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https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/c644af5265e2d1bf8a92c7125c381c5f.JPG
2fa301472178b0ffec78ae7ab71a90b4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10/20/2019
Oral History
An audio or video resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Arthur Divers
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Arthur Divers is an African American male and was born December 12, 1962 and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. His family moved to 7 Mile after the civil disturbance. Divers joined the Detroit Police Department after graduating Ford High School.
Interviewer's Name
The first and last name of the interviewer.
Giancarlo Stefanutti
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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07/26/2016
Interview Length
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00:13:29
Transcriptionist
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Ciaran McCourt
Transcription Date
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08/04/2016
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>GS: Hello, today is July 26, 2016. My name is Giancarlo Stefanutti and this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s 67 Oral History Project, and I’m sitting down with Arthur Divers today. Thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AD: Thank you.</p>
<p>GS: So where and when were you born?</p>
<p>AD: December 12, 1962.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, where were you born?</p>
<p>AD: Here in Detroit, Michigan.</p>
<p>GS: Okay. So where did you grow up as a child?</p>
<p>AD: My first residence was 9362 North Martindale.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, and what did your parents do growing up?</p>
<p>AD: My father was a retired educator and my mother’s a homemaker.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, do you have any siblings?</p>
<p>AD: Yes I have a brother and a sister.</p>
<p>GS: Okay. So what was your neighborhood like then, growing up? Was it very racially integrated?</p>
<p>AD: At that time – in that area, there was Joy Road – Joy Road, the Jeffries Freeway, Dexter, all that pretty much was black. However the businesses over there were white, and there were Jewish people. And you had business of all type of variety you could think of on Joy Road. You know, now it’s nothing but vacant lots, but you had businesses back to back there were no gaps and vacant lots. No, it was businesses on both sides of the street.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, where did you go to school?</p>
<p>AD: Oh at that time, I started kindergarten at Keiden School, which is two blocks south of that location on Martindale.</p>
<p>GS: Okay, was that very racially integrated?</p>
<p>AD: That was mostly blacks. Yeah, at that time, yeah.</p>
<p>GS: So you were born in the early 60s, so I don’t know if as a child you could sense any tension, but could you, you know?</p>
<p>AD: You know, at that time I couldn’t sense any racial tension, but I saw a lot going on, but I didn’t get a connection on it until I got older and – quite naturally after I joined the police department, saw life from a completely different perspective, but I had no understanding that whites and blacks had these deep-seeded issues. But I did see a lot of stuff, now as I’ve got older I said ‘oh, I see how that happened, I see why that happened’.</p>
<p>GS: Could you describe what one of those things were?</p>
<p>AD: Well, that whole area there was the epicenter for that riot. That riot sprawled all up and down Joy Road, Warren, Michigan, they burned all of Grand River up in there. That’s the area that I lived in – but like I said that was a heavy business district, you had a variety of thriving businesses in that area, but again at that time they were primarily run by Europeans or Jews – and then there were a few Middle Eastern people, but it was primarily Europeans and Jews that ran those. They had drycleaners, beauty shops, we had dime stores back then – that was a dollar store now– Shoe shops, place to get your haircut, they fixed cars; there was a variety of things. And the funeral home – the funeral home is still there.</p>
<p>GS: So moving to the riot itself, where were you when you first heard about it?</p>
<p>AD: Okay, my experience with the riot was this: my dad he’s a retired educator, at that time he was a regular teacher, and we frequented that Joy Road area to go home. And my grandparents lived on Gladstone right off Twelfth Street. And Twelfth Street was where the riot was, and that area there again was heavily – it was stores, businesses, clubs. What happened specifically, the nights of the riot, we pulled up on Joy Road to, Petoskey, the intersection now has a liquor store on the corner, and there’s a house there. The house’s address is – 4209 Joy Road – that house is still on the corner. That house still stands there today because that was a Michigan State Police National Guard Command Center for that area. So you had officers changing shifts, you had tanks coming in and out of there, you had soldiers in formation, they were having roll call there, I became aware of that because we pulled up there, you have to pass Petoskey to get to Martindale, and the soldiers, they had everybody stopped. And, I had never seen a rifle. I’m 53 and at then my parents didn’t own firearms. So I’m a little guy, looking out the back seat of the car, and my dad says “You sit here, I’ll go talk to them,” and it was two white soldiers from the National Guard, and he had a rifle and a bayonet. I had never seen a rifle or a bayonet, and I’m like “boy, that thing looks sharp!” And he talked to them, they talked to him, and he got in the car and we pulled off, and we went through this everyday. They knew him and he knew them. And you had the state police there and you had the National Guard there. They exchanged gunfire between the authorities and the black residents; they had ran all night and all day, particularly all night. It got so fierce one night until, my mother, she forced all our bodies on the floor, and she threw her body on top of us and she started praying. The fighting was just that intense that night, yeah. And it was tanks up and down Joy Road, you had tanks, you had soldiers, you had Detroit police out there, and the place burned. Everything burned. The houses burned, all the businesses down there burned, the only ones that didn’t burn were, you had some people that had their own armed security, you had several business guys who were out there with their shotguns standing in front of their stuff so it didn’t burn. But a lot of it burned. A lot of people lost their homes, and they just gutted – that’s why you don’t have a Warren - young people like your age asking “Well, what was here?” Well, all that was there prior to the riot. That’s why you don’t have a Joy Road, a Twelfth Street, Harper burned on the East side; Jefferson – what’s the other big one over there – Dexter, Linwood, Woodrow. All those were businesses on both sides of the street, and the reason why they’re vacant lots now is because they either burned them down or in later years the city came and demolished that property.</p>
<p>GS: With the National Guard being there did you and your family feel more secure or were you more concerned?</p>
<p>AD: Well, we felt more secure because the local authorities couldn’t handle that. You know, you had the state police coming in, you had the National Guard coming in, then you had the military come in, but it was needed. But the place burned and burned – it looked like it wouldn’t stop burning and it wouldn’t stop shooting.</p>
<p>GS: How was your neighborhood reacting, similar to your family?</p>
<p>AD: Yeah, yeah. Everybody was on lockdown in the house. And they had what they call a curfew, you couldn’t come out by a certain day at a certain this – you had to drive way out to get groceries and come back. You know, yeah.</p>
<p>GS: So moving towards, you know post riot, could you sense any changes in Detroit? You were still pretty young.</p>
<p>AD: After then my dad moved us, it had to be about ‘69, he moved us from that area out to the John Lodge and 7 Mile. Due to schools, the crime, and then that riot situation, and the decline in the quality of life. After that riot happened that area down there, there was a serious decline in the quality of life after they burned everything down. He moved us - that was either ‘68 or ‘69 - he moved us over on Morrow and Margarita, 7 Mile Lodge area. And then that’s why I subsequently went to Winship Elementary School, and then I went on to Ford High School from there, and then after that I joined the Detroit Police Department.</p>
<p>GS: Could you just provide an example of how your old neighborhood, you know, lowered in way of life and quality of life?</p>
<p>AD: Well, there’s nothing down there anymore, all the stores are gone, and they had every kind of store down there you could sit here and make a list. Joy Road had every kind of store you could think of, and all that’s gone after that riot. So there’s no place to shop, they had theatre there – The Riviera – which used to be there on Grand River and Joy Road, it’s gone, it’s a federal facility now, social security administration’s in there now they tore the place down, that used to be a theatre, we used to go to that theatre all the time there, yeah, it went out of business because of the lack of population in the area, they couldn’t make money.</p>
<p>GS: So a lot of people call the riot using different terms like ‘ rebellion’ or ‘uprising’ and you were very young, but looking back now would you call it one of these terms or would you still call it a riot?</p>
<p>AD: I’d call that a riot. Because the whole city was on lockdown for five to seven days, and Romney and Cavanagh – from video footage that I saw – they were doing the best they could to handle that situation. I personally don’t believe that Cavanagh thought that, the black community would rise up like that and have that much going on. From what I’ve read, and people I’ve met, he was trying to mend that, trying to have some order, some respect, amongst the races in the city of Detroit.</p>
<p>GS: So how do you see Detroit today?</p>
<p>AD: Well I see Detroit today struggling to get all in line with all the other big cities that have nicer facilities than we do, you know. And that’s probably one of the major reasons why we don’t have a thriving business district is because of that riot. We had one at one point, and after that the whole business thing went in the tubes, and we’re trying to come out of that. They’ve done a lot of work down here, Midtown; and they’ve done a lot downtown, but okay what about the neighborhoods? We had nice stuff in the neighborhoods prior to that riot; they had every kind of store, or restaurant, that you could think of. You know like they have out in the suburbs, well Detroit was like that at one time. You go out to Farmington Hills, Novi, West Bloomfield; Detroit was like that! We had stores and theatres and clubs like that, prior to that riot, but that riot sucked the commercial life out of the city, and then a lot of the blacks left – the whites they had been leaving anyway– they accelerated that. And then I know it’s one thing, after all that the Middle Easterns came in and they bought all the liquor licenses, so they have a lock on all the liquor stores now, they have a lock on a lot of the grocery stores now, those people weren’t that prominent in that liquor industry or that grocery industry, that was run by Europeans primarily and some Jews. Arabs didn’t have that kind of influence, but they have it now, they’re some hard working people. Yeah, they work twelve, sixteen, eighteen hours, yeah.</p>
<p>GS: Well is there anything else you would like to add?</p>
<p>AD: Well, you know, the interesting thing about this, you know, the focus at that time of the riot – the grievance, I’ll say – was mistreatment of the citizens by white male officers, and I guess that’s what we’re coming back to now, you know. That’s just the funny thing about it. After that riot, Cavanagh left, we had [Roman] Gribbs in there, and then Coleman [Young] came in, and what he did with the department, he went to Washington, he got federal money, and he dismantled the white male leadership. And he forced that agency to hire blacks like myself, and minorities, and females of all races on that job, and integrate that job, and then they created a thing called crime prevention where the officers actually go out – you say Community Policing – it was crime prevention back then. I worked there before I got promoted, and mending this [unintelligible] relationship with some friendship with these people, everybody wants to see somebody that looks like them in an authority position. And you know he changed a lot of that, to the point where it is now. I kind of benefitted from it in that kind of way, but I work with some very good white male officers, I worked with some that were openly prejudiced – but I worked with some that say ‘I’m not with that, I’ll work with you, alright this is my first year or so on the job I’ll work with you.’ And they showed me some of everything that I needed to make it out there on that street, to deal with the citizens, the bosses, and stay alive out there, so you know. And there’s good and bad in that profession, I worked internal affairs for six years, I’ve dealt with blacks that weren’t that good, that were shady, and I’ve worked with whites that weren’t that good and shady and I had to deal with them. But those are things that paused a fallout from that riot or some people say rebellion, I say it was a riot because it was extremely violent, extremely dangerous, and the city almost burned down, if they hadn’t done that inter agency thing with the state police, the National Guard to come here because the Detroit Police couldn’t handle that it was too much. Cavanagh and his people they couldn’t handle it.</p>
<p>GS: Wow. All right, well thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AD: Okay, sure.</p>
<p>GS: Thank you.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 13:29]</p>
<p class="Normal1">[End of Track 1]</p>
<p class="Normal1"> </p>
Original Format
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audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
13min 29sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Giancarlo Stefanutti
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Arthur Divers
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S74zwoTQvs8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Arthur Divers, July 26th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Arthur Divers describes what it was like living in his black community during the disturbance. He discusses the various businesses that existed before the disturbance, and how it has drastically changed the community since then. He also explains racial relations within the city as well as the Detroit Police Department, and how that had an effect on him personally.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
08/05/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Childhood
Children
Detroit Police Department
Governor George Romney
Growing Up In Detroit
Mayor Coleman Young
Mayor Jerome Cavanagh
Michigan National Guard
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https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/f4fd5cfd3fbe7ba3821ca49527dfa9ef.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
A language of the resource
en-us
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10/20/2019
Oral History
An audio or video resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Berl Falbaum
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Berl Falbaum was born in Germany and spent the first ten years of his life living in Shanghai, China. His family then came to the United States where they made Detroit their home. Felbaum worked for the <i> Detroit News</i>, covering Mayor Cavanagh's office during the events of July 1967.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Date
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04/21/2016
Interview Length
The total length of the interview in HH:MM:SS format.
00:28:24
Transcriptionist
The first and last name of the transcriptionist.
Julie Vandenbloom
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p> WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel. Today is April 21, 2016. This is the interview of Berl Falbaum for the 1967 Oral History Project. Thank you very much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>BF: My pleasure. Thank you for being here.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please tell me, where and when were you born?</p>
<p>BF: I was born in Berlin, Germany, in October 8, 1938.</p>
<p>WW: When did you come to the United States?</p>
<p>BF: Well, it was during the rise of Hitler – of course, he's already been in power – we escaped from Nazi Germany in August of '39, and escaped to Shanghai, China, where twenty thousand Jews escaped to. And I spent the first ten years of my life in Shanghai.</p>
<p>WW: What brought your family to Detroit?</p>
<p>BF: Well, after the war, different countries were starting to pick up refugees, and this country – the United States opened its borders, and we applied, and fortunately got accepted, and we came to Detroit, landing first in San Francisco, in August of '48.</p>
<p>WW: Who came to Detroit with you?</p>
<p>BF: Just my parents. I have no siblings.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. What was your first experience in Detroit? What was your first impression?</p>
<p>BF: Well, my first impression was the plentiful nature of the United States, given that we were poor – extremely poor – in Shanghai, war-torn, you know, and drug-infested, and war-torn – and so the plentiful nature of food was my first impression. And we moved into what is now called Rosa Parks Boulevard – it was Twelfth Street at the time – and I was enrolled in the fourth grade. But those were my impressions of – you know, first of all we had freedom, we could move around unlike in Shanghai, and we had, you know, enough food, and so forth.</p>
<p>WW: The time when you moved into Twelfth Street area – that was still predominantly Jewish, correct?</p>
<p>BF: No – not at the – well – yes and no. It was changing. There's a history in Detroit, as you know, probably maybe even better than I do, of movement of Jews from Hastings, way down south in Detroit, to Twelfth Street, then Dexter, then Seven Mile and Shafer, then Oak Park. And at the time we moved into Twelfth Street, that neighborhood was already dramatically changing.</p>
<p>WW: So how much time did you spend in the Twelfth Street area growing up?</p>
<p>BF: Fourth grade, I'm going to say, until the ninth or tenth grade, and we moved to Dexter. Dexter, roughly south of Davison – about a mile south of Davison – and I went to Central High School.</p>
<p>At Twelfth Street I went to Crossman Elementary, which is closed – it's boarded up, but it's still there – then I went to Hutchins Intermediate – we called it intermediate, which is middle school, and that's still there and active – and then I went to Central High School, which is still active – when I went – moved to Dexter.</p>
<p>WW: What were your experiences growing up in the city, especially in an interracial area?</p>
<p>BF: Well, I had, you know, very good experiences. I moved – always grew up in interracial atmosphere, which, of course, is very positive in terms of your education and interrelationships. So I had, you know, extremely good relationships growing up there. I wish it had stayed interracial, you know, again the white flight caused it to be almost predominantly, if not exclusively, a black community, and that's bad on the other side, so to speak. The interrelationship aspect would have been better, so – we already experienced the white flight from Twelfth Street, then Dexter and Seven Mile and Shafer.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up, what did your parents do for a living after they moved to the city?</p>
<p>BF: Well, my dad was a tailor. And he was a tailor in Germany, he was a tailor in Shanghai. He worked in a variety of shops. And my mother became a domestic to help out, because we were obviously extremely poor.</p>
<p>WW: How did growing up in a poor neighborhood affect you?</p>
<p>BF: Well, it affected me in a sense that I – I am not at all materialistic, and I raised my family on having what it needs – and I think that's good. One thing that I notice is the materialism of this country, you know – always see a new car – and one of the things that always – hasn't left me – is now we have cars which warm your seats. I mean, that's sort of indicative of my philosophy. You know, I wouldn't have thought of that in a million years. I'm a utilitarian kind of guy, you know, I have a – I never bought a new car – and I think that's because of my background. I've always bought a used car. I don't care the car it is, just gets me from A to B. So that's how my background impacted me, you know. I buy my clothes at thrifty stores – not because I don't want to spend the money – I don't see the point. And you know, I'd be glad – I like spending money for travel – so I think that's basically because of my background. You know, I use paper, I cut it in half, and use scraps of paper, and I think that's not because I'm cheap – I'm delighted to spend money, you know, on travel – but materialistically, I had a tremendous – that had a tremendous impact on me.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up in the 1950s, did you notice any tension growing in the city?</p>
<p>BF: Oh yes, yes, yeah. There was a lot of tension in the schools. I – you know – you could feel the tension between the blacks and whites – you know – there – again, discrimination they suffered, and the white flight caused a lot of problems, you know, and I understand that now, of course, and sympathetic to it. So there were a lot of tensions already in school, between the races, you know, and so to answer your question, yes. I noticed it. Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember any particular instances where it was right in front of you?</p>
<p>BF: Yeah, yeah. I was a paper boy, and, you know, I'd be confronted with blacks who – I had good relationships, and I liked interrelationships, but – there were these confrontations from time to time, and especially with young kids, you know – so you'd have confrontations in school, on the streets. You know, I think they understood my view too, and so to answer your question, overall, yes. There were confrontations in school between blacks and whites. There were confrontations on the streets. I understood it, as much as a fifteen, sixteen year old, you know, understood. Of course I understood it better as I grew older.</p>
<p>WW: Moving into the 1960s, what year did you graduate from high school?</p>
<p>BF: From high school? January '57, and I went to Wayne State University, and I graduated from Wayne State in the summer of '61, because I was already hired by the <i> News</i> as a reporter full-time before I finished, and so I finished at night.</p>
<p>WW: What work did you do for the <i>Detroit News</i>?</p>
<p>BF: I started out as – where everybody starts out – you do a variety of beats. I went to the police beat, where you cover crime, and then you went to general assignment, meaning you do soup to nuts, you do a little of everything, and in '65 I was sent over to City Hall to cover politics.</p>
<p>WW: When you were covering the police, did you notice any – did you cover the Big Four at all?</p>
<p>BF: Big Four?</p>
<p>WW: The police tactic used in the early 1960s.</p>
<p>BF: I don't remember it by that name. What you do – what I did at the police beat is – there's – it's closed now, it closed many years ago – but there's an office that the press has in police headquarters. At the time it was manned by three – well, three newspapers – one died quickly – the <i>News</i>, <i>Free Press</i>, and the <i>Times</i>, and you covered murder from that desk. And you went to a different office in that building – you never left the building. And you'd call around to suburban bureaus to see what was going on every few hours. You had, you know, hundreds of phone calls to make. So when you say did you cover the Big Four, there was a very controversial program called STRESS [Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets.</p>
<p>WW: Yeah, that was later on.</p>
<p>BF: That was later on. So the answer is, I didn't cover it as such. I covered the crime, and so forth. I didn't really cover the politics of the crime – I covered the crime.</p>
<p>WW: Okay.</p>
<p>BF: I – you know, if there's a murder I'd go cover that. Don't go – you cover it from your office. And if there's a good story – meaning a terrible story – required a reporter on scene, that was done out of the office.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. Was moving from crime – the police department to City Hall a promotion, or -</p>
<p>BF: Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Was it just a different assignment?</p>
<p>BF: Well, a different assignment. Those who stayed with the police would say it's a different – I know I didn't like doing that. It was a good learning process, but I don't – I love politics. So next I went on general assignment – there were people on police beat which have been there for thirty years. And so they would say that's heaven to them, but it wasn't my kind of – similarly, I didn't want to cover sports, but – I went to general assignment, which you cover everything, and I did that for about three-four years, and then I went over to City Hall.</p>
<p>WW: So you were covering City Hall in 1967, correct?</p>
<p>BF: I started in '65 at City Hall and yes, I was at City Hall in '67 when the riot broke out July 23, 1967.</p>
<p>WW: Where were you living in 1967?</p>
<p>BF: I was just inside the border of Detroit, on Schoolcraft and Telegraph – the other side of Telegraph. I was on the east side of Telegraph and the other side was where Redford Township. And we were on the Detroit border. Matter of fact Sunday I was sitting on my porch – well, we – a little step, it wasn't a porch – when I heard on the radio, the riot, and I said to my wife I've got to go downtown and go to work. She said, "You're not leaving the family for a riot.” I said yes I am.</p>
<p>WW: What was the atmosphere going in – driving through the city and then getting to City Hall?</p>
<p>BF: Well, at the time, I didn't encounter any police or military yet. It was just broke out. So I didn't go to City Hall, I went to the main office. We had an office in City Hall where you covered the politics, you never went to it, but I knew right away I'd go back to the city room and see what my assignment would be. But I didn't encounter anything on the streets. And I didn't see anything because I didn't go into the – driving down, I didn't pass the 12<sup>th</sup> Street – devastated area.</p>
<p>WW: Can you share some of your experiences you had during that week?</p>
<p>BF: Sure. In '65 I [unintelligible], by '67 I think I was head or chief of the bureau and my job was to cover the mayor. So what I did, was I just attached myself to the mayor, meaning wherever he went, I went. Whatever meetings and press conference I'd cover. And so, the answer is yes, one of the pictures I gave to – uh – what's his -</p>
<p>WW: Joel.</p>
<p>BF: Joel is, I have a picture of the mayor and Senator Philip Hart, democrat from – U.S. Senator, from Michigan. They were touring the area, and I have a picture – I'm behind them, and I gave him that photo, and we toured – he toured, I followed, and took notes – you know, what they were saying, and so forth. So that was my major assignment, and I covered the press conference between Mayor Cavanagh, Governor Romney, who came in of course, George Romney. Cyrus Vance, who was sent in from Lyndon Johnson, I think he was Secretary of State at the time was -</p>
<p>WW: Defense.</p>
<p>BF: Huh?</p>
<p>WW: He had stepped down as Secretary of Defense.</p>
<p>BF: Yeah, okay. He came in as the federal representative, and so I covered those. So I didn't really cover the riot itself, the violence, and so forth. I did go by myself once back to tour it – and a fellow I knew, who I covered as a community activist, his name was Joe Williams – I see him – who suggested I leave – he said it wasn't safe for me to be alone, walking, you know, in the streets. So I didn't cover the actual devastation, and the fighting, and the looting, and the violence. I covered the political side of it.</p>
<p>WW: Going – so you said you were part of the meetings and you were Mayor Cavanagh's shadow. Can you speak to the disagreements he had with Governor Romney, and especially President Johnson?</p>
<p>BF: Yes. I came across – and I gave it to Joel – by accident I came across an oral history that Cavanagh did for the Lyndon Johnson library in the 70's. They were doing oral histories for anybody that had a relationship with Lyndon Johnson. So they did Cavanagh. Now they weren't focused specifically on the riot, but as a result, about ten of those hundred pages deal with the riot. And he talks about the friction and the – yes, there was a lot of friction. One, you know, pure political, without egos – you know, Romney feeling that he's the governor of the state, and he perhaps should take the lead – Cavanagh feeling “this is my city, and I'm the chief executive officer.” And then you had political issues with, should you have the federal troops – is it too early to come in – what are the politics of it. So the federal government was, according to Cavanagh, and I tend to agree with him – is they were a little slow to react.</p>
<p>Some of it may have been based on waiting for a good assessment of the situation, or some of it may have been politics. I'm sure it was a combination of both.</p>
<p>So there's tremendous friction between Cavanagh and the powers to be, of when to send in the troops, and how, you know, and how quickly, and Cavanagh was of the opinion – send them right away. And that was the major disagreement. There were, you know, little ego issues between, that always happens, who conducts the press conference, and who's first, and all that.</p>
<p>WW: Can you speak to how Cavanagh himself handled the situation?</p>
<p>BF: I had covered Cavanagh, by that time, about four – three-four years. And what I noticed, is that this took a tremendous personal toll on Cavanagh. And the reason is, here was a mayor who was elected at, I think thirty-one or thirty-two years old, in '61 – the youngest mayor ever elected to the city until, I think, Kilpatrick came along – and he got national headlines. He was on the covers of major magazines for doing all the right things in Detroit. Integrating the police department, you know, being responsive to discrimination against blacks. He was doing everything right. He became president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the National League of Cities, at the same time. Unheard of. He was a national figure. Matter a fact, a lot of people already started talking to him as a presidential candidate somewhere along the line. [coughs] – excuse me.</p>
<p>This took a personal toll. Basically, I've done everything right, and he ended up having not just a riot, but the worst riot in the country. I think forty-three died. And he had the worst fatality record, and that was the irony of it. And I don't think I saw him at ease - and I don't mean at ease, sitting back and just relaxing – but just at ease, throughout those days, and I don't think I ever saw a smile on his face for anything. I remember him coming back to the office, about twelve, one o'clock in the morning, and our office – not just the News, but the Free Press – was right down the hall. But I was the only one there. So he walked into his office and I walked in – he let me come in – we sat down. It wasn't to do a story, just to talk. And I could feel the pain. I could feel the pain. You know, we had a drink – he had a little bar in the back – and I could feel the pain. I don't think I ever saw him smile after the – for a long time after that.</p>
<p>WW: Wow. Can you speak to the time following the riots? So, the gradual – with the Cyrus Vance taking over – General Throckmorton taking over the National Guard, and federalizing the troops?</p>
<p>BF: I don't remember a lot of that. Only because the years have gone by. But the next steps that I recall is, after everything calmed down again, Cavanagh was instrumental, if not the lead character in creating New Detroit, which was – the first president, if I recall, was Joe Watson, you know, from the Hudson department stores, and the – the insistence of New Detroit that members could only be the heads of organizations – you know, staff people couldn't come – which was the right thing, because these are people making the decisions, and you don't have to worry about staff. And I don't remember some of what you're referring to, I don't think I could speak to it, 'cause I don't recall that. Fifty years. [laughter]</p>
<p>And he started the so-called reconstruction. The problem was, for him, his political strength has been ebbed, dramatically. One, you had the riot. He, unfortunately, had a lot of other political issues which had sapped his strength. Some of his own making. He had – he challenged Soapy Williams for the primary nomination for U.S. Senate – which hurt him badly, because the democrats felt it was Soapy Williams' turn – he should wait - but the party was very angry at him for challenging Soapy Williams. And he – he lost. And that sapped his political capitol. And then he had a messy – it's not of his own making, it's just one of those things – he had a terrible, messy personal divorce that became highly public, and messy, and so that sapped him. So unfortunately, a lot of things I think he could have and would have achieved, he couldn't because of – you know, he had all these other issues to deal with.</p>
<p>WW: How long did you stay in the city after 1967?</p>
<p>BF: Well, I – he did not run again in 1970 - funny story, how I learned that – but that's not – too long for you to tape – it's a cute story but it's a long one.</p>
<p>WW: Feel free to tell it.</p>
<p>BF: Well he and I had a good relationship, so that when he would announce something major, like a budget, he'd give it to me three-four days in advance, so I could study it. I couldn't use it until he's ready – so come his announcement, whether he's going to run for a third term – it was on a Tuesday he was going to announce, so I asked him if I could have his decision on the weekend, so I could write all the stories. He said “no, I can't give you this one.” And I said don't you trust me? He said “It's not that, I just [unintelligible].”</p>
<p>So I negotiated with him, that if I came to the Manoogian mansion, say, at three in the morning, that day – just so I have time to write, 'cause we're on deadline. So he agreed to that. So I drove done to the Manoogian mansion at three in the morning, and security opened it up and said “there you are,” and I get ready to write, and I take out a piece of paper, and it said something like “I will run again.” And just before I start, I see another piece of paper, which says “I will not run again.” [laughter]</p>
<p>So I said which is it? They said “I don't know!” I said, wake him up! “Yeah, we're going to wake up the mayor at two in the morning, or three in the morning.” I had to wait. He came down about seven o'clock with a big smile on his face. “So how's it going?” But I couldn't write anything - [laughter] – it was his practical joke.</p>
<p>So he didn't run again, and I covered Roman Gribbs, who just passed away, about two weeks ago, at 92, I believe – or 90, 92, I think he was 90 – and Nick Hood, who I covered, died about a week later at 92. And I covered him for a year. Gribbs – and then I quit, and went into Bill Milliken's office as administrative aide to Lieutenant Governor James Brickley who has passed away. So, to answer your question, I left the News in '70.</p>
<p>WW: And when you left the News, did you move to Lansing?</p>
<p>BF: I didn't move, but -</p>
<p>WW: Oh.</p>
<p>BF: Basically, my job was – we should have moved – I commuted almost daily, and that was a terrible – how I did that for four years, I don't know. We knew it was a political appointment and we didn't want to buy a house there and come back – terrible mistake. It was awful. Especially in the winters, you know – the drive. And we didn't have the kind of full expressways we have now, and it was awful – but. So I worked in Lansing for four years.</p>
<p>WW: When did your family leave the city? When did they move out, I mean?</p>
<p>BF: I think I want to say – Phil? - I want to say – I know that we left before Gribbs was - Gribbs was elected – because he offered me to become press secretary, and I was living in Oak Park, so I couldn't take it then – so that's one reason I took the Milliken job. Phil?</p>
<p>Woman's voice: Yeah?</p>
<p>BF: When did we move to Oak Park?</p>
<p>Woman's voice: I can't hear you. What?</p>
<p>BF: When did we move to Oak Park?</p>
<p>Woman's voice: Oh, Julie was three. So, forty-eight years ago -</p>
<p>BF: So '67. So the year must have been -</p>
<p>Woman's voice: '67.</p>
<p>BF: So one month later, before the riot, so I didn't know that.</p>
<p>WW: So your – you moved out before the riot happened?</p>
<p>BF: I guess -</p>
<p>Woman's voice: Wait a minute, no no -</p>
<p>BF: You said June of '67?</p>
<p>Woman's voice: No – I said Julie was – no – I remember -</p>
<p>BF: '65?</p>
<p>Woman's voice: I remember, in the apartment in Detroit, you were called down – the riots broke out when we were in Detroit. We moved in October when Julie was past three and a half.</p>
<p>BF: So '65. Yeah. So we were out -</p>
<p>Woman's voice: She was born in '64. She was born in '64 -</p>
<p>WW: So October of 1967?</p>
<p>BF: That's when -</p>
<p>Woman's voice: She was born in June of '64 -</p>
<p>BF: So she was three. I said '67.</p>
<p>Woman's voice: But we were still living in – because we moved to Oak Park in June – in October of '67.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. Why did you move? Did you move – were you planning on moving ahead of time?</p>
<p>BF: Schools -</p>
<p>Woman's voice: We were ready to buy a house. [laughter]</p>
<p>BF: You mean, we – why we moved to Oak Park?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah.</p>
<p>BF: Primarily school system. Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Okay.</p>
<p>BF: Primarily school system.</p>
<p>Woman's voice: At that time -</p>
<p>BF: Oak Park at the top school system in the country – in the state, I believe -</p>
<p>WW: Okay -</p>
<p>Woman's voice: Well -</p>
<p>BF: Close to it.</p>
<p>Woman's voice: It was a very, very good school system.</p>
<p>BF: It was one of the best in the state.</p>
<p>Woman's voice: And -</p>
<p>BF: Yeah, so -</p>
<p>Woman's voice: Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: What are your impressions going back to the city now? Like seeing how – how do you believe the riot has affected the city? You talked about how it sapped the strength of Mayor Cavanagh -</p>
<p>BF: It sapped the strength of Mayor Cavanagh, and if caused – first of all, it accelerated white flight. It already began, with the building of expressways and shopping centers in the suburbs, so that made it easier for – unfortunately, for whites to leave the city, but the riot accelerated it. And so it sapped its – not only bad for the integration process, but it sapped its economic strength. Businesses moving out and white residents moving out. So I think it had terribly detrimental impact from that standpoint.</p>
<p>Then along came Coleman Young. And I happen to be an admirer of Coleman Young. But I also understood the tension he was creating, and I think unfairly – he was unfairly judged, with his comment about Eight Mile Road, which you've probably come across in your research. I think it was a bum rap – I don't think he meant “go rob the white people in the suburbs.” I think he meant there was a new sheriff in town, you know – And I – I happen to be a big admirer of Coleman Young – read his – couple biographies and I think he was a great hero, frankly – political hero in this country – taking on the unAmerican committee in Washington, and his union activities, and his army activities. But he – but – the perception of white people was that he didn't like white people, and so they left – which, again, I think was wrong, and unfair to Coleman Young and the city.</p>
<p>So there were a lot of issues which accelerated – I don't know, I don't think the riot was the beginning of it – I think the expressways and the shopping centers, things, started – the Davison Expressway, I think was the first one in the country. That helped – they went east/west, not north/south – but once you went north/south, it made it even quicker.</p>
<p>So I think that – the riot, obviously, accelerated the white flight, then came up wrong Coleman – who, Mayor Young, who I think, like I say, got a bum rap from the white community, especially the conservatives out in the suburbs, and I thought that was terribly unfair to him, and the city.</p>
<p>WW: You spoke about – you spoke about earlier, how it was unfortunate that your neighborhood in 12<sup>th</sup> Street became - went from being integrated to all black. How do you see – well, do you see that hampering the metropolitan Detroit now, given that the suburbs are primarily white and the city is primarily black?</p>
<p>BF: Yeah, I think so. Again, I – I'm a supporter of integrated – you know, I understand the value of living in an integrated, you know, community. And I think it – the segregation, if you will, between the communities now, I don't think helps either side. I don't know if we'll ever see that again, you know -</p>
<p>WW: The integration?</p>
<p>BF: In the city – in the city. I don't know – I don't know if we'll see that again. I think we see it somewhat in Southfield, I'm not an expert on that – you're much more – and we have it here in this community, you know. My subdivision now, taking a census, it's wonderful. I don't know if we're fifty/fifty now – I don't know. But it's certainly much more integrated than when I moved here thirty-five years ago – which is good!</p>
<p>And my kids went to integrated schools, and I thought they, you know, they – a lot of value in that, and made them better people, but I don't think – I don't see Detroit becoming a vibrant, integrated city along those lines again. Matter of fact, there seem to be a lot of complaints – I heard it just the other day. I heard a speaker on - on Detroit. That as well as Detroit and Midtown is doing, there seem to be a lot of complaints that the entrepreneurs are all white, and that the population of downtown is white, and not integrated. That they're young people, yes, but they're all white people. By the way, I don't know that to be true, 'cause I don't study it. I've heard those complaints. So I don't think – to answer your question, yes, I think there's tremendous value in the comprehensive integrated community.</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you'd like to share?</p>
<p>BF: No, you've done a good job. You've worn me out!</p>
<p>WW: Thank you very much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>BF: My pleasure, my pleasure. </p>
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Jewish Refugees, Shanghai, China
1967 riot - Detroit - Michigan
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Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Berl Falbaum
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eWqUmsDMJ18" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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Berl Falbaum, April 21st, 2016
Description
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In this interview, Falbaum discusses his impressions when he first moved to Detroit, as well as his work covering Mayor Cavanagh's office during the summer of 1967.
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Detroit Historical Society
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06/07/2016
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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en-US
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|3|0.0000000|0.0000000|osm
Schoolcraft and Telegraph
Redford Township
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Community Members
Detroit News
General Throckmorton
Governor George Romney
Jewish Community
Mayor Coleman Young
Mayor Jerome Cavanagh
Mayor Roman Gribbs
New Detroit
Shanghai
STRESS
Twelfth Street
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https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/fe3c89e718e70bdff596d396f7f7a23c.JPG
feac0b8ba33b51cfe43f5b2bc0521928
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
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Detroit Historical Society
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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en-us
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10/20/2019
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Bob Hynes
Brief Biography
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Bob Hynes was born on July 11, 1932 in the Boston area. He moved to Bloomfield Hills in 1966 in order to become the host of Channel 7’s Bob Hynes Morning Show. Hynes recollects covering the unrest of 1967 as a journalist.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
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Detroit, MI
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09/21/2016
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00:23:41
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Emma Maniere
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10/27/2016
Transcription
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<p class="Normal1">WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel, today is September 21, 2016. I am in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is the for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I am sitting down with Mr. Bob Hynes. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: Pleasure to be with you William, thank you.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when were you born?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: Yes. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts–Brighton, Massachusetts, part of Boston–in 1932, July 11, 1932.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: What year did you come to Detroit?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: I came here after a long military career in college. I ended up here in 1966.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: What brought you to Detroit?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: I had been here a couple times and interviewed and auditioned for a position as host of the <em>Morning Show</em> on Channel 7, and I won the audition. And then I came here on Labor Day, we premiered the show on Labor Day 1966, an hour and a half every day, Monday through Friday on Channel 7.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: What was the name of your show?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: <em>Bob Hynes Morning Show</em>.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: You said you came here a couple times before you settled down here, what was your first impression of the city?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: I liked it. I drove into town, I visited some friends down in Southfield and stayed in that area, and I thought it would look pretty good. I had no angst at all about coming here. At that time, there was some minor problems, but there were everyplace around.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: So I didn’t have any quandaries. I just spent four years in Germany before that in the military, and saw things coming out of World War II, after the fifties–’45 and the rest of the time. It seemed fine to me, I didn’t see any big problems.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: When you came here for the final time, where did you settle down?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: We settled into Bloomfield Hills, we rented for a year off of Telegraph Road in Bingham Farms. Then I bought a house in Bloomfield Hills.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: What made you choose Bloomfield Hills?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: I went to ask somebody, I said, ‘If I’m coming into town, I’m going to buy a place, where should I go?’ This fella looked at me, and he says, ‘There’s two places to live. Either Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills, if you really want to be comfortable.’ I said, ‘What’s the difference between the two?’ He says, ‘Well the people in Bloomfield Hills <em>think</em> they have money, but the people in Grosse Pointe have the money.’ So I broke up and said, ‘Okay.’ But it was a little far to drive, so I didn’t even consider the commute. So my wife started looking and then we found this house.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: As you’re settling yourself into the city, do you notice any tensions throughout the city?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: If there were any, I saw them a little bit around Northland. Northland was <em>the</em> shopping place in 1966. It was very close to Channel 7. Before my family joined me, I lived in quarters on the campus at Channel 7; they had a cafeteria with a couple of bedrooms up above, and I stayed there for a while. I would go into Northland, and that was one of the few places where it seemed to be–we’d get some news out of it, and it would pop up, but I thought it was a great shopping center, it was a shame that this happened.</p>
<p class="Normal1">There was a hotel there, I remember when my wife first came to visit me, during my time hosting the shows, we stayed there at the Northland Inn which was a fine Inn. Then later, things started to get a little rougher and what have you.</p>
<p class="Normal1">You’ve got to remember I’m doing a 90-minute daily talk show, and I’m talking to everybody in the city. I’ve got the mayor coming in, I’ve got the governor at that time, he comes in and he’s talking to me at different times. Bob Talbert was one of the leading people for the <em>Free Press</em> and he would come in and we would talk. So you’re getting feelings from them too as you get conversation going. Talked to the Police Chief, I talked to anybody that we would interview. Sometimes authors and actors would come through and all of this in promoting TV, movies or TV shows. It was a lot of fun. Musicians, that came into visit from other places. Popular place in Detroit was the Playboy Club, which was downtown on Jefferson, and it brought in a lot of fine acts. I met a lot of the people and my music director on the show, and we usually had music three days a week, anyway, was Matt Michaels, and Matt worked at that show also, so he would book and help book some of the talent for that. And these people come in and stay and enjoy what Detroit had to offer.</p>
<p class="Normal1">I have a feeling we’re building up toward the Detroit Riots and in all honesty, I am not going to say I would suspect at all that something would happen. In fact, that day, when we received word, it was a Saturday if I remember correctly, and–</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Sunday.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: Sunday, yes. Well Saturday we had company and we had been out in the backyard and having a cookout–you know, a regular thing you do on a weekend.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: And then we woke up Sunday and it had happened overnight, as I recall, in a blind pig. This was the events of the next were really into the news, everything we can hear, and watching the news, which brings me to my small part in this, and that was as the host of the show, we decided on Monday, my show was on in the morning, so we decided after the show, which ended around 9-9:30, you have a cup of coffee with your guests and all, and then you start to look to the next day to get busy. So we decided to see if we could get a film crew and go down 12<sup>th</sup> Street, the area where this had happened. And I had a very knowledgeable crewmember, a producer, I remember there were three of us in the car, anyway, and it was like one of the original SUVs, but small, like a big, oversized station wagon. We decided to go down and see what had happened. So I’ll bring you to my story if I may.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: We got down there, we’re on 12<sup>th</sup> Street, and we thought this whole thing was over. Even at the end of my show on that Monday morning, I had said, ‘Well thank God something like this without getting too <span style="text-decoration: underline;">[</span>unintelligible]’ I said, ‘Thank goodness things are returning to normal,’ or something like that. Now, I go downtown, and I got a microphone in my hand, and I’m doing a feature for the next morning. With all the bravado in the world, I’m there, and I have the microphone, and I say, ‘Well here we are at 12<sup>th</sup> Street.’ And over behind the camera crews, we’ll pan around in a second, we have the back hose moving debris apart, clearing up the roads again, and as you look around in this area, this is 12<sup>th</sup> Street, and this is where there were problems last night, but we think it’s all cleaning up now and it’s coming to the end, and I’m happy to be here, and just about that time, shots rang out. I looked around and I didn’t even know what it was, I’m looking at my crew, and they’re looking in all directions, and one of the fellas that was there had come back from Korea, and he was our driver and the chief cameraman. He said, ‘Let’s go!’ In other words, we can come back here anytime, let’s get out of here. So we ran for the vehicle and everybody cleared the streets, we were just, we didn’t know what was going on. Then you hear the sirens, the automobile sirens, the police car sirens going. I didn’t know if we were going to come back that day or not. This fella that was driving called to the rest of us, he says, ‘Down on the floor! Down on the floor!’ Well, ‘Wait a minute, I’m the host of the show, do I have to get down on the floor?’ ‘Get down on the floor!’ Then he says, ‘Wind those windows down!’ This was back in the old days when you had to wind it down, we didn’t have too many power windows then. And we’re winding, and I’m shouting, ‘What am I doing this for?’ And I’d had some military experience, but not as much as he, or in the places that he had. He says, ‘So we don’t get glass in our face’: he was concerned about bullets hitting the windows and ricocheting around and getting us, so that tells you we were not in immediate danger.</p>
<p class="Normal1">He took off, and we decided to chase a couple of the police cars to see where they were going. Incidentally, just back for a minute, no bullets hit our car or anything, but we did have a feeling they hit a couple of the buildings over behind us. So we’re getting our courage back now, we’re chasing the police cars, and all of the sudden he looks up and he says, ‘Up there, there’s some guys with rifles on the roof,’ and they were a couple of blocks away, and there were a couple of fellas up there with rifles of some sort. The police cars had come to a stop and they were waving us away, and now came the decision for him, which had nothing to do with me, I was just going to interview and stop some people on the street and do a few things. This is now he’s covering news. Do you get your camera out with bullets flying through the air? How far have we come? I think he felt, ‘Wait a minute, we better get away from here.’ And one of the police officers suggested we move on. So we moved on and we were going to come back to that area, and decided it would probably be more prudent–we had some silent film that we brought back to the newsroom and head back–we said for the type of feature that I wanted to do, was ‘this is where it happened and now peace has taken over, Detroit is returning to its senses and the bad guys are wherever,’ of course who knows who are the bad guys. So anyway, I was shook up for the rest of that day, and it was my memory of that.</p>
<p class="Normal1">I apologize for not remembering–I didn’t see too much of the guys from the newsroom, because I worked on the morning show and we had our own staff and what have you. We worked in the studios mostly. But I think- I was pleased for his leadership, whoever it was. I think he was very cautious and at the same time intelligent in what he was suggesting that the rest of us do.</p>
<p>I thought maybe I’d share this with you, that this was there, but we looked down in that 12<sup>th</sup> Street, just back to that for a moment, to see all the buildings broken up, and the damage that was done, and the trucks that were pulling up underneath this back hoe, which was the shovel that was dumping stuff on the back of them, and it looked like things were getting back to normal, William. I was sorry that it took a little bit longer to happen. We continued after that if I could just give a plug for the show and for Channel 7 and for ABC and what our records were, we would book after that time the leaders of Detroit and get them in there, and give them progress reports on how things were going, people cared very much what was going on. One of the foremost I think was Father William Cunningham, who became a very close friend of mine, and gave sacraments to a couple of my kids. I had great respect for him. He and Eleanor Josaitis started Focus: HOPE, and there were a lot of good things that came out of that time. But I’m happy to share that experience with you.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Wow. Thank you for sharing that. Just a couple quick questions. How did the studio react when you told them that you wanted to go down to 12<sup>th</sup> Street?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: What’re you gonna do? … go down and see what’s going on, they say it’s clearing up. You know, ‘Okay, we’ll take a look at it when you get back and let’s see what we can do with it,’ which is usually how we do something, see what the product was when we returned.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: A producer asked for a couple of things, and when you’ve got two or three people working on a little production like that, usually come up with some pretty good ideas, put one or two together, and you say, ‘Oh yeah, well this might work, this might work.’ So, they laughed at me the next day, when I said, ‘We had a few bullets bouncing around down there.’ ‘Yeah, sure, Hynes, yeah’ [skeptical tone]. But I knew, and we knew, what had gone on there. And thank God as I said before Detroit came to its senses after that.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Uh-hm. Did you still do a feature? Because you spoke about how your feature was going to be along the lines of–</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: No, we never really did go back down there. One of the reasons was mine was going to be spontaneous as a personality. I wasn’t working for the news department, I was working for the program department doing a show for programming. So news kind of took over and they did that, and they covered it very, very well. In fact, Channel 7 I was proud of but all the stations in Detroit covered it very, very effectively. It was good, the coverage that we got on that.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: How do you refer to what happened in ’67? You said earlier, you called it a riot. Is that how you interpret the events of July 1967?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: Well I think when we first heard the reports on Sunday, I probably got it from the radio because I tuned in–later I worked for WJR for 20 years–and they were very progressive on it, as were other stations in Detroit. When you were plucking the dial around to find out what was going on, on Sunday, I think that already some of the news people had started to pick it up and refer to it as riots, revolt, uprising. People were in a blind pig and things went wrong and it brought down a city for a little while.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Did you see the city any differently after everything calmed down?</p>
<p>BH: Oh it was obvious it was fearful to go down there for a little while. It took a lot, an awful lot to get people to–Jerry Cavanagh was Mayor and he did his best. Governor Romney, he was doing his best from Lansing to get people to settle down. And also the leaders of the town, there were some wonderful leaders, we would get the police chiefs in there and talk with them and they were very good about giving you updates to keep people as calm as possible. But like anything I think it kind of faded out a little bit; I don’t mean to put it down, what I’m saying is, it became a little bit of history and it was part of what we had to do to make Detroit a better place.</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="Normal1">Then, you know, crazy things happened. The Detroit Tigers had a great year in 1968. We were all down there at the ballpark if we could get tickets. The Norm Cash’s of the world, and the Jimmy Northrop’s, and the rest of them that were Tiger players, they were out there doing interviews, I talked with almost everyone of the guys from the 1968 Tigers. They were down there everyday at old Tiger Stadium to go to work. Then our hockey teams were doing well. Sports was … all of those teams, all of those things that were a part of Detroit, I think they helped to make it a stronger place again. That was my personal opinion.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: Yes, because they were pulling for the right direction. You know what? Unlike today, I did not consider it as much of a Black/White situation, I did not think of it as a prejudice–it did happen because of some prejudice, but we had a lot of white guys, a lot of Black guys, we all worked together, this is what you do, you know? So I didn’t feel it was a big prejudicial thing down there. I think prejudice is probably stronger today that I felt it was at that time. That’s my opinion again.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm. You spoke about having Detroit leaders on your show and giving progress reports about the city. When speaking with these leaders like Romney and Cavanagh, did they seem optimistic for the city moving forward?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: Oh yes, oh yes. Oh I thought so. Absolutely. If they didn’t feel that in their hearts, they certainly didn’t show it. You have to convey, I think, as a leader like that, you have to convey that to get things back and rolling again. That was my feeling, yes. We were always excited to see them back in there, and we knew we were probably going to get some type of a positive report. My job, I think, as the interviewer, was to dig at it a little bit and ask the same type of things you’re asking right now: ‘Why, why do you feel this way? What are we doing, what are the progress? Making progress how?’ and what have you. And they would usually map a few of the things that they were doing. Some good organizations such as Focus: HOPE that were getting behind the people and behind the times.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: For you and your wife who just moved to the city, at any point during this were you like, ‘Well, we made a terrible mistake’? [Laughter.]</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: We had my brother-in-law and his wife from Pennsylvania visiting with us. And I have to say that they were going home on Monday, and they couldn’t wait for that Sunday and Monday to pass, and they wanted to get home. They were concerned about driving away. There wasn’t a lot at that particular moment that I could say to them. I had an advantage, and it wasn’t bravery that took us down there, it was curiosity and I think some care or feeling for the city of Detroit. I had an advantage to go downtown and see what was going on that other people did not. I walked 12<sup>th</sup> Street that day.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: I was scared, but the thing that scared me was the firing of bullets–I didn’t want to stop one of ’em. My feeling was we’re going in the right direction, now it’s a couple of days late.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: It wasn’t the best of times right then, but I think it started us back toward better times.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Are you optimistic for the city moving forward today?</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: I am. You and I watched M-1, we watched the rail being built, and there’s always something there and I say, ‘Wait a minute,’ I was in a conversation with someone: will the M-Rail build us up or whatever? I wasn’t trying to be facetious, but I said, ‘I’m more concerned about cars running into the thing than anything else,’ you know? Because we’re not used to having these static – usually you aim toward something and it moves, this trolley isn’t going to move. So I think we’re going to see a lot of bumps and bruises in those things [laughter] just because it is--</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: --it’s not stationary but it’s certainly a solid thing going on the North or South as I’m looking at it right now.</p>
<p class="Normal1">Anyway, I think our city is coming back. Gosh! Look at what they’ve done–I’m back to sports again, but I do think there’s a lot in that, in the homes that these places, where the Lions and the Tigers play and now the Red Wings. Everyday reading about a new restaurant opening in the city of Detroit. I’m trying to get to some of them, and visit them; there are some real fines ones and I haven’t been too disappointed yet. And the young people moving into downtown Detroit–holy mackerel, that is so great! They can’t build lofts fast enough. It’s vibrant. It’s getting better all the time. Detroit’s a great place to live.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Is there anything else you’d like to add today?</p>
<p>BH: No. I think we just said it in the fact that, yeah, I think Detroit’s going in the right direction. When I came here in 1966, I took a deep breath and I said, ‘Oh.’ Because the reports of Detroit that went around the country were not that great, and people would say to me a very simple little thing: ‘You’re going where?’ Or, ‘You’re going to Detroit?’ In my business, it was usually a contract of a couple of years or something like that, and then you’d move on or you’d go someplace else; I never knew what the future was going to bring when you come from another town. I always pictured myself maybe going back to Boston, I did host <em>AM New York</em> for a short time, and I’ve been out on the West Coast and I did some projects out there. I went to Houston, Texas with Dom DeLuise and we did a show down there. So, yeah, we got a few of these things around, but I always ended up coming back to Detroit–partly because some of those things didn’t work out too good, but the other reason is, I mean, it’s great. It’s got more shoreline than any state, it’s got more boats, it’s a great place.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today, greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p class="Normal1">BH: Alright, William, good to be with you. Thank you very much.</p>
<p class="Normal1">WW: Thank you.</p>
<p class="Normal1"> </p>
<p>TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW: 23:41</p>
<p class="Normal1">End of Track 1</p>
<p class="Normal1"> </p>
<p class="Normal1"> </p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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23min 41sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Bob Hynes
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U70fqWgp3s8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Bob Hynes, September 21st, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Hynes recalls his experience covering the unrest as a reporter for Channel 7 the day after the outbreak of the disturbance. He also discusses his interviews with local and state leaders in response to the unrest. Despite being surprised by the disturbance, Hynes concludes that, “it was part of what we had to do to make Detroit a better place." Hynes remains optimistic about the city’s future.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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11/01/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
1968 World Series
Channel 7
Detroit Community Members
Detroit Police Department
Father William Cunningham
FOCUS: Hope
Governor George Romney
Mayor Jerome Cavanagh
Twelfth Street
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/2b67b2917831611b7ef70660cb0ab08f.jpg
950bc52a54c863ba13b92dbebefadf47
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
An audio or video resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Bob Roselle
Brief Biography
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Bob Roselle was born in the east side of Detroit in August of 1925 and spent many years there working as a civil servant for the City of Detroit. During the summer of 1967, Roselle was working as Deputy Mayor under Mayor Cavanagh and was in charge of the civil response to the unrest.
Interviewer's Name
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Lily Wilson and Noah Levinson
Interview Place
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Grosse Pointe, MI
Date
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07/20/2015
Interview Length
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01:11:24
Transcriptionist
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Hannah Sabal
Transcription Date
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05/10/2016
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Lily Wilson and Noah Levinson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Bob Roselle
Location
The location of the interview
Grosse Pointe, MI
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>LW: Today is July 20, 2015, this is the interview of Bob Roselle by Lily Wilson and Noah Levinson. We are in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and Detroit 1967 Oral History project. Bob can you tell me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>BR: Born in Detroit, August 19, 1925.</p>
<p>LW: Okay.</p>
<p>BR: Eastside of Detroit.</p>
<p>LW: And tell me a little bit about the neighborhood you grew up in.</p>
<p>BR: Pardon?</p>
<p>LW: About the neighborhood that you grew up in.</p>
<p>BR: Oh, it was the far east side. Jefferson and Chalmers area. Went to Guyton Grade School which is east side and then to Cass Tech for high school.</p>
<p>LW: And, what did your parents do for a living?</p>
<p>BR: My dad worked in the auto plant as a foreman and inspection, and my mother was a milliner.</p>
<p>LW: Oh.</p>
<p>BR: She would make ladies’ hats in that day and age. And she had an aunt who owned a store and she apprenticed there at age 14 and didn’t finish school. She learned a trade and then worked at it through the years.</p>
<p>LW: And if you could tell me a little bit about your education and the time leading up to you getting involved in politics in Detroit.</p>
<p>BR: Okay. Well as I mentioned I went to east side Public Schools all through, uh, after Cass Tech I went on to Wayne State when I came out of the service. But, I was married and had a family so I went to night school for ten years to get the degree.</p>
<p>LW: I see.</p>
<p>BR: So I had a wife and two children at graduation. But I went into the service right out of high school, it was in 19— hold on a second I've got to get my glasses. In January I went into the service and February I got my induction notice. And I served 26 months in the Army. We were overseas for seven months in Germany but I didn’t see a lot of combat maybe four months of it or so. I came back on July the 5, actually landed in the harbor of New York on July the 4, returning heroes — the war is over and all that — and they wouldn’t let us out of the ship because longshoremen don’t work on a holiday. But we sat on and humbled ourselves in the harbor for a day. Anyway I got married while I was home because I didn’t get out for another year — didn't have enough points — and we had a home on the east side, I got a job with the City of Detroit. I started as a junior clerk in September of ’47, for $2,621 a year. Prices were different then.</p>
<p>LW: Sounds like it.</p>
<p>BR: Anyway, then I held a whole series of titles over the years and I’ll just read them off to you.</p>
<p>LW: Okay.</p>
<p>BR: Interviewed for junior claims investigator, claims investigator, junior accountant, semi senior accountant, senior accountant, principal governmental analyst, head governmental analyst and that was in ’62. So every couple of years I changed around. And then in ’62, I was working in the buzzard room which was really close to the Mayor of government and Jerry Cavanagh was mayor, I did not know him but he apparently had heard about me. We had a federal grant for a community renewal program and he made me the appointment to run that, so I had to organize it and hire the staff and work with the Federal Government; they were in the labor department coming up with that. And after there was a study in city’s physical shape. We did—just recently, you might know, they did a windshield survey of the city and rated all the buildings?</p>
<p>LW: Mmhm</p>
<p>BR: We did that back then.</p>
<p>LW: Mmhm</p>
<p>BR: We didn’t have computers that had to rate it; it was all done manually and a map colored by hand. Anyway, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson became president and he initiated something to identify him called The Great Society program.</p>
<p>LW: Mmm</p>
<p>BR: And in preparation for that – he introduced it in the State of the Union, which is in January, but Congress would take until fall to actually implement it, or authorize, I should say. So the Feds decided to use the community renewal program which was already there and staffed and funded to do the applications for the programs and this is the application we did for Detroit. And I used the staff of the community renewal program to do it and we got funded in the first round in fact. That book is being held in Sgt. Shriver’s hand at the announcement of the grants, and he is quoted in saying, "This is the type of program they were hoping to see." So the city was very pleased with that. So I ran that for a year and then I had a great deputy that was black and it just made sense that that program should be run by a black person and he took over and I went back in to the finance department. But the program was called T.A.A.P., Total Action Against Poverty, and there’s all the rigmarole about it.</p>
<p>LW: Mhmm</p>
<p>BR: So then I stayed in finance and then I got another appointment. I was budget director, and then the deputy controller, and during that year of the riot I was deputy mayor, but I left that in July 1 of ‘68 and became a commissioner of public works — and it was a big [unintelligible] and I liked that. And when Gribbs took office I went back as controller and I stayed controller as long as he was mayor.</p>
<p>LW: Mhmm</p>
<p>BR: And in ‘47 I resigned my—not ’47, ’73 – I resigned from the city with 25 years of service and went to work in Campbell Ewald advertising as their Chief Financial Officer.</p>
<p>LW: Oh, okay</p>
<p>BR: and I stayed there to age 90, year ‘90 which was my 65 birthday year and our corporate policy was you had to retire at 65 and it was part of my job to enforce it so I wasn’t going be in [unclear, followed with laughter]. So I’ve been retired since 1990, 25 years.</p>
<p>LW: Wow.</p>
<p>BR: 25 with the city, 17 with Campbell Ewald, and then 25 retired. My first wife died of a heart attack in her fifties, left me with four children, all adults, and I remarried to a rich babe who was also a government employee and ran Cobo Hall for a couple years, she was the chief assessor. Very close to Coleman Young.</p>
<p>LW: Your current wife?</p>
<p>BR: No. She had five children, and she died at age 75, and I married Mary Sullivan. Joe Sullivan, her deceased husband had been a judge on the appellate court, and a lot of Sullivans, a lot of lawyers, lot of judges. We’ve been married six years, and she’s my age.</p>
<p>LW: Oh wow, okay. So you’re newlyweds?</p>
<p>BR: And this is her home. Yeah, we’re basically newlyweds. I’ve got two jokes, a good friend of ours said, “I asked her two questions when I proposed: Will she marry me, and will she help me up?” [Laughter] And the other one is, we spent the first night of our honeymoon getting out of the car. If you’ve seen elderly get out of a car, you’ll appreciate that. [Laughter]</p>
<p>LW: Oh I know. Well thank you for sharing that. I’d like to go back to the 1960s, in particular, July of 1967 and talk about some of the documents that you’ve pulled out for us. But why don’t you first start, just again, telling us what your job was in 1967 in the city?</p>
<p>BR: At that point, the charter didn’t call for a deputy mayor, it was called Executive Secretary to the mayor, but the duties were the same. And that was my job, I was executive secretary to the mayor. And I started in June, so I had only been there – I had been there a long time, I knew Cavanagh. I was up the hall from his office as finance director. So that was my job and I was at home on the northeast side on Sunday morning. We had the kids up to go to church, about 8 o’clock I got a phone call from Conrad Mallett, who was in charge of the emergency response program. Good friend of mine. And he called and said there was a disturbance, and he was calling in all of the executives so I said good-bye and I went downtown, and the mayor’s office is across the hall from the budget bureau where I used to work, so I went in the budget bureau instead of the mayor’s, we were separate, and I called in a lot of my old staff in the budget bureau, and organized answering – doing the phone log. So I was there on Sunday morning, I didn’t go home until the following weekend. When they could move, they brought food and clothing in, and we had probably 10 or 12 people in the office, and they worked in shifts, they would answer the phones and do things. And after the first 10 or 12 hours, the mayor said he would go over to police headquarters and be in charge of the military response, and I would stay where I’m at and handle the civil response. So we had to close all the theaters, we closed all the gas stations, we had to postpone the ballgame, and do all that — a lot of it’s in here, I reckon [gestures to papers]— And answer phone calls from overseas, had one from London that said that they had a report that the city was burning to the ground, I said," No, that’s not really happening," but that was a rumor. You can see it in the phone log. The number of rumors that came in is extended. It was a very serious situation, but it wasn’t total, by any means.</p>
<p>LW: So, when I’m reading these rumors, for example on Sunday, at 1:43pm, there’s a rumor that there’s a person at the blind pig that was badly beaten, there’s another rumor later on that says a young boy was killed on Belle Isle, how did those rumors get started?</p>
<p>BR: [Laughs] How do rumors get started? In history, nobody knows the answer to that one. How do you stop them? is the little more difficult question.</p>
<p>LW: Do you think that was a mobilizing force behind some of the violence that happened?’</p>
<p>BR: Well it helped, but no, I think it was, as the reports will show, in hindsight, everybody agrees it [was] mis-termed it as a riot. A riot seems like a lawless crowd that’s just trying to damage things and these people were stealing. It was a looter’s riot. There is, I think, something in human nature that says, if you see a $20 bill on the ground, and there’s nobody around, it has no ownership, and you take it. If you see somebody drop that 20, people with normal morality would say, “Hey, you dropped that money.” Well when you have riots and looting, ownership has disappeared. And everybody—there’s reports there were white people looting and black teenagers and of course they looted liquor stores, just right there, and furniture stores, clothing stores, and just sort of totaled them. So that’s what it turned into. It started out, and I go into more detail there, they raided this blind pig at Clairmount, up on the second floor. I don’t understand this part of it. Normally to do that, you have to put a plainclothes man in, and he has to buy a drink, to legalize it. Then he comes out and reports it, and they go in and arrest the people. The police report said after, they expected 20 to 40 people, actually there was closer to 100. Now if they’d sent an officer in and he came out someplace, there’s a missing link there. Not only were there more people there than they expected, they didn’t keep them there; they brought them down on the street. Now this is a Saturday night, Sunday morning and a very hot day in the summer. And as they brought them down, sirens—police came, backup came, because there were so many — and there go sirens, and to this day I think if you hear sirens from a fire truck or police car, you’re inclined to try to follow it, see what’s going on. And if you’re in the neighborhood, you’re going to walk over and find out, especially on a hot summer night. So the crowd gathered. And they did not get – some of this isn’t in that – they did not bring paddy wagons to arrest them and move them, so they stood there on the sidewalk for two hours waiting for transportation, and then the crowd got restless, and started threatening, and the cars came, and they were putting them in the cars, and the last car out, they threw a bottle through the back window. But there was a crowd; they had a couple hundred people. Police were gone, but they were a restless crowd, early, early on Sunday morning. Now the Sunday shift that started at midnight and goes to 8 o’clock at the police department is the lowest manned shift of the cycle. Because it’s Sunday midnight, everybody’s going to church, you’re not going to have crime. So we had very – the minimum number of police on, plus it was the weekend, and many off-duty officers were out of the city, and couldn’t respond and get called back quick enough. Plus a lot of other—and they name the names as they go through the report—notable figures, community leaders, government officials, were also out of town. So you did not have that easy of a response time. Anyway, we held the midnight shift on, and the dayshift on Sunday wasn’t that much bigger, so we’re under-manned again. The response is again [unintelligible]. The way to handle a riot is you have to overpower it physically with people, not with guns or there’s bayonets involved here by that time. They were on Livernois, and they did get a police line out, riot police, and they had big batons about that long and that thick around, and they hold it like this, and they walk shoulder-to-shoulder, and they moved the crowd up the street. Well this crowd went up the street, down the side streets, through the alley, and came in behind. So, you know, they were so overwhelmed, numerically, that they never got control. Well, the [National] Guard came in, they weren’t much help because they’re all white, suburban country boys who didn’t know a big city, and they were ineffective. We finally got the 101st Airborne, and they were, I’d say, over-effective, because they were .50 caliber machine guns on trucks to shoot and those would just go three houses at a time. So, fortunately there weren’t more people killed inside. But another aspect that was unique was gunfire. Never in my lifetime knew organized people shooting against the police. But at night that was happening; there were snipers, so it got more response. Now the chain of responsibility, of course it’s the mayor and the city. But I talked to Romney, who was the governor, and Romney and Cavanagh were not buddies, by any means, they just had no reason to be: one’s a democrat, one’s a republican, one’s big city, the other is state, [Cavanagh] asked for help from Romney and the National Guard. And Romney said, as he was legally able to do, “Well you have to put it in writing, say you no longer control the situation, you’re asking for the State’s help.” Well, that was a big delay. So then, when the guard didn’t work, and that’s recorded, and the mayor told me, “Get ahold of Vice President Humphrey.” Because he had been designated by Johnson—because there were more riots going on—to be that key person in the federal government. So how do you get ahold of the Vice President? You call the operator and say, “I want to talk to the Vice President in Washington.” And she puts you through. And of course he doesn’t answer the phone, you get a staff member, and you say, “I’m calling on behalf of Mayor Cavanagh. He would like to talk to Humphrey.” And they say, “Well, he’s up in Minneapolis,” — it’s his home state — and they gave me a number there to call. So I call up there, and got the Secret Service and told them what I need. And they said, “Okay, you give us your number and the Vice President will call the mayor.” That’s a power thing, I don’t know. But he did.</p>
<p>LW: He did?</p>
<p>BR: The mayor explained that, and that led to the National Army response. And that came in slow, always slow. They were here, the 101st, out in, I think, the State Fair Grounds for a whole day before they activated them. And the State Police had mobilized a day before they went in. In all that time, it was building up. And until the Airborne got on the street, it didn’t start down, it was always gaining. But the details of that and the locations, if you get a chance to read that, is better than my memory.</p>
<p>LW: So at 9:30 on Sunday morning, you were called into the task force office. And you were living on the east side of Detroit at that time.</p>
<p>BR: Yeah.</p>
<p>LW: So what did you see on your drive to work that morning?</p>
<p>BR: Nothing. The east side was quiet, most of that time. No, I got on Eight Mile at Kelly, probably went down Gratiot Avenue, right into City Hall.</p>
<p>LW: So were you wondering what was really going on? If what you—</p>
<p>BR: Not that early. We knew there had been civil unrest, we were not the first or the last, so we knew what the potential was. We did not realize how fast and how big it would get. As I said earlier, that was because of the timing – Sunday night, hot summer – and the lack of manpower to control it. You see in there repeatedly people calling in for fires, and we couldn’t get fire equipment into the areas, the streets were blocked. So that led to one store, you know, might raid a liquor store, but then the building next to it might have been a dry cleaners, and it’s going to catch fire, although they looted dry cleaners, but that’s why a whole block set on, it was a lack of being able to control the fires. They didn’t set them all on fire, they robbed the liquor store, set it on fire, and then it would sweep down and get into the residential neighborhoods. There was no real looting in the residential neighborhoods, why bother when you’ve got all these main streets that have so much. But I would say 80 percent, my guess, of the rioting was west of Woodward, or then on Woodward. Very few came on the east side. Certainly, it’s all there.</p>
<p>LW: So you’re in the task force office for, essentially, a week. I mean you’re just on lockdown basically.</p>
<p>BR: Yeah, well, he has a shower — the mayor’s office has a shower and a little couch in there, [unintelligible] bring down some clean clothes.</p>
<p>LW: What crossroads was that at?</p>
<p>BR: Pardon?</p>
<p>LW: What crossroads was the mayor’s office or the task force located at?</p>
<p>BR: Woodward and Jefferson, was city hall. Coleman Young City Hall. That’s where the mayor’s office is.</p>
<p>LW: It wasn’t called Coleman Young Center then?</p>
<p>BR: No, it wasn’t.</p>
<p>LW: No, okay. So you’re called in, and what was your general sense? You said you could sense that it could get big, that it could get out of hand.</p>
<p>BR: Well the reports coming in indicated that, just everything that was said that we were begging for help, more policemen to come out here, more firemen to help there, and there just wasn’t the manpower to do it.</p>
<p>LW: So, going back to something you said a little bit ago, you mentioned that it wasn’t a riot, per se, that it was more looting and stealing.</p>
<p>BR: Looting, that’s right.</p>
<p>LW: So what do you think the definition of a riot is, and how do you think it differed exactly from what actually happened?</p>
<p>BR: Well, I think riots as we see and hear them today are more political, they’re not against property, they’re against government or social parties and that, and it’s almost against persons also. Now, they’ll destroy property as part of that, but that’s not their focus. They’re focused on people. This might’ve started out minor, focus against the police, but it quickly spread to property right from that location. And that’s why it grew hundreds and hundreds of people, they were only opposing the police when they were in their way. They weren’t going out after them. Now, as it went on for two or three days, I think a radical element did grow that weren’t looting, that were shooting and that, but that was afterwards. That was certainly not the start. I don’t think there were any shots fired in the first 24 hours. Heard a lot of them after, 30-something people got shot. And violence begets violence. Somebody shoots at them, the police shoot back, to this very day.</p>
<p>LW: Had you ever dealt with anything comparable before in your career, before this point?</p>
<p>BR: No. Not many people do, unless you’re in the army, you do different wars and battles, but in the civilian life, you don’t. It is interesting, as I read back through that, the following year, in ’68, Martin Luther King was killed, and there was a great concern based on what had just happened, but there was no big disturbance on that. We did put curfews in right away, banned sale of liquor and gasoline, and it never got to be a riot. It was peaceful.</p>
<p>LW: This document comes from the task force office, and was somebody actually writing this? Was someone transcribing this?</p>
<p>BR: It was my staff. They were all taking notes, recording every phone call that comes in, who’s calling, what time it is, and what it’s about. If we’re going to look back on this and not remember — so we compiled those notes.</p>
<p>LW: I see. And then, this larger—</p>
<p>BR: See all the people in the task force? All those names?</p>
<p>LW: So this was the order that people reported to the task force office?</p>
<p>BR: Let me see how we set it up, it’s not alphabetical. Conrad Mallett was the number one guy: former policeman, had been on the mayor’s staff for a long time. Then my name, then Alex Davis was the Chief Attorney, and Juliette Sabit was a social worker and activist. Al Day, I don’t know who that is. Bob Knox was head of housing, and he had the housing projects and a lot of stuff out there. Denise Thresh I don’t know, Catherine Edwards, Michael Bruin. Marty Battle was a budget guy, worked for me for a long time. Just an aside—he was working at Receiving Hospital as administrator there, and he got shot and killed by an enraged citizen. Still happening today, but then it was very, very unusual. And Jim Budge, who, I think, was a reporter. But anyway, those are the ones that – there’s a lot of other names in here. People that called in. Roosevelt, he was probably a head social worker someplace. Carl Westin was a senator, Girardin was a police chief. Lot of repeat names in here. Bob Knox, Phil Rutledge, he was part of the [unintelligible], had been my deputy there. Policeman calling in, Brian [Urick ?], he did community activist work for the government some.</p>
<p>LW: So people were calling, higher ups within police, fire, community organizations, were calling to you all to report what was going on?</p>
<p>BR: They were reporting in, but there were some of them calling in with questions. “What’s going on? And why can’t we get police out here?” Their questions were why they called. And some citizens called. A lady was at home with six children and they had no food and she couldn’t get out, she called. I told her to go to a local church. Then they opened Herman Kiefer Hospital, which is up at Clairmount and the freeway, they opened the kitchen there and they were feeding the policemen, and there was a lot of logistics involved when you have hundreds and hundreds of people and you don’t have normal services, you have to have an emergency service for this and that. Somebody called and said they couldn’t get gas, we had closed all the gas stations. So we told him to go to the police station and get gas. These were emergencies; there were doctors that couldn’t get into the hospital, so we had to make a plan to get gas for them.</p>
<p>LW: So what was your biggest challenge of being in charge of a lot of this? What was your biggest challenge?</p>
<p>BR: Knowing what’s going on.</p>
<p>LW: Just not knowing?</p>
<p>BR: There were the rumors you spoke of earlier, what was fact, what was fiction. Like the guy who called in from London. And you just were dealing with it really as it came up, you know there can be no — at that point, you’re not planning, you’re reacting. Trying to think of how to do things that would calm it down.</p>
<p>LW: From the mayor’s office, could you see anything at all, any sort of chaos at all?</p>
<p>BR: Yeah, you could see fires from the office.</p>
<p>LW: You could.</p>
<p>BR: The most interesting thing, it’s on the eleventh floor, those days, and the budget staff where I was faced north, up Woodward, and Willing’s Clothing Store was in the next block, facing on Woodward on the east side, It was very good, Willing’s, good clothing store. And we looked out the window, and there was a car parked on the backstreet, behind Woodward, I forget the name, and were going into the store, had broken the door down, and were carrying out loads of clothing, put it in their car. But we had police in the City county building, guarding it, so two of them ran out, and the guys ran, and I saw them split up, then, "Boom!" I heard a gunshot. Now you wonder, who shot whom? I went down to the first floor and watched it, and one of the policemen came back with a prisoner, and they were both walking. The other one came back with his prisoner, and the guy was dragging him, shot him in the leg. He got him in a blind alley downtown, and confronted him, and the guy wouldn’t surrender, so they sat them down on the floor of the first floor, and, I think, they had to wait hours, a couple hours—well, things are going on, there’s not—you wait a lot of time today for police response and there isn’t a riot going on. It’s who’s available. Anyway, they survived. But yeah that was the most – oh, later on in the week, I looked out the front windows of the mayor’s office, on Jefferson, and there goes a state police car down and they got shotguns stuck out the window, you don’t want to have a loaded long gun in the car with four guys, so they rolled the windows down and stuck them out of the car. Then you saw the army stuff come through. They didn’t have tanks, they had trucks with machine guns mounted on them, and personnel carriers, they call them. That was the most I saw of it.</p>
<p>LW: The most activity you saw of it.</p>
<p>BR: And I had, you get a city badge back in my day, for different offices, and I had one that said “Mayor’s Office” on it, and you’d never wear it, you might carry it in your wallet if you thought, but I had to go from City Hall over to police headquarters on Beaubien to see the mayor, so I had to pin that badge on so I could walk through the streets.</p>
<p>LW: I see that here, that you called at two o’clock that afternoon on that Sunday, you called from police headquarters—it says “Bob Roselle calls from police headquarters”—so I was going to ask you, you moved from the mayor’s office to police headquarters? No.</p>
<p>BR: No, the mayor did. He wanted to be where the military were, the police, the governor, and the police chief, no he was with the response.</p>
<p>LW: So you were there the entire time that week?</p>
<p>BR: Oh no, I was in City Hall. I walked over there one day because I had to see him. I walked over and walked back. So I had that badge with me.</p>
<p>LW: Good thing you had it, huh?</p>
<p>BR: Yeah.</p>
<p>LW: I want to talk a little bit about after the riots and your work for the city, and the T.A.A.P program. Can you tell us on the record again what that is?</p>
<p>BR: I mentioned I was the budget director, and Jerry Cavanagh became mayor, and he had a brilliant lawyer with him, Richard Strickharts, who he appointed finance director. He was writing grant requests because these were the days when the government was giving out a lot more grants, but they still do, but the city hadn’t taken advantage of that. And Strickharts wrote many proposals and one was for a federal program out of the labor department called the Community Renewal Program. CRP. They got $25,000, which was a lot of money but I could hire a lot of people with that. Anyway, they didn’t know who to run it. They weren’t expecting it, they weren’t organized to do it. So Strickharts talked to Al Pelham, who was the finance director. His father, Benjamin Pelham, had been a leading black politician in the early 1900s in Wayne County. Al Pelham was the Wayne County budgeting director for many years. And my work in the city budget, I had many things to do with it. For example, the city had its own welfare department during the depression because welfare, there was money and power in that. All the other welfare departments in the state were county; we were the only city welfare department. Well, after the war and things were getting processed, it was a burden. There was a lot of expenses to doing welfare, and you didn’t need that political clout. So we wanted to turn it, the department, back to Wayne County. Well, you’re trying to give away an expense, but I worked it out with Al Pelham. So now, Cavanagh gets elected mayor, and he appoints Al Pelham to city financier, from the county to the city, and it was the highest paid black official in the city at that time. Al Pelham knew me, so he calls me in his office, and he said, “Would you be interested in taking an appointive job —take a leave from your [civil citizen's ?] job — and run the CRP?” And I didn’t know what it was. And I said, “Yeah, I’d like to talk to my wife first,” and he said, “You have to let me know tomorrow,” he was a no-nonsense guy. So I said, “Fine, I’ll let you know tomorrow.” I went back to my office, and later in the day I went back to his office, and he had left, and Dorothea Cross was his secretary. But she had been the secretary of other controllers, you didn’t get to pick your own secretary in those days. So I said, “Dorothea,”—we both were career people—“What is CRP?” She said, “Well, I’m not sure, but I think there’s a folder on his desk,” so she just goes in, grabs the folder and says, “Here! Read it!” And it says “Community Renewal Program.” It was a study of urban renewal and its impact on the community. Like, what happened to Black Bottom when they built Lafayette Park. So I read it, went home, talked to Bev, and decided why not? So I took it, and I had to hire the people, but again, my experience with the city for a number of years, I knew good people in the city who could help and got them transferred in. It isn’t as though you had to go out and hire people, you could have them transferred in. We had to find a headquarters and stuff, but that’s it. But then, as I mentioned earlier, when they got the War on Poverty federal program, they wanted to get it working, and when Congress passed, he wanted to start spending the money. So they had a plan to do that. And this was a whole different plan. [shuffling through papers] Anyway, there’s a table of contents, all these different subjects.</p>
<p>LW: Ok, so, that was all taking place leading up to July of 1967? Because you were in office for a month you said?</p>
<p>BR: No, the T.A.A.P program came after the riots. I should know things like that. No, you’re right, T.A.A.P program came in ’64, the riot was in ’67.</p>
<p>LW: You were helping to mobilize that as well?</p>
<p>BR: Yeah, I was responsible for it.</p>
<p>LW: As the city controller?</p>
<p>BR: Went to Washington about twice a month, and we met with other big cities, we formed a—well they had federal professional associations for all kinds of things—we formed one for people who were running the T.A.A.P programs.</p>
<p>LW: Do you think those efforts helped Detroit in the Sixties?</p>
<p>BR: I think they did, we didn’t follow through though. Johnson dwindled away. Much like today, just, you know, good programs don’t get financed. It was an ambitious thing. When it isn’t your baby, you don’t commit the money to it, and it faded away. Well, parts of it, like Head Start, started with that program. It was a good thing. Local community centers, we called them, I had four districts in the city, and we had rented buildings and set up community centers that were supposed to offer counseling, medical care, food, what they liked to call, “comprehensive services,” or “one-stop shopping.” Again, there was pressure to get it going, and we had an abandoned police station called Petoskey, the Tenth Precinct, on the northwest side, and because it was a city building, we could get immediate occupancy, except it looked like a police station. But then we had a city department, part of Public Works, hadn’t previously, called Building Maintenance, and they had all the trades—plumbing, electrician—they came and they tore the inside of the gym out, took the bars, and made it into an office. We opened it as a community center, and Romney came down. I’ve got press clippings of all this that explain it better than I can, but CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] was a big civil rights union, and Clyde Cleveland was the head of it, and I bumped heads with him previously on things. I said, “Clyde, would you like to work in this program? You’re good talking to the community, here’s your chance to have a job,” which he didn’t have, “and you can be a counselor. And people will trust you and everything.” And sure enough, he took that job. He became the city councilman later on in life. He was successful. I took great pride in that, got the head of CORE to work for that. It worked out well. So we got all four open, eventually. Not quite that fast. The former Masonic Temple on Grand River, big building, we turned that. And on the east side, on Mt. Eliot and Vernor, there was a big church, now it’s gone through several changes since then, but it was perfect for what we wanted to do. The east side, west side, there was a fourth one someplace.</p>
<p>LW: That was throughout the Sixties? You were establishing those throughout the 1960s?</p>
<p>BR: Yeah, One of the other concepts of the TAAP program was that you hire community people to work in there, as community relations people. They know their neighborhood. And they said, “You can’t ever do this in civil service, you've got to be under civil service, and they’ll never pass those written exams! It’s crazy!” Well fortunately, I had on my staff a man who had worked in civil service, a real good guy, probably my number three in the department when we got him, and he solved the problem. He said, “Right now, the system calls for 70 percent written, and 30 percent experience.” So we changed the rule, made it 30 percent written, and 70 percent interview. And they don’t have to pass the written, you can interview them, and hire them, and that’s 70 percent of the score so we can hire them.</p>
<p>LW: What was the motivation behind that?</p>
<p>BR: We couldn’t hire local people that knew the neighborhoods that had high school educations. Or could pass a written exam. Even high school graduates, I’ve taken many a civil service exam, and they’re—well you take exams all the time. If you’re not used to them, if you haven’t been experienced in them, they can be pretty tough. Civil service used that written exam thing as an exercise in power, selection.</p>
<p>LW: Was any of that race-based in an attempt to diversify?</p>
<p>BR: No, not that I could see.</p>
<p>LW: No, just to get more civil servants from those neighborhoods.</p>
<p>BR: Well the goal of the department was having community representatives, and we had in each of these four districts a community council made up of people, and I had to meet with them once a month in the city council auditorium, and there were, a certain number of them, rabble rousers, that’s how you get to be a community leader, it’s attacking the status quo. And you’d walk up there, and you’d be Mr. Status Quo. I got along with them all, really, they all ended up being good friends, but they had to put their act on once a month, to keep their job, really. No, I think that was a good part of the program. Earlier on at Community Renewal, we had a similar experience. That program originally was what happened with urban renewal. And I hired a social studies major at Wayne State that wanted to do his doctorate paper and we put him in at Mt. Eliot, on the fringe of Lafayette Park, and it was still a neighborhood. And he lived there for three months and then wrote his thesis on that, and he said, “What you lost when you wiped it all out, the people living here, they have a social network. If they need help, they lower their shade to a certain point and people come over and ask them. If they run out of money before the end of the month, they can get credit at the grocery store,” the little corner store, and he said, “You don’t have that.” That’s how they survive in the low income neighborhoods, in his experience. That was Dick Simmons, he became deputy mayor eventually. He’s passed on; he was a great guy. I think communication is very difficult, and maybe with the electronics today that could change if they use it for good purposes, to help each other, not to hurt or fool around.</p>
<p>LW: After July of 1967, you remained City Controller, right?</p>
<p>BR: No, no.</p>
<p>LM: Deputy mayor I’m sorry.</p>
<p>BR: No, I became finance. And then in the mayor’s office, then into public works. Then back in the mayor’s office, as finance director, under Ray Gribbs [Mayor Roman Gribbs]. I did not know Ray. He was a northwest guy. When he took office, I hadn’t heard from him all through the month of December, and I thought, well, if it turns out I’m not going to be finance officer for the next mayor, I’ll come back into budgeting. And about a week before his sergeant, John Peddler, was acting as his aide, and he called me and said, “Can you meet with the mayor in our temporary office in the Guardian building on Christmas Eve?” It was the 24. And he said, “Two o’clock?” And I said, “Fine, I’ll be there,” because I wanted the job. Or I wanted some job. So I went over there and I went up the elevators and I get off at their floor and all you can hear is wastebaskets being emptied by the staff, bottles clanking in it. They had celebrated all morning, and now everybody’s gone. So I’m walking down, I find the number, and it’s locked with no lights on. I hung around for about ten minutes, then I thought, well, this isn’t going to work. I don’t know the guy, he doesn’t know me. So instead of going back the way I came, I walked to the front elevators of the Guardian building and as I come to the elevator, here comes Peddler jumping out of the elevator saying, “The mayor’s running late! He wants you to wait, let’s go back, I’ll let you in!” So that’s what happened, I went back and Ray came in and we talked for five or ten minutes, we shook hands, and I became the finance director.</p>
<p>LW: Under Roman Gribbs. And what was that experience like following the riots, following ’67, ’68? Can you explain some of the changes that you saw taking place in the city around that time?</p>
<p>BR: Yeah, it was declining financially. The whole concept, even too much, so they say, is government’s going to be run on property tax. That was a whole, gone many years ago. Property values and the taxes to support the government weren’t keeping up with the growth of government. So we’ve gone through dozens of special things here. We put through, back in my day, Cavanagh, a utility tax, and we put through a city income tax, now they’ve got gambling, and for a glorious, golden period of time, you had state aide. You had grants from the state. Revenue sharing, they called it. The feds came. I’m just going to back up a minute. One of the big changes in the Kennedy era was traditionally, for hundreds of years, the federal government only dealt with state government, and state government dealt with the local governments. Well that was out moded. A famous line in my talks would be that I can get to Washington faster than I can get to Lansing. Because I drive to Lansing, and fly to Washington. It’s a one-hour flight. So I said why are we going through Lansing? Well, Kennedy changed that. He said, “I’ll give money directly to the cities.” And that’s a momentous change in history. And it worked to this day. There still is a big state connection, but that was a major change.</p>
<p>LW: Was the property tax declining because of people moving out of the city?</p>
<p>BR: No I think, well yeah, it was certainly part of that, but also the inflation of the cost of government was on a different track than property, because you were doing a lot more that property tax didn’t have to do. And the expense of doing it. The property values and taxes did not go up with inflation on services. Salaries for police and firemen, pension costs, road repairs, to this day. We did a lot to try to comprehend it. When I was public works commissioner, we were still collecting garbage with a back-end truck with two loaders and a driver. And they go down the allies and shovel them. We had taken time for rubbish collection. We insisted every house have a concrete receptacle, the size of your chair there, and it had a metal lid on top to throw the garbage in, and a metal lid on the side to take it out. You’d open the door, and two guys with shovels would shovel the garbage out. You didn’t wrap it in those days either, we didn’t have plastic bags. They’d shovel it into the back of the truck. Well the time and the spillage was just horrendous. Plus those metal doors didn’t last a year. The acid in the garbage just ate them right up. They weren’t in footings, the rack couldn’t go down more than 18 inches, so rats were living under these garbage receptacles, and coming up and feeding. It was a crazy system. But the union, the teamsters loved the 3-man crews. But once you get the front-end loaders—the whole country is going through this—this was not a Detroit problem. Refuse collection was going through a big, big change, and it’s a one-man, front-end loader you see today. But besides the resistance to that, in our town, we had alleys. And those trucks were too big to go down an alley and lift them because of the power lines. So that was a physical, you had to go to front-end street pick-up and people didn’t want to take the rubbish out and put it on the street. Especially if you didn’t pick it up the day you were supposed to. But eventually it went through.</p>
<p>NL: Could you tell us more about how the decisions were made in 1967 that were regarding halting alcohol sales and the providing of services or not providing? The closing of borders? What was that decision making process, and who was involved?</p>
<p>BR: Well, it was sequential, every time you saw a problem, you tried to solve it. I think it was random, no one person was making these decisions. Police department could have, I don’t know. Close the liquor stores, it ain’t a bad idea, so that was easy to do. And I think some of the others, like stopping gasoline sales, that had been thought of before. The border thing, I was surprised. I read that in there, apparently they weren’t letting cars into Detroit that weren’t residents, I didn’t see that happen. I don’t think you can look to any one person or any one area. The police certainly had some. The fire department, they had to clear the crowds out. A lot of comments, people calling in saying—the initial reaction, by the way, was the same, in the first few hours—was, “Get the people off the street, and clean the streets.” They wanted public works to come out there and clean the streets. Apparently the idea of the debris, that was exciting. They never could do that. They never had the man power, the police power, to clear the people out. But it’s asked repeatedly. And then finally someone calls in and says, “Forget cleaning the streets. All that is irritating to see all that manpower out there.” So that’s how it goes. You learn as you go on.</p>
<p>NL: Could you comment on the relations between the police and the citizens of Detroit in the Sixties before ’67?</p>
<p>BR: In my opinion, it wasn’t a good time. We’d had that special police patrol, what’s it called?</p>
<p>LW: STRESS? [Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets]</p>
<p>BR: Yeah, STRESS. Safe streets for — And they had this particular incident where the STRESS crew, which was a group of plain clothes guys, put one of them out on the street and had him act drunk, white guy, and stagger through the street. And a teenage black kid came up with an aerial, car aerial, and he was going to strike him. And I think in that case, they shot him. But it was that type of entrapment that STRESS was doing, and that was badly received.</p>
<p>NL: Do you think there’s a history of racial profiling in the Detroit police system?</p>
<p>BR: I wouldn’t think now.</p>
<p>NL: I meant more at the time of these events, the Fifties and Sixties [talking over each other]</p>
<p>BR: Oh yeah. In my mind? No question about it. There was racial profiling and everything. But the blacks particularly.</p>
<p>NL: Were there ever people that raised that issue or spoke out against it?</p>
<p>BR: I’m sure there were, but they were ineffective. Took a national movement to do away with racial profiling, took a federal law. No, the police and fire department in my early days was really white. Really, really white. Whiter than the city. It got increasingly difficult as the state was white and the city became more black. And it took a long while to overcome that. The fire department was the last to go, you know, because they lived together 24 hours, and they fought it. I think that’s long past now.</p>
<p>NL: What about housing opportunities for black people and other non-white people in the city at those times?</p>
<p>BR: That wasn’t really my thing. I lived in the city, and we had a residency rule. If you worked for the city, you lived in the city. And I’d always lived in the city, and my kids went to public schools—well, the first two. Third one came along and it wasn’t a school problem there. When he went to Junior High, his two older sisters had gone there and were outstanding students, and he was always being compared to them. So he said, “Dad, I’ve followed them all through grade school with this.” So he went to military school for five years. And then the youngest daughter came along, and she went maybe a couple grades in Detroit, our local Detroit school, but then we put her in French School in downtown, it’s still there. And we lived in the city. But when she got in tenth grade, with two to go, she said, “There’s only going to be three people in my graduating class, and I don’t think that’s a good experience for going on to college.” So by then I had left and went to Campbell Ewald’s, so we didn’t have to live in the city, so we bought a house here in Grosse Pointe and she took two years at Grosse Pointe South. I think it was Richard Strickhart, actually, the most liberal Jewish man I’ve ever known, brilliant guy. His boy delivered newspapers in Detroit, up there around Palmer Park, and he got robbed at knife point. Comes home and tells his dad. He moved out of the city within a week. “You’re not going to threaten my kid!” You know, he’s family first, and he’s gone. That happened to a lot of people.</p>
<p>NL: In your work with the T.A.A.P program, did you get a chance personally, to work real hands-on with the people that that agency was providing services for?</p>
<p>BR: Before we began starting, we were still in community renewal then, the neighborhood services or NSO — never heard of the organization and living here all the time, I’m ashamed of that —but it is the best youth service organizations. They’re all top-notch social workers, the guy who was running it when I got involved went on to be the dean of social work at [the University of] Michigan. They had a big project over on the northwest side where they took over an old telephone building and turned it into housing for 200 homeless men. It’s up and running now. I went to him and said, you know “poverty program, I don’t know what the needs are,” and things like that, so he arranged—we had an interview with two teenage black boys. And we introduced ourselves and were talking, and I glanced down and the one boy – well I guess I didn’t look first – I said, “What would you do if you had a job, you could earn some money?” And he said, “I’d buy a pair of alligator shoes.” And I looked down again, he had really decrepit tennis shoes on, and so his aspirations in life was a pair of shoes. And he just didn’t see above that at that point. And what was the other fellow? He didn’t have any big things either. And one summer, aside from the poverty program, June, my wife at that time, tutored—wanted to tutor in Summer school. And we volunteered, and did not get a good reception. We went to the school, they did not expect us, they didn’t know what to do with us, all black. She said, “Well, you go up to this classroom, you can sit in the class and monitor. Black teacher, all black students, junior high. And the teacher was gracious. We sat in the back. Complete chaos. She had no control over the thing at all. The kids were talking to each other, they were doing everything. They had notebooks, they were supposed to keep a journal—they still do to this day, I’m told—and they were supposed to each day write in it. Most lurid writing I had ever heard about. I mean, it wasn’t good spelling or handwriting, but the subject matter was not educational. She calls for a break, and she assigns a boy to me and a girl to June to go and talk to, and I asked the question, “What would you like?” And he said, “I’d like to have white hair like yours.” Isn’t that off the wall? I could not comprehend. So anyway that was — I was also on the school monitoring commission for two or three years when they were trying to get civilian involvement on the rules and that, and that was a very educational experience. You know, what do you do when you throw a kid out of school? Where do you send them? Troops? Now they have alternative high schools or junior highs now. In fact, my granddaughter’s taught in one. But they had many, many logistic problems, and they had no control over it, they haven’t been able to conquer that. So I learned, but I knew outstanding black people. Cass Tech was good, black too. Certainly when I was in public works, my staff was mainly black, and they were great. I would go to give talks at night, and four or five of them would go along with me and we’d park the car, and they’d spread out just like they do for the president and see that I could walk in without being hurt. And volunteers.</p>
<p>NL: Looking back in hindsight at the after-effects of the 1967 riots on the city, the short and the long-term effects, is there anything specific that you think that the city departments could have or should have done differently that would have helped alleviate or minimized some of that long-term damage?</p>
<p>BR: Well, I think the conventional wisdom is that the riot pushed the black population out. That was the turning point. That those that were hesitant about leaving, they left in larger numbers. And now the school system has continued that drain. Mary lived in the city at that time too. She was a teacher. Probably, if it could have put more attention, and found the resources on housing, because I went to a committee meeting long before all this, and it was down here, off of east Jefferson, where a grade school — and it was turning black. So we had a meeting at the church and talked about it, and a black man got up, and he identified himself as a postman, and he said, “The white people have stayed here and the more affluent ones moved, and the people that came in weren’t interested or able to keep the houses up as they should have, so then they move out. And when the blacks get possession, the home is already in disrepair, and they are now the least financially-able to fix it. And it just doesn’t stop.” But, you know, that’s – I think – a very common story. The Jewish population moved first, then the Protestant whites and Catholics, Catholics were last to move out, and they left behind them not-the-best properties in the world, and certainly the people coming in were not financially set. I guess finance is a very key part of that, the minimum wage, and jobs, and youth programs where they can earn summer money. You’ve got to make an investment in people.</p>
<p>NL: I have one last question. In that same vein, do you have any specific ideas on what the city can do now in 2015 to continue moving forward and make progress as a city that they might not already be doing?</p>
<p>BR: Well, Mary’s son-in-law is Tom Lewand, works with the mayor, and her granddaughter is in the land base, so we’re in touch with the city, so to speak. I think what Duggan is doing is the right thing. It’s just a question of resources, and I don’t think people understand the logistics of the homing, the home situation. What’s the number, sixty thousand homes that are scheduled to be torn down? And we were previously doing five or six hundred a year. Now they’re doing ten thousand and it’s still a five-year program if nothing else comes on the market, and I don’t think that count includes the commercial buildings, which are, many times — in the meantime, the cost of tearing down homes has risen. Usually we just collapse them in the basement. And throw some dirt on top. But it was not environmentally sound, so now you have to get a permit that the asbestos has been cleared out, which requires a specialist to come in and certify that, that there isn’t any other poisonous subjects and that. You have to clear the site completely and haul it off to a dump. You have to put clean dirt in the hole. They were bogged down six months ago, we were talking with our granddaughter. They ran out of clean dirt! They couldn’t find clean dirt! They were trying to deal with the expressway construction, get that dirt. Now they’re finding that wouldn’t pass inspection because it had oil contaminants in some of it. It’s whether they can hold it together over the long haul. Certainly Duggan has taken a fantastic start and strategically picked the things that they could do that would make an impact, like street lighting. The idea to get in there after all these years and see street lights and put it into authority and let it raise its own bond money, and be run outside of city government was a marvelous thing, and it’s working, it has worked. I hear people say, “We’ve never had a streetlight.” Now they do. So that one thing — employment program to get companies coming in town is the right thing to be doing. Get more employment in here and raise that tax base. Because you not only get the property tax, now you get the income tax. So the renters have a way to support everything. They’re battling time. That’s all. Right now, I don’t know if they’re even holding their own. If you’re losing more than you’ve gained, but you’ve certainly narrowed that gap. You’re gaining people now. They could do – well they are, I have a grandson at northwest Grosse Ile Park area in that community organization, which is funded, and they’re trying to keep the homes there from being dilapidated. And people give them their homes. Then they take in and renovate it to modern, and sell it, below market, because they can do that. Grosse Ile is not the best model, because those are substantial homes on Grosse Ile. On the eastside of Detroit—Detroit was built as a lumber town, it was built out of wood. They didn’t have to make bricks, they just cut the logs up north and floated them down the river, sawed them up, and built a house. My mother was born over by Eastern Market, on Wilkins Street, which is gone now. And they had nine children, all in one big house for that. They had no plumbing. They had to—what we call a garage, they had a stable, and an outhouse in the stable. No central heat, no central electricity. Those houses aren’t going to be renovated for anybody to move in to them. These apartment buildings you see on Chalmers Street, I had an aunt and uncle who lived in one, and I remember visiting them. The rooms are six by eight, the living room would be maybe eight by nine, nobody’s going back in those buildings! And besides that, they let the vandalism out of control. That was a big mistake, which I think they’ve tried to solve by first of all, licensing the junkyards, not letting them pay cash, have to get a signature and a photograph of the seller. They could have put all those junkers out of business years ago. It seems so obvious now, that was where to stop it. Not trying to enforce it on the street. They didn’t get away with where they could sell the material.</p>
<p>LW: Thank you so much for talking with us!</p>
<p>BR: Well, you know I love to talk! [Laughter]</p>
**
[note: STRESS was formed in 1971. Before '67, plainclothes police operated as The Big Four]
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qrnh0dWTUFU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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Title
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Bob Roselle, July 20th, 2015
Description
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In this interview, Roselle discusses being called into the mayor’s office to handle the civil response to the unrest, incidents that he saw and heard of, and his opinion on the response in general. He also discusses how the city has changed, what it was like working for the City of Detroit, and how he perceives the future of Detroit.
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Date
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05/26/2016
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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en-US
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Cass Technical High School
Civil Rights Movement
Detroit City Council
Detroit Police Department
Government
Governor George Romney
Looting
Mayor Jerome Cavanagh
Mayor Roman Gribbs
Michigan State Police Department
President Lyndon B. Johnson
Public Servant
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https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/69a1f8ecadd898d826f007760ddc5d64.jpg
20ba87d0842b420d7a60129dd9a41232
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41d1c6018a6aa67c70b0608a811176c1
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Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
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Detroit Historical Society
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Brenda Perryman
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Barbara Perryman was born in South Carolina in 1948 but came to Michigan six weeks later and considers herself a native Detroiter. A playwright, author, and former teacher, she graduated from St. Theresa's High School in 1966 and then attended Eastern Michigan University. She was present in Detroit for the summer of July 1967, and her brother went missing during that time.
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William Winkel
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Detorit Historical Museum
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03/19/2016
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00:45:54
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Julie Vandenboom
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04/25/2016
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<p>WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel. Today is March 19, 2016. We are in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's 1967 Oral History Project, and this is the interview of Brenda Perryman. Thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>BP: Pleased to be here.</p>
<p>WW: All right. Can you tell me first where and when you were born?</p>
<p>BP: Okay, I was born in Kingstree, South Carolina, and I was just there for six weeks, because my grandfather was sick and my mother was living in Detroit – my parents were – and so that's how I ended up in South Carolina. But basically I'm a native Detroiter and I was born in 1948.</p>
<p>WW: Can you tell me about your childhood growing up in the city during the Fifties?</p>
<p>BP: Well, it was very interesting because I grew up over near Dexter and the Boulevard — West Grand Boulevard — and I started kindergarten over there at public school – at Marr — and at five – it was a little different in the city because, you know, we lived in a duplex, and we felt pretty safe, even – it was an interracial neighborhood at the time. And going to Marr, I was about four blocks from it, and we felt so secure, I guess. I think about my mom and dad, they felt so secure. There was a furniture store named Charles Furniture that was up on Grand River near the Boulevard, and my mother would send me up there to pay bills at five years old. I always had a key to the house.</p>
<p>WW: You said the neighborhood was interracial. Was it that way the whole time, or did it get increasingly more interracial as you were growing up?</p>
<p>BP: Well, more – one race. Well, I was only there until about the fifth grade. And yes, people started moving out and so forth, but it still had some white people there. White and black, everybody kind of lived harmoniously for the most part. The one incident I remember – well, two incidences, really – it was across Dexter, we'd walk up, if we walked up across Dexter for another block or so, we were at Grand River. And if I walked – Hogarth, I lived on a street named Hogarth – and there was this one white man who kept on calling me to his porch. And I went over, I said, “Yes, yes, yes,” and it just didn't seem right because he bent down like he was trying to kiss me and I ran home, seriously, and my mother called the police.</p>
<p>Another thing that happened in that neighborhood: I was pushing a wagon down Dexter — I had a friend in a wagon – and this man came. He was a white man, and he knocked against me, and I fell on the ground, and the wagon was going and it dragged me, and I still have that mark on my thigh. And then I found out later on, because I was doing research on Dr. Ossian Sweet, for a play that I was commissioned to write, and found out that in that particular neighborhood, there over near Tireman and other streets, there were – there was like a Tireman Improvement Association. And they were running like – black doctors who used to move over there, I guess it was a decent neighborhood. They would go in and start moving the doctor's furniture out and everything and make the doctor sign over the house to them. So they – blacks weren't really – they didn't really want them to live in that neighborhood. But anyway, I went to Marr School until third grade, and then transferred to St. Theresa's, which was right on Pingree area. I'm Catholic, and so I started going to that Catholic school I went there fourth and fifth grade, and then we moved further down Dexter, and maybe that's a little bit of dealing with that flight, we moved to a street named Clemens, and I went to St. Gregory's, for up until the tenth grade, and then eleventh grade we ended up moving back over near St. Theresa's and I graduated from St. Theresa High School in 1966. Which at that time, more than half our class was white, so it was still in the neighborhood so people were still coming. It was an interesting dynamic that was going on at the time, I think.</p>
<p>WW: What did your parents do for a living?</p>
<p>BP: My mother was a licensed practical nurse, and my father worked at Ford Motor Company until he was fired for running numbers. And my mother – the interesting thing, too, was my mother could always go over to Ford and ask him – ask could they give him his job back. She did that three times, and they did.</p>
<p>WW: What was it like growing up and going to a private school in Detroit at that time?</p>
<p>BP: Well, at that time it was – we had a good time because we didn't notice certain things. But you have to understand, I ended up graduating from college with a degree in speech and dramatic arts and dealing with theater and stuff like that, and in – at the Catholic school – which I enjoyed it – but when there was a little play, we just got little roles. And a nice girl, Mary Zukowski she would always be the Virgin Mary in the play, she would always – you know, they'd always pick – well my mother told me something very interesting yesterday, and something I had never heard. But – it makes sense now. In 1965, I think it was, I went down to Hudson's. My mother is darker-skinned than I am, and she went to get a part-time job because she was already a nurse at Henry Ford Hospital. And another friend of mine, she was darker-skinned, she went, and I was the only one who got the job, and my mother said, because I was light enough to work at Hudson's. And I never thought about – I never put it together that way. And my mother was one, my mother – she's never a person to play the race card. For her to say that —;</p>
<p>But then, too, she had an experience. She came up in South Carolina. She went to college at South Carolina State.
</p><p> [background: Sorry.]</p>
<p> She took a – she took a test – a civil service test to work at the post office, and she got the highest – they sent her a letter, she had the highest grade on this test. So she got her suitcase, and everybody said goodbye to her so she could go to Charleston for the job. She got there and she told them her name, showed her paperwork, and they said, “You’re Pearlie Burgess?” She said. “Yes.” “Oh, it's another Pearlie Burgess.” So she had to get on to that bus and go back home. It was – you know. It – but she never carried that with her. That's what I noticed about my mother. Because up here, she had white friends and black friends, and so I kind of grew up like that also.</p>
<p>And so, I wasn't looking for racism, you know. Oh yeah, that's going to happen. First - my first idea of what racism could be was watching the Little Rock [Nine]. I was – it was on television. My mother was watching that, and I said, “What's going on?” She said, “They don't want the colored kids to go to school with the white kids.” I said wow. I thought that was strange, because I went to school with white kids. You know, I said it's not like this?</p>
<p>So, growing up, the — what was so good about growing up in Detroit was the fact that you could – we felt free to go anywhere. And when I come over this way, I think of the fact that I used to take, as a grade schooler, I'd take the Dexter bus down to Cass and I guess it's Putnam or whatever this next two – second – next street after Kirby, just before you get to Warren. I think it's Putnam or something. I'd take the bus and then I'd walk down here and right next to the Maccabees was the Detroit Conservatory of Music and I took piano lessons there. Mind you, I said, I would get on the bus, I was like eight, nine years old. And I'd come down here and I'd – and I'd go back with my music book. And I don't know why – you know, like I said, I always had the key to the house and my mother – my parents would be home but – that's what they raised me, to be pretty independent and navigate pretty well.</p>
<p>WW: So you said your first experience with racism was watching the Little Rock —</p>
<p>BP: It was noticing that there was supposed to be a difference, yeah, that's right.</p>
<p>WW: Did you begin to see racial problems in the city after that, or –</p>
<p>BP: Not initially, because — my best friend's name was Andrea Sarkisian, you know we went to St. Theresa's, and we were just best friends. She was white, I was black, and we just kind of never talked – noticed – well, talked about it. And our role models were people on television, and there were very few people on television of color. There was a show called <em>Beulah</em> with a black maid, at that time, when I was a little girl, but most other shows, like the <em>Life of Riley</em> and all these shows, they didn't show a black family, it was always a white family, and kind of getting into the drama piece – Disney. Disney was like a salvation to everybody. As far as growing up in Detroit, we had the Thanksgiving parade, everybody wanted to go to Hudson's to see Santa. I mean, things just seemed sanitized in a child's eye.</p>
<p>WW: Throughout the 1960s, being a teenager then, how did you experience social movements that were going through the city?</p>
<p>BP: Well, my first initial social movement was my love of Motown. I've got to be honest. I have to be honest. I'm like an aficionado, and just hearing – well, I need to talk about radio, because it was really important to hear music and all this and then, as a grade schooler, American Bandstand was on, so that was a cultural phenomenon, watching kids dance and all of that. But then as the Sixties went on and progressed, the music was beautiful, we weren't feeling really in it – we were teenagers having fun, that's basically it, and going to Belle Isle and Tanglewood Drive, which was down there at Belle Isle.</p>
<p>But we never – I'll never forget going out to Sterling Heights, though. Bunch of us jumped – we went out to Sterling Heights to this park and we were all just sitting in the cars, and all of a sudden, we heard, “Let's get 'em!” It was a group of white men, they started chasing us. We had to crank up the cars and go.</p>
<p>But as far as the movement, we heard – started hearing about Martin Luther King and all that, and he was in town, but didn't – still didn't know much about it. But I did – one day, I was walking from – to the bus stop – a different bus stop, I was downtown, went to Baker Shoes to buy some shoes. And there was a crowd from around the Book Cadillac, and I asked a man, I said what's going on here? He said, “President Lyndon Johnson is here. Would you like to meet him?” I said, well why not. I went up there, and I said, “I'm Brenda,” and you know, he said “Pleased to meet you,” and he shook my hand. He had the biggest hands! And I have large hands, for a lady, but he had the biggest hands, and he was so bow-legged, it was like you could put a basketball through his legs, and just very friendly, very, very friendly, and that was just a weird thing. I said I'm the humbug – here's the president of the United States.</p>
<p>Another thing, in the Sixties, I worked in the Ford hospital in the summers, because my mother worked there so I got a job. One day I heard Governor Romney was up there, in the hospital, I said, “Hm, I'd like to meet him,” and I remember having a little white bag with some gumdrops in it. So I went and knocked on the door, said Governor Romney. My name's Brenda, I work here, but can I come in? He said, “Yes.” So I came in, I sat down, and he asked me, “What school do you go to?” We were talking, I was eating my gumdrops, and I spent my lunch hour with him, just talking. Isn't that something, though? When I think about it in these terms, I say wow, how did that happen? But I was just talking, and then he asked, “Can I have some of those gumdrops?” Sure. Next day I got a call, down to where I was working, saying, “You gave the governor gumdrops!” I said, he asked for them. “It messed up his barium test,” she said. I said, Oh my god. I – but I don't – what do I know of barium? All I know is the governor of the state of Michigan asked me, could he have some gumdrops.</p>
<p>But as far as movements, I wasn't in any movement until I got to college. And when I went to college, well, I guess I had a little something to – to prove to myself because I remember telling, Sister John Damian, a nun, I said, “I'm going to Eastern Michigan University,” and she said, “You won't make it a year.” I – you know, I taught for 39 years, and I never told a student they won't make it. But I guess – so I went up there, and when I went to Eastern, and I guess I’ll get into the activism. I went to Eastern, and was up there three weeks – I couldn't believe a community of kids, and no parents. You know, the freedom I felt, even though we had to be back in the dorm by a certain time. But there were not – not a whole bunch of black people on campus, but it was enough of us to party, and sit in the union, and do all those good things.</p>
<p>But after three weeks, I went to a dance, and my boyfriend, who was here, he'd gone to St. Cecilia which was another Catholic school in the area – and he said, “Listen, if you get a ride –“ because people would come up from Detroit to go to the parties – he said, “If you get a ride down here, to Detroit – I'll give you a ride back to Eastern.” I said, “Oh, that sounds like a plan.”</p>
<p>So these people would come up – they were going back – I asked, can I get a ride. They said sure, so I got in the backseat of the car. It was an Oldsmobile Spitfire or Starfire – it was a nice car, but it was a convertible, but the top was up, and I got in the backseat and when I was in – they got lost getting out of Ypsilanti, so they said Brenda, get in the front because you probably know the way. I didn't know the way, but I said oh, a little more leg room. Got in, and so there were three people in back, two in the front, and we were going down I-94, and when we got towards Rawsonville Road, all I remember, because I was looking out the window – I remember the car kind of going off the road and then I looked to the driver. I think the driver fell asleep. And he woke up and he took the wheel over to the left, and we went across the road, turned over three times on – in the embankment in the middle. And after – I remember that so vividly because as we turned over, I said to myself, well, this is it. And then when we landed, when the car stopped, I couldn't believe I was still alive. I heard the other people in the back moaning, the driver was kind of moaning, and I remember feeling my tooth. I said, well, god, all I have is a chipped tooth, I feel pretty good, but I was on the floor between the glove compartment and the seat. And as tall as I am, my knees had hit the glove compartment and everything in my back backed up there. And I was on the floor, as tall as I am, I'm in this area, and I said get me out of here!</p>
<p>And they got me out, and you know people pulled over to the side of the road, too. They got me out, and as I laid there, I said, lay my legs down. They said, “Your legs are laying flat.” I said no they're not, because I felt like I was laying on the ground in a sitting position. And they kind of lifted my head a little bit so I could see and I saw my legs and my knees bloody – both knees, bloody. And I said oh my god. So what – a guy came over to the side of the road. He said, “Look, you live across the hall from my girlfriend at Eastern. What's your mother's number, I'll go to a phone and I'll call her.” Do you know I actually thought twice about calling my mother because I was sneaking home! And I said – so I finally gave him the number, and they took me to Wayne County General, and then, after a while my mother came. And I remember saying, “Mother,” she said, “Shut up.”</p>
<p>She told me to shut up because she was getting me out of that hospital and having me sent to Ford where, once I got to Ford they gave me the Last Rites. And I was kind of messed up – I was really messed up. Because it felt like I was laying on big boulder, and anyway – I ended up having an eight-hour operation, and when I woke up I saw my family, and I also saw – I remember saying, I'll teach you to dance. And so, anyway, time went on in the hospital, and after a few weeks, I had surgery – surgery all down my back, because my spinal cord was compressed and wrapped around several vertebrae that were knocked out of whack, and all this caused for the paralysis, and so during the operation they had to pick everything out around the cord and let the cord slither back into place. What an operation, isn’t it? So they didn't think I was going to walk again.</p>
<p>One doctor came out of the room with his fingers crossed, another one said all we can do is wait, and another one said, “Do you have somebody who could push her around in a wheelchair until she gets familiar with it?” So, I was kind of halfway given up, gone. But, as time went by my cord started to heal, I guess, or something started to heal, because I moved my big toe. The doctors started jumping around, and they started the therapy.</p>
<p>And I would say that accident happened like October 1, I was able to get out of the hospital Christmas Eve, so I went to midnight Mass and I could barely walk. I had a steel neck and back brace on. I remember going to Communion and I could hear people crying in the church, because I guess they thought I was never going to come back, and I did. I knew it was time to take things a little more seriously, that's why I told that story, that little piece of story, because I lived for the day. I didn't live for the future, I didn't live for the past. I had an excitement about life, but I needed to put it somewhere. And so, I – in fact, I recorded everything about that accident, the person I became in a book that I finished called <em>She Who Limps is Still Walking</em>. And anyway, so, while I was on campus, okay – the riots started – okay, to make up that time, of missing school, I had to go to summer school, summer of '67, and I happened to be home a weekend. My activism really started the next year, with Martin Luther King's death. But that accident helped me to be at Eastern summer of '67 but be home the weekend of the riot. So I mean, is there another question about -</p>
<p>WW: Oh yeah. Where were your parents living then?</p>
<p>BP: Well, my parents had separated. Both lived – living in Detroit. My mother lived on South Clarendon, over near Grand River and Joy Road area, which is funny because the Grande Ballroom was two blocks from us, and the Grande Ballroom, around '69 or so, Janis Joplin would be there, and all these people. Before that, we had - the Temptations would be there – we had to get fake ID, because we had to be 17 to get in. Fake ID was really easy – we were erasing stuff. It was a real – it wasn't real sophisticated, but – just to see the artists. And at the time, also, I remember St. Cecilia in the earlier Sixties, Dionne Warwick came to perform there at a sock hop and the white kids threw pennies at her. Yes.</p>
<p>WW: That's sad.</p>
<p>BP: And she became a star.</p>
<p>WW: How did you first hear about what was going on?</p>
<p>BP: As far as what – the riot?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah.</p>
<p>BP: Ironically, my boyfriend and I were at the Fox Theater that Saturday night, on a date. We always came back home, driving down Twelfth. Twelfth was the most interesting street in the world. You see the colorful individuals, the – the pimps were – we just – I mean, it's like living vicariously but safely in a car, and going down – we said look at this. You know, you could kind of slow down but it was – it seemed like it was 95 degrees that night. It was so hot. That's what I remember, it was hot and muggy. And he said, “God, if a riot ever started, it'll start over here.” I said, “Yeah, I guess you're right about that.”</p>
<p>So we went on home. Six o'clock in the morning, the next morning, the man who was supposed to take me back to college – because I was home for the weekend – a friend of my mom, who lived on Twelfth, above Dr. Perkin’s office, he said, “I don't know if I can get over there because there's a little riot going on over here.” Now this is like six o'clock in the morning. Six or so hours after we had just driven down there. And so I kind of waited around – my mother told me – until about eight so I could call my boyfriend, you know, I said – there's a riot on Twelfth. He said, “You're kidding.” I said no. He said, “I'll be over to get you.”</p>
<p>So he came over. And as we got closer, we had to park a few blocks away. Wow, this is something, so I remember the dress, and everything I had on that day too. Just a little sundress. But we walked up to Twelfth, and we started walking down the street, and as we walked down the street, they had already broken some windows out, and all of this, and I remember passing a record shop. And you know, we had the 45 records. And I picked up a record, wow, this is my jam, you know. I said, I better put it down.</p>
<p>And so we keep on going, walking down, and then the National Guard was standing at Virginia Park, they were standing straight across Twelfth like that, so we were coming this way, this side of the street. And, see, I'm using this – so imagine yourself coming down – and – from where you are sitting. Anyway, the National Guard was – so we said we'd better stand around. So we just standing around watching people – some people still, they're breaking windows out and all, and I couldn't get over this, and then milling around. I said, the cops are out here, the National Guard is out here. Nobody's doing anything to anybody.</p>
<p>So I turned around and looked in the grocery store. I said, “God, look at all those cookies on that shelf. Sure would like to take some cookies back to school.” So anyway, kept looking. Next thing I know, some guy I did not know came up to me. “Here are your cookies!” Look at those Fizzies. Fizzies were little – they were like the size of Alka Seltzer tablets. And you drop them in a glass of water, and they create a little fizzy pop. You know, soda. I said, well I could have gotten some Fizzies. Next thing I know, somebody else came - “Here's some Fizzies.” Then everybody starts running in this store, but I didn't run in. I said oh my god, even my boyfriend ran in. I said, “Gee, what's happening? They're going to get it. They are going to get it.” They didn't get it. And we ended up with four grocery bags full of stuff. He said, “Come on, let's go.”</p>
<p>So we had to walk, and I remember the helicopters above, and it was such a thing, and people just wave – we waved to the helicopters. It was – it was something so surreal, I can't even – I really can't. What was this we were doing? So he took me home and he took the stuff to his house. I don't think I got anything I took up there. I don't even know if I took the cookies. But some man told me, said, “Look what you started.” I said, “I didn't start anything. I was just saying it.”</p>
<p>But anyway, that was – so, he took me back to school, and it was hard being back to school knowing what was going on down here, because my brother, who – he worked at – he had a little part-time job, he's two years younger than me – he took his car – he and a friend of his went out to Inkster. He asked my mom, “I'm going out to Inkster.” He goes out to Inkster, so the next day I get a phone call in my dorm room. My brother hadn't returned home. I said oh my god, what is going on? Because he went to Inkster. So my mother called my father, and everything. My mother started looking, trying to call people, see if they’d seen him. “No, no way.”</p>
<p>And I remember, too, another thing, the tanks were going down Davison. I mean, they were all over – it was just so surreal, do you get – it was like a war zone, in a way, in the summer. And you know what amazed me too? I don't think it rained that entire week. I know it didn't rain at Eastern and Eastern was only thirty miles from here, but I don't remember any rain. Every day seemed sunny. The police got serious about it I guess by that Sunday night, they got serious. People had to stop this, and because my boyfriend – he and his brothers went back over there and one of his brothers got hurt. He was trying to loot and put his hand through a window or something.</p>
<p>But anyway, I was away from all that. My main concern was my brother. Where was he? They're out searching, searching, and then that Wednesday my mother – and I stopped going to school – I told the teachers, I cannot come in here. I've got to wait to hear from my mother, about my brother. And my mother called, and she said – oh, and another thing, she was still working at Ford Hospital, and one day there was a sniper on one of the roofs of Ford Hospital or something like that. I remember hearing that on the news, and as far as media is concerned, Bill Bonds was the one who kind of – we were – we could be voyeurs, kind of listening to him, or we thought, so we'd watch him every day. It seemed like he was on all day, all night. All day, all night he was on, talking about the riot and showing and say, “Oh look what's happening.” He started kind of editorializing. “Look what's happening.” But he was the face of the riot.</p>
<p>So, my mother called. I said, “Mother, what's up?’ She said “I just came from the morgue.” I said oh god, I just fell on the floor, I was – I just – oh – and so my girlfriend who was there, she picked up the phone, she said, “Miss Louie what? And oh, okay, Brenda, he wasn't there.” You know. I – [laughter] I totally fell apart, I fell apart. And, as I said, they were searching. Finally, that Friday, now remember this was Sunday night he went missing – that Friday, my mother was on the steps. She and father – I think it was Father Moran, the priest – just passed away within the last two years – they were sitting on the steps of 1300 Beaubien, where the police department was, and she heard a big mouth coming out of there saying, “I sure am hungry,” and it was my brother.</p>
<p>She beat him down the street. She just went – and they said the prisoners on the bus were just laughing, they were just having a – what – oh, in the middle of this, just before all this happened, and she discovered him – my dad – I think it was that Wednesday evening or something – he found the car. Just the car. Right, right. And that scared them too. Because you find the car and not the occupants. And he was picked up for curfew. But the bad thing about that is how you going to pick someone up and not let them call? He and his friend were in a cell with about twelve other people, twelve or fourteen other people. Not only black people – white people too, and they were about to get into it at different things, and they were given bologna sandwiches. I mean, it was real cramped quarters, and everything- they had so many people. Now some people got locked up for serious – more serious offenses, but yeah. He was really hungry. My mother said, “I got your food for you.”</p>
<p>So that – that was – I'll never forget. I'll never forget that. And the city – you watched the difference in the city right after that. And then, when Martin Luther King died in April of '68, I was in class at Eastern, was in an evening speech class, and somebody came to the door, asked if they could see me – and I said yes – I was the only black person in the class, and they said, “Martin Luther King just got assassinated, blah blah blah,” so I turned to the class and the teacher said, “Martin Luther King just got assassinated” and one white boy in the class said “That's just like someone getting hit by a car to me. I don't give a damn.” And I said what? The teacher said “Brenda, go on, go on.”</p>
<p>That night we kind of galvanized. Everybody just kind of marched around, and there was this one little guy we called Cricket and Cricket got up on the car, he said “Don't march! Don't do anything!” Somebody knocked Cricket off the car. But, so Eastern canceled classes for a couple of days. And I noticed another thing, when I was going back to Eastern that Sunday, the day of the riot, there were people coming from Ypsi or Chicago or whatever on I-94 and they had trailers hitched to their cars – empty trailers. And then there was someone down the street from my mother then – they burned their old furniture, they took it all out in the back, because we burned things in the alley then. The garbage was burned in the alley – our trash, paper trash. In Detroit, that's where it was. They had the garbage cans, but the paper trash, they had, you just burned it. And they burned their furniture, moved new furniture in, then the cops raided the house, took the furniture out. Yes. It just seemed like people from miles around saw what they called opportunity.</p>
<p>WW: We've heard a couple other stories like that.</p>
<p>BP: Huh?</p>
<p>WW: We've heard a couple other stories like that.</p>
<p>BP: Right. And so, from then on I became active. I even was kind of active in the SDS, I guess, the SDS – is that the Students?</p>
<p>WW: For a Democratic Society.</p>
<p>BP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. And because it was coming a time, when Richard Nixon started rearing his head, and they were talking about the silent majority. I said, what is this all about? I had a new discovery of what it was to be black. You know, I said, let me pay attention to this, something I hadn't really paid as much of attention to, and I got into Nina Simone real heavy. I was the first girl on campus to have an afro. And I'll never forget the day I wore that afro. Everybody was looking – looking at me. I mean, it's just – and I said I've got to dress cute every time I wear this afro – you know, I was real self-conscious of the afro, I said I don't want to look like a boy, you know, but I wore that afro and I remember my cousin – he was going to Harvard at the time – and he said, he said, “Are you militant?” I said, “I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not.” [laughter] I just said that.</p>
<p>But yeah, I started getting involved. That's when I started getting involved with things. And I was – it's funny now – and I was telling somebody this – or mentioning it on my show yesterday – that you would have thought I was – you know – if Bernie Sanders would have run at that time, I had the same philosophy. I had – I guess – a lot of socialist philosophies for a minute, and – but, you know, things evolved into something else as time went by. And my whole thing with all of this is injustice. I never quite knew, though, why I wasn't feeling that tension in Detroit, that people said was there, when the riots started. I think it just started – didn't they bust a blind pig or something?</p>
<p>WW: Mm hm.</p>
<p>BP: And I just thought that people just started fighting and protesting and it kind of evolved into something else. I don't think, initially, it was meant – see, people call it, and I have discussions with my friends, who say “Well, the rebellion —” I said, that wasn't a rebellion, that was a riot. It was a riot. I was there. I saw it. A lot of people – they weren't talking about injustice. I was talking to everybody on the street that day. I can't tell you about what they were talking about, but 40-something people got killed during that time. Mmhmm. I remember that so vividly, and my mother had to take the bus to work, I was so worried about her, too. And I mean, she would – she missed a day looking for my brother but still, you know, she had to go to work, and – Detroit was a city, too, that when she worked afternoons and get off at 11 at night, she could still take that bus home and walk home, and she did not – she never was robbed, she never was accosted. But the fear was in us, from the Big Four. You've heard about the Big Four? STRESS [Stop The Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets], all of a sudden, the – huh?</p>
<p>WW: STRESS was afterwards.</p>
<p>BP: After – yeah, it was after the Big Four. I'm just going on - just thinking – and the thing about it was, I had an encounter with the Big Four but my encounter was because in 1969, I got married, I was just 21. And we lived – my husband, he was in the Army Reserve, and we went to – so I lived in that part, with that flat – upstairs flat – of Dr. Perkin’s office. That's where my mother's friend lived who was on Twelfth. And we kind of rented it out from him, we kind of sublet it. And I'll never forget this – this – it seems like drugs started exploding. I mean, you heard more about drugs, and all of that. And I was taking the bus – I was still at Eastern – I was taking the bus from Twelfth, where I was – I had to take a couple of buses so I could get to Telegraph and Fenkell, and a girl would pick me up at Telegraph and Fenkell and all this, but one night – I think Johnny Carson was on, I'm pretty sure – and I heard at the – remember, I'm over a dentist's office – I heard boom! Boom! Against the back door downstairs of the dentist's office.</p>
<p>It was kind of winter time; it was icy. I said oh my god. I've got to call the police because the dentist's office had been robbed for drugs before. I called the police, I said somebody's trying to get in, and I gave them the address. And so I went downstairs to the front door so I could see the police when they came. Well, I don't know what happened. I didn't see the police, but all of a sudden I see these men coming down the same stairs to my living room, and it was the Big Four. I said, “Ahhhh!” They said, “We're the cops.” So they said, “We want you to go downstairs with us.”</p>
<p>Apparently the people had gotten the back door open, but then they ran. So I said okay, I will. So I went downstairs – we went downstairs. Took me through the dentist's office – how would I know what was missing? Anyway, as we came back out of the dentist's office to get ready to go back upstairs to my house, I heard what I felt was a little crackling of something. I said you didn't check the basement. And nobody was down there, but I – it was crazy. My - Oh! The sound I heard, I know what it was. When my girlfriend – she was my roommate at the time, because my husband was gone and I needed someone to help with the rent. The – I let the Big Four out the back door and there was a big thing to put over the back door and everything. So we were going upstairs I hear this crack – I said, they didn't check the basement, run! And I pushed her, and she said “damn, you didn't have to push me!” I said get upstairs, get upstairs, and we locked the door, and I ran to the window, and I remember going to the Big Four – they were out there and they jumped out the car, all four of them – I let them in the door. What I heard was really the crackling of the ice on the side of the house as they were walking. It was crazy.</p>
<p>But the tension – because at that time, also, so many people were getting killed around us. I mean, this – Detroit totally changed. It was totally changed. You could be at a place where – you could be an innocent bystander. Everything changed. Everything changed after the riot. And maybe reality was striking or something, but I was seeing a lot more than I ever knew. And then people – and so, at one point, I remember writing – well, I wrote a play that my students performed, it was called <em>Sixties Girl</em>, and in the play, I have a white young lady and a black young lady who had grown up together walking down the street, and she said “You're moving?” the black girl said. “Yeah,” and the white girl says “Yes, I'm moving to some place called Southfield.” And she says “Southfield, I've never heard of that.” And see, at that time, and it was interesting because the play I was doing was at Southfield High, because I taught 22 years at Southfield High – and I wanted to let people know what was going on in '68 Detroit and all. So – we were still – oh, and as far as socially, before all this we were having the waistline parties, all kind of parties in the basement. It wasn't shooting – just everything changed. Even the music changed. “War, What is it Good For? Absolutely Nothing.” “What's Going On?” The music changed. Everything changed. Our so-called innocence was gone. We had to really look around.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you very much for sitting down with me. Do you have anything else you'd like to add?</p>
<p>BP: No. No, I don't think so. You know, if there wasn't a question, I'm good, I believe. I'm good, I believe. But it just – I hated how it changed. That I didn't feel the safety anymore. Because we used to go on bus dates, before – say the boyfriends had a car – the boy would walk over to our house, we'd get on the bus, come down here to the movies, then go back on the – get on the bus. I mean, it was – I never felt unsafe. It just changed.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you very much for sitting down with me.</p>
<p>BP: I'm sorry I made the story so long.</p>
<p>WW: No problem at all.</p>**
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Brenda Perryman
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit Historical Museum
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YLRDsmKcEmA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Brenda Perryman, March 19th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Perryman discusses growing up attending multi-racial parochial schools in the Detroit area, as well as a life-changing car accident and her role in the events of July 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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05/24/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-US
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Catholic Education
Curfew
Detroit Community Members
Eastern Michigan University
Fox Theater
Governor George Romney
Henry Ford Hospital
Hudson's Department Store
Looting
Marr School
Martin Luther King Jr.
Michigan National Guard
President Lyndon B. Johnson
Tanks
The Big Four
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/8cf8d3d6f236f3236a816a7e2dee6085.JPG
a1f86a7815e8fa18d739d48136e42cbd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Carter Stevenson
Brief Biography
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Carter Stevenson was born in Detroit in 1946 and grew up in Delray. He attended Cass Tech and Mercy College and was very active in civil rights movements in Detroit.
Interviewer's Name
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Giancarlo Stefanutti
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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07/23/2016
Interview Length
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00:47:27
Transcriptionist
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Hannah Sabal
Transcription Date
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08/05/2016
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<p>CS: [My name is Carter] Stevenson. I was born in Detroit, 1946. I went to public schools in Detroit. McMellan Elementary School from kindergarten through grade 8. Cass Tech High School for high school, and I also went to Henry Ford Related Trades and University of Michigan in the Rackham Center. Lastly, at the time of the riot, I was a student at Mercy College. I had worked in my neighborhood, in my community, in Del Ray before I could, you know—my family was very much a part of the community there. My dad had baseball teams, he organized a boys’ club. I had gone to Presbyterian neighborhood services in the area. We had a lot of family interaction in terms of things that went on there. I graduated from high school in 1964. There was always rumblings of things that were going to happen. I remember the freedom schools on the north end, around Northern High School. I don’t know if he’s still alive, I think Chuck Colding was one of the people involved with that. Of course, Judy Walker and guy who’s an attorney now, but they were involved in that. Through my community activity, I was involved through the Presbyterian Neighborhood Services. That organization or that presence changed names over the course of the time, and there were events that brought about that. Presbyterian Neighborhood Services became Protestant Community Services and eventually became People’s Community Services. Each time there was a change, there was an event that was related to it. It’s sort of a distraction to go through it, but it’s important to know that that’s how it evolved. But through that social services institution, we had a presence in terms of things that were going on. They were not just present in Del Ray, but they were also present in Hamtramck, they were present in some other areas of the city. Through the torch drive and UCS, there were a lot of social services, folks who were looking at conditions and things. During those times, they would get together and talk about things that were imminent or happening. During that summer, there were rumblings that something was going to happen. It’s 1967, after graduating from high school I had gone to work for the city of Detroit. I was a stationary steamer apprentice. I worked in my neighborhood, literally on Jefferson and Junction.</p>
<p>GS: Moving back just a little bit, as far as growing up, what neighborhood did you say you lived in?</p>
<p>CS: Del Ray.</p>
<p>GS: Del Ray. Was that a very racially integrated neighborhood?</p>
<p>CS: Historically, yes. Even then, and as it is now, yes. It didn’t always feel like it, but it was. To play baseball in my neighborhood my uncle had to be conversant in three different languages. There was a church there, Holy Cross, where the priests had mass on Sunday in two different languages, and neither one was English. When I was a freshman in college, I tried to organize against what now became—what now is the Water Sewage Treatment program. We tried to organize against Urban Renewal to the extent that we were interested in stopping the imminent domain from depossessing residents of their properties to build the Water and Sewage Treatment program. What had happened was that there were a lot of people who spoke Polish and Hungarian as a first language and only language who were still living there, and the younger folks who were bilingual were getting better prices for their property under imminent domain, and we tried to organize with Father Jacobs—Father Jacobs was the priest at Holy Cross—to help the other people who didn’t speak English get better prices for the acquisition of their properties. It was an internal conflict and turmoil, so when I got to college, I was looking for people who could speak Polish and Hungarian to do that, which, of course, made me somewhat notorious at my campus, because there was this guy trying to influence people to volunteer in his neighborhood. Yes, the neighborhood was like that. It had always been that way. To some large part, it still is.</p>
<p>GS: Moving to the 60s, you said you heard some “rumblings.” Could you expand upon that a little more?</p>
<p>CS: Yeah, well, before I quit my job at the city, 1965, I had gone to some meetings where people were talking about not taking it anymore. What was interesting was that there were people who—I had gone to meetings with people who were interested in not taking it anymore and doing something about it. I remember guys being really highly upset about what was going on. By the same token, one of the guys I worked with had me go to another meeting, and they were the opposition to the people who were doing the other stuff. I’m an 18-year-old kid who’s sort of interested in civic affairs but somewhat unknowledgeable. So what I would do invariably, though, is a lot of reading. I’d read all the literature and see if I could figure out which side was I on, because it was very evident that there were different sides. There also was this precursor to Americore, which they called VISTA: Volunteers in Service to America. What that basically was was an avenue for some religious kids who were liberal in persuasion, some college kids who were looking to have summer jobs. They would come or join VISTA, it was either a summer experience or maybe even a year-long experience. They’d come and live in these areas and they were going to do good. It was like a domestic Peace Corp. Well, Delray is probably the lowest socioeconomic status by definition area in Detroit, so the VISTAs were located in my neighborhood, stationed there. Of course, it always intrigued me that there would be people coming in to help my neighborhood because it wasn’t like—well, it was my neighborhood! I considered myself their ambassador and guide, since they were coming there and they were going to help basically the extended neighborhood, which also is my extended family. When the VISTAs came, I would make myself known to them and we’d become friends. When these people came, we’d do that. We paled around with them. I remember it very well. I got taken to what turned out to be historical kind of event in Detroit. It was the Winter Soldier protest. Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland were at this place in midtown, which later became my actual church, but they were speaking. I remember going there because there was some VISTAs who actually lived there too. Since I wasn’t too much younger than most of the folks who had come to work in my neighborhood, I kind of palled around with them. By then, I’m working for the city, initially, and then I quit the city and went to college. Now we’re at the eve of the civil disturbance, which is what Romney called it. He did that for insurance reasons. It would depend on how the events were classified as to whether or not the people who had commercial losses would be indemnified or would get money. So if you called it a riot, then that was usually excluded from a commercial business, commercial insurance. So when Romney was asked about the events in Detroit, he said, “Oh, no, we had a civil disturbance,” which means then that the insurance companies had to pay the people for their losses. What things are called had a big impact on what was going to happen in the aftermath.</p>
<p>GS: Moving to the civil disturbance itself, where were you when you first heard about it?</p>
<p>CS: I was in college. I was going to summer school, taking a Latin-American history class. But I also was working for Protestant Community Services—back then, that was what it was called—in a program called Summer Weekend-Evening Entertainment Program, SWEEP. That basically was to avert civil disturbance. Obviously, that didn’t happen. But I was working with VISTAs, and it was sort of my summer job as I was going to college. The first night, ostensibly—and there are lots of different perspectives on how things happened—but ostensibly, on 12<sup>th</sup> Street, there was the shooting of a prostitute named Cynthia Scott at an after-hours bar. That was the spark. That’s one way of looking at it. To that point of view, one of the people who they interviewed as a consequence of that was a guy that I had gone to high school with. They were twin brothers, Charlie and Wilbur Marshall. Charlie Marshall I knew a little better than I did his twin brother. But it was his twin brother, I believe, who was a witness to the shooting. That was the spark and things sort of got out of control. Now another way of looking at the same event were some of the things that had been happening before then. Another perspective was the evolution of the police officers as a bargaining unit and as a political force. Police as—police organizing, or police department as a unit—much like the other organizations and unions in the Detroit area, organized labor—that was, at the time, that was beginning to happen in this country and it really did start in Detroit. The Detroit Police Officers Association was just beginning to formulate, and I think they had, Carl Parcell was the chief organizer. I don’t know that I could prove that there was a blue flu, but there was certainly a reduction in law enforcement as it related to dealing with, monitoring and preventing crime on the streets. Some folks might call it a blue flu, but everybody knew that folks were getting away with a lot. There was also a newspaper strike. The word on what was happening inside of Detroit was not good as far as communications were concerned. The then mayor, Jerome Cavanagh, had been elected primarily as a—it wasn’t exactly a fluke, but he had been elected and run against the power structure of Louis Miriani, who I guess subsequently may have spent some time in jail, even. They’re both Catholic, they’re both white. Cavanagh was running to represent truth and justice. Miriani was the old establishment. The setting was right for the police officers to actually do their organizing because the situation was fluid. It was a better time for them, I guess, to do it. Now, this happened, starting in Detroit, and was true all over the country in terms of policemen organizing. It’s difficult to say that people talk about looking back at it. Historically, sit-down strikes were an effective tool in organizing unions. Blue flus is still such a sensitive kind of a thing that you don’t say that to police who are shirking their duty.</p>
<p>GS: You were in college when you first heard about it, the civil disturbance starting. How were you reacting and how were the other people around you reacting?</p>
<p>CS: Well, I used to commute by bus to Mercy College. I couldn’t get there. First day, I kind of stayed in. When they called the National Guard, I don’t remember which day it was. I remember going on my porch and a guy came by on a jeep and on the jeep he had an anti-aircraft gun. I’m standing on my porch. This guy pointed the anti-aircraft gun at me and said, “Go back in the house.” I went back in the house. There’s nothing like having an anti-aircraft gun being pointed at you. So I went back in the house, but I decided that I was going to do something, from that point on. Because we already had the facility, I started to go to find out what kind of things happened. These folks that we were working with, with SWEEP, had meeting and went around the room, talking about things that were happening, and I can remember one of the guys that was involved in that program had been a civil rights worker. He and his wife had both been involved there and were looking at things and part of the stuff that I was supposed to do was keep the lid on and keep young people active during the course of that summer. We had pool tables, and we were running a pool program, doing all kinds of things to keep the lid on because folks were afraid that something was going to happen. Somebody else said, “Well, it happened in the area that we were working in, and we had our nose to the ground.” I decided that I was going to take on, as my running buddy, the guy who had been the civil rights worker. He was from Chicago and he and his first wife had gone south to Alabama to be involved in what was going on. She had gotten killed down there. Then he met his second wife. There was a whole kind of subculture in terms of people who had been involved in SNCC and had gone south from the Detroit area and were coming back. Those folks were generally about four or five years older than I was, so I missed the civil rights movement. That was terrible. So I had to be involved in something, so I was involved in this in terms of this stuff. The adventure was very high, my sense of adventure. We’re out there doing this stuff and I happened to be tagging along with the Scott B., was his name. We went to a house over on—I can’t remember exactly the address—but we were in the shadow of the seminary, Sacred Heart. In the grotto there they had a statue of a Madonna. We’re in there talking with this family. The family became kind of famous, and still are, sort of. One of the little boys—I say little boy, I was 20, 21, he must have been about 14—came in, him and his buddies had painted in that grotto the Madonna, which was cast, and they painted it black. He came in and he said, “We painted the statue black.” He was just sort of beaming, because it was his act of civil disobedience. There wasn’t much else going on with those folks involved in that kind of stuff because obviously the program that we were dealing with had not been successful in averting something. So the next thing that happened was that anybody who was caught on the streets was being picked up. They were putting rioters or suspected rioters or potential rioters or people who fit the general description, myself included, in jail. They put them in jail in Detroit and they put them in jail any place that they could put them.</p>
<p>GS: So you, yourself, were arrested?</p>
<p>CS: No, I wasn’t. But they were putting people in jail, and then I found out about the Detroit Defenders Association who were trying to get people out of jail. But there was another step between those, and that step was identifying and locating people who were picked up and put in jail, so we could notify their families. I joined. So I’m at the now deceased judge Claudia Morcum. Her name then was Shropsher. I guess she had married a couple of times. Her maiden name had been House, and her nephew and I had played football together at high school. He was one of the guys who was maybe a year, year and a half older than me, because I started high school fairly early. I was like 12. He might have been as much as 14 when we started high school. I’m not sure if he left high school to go and be involved in the civil rights movement, but he might have. I don’t know if he graduated with our class. In any event, this was his aunt. What we were doing was finding people, locating them, and then notifying their families. So they gave me something else to do during the riots. I did that. I met a guy two years later at a Midwest United Nations seminar, workshop. I couldn’t—his name just sort of hung with me. Then it dawned on me that he was from Sandusky, Ohio. He had gotten off a bus at the bus terminal in Detroit, been picked up, and transported to Milan, Michigan for incarceration. Because he was a suspect. There were people as far away as Milan. There were people—anywhere they could lock folks up, they were locking them up. Our job was to find them. That was my job during what was going on. I mentioned to you that the kids, the Hankerson boy, went and painted that Madonna black. Now, that was significant for three reasons: one reason was that the aftermath in terms of what happened was that there was an artist named Glanton Dowdell, and Glanton Dowdell did a portrait of a black Madonna. That was, you know, important because it was at that time a significant statement in terms of what was going on. The other reason, second reason was the Reverend Albert Cleage changed his name and renamed his church to Shrine of the Black Madonna. That’s two. But what I think is significant is that after the riots were over, in that grotto, the people—I guess it was Sacred Heart Seminary—went back and they repainted the Madonna white. Then they had some consciousness and they thought about the significance of the act, and then they went back and painted it black again. That was fairly significant, I thought. So those three things came out of that one event. Police Officers’ Association became POAM: Police Officer’s Association of America [Michigan]. Leadership nationally, in terms of police officers as an organized entity, that leadership came out of Detroit. I witnessed a parade down 12<sup>th</sup> Street that lasted an hour or maybe an hour and a half. I think the organization as called BCA: Black Construction Association. These were basically black contractors who said that they wanted to be part of the solution in terms of the rebuilding of not just 12<sup>th</sup> Street, but Detroit and any areas where there was stuff. That parade had a total media blackout. I mean, no television, no radio, no newspapers, no ethnic newspapers, no ethnic radio, no nothing. No one—I don’t know if you’ve heard this before—saw it. No one reported it. No one talked about it. If you hadn’t been there, you would never have known that any of this stuff had gone on. It was over. I went back to college, I got an Incomplete for my History of Latin America. The president of the school, who was a nun, asked me to take her and show her the area because she knew that I had been involved in it. So I did, and I took her to the Shrine of the Black Madonna. We went there and the kid that painted the Madonna is generally credited with being one of the founders of techno music. You know what I mean. His name is [unintelligible]. I think he’s the music director for one of the casinos here, in town. After that, they came up with New Detroit.</p>
<p>GS: All right. Is there anything else you’d like to add?</p>
<p>CS: No.</p>
<p>GS: All right, thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
Original Format
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audio
Duration
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47min 27sec
Interviewer
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Giancarlo Stefanutti
Interviewee
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Carter Stevenson
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GmWcF4Osiyg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Carter Stevenson, July 23rd, 2016
Description
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In this interview, Stevenson talks about how he got involved in the civil rights movement in Detroit and his participation in identifying prisoners during the unrest and informing their families. He also discusses at length the history of the Shrine of the Black Madonna church.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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08/09/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Civil Rights Movement
Detroit Community Members
Governor George Romney
Shrine of the Black Madonna
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/fd80da09f879d067b324a0ebd801e6ba.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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The following are the answers to the questions that were sent to me:
1. I was born at the Dearborn Hospital on February 11, 1945, which was Sunday, the 7th Day of the week. 11th day of the month, born at 7:11 a.m, weighed 7 lbs 11 oz., and the seventh child of eleven born to Pelagia & Stephen Smigielski. When the doctor that delivered me found out that I was the 7th child, he followed my Dad home, for the delivery charge of $75.00 (my Mother's regular doctor was on vacation).
2. I grew up at 8682 Smart which was an ethnic Polish neighborhood, three blocks from the Desoto plant, which was at McGraw & Wyoming. It was a five bedroom home, and in an all white Polish neighborhood. i graduated from St. Vincent High School in 1963, went into the military in May of 1964 came home in May of 1966, lived there at 8682 Smart until August of 1967 when i got married on August 5, 1967.
3. I was transferred to the A&P supermarket in September of 1966 and promoted to produce manager, to clean up that store, which was in terrible shape.It took me a couple of weeks, and the customers really enjoyed the job that I did for that store. It was clean, had fresh vegetables and fruit, and I increased sales 100%. I also enjoyed great relationship with the African-American neighborhood. they knew me by my first name, "Greg".
4. On July 23, 1967, I attended the 2:30 a.m. Mass at Holy Trinity (6th & Michigan) before going into work at 4:00 a.m. at the A&P Store at W.Grand Blvd. & Linwood. I had keys to the store, and always opened up at 4:00a.m., locked myself in, set up the store, and let the rest of the employees in at 8:00 a.m, store opened for business at 9:00 a.m, the Store Manager came in at noon to relieve me.
5. After the store closed at 6:00 pm., it was vandalized, windows were broken out, and the looting began. 15,000 businesses and homes were vandalized, looted, and set on fire. Governor George Romney had called in the National Guard to help the Detroit Police Dept., and the State Police patrol the streets.
6. The city of Detroit has never recovered from that fateful day in July. There are still 40,000 homes that have to demolished, which has been going downhill ever since. The population is only one-third of what it was 50 years ago, with an 80% African-American population, yet a white write-in candidate was elected Mayor, and who has been doing an outstanding job, but will never reach the population that it was in 1967.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Greg Smigielski
Submission Date
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07/21/2016
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Greg Smigielski
Description
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Greg Smigeilski was a manager at the A&P on West Grand Boulevard and Linwood the summer of 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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08/19/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society
Format
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Workers
Governor George Romney
Looting
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/a52b7e44e6f25782354903a7f97c0ee7.jpg
8b948fb5f090391e0cdb925f4ea39cd6
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Jerome Pikulinski
Brief Biography
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Jerome Pikulinski was born May 20, 1955 in Detroit, MI. In 1967 he was a contract training director for the City of Detroit’s War on Poverty. He was living in Dearborn, MI in 1967.
Interviewer's Name
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Lily Wilson
Noah Levinson
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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08/14/2015
Interview Length
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01:00:02
Transcriptionist
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Robert Lazich
Transcription Date
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07/03/2016
Transcription
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<p> [INITIALS OF INTERVIEWEE:] JP</p>
<p>[INTIALS OF INTERVIEWER:] LW</p>
<p>[REPEAT INITIALS EACH TIME EACH PERSON SPEAKS]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>LW: Today is August 14, 2015. This is the interview of Jerome Pikulinski by Lily Wilson. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project and the Detroit Historical Society. Jerome, can you start by telling us when and where you were born?</p>
<p>JP: I was born here in Detroit, Michigan in 1938 -- born in a house, not a hospital.</p>
<p>LW: In July of 1967, where were you living, specifically what neighborhood?</p>
<p>JP: I was, at that time, in Livonia, Michigan.</p>
<p>LW: What were you doing for work then?</p>
<p>JP: At that time I was an employee of the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, Wayne State, University of Michigan. I was deployed as a contract training director for the city of Detroit’s War of Poverty. I was based on the Wayne State University campus and developed a core training staff there to later carry out the mission.</p>
<p>LW: What was your day-to-day job like during that time?</p>
<p>JP: Well, I had an all minority staff except for one lady, a white lady. I had to train people to be trainers. I had all the resources of Wayne State University, the various departments, to deal in general semantics, to deal in the perception laboratory, to deal in the video training facility. I had done some work earlier with Michigan Bell Telephone. They had asked us to work with their white staff who were having difficulty training new minority members. I put together a program that changed the perceptions and attitudes of trainers. It gave me some credibility in behavioral terms and on working on this complex problem. We also involved community people in the sensory reactor element. We used to use the term “training up.” It was an opportunity for people in the community to speak to others about what they felt, what they thought what was needed in the way of training and the like.</p>
<p>LW: So how did you go about changing the perceptions of the people you were training to work with minorities?</p>
<p>JP: Well, the first thing we did is have regular meetings with them --- personal, it was more like let’s have lunch, let’s have somebody be a speaker, let’s plan an event. But we had people on campus people who were experts on general semantics. So we played games with them about what do things mean and what are the different meanings of things, how do we give expressions to our feelings, how do our feelings affect how we name things. Then we also had on campus a person who had access to a laboratory where again it is perception. You know this room with the false dimensions and it is the rotating, wobbling figure that shows we are conditioned to perspective since birth. We ran them through all those kinds of things and we were really raising doubts in them about “what do you know?’ We weren’t telling them anything, we were asking them how do you know, can you be sure, how do you feel about what you’re doing. The graduation program, we went into the television facility and we fed them back images of themselves responding to various teaching situations. We got a general recognition on the part of the people that, “my God, we’ve got to look at this differently” and they were looking at it differently. Well, we didn’t have any long term follow up but it was perceived to have been a success.</p>
<p>LW: This would have been white people that you were working with?</p>
<p>JP: Yes. Ladies.</p>
<p>LW: All white women?</p>
<p>JP: All white women.</p>
<p>LW: You were attempting to – what was the end result, what was the end goal of the project?</p>
<p>JP: We wanted them to accept the differences that they were experiencing with the new black candidates things which they had not experienced before with the previous white people they had trained.</p>
<p>LW: What year did you begin that project?</p>
<p>JP: That was done about the spring of ‘66.</p>
<p>LW: From your perspective, what was the biggest challenge between the white and black communities in Detroit right at that time in 1966?</p>
<p>JP: I think Detroit was reacting to the immigration (laughs) migration of so many people from the south who were coming in and the statistics were explosive and phenomenal. There were other problems but this was a new experience for Detroit to have this migration. In the literature today there are many analyses of how migrations affect culture and give rise to conflict.</p>
<p>LW: So you felt that what later happened what happened in July of 1967, do you think that was also –</p>
<p>JP: You know, I was very much surprised and the reason I was surprised --- coming out of Wayne State University and the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations I thought we all had a pretty good handle as to what was going on. I mean, the Community Action Program was in place and we really had guys like Ron Haughton who had negotiated in California under Pat Brown the Cesar Chavez Protests. Here we had in our own community an outstanding leader in terms of racial economic issues and I think we were really surprised. I don’t think we expected that. I will say this, though – these are now only commentaries. One of the things that was of concern as we look back on this was the political decision making with respect to the use of force in conflict resolution, an optimism that somehow this would work itself out and it did not work itself out. It was inflammatory and explosive. That was one part of the picture. The other thing that we learned later is that groups like SLCL, SNCC, Core, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress on Racial Equality. Later, when I was involved in the spring of 1967, there were people who asked me to help them identify which of these groups might be operating in Detroit. This is a problem we have in managing what would ordinarily be very difficult relations with a minority group, whether it’s a black community or a Latino community you add the element of political activists you have an explosive situation. You do not have a rational alternative. You like to believe you could compromise but there isn’t any end state; it’s an ongoing conflict. Those groups have an investment in a staff point of view and a charter point of view in continuing their activities.</p>
<p>LW: Tell me a bit about those groups and your knowledge of them.</p>
<p>JP: Much later I came to understand that but early in the spring to help identify at least one of those groups. I don’t recall which it was because some people went to an organizing meeting of one of these groups and identified their work.</p>
<p>LW: What were they doing?</p>
<p>JP: Well, community meetings were very difficult -- this even goes into ’66 into ’67. There would be public meetings when government officials tried to explain things to people and there were activists who would take the stage and take the microphone. It was very conflict-oriented, so I don’t know what more can be said about this but the tactics that these groups employed were violence – not full force, but they were inclined to use violence.</p>
<p>LW: These were predominantly black or white groups?</p>
<p>JP: No, these were black groups.</p>
<p>LW: So, the Southern Christian Leadership, you said?</p>
<p>JP: Southern Christian Leadership Conference, I think – SCLC.</p>
<p>LW: Student Nonviolent --</p>
<p>JP: Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress on Racial Equality.</p>
<p>LW: Those were actually groups of black people in this area in Detroit who actually did use some form of violence to make their case.</p>
<p>JP: You know, the interesting thing is I think they were promoting this. It’s just like Al-Qaeda. There is a core management group that trains the next cadre to go out and shed blood, so to speak – to engage in conflict. So it’s very hard to say that those groups themselves were exercising violent techniques but they were encouraging it and feeding it. It’s like what we see in Ferguson – In Arlington, Texas we have a problem right now, in fact I’m going to meet our police chief at the end of this month. This black youth problem is very difficult. It’s a sense that youth is hard to deal with and minority youth is even harder to deal with. Where drugs and alcohol and the like come in to play it can be even more complex. We have a situation in Arlington, Texas where we had a guy who must have been under the influence of drugs running into a Buick dealership and jumping on cars, driving his car through a gate, finally driving his car into a dealership. But the people who are going to look at this, they discount all that. “Black Lives are Very Important.” So, no matter what, you never shoot anybody. From the point of view of law enforcement and the like -- just like these trainers, for example. We got a problem that we need to train police officers in psychiatric concepts. That’s one of the things I’m going to talk to the police chief about in Arlington, Texas. I’ve run for office in Arlington many times so that was one of my planks the last time around, which was to train a new special class of police officer. They said, “Well, we have people who are negotiators.” I said, “No, not negotiators. People who understand how a body of energy, a person, translates in anger, aggression, hostility and all these things and how you can possibly diffuse some of that.” The problem of the people who carry out violence is a spectrum. It’s anything from people who are promoting it to people who are likely candidates among which or among whom violence can be encouraged.</p>
<p>LW: Did you feel that groups that were condoning violence were condoning or encouraging violence in the ‘60s, do you think that was a major challenge against the type of work that people like yourself was doing to try to break down some racial barriers? Or what do you think the biggest challenge was if not that?</p>
<p>JP: This really started with the strategies that civil rights groups were using in the South to provoke violence. It’s the whole thing of “I’m innocent. I didn’t do anything. But you came and beat me on the head.” But of you march down a Southern street it’s like yelling “Fire” in a theater. Culturally, these people who organize this … there’s a legend that LBJ suggested to some of these black leaders that he needed something like what was taking place in the South to carry out a civil rights legislative program. It really gets to be hairy.</p>
<p>LW: So, in terms of violent activity, you think that some of that, that the precedent for that was set down South?</p>
<p>JP: I really do. I think that was the staging area for that. Because there were people who fled the South. They brought with them their attitudes and hostility.</p>
<p>LW: I want to go back to the project you worked on back in 1966 in the spring.</p>
<p>JP: We had a staff of about … there were four key trainers and I had 4-8 of these community people. That lent credibility to what we were doing. In race relations you always get this thing of “You don’t know what we’re doing. You’re trying to teach us and tell us what to do. We will teach you.” That’s a “training up” kind of concept. I had this group and I had a house on the Wayne State Campus. We would hold regular meetings and sessions and I would have people that were faculty from Wayne State come over as my resource people. So some of the same sorts of things that we did with the Michigan Bell trainers we tried on this group. We really wanted to get their perceptions as clear and clean as we could possibly do it before they went out. In other words, I was in conflict with a number of people at that point because they said I was irrelevant and I was not really promoting change. I was so much of a technician that what I cared about was training a group of people who could go out and work within the community. I jokingly say this was the establishment counterrevolution program that never really succeeded. This is also the period of Vietnam and enclaves and a lot of social experimentation and thinking about culture and its effect and conflict in war. We exposed these people to all these operations. I was in conflict. I had a white woman, a staff member, several people said she was a well known communist in Russia. This is why I don’t put some of this stuff in my resume. I started out doing some doctorate work at the University of Michigan. They didn’t like me. They told me they didn’t like my association with things I had done – you’re not the type of guy we have in the business school. Maybe that’s another discussion. Anyway…</p>
<p>LW: Sorry to interrupt. The Wayne State faculty, were they black? Were they black faculty that came and contributed?</p>
<p>JP: No, they was only one guy – Leonard was his name – a political science guy. One political science guy was always looking in and offering advice and suggestion. He’s the only minority faculty member. These faculty members were all white.</p>
<p>LW: The people you were training and the community members…?</p>
<p>JP: Were all black.</p>
<p>LW: The workers you said were actually going to train were an all white group, majority white women.</p>
<p>JP: No, I was preparing a core black staff to work with the community action centers and groups out in the community. The curriculum was “Culture of Poverty,” the next one was “Communication and Communication Skills.” We even had a communication specialist who had a philosophy that was really neat. She would persuade people that they were not being changed, they didn’t need to change. Their personalities were fine; you are wonderful. She did a great job of bringing people out as communicators. So in the communications thing, we really tried to build confidant communicators. So if we put messages out into the community these people would do it. Now you have to remember there are people around me who are saying “Hey, we need change. We need action! We need political stuff.” Here I am going, “Now wait a minute. I’m training these people to be in effect change agents.” We didn’t use that concept at the time. But I was in great conflict because I was taken on and said that I was irrelevant and I wasn’t doing my job.</p>
<p>LW: Who was saying that?</p>
<p>JP: Primarily my black communist staff member undermining me. Because it was a real issue. The discussion at that time was what role does structure play in our communication and is it just a matter of process. That was one of the things that she was driving home. Here I am structuring. We need to have more handholding meetings. Those are the kinds of things that explode all over the place. They are much harder to manage and they aren’t well directed or easily directed. So actually I had to put together with the help of some of my staff, my secretary, documentation so that I went before a number of administrators who wanted to hang me but they couldn’t hang me because we were doing the job. They want to knock me out of this chair.</p>
<p>LW: With regard to the way you were training the black staff to go out into the community, what were some of the things you found to be more effective in terms of not necessarily training them, but what were some of the things that they could do once they were trained and going out into the community?</p>
<p>JP: We got this far: before you train in the community, you train the community action staff. We actually had first meetings of community action staff. We were training the war on poverty people to think through the problems that they were confronting. We were creating the next level of people. What’s the culture of poverty? It involves aggression, it involves hostility, it involves despair. So even side-by-side you have some of the most heart wrenching problems in society, some of the most vicious kinds of problems that you have to deal with. We wanted to discuss with the staff people that they were working in this environment of a culture of poverty. These are the things they are dealing with. These are the givens, the things we want to change. We really want to move behavior in the direction of constructive ends. We didn’t get that far. Let me go back to my story. This conflict was so great that I overcame the resistance from administrators and the subversive element on my staff. I beat that. The next thing I couldn’t beat was all this sentiment that “this is irrelevant, that this has nothing to do with solving our problems.” I was the victim of a community tribunal. You wouldn’t believe that this would happen in America. This is the problem with collective bargaining and conflict resolution people. They believe they can negotiate the settlement. We might be heading in the wrong direction but we’ve got peace today. Are you with me on this? People with interest in conflict management what they want to do is get the fire down to controllable levels. They don’t expect that they will ever be able to put the fire out.</p>
<p>LW: So what were you being accused of?</p>
<p>JP: I was irrelevant. I was not addressing the problems that the community felt were important. That’s where that stage of the community people became the spokespeople, not the administrators, not the rational people. </p>
<p>LW: So there was resistance to the method of training black community action staff to go out into the community? There was resistance against that?</p>
<p>JP: Yes, in a structured way. What they really wanted was, let’s have more meetings. Let’s have people discussing things. Well, what the hell are we going to do? We’re going to put people out there who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about? We don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re going to be out there as agents of change? What the hell are we doing? I would not buy that. I said we have to know where we’re going and what we’re doing.</p>
<p>LW: Who in particular was resisting this? You don’t have to name names if you don’t want to. But who was resisting this program? It sounds like there was sort of an overhaul of the program.</p>
<p>JP: Well, I’m going to jump ahead and say that the guy that they chose to replace me was Conrad Mallett. I don’t know if you know Conrad. Conrad was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court at one point. My claim to fame was it was under Mallett’s leadership that things in the training program fell apart, the violence and everything erupted. I had frequently said my claim to fame was “the community never rioted while I was there. They were too busy beating me up.” That’s not intended just to be smart. From a collective bargaining point of view, it is necessary – and I still believe this today, whether you are talk about the white community or the black community – once they have a constructive, sound program they have to stay with it. Even at the price of violence you have to do that. Because if you don’t and you agree to a sham or a shambles, which was what happened in Detroit in terms of conflict resolution, that eventually the whole process just went out of control. Now that’s my editorial.</p>
<p>LW: So you think from your perspective that there was a link between the demise of this community action program and rioting that took place in July 1967?</p>
<p>JP: No, I don’t think the community action program … I was the second to the last white guy to be driven out of that program. The last white guy was a Jewish guy. He was head of a youth program. Finally, the community action program was a totally black program. It seemed that to me the white community, including guys like Mayor Cavanagh, were just like backing off. I’m saying that when you’ve got an explosive situation, you don’t back off. Excuse me. I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve gone through formal sensitivity training, combined faculty, University of Michigan, Michigan State psychiatrists and the like all involved in stripping you down and pulling your plug. On the way to authenticity and the like there are many steps, many masks that people wear. The Community Action Program in a more authoritarian regime, we probably would have gone after the activists and the organizers as they do in Turkey and Syria. We democratically minded people don’t like picking off the disruptive activist group.</p>
<p>LW: So the groups more inclined towards violence like you mentioned …</p>
<p>JP: If you prune the trees the crop will come in a whole lot better. As a person, I really wanted this opportunity to speak because subsequent years I’ve gone through many years reflecting back and I don’t put this in my resume. This is part of one of the most significant life experiences that I had as a man 25, 26 years old. I think I didn’t know what I was getting into. In fact, when I took on this responsibility they called my wife in and they told my wife, the two of us together, “Jerry is in a very dangerous position.”</p>
<p>LW: How long were you working for the Community Action Program?</p>
<p>JP: What’s that?</p>
<p>LW: How long were you working for the program?</p>
<p>JP: It was probably from the time we formulated it, all this took place in a six month period. We moved the operation from the Wayne State University campus over to a community action center on West Grand Boulevard. Now during that time my office was broken into here on campus and all my stuff was gone through. Then we moved to the other location and it was broken into and all the films and any of the graphics and things we were doing there it was all disrupted. So I had two break-ins.</p>
<p>LW: Why do you think there was such resistance and such hostility over what was presumably a positive program to get people employed and to give them resources and tools?</p>
<p>JP: It might have been better if we really had the employment objective. The Community Action Center philosophy was more like returning government to the local level and to the people and hearing the people. That’s why I say the Vietnam policy of creating enclaves where in fact there are communities that are peaceful and orderly. That was too high minded. It might have been better to be training them for jobs, which is where it all went. You know, I’m jumping ahead, from that experience I was appointed Deputy Director in the Michigan Department of Labor by Governor Romney. Then I became Governor Romney’s Manpower Planning Staff Director. I went out and tried some statistical techniques in the Muskegon area and got a lot of recognition for a non-political approach to allocating resources. Milliken came in – I was invited to join the governor’s office. I’m not a politician even though I play with all those guys. I don’t make political decisions. I’ve always been a staff guy. My friends in Texas were looking for a guy to put Nixon’s Manpower Revenue Sharing into Dallas-Fort Worth and I was invited by a Democratic governor to come down to Texas. We did set … we got local elected officials to understand that they were responsible for the employment Manpower development training of people in their areas. I set up centers, just like Community Action Centers but they were employment centers, through North Central Texas. I’ve gone a long way to answering the question. Did we have the right objectives in the Community Action Program, could we have done something better? Yeah, I think we could have. We made a mistake. But we should have pruned the bushes, taken out the bad guys.</p>
<p>LW: The bad guys in this case were…</p>
<p>JP: It’s very hard to get these bad guys in our system.</p>
<p>LW: Who were the bad guys, in your opinion?</p>
<p>JP: This is strictly a value judgment. There are no bad guys. Those people who contributed to increased levels of conflict and promoting conflict are the people we need to contain. The reason I hesitate is because I’m not a fascist. I’m not a Nazi. I really do believe in our republic – notice I said “our republic.” We need to pursue the best, fairest most honest policies with respect to how government operates. I think we have failed miserably.<br /><br />[phone rings]</p>
<p>[recording resumes]</p>
<p>LW: I believe that you were talking about the people who resisted this type of program, this community action plan, the people you felt were sort of the biggest challenge to you implementing this program. We were talking about the people who created conflict.</p>
<p>JP: It’s very hard because I was irrelevant to their doctrine, to their beliefs.</p>
<p>LW: I just want to clarify, we’re talking about groups like the Southern Christian Leadership, the student non-violent youth groups, right? These committees and groups who you felt were using violent tactics …</p>
<p>JP: They were promoting --</p>
<p>LW: They were promoting violence, condoning violence, whereas the community action groups were much more about community outreach -- at least that was the intent.</p>
<p>JP: Community outreach and sharing government. One of the things I did with my budget is I arranged a conference with the University of Michigan with key political leaders, white brothers and black brothers, there were discussions about how single member districts could possible help. I don’t recall clearly whether we had single member districts back then. But one of the offshoots of this community strategy philosophy was to create more awareness about bringing government down to the local level. One of those alternatives is the electoral process and single member districts. That was one of the offshoots of this whole effort – I wish I could recall of their names but they were key guys. One of the guys involved in it became the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Manpower.</p>
<p>LW: I just want to clarify: this was someone who was part of –</p>
<p>JP: At that time he was head of the Office of Economic Opportunity here in Michigan. He was one of the guys who participated in that. I don’t know if you think this way, but you know there are people who operate in fronts – are you familiar with that kind of political logic of fronts?</p>
<p>LW: Explain to me what exactly what you mean.</p>
<p>JP: Well, what it means is there are some guys over here running around yelling, Black Panthers and they have guns and carry clubs. Then we have some other guys that organize marches. Then we have some other guys who are having inflammatory meetings. They go and engage the political process. Then we have some guys that work with the business community, like B’nai B’rith and the like. This then becomes a front; B’nai B’rith benefits from having these guys who carry clubs. To understand how all those organizations spread out and what they do.<br /><br />[phone rings]</p>
<p>[recording resumes]</p>
<p>You know, I have had so many blessings about experiences. I also worked in Saudi Arabia under – I worked in a kingdom. I was loved by the Saudis. They would have gotten me a Saudi wife and everything. I had to decide whether I was an American and a Christian. Very few men decide that.</p>
<p>LW: I want to wrap up by talking about because we’re just about out of time. I do want to talk about how you think some of the activities and the upheaval that it sounds like you experienced and occurred within the community action program, how you think that may or may not have impacted the events of 1967?</p>
<p>JP: It could have. This was an arena of conflict where they were winning. The control of the community action program as a whole was a victory. Taking the whole, we want it all. So you have this unbounded, unbridled kind of aggression that grows. It’s really hard to say what happens when you are a nice guy. I told you I went to sensitivity training. There’s a time not to be a nice guy. There really is. [People enter the room]. I’m sorry. You see, the ladies in our family are interested. [Introductions made] This has been an exciting discussion.</p>
<p>LW: So, just to sort of wind down. Is there anything else that you remember about Detroit specifically in ’67 or in relation to you work in ’66?</p>
<p>JP: I mentioned I was replaced by Conrad Mallett. He was a favored son of the black community. Eventually he was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court. At the time Conrad was a really nice political guy. I think your questions and comments help me a little bit. We covered a great deal. I’ll tell you what the riots meant to me. What they meant to me was that I went and got my shotgun because of our family store. It was on the west side of Detroit, just up there in Grand River and the like. You could hear the gunshots and the firing. The burning did not necessarily move into our shop at that time, though my uncle was later a victim of a robbery and an aunt was murdered. We experienced that racial conflict. A 15 year old with a 38 special is a very dangerous entity. The climate was such that one time we took arms. We took a shotgun out and maybe like the Koreans – maybe because we’re Polish or something, I don’t know – but like the Koreans in the Los Angeles area we stood on top their stores with shotguns.</p>
<p>LW: So this was something that you participated in during the riots in ’67</p>
<p>JP: Yes. This was happened most recently in Ferguson. People now were about to be victims a third time have armed themselves and were standing by their property and shops.</p>
<p>LW: So what property – you said you were living in Livonia in July of 1967.</p>
<p>JP: But my uncle and aunt had a family store in the west side of Detroit – Campbell Avenue. In fact, I drove through there on the way here because that whole community is just a bunch of empty lots.</p>
<p>LW: What kind of store was it?</p>
<p>JP: It was a grocery store. It was a grocery store in which many members of the family had worked over the years.</p>
<p>LW: What was the name of it?</p>
<p>JP: It was Joe’s market.</p>
<p>LW: It was on Campbell Avenue, you said?</p>
<p>JP: Campbell and Rich.</p>
<p>LW: So, during the rioting in ’67, how was that store affected?</p>
<p>JP: I don’t know how to describe that. The riots affected us as individuals. The business was not affected.</p>
<p>LW: So when you were talking about what the riots meant to you, you got a shotgun and went armed to the family store. So explain that a little more to me.</p>
<p>JP: There’s not much depth to that. That is really a feeling that it is over within a quarter of a mile of where you are, if violence is a quarter of a mile away or less, you are well advised to take action.</p>
<p>LW: Did you ever have to shoot your gun?</p>
<p>JP: What?</p>
<p>LW: Did you ever have to shoot your gun?</p>
<p>JP: No.</p>
<p>LW: So the store was not rioted. Was it near stores that were rioted, that were looted?</p>
<p>JP: I don’t understand.</p>
<p>LW: Was Joe’s Market, the grocery store that your family owned, was it in an area where there was looting and rioting going on?</p>
<p>JP: No. What was true at that time was that all these small grocers on the west side of Detroit were being robbed. Black youth were robbing these stores. That was one of the reasons. That’s where the retail business goes by the board. That’s part of the deterioration of a community. That’s about all I could say about that.</p>
<p>LW: Is there anything else you want to share why we’re still on the record?</p>
<p>(New Interviewer: Noah Levinson): One of your positions – you might have talked about this while I was out of the room -- you worked in you said you were appointed by Governor Romney I believe to head up – I forget.</p>
<p>JP: There were two things: first off Deputy Director in the Michigan Department of Labor.</p>
<p>NL: Yes.</p>
<p>JP: Lansing-based, legislative oversight and some other oversight functions. And then I did some work with Census data and the like. We put together a resource allocation scheme for a given geographical area not political decisions. Not political decisions but decisions with respect to educational requirements, unwed mothers and all. It was very well received. I got a certain amount of recognition. So the governor moved into a role where I was staff planning director. Well, it wasn’t the governor who did it, it was one of his staff guys. It was a black guy who did that – a very fine man, Dave Dunfitt. Was a critical resource -- He’s an example of what you want in the way of a black leader. He later became a controller, budget director for the Manpower Administration in Washington.</p>
<p>NL: Did you work closely with the governor in your role in the state labor department?</p>
<p>JP: Nobody really works that closely – the question is how many governors are there? There are people who exercise influence on decision making. One of the things I did do and am really proud of – I drafted and lobbied with the Farm Bureau an agricultural labor commission board. The reason I did that is that Michigan really had a lot of conflict with respect to the migrant stream. The U.S. Department of Labor was creating issues with respect to housing, child care, education and pretty soon the government’s good intentions stir up the people because they want political support. I figured that the way to settle that down was to create a body within the state where we talked to migrant people and their representatives, farm groups and the like. I lobbied that. Nobody else knew it. I just did it. I did it with the Farm Bureau. When you get the Farm Bureau to agree to something like that it’s no problem. No, Governor Milliken came in, Romney went to HUD. Governor Milliken came in and I was invited to join the Executive Office and to leave Labor. As I mentioned to you earlier, I have always seen myself as a policy program specialist, not a politician. I don’t do much lying. I don’t like it. But ’67 it was just a nightmare. Excuse me, that’s not very analytical; ‘67 was not expected, going back to earlier conversation. That was not supposed to happen. We had a plan. There was a community action program and the federal government was funneling money in. I had the first OEO tactical assistance grant for training in the United States. Detroit was the first such experiment. That’s probably worth noting. Also, when I was interviewed by some people – I don’t know who they were with, Congressional committee, CIA. I had a day long intensive interview with a recorder. I’ve been interviewed that way a couple times. That was the end of my role with the community action program. That’s the last thing I did.</p>
<p>NL: So, with your background being in policy and programming, could you speak to – were there certain policies that didn’t exist or that were in place that you can see in hindsight being key contributors to … oh, okay, cool, I guess we already talked about that.</p>
<p>LW: Do you have anything else with regards to programs that maybe did or did not work?</p>
<p>JP: Well you know, I think that what happened in the country was that the country saw a need for HUD - Housing and Urban Development. The policy framework then moved – you know, the policy part of that had been, “Let’s put expressways in and let’s have urban renewal.” Housing and urban renewal was another whole approach, a political approach, to let’s find some housing for people, let’s have a more humane approach to how we manage central city people.</p>
<p>LW: You also mentioned too had the community action program continued or been re-evaluated that employee or employment driven programming would have---</p>
<p>JP: We did say that, we did cover that in the sense that, were jobs more important, a better incentive, you know? The one thing that is so true, it’s a political reality, there is no one single black person. There is no generic type. We need to understand just as there are these fronts – there are fronts, Black Panthers over here with clubs and the B’nai B’rith kind of thing, businessmen, Jewish leaders working to build good will and then there are other groups around there. There’s a whole spectrum of political approaches to addressing the needs of the black community –There is a whole spectrum, some of them totally led by the black community --the Black Panthers. If you have a Black Panther policy, “White Charlie shouldn’t be voting. We should promote more Black voting. We should have more control. We can decide where we go.” The B’nai Brith kind of thing is “We all need to work together. We need to build cooperation. We all live in the same world.” The black people you meet are spread throughout that spectrum so there are probably four or five different strategies. One of the things that troubles me very much is we lose the good black kids. In fact, when I meet with the police chief I want to talk about gang management. Gang management – well, there’s another whole thing to this period. The student unrest and student demonstrations, that’s a tactic used in civil rights is to get the students all stirred up and angry and demonstrating. It’s a lot easier to do that and we had student demonstrations that were going on in that period of time. I think that really we should have come away from that – and this is where your work is valuable – we should have come away from that with lessons learned. You say, “Well yeah, we did learn something. Jobs are more important than trying to build community good will.” Yes, improving housing and urban development is another building block. But I don’t think that it’s all through. We’re not done with it. We have not solved this racial problem here in the United States. But your work will point to that.</p>
<p>LW: Perhaps. I hope so. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us?</p>
<p>JP: No, I would just say that Dean William Haber, Bill Haber at University of Michigan School of Arts, he was a guy who passed on my employment with the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations. He interviewed me and he said, it was one of his favorite sayings, “If you’ve got the answer, you’re wrong.” The reason your wrong is that it is a process. It’s something that will work out. There is no answer to this. This was Bill Haber’s idea -- just the opposite of who I am and how I am. I really think that Bill Haber may be right but there needs to be people who will bring about structure and take the risks. I told you I paid the price for trying to set some quality standards in the process. No, I don’t have anything more to say. I’m just pleased you guys are doing this study and really would like at some point to be able to learn more about what you have learned so that I can add it to my background. What do you envision in the way of production and the like?</p>
<p>LW: I’m going to take us off the record now. I’d like to thank you while we’re still recording for your time and we can wrap up off the record, okay? But thank you so much. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>JP: Well, you are quite welcome.</p>
<p>[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 1:00:02]</p>
Original Format
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audio
Duration
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1hr
Interviewer
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Lily Wilson
Noah Levinson
Interviewee
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Jeromone Pikulinski
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1PYO16N5Nhk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Jerome Pikulinski, August 14th, 2015
Description
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In this interview, Pikulinksi discusses his work with the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations and running the Community Action Program. He discusses the goals of this group, its successes and failures. He also talks about conflict resolution and other broad concepts.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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07/05/2015
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Black Panther Party
Community Action Program
Community Activists
Governor George Romney
Volunteers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/02e9d3ada01d971ae0a063c33a8c264c.jpg
7f1bbe17ea028aca9077b1cd7c1e92a2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
John Crissman
Brief Biography
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John Crissman was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan. He began working at Detroit Receiving Hospital as a trauma surgeon on July 1, 1967. He was drafted in 1967 and lived in Cleveland before returning to Detroit where he served as the Dean of the Wayne State Medical School from 1999 – 2004.
Interviewer's Name
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Hannah Sabal
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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07/11/2016
Interview Length
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00:20:02<strong><br /><br />Note: The audio is broken into two tracks</strong>
Transcriptionist
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Hannah Sabal
Transcription Date
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<strong></strong>07/14/2016
Transcription
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<p>HS: Hello, this is Hannah Sabal. I am in Detroit, Michigan. The date is July 11<sup>th</sup>, 2016 and I am conducting an oral history interview for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project with John Crissman. Thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>JC: It’s a pleasure.</p>
<p>HS: Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>JC: I was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan.</p>
<p>HS: What neighborhood did you grow up in?</p>
<p>JC: I grew up in Charlotte, Michigan, out by Lansing.</p>
<p>HS: Out by Lansing, okay. And what did your parents do for a living?</p>
<p>JC: My mother was a housewife, and my father was a traveling salesman.</p>
<p>HS: What was your neighborhood like growing up?</p>
<p>JC: Small town, middle class.</p>
<p>HS: Was it integrated?</p>
<p>JC: It was a white town. Small town.</p>
<p>HS: Where did you go to school?</p>
<p>JC: I went to MIT for my bachelor’s degree, then I went to West Reserve for my medical degree, and then I went to the University of Michigan for my surgical internship, then I transferred down to Detroit Receiving Hospital, July 1, 1967.</p>
<p>HS: So you had just moved to Detroit in July of ’67?</p>
<p>JC: Correct.</p>
<p>HS: And what was it like moving into the city?</p>
<p>JC: It was Detroit. It was a segregated city; there were certain areas you couldn’t live in. I ended up living near Chandler Park. I commuted downtown, which was maybe four miles.</p>
<p>HS: When you moved into the city, did you notice any tensions?</p>
<p>JC: I talked to a lot of my patients at Detroit Receiving Hospital. I remember one old black lady. She took me under her wing, and she said, “Doc, be careful. There’s something going to happen this summer, and it’s not going to be good. So watch your step.”</p>
<p>HS: So this woman knew that something was going down.</p>
<p>JC: The undercurrent in the black community was there was a lot of unrest.</p>
<p>HS: Were you working when the riots started, or were you at home? How did you hear about it first?</p>
<p>JC: I went to a Yankee-Tigers double header, and when we were coming home after the came toward Chandler Park with a friend of mine, I saw the smoke and I wondered if something had started.</p>
<p>HS: This was on Sunday?</p>
<p>JC: This was on Sunday. I wondered if something had started or—there were a couple fires for sure. We got home, and we’re watching my TV, and we’re watching another ballgame, and I still remember this—this big section came across the TV: “Would the Pontiac National Guard please report to their armory.” And I knew what had happened. I knew the riots had started; had no idea where, when, how much, and then I got the phone call that, about an hour later, to come down to Detroit Receiving Hospital.</p>
<p>HS: When you heard about the events, did you think back to the black patient that you had who said something was going to happen?</p>
<p>JC: Not really. We knew something was amiss. I’d heard it from a number of patients, but I remember it from this one lady specifically.</p>
<p>HS: You went into work on Sunday?</p>
<p>JC: Absolutely.</p>
<p>HS: What was that like?</p>
<p>JC: Actually, it was pretty quiet. There was a paradox because the emergency room basically closed down, because there won’t any of the routine, ambulatory emergency room patients coming in. The first night was reasonably quiet until, maybe late in the evening. But the only things we saw were major trauma.</p>
<p>HS: What was the atmosphere in the hospital like? Was it tense? Nervous?</p>
<p>JC: Nothing. I mean, Detroit Receiving is a trauma hospital. There’s patients all the time. In fact, it was kind of ironic, as I said before, it was kind of a little more quiet. Then the major trauma cases started rolling in. Now I was a new kid on the block in surgery, so my responsibilities were not to go to the operating room, but to take care of all the post-surgery patients and all of the patients out on the wards. I did do some of the initial triage in the emergency room.</p>
<p>HS: The traumas that you received, were they mainly GSWs [gun shot wounds], or—?</p>
<p>JC: Most of them—there were a few gun shots, a lot of stab wounds, and all various kinds of trauma. One of the memories that I have that’s the strongest is that on one of the wards, we had all of these young, muscular black males. It was like 90 degrees in there, they were all sweating in there—glistening, actually—they all had had abdominal operations, and they had all had tape on their abdomen, and they were basically laying in bed. We had these little stomach pumps going, “Tch tch tch tch tch” and there are like 40 of them. It was an eerie kind of situation to be in. The patients were just great. They knew they’d been hurt, they knew they’d been operated on, they knew they’d been saved, and they were very grateful that someone was taking care of them.</p>
<p>HS: I’d imagine so. What else do you remember from that week? Did you work most of that week?</p>
<p>JC: I was at the hospital, I think, for four straight days. I have many memories of those four days. One of the burning memories is that so many people were arrested and the jails were full. You’ve probably heard this before, but they put buses on every corner, and then they would put a port-a-john over the sewer inlet, and you’d look out there, and I don’t think these guys got fed very often. But they were all out in front of the hospital, they were all through downtown. You’d look out there once in a while and see them, they’d be allowed off for handling the bathroom activities, and I guess they got some food, but they were basically incarcerated on the buses.</p>
<p>HS: Anything else? Any other stories?</p>
<p>JC: Oh yeah, I got lots of stories.</p>
<p>HS: Please just go for it.</p>
<p>JC: It was about the second or third night, we were in the recovery room where all the patients come after they’ve finished their surgery, and it was on the fourth floor of the old Receiving hospital, and it had frosted glass windows. We were in the recovery room, and we heard a funny noise, “Ping!” Didn’t think anything of it. I think I was the only physician in there with a number of nurses, obviously. Then we heard another, “Ping!” and everybody started looking around. “What was that noise?” When we heard a third one, we realized that someone was shooting at us from across in a parking deck. We immediately hit the lights and pulled all the patients out into the hall, then informed—they had a police command post on the first floor of the hospital—and we called down and told them that somebody was shooting at us from the parking deck across the way, and the police went out and killed the guy.</p>
<p>HS: Wow.</p>
<p>JC: Which was fine with me.</p>
<p>HS: Well, I mean, he was shooting at you, so…. That’s intense.</p>
<p>JC: Probably one of the most interesting parts of it was when it first started, it was all handled by Detroit Police force, and they became overwhelmed, obviously. Governor Romney called in the National Guard, and these guys looked like somebody off the street that someone had put in uniform. It was a mixture of characters. Some overweight, some underweight, not very military in manner or deport. They did the best they could. Then President Johnson shipped the 101, I think the—</p>
<p>HS: 82<sup>nd</sup>.</p>
<p>JC: The 82<sup>nd</sup> airborne, put them out at Selfridge, and we knew this! We heard about all this downtown! And he held them there for a day, just to embarrass, I think, Governor Romney. When they released the Airborne into the city, it just shut the riots down. These people used to come in, a number of the non-commissioned officers and some of the soldiers would come in and eat at the cafeteria of the hospital. So I got to know them, got to talk to some of them. Very impressive, very tough, very lean, and not somebody you’d want to—</p>
<p>HS: So they appeared more professional than the National Guard?</p>
<p>JC: They appeared frightening. They’d all just gotten back from Vietnam. They were obviously very, very controlled, commanding soldiers. We had one kid that got into the emergency room. He was about 18 years old, maybe 16. Can’t remember, overweight, and just scared out of his mind. We couldn’t figure out how he got in the emergency room until we talked to him. The story he related to me, who was trying to take care of him, was that his brother—these are two white kids—his brother had driven up from Ohio with his brother, found an apartment, and were shooting at soldiers. The airborne were running around town in jeeps with 50 caliber machine guns on the back, and if they had any fire from an apartment, they’d just start blasting the apartment. They killed the older brother, who was the sniper. This kid came running down out of there. They probably would’ve killed him, except that he stumbled and fell on the steps and knocked himself out. This kid was so scared that he was going to get killed, and he came very close to it.</p>
<p>HS: From your understanding, they came from Ohio specifically—</p>
<p>JC: This is what the boy told me, that the brother came up to kill some cops or army people.</p>
<p>HS: I don’t know what to say to that.</p>
<p>JC: Well, we just saw it in Dallas.</p>
<p>HS: Yeah, that’s true.</p>
<p>JC: There’s nutcases out there, there’s no question about it.</p>
<p>HS: That’s why this project is so relevant, you know? Any other experiences? Note-worthy experiences?</p>
<p>JC: Let me think. I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t remember them all.</p>
<p>HS: That’s fine. After the riots ended—I know Detroit Receiving is a trauma hospital, but did the traumas go down at all after that week, back to their norm?</p>
<p>JC: Well, everybody in the city was basically holed up, particularly in the black community. Anybody that got ill had no place to go because you couldn’t move. As soon as the riots ended, there became more normal movement, and we saw an upswing in emergency room routine traffic. That was, I guess, basically a sign that things were returning back to normal. Now, I lived on Dickerson right across from the golf course on Chandler Park. We were sort of at the edge of the black community. There was a public housing on the other corner, off of six mile. There was a big liquor store there, and that liquor store got hit and cleaned out. I came home, and I told my wife—and we had a young baby—I said, “If you have any problems, keep the car gassed, just go north.” I came home, I think, on a Thursday night and there were just lines of people sitting on their porches with deer rifles, waiting for someone to come across Chandler Park, so I felt comfortable that my wife and child were safe.</p>
<p>HS: So your wife and child didn’t have any problems then?</p>
<p>JC: No problems at all.</p>
<p>HS: Was your neighborhood affected at all?</p>
<p>JC: Well, the liquor store about 800 yards away was robbed. One of the funny things that came out of this was all the liquor stores were completely wiped out. And about six weeks after the riot ended, we started seeing alcoholics coming in with chronic pancreatitis, which is a complication of drinking, so the conclusion I reached is a chronic alcoholic, given all the alcohol he wants, will develop pancreatitis in six weeks.</p>
<p>HS: Yeah, that makes sense. How long did you live in Detroit for?</p>
<p>JC: Just that one year, ’67-’68. Then I went into the military. All male physicians were drafted in that era.</p>
<p>HS: Did you end up serving in Vietnam?</p>
<p>JC: I did not, I’m not sure why. I was a trauma surgeon at that time, even though in my first year, but that was the most popular medical specialty at that time, they wanted partially trained general surgeons. But I didn’t go to Vietnam.</p>
<p>HS: When you returned from the service, did you continue to live in Detroit, or did you move somewhere else?</p>
<p>JC: I went back to Cleveland, where I went to medical school. Then I returned to Detroit in 1981, and I’ve been at Wayne State since then.</p>
<p>HS: You are the Dean of the medical school?</p>
<p>JC: I was at one time.</p>
<p>HS: Okay, that’s awesome.</p>
<p>JC: Actually, 1999 to 2004.</p>
<p>HS: You were the dean during those years?</p>
<p>JC: Yeah.</p>
<p>HS: That’s great. You’ve been in Detroit a fair amount, then. Have you noticed any changes in the city?</p>
<p>JC: The blacks now provide a majority of the leadership in the community, and I just came from the DAC—The Detroit Athletic Club—and I know a lot of the prominent black, both politicians and entrepreneurs and business people. That certainly is a welcome relief, there’s a lot of black that have very prominent roles in the community. I drive through the east side almost daily. The ghettos, though not as heavily populated, have not changed a great deal. There’s still tremendous amount of unemployment, young blacks walking around with apparently no role in life, and that has not changed.</p>
<p>HS: Where do you see the city headed?</p>
<p>JC: I think that the rebirth of downtown and of central area, where we’re sitting today, is a huge step in the right direction. I think the real crucial element is going to be restoration of the public and charter schools. If that’s accomplished, I see Detroit resurrecting itself and young families moving back into the community. But I think it’s all going to be crucial as to how public and charter—I include charter under public education—I think it’s going to be very crucial to see how that does.</p>
<p>HS: If you had a message for future generations of Detroit, what would it be?</p>
<p>JC: Well, I think everyone has to continue to work in the direction they have. One of the saddest parts is so many, particularly the black male population, has been lost to society for various reasons, and I wouldn’t even pretend to be able to interpret those, but I think that’s really a sad element. If anything could be done to restore that, I think it would be a huge move in the right direction. I think Detroit—if it gets its educational program back together—people don’t realize, back in the ‘50s, Detroit Public Schools was an excellent organization.</p>
<p>HS: That’s what I’ve heard.</p>
<p>LC: Yeah, and they’ve lost all of that wherewithal and experience, so forth. But I think Detroit has a future. I think it’s going to be slow in coming, but I think it’s clearly headed in the right direction.</p>
<p>HS: Sounds optimistic. Do you have anything else you’d like to share with us today?</p>
<p>LC: I could go on for a long time, but I will end it at this. I probably fulfilled what you needed.</p>
<p>HS: Oh, definitely, yeah. Well, thank you for sharing your stories, we really appreciate it.</p>
<p>[End of Track 1]</p>
<p>[Beginning of Track 2]</p>
<p>HS: This is a continuation of John Crissman’s story.</p>
<p>JC: One of the patients I took care of in the intensive care was a fireman. He obviously was fighting a fire and he was on one of these elevated lifts, and they lifted him into a power line. He was essentially electrocuted. He had electrical burns in his frontal lobes and both of his eyes, and out his left arm. I took care of him for a number of days. As I mentioned before, I did all the scut work, because I was a young guy on the service, so I got to take care of all the patients after surgery. He lived for about five days, eventually died, and I remember his wife coming in. I can’t remember if they had any children; of course, they wouldn’t have come in. But it was a very sad situation. Subsequently I got to know some of the fire chiefs, and they remembered the incident very dramatically as the one fireman that was killed in the riots. That’s it.</p>
<p>HS: Okay.</p>
<p>JC: That’s the only story I forgot.</p>
<p>HS: Okay. </p>
Original Format
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audio
Duration
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20min2sec<br /><br /><strong>Note: The audio is broken into two tracks</strong>
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Hannah Sabal
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
John Crissman
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sElEQ60f3EM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
John Crissman, July 11th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Crissman tells of being called in to Detroit Receiving to work as a trauma surgeon.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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07/15/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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auido/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
Coverage
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||||osm
Detroit Receiving Hospital
101st Airborne
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
82nd Airborne
Detroit Receiving Hospital
Detroit Tigers
Governor George Romney
Gun Violence
Medical
Medical Staff
Michigan National Guard
Snipers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/bab4ae0d735186345de0bed07b228453.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
A language of the resource
en-us
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10/20/2019
Oral History
An audio or video resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Karl Mantyla
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Karl Mantyla was born in Detroit in 1937. He worked for the Associated Press and several other newspapers.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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09/09/2016
Interview Length
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00:30:59
Transcriptionist
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Robert Lazich
Transcription Date
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10/28/2016
Transcription
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<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Karl Mantyla: You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Can you start by telling me when and where were you born?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Growing up in the city, what neighborhood did you live in?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Growing up, the neighborhoods you lived in, were they integrated neighborhoods?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Growing up in the city, what schools did you go to?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Moving around a little bit.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: After you graduated high school, did you stay in the area?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>KM: I stayed, generally speaking, in the area with the exception of when I was employed by the <em>Detroit Times</em>. 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 <em>Akron Beacon Journal</em> 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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: In the 1950s and early Sixties, did you notice any growing tension in the city?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Do you know why they did?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: What year did you leave the city?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>KM: I have a little difficulty remembering exactly when that was.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Okay, not to worry. When you came back to work for the Associated Press, what was your job with the Associated Press?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Going into the summer of ’67, had you seen any signs that something was coming?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Going into the following summer, were you anticipating another event?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There were three reporters that covered the Algiers Motel: there was myself, there was Joe Strickland from the <em>Detroit News</em>, and Lev Newman from the <em>Detroit Free Press</em>. Strickland died a couple of years afterwards, after he’d gone to work for the <em>Philadelphia Inquirer</em>. 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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Backtracking a little bit, how did you first hear what was going on on Twelfth Street?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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 <em>News</em> and the <em>Free Press </em>or otherwise. But they found out very quickly that crowds were gathering and beginning to loot.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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 <em>Free Press</em> I believe did a story reporting on each death long after the riot had subsided.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Going into the Algiers Motel incident, how did you first hear about it?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>KM: I don’t recall exactly but it was through the other news media, the <em>News</em> and the <em>Free Press</em>. I’m virtually certain.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Did you go down to the Algiers Motel?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: What other work did you do on that case?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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 [<em>The Algiers Motel Incident</em>]. 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 <em>Spirit of Detroit, </em>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 <em>The Algiers Motel Incident</em> book. He was best noted for his international bestseller called <em>Hiroshima</em> about the atomic bomb attack on Japan that ended World War II.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Are there any other stories you’d like to share from reporting on the riot that week?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Did you cover the mock trial that was done?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>KM: No, I did not.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Did you see the city any differently after ’67?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: What year was that?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>KM: I forgot the year.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Are you optimistic for the city moving forward?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Do you think the events of ’67 still hang over the city and the metro area?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you’d like to add today?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>KM: I don’t think so.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WW: Fine. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>KM: Thank you, William.</p>
<p> </p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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30min 59sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
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Karl Mantyla
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/deUFgk1LhWo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> SHOW MORE
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Karl Mantyla, September 9th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Mantyla discusses growing up in Detroit, the racial situation of 1967 and his feelings about Detroit today. Also, he speaks of his time as a reporter, focusing on the fatal shootings at the Algiers Motel in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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11/01/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral history
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
1968 World Series
Algiers Motel
Associated Press
Detroit Community Members
Detroit Free Press
Detroit News
Detroit Tigers
Governor George Romney
Kercheval Incident
Mayor Jerome Cavanagh
Michigan National Guard
President Lyndon B. Johnson
Recorder's Court - Detroit
White Flight
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/0f84bf3a5f979eef0a7c819378050cb8.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m1uqYZWrte8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Mary Jo Johnson
Brief Biography
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Mary Jo Johnson was born in Dearborn, Michigan in 1941. She attended Catholic schools and eventually became a teacher in Highland Park, Indian Village, and Grosse Pointe Park where she lived with her husband. She retired in 2006 and currently serves as a docent for the Detroit Historical Society.
Interviewer's Name
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Julia Westblade
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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4/28/2017
Interview Length
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00:42:14
Transcriptionist
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Julia Westblade
Transcription Date
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09/29/2017
Transcription
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<p>Julia Westblade: Hello, today is April 28, 2017. My name is Julia Westblade. I’m here at the Detroit Historical Society recording an interview for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I’m sitting down with –</p>
<p>Mary Jo Johnson: Mary Jo Johnson</p>
<p>JW: Thank you so much for coming in and sitting down with us today.</p>
<p>MJ: I’m happy to be here.</p>
<p>JW: Good. Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>MJ: I was born in Dearborn, Michigan because my grand-grandfather had come from Ireland, worked on the Chicago Road and then bought property there and so by that time my grandfather was farming. I was born October 14, 1941 so just before Pearl Harbor and my grandfather subsequently stopped farming because he couldn’t really get people to help him but I spent a lot of time on the farm with my grandmother canning and with him, which was wonderful. He also went to work in the Willow Run – he called it the Bomber Plant – during the war, so I remember taking him there. Everybody didn’t have a car so I remember we did a lot of chauffeuring.</p>
<p>JW: So you grew up and you stayed in Dearborn?</p>
<p>MJ: I did. I went to Catholic school in Dearborn. I was the oldest of six. My father worked for Ford Motor Company so I feel like a real Detroiter because of all this. Until I went away to college, I lived in Dearborn and I graduated from high school in ’59, from college in ’63. So, when I was a kid, when my grandmother was still running the farm, we used to go downtown to Hudson’s and she would get everything she needed. I was very used to going downtown with my mother and grandmother, going to Hudson’s and Himelhoch’s and I remember the first dance I was invited to was on Grosse Isle and I remember coming down the day after Thanksgiving to Detroit to look for a dress. My mother was really good about stuff like that. And we had to turn around and go home because we couldn’t find a parking place and come back another time. So, I feel like I knew the city and when I was in high school and college, we would come down for dates. I remember the Gas Light Restaurant, the Pontchartrain Wine Cellars, the Pontchartrain Hotel. So, I feel like I knew the city at that point in time and then when I graduated from college, I went away to school to a girls’ school in Indiana for two years and then I went to U of M [University of Michigan] and gradated and took a job teaching in Highland Park. That was my first job which was an excellent school system at the time. It had – It was very integrated. Almost even black and white and a lot of Jewish teachers and administrators who were very competent. So, it was a good place to start teaching. I taught there for about five years and I was slated to go overseas to teach in a military school and I kind of chickened out when they got to the point that they were shipping my car, I just wasn’t that brave. Anyway, at the time I taught in Highland Park I was living downtown in Lafayette Towers. Not 1300 but there was Lafayette East and West – I think they’re still there. I lived in Lafayette East with my cousin whose father was a traffic referee in Detroit, John Carney. He was my dad’s oldest brother and ran for judge. At one point in the year we had this huge “Carney for Judge” sign in the apartment. He didn’t make it but he was kind of a talked-about traffic referee because of the way he handled people and there would be stories in the paper about John Carney. He was a very good guy.</p>
<p>JW: Yeah, so it sounds like you felt safe moving around the city and comfortable and enjoyed it. Was that typical of other people in your neighborhood growing up, or did most people in Dearborn stay in Dearborn?</p>
<p>MJ: You know, that is a great question. I’m trying to think. I mean, my family obviously came down and my parents never gave us any warnings about coming down for movies. Grand Circus Park had movie theatres. And our family, one thing I should mention, in my uncle, Tom Daley of the Daley Farm, reminisces is a reference to either his father or grandfather – I should have looked it up – having lunch once a month with the Inkster Superintendent of Schools and my grandfather and his family were always very tolerant and my grandfather had great empathy for what African-Americans were going through. They weren’t quite as tolerant about Hillbillies. That was the negative connotation. And now I see maybe where that comes from, too, because I think a lot of Southerners were moving up here during the War and after and it was probably a really different culture to them.</p>
<p>So, that’s what brought me to ’67. I was still single. I wanted to look up whether I was still teaching in Highland Park at that point. I think I was teaching summer school because I have this recollection. But the thing I definitely remember ­– and I hope this is an accurate memory – but on Sunday night after the initial start of all the action, I went to a Tiger baseball game with a date at the old Briggs Stadium or Tiger Stadium and when we got out, there were some kind of rumblings about something going on. Then we went to get something to eat because it was dinner time; it was an afternoon game. We went back to Dearborn, went to what I think was Ford Road to a bar and at that point the bar was closed. And I don’t remember what happened after that, but I know by that time, I think, Wayne County businesses, at least that served alcohol, were shut down.</p>
<p>JW: Before we get too far into ’67, so you said you were living in the city and you were teaching in Highland Park at an integrated school. Did you sense any tension in the city in the early sixties leading up to all of that?</p>
<p>MJ: You know, that is not my recollection. I’m sure there was, though, and I’ll get to an incident later on when there really was, but I remember teaching with a guy from the South whose father had been a dentist in the South and I remember him talking about life in his community down there and it was like, really? They were not integrated but they were very middle class African-Americans. And he’s the only African-American I can really remember except the last year I was there were had an African-American principle, Bill Bray, and I should see if he’s still – is that right? No, Bill Bray? Anyway, I could find the man’s name. He was great. He was very competent, very dignified, great role model for kids. But there were, when I first started at Highland Park, it was a junior high and I could tell there were girls, there was a little group of girls that really gave me an awful time. I mean, they were just really – and I was naïve and not equipped to handle them. But for the most part, the kids were good. I remember coming in to school once and some kids were absent from my eighth grade class and I said something about where’s so-and-so? And they said, “Oh, they got picked up for stealing a car last night.” And I remember a woman having her purse be, what do you call it, assaulted in Highland Park on Woodward near the Sears store but on the other hand, we used to go to – for a while I had a group of girls at the YMCA after school and we also used to go to a bar or restaurant after that. My good friend Lois Stock then, she and her mother and her sister all were teaching in Highland Park. So, Lois and I were the ones who became friends and I remember because there was this strike in Highland Park and Lois’ mother was – Lois, I don’t remember, Lois’ mother was very anti-strike but I had one of the most renowned teachers in Highland Park was a journalism teacher at the high school and he was very highly respected and I remember going to his house and he lived in a little – it was obvious to me that teachers weren’t paid very well if this was the best you can do for this man who was so good. So I went on strike and that was a little touchy because I used to go to my friends the Stocks’ house for dinner. I would always make the salad because I lived in Dearborn and it was kind of far. That’s about – in terms of conflict – I mean, Dearborn had a reputation, a horrible reputation, for “Help Dearborn Clean” and Orville Hubbard and all that. And I was aware of that but not as – I didn’t really know what that slogan meant besides he did run a clean city literally. I was aware that Inkster was Inkster and it was African-American people and it was poor. That’s what I come up with in terms of that kind of memory.</p>
<p>JW: So then, going into ’67, you were at the Tigers game, came home and saw the bars were closed. So when did you first hear officially what was going on?</p>
<p>MJ: You know, that is a great question. I can’t even answer it. I don’t know. I mean, it just gradually – probably the newspapers. My parents were both great newspaper readers and I wish my memory were clearer after that. I think I was teaching summer school in Highland Park. I think I remember after a couple days going into summer school and one of the African-American councilors, Carl Petway, was saying, “Yeah, they have guns on one side of me and guns on the other side,” which was unusual. Then everyone didn’t walk around with a gun. I was volunteering at Receiving Hospital in the children’s ward and I would go on Sunday and I do remember not being able to get near the place because of the National Guard troops. What I remember is more general after that which are these materials. [note: referencing physical materials she brought with her] It was a wake-up call that something was drastically wrong in the city and the churches started to kind of become a little more active and that’s how I first remember getting involved after ’67, after the incidents was my parents had a neighborhood gathering and, like, talking about what’s the problem, can we do anything about it? And I remember my mother and my sister and I going down to a parish in the city, I think it was St. Rose’s, and working with kids on Saturday. Doing just activities. My sister became an art teacher; she was younger then and I do have a picture of her with a kid from down there and my mother was very empathic and she was also a first grade teacher so she was passionate about education and upset that the education wasn’t what it should be.</p>
<p>Okay, so – oh, so, my father was – how did that work? My brother was at Michigan. My brother became our free-spirit, civil activist person. He marched on Washington and he was four years younger than I was. When I was at Michigan, they were starting funding, raising funds for is it SNCC?</p>
<p>JW: Mmhmm</p>
<p>MJ: SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] on the Diag. I remember the buckets being out. So, where was I going with that? Anyway, I remember my brother pushing my dad and saying, “You know, the solution to this is open housing. You have to let people buy houses in good neighborhoods and then you’ll have people who are going to be okay.” And my father, who had six kids, worked sometimes three jobs – he was Ford Motor and he would work at a local bowling alley, he was paying tuition for these Catholic schools, and he was going, “Look, I want to be fair, but this is my wealth. My wealth is in my house. Whatever assets I have are in my house and I cannot afford to have the property values go down.” So that was the point of disagreement, however he did write this letter, which I have here to the <i>Dearborn Free Press</i> because – and it was – it promotes good education for African-American kids, with a little bit of self-interest, because he said if you funded parochial schools, if government money could go to parochial schools, then African-American kids could get a better education. And the letter is here and then the post card he got in response is here and it’s quite ugly. [pulls out physical materials she brought with her.] So, this is the letter. It’s just really one page; there’s only a little bit on the last part. And this is the response. How you had to type on a post card but –</p>
<p>JW: We can look at these when we’re all done. Oh wow.</p>
<p>MJ: And actually, I was thinking about it, I copied them because I thought you’d probably rather have the original source if you’re collecting things.</p>
<p>JW: Okay, we’ve got release forms and stuff that we can have you sign and if you want us to take copies and send them back we can do that as well. So we can talk about this –</p>
<p>MJ: The only copy I really need is the post card because it’s not a very good copy that I have.</p>
<p>JW: We can talk about these when we’re all done.</p>
<p>MJ: Good.</p>
<p>JW: Yeah, okay, so, I’m trying to think. No, it’s okay. So then, back in 1967, you mentioned that the National Guard was at the hospital and you couldn’t get in here.</p>
<p>MJ: Right.</p>
<p>JW: So was it a sense of relief when the National Guard and when the federal troops came in or did it cause more anxiety in the city, do you think?</p>
<p>MJ: I remember, especially after seeing the presentation, the PowerPoint, I do remember all the political ramifications of Cavanagh. Cavanagh was a rising, shining, young star for mayor. Romney, I have a picture of myself with George Romney because I belonged to the Young Republicans because that was a good social group when I lived downtown. And my cousin, who I lived with in Lafayette and George Romney and I at some function. So I remember that and I remember that Johnson was a Democrat and that Romney really didn’t want to bring federal troops in and kind of had to be talked into it. I think Cavanagh wanted the federal troops. Anyway, I remember all that but, you know, not specifically just generally. Oh yeah, I remember that. And I get mixed up were the troops or the tanks that I saw at Receiving Hospital or Children’s whatever, but I think it was – anyway, were they Michigan National Guard or were they federal troops. But it would have been the following Sunday so by that time, maybe federal troops would have been there. And I’m not a real detail person so that did not occur to me to worry about it at that point.</p>
<p>JW: That’s okay.</p>
<p>MJ: I was just like, oh, I’d better go home.</p>
<p>JW: So, you said that it was a couple days before you went back to work so did you stay in your apartment for those couple days or did you go around and see what was going on in the city?</p>
<p>MJ: I know I didn’t go around and see what was going on in the city. And I only lived in that apartment for one year so I’m trying to think if that was the year but it was. I mean, I could have been back home in Dearborn but I had an apartment in Dearborn before and after and I lived at home at first. I lived with my parents and drove and then at one point had the apartment in Lafayette Park and then gave it up after a year. And I forget why exactly. I think my cousin and I weren’t living the same lifestyle exactly and that was – although she worked for United Foundation and she worked for the head of United Foundation whose name you would – he was well known for being that. And United Foundation was a bigger deal then. I mean, every work place, you signed up to give out of your paycheck and they did a lot of good things. But she was kind of partying and I remember thinking, I don’t think this is going to work for me.</p>
<p>So where did we go from there? Oh, my next kind of vivid memory is I was engaged to be married and at some point when they were going to send my car overseas, I had resigned from Highland Park and so I taught in Dearborn Heights for a year and that was a lot of African Americans. I could tell really the school didn’t compare with the schools I had been at in Highland Park. And then ended up teaching in Indian Village because I was going to be living in Grosse Pointe; that’s where my fiancé was living – my husband. I had been living in Dearborn at that point so I taught at Nichols School on Burns in Indian Village and, again, a mixed faculty. Mostly white but the principal was very committed, very good. He let me do a lot of experimental things as much as I knew how to do at that point but the assistant principal was an African American woman and I remember that she used to stay after school and practice. She was a beautiful pianist and I liked her a lot. And that they had really good teachers, mostly, but the first-grade teacher was really an alcoholic and stayed – you know, it didn’t even strike me as much then as it does now. Those kids had crayons and that was it and nobody – I guess they couldn’t do anything about it because nobody did. The teacher across the hall was amazing and older – probably my age now, Mrs. Sharite – and known as a good teacher. I remember the school councilor – it was a K through six school – but in the spring, at some point, they used to have this called “Audiotorium” and I don’t know exactly what the point was but I think it was like a little drama class but it never was given a priority. So, at Nichols, they had a sub and this sub was a woman who had been a nun and she was really trying to do something with it. I remember taking my class and seeing her with her kids in costume and seeing a performance. But I didn’t know her very well. She went out for lunch, came back, and was still in her car when someone came up, some kid, and asked her for a light and he shot her.</p>
<p>JW: Oh my gosh.</p>
<p>MJ: I guess he expected – so, she was in the hospital. We were still at school. We stayed for lunch and the faculty room was right above the main entrance to the school so the first we heard were all these sirens and cops on motorcycles coming up right in the entrance. We gradually found out what happened. My parents were very upset because they knew it was the school where I was. My husband-to-be was very upset. I finished out the year and I’m not really so sure I would have left except where I was living in Grosse Pointe, my aunt was on the board of trustees taking over a school from nuns who couldn’t staff it anymore and it was becoming an independent school which became Grosse Pointe Academy and I think I went there the second year. They were Grosse Pointe Academy for one year. They were Academy of the Sacred Heart then Grosse Pointe Academy for one year and then I went and that was building from the ground up. It was really exciting even though at the time we didn’t always consider it exciting. It became a really thriving, independent school which was purposely integrated. We had a lot of kids originally Detroit kids. They were scholarship kids but by the time I left, Judge Young’s kids were there – he lived in Grosse Pointe Park. I know three doctors’ families, Dr. Oney – I could name the other two if I thought about it. [Abudo Ngang?] was one of them and they had three kids and one, [Emo?] went to Harvard. So, there were middle-class blacks moving into Grosse Pointe Park and, actually, that is one of the things I want to check because Bill [William Winkel], is it? When he did his presentation, I question because he said none of the suburbs were integrated except Southfield and actually Grosse Pointe, from all appearances, is becoming integrated. The Park [Grosse Pointe Park], the Woods [Grosse Pointe Woods]. I have a good friend from League of Women Voters who lives in the city, so I think I want to look up the numbers on that.</p>
<p>But anyway, I loved teaching at the Academy because of the families I met from all over. So, that’s where I ended up my career and that’s probably – I retired in 2006. But, you know, I would see the news. The people I saw at my school were not those people. They were people who wanted a good education for their kids. There were – I still see them on Facebook and there were at first a lot of teachers’ and administrators’ kids. Scholarship kids because the nuns had this SHEP program, the Sacred Heard Enrichment Program, where they would bring girls in the summer for some kind of enrichment and then they kept a lot of the girls for school for scholarships. In fact, I just went to a funeral of one of the girls. Sonja Scott was a rising star and she was at Purdue - went to Country Day and then she went to Purdue and was driving home, fell asleep at the wheel and she became a quadriplegic for the most part. But she was so dynamic, as they said at her funeral. She did more things from her wheel chair with her computer however she managed it. But that kind of incapacitation takes its toll and she died young. So, the principal and I from the Academy went to her funeral in the city.</p>
<p>JW: So, you moved to the Grosse Pointe area –</p>
<p>MJ: I did.</p>
<p>JW: - to work at that school. Did you feel safe coming back into the city after that or did you mostly stay in the suburbs?</p>
<p>MJ: You know, we came down to the [Detroit Symphony] Orchestra or wherever the Symphony was which was Orchestra Hall. Orchestra Hall – no. We did. We came down for stuff: plays or concerts and I remember my husband taught at the law school, Detroit College of Law, when it was here. Before it was part of Michigan State, it was in Detroit; it was a very old law school in Detroit. A lot of politicians from Detroit started there. But they had a benefit for whatever, I can’t remember – no, it was a benefit for Orchestra Hall, that was it. The faculty and their spouses came down and I remember because Orchestra Hall was freezing cold. It was like this time of year and I was like I’m never going to get warm. I was pregnant for Chris who is now 40. So, yeah, we came down. I think probably not as much to the downtown after but I still used to come down.</p>
<p>I remember – oh, Grandpa’s funeral we needed a black mantilla. I came down to Hudson’s because you had to wear mantillas in the Catholic Church then. And shopping was a tradition. It was cool to come down and when I was working in Highland Park, I would go to Hudson’s, check the sale and call my mother if there was anything she should come down for. She got her hair cut downtown because it was someone who was really good with naturally curly hair and then I got my hair cut downtown, too. So, stuff like that but once – then you get into – fast forward 10 years, right? Martin Luther King comes to Grosse Pointe and that was – I did not go to that. And it’s kind of funny that I didn’t go but I don’t think I was aware of it when he came to Grosse Pointe South High School. I just heard about it after. That’s kind of where I am unless you can think of what else. I wish I remember things more clearly.</p>
<p>JW: That’s okay. When you look at the city today, do you think that ’67 still hangs over the city or do you think that they’ve moved on?</p>
<p>MJ: Boy, that requires – here’s how I’d answer that. I went to a Wayne County Community College scholarship dinner and there was a black professor from Harvard. His name was [Randall] Kennedy and he was from the Harvard Law School. And I was, like, oh, I really want to hear him and he talked about perspective. And he said, “I think things have come a really long way.” He said, “I remember when my mother used to have to get the fried chicken lunch ready before we started our trip down South because we wouldn’t be able to stop in any restaurants along the way.” And people went, “Oh, yeah.” The older people there would remember that. But he said, “My students say, ‘What do you mean we’ve come a long way?’ and have an entirely different perspective.” So, I guess that’s the way I look at it and I think there’s a black middle-class in Detroit that has grown and thrived and I guess it’s the neighborhoods. And I think for everybody that’s kind of common knowledge. I’m most upset about the schools. There’s a guy who’s a docent here who went to school in Highland Park and his kids ended up going to my school, so that’s how I knew him. I saw him at the ’67 thing the first time and he was talking about how good the Highland Park schools were and how he liked his teachers and how they made him want to learn and we were just – the school nearest my neighborhood is a disaster. They don’t have a functioning library for one thing. I brought books over and she said, “We can’t use the textbooks because we have our own.” And I said, “Well, maybe you want this stuff for the library?” And she went, “We don’t have a functioning library.” The woman who was my principal, who is also a very good friend, her son came back from Germany. He was the head of the department at his American school in Germany. He couldn’t get a job here – this was in the last four years – and Walter went to work at Marquette School which is the one near me. Sheila said, “And he’s teaching social studies. He doesn’t have anything will you”– and I had a lot of materials so I brought him maps and stuff and the kids were great but the building was dismal, there was not much discipline, and you could tell there wasn’t a lot of learning going on. My friend now goes once a week to that school and is trying to set up a program for them where we just go in and do literacy. Do reading computer programs which I’ve done at Epiphany down on Conner for the nuns who taught me. She said it’s just so disruptive that you have to take the kids out of there. She said there are really a lot of kids who really want to learn but they just can’t deal with all the noise and chaos and the school wasn’t fully staffed, Sheila said, at the beginning of the year. The person – some people aren’t doing their jobs and it’s just sad because – oh, and I got acquainted with that school because I was tutoring – this is after I retired – I was tutoring at Epiphany Education Center which is down in the Samaritan Center on Connor near the Capuchins, actually. These three nuns, elderly nuns, they were retired. They ran the greatest program and they do great things with these kids. I still do their summer school with them. But they – now where was I going with that? Oh, I know. One of the women who was also a tutor there had been widowed and wanted to get back teaching so she finished her degree. She got a job at Marquette and she didn’t have books. So Academy changes series so I got books and took them over and that was the first time I saw Marquette and then when Walter started teaching in the middle school there, I brought him stuff. But it’s just so troubling to me the state of the schools and what happened and how it happened and how far down they went and these kids are never going to catch up. They are never going to catch up unless they’re very exceptionally driven. It’s just the caliber of the school and so I have really – if I’m going off the track, let me know. I have really mixed feelings about charter schools but taking kids through here, I do see that the charter schools often – the kids are very well-behaved so I think there’s more discipline often. Like those boys who were going through. They were really into it and that’s a charter school in Detroit. And I had some little girls, they were third graders or something from a charter school and then it’s just, you know, you worry about the school and because that’s what’s going to – the city has to have that or they’re not going to really become a great city, I think.</p>
<p>JW: Well, is there anything else from ’67 that you remember that you’d like to add?</p>
<p>MJ: I know, I went way off ’67, didn’t I?</p>
<p>JW: Oh no, it’s okay.</p>
<p>MJ: No, I remember it was kind of a wake up call. That’s my perspective on it. We need to, everybody needs to do something here. And my friend, Barb Carley, I don’t know if you’ve interviewed her, she was living in Redford at the time and she said her family took donuts and whatever to the National Guard troops when they were in her neighborhood and she said her father stuck it out for as long as he could but once it got too rough for them to go to school and back, he sold and they moved to Grosse Pointe.</p>
<p>JW: Well, is there anything else you’d like to add today?</p>
<p>MJ: I wish I could think of more but I’ve probably gone way beyond the beyond.</p>
<p>JW: Oh, you’re okay. Well, thank you so much for sitting down with us today. We really appreciate it.</p>
<p>MJ: Oh, you’re so welcome. It’s really good to – just the effort of recall is good and since I taught history, I think oral history is wonderful and I love this project. I’m thrilled about this project.</p>
<p>JW: Oh, good. </p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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42min 14sec
Interviewer
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Julia Westblade
Interviewee
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Mary Jo Johnson
Location
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Detroit, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Mary Jo Johnson, April 28th, 2017
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Johnson remembers her childhood growing up in Dearborn, Michigan and how her family’s view on racial relations did not align with the public views of that community. She mentions a letter her father wrote to the editor of the newspaper regarding public funds for private education and her eventual profession as a school teacher and her relationships with her students. She discusses her memories of the summer of 1967 as well as the current state of the public school system.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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11/17/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Dearborn
Detroit Community Members
Detroit Public Schools
Detroit Tigers
Governor George Romney
Highland Park
Mayor Jerome Cavanagh
Michigan National Guard
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/5ef63f4e59224147699eddeda8b08842.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Mike Stacy
Brief Biography
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Mike Stacy was born in Dearborn. He was working as a probation officer at the Recorder’s Court in 1967.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Phone Interview
Date
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08/22/2016
Interview Length
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00:24:29
Transcriptionist
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Celeste Goedert
Transcription Date
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01/27/2017
Transcription
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<p class="Body">WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel. Today is August 22, 2016. I am in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project and I am on the phone with Mike Stacy. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p class="Body">MS: I missed that last question?</p>
<p class="Body">WW: I said thank you for sitting down with me.</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Oh yeah, you’re welcome.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: I was born in Dearborn, Michigan.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: What year?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: March 24, 1931.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Did you grow up in Dearborn?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: I grew up in Dearborn and graduated from high school there, yes.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Did you enjoy growing up in Dearborn? What was it like?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: It was home. I enjoyed it. My dad worked at the Ford plant and one summer, I even worked at the Ford plant when I was 17 because I forged my birth certificate so I could be 18 and I got a job there for the summer.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Wow [laughing.] During your time growing up in Dearborn, did you come to Detroit at all?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Oh yeah, we used to go to Detroit but there were a lot of gangs there so the only way we could go to Detroit, we’d take the Baker streetcar. But we’d have to have five or six of us go in a bunch to one of the theaters to see the movie because the Detroiters didn't like the folks that were from Dearborn. So, we didn't want to fight like hell all the time to go to Detroit. So we always went to Detroit in a group.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: So you didn't feel comfortable whenever you came to the city?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: No.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: After you graduated high school, did you continue to work at the Ford plant or what did you do?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: After I graduated high school, my friends and neighbors sent me a draft card and I was drafted into the Marine Corps.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Lovely. How long were you in the service?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: I wouldn't call it lovely, but it turned out to be lovely.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: How long were you in the service?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Two years.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Did the city seem any different to you after you came back, or was it still the same city?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Things were improving, Detroit was moving along in a very positive way at that time. Things looked good. I was impressed with Dearborn and I was impressed with Detroit. I had essentially no problems when I returned. Then I went on to Michigan State to take advantage of the GI Bill.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: After you left Michigan State, did you return to the city?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: I returned, let me see, after I got out of military. And then went to Michigan State, and then after I graduated, my parents moved from Dearborn to Melvindale and so I lived with them for a period of time in Melvindale. And then I decided to go to Michigan State and I took police administration at that time. And now they call it criminal justice. So, I graduated from Michigan State, I was offered a job as a campus cop. I said, well, I didn't want to graduate from Michigan State and become a campus cop, but they told what the salary would be and of all the salaries of the police departments of the state of Michigan, the Michigan State campus police were paid the best. So I went with the flow and with the money and worked at Michigan State for three years. Then I decided I wanted to find out what Detroit as all about and I decided to take the job at Recorder’s Court. And I think there were thirteen judges there at the time and I was interviewed by all of them. The reason they decided to hire me—there were about a dozen applicants—and I surfaced as number one and I said, “Well, why did you pick me?” And they said, “Well, you were a cop and we have 1700 people locked up in the county jail, sleeping in the aisles and very overcrowded. We want you to do a pre-sentence report on all of them to tell us what to do with them, whether to send them to prison or put them back on the street. I did that for two years and I cleaned out the crowded conditions in the jail and then I at that time was living in Warren, Michigan.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Did you enjoy your time at Recorder’s Court?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Oh, it was the best job I’ve ever had. I enjoyed it immensely.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: And what two years did you do that job?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: At Recorder’s Court?</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Yes.</p>
<p class="Body">MS: I’m trying to think. I left Michigan State in September of, I want to say ’61. From September of ’61 I worked at Recorder’s Court and I worked there until May of ’68. I was there during the course of the riot and the thing that’s interesting about it, if you allow me to editorialize a little bit about it here—</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Go right ahead.</p>
<p class="Body">MS: The riot, you know, that occurred – I’m trying to get my thoughts together here. What was the question you wanted me to respond to?</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Oh, I was just asking what years you worked there and then I was going to go into ’67 after that.</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Okay, well, the years that I worked there was from ’61-’68 and I was there during the riot of ’67 and in that July of ’67, we were coming back from a vacation at Camp Dearborn. I was doing 80 miles an hour on I-94 and I looked in the rearview mirror and I said to my wife, “ Oh damn, I’m busted” because a blue goose- you know, a State Police car was fast approaching. And it passed me at about 100 miles an hour and that was followed by about 30 other State Police cars. And I said to my wife, “Something bad must have happened somewhere.” And I had no idea what bad meant. And we finally got home to our home in Warren, Michigan, turned on the TV, and I saw Detroit in flames.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Did you have to go into work that week or did you stay home?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: That was Sunday and I got a phone call about five o’clock and it was the chief probation officer who told me, “Mike, don't come to work until we call you.” And I said, “Why not?” And he said, “Well, the snipers have taken the high ground and they’re shooting into the courthouse. They’re shooting the windows out of the courthouse and we can’t do any business there. So as long as the snipers hold the high ground, we can’t do any work. So we’ll call you when the Detroit Police clear the snipers off the rooftops.” So I was called to come in the following Friday after the riots began.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Oh wow.</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Yeah. And the thing that’s interesting that you should probably know about is Governor Romney, as a matter of fact, he activated the National Guard and they were understaffed and undermanned and he said, “I’m going to petition the President, Lyndon Johnson, to send in the Federal Troops.” So he contacted President Johnson and President Johnson said, “This is unprecedented, this is unheard of and I’m looking for a set up. I don’t trust you” —you know, to Romney—“because I think things cannot be that bad in Detroit.” And Romney insisted that things were bad. And he says, “Well, I still don’t trust you so I’m going to send in my administrative assistant, Cyrus Vance. Cyrus Vance finally came in, he took a tour of the Detroit area which was burning in flames and he said to the President, “Yes, it’s that bad. It’s worse than bad. Bring the federal troops in.” Well, they didn't have enough federal troops to bring in so they brought in the 37th Airborne from Vietnam. And they surrounded the courthouse. So then on that following Friday, I went in, I see these 37th Airborne troops sitting in front of the court eating an apple out in front of the court with a couple of the guys and they were doing perimeter security. The guarded all of the courthouses and city hall, the critical-where you get your drinking water and all that kind of thing. And they were very angry because they said, “We could solve this riot in about a week or so and bring things back to normal but they got us guarding these installations like the court house here.” Anyway, they were not happy campers. And so, in answer to that question, okay?</p>
<p class="Body">WW: So you know, the federal troops that were brought in were recently already back from Vietnam. They were already in Kentucky.</p>
<p class="Body">MS: They were brought in from Vietnam, yes.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: So what was the mood of Recorder’s Court when you did come in to work?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: When I came into work, we had to process 7,200 folks who had violated the curfew. In other words, when the riot began on that Saturday night, early Sunday morning, John Conyers was on top of a car pleading with the rioters to settle down and go home and then word on the street came out that the Detroit Police were not shooting looters. And the switch boards opened up all over Detroit. They said they’re not shooting looters and so then the riot intensified and they broke into stores and began stealing all of the merchandise and began kicking in doors and all of that business and so forth. And things literally went to hell in a hand basket. And so that’s another reason why they brought in the federal troops. Because the local state police, the Detroit police, the suburban police, they brought people in from police departments all over the state and we could not stop the rioting and looting and burning until finally Cyrus Vance came in and told his boss, Lyndon Johnson, “Yeah, it’s that bad. Bring in the federal troops.” So it was a political issue too, you know.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Oh yeah.</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Johnson and Romney didn’t trust each other, you know.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Going back to before that Sunday, did you sense any tension in the city? In the months leading up to it?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: I was totally blindsided and flabbergasted because my particular jurisdiction as a probation officer in Recorder’s court where Gratiot and Woodward Avenue meet, Mack Avenue and all the way down Mack Avenue to St. Jean’s and over to the river, that was my district. That was- in other words, Detroit was chopped up into pieces of pie and I was probation officer. Anything that happened in that particular district from Gratiot to Mack Avenue to St. Jean over to the river, that was my responsibility and I would do pre-sentence reports on any of the individuals that were there and then I would supervise that district. So that was my area. Now, when you say did you sense anything? No, I did not sense anything, I was totally blindsided and it was a horrendous overreaction. It was like an explosion and I was flabbergasted. I thought that the people of color really overreacted and not only people of color, but Caucasians and Hispanics as well. Not only blacks were arrested but of that 7,200, it was a combination of blacks, and whites and Hispanics. But no, I did not sense anything. I still haven’t been able to figure it out, I’m still searching for answers as to why it exploded the way it exploded, it made no sense at all. Everybody, including the blacks, the Hispanics, the whites, lost a great deal over the overreaction by the folks that rioted. And once it started, you couldn't stop it. And once again that’s why Cyrus Vance recommended, “yes, it’s bad, bring in the federal troops.”</p>
<p class="Body">WW: So, you spoke about how the arrestees were integrated, would you say that it’s simply a riot and not a race riot?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: No, it wasn't a race riot, I want to say it was probably an opportunity to steal, break open doors because the word on the street was “Cops were not shooting at looters so that we can take any damn thing we want to take because the cops aren't shooting at us.” And there were not enough police to protect the city and it was a license to steal because of the undermanned staffing of the Detroit police and even the suburban police that were called in. Even the National Guard, up until when the federal troops came in. That’s when things began to settle down. Anyway, after the riot I said, “I’ve got tp get out of here.” Because I could see Detroit going to hell in a hand basket now, there’s no way to salvage this community. So I stayed in Recorder’s Court until 1968 and in 1968 I took a job at Macomb Community College. And they hired me because they said, “We noticed that you’ve been a campus cop at Michigan State and we want you to start a police department here at Macomb Community College like you had at Michigan State.” And I said, “Well, that’s a no brainer.” So I went to the community college for three years and set up their criminal justice program and their police academy and so forth and got them operational and then I was recruited to go to Kalamazoo to do the same thing. So I went to Kalamazoo and ran the criminal justice program at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, where I trained police officers for 22 years and retired in what was it? ’96 I want to say, yeah it was 1996.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Wow. So the reason you left in May was you were just trying to find the right reason to leave or you decided to leave in that May?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Well, I could see Detroit going to hell in a hand basket. The city had been destroyed and I knew it was going to fall on hard times so I decided to get out of dodge, as did thousands and thousands of other blue collar workers. They fled to the suburbs, including myself, you know. I had fled to the suburbs before because I didn't want to work in— Warren isn't that far from my district—I couldn't even have my home phone number and address in the phone book because of possible reprisals. You know, by the folks I was doing pre-sentence reports on and recommending that they go to prison or that they be released back into the community. That’s another reason that I moved to Warren. You get some safety and security that was faltering badly in Detroit.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Did you ever return to Detroit—</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Oh yeah, we go to Detroit. We have friends in Detroit that we visit. As a matter of fact, we’ll be going to Detroit tomorrow to visit some friends that we have there—</p>
<p class="Body">WW: How do you feel—</p>
<p class="Body">MS: But Detroit is on the mend. The yuppies and people mover wanting to build new homes and move there, that’s a mighty big question. I don’t know if that’s going to happen or not.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Are you optimistic for the city moving forward?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Well, I think Duggan is doing a marvelous job. I’m optimistic to the extent that I think yes, Detroit can recover but they have to make some really, really hard decisions. As I said earlier in the interview, the turning point in Detroit, in my opinion, occurred when they disbanded the Big Four. The Big Four was the safety net for keeping gangs at arm’s reach, where they could control the streets and the hoodlums and the gangs. The Big Four did a fantastic job but politically, they were a liability and so that’s why they disbanded them. And then they identified 200 cops, they called them TMU “Tough Mother” you-know-whats. “Tactical Mobile Unit” “Tough Mothers” [laughing]. Anyway, they would move in and then computers began to get very-computers came into being and they could track crime more effectively than they were able to. So they would take these 200 tactical unit officers and put them into a high crime area. And yes, crime would stop in its tracks. So then the hoodlums, they said, “Well if you’ve seen one tough mother, you’ve seen them all.” So they would get in the ditches in the expressways and go to an area where the tough mothers weren’t. It was cat and mouse. The criminal element, they out-foxed the TMU units. So it’s cat and mouse kind of a game. It’s tough keeping crime under control. The tactical mobile unit was disbanded because they were not sufficiently effective to that particular problem. You move them from one area to another, then the mercenaries, they were smart, they’d move them to another area where you didn't see a TMU.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: Is there anything else you’d like to add today?</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Well, if you got any more questions, I’d be happy to answer them.</p>
<p class="Body">WW: I think I’m all set. Thank you so much!</p>
<p class="Body">MS: Well, thank you and I appreciate the opportunity.</p>
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:24:29
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Mike Stacy
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit, MI
Phone Interview
Video
A link to the video
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v-SjoE6oOtU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mike Stacy, August 22nd, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Stacy discusses growing up in Dearborn, going to Michigan State after serving in the Marine Corps, and working as a campus cop. He reflects on his time at the Recorder’s Court and how the unrest of 1967 affected his work there. He details his changed perception of the city in light of riots and shares his thoughts on the Big Four and the future of Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
01/27/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
A language of the resource
en-US
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Curfew
Dearborn
Detroit Police Department
Governor George Romney
John Conyers
Michigan National Guard
Michigan State Police Department
Recorder's Court - Detroit
Snipers
The Big Four
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/33004c197696e4946d77098c4e0f56bd.JPG
015efee1599175cf8f1beeb2eec6c290
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
A language of the resource
en-us
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10/20/2019
Oral History
An audio or video resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Raymond Walker
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Raymond Walker was born in 1946 and grew up in Wyandotte, Michigan. He worked for the city of Wyandotte in 1967.
Interviewer's Name
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Giancarlo Stefanutti
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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06/18/2016
Interview Length
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00:22:29
Transcriptionist
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Hannah Sabal
Transcription Date
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07/11/2016
Transcription
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<p>GS: Hello, today is June 18<sup>th</sup>, 2016. My name is Giancarlo Stefanutti, I’m also with Julia Westblade. This interview is in Detroit Michigan for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. Thank you for sitting down with us today.</p>
<p>RW: You’re welcome.</p>
<p>GS: Can you first start by telling us your name and where and when were you born?</p>
<p>RW: My name is Raymond Walter Walker. I was born in Trenton, Michigan, December 15<sup>th</sup>, 1946. Kind of almost a Christmas baby. I was cheated on my birthday because it was too close to Christmas.</p>
<p>GS: Excellent. So when did you move into Detroit?</p>
<p>RW: I’ve pretty much been in Detroit all my life. My father worked for Monsanto Chemical Company as an engineer, and we moved out west to Soda Springs, Idaho in the early 50s, and then he became ill and we moved back here about 1957. We’ve been in Detroit, the Detroit area ever since.</p>
<p>GS: Did your mother have a job?</p>
<p>RW: My mother worked part-time at a credit union, and my father died when I was just a teenager.</p>
<p>GS: I see. Where did you say in Detroit you lived?</p>
<p>RW: I didn’t exactly live in Detroit, I lived in Wyandotte, Michigan.</p>
<p>GS: So then, what was your childhood like?</p>
<p>RW: My childhood was like in the 50s, and early 60s, like everyone else, you want to play cowboys and Indians. Had a couple friends down the street. We were always interested in the Davy Crockett, the Alamo, and stuff. We played army. We had a tent and we’d sleep over. Played on some baseball teams, softball teams at a park. Growing up, the family was really poor. Hand-me-down clothes, Christmas time, maybe one or two presents. I do remember one Christmas always stuck in my mind: the people across the street bought us a Scotch pine Christmas tree so we would have a tree to put up in our house as a kid. Then we always had old decorations that we used, and recycled. Growing up, it was second-hand clothes, second-hand shoes. When you got into junior high or high school, it was pretty much segregated. They knew you were poor, you don’t eat lunch with us, Ray, you go over there and eat lunch with somebody else. You know, it was that kind of a deal. I always resented being poor, and my parents were born in 1908 and 1910, my father in 1908. He fought in the Pacific for three years. He was in the first regiment, first marine division. Made a couple invasions, spent three months in China after the war. Never really held a job later on in life, became ill, and passed away—cancer. Resented being poor. I always made it a point—and they wanted us to receive an education because both of them had quit school at the age of eight because of the Great Depression in 1929, 1930. They lived in a home with multiple families, you know, everybody trying to scrape together and that. My father, when he was growing up, in the early ‘20s and that, he was a professional prize fighter. Won some state championships and that but never made, you know, the big titles. Trained with some of the champions as a sparring partner and things like that. I always resented being poor and I made it a goal in life that when I grew up I would be eccentric.</p>
<p>GC: A good goal.</p>
<p>RW: I was not much of an athlete, so I gravitated to hunting and fishing. My brother-in-law pretty much took me under his wing and taught me how to hunt. Now I raise champion field Gordon Setters, hunting dogs. One of my dogs was Setter of the Year for the Costco stores about thirteen years ago. Her picture was on their dogfood. I guide hunts, I take doctors, lawyers, dentists out. I have a group of professionals that I hunt with, and I hunt all over the United States. I have one son, he’s 37 years old, he does homeland security, he’s been shipped all over the country. Right now, he’s pretty much been stationed in Casper, Wyoming. He does airport securities, a lot of times he’ll call and say—it’ll be a Monday and he’ll say, “I’ll be gone for a week.” So I really don’t know what he does. And when the Brussels attack came, he called us two days in advance and he said, “I’ll be gone for a while, I’m going to travel.” We were used to that, so we never thought of it, and then when the Brussels attack came I thought, he’s checking these small airports, checking places to make sure that there’s no attacks or that. Sometimes he does undercover work. Travels all over. My wife was a nurse, she’s retired, of course, I taught high school at Grosse Ile High School. I’m retired. In 2009, 2010 I was the Civics Teacher of the Year for the Center for Civic Education out of Washington D.C. 2014, I was the Social Studies Teacher of the Year for the State of Michigan. I’ve won some awards from the Daughters of the American Revolution. I’ve won a couple awards from the Foundation for Teaching Economics. I’m a docent and also, kind of don’t exactly work for the Library of Congress, but I write grants through the Library of Congress, and I run seminars, training teachers to use primary sources in their classroom, and then their lesson plans are put online from k-12 or A.P. classes, anywhere from twenty to thirty teachers at a time. I’ve done that about ten times, and we have another grant out right now. We’re waiting on the results for that.</p>
<p>GS: That’s very impressive.</p>
<p>RW: Thank you, sir.</p>
<p>GS: Growing up, where did you go to school?</p>
<p>RW: I went to Soda Springs Elementary School. There was no kindergarten, so I went there first, second, and third grade. In October of the third grade, we left there and moved to Riverview and lived with my uncle and aunt for a while, so I went to one of the Riverview elementary schools in the third grade. And then we bought a house at Oak Street and 9<sup>th</sup>, and I went to an elementary school in Wyandotte. Finally, we moved to another house at the north end of Wyandotte and I wound up in the third grade—four schools, third grade—at Taft elementary. Then I went to Taft Elementary until the sixth grade, and then over to Woodrow Wilson. At that time, that was called junior high—seventh, eighth, and ninth grades and I went to Roosevelt ten, eleven, and twelve, then I attended Wayne State, as my parents wanted me to.</p>
<p>GS: Wow. These were a lot of schools. Would you say that they were racially integrated?</p>
<p>RW: Wyandotte was not racially integrated. My father always brought us up not seeing color. My father had African American or black—whatever the proper term should be—prize fighters that he was friends with. He had Hispanic friends, and then my son married a Hispanic or Mexican woman; he’s their favorite son-in-law. They treat him like a king, which I’m very proud of. Very fine people. I’m not a racist, I don’t see color, I brought my son up that way, we were brought up that way. The neighborhood I lived in in North Wyandotte, there was people that moved out from small West Virginia town and they seemed to all congregate in these couple streets and my father told me a couple of them were KKK members. He was not pleased with them. We didn’t associate with them, but, you know he told me on the side, he says, “Ray,” he says, “they’re Klan members.” And I said, “Oh! I didn’t know that!” So no, we never saw color. In the marines in 1942 – 43 in that area, the marines were segregated so the African Americans, the blacks, were CVs, and my dad, of course, was infantry; he was a combat engineer. He told us stories, he said, “They gave them World War I equipment and rifles,” and he said they sent these guys to shore at Peleliu and he said no training, and they were absolutely petrified. He said he was in a foxhole with some of them, and he said, “Just wait here, wait here for the tanks to come in, come ashore, clean out the pill boxes.” And he said, “We’ll be safe.” One guy jumped up and ran, and the rest of them jumped up and ran, and the Japanese just mowed them down in front of him. And he says they just were not trained for combat. And he says that’s race.</p>
<p>GS: Wow. So then your neighborhoods themselves were racially integrated, or—</p>
<p>RW: No, they were all white. But like I said, there were some that were Klan members.</p>
<p>GS: Right. Kind of moving into the 60s, did you notice any sort of tensions in your community around the city?</p>
<p>RW: No, Wyandotte was all white at that time. All white. There maybe have been one or two African American families. Wyandotte bordered Ecorse, and of course, that was becoming black. And Lincoln Park at that time was white, that bordered Detroit. So there was a lot of white flight from Detroit to the suburbs: Wyandotte, Taylor, Romulus, Riverview, Trenton, those areas. And they were dominantly white. Now, of course, they’re more integrated.</p>
<p>GS: Right. Moving to the riot itself, what was your first memory of hearing about the riot?</p>
<p>RW: The first memory was I had a summer job that paid for my college education. Two gentlemen hired me, John Rittnerberger and Roger [Morethaeu?]. They were supervisors for the city of Wyandotte, the Municipal Services Lecture department. I got in through a councilman and they realized that I was poor, they gave me a summer job every year to pay for my college education from the day I got out of school until the day I went back to school. And sometimes they even hired me during Christmas break. But anyway, I was working for the city of Wyandotte just as laborer, and in the electrical department you had linemen that did the power lines, the electrical lines. Some of them did not live in Wyandotte, and we heard about the riots and one fellow left work to go home because the riot was spreading to his neighborhood; I don’t remember what city he lived in, but he was afraid for his family, fearful for them. He left there to get them out. When I left work that afternoon at five o’clock, I stopped at a little mom and pop corner grocery store, on Twelfth Street across from Polaski Park. I walked in just to buy some stuff for supper and a policeman walked in right behind me, and the guy running the store says, “Get your money out and hand it to me!” because he was selling beer and wine, and they were going to shut the store down. So they shut all the stores down like that that sold beer and wine. They shut everything down. Then I went home, and of course it was all on the black and white TVs at that time, it was on the news, it was on the radio. I do remember later on, reading about Governor Romney called in the National Guard, and then Governor Romney at that time was a potential Republican candidate for the Presidency, possibly running against Lyndon Johnson, it’s 1968. He asked Lyndon Johnson to bring in the regular army, and Lyndon Johnson delayed, and delayed, and delayed bringing in help for Detroit. Romney was struggling with the Detroit police, so was Mayor Cavanagh and the National Guard, and eventually Johnson got off his fanny and let the regular army in, so there was politics being played there.</p>
<p>GS: Right. A lot of people call it a riot, but we also hear terms like “rebellion” or “uprising.” Would you call it a riot or would you call it one of these other words?</p>
<p>RW: I guess I would call it a riot. There was a lot of race tension in the city at that time, even though you had a white mayor, Cavanagh, and he was pretty liberal. But there was a lot of race tension. There was a lot of poverty in those areas. There wasn’t a chance for those people to get out of poverty, even though we still had a manufacturing industry with, you know, chemical plants, steel mills, and auto industry and that, where you could get a decent job. These people were poor. There was race tensions. At that time you had all the Freedom Marchers, and it was constantly on TV down in the south where they were hosing them with fire hoses, turning dogs on them, using cattle prods—a cattle prod is an electric shock thing that you would use, long nail, stick it into the thing and it sends a tremendous electrical shock. They can use it on bulls to control them. So they’re using those things on people, and you saw this all the time. At that time also, the Vietnam War was becoming unpopular in the United States. Johnson’s popularity was going down, he was tied to it. Wayne State had constant protests against the Vietnam War. So there was all this turmoil, racial turmoil, Vietnam turmoil, job turmoil, poverty and everything. The way I looked at it was a riot because they did the looting of the stores and stuff like that. That is rioting. My perspective, it was not so much a rebellion. But I can see there were people rebelling against the society they were in and the society that they were contained in. They were captivated almost into this abject poverty and they were going to go generation to generation to generation of poverty. And at that time also, you had Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty going on, and HUD and trying to bring social reform from the federal government into the state and help these people. But they were captured in. It was a very hot summer, and it escalated and, I think, you had some people who took advantage of the situation and said, “Hey, let’s go loot stores, let’s go steal, let’s go get some stuff, we can sell it on the black market, we can sell it here.” Matter of fact, earlier I mentioned about the Klan members in my neighborhood. My father said that two of the people—they guy living next door to me and the guy living about four houses down from us—bought stuff that was stolen from the 67 riots. And my dad was just absolutely upset about it. From my perspective, yeah, it was a riot because of the breaking and the entering in the stores and the destruction of private property. Especially of the stores that would have been aiding these people. Now, I know around Wayne State there was some rioting that went on and houses were burned down and that, and eventually Wayne State took that land and built the new athletic area in it, and parking structures and that. They’ve expanded out into those areas, and a lot of those streets don’t even exist anymore.</p>
<p>GS: Yeah. We were talking about this tension that you saw beforehand. Were there any changes, kind of sharp changes you could see in the city or the community around you after the riot?</p>
<p>RW: Not really, no. Wyandotte still maintained to be pretty much white. There where Italians, Jewish, French and Polish and everything, but it was basically an Eastern Europe city: white, European community. It didn’t change until much, much later.</p>
<p>GS: I see. Was there anything else that you would like to share with us?</p>
<p>RW: Yeah, it seemed the riots really brought on—people seemed to become aware that Johnson’s helping all these poor people, and especially the Civil Rights Acts, and the Voting Rights Acts, and HUD, and the War on Poverty’s helping all these people, and then they turn around and they riot. There seemed to be a political backlash, especially at the voting booth in 1968 against all those riots. Because it wasn’t just Detroit; it was Maryland, Chicago, California, all across the country, there were riots going on—or protests, whatever you want to call it. Revolts. There became a big split in the Democratic Party at that time because George Wallace, a southern democrat, split from the regular democrats, ran as an independent, captured several states that always went democrat, took that away from Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and Nixon realized what was going on. And also in 1968, the democrats didn’t have a very peaceful convention; they had a revolt. It was on TV, people fighting and the Chicago Police beating people up, even in the convention, so, I mean, that whole 66, 67, 68, all that time was turmoil and really did not see change until the end of the 70s and then into the 80s, and then today.</p>
<p>GS: Leading in with that, I’m just wondering how you see the city of Detroit now with the 67 riot in mind.</p>
<p>RW: I see Detroit much calmer. I don’t see the race tensions nearly what they were in 67. And even when I’m talking to black people in stores and stuff like that, there’s no resentment; there’s no race. I don’t see it. I really don’t. I work with blacks, I’ve had black students. Matter of fact, when I taught high school at Grosse Ile, when I got into segregation and the Civil Rights and the Jim Crow Laws and stuff like that, I was very cognizant of my African American students in the classroom. And when I retired, those African American students wrote me cards saying they appreciated how I taught them because I knew that that was a sensitive topic to them, and they really appreciated that. Matter of fact, being a white guy, I was their favorite teacher. I’ve had several back surgeries, and they would write me Get well cards, and it was always, “Mr. Walker, we love you, we love you.” I don’t see the race. I’m sure there’re still people that are resentful in race on both sides, but I don’t see it in the public like it was in 67. I lived downriver, lot of African Americans in the stores, lot of Arabic people in stores, all kinds of nationalities in stores. I don’t really see the resentment. I just don’t. I think the legislation came along, people changed their minds through the legislation. Generations change, you grow up. And I had an advantage because of the way my father brought me up: not to see color, to see the heart of a person, to see what they are. Not to see and categorize people just because they’re black. I hunt with black people, I take black people out and they hunt with my dogs. I don’t see it. I just don’t.</p>
<p>GS: All right, well, thank you for sharing your experiences with us today.</p>
<p>RW: You’re welcome.</p>
<p>GS: We appreciate it.</p>
<p>RW: Thank you for inviting me. It was an honor. </p>
Original Format
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audio
Duration
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22min 49sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Hannah Sabal
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Raymond Walker
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DEhm85dNA80" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Raymond Walker, June 18th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Walker discusses growing up in Wyandotte in a segregated neighborhood, but being raised by his father to be tolerant of all races. He tells what he was doing he heard about the unrest and how he sees the city today.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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07/12/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Civil Rights Movement
Detroit Community Members
Governor George Romney
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Wyandotte
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/d3399ed498b52483a812b6ee849c5b22.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Reverend Wendell Anthony
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Originally born in 1950 in St. Louis, Missouri, Reverend Dr. Wendell Anthony’s family moved to Detroit in 1958. The church was a big part of Rev. Anthony’s life and he later went on to graduate from University of Detroit with a degree in black political theology. He is currently the pastor for Fellowship Chapel in Detroit, Michigan.
Interviewer's Name
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Zachary Shapiro
Interview Place
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Fellowship Chapel, Detroit
Date
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11/19/2015
Interview Length
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00:54:35
Transcriptionist
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Zachary Shapiro
Transcription Date
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12/16/2015
Transcription
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<p>ZS: Okay. My name is Zachary Shapiro. Today is November 19, 2015 and today we will be interviewing Reverend Wendell Anthony for the Detroit Historical Society’s 1967 Oral History Project. We are holding the interview at Fellowship Chapel in Detroit, Michigan.</p>
<p>Can you please start by telling me where and when you were born and when you moved to Detroit?
</p>
<p>WA: Originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Was born in St. Louis in 1950 and I moved here with my mother in 1958. Went to Detroit Public Schools — Central High School, Durfee, Roosevelt — and joined the St. Marks Presbyterian Church and the rest is history.</p>
<p>ZS: Why did your family decide to move to Detroit from St. Louis?</p>
<p>WA: My mother did. I stayed in St. Louis with my grandmother. I didn’t want to come to Detroit so I stayed, all my cousins, relatives, friends were there. My mother remarried. She came to Detroit so naturally I had to come with her.</p>
<p>ZS: Would you like to briefly describe your parents and family?</p>
<p>WA: Well, I have a great family. As a small boy I was raised by my grandmother in St. Louis in a small town called Kinloch, a lot of relatives. We were not middle class. We were kind of poor economically, but rich spiritually. I don’t regret any of my childhood experience. I wish my own kids could have experienced some of what I experienced as a child because I enjoyed every moment of it. My cousins and I lived in a little red house on the hill down in the basement and we had a very good life. So that’s where I got a lot of values. Church being a part of that all day experience and then coming to Detroit later on when my mother remarried and meeting a guy by the name of Jim Wadsworth. She joined the St. Marks Presbyterian Church and I followed that and connected with him. He was very much involved in the community. As a matter of fact he was president of the NAACP, back in the middle-sixties and was instrumental in helping Coleman Young become the first African-American mayor. So, that was a part of that. I used to come up here on the train. My grandmother would give me a shoe box filled with food — pound cake, pie, chicken — and with a note "Wendell Anthony for Detroit," pocket full of change, so I could get some pop. We called it soda on the way. And then when I stayed up here, my mother would, when I went back to St. Louis in the summer she would do the same. Put a note on my chest, "Wendell Anthony St. Louis," shoe box of food, pocket full of change. My grandmother and cousins would be waiting on me and that’s how I spent my summers and school time period so for me it was a great learning and growing experience.</p>
<p>ZS: Alright. Could you talk about where exactly you grew up at in Detroit and describe what living in that area was like while you were growing up and what the neighborhood was like and everything?</p>
<p>WA: Two areas basically. When I first came in we lived in an apartment over on LaSalle and Elmhurst near Central High School, near Tuxedo. Apartment life was good although there wasn’t a whole lot of play space, but I had a few of friends over there and then we moved to Linwood and LaSalle to West Buena Vista near Davison. I remember going to the old Avalon Theater, which used to be at Linwood and Davison. I used to go there every Saturday basically at that time. I used to go in the show for fifty cents and I would take bags full of goodies and you have two movies, cartoons and previews and we would stay in movies all day basically. So, Linwood I went to McCulloch elementary over there and nice neighborhood a lot of trees played running, football, baseball in the streets and on playground. There was a time period in which folks could sit on their front porch and you could do what you want to do until the street lights came on. Street lights come on everybody had to be at the house. So Linwood, LaSalle, pretty much in the Dexter area.</p>
<p>ZS: Dexter area, alright. Could you talk about where you went to college and what you studied in school and why you decided to study that?</p>
<p>WA: I went to Wayne State University from Central High School. Met a guy by the name of Noah Brown Jr., who was the first African American vice president at Wayne State. He was very much committed to young people. He got me in school, gave me a job helped me to go to Africa. My first trip to Africa was in 1970. I was not quite sure what I was going to study. I wanted originally to be a lawyer because at that time period Ken Cockrell Sr. was the preeminent lawyer around here and every young brother who was thinking about anything wanted to be like Ken. Ken was so brilliant in terms of his articulation of issues and his use of the king’s language and he bamboozled so many people by his wit and his brilliance so we all wanted to be like Ken. I thought that’s what I wanted to do. But then I was always in the church. I was with Reverend Wadsworth and I did not know how strongly that was weighing upon me but the church seemed to be able to give me everything. The church really helped me to go to Africa. We raised money — we were originally gonna go to Africa in '70 through university, but the trip fell through.</p>
<p>ZS: What country?</p>
<p>WA: We were going to go to East Africa we were going to go to Tanzania and Kenya but that trip — and Wayne State University was planning that trip — Brown was going to send us but the university could not — something happened and that trip fell through, but Noah Brown said, “Y’all still going,” Talking about me and Ron Massey, a guy that came through school with me. I was president of the student council at Central High School. He was president of the senior high class. We graduated together and so we were very close and we also got involved and we went to Wayne State. We were in Project Fifty at that time. Came in in the summer worked and all of that. So he said, “Y’all still going,” so he called all his friends he said I want thirty dollars from you, thirty dollars from you, thirty dollars from you. Talking about that time was like Horace Sheffield, it was Judge Wade McCree, it was Blaine Denning, it was used-to-head-of-the-Urban-League; I’m looking at him and his name will come to me: Francis Kornegay. All those guys gave us thirty dollars and then the church Rev. Wadsworth raised the rest and so we got binoculars, we got tape recorders, and some friends over here contacted some people over there and instead of going to East Africa we went to West Africa. We went for a month. It was the best experience I ever had. I’m so glad that Wayne State’s trip fell through because we went to Ghana and to Liberia for a month. That trip was only two weeks, Wayne’s trip, but this trip was for a month. We had a chance to stay in the homes of the poorest to the the mansions of the president of the country. And so we were really hot on Black activism back then, because this was in '68, '69, '70. We graduated in '68 right after the rebellion and so we were still talking about Black history classes and Black folk needed to be a part of everything that went down and we needed power and economic — the same thing folks talking about today. And so to be able to go to Africa and to see all of this was mind blowing for us. And so that was a part of it those were the countries and that experience really has mirrored this experience.</p>
<p>ZS: Did you say what you studied, what your major was?</p>
<p>WA: What I majored in was political science. Originally I was going to law school, but having met Wadsworth I decided to go into another law, this law, His law, which is higher than that other law and so I decided to go into the ministry because the church was doing everything. It’s where I learned how to speak publicly. It’s where I first met my wife. They supported me in school. They did everything and so it just seemed that no matter which way I turned there was a church and that’s why — let’s see I went to Wayne State, I went to Marygrove college, majoring in pastoral ministry. I have a master from Marygrove and I also went to the University of Detroit [for] advanced studies in black political theology.</p>
<p>ZS: Great. Okay, so again what year did you say your family moved to Detroit?</p>
<p>WA: Fifty-eight</p>
<p>ZS: Fifty-eight, okay so —</p>
<p>WA: Well, that’s when I moved here. My mother I think she came maybe in, I would say '55, '56 and then I settled here because I stayed in St. Louis. She came, started working and got remarried and then I came maybe three years later. Because I mean, I was still coming up here, but I didn’t come to live until 1958 because I didn’t want to come here. I wanted to stay in St. Louis but had to go where mama went.</p>
<p>ZS: And how old were you roughly?</p>
<p>WA: I was eight.</p>
<p>ZS: So I guess from 1958 through the sixties we’re talking about now, can you just describe what you observed as the relationship between the city of Detroit, your community, and the city government and the police?</p>
<p>WA: Well, it was a rocky relationship obviously because I grew up under the “Big Four.” You familiar with the “Big Four”?</p>
<p>ZS: I’m not.</p>
<p>WA: Yeah you probably wouldn’t be. The “Big Four” was four big burly white police officers that would ride around in a big black car, a or blue car and they would tell you to get your ass of the street and they would beet down Black people. And we would call them the “Big Four” because that’s who they were. You didn’t have a lot of Blacks on the police department — basically none back in those days, fire department same way. And so you didn’t have a lot of ownership of Black folk. So it was a trying time. Plus it was the sixties, fifties and sixties, era of Dr. King, you know, Civil Rights, voting rights back in that day we would see the Civil Rights marches and dogs biting folk on TV every day. Vietnam was popping and kicking and so it was a real activist time. Motown was strong. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," Stevie Wonder, 4 Tops, Supremes and all of that. So it was really hopping in Detroit and a lot of people had come and migrated to Detroit, Black people, for obviously for economic relief. So we were here, saw all of that. We wanted more Black history in our schools. Because I remember when I first started Central High School in '64 protesting about the fact that we didn’t have Black history, Black studies, like we should. We did walk-outs. I was a part of walk outs, which is a part of the reason I was matriculated to the student council.</p>
<p>ZS: Because they weren’t teaching about Black history enough?</p>
<p>WA: Not the way we wanted and they weren’t — It was not emphasized. And the sixties, that was a time when all of this going on like what you see going on at the colleges, Living Out, MSU [Michigan State University] and Howard and Mizzou, that was going on back then because the same thing you see going on now was going on then. Sit-ins shutting down universities; this is not new. It’s almost like reliving what we went through back in the sixties, which is a good thing because it shows this generation of young people ain’t dead, ain’t oblivious to what’s going on, that they are paying attention that they are in it and now it's their turn, so they going to make their own mistakes, their own gains, but it’s their time, so do something with it. So, that’s what was going on at the time and which propelled us to the — I guess moving us towards ;67 and —which should not have been a surprise for anybody. Because if you couple what was going on with Dr. King, his assassination, his march in Detroit in '63, Detroit being the first place where he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech downtown, and birthplace of the labor movement, UAW [United Auto Workers] and I can remember the excitement around that, and John F. Kennedy being president, I mean, which gave us some new hope and insight that maybe here’s a guy that’s going to come in and change some stuff, which he tried to but he didn’t live long enough to really effectuate change. And when you saw all the things that were going on down South it affected us and so being up north, it was no bundle of joy because we had our issues to: Detroit, Chicago, New York, California. So, a lot of issues were happening in cities all around this country, not just in the South, but here too so all of that impacted what we were going through.</p>
<p>ZS: Could you talk specifically about your memories of the events that took place in the summer of 1967?</p>
<p>WA: I remember seeing the smoke, the streets with tanks coming down them. I’ll never forget that I saw the corner stores — we lived on Linwood and Buena Vista near Davison. I remember the curfew and all of that and burning up on Twelfth Street because our church, St. Marks Presbyterian Church, was up on Twelfth and Atkinson and I had friends that lived over there who were right kind of in the thick of all of it. But I remember seeing the tanks come down Linwood. I remember Governor Romney and I think [Mayor Jerome] Cavanagh on Linwood. I remember Romney coming down with his sleeves rolled up — not his son, the daddy, his son was totally different than the daddy. I had a lot of respect for his father, because his father, former Governor George Romney, had a sensitivity. As a matter of fact, he started the HUD [Housing and Urban Development] program, he was the governor that helped initiate that and I think when he went to DC. And he started the Michigan Civil Rights Commission. So he was very sensitive, unlike Mitt; I don’t know what — he didn’t fall of the tree; well, he fell off but he might have fallen off on his head or something, I don’t know what the hell happened to him. But at any rate, his father was much more sensitive than he is, appears to be. So I remember seeing them comedown Linwood.</p>
<p>ZS: They were giving a speech or what was it?</p>
<p>WA: They were trying to calm, just being out there showing that they were concerned, telling people to kind of calm down, just their presence I think was demonstrative of the fact that they were not oblivious to what was happening, because you had these police officers with real long guns. I remember them standing out in front of stores because people had broken windows and they would get out of these cars and I guess trucks and stand in front of the doors. I remember because we had a curfew and I was looking out of my window over at 2683 Buena Vista, it was the address of the house, and I was looking out the window to see what was going on and I remember this officer, this police, taking this long gun and he turned it and he pointed it right at me and I immediately closed the curtains because I didn’t know if he was going to shoot me or not. </p>
<p>ZS: Was it a police officer or the National Guard?</p>
<p>WA: It was a police officer. He had a long, long gun. Different than the kind of gun they have today, I don’t know what kind of gun it was, but it was just a long-ass gun and he was pointing it at me. I will never forget that. And that came as a result of discontent and folk called it a riot, others called it a rebellion, to us it was more of a rebellious in terms of what was going on as opposed to just riots for the sake of riots and out of that it emerges a new Detroit to address some of the economic social ills in the community and I think the following year, the next year, the year that I was graduating from Central, and being a part of that and having experienced that, that heightened my level of consciousness to the degree that I began to focus in on the social economic needs of our community.; I remember in '68 Reverend Wadsworth asked me to do a youth day at Fellowship Chapel. Our church had split in 1966. St. Marks. He was a pastor at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church; that church split. I went, we went, my family went with Reverend Wadsworth. It split over his activism in the community. People didn’t like him being active with the NAACP. Interesting. And they didn’t like the way he related to the community. Because Twelfth Street was real popular; you had Twenty Grand, you had all these black businesses, you had pimps, prostitutes. He didn't have a problem talking to the pimps prostitutes, but the Presbyterian church in those days was very conservative. And everybody couldn’t get with that. And but he was his own man, and so it split eventually and so we went with him and Fellowship Chapel was formed in 1966 and he and I were very, very close and as a result of that I began to be more and more in tune with the church and all of that. The way that happened was he would give us tests. I was in his Sunday school class. He would give us tests like, you know, who was this character? What’s this person’s name and how do you spell this? And one Sunday he asked. “Who in the class can spell Nebuchadnezzar?” and so I was the only one I raised my hand and I spelled it and he was so excited and was like, “How did you know that word?” Because you know Nebuchadnezzar isn’t an easy word and so he gave me a little gold cross with a metallic base and I thought that was the end of it. Well, during the service in worship he said, “Before we leave today I just want to tell you all something, Wendell Anthony,” I was sitting there with my mother and I was like what did I do? Because I thought I had done something. “Wendell Anthony” and so he said, “Stand up Wendell.” and so I stood up and I was what in the world, he said, "We had a test today and Wendell Anthony spelled Nebuchadnezzar and you all know that’s not an easy word, give Wendell Anthony a hand.” And everyone the whole church I was blown away from that one word from that moment on we were like this together for 28 years. My point on that is that you can never know what you can say to a young person or someone else that’s going to make a life changing difference and it did, because from that point on there ain’t nothing you can tell me about Jim Wadsworth, he was the man. And so we continued to grow together and there was a group of us that kind of hung with him but I would walk to church and walk home in the winter from Linwood and Buena Vista to Twelfth Street and Atkinson, which is a little ways. My mother would sometimes go with me, drop me off, we would come together. She would leave and I would stay until the end of the service just to be around him and that continued when we split and he said we going to have a you know our first youth day in '68 and I want you to be the youth day speaker. Well, my theme was the Black church in revolutionary times. Dovetailing off what had happened, dovetailing off Dr. King had been assassinated and all that and my thing, was the NAACP wasn’t really as relevant as it should be. And so I remember that and so I spoke and some people left the church when I got through and because I’m 18, I’ve got fire. I’m throwing the stuff out there. I used to wear a leather dashiki and a bullet in St. Louis and that was my M.O. and so but on that Sunday I wore a black suit and a white shirt but I didn’t change my dialogue and so when I got through some people left the church. I never knew that until years later Reverend Wadsworth and I were having a conversation and some kind of way it got on the early days of the church and he said you know, “Remember Dr. Smith,” I said “yeah” he said, “You know he left the church back then,” and I said, “Yeah, I knew he left him and his wife and his family." He said, “They were big donors,” I said, “Yeah” and he came to me and said and he wasn’t the only one who said, “Either him or me.” “What you mean either him or me?” Meaning he said, “That young man that you had in the pulpit here, he said some things that kind of disturbed me and Jim”, that was what they called him “Jim, either he’s got to go or we going to go," meaning they wanted me to get out the pulpit and never have nothing else to say. And so the Rev said, “Well, you know the church is a place where I think young people, even though we may not agree with them, should be a foundation, a platform, for them to speak and to be raised up and I know we don’t always agree with what they say or how they say it, but I think that it should be something where they’re able to come and do that and therefore I think Wendell is going to stay.” So, they left. I never knew that until years later. Now, if he had eaten chicken and said, “Oh, I didn’t know he was going to say it. I ain’t going to never have him up there again because I don’t want to lose you all as members and certainly the ties and offerings that you bring,” you and I would not be sitting here today, but he didn’t eat chicken he stood up, and as a result of that we’re here and now I’m president of the NAACP, which I used to be twelfth term, 24 years, which I never thought I’d be doing.</p>
<p>ZS: Going back to something you mentioned a little bit ago you talked about how you called the events of 1967 a rebellion as opposed to a riot. Can you talk about why you would refer to it as that?</p>
<p>WA: Because it was a response to what many folk felt. The only way you can get certain folks' attentions is to do things of that nature and it was now some people might have used it for their own means, but other used it for means of expression. It’s interesting because back in that day there were — when Dr. King was having his marches in various cities and a news person asked him, “You know, Dr. King, you are having all these non-violent marches and then you see these riots.” The press called them riots. Rebellions places like Detroit, LA, Chicago. There were 125 cities that went up in flames during the time King was having his stuff. And so he said, “you know,” Dr. King response to that was, “Yeah, I understand that and I still believe that peaceful non-violent assembly is the best way to do this but it would be contradictory or hypocritical for me to talk about non-violent protests over economic issues if I don’t at the same time talk about the root causes of why they occur. So riots are really the language of the unheard." That’s what Dr. King said and I think that’s the way many of us view the rebellions, the language of the unheard. You’re not necessarily getting at the — by having a press conference the attention of folk that will make a difference because as a result of that New Detroit was created, structure with business people, political people, community people to address the social, economic, and political concerns of the city of Detroit. Funds were created to do economic development. Race relations were then beginning to be talked about. The whole issue of police controlling the city being an occupying army. And as you know that’s what certainly lead to the propelling of Richard Austin to run as — you may not know — as the first black mayor for the city of Detroit. I remember wearing a button saying “Black Mayor 1969.” We wanted Richard Austin, who was the Secretary of State, first Black Secretary of State for Michigan, real good guy ran but unsuccessfully, but that’s who we wanted. And then a few years later you have Coleman Young. We move from the “Big Four” to S.T.R.E.S.S., Stop the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets. That was the decoy unit that was formed by the police department. They killed about 19, 20 people and they were decoy units set up to trap Black folk and community people into criminal behavior and in most cases they would have folks guns were planted on the people they would have folks in certain positions where they had to make certain moves and then they could take them out, so it was a very detonating unit. And Coleman Young came in vowing to eliminate S.T.R.E.S.S. and to integrate the police department and the fire department and to make Detroit much more representative of the community in which it exists and a lot of us support it. That’s how he became mayor, he rode that horse into public office and so that’s why.</p>
<p>ZS: You mentioned viewing the police as an occupying force. Were the police viewed that way prior to the rebellion?</p>
<p>WA: Absolutely. Yes. Totally. That’s part of what led to it. And most of them don’t live here. Didn’t live here. The sad commentary in all of this is that we are going back to that. Residency means something. Residency means that you have a stake in the community. Well, the police were white for the most part. They came in in the morning and they left in the afternoon, meaning you didn’t see them and so they didn’t have no stake in the community. They would view us as like folk they had to control and contain not citizens or people or neighbors or friends or Mr. Jones' children or Mrs. Smith’s daughters. These were just indigents that they had to contain and control. So that’s why residency was so important and it’s interesting that the Kerner Commission report that came out 60 years ago in that time period says that residency is most important and we’re losing that. Now we don’t have residency, so what we fought for we fought for affirmative action. We don’t have that anymore to the degree that impresses upon the community and the police department in that those things are good but the president’s commission twenty-first century policing now says that we should have that, that it’s important for police officers in a community to have relations through the report following the situation in Ferguson where they oppose a board of police commissioners. Now they say they want a board of police commissioners controlled by the local people and so we go through these circles. On one end we saying we shouldn’t do it and were saying we coming back to doing it. The Kerner Commission also stated that the police should not be utilizing these militarized equipment and looking like they are on patrol in Beirut or the West Bank or in Syria, because these are American citizens, these kids don’t have no bazookas and tanks. I mean they had rocks and most of them ain’t even doing that and so we’re simply saying that and they didn’t follow the edict of the Kerner Commission report. It was not forced. President Johnson did not push it like that. It was done most folks didn’t read it. But we’re repeating the same stuff in it. And unfortunately we’re going back now and so things changed and things remained the same, so that’s my response to your question.</p>
<p>ZS: Alright great and you also mentioned what was the unit?</p>
<p>WA: S.T.R.E.S.S. (Stop the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets).</p>
<p>ZS: Yeah and you said they were setting people up planting weapons on people and things like that.</p>
<p>WA: They was killing people basically.</p>
<p>ZS: And this was a very well-known thing in the community?</p>
<p>WA: Oh yeah everybody knew it.</p>
<p>ZS: You think that this was a factor that led to the rebellions for sure?</p>
<p>WA: Well they had the decoy units, the “Big Four.” All of that. The lack of African American involvement and representation in the police department, in the fire department, Black business, the fact that you had folk who felt that they were being exploited in their own communities, the high prices, a lack of jobs, all this all these factors led to this. It was not just one, but it was several factors that had a piling on effect and so at some point it’s like water behind a dam and there’s a crack in it. Pretty soon the pressure is going to bust the whole thing wide open and that’s what happened here.</p>
<p>ZS: Now I guess switching over to after the events of 1967. Could you talk about what you think were the effect of 1967 on the city in the years after and even leading up to today?</p>
<p>WA: You said after '67? I think — well, after '67 there was a heightened sensitivity on the part of some that we needed to do some things in Detroit that we had not done before. That there was great division between the races, that the leaving, the exiting from the community, the lack of economic empowerment was a factor and it coupled with that — and you still got all of this stuff going on in the country. You still see the lack of opportunity for Blacks, the demonstrations, the lack of voting, capability and access, so all of those are still factors, national factors, that weighed in on the city of Detroit, it’s no different. You had King coming here, you had the fact of his death, his assassination and what that meant to a lot of people. You had [John F.] Kennedy’s assassination, you had Robert Kennedy’s assassination. So all of those were things like saying and you know who ever is standing up seems to be taken out by certain people and so all of those are factors and I think with Coleman Young’s election that certainly changed some things in Detroit because he began to build a coalition of people and the first thing he said is I’m going to have an administration that’s going to be fifty-fifty. Fifty percent white folk, fifty percent Black folk. Now it’s interesting, no white man ever said that before. Coleman Young said and that pissed of a whole lot of Black people too. “Like man they ain’t never said that why you coming at it like that?” So that’s what he did and so a lot of folk forgot that he said that and he did that which, you know, saying that all of us should partake in this, unlike his predecessors. And things began to happen: the police department began to be integrated, S.T.R.E.S.S. was eliminated, economics began to develop, later on the Renaissance Center began to emerge, up until the time I think he called Reagan “prune face” and then stuff kind of went south because we didn’t get a whole lot of development from funds from DC. He had to go through his friends Max Fisher and Al Taubman and those guys. Coleman had a great relationship with Bill Milliken, who was a former governor, republican, and a lot of us supported Milliken. He was a very fine guy, different than these guys today, these Republican governors I mean they’re off the chain, but he was reasonable. I mean I voted for Milliken because he was a good man, he <em>is</em> a good man; he is still with us. And he was a good governor and they don’t make them like that too much today unfortunately.</p>
<p>ZS: I know you touched on this a little bit earlier, but you just explain again how and why you became involved in the NAACP?</p>
<p>WA: Well, a lot to do because my mentor Reverend Wadsworth was a part of it. We used to sell tickets for the Freedom Fund dinner we used to sit out there in the audience with my mother from the church we had a table see the big fellows up there on the stage and it just matriculated. Joanne Watson, who lived next door to me on Buena Vista, she was head of the Central High School NAACP and I was head of the student council, we used to argue all the time about the relevancy about it and she used to tell me all the time, “You ought to get involved and join it.” And I said “I don’t want to do all of that because you all are a regressive organization and all of that,” but Ernie Lofton came to me and he used to be — he was with the NAACP in Detroit, and he came to me because of stuff we were doing in the community. He came to me because I was a very active minister. We did a campaign called “Detroit is Better than That” when the <em>Detroit News</em>, when the <em>Detroit Free Press</em> was really writing bad stuff about the city all the time and so we had a boycott of the paper and sometimes the <em>Free Press</em> seemed to be writing better than the <em>News</em>, sometimes the <em>News</em> writing better than the <em>Free Press;</em> I mean it’s so you can take your pick depending on the time and so we had a boycott and wore pins that said “Detroit is Better Than That” we started that and Ernie knew of my activism along with other and so he came to me and asked if I would consider running. I had been recognized by then Arthur Jeffery Johnson, who was the president of the NAACP, he and I were friends. And I had friends in the organization they gave me the key, gave me his President’s Award, and I said, “Well, you know Arthur is president but if he don’t run then I might consider.” And they said, “We don’t think he is going to run.” So I wrote him a letter certified Art Johnson, saying, “If you are a candidate, I will not run and therefore I am just letting you know.” He didn’t respond. I know he got the letter, certified and all, but they didn’t respond and soon enough they start announcing that a guy named Charles Wash was going to run. But I had made no commitment to him; I didn’t know him so I told Ernie and them that I would run, that I’d be a candidate. And so the rest is history. We ran in 1992, they changed the election — the first time that ever been done. They cancelled election nationally did Ben Hooks, William Penn in conjunction with the local people here because they knew we were going to win and they had more votes than them. They did their best to postpone the election to give them more time which we knew, but so it was postponed until I think February of '93 and we had that election and we won. And that’s how I got involved and I’ve been president since that time period.</p>
<p>ZS: Alright, could you share some of your knowledge of the history of the Detroit branch of the NAACP and I don’t know if you have anything to say about its involvement with the 1967 events too?</p>
<p>WA: Well, I don’t know if it was involved with the '67 events, I know—</p>
<p>ZS: Just a general history then.</p>
<p>WA: Well, the Detroit branch is obviously been around a while. It came in around 1912, I believe. The Ossian Sweet case was a very prominent case. This was about an Ossian Sweet who moved into a certain housing area and he fired and his house had been attacked by white folk who didn’t want him to live there and shots were fired he was arrested and all of that. Clarence Darrow, the great lawyer, was retained to deal and defend him and that’s how the NAACP Detroit really began to get on the map. The NAACP Detroit through its Fight for Freedom Fund dinner began to grow and to expand and this year was its sixty-first year starting way back in the mid-fifties and I think that through the work with the Fair Banking Alliance, which comes out of NAACP in Detroit to get banks to do more banking with this community, working. We also had champion issues like Affirmative Action are folk lead that coalition, I led a coalition, a few years ago a governor’s task force for a new beginning education committee in Detroit. We had 150 folk creating a document and now we’re doing it again with regards to the Detroit coalition feeding Detroit school children with the Skillman Foundation. We did — when I first came in, I wanted to do a tribute to Dr. King, the march in 1993, celebrating the first march in 1963, which the NAACP by the way opposed, they did not support his original march in '63, there was a lot of folk who didn’t support it. We were one. They though first of all that he would take all the money raise the money and go take it South. He was a little militant; they didn’t really understand. Now everybody supports Dr. King. But in '63 they didn’t. Now at the last minute they did come out. I’m talking about Detroit. They did come out they had signs and all of this, but they were not really supportive of his march. That was through Reverend C.L. Franklin, James Del Rio, the Reverend Albert Cleage, Walter Reuther the UAW, Tony Brown at the <em>Detroit National Black Journal</em> — those were the people in Detroit — the Human Rights Coalition — those were the people that really helped to bring Dr. King here C.L. Franklin because they were friends and what I did and what we did in '93 was have a tribute to the march. We had 250,000 people in the streets of Detroit in June of 1993. So we celebrated the thirtieth anniversary and then the fortieth anniversary and in 2003 we had about 50,000 people and then we did the fiftieth anniversary to Dr. King in 2013 and again 200,000 people in the streets of Detroit. So I think we more than made up for the lack of support that we did not give him in '63. I was not a part of the NAACP then but those are some of the things. The whole “Take Your Souls to the Polls” campaign — you may have heard that term used — comes out of an idea that we had, I had. I wanted to get the hip hop community involved in the elections and so over — it’s probably been about twelve years now, I asked a young lady to design me a flyer, a poster, that would appeal to the hip hop community, young people, put some gym shoes on it and a cap. “Take your Souls to the Polls” and soles was on the back of the shoe, so S-o-l-e and then take your souls, S-o-u-l-s, or the church community and the faith based community, so sole for the secular, soul for the spiritual. That campaign comes out of right here and so that’s gone all over the country now but it comes out of Detroit a lot of people don’t know it but you’ve heard that term?</p>
<p>ZS: Yeah.</p>
<p>WA: But that’s your looking at the originator.</p>
<p>ZS: That’s interesting.; Could you talk about your thoughts on the state of the city of Detroit today and how it compares to the 1960s?</p>
<p>WA: I think it’s moving in the right direction. I think that Detroit’s best days are still in front of us. Downtown is going to be fine, Midtown is going to be fine; it’s the neighborhoods. That’s why we’re doing housing development right here. That’s why when Kevin Orr came here I had him here at the church and I told him, the emergency manager, that “Your job don’t mean nothing if it don’t benefit the community here.”; And I said “What do you hope to leave here? First of all you got a lousy job.” As a matter of fact I used some other language that I won’t use on your tape and he laughed and I said, “I wouldn’t want your job, but you know you’re a nice guy, but it ain’t about that. When you leave here what do you hope to leave?” And he said, “That’s what I got to figure out, that’s my challenge.” And I said, “Well, if all you do is sell all the assets, cut, slash and burn and sell, it ain’t helping us. If you don’t move into the neighborhoods it’s of no benefit.” He said, “I agree.” Well, he has not moved into the neighborhoods. He has opened the door through the bankruptcy process forced on us. So, we’re trying to absorb the benefits of that and eliminate out of this lemon that we’re left with. And so I can see certain things happening. I think we’re doing more to emphasize the neighborhoods now. I think that city council and the mayor are starting to emphasize that. I think some of the business people are starting to see that they got to spread this out, because you can’t build a moat around Detroit and say you can’t come in, because this is our city, too. I tell people all the time, “Don’t move, just improve” right where you are, because obviously we have a stake in it we have to act like it and let’s take advantage of it.</p>
<p>ZS: Well, so you kind of talked about it there, but do you have anything else to say about how you see the future of the city turning out?</p>
<p>WA: No, I’m optimistic about it. I think that I see a lot of young people who want to do something significant, both Black and white, but I think we all have to be around a common table, it can’t just be one group, one segment. I think the business community has to do more in terms of partnering and in terms of building like bridges, providing incubators for economic development and for opportunities. It cannot just be the downtown. If Detroit is really going to have a renaissance, it’s got to be a renaissance that involves all the people not just some.</p>
<p>ZS: And one thing that I wanted to ask you before we wrapped up pretty soon is you mentioned the Human Rights Coalition. Can you talk about that a little?</p>
<p>WA: That was something that was formed by Del Rio and [C.L.] Franklin and folk back in the day. Tony, Brown, they were part of that, because that was the group that helped to facilitate bringing Dr. King up here. Because there was no other [unintelligible] to do this. Preachers weren’t going to do it. So they formed that kind of coalition basically to address that issue and to address issues in the city of Detroit which the other institutions weren’t. That was before New Detroit, that was before some of these other coalitions that you see. That was an adjunct outside of the NAACP because a lot of people had issues with the NAACP at that time period, so they didn’t see it as moving in the direction that they wanted, so they formed the Human Rights Commission back in the day through those preachers and some labor folk.</p>
<p>ZS: Well, do you have any other additional thoughts that you would like to share?</p>
<p>WA: No, I just think that from '67 to 2015 we have come a long way. I think the hope of our city and really our nation is going to be people who are going to think beyond themselves and willing to take certain risks and do some stuff that’s different. And you’re not going to make everybody happy. You are going to make some people unhappy. But if everybody is happy that means you’re not doing nothing, so somebody got to be unhappy. Just like your granddad, I mean he was a hell of a man. Which I’m sure you know and he made a lot of people unhappy, but Nate spoke truth to power he didn’t give a damn who it was and he was the same no matter who he was talking to. That’s why I loved him. That’s it.</p>
<p>ZS: Thanks Reverend Anthony, I appreciate it.</p>**
Interviewer
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Zachary Shapiro
Interviewee
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Reverend Wendell Anthony
Location
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Fellowship Chapel, Detroit, Michigan
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P7lbFSwlIrw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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Title
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Reverend Wendell Anthony, November 19th, 2015
Description
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In this interview, Anthony discusses moving from St. Louis to Detroit, Kenneth Cockrel Sr., and the Big Four. He also discusses the challenges of activism within the church and his role working with the NAACP.
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Date
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06/01/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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WAV
Language
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en-US
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Central High School
Coleman Young
Community Activists
Curfew
Detroit Police Department
Governor George Romney
Kenneth Cockrel
Kerner Commission
Linwood Street
Martin Luther King Jr.
Marygrove College
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
STRESS
Tanks
The Big Four
Wayne State University
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https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/72a2167126c773b325834f49c0edb6d4.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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Reporting the Detroit riots, 1967
The racial violence of July 2016 has brought to mind the Detroit riots of 1967. I worked throughout the riots as a 27-year-old reporter for The Detroit Free Press.
On Sunday, July 23, 1967, the day the riots started, I had returned from two weeks of summer camp in the Army Reserve at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. My wife Deborah and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a modernist building named One Lafayette Plaisance that overlooked downtown Detroit from the east.
With no military muster that Sunday morning, we were enjoying the day off. I noticed smoke rising from the west side of town. Thinking perhaps there was a large unreported fire, I called the city desk of the paper to alert the editors.
I worked Monday to Friday in those days. The paper had assigned me to the City-County Bureau, headed by the late Jim Mudge, which covered both City Hall and Wayne County. The two governments shared an office tower on the river front. At some point that year, the city editor, Neal Shine, assigned me to the schools beat. I worked one job or the other that summer.
(The third person in the bureau was a bright young graduate of the University of Michigan named LaRue Heard, who talked to me about heading to journalism school at Columbia University. I learned today that after she finished at Columbia, LaRue died in a car crash in the Caribbean in 1969 on her honeymoon.)
When I called in, an assistant city editor told me a race riot had started along 14th Street on the West Side. The editor told me to report to the office. It was all hands on deck.
The Free Press then operated from 321 W. Lafayette, a 1920s building less than a mile away. I especially recall that the building lacked air-conditioning in the Michigan summer.
The riot had started early that Sunday morning when the police raided a blind pig – an illegal gambling site. A fellow reporter named Bill Serrin had gone out Sunday morning from the Free Press to cover the riot. While Serrin watched from the crowd, a rioter threw a brick that struck him in the head. Our photographer took a picture of Serrin with blood streaming down his face and staining his shirt.
I reported to the city editor. The City-County Building closed on a Sunday, so the city desk sent me to police headquarters, a few blocks away in downtown Detroit.
I never been in police headquarters in Detroit. The city editor said Governor George Romney was meeting with Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, whom I knew. They instructed me to cover the press conference.
When the meeting ended, the governor decided to fly over the riot area in a helicopter of the Michigan National Guard.
By this time, a gaggle of reporters from the national newspapers, wire services, and television networks had flown into town. There were perhaps a dozen of us. The governor’s staff announced there was room for only one reporter on the helicopter and suggested a pool.
A pool means the reporters from the various organizations pick one reporter cover with the event. That reporter afterward pools his information with everybody else.
Someone organized a drawing, and to my surprise, I won. I became the pool reporter.
Governor George Romney of Michigan
An aide escorted me to the governor’s limousine outside. By now it was growing dark. I carried my ever-present stenographer’s notebook, introduced myself to the governor, whom I had never met, and slipped into the back seat of the limousine.
Governor Romney rode in front. He had a driver, who I assumed was a member of the state police, but no other security. I made desultory efforts at conversation with the great man, but he seemed lost in thought.
We took Gratiot Avenue east. Gratiot runs at a 45-degree-angle from downtown. A small airport sits near the city limits on east side of town.
A military helicopter awaited, and I followed the governor inside. The helicopter lifted up into the air and proceeded west to the danger areas.
There were seats, but we stood to look out the open sides. Helicopter noise deafened us.
Riots had broken out in several parts of the city, and we could see flames along many streets. The governor pointed occasionally to the ground, but I could not make out what he was saying.
When we got to the epicenter at 12th Street on the west side, fires were consuming buildings. It was as if we were staring into a huge campfire.
The governor began talking again, and I strained to listen. But it was no use.
After perhaps an hour, the helicopter set down again at the east side airport. We waved to the pilot and moved into the limousine. The car glided back downtown.
I realized I had no story. The governor had taken an inspection tour, but there were no quotations jotted down in my notebook.
Governor Romney seemed taciturn. As the car zipped down Gratiot, I tried to draw him into conversation about his impressions of the burning city. Mostly I got monosyllables — no real conversation.
Finally, I said Detroit looked something like Berlin must have looked at the end of World War II. Yes, he said, that’s what Berlin must have looked like at the end of World War II.
I had a quotation.
When the limousine dropped me off at police headquarters, I met with the pool. I gave them the few facts of the inspection trip and then read them what the governor had said. I phoned in my report to the city desk and went back over to the office.
The Free Press is a morning paper. I hardly expected my puny little story to lead the news the next day, but I thought the rewrite man would at least pick up the quotation about World War II. But I read the paper in vain.
However, the wire services, the national newspapers, and the news magazines such as Time all picked it up. It was what H. L. Mencken, in his classic memoir Newspaper Days, labeled “creative journalism.”
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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William Pannill
Submission Date
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08/03/2016
People
List any relevant people (interviewers, interviewees, important people mentioned, etc). Please use "Lastname, Firstname".
Romney, George
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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William Pannill
Description
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William Pannill was a reporter with the Detroit Free Press. When Governor George Romney flew over the city to survey the events, Pannill was chosen by the other reporters to accompany him and share his observations.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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08/05/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Arson
Detroit Community Members
Detroit Free Press
Governor George Romney