In 1967 I was 23 years old, attending Wayne State University, married with a 1-year-old son and living in a highrise in the Jeffries Housing Project, reserved for WSU students, faculty and staff. I grew up in the all white Redford neighborhood, but graduated from Cass Tech where one semester I shared a jewelry table with Diana Ross (great school, great days.) Perhaps that very brief biography provides a context for understanding how my perception shaped my experiences during those hot July days in 1967.
Backgound notes:
In July of 1967 we were connected to the inner city community of Jeffries and beyond in a number of ways. There was a food co-op which shopped at Eastern Market every Saturday and had a milk dispenser installed in one of the buildings. We were actively involved in the 13th District of the Democratic Party. My son's father worked as a community organizer for the United Farm Workers.
Why a food co-op? The nearest supermarket was an A&P on Trumbull, a walkable distance from Jeffries. With a very large population being served, this was a very small store where the checkout lines were usually very, very long. One day we were so exasperated by the poor quality of the produce that we loaded up two bags and took it to the local District Office and showed it to the District Manager. It was truly appalling: slimy lettuce, tomatoes so old and soft they were flattened out instead of round, and cantaloupe covered in brown bruises. Even the district manager was appalled. As a follow-up, several of us went to meet with the store manager. As we were standing outside of his office, we noticed a memo from the District Manager posted on the employee's bulletin board: "Congratulations! Your store had the highest gross sales of any A&P in southeastern Michigan".
Police protection? One day we arrived back at our apartment to find a thief had broken into our apartment. A couple of neighbors from the same floor heard our commotion and immediately came over to help. We decided to hold him there until the police came. On the fourth call to 911, a full hour later, the officer said, "You still have him there?" After they finally came and took the guy away, the first thing the officer said before taking down the report, "What did you expect? What are you doing living here?"
July 1967:
While we heard gun fire in the distance, all was quiet in the Jeffries Housing Project. No one was outside during the day. At night there were armed personnel carriers driving up the freeway service drive, panning the buildings with the mounted cannons. ("Turn off the lights! For God's sake, don't light a cigarette!") We watched streams of tracer bullets lighting up the sky like the 4th of July.
One night word spread through the building that the A&P was burning. Cheers went up! We were unashamed to feel that they got what they deserved.
Afterward we found that the drugstore on Forest and 3rd was untouched. Why, you might wonder, would a fully stocked pharmacy and liquor supply remain untouched? We knew it was because the man who owned the store was unfailingly kind and respectful to all of his customers.
After a couple days of confinement, we decided to drive out to my mother-in-law's home. As we drove through Northville, we saw numbers of men walking around the streets with rifles and shotguns, apparently patrolling the area to fend off the invading hordes. That was so unnerving that, after a short visit, we decided to go back downtown where there was only the National Guard to contend with.
My son's father spent the remaining days helping to bring donated food and clothing from outlying areas back down to inner city collection and distribution sites.
Afterword:
In August or September of 1967 the Detroit Free Press published a summary of the 43 deaths that had occurred. Deaths by snipers? As I read over the descriptions, I found only one that could arguably be described as such: the white woman driving south on Woodward, passing the Algiers Motel. It is more likely the fact that she was hit by a random bullet fired from the Motel than by an intentional sniper. As I recall, every other death was from burns or falls or intended and stray National Guard and/or police firearms. Snipers from the black community? It didn't happen.
I was eight years old when the '67 riot occurred. My family was living on Sturtevant and LaSalle, about six blocks from Central High School and about less than a mile from the blind pig incident on 12th Street that incited the riot. We went to church (Bible Community Church) on 12th Street. I remember the National Guard being stationed at Central High School. A tank actually on patrol rumbled down my block with the turret going around as I sat on my front porch. It was one of the scariest things in my life.
My dad was a WWII veteran and he spent a lot of time on our front porch with his rifle guarding our house. My older brother was a copy boy for the Detroit Free Press and we would have to pile into the car to take him to work during the riot at the Free Press building downtown. Sometimes he just spent the night downtown instead of coming home. Shortly after the riot, the Free Press ran a story about it with a picture on the front page with a black boy and a white boy facing each other with a penny in between. My brother was the black kid in the picture. As we drove down Linwood to take him to work, there is a school on Linwood that had a statue of Jesus on the front corner of the lawn. During the riots, the statue, which was white, was painted over in black paint. It was re-painted over in white and then re-painted in black paint and it was never changed again after that. What I remembered most was how hot it was and the never-ending gunfire at night and through the daytime.
One of my older uncles was on the police force at that time and he would come over to the house to check on us all the time. Also he was one of the first black motorcycle cops on the Detroit police force. My older brother joined the force after serving in the U.S. Navy in the Vietnam War after coming home and served on the Detroit police force for over 25 years. The house I was raised [in] on Sturtevant still stands today although the neighborhood never recovered from the riot; it looks like a war zone. There was a small store named Andy’s Market on LaSalle around the block from my house which they were looting. I went with my next-door neighbor to check out the scene and it was scary to see people act that way. We got the heck out of there and ran back home. With the curfew, you could not go anywhere. My parents would not even let me go down the street to play with my friends because it was so dangerous. 12th Street was a thriving street before the riots. We use to go to church on 12th Street; we even used to go to this Chinese restaurant for dinner on 12th street and they were the nicest people who owned the restaurant, but after the riots they never came back and Linwood has never been the same.
I went to college in North Carolina and after graduation returned to Detroit and now I’m in my thirty-second year of government service (looking forward to retirement). Hopefully someday Detroit will come back; I love my city. I just wanted to share my experience of the 1967 riots.
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. Today is August 4, 2016 and I am in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 oral history project and I am sitting down with…
HM: Helen Obedience McQueery
WW: Thank you for sitting down with me. Can you please tell me where and when were you born?
HM: I was born in Poplar Bluff, Missouri
WW: And what year?
HM: 1928
WW: When did you come to Detroit?
HM: 1949
WW: And what brought you here?
HM: My Mother-in-Law and Father-in-Law bought a home here and they asked for my husband and I to come, to help, you know, free the expense of the home. So we came.
WW: Was there a culture shock when you came from Missouri to Detroit?
HM: Not really, because we lived on the east side. The home we bought was on Arch St. [possibly now Bagg St,]. That’s near Gratiot. And when I moved here I was a little bit disappointed because you could only move as far as Van Dyke. That’s as far as you could move but I loved it after a while, you know, coming from a small town to a city. It was kind of shocking to me at first and then, I like it.
WW: Was the neighborhood you moved into integrated?
HM: No
WW: Was it all Black?
HM: Yes
WW: Did you find that you had a hard time, that you had a hard time moving around the city given the segregated neighborhoods?
HM: No because we didn’t go that far out of our neighborhoods. We’d go downtown to the Eastern Market, you know, and everything we did was on the east side. Didn’t go to the west side hardly at all because there was a culture when I moved here that if you lived on the east side you didn’t go to the west side and vice versa.
WW: Given that you said in your neighborhood, was there neighborhood cohesion or was it, was the neighborhood friendly and welcoming or was it…?
HM: Oh yes, Yes. We knew, everybody knew their neighbors. They would help out. You know we had a grocery store on the corner a white guy owned it, and at that time you could go there and buy things and he’d let you have it on credit and then when you’d get your pay you’d go and pay him, you know, and it was really nice. And the neighbors looked after each other, you know, that kind of thing. And I enjoyed that even with, when I had my kids the neighbors would help with the children, you know. It was like a village where everybody kind of looked after everybody.
WW: What did you do for work when you came to Detroit?
HM: Well, at first I didn’t work when I came to Detroit but I had a profession when I came from Missouri, in photography, and I finally got a job working in a studio in Highland Park as a Photo Tech and I worked there for 14 years, and then I left there and went to Ford Hospital and worked in Medical Photography for 2 ½ years, and after that I went to the Free Press and worked there until I retired. I worked there 26 years as a Photo Tech and I ran the color lab there. We were the first paper in the country to do color in the newspaper.
WW: When you say “finally”, were you having a hard time getting a job as a Photo Tech in Detroit?
HM: Yes. Yep. The first time I went for an interview it was on 8 Mile near Woodward. I’ll never forget the house. I answered an ad and the lady asked me to come for an interview, and I went, and when she opened the door she looked at me real funny and she said “come on in” and she said “you know, when I talked you on the phone you didn’t sound like you were colored” and she said “ I have a girl working for me in the dark room, from Texas, and she’d just have a fit if I put you in the dark room with her” and I said “well, I tell you what, knowing that she felt that way if you put me in the dark room with her, you’d have 2 people having a fit”. So she said “you know I like your, I like your, the resumes, and I like your recommendations” and she said “it just seems a shame that you can’t find a job and we gonna, I’m going to help you find a job” and I said to her very politely “well, that’s fine, I’ll give, leave you my, my resume and my recommendations but I know they gonna wind up in the trash can like all the rest” and I left. And about 3 weeks later a guy called me and he said “you know I got, I got somebody I think you’d like to work for” and he recommended me to the Joe Clark Studio out in Highland Park and I worked there for 14 ½ years.
WW: Did you run into racist [unintelligible] a lot?
HM: Yes. Yes, because he, the, the man that owned it was a hillbilly from Tennessee. He called himself “Joe Clark the Hillbilly Snap Shooter”. His wife was Polish, and I’m working one day and she said to me “you know Helen you’re the first Colored person we ever had work for us” and that set a bell off in my head and I thought “Okay, I really don’t have to work but I want to work”. So I went home that, I worked all that day and went home, and I didn’t go back to work for 2 weeks, and she called me on the phone one day and she said “do you really want to work?” I said “yes, I do, but I don’t need to be reminded of my, my color. I was born this way. I know that I’m colored. You have a job and I can fill the bill and that’s all, that’s the only thing I ask for. My color should have nothing to do with it”. So she said “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t know I offended you” and I said “well, you did”. So she said “ok, well we want you to come back”. So I went back and they never, never said anything to me again. I ran into that everywhere I went to work because during that time you didn’t find black people in photography, especially women. So I ran into that a lot. When I left there I went to Ford Hospital. I was the only, the first Black they’d ever had there and I, it was kind of shaky and then we became friends, you know. And when I left and went to the Free Press I was the first Black, and the first woman, they had in the photo department. Wow! You talk about something there, I had to go, and it was all men, and I really went through something there. And we had one Chinese guy there that worked in the lab and he came from China, by way of Canada, and he got a job there and he made a remark to me one day, he says “why don’t all you people get on a boat and go back to Africa?” And I looked at him and it shocked me so, that I really started to take something and hit him with it, and I thought that wouldn’t solve anything, so I said to him “you know, I’m a citizen of this country. I was born and raised here and you are what I call a ‘second-class citizen’ because you came back both from Canada and everywhere else, so don’t ever say that to me again”. Well, he said it to the girl downstairs, she was in the City Room, and the editor at that time, we went to him and told him, so he called him in and told him, he said “if I ever hear another expression like that from you, you won’t have a job here”. He and I became the best of friends. I worked there 26 years and I ran the lab and I, and I was his boss in that lab, you know. But Tony was their boss, as photographers, so we became the best of friends. But it wasn’t easy for me there, you know. I’d have guys say nice little things to me, you know, and I have to tell em’ “I’m not here to socialize with you. I’m here to work. I have children I have to raise. So, when I leave here I go home. I don’t go outside and play around”. So that’s it. I ran into a lot of prejudice when I came here but after a while you get used to it and you just live through it.
WW: Were you expecting so much prejudice given that this is the North vs. the South?
HM: I never thought about it any way because when I was down, well, when I was down in Missouri where I lived, I lived like here, there was a white family lived there and we were kind of all mixed-up, you know. And when I went to work, for this lady, she had a photo studio in her house and I used to, to clean for her and I, she paid me 25 cents an hour and I got, I was fascinated with the enlargers and all the chemicals and stuff, and she saw that I was interested in it and she asked me if I wanted to learn photography and I told her “yes”. So she said “okay, we’ll make a deal. You have to still come and clean but I’ll take time and teach you”. And that’s how I learned my profession and it took me through life and I, when I worked for Joe Clark out in Highland Park, Kodak used to send all their papers, paper, before they put it up for sale, they would send it to us to be tested and we would test it, I would test that paper, I’d work with it every day and then I would say to Joe “okay, this, this is wrong with this paper. They need to know this” and that, they would take our word for it. And I used to print exhibits for Joe on some of their paper that they wanted to test and he would take it to conventions with him and they had a laugh, and they would laugh at me, and say that I was the only woman they knew that printed pictures by the pound, you know, and my, I became known among other photographers in the city by working for Joe because he used to do work for Life Magazine, Look, and Time, all those magazines, you know, so, I got a lot of experience working for him. He started, used to do the advertisement for Jack Daniels liquor and he did advertising for General Motors and I accidentally, working in the dark room I came up on something when I was processing the film and I discovered how you could drop the gray out of the picture and it would just be black and white. He, and I, I told him about it and he said “well don’t say anything to anybody else about this” and I said “okay”. He went to General Motors and showed them this and they used it in their advertising for years, and he called it “Impro”. So, you know, I got thrown under the bus that way too, so, but its okay, you know. Everybody knew me by my work. So when Tony Spina found out I wasn’t working for Joe anymore and they needed a, a Lab Tech, he asked me to come, and the interview, well, I got interviewed by 5 different white men and what they would do, they would take a note pad and they would write down what I say, I’d go to the next guy, he’d ask me the same questions and they’d look to see if I was telling the truth. It took them 5 months to make up their mind that they wanted to hire me. Well I finally said to Tony, I said “look, I have a job and I have somebody else that want me to come and work for them”, which I didn’t, I didn’t, I had a job but no one else had offered me another job and he said “ don’t, don’t take it Helen”. He said “look, I want to talk to ‘em’”. So he did, and they called me right away and after I got there they, you know, I ran that department and they began to respect me because they knew that I knew what I was doing. And then the newspaper finally sent me to Rochester when they were going to get ready to go into color. They sent me up there for training. I was instrumental in, then after that they hired a Black guy as a photographer. They hired 2 Black guys, and after that they started hiring women ‘cause there was no women in there.
And, I did good. I went to, I, I have done work for, for 3 books. One, one photographer was David Turnley. He was a photographer and he traveled. He went to Africa and stayed for about 2 years and he was acquainted with Nelson Mandela and his wife, Winnie, and I think he was courting one of their daughters. So he took a lot of pictures and he would send them, the negatives back, you know. I’d process them and make prints. And finally, when he left there, he got in touch with a company in New York called Black Star and they saw his pictures and they wanted to do a book. And they wanted someone else to do the prints and David said “I don’t think so”. He said “Helen is, I know what Helen can do. So, I don’t want to try anybody else”. He did. And they paid me $10,000 for doing that. And then they had another book, the book from Africa was called “Why Are They Weeping?” Then he had another one from China, you know when they had that uproar in China and they had that, the guy standing in front of that tank-
WW: Tiananmen Square?
HM: Yes. We did a book on that. Schwarzkopf, the General, they did a book on that. So I did that, but anyway he won a Pulitzer Prize and I, I went to New York for that presentation then I went to Amsterdam and Paris for him to receive his Pulitzer Prize.
WW: That’s amazing.
HM: So I came from a long way, you know.
WW: Going to back 1950’s Detroit, given the racism you repeatedly, you were running into, did you notice any rising tensions in the city as well?
HM: No because everybody stayed to themselves pretty well. You’d go downtown, you know, you’d go to Hudson’s and places like that, and shopping, and, you’d, sometimes you’d go in a store, if two people walked up at the counter at the same time, you know, they’d wait on the white person before they would the black person, you know, and that would kind of set off a sign but there were things, and I think what happened is people just got frustrated because you could only stay in a certain area and do certain things. That was it. You know, you’d go to church, you’d go downtown. You could go spend your money but you couldn’t get a job down there, at Hudson’s, only they had women with the elevator- operators- but they had to be fair skinned. So people I think just got kind of fed up.
WW: Where were you living in 1967? Were you still living in the same house?
HM: No. In 1967 I was living on Parker Avenue. That’s on the east side. We finally got to the place you could move beyond the [Grand] Boulevard.
WW: And were you anticipating any violence that summer?
HM: No, I was, I was just telling Fishmen at the bar. I had just come from church and I didn’t know anything was happening, really. You know, cuz I left church and I went home and I had just started working for the Free Press. I started working for them in 1966 and that was, the riot was 67 and I came home, went home from church and it was quiet, nothing happening, and then all of a sudden we heard about this thing on 12th street. And we saw that they were burning and looting and I thought “what in the world is going on?” Nobody knew. Well, it got to the place they said that they were going to bring in the National Guard. That’s how bad it got. And I wouldn’t go, I was afraid to go to work. So Tony called and he said “Helen, you coming to work? I said “no, I’m not getting out in the street”. ‘Cause they were stopping people and shaking their cars and all that kind of stuff, and I was afraid. So he said “well look, you work for a newspaper now. We supposed to put out the news. So you have to come. We’ll send a cab for you”. So that’s what they did. They sent a cab for me and I worked. I’d be to work some time, 7 o’clock and I’d be, work some time until 10 o’clock at night, you know. And they’d go out and bring pictures in and, it was a mess on Hastings St. We had pictures where they had the National Guard there and they with their guns and, and after the, after the riots started and they brought the National Guard in, it was a horrible thing, to hear those tanks. They would roll down the neighborhoods and everybody had to be in the house at 9 o’clock. You couldn’t be outside after 9. And you in your house and you’d just stop and think, you’d hear this “klunka, klunka, klunka, clompa, clompa” coming down your street. But the guys, the soldiers were very friendly. They were nice, you know. But you couldn’t, and they had a staging area, it was Eastern High School, that was on the, East Grand Blvd. and Mack. And they had a staging area up there, that’s where they kept the tanks. That’s where they all stayed. It was big area. But the people were just very defiant when that started. I don’t know how it got started. You heard different stories about why it got started but it started on 12th St., but I don’t think anybody ever got the straight of really what happened. But I know it was a frightening time and then after that it was so much tension and that’s when things kind of started turning around just a little bit, you know. And then you could see things kind of easing up, but job-wise it was still hard, you know, for people of color to get jobs.
WW: Did you become more anxious when the National Guard came in or did they alleviate stress you were feeling with the situation?
HM: Well, I really didn’t have too much time to think about it because I had to get up and go to work and come home. That’s all I did during that time. I didn’t go to the grocery store shopping. I didn’t do anything because I didn’t want to be out in a place where I maybe would antagonize somebody and get hurt. So I just went to work and came home. And that’s what most people, most of the older people did. The younger people were a little more, you know, they’d do what they wanted to do.
WW: While you were at work, were you worried about your children or was your neighborhood roughly untouched?
HM: No, they, it was untouched. Nobody did, but I, my old, I was just telling Fishmen Uncle Bob, my oldest daughter and her friend they would, during the day they would go walk up to the school and try to meet some of the guys, you know, soldiers. But we didn’t have any problem. Most of your problem, most of the problems that they had during that time was right around 12th St. I can remember they had stores and everything down there and they looted those stores and took everything out. But you didn’t, on the east side where I lived, we didn’t have that. It was mostly on the west side.
WW: How do you view the events of July 1967? Do you see them as a riot or see them as a rebellion or uprising?
HM: No, I, it was kind of a uprising and a riot, you know. I think people had just gotten, they’d just been, gotten tired, you know, you, at that time you were just, you were almost like you were caged in. You couldn’t go to certain places. You had Hastings St. where they had their own bars, their own hotel, they had the Gotham Hotel, they had everything of their own and you stayed within that area. You didn’t branch out unless you went down on Woodward to go shopping, you know, for clothes and things. But other than that you didn’t, you didn’t, how would they say, when you cross Woodward you were on the west side, so most, I stayed on the east side most of the time.
WW: Do you believe that 67 still affects the city?
HM: I don’t know if it really affects the city. Maybe to some extent it does because, you know, well they cleared that out and then they started building things but Detroit has never been what it was before that riot as far as businesses are concerned. There were a lot of “Mom and Pop” places around you know. And people got along well but after that…..
WW: Did the city change to you? Did you look at it differently?
HM: Not really. I, if I, I think if I had been a person that was more involved in the city maybe I would have noticed a change but I, I didn’t, I just went about my normal life. But as I got older I saw changes but it wasn’t right after the riot. After a while I saw, saw changes, you know. Neighborhoods started mixing you know. You could do things. You could go. You could get involved and the Queen was, had a lot to do with that, you know, because she was a person, she was on the radio, she was talking to the community, she was going, she was talking to the other side and the black people, you know. She was really instrumental in gettin’ this city kind of straightened out.
WW: And who is that?
HM: The queen. Martha Jean the Queen. She was on the radio and she talked to people and talked to em’ about, you know, about staying home and staying off the street and all that, looting and all that, because see she worked closely with the police department. She was with a thing, with the police commissioner, and she had a program called, they had a program called “Buzz the Fuzz” and they, she’d get on the radio and really talk to the people, you know, about staying home, not looting, and all that kind of, she was on the radio like day and night talking to people, you know, and then she once got on a flatbed truck, you know, and talked to em’. She was a really stabilizing voice in the city of Detroit during that time. And the people listened to her.
WW: After 67 did you and your family ever think about leaving the city?
HM: No. Nope and I came here when I was 19 years old and, you, I don’t even go back to my home anymore cuz’ there’s nothing there. But this city, Detroit, gave me a chance and I found things here that I never found at home. And I enjoy it. It’s been good to me even though when I came I had a struggle, you know, getting started, but after I got started, and I just was never the kind of person that would give up, you know, I was always excited about something and I raised my 3 children and they, you know, all of them did well.
WW: How do you see the city today? Are you optimistic?
HM: Well, I’m a little bit optimistic. I think what they’re doing is they’re building up the downtown and they are not doing as much as they could do, or should do, in the neighborhoods. I look at all this vacant land, you know they just let homes just go to waste and then they tear em’ down. There’s vacant land and what’s happening is other people, and other cultures, are coming in and they’re buying this land and building on it. So, I think a lot of things, a lot happened is that after the riots, when people could move out they decided, a lot of Black people decided, I’m going to move to the suburbs. And my Dad had an old saying, “okay you guys can all move out if you want to, but in a few more years they goin’ to come back and take everything you had”. And that’s what’s happening. Now I see it, but it’s on a friendlier term, people are friendlier with each other now than they used to. Dan Gilbert is a very nice man. He’s bought up a lot of land, a lot of property, building things, but he’s a good employer, a fair employer too to people, you know, and, but, I see Detroit in a whole new light. It will never be what it used to be because what they’re doing now, instead of building homes, they’re building condos, you know, and it’s beautiful downtown. I went downtown, I hadn’t been, driving, I used to drive every morning, going to work at the Free Press, go straight down Lafayette and just keep going. I went downtown about, about 2 years ago, I got lost trying to get across Woodward and I thought “what in the world has happened?” So Detroit has changed. Now, another thing, they’re bringing in this rail system. To me, if they were going to build something like that why wouldn’t they build it so it just keeps going on instead of stopping it at 8 mile? What’s that, what good is that going to do?
WW: Is there anything else you would like to share today?
HM: No
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me. I greatly appreciate it.
William Winkle: Hello, today is September 9, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am sitting down with Mr. Karl Mantyla. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
Karl Mantyla: You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure.
WW: Can you start by telling me when and where were you born?
KM: I was born in old Grace Hospital in Detroit, June 18, 1938. I’ve been either, for the most part, close to Detroit or a resident of Detroit for many of the years following that time.
WW: Growing up in the city, what neighborhood did you live in?
KM: I lived in several. I lived in the Dexter-Davidson area on Clement Street. The house is no longer there; it's a vacant lot. I lived on Longfellow Street, again in the same area. I lived on Mettetal Street. I went to grade school there. That was near Plymouth Road and Greenfield on the northwest side. Far north side. I lived on Brentwood for close to seven years. I also had a house for a period of time on Maryland Street in the Warren and Alter Road area. Then I associated Detroit with members of my family for a good long time.
WW: Growing up, the neighborhoods you lived in, were they integrated neighborhoods?
KM: They were not. They were primarily white neighborhoods. My first family consisted of myself, my wife then, and four children. The children were raised with white friends for the most part. Later on the neighborhood began changing to Chaldean and then to African-American.
WW: Growing up in the city, what schools did you go to?
KM: I went to the elementary school that serves the Clement Street area – the grade school, I should say; the elementary school that served the Plymouth Road-Greenfield area near Mettetal Street. Other than that, I was in school in later grades in Waterford Township and graduated eventually from Waterford High School. Attended several primarily all white schools: Waterford, from which I graduated in 1956; Sturgis High School; Petoskey High School; and Royal Oak High School for a short period of time.
WW: Moving around a little bit.
KM: I did, yes. There was a divorce between my mother and father and my mother moved frequently in search of better and better jobs. I moved with her.
WW: After you graduated high school, did you stay in the area?
KM: I stayed, generally speaking, in the area with the exception of when I was employed by the Detroit Times. The newspaper went out of business in 1960 and then I left Detroit for a couple of years to work as a bureau chief for the Akron Beacon Journal in Akron, Ohio, then after that returned to Detroit for seven-and-a half years. I was working at the Associated Press as a newsman and journalist and editor. From Associated Press I went to the United Auto Workers Union in their publications department, public relations department, and their local license department. I worked there for over 30 years until I retired in 1998.
WW: In the 1950s and early Sixties, did you notice any growing tension in the city?
KM: I did not witness any personally but I certainly heard of a good amount of tension and heard of it, including from members of my own family. We moved from one part of the city to a more suburban part of the city and eventually moved out of town to the suburbs. Actually, I think there were a total of six or seven of my relatives who eventually moved away from the city.
WW: Do you know why they did?
KM: I think they were primarily part of the “white flight” that left the city. Unfortunately, when I chose to come back to the city and purchase a home on Maryland Street in the Warren and Alter Road area, that house had one buyer after me and then it was bulldozed into the basement. [Berg strippers ?] went in first. The neighborhood had changed there. They changed from working class home ownership primarily neighborhood, to one of rentals. A lot of people left and used their properties as rentals. We began noticing fewer and fewer residents who were the original residents and bought and paid for their own homes and eventually I joined that flight myself.
WW: What year did you leave the city?
KM: I have a little difficulty remembering exactly when that was.
WW: Okay, not to worry. When you came back to work for the Associated Press, what was your job with the Associated Press?
KM: I was a newsman journalist, often called “general assignment.” Also was an editor, a real editor, edited the copy that was furnished to broadcast stations. I worked there from 1962 until late-1969.
WW: Going into the summer of ’67, had you seen any signs that something was coming?
KM: Yes, I had. The 1967 riot was actually one of three riots that occurred in the city. The first one was a mini-riot. It was in 1966 on Kercheval on the lower east side. The big one, as it was called, the one in which so many people were killed, was in 1967. There was a riot the summer following that, the World Series year, when the Detroit Tigers faced the St. Louis Cardinals. You may remember some of the names of the players that were associated with the World Series champion Tigers: Mickey Lolich was a pitcher; Denny McLane was a pitcher; there were others as well – all well known names from that period. There was a riot at the same time as the series was going on in the summer of 1968. In the 1966 mini-riot on Kercheval, I was at one point surrounded by a mob. But, the mob was primarily black. I was there as a newsman asking questions about their motivations. At that time I finally had to talk my way out of the group and rejoin the police officers. In other words, join again for safety sake. Because the mob started — members gathered to see what was going on. They began jive talking me. It wasn’t making any sense. My questions wasn’t getting any answers that I sought. At that point, I realized I was in a precarious situation. I talked my way out of it.
WW: Going into the following summer, were you anticipating another event?
KM: I was not surprised when one occurred. The precipitating event was supposedly they arrested several men at a blind pig. It quickly spread to the streets and it lasted through contrasting administrations with each, as widely surmised, with each intending to embarrass the other one into showing that they could not control the situation at hand. The governor at the time was a Republican, George Romney. It was widely opinionated that Mr. Romney sought to hold back on the state police, and eventually the National Guard, in order to embarrass a politically active Democratic mayor of Detroit, Jerome Cavanagh. It was similarly suspected of the president at the time, Lyndon Johnson, he was to show that Romney and the National Guard and the state police could not control the situation. In other words, the ’67 riot grew beyond the abilities of these two law enforcement branches to control it. It was only when the Third Army was ordered in by Lyndon Johnson – the divisions of that were the 101st Division and the 82nd Airborne Division — that the city was essentially buttoned up and controlled. The National Guard was pretty wild, I thought anyway. I witnessed National Guardsmen with .50 caliber heavy weaponry — .50 caliber machine guns — mounted on trucks that were used to shoot out streetlights. They shot out streetlights in order to conceal themselves in the darkness. They were afraid of being subjected to lighting from outside where “snipers” could take advantage of them, could attack then. There are few reporters living today – if any, besides myself – who covered the riots in general in 1967. And there are no reporters, other than myself, who covered the Algiers Motel incident.
There were three reporters that covered the Algiers Motel: there was myself, there was Joe Strickland from the Detroit News, and Lev Newman from the Detroit Free Press. Strickland died a couple of years afterwards, after he’d gone to work for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Lev Newman eventually moved to California. He taught journalism there for a while and then guest-lectured at some of his journalism classes at Wayne State University. He died in the 1970s or 1980s in California. So, I’m the survivor; I’m the last one. The only one.
WW: Backtracking a little bit, how did you first hear what was going on on Twelfth Street?
KM: Like most newsgathering organizations, we had connections with the police through police reporters. I don’t know exactly whether the A.P. learned of it from police reporters from the News and the Free Press or otherwise. But they found out very quickly that crowds were gathering and beginning to loot.
WW: What was your first assignment that week? After you found out what was going on, were you assigned to go out to figure out what was going on?
KM: I was assigned to the Algiers Motel case. I was assigned from time to time to cover the riot in general. Covering the riot in general is how I saw the National Guard and their convoys shooting out streetlights. I was very surprised because .50 caliber ammunition could go through two to two-and-half, maybe even three houses without stopping. There were a total of more than 40 people who were killed during the riots, many of them innocent. The Free Press I believe did a story reporting on each death long after the riot had subsided.
WW: Going into the Algiers Motel incident, how did you first hear about it?
KM: I don’t recall exactly but it was through the other news media, the News and the Free Press. I’m virtually certain.
WW: Did you go down to the Algiers Motel?
KM: I visited the motel. There was nothing happening except for a lot of policemen who were watching the property at that time. Most of what I did later on that day, within the next 24 hours, on the Algiers Motel was based on interviews. The primary interviewee was the father of one of the victims.
WW: What other work did you do on that case?
KM: I reported it for the Associated Press. I also cooperated with Lev Newman, who had begun an association with John Hersey in the book that I believe I brought along and that I recommend that you read [The Algiers Motel Incident]. Whatever information Lev didn’t have I furnished him for use by Hersey. I had no interest at the time in writing my own book on it, or doing my own summary of it. So I cooperated with Lev. One of the things I wanted to show you is – I don’t know if you have a copy of this or not. There was a play written ironically with the title Spirit of Detroit, of all things. That was presented several years ago at the Charles Wright Museum of African American History. There was a panel discussion following that play. I was on that panel; I was the sole member of that panel who had actually been at the Algiers Motel and witnessed the events that not too long before had unfolded there. Also later on I covered the trials of three of the policemen. The three policemen who were there: Robert Bailey, David Senak, and Ronald August, who were accused of killing the three youngsters. The Algiers Motel, even though it accounted for fewer numerically victims then the riot itself, three victims out of a total of more than 40, it became a focal point for a lot of the coverage on the riot. It certainly was the focal point for John Hersey’s book, part of The Algiers Motel Incident book. He was best noted for his international bestseller called Hiroshima about the atomic bomb attack on Japan that ended World War II.
WW: Are there any other stories you’d like to share from reporting on the riot that week?
KM: Just that it was very difficult, for example, for Aubrey Pollard Sr. to gather information on his son. It was difficult as I understood it at the time for the relatives of the other victims — Carl Cooper especially, for example, to obtain information. They apparently were never told why their children had been shot and killed. There was never any evidence to support the theory that gunshots had come from the Algiers Motel and that is why the Detroit Police, the State Police, and the National Guard showed up there in force looking for signs of someone who was firing at law enforcement from there. No gun was ever produced at the trials. The first proceedings were in Detroit in Recorder’s Court and the later proceedings against the three officers were moved to Mason, Michigan, far, far remote from the city and the politically charged atmosphere at the time.
WW: Did you cover the mock trial that was done?
KM: No, I did not.
WW: How do you refer to what happened? Do you refer to it as a riot or a rebellion? How do you see the events?
KM: I’m still self-questioning about how it should be described. It certainly was an uprising. It was a riot in the sense that there was looting going on. It seemed to be more a matter of crimes against property than crimes against humanity. One of the phrases that we’re familiar with from recent times is “Black Lives Matter.” People have primarily with the use of video phones have documented attacks against blacks. Practically all of the victims of the 1967 riot were black. But at that time there was no watch word, no phrase such as “Black Lives Matter.” It was sort of taken for granted that the officers would be white and the victims black. There had been some changes inaugurated under Jerry Cavanagh, the mayor, and one of the primary reasons for bringing Ray Girardin as police commissioner was to smooth out the police force and make it less an opponent of the community and more a protector of the community. Unfortunately, due to the riots, disturbances, uprisings, whatever you wish to call them, it never took hold. It’s only in recent years that community policing has become a watch word of the law enforcement agencies.
WW: Did you see the city any differently after ’67?
KM: I saw it as a less inclusive place for white people, less inclusive place for others. I think I fully understood why people left. I tried myself with the property on Maryland long after I was divorced to re-establish roots in Detroit. Ended up having to sell the house at a loss and for lack of a better term, “get out of Dodge.”
WW: What year was that?
KM: I forgot the year.
WW: Are you optimistic for the city moving forward?
KM: I think that there’s more hope generated now in Detroit's reviva than there has been at any time since the riots and the flight from Detroit and the loss of jobs in Detroit. There was a lot of employment, primarily blue-collar people and single family business owners moving from Detroit to, for lack of a better word, “greener pastures.” What they presume to be greener pastures. I saw it with members of my own family. There’s six or seven properties that have been occupied by members of my family, including myself, that yielded to flight to the suburbs.
WW: Do you think the events of ’67 still hang over the city and the metro area?
KM: I think to some extent it does, yes. There has not been an overall overcoming of that feeling. There has been more of a whittling away at some vestiges of racism. I’m reminded of one family in particular – two families actually – that stayed in the East English Village area of Detroit who are pleased that their neighbors are of a different color, maintain their houses, maintain their lawns, and maintain quality looking environments for themselves. I think it’s a struggle for a great many other people.
WW: Is there anything else you’d like to add today?
KM: I don’t think so.
WW: Fine. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I greatly appreciate it.
KM: Thank you, William.
CG: Hello. Today is December 6, 2016. This Celeste Goedert with the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Today I’m in Monroe, Michigan, and I’m sitting down with --
MS: Sister Monica Stuhlwier.
CG: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
MS: You’re welcome.
CG: So if you could just begin by telling me where and when you were born.
MS: I was born in 1939 in Cincinnati, Ohio. But I went to college in Detroit at Marygrove, 1957-61. Then I entered the Congregation, the IHM [Immaculate Heart of Mary] congregation in Monroe, Michigan. In 1967, I was studying in Detroit at Calvert and LaSalle at the Pious XII Religious Education Institute. We were taking classes at Central High School.
The night that the riots started I was visiting a Sister at Marygrove, Six Mile and Wyoming, and somebody told us that we’d better not try to cross Livernois at Six Mile or Five Mile because the riots were beginning. So, they took me up to Seven Mile, and I crossed over. I was staying at St. Gregory Convent, which was at Fenkell, Five Mile two blocks north of Livernois, a block down maybe.
Anyway, when I got home that day and the next few days we had to stay in and we were observing a lot of the rioting that was going on in the small shops on Livernois. There was a furniture store so we saw people coming down the street with TVs and lamps and there was a Honeybaked Ham Store on Fenkell, so boy, they were having a great time with the Honeybaked hams, coming down the street with the Honeybaked hams. I just remember there were a lot of helicopters above and one Sister got the idea, “Let’s go up on the roof so maybe we can see better.” Well, another Sister said, “You better get down there, the police have said they’re looking for–
CG: Snipers?
MS: –snipers up there so get down because they might shoot you.” [Laughter.] So anyway, it was just quite a time the few days. We couldn’t go to class yet, and in the meantime I think after they said that down at Central High School there were tanks
CG: Mmhmm.
MS: And soldiers and stuff like that. Then, one of our Sisters was very active in social justice, and she asked any of us that wanted to go down to the jails because a lot of the young people were taken off the streets because they had a curfew.
CG: Right.
MS: And they didn’t realize, I suppose, that there was a curfew so they were out. The girls were taken to one jail, and the boys were taken to another, and she took us to the girls’ jail. We were to interview these girls–a few of these girls each of us–to get their names, get their parents’ names, and their phone number, and we were to go home and call their parents and tell them that they’d be home within a day, not to worry.
CG: Oh, okay.
MS: So that’s what I remember mostly.
CG: Do you remember any of the interviews?
MS: No. I mean it’s been 50 years, honey.
CG: Yeah, a long time ago.
MS: 49 maybe, it’ll be 50 in the summer. It was just young kids, 13–
CG: They were all young kids who had just been arrested?
MS: Yeah, they were just out, they weren’t supposed to be out past eight o’clock or something, I don’t know what it was. I don’t remember that part.
CG: Do you remember where they were keeping them?
MS: They were in the jail, I don’t know, some jail downtown.
CG: Downtown?
MS: Yeah. And Sister Mary Gerald, Shirley Alice, was the one that standing at our convent too, there was a bunch of us. We were studying, as I said at the Pious XII Center, and there were older sisters. When Sister Mary Agnes asked me, “You know, who else was there?” I said most of them either are dead or left to community [laughter]. The Superior I know she was dead, she was wonderful. And I remember the other gal, she’s 100 now, and she was all scared, better sit down, get down to get out of the windows, you know, get into the corridors so nobody shoots you. Well there was no shooting, we didn’t have any shooting, no. I mean we could hear shots, and there was the smell of burning.
CG: Oh yeah? Did you see any smoke?
MS: Yeah, we saw smoke because we were only two blocks from Livernois and there was a lot of stuff going on on Livernois.
I do remember that as a result of the riots, that there were people–white people–who got together like out in Southfield I remember we had a big meeting, “What can we do? What can we do to try to help in some way or another?” Because I think most people were not aware probably of the effects of racism and all of that. I do remember that meeting in a home, I think it was one of our convents–
CG: That was after the riots?
MS: –in Southfield, yeah, yeah, after the riots to try with some laypeople and men, businessmen who wanted to know what they could do. That was a very interesting time.
I remember coming home and wanting to call my parents and tell them I was okay. Well, they were up at the Expo ’67 or something in Canada, was up in Montreal or something, they didn’t even know there was a problem.
Basically that’s what I remember. Of course, a lot of fire and stuff down where it was actually happening around the seminary. I remember they painted the face of Jesus black.
CG: What did you think about that?
MS: I thought that was neat. And then they tried to take it off, and then they painted it black again, so they just left it black. The Church was slow on the draw, but we were trying anyway. I think the Sisters were more aware, and then of course our Sister Jane Mary, who was a temporary President of Marygrove, wanted to take 68 African American students for 1968. 68 for ’68.
CG: And did that happen?
MS: Yeah, it did.
CG: Do you feel like that was kind of some of the response that at least the Sisters had to the riots?
MS: Right, oh absolutely, absolutely. I think we were very much made aware of it. Because you know, Marygrove is right in the middle. As times have gone on, a lot of people moved out of the area: white people move out, they were frightened or whatever. Some tried to stay; I know that in the Gesu area, the University District area, a lot of the people were very open to being caring and so forth and so on, but sometimes it got really tough and some of the black kids from further in would come out and they’d cause problems with children walking home from school and stuff like that, so some moved out. Now, I have a friend, however, who raised all her kids there, and is still there in the University District, and she just loves her neighbors and Gesu Perish has worked to be open to everybody.
CG: Yeah, I’ve heard that they do a lot of social justice work.
MS: Mmhmm. Yeah.
CG: What year did you leave Detroit?
MS: Leave Detroit? Well, let’s see. After we studied, I taught at Immaculata which was right on the campus there at Marygrove which is a–what do you call it?–preparing you for college, you know. These girls were very bright, ’68-’70. In ’70 I got a job because I’d been in this religious education program which was a new program, and I was invited to go to a parish, had no school, so we had to do the religious education programs, so I moved out to Birmingham, and then I was there for four years. Then I moved to Chicago, and I went to school for a year, but then I worked at an inner city parish in Chicago. Then I moved back to Detroit in ’77-’78, ’78-’82. Lived on the Marygrove campus actually, then. And then our community decided not to leave that area, to keep the college and it went co-ed and now many, many students are African American, they’re open to anybody, but urban leadership is one of the things that they are trying to offer to the city of Detroit.
CG: Definitely. So earlier I heard you use the term ‘riot,’ and this is often a question that comes up. Do you think of it in terms of a ‘riot,’ or others use the term ‘rebellion’ or ‘uprising’?
MS: Well we just heard that’s what they called it: the ’67 riots.
CG: Yeah.
MS: So, I mean I can certainly see why it was an uprising: because they weren’t being treated well.
CG: Had you heard of a lot of incidences of police violence?
MS: Then?
CG: Or sort of tension?
MS: Before that? No, not before that. But you know, it was just, we were in a culture that didn’t pay attention to it, I guess. This is what caused us to pay attention to it. But you know they had the riots out in Los Angeles right before that, and then this just blew up.
It’s a difficult thing, isn’t it, really we’re still in it. Really, when you look at what’s happening now, these crazy things and that election, really. But lots of people are trying to be sensitive; I just read that book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, it was a wonderful book. It’s amazing though how racist a whole state–I couldn’t believe it. Alabama I think it was, or Mississippi, I forget which one, Alabama, wasn’t it?
CG: I think.
MS: And as somebody said who was working in one of our Sisters is working in Alabama, she said that Sessions that is now appointed to be whatever he’s appointed to be, is so racist, she said, “I can’t believe that he was picked.”
Yeah, it is.
CG: I know you have to go, so I have just one last question to wrap it up.
MS: Yeah, sure.
CG: I would just be interested in hearing your thoughts on the future of Detroit and maybe how you see 1967 affecting what’s going on now, or just your general feelings about the city right now.
MS: Well, you know, I love to read the Free Press. I always like to keep up on what’s going on in Detroit. I have to say this one thing: I went to visit my sister–and you don’t think this is connected but it is–my sister lived for a couple years in New Orleans and this was in the Nineties, probably early Nineties. I noticed that the black people in New Orleans were so different than the black people in Detroit. In Detroit, “Black is beautiful, you got to pay attention to me, you know we’re important!” They were assertive, and down there they were like meek and mosey. You know? It was just to me very amazing, and I think that’s what the ’67 riots and everything that’s happened since then has done for the city of Detroit –I guess Motown and all the rest of it. But black people, Black is beautiful, you know, and so forth and so on. I was amazed the difference in the culture. I was only there, it was a couple of weeks or maybe even just a week, but I just noticed what a difference in the culture of the black people, of the African Americans, how they were not assertive. Isn’t that interesting?
CG: Yeah.
MS: Really. And so really when you say, “What is the hope of the Detroit?” I think it’s that black people have come a long way, and they have a long way to go too because of the prejudice and the racists and the probably unconscious racism of a lot of people. That’s what we keep trying to work on in ourselves: the unconscious racism.
But we have a community, our sisters were founded by a black woman, she was partially black, she was not really recognizable. She was Haitian and English–her father was an English soldier, and her mother was from Haiti. The priest that brought her to Monroe was looking to make some Sisters because he felt there was no education for young girls here in 1845. So she came, and she could pass. So I think we have gotten back to, she came from a black community that she thought was going to dissolve because they didn’t get very good rapport with the Archdiocese of Boston–not Boston, Baltimore, the Diocese of Baltimore. So she though the community was going to fall apart, so she went with this Father Gillet who came here. We have now reconnected with that community, the Oblates of Providence, it’s a black community, and we have gone for retreats with them, and there’s two other branches of our community. We came together and showed us this movie which–ah, gee, I wish I could think of the name of it–but I couldn’t believe the racism of the policemen toward the black people, even well-off black people. What was it called? It was a few years ago, and it won an academy award.
CG: I know there’s been quite a few documentaries about this.
MS: It wasn’t a documentary.
CG: It wasn’t a documentary?
MS: No. I can’t think of the name of it.
CG: Oh, was it Fruitvale Station?
MS: No, no, no, it was just one word. I can’t think of the name of it. See when you get old you forget names. Anyway, it struck me more powerfully than almost anything I’ve seen–Psycho, it wasn’t Psycho. I don’t know the name of it, but I’ll try to find out and get back to you.
CG: Yeah. Did you have any other thoughts that you wanted to share, or experiences, memories of ’67?
MS: No, it was just, you know, kind of a shock. But, it was a good shock to us. I guess my own, I know I’m sure I’m racist unconsciously, but I remember when I was working in Chicago in that inner city, I came to really expect–I mean the whole school was black except the principal and a couple of teachers, the other teachers were black too. I just really, when I moved back to Detroit, I did live and work in Detroit, so I saw a lot of black people. Then the other experience I had was where there was no black people, and I just really missed them. You know? It was kind of funny.
So much is part of the culture in which you grow up in. You know? Really.
So I love Detroit. I have a very good feeling about Detroit and, like I say, I think that the Free Press is one of the best papers. When I go to other cities, I go, “Oh, not as good as the Free Press.”
CG: Yeah.
MS: But, it costs money, so I try to get deals. So that’s about it. That’s all I have I think that I can share with you.
CG: Well thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
MS: You’re welcome, Celeste.