I was pretty busy but I was home all the time. It was intended that the new house would be a place where people could come when they needed something—when they needed food or shelter. We knew the priests at the cathedral, so we had a lot of coming and going. Sometimes people would knock on the parish door and ask for help and they would send them to us.
WW: Where were you when you first heard about what was happening on July 23, and how did you find out about what was going on?
JC: Well, we were at home. It was a Sunday, and we had visitors. A woman that I had known from high school, she and her husband were moving out of the city. They had just sold their home on the near east side because they felt unsafe and they were going out west. They were going to spend the night with us. All our children were in the back yard playing, and all of a sudden they started squealing. They were all excited. I went to the back door to see what was going on, and there were bits of paper falling from the air which the children were trying to catch. To the west, I could see that the whole sky was black, and I could smell smoke. So, I called the children in and tried to get through dinner.
It got dark, and we still really didn’t know what was going on. My husband went out and turned the car around in the driveway in case we needed to leave quickly. By then we could hear the sirens. My friend’s husband was totally freaked out. He was standing—we had this big kitchen window that opened out—and he started shouting racial slurs out the window. I had to calm him down. Then, I went up and put the kids to bed and tried to reassure them that we were all together and they were not to worry. We did sleep, but before we went to sleep the gunshots started—we could hear them. When we woke up in the morning, our friends and their kids were gone. They must have left in the middle of the night. I never heard from them again.
By then—it would have been by Monday morning—we had a pretty clear idea of what was going on. Then we had a priest from our parish in the suburbs knock on the door. I think it was Monday. And he said there was all this looting going on he had an assignment of going to people’s homes when they requested help. People needed things: they needed milk; they needed diapers; they needed all the essential things. The assignment he had been given was to go to people’s houses and confirm that they actually needed these things. And then he would facilitate the distribution. He asked if he could stay at our house that week so he’d be close and he could go back and forth to the food distribution center.
I think it was the next day—we were listening to the radio, and the governor had said that he was sending troops, but we had already heard them come. The tanks came rumbling in the night. One was parked on the lawn of the house next door to us. We had no clue what was going to happen or how it was going to get resolved. We were hearing about the deaths and the sniping.
We had another friend come through, a priest who was stationed in St. Clair Shores, Father Moloney. He was trying to reach his family’s home, which was on Dexter Boulevard, right in the middle of what was going on. But because of the burning fires and police barricades, he couldn’t get close so he came to our house. He slept in the day and at night he and a friend would go to the fire station to assist the firemen. I believed they helped cook at the fire station. So we had a few people around.
And some of our neighbors—a gentleman from across the street, Phil Gordon, who worked with the NAACP—he and his brother, Lincoln, lived there. Phil had gone over to Twelfth Street to see if he could assist in a resolution. He told us, the police were teasing him asking, what was he doing on the outside of the barriers, they need him on the inside to deal with some of the youth that were out of control. Throughout these days, Phil was one of our major points of information. We’d meet with him and the police would come and tell us that we couldn’t be outside congregating. And so we’d wait until they were gone and then we connected. We were trying to keep up from Phil’s inside point of view what kind of danger we were in. There was an article in the Free Press—or maybe it was the News—that indicated that blacks were going to attack the homes on Boston Boulevard, and we were in one of in those homes.
And so Don and a man from a white family down the street decided that the women and the children had to leave. Get out of there now! And his wife and I went to Taylor with nine children to stay in the house of somebody that was on vacation. Then, we both decided it made no sense to be running away. We were creating problems for the kids—we were making them think that they should be afraid. So we turned around and came back. We were warned that we were going to be targets of blacks on the freeway, and they wouldn’t let us back in—but the freeways were deserted. There was no threat to our coming back.
We talked with neighbors about things that they had seen. We were sharing information. They told me that the looting was not just by blacks that it was blacks and whites together. And over time talking with Phil and our neighbors, we could see that it wasn’t what I would call a race riot. Black folks were mad about how they were being treated. They weren’t going to take it anymore. And later, when I spent some time reading up on these analyses of what really happened, I could understand people—with the urban renewal going on; the lack of options for places to live, people were getting pushed into substandard housing; there was hardly any grocery stores; they had no transportation; they had no jobs—and they were pissed. And the police treated them so badly, which I saw a number of times when I lived in the city. And they just exploded. And so I agree that it was a rebellion. We as a society haven’t figured out how to deal with these things, and we need to.
WW: How did what happened in 1967 affect your view on your charitable work? Did it change the way you wanted to approach your charitable work, or did it just reinforce what you believed that needed to be done?
JC: Well, it reinforced that there was a role for us to play. The first thing that happened afterwards is one of the priests that I knew brought me a child who was homeless after her mother had a mental health breakdown in the middle of the disturbance. Someone took the child to the nuns in a nearby convent and they kept her a couple weeks and then decided they couldn’t continue to take care of her. The priest brought her to me. I went to Catholic Social Services and got a foster care license so I could keep her. Then, there was another young woman, a teenager who had run away from a halfway house where she was being ill-treated and we were able to take her as well. So that became part of my life, taking in these foster children.
The Catholic Church played a reluctant role in the aftermath of the rebellion. The archbishop was being pressured to do something to make a difference for people who were very needy. My husband and I teamed up with a seminarian that we had met at one of Father Bill Cunningham’s retreats. We started this program called Hourglass. And the idea was to lobby—that’s the best word I can think of—to lobby the archbishop to do something. We received support from a network of radical Catholics who were sympathetic to the needs of disenfranchised people and their anger about their oppression. We decided to have a meeting to see if we could get enough people together to do something meaningful and we formed this organization called Hourglass.
Hourglass wanted the Catholic Church to turn over their boarded up properties abandoned by white flight to the black community for recreation centers for young people or for educational programs or services that the community needed. We had the first meeting about this idea at our house. And that would have been in the fall of ’67, shortly after the civil uprising. More than a hundred people showed up, these were white people. It was just amazing, they all wanted to do something.
Catholics across the Detroit Area donated more than a million and a half dollars to the Archdiocesan Development Fund for alleviation of conditions that caused the rebellion. The Archbishop was looking for proposals to fund.
By spring of ‘68, Hourglass connected with Sheila Murphy from the Catholic Worker. Sheila grew up in a Catholic Worker house She was young and talented. At the time, she was a student at Wayne State. Because her parents had been active with the Catholic Worker for all of these years, she had a lot of connections in the community to people in the city administration and to higher-ups in different places. And she hooked us up with a black youth group on the East Side, under, Frank Ditto.
We had our first demonstration in May of ’68. We called it ‘a Witness’ in support of the concept of black self-determination. It was small, maybe 60-75 people, blacks and whites together in support of the concept of black self-determination. Then, we put together a proposal for funding our idea of community centers for black youth and submitted it for funding consideration by the Archdiocesan Development Fund. As a first step, the Hourglass Board presented the proposal to Bishop Gumbleton who came to our house to say how pleased he was with our proposal and he recommended it to the Archbishop.
Frank Ditto worked with young people over on Kercheval on the east side where he was training them to be community leaders. They were looking for facilities where they could expand their program. With the Archbishop’s approval we chose a church in Ditto’s area that we wanted to turn over to the black community for his program. We targeted a parish gutted by white flight with only a handful of white members left and a lot of unused space. But when people from Hourglass and representatives of Frank Ditto’s group went to meet with the parishioners, they created such a ruckus about young blacks using their church facilities that nobody could even present the proposal. So that was the kind of situation we were working in. Our proposal was abandoned by the Archdiocese but ultimately Frank Ditto’s efforts were funded by New Detroit.
WW: In the early 1970s you were you were the chairwoman of Control, Conflict, and Change?
JC: Yes.
WW: Can you speak to that a little bit?
JC: This was a book club. And it came about—I have to tell you a couple of things to get to that.
WW: Okay.
JC: After I got divorced, I was working with a seminarian Tony Locricchio, who was a partner in the Hourglass effort. Tony discovered mismanagement of funds distributed to Detroit by the Office of Economic Opportunity—the OEO—which was the federal program that funded President Johnson’s War on Poverty. In Detroit, these programs were administered by the Catholic Archdiocese. A lot of money had been misspent which resulted in the closure of some community programs. For instance, there were people on the payroll that didn’t work on the programs—almost twice as many people on the payroll than reported. It was a really big deal. And I got involved in that by trying to prove that this was true. And that’s where I ended up in a confrontation with the Archbishop Dearden.
WW: What year was that?
JC: I believe that was 1968. After we discovered this scandal and the Church got away scot-free, Tony and I gave the information to three leaders of the Black Manifesto group who were exposing the role of Christian Churches and Jewish Synagogues in the oppression of blacks. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Black Manifesto, it was based upon reparations—it was during the Black Power movement—and based upon the theory that reparations were due to black people for the church’s complicity in slavery.
WW: Oh, yeah.
JC: So, after our meeting with the Manifesto group, I kept running into one of the leaders of that program. We talked a lot about what needed to be done in Detroit and we became good friends. He was in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. They were looking for a group of whites to work with them, and to give them access in different kinds of ways to promote their ideology and to protect the work that they were doing. He initiated the idea and promoted the organization of the Motor City Labor League to bring the white left together. Sheila Murphy was the head of MCLL. Frank Joyce, from People Against Racism, worked with her. I was an incorporating officer of the Ad-Hoc Action Group a group working against police brutality that preceded the Motor City Labor League and then a member of MCLL.
WW: What was the name of the gentleman that you met, one of the leaders?
JC: Michael Hamlin. Yes, and five years later, I married him. As we got to know each other we started talking about effective ways to build a base of support for the League, to educate white intellectuals and workers and to raise consciousness, to introduce a working class perspective to the community. This would be a book club where blacks and whites would come together, read books, and we’d have the book author or a presenter on a related topic and draw people together for discussions. And that was how the Control, Conflict, and Change Book Club started in—I think it was December ’70, if I remember correctly.
JC: Okay. So Mike and I put together this program, and we started with the list of Hourglass people and 350 people showed up to the first meeting. It was just phenomenal. Ultimately around 700 people participated in this book club. People in this city wanted to make a difference, they really did. I love this city. So we carried on that program. I did it out of my house. The speakers a lot of times stayed at my house. We had to move the book discussion meetings from the Highland Park church—because it was too small—down to Central Methodist on Grand Circus Park.
We trained our table discussion leaders before the meetings to manage group discussion and to promote the teaching points we wanted to emphasize. By the second year of this program, we were experiencing—well, we knew that our activities were being monitored. We knew some of our phones were bugged and we had infiltrators working on the inside. We had assigned seats for the discussions and we had a special table where we put disruptive people. In some of the police reports they complained about the seating arrangements, they couldn’t circulate.
So, then about a year and a half, or a little bit more, into the program, I’m still doing it out of my house, I was still taking care of my six kids, and it was getting overwhelming, and people were eating my food when they were there for long meetings. So it already pretty tense. And then one night we had a meeting at Sheila’s apartment, with some people from the League and people from MCLL. And at that meeting they discussed that Ken Cockrel was going to run for office, and that MCLL was going to support him.
Well, we had spent—I mean, how many years talking about change coming from the bottom up—and I had the impression that we were being asked to support some goals that were not in line with the purpose of the organization. So that’s where the breakdown started. And I ended up asking for leave because I was exhausted, I couldn’t think my way through this. And I didn’t feel I had the power or the support to do anything about it. But ultimately I wrote a paper trying to explain my position. I asked people to find another coordinator for the book club, and I resigned from the general staff. And I just had to pull in and take care of my kids.
WW: You pulled out of the general staff of CCC or—
JC: No, MCLL. Well actually both. At the time, CCC was under the MCLL umbrella.
WW: Okay.
JC: They appointed someone to take over the book club, and I was going to train them. And then I wrote this position paper which leaked. And they put me out. Actually I asked for leave and they said no. And it just broke me, the whole thing.
So anyway, then Jim Forman—I don’t know if you saw that in the archive file —Jim Forman, who was from SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], came to town. Jim had been a leader in SNCC. He’s the one who wrote the Black Manifesto. And he came to Detroit, as did many during those years. Many, many people moved to Detroit, because many believed that the revolution was going to start here. Jim came to Detroit to join the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The League had plans to develop into a national organization called the Black Workers Congress.
WW: Um-hm. I have a note on that. I don’t know where it is.
JC: It might be, if you did see it, about the “Black Economic Development Conference”.
WW: And the Black Workers Congress grew out of the Pan-African Congress, right?
JC: I don’t think so. There was this meeting, and they called it “BEDC”—the Black Economic Development Conference. And that’s where the Manifesto started. The Manifesto was written to raise money for the development of a national organization. The Black Workers Congress was supposed to pull together the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and their affiliates across the country. My husband Mike was to be the chairman of that Black Workers Congress. But there was so much chaos politically among the Left at that point, and the Black Workers Congress never really got off the ground. I know they had one large convention in Gary, Indiana, Atlanta and some other locations. But the left was splintering. During these years, Mike and I had a child. We’ve been married 41 years now.
WW: What year did you get married?
JC: 1975.
So, the League split, and MCLL split. Some of the people went into the Communist Labor Party. and some of them went into the Congress. And then everything was—the whole Left movement and the Black Power movement—it was all falling apart, everywhere. And we had to reorganize our lives. So I went to work at a hospital, Metropolitan Hospital, which was a UAW hospital—two hospitals and eight health centers. And Mike became a social worker. After he got his degree, I went back to school and got a Masters in medical anthropology. So, I worked in health care advocacy for 27 years.
WW: That’s a fantastic life story! What are your thoughts—you lived in the city ever since, correct?
JC: Yes. Well, no.
WW: No?
JC: We left the Boston house in 1985, I think. All my children had left except Mike’s and my small child. The neighborhood was so bad, and I was starting to travel for my job, and we just couldn’t let our child come back and forth from school by himself. So we moved out to Bloomfield Township for a few years, until he finished school, and then we came back.
WW: Okay. And you’ve lived here ever since?
JC: Yes.
WW: What are your thoughts on the way the city has grown and changed since your work in the 1970s? That is a very big question, I am sorry.
JC: It’s still bad in the neighborhoods. Really bad. I mean, we’re creating a situation where we can bring people downtown—it’s true that we need the tax base. And it’s exciting to see people on the street again, and to see Midtown, but that’s not helping people in some of our neighborhoods. And it’s tough. It’s tough. We are seeing the same old problems with housing, the same problems with lack of employment, essential services and fear of crime. I think Mayor Duggan is doing a good job under the circumstances but we’ve got a long way to go. There is progress in some neighborhoods for instance, Grace Boggs’s area out there on the East Side, where young people are involved. There are other communities that I’m not as familiar with but I meet people in different places who tell their stories. .
I think the ideal of self-sustaining and entrepreneurship is good for Detroit but it’s limited. People in Detroit are resilient, and bad as things are they still love their city. I don’t know where it’s going now.
WW: You positive? You—
JC: I’m always positive. I think we have to struggle; we have to be active, because if you don’t it just gets worse. I’ve convinced myself that life is about struggle. Of course, this is easy for me to say because I’m in a life where I have a lot of opportunity. I can see the difference opportunity makes and I feel an obligation to a play a role in helping others. We need to keep working. We need to support each other. Projects like what you’re doing here are hopeful. The university and the medical groups getting together is useful. We need capital to solve some of our problems, but whether Gilbert is the answer—or other Gilberts like Ilitch—we might end up like Paris, with all the have-nots pushed out into the suburbs and find ourselves in the same situation that we were in originally. The churches need to be more active. In the Seventies, the churches—including and maybe primarily the black churches—were doing a lot. We need neighborhood organizing from the ground up and good people to run for office. Hopefully there will be opportunities in Detroit for young people today, I think they’re looking, and you can’t blame them, they’re looking for stability. They are looking to make a buck and build some skills. And I don’t see the number of young people in community work that there were back in my time. It’s necessary; I hope they can be inspired to give back to their communities.
WW: Well, thank you so much for sitting down with me, I greatly appreciate it!
JC: I appreciate the opportunity.
**[INITIALS OF INTERVIEWEE:] JP
[INTIALS OF INTERVIEWER:] LW
[REPEAT INITIALS EACH TIME EACH PERSON SPEAKS]
LW: Today is August 14, 2015. This is the interview of Jerome Pikulinski by Lily Wilson. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project and the Detroit Historical Society. Jerome, can you start by telling us when and where you were born?
JP: I was born here in Detroit, Michigan in 1938 -- born in a house, not a hospital.
LW: In July of 1967, where were you living, specifically what neighborhood?
JP: I was, at that time, in Livonia, Michigan.
LW: What were you doing for work then?
JP: At that time I was an employee of the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, Wayne State, University of Michigan. I was deployed as a contract training director for the city of Detroit’s War of Poverty. I was based on the Wayne State University campus and developed a core training staff there to later carry out the mission.
LW: What was your day-to-day job like during that time?
JP: Well, I had an all minority staff except for one lady, a white lady. I had to train people to be trainers. I had all the resources of Wayne State University, the various departments, to deal in general semantics, to deal in the perception laboratory, to deal in the video training facility. I had done some work earlier with Michigan Bell Telephone. They had asked us to work with their white staff who were having difficulty training new minority members. I put together a program that changed the perceptions and attitudes of trainers. It gave me some credibility in behavioral terms and on working on this complex problem. We also involved community people in the sensory reactor element. We used to use the term “training up.” It was an opportunity for people in the community to speak to others about what they felt, what they thought what was needed in the way of training and the like.
LW: So how did you go about changing the perceptions of the people you were training to work with minorities?
JP: Well, the first thing we did is have regular meetings with them --- personal, it was more like let’s have lunch, let’s have somebody be a speaker, let’s plan an event. But we had people on campus people who were experts on general semantics. So we played games with them about what do things mean and what are the different meanings of things, how do we give expressions to our feelings, how do our feelings affect how we name things. Then we also had on campus a person who had access to a laboratory where again it is perception. You know this room with the false dimensions and it is the rotating, wobbling figure that shows we are conditioned to perspective since birth. We ran them through all those kinds of things and we were really raising doubts in them about “what do you know?’ We weren’t telling them anything, we were asking them how do you know, can you be sure, how do you feel about what you’re doing. The graduation program, we went into the television facility and we fed them back images of themselves responding to various teaching situations. We got a general recognition on the part of the people that, “my God, we’ve got to look at this differently” and they were looking at it differently. Well, we didn’t have any long term follow up but it was perceived to have been a success.
LW: This would have been white people that you were working with?
JP: Yes. Ladies.
LW: All white women?
JP: All white women.
LW: You were attempting to – what was the end result, what was the end goal of the project?
JP: We wanted them to accept the differences that they were experiencing with the new black candidates things which they had not experienced before with the previous white people they had trained.
LW: What year did you begin that project?
JP: That was done about the spring of ‘66.
LW: From your perspective, what was the biggest challenge between the white and black communities in Detroit right at that time in 1966?
JP: I think Detroit was reacting to the immigration (laughs) migration of so many people from the south who were coming in and the statistics were explosive and phenomenal. There were other problems but this was a new experience for Detroit to have this migration. In the literature today there are many analyses of how migrations affect culture and give rise to conflict.
LW: So you felt that what later happened what happened in July of 1967, do you think that was also –
JP: You know, I was very much surprised and the reason I was surprised --- coming out of Wayne State University and the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations I thought we all had a pretty good handle as to what was going on. I mean, the Community Action Program was in place and we really had guys like Ron Haughton who had negotiated in California under Pat Brown the Cesar Chavez Protests. Here we had in our own community an outstanding leader in terms of racial economic issues and I think we were really surprised. I don’t think we expected that. I will say this, though – these are now only commentaries. One of the things that was of concern as we look back on this was the political decision making with respect to the use of force in conflict resolution, an optimism that somehow this would work itself out and it did not work itself out. It was inflammatory and explosive. That was one part of the picture. The other thing that we learned later is that groups like SLCL, SNCC, Core, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress on Racial Equality. Later, when I was involved in the spring of 1967, there were people who asked me to help them identify which of these groups might be operating in Detroit. This is a problem we have in managing what would ordinarily be very difficult relations with a minority group, whether it’s a black community or a Latino community you add the element of political activists you have an explosive situation. You do not have a rational alternative. You like to believe you could compromise but there isn’t any end state; it’s an ongoing conflict. Those groups have an investment in a staff point of view and a charter point of view in continuing their activities.
LW: Tell me a bit about those groups and your knowledge of them.
JP: Much later I came to understand that but early in the spring to help identify at least one of those groups. I don’t recall which it was because some people went to an organizing meeting of one of these groups and identified their work.
LW: What were they doing?
JP: Well, community meetings were very difficult -- this even goes into ’66 into ’67. There would be public meetings when government officials tried to explain things to people and there were activists who would take the stage and take the microphone. It was very conflict-oriented, so I don’t know what more can be said about this but the tactics that these groups employed were violence – not full force, but they were inclined to use violence.
LW: These were predominantly black or white groups?
JP: No, these were black groups.
LW: So, the Southern Christian Leadership, you said?
JP: Southern Christian Leadership Conference, I think – SCLC.
LW: Student Nonviolent --
JP: Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress on Racial Equality.
LW: Those were actually groups of black people in this area in Detroit who actually did use some form of violence to make their case.
JP: You know, the interesting thing is I think they were promoting this. It’s just like Al-Qaeda. There is a core management group that trains the next cadre to go out and shed blood, so to speak – to engage in conflict. So it’s very hard to say that those groups themselves were exercising violent techniques but they were encouraging it and feeding it. It’s like what we see in Ferguson – In Arlington, Texas we have a problem right now, in fact I’m going to meet our police chief at the end of this month. This black youth problem is very difficult. It’s a sense that youth is hard to deal with and minority youth is even harder to deal with. Where drugs and alcohol and the like come in to play it can be even more complex. We have a situation in Arlington, Texas where we had a guy who must have been under the influence of drugs running into a Buick dealership and jumping on cars, driving his car through a gate, finally driving his car into a dealership. But the people who are going to look at this, they discount all that. “Black Lives are Very Important.” So, no matter what, you never shoot anybody. From the point of view of law enforcement and the like -- just like these trainers, for example. We got a problem that we need to train police officers in psychiatric concepts. That’s one of the things I’m going to talk to the police chief about in Arlington, Texas. I’ve run for office in Arlington many times so that was one of my planks the last time around, which was to train a new special class of police officer. They said, “Well, we have people who are negotiators.” I said, “No, not negotiators. People who understand how a body of energy, a person, translates in anger, aggression, hostility and all these things and how you can possibly diffuse some of that.” The problem of the people who carry out violence is a spectrum. It’s anything from people who are promoting it to people who are likely candidates among which or among whom violence can be encouraged.
LW: Did you feel that groups that were condoning violence were condoning or encouraging violence in the ‘60s, do you think that was a major challenge against the type of work that people like yourself was doing to try to break down some racial barriers? Or what do you think the biggest challenge was if not that?
JP: This really started with the strategies that civil rights groups were using in the South to provoke violence. It’s the whole thing of “I’m innocent. I didn’t do anything. But you came and beat me on the head.” But of you march down a Southern street it’s like yelling “Fire” in a theater. Culturally, these people who organize this … there’s a legend that LBJ suggested to some of these black leaders that he needed something like what was taking place in the South to carry out a civil rights legislative program. It really gets to be hairy.
LW: So, in terms of violent activity, you think that some of that, that the precedent for that was set down South?
JP: I really do. I think that was the staging area for that. Because there were people who fled the South. They brought with them their attitudes and hostility.
LW: I want to go back to the project you worked on back in 1966 in the spring.
JP: We had a staff of about … there were four key trainers and I had 4-8 of these community people. That lent credibility to what we were doing. In race relations you always get this thing of “You don’t know what we’re doing. You’re trying to teach us and tell us what to do. We will teach you.” That’s a “training up” kind of concept. I had this group and I had a house on the Wayne State Campus. We would hold regular meetings and sessions and I would have people that were faculty from Wayne State come over as my resource people. So some of the same sorts of things that we did with the Michigan Bell trainers we tried on this group. We really wanted to get their perceptions as clear and clean as we could possibly do it before they went out. In other words, I was in conflict with a number of people at that point because they said I was irrelevant and I was not really promoting change. I was so much of a technician that what I cared about was training a group of people who could go out and work within the community. I jokingly say this was the establishment counterrevolution program that never really succeeded. This is also the period of Vietnam and enclaves and a lot of social experimentation and thinking about culture and its effect and conflict in war. We exposed these people to all these operations. I was in conflict. I had a white woman, a staff member, several people said she was a well known communist in Russia. This is why I don’t put some of this stuff in my resume. I started out doing some doctorate work at the University of Michigan. They didn’t like me. They told me they didn’t like my association with things I had done – you’re not the type of guy we have in the business school. Maybe that’s another discussion. Anyway…
LW: Sorry to interrupt. The Wayne State faculty, were they black? Were they black faculty that came and contributed?
JP: No, they was only one guy – Leonard was his name – a political science guy. One political science guy was always looking in and offering advice and suggestion. He’s the only minority faculty member. These faculty members were all white.
LW: The people you were training and the community members…?
JP: Were all black.
LW: The workers you said were actually going to train were an all white group, majority white women.
JP: No, I was preparing a core black staff to work with the community action centers and groups out in the community. The curriculum was “Culture of Poverty,” the next one was “Communication and Communication Skills.” We even had a communication specialist who had a philosophy that was really neat. She would persuade people that they were not being changed, they didn’t need to change. Their personalities were fine; you are wonderful. She did a great job of bringing people out as communicators. So in the communications thing, we really tried to build confidant communicators. So if we put messages out into the community these people would do it. Now you have to remember there are people around me who are saying “Hey, we need change. We need action! We need political stuff.” Here I am going, “Now wait a minute. I’m training these people to be in effect change agents.” We didn’t use that concept at the time. But I was in great conflict because I was taken on and said that I was irrelevant and I wasn’t doing my job.
LW: Who was saying that?
JP: Primarily my black communist staff member undermining me. Because it was a real issue. The discussion at that time was what role does structure play in our communication and is it just a matter of process. That was one of the things that she was driving home. Here I am structuring. We need to have more handholding meetings. Those are the kinds of things that explode all over the place. They are much harder to manage and they aren’t well directed or easily directed. So actually I had to put together with the help of some of my staff, my secretary, documentation so that I went before a number of administrators who wanted to hang me but they couldn’t hang me because we were doing the job. They want to knock me out of this chair.
LW: With regard to the way you were training the black staff to go out into the community, what were some of the things you found to be more effective in terms of not necessarily training them, but what were some of the things that they could do once they were trained and going out into the community?
JP: We got this far: before you train in the community, you train the community action staff. We actually had first meetings of community action staff. We were training the war on poverty people to think through the problems that they were confronting. We were creating the next level of people. What’s the culture of poverty? It involves aggression, it involves hostility, it involves despair. So even side-by-side you have some of the most heart wrenching problems in society, some of the most vicious kinds of problems that you have to deal with. We wanted to discuss with the staff people that they were working in this environment of a culture of poverty. These are the things they are dealing with. These are the givens, the things we want to change. We really want to move behavior in the direction of constructive ends. We didn’t get that far. Let me go back to my story. This conflict was so great that I overcame the resistance from administrators and the subversive element on my staff. I beat that. The next thing I couldn’t beat was all this sentiment that “this is irrelevant, that this has nothing to do with solving our problems.” I was the victim of a community tribunal. You wouldn’t believe that this would happen in America. This is the problem with collective bargaining and conflict resolution people. They believe they can negotiate the settlement. We might be heading in the wrong direction but we’ve got peace today. Are you with me on this? People with interest in conflict management what they want to do is get the fire down to controllable levels. They don’t expect that they will ever be able to put the fire out.
LW: So what were you being accused of?
JP: I was irrelevant. I was not addressing the problems that the community felt were important. That’s where that stage of the community people became the spokespeople, not the administrators, not the rational people.
LW: So there was resistance to the method of training black community action staff to go out into the community? There was resistance against that?
JP: Yes, in a structured way. What they really wanted was, let’s have more meetings. Let’s have people discussing things. Well, what the hell are we going to do? We’re going to put people out there who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about? We don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re going to be out there as agents of change? What the hell are we doing? I would not buy that. I said we have to know where we’re going and what we’re doing.
LW: Who in particular was resisting this? You don’t have to name names if you don’t want to. But who was resisting this program? It sounds like there was sort of an overhaul of the program.
JP: Well, I’m going to jump ahead and say that the guy that they chose to replace me was Conrad Mallett. I don’t know if you know Conrad. Conrad was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court at one point. My claim to fame was it was under Mallett’s leadership that things in the training program fell apart, the violence and everything erupted. I had frequently said my claim to fame was “the community never rioted while I was there. They were too busy beating me up.” That’s not intended just to be smart. From a collective bargaining point of view, it is necessary – and I still believe this today, whether you are talk about the white community or the black community – once they have a constructive, sound program they have to stay with it. Even at the price of violence you have to do that. Because if you don’t and you agree to a sham or a shambles, which was what happened in Detroit in terms of conflict resolution, that eventually the whole process just went out of control. Now that’s my editorial.
LW: So you think from your perspective that there was a link between the demise of this community action program and rioting that took place in July 1967?
JP: No, I don’t think the community action program … I was the second to the last white guy to be driven out of that program. The last white guy was a Jewish guy. He was head of a youth program. Finally, the community action program was a totally black program. It seemed that to me the white community, including guys like Mayor Cavanagh, were just like backing off. I’m saying that when you’ve got an explosive situation, you don’t back off. Excuse me. I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve gone through formal sensitivity training, combined faculty, University of Michigan, Michigan State psychiatrists and the like all involved in stripping you down and pulling your plug. On the way to authenticity and the like there are many steps, many masks that people wear. The Community Action Program in a more authoritarian regime, we probably would have gone after the activists and the organizers as they do in Turkey and Syria. We democratically minded people don’t like picking off the disruptive activist group.
LW: So the groups more inclined towards violence like you mentioned …
JP: If you prune the trees the crop will come in a whole lot better. As a person, I really wanted this opportunity to speak because subsequent years I’ve gone through many years reflecting back and I don’t put this in my resume. This is part of one of the most significant life experiences that I had as a man 25, 26 years old. I think I didn’t know what I was getting into. In fact, when I took on this responsibility they called my wife in and they told my wife, the two of us together, “Jerry is in a very dangerous position.”
LW: How long were you working for the Community Action Program?
JP: What’s that?
LW: How long were you working for the program?
JP: It was probably from the time we formulated it, all this took place in a six month period. We moved the operation from the Wayne State University campus over to a community action center on West Grand Boulevard. Now during that time my office was broken into here on campus and all my stuff was gone through. Then we moved to the other location and it was broken into and all the films and any of the graphics and things we were doing there it was all disrupted. So I had two break-ins.
LW: Why do you think there was such resistance and such hostility over what was presumably a positive program to get people employed and to give them resources and tools?
JP: It might have been better if we really had the employment objective. The Community Action Center philosophy was more like returning government to the local level and to the people and hearing the people. That’s why I say the Vietnam policy of creating enclaves where in fact there are communities that are peaceful and orderly. That was too high minded. It might have been better to be training them for jobs, which is where it all went. You know, I’m jumping ahead, from that experience I was appointed Deputy Director in the Michigan Department of Labor by Governor Romney. Then I became Governor Romney’s Manpower Planning Staff Director. I went out and tried some statistical techniques in the Muskegon area and got a lot of recognition for a non-political approach to allocating resources. Milliken came in – I was invited to join the governor’s office. I’m not a politician even though I play with all those guys. I don’t make political decisions. I’ve always been a staff guy. My friends in Texas were looking for a guy to put Nixon’s Manpower Revenue Sharing into Dallas-Fort Worth and I was invited by a Democratic governor to come down to Texas. We did set … we got local elected officials to understand that they were responsible for the employment Manpower development training of people in their areas. I set up centers, just like Community Action Centers but they were employment centers, through North Central Texas. I’ve gone a long way to answering the question. Did we have the right objectives in the Community Action Program, could we have done something better? Yeah, I think we could have. We made a mistake. But we should have pruned the bushes, taken out the bad guys.
LW: The bad guys in this case were…
JP: It’s very hard to get these bad guys in our system.
LW: Who were the bad guys, in your opinion?
JP: This is strictly a value judgment. There are no bad guys. Those people who contributed to increased levels of conflict and promoting conflict are the people we need to contain. The reason I hesitate is because I’m not a fascist. I’m not a Nazi. I really do believe in our republic – notice I said “our republic.” We need to pursue the best, fairest most honest policies with respect to how government operates. I think we have failed miserably.
[phone rings]
[recording resumes]
LW: I believe that you were talking about the people who resisted this type of program, this community action plan, the people you felt were sort of the biggest challenge to you implementing this program. We were talking about the people who created conflict.
JP: It’s very hard because I was irrelevant to their doctrine, to their beliefs.
LW: I just want to clarify, we’re talking about groups like the Southern Christian Leadership, the student non-violent youth groups, right? These committees and groups who you felt were using violent tactics …
JP: They were promoting --
LW: They were promoting violence, condoning violence, whereas the community action groups were much more about community outreach -- at least that was the intent.
JP: Community outreach and sharing government. One of the things I did with my budget is I arranged a conference with the University of Michigan with key political leaders, white brothers and black brothers, there were discussions about how single member districts could possible help. I don’t recall clearly whether we had single member districts back then. But one of the offshoots of this community strategy philosophy was to create more awareness about bringing government down to the local level. One of those alternatives is the electoral process and single member districts. That was one of the offshoots of this whole effort – I wish I could recall of their names but they were key guys. One of the guys involved in it became the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Manpower.
LW: I just want to clarify: this was someone who was part of –
JP: At that time he was head of the Office of Economic Opportunity here in Michigan. He was one of the guys who participated in that. I don’t know if you think this way, but you know there are people who operate in fronts – are you familiar with that kind of political logic of fronts?
LW: Explain to me what exactly what you mean.
JP: Well, what it means is there are some guys over here running around yelling, Black Panthers and they have guns and carry clubs. Then we have some other guys that organize marches. Then we have some other guys who are having inflammatory meetings. They go and engage the political process. Then we have some guys that work with the business community, like B’nai B’rith and the like. This then becomes a front; B’nai B’rith benefits from having these guys who carry clubs. To understand how all those organizations spread out and what they do.
[phone rings]
[recording resumes]
You know, I have had so many blessings about experiences. I also worked in Saudi Arabia under – I worked in a kingdom. I was loved by the Saudis. They would have gotten me a Saudi wife and everything. I had to decide whether I was an American and a Christian. Very few men decide that.
LW: I want to wrap up by talking about because we’re just about out of time. I do want to talk about how you think some of the activities and the upheaval that it sounds like you experienced and occurred within the community action program, how you think that may or may not have impacted the events of 1967?
JP: It could have. This was an arena of conflict where they were winning. The control of the community action program as a whole was a victory. Taking the whole, we want it all. So you have this unbounded, unbridled kind of aggression that grows. It’s really hard to say what happens when you are a nice guy. I told you I went to sensitivity training. There’s a time not to be a nice guy. There really is. [People enter the room]. I’m sorry. You see, the ladies in our family are interested. [Introductions made] This has been an exciting discussion.
LW: So, just to sort of wind down. Is there anything else that you remember about Detroit specifically in ’67 or in relation to you work in ’66?
JP: I mentioned I was replaced by Conrad Mallett. He was a favored son of the black community. Eventually he was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court. At the time Conrad was a really nice political guy. I think your questions and comments help me a little bit. We covered a great deal. I’ll tell you what the riots meant to me. What they meant to me was that I went and got my shotgun because of our family store. It was on the west side of Detroit, just up there in Grand River and the like. You could hear the gunshots and the firing. The burning did not necessarily move into our shop at that time, though my uncle was later a victim of a robbery and an aunt was murdered. We experienced that racial conflict. A 15 year old with a 38 special is a very dangerous entity. The climate was such that one time we took arms. We took a shotgun out and maybe like the Koreans – maybe because we’re Polish or something, I don’t know – but like the Koreans in the Los Angeles area we stood on top their stores with shotguns.
LW: So this was something that you participated in during the riots in ’67
JP: Yes. This was happened most recently in Ferguson. People now were about to be victims a third time have armed themselves and were standing by their property and shops.
LW: So what property – you said you were living in Livonia in July of 1967.
JP: But my uncle and aunt had a family store in the west side of Detroit – Campbell Avenue. In fact, I drove through there on the way here because that whole community is just a bunch of empty lots.
LW: What kind of store was it?
JP: It was a grocery store. It was a grocery store in which many members of the family had worked over the years.
LW: What was the name of it?
JP: It was Joe’s market.
LW: It was on Campbell Avenue, you said?
JP: Campbell and Rich.
LW: So, during the rioting in ’67, how was that store affected?
JP: I don’t know how to describe that. The riots affected us as individuals. The business was not affected.
LW: So when you were talking about what the riots meant to you, you got a shotgun and went armed to the family store. So explain that a little more to me.
JP: There’s not much depth to that. That is really a feeling that it is over within a quarter of a mile of where you are, if violence is a quarter of a mile away or less, you are well advised to take action.
LW: Did you ever have to shoot your gun?
JP: What?
LW: Did you ever have to shoot your gun?
JP: No.
LW: So the store was not rioted. Was it near stores that were rioted, that were looted?
JP: I don’t understand.
LW: Was Joe’s Market, the grocery store that your family owned, was it in an area where there was looting and rioting going on?
JP: No. What was true at that time was that all these small grocers on the west side of Detroit were being robbed. Black youth were robbing these stores. That was one of the reasons. That’s where the retail business goes by the board. That’s part of the deterioration of a community. That’s about all I could say about that.
LW: Is there anything else you want to share why we’re still on the record?
(New Interviewer: Noah Levinson): One of your positions – you might have talked about this while I was out of the room -- you worked in you said you were appointed by Governor Romney I believe to head up – I forget.
JP: There were two things: first off Deputy Director in the Michigan Department of Labor.
NL: Yes.
JP: Lansing-based, legislative oversight and some other oversight functions. And then I did some work with Census data and the like. We put together a resource allocation scheme for a given geographical area not political decisions. Not political decisions but decisions with respect to educational requirements, unwed mothers and all. It was very well received. I got a certain amount of recognition. So the governor moved into a role where I was staff planning director. Well, it wasn’t the governor who did it, it was one of his staff guys. It was a black guy who did that – a very fine man, Dave Dunfitt. Was a critical resource -- He’s an example of what you want in the way of a black leader. He later became a controller, budget director for the Manpower Administration in Washington.
NL: Did you work closely with the governor in your role in the state labor department?
JP: Nobody really works that closely – the question is how many governors are there? There are people who exercise influence on decision making. One of the things I did do and am really proud of – I drafted and lobbied with the Farm Bureau an agricultural labor commission board. The reason I did that is that Michigan really had a lot of conflict with respect to the migrant stream. The U.S. Department of Labor was creating issues with respect to housing, child care, education and pretty soon the government’s good intentions stir up the people because they want political support. I figured that the way to settle that down was to create a body within the state where we talked to migrant people and their representatives, farm groups and the like. I lobbied that. Nobody else knew it. I just did it. I did it with the Farm Bureau. When you get the Farm Bureau to agree to something like that it’s no problem. No, Governor Milliken came in, Romney went to HUD. Governor Milliken came in and I was invited to join the Executive Office and to leave Labor. As I mentioned to you earlier, I have always seen myself as a policy program specialist, not a politician. I don’t do much lying. I don’t like it. But ’67 it was just a nightmare. Excuse me, that’s not very analytical; ‘67 was not expected, going back to earlier conversation. That was not supposed to happen. We had a plan. There was a community action program and the federal government was funneling money in. I had the first OEO tactical assistance grant for training in the United States. Detroit was the first such experiment. That’s probably worth noting. Also, when I was interviewed by some people – I don’t know who they were with, Congressional committee, CIA. I had a day long intensive interview with a recorder. I’ve been interviewed that way a couple times. That was the end of my role with the community action program. That’s the last thing I did.
NL: So, with your background being in policy and programming, could you speak to – were there certain policies that didn’t exist or that were in place that you can see in hindsight being key contributors to … oh, okay, cool, I guess we already talked about that.
LW: Do you have anything else with regards to programs that maybe did or did not work?
JP: Well you know, I think that what happened in the country was that the country saw a need for HUD - Housing and Urban Development. The policy framework then moved – you know, the policy part of that had been, “Let’s put expressways in and let’s have urban renewal.” Housing and urban renewal was another whole approach, a political approach, to let’s find some housing for people, let’s have a more humane approach to how we manage central city people.
LW: You also mentioned too had the community action program continued or been re-evaluated that employee or employment driven programming would have---
JP: We did say that, we did cover that in the sense that, were jobs more important, a better incentive, you know? The one thing that is so true, it’s a political reality, there is no one single black person. There is no generic type. We need to understand just as there are these fronts – there are fronts, Black Panthers over here with clubs and the B’nai B’rith kind of thing, businessmen, Jewish leaders working to build good will and then there are other groups around there. There’s a whole spectrum of political approaches to addressing the needs of the black community –There is a whole spectrum, some of them totally led by the black community --the Black Panthers. If you have a Black Panther policy, “White Charlie shouldn’t be voting. We should promote more Black voting. We should have more control. We can decide where we go.” The B’nai Brith kind of thing is “We all need to work together. We need to build cooperation. We all live in the same world.” The black people you meet are spread throughout that spectrum so there are probably four or five different strategies. One of the things that troubles me very much is we lose the good black kids. In fact, when I meet with the police chief I want to talk about gang management. Gang management – well, there’s another whole thing to this period. The student unrest and student demonstrations, that’s a tactic used in civil rights is to get the students all stirred up and angry and demonstrating. It’s a lot easier to do that and we had student demonstrations that were going on in that period of time. I think that really we should have come away from that – and this is where your work is valuable – we should have come away from that with lessons learned. You say, “Well yeah, we did learn something. Jobs are more important than trying to build community good will.” Yes, improving housing and urban development is another building block. But I don’t think that it’s all through. We’re not done with it. We have not solved this racial problem here in the United States. But your work will point to that.
LW: Perhaps. I hope so. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us?
JP: No, I would just say that Dean William Haber, Bill Haber at University of Michigan School of Arts, he was a guy who passed on my employment with the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations. He interviewed me and he said, it was one of his favorite sayings, “If you’ve got the answer, you’re wrong.” The reason your wrong is that it is a process. It’s something that will work out. There is no answer to this. This was Bill Haber’s idea -- just the opposite of who I am and how I am. I really think that Bill Haber may be right but there needs to be people who will bring about structure and take the risks. I told you I paid the price for trying to set some quality standards in the process. No, I don’t have anything more to say. I’m just pleased you guys are doing this study and really would like at some point to be able to learn more about what you have learned so that I can add it to my background. What do you envision in the way of production and the like?
LW: I’m going to take us off the record now. I’d like to thank you while we’re still recording for your time and we can wrap up off the record, okay? But thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
JP: Well, you are quite welcome.
[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 1:00:02]
NL: Today is July 25, 2015. This is the interview of Harriet Saperstein by Noah Levinson. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum on Woodward in Detroit, Michigan. And this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Harriet, could you please start by telling where and when you were born?
HS: I was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1937. January 17 to be exact. And I came to Detroit in 1963 with my husband, who took a job at Wayne State University. We moved into Lafayette Park near downtown Detroit and I have lived there ever since. Luckily, also having lived abroad a number of times.
NL: You've lived in Lafayette park your whole time in Detroit?
HS: Yes. Except for the time I was in London, Stockholm or some other places.
NL: Could you describe what the neighborhood was like during the first years you were living there?
HS: Interestingly enough, because I just did a talk about that last night, we moved to Lafayette Park because I wanted to live in an integrated setting and that was very important. And what you had was a lot of people who were coming there who were new and young. We were renters at the time and for me who came from Brooklyn, New York, I was used to density and renting and even though I really support historic preservation and I’m sorry to see a lot of the stuff that is being torn down in Detroit, I don’t want to be involved in anything that is related to a house. I don’t want to worry about it and I don’t want to mow my law and moving into Lafayette Park I had this community with lots of people and lots of green space and no responsibilities to my house, per say. But I loved the people; there were kids, they were active and there were activists. You could feel that from the very beginning of moving into Lafayette Park. We were all really involved. For example, I usually talk one of those three or four memories two of which I’ll share around the riot time — and by the way I use the word “riot,” but I am uncomfortable very often, and in an African-American community, I am very careful to recognize that "riot" has a very negative feeling among many African-Americans. "Riot" blames the victim. These victims, although individuals, perhaps should be blamed for what they did, doesn’t shouldn’t blame it. On the other hand the word rebellion which is a much more popular word, for me has a real political influence and this was not yet a political, joint “political rebellion” where there was a philosophy involved. It was people who because of the rising scale of expectations, because other people were getting things that they felt they should getting too, were angry and pushed back and pushed down as many African American still are today. We have a level of institutional racism in our society that, we know, these last several months have been examples of that in individuals being killed clearly, personally in my mind for basically conscious and unconscious racial feelings and stereotypes. But going back to that time, riot, rebellion and civil disturbance. Civil disturbance is a terrible word. Doesn’t give you the feeling of what was happening and what was going on, so if I use the word riot I am accepting it in the context that it is really too narrow and I am not in any way blaming the victims. Okay?
NL: Alright.
HS: So one of my memories, but going back I remember walking down with my kids to the riverfront which is four blocks from where I lived and because I remember sneezing and a number of other very emotional kind of feelings and I wrote a letter to the recreational department asking, “Why are you moving us here from there?” That is not the only thing I did. Took action almost immediately, because I didn’t say, “I don’t like it” I said “why are you moving all of us who are coming to this city?” And we can’t get there, meaning the riverfront from where we lived four blocks away and anything positive. And I got back the kind of letter I hoped I didn’t right later on which said “Thank you for your interest. Here’s a map.” But I probably did, so the activist nature and the interested nature, the integrated nature of it, the first three people who moved in were mixed. I think if I believe two African-Americans and one Caucasian person. It just then you had a lot of people who moved in for example in the African-American community as I understand it, and I’ve talked to them because they wanted something new one of the things that African-Americans wanted — and again they have to say this not me — is that your always inheriting things and sometimes you want something new and something fresh, that’s what Lafayette Park gave us all. It was designed to encourage people interacting, you had no choice. Your windows were full floor to ceiling windows with at best shades or curtains that you could pull across. Your sound pattern unfortunately carried from house to house a little bit. But that was the design and the pattern and that’s what we wanted.
NL: Could you talk about the decision your husband and you to move to Detroit as versus maybe to some other locations that were considered?
HS: We were living in Buffalo, New York; my husband was an academic. Those were the years that the wife went wherever the husband went. I was going to get a career. I was younger than him basically and I was just finishing my graduate studies and someone recruited us for Wayne State University and it seemed better. I usually say it was 6,000 dollars more but it really wasn’t that, maybe it was a thousand dollars more but it really was looking at it —and we met someone in Lafayette Park and I loved the life style, so we to be honest looked at Lafayette Park, we looked at the University District, but as I said I’m not into houses per say, and we looked at Huntington Woods because that was near Woodward Avenue. I’m chair of the Woodward Avenue Acton Association now, so even then I liked the concept of being near a major street. I grew up taking transportation and that’s the saddest thing for me about Detroit is its lack of public transportation in a meaningful way. I was ten or eleven traveling the trains on my own, with friends. I wouldn’t let my kids do that, but I could do that then. And so my choice was to come to Wayne because it had an opening and some real potential for my husband it looked like it supported women in terms of things and I met someone. It was the grapevine like every immigrant group. Whether internal immigrants in terms of the African-Americans from the South to the North or European immigrants whose friends and cousins and relatives bring them. We had a friend of a friend, she showed us the neighborhood and it rang comfortable and true. And no regrets. I love the city. I resent it sometimes. I worry about it, but I still feel it was the right place for me and it’s been good for me and the career.
NL: Could you tell me about where, I know this is not a concrete answer but about where you were living in the summer of 1967?
HS: Well that’s the piece of why I was interested in this particular study. Because, I have to go back. In the summer of ‘67 just in July and August, I was actually with my husband who was at a conference in Aspen, Colorado and in Palo Alto, California. I had a five-year-old and a three-year-old and I had made the decision in June of 1967, after a major study for the League of Women Voters of Detroit on police community relations, which I did as a volunteer. I was teaching part time in Sociology, I had my two young children and I made the decision at that point because I felt the city falling down around my ears, feet, or whatever body part you want to do, that I would leave teaching in the classroom and I wanted to walk the streets. Well, how am I as a white, Jewish woman going to walk the streets? And I wanted to do it obviously in an intellectual sense that contributed, so I was again recruited to work in the poverty program which was then called TAAP, Total Action Against Poverty. We were just in the Great Society and we were having things like that happening and so I left but the summer was committed away and I completed my study and then I went away. And perhaps now or after I would like to read you what I wrote exactly at the time the riot happened. Do you want that later on?
NL: Well I think that why don’t we do that right now. That would be great.
HS: Alright, there are two little pieces. This is — I write an annual letter which is generally four to six pages some people call it a book and you don’t have to read it. I’m at the point now where by email, where I send a cover letter and it’s got an executive summary and then I write it and it’s got pictures by using the internet. But, it started as a page or two of personal — and it was always both personal and political in a general sense of what was happening in my community and in my society, and in the process of having to do a talk about Lafayette Park last night, I looked back. I find I use it as my own history, so I look back and it’s written in the third person generally so it starts with “Harriet” , but that’s me “ Harriet has been teaching and been doing some interesting volunteer work completing a study of the Detroit Police for the League of Women Voters of Detroit. And working with an exciting educational project in the inner city. Our urban renewal area - that’s Lafayette Park and the beginnings of the Elmwood’s -”, but just the beginnings “has joined with six” Elmwood one was certainly there maybe two I don’t know whether three was there yet. "Our urban renewal area has joined with six other really inner city schools trying to bring quality education to a heterogeneous area that has suffered too long for the problems of little money and less thought. Funded by the State of Michigan to the tune of $600,000, we having a strong concerted citizens council began as a citizens study action group, we meet at least once every two weeks and try to deal with the serious problems of education in the big city.” Could I write that today? “It took two elections to get the minimum mileage through, this when Detroit was at its most prosperous” that’s a piece of what’s important “and we suffer mightily with the big city problems: the achievement ability, motivation circle (or lack of it), overcrowded classes and under trained teachers, rigid bureaucracies, and the beginning of citizen concerns. Can we change the circle of disillusion and despair? This group will try hard to do so.” That was written in January ‘67 so it’s before everything really fell apart. Now, this is coming into written the next in February of ’68, but is reflecting the summer of ’67. On the fact of what I had done with the League of Women Voters and what was happening and my images of what I know. So it’s as accurate of a personal imagery could be. It’s not my memory as much as what was. “On the domestic front we tried. Harriet has taken a full time job with the poverty program. The Mayor’s Commission on Human Resource Development (fondly known as McCurd; the Scotch poverty program) and there is you feeling there was some feeling you could see to a gut realization of the increasing polarization between black and white in the metropolitan area, that no amount of really inner city changes can really help. Harriett finishes substantial report for the League of Women Voters on the Detroit Police, “Problems and Perspectives” which is still being circulated and utilized in the cities attempt to deal with the delicate issue of police-community relations.” Now I have to stop and give you a memory. In June of 1967 I was asked to speak to the police academy at least I think it was the police academy. It’s a memory I can feel and touch and smell. I can see myself standing in front of a microphone in a Quonset hut, as I remember it, feeling sweaty and talking to a whole group which I have to be, in the context of what I said, the graduating police students. So I talked about police-community relations study, why we needed a citizens review board that had outsiders tied into it. We’re still talking about that issue. Why do we want the Justice Department to deal with these horrible cases we’re having of local police basically killing African-Americans and black lives do matter. I’m a supporter of that. But basically, when I look at that I gave this talk and I said we need the outsiders and there were many other things; none of which I remember. But, I do remember that. After the talk I asked for questions and someone raised their hand and said, “Do you think there will be a riot this summer?” I remember standing there silently which would seem to be three minutes, four minutes, but it was 30 seconds I’m sure and my answer was “My silence is my answer. What I do know is if something happens this summer it will be because of someone in this room and I’m not blaming that person. It will be someone inexperienced who doesn’t know how to handle a crowd and it’s a tinder box out there. Something will happen no one will know what happened and all hell will break loose.” That’s what happened, but I, having commitments for the summer with my husband and my family, left town. Okay, now I’m going to go back to what I said when I found out about it. “In the midst of the clean air, flower, glaciers, stars, skiers - yes in August - came the news of the turmoil in Detroit. Harriet felt guilty for not being there and kept phone lines busy as soon as you could get through to Detroit. It seemed so strange to look out the window at Independence Pass and hear the stories about people arming their homes, working 24 a days at our centers” - those are the poverty centers and the recreation centers - “and the death or destruction. Riot or rebellion, it is an expensive way to settle our problems. Attitudes have hardened since. And yet, what else can one expect? Any can under too much pressure will explode. And our cities are under unimaginable pressures.” This is written in February ‘68, so it’s after the summer. “Touring the riot area, even well after the fact,” - September in retrospect, that’s not well after the fact, but it’s afterwards “showed how specific the hostility and anger were. The damage was clearly directed towards the stores in the area. Homes, public buildings, occasional stores (sometimes labeled 'Soul Brother', sometimes not) were carefully left unburned and undamaged when all around it would be destroyed. The image I am left with is however, one block of homes that did catch on fire” meaning that everything went. “There was the front of the house. A rod iron balcony and a flower pot with a real geranium still growing and nothing else. The rubble had been cleared but people gone. Where? But the geranium shown rosy in the sun. And so thinking about the easy life in Aspen and the difficulties of Detroit, we tried to explain to everyone who asked and tried to understand ourselves, how it could happen in a city with more citizen involvement than most others, better programs than most other, and a reasonably concerned attempt to change. A band-aid on a cancer was the apt analogy.”
NL: Wow.
HS: So that’s what I wrote.
NL: Not enough people heard that in 1967 and ’68, I guess.
HS: And that leads me to the fact and one of the things I really do think needs to be left, whether it’s an oral history or research. I’ve now seen a couple of plays that have dealt with this as well as now I’ve read a number of books about it. Is the winter of '68 for me was the worst time I can remember living through. The fear was palpable. We had a newspaper lock out. Let’s remember that. And the stories in the newspapers were awful. There was an old German-American newspaper that was talking about children being castrated in the eight floor bathroom of Hudson’s. They talked about it as rumors, but you say it’s a rumor and people say, “Hmmm, where here’s smoke there’s fire.” Well there’s a hell of smoke and there was a hell of fire, but not for that. So basically, it was — Dearborn, you couldn’t find a bottle of water (and we didn’t have the little bottles everyone’s got now), but you couldn’t find any water for sale in Sears or groceries [stores]. People were stocking up their houses. In Dearborn, people were taking courses to learn how to fight, to shoot guns. And the city we were trying to do things. People were moving out. It exaborated [exacerbated] the move, but the move started before '67, partly because of personal things and because of government policies. If we don’t look at the government policies that encouraged suburban sprawl and stopped public transportation in cities like Detroit. we don’t understand and we blame the individual. Individuals make their choices, but the government policies around them impact on that amazingly. So there I was, still living in the city, still working on a number of things, no longer the league study. Now working in the poverty program in the centers trying to deal with things and a number of things happened that made a real difference. For example, when I got hired I was going to be a professional assistant to a project on the east side, Butzel Center on Kercheval and Van Dyke just where the secondary fires were. And that had some funding which had come from the Butzel family, which is an old Jewish family, for a library and for Southeastern High School which had been closed and had been given some money. We were going to do a community center. It’s still there it’s now the Harambee Center. I haven’t been in it lately, but I go by it and it looks like a viable center near a viable school in the neighborhood. But, when I came back in September, we now had two of us working on that I was technical planner and there was a community planner. She was technical also, but she was now working with people who were hired as community planners. That was the first time we really recognized – at least in the Detroit poverty program (and I suspect it was a national trend) – that we really had to not only ask the people who were going to be affected by things to be volunteers, but you know, they could take those jobs and have responsibilities that they were getting paid for as well. And that interaction in that winter of ‘68 between the, basically the various two had a lot of tension in it. We had to learn how to talk to each other, we had to learn how to listen! We had to learn how to listen, that’s what’s really important, Noah. And I had to learn how to listen, because I tend to talk first and listen afterwards. So basically, we had that going on in terms of work we were cleaning up, and at home as a volunteer, we had something called the Miler District Advisory Council. And just in my basement for the talk I gave, went and found the book which I will be putting in the Reuther library. It’s too good, it’s information that someone need to have on what was happening, We were trying. And here’s the example of Lafayette Park and the difference. We had the Chrysler School and sometimes we’d resent it because it would have the middle class integrated racially, but not class necessarily and the class/race overlap always gets so confused in our minds and in our country, in terms of what’s going on. But we didn’t just deal with Chrysler school. We joined with Chrysler, Bunche, Harris, Bellevue, and Duffield all of which flowed into what was then Miller Junior High School which in the past had been Miller High School where Joe Louis went. Okay — and now is a charter school by the way, a good charter school I believe, but a charter school. A science and arts charter school, but at that time it was a pubic junior high school — and we tried to see if all six of our schools could be improved. That was the kind of thing then in those days people were trying, but what happened was we had some funding from the state and the funding was going to run out and the school board had given us a person to work with us and he said he was leaving. And that was February and March of ‘68 when it felt like all the grassroots in town were trying to do something. We said, “We can’t live like this.” We began looking at the grassroots level, as well as the New Detroit major level, to see what could we do. Did we make a difference? I hope so. Was it a big difference? No. The pressures, the strengths were really awful. That went on until the spring with the awful assassination of Martin Luther King, basically. And we didn’t blow up which was very interesting maybe because we had blown up before and then the Tigers won the Pennant and it’s a very funny thing. Last night, when I was talking, people were sitting there and their heads were going up and down yes, remembering. There was something about sports, there is something about sports, that does seem to cross class and race lines and people get together around it. Now I’m not a sports fan, just like I’m not a house fan, in a sense, but I appreciate that, just like some people are not musicians and they can appreciate different kinds of music. And there was this kind of celebration that we won the pennant and it just set a new tone for things that could happen. However, I will remind people that there were a couple of cars burned up and there were white suburban guys who burned them up. Just like we still have dumping in areas and if you watch the trucks they’re not local trucks. We still have the tensions between suburban and city in this area. 142 governmental agencies and the pressures are really great around saying, “I will support me, not the larger community.” The thing about Lafayette Park and the people I know and the people I care about is we cared about ourselves, we cared about protecting ourselves, but we saw it and still do in the larger context of our communities —our neighborhoods, our community and our society have to function. I’m lost, where was I?
NL: You are everywhere and it’s fantastic. I want to ask you a few specific questions about things that you’ve already said, to go into a little bit more detail.
HS: Certainly.
NL: Going, I think sort of chronologically, back to some things that you said in your written piece. Could you tell me about sort of the genesis of that police community relations group and the League of Women Voters that you were involved with, how did that start what was the process of making that report and maybe a little bit more details about what you remember being in the final report?
HS: Well, the League of Women Voters is still a strong organization. There is a League of Women Voters in Michigan. At that time, we had the League of Women Voters of Detroit We don’t have a Detroit chapter right now and that’s again because younger people are much more interested in being politically active around an issue and a narrower focus, the League of Women Voters still has as its major interest voting representation and the larger way of creating a democratic society. The women that I worked with and knew were very much interested in that and there are just other issues that have taken people. It still exists. My daughter is active with it in Cincinnati although it’s a kind of thing, but here it’s got some state leagues it’s got some local leagues and at that time though there was a Detroit chapter. A good friend of mine named Carol Campbell, and by the way her husband Phil Campbell is somebody that hopefully gets talked to on this because —
NL: We just scheduled an interview with him yesterday.
HS: Fine, because he’s someone who basically was here during the riot in the summer. But Carol came over to me and asked if I could do this volunteer study which looked at police community relations. Why? We’re having a new charter, there were discussions about some of the impact, we didn’t talk police brutality, we talked just police issues and the problems of police community relations, and one of the things about the League of Women Voters is they require consensus. It’s a very democratic way of looking at things. You can’t do a report, you don’t do a study and you don’t get it. You try to find, what can you get that everybody will agree upon. That’s harder and harder to do in today’s world, because basically people say, “No. I will stop” and it’s how you do mediation for example. Mediation has to be done and consensus building means everybody has to give up something. They all have to feel that they got a little more than what they wanted and lost a little less, but it has to be done from the purpose of saying, "How can we agree, what’s the core that we can move ahead?" That’s been I think the values system and still is of the League of Women Voters. So what do we do on that? There was a lot of people I don’t remember them all, but it turned me from teaching to going to work for the city, because I went on bus tours, I got to meet government people, I began to see the impact of what could happen. And in that study, you know we had a lot of recommendations, because the charter was coming and we wanted to feed into the new charter. I think that’s three charters ago, it’s at least two maybe three, but we did make some changes. I believe that the civilian review board was incorporated into the thing. So, it was a lot of women who were working to find out what was going on, who could you talk to, and in the process I and all of us learned a great deal about the city that I certainly didn’t know.
NL: How long do you think that whole process was from the first that you heard about, “Okay we’re gonna make this report in preparation for the charter” and then completion of it?
HS: Less than a year. Six months or seven months. I believe it was in the fall. I don’t really have a specific memory, but it was finished in June and in fact I think it goes — it says here “they finished a substantial root” and it says in January ‘67 I was doing it and in February ‘68 it was done, well before that it was June of ‘68, six months. I’d say, six, eight months.
NL: Did that report, I know it’s not exactly the same thing because it’s about community relations, but —
HS: It was a lot of things on police.
NL: Was there anything you remember learning about relating to their hiring practices, particularly in regards to race?
HS: No. I do not remember that. I do not remember it yes or no.
NL: Okay. Could you along the same line of thinking, could you elaborate a little bit more and talk about the beginning of your personal involvement with the TAAP program and the efforts you put in that regard?
HS: There are two levels to that. While I was teaching, my friend Joyce Brown who was the one who introduced — she and her husband Leon Brown was an academic like my husband. They had two boys a little older than my kids basically and we both started in the Nicolet-Joliet and moved to Shadow Ford or a little different, just across the park personally, but Joyce — who unfortunately has passed on, but was really important to my career — had been already working for the city and she asked me to do a study with my class on what programs served youth. So I had done a class program looking at what were some of the various kinds of programs serving youth in the city. Because of that I met her boss, the director Myron Liner who is still around — I think he works for Matrix right now, another person probably well worth talking to, Myron M-Y-R-O-N, Liner L-I-N-E-R – basically asked me to come to work for him. So, I literally wrote a proposal, which was not atypical even today, which would have for this Butzel project, and which had a technical assistant which wasn’t officially or legally going to be for me. I wrote the grant, as a part time person, but was designed so that they could get some funding so that I would get hired by the city. And then all hell broke loose that summer, but I did make that choice to leave. So basically, I knew about the various programs and I came in, but it changed tremendously because before this we were doing Great Society programs [unintelligible], I don’t think again the programs locally were listening. And we had to do a lot more in bringing in the community planners, although it wasn’t perfect, [it] made a difference, looking at how we worked and where we worked and now we had things that had to deal with cleaning up the city, putting back together rec centers, looking where our center were and who they served. What was going on to do it? I got a lot of stories both at that time and later. Another person to be sure to talk to is Roy Levy Williams. Roy Levy William worked for the Urban League at the time and when I was teaching after I left working in Highland Park — I tease, Noah, and say that I worked for the city of Detroit for 17 years, almost ten probably in the Recreation Department, and then Detroit wasn’t tough enough for me so I took on Highland Park.
NL: [Laughter]
HS: But I was teaching when I left Highland Park - 17 years later - I taught metropolitan conflict for a little bit and Roy came to my class and talked about what it was like being on the street. Now I’m going to quote his story, but I hope he gets a chance to do it as well. Which is he remembers dealing with not just in Detroit, but other places in the riot itself, as an African-American man, working for the Urban League, working with young people trying to keep the riot/rebellion from spreading. But his image, and you know, talking with the various people that came in, and his image, like mine on the geranium on the empty porch, his image is of a street, near Twelfth street, where there’s a cart and a television set in it and an older woman standing. The lights are shot out, the gunfire can be heard, the smoke can be seen, and she’s waiting for the light to change when she crosses the street. Now she didn’t steal that, someone gave it to her, and I’m not gonna argue that, but it was that kind of image because after the riot there was an interview, there was a whole research study and they said, “Were you involved in the riots?” But you know what, that question got answers which really could be interpreted several ways, because some people were involved in the riot and they gave water to the National Guard people; they walked around their neighborhood trying to calm people. I worked with people in Highland Park who basically drove around the city, there were no fires in Highland Park. Why? Because the African- American leadership went to the white mayor, Michael Glusac — who is still alive and around — who said we want to prevent our city from blowing up too, and they did because they were there and they knew that the fires didn’t help. Nevertheless, the pain does and the anger does and you have to find a way to deal with it. That’s not — I’m quoting other people, but they’re stories that I heard and know and that’s what I also felt when I was out there, how do we put the city back together? What do we do?
NL: I’m curious, and I think this is sort of connected to another question that I had about the governmental involvement, really the aftermath, the Seventies and beyond of it today. So I hadn’t heard that before that Highland Park took action to try to prevent those same kind of damages.
HS: That’s because no one does the oral history and you know something, every one of those people in those cars is gone.
NL: Looking at Highland Park today, it suffers just as much as lots of areas of Detroit and I’m wondering if you can weigh in on that. And how that has happened and what has been happening in the city and the several counties around the area that have contributed to the problems of Detroit.
HS: Highland Park is a microcosm of Detroit. It’s exactly the same patterns except they’re even more so. And one of the things basically, and my job when I went there was to run an economic development agency called HP DEFCO which was funded with five million dollars from Chrysler when they decided to leave Highland Park, technically to take half their people to Auburn Hills. At least they were responsible. Ford Motor Company is a very philanthropic corporation, but they have never recognized or met their responsibilities to Highland Park. If you ask them about the Ford site they say we don’t own it. They do, they own the story and the history. I’m still trying to work with Ford Motor Company.
NL: You’re talking about the original?
HS: I’m talking about the original Ford plant is there. The original Ford plant is there. They may not own it, legally.
NL: I drive by it every day.
HS: But they — well, the Woodward Avenue Action Association, which I’m chair of, basically now owns the Ford administration building in Highland Park and we’re trying to turn it, and there’s a number of things we’re trying to do with it. That’s not for this talk I’ll talk to you about it later, but it’s a representation. So basically, again, Ford is very philanthropic, but they’re scared of Highland Park, that’s another story. In Highland Park itself, it’s a microcosm; it basically had a fair amount of duplex housing, rather ownership. Comparing Hamtramck and Highland Park will be a fascinating PhD study someday because they started about the same size (Hamtramck lower), they boarder each other. One ended up with a real mix of ethnicity and still has it; one turned from white, Armenian [to] black, basically and now has 10,000 people instead of 60,000. Well we have 2,000,000 to less than 700,000 so it’s basically a microcosm. And yes, what happened is the 142 community government agencies we have, the state pattern of property taxes staying with the community and then putting in basically something like Proposition A where you can’t raise your taxes, but if you do sell eventually somebody else gets caught in that and it is a parallel and a microcosm and all I can say is it’s a village. It’s also a neighborhood. It’s tried very, very hard. And it’s had the same problems, it’s had some corrupt leadership, it’s had some very responsible leadership just like Detroit has had. So I can only see it as an analogy and a parallel and the fact that it sits right in the middle on Woodward Avenue is an interesting part of it. I researched why it isn’t part of Detroit and that has to do in the 1920s when it was talked about, they were getting a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of taxes from Ford, this is 1921 I believe, I’d have to check that. And the point is that’s like a million dollars in taxes today so they didn’t want to join Detroit, because they were getting a fair amount of money, Detroit didn’t care at that point they could have their little hole in the spot. Now, I’m not sure. I’ve been asked by Carl Levin why it isn’t part of the city. On a regional planning thing it should be part of Detroit on a personal, historical, there’s a history, and a personal, and a feeling about this community that makes it very hard, so I don’t know what will happen, but it is an analogy and a parallel. They’ve tried.
NL: Could you, I think you were just touching on it. Could you elaborate a little bit more on your views of the policies that encouraged white flight I think is how you said it earlier. Or just general suburban flight?
HS: Well you start with several things. The ones we see are the express ways. If you take the Lodge expressway it tears, take a look at just the pattern there were big fights, should it be under ground? Should it be over ground? It divided up functioning neighborhoods. Chrysler, particularly the I-75 and the 375 piece is even more exact. It destroyed Hastings Street and Black Bottom, and again for history, I’m sure other people will tell you that the name Black Bottom comes originally from the delta and the dirt, the black rich dirt they had. It was Irish, German, other things, Italian and then now it has the double meaning of Black Bottom, because African Americans live there. But basically it was destroyed by 375, or 75 whichever one you want to do. Paradise Valley and Black Bottom and viable neighborhoods And putting it back together again was very hard. This will relate perhaps to the ‘67 one. So, the expressways did it, you can see them, you can go look at maps and see and watch what’s happening. The government policies around mortgages are the major thing that did it. What we call redlining, okay, which we think about — they sometimes think brokers, you know, said, “We can’t take you there.” It’s more than that. The FHA, Fannie Mae, the various government policies, would not give mortgages to people who moved into integrated neighborhoods, to mixed neighborhoods. That is a factual, the numbers I can’t give you, the exact timing of how it worked and when it I did, but it existed. You can look up the history and you’ll find it. One of the things we had that goes even further of course, but that was done in ’48, I think it was ‘47 or ‘48 is the restrictive covenants and deeds. In fact, a local person Reggie McGee’s family — and he is around and probably was here during the riot and probably worth talking to — was one of the key people in the case that took the restrictive covenants. It went to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court said, “We can’t change deeds, if it says no black, no Italian, no Jews, no Catholics. It has to sit there as language.” No court in America may hold that up. It can’t be held up. It’s Constitutionally wrong and it’s psychologically and sociologically and humanly wrong. That’s a little more hidden. I don’t know if people know about what I call the segregation wall [Burwood Wall] which is basically four blocks west of Wyoming and two blocks south of Eight Mile, which is now an inspiration, the little piece that’s left. But, some developers built a six-foot-high concrete wall because they could get mortgages on the other side. That kind of thing was hidden. African-Americans had a double line, even if whites could get mortgages, they could. Then you had blockbusting basically with conscious kind of ways of getting it and pressures. Leon Atchison, who just passed away, who was the Director of Recreation and again a major force in my life and other lives and has done a great many things, remembers talking about looking out of his house, which is in northwest Detroit, and seeing an African-American woman with a stroller and three kids walking down the street. He went out to talk with her. She had been hired to walk the street. How does that impact on white flight? Another issue, in the sense, is why African Americans have often followed Jews in this area, in the northwest area, and it has to do with the public social justice commitment of the Jewish community. Those people who disagreed kept their mouths shut. They didn’t picket, they didn’t use violence. Other groups did, and I’m not blaming those groups again; there’s a lot of other reasons for this. So you had that kind of thing and you also had some people who basically would bring people in because they believed in integration, and others who were making money, point blank. Let me say that. And I wonder someday, and I keep asking people, somebody needs to study land contract, and the function that can have, when you have access to credit because you’re a business man versus someone who is perhaps in a corporation or a government job. So that you can move faster. Not true today, but was true then. So the issues of government policy around mortgages, around —which were discriminatory, not just for the individuals, but for the whole development community — and the highways and the way they tore that apart and the policies that made it easier for developers to take a green field. You didn’t have to pull out the pipes underground, you didn’t have to tear down a house or buy something from someone. But if you look at Lafayette Park, it was cleared right after World War Two and it took until the late-almost 1960s, until it began to be built on, because people wanted it. Mortgages, in terms of GI bills of homes, and people wanted individual homes and space at the time and were encouraged to do so, so the whole pattern of the dense pattern in this city. Now I have to take the role of the auto companies. They pulled out the tracks; GM did that in the Twenties. They encouraged the driving; they’re selling cars. They did it for good reasons, both corporate money making and values in terms of that. It gave people individual freedom, that all affected flight, which was primarily white flight, because African-Americans couldn’t move. It’s not that they wouldn’t, they couldn’t move in the same way that whites could, and that’s what we’re still living with today, less so, but we’re but were still living with it today. The patterns get established. That’s why kids are coming back they don’t carry their parents’ and grandparents’ fears at the same level as their parents and grandparents. I spent my life, people saying, “How come you still live in Lafayette Park?" and I argue with it because it’s the right place to live and because I wanted a setting where my kids could meet people that were different than they, not terribly different let’s be honest, here’s the class/race issue, where I could work to make something better, but people ask me still all the time, “You still live in the city?” I say, “Where do you live?” and people - I say and I say “Detroit”, because that’s the piece, go anywhere else, say West Bloomfield, Farmington, Shelby, nobody knows, but you say Detroit. But basically they say, “What Suburb?” And I say “I live in downtown Detroit.” Did I take you where you wanted to go?
NL: Absolutely. And further. I just have one more question before we wrap up and that is could you sort of sum up what’s your views on the state of the city today in regards to everything that we’ve discussed and sort of what your visions are for the near future of the city? Whether they’re hopes or whether they’re trepidations?
HS: Okay. If I’m asked what my dreams are, it’s for a regional government and a regional community that is Detroit and its suburbs that is back into at least the 4,000,000 that we have working together and it has good public transportation. We have pieces of it, it’s not quite the right way from my perspective but we’re going to that. I have hopes and dreams, I worry about the plans. I’m not stopping, but I do worry about my children and grandchildren and I’m using that phrase beyond my personal family. I think we are back in a situation where there are some hopes again because we’re trying very hard to work this. It is the national situation that worries me. The worst decision we’ve made in the last twenty years of the Supreme Court decisions is Citizens United. The ability to buy elections has impacted and the buying elections has removed and hurt voting rights. And it has hurt the way primaries have become gerrymandering and primaries, it has therefore hurt democracy. Citizens United has hurt democracy, and I don’t know how to change it, but I’m willing to try to work on that. So my hopes are we’re in better shape. We’re getting some mass transportation, it’ll probably be bus rapid transit and the people mover and basically the light rail. Hopefully, I hope the light rail will go further, because people psychologically can handle that better. Again historically, we have all kinds of images in terms of buses that make it harder for people to ride and I just got that talked about the other day. So I’ve got hopes, I’ve got dreams. I worry about that is that it’s even harder. Is it harder than it was in ‘68? No. how could it be harder than it was in ‘68? In a certain sense, we had a city that had been partially burned, destroyed, fear and anger palpable. I don’t have the palpable feeling that I can almost touch it, like I can touch your arm rather than touching the air, but it’s there and hidden. So the answer is what are my predictions? A real long, hard battle as we move forward. Detroit is in better shape. When people ask me what’s it like in Detroit? I always say, “It’s better than you read about.” Now interestingly enough today, we’re reading all kinds of little positive stuff, but the thing I want to make sure that happens, the thing I hope that happens and I still try to work on and a lot of people I know do, both black and white and everything, is making sure that the people who have struggled and stayed are really there and that’s the jobs, because the jobs moved further and without public transportation we can’t get it. It’s interesting how the one little story about the guy that was walking miles and miles, you know, got him perhaps rescued, but it’s died down now. Okay, so again if you want to say Detroit is coming back, will it ever be where it was? No. Does it have to be where it was? No. Nothing stays the same. You do not return. It’s a spiral, and I’m hoping that the spiral is moving upward and not at a level. For a long time we had a spiral that was going down. It was a spiral of degradation. Now I’m hoping that it is a spiral that is perhaps at a parallel, but moving up. There are people who are investing positively, there are people who are continuing to work, there is a better relationship between African-Americans and whites for many of us, but not for all. And I worry about the national policies that impact, because they’re hidden and they affect us and they last for years. I care enough. I’ll give you my epitaph: She cared, she tried, she did. Okay? But if a lot of people don’t do that I’m one person, I’m 78 years old, my kids still do this, they happen to be in other cities, but are still working in different things. Everybody has to care and find the one thing they can do. I got asked that last night and I said, “You can’t do it all.” You pick the thing you can do to make not just your life, but someone else’s life better. Going back to ‘67, ‘68, that’s what some of us, not just me, some of us tried to do. Did we succeed? In pieces. Did we succeed where we should have? No. Are we still struggling in the same battles? Yes. Do we need to have these stories? Yes. And my story is just one story of what I remember and what I lived through and probably even what I’m making up a little bit, because your memory takes you where you want to be.
NL: So true. Well, thank you for sharing your memory with us and your perspectives today.
HS: Okay.
**WW: Hello, today is October 17, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I am sitting down with Mr. Frank Joyce. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
FJ: Thanks.
WW: Will you please start by telling me where and when were you born?
FJ: Sure. I was born in Detroit in 1941. My parents lived here until–and this is right away we’re right off into something that’s something a little fuzzy but not that much–sometime when I was quite young. They moved to Berkley, Michigan. We left Detroit. Some people who read this interview may be familiar with Marsha Music’s essay about the kidnapped children of Detroit, and I’ve said ever since I understood that really important concept that she put out there that I was kind of a pioneer kidnapped child of Detroit. My parents were white flighters sometime in the late-1940s. I started elementary school in Berkley, and then at some point we moved from–I think I was still in elementary school–and they moved to Royal Oak. I finished school in Royal Oak and graduated from Royal Oak Dondero High School.
WW: During that time, you’re growing up in the suburbs, did you come to the city or did you tend to stay in the suburbs growing up?
FJ: I’ve recently been writing something where I’ve been thinking about this. We came to Hudson’s to see Santa Claus. As so many suburbanites did. I have some memories of that. Otherwise, we came to baseball and football games. I remember that as a child. But one thing that’s relevant to this project that I just remembered is–and my grandparents lived on Ivanhoe in Detroit until some point in my childhood and so we would come to Detroit to visit them until I was, I don’t remember how many years old. They then moved to Texas.
One thing that I do remember is times that we would be in Detroit as a child and we would be in what was then known as “the ghetto,” and my father making it clear just by the condition of the housing that we saw primarily that we were both better off than those people, and in some way better. I remember that as sort of an early lesson in the culture of white supremacy. Similarly, as a child I remember being on vacations and trips in rural areas in the South where impoverished communities, rural communities, black communities were pointed out to me as some sort of evidence of white people being, again, not only better off but better. To digress on that for a minute, because I’ve written a lot about race over the years and continue to do so, and I’m working on a new book now in fact that is not exclusively about race, but that’s a big part of it. This self-fulfilling prophecy nature of white supremacy, which is that you create a structure that advantages whites. And then you use the physical evidence of that advantage of proof that you deserve it. It’s the born on third base but thought I hit a triple phenomenon that some people have used. Again I, in a way, I maybe have more awareness and more conscious of this now, in the last few years, we’re sitting here in 2016, even though I’ve paid attention to this stuff for a very long time now. I think a lot of things are becoming clearer to all of us about our collective history, but even in my case, our individual history of how things work. So sorry for the long-winded answer, but.
WW: Not to worry. So, having those little moments growing up where you–that was pointed out to you, when did that click in for you growing up? At what point did you become an active agent, say, against white supremacy?
FJ: Here’s the hopefully short version of how that evolved. I was of a generation that I and others have characterized as rebels without causes who found causes. As I mentioned, I graduated from Royal Oak Dondero High School in the class of ’59. As some people know, Tom Hayden graduated from Dondero in the class of ’57. There was clear evidence in Royal Oak at that point of this pushing against authority. Tom, for example, was involved with creating a forerunner of the underground press, a publication called The Daily Smirker, which is a satirical publication that made fun of the school authorities, and, you know, things that teenagers like to make fun of. I was involved in a May Day protest in my senior year in high school. It wasn’t that we had a lot of political consciousness about race or much of anything else, but we were pushing these boundaries of authority, we were questioning authority as became clear later.
What I trace as my first overt political act was in the summer of 1960, I was driving down the infamous Eight Mile Road, and I happened, at the intersection of Eight Mile and Greenfield, and I happened to notice a picket line, a demonstration that I couldn’t really figure out what it was. But I was intrigued by it, so I made a U-turn on Eight Mile Road, and I came back, and I saw that it was a protest at a place called The Crystal Pool, and the protest was over the fact that the pool–remember this is 1960 in the North–that Crystal Pool denied admission to African Americans: it was a white-only public swimming pool in Oak Park, Michigan in 1960. And I said, “Well that’s not right.” So I joined that picket line. Memory is fallible as we know, but I’m pretty sure that John Watson was on that picket line and others who came to be kind of prominent and early activists in Detroit. It happened that there was news coverage, television coverage, of that demonstration which my father saw on TV either that night or the next day, I don’t remember which, and shortly after that I was a homeless teenager, is how I characterize it now.
But part of my rebellion was in my own family, and part of it was in a larger context, but he just considered that like, I had crossed some line at that point and basically I got thrown out of the house. I’ve told this story in writing and a few other times. The good news is that at that point I had a factory job, and I was economically in a position to be self-supporting. I was working at a factory part-time, going to Wayne State part-time. So, I was homeless for two days until I found an apartment, stayed with a friend at first, and had been pretty economically independent for quite a while before that.
Anyway, that was a very explicit political act that somehow, this racial discrimination resonated with me and kind of set me on my life course ever since.
WW: Where did you go from there? You’re at the picket line, and you see the consequences of picketing and protesting.
FJ: Right.
WW: Does that inspire you to keep going?
FJ: It does. I was going to school, as I say, part-time at Wayne State, I was working in a factory, but I had been the president of the student government at Royal Oak Dondero, and I was active in student government at Wayne State as well. In that milieu in 1960 and beyond, there was of course a lot of social ferment and people like Kenny Cockrel and John Watson were students at Wayne State, and so I became involved.
I read an article in a magazine, The Reporter magazine I believe it was, about an organization called the Northern Student Movement. The Northern Student Movement was founded by Peter and Joan Countryman on the campus of Yale University initially as a group of college students supporting the Southern Movement and SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] in particular. We’re not here to talk about the whole history, but the short version is I wrote them a letter, we didn’t have email then, I wrote them a letter, they wrote back, we came to be in communication. I went to a conference on the campus of Yale, and I founded what became the Detroit chapter of the Northern Student Movement. I also became active in the Detroit chapter of the Friends of SNCC–we were sort of an overlapping group. NSM took on its own political evolution, but one of the projects that NSM did that I helped to start in Detroit was a tutorial program which brought college students into mostly elementary schools and other community settings in Detroit, it was a little like a Big Brother Big Sister program. We would do after school programs with young kids in schools to help with reading and so on and so forth.
That very quickly became a radicalizing process because A) I was engaged in Detroit, I was living in Detroit, I was going to school in Detroit, my job was actually in Ferndale, but I became immersed in Detroit the city, which I hadn’t known anything about as a kid growing up mostly in the suburbs, but also became radicalized by the tutorial project at understanding the segregation that existed in the Detroit Public Schools, and the disparity between predominately white schools, which there still were then, and black schools, and so on and so forth. So this all became a part of a radicalizing process that continues to this day, where were we? That set me off and I’ve been a lifelong political activist ever since. One group lead to another: I was active in the anti-war movement, I became active in labor movement, I worked on the staff of the UAW [United Auto Workers] for many years, I became involved in part of my growing up in that time and in that movement was the emergence of new media. I was very early involved in the staff of the Fifth Estate newspaper, I was the news director at WABX, the sort of legendary radio station–not in the first wave of WABX, but later in the late-1970s. I was the news direction at WDET for a while in the 1980s, then went to work in the communications department of the UAW from which I retired 12 years ago now.
WW: Wow. Coming back to the Sixties, so you mentioned you were a founder of the Northern Student Movement in Detroit.
FJ: Right, correct.
WW: Friends of SNCC. Did you do work with ACME in ’66?
FJ: Well, yes. The Northern Student Movement had its own evolution as a chapter in history that is underreported and needs to be written. One of the spin-offs from the Northern Student Movement was that we continued to do these tutorial programs for quite a long time, but we also got engaged not just in Detroit, but this happened in Boston, in Harlem, in Baltimore, in Philadelphia, in community organizing projects around issues of education, housing, police brutality, etc. In Detroit, that took the form of helping to create an organization called the Adult Community Movement for Equality, known as ACME, which was located on the East Side, and basically headquartered, we had an office on Kercheval and Pennsylvania, Mcclellan, that area of Kercheval. ACME became very quickly–while it had a pretty sophisticated political program again around schools, housing, education, etc.–we quickly became very involved in conflict with the police because the police very quickly came to see us as some sort of threatening, radical influence in the community.
Of course this was in the mid-Sixties, we’re sort of in the ’64-65 framework here, but by then, particularly as a result of the civil rights movement in the South, there was a lot of political surveillance going on. We knew people who came to be involved in what became the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and so on. It’s well-documented how much police surveillance there was of what was perceived as radical activity in Detroit. I brought with me today some recently unearthed, to me files that have a lot to say about that police surveillance and that are police documents. I also have gotten some of my own surveillance files from the Detroit Red Squad, from state police, from the FBI, etc., etc. I’d like to say I brag to my kids sometimes that I have the biggest police file of any white guy in Michigan, meaning that of course much more surveillance was devoted to black radicals, but partly because of my association with black radicals, I show up in a lot of these files as well. I was very immersed in all of the emerging movements in Detroit and elsewhere. I was active in the national leadership of NSM as well.
The other thing that happened out of the Northern Student Movement, however, that’s relevant to Detroit history is that before SNCC went through its famous racial divide, at least a year ahead of that, the Northern Student Movement had our own conversation on the question of, “Should white people be working in white communities?” So people like me, who were involved in ACME and in the black community on the East Side of Detroit, basically–and this was not an acrimonious or hostile debate, it was a genuine and serious conversation of “What’s the best strategy here?” I was very persuaded that it made sense for white people to focus activities in the white community.
Somewhere in this time range, ’65-66, we first created a group called Friends of NSM, which was basically the white people who had been active in NSM became Friends of NSM both to raise funds and provide support for the Northern Student Movement, but also to begin to think about, “Well, what would it mean to craft a message and be involved in the white community?” Friends of NSM evolved into an organization called People Against Racism, PAR. PAR became an organization in its own right that flourished for a while: through the late 1960s we had chapters on college campuses, we had chapters in cities literally from coast to coast, from Boston to Palo Alto and places in between. Again, I think it was a more influential organization than the history books tend to give us credit for. That’s partly my own fault for not paying enough attention to that, and particularly for not doing a good enough job of record-keeping. But it turns out there’s more records than I had thought at the Reuther archives and elsewhere, and thanks to taxpayer dollars engaging in political surveillance, there’s a lot of stuff in police files that’s very helpful about the history of NSM and People Against Racism and other organizations. More of that stuff is out there to be looked at by people who are interested than I had realized.
It gave me a really rich opportunity to live in a very dynamic time and have this perspective of coming from the suburbs and into the city, sort of eyes wide-open. And really learn an enormous amount from what is sometimes called the ‘Up North Movement,’ as well as engagement with people who where active in SNCC and Detroit Friends of SNCC, etc.
I only in that time period went South one time, and that was to Selma in what is known as Turn-Around Tuesday. The movie Selma does a halfway decent job I thought, or a more than halfway decent job, of depicting this. Many people know about the Selma to Montgomery March, they know about Bloody Sunday, but after Bloody Sunday there was a call that went out to people to come to Selma and show solidarity and attempt to march once again across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. There was a big meeting in Detroit after Bloody Sunday, and funds were raised, and volunteers were sought to go South. My colleague and comrade and lifelong friend from ACME, Will McClendon, and I, went to Selma as a part of that trip. The march itself, as history shows, was the march where those who showed up went to the Edmund Pettus Bridge again, where we were confronted with a massive display of force from the Alabama State troopers. At that point, Dr. King and other leaders were negotiating with the federal government for some sort of federal protection, which they by that time did not have. So this was the march where Dr. King led people to the bridge, then stopped and prayed and turned around and came back, which was aggravating and disappointing to those of us who were there. But in any case, not knowing what was going to happen next week, we turned to Detroit. I just cite that because virtually all of my political activism has been in the North while supporting the Southern Movement, but as a larger proposition I think also the movement in the North is also kind of underreported as a chapter in the history of the Sixties.
WW: Speaking of Martin Luther King, did you happen to march with him in’63 here?
FJ: I marched in’63. I met Dr. King when he was here I believe for one of his speaking engagements at Central Methodist. We had a situation at that point with–this is a great story, actually, I don’t think I’ve ever told this story before. Within NSM at that point, because we were doing these tutorial programs and we were involved with a lot of young people in the schools, including high school students, and we were increasingly engaged. I remember we picketed the Neisner Store, for example, in downtown Detroit over employment discrimination issues there. There was a lot of activity, to state the obvious. We had a particular case where a really incredibly charismatic, for lack of a better term, young woman was very active in promoting the movement in her high school, and had encountered enormous opposition from her parents, which is something I happen to know a little bit about. And so we knew that Dr. King was coming to town and somehow we reached out to him, and asked would he agree to speak to this young woman’s father, and he said that he would. This entailed me meeting him at a church that he was speaking at, not at Central Methodist, riding in a motorcade with him from that church downtown to Central Methodist, sort of briefing him on what this situation was about, and indeed the father had agreed to come–who wouldn’t come to meet Martin Luther King, at that point? and they did speak, and he never really became fully supportive of his daughter, but he didn’t put up the resistance and opposition that he had before. I had a couple of other personal encounters with Dr. King at other times, but that’s one incredible story. That I remember. What year was that? I don’t know. I’m going to guess … it certainly was after the 1963 march in Detroit, and I also attended the’63 March in Washington in August and helped, as I recall, organize a bus of people who went to that as well. It’s kind of a [inaudible] thing; if it happened I was probably there.
WW: So you mentioned the pushback that this young woman was getting from her father. As you’re protesting, as you’re picketing around Detroit, do you get pushback from other groups?
FJ: Oh yeah. That’s kind of a loaded question.
WW: [Laughter.]
FJ: Yes. In particular, there was an organization called Breakthrough that sort of devoted itself to being the opposition. They would be the Trump Movement of our time, they were part of the backlash and of the opposition to this push for civil rights and racial equality in the North. I can’t recall how many encounters I had with them, Donald Lobsinger and Breakthrough. I do remember being on a television show once, and describing Breakthrough as a parasite organization–this is sort of coming back to me as I’m talking about this–but I said, “You know, if we went out of business, they’d go about of business, too,” because their sort of sole purpose in life was to protest us and to hassle us and to show up at Grosse Pointe South when Dr. King spoke there, for example, and try to disrupt that speech. There was another event in Grosse Pointe South that–this was prior to Dr. King’s famous speech there–I don’t remember some of the details of this, but I remember I was a speaker at the event and Breakthrough disrupted and were escorted out. They did not succeed in destroying that event either, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Two other things come to mind when you ask about the opposition in addition to Breakthrough. One was of course the police, and that was particularly focused on Kercheval relative to ACME. At any demonstration we had anywhere in Detroit, there was a massive police presence, and there was massive police surveillance.
The other organization that I would cite as having been incredibly hostile to the movement was The Detroit News, a tradition which continues to this day. I mean Nolan Finley is one of a long history of white editors of The Detroit News who have tried to put the brakes on any and every effort to bring about any sort of progress, but was particularly antagonistic and hostile on issues of race. I know this is on the record, and I’ve said it many times before, so I don’t mind saying it now, I’ve characterized Nolan Finely–who, for those who don’t know, is currently and has been for many years the editor of The Detroit News now–as, “’white supremacists’ chief spokesman Nolan Finley,” because he has routinely–and I’m talking about modern, current times–2016 and over the last several years, however long he’s been there, he has been incredibly hostile to African Americans, and incredibly hostile to change and incredibly denigrating toward African Americans. I remember an editorial he wrote, which I quoted in something I wrote and which has now been deleted from The Detroit News website, in which he basically said, “The reason we need an emergency manager is that black people are not capable of governing themselves.” Again, this is not ancient history, this is within the last few years. There’s a big fog machine that I think confuses a lot of people about how the mechanics of institutional racism and institutional white supremacy works. The Detroit News has been a bastion of opposition for as long as I can remember in my lifetime in this town.
WW: In speaking about the opposition you faced from the Detroit Police Department, could you speak a little bit about the Kercheval Incident in ’66?
FJ: Sure. As I said earlier, ACME–and thank goodness for a woman whose name is Nancy Milio who wrote a book called 9210 Kercheval, and Nancy was a social worker who was active in this very same area, and she created a Moms and Tots center which was considered very radical in the practice of social work at that time. A little digression here: Aaron Krasner, known as Ike Krasner, was a faculty member at Wayne State University in the Department of Social Work, and was himself an activist and radical in this time and helped to make Wayne State University a center of radical new thinking about social work. To be honest, I don’t know that Nancy Milio even went there, but I want to give Ike Krasner some credit and some recognition here for what he did. She was a nurse, and as I say, she created this Moms and Tots center that had a very complicated relationship with ACME. We were sort of dealing with the same constituencies in some cases. In any case, she came to publish a book about her experiences on Kercheval, and thank goodness, a lot of her book is about ACME, and she reproduces some of the documents that ACME produced including a manifesto, if you will, that sets out a quite sophisticated program addressing, as I say, education, health, and the whole gamut of issues of institutional racism.
But the thing that came to define ACME’s existence more than anything was this conflict with the police. At one point they came up with some pretense, they raided the ACME office and tore things up and destroyed things and took documents and so on and so forth. On a daily basis, there was this sort of police presence and there was at that time a unit of the police known as the “Big Four,” which was always four, big white men who rode around in big Chryslers and who basically contended for control of the streets, is the way that Will McLendon, who was one of the leaders of ACME, and I would put it. They did this all over the city, and they did it in every city in the United States, and they still do it in every city in the United States. But what made it different in the context of ACME is that it always had this very clear and defined political edge.
Do people call you Bill or William?
WW: Billy.
FJ: Billy? Okay. This was a source of constant conflict and ACME, as I look at this now, we certainly did some things that I’m sure they found deliberately provocative: we picketed police stations. I remember one time we organized a little sort of yippee-like intervention. They were doing an open house at the Fifth Precinct, I get the Fifth and the Seventh mixed up sometimes, but anyway, it was the precinct whose headquarters at that time were on Jefferson and Connor. We kind of invaded the open house and I remember one of our members, Moses Wedlow, who was an extraordinary guy by any measure, sort of took over giving guided tours of the precinct and said, “So this is the little room they put you in when they’re going to beat you,” and we completely disrupted this goodwill community outcome. I cite that just because it’s kind of a fun story on the one hand, but also because it was evidence of this, “We mess with them, they messed with us.” So come to the time of the Kercheval Incident in 1966, for which I was not physically present, by the way, but this led to an encounter that, I guess from the police’s point of view, got out of control in which they pride themselves of over a three-day period having gotten back under control again. Let me stop there and see if you have a follow-up question or where else you want to go with this.
WW: So still speaking about Kercheval, who were some of the other major Detroit activists that were involved, say in the Kercheval Incident?
FJ: Well of course the local activists were Will McClendon and Moses Wedlow, Clarence Reed, a number of other names. Part of the notoriety of the Kercheval Incident is that General Baker and Glanton Dowdell, who at that point were very prominent African American activists in Detroit themselves, were stopped on I think it was the second night of the incident on their way to Kercheval and a number of weapons were found in their vehicle. I think that that’s important because there is this debate, which I’ve weighed in on in many ways and many times about “Was it a riot, was it a rebellion, was it civil unrest?” and my argument in part that it was a rebellion was that in the case of Kercheval at any rate, everybody involved knew that these were overtly political people. You can say, for example, of a blind pig on Twelfth Street, a year later in July of 1967, “Well, that was just sort of the day-to-day tension and struggle between mostly white police and black citizens,” but you couldn’t say that about Kercheval, because ACME was known to the police, had an office, was a political organization, and was already in a kind of medium intensity conflict with the police.
I was pleased to read recently Hubert Locke’s interview for this project and Hubert and I have a long history, and I have great respect for him and for the work he did in the effort that he made in the city. But I noted that in his interview about the Kercheval Incident, and others have made the same point, for all of the pride they took–“and boy did we know how to handle this, and we put on this overwhelming display of force and so we contained this”–he gives a lot of credit to a massive rainstorm that took place on the third night of what was going on and that swept everybody–the cops, and everybody else–off the street. Had that rainstorm not happened, might there have been a different outcome? Well obviously, we’ll never know. We do know, however, that whatever significance is attached to the rainstorm, it was because of Kercheval that from Mayor Cavanagh to the Police Commissioner and everybody on down, there was this confidence that “we know how to handle this.”
WW: Uh-hm.
FJ: Other cities–Newark, other places–this may get out of control, but we have proved and we’ve trained and we’ve learned and we’ve equipped the police to make the kind of presence and so on and so forth that that can contain conflict once it starts. I think hardly anybody disputes that that played a role in them kind of misunderstanding what started on Twelfth Street in July one year later.
WW: Did your work change after the Kercheval Incident? Was there a sense of worry going forward that the police were going to be more openly antagonistic toward you?
FJ: That’s a great question. I think that we thought they probably couldn’t be anymore antagonistic than they were already. A couple of other things happened at the same time. For one thing, of course, Will McClendon and Clarence Reed were charged for inciting a riot and we became involved in their legal defense in the immediate aftermath of Kercheval, and they were I think unjustly convicted, they both did, in Will’s case, quite a bit of time, in Clarence’s, not so much. It would be fairer to say that we were in a certain way put on defense from that point forward in a way that we had not been previously. That did have a disruptive effect on ACME and its ability to do what it was there to do.
At the same time, personally, I was going through this transition that I mentioned before of shifting into, “What do we need to be doing in the white community, and what kinds of programs and organizing and educational materials and so on,” because that was the period of the evolution first to Friends of NSM and then to People Against Racism, so my own attention was shifting more towards People Against Racism.
I also was becoming more involved in the anti-war movement at that point. And I remember very well the conversation within People Against Racism about the war, because it was a formative experience for us. We developed position papers and we had a long conversation at the end of which we said, “This is a racist war. If we are People Against Racism, we must be against this war.” The grounds for believing that the war in Vietnam was a racist war was twofold: First, we felt that this kind of death and destruction and brutality was a continuation of the racial practices that we were coming to understand that went with slavery, that went with genocide against the indigenous people of the United States, and that this war was not going on against white Communist countries. The allegation, in the case of Vietnam, or the cover story was, “Well, we’re stopping Communism.” “Well, why don’t you stop Communism in Poland? Why don’t you drop napalm on the Polish people if you think that that’s the way, if that’s how you have to achieve regime change?”
So we thought the war was racist on those grounds, and we thought we thought the war was racist because we understood that black and brown people were experiencing a way disproportionate impact of casualties, of being killed and injured in the war. All of these threads were converging in 1967, in that year from ’66-67, both in my own personal life, and in how the movement in Detroit and around the world was evolving.
Somewhere in there, I don’t know that I could put even an approximate date on it, but somewhere in there, ACME kind of fell apart. Keep in mind that as a result of COINTELPRO, and as a result of police surveillance and intervention, none of the organizations of the Sixties really survived, not SNCC, not SDS, not the anti-war coalitions sort of lasted more into the early-Seventies. But I have long maintained that too little attention is paid to, I have to say it, the success of political repression, the success of intervention and arrests and assassination, obviously in the case most notably of Malcolm X and of Martin Luther King. As too few people know, scores of civil rights activists, particularly in the South but not exclusively in the South, were killed.
By vigilante groups, by the police, etc., etc. You know it’s funny. When we want to go make an intervention in some foreign country we often cite the repressive machinery of the state as stifling dissent and free speech and democracy and so on and so forth; well, it works, and the evidence that it works is, you don’t have to go to some country in Latin America or Africa or Asia to prove that, you can go to the United States. That did begin to have an effect. I’ve written about this: we had our own internal problems, I think we weren’t prepared to deal with the level of repression, we didn’t understand U.S. history, we didn’t really understand what we were up against, and there were other flaws that I can look back on now in terms of what our philosophy and our goals and objectives were, but we for sure were not ready for the level of political repression that we encountered. So, the short answer summary of that is that ACME kind of fell apart.
WW: Before we get into ’67, so during the year before ’67, what was the state of, say, left-wing activism? In Detroit, was it a cohesive group, or was it multiple groups working toward the same goal but independently? Because you mentioned you’ve worked with John Watson, you’ve worked with General Baker, you’ve worked with Will McClendon. Was it a unified group?
FJ: I would say is that it was sort of all of the above. What I mean by that–I’m not trying to be cute–I think Detroit is a special place. I think the history of the movement in Detroit, if for no other reason than the importance of the League of the Revolutionary Black Workers coming from Detroit, and because of the history of Detroit preceding the 1960s because of the labor history of Detroit and the deep roots of political struggle and particularly the Black community in Detroit that goes way, way, way back. I think the Detroit movement had a vitality and an energy that was important and extensive. But I think we also had all of the political contradictions that were to be found both in the national movements and so on.
The most important of those contradictions, and again I’ve written quite a bit about this, is that I think the movements of the Sixties themselves never overcame the racial divide. I think you have the “white movement” on the one hand, which was SDS and the women’s movement and a big part of the anti-war movement, and then I think you had the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement and the League of Revolutionary–you know, the name was the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. It’s not that those things didn’t overlap and intersect: white people went to the South, obviously, and I as a white activist was very engaged with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. I mentioned earlier later in that process when Jim Forman left SNCC and came to Detroit because this is where the League was, and he and I taught a class together. It’s certainly true that there was, however you slice it, there was some contact between white activists and black activists.
That being said, there were organizations that were overwhelmingly white, and other organizations that were overwhelmingly black. Even more as my own politics and understanding has evolved to this day, I understand that we have a–I sometimes call it ‘eugenic capitalism,’ I sometimes call it ‘race-based capitalism,’ I sometimes borrow Jim Lawson’s phrase ‘plantation capitalism’–we have a particular animal that we are dealing with here, not just in Detroit, and not just in the United States, but the history of colonialism on a global basis that requires and compels us to understand the power and the dynamic of race. I think we tried hard in the 1960s to do that, but I don’t think we got there. I think we didn’t understand it from an analytical point of view as well as we can now, and we certainly didn’t understand it from an organizational point of view. I can go on and on that, and I have in writing .
WW: [Laughter.]
FJ: And I will some more, but we don’t have all year here.
WW: So going into ’67 and then going into the summer of ’67–were you and other activists anticipating anything in Detroit? Watts has happened, Newark is going on. Are you anticipating that there will be an uprising in Detroit?
FJ: That’s a great question, and I don’t know that anybody has asked it exactly that way before. I think that we certainly thought it was entirely possible, how could we not? Particularly those of us who had been very directly involved in the Kercheval situation, and who knew how volatile things were and who knew–and I’m sure there’s things in writing that maybe you’ve already looked at or whatever–but whether in The South End, or things that the Cleage’s (??) were publishing at that point, no one was under the illusion that this cover story of ‘Detroit is different because things are better here and because we’re the poster child for liberal policies and model cities and so on and so forth,’ we knew that was all nonsense. We knew that one-millimeter below the surface was conflict with the police, was racial segregation, was institutional racism, so the possibility that at any given moment something could break out was in our minds. But I don’t know that anybody sort of specifically predicted that what was going to happen would happen. None of us were surprised, that’s for sure.
WW: How did you first hear about the incidents going on at Twelfth and Clairmount?
FJ: What a story! So, I was not in Detroit at that point, I was in London, England, attending something called the Dialectics of Liberation Conference with Stokely Carmichael. You can look this up: there’s websites that talk about the Dialectics of Liberation Conference, and there’s some accounts from people who were there of sort of me, and Stokely, and some of things that went on in that regard. I honestly don’t remember the sequence here, but somehow, news accounts began to make their way into the international media of the time. The Dialectics of Liberation Conference, by the way, was this radical gathering of activists from all over the world, including from the United States, that itself had sort of an interesting take on, “Where are we at in this point of history?” and so on and so forth. At some point, with all due respect–and I really mean this, to my friend Hubert Locke–as I recall it, he didn’t tell this in his story, but at some point Hubert Locke reached me in London and said, because of Kercheval and other reasons, “Do you know what’s going on here, and do you have ideas about anything we can do about it?” was sort of the way I remember it. I said, “Well, I’m vaguely of what’s going on,” and this would’ve happened whether I’d gotten that phone call or not, but I said, “I’m coming back to Detroit.” I remember–this was easier to do then than it is now–but I remember changing my flight, and the earliest flight I could get, it still took me any number of hours before I could. But I came back to Detroit early.
By the time I got here, of course things had escalated to an incredible degree. But I remember that People Against Racism, which was my primary organization at that point, started to organize and I remember we had a meeting at a church in Royal Oak, and we established some sort of outpost as I recall at Grace Episcopal Church, where Father David Gracie was located who had been a longtime supporter of the movement to bring people together to talk about what was going on to try to figure out whether there were supplies that we could raise, that people need that were being dislocated and so on and so forth. I was up to my eyeballs in it. At that point, the Detroit Police no longer had any reason in talking to me, and I didn’t have any interest in talking to them either, but it’s just a funny little footnote of history, getting that call from Hubert.
A parallel story is that I was still at that time the news editor of The Fifth Estate newspaper. So one of the other things that happened as things were still smoldering, is that I was still the news editor of The Fifth Estate at that point, and as a result of people that I knew on the East Side, I was told of a story which turned out to be basically a story of the National Guard assassination of a young man who was named, I remember to this day, John Leroy. I got to work on a story about the brutality of the police and, in particular, the National Guard during the rebellion. The Fifth Estate published a story, which was referenced actually in The Fifth Estate exhibit that was done here at the Detroit Historical Museum, a front-page story called “Who Killed John Leroy?” Peter Werbe and others at The Fifth Estate and I are still proud of the fact that we think before the Free Press got into investigating what happened at the Algiers Motel, we were really the first publication to raise and document a story about the incredible brutality and repression.
Perhaps others have said this as well, I think its widely understood in some circles at least that our interpretation even at that time of what we knew in the moment was the main reason that the 82nd Airborne came to Detroit was to control the National Guard, it wasn’t necessarily to control the population, because the National Guard was out of control and basically the police were out of control at that point. Who knows how many more people would’ve been killed had it not been for the 82nd Airborne, which had brought–I’m not saying any of this would have called to bring the 82nd Airborne into Detroit. By the way, a side note, the law that had to be used to allow the 82nd Airborne to participate, to be deployed domestically, was specifically a law about insurrection; I cite that in terms of this ongoing debate about rebellion or riot because the law sort of anticipated exactly–well, maybe not exactly–but a situation like this as a time when federal troops could be deployed domestically. In any case, not only were they a far more disciplined fighting force obviously, but there were a lot of black people in the 82nd Airborne and there were not a lot of black people in the National Guard at that point, that was an overwhelmingly white organization. As I say, but for that fact, probably even more people would’ve been killed than were killed–of course, all of whom were killed by the police.
Anyway, the story of “Who Killed John Leroy” is something I’m proud of and proud of because it was at least shining a tiny little light on, ‘let’s look at what was the conduct of the police and the National Guard and the federal troops in this.’ And it’s an old story in US history of course, that the military is created in part out of fear and anticipation of slave revolts going all the way back to slavery, and of course of having to clear territory and otherwise deal with Indigenous Americans, so there is this continuous line throughout our history that is a part of my mission to this day continues to be to help white people understand that. I don’t know where that leaves us, but.
WW: So now the 82nd Airborne has come, and the rebellion is put down, essentially.
FJ: Correct.
WW: I have a couple of effect questions. So what effect did the rebellion have on your activism?
FJ: Well it didn’t diminish it in any way, that’s for sure. I think, again, my primary sort of base at that point in addition to The Fifth Estate was People Against Racism, and we became even more active, and it became even more apparent to us that institutional racism was a very powerful and brutal force in American life. So we continued to do the work of People Against Racism, and at that point as I say, we have active chapters in a number of cities and on many, many college campuses. I think it’s fair to say that I had not thought about it this way until now, but I think it’s fair to say that in the same sense in which 1966 was maybe the beginning of the end for ACME, maybe 1967 was the beginning of the end for People Against Racism because, in part, I think we got, there’s this drip-drip-drip isn’t the right expression, but there was this relentless political repression and surveillance and so on. We were a white group so weren’t experiencing it the way Black Panthers or SNCC or anybody like that was, but we still knew that even for the kind of work we were doing, there was a lot of opposition.
Of course, we previously referred to Donald Lobsinger and to Breakthrough, but these kinds of organizations are a permanent feature of American political life. They ebb and they flow, we happen to be in a time of the presidential campaign of Donald Trump which obviously is capturing a lot of this, “I want my America back again,” and we know what people mean. There’s a left-wing version of, “I want my America back again,” too, by the way, but the right-wing version of, “I want my America back again,” is, “We want white people clearly in charge,” that’s what that’s all about.
I cite that just because obviously post-’67 in Detroit, the anti-war movement is still gathering steam at that point, but personally I think it’s fair to say that even within People Against Racism, we began to pay more attention to the war as a focal point of our activities, for better or for worse, not even entirely sure why that happened, but part of why it happened was that that was still a growing and very dynamic component of the movement.
In any case, were there people in that period who dropped out of politics? Well, nobody that I knew. I think maybe people did get burned out. And people sort of did take a break from politics at various points along the way, but I don’t know, I was as busy as ever.
WW: You touched on a couple points in our interview so far. The term ‘rebellion’ and why you use that terminology. Could you go in-depth with it for a couple moments?
FJ: Sure. I’ve already said that I think, don’t take my word for it, take the government’s word for the fact that it was a law about insurrection that was used to create the legal justification to send the 82nd Airborne to Detroit. I’ve also said that in the context of the Kercheval Incident, that was a conflict between an overtly political organization and the police and it had a long history before August of 1966 and a history after that. Also I’ve talked about the fact that–and I think for white people in particular this is important to understand–language does matter. The investment that a lot of white people have in calling this a riot is precisely because they don’t want to concede that black people had anything to rebel about, and because the characterization of this as criminal activity as opposed to political activity fits the whole ideology of white supremacy in the first place. Because whites perceive blacks as an underclass, a criminal class, etc., and going all the way back to slavery, the demonization of black people in order to create a moral justification for slavery and for the oppression and segregation and exploitation of black people is at the core of the identity of the United States of America. That’s hard for people to accept, it’s hard for people to hear, it’s hard for people to understand, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. So this debate–‘riot’ versus ‘rebellion’–this argument over a word does not take place in a vacuum, it takes place in the context of this.
Interestingly enough, fast-forwarding to the present for a minute, so now we have Nate Parker’s film Birth of a Nation, and there’s a growing understanding and a better understanding of African American history and of the fact that the institution of slavery has always faced resistance from black people, but that resistance has also always been distorted and mischaracterized and demonized in and of itself. Again, there is this continuing from whether you’re talking about Nat Turner or Denmark Vesey or some of the episodes leading up to and during the Civil War of mass black desertions, of blacks joining the Union Army. I could go on and on about some of this history, but the importance of it is to understand that this is a linear process. We’ve been having this argument about ‘rebellion’ versus ‘riot’ since the 1600s, and it’s as an important a conversation to have today as it was then.
I’m actually encouraged that we’re in a new wave of scholarship, and in a new kind of conversation about race. You know, I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I find some of the things for example, some of the programs that the African American History Museum is doing here. There hasn’t always been an African American History Museum. It is the cumulative effect of this movement and of the civil rights movement for example creating spaces in colleges and universities for scholars to do African American studies–white and black scholars I might add–to produce new work and better understandings of our own history whether you’re talking about 10 years ago or 100 years ago or 400 years ago, we are better positioned to, I hate the term ‘conversation about race,’ but partly because we’ve never not had a conversation –we talk about race all the time, and we have from the beginnings of the slave trade been talking about race, and white people talk about race all the time, and white people talk about their fear of rebellion and their fear of uprisings, and their fear of revenge and of justice. I can speak as a white person of a certain age, I’ve heard variations of the, “Well what if they started treating us the way we’ve treated them?” It’s not like white people don’t know what’s happened here, they know deep in their heart and their head what has happened, and they have a lot of fear, and that is also a big component of this ‘we have to call it a riot.’
WW: Wow. Thank you so much.
FJ: I have a follow-up to that.
End of Track 1 [1:08:18]
WW: Part two: The Frank Joyce interview.
FJ: Well, we were on a little tangent there, but let me stay on the tangent for a minute.
WW: Uh-hm.
FJ: Because it fits with another point that I want to make. I have long singled out The Detroit News for its prominent and particular role as an advocate for and defender of white supremacy and racial privilege and racial segregation and the attitude that white people are a better-than black people and more deserving than black people and so on and so forth. I think one cannot understand either how did we get to the point of 1966 and ’67, and I think I haven’t said this yet, but I do consider ’66 starting at Kercheval and ’67 to be one continuous event, just happened to last about 340 days, and continues in its own way to this day, because it’s not like this conflict is over with or is resolved.
In any case, I think The Detroit News had a particular role to play in creating the conditions and attitudes in Detroit that preceded ’66-67, but I think they continue to play that role and in particular–and actually this is a good segue into the other point that I want to make. One of the other arguments that I make for ‘how do we know it was a rebellion, not a riot,’ is by reverse engineering what happened after the rebellion. I compare what happened toDetroit, and I use that term on purpose, after 1967 to what happened to Haiti after the Haitian uprising in 1791, if that’s exactly the right year, I think it is. What I mean by that is that Detroit was punished, and that the fears of white people which always just below the surface are of rebellion, are of uprising, are of revenge and fear motivates white attitudes in a way almost as much–maybe as much–in 2016 as in 1616, 1716, and all the years in between. And it is this notion that deep down inside we know that what we’re doing is wrong, and that whether it’s Christianity or whatever, that somehow, somewhere, there’s gong to be a price to paid for this on one hand, and on the other hand, there’s this notion that we must keep a lid on this. We must punish those who rebel. All of the known slave rebellions, for example, Denmark Vesey, Nate Parker, and so on and so forth, they were all hunted down and hung. The communities–whether it was the Church or the neighborhoods or the communities from which they sprang–were punished too. We have this notion of collective punishment, which is that, “Okay, we’re not saying everybody did it–not everybody went into a store on Twelfth Street, and took a TV set, or whatever–but in order to see to it that this doesn’t happen again, we are going to reassert our power and our control.” Militarily. So for example, and I wrote a piece about this shortly after the rebellion, we hear today a lot about police departments being weaponized with surplus weaponry from the Pentagon and from war. Well in Detroit, shortly after the rebellion, at taxpayer expense, not because the Pentagon was giving anything away for free, a bond issue was passed which was used in part to buy heavy weaponry for the Detroit Police Department: military personnel carriers, assault weapons, all kinds of other stuff, and I wrote about that at the time.
That in a way was only the half of it because as hostile as suburbia and as out-state Michigan might have been to Detroit as it was becoming a predominately black city, all of that hostility greatly intensified after 1967. You see that play out certainly in the state legislature again and again and again, very dramatically on the question of regional transit, for example. We’re facing a ballot proposal about creating a Regional Transit Authority, and it will be, I believe, number 27 in a series of regional transit proposals everyone of which up to now has been defeated. I’m optimistic about this, I think it’s evidence of the fact that some things maybe have changed here. But the 26 defeats are a dramatic example of this attitude of, ‘We do not want to do anything that facilitates interaction and transportation between black Detroit and the suburbs.’
As you may know, but others may not, I remember not that many years ago Wal-Mart wanted to build a store in Livonia. People militantly opposed Wal-Mart’s building a store in Livonia not because of the reasons that Wal-Mart meets a lot of antagonism: it’s bad for small business and so on and so forth, people explicitly stood up and said, “If there’s a Wal-Mart in Livonia, black people will work there, and black people will come here to shop, and we don’t want that.” This notion of rigid residential and economic segregation between the suburbs of Detroit–I mean white flight is of course what made Detroit predominately a majority black city in the first place. Once white flight had taken place, the notion that was crystallized so clearly and repeated only recently by L. Brooks Patterson of what we should do with Detroit is build a wall around it and throw in the blankets and corn, characterizes for me not the only response but the predominant response to 1967 of hostility, of punishment, of control, of antagonism.
Glibly people say, even Nolan Finley will said this, “We live in a racially polarized community.” Well we sure as hell do, but it takes certain kinds of behavior and certain kinds of attitudes and certain kinds of legislations and certain kinds of practices on the part of white people to create that polarization and to keep it in place. Those forces are still very powerful. I think they’re not as powerful in 2016 as they were probably in 1969, but they are baked into the institutional and power arrangements of our society in that sense. Thomas Sugrue of course is one of many who’ve written about this, but in that sense they continue to be baked into the intuitional arrangements and into how we talk about race in Detroit to this day.
WW: Wow. Thank you.
FJ: Thank you.
WW: [Laughter.]
FJ: Wrap it all up and tie a bow around it.
WW: [Laughter.] A few more questions first.
FJ: Sure, okay.
WW: So I asked you earlier how the rebellion affected your work. How did the rebellion affect activism in Detroit in general? Did you personally see an uptick in say organization or activism?
FJ: Well, to refer back to something I said before, it’s hard to sort of separate out, “Okay, what was the impact of the rebellion?” versus, “What were these other macro-forces that were in play?” By the end of the 1960s, for example, SNCC and SDS and all of these organizations with the something of the exception, as I said, for the anti-war movement, were beginning to crash and burn, for a variety of reasons.
WW: Okay.
FJ: Certainly, rebellions were a national phenomenon from Detroit to Newark to Watts to etc., so that plays into the national mix here. Certainly, the intensification of the war in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia at the same the intensification of the anti-colonial struggle in Africa, in Latin America as well were part of kind of the big picture forces that were in play here. The other thing I think it’s fair to say is that I don’t care whether you’re talking about the labor movement in the 1930s, for example, or even the Civil War for that matter, things run in kind of waves and phases and they run out of gas and then things are more dormant for a period of time until, for whatever reasons, these things happen. The period we’re in now, with Black Lives Matter, for example, and other organizations that are reframing and reenergizing these political conversations. I include the Bernie Sanders Campaign in that, for example. We’re in a maybe a pre-movement or early-movement time again, but how much weight to give to political repression, how much weight to give to other things, things did kind of run out of gas. Even the anti-war movement, which I stayed active in until the very end–in which I’ve, a year or so ago, co-edited, published a book about, even the anti-war movement–basically ran out of gas in 1973 at the time the Paris Peace Accords sort of officially ended US participation in the war. Now we know the war didn’t really end until 1975, but certainly by 1973, the anti-war movement was out of gas as well, except for some die-hard people like me.
And there were die-hard people in all of these movements who continued on. One of the things when I talk to young people today, which I of course very much enjoy doing, is nobody told me when I was your age that you should start thinking about this as the work of a lifetime. But it is the work of a lifetime. The overwhelming majority of people who were active in the Sixties are still active in some way or other, obviously not as intensely as they were, but there’s a real core of people like me who, we zigged, we zagged, we had kids, we had families, we did some other things, but we continued to be politically active. Anyway, to try to sum that up in a slightly more coherent fashion, I just can’t pinpoint where in the winding down of that movement the rebellion fits.
WW: Okay. To you, is there a difference between the organizations that blossomed before the rebellion and after; say SNCC fell before the rebellion, and then is there a difference between say SNCC and Ad-hoc Action Group or DRUM or League of Revolutionary Black Workers, was there a strikingly different tone to their work compared to the work in the early Sixties?
FJ: You know I really don’t think so. I’d love to have a conversation with somebody who disagrees, but I see that more as evolutionary, not some big break and then we started over.
WW: Uh-hm.
FJ: I think that we all were learning things at the time. In retrospect, we clearly didn’t learn enough. As I said before, we really were naïve about a lot of things. We were naïve in part because, using this term in the broadest possible way, we were a New Left. It’s not that we didn’t have some connections to the Communist Party and to some of the key organizations of previous struggles and previous movements, but we were in part rebelling against them too. What that meant, and there’s an upside to this as well as a downside, but it meant that we were figuring it out on our own. Now, amongst organizations that I think doesn’t get the credited desserts in American history is the Communist Party. I was pleased to see R.D.G Kelly has recently written a book in which he talks about this. Particularly on the issue of trying to form organizations and movements that could bring blacks and whites together in the workplace, in communities, and so on and so forth, the CP was trying to do that, and had no small success at doing that for a very long time. Of course, they paid a price as well, and of course, there’s a bigger story to tell there.
Let me just think about it personally. There’s a lot of continuity in the evolution of my own political thinking over 50 years, and it’s a mosaic and every piece of it fits somewhere. I think, for example, I give a lot of credit to initially Jimmy and more so Grace Boggs, but I think as their political thinking evolved, and as they brought us to a point of understanding that we need to take a fresh look at how this society is organized and one that was, to use Arundhati Roy’s phrase, what a better world might look like. I think again Detroit in many ways leads the way in this of not being stuck, of not being doctrinaire, of being able to step back from our own movement and look at, “What did we do right, what did we do wrong, and more immortally, what do we need to be doing now?” But there’s many threads, but I do see it as a whole piece of cloth, if you will.
In some ways, just a specific point–picking up, reacting to the Ad-Hoc Committee, in some ways some of the work that we did attracted more support from whites after the rebellion than it had before. In its own way, that goes to my argument about rebellion because it wasn’t just that the response of the white establishment or whites in general was 100 percent repressive. Again, go all the way back to slavery, and go all the way back to the Indian Removal Act, or pick any symbol you want of the genocide against indigenous people in the United States and elsewhere, there are always some whites who are saying, ‘More carrots, less sticks’. To further mangle that metaphor, I think that we began to see some resources that were available, some from foundations and from wealthy individuals and from other organizations who kind of got it and said, ‘The root of this problem is segregation, it is economic exploitation of African Americans, and we need to address that part of the problem too.’ So, that didn’t prevail, the bad guys won out and the punishment and control people were more powerful than that, but there was a liberal response for sure.
WW: Speaking about Detroit groups in particular, you mentioned how groups were burning out and sputtering out.
FJ: Uh-huh.
WW: What was the lifespan of Detroit’s hard-core political groups?
FJ: Well I don’t know if Shelia talked about this in your conversations with her, but of course one of the things that was important to Sheila and me and a lot of other people was what is known–we’re getting really into the weeds here of history–was what is known as the split in the Motor City Labor League, because one of the things that emerged in that period was, out of DRUM and what became the League of Black Revolutionary Workers and so on, a multiracial organization that was trying to build on what had we learned and what had we organized up to that point. It created very successful programs such as the Control, Conflict, and Change Book Club for example, which I’ve been trying to recreate ever since–one day I’ll succeed. That goes to the point earlier of how after the rebellion, there was even more energy, and more organizing, and more activity going on. But, how much of this might’ve been in part exploited by COINTELPRO or the police or whatever, we began to encounter serious political differences about ideology, about strategy, about Marxism, about many, many of these questions.
There was an organization called the Motor City Labor League, it divided in a very bitter conflict, and I think did contribute to the demise of at least a significant part of the Detroit left. It would be wrong not to mention that, and I’m glad you brought it up, because that certainly played a big role.
WW: Another very loaded question: do you think that the quote-unquote “shadow of ’67” still hangs over the Metro area?
FJ: Oh, absolutely, very much so. When I wrote my piece in The Free Press earlier this year about ‘riot’ versus ‘rebellion,’ I had that very much in mind, and I started that piece with saying something like, ‘It’s a part of the summer ritual,’ because not a summer has gone by since that that anniversary isn’t marked, it’s like 9/11 or Independence Day or something. This metropolitan area pays attention to 1967 on every year ending in the number seven, and I’m sort of fantasizing out loud here, but maybe we’ll know we’ve made some real progress when a year goes by and nobody does that. It is a part of the summer ritual here, and I say that to say that the ‘riot’ versus ‘rebellion’ debate, it’s like a smoldering ember and the flames shoot up all over again, so in that narrow way, it continues to cast a shadow. In a broader way, in a far broader way, as a result of what has been done to Detroit, as I was saying earlier, the destruction of the Detroit Public Schools, for example, emergency management, bankruptcy, the distortions of the tax code that are punitive towards Detroit, the question I mentioned earlier, the isolation of Detroit by the refusal to create a regional public transportation system, I could go on and on and on, but in those ways, very directly, we are still in the shadow of 1967 for sure.
WW: Well thank you so much for sitting down with me. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
FJ: God, I don’t think so.
WW: [Laughter.]
FJ: Of course, on the way home, I’ll think of five things.
WW: I’d be happy to sit down with you again.
FJ: Okay.
WW: Thank you so much.
**Publisher’s note: This is the edited version of an interview with Dr. Karl Gregory by Tobi Voigt for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit ’67 Oral History Project.
Interviewer: TV
Interviewee: KG
TV: Today is Tuesday September 1st, 2015. My Name is Tobi Voigt. I’m with the Detroit Historical Society and I’m the Interviewer today and my interviewee is…
KG: Karl D. Gregory, Karl with a K.
TV: Great. Welcome, thank you Karl. Can you let me know a little about yourself? When and where you were born and a little but about your family?
KG: I was born in Detroit. I’m a Detroiter although I have lived many other places throughout my life, Even though I’ve left Detroit a lot of times, I’ve always come back. I have a spouse and three children. I worked as a professor of Economics at Wayne State University during the Civil Uprising in 1967. At that time, I lived on Appoline Street in Northwest Detroit and was very active in several community organizations - an activist professor. In fact, there were three professors at Wayne State at the time who were very active in the Detroit community. They were Mel Ravitz, a City Council person and Marian Mahaffey, another City Council person. I was the third active professor. There’s a great difference… I was a distant third [chuckles], but nonetheless quite active in the community, particularly the year before 1967 when I was involved in a major incident in Detroit that could have led to an uprising at that time, had that incident been handled differently, say in an Alabama Mayor Bull Connor fashion.
TV: Are you referring to the school walkout?
KG: Yes. I was the volunteer principal of the Northern High Freedom School trying to help the students there receive responsible attention in place of an initial hostility from the school board to their walkout. I recognized that it was a highly combustible boycott that could have led to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. My supporting the students was important because they were being abused by the Detroit school system, as were many students in the predominantly black central city schools at the time. The active seeking by students of a hoped-for higher quality education could be, I thought, the cutting edge for reinvigorated better performance in a new non-racialized school system.
TV: Would you tell me a little more about that?
KG: The Northern High School student body walked out in rebellion against a repressive school where very little learning and much student harassment took place, complete with an aggressive policeman within the school overly exerting his authority, according to the students. The building was badly maintained. Several senior teachers who were there many years ago when the school had mostly white students were not comfortable with a virtually all black student body. Students regarded younger teachers as having more positive attitudes about black students, but they tended to be rotated out due to seniority provisions in labor contracts.
This was a troubled school on the verge of becoming a none-too-subtle institution of incarceration pretending to be a school. It was a place of declining learning requiring a change agent to turn it around. The students became the change agent. I and my volunteer assistants at the Freedom School were administrative non-policy making volunteers, without pay or assets for operating the freedom school other than what could be scrounged from the community.
There were three major leaders of the student walkout. The relationships each had with significant parts of the student body explain the marvelous coordination the students had. One was an intellectual named Charles Colding. He was the editor of the student newspaper. His article describing the school’s deteriorating condition and strife led to the principal stopping the publication. It was too penetrating and too complete a description and could perhaps have led to embarrassment for the principal. That action was the trigger, piled on many other grievances, that subsequently initiated the school boycott and the formation of the Freedom School. This in turn could have led to an inner city-wide conflagration more than a year before July, 1967, were it not for a well-led strategy by students with some responsiveness ultimately by community leaders and the Detroit School Board chaired by Remus Robinson, the first black school board member and board chairman.
Judy Walker was the second student leader. She is now a well-known real estate broker and owner who has bought buildings for her own account. At the time of the walk-out, she lived east of Oakland Street, at that time, the dividing line between the black middle class and the families in her neighborhood who were not as well off. She was looked up to by all of the students east of Oakland and some on the west, the more affluent side.
Another student leader, Michael Bachelor, became a prominent attorney in Detroit. He is now dead, I understand. He was a football player and was respected by the athletes at Northern High. Many of the athletes supported his leadership.
These three student leaders, with connections to, and loyalty from, several different and influential student groups, brought cohesion to and loyalty from the student body. Efforts to divide them by police, employees of the school board, an initially misunderstanding daily press, and others, were unavailing. Together with other supporting student leadership, the student body became organized to carry out their strategies for their negotiation with the school board and to confront factors that led to a decreased quality of education in inner-city high schools.
The students of Northern believed that they could not compete equally with graduates from other better-resourced schools in the suburbs and the virtually all-white outlying districts within the city of Detroit. This was one of many interlocking issues of racism. If one looks closely enough at that period, one cannot avoid seeing that efforts having the impact of maintaining white supremacy citywide precipitated that school walkout and also, for that matter, the subsequent 1967 civil uprising. Fortunately, this walkout did not result in any violence, but it could have been different without a Freedom School to challenge the students, contribute to their learning and provide the time and leadership sustenance for successful negotiations with the initially hostile Detroit School board .
TV: This was Northern High School…
KG: Right, on Clairmount and Woodward. Incidentally, Clairmount is the same street at which the Rebellion in ’67 started. It is about 12 blocks west of Northern High.
TV: Yes. I understand, from what you’re saying, the students were boycotting because they were not getting an equal education.
KG: Exactly.
TV: And I understand correctly, the administration (the principal, the vice-principal and most of the teachers) were white [and] it was a majority African-American school and there was blatant mistreatment.
KG: Yes. And under resourced unlike many mostly white schools in the city. The basketball floor had nails protruding from the floor. If one was playing a basketball game there, one would have to know where to run or else the nails would pierce one’s gym floor shoes.
There were three floors in the school. Railings on some of the stairways (from first to second, second to third) were off. One couldn’t hold on to them, increasing the possibilities of falls. Academic standards were very poor such that the students felt that they were handicapped and they couldn’t compete with students from other schools who had better supervision, more caring instruction, more books and other resources.
Needless to say, the Board of Education did not treat all high schools equally. Historically there had been a flight of middle class whites out of Detroit and to a lesser extent a flight of whites from central city to outer city Detroit. This had been going on for years at that point, but it was beginning to pick up. The school board was faced with the situation that the inner-city schools were predominantly black because of rigid racism in housing patterns, including the segregation that public policy condoned and in fact subsidized. This left African Americans with a limited residential area permitted by segregated patterns enforced by real estate agents. By that time, the black population had grown out of Black Bottom westward, across Grand River, from being heretofore densely within the Boulevard and largely on Detroit’s east side. It had by then expanded to many adjacent areas of the city to heretofore primarily white and often Jewish areas as they, in turn, moved out of Detroit to Southfield and beyond increasingly as the years passed. The outer areas of Detroit were predominantly white and remained white for several years, as did the schools their children attended.
The school board was concerned with the departure of whites predetermining a mostly black school district. Whites generally had higher incomes and higher valued homes, which meant they usually paid more taxes than inner city dwellers who were increasingly black. The school board wanted to maintain an interracial population and the tax yield. It seemed to give priority to resources for the white schools. At that time, the schools were financed primarily by property taxes. There was not then an allocation per student such as the State has now. The interest was in maintaining revenues for the school system by giving preference to those most likely to flee, who were mostly white. Consequently, more resources were placed into the schools that were in outer Detroit. Less money was spent for the schools in lower income communities in the central city. Race was undoubtedly not a neutral factor in these decisions.
The central city students understood this disparity. They felt underserved and they were really angry because their whole lives were at stake just at a technological time that a college education was becoming more important for viability in later life. If one did not go beyond high school, and the students recognized this, one would be handicapped for the rest of their life.
A tragedy of that situation in the late 1960s is that the state and city are today in the third millennium still under investing in schools, and with a heavily disproportional impact on African American youngsters in communities like Detroit and elsewhere. That this area of the city has a large African American population is not coincidental. Sensitivity and understanding by public officials in the state continues to be lacking to this day.
TV: I understand that the students came to you and asked you to be a principal for a new school that they were creating. Can you tell me a more about that and your role?
KG: Let me give a little back story before addressing the role of the volunteers of whom I was just one. When the students walked out, they were being harassed by the police and truant agents. The students decided that they needed to do something to stop this harassment and to get the Detroit School Board to change its policies. The media was playing the walkout negatively. The impression that followers of the media received – and that some of the public school leaders including the then principal was that these were “hooligans”. They didn’t really appreciate an education. They were just “acting up” as “these” kids – (silently understood to mean black kids) are inclined to do.
The first days of the walkout, there seemed not to be much belief that students were really fighting for a higher quality education. Hence, the students understood that something had to be done to get this pressure off of them, because, among other forces, their parents were reading the newspapers and pressing them to return to school. Parents did not realize how badly operated and racist Northern High was until the evening meeting at the Freedom School when parents were invited to hear from the students collectively why they walked out. These students explained their reasons. They became heroes to their parents and to the Freedom School staff. Most of the parents then came to understand support their children more than before.
Regarding how I became involved, on my way to teach at Wayne State University, I heard about the walk-out on the radio. I stopped by the high school, parked my car and went up to the picketing students and enquired what was happening. I was introduced to Charles Colding and identified myself as a WSU professor who had graduated from Northern years before and went on to my class at the university. He called me later in the afternoon and said, “Most of the student body has walked out. The police are after us as well as the school agents that deal with truancy. We would like to establish an alternate school and we were wondering if you’d be the volunteer principal.” I was at my Wayne State University office in the Department of Economics. I asked a few questions and responded “OK. When do you want to start?” He replied, “Tomorrow.” [Chuckles]
I went home after my day at the university and made many phone calls for the rest of the evening; I knew many faculty from and around Detroit and found diverse professors who didn’t have all-day classes at their universities who could come and meet me at the school a few hours the next afternoon and at various times during the following days.
I knew that it would take the first morning to form a curriculum, prepare teaching schedules, find nearby churches in addition to near-by St. Matthews St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church on Holbrook and Woodward, a Freedom School Site that the students had already arranged with Father David Gracie, the Rector and a community conscious priest. He knew many of the students because their parents were members of the church. The volunteers including Frank Joyce, my Deputy Principal, and I knew that we had to plan something for the students that first morning while the organizing took place. Frank and I along with other volunteers would plan in another part of the church while the students met in a large group with spillover room arrangements. We arranged to have an initial program featuring local civil rights activists who had worked in the south with the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other organizations to lead in freedom songs and talk about their experiences until formal classes started that first afternoon.
We did not have any financing. At least 1,000 students ultimately came to the school, although not that many came the first day. The public high school had an enrollment of about 2200. The principal placed pressure on some students not to walk out. The balance of students either didn’t show up for us, stayed home and/or returned to Northern. We had to find added space, so we recruited churches that were nearby to cooperate.
The leading church to volunteer was St. Mathew’s/St. Joseph’s.
Students came early in the morning and stayed throughout the day except for lunch. The school subsequently expanded to other churches.
Much of the night time was spent recruiting faculty and revising the curriculum based on the strengths of the volunteer teachers, largely college professors. We had no food or any other supplies for the students. I was very active in the Civil Rights Movement and there were a lot of Detroiters who had been active active in Freedom Summer and the voting rights movement in the South who were back in Detroit. I called a few of them and said, “Hey, we’re going to need you in the morning to conduct a session in the large chapel and a few of you to work out a curriculum on the afternoon of the Freedom School. Can you come and lead them in freedom songs, talk about what’s going on in the south, about Freedom Summer, and so on?” They came and we had a mass assembly in the church – where the congregation would sit.
In one of the side rooms, volunteers planned who was going to be there in the afternoon, who’s going to take what classes, where and so on, and how we’re going to structure things henceforward. We completed a tentative curriculum. There’s a lot to say about this, but we could use up the whole time talking about that.
TV: I know, but it’s so interesting!
KG: The story was in the papers daily during the walk-out. It was also the subject of a play given two consecutive weekends by the Mosaic Youth Theatre, headed by Rick Sperling of Detroit, in May 2011 at the Detroit Institute of Arts Theater. Each presentation was sold out or almost so. Mosaic youth teenagers played all the roles: the principal, students, school board, police, etc. I thought it was an outstanding presentation.
A point the play made clear was that the Freedom School bought the students time to negotiate with the Detroit school board which did not want to negotiate with them. The school board said, “We do not negotiate with students. We’ll negotiate with your parents.” But, some of the parents had not reached high school themselves. The students felt better off negotiating for themselves. They knew the circumstances of the schools since they lived them, but school board policy was “we don’t negotiate with the students.”
The students had to create a crisis so they would receive attention and they did that beautifully. They were at risk because they never knew when the police or the truancy officer would crack down physically. Other volunteers and I were also at risk for helping the students while they confronted the school system. In fact, I heard statements from people who knew legislators in Lansing who reported to me that “legislators were discussing passing legislation criminalizing activities of volunteers like you!”
That students could conceive such a strategy as they did and carry [it] out so well was unbelievable to them. They probably thought outside adults were misleading them. It’s like in the South during the fifties and sixties; it was never the system or authorities at fault. They would also say, “we know our local Nigras, they wouldn’t do this by themselves. [Thumps fist on table as he talks]. It’s the outsiders that are agitating!” The volunteers were seen in the role of the outsiders here with much of its risk, but it turned out beautifully and I’m so glad.
I just loved that experience and the accomplishment. I played a similar but less visible role in the aftermath in the Rebellion of 1967. We shall come to that later.
TV: Yeah, that’s great. That was a good story to hear because the detail help us understand the kind of role you play generally and I know you had a long career in Washington and the Civil Rights Movement before even that incident. Sometime I would love to sit down and learn about that [laughter], but I just realized we could be here for a week and I really want to hear it all, but let’s talk a little bit about that.
KG: Regarding a particular role in Washington D.C., I worked for the Kennedy and the Johnson Administrations in the Executive Office of the President, in the height of the Civil Right Movement in 1961 to ’64, while on leave from Wayne State University. Just to mention one of many experiences, following when Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner , civil rights workers, were murdered in Mississippi, I was the Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality in District of Columbia, a U. S. colony without complete self-government, a colony somewhat like Detroit during the recent bankruptcy and the Detroit Public Schools for a much longer period. CORE wanted to make sure that the murders of these three civil rights workers was not given low priority at the presidential level. I had extreme personal challenges because I was an economist working the Office of the President of the U. S. and heading up D. C. CORE in my non-working hours, while trying to encourage federal actions to help secure justice regarding the Mississippi murders. Somehow I had to find a way to heighten the consideration of this while I stayed in the background in order to avoid a conflict of interest. I finally decided to let others lead the way and remain personally uninvolved.
TV: That’s amazing. Now was your group instrumental in preparing Johnson and the administration for the signing of the Civil Rights Act?
KG: No, no, no, no, no. I can’t claim that [laughter]. CORE at the local level was trying to make sure that there was the understanding locally of the role racism played, opening up job opportunities in D. C., desegregating housing and supporting national efforts across the board there. The national office of CORE had the dominant role in dealing with the White House on national issues.
For example, in July 1963, our chapter of CORE helped many other organizations prepare D. C. for the March on Washington and worked as marshals for the March. We operated rest stations, etc. for the 250,000 marchers according to the understated official count.
For another activity, among several, in July of 1964, the protest of highest priority for the Civil Rights Movement nationally at that time was the seating of Mississippi Freedom Democratic delegation at the Democratic National Convention for the nomination of the President held in Atlantic City, where Johnson was to be nominated following his first partial term after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The Mississippi delegation was then, and had been historically, all white. The 1960 U. S. Census reported blacks were 42 percent of the population of Mississippi. But, they couldn’t have even any members [slams fist] of the Mississippi delegation.
A well-organized black political group with Fannie Lou Hamer as the head went to Atlantic City in full strength insisting that they be seated as the authorized delegation, pointing to the racism in the selection of the delegates in Mississippi. Actually, there were similar circumstances in lots of other states, but in Mississippi, it was worse than most other places.
How to handle this gave the Democratic Party a colossal problem. The party didn’t want these circumstances to reflect on their choice of President and his re-election, for Johnson had to win a national vote that included African American citizens in some states where they could vote.
Civil rights groups urged the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation, as they were called, to be seated as a group in place of the regular all-white delegation. CORE chapters and other civil rights groups all over the U.S. converged in Atlantic City and protested on the boardwalk for almost the entire convention, sleeping at night on the Boardwalk just outside of the Convention Center. I led a delegation consisting of members from Washington D.C. CORE, nearby Northern Virginia CORE and Baltimore CORE, all in that Northeast section of the U. S. We had two busloads and stayed on the boardwalk in Atlantic City for almost the entire convention until the Mississippi Freedom Party delegation incident was resolved.
It was resolved much to our dissatisfaction. Lyndon Johnson, with V.P. designate Hubert Humphrey being his point person, devised a so-called compromise. The Rules Committee decided the Democrats could not reject the Mississippi delegation in its entirety. Johnson’s negotiators offered a compromise to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation. They were to have a token of one delegate to join the regular delegation. It may have been that they could have compromised for two or three. Who knows? But, it would have been extremely difficult. Fannie Lou Hamer and the delegation rejected that compromise on obvious grounds. One delegate is like being a little bit pregnant.
The matter ended with continued racism in the Mississippi delegation, even though the state had a large number of African-Americans. It remained an all-white supremacist delegation from Mississippi. That same kind of attitude made it possible for the murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner to occur with an attempted cover up with the involvement of local law enforcement.
It should be noted how strongly white supremacy mattered in voter representation. Johnson realized this. To his credit he pushed through the Voting Rights Act afterwards knowing fully that white southerners would shift their allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans where they and their views would be more welcome and to change the latter party to representing the southern Democrats.
TV: That is a lot of history.
KG: Circumstances like those in Mississippi made racial problems worse and helped lead to situations like the 1967 Rebellion.
TV: Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about that. I know that we’ll get into it more a little bit later. You know Detroit being the quote, unquote “Model City” and the kind of feeling that the North is racist based on…
KG: There were slaves in New York and elsewhere!
TV: There were slaves in Michigan [chuckles].
KG: Yeah, that’s true, that’s true.
TV: Yeah, there were… Anyway, let’s scale back and go back to the events of ’67.
KG: Right.
TV: Particularly, what was your familiarity with the scenes of the uprising and the rebellion?
KG: I lived on Hague Street in Detroit between John R and Brush. That’s about eight blocks south of where the Rebellion started on Clairmount and Twelfth Street and about 14 blocks east of it. I lived there with my parents most of my youth and college years. My brother and I went to Northern High School that was on the same street (Clairmount) where the Rebellion occurred. I was very familiar with Twelfth Street also because my father owned a tailoring, cleaning and pressing shop on Twelfth Street and Delaware just a few blocks south of where large police arrests precipitated the Rebellion to break out. My father’s business was subsequently broken into, all the clothes taken and the building set of fire as the Rebellion turned into a riot.
On the second or third day I believe, I went into the 12th Street area in the early stages of the Rebellion with Chuck Colding, who was one of the leaders of the Northern High School boycott a year and a few months earlier. Together, we saw a group of fifteen [or] twenty adults in a close circle and we looked in the center. At the bottom was a cadaver who had a wound. I was told it was a police-inflicted bayonet wound. What struck me –and I’m always looking at symbols that are passed on to future generations – is that there was a little boy (no more than four) who stood beside I guess his father, holding his hand. The child was looking between the legs of the adults to see the cadaver. To me this represented the hostility and the violence of the current generation being passed to future generations, through the eyes of this kid. So I took a picture of it, with Chuck Colding there by me. I gave the picture to an editor of the Michigan Chronicle – whom I knew well. His name was Al Dunmore, who turned out to be one of the leading spokespersons for the Michigan Chronicle and the African-American community in Detroit for interpreting to the entire community what was transpiring during the uprising. He was very objective. He liked that picture so much he published it as a space filler in several individual issues later on in the Michigan Chronicle.
When I told that story of the photo to Sidney Fine, author of the Violence In The Model City (which is reputed to be the definitive discussion about what occurred then, next to the Kerner Commission report), his response was he researched all the deaths and did not find any death that corresponds to that one. Recently, I checked with Charles Colding. His recollection is the same as mine. I wonder how many other deaths official records did not count at all or counted incorrectly by location.
KG: The impression given by Fine was [that] I was mistaken, that this was not real. I elaborate on that because I think there’s a real need for this project that the Detroit Historical Museum is undertaking, because there is probably a lot of that the public does not know now. I also believe they will never know about some incidents that actually occurred. Yet, the more the public knows the better.
In fact, one of the major incidents that happened concurrent with the Rebellion --we only found out about it afterwards– was a truly heinous event. It happened five blocks from where my parents lived. The public only found out about it because a black reporter for a daily newspaper, one of a few reporters of color then to be sure, did not give up in trying to get further information on a rumor he heard. He heard police killed people in a motel on Woodward and Virginia Park named the Algiers Motel Annex. He heard … and he investigated with persistence despite initial resistance. He was like a bulldog. I happened to know him and noticed those bulldog characteristics.
He may have died because of that determined attribute, because he went to Boston afterwards and was, I have been told, investigating drugs and was killed there [under] unknown circumstances. This is unconfirmed. But, this reporter did the investigation and what he discovered has now been documented as the Algiers Motel Incident:
Three African–American males were killed and two reported white streetwalkers were involved. How that story could have escaped recognition and exposure instantly, except for the determination of one bulldog black reporter, is something the police and the daily press needs to understand and correct. Just imagine how many other similar circumstances may have happened.
Another of several things with which I experienced: I was also involved in an incident where I could have been killed during the 1967 rebellion. I received a call from a community organizer named Alvin Harrison. He worked with black youth on the east side Detroit in a very needy area. Those youth had an altercation with the police department during what’s known as the Kercheval Street Incident in the mid-1960s. I won’t go into this in detail because there are too many other things to talk about that are more related to 1967. Al called me. He was deeply involved in the community activity on the east side and he said, “Look, I just heard the National Guard is coming to the east side. There are lots of people on the street who do not know anything about this and I’m afraid [of] people getting killed.” He asked, “Can you come out with me to inform as many people as we can? And we’ll try get people off the street.” I said, “OK.” So we went over on the east side in my car and patrolled as much area as we could telling people ”the National Guard is coming, we do not know how well trained they are or if they are integrated. You have got to get off the street.” We got a lot off the street. But, I recall we drove around Mack and McClellan, Kercheval – some places like that and near where Northeastern High School used to be.
We continued until late that evening during a curfew. The National Guard stopped us. There was a young white guardsman who dismounted from his vehicle, approached and told me, “Pull your window down.” I was driving. [He] pointed his gun at me. I was concerned, but I wasn’t afraid then. His hand was shaking… on the trigger. And I said, “look, I’m a college professor, I am just trying to get the people off the street.” And he looked like he was trying to determine whether or not I was a rioter (or what have you) and a sergeant came by and said something like, “cool it.” But, this guardsman [the kid] was more afraid of me than I was of him. I don’t know how many black persons, if any, that youth had been in contact with before in his entire life.
Other incidents like that one have come to my attention subsequently from friends and students. The first military who arrived were National Guards personnel. They were fairly untrained, those I saw were white, volunteer National Guard. I presume they had little or no experience with African Americans. It wasn’t until later that the Army sent in the regular military. They were more diverse and were better trained and they weren’t as unfamiliar with black folks and didn’t feel challenged because they were dealing with a section of the population that very few of them had any connection with before and were frightened by.
With that experience, I don’t really believe that we, the public, have heard everything important that happened. That further makes me wonder how much we really know about matters in depth.
I have a friend named Paul Lee, who was a kid at that time, but he has researched 1967 widely. He has written several articles for the Michigan Citizen that go into the depth on the things that occurred which I did not know about before. For example, the authorities arrested so many folks in July 1967 that they didn’t have any place to put most of them. They took some of them out on buses to Belle Isle and kept them on the buses for days. They had no lavatory, no food, not anything but buses. If there is any violation of civil liberties, this is it! And they converted a bath house and perhaps other structures into incarceration facilities. I have not seen discussion of this in any media prior to seeing it in the Michigan Citizen years afterwards and I read voraciously. Again, I wonder, how many other incidents like this were, if not covered up, not relayed to the public, apart from the revelations of the Kerner Commission Report. A disturbing thought is: how much would the public know if there had not been a Kerner Commission report and Sidney Fine’s study. One wonders how complete were they.
An enlightened democracy needs more factual information conveyed to the public on what is really transpiring about which they should know to be informed citizens. I am glad to see the Michigan Historical Society bringing these stories through our interviews and other planned programs.
My major discretionary activity during that week was taking 35 mm slides and 8 mm movies of various uprising scenes. I took hundreds of slides, and several 8mm films. For example, I have film showing early during the Rebellion on Grand River in mid-town and north of there going up in flames. One wonders, why on Grand River between ten or so blocks north and south of the west Grand Boulevard and elsewhere, businesses were in flames at the outset of the Rebellion. One has to ask “Why there?” Of all the other places… and if you knew Detroit you knew then that on Grand River there were a lot of businesses that were really exploitative of the poor and the black community. Furniture and appliance stores would charge very high prices, accept a down payment and layaway goods. Customers could reserve furniture, put five dollars down and sign an “I owe you.” They couldn’t get the furniture until they paid the entire remaining balance.
It was well known that many people who purchase such items, largely overpriced to begin with, on layaway will never come back, or if they do come back, they will not pay off the entire bill and thereby lose their partial payments. These items could be sold over and over again. All sorts of businesses operated like that, just exploiting the community, particularly those who were poor and could not pay the entire price and hoped for better income allowing them to pay off their debt.
The day of the month that welfare checks were issued was well known. It was called “Mother’s Day”. Some commercial establishments would raise the prices of some goods temporarily on Mother’s Day on which the poor spent more.
One of my students while I was teaching courses in economics did a project where he compared prices of a basket of goods in suburban grocery stores with those in Detroit ghetto grocery stores and commented on the contrast in the price and quality of sample goods he observed. He discovered higher prices and lower quality in lower income neighborhoods in central Detroit. The quality was often much lower in the latter. Bread that was stale or older would be more frequently found in the inner city. There are stories like this of which the total population may be unaware. There is a huge foundation for many forms of alienation that would explain the dissatisfaction culminating in a rebellion. (I will not speak to a leading factor, police brutality, for it has been covered elsewhere.)
All this exploitation and lack of services and few food stores in very low income areas, falls with huge force on the people least able to afford it who also need the nutrients from fresh food, vegetables, and so on. Prior to the early 1950s when the Detroit population was just below 2.0 million, there were many services and commercial establishments which left the city after the Rebellion with the continued process of deindustrialization, globalization, disinvestment in the city and white flight followed by some black flight ramped up. Many more grocery stores and other service establishments existed then which thinned subsequently with the loss of businesses and population. That is when parts of Detroit continued to become commercial and food deserts.
TV: Wow… Those are pretty significant experiences. I know we wanted to talk a little bit about your involvement after the rebellion and post the uprising. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
KG: Right after the rebellion, before Thanksgiving, 1967 there was a huge concern among black community leaders about “what do we do now?” Forty-three persons or some such number officially dead, dozens of buildings burned down, economic activity brought to a standstill for several days, people not having services that they depend on, what do African Americans do about all of that, it was asked. Charles Diggs, a well-known Congressperson at that time, called a group of business and other activist leaders in the African-American community to meet to begin to answer this question. They were businessmen, preachers, and professionals (doctors, lawyers, teachers, business persons) and a cross section of the black leadership community, focusing on doers and not spotlight seekers or newspaper headline hunters.
The Congressman and others made an introductory statement expressing that we really have to do some creative strategizing beginning quickly. We have to think about rebuilding local institutions for African Americans in their interest so that events similar to the Rebellion would not recur and to eliminate the oppressive circumstances leading to such a Rebellion. Attendees discussed what happened and why it happened, in addition to offering ideas for redevelopment covering some of the points made in this interview.
Out of that group came several messages, but one was that people who owned and managed property tend to protect it. If one wants to increase interest in property value preservation and enhancement in our neighborhoods, one has to create service institutions and to organize businesses for generating jobs, fuller employment, and more residential ownership. Most importantly, however, one also has to address the exploitation that generates the motivation for Rebellion in the first place, such as, but not limited to, particularly police brutality, under education, huge income and wealth inequality, extensive residential segregation, racism and various forms of other repression and overall lack of opportunity.
TV: Now is this because just thinking back to the little bit I know about demographics in Detroit, but especially I know in the neighborhood of Twelfth and Clairmount in that neighborhood [there were] very few African-American homeowners and most were renters? Is that kind of the powerlessness behind it?
KG: That’s partly true. Many apartment buildings had absentee landlords who subdivided units to maximize rents. Many houses were sold on land contract. Some homes that were said to be owned were really bought on land contract, since mortgages were hard to get from white-owned banks. Houses bought on land contract were not really owned. The seller kept the title until the last installment payment was made. Many buyers paid for years but never built up any equity, so that when they missed a few payments, the seller reclaimed the property to repeat the cycle with other prospective purchasers. Please realize the bitterness when one pays for years for a house and then misses a few months and loses the house, particularly after many improvements one has paid for, to see it sold again to another of the exploited.
With regard to apartments, the Diggs-convened group talked about landlord exploitation. Investors would buy large buildings. They’d subdivide them into much smaller units, sometimes sharing bath rooms while the government code enforcers looked the other way. There were all sorts of building codes on the books. The code violations were enforced in the white communities to preserve conditions there. (The reader should realize that the fairly recent significant degree of desegregation of city government management jobs, particularly in middle and upper level decision making ranks, did not really begin to develop until under Mayor Cavanagh and picked up substantially after 1974 with the advent of the Coleman Young administration. Much of the disgust some white leaders had for the latter Mayor was due in part because he changed Detroit from being ruled primarily by whites and that he desegregated employment and particularly the police department.)
The mass media did not cover much such stories about landlord abuse and the failure of code enforcement in the central city. The larger community was somewhat unaware of this extreme oppression, or if they were aware, they often ignored it if they were not victims. The prevailing philosophy seemed to be, “let sleeping dogs lie.”
Landlords and businessmen often charge high prices because they know people don’t have alternatives. Consumers are only protected in markets when there is adequate information, good transportation, fair competition, and the absence of racism, among other requirements for markets to work well. We mentioned the welfare checks that came out at the beginning of the month. Right at that time some commercial prices went up in ghetto stores. A few days after the welfare check had been distributed, prices went back to normal. But, normal in the ghetto is usually higher than elsewhere, sometimes much higher. There is a for- profit system with devastatingly weak provisions for avoiding consumer exploitation. Some business persons believe that consumer exploitation is consistent with the often overused term “free markets.” Such heresy creates distrust of capitalism and the real meaning of free markets as Adam Smith used the term.
TV: I didn’t mean to get you off track. You were talking about one of the things was, you know, encouraging ownership of property.
KG: Right, right, right. You did not get me off of track. I wandered off myself. We were talking about the group that Charles Diggs brought together. Another major conclusion of the group was that a self-determined economic development thrust had to be developed. An organization to plan for and is committed to that purpose had to be founded. It must be focused on developing businesses, housing and jobs. In short, it must be about community economic development. A checklist of deliverables to which priority is to be assigned should be created and new agents chosen to implement those priorities.
Out of this meeting a group of leaders decided to organize this economic development thrust. That organization was subsequently was called ICBIF (the Inner City Business Improvement Forum).
Another recommendation dealt with the fact that the community did not have a self-determined political organization representing African American priorities and enabling independent leaders to strategize together and share ideas so that the black community speaks with one voice. Everyone would know that if it came through that political organization, the recommendations would be authentically in the interest of all, and that the positions advocated would not be beholden to any external interests. The paramount focus should be, it was said, on community self-determination. It was thought that if Detroit’s African Americans have a group that everybody knows speaks for all of its members, they could act in a more coordinated and forceful way and resist the influence of captive gatekeepers.
Such an organization was established subsequently. It was called CCAC (the Citywide Citizens Action Committee). Revered Albert Cleage, who later became known by his African name, Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, was elected as Chairman. It had a wider and more militant and lay membership than ICBIF and supervised the negotiation of a planning grant proposal with New Detroit in formation.
In summary, the two major organizations were CCAC (which was political, focused on community cohesion, voice of the community) and ICBIF ( focused on inner city economic development, housing, business formation and economic opportunity including job creation).
Both organizations came into being and developed agendas that were put into operation. ICBIF then developed a governing body, raised money from the Ford Foundation, from New Detroit (when it was organized, that was later). ICBIF was chaired initially by Revered Charles Morton, a Morehouse College man. Graduates of Morehouse, a prime historical college for black men in Atlanta, played a big role in our community. Lawrence Doss, the unpaid President, was relocated from outside of Detroit, was not a Morehouse man but also played a major leadership role. He was formerly a top administrator in Detroit for the IRS. The IRS began a data center in the city and he came to head it and brought with him Walter Douglas as the Deputy Administrator; African Americans, both were talented administrators and became very active in ICBIF and lent professional management.
I was elected Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors. The Board had businessmen, attorneys, clergy, educators, architects and other professionals. It hired trained business persons led by a black Bank of the Commonwealth banker named Walter McMurtry.
ICBIF refined a strategy that involved large sums to start it and a complex associated economic firms. The strategy was initially prepared in an outline form by another organization to be discussed shortly, called the Federation For Self -Determination (FSD). ICBIF needed funding to make it operational and to put it into a posture where the officers could raise money. They approached New Detroit, which was then being organized.
At that time Joe Hudson of the J. L. Hudson Department store family and former Chairman of the HudsonWebber Foundation was a central leader in trying to find strategies for the white business leadership beginning to respond to the crisis in Detroit. This led after a while to the founding of New Detroit. The major auto CEOs and the CEOs of the large utilities and some of the banks became involved in providing top community leadership and themselves (not staff) forming one part of the proposed Board of New Detroit at that time.
Henry Ford II became personally involved as a key participant; he had a large self-interest, as did the other corporate leaders. During the Rebellion, production came to a halt in the auto industry. Plants and department stores were closed. These large plants operated with huge investments having high fixed costs. When the plants and some retail outlets shut down operations for several days, no product was produced. Cars could be sold out of inventory temporarily, but losses could be substantial. Even if the losses were small, the UNCERTAINTY created by the Rebellion would diminish added investments, particularly if a longer disruption of production were possibly to take place. The business sector had a big vested interest initially in what could be done from a profit preservation among other perspectives.
Business leaders became genuinely involved. Henry Ford II in particular visited the low income community and met some of us. In fact, I think the January ’69 issue of Fortune magazine has a photograph of Henry Ford with his trusted administrator who dealt with Detroit issues, named William Schoen. Sitting at the same table in the Shrine of the Black Madonna and right across from them (in full face view) is Reverend Albert Cleage, the leader of CCAC, the political arm to negotiate with New Detroit. Right beside him was this author. We had an in-depth conversation.
Henry Ford wanted to know how Rev. Cleage perceived the Detroit post-uprising scene and possibilities. He asked about Cleage’s thoughts to turn the city around, how Detroit could get back to the status where most people were working, there were more jobs and there was a community that’s progressing? He asked some very general questions. Rev. Cleage would answer some and he would turn to me particularly for detail on the economic programming. Rev. Cleage and I laid out brief elements of a strategy. Bill Schoen took copious notes.
I asked Schoen subsequently about Ford’s reaction; he answered by stating that his boss was impressed by the constructive proposals and wanted to hear more about them.
Bill Schoen and others spent many hours, in addition, talking to Detroit grass roots community organizers. He would have Lorenzo Freeman (Renny), who was head of West/Central Organization at that time go around with him to places in the community. He talked to Kenneth Cockrel, Sr., a much admired figure among the young black community leaders – an attorney and subsequent Detroit City Councilperson, and according to some a likely prospect for mayor had he not died early. Schoen would pry him with many questions. Don Roberts was very active in the Congress for Racial Equality and was involved in the Northern High School Boycott. He spent time with Schoen also as Schoen gathered intelligence from many grass roots leaders.
Henry Ford also brought a sociologist from one of the major universities to consult with him on urban issues and strategies applied by other municipalities nationally. The sociologist met with me to ask a lot of questions. Ford probably felt there was information other activists and I had that an academic professional could gather which Ford and his staff could not obtain directly. We had lunch together. The professor posed many questions. I subsequently saw a partial report on the meeting which noted that the professor was reporting to Henry Ford, and that he regarded me as “testy” on some of his questions. I gather that Henry Ford had other persons become involved in order to help arrive at independent solutions and to test CCAC’s and ICBIF’s ideas for reasonableness.
I suppose that out of those and other discussions the decision to form and fund New Detroit, Inc. was made firm. The corporate community needed an organization seemingly independent of it that was keeping in touch with the community on racial tensions and other matters with persons representing the grass roots, including the militants in the community. Henry Ford had been known to have said that he had previously been talking to the wrong people. The CEOs then wanted to establish and keep communications particularly with the activist leaders, it seemed to me, for keeping up with developments, particularly for early warnings if developments were to go badly. They hoped to find out at an early stage and be able to do something about it, if all else failed. The fundamental hope however seemed to be improving communications of leadership with the grass roots to observe better how conditions could be improved and better community relationships be established.
The corporate leaders forming New Detroit, Inc. started off by appointing Kent Mathewson, a former head of a metropolitan Fund, an issues- oriented organization before he was made something like a coordinator and transitions manager in the post-uprising discussions and the corporate reaction to it.
If I remember correctly, Mathewson was originally from Texas and spoke with a southern accent. He worked with Joe Hudson, the critical guider of the post-Rebellion organization of New Detroit, working closely with Henry Ford and other top CEOs. Hudson seemed to be the vigorous point person in the beginning with Mathewson as the official temporary administrator.
After a while, I think the CEOs observed – I believe, this may be a conjecture - that this white guy from Texas was probably not the guy to bring the black and white community together. But, be that as it may, they decided they needed to have an interim manager to lead the transfer out of the preorganization to New Detroit into operating status. The corporate CEOs wanted, I believe, someone they could talk to, someone they were comfortable with, and with whom they could establish an amenable and productive track record. They didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances at this, it seemed to me.
William T. Patrick was appointed temporarily. He was a player in the community. I had known him since I was a pre-teenager, though he was much older than I was. My father was a Black Elk (IBPOEW, Independent Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World). The Elks had annually an oratorical contest in which students could debate an issue. The winner would give an award as the outstanding debater. Patrick was one of the debaters. He performed magnificently, so I, just a little boy then, was really impressed. He became later the first black council person in Detroit. I think he was before Erma Henderson and Rev. Nicholas Hood Sr. Patrick moved upward from that position to become a corporate attorney for Michigan Bell, then the major telephone company locally before AT&T bought it.
Patrick became titled something like interim coordinator of New Detroit. My impression was the decision makers wanted to have someone who was on comfortable speaking terms with the entire community, including militant leadership, and was respected by them. Patrick was not believed to be such a person. They knew the head of New Detroit would be a critical person for the credibility of that power structure organized group.
A search for the president was organized. I only knew of three candidates identified in that search. All three of them were African-American. I will comment on only two. These two communicated well, had good leadership skills and had not burned any bridges with any sector of the community. One was a professor in political science at a major university in this state. He published a lot, was a very positive and effective spokesperson, and was analytical, resourceful, and also respected by all groups who knew him and his objectivity.
The second candidate was very much like the first but was a consultant not a professor. He had been a public school teacher, attended law school but decided against that career, received a graduate degree and became an organizational development consultant for large corporations and had several clients and a good track record. He had close friendships among the leaders of the activist community.
The third candidate I shall not characterize for he is myself. We were all interviewed.
KG: … All three declined. I don’t know why the others did so because they had a lot to offer, including being seen by the black community as professional and independent on their own terms, which was important. I cannot speak for the other two candidates on why they rejected being considered for the position. I was not interested because I investigated various items like the expected budget for the organization. The apparent commitment was not consistent with my understanding of the massive problems that I realized existed. Further, I wondered how strong the corporate support would be when and if conditions in Detroit became more normal. Would the CEOs remain engaged or would their interest wane? Plus, I was reading reports of what the city government was doing defensively; tooling up militarily. I guessed that corporations were very supportive of such militarization. So, it seemed to me like an effort…an attempt to give the appearance of really dealing with the problems but not putting enough resources in to really make a significant difference. Better communications without adequate resources are helpful but insufficient, I thought.
Also, I preferred to stay in a professorial tenure track. At a professorial level one has more independence and self-determination.
Without a successful search result, Patrick became the President. New Detroit subsequently selected some excellent initial leaders, given the limitations, like Lawrence Doss and Walter Douglas, who did as much as they could, but the constraints were great.
More recently, New Detroit’s focus has shifted from race relations, communications and racial equity to a new goal: diversity. This multiplies by a factor the beneficiary group members with little increase in resources, thereby decreasing, I believe, the resources per affected member of the target population. A much stronger commitment of resources would be required for the much larger target population given the new wider focus to be pursued effectively.
Also and more importantly to me, there is a question of priorities. Many of the forefathers of African Americans were brought to this country involuntarily in chains as slaves, merely chattel or personal property, who were deliberately encouraged to have children, for their offspring increased the assets of their owners, just like cattle. These slaves produced with their unpaid labor large parts of the U. S. gross domestic product and tax base annually for over more than two centuries. Taxes were then largely derived from levies on exports of the crops the slaves tended.
Shifting the focus of New Detroit from the descendants of slaves to voluntary immigrants and their descendants does not seem to me to be progress. I am not demeaning diversity as an important cultural value to be sought. Diversity is very important. It just does not seem to me to be on the same high moral ground as repairing for the impact of slavery and its legacy for which reparations have never been paid, as with the Japanese after World War II when they were interned for the war period, as contrasted to slavery for over two centuries, followed by periods of Jim Crow, segregation, and disproportionate incarceration, etc.. It puts voluntary immigrants and their offspring at the same moral level as slaves and their descendants, despite the involuntary nature of their status.
This topic becomes a significant part of this discussion, for New Detroit was an integral reaction to the Rebellion, a racial incident growing out of the legacy of slavery. When its focus was changed from improving race relations to diversity, New Detroit denied its birthright and diluted its effectiveness, it seems to me.
TV. Can we turn now to developments in 1968 as a result of 1967?
KG. The major innovative redevelopment thrust from the African American community involved CCAC and ICBIF. When CCAC was first organized, it had a meeting at the Detroit City Council chamber – the officers of CCAC all sat on the 13th floor of the City County building at the big curved table where the city Council sits in the large auditorium. CCAC had that meeting there shortly after the 1967 uprising began. I recall they billed themselves as the “New Black Establishment.” Rev. Cleage had the center seat and some other members of the group were seated on both sides in an arc with many other members in the audience. (I was not at the table because I was a volunteer advisor to CCAC, along with Grace Boggs of the Boggs Center and Nadine Brown of the UAW. In addition, I was a consultant to Rev. Cleage.) CCAC held those hearings there and other meetings elsewhere.
The speakers reviewed their interpretation of the events that had occurred, why they happened, and the urgency of developing a program to achieve more self-determination for the residential community and to negotiate a transfer of power. Rev. Cleage frequently stressed the desirability for a transfer of power. Many leaders of the more militant African American organizations were in attendance and were influential members of a diverse CCAC membership. A promise was made to develop programs for a transfer of power to Detroit residents and away from corporations and nonresidents and to move toward ending racism in Detroit. Some persons spoke to types of programs which were needed for greater self-determination and to deal with the many problems confronting the community. Ending police brutality and desegregating housing and employment were the focus of many comments, along with suggestions for doing so.
An interesting and revealing incident occurred at that meeting which helps to explain why the Detroit community at large knew so little about the anger felt by the local grass roots leadership that led to the Rebellion. The CCAC meeting was attended by a stranger to the local activist members of the audience. A short stocky dark skinned person attended with a large Afro hair-do, a thick beard and a white tee shirt with a dominant black power symbol on it. The press photographers and journalists seemed to ignore the speakers and were around this newcomer taking many pictures of him. It was almost as if a very important national leader was in attendance. The press gathered around him at the end of the meeting firing questions at him. He responded by giving the standard militant answers as if he had been a long time resident of Detroit, had a constituency here and was accustomed to speaking for Detroiters. He seemed to relish his new found notoriety.
I asked other long time activists who this stranger was and was told he just arrived in town from out of town. He was quoted a lot in the newspapers the following day. Overnight, he became a black leader in Detroit because of the mass media treatment.
Largely not observed were the leaders who had been very active for years, some for decades, and did not seek ostentation or wear a symbolic uniform, but who just provided, selflessly, service to the community steadfastly. The white newsmen did not know to photograph and pose questions to these real leaders and therefore could not write about them. A predominantly white media staff then, including few, if any, editors with a history and direct knowledge of black leadership in Detroit, at the time did not help bring insightful understanding of local conditions and leadership to the citizenry at large.
CCAC’s major responsibility in the self-determined scheme was to help raise funds for financing the outlined list of projects that had been prepared for it by the Federation for Self –Determination (FSD). I don’t remember the exact amount. I think it was about $5 million, some amount like that, to get many of the activities begun, including completing the planning, some seed capital funds for the several planned corporations, including a bank, MESBICS, housing corporation, business consulting center, etc.
CCAC could not raise funds for all these activities since they were starting from scratch and therefore without operating experience. FSD had the idea of approaching the large church denominations in New York. Most of them had in New York a central or regional administrative unit and at least one African-American executive on staff who was involved in budgetary decisions. We researched them and arranged a meeting in New York. Attending from Detroit and representing CCAC and the FSD were Rev. Albert Cleage, Don Roberts, Lorenzo Freeman, and myself. I may have forgotten someone. The representatives of the assembled denominations were eager to learn of our plans. Rev. Cleage had been developing a national reputation. The news of the attempted recovery in Detroit from one of the larger of several U.S. rebellions in that time period enlivened their interest. Their attendance was 100 per cent. They wanted to participate and saw this as an example of what could be done in other communities like Watts in California, Newark, in New Jersey and elsewhere, if they could help make Detroit rebuilding successful. They were so interested in it that it was easy to establish the meeting in a short time frame.
FSD was led by Rev. Cleage and smooth Lorenzo Freeman. When we described the content of the outlined plans, the discussion was enthusiastic. Then we turned to the millions of dollars sought, even in part. The decline in enthusiasm was palpable. Before then, they were really into the presentation. We used an overhead projector with transparencies. The last thing we did was discuss money and that made the difference. After having preliminary discussion of the overall plan and getting to the money required, one church representative looked at us, and said, “if you put all the parts of budgets – we here combined can influence- from all these church denominations, this amount you are seeking vastly exceeds it.” They were prepared for small grant requests.
The Detroiters left and decided they would have to look elsewhere or be less comprehensive and more incremental in the plans at the outset.
CCAC decided to disband after a few of years when it came into conflict during the approval discussions of a proposal to New Detroit in organization for funding. ICBIF continued in operation and grew stronger.
The background of the decision to disband is interesting and instructive. CCAC through the FSD made an application to New Detroit in organization for seed funds to help further develop an economic plan for ICBIF to implement. It was attempting to help get the planning funds. ICBIF had a board that was strictly economic/business development and not political in the partisan sense of that term; it was also seeking tax exempt status. CCAC was political and community leadership focused.
I made a presentation to New Detroit in organization similar to the one made in New York to the religious denominations but revised somewhat. William Patrick, and Kent Mathewson, I believe, were present. The feedback I received was that they were impressed. They wanted to see the programmatic elements completed so years from then they could either point to the progress made or learn from the effort. That presentation set off conflicting and unanticipated dynamics.
I was informed that the proposal for seed funding for a fuller proposal and some other elements would be funded, I recall, for $300,000 subject to a contract. In the interim, another group of black leaders, after reading about the proposed contract in the press with CCAC, decided, “that group is getting money, why can’t we get funded also?” They put together a quick plan to submit to New Detroit in organization. Staff from New Detroit told me point blank that the quality of the newer proposal was not competitive in the least.
New Detroit was then put in the position they regarded as untenable, of choosing between two black leadership groups; they did not want to do so, regardless of the differences in the quality of the proposals.
The people I was representing did not sympathize with New Detroit’s dilemma. CCAC, with a commitment for self-determination, saw the contract providing funds with a string attached, such that it could be jerked back at any time the grantors were displeased with the community efforts. New Detroit decided that since it had two black groups –committed to various redevelopment plans – two different plans all together, but one very detailed one, one not, New Detroit decided, it would just split the money between the two groups.
I took the New Detroit decision to split the funds and copies summarizing the proposed contract with the reduced award back to a CCAC assembly. They were, to say the least, very displeased. (This CCAC meeting incidentally took place at the old Fischer YMCA building, which is on West Grand Boulevard at its intersection with Grand River, and Dexter, right across from the old Northwestern High School. At that meeting, in a greatly spirited gathering, a large consensus developed not to surrender self-determination by signing the contract. “We would subject ourselves to being evaluated, critiqued, money drawn back because we didn’t do what they wanted us to do? We’d be puppets on a string! We cannot represent our constituents and put ourselves in such a noose…”
I offered the comment, “If you’re going to get resources, there are somethings you’ll have to submit to. So tell me – I am a liaison. What sort of change do you want me to propose?” There was none suggested. A motion was made, seconded and passed to disband CCAC rather than continue to participate.
I communicated with New Detroit in organization that CCAC would not accept those terms and rejected participation. I must give Joe Hudson credit; he called me promptly thereafter and asked me to meet him at a place convenient for both of us. He said, “How about meeting me at Northland?” I said fine and we met and talked. He thought CCAC made a mistake in rejecting the funds and wanted to know if it would reconsider. I explained the decision and indicated the group would not change.
New Detroit went ahead and committed half of the proposed initial grant to the other group, the Detroit Council of Organizations (DCO), consisting largely of black moderate leaders, mostly of ministers, black labor union officials and traditional organizational heads; I have not heard of anything that came out of grant. Sidney Fine’s book states that DCO could not raise the matching funds and therefore could not finance their proposed programs.
In contrast, community development activities continued despite the setback. The organizers of the Inner City Business Improvement Forum (ICBIF) completed a study, starting with the outline prepared by the Federation of Self-Determination, which listed important projects to establish a stronger economic base in support of more self-determination in the city’s black community. One of many completed projects was to establish a black owned and operated bank.
If one reviews the structure of banking in Detroit at that time, one saw a few, very few white-owned and operated banks, with many dozen branches, some in the virtually all the various city Detroit neighborhoods in the 1950s when Detroit’s population was at its peak, with declining numbers thereafter. Afterwards, an outflow of population and a trend of bank closings was apparent. Each of these branches would draw money through attracting demand (checking), savings and time deposits from households and businesses in the neighborhood and beyond. A study of how these deposits were invested showed them primarily supporting new housing and other development in Florida and Arizona and other places plus other out-state and foreign placements and very little re-invested back in Detroit at that time. When there was investment remaining in Detroit, it was largely to provide funds for white-owned businesses. Rejection rates for black businesses were very high.
The large banks denied vigorously any discrimination in lending to minorities. One of the daily newspapers imported reputable objective researchers from outside of the state to study bank lending. They documented the large racial bias long denied by the banks in articles published in a daily Detroit newspaper.
The huge siphoning of the deposits from local black and local white communities went to financially empower others. This drainage of purchasing power from the black and lower income community is exactly the opposite of a view held by some whites. That view holds that funds from outstate are drained into poor Detroit black areas and squandered there. The truth is greatly different and complex as indicated in a conclusion of the Kerner Commission report: “White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White society created it. White institutions maintain it and white society condones it.”
ICBIF drew from the analysis that Detroit needed to have a bank which hopefully would take deposits from blacks and whites in Detroit and elsewhere but which would be more open to making loans to African-American and white households and businesses doing business in Detroit. Such a bank was therefore a high priority for ICBIF. It was created and opened for business on May 17, 1970. It was one of several goals in the FSD outline of an economic development plan that that was completed despite the early problems in seeking funds and CCAC’s dissolution.
Supporting black businesses with a larger variety of financing options was another priority. Banks can make loans providing that there is the ability to repay and a significant cushion of equity to offset risk. Providing equity funds beyond savings of the owner and the family and friends required other kinds of capital institutions. One source of equity capital was a Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) which is chartered and supported by the U. S. Small Business Association. The FSD outline called for two of these. Through ICBIF’s efforts at least two SBICs were established to provide financing to minority businesses. The two MESBICs (Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Corporations) were called Independence Capital Formation (ICF) and Pooled Resources Invested in Minority Enterprises (PRIME).
ICF and PRIME lasted several years but only the Bank is in operation today; it is currently under other black ownership and management. Originally called the First Independence National Bank of Detroit (FINB), it is now called the First Independence Bank (FIB).
After New Detroit was finally organized, ICBIF received some help financially from New Detroit over several years, and also from the Ford Foundation, as well as several other sources. I would not be surprised if there were some invisible sources of support from white Detroit business leaders involved in the funds raised from out-of-state. Members of the Ford family and perhaps a few others of the power structure did buy modest stock in First Independence National Bank. The Commonwealth Bank top leaders and Fred Matthaei invested in Accord Inc., the housing operation. A few local banks, particularly Commonwealth, Manufacturers National and National Bank of Detroit (NBD), gave a helping hand in initial staff training and start-up bank issues. NBD lent FINB for a short time a young black star employee, Walter Watkins, who later became a local president for NBD. Esther Gordy Edwards convinced her father, Berry Gordy, Sr. to become a board member of the bank and otherwise supported ICBIF. The name, Gordy, meant a lot with its Motown significance.
As stated elsewhere, Congressman Charles Diggs’ assistance to the bank was quite consequential. He monitored the approval of the application for a national bank charter to the Controller of the Currency in Washington, D. C. Without his frequent monitoring the application for a national bank charter for a Black organized bank, it would probably have died. That bank in 2016 is in its 46th year. In four years it will have existed for half a century.
TV: Really?
KG: Another service called for by the FSD and organized by ICBIF was a small business consulting service. When people typically launch a business, they usually do not have all of the complex and myriad skills required to put a business plan together. Without a good business plan failure is most often the result for a new start-up or a major expansion of an existing business. It is helpful for one to know strategic planning, management, marketing, fund raising and capital structuring, inventory control, budgeting, site selection, personnel and risk management, record keeping, accounting and other specialties.
ICBIF hired and trained staff to help clients to secure and/or execute such services and recruit specialists to help clients. It did a lot of initial business planning and almost hand holding, as it were, during the launching of a new business and expansion of an existing one. Staff often went to the bank or to city offices with the client. Numerous businesses were assisted, existed businesses expanded, and hundreds of jobs created.
After the Rebellion, access to affordable low cost housing for African Americans was even more of a challenge that before. ICBIF decided its portfolio of functions was large enough without the housing being added to it. An independent organization named Accord, Inc. was established. An interracial board of directors was selected including, among others, Rev. Albert Cleage; Don Parsons and Steve Miller of Bank of the Commonwealth; Edgar Brazelton, a local florist and Chairman of the Booker T. Washington Business Association; Howard Sims, a local architect whose firm was to significantly help determine the Detroit’s skyline; Fred Matthaei, a U of M regent and owner of local businesses; Reverend Charles Butler, a prominent pastor, a Morehouse graduate, and the pastor of Mayor Coleman Young; Alan E. Schwartz, a prominent young attorney; and several other community leaders. Another board member, yours truly, was elected Board Chair, CEO and President.
The contextual setting was important for the strategy FSD had developed that ICBIF and ACCORD inherited. White absentee apartment owners were fleeing the city after the Rebellion. They wanted to sell and get out, because they didn’t like the uncertainty, while the getting out was possible. ACCORD wanted to help them get out and to transfer ownership to community persons.
ACCORD could, for example, buy a twenty-unit apartment building for 1,000 to 1,500 dollars a unit soon after the Rebellion, that would sell for much more during good times after some rehabilitation costing $5,000 to $10,000 per unit. The strategy however was not to sell it as such, but to organize tenants into cooperatives so that they would own it much upgraded. Over time, the previous rents paid would transition to management fees and capital gains, if and when the entire cooperative was subsequently sold; the occupants could sell their ownership in the coop as a whole.
The housing corporation, called Accord Inc., wasn’t organized until late 1969. It failed afterwards a couple of years. It bought a few structures and was in the process of rehabilitating them. Prior to completing rehabilitation and to organize them into coops, there was a major change in the national economy. Inflation went up and unemployment rose. The prime interest rate which impacted Accord’s borrowing rate rose unanticipatedly. The banks added several points to the prime rate for Accord and other companies of similar risk. Accord’s ability to finance its rehabilitation completely on the private market with its small capital base became decimated. Accord went bankrupt. It was a good idea at a bad time.
As an aside, this was during Nixon’s term of office when he was involved in the Watergate scandal. Despite this catastrophe, Nixon did some very good things about which Detroiters should know. He advocated for “black capitalism”, a term with which many black activists had problems but took advantage of anyway. ICBIF’s programs benefited from it. The concept helped legitimized and make popular white business support for black business development.
It is difficult to resist, when mentioning President Nixon in the context of black business development in Detroit following 1967, stating how he personally interceded to make sure that a black Detroiter, Rev. Dr. William V. Banks, received a TV license. This is a digression for ICBIF was not involved with this business. The founder of the TV station, Rev. Dr. Banks, was a great entrepreneur, a prominent lawyer and an organizer of a national black fraternal order, the International Masons and Order of the Eastern Star headquartered in Detroit.
TV: And you’re talking about WGPR-TV founded in 1975, first black owned television station?
KG: That’s right, first black owned television station in the United States.
TV: I had no idea of the Nixon connection to that.
KG: Oh yes. As Rev. Dr. Banks told me, it was virtually impossible then for an African-American to get a license for a TV station. It had never been done in the U. S. and was not likely to be done without support from the highest level. It also was consistent with Nixon’s black capitalism initiative.
At this point, to partially summarize the major projects ICBIF had helped organize: the First Independence National Bank, two MESBICs, the business consulting operation with many independent businesses being serviced with varying results, and Accord Inc., the latter to establish and promote housing development to transfer ownership of apartment buildings to a cooperative. However, these were only part of ICBIF’s accomplishments.
The FSD’s strategic outline had called for establishing for the first time in Detroit a black operated and managed charitable organization somewhat like a foundation. The rationale grew from the observation that while several large foundations did support activities benefitting African Americans in Detroit, there were smaller African American, nonprofit (by design) organizations with potential for growth in size and effectiveness, who served the community that were not likely to be supported by the large foundations. A local black charitable fund also would have a better knowledge of the black community and had advantages in assessing of risks, reputation, personal commitment, local history and community acceptance.
FSD saw a need to have a local Black United Fund and ICBIF concurred, for it believed it knew the community better than the large foundations; but, it did not proceed directly to establish such an organization. An impressive person, Brenda Rayford, visited ICBIF seeking help. She had heard of Black United Funds (BUF) in other states and planned to begin one in Detroit. She had the idea with few resources other than her commitment, high energy and dedication and sweat equity. She approached Larry Doss and Walter McMurtry who gave her free office space in ICBIF’s offices, supplies, use of its typewriters, mailing and duplicating room, desk, etc asking nothing in return but dedication to her goals. ICBIF’s offices first on East Grand Blvd. and then on Fourteenth Street became her free address for the first two or three years while she launched BUF. ICBIF also helped her get some initial external funding and helped to develop her business plan. She was able to move out on her own to serve independently.
The Black United Fund is still in existence today. Its office is on West Grand Blvd across the street and just east of current location of Northwestern High School. It is near its 50th year.
TV: You are still in the 1970s?
KG: Yes, early 1970 to 1995, ICBIF had a staff of about 20 people. Several have gone on from there to work for banks, operate their own companies, join the staffs of companies they assisted, enter the music business and do lots of other things. Several of our board members made large contributions to the community. Walter Douglas moved on to buy and expand a company, Avis Ford, and to be involved in several other businesses. Lawrence Doss had lots of business involvements on his own (communications, transportation, including helping others through his employer, Coopers Lybrand, etc). ICBIF was just a wellspring of ripples that gave rise to waves, some of which became bigger as they spread. Some vanished.
KG. ICBIF stayed in business for about 19 years, but it closed when funding dried up. It did not charge for its services. New Detroit stopped finding ICBIF which had leveraged its resources maximally; however, when the basic bottom line funding was removed, the source of leveraging was gone. ICBIF decided to close after almost two decades of operations.
Much was accomplished: there were hundreds of businesses assisted, many hundreds of jobs from companies for which ICBIF had provided financing and helped with their business plans. Some of the businesses assisted failed. Some went on to do better.
The cyclical nature of the Detroit economy with its concentration then in the durable goods industry with its ups and downs was not a force for stability. When the auto industry laid off workers and sales dropped every so many years in the Detroit area, it was hard for businesses, particularly underfinanced ones, to survive. ICBIF was caught in that cyclical behavior.
Reverend Cleage, the titular leader of CCAC and who was really the only person who could hold all of those diverse groups together, deserves applause for his efforts during the short period of his leadership. He had the foresight, the analysis, and the commitment to self-determination. He became inactive outside of his church and its related programs. I don’t know why, I never asked him. I suspected that he wanted to give his wholehearted effort to expanding his Pan-African Orthodox Church denomination. He had begun to establish churches in other states and he wanted to give that priority, I suspect. I also think that he gave up on the possibility of there being any receptiveness to a transfer of power. When he pulled out of the combined leadership, there was a vacuum without someone with the charisma and the deep understanding of the complex situation and selflessness who could get and keep the attention of very diverse group of activist community leaders and the power structure.
When CCAC ended, Reverend Cleage concentrated on growing the Shrine of the Black Madonna and sister churches. Members of his church organized the Black Slate which was an effort to get approval for preferred candidates so that they would be elected. This has been a very successful thrust and has intensively influenced the Detroit political landscape producing an increased number of black elected officials chosen by the community and not imposed upon it.
Again, I would encourage the Detroit Historical Society to review and make available, if possible, a copy of Cleage’s sermon on the Sunday morning the Rebellion began. Much of his analysis of it is in that very early sermon that was prepared almost instantaneously with the sermon’s delivery.
TV: That’s Amazing.
PART TWO
TV: Hello, My name is Tobi Voigt and I am with the Detroit Historical Society. Today is Thursday, September 3, 2015 and I’m here with Dr. Karl D. Gregory for part two of our oral history. Well alright, we were talking a little bit on Tuesday about the Rev. Cleage’s sermon on the morning the uprising began. I want to talk little bit about that first?
KG: Yes. I just wanted to encourage you, in particular for preparing for the 1967 Exhibit to be launched in 2017, to get a copy of and read the text of Rev. Albert Cleage’s sermon. He preached about it a few hours after the Rebellion began and was taking place for days afterwards. Following that Saturday evening where there was a gathering on 12th and Clairmount and the police entered. You know that story. It’s been well documented. The results of the police action and the version of it that was circulating in the community made people angry. That’s very morning, Rev. Albert Cleage gave an explanatory sermon and termed the reaction a Rebellion. He was the pastor of what subsequently became named, The Shrine of the Black Madonna. He explained it the first morning, just a few hours after it began; he gave an in-depth analysis of what occurred and why he thought it occurred. I think you need to highlight his view for it represented much of the black activist community. There is a book of his sermons including that one. I know that historian Paul Lee has a copy. He is one of our able local historians, or perhaps you could get it through the church.
TV: Great, thank you. OK. When we left off on Tuesday, you were giving a great background on the post-uprising involvement and activities, and the self-determination movement, and we were just starting to get more philosophical about it. One of the concepts that has come up is that Detroit was considered ‘the model city’ because it had leveraged a lot of federal funds to work on issues of equity and racism during the Cavanagh administration. Several folks were therefore surprised when the uprising happened. My question for you is what do you think about Detroit being the ‘model city’? And your thoughts on if the uprising was predictable or not.
KG: Let me take the last part first, I think the civil disorder, as it was called in the title of the Advisory Commission On Civil Disorders or the Kerner Commission report, was predictable by persons who were aware of the intensive reaction of many of Detroit’s black residents to racism and white supremacy in their various local forms and the numerous impacts of racism on the lives of African Americans in the city. To them the only surprise was the scale of it and the specific incident that would set it. If one were to happen, police involvement as an initial spark would surprise very few informed persons
I doubt that the federal funds received by the City during the Cavanagh administration were ever used to truly address racism. Through the anti-poverty and other programs Cavanagh did support modest measures to achieve greater equity, and undoubtedly more so than by former mayors. There was indeed the leveraging of sums from the federal government for social programs that influenced opportunities.
However, the Rebellion was indeed predictable from the several other prior uprisings elsewhere in black communities across the country in overcrowded central cities. Racism is not isolated in one area of the country but is widely spread. Detroit itself had other similar circumstances of different scales in its history. Further, there were several very recent events that could have led to local uprisings to give guidance, not to mention many additional instances of alleged police misconduct in racial incidents.
Looking back within two or three years before July 23rd, 1967, a few incidents could have expanded into a significant uprising. For example, in the Kercheval Street Incident, a group of youths on the east side were organized to participate in various kinds of youth activities, in terms of community building and creating good experiences for young folks. The police were said to have clamped down on them with unnecessary force. That led to what could have exploded into a large-scale racial incident.
There was the Northern High School boycott in 1966 that we talked about in the first session at some length. That school had what the students regarded as a racist principal with police inside the school and an inferior education being provided. If the incident had been handled differently, a conflagration could have occurred there. Students from other schools had planned to join in by supporting the walkout in their schools thereby spreading it widely. It was that likelihood that the chairman of the school board, Remus Robinson, understood, that motivated the school board to finally agree with the demands of the students, indeed to go beyond them. Resolution was accomplished by constructive black student behavior and leadership in organizing a freedom school; that freedom school enabled their leaders to concentrate on negotiating with the Board of Education for relief and for getting then-current policy changed after a citywide review of schools to examine the unequal circumstances of inner city schools and what could be done about them, ending in a set of recommendations that were adopted.
The students were focused on changing their inferior education and what they could do to initiate change. If they had not left the school to establish a school of their own, while they negotiated with the school board, or if it had not been handled in some other satisfactory way, a strong negative reaction could have occurred.
Too, it was interesting that Northern High school is so close to where the Rebellion first began. The same neighborhood, the same sociological and psychological forces were operating there. Yes, I do think it was predictable.
If a story I was told is true, not only was the possibility of an uprising predictable, but it was predicted. Conrad Mallett Sr. (who coincidentally is the father of Conrad Mallett Jr., a former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and Chief Administrative Officer in Detroit Medical Center and the brother of two sisters who are well placed in senior positions in the corporate world) was a Black appointee in the office of Mayor Cavanagh around that time. As the Director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Cavanagh, he had read about rebellions in other cities that occurred before Detroit’s. He approached the Mayor and said, and I paraphrase, look: an uprising could happen here, and if we really want to be on top of something like that if it happens here, we have to train our department heads. I recommend Mr. Mayor that you have a meeting, a retreat for the department heads, to discuss what’s transpired elsewhere, what went wrong, and what went right, so we have guidance of what to do if something like that happens here. The Mayor had that “model city” super confidence and rejected the proposal. Mallet, Sr. persisted. Cavanagh finally decided to approve Mallet’s recommendation. So they held it!
Planning for it, they had to describe a likely precipitating incident or scenario. I know the following is incredible but believe it: Conrad Mallett Sr. suggested: let’s assume there is a car accident on 12th St. and Clairmount (sic) (which was exactly where the actual rebellion began). He said, let’s assume two cars. One car had a black couple in it, and the other car had whites. I forgot the exact nature of the collision that was described to me, but it involved police who were seen by bystanders as being more supportive of the white couple and rough on the African Americans. I was not told which car was at fault in this scenario. People gathered to watch and rumors circulated in the community about police treating African Americans roughly and not treating the whites similarly or something like that.
That’s the incident that was hypothesized as spreading in the community resulting in inciting a vigorously hostile reaction. People started gathering, the story spread. A brick was thrown at a window. One reaction led to another and so on.
The training session for the department heads was completed. If the story is true, the answer to your question is that the possibility of a rebellion in Detroit or something resembling it was perceived. This story became known to me by someone who was a friend of Conrad Mallet, Sr.
The next logical question is why was it generally believed not to be reasonably predictable. It is very important to answer that question honestly, because the circumstances that existed then, could exist now. Then, the city had a mass media, business leaders, and those in the local community who really wanted to see the “good side” of current events. They tended to downplay the “bad side” of current circumstances and to ignore or at least overlook or play down extensive racism, white supremacy and segregation, huge inequalities in wealth and income (then and more so now now), as well as issues like extensive neglect of circumstances impacting the poor, inadequate mental health care, extensive over-incarceration particularly of black males (the latter a more recent phenomenon), underinvestment in schools and huge inequalities in many areas by income level, wealth and health care, etc.
The more a society looks the other way and refuses to address such issues, the more likely it is for them to result in compiled grievances that accumulate and fester, and subsequent reactions to break out in costly ways. These issues have to be addressed directly and resolved or the problems compound or are pushed elsewhere were they can subsequently erupt, the latter as seems to be a likely current policy outcome.
Regarding officials not perceiving the real climate of the city, effort was put into painting Detroit as a model city, as a place to which everybody should look and admire. It was one thing to advertise an exaggerated bright side in order to get investment dollars and federal grants coming in, and to attract residents, including hopefully those with needed skills. But, it was another thing to self-delude so one doesn’t see the festering impact of racism, concentration and isolation of the underserviced poor and insensitive public policies, particularly for disadvantaged households. Some of us have a predilection to see the city, then and now, with rose colored glasses that screen out the reality for many of our deprived current citizens.
You know the popular vision today. There are huge investments being made in the city, particularly the downtown and the Midtown, and more recently beginning in a few neighborhoods. The city of Detroit has come out of bankruptcy. The city now knows what to do, how to do it, how to become fiscally secure. In time this growth will encompass most neighborhoods. While a beautiful future is not securely established, the outlook is very promising in a reasonable time period. Progress is being made and Michigan will become a top 10 state. Could this vision be the counterpart now of the “Model City” image in the mid-1960s? Could it discourage the comprehensive analyses and actions, including regional equitable policies, a proportional statewide combined tax structure (i.e. progressive enough at the state and/or local level to offset all of the other regressive state and local taxes) and other changes necessary to really make such a popular vision achievable?
For example, it seems to be overlooked (except for persons like Professor Peter Hammer of Wayne State University’s Law School in a paper he wrote and submitted to the bankruptcy judge in Detroit without any reaction of which I am aware), that the bankruptcy expert’s analysis, presented to the judge to undergird his decision, focused narrowly upon what could be done within and despite the considerable limits of bankruptcy law. There was no analysis, much less corrective action solutions that were based upon a complete study of the major reasons why Detroit became so fiscally depleted, built up much of that cumulative debt and had such a poor level of public services.
A complete analysis of the circumstances that would have to be changed, including areas beyond the limits of current law, needed to be explored to craft a comprehensive conclusion and to understand how incomplete the proposed legal solutions were. A total analysis of the fundamental causes of Detroit’s decline was and is still necessary. What really, if there were no legal or other limits, would have to happen to turn Detroit once again into a viable, much less a leading, central city in a cooperating metropolitan area and state? There was no consideration, for example, of the racism in the metropolitan area and in the state that impacts Detroit and other central cities severely, of the biases in state public policy and how this short-changes central cities across throughout the state, the failure of fiscal systems to fund infrastructure needs and education adequately, etc.
These issues are destined to be made much worse by the recent Michigan Legislature’s gross distortion of legislative districts through gerrymandering after the 2010 Census count and the rejection of voting on issues by party probably in the creation of long lines at voting districts, discouraging voters without maids or a stay-at home-parent to look after the children while another voter votes. The state in this respect is moving backwards away from democracy and equality, not forwards towards it.
Some important regional issues were also not explored comprehensively in the bankruptcy. There are issues that can only be resolved with dialogue between and within state government jurisdictions that impact both central cities and other areas. Many relevant issues were not Detroit’s alone. All of these dynamics play into required changes in state legislation for optimal positive results.
There are dysfunctions and inefficiencies caused by overlapping functions among jurisdictions, fractional jurisdictions in the state, areas without needed public services, excessive numbers of districts like those for schools, all of which waste and continue to waste valuable resources and cause an inadequate and unequal distribution of public services.
Just a fiscal approach alone within legal limits to which the bankruptcy process recommendations and discussion restricted itself is not adequate for visualizing, much less addressing, the most important causal factors. I am not saying that the Judge should have gone beyond what the law required in his written decision, just that a more complete analysis particularly by his chosen expert would have been appropriate in forming his decision to maximize the effectiveness of his recommendations within the law. Partial analysis often leads to insufficient analysis. The force of excluded factors, such as has been addressed above, can defeat those of included factors.
TV: Have we applied the lessons learned from 1967?
KG: I don’t think the understanding of the information that came out of 1967 has been processed enough to point to corrective actions not taken before that should be taken now, or that should have been prescribed and taken then within and beyond the recommendations of the Kerner Commission. Also, the motivation and the will to address better and more comprehensive corrective action must be created. I do not think they exist now. The inclination in the State house of Representatives now may be punitive in the opposite direction of a real solution.
I also don’t think we have learned the right lessons from 1967 and there are lots of lessons that should have been learned. One of them is that decision-makers have to see what’s really going on in the community, be involved with the citizens to get input and have a commitment to democracy. Current Emergency Manager laws are in conflict with this and provide a foundation for continuing catastrophes, as in the water crisis in Flint and Detroit School issues. This dysfunction has to be corrected and that is a statewide task.
Another lesson that should’ve been learned is that one has to deal with the huge inequalities in public services and the lack of opportunity in some areas. Human potential outcomes should not be decided by the zip code in which one is born. Kids born in some low-income areas in Detroit probably have the worst objectively predictable futures in the state and perhaps in the country. They just did not and do not have the opportunities in several areas, or the access to the mechanisms for becoming involved positively in the future and taking care of their families and so on that many other others have. Decision-makers really have never given adequate consideration to that. They fail to determine and effectuate policies to remove the huge inequalities that exist.
A lesson we should have learned then is that communities have to invest in their children and protect them equally and make sure that they have many opportunities for reaching their potential. Policy has to be made as if people are the most important resource in this state; that is, policy impact should be person-centered while treating all persons equitably. Instead, Policy appears to be centered on land use, businesses and private profits. These are important but people should come first.
There have to be opportunities created to first educate people, and secondly, to make sure that there are equal opportunities to advance and to achieve one’s potential. That is far from being applied across the geographic areas in this state, much less equally among jurisdictions and for minority groups. In many ways the situation is probably worse now than it was in ‘67, given the concentrated impacts of deindustrialization and globalization over the last half-century and the factors pointed to by Thomas Sugrue in The Origins of The urban Crisis, Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, (published in 1996).
Many middle- income families have left the city, some the state, along with numerous businesses particularly from the neighborhoods. These gave much more of a sense of stability then than has existed recently.
Nationally, the middle class is a much smaller proportion of the total population then before and the decline appears to be continuing. In the last 30 years, the middle class has greatly narrowed, and the degree of inequality in income and wealth has increased immensely. I presume the same has been happening in Detroit and much more so, particularly with regard towealth ownership in downtown and midtown Detroit.
KG: What was the other part of that question?
TV: I think that was good, but I did want to ask, going back a little bit, about not even learning the lessons and not being able to apply them. I was kind of thinking about the different government reports that Kerner commissioned, the inquiries done by government officials, and other non-profit groups --so it seems like there was data collected that could have been used for analysis. So what didn’t happen for the city to not learn the lessons, when there was a lot of raw data and evidence right there in front of our face? Does that make sense?
KG: Yes, that makes sense. Analysts and researchers do the studies. They may not explore all the needed issues. Decision-makers may or may not review the analyses and understand them. Even with the best data they may not view it realistically. They are confronted with limited resources and have other real or imagined priorities and political constraints such as getting re-elected or reappointed by persons with clear and strong biases. However, to answer this question much beyond my previous statements, as I would like to do, I would have to review again the various reports you mentioned. Their content in the detail I would need is not fresh in my recollection, for it has been over 35 years since I studied them.
Yet, some of my prior discussion herein is relevant, particularly the reluctance to deal frontally with racism, regional issues, extending our democracy to all groups with equal opportunities and narrowing the huge disparities in wealth, health and income. There is also a reluctance to invest adequately and nonracially in education, training, health care and other public and private services with special emphasis on the poor and the disadvantaged. Facilities for mental health care are a disaster; prisons are not the solution.
Local citizens should be able to give input and be heard. Currently, it almost seems as though decision makers have decided what Detroit’s future is and the current residents of low-income by and large are being written off. The model now is to create an image that will attract outside investors and people with high skills. The prevailing thought seems to be that there is no need to concentrate on adequate education and training of the existing population, apart from the Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation, etc., and instead to rely on the processes of gentrification, rising property values and low appraisals of current residential property that will force out from the central city the existing low-income and primarily black and Hispanic population such that they will be some other jurisdiction’s challenge. Then there will be more land in the city for persons with great wealth to acquire further concentrating wealth and income in this area and state.
A few of the policies needed now include, but are not limited to: every child is made ready for school before kindergarten, ensure that all children can read by the third grade; that youth obtain a high quality of education and training, including preparation for blue collar careers, at least to replace persons retiring, and boost training in STEM and other skills required by current and future technologies, and for continuous learning throughout one’s lifetime. Since technology is changing so rapidly, persons learning how to learn and gain new skills is more important that mastering a specific skill that might become outdated.
Such schooling for all current residents in Detroit is not of priority, much less high priority. Further, charter public schools in Detroit and other urban school districts under the present system are centrally unregulated and uncoordinated. Current policy decisions, or the absence thereof, suggest that the best approaches are not in the current policy mindset for meaningful implementation. Visitors from Mars reviewing such issues in Michigan, might wonder how such mismanagement and misinformation could prevail in one of the world’s wealthiest countries? How much is spent and how little is achieved, relative to the achievements of other advanced countries on this planet, would baffle them.
There are several positive measures underway in the Detroit area, for example with the mass transit, other transportation and public lighting, blight removal, police administration, etc. There are still other positive things being done. I don’t want to paint with a red brush across the entire board. However, to really reinvigorate Detroit in a manner to benefit in significant part the existing citizenry, a lot of person-centered issues that have to confronted that are not being addressed adequately, if at all. Racism is one such issue, along with other conflicts between geographical areas, as we have discussed above. Policy is now land and building centered.
Looking at this from another perspective, a most fundamental challenge is to make opportunities available to individuals fairly throughout the region without regard to the citizen’s area of residence.
TV: That makes a lot of sense, and that speaks to equity. It’s not just equality, it’s equity, equity of access, equity of resources. One thing that we should talk about was your using the term Rebellion when referring to the events of ’67. Why do you use that word, when you discuss 1967?
KG: I think that how an issue is framed is very critical for understanding the causes and problem solving. A given set of circumstances framed one way may make assumptions and bias the inquiry and lead to one set of solutions. Framed in another way, they will raise other issues, the answering of which will help close in on fundamental causes and point to questions the answers to which suggest basic solutions resulting from an objective analysis.
If one frames what happened in 1967 as a riot, there is very little attention likely to be paid to why that conflict happened. It is categorized as violence and the implication is that everything was going well; a group of irresponsible law breakers, violent people caused a riot without provocation. The assumption can be made that justice prevailed before. The initial causative acts had no long standing or immediate justification. Hence, the solutions of that mindset are frequently repression focused. There is little reason to explore for a deeper understanding to prevent similar events from recurring. Just kill or incarcerate subjects hopefully in privatized prisons for greater profits, increase investment in the military and perform other repressive acts, just like was done in the South during voter registration drives in Selma and elsewhere. Such framing is loved by racists and some conservatives, for it gives the appearance that there is no responsibility for the ruling public to take. There is official blamelessness and harsh reprisals are warranted for all the rioters with little caring for true justice. Such thinking often results in state governments spending more on prisons that on higher education.
Some in the mass media find that framing attractive, for it makes some decision-makers (read advertisers) look uninvolved and innocent of the conditions leading up to the uprising. Their hands are entirely clean.
Those relying on the mass media for their information repeat the “riot” terminology without thinking of its implications. All instances of uprising are regarded as riots without distinction. The terminology can have dire implications for the “rioter” particularly if the charging and conviction of all the participants is understood to follow automatically. All without due process, guilt often tends to be assumed.
In contrast, if the framing is as a ”rebellion,” this suggests a question: why did the people rebel? Were there circumstances that lead to it? Not that you are justifying it, but in order to have effective public policy, one has to understand things as they are. One has to ask questions that deal with causation, because one can not avoid in the future a similar set of circumstances that result in violence without analyzing those prior circumstances. They may or may not have been criminal actions. They may just have been lawful protest to which needless police provocation incited a reaction. They may have broken laws under attenuating circumstances for the judge and/or jury to assess. Or, they may not have broken any laws or they may have. It is for the justice system to decide in objective non-biased deliberations.
In short, the word “riot” provides little or no incentive to look for the back story. It is not that a violent reaction is justified, not in a nation led by laws.
There is also the companion issue of how fair are the laws? Do they apply to everybody equally? When they’re applied, are alleged law breakers of different races equally likely to be arrested, have equal opportunities for the same quality of defense counsel, jailed across the board with the same set of penalties for the same crimes, etc.? Is the term of each class of the incarcerated uniformly consistent with the crimes it was reported to have committed? Are the terms for similar crimes the same without regard to race?
One is not given comfort to the answer to some of these questions by the findings of the Innocence Project and other interventions by neutral parties reviewing legal judgements, convictions and sentences which have found that many innocent parties have been convicted, jailed and some executed as a result of erroneous judgements.
I am not denying that some people were violent, broke the law, destroyed property and that the term riot might be appropriate for some stages in the totality of all that happened. Marauding robbers who take advantage of the resistance of rebels and destroy property are in one category. The resistance of rebels seeking change and exercising their legal rights is in another category. The initial and early stage resisters are often in the latter category. I would hate to see a world in which peaceful law abiding resisters to injustice are penalized. The use of the word rebellion would be better for such rebels.
I don’t think violence has any peacetime justification in a just society except for self-defense. But, I like to see used the nomenclature about uprisings that focuses upon what happened, why did it happen, what do we need to do to correct what happened, so that that won’t happen again, that promotes equality of opportunity without regard to race, ethnicity, nationality, gender and whom one loves, all within the terms of Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and still to provide for justice in a larger sense.
TV: Great, thanks. Well, I think we made it through our initial questions but is there anything else that you want to talk about for this recording? You had just mentioned that you were around 1943 when there was a riot, if you will, of 1943. Could you talk a little bit about that?
KG: Well I can talk a little about my experiences there. I returned to Detroit in 1941 where I was born but had left for seven years. That was two years before the uprising of 1943.
TV: How old were you in 41?
KG: I was 10 years old. At the time of that uprising, I also lived at 287 Hague, between John R and Brush. I heard on the news rumors about someone being thrown off the Belle Isle Bridge and the ransacking of stores along several thoroughfares, including Oakland Avenue near where I lived.
I was told white people were crossing Woodward from the west going east where African Americans lived committing violent acts, but my understanding was that they were coming across Woodward further south below the West Grand Boulevard. I did not actually see them.
I went three blocks east from my home to Oakland Avenue and saw commercial establishments that had been ransacked, goods taken. I did not understand a lot of the occurrences at that age but personally watched people going in stores and helping themselves to merchandise. There was chaos.
Shortly before that time my parents bought our home in that area. The residents at the time were changing from being predominantly white and with many being Jewish. Most persons of my color were in Black Bottom, the east side and south of the Grand Boulevard. There had also been the opening of some residential areas in the northwest area around Tireman where there had been efforts to stop blacks from moving into those areas. The Orsel McGhee Case on the legality of restrictive covenants barring sales of housing to African Americans went to the U.S. Supreme Court which overruled the use of such covenants in land titles.
Blacks were moving steadily north of the boulevard, with a few higher income blacks that leap-frogged north towards Boston and Chicago Boulevard, but there were still lots of whites there. In fact, Northern High School had a lot of white student when I moved in the area. But, still there were enough Black residents to support a few black-owned stores on Oakland Avenue.
I remember hearing that people south of where my family were in more densely occupied African American areas had been targets of white physical aggression.
At that time the police department was, as I recall, almost 100 percent white, very few, maybe 2% were not white, very much unlike the racial make-up of the population. According to the 1970 Census 43 % of Detroit’s population was black.
I can remember more rumors of how the riot of 1943 started, but I’d rather not talk much about that for I did not observe such personally. I visited Hastings Street where my father had a business but do not remember much of what I saw there. I heard all sorts of stories about injustices, violence against blacks, and so on. As a young boy at the time my recollections are not as focused or as well-defined as my memory of the 1967 Rebellion, where I observed it and was very much involved during and after it.
TV: Do you recall ever talking about what happened in 1943 with your parents at all? Did they have any reaction to it?
KG: They were very fearful that this would continue and that their business would be destroyed, as it actually was in 1967 and that whites would come into our residential area and be violent as we were told they had been in the heavily segregated mid-town area, south of where we lived then. My impression was that some police were involved in the black areas offensively rather than defending the community. I understand that a lot of the aggressiveness there was not all from whites, but I don’t know from personal observation. My parents did not let their children get too far from home then in those circumstances.
I didn’t study that ‘43 time period and several uprisings before then, but it is clear that uprisings were far from being unprecedented. Kevin Boyle wrote a book on the “Arc of Justice” about another circumstance in 1925, when a white mob attacked the house of a black doctor who had moved into an all-white area.
TV: Ossian Sweet?
KG: Yes, Ossian Sweet was the doctor. His house is still there on Crane Street on the east side of Detroit with a state historical marker. After several years that became an all-black neighborhood. Given then the rigorously enforced practice of racial segregation and block busting by real estate agents, integrated housing was defined as the short period of time between the entrance of the first black family in an area and the departure of the last white family. I think that is a cynical definition, but it fit the behavior then. Research has shown that when African Americans move into an area and are accepted without whites panicking, there can be continuously stable and integrated areas. It is the panic caused by the whites and some African Americans, and most importantly, it is the aggressiveness of real estate agents who will not sell to blacks in previously all-white areas, but who will select one area at a time, panic whites to get them to move out and steer blacks into that selected area. The panicked whites will sell cheaply, and the housing sold to African Americans who pay high prices to get out of the over-crowded and underserviced ghetto. Real estate agents historically would open one area at a time for exploitative profit maximization through discriminatory racial housing turnover.
That’s what I remember, but I know my parents were fearful and so were my brother and myself in 1943. Fear plays extensively in impacting behavior in these turbulent circumstances.
In contrast, in 1967, I remember that I was apprehensive when my father’s tailoring and cleaning establishment got broken into. Also there were rumors of whites coming into black areas and doing damage. I felt, if attacked, I could not defend my family for I did not have an effective weapon. I had a wife and kids and so went out and bought a gun and ammunition. I felt like my major responsibility was to defend my family, if people were going to come and attack my area.
All the weapon stores that I knew were white-owned. The owners were fearful and reluctant to sell to me. They were experiencing heavy traffic. Weapons were flying off the shelves, just one after another. They didn’t seem anxious to sell to someone of my color, but I imagine they did not feel like they could deny me. I do not know that they would react the same way if a white person came in to buy a gun, but I sincerely doubt it as confirmed by looking at the sales persons serving whites, and observing the difference in how they reacted hospitably to them in contrast to the sourness with me. This is what fear does. They insisted that the gun not be loaded within the store and watched my departure. To be clear, that was in ‘67, not ‘43.
There is a major difference between both 1943 and 1967 and currently. Racism had a major role in all three periods. Now, it is accompanied by income and wealth systems transferring from the poor (and in the last three decades, the middle class also) to the highest income groups. This transfer has been institutionalized to a much greater extent, and has become automatic the way current systems operate. Only deeply systemic change can bring about equality of opportunity and the stopping of these automatically built in harmful transfers of income and wealth. The recent Great Recession was extremely impactful in transferring home equity from the poor to the rich and particularly for African Americans who were often the target of pressure to take out ultimately overpriced subprime mortgages for amounts they did not understand they could not afford and did not qualify for under normal, responsible bank standards.
These systems transferring wealth and income are complex, multi-faceted, and numerous. They include, to mention just a few, regressive tax systems at the state and local level and on the surface a progressive tax system at the national level with huge loopholes for the wealthy, high income persons and corporations with high nominal (but low effective) rates that few of the wealthy actually pay. Huge tax loopholes exist that the U.S. Congress has passed to please its large contributors. Tax havens abroad help the rich and corporations shelter income. Investing abroad and keeping income there helps high income groups avoid U. S. taxes. Relocating U. S. corporate ownership abroad can not only relocate income abroad but also jobs that were formerly stateside. And so on.
All of this and more are part of the processes to which I referred earlier that redistributes income and wealth from the poor and the middle class to the highest income groups and produces much dissatisfaction among the non-rich. This is the dissatisfaction that a few candidates are appealing to in 2016 political races and that will sow the seeds for conflicts in the future unless they are addressed well in a reasonable time frame.
As stated by the Kerner Commission, the only way to break the frequent cycle of black revolt and white repression is to address the underlying problems of racial injustice and to remove the barriers to equal opportunity. The U. S. is not much closer to doing that now than it was in 1967.
Some earlier anti-racism gains are being lost again. With regard to a most fundamental right, voting, past progress is being reversed, not only without opposition by the Supreme Court of the U. S. at the point of time this document was prepared, September, 2015, but with its assistance by its interpreting corporations as individuals with the right of free speech in their use of campaign contributions. Policy appears to be going in the wrong direction.
WW: Hello, today is June 23rd, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I’m in St. Claire Shores and I am sitting down with Mr. Don Lobsinger. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
DL: Pleasure.
WW: Can you tell me where and when you born?
DL: Detroit, Michigan, 1934.
WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?
DL: Northeast side, in the vicinity of Chandler Park. Chalmers and Harper, in that area.
WW: What was that neighborhood like for you growing up?
DL: It was a great neighborhood, and that’s the only way I can describe it. Many houses. Detroit was pretty well known at that time for its tree-lined streets, Dutch elms, and of course they got the disease and they had to get rid of them a number of years later. But Detroit was known for that because you had cities like Chicago known for tenements and apartments and so on, but not Detroit. Detroit was known for its tree-lined residential streets. Very well known for that. That was my neighborhood. Park nearby, played ball in that park as kids. Make-up ball as kids growing up. Street hockey, growing up. The neighborhood was tremendous. The young people living today, they can’t possibly imagine or understand how great it was to live in the city of Detroit. I went to De La Salle High School, I went to St. John Burkman’s grade school, which was at Warren and Lakeview. That was eight years. Then I went to De La Salle High School, which was over by the city airport. The De La Salle sports teams are called the pilots because of that airport. Those planes—those two engine planes—would fly over the school and rattle the windows. [Laughter] I remember the first year I went to De La Salle as a freshman, got up one morning and heard that a plane had crashed into a house several blocks away from the school and I remember a number of us going there afterwards and I can still see, as I’m sitting here talking to you, I was a freshman at De La Salle, and I can still see that plane sitting on that house. I can’t remember if anybody was killed, but I do remember seeing that. Right by the city airport. That building is no longer there, and De La Salle has moved out to Warren, it’s in Warren now. And then I went to the University of Detroit and graduated from the University of Detroit in 1957. So that’s my educational experience. All private education, Catholic. That education, being brought up Catholic, and being brought up on those particular years, is what laid the foundation for me to form an organization in the 1960s after I got out of the army to fight the communists.
WW: Let’s go back. Did you join the army before or after you graduated—
DL: I didn’t join the army, I was drafted. I was drafted out of college. I had a college deferment. I was drafted in 1957 and, I don’t know if I should, or if you’re interested in this, but all I know is that I prayed that I would go to Germany because I didn’t want to spend time in the states, and I knew I’d never get to Europe. We went to Ft. Knox, it’s where they broke all of us up into two groups: one went to Korea, one went to Germany, and we went to Germany. And so we trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, infantry training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and went over to Germany as a company. Part of an entire division, an infantry division went over to Germany, and we stayed together as a company that entire two years. We were sixteen months in Germany, and we were able to have a reunion because of that some forty years later. My experiences while I was in Europe were a major factor in my deciding that when I got out of the service, I would fight the communists. At that time I didn’t exactly know how, but it wasn’t long after I got out of the service that I knew.
WW: Could you share a couple of those experiences with us?
DL: You mean when I was in Europe?
WW: Yeah. The things that drove you—
DL: Well, these were—it wasn’t the military training that did it, although we were stationed in Vanburg, Bavaria, maybe forty, fifty miles from the Soviet sector. The two experiences that really impacted me—I’m convinced that this was meant to be—I went to Berlin twice, and you got on an American military train in Frankfurt, and you had to go through 110 miles of soviet sector to get to West Berlin. And of course the army knew that I was on leave and that I went to Berlin, but I went there. But what I didn’t know was that while there, I went into East Berlin, which was the communist sector of Berlin. So the army did not know I went in there. The American soldiers could go into the communist sector as a result of the Potsdam agreement so that American soldiers could go over there. But I really doubt that American soldiers stationed in Berlin went into Berlin alone. I did, and when I look back on it, I think I had to be crazy because I could have been picked up so easily on any pretext. We were told that if you get on the subway on the elevated trains and you go into East Berlin—because you go into East Berlin—but the last stop was outside Berlin and in the soviet zone of Germany and you would be arrested and picked up by the soviets and have to be turned over to the American military, and they’re the ones that would really take it out. But I remember reading that if the stars and stripes appear in Berlin, get off before that last stop. Well I went into East Berlin, and I walked around, and just that experience, having seen West Berlin, how the thriving city that was Berlin was, as opposed to East Berlin, it was like night and day. It was unbelievable. I visited the Soviet war memorial in West Berlin and I visited the soviet cemetery in East Berlin on a tour. So that was part of it. But the thing that really made me decide, without question, that I would devote my adult life to fighting the communists, was I was on leave in Vienna, Austria, when a communist youth festival, sponsored by Moscow, was being held in Vienna. And the first time the soviets held their youth festival, their international youth festival, in a free country. They never did again after that because the Austrian students put up such resistance against that festival that the soviets never again held it in a free country. I met a number of those students. They knew I was an American soldier. I became friendly with them. My experience during that festival is what impacted my decision to fight the communists when I got out of the service but the main thing was the attendance at the opening rally. The opening rally was in an open air stadium and I walked among the groups that were there—these were groups from all over the world, including North Korea, Communist China, and they were all lined up outside of that stadium to go marching in when the rally started. And I was in that stadium. First of all, I walked among the delegations, and I went into that stadium, and I remember sitting there and I remember as these groups entered, flying communist flags, each group flying a North Korea, Communist China, the second largest delegation was the Communist Chinese and they came into that stadium. The largest delegation was the Soviet Union. And they were the ones that came in last. And when the soviets came in, they released hundreds of doves into the sky, symbolizing peace. And they chanted in German, constantly, through that rally, so that it had a tremendous impact on everybody who was attending this rally. It was similar to the Nazi rallies. It has a psychological effect on you. If you see any of the Nazi rallies in documentaries, I mean, the impact that it had on the people attending those rallies—the communists did the same thing, and I witnessed it and experienced it in Vienna. And they were chanting, [unintelligible German], “Peace and friendship, peace and friendship.” That had such an effect on me that it lasted for at least two to three days, and I concluded communism is the wave of the future. The only way it will be defeated if it isn’t opposed by their enemies who have a greater dedication than they do, and on the train back to post, I thought to myself, if this festival had been held in the United States instead of in Vienna, Austria, would the American students and American youth have opposed it to the extent that the Austrian students did? And I concluded in my own mind, no, because American students didn’t know a thing about communism. The Austrian students experienced it because Austria was under soviet domination for several years. The Hungarian revolution took place in 1956, which was three years before the communist youth festival that I attended. So the Hungarian revolution was very fresh in everybody’s minds. And those students sponsored bus tours to the Hungarian-Austrian border for anyone who wanted to go, four times a day so the people attending that festival, the people in Vienna, could see with their own eyes, the barbed wire fences and the gun towers separating Austria from Hungary, raising the question, who was the fences there to protect? To keep the people going from free Europe into communist country? No! To keep the people in the communist countries from going into Western Europe. And anybody who tried, there were mine fields on the other side of those fences, and gun towers. When I went to Berlin, the Berlin Wall had not yet been put up, but once the Berlin Wall was put up, I believe it was in 1961, a number of people were shot down at that wall, I remember very well the one German student, Peter Fechter, who was shot down at that wall. And the communists let him lie there in his own blood until he died and then they came and removed him. Even in the “decadent west,” according to the communists, if we would’ve shot somebody down at that wall, we would’ve gone and taken them to the hospital; not the communists. They let him lie there in his own blood. Only yards away from an American guard post separating East and West Berlin. And I have often thought that if I had been a guard, an American soldier guard in Berlin when that kid was shot down at the Berlin Wall, I would have risked my life to rescue that kid and let the communists do whatever they wanted to do. Whether or not they would’ve shot an American soldier, I don’t know. But I do know myself. And I don’t believe I could have, even as a soldier or a guard, I don’t believe I could have stood there and tolerated that. I believe I would have gone to rescue that kid. Who knows what the consequences would have been. The simple fact of the matter is I’m simply saying this because this is how strong I was against the communists. So in Vienna, the experience that I had at that festival, the experience that I had with the Austrian students, they had set up booths with materials to hand out to people, people from all over the world were in Vienna for this. They had set up booths and those experiences—there’s more that I could tell you, you don’t have the time here. But that, especially the rally, that opening rally, impacted me to the point when I was on that train, I decided no, American students would not have imposed a communist festival like the Austrian students did. To defeat the communists would require a dedication equal to theirs or greater. And I decided right then and there, on that train on the way back to post, that when I got out of the service, I would fight the communists, and I have done that all my adult life.
WW: That’s a good segue. When you came back to Detroit, did you see the city any differently than when you had left?
DL: Not really.
WW: Not really?
DL: No, it was the same neighborhood as when I had left.
WW: What year did you come back in?
DL: 1959.
WW: Okay. What did you do upon your arrival back home?
DL: I went back to the job that I had with the City of Detroit. I worked for the City of Detroit recreation department, and I had an office job doing clerical work. I had that job before I went into the service, and so when I came back I just went back to that job, and I ended up staying there. I worked for the City of Detroit recreation department, doing mostly clerical work, there was some other assignments during that time, but I worked for the City of Detroit for thirty-six years. So that was until 1992. So I was an employee of the City of Detroit when Coleman Young became mayor of the City of Detroit. So Coleman Young really was my boss.
WW: We will get to that! We’re not really there yet.
DL: Well, anyway, that’s what I did when I got out of the service. I returned to my job at the City of Detroit and I stayed there. I was a civil service employee. Which was convenient for me to engage in the activities that I did against the communists in the Detroit area, especially during the Vietnam War.
WW: Another good segue. What efforts did you undertake when you got back? And in 1963, you founded Breakthrough?
DL: Yes.
WW: Can you talk about that please?
DL: Breakthrough is, we named it “Breakthrough” in ’63, but ’63 was when we became active as a group, yes. When I first got back, I saw in the paper a meeting showing the movie Operation Abolition and by the way, you can see that documentary, put out by the House Committee of Un-American Activities. The US House Committee of Un-American Activities put out a documentary in, I believe it was 1961, called Operation Abolition. And it had to do with the communist-organized protest against the House Committee of Un-American Activities investigating communist infiltration of the educational system in California. And it documented and showed communist leaders of these demonstrations. That was a real awakening for me in terms of how the communists operated and so on and so forth. So I met people there at this meeting, and as a consequence of that it led to my eventually founding Breakthrough. By the way, there was a communist bookstore on Woodward Ave. called Global Books. It was on Woodward Ave. right near Warren, near the Wayne campus, deliberately so. And I went there a number of times because I could pick up announcements of communist meetings, communist front meetings, and I went to them. This was before I had become active, so they had no knowledge of me. I was a potential recruit to them. So I saw a number of people who I later saw active with the communist, active with the NA Ordinance Regents [JY1] [18:18??]. And so then later, as I said, I had Breakthrough, I became public. But that was beneficial to go to some of these meetings, actually attending communist front meetings, and seeing how that worked. So that was part of it too. Also, after seeing that movie, Operation Abolition, I joined with a woman whose name I’m not going to mention here now—
WW: That’s fine.
DL: —to oppose the lifting of the ban of communist speakers at Wayne State University. And we circulated petitions throughout the Detroit area to reinstate that ban. And the Board of Governors at Wayne State University would not do so, and so as a consequence, Wayne University was now open to open communists to come in there and speak. That petition drive was, I think, 1961, and then by 1963 I had Breakthrough and the Vietnam protests were starting. Having gotten out of the army only a few years before, knowing that these were pro-communist demonstrations, I found people of a like mind and we opposed them in the streets.
WW: Did you find that metro Detroit, or Detroit specifically, was a large basin for communist support or was it localized individuals, or was the support far more widespread?
DL: No, there was communist party organizations, there was also the Socialist Workers party, which was a communist organization, based on the teachings of Lenin and Trotsky. They were very active on the Wayne campus, Wayne State University campus, and I knew a number of those people and they were very active in the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, and the leadership of those demonstrations. And two professors at Wayne State University at that time were major instigators of the anti-war protest at Wayne State University that ended up downtown in Detroit. Dr. David Harishov and Adolf Einstein. Those were the two major leaders of the anti-war demonstrations on Wayne State University campus, as part of the faculty. Their names were in the papers constantly. There was a Dr. Fitzhov Bergman at University of Michigan who was also very active in the anti-war demonstrations. And Helen Winter, who ran the Global Bookstore that I just mentioned, was the wife of Carl Winter, who was the head of the Michigan Communist Party. And at these anti-war demonstrations, Helen Winter would be there distributing her literature, and so on and so forth, I saw her a few times. Most of the people most visibly active were Socialist Worker’s Party, young people, a number of students. Please understand that the majority of the demonstrators are not communists. They’re just lured there against the war, they’ve been incited against the war by their professors or someone. A lot of them didn’t want to be drafted, a lot of them didn’t want to go to Vietnam. They were also lured there by the music. They were lured there, later on through the years, by the drugs, the music, revolution, because the ‘60s were a major turning point in the United States. The 1960s were a communist-inspired revolution that overturned most of the values in this country. It definitely was a revolution that took place in the 1960s. It turned this country upside down. And Breakthrough, my group, I can proudly say that we opposed that revolution. It turns out today, when I look at it, we’re pretty much the losers. So much of what I experienced back in the ‘60s and ‘70s is being repeated today right in front of my very eyes! Black Lives Matter, groups like this. This is all communist inspired. You can go right back to the ‘60s, it’s the same thing, same pattern, same slogans, same everything. And you see the leaders and the members of the Black Lives Matter movement wearing red shirts with a clenched fist on the red shirts. The clenched fist, anybody who knows anything knows that the clenched fist is a communist salute. New York Times even had an article on that. The New York Times is not a right-wing paper, and they had an article showing the Nelson Mandela marching with the head of the communist party in South Africa at an open-air rally, giving the clenched fist salute with Joe Slovo. Joe Slovo was head of the South African Communist Party, and Nelson Mandela was head of the African—I forget the name of it—
WW: National Congress.
DL: African National Congress. And he was what we would describe as a terrorist today, when he was arrested. That African National Congress that he was part of, I don’t know if it was that named group then when he was arrested. But when he was arrested, their group, they were famous for doing this to their enemies: putting a gas-filled tire around their necks and setting it on fire! We would call those people terrorists today! That’s what Nelson Mandela was! Nelson Mandela was no innocent freedom-fighter, he was a hard-core communist! And after he got out, he was marching around with Joe Slovo giving the clenched fist salute! And the New York Times had a picture of it, a picture of him marching with Slovo, and identified it as the communist salute. The black power movement adopted the communist salute as their own, at the Olympic Games with their arms in the air, giving the communist salute. And today, it’s being repeated all over again. We’re going to see the ‘60s again, especially during, I believe, this political campaign. I believe that the convention in Cleveland will be Chicago all over again, 1968.
WW: Bringing it back to the ‘60s. What were some of the activities that Breakthrough engaged in between the founding in ’63 and, say, ’67? What were some of the activities you engaged in?
DL: Oh, my. [Laughter]
WW: Little snapshots.
DL: Well, numerous clashes with the anti-war movement here in Detroit. Numerous clashes. Which resulted in arrests several times.
WW: On both sides?
DL: Well, I remember my own being arrested.
WW: That’s fair.
DL: For disorderly conduct, I mean these silly things. They’d get rid of you, and I mean, it was nothing serious, you understand, it was these little misdemeanors. So clashes with the communist-led demonstrations here in Detroit during that time period, and opposition to soviet cultural groups that came into the city. The Moscow Chamber Orchestra. There was another orchestra—I forget the name of it right now—but that was early ‘60s. We had several demonstrations against the communist orchestras when they came into Detroit, and the purpose of those demonstrations was to alert the people going to those concerts just who it was that was entertaining them. People who were financing the war in Vietnam against our soldiers, that was number one. And also to inspire people behind the Iron Curtain who might learn what we were doing here in Detroit through BBC or whatever. So there was that. We also had—see, I don’t really know what this has to do with the Detroit riot, but we also had a parade in downtown Detroit in support of victory in Vietnam. We had floats, we had marchers, we had a permit for that parade. I remember how the police rushed us through it. They rushed us through that, and I’ll never forget. Cavanagh was mayor at that time. They never did that with the anti-war demonstrators, only us. And our parade got hardly any press coverage. So what that told me was, the only way that the opponents of the anti-war, rather the supporters of victory in Vietnam and those opposing the anti-war protestors—the only way you’re going to get any public exposure is by opposing. We had a parade, it was blacked out by the press. Virtually blacked out. We had floats, people marching, it was a tremendous parade! Virtually blacked out! So here’s what we were confronted with, my organization: if you don’t oppose the anti-war protestors, it looks as though there’s no opposition against them. If you do oppose them, the press makes you the villain. So either way, the communists win. And so with that as the—I forget what you would call it, it’s like a double-edged sword—if you do this, you lose; if you do this, you lose. My attitude was we’re going to oppose them, and there will be enough people out here who will see through the propaganda, who will see through the news reports, and see the truth of what it is that we were trying to do. We also had demonstrations during that time against communist meetings at various locations. And the principle meeting place was the communists and their fronts in the Detroit area in the 1960s, the time that you’re asking me about, was Central Methodist Church in downtown Detroit and still is! Central Methodist Church is right next to Comerica Park. Anybody going to the ballgame, you’ll see Central Methodist Church. That was a major meeting place of the communists and their front groups during the Vietnam war, outright treasonous organizations. One of the groups that met there was a Fair Play for Cuba meeting. I remember attending that. It was pro-Castro, and one of the speakers, two of the speakers, Cleague—I can’t remember his name—
WW: Albert?
DL: Albert Cleague, he was a black power leader. At that time, I think he had the Church of the Black Madonna, I believe it was at his church where the Republic of New Africa had a meeting. And they were brandishing weapons and the Detroit Police encountered them. One police officer was killed, another police officer was wounded. Robowsky, I think his name was, and Chopsky, I think the other one was.
WW: The church that happened at was New Bethel Baptist.
DL: Okay, my memory can fail me here on some of these things.
WW: Not to worry. What was the size of Breakthrough during this time? What was your scope?
DL: In terms of activists, I would say anywhere from fifty to a hundred. In terms of supporters, I would say in the hundreds. You have people come and go, the left wing, the same way. So you have people come, and they go, and then there’s new people. So over the years, I would say, and I don’t believe I’m exaggerating, counting the people who would come and they go, over the years, people who were supporting Breakthrough, I would say hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. I’m positive to that. We had a lot of people supporting us. We had no financial backers. I financed a good part of Breakthrough. And it was people who just sent in small donations. We would get a mailing list and we had a mailing list, we’d send out appeals. We’d get $10, $25, that’s how it worked. Our attorney pretty much worked for free. Just the publicity would get him clients. So he pretty much worked for us free.
WW: Did you start a newsletter by this time, or was that later?
DL: We didn’t start the newsletter until after the riot, and it was called “Battle Line” newsletter. And that lasted from about 1967 until about 1972. Also during that time we allied ourselves with a group in Toronto called the Edmund Burkes Society. It was a group similar to Breakthrough who were clashing with the communists, especially the Maoists, in the city of Toronto. They had far more violent clashes than we did. And we formed an alliance. The problem that happened there was the Edmund Burkes society was infiltrated by Nazis and that pretty much brought the group down. This new group called themselves the Western Guard, and it was pretty much pro-Nazi. So we no longer had anything to do with them. The alliance just completely collapsed. But for some time, we were allied with that group in Toronto. There was one other thing, though, in the early ‘60s that you asked me about—oh yes, I want to emphasize—I really want to emphasize—the number of meetings that took place at Central Methodist Church that were communist. And we had quite a few demonstrations outside of Central Methodist Church. The minister there was James Laird. He had a column for the Detroit Free Press. We put so much exposure on that church, he was eventually transferred to, I think, Pennsylvania. And the pastor emeritus at that time of Central Methodist Church was Reverend Henry Hitt Crane. Henry Hitt Crane was one of the individuals cited by the US House Committee on Un-American Activities as one of the top communist party front people in the United States. So that’s Henry Hitt Crane. And when you belong to that many communist party fronts, believe me, you are a communist. There’s no question about it. You’re just hiding behind all these front groups. Henry Hitt Crane was a communist, no doubt about it. And he formed the group, which is now, today, the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion. That group, they will tell you, was founded—it was a different name then—by Henry Hitt Crane, a communist. And they are very prominent in this area now, especially here in St. Claire Shores, operating under the radar in our schools. And they have established a youth group called the St. Claire Shores Youth Diversity Council. That’s a creation of the Michigan Roundtable. I’ve opposed them here in the city in front of the city council, but it doesn’t do much good, because there are very, very prominent people associated with this group. But what I’m saying here is that that group will tell you that initially, it was founded by Henry Hitt Crane, a communist. And they’re proud of it! So when you ask me what we did? Yes, demonstrations at communist meetings, especially Central Methodist Church, and clashing, opposing, the anti-war protestors. Because if you read their literature—this is very important. If you read their literature, it’s not really the war they were against. They were against American victory! They were marching for a communist victory and American defeat! That is treason! They were burning the American flag! They were carrying the communist flag! And one thing that I want to really emphasize here is that when asked about burning the American flag, here’s what they said: “It’s just a piece of cloth.” But that communist flag they were carrying wasn’t just a piece of cloth, I mean to tell you. And when they flew the communist flags here, we tore them down, because my attitude was, they’re not going to take pictures of these demonstrators carrying communist flags to show our P.O.W.s in Vietnam or Korea or anywhere else. They’re not going to do it anywhere here in Detroit because we’re going to stop them from doing it. And I firmly believe that our opposition to the anti-war demonstrations here in Detroit resulted in a lot less numbers than they had in other cities. Our opposition to those demonstrations did that. And then, of course, there was also our involvement in exposing certain individuals in the Archdiocese of Detroit. I am Catholic, and so consequently, when I saw this, I thought the Archdiocese of Detroit would be on our side. I was anti-communist mainly because of my Catholic education. And I find out, from experience, that the Archdiocese of Detroit, under Cardinal Dearden was not only not on our side, they were actually collaborating with the enemy. We put out leaflets to that effect. And that was right, especially, after the riot. Especially after the so-called “riot” in 1967. Because the Archdiocese of Detroit gave money to these black militant, black power groups, the Association of Black Students at Wayne State University, they gave them $100,000, $64,000. The Ghetto Speaks, Eastside Voices, they had been in Detroit led by Frank Ditto. They gave them money. And this group called for violent revolution, killing the pigs, meaning the police. Violent revolution. And the Archdiocese of Detroit gave them thousands of dollars. And the Black Panther Party, which was a Marxist, Leninist party, I read in some government document, I can’t remember what it was now, but that the Archdiocese contributed $100,000 to the Black Panther Party. And so, where was the Archdiocese getting this money? From Catholics contributing to the Archdiocese in development fund, that’s where the money was from. So consequently we exposed that with leaflets all over the Archdiocese of Detroit, at churches on Sunday mornings. And as a consequence, the Archdiocese and development fund was—they got rid of that, and now it’s the something else. But that was all a consequence. And then of course there was Bishop Thomas Wimbleton, who—that’s a whole other story. But Wimbleton supported the communists throughout the Vietnam War, we had a number of clashes with him.
WW: Were you still living in the city of Detroit during all of this?
DL: Yeah, I was at my parents’ home as a matter of fact, because I had a room upstairs so it was cheaper living for me. So I was living there, and my city job was civil service really enabled me to engage in these activities without getting fired. If I had been working for a private company, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. I had vacation time, I didn’t go on vacations. I used my vacation time to engage in these activities and to defend myself in court numerous times. So what I’m trying to say is that by being a member of civil service, I was able to engage in these activities without fear of being fired, unless I was arrested for some serious crime. The reason they’re not going to do that—get rid of me—is because they would have had to get rid of a number of leftists as well, who were in civil service. So they didn’t. I had the press ask me many, many times, “Don, how do you get away? How come you haven’t been fired?” Especially after Coleman Young became mayor. I don’t know. They asked the director of my department: “He does his job, we can’t fire him. He does his job.” So in addition to working 40 hours a week for the city of Detroit, I was involved in that. I didn’t have very much time for anything else, I’m telling you. Because leading an organization like Breakthrough required all of my free time.
WW: Going into 1967, how do you interpret what the events were? Do you see them as a riot? Because you said “so-called riot.”
DL: No, I see them the way the black militants see them, a black rebellion. That’s how they call it. A rebellion. To this day, they call it that, the black militants. You’re asking me how did I see it at the time? Very truthfully, it didn’t turn out the way I saw it. You must understand that at that time there were major violent disruptions. I refuse to call it a riot, it was not a riot. If it was not brought about by subversives, if it wasn’t brought about, it was that police breaking up that blind pig, if that’s something that just happened, it was exploited and taken advantage of by subversive groups to promote their ends and their goals. And at that same time, you had it going on in Watts, Newark, there were several other cities, so this happened just by coincidence? Oh no, it looked pretty organized to me. Same thing with Black Lives Matter. This isn’t just some local group, this is a national organization. Then you’ve got Sharpton’s group, that’s a national organization. They are national.
WW: Bring it back.
DL: Bring it back? Okay. No, wait a minute, at that time, you had Rap Brown, you had Stokely Carmichael, you had these black power militants who were promoting revolution—revolution!—and so I thought, the way I saw this, these were dry runs. This wasn’t just an ordinary riot. These violent in Newark, Watts, Detroit, other places—this was how I saw it at the time—were dry runs for a major violent revolution in this country that would maybe bring about the communist conquest of the United States. Now time has proven that that view that I had at that time was very, very premature. But please understand, that you had these black power militants preaching violent revolution and overthrow of the American government. And you had a group set up at Wayne University, the Association of Black Students promoting that very thing. Lonnie Peak was one of the leaders of that, Dan Aldridge was one of the leaders of that. Lonnie Peak later became a city official, and I believe he became a minister later on, in later years. But at that time he was very active. And the Association of Black Students, they held a symposium at Wayne State University, I believe it was in 1968. It was either ’68 or ’69. They had a symposium, and I have the program from that symposium. There’s a poem in there, in which they call for the murder of the police. Kill the police, murder the police, calling for violence. This was the Association of Black Students at Wayne University. Then you had the Eastside Voice of independent Detroit which was headed up by Frank Ditto. They had a publication called The Ghetto Speaks. This was all after the riot, all this was the aftermath of the riot. These were militant organizations. Are you wanting me to talk about the riot right now, the aftermath of it?
WW: I was just about to bring you back to that.
DL: Because that’s really where I became very much involved. But right now you’re asking me how I viewed it at the time, and so I think I just answered that.
WW: Yes.
DL: I saw it as dry runs for the big push that would result in the takeover of the United States by the communists.
WW: And now, just a couple of small questions. How did you first hear about what was going on in the city?
DL: You mean how did I hear of the violence?
WW: Yeah.
DL: I was at a friend’s—a Breakthrough member’s—he and his wife were visiting his parents. They lived in Detroit right by the City Airport. I happened to be there that Sunday when all of this broke out, and I remember we heard the—there were like helicopters, I think, that went over the neighborhood—and then we later on, we heard about what was going on. And also, this might sound really stupid, but it is a fact: I thought that—seeing this as I did, which I just described, I saw this as an opportunity on the part of the left wing in the city of Detroit to use it as a cover to attack my place of residence. I had members of Breakthrough there. We were armed in case anybody attempted to burn the house, attack the house, all under the guise of the riot. Never happened, but I was prepared for that. That’s pretty much how I saw it. Dry runs.
WW: And before we move to the aftermath, did you see the violence? Did you anticipate violence that summer or was it a surprise to you? In Detroit. Because you mentioned that Watts and Newark, did you say to yourself, “It’s coming here”?
DL: No, I told you, I saw the Detroit so-called riot as part of this. This was not something that just happened like the riot in the ‘40s. That was a genuine riot. This was, if it was not an organized rebellion from the beginning, it was seized upon to become that.
WW: Yeah, I’m asking if you saw it coming to Detroit.
DL: Saw what coming? That particular riot, did I see that coming? No.
WW: Did you anticipate a rebellion or an attempted—
DL: No, no, no, no, no. But when it happened—
WW: You knew it.
DL: —the way I saw it—as I said, dry runs. And then, well I’m getting ahead of myself because we had rallies afterwards, I mean public meetings afterwards. We’re getting into the aftermath of it now.
WW: Yep, we can get into that now. Well, did you have any experiences from that week you’d like to share?
DL: You mean the week of the riot?
WW: Yeah.
DL: I just shared one of them. I did not go to work for three or four days. I felt it was far too dangerous. A number of people didn’t go to work, I wasn’t the only one. And I had members of Breakthrough—several members of Breakthrough—at my place of residence in the event that my enemies would use the riot as a cover to attack my residence, maybe burn it down. I was prepared for that. Thank God it didn’t happen. But I was prepared for it. You’re asking me how I viewed it, that’s how I viewed it. I was probably the only one in the entire city that viewed it that way, ‘cause the people in the city of Detroit are viewing it the way the news media are reporting it to them. Not me. I’m viewing it with the knowledge of communist activity in the city of Detroit. That’s how I’m viewing it. Other people are not viewing it that way. I’m probably one of a very few that view it that way.
WW: Now moving into the aftermath. How did the rebellion affect Breakthrough? Did it?
DL: Oh, it sure did! I mean our major focus was to promote victory in Vietnam, an American victory, a communist defeat, and to oppose the anti-war movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, which I have just said was really to end the war with a communist victory and an American defeat. That was the whole purpose of it. That’s what we were opposed to. The riot—I hate to use the term, because the militants call it a rebellion, and that’s what I believe it was, so I’ll refer to it as the “rebellion” from here on—
WW: That’s perfectly fine.
DL: The rebellion changed course for us. And if you want to tell me what happened that brought that about, I think I’ll do it right now—
WW: Go right ahead.
DL: Because no one you talk to is going to tell you what I am now going to tell you because there’s no one that even knows about it, or will recall it. I do, because I experienced it first-hand. Immediately following that rebellion, the white leadership, government, of Detroit, Mayor Cavanagh—it was pretty much white, and there were white neighborhoods in Detroit. I lived in a white neighborhood. And so, the black power leaders, the black leaders of the city of Detroit, they took advantage of this rebellion to now flex their muscles politically and they called on the mayor of Detroit—it’s so important to understand here, I didn’t mention this, the mayor of Detroit—they had the police out there, anybody that experienced this out there on the television news—the police stood by and let them burn and loot, they did nothing to stop them, nothing! And then after 24 hours, the governor sent in the National Guard, and I’ll never forget it. He said, “Well, the rioting has now become intolerable.” And, publically, I scorched the governor for [JY2] making that statement because what he was saying was that for 24 hours, all the burning and the looting was tolerable. Just imagine that, it was tolerable. Now if I had been mayor of Detroit, that looting would have ended in a big, big hurry because they would have all been arrested and some of them would have been shot! And that would have been the end of the riot in the city of Detroit. But Cavanagh, no. Police stand by and let it all happen. And then the National Guard did, too, for a while, before they really put it down. So naturally the black leaders in Detroit, they’re flexing their muscles. The city government isn’t going to do anything, so now we’re going to take advantage of this, so here’s what happened: about a month after that rebellion, it’s reported in the paper that these black leaders in Detroit—I can’t name them right now, I don’t know their names, I just remember reading it in the paper—that there’s going to be a black rally, a black power rally, in the city council chambers at the city county building, approved by the mayor of Detroit, Jerome Cavanagh. So I thought, “Oh, I’ve got to be at that. I’ve got to see that. I have to see where this is going.” So I went through with a Breakthrough member, and we were in the auditorium of the city county building, where the city council held their meetings when they expected large members of the public in attendance. When we got there, this Breakthrough member and I, we stood in the side aisle by the wall, just observing—that’s all we intended to do, was just observe, just observe what was happening—these black leaders—I can’t name a one of them—they were already sitting in the chairs of the city council members, ready for the rally when I noticed that this woman went up to them and pointed me out to them. Now the woman, I happened to know, was Naomi Komarowsky. Naomi Komarowsky was the wife of Conrad Komarowsky who was a member of the communist party and a writer for the communist publication “The Worker.” She was his wife. They were both communists. Now I didn’t see Conrad Komarowsky there, but I did see Naomi Komarowsky. And she is the one, a communist, who pointed me out to these black leaders. Several of them came up to me and here is what they said, I remember it as though it happened just yesterday: “Lobsinger, don’t even open your mouth because we’re running things now.” Those are the exact words that were said to me. And I said to myself, I looked right at them, and I said to myself, Okay, you win this round. You win this round. I’m not going to open my mouth, but you sure as hell are going to hear from me. So I got Breakthrough together, the Breakthrough leaders together after that, and I said, “We’re changing direction right now from the Vietnam War to opposing the black power movement in the city of Detroit” and holding public meetings around the city, at halls, telling the people what happened at the city county building, who was behind these riots, what was likely to happen again, what they should be prepared to do if they did happen again. In other words, if there was another rebellion, what would happen, we believe, was that there would be entire neighborhoods unprotected by the police and so consequently they should have weapons to defend their lives and their property and food to last for a number of days, in case all the power went out. We held these meetings across the city, in various parts of the city, and we couldn’t find halls big enough to accommodate the people that came, and these meetings were almost totally blacked out in the media! No reporting in the media! Maybe a little paragraph. I mean, this is big news! There was a rally on the northeast side of Detroit, cars were coming from every direction! There wasn’t enough parking space for them! The hall accommodated 300-400 people. There were so many people we had to set up speakers outside. So then we rented a bigger hall over on 7 mile by Gratiot, the Flamingo Hall, a much bigger hall. Accommodated 800 people. More people came, then even more people came, and we had to put up speakers outside to address the people at this meeting. And I’m telling you what we told them, “Be prepared for another one.” Be prepared for something far greater: neighborhoods unprotected by the police that will have to defend your own property. That was the gist of our message. Blacked out by the press. This is a big story! This is a big, big story! Then we had meetings on the northwest side. Some of those meetings were cancelled under pressure from the mayor of Detroit, I’m positive. Every instance, we couldn’t find halls big enough. Then, when the rallies were over, these public meetings were over, then the Detroit Free Press ran a feature article in which they made it look like we were just a bunch of crazies overreacting to something that never really happened, as we described it. That’s what the article amounted to. So it was a smear article in the Detroit Free Press, even though they blacked out all these meetings before hand, and they did not tell the truth at all as to what we were saying to the people of these rallies. By the way, part of the reason we got people to come to these rallies in the numbers that we did was that in the neighborhoods surrounding the halls where we were holding the meetings, we saturated the neighborhoods with leaflets and flyers telling them, “Will you be prepared for another riot if there is one?” And that’s why people came. They came walking—it’s unbelievable the response that we got to those leaflets. Each instance in the area where the meeting was going to be held, we saturated the area with flyers, and that’s why we got the numbers that we did. Now, this is a meaningful, in my opinion: at these meetings I scorched the mayor of Detroit for having the police stand down while these stores were burned and looted. I scorched the mayor for this. I scorched the governor for this. For twenty-four hours, the rioting was “tolerable,” according to Governor George Romney, because, “it’s now become intolerable.” Those were his words. And I reminded the people at the rally what the governor said and what Cavanagh said, and we put out leaflets: Wanted for…whatever. Malfeasance of duty or whatever, against Cavanagh and Romney. 1969 comes, and Cavanagh is running for mayor—no, ’68 comes. Early 1968. We had a huge demonstration at Grosse Pointe High School when Martin Luther King was invited to speak there. That gymnasium was packed. It was a cold winter night and it was snowing. We had about two to three-hundred people outside that school protesting Martin Luther King. Because Martin Luther King and his communist associations and his communist background, Martin Luther King was no patriot! He was an enemy of the United States! He supported the communists during the Vietnam War! All of his loyalists and supporters will admit it! Will admit it, that he supported the communists during the Vietnam War! We knew that. That’s why we opposed Martin Luther King. And we had a huge demonstration outside Grosse Pointe High School in early 1968. And inside, too, to the point where Martin Luther King had a press conference the next day and said that never in his experience did he experience anything like this opposition at Grosse Pointe High School at an indoor meeting. Those are King’s own words. Well, then King was assassinated a couple weeks later, and the mayor Cavanagh immediately imposed a curfew in the city of Detroit. A curfew. And the only reason that he imposed that curfew was because he knew that if he didn’t stop things right in its tracks, right there, that we would’ve come after him. And he was up for re-election next year, so he imposed a curfew. And we did not have the violence in Detroit that other cities had because there was major violence in other cities in the United States after King was assassinated, but not in Detroit, and we’re the reason for that. We’re the reason for that. And then after King was assassinated, oh brother. After King was assassinated, at the time, he was organizing a poor people’s march on Washington, then he was assassinated and Ralph Abernathy, his chief aide, took over. He resumed the poor people’s march. So they came to Detroit. This was in 1968, not long after King was assassinated. Abernathy picked up the Poor People’s March but they came to Detroit first, and they had a march here in Detroit. Oh gosh, I remember this like it happened yesterday. They had a march here in Detroit. The Poor People’s March, as a prelude to the one in Washington. Father James Groppi from Milwaukee, an agitator, a priest agitator from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee who was very well-known at that time, was one of the leaders of that march, along with Ralph Abernathy and a number of others. The march got to Cobo Hall where they were going to have a rally and then, there was violence that broke out—I can’t remember exactly what the circumstances were, but the mounted police had to go in to try to calm it. There was a clash between the Mounties—the mounted police—and the Poor People’s March. When they left, before they left, they demanded that Cavanagh, Mayor Cavanagh, punish those mounted police for their actions at that Poor People’s March gathering, I believe it was at Cobo Hall. And they demanded that those police officers be punished and as a consequence of that—and they also said they were going to come back to Detroit after Washington, they were going to come back to Detroit. I remember that distinctly, that they promised that they were coming back to Detroit. As a consequence of that clash, between the Mounties and that group. I told you about the public meetings we had to tell people about the riots, the rebellion, what they needed to do to prepare in the event there was another one. Now, we held public meetings again and we put out leaflets telling people to come, and so on, in defense of the police and in defense of the Mounties. We held only one meeting, I think, at that time, at the Flamingo Hall in northeast Detroit at 7 mile and Gratiot. We packed the place, it was 700 people. And I remember, before I went there to speak that night—I was always the main speaker at these meetings—Mayor Cavanagh was on television news and said he was going to get rid of the mounted police. He had already suspended the Mounties that were involved in that clash. He had suspended them. And I heard him say in the news he was going to get rid of the mounted police. And at the rallies, I’m going to tell you right now one of the things I said to the people at that rally, “Mayor Cavanagh was on television tonight—” and, let’s see, how did this go? Okay. I said at that rally to these people, I quoted the mayor, I said, “I know there’s a representative of the mayor here in the audience tonight. I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re here.” And I said, “The mayor made a statement tonight that he’s going to get rid of the mounted police because they have outlived their usefulness.” And I said to the people there and to the mayor’s representative who I was sure was there, I said, “I want you to take this back to the mayor for me, tonight. It’s not the Mounties who’ve outlived their usefulness, Mr. Cavanagh; it’s you!” And that about brought the roof down. Then, as an individual, I gave my public support to George Wallace of Alabama who was running for the President of the United States on the democratic ticket and he won the primary in Michigan. And the roof came down when I said that too, that I believed that George Wallace should be the next President of the United States. That was in 1968. So in 1969—by the way, Cavanagh reinstated the Mounties as a consequence of our meetings. He reinstated the Mounties and he never did get rid of the mounted police. I worked downtown and I am telling you, when I walked downtown on my lunch hour and the Mounties would see me, they practically saluted me, because they were still in existence. Cavanagh was definitely going to get rid of the mounted police. We saved the mounted police in the city of Detroit. 1969 comes, mayoral election, Cavanagh made this public statement: “Since Don Lobsinger is so critical of my administration, why doesn’t he run for mayor against me?” Yeah, that’s kind of a good idea. So I announced that I would run for mayor of Detroit against Jerome Cavanagh. And by god, if a couple weeks later, he didn’t drop out of the race. Now the heavies got into it, Roman Gribbs and Mary Beck and others whose names won’t even come to me now, Richard Austin…and then there was another man who was an instructor at Wayne University. The press blocked out my campaign. They just blacked it out. They blacked it out and they mentioned four major candidates: Austin, Gribbs, Beck, and this other man whose name will not come to me right now. Well there was something like 31 candidates for mayor, and there were only four major candidates, according to the press. And when that primary election was over, I came in fifth, and I almost beat the fourth one. No publicity. I was a major name in the city of Detroit. A major name! Press blacked that out. They just blacked it out. As I said, Cavanagh dropped out of the race, and the winner of the election turned out to be Roman Gribbs who became Mayor of Detroit, then later, Coleman Young. Have I answered your question?
WW: Yes.
DL: You wanted to know how I saw the rebellion at the time? The aftermath? The major, major event was that black power rally in the city council chambers which I witnessed and was told, I’m repeating this, was told by the black leaders who had me pointed out to them by a member of the communist party, I was told by them, “Don’t even open your mouth because we’re running things now.” That experience, that event, led to Breakthrough, kind of postponing our opposition to the Vietnam War, and taking on the black power movement in the city of Detroit. And not just right after that, almost forever after that. Black Panthers and everybody.
WW: You said Battlefield ended in ’72—
DL: Battleline.
WW: Battleline, sorry, ended in ’72. How long did Breakthrough keep going for?
DL: With reduced numbers, at least until early ‘90s.
WW: Wow, that’s very long.
DL: Because we went to the support of Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn, most people don’t remember that. In 1992 they were prosecuted for murder in the killing of that black druggy, Malice Green and along with the number of others, we went to back their support. So with far less numbers, Breakthrough was still in existence in the early ‘90s. But I want you to understand, now, that I always said, and I still say it to this day, that so long as I have breath in me, Breakthrough lives. So even if I’m the only one, Breakthrough still exists. And we’re sitting here now talking.
WW: What year did you leave the city?
DL: 1992. I was pretty much forced out by that time. Coleman Young was mayor. I was pretty much forced out by that time because I was no longer protected by civil service. It was now unionized. And they were able to work it in such a way that they were able to lay me off. I took a demotion and a transfer to another job in the same office building, but another job. So then they laid me off again. So then I just simply put in for retirement. That was in late 1992. As a consequence of having been demoted, all the vacation time and sick time that I had accumulated on higher pay was reduced to my salary at that time. So I lost quite a few thousand dollars because of it. But remember, Coleman Young was mayor at the time, so it was time for them to get rid of me.
WW: You refer to yourself as a refugee from the city of Detroit.
DL: Well, I didn’t in this interview.
WW: Not today, but you have.
DL: Yes, I have. As a matter of fact, when I addressed the Board of Commissioners here in Macomb County, almost for an entire year, month after month after month, in opposition to the Black Ministers’ Alliance, which was out here in Macomb County, inciting, opposing the county government on accusations of racism, I read that in the paper, and I thought, I’m not going to let you get away with that! So I went in front of the Board of Commissioners, meeting after meeting after meeting, in the mid-90s, and yes, I identified myself as a refugee from the city of Detroit. Which I was. Which I was. The blacks took over the neighborhood and simple fact of the matter is, this is a fact, if it makes me a racist, well, I plead guilty, because facts are facts. And the fact is there was no crime in the neighborhood in which I lived until the blacks moved in, especially when they moved in in large numbers. I mean, there were people murdered on their front lawn just a few doors away. We didn’t experience that kind of crime. There was no crime like that until the blacks took over the neighborhood. Once I left the city of Detroit, at that time, you had to be a resident of the city of Detroit in order to be employed. So once I was no longer employed by the city of Detroit, I moved out to St. Claire Shores. But the neighborhood had become black, and I remember coming home one night and the black neighbor saying to me, “Your kind is not welcome here.” And I thought to myself, this is my neighborhood. How dare you talk to me like that! That’s all I could think of. Now I want to make something very, very clear in this interview right now: I am not against black people and never have been. I worked with black people, I got along with them, even during these years of activity, I got along with the black people at work. They knew me personally. They knew I was not what the press was branding me. They knew that. And I got along with them very well. So I’m not against black people. What I am against is the black leadership because it’s communist and socialist, and Martin Luther King, who was made a hero, who all the blacks worship as their hero—well, unfortunately, Martin Luther King, back in the ‘60s, conservative groups had a photograph of him at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, which was a communist training center. And pictures of Martin Luther King at that training center were in conservative publications across the country. And Carl Prussian, who was a member of the FBI, said Martin Luther King belonged to a number of communist front organizations. And a woman by the name of, her name will not come to me right now, it will not come to me right now—Brown was her last name—she exposed Martin Luther King in a book that she wrote saying that she identified him as working with the communists. Then when Martin Luther King was killed, the communist press eulogized him, they would never eulogize an enemy like they eulogized Martin Luther King. The reason being because Martin Luther King took the side of the communists during the Vietnam War. He supported the North Vietnamese communists, he praised Ho Chi Mihn, and he identified the United States as the greatest perpetrator of violence in the world when we shared the planet with the Soviet Union and communist China, how dare him accuse his own country of being the most violent nation in the world when we shared the planet with, as I said, with the Soviet Union and communist China! He displayed his sympathies for all to see, at that time! Martin Luther King was a traitor to the United States and a monument in his honor in Washington is a national disgrace, and I will say that publically ‘til the day I die. I don’t care if I’m the only voice in the land that says so. But that does not make me against the black people. I am not against the black people. What I am against is their leadership which is misleading them.
WW: That is all I have. Thank you very much for sitting down with me, Mr. Lobsinger. Greatly appreciate it. I’m glad we were able to make this appointment.
[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 01:16:56]
[End of Track 1]
WW: Hello, today is August 11, 2017. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Detroit '67 Oral History Project, and I'm in Detroit, Michigan. And I'm sitting down with -
BP: Brenda Peek.
WW: Thanks so much for sitting down with me today.
BP: Oh, you're welcome.
WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when you were born?
BP: I was born in Brooklyn, New York.
WW: What year were you born?
BP: 1944. January 10, 1944.
WW: When did you come to Detroit?
BP: I came to Detroit in 1966.
WW: Do you remember what you first thought of the city?
BP: Well, I first - yes. When I first came to Detroit, I was looking for Macy's. I was pregnant with my son. And I had just left the military, with my husband. So, I'm looking for - you know, a little mimicking of New York. Well, it wasn't quite that. And one of the things I wanted the most was yogurt. And my aunt sent me to an area to go get yogurt, and some of the things that I was accustomed to, just walking in the neighborhood and getting.
And I was looking for something like Macy's, but there wasn't any. There was Hudson's. And I went to Hudson's, and she showed me the downtown, and I said, "Is this it?" That was it. But - through the years, having - as I started to become Detroit - a Detroiter - I started to feel very much comfortable with the community, because it started to mimic, and once I could get around, it started to mimic some of the things that I had missed, you know, having living in Brooklyn.
Still, complaining about the transportation, but, you know, I got a little Volkswagen, so that kind of sufficed.
WW: What brought you to Detroit?
BP: They were looking for teachers at the time, and my husband has a teaching degree in science. And they had built - King School was a new school that they had just built, and we walked - he walked into an interview and he had a school in a minute, and then we stayed here for a little while, and then we went back to Ft. Knox, and then we moved in September of that - of 1965. No, '66. Sorry.
WW: When you came to live in Detroit, what neighborhood did you live in?
BP: I lived in - I lived over by Taylor, in the Clairmount, Taylor, Atkinson, Boston - in that, Chicago Boulevard neighborhood. The Boston-Edison area. And I lived with an aunt. And then we moved to Columbus, which is right off of - Columbus Street - after the baby was born. And we - which isn't far from Henry Ford Hospital, West Grand Boulevard, and in that area.
And then we became - you know,we hooked up with a church, and then we - after the baby was born, and started getting up a little bit older, we moved to another area, on Courtland, between Wildemere and Lawton. Not far from Dexter and not far from - it was just a real nice west side neighborhood, and we stayed there for quite some time.
WW: Going into '67, did you anticipate anything going into that summer?
BP: My ex-husband's name is Lonnie Peek. And he's Reverend now. But he was in the MSU - he was in social work. He was working on a masters in social work at Wayne State University. And actually, Miriam Heffy was his counselor, at the time. And he had become very active on campus, and he became the president of the Black Student Movement. And there were movements all over the country, and they were very much sitting in, and doing this and that, and he kind of had a good relationship with President Keast, and he was able to keep an urban school - university - from having a shutdown and being the focal point of, like, some of the other colleges were having problems. And ended up on Sixty Minutes, and had done - he was involved in the tribunal.
But to backtrack, that wasn't the only thing that we were involved in. There was a lot of things going on, and you asked me, did I have an inkling? Sort of. But I wasn't sure, because it was mostly a guys' thing. They were moving. They had - there were - you could feel the tension that was happening. The newspapers did not have any black reporters. The Detroit News, at the time. The Free Press had very few - maybe two. There were - there were a lot of issues with the police departments. STRESS [Stop The Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets]. And the police were -
WW: STRESS was after.
BP: Was after it?
WW: Yeah. Big Four was during.
BP: Oh, it was? Oh, I didn't - there were a lot of things that were coming about, that there were some inequities. Lonnie wasn't just - wasn't like what you would say, a Black Panther. He was more of a philosopher, you know, trying to get things moving. Comes from a church background, his father was a minister, so he has that philosophy. So, we had a lot of meetings at our house. There were meetings for, you know, talking about some of the inequities that were going on in the city. And they were looking at a lot of things politically. Was I involved? Yeah, I became involved in politics. Helping campaigns. I was a little limited because I had two children, and he was gone a lot. And then I was a fulltime student at Wayne State University. And trying to quickly finish up.
Fast forward, while I was working on my degree, there was an opportunity, after the riots, for me to become involved in a survey.
WW: Let's not get there yet.
BP: Okay.
WW: We'll cover that in a moment. Going into that week, how did you first hear about what was going on?
BP: Well, my cousin in the neighborhood, lived across the street. And we all listened to the radio a lot. And I had heard that there was some - you know, Lonnie would come home, and he was coming home late, there was a lot of stuff going on with the Algiers Motel, and there was a lot of - there was a lot of phone calling. Kenny Cockrel - Kenneth Cockrel Senior - a lot of - a lot of people that were very much into the movement, in terms of trying to get correct things in the city of Detroit. Both black and white, phone calls.
And then I turned the TV on, and then I found out that they were having - that there was, you know - the military was coming in. So that didn't really frighten me, because I was so used to it, that - but they - when they had tanks coming down Cortland, that was a little bit different. And you could feel the neighborhood, the next day, after some of that was going on, and the looting, you know, and then I had to go to the airport to pick up my mother, because she was coming to visit - and I didn't bother telling her not to, so in the midst of all that, it took a little bit for me to even get down into my own neighborhood. It was easy to get out, but it was hard to get in, because things had really started to explode.
And where we lived, there were bowling alleys, delis, a mixture of businesses that were thriving, at that time, that we would go to, that people were looting, and you know, it was kind of like - how did I feel? I felt a little - I felt depressed, because I wasn't on the inside fringes of everything. But I knew that there were issues, because Lonnie was bringing them home, you know, every day. Talking about different things. And I was like, are we going to stay here? And he said "Yes, we're going to stay here. We're going to stay for the duration."
But on the campus side of things that he was dealing with, President Keist was very effective in terms of whatever Lonnie wanted, in terms of negotiating, talking with him, and actually implementing some things to make it better for the students, and for the black students on campus.
WW: Going into the Algiers Motel work that Lonnie did, were you involved at all in the Peoples' Tribunal? Were you present?
BP: I went. And at that time there were several different things that went on, and he picked up Rapp Brown and Stokely Carmichael and, you know, people like that would come to the house. And I wasn't as involved as - because I had little ones - I wasn't as involved, but I was involved in terms of making sure everybody ate, fixing food, you know, my house was constant - a lot of meetings. A lot of meetings.
WW: What was the mood inside the church for the tribunal?
BP: It was as if - I think - the mood was peaceful. It was like oh, we're doing something, you know. Even though it was a mock, they felt that somebody cared, and it was - you know, there were outbursts and "yay," and that kind of thing, and people had an opportunity to talk. It kind of soothed what was the conflict that was going on. That's what I got out of it, you know, I was like 22.
WW: Earlier you mentioned you started doing work after '67. Can you go into the work that you did?
BP: They couldn't find people. I did the survey. They couldn't find enough people to - to do these - the Kerner Commission had requested that - they wanted to know why the media - what happened. And so they came up with a survey. I think it was Henry - I think it was Ford Motor Company underwrote the survey, to have it done. But you had to get people to go door to door. A lot of people would go on the west side, but they didn't want to go on the east side. So, Lonnie just happened to mention it, and I said oh, I'll do that! "No, you won't."
You know, we said, "You're not that familiar with Detroit. You haven't been here long enough." He said, "Maybe we could find some others." And I went over to the Urban League and said I am doing it, and I'm not afraid, because I don't know what I'm supposed to be afraid of. These are people that - just like - live in Brooklyn. And in New York I'm not scared. And I said, I always talk about - well I'm - I got a lot of moxie from living in New York, so I am not afraid. I am fearless.
And it all depends, because - so I went, I found - he said, "You don't even know where you're going." I said oh yes, I'm going to find out how to get over there, I'll ask the gas station, because we didn't have cell phones then, and I went, and it was - I am so glad that I stuck to my guns and it was the best - I wanted to learn about - I wanted to learn - meet some people from the east side, that I didn't know, other than at school maybe. But I didn't stay at school - I was a commuting person. And so, it gave me a real opportunity.
So, when I got to my first survey, with the number of the house, went and knocked on the door, and I said - at first I was a little apprehensive, but I knocked on the door, this lady - I said I'm from, I'm doing a survey, we're trying to find out exactly what the true feelings that people have, after, you know, after the riots, and what happened. How are you feeling? And they said, "They sent you out to do that?" And I said yes. And I said, so don't feel that it's not going to get published, because I'm going to write it and say it just like you're saying it.
So, they welcomed me in, and then some of the other kids that came home from school, because it was around school time, some of the kids that probably were doing the looting, because this lady was old - she said, "My grandchildren are coming in and they'll answer some of the questions." And she answered the questions, and then the dialogue got to the nitty-gritty. How they felt. How they felt isolated. How, you know, there was a big divide between white and black. And that when they would go looking for jobs, the kids - the young high school students - they would do the interview, but they never would get hired.
So, an idle mind is the devil's workshop. And so I flipped the questions over, because the questions were very survey, you know, done out of a university, and they didn't want to infringe, or incite. But I turned it over, you know, and on each page I put the person's name. They were not afraid - they didn't even ask for names - and I wrote the feelings that they had. I was studying to be a teacher anyway, so I had experience doing that. I didn't have experience being a reporter, but I felt what was important was to get the true gut feelings.
And how they felt, from the young, to the older, and in some instances I was there for two and three hours, because they would bring other people to come. And so I think I did about 20, 25, surveys. But then you have to turn them over, and it really added up to much more. It's unfortunate - and the crux of it was, they felt - the older people felt that it was a good thing that the younger people were expressing themselves. Some of them felt that they shouldn't have messed with all the businesses, the viable businesses, because it kind of hurt them, because some - many of them didn't have cars.
And education was, you know, they didn't feel like after high school, what am I going to do? Because there wasn't any community college back then. And they couldn't afford to go to college, and there weren't very many good programs to help the kids to go to college. Anybody to go to college. So a lot of the grandparents were taking care of some of their kids and their daughters', and it was generational. They had more than just one family in a house.
And what I felt it - after I finished the survey and I had done as many as I could - some of the kids, when I would leave the survey, would take me over to another house that wasn't on the survey list to do - each survey had an address - but I felt incumbent upon it, for me to actually add what they had to say, because they knew that they had stories to tell. So I did that. And every time I went out I would leave with chicken, greens, with food. And they said, "You look too skinny to be a mommy, so we're going to fatten you up." And cake. I'm telling you, when I look back at it, and the more I talk about it, the more I get a warm, fuzzy feeling about the fun that I had. And it did just what I thought it was going to do. I got to meet the people on the east side of Detroit. Because I lived on the west side, and I knew a lot, but I didn't know the east side. And I grew to feel comfortable, and I met a lot of nice people in their neighborhoods. Some of them were tore up, and some of them weren't. But they were very nice people. And I enjoyed it - plus I got paid.
WW: Earlier you mentioned like, you thought to yourself, "Am I going to leave?" and Lonnie said no. Did this cement for you that you were comfortable with staying?
BP: Oh yeah. I grew to love Detroit, because opportunities that were - the opportunities that I had were just unbelievable. I started teaching school, with two and a half years of college. I was an emergency sub in a regular position, so I was getting regular teacher pay. Because they had the same problem that we have now - it's the same problem that was going on then. So my son got up some age, so I was able to - he was about - maybe almost a year - and I found a real good babysitter, and I started teaching school. And then I was going to school. And then I was working as a sub, initially, a couple of days a week, and going to school every Tuesday and Thursday. So it was a nice blend and a mix - I was able to buy a better car, you know, and we were able to do some things.
I got to be very involved in politics. I got to know Mary Ann Mahaffy very well. She called me - she was like my mother. I didn't have any family here. And she became like my surrogate mother. And when Lonnie and I would have our little issues, she would always try to referee, and treat me like I was her daughter.
I met so many people in high places, and got to do a lot of volunteer work. Got to do a lot of - Cushingberry unfortunately, didn't make it this - you know, through to the council, to stay on the council, but he became - he was a state rep, and he was the youngest state rep in the country. He turned 21 while he was in Lansing - and they met at my house, and we did the campaign, and we masterminded, and we actually knocked somebody else - somebody out, who had been a longtime legislator in Lansing. So it was quite a surprise.
WW: Just a couple quick wrap up questions.
BP: Sure.
WW: What was the reaction when you turned in your surveys? That they were not just like the standard survey, that they were so in depth?
BP: After I turned the surveys in, I mentioned to the person that took them - it wasn't the same person that gave them to me - that - they were in an envelope and I said I wrote on the back, so make sure - but what I did do, I wrote a note on the outside, telling them why there was stuff on - there were other peoples' names on the back, and a different house number, because everything was structured. And the reason why I used the back of some of them to engage in a deeper conversation.
And so, the day that it was published - and I wish that I could find that article, you know, I kept it, but I don't know where it went to. The day that it was published, one of my friends called up and said "Girl, you're on the front page of the Free Press. They're talking about your survey, or something that you did door to door, and how helpful you were." And they praised me because I went beyond the survey. I went and did exactly what I told you I did. I interviewed other people. I wasn't looking to get paid that way, and it didn't matter - I just wanted to get - at a certain point, you say hmm, I don't have any more surveys. I'm just going to write on paper, because this information is good. And then I assembled it how it was supposed to be, so that whoever was reading it would understand exactly. And then I wrote a note - a cover letter - on why I did it that way.
WW: Awesome. How do you refer to what took place in '67? Do you interpret as a riot, rebellion, uprising?
BP: I interpret it more as an uprising. And I didn't - I didn't feel - I didn't refer to it as a riot. Occasionally I will, if somebody says something to me. But I think it was more of a rebellion. I think people had reached their limits, and they were just frustrated. And the newspapers referred to it as a riot, and then they kind of drifted into the rebellion, uprising, and using a different vernacular in relationship.
Let me tell you something that's funny. Living on the west side, I always went to the same gas station and dropped my kids off. So here comes - one day, this man - at the gas station, because they pumped gas back then - and he said "Brenda," he called me Little One. He said "You're on your way to school. You see that car across the street, with those two white guys in it? They've been following you, and we've been watching them. And they leave a little after you leave, so we're trying to figure out who they were after, and then we figured it out that it was you that they were following."
I never look out the back of my car because I'm so busy trying to do what I got to do. So fast forward a little bit. This was during - after the - before and after, because once Lonnie got hooked into Rapp Brown, everybody was out, against us. Meaning, thinking, "Are they Black Panthers? Do they have guns?" You know, that kind of stuff.
Martin Luther King dies, and they didn't do their homework, because my cousin lived across the street in the upper flat, and he called up and he said, "Where are you?" I said I just got through - I'm clearing the dinner table. "Is Lonnie there?" Yeah. "Martin Luther Kind died." I said I know, I kind of had the TV on, I heard it, but I don't know. He says, "You better duck, because there's police all in the bushes, with hard caps and guns, and rifles." So, we - I said Lonnie, we better go get the rifle, and cock it, because it didn't have any bullets in it or anything, because we had little kids.
But it was a - not a bullet. It was a shotgun. That's what it was. It was a shotgun. So we were near - we were on the floor. I went and got it - we were on the floor, I had the kids underneath me, and Lonnie went near the window and he just cocked it and they left. But they were police. He cocked it and then my cousin called up and he said, "They're gone." He said, "They're moving." Now, they couldn't have been too smart because they would have known that - but that was the most frightening, because my kids bedroom had a window and we were on the first floor. So, you know, I didn't know what their - I didn't know if they thought we were going to uprise, or - because Martin Luther King got murdered. And I don't know what they thought Lonnie and I were going to do. Mostly him. But you know, they never came back.
So fast forward to when President Keist - after it all happened, and it was time for him to retire - I would say probably after - I would assume he retired a little after Martin Luther King got killed. And we went to his event, and they did a slide presentation. And in it, he had Lonnie, and he called him his son - actually, it was a film - and he called him his son, and it was very heartwarming to me. I remember feeling very proud, because, you know, there's a lot of - and he praised him for all the things that he had done during that time. And for keeping the university safe and open, and the kids - and keeping the - and we had it was called the Black Students, but they had white students that were very much involved with what was going on too, and so he was just tearful. You could see him tearing up while he was speaking about Lonnie. So that's how I'll end it. If you have any more questions?
WW: Just two.
BP: Go ahead.
WW: What do you think of the state of the city today?
BP: I'm disappointed that there's not enough local community interaction between the haves and the haves-not. I feel that the Mary Ann Mahaffys, the Mel Ravitzes, the Reverend Claeage, even though everybody didn't believe in his philosophy - but he provided a lot of stuff in terms of the blank slate, and there was Father Cunningham, he – Focus: HOPE. And that whole New Detroit thought process has kind of disenfranchised. It's taken on a different - a different stand, and it's not the same that it was, where everybody was trying to pull together to try to get the city back. There's a movement to, I think, it should have been thought out - even though they were thinking it out - it should have been thought out better on how to keep some of those minorities who stayed in the city and kept the city viable, and those landlords who were slumlords and didn't do anything with the buildings and stuff like that, but all of a sudden there's all new, and they're pushing them back again into old.
Or they've just been displaced, and they've either gone back to Alabama, Tennessee, or Atlanta, or some of the other places. I know they didn't go back to New York, but you know - and I think that's unfair. I have friends who have had businesses and they don't have them anymore. The landlord won't even renew the lease. That, I think, is poor planning.
But what has happened in the city of Detroit, and we go back to when the freeways were built - having a freeway - working for MDOT [Michigan Department of Transportation] for 25 years, I'm pretty good at what happened. And when they put I-75 in, and the Lodge - Black Bottom was a city within a city. You had doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, you had hospitals that were black hospitals. You had a lot of things, because it was a segregated city. And the state of Michigan gave them 30 days to cease and desist and move. How the heck - think about it - so you have that story, and when we do things over on the east side, the grandkids come to the meetings and they talk about what they know, and what they heard from their grandparents. How badly they were treated by MDOT, or whatever it was called back then. I think it was just called the Transportation Department.
And so, having worked there, I was able to kind of change some things, because I was Communications. But I couldn't envision - it was like a city, like Harlem, within Detroit - and you had people who owned hotels, and a lot of them lost their businesses. And they didn't get reimbursed for a fair share of the money. That, I think, is happening again, but a little bit more sophisticated. And having sat on several panels, and been to several panels, with respect to this, that have to do with the media, and just because I'm in the black journalists – NABJ [National Association of Black Journalists] - you get a chance to hear what they hear, because they're right in the midst of it.
And several of them are saying, we're a snap away from that happening again. Hopefully it won't. That there will be some dialogue, and that some of the masters-to-be will listen. But I don't know. You know. I really don't know. It's sad. I feel a little bit of sadness, when you hear that. Because - I don't know. We have a lot of friends - even from, you know - it's a different - there's more mixed families - my own - and they're very Bernie Sanders - so you have democrats, and you have a whole different thought process, and they're from the old regime. But the old regime works. We need to have the young and the old to help get things so that it'll stay - it'll simmer. It won't flare. You know.
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
BP: Oh, you're welcome. It's been a pleasure. It's been an absolute pleasure.
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.
AK: I am glad to be here, Bree.
BB: Okay, we’re going to start. Can you please tell me where and when you were born.
AK: I could tell you that. I was born in Detroit, Michigan in July of a long time ago.
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?
AK: My Dad worked for Internal Revenue Service.
BB: Oh, okay.
AK: And my mom was a homemaker and mother to we five children.
BB: Wow. Older siblings, younger?
AK: Younger. I am the eldest.
BB: You’re the eldest. Fantastic. Where did you live in July 1967?
AK: At 10210 Second Avenue. At the corer or Glen Court a block from Chicago Boulevard, I believe.
BB: What were you doing in 1967?
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.
BB: And what did you do in that position?
AK: I worked as a school-community agent in their program.
BB: How old were your siblings? You have four younger siblings; how old were they at that time?
AK: Oh dear.
BB: IF you can’t think of specific ages, roundabout ages is fine.
AK: Like 24, 22 –
BB: Okay. So, older adults.
AK: 19, and 16.
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.
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.
BB: The toy floor is infamous. I’ve heard stories.
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 -
BB: [at the same time] I can imagine.
AK: -I truly enjoyed it.
BB: Along with visiting Hudson’s, what other fun activities did you and your siblings do in the city? What occupied your time?
AK: The library. We spent a lot of time at the Detroit Public Libraries. Going to the movies, that kind of thing.
BB: Did you –
AK: And dances. I went to a lot of dances.
BB: Did you feel any racial tensions in your early life and in your 20s?
AK: No, not really. I attended Wayne State before I went to U of M and that was a somewhat diverse campus, so.
BB: So it wasn’t something new for you.
AK: Right, right.
BB: I just wanted to clarify that. What was your community, the area – You grew up on Second Street.
AK: No, I did not grow up on Second. That’s where I was in 1967.
BB: So where did you grow up?
AK: In far Northeast Detroit near Seven Mile and Meringue.
BB: Can you describe your neighborhood and community for us?
AK: It was a kind of a blue-collar neighborhood. All single family homes. The area was predominately Catholic, heavily Italian and Polish.
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?
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.
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?
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 –
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?
AK: More of a rebellion.
BB: More of a rebellion. Can you tell me some accounts of what happened or what you saw?
AK: Oh yeah.
BB: That’s okay. You can take your time.
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.
BB: Wow.
AK: It was something.
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?
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.
BB: Like, by accident?
AK: Yeah. By me. By accident but by me.
BB: Did he hit anybody that you know of?
AK: He hit the building but there was –
BB: Surreal.
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.
BB: So, just a few more details. Because you did have five younger siblings, were your siblings living in the area at the time?
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.
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?
AK: Right, my dad was quite upset. He knew exactly where I was living and Second to Twelfth is -
BB: Yeah, very close. Dad was worried, huh.
AK: Right.
BB: That’s good to know. There was, after the event, how did you see the city of Detroit change?
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.
BB: How did your position at the school pan out after the event?
AK: That was -
BB: Cause I could imagine that would be an interesting transition.
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.
BB: Some serious experience you got on that resume quite early. [All laugh]
AK: It really changed the whole – people were like, “You were there?” Yeah, we were.
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?
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.
BB: What was your position afterwards once you graduated?
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.
BB: Fantastic. You’ve got some notes. Anything imperative we need to discuss?
AK: Well eventually I worked with the Neighborhood City Hall. I worked for Coleman Young. I was the manager of the Neighborhood City Hall.
BB: And how what was --
AK: The mini mayor.
BB: Yeah, and what did that entail? What did that work entail?
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.
BB: Just a few more questions to wrap up. What was the impact of the unrest in July 1967 on you and your family?
AK: I would say, it was challenging for some people in my family.
BB: Do you want to elaborate on that?
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.
BB: Fingers crossed.
AK: No, I mean, they did.
BB: Oh, they did, okay.
AK: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
BB: Good. It was a good change.
AK But it takes time for all of that to happen.
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?
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.
BB: That’s kind of all the things that I wanted to discuss.
AK: Not.
BB: Not anything you can think of:
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.
BB: Did you have to turn and be like, I’m just trying to get a muscular guy to do some lifting?
AK: They’d heard everything at that time.
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.
AK: Thank you.