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https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/f301289388e27b655eb1d07888d6f25a.JPG
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Alan Feldman
Brief Biography
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Alan Feldman was born September 29, 1947 in Detroit, MI and grew up in the nearby town of Oak Park, MI. Alan was a student at Michigan State University and was home for the summer of 1967 working in a shoe store at Twelfth Street and Clairmount. Feldman is a retired Detroit Public Schools teacher and currently lives in Pontiac, MI.
Interviewer's Name
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Noah Levinson
Interview Place
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Pontiac, MI
Date
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06/16/2015
Interview Length
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28:27
Transcriptionist
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Noah Levinson
Transcription
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<p>NL: Today is June 16, 2015. This is the interview of Alan Feldman by Noah Levinson. We are at 1599 Marshbank in Pontiac, Michigan; the home of Mr. Feldman. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Alan, could you tell me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>AF: I was born in Women’s Hospital on September 29, 1947. The Yankees beat the Dodgers in seven games.</p>
<p>NL: And where is that hospital located at?</p>
<p>AF: I have no idea. I think it was incorporated with something else.</p>
<p>NL: Okay, and where did you live in July of 1967?</p>
<p>AF: I was going to Michigan State University, but I came home for the summer to my parents’ house. They lived in Oak Park.</p>
<p>NL: So you were home in Oak Park during the summer. And what were you doing that summer?</p>
<p>AF: I sold shoes at Name Brand Cancellation Shoes, on Twelfth and Clairmount. I don’t recall if I went to the other store. The owner, “Uncle Harry,” his name actually was Hoffenbloom, I believe, but I always called him Uncle Harry, much to his chagrin, he also had a store on West Warren—he’s eating Nikita’s food, or he’s eating Sally’s food I’m sorry [referencing pets].</p>
<p>NL: What do you recall about Detroit’s—and Oak Park and the general area, in the mid-1960s, about the neighborhoods and the community of the city?</p>
<p>AF: Well, I was very lucky to grow up in Oak Park. Oak Park was really the first, I guess you’d call it a “bedroom community”. The people came from Detroit and moved to Oak Park, there was Birmingham and places like that that were established already, but Oak Park, we had a beautiful high school, brilliant students—I think we were third in the state, our ranking. I was an idiot, but I went to school with a lot of very brilliant people; and we’re having our Fiftieth Reunion, October 3, in which I will display history from the 1960s. Well, you want to know about Detroit?</p>
<p>NL: Sure.</p>
<p>AF: Well, Detroit – you know I really wasn’t aware that Detroit was disintegrating. Like the governor of the state says, when we went bankrupt, that this has been going on for sixty years—I don’t know where he came up with this ‘sixty years’, it seems pretty extreme, but it was the same way it always was. White people lived in a certain area of Detroit, black people lived in another area; white kids went to high school basically together, black kids went to high school. I taught in a place called Nolan Middle School and—in the mid-sixties, this is before I taught, there were some black kids going to Pershing High School, but still most of the neighborhood was white. After the riot, then many white people moved, so I guess that’s the onset of white flight, but Detroit had high crime. It was a factory town, a huge factory town.</p>
<p>NL: So, growing up even as a child, it sounds like you were aware of the segregation that was happening in the city, at that point.</p>
<p>AF: Oh yeah. My dad owned a store on Woodward and Alexandrine and on Woodward and Canfield, cleaning plants. Everybody that worked for him was black, everybody, and then most of his customers were black, although there were some whites in that area, but not very many. We used to have – I was telling somebody this the other day -- we used to have pimps drive up in their pimpmobiles, for the day, you know, [Buick] Electra 225’s, big Cadillacs—am I supposed to say this?</p>
<p>NL: Sure. Everything you remember.</p>
<p>AF: It’d be a guy, the pimp, was in the front seat just like Mr. Turner—he’s got to be passed away by now—Mr. Turner would be in the front seat and he’d have, like three girls in the backseat, all three beautiful girls, and he’d come in and he’d have this big order of women’s dresses and his clothes. And my father would say to me, “Alan, go help Mr. Turner out with the clothes.” And I’d go outside and they’d all go, “Honey, honey, Hi! You grew over the winter, haven’t seen you,” because he’d have a convertible, so the top would be down, they’d, “Oh Alan, you so handsome!” I’d be like, thirteen, fourteen, I’d be like, Oh my God! That’s when I realized that –see when you live in an area where the only black person that you see, basically, is your maid, okay? When you see women like that you go like, whoa! What’s going on here? I mean, when you’re fourteen— I’m a guy, you look at girls, that’s your one thing. You play baseball and you sleep with the ball, and then you look at girls. So, it always kind of shocked me that there were so many beautiful black women. And in our store that burned down, I used to stand—you want me to put them back out? [referencing pets]—I used to stand, the place was, on the left-hand side there was a window, on the right-hand side there was a window, and then you’d walk into the store. On a hot day when we wouldn’t do very much business, I would stand out on the sidewalk, and people would be walking by all the time. Some of the women knew me after a while, I’d be standing there, “Ooh, you so handsome, why you wearing that? Why you wearing that today? That shirt don’t fit you right.” They get to know you, and in the drugstore, and in whatever, it was amazing. You were one of the community.</p>
<p>NL: So, Detroit was already an obviously segregated city in your estimation by the mid-sixties. Do you remember seeing or hearing about incidents of discrimination against black or non-white people?</p>
<p>AF: In newspapers I remember seeing things, which I have—I’ll show you, I’m pretty sure there’s some in there, but also, Eight Mile Road and Schaeffer, as a little boy, I might have been eight, nine, ten -- right at Eight Mile-Schaeffer there was a hamburger place, I think it was White Castle, and all these black people would line up every morning, right on the curb of Eight Mile and Schaeffer, and white people would come by—I presume they were mostly all white people, and they’d say, “You want to do yard work?” You get in the car, you go do yard work. They’d pick up a woman, “You want to clean the house?” This is how employment was gained. I remember asking my father, why are those people lined up. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven probably. He told me they were they waiting for jobs. So that’s what they did. There were no white people there, there were all black people.</p>
<p>NL: What do you remember thinking or feeling at that time when your dad was explaining that to you? How did that scene strike you?</p>
<p>AF: I don’t know really. It didn’t really affect me very much, but you know what affected me the most was going downtown—I mean I wish I could give you an answer for that, but I don’t really feel like there was an answer it was just like, I wanted to know, who are those people and what are they doing there? And the fact that he pointed out that they were basically black people didn’t really move me—but I saw a black man in downtown Detroit, I couldn’t have been more than five, and this is during Christmas when people—there was no Northland or Eastland [Malls], people went downtown to shop so the streets were jammed with people. There was a policeman and he had this black man up against a wall—I was with my mother—and he had two hat boxes. This is not something I’m dreaming about; this is something that was real, and the policeman had a gun on him and he had his hands up and he was like this [motions], and that’s one of the first remembrances of black and white. I presume he stole hats.</p>
<p>NL: Wow.</p>
<p>AF: And we had a maid for a long time, named Grassie. I never did go to Grassie’s house, so I never did know what her kids were like; I’d hear about them, but I never saw what her house was like or what was going on in her house. It was like, well, Grassie just went home, but I don’t know what she was doing, you know what I mean?</p>
<p>NL: She left work and went home; we all do.</p>
<p>AF: She made great tomato soup and tuna fish sandwiches. Now there’s something to say about that though, but I don’t know how to express it. When you work for a family and then you go home to your own family—because you’re not working for a family, really.</p>
<p>NL: How do you mean?</p>
<p>AF: Well, it’s like they’re part of your family. Grassie was like my second mother. I could come home for lunch and if my mother wasn’t there then Grassie would feed me; and she’d sit down and she would tell me about Louisiana. Baton Rouge. She would tell me about –what is that—a gumbo. This is how I knew about these things. She was so nice, so sweet, and she had little hairs growing out of her chin [laughter], but, you know, that’s my growing up process with African-Americans. And I did know that African-Americans grew up in a different area than we did because of Joe Louis. My father told me the story when Joe Louis beat Max Bayer in 1935. My mother and him went for a ride to celebrate, to see people on the street, and, you know they were honking their horns and everything. Joe Louis was a huge hero in Detroit. I’ve got the greatest Joe Louis collection. They’ve been to my house ten times; the African-American Museum. I won’t give them my stuff. And they threw garbage in his car. So my dad said, it was down on Hastings—have you heard the name of that street, Hastings Street? He said he’d never do that again, ever.</p>
<p>NL: That was 1935?</p>
<p>AF: 1935. And I’ve got a picture in the newspaper of the crowd of African-American people after he won, and they’re going crazy. He was the biggest hero.</p>
<p>NL: Switching gears a little bit, I want to ask you about 1967. First off, how did you first hear about or become aware of the civil unrest in July 1967?</p>
<p>AF: I was listening to the Tiger game at home. I don’t know what I was doing before then. And I needed gas; I was going to a friend’s house named Joe Kass, K-A-S-S, we’re still friends. I went up to Eight Mile Road and Schaeffer; there was a Sunoco station, and gas was 19 cents. I had a car, a Pontiac LeMans that was like a year or two old, it was like brand-new. And back then where you had the license plate, you’d pull it down and the gas cap would be. So I took the thing off and I was putting the gas in, and I just happened to straighten up and look and I saw the whole sky was full of smoke. The entire sky going south, I was like, “Wow! What a fire that must be.” You know? So I get back in my car and I got the ballgame on. They were playing a double header; back in those days you played double headers. Now the [dog barking] players won’t do it unless it’s really a catastrophe.</p>
<p>NL: Yeah, if there’s a rain delay [dog barking] from yesterday or something.</p>
<p>AF: Yeah, right. So they won’t do it, but [dog barking] I turn it on and it says—they’re doing the news and then at the end of the news, I think it was the end of the news, the guy said, “There is a civil disturbance going on in Detroit. Do not go to Detroit; stay out of Detroit.” So, I went home and I said to my dad, “Civil disturbance. I think, Dad, that means a riot; they’re having a riot in Detroit,” and he said, “Yeah, I heard that on the radio,” because my father had a transistor radio, and like a lot of men back then, they had their own chair—did you ever see <em>All in the Family</em>?</p>
<p>NL: Sure.</p>
<p>AF: I swear to God, I swear to God, they came in our house late at night.</p>
<p>NL: [Laughter]</p>
<p>AF: And they saw my father with a cigar hanging out of his mouth, asleep, with the transistor like this. I come home at two o’clock on the morning he’d be like that. I’d say, “Dad, get up!”, and he’d go “[grunts] Ehhh, what do you want from me?” That’s what happened. I went over to my friend Joe’s house and now everybody knew. Like, if you were my neighbor I’d go over and I’d say, “They’re having a riot in Detroit. Did you hear this?” So, everybody knew and you had to be off the streets I believe by 5:30 or 6:30, something like that. I’m not sure; I think it was 5:30, 6:30. So I left Joe’s house and went home, and that night—we lived in a really beautiful apartment complex—people took their TV’s and put them on the porches. We had a celebrity talk show guy in Detroit then, his name was Lou Gordon, if you ever heard his name, and Lou Gordon was on with his wife, Jackie Gordon, and that’s all they talked about was the riots; you know they had people on talking about it, and they were saying it was just terrible. And my father was just praying that they burned down his store; he was praying, he was, “Alan, I want them to burn down the store so bad.” Because he had had a tremendous business, and then, you know where the medical center is there? Like off of Woodward and Alexandrine, that’s the area. They tore down all these houses in that area, and that was my father’s walk-on trade. He had a tremendous route that he did, but that was his walk-on trade; and there were no houses there anymore [laughing] so he was losing a lot of money you know, so he was praying they’d burn down his business. It didn’t happen. We went downtown on Tuesday and the entire city down the Lodge [US-10] smelled of smoke. Everything. I mean, when you got down past, like Eight Mile Road, the entire city smelled like smoke; like fire. So he’s like, “Let’s go to the store. Let’s hope it burned down.” [laughter] Because of insurance, you know?</p>
<p>NL: Right.</p>
<p>AF: So it didn’t burn down so he was very disappointed. Then we went for a ride. I never was sure if my father should have done this, but we went for a ride all over the western side. And what I recall mostly is, right near – I think it was near Northwestern High School in Detroit, they had a gun store. And on top of the gun store were all kinds of police and state troopers, I guess they were, National Guardsmen, one of them was Mickey Lolich of the Detroit Tigers; he was a National Guardsmen, and they surrounded this place; they weren’t about to let anybody get in that place. They’d kill them. If anybody tried to break in there they would kill them. There were troops all over the city, like army trucks, and there’d be like four guys in a Jeep, and three guys would have their rifles pointed out. You probably heard this already. They’d have their rifles out—the driver didn’t obviously, and this went on for a long time, you know, the city was in chaos. </p>
<p>NL: You said that the store that you were at this summer was near Twelfth and Clairmount?</p>
<p>AF: It was on Twelfth and Clairmount. It was on Clairmount.</p>
<p>NL: What happened to the store?</p>
<p>AF: Oh, it burned down. Uncle Harry had that store and one on West Warren, they burned down. The tale is this: Uncle Harry never left the store on the weekend with any money, because the weekend was big. It was like New Year’s Eve, for a lot of people, every weekend on Twelfth and Clairmount. You can’t understand unless you were there. It’s like, during Christmas and Easter, everybody had to have a pair of shoes; you had to have a pair of shoes. And I’ll deviate just a little bit; when I first started working there, people would come in and—you know it was a men’s shoe store, so guys would come in and they’d say, “I need a pair of Stacy Adams,” so I’d say okay. Now I’m like, seventeen, sixteen, I don’t even know what I was, but I was the guy that they kept because I had a way, a natural bullshit way. So I’d say, “Well, what do you wear?” and they’d say, “Oh, I wear like, ten triple-A,” and I go, “Ten triple-A? No, let’s measure your foot,” and it’d be like seven and a half. So I’d say, “Well, what makes you think you wear a ten triple-A?” He says, “I want you to give me a ten triple-A.” I said, “Why?” He says, “Well because that’s what I want to wear, is a ten triple-A.” I said, “You wear a seven-and-a-half,” and then it dawned on me what was going on here; they wanted their feet to look longer. They wanted to look more like a grown-up man or something like a big guy, you know. So I’d get them the ten triple-A, and their foot would stop like right here, and then there’d be a point here, and this is what they’d wear; this is what they wanted. [Dog whimpering] and then we’d go up to—[to dog] ‘Kita! Shhh! That’s a trait of a pointer, by the way; they cry. That’s what she does. –I’d say to them, “You need some socks?” and they’d go like, “Yeah, give me some thick-and-thins, thick-and-thins.” They have, like, a lisp for this. Thick-and-thins are like, the bottom part is a regular kind of sock, and then the part going up, you can see through. So they were thick, and thins. Anyway, I was really good at doing this, and Uncle Harry, who honestly spoke like my father, like this deep voice; he’d say, “You work for me”, so I’d say, okay, so I’ll work for you. The other guys were afraid. So where were now?</p>
<p>NL: You said that the store at Twelfth and Clairmount had burned down.</p>
<p>AF: Okay, so he would never leave the store with the weekend’s receipts. He would go in the basement, and he had a special box I didn’t even know about. He totally trusted me. [deep voice] Alan!” [laughter]. He had a box down there; so supposedly the story was—you know, they burned down the whole neighborhood—he went down in the basement; this is what I heard from my best friend Richard, who was his nephew, and he walked, I guess in the water, I hope the electricity was turned off otherwise he’d be dead, and he went to this box, it was all mushed up, reached in and there was three thousand dollars. </p>
<p>NL: Wow!</p>
<p>AF: There was three thousand dollars. He never worked a day in his life again. He had insurance on, obviously, Twelfth and Clairmount and West Warren; I don’t know what else he owned, he was very wealthy. He grew to depend upon me, because I was an idiot, basically where they would get robbed in the middle of the night. So what you had—remember I told you, you had a window here full of shoes and a window here and they walk in? So all the shoes were left shoes, okay. You never put in a left and a right; because you put in a left and a right, then they have a pair of shoes. So they’re only left shoes. So he calls me up one night—this happened, I think, four times. And this time my father, after he said it, “Okay, pick him up,” he said to me, “You ain’t doing this no more.” So I said, “Okay, I’ll tell Uncle Harry.” We get in the car and we go to the store and the window thing is there, they’re fixing the window, but all they did right then was put up a board, and they were gonna come back and put the glass in, because it was, like, 6:30 in the morning I guess. I don’t know, I can’t recall that much, but I do know that about 11:30, 12:00, this guy comes in—and I’m behind the counter, there’s no business, and Uncle Harry is doing something with the shoes upstairs. He had shoes downstairs; thousands and thousands of shoes. The guy comes in, “Man what’s wrong with you? I want to know what’s wrong with you?” So I said, “What do you mean what’s wrong with me? There’s nothing wrong with me.” And he says, “I came in here yesterday, I bought a pair of shoes, you only gave me the left!” So I said, “Would you say that again?” He said, “You only gave me the left shoe, where’s my right shoe?!” I said, “[loudly] I only sold you a left shoe?” So Uncle Harry turns around with fire in his face, I mean he is really angry. And, the guy looks at Uncle Harry, he looks at me and [clap] he’s gone, he gets right out of there. So Uncle Harry says to me, “Alan, follow him.” So I said, “Follow him?! I’m 18 years old; I’m not a detective! I’m not following this guy.” He says, “Follow him. Just go see where he goes.” So I went outside and I watched where he went, I went down like a block and he walked across the street into an apartment building. I came back, I told Uncle Harry, and he called the police so I think the guy was arrested. They might have found a lot of left shoes. [laughter] You know what I mean? So this is the type of stuff that went on, and there were pimps and whores all over the sidewalk all the time. This was the neighborhood; there was a lot of crap going around, but it was actually fun, a fun kind of place to be. But after the fire, there was nothing left, so now the people—just like in Baltimore and other places—when you think about it, these people think they’ve accomplished something. What they’ve accomplished is, you got to get in your car now and drive someplace else to shop. You haven’t accomplished anything. I hate to say it, it makes me sound like a racist, but it’s the truth. You haven’t accomplished anything; nothing has taken place that is going to be helpful to you. A bunch of rhetoric by a bunch of politicians who really could care less.</p>
<p>NL: What do you remember about the first time that you went back to the neighborhood after the store had burned down?</p>
<p>AF: That’s what I thought about. I was with my dad and my dad really brought it up. It was like, “Well I won’t be buying shoes from you anymore, I wonder where they’re going to have to go.” Nothing really dawned on me, I was like 18 years old or 19 and, you know, you don’t think about these kinds of things; you’re not that deep, generally. And it took years for them to rebuild that area, Rosa Parks Boulevard?</p>
<p>NL: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>AF: It’s never been the same because it was like the hub of the West Side of Detroit, this area. Like I’m saying, you’d walk down the street and there would be just tons of people, and everybody seemed to know one another. It seemed like bullshit, but it really wasn’t. Of course you could be friendly with somebody and they might shoot you later in the day but, there was a lot of crime.</p>
**
People
List any relevant people (interviewers, interviewees, important people mentioned, etc). Please use "Lastname, Firstname".
Gordon, Lou
Louis, Joe
Search Terms
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12th Street, 1967 riots, Clairmount Street, Detroit Tigers, domestic work, interview, Joe Louis, looting, Oak Park-MI, riots, West side of Detroit
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ec-quDvoUis" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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Title
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Alan Feldman, June 16th, 2015
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12th Street—Detroit—Michigan
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Clairmount Street—Detroit—Michigan
Eight Mile Road—Detroit—Michigan
Joe Louis
Looting
Lou Gordon
Michigan National Guard
Oak Park—Michigan
Schaeffer Highway—Detroit—Michigan
Woodward Avenue—Detroit—Michigan
Description
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In this interview, Feldman discusses growing up in the suburban community of Oak Park and his experiences on Detroit’s west side, where he worked as a shoe salesman, and where his father ran two cleaning stores. Feldman discusses segregation in the city and its role in precipitating the civil unrest of July 1967. He also recalls some of Detroit’s athletic heroics including the Detroit Tigers baseball team and boxer Joe Louis.<br /><br /><strong>***NOTE: This interview contains profanity and/or explicit language</strong>
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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audio/mp3
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en-US
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Clairmount Street
Detroit Tigers
Eight Mile
Hastings Street
Joe Louis
Looting
Lou Gordon
Michigan National Guard
Oak Park
Schaeffer Highway
Teenagers
Woodward Avenue
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https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/46600a64febc6b5c95c7333c8ae1d583.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
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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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At the time of the 1967 riot, I was 11 years old and living with my mother, grandmother aunt and uncle in a two family income on the lower east side of Detroit between Vernor and Charlevoix. Our neighborhood was predominantly black and ours was one of the last white families who had chosen to remain. When we heard news of the riot, we hoped that it would bypass us. We discovered otherwise when the convenience store at the end of our block was broken into and a steady stream of people looted it. I sat on our front porch with my family and a few neighbors watching people lugging arm loads of stolen goods past our house. I remember thinking "These people are on foot. These are our neighbors." I experienced no direct racial animosity during the riot. In fact one black man even deposited a case of beer on our front lawn, apparently deciding that we were too uptight to grab anything for ourselves and not wanting us to miss out on our share. (We never took the beer and it disappeared later.) I had a fairly strong moral compass and felt indignant that so many people could just blithely take what did not belong to them.
After the store had been emptied out flames started coming from the building. It seemed so absurd to me that people were burning down our own commercial district. The fire department arrived to put out the flames and suddenly shots rang out from snipers. All of us who had been on the porch scrambled for the front door. There was one older lady who lived across the alley from us we tried to convince to stay with us until the gunfire ceased but she decided to take her chances and sprinted across our backyard and alley to the safety of her home.
As the shooting continued and it grew dark, we left the lights off in the house. Some of us sat in chairs and others sat on the floor worried about the possibility of a stray bullet.
We felt relief when the National Guard arrived although it felt surreal to see armed guardsmen patrolling up and down our street and tanks rumbling down Charlevoix. The local unit bivouacked at St. Rose Church, which was our parish and where I attended school. I remember many people, both white and black, offering the young guardsmen food and coffee.
When the riot was over, we were able to view the damage. The local convenience store, bakery and laundromat were all burned to the ground, just an ugly mess of rubble. The ruins remained for a long time before they were finally cleared. Some of the owners of other local businesses had written "soul brother" with white paint on the walls of their business indicating that it was a black owned business and should not be burned and looted, unlike the white owned businesses.
We were poor and did not own a car at the time, so life became harder, with the need to walk further and pay higher prices for bread, milk and other necessities. The neighborhood deteriorated afterward as well, as one house after another was ruined, then gutted, and finally torched. Two thirds of the houses on our block were eventually destroyed this way in what had once been a solid working class neighborhood.
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Email
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Allan Ranusch
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08/20/2016
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Allan Ranusch
Description
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Allan Ranusch was 11 years old and lived in the lower east side of Detroit in 1967. He remembers when looters broke into the neighborhood convenience store, snipers, and the damage to his neighborhood.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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08/23/2016
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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Text
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Arson
Childhood
Children
Growing Up In Detroit
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Snipers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/f25a76cb3dccc9be6bb48e1ed17eb807.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
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Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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I remember Detroit as a flourishing city prior to July 23, 1967. It was a city with an equal number of Blacks and Whites. It was a place I’ll always remember though I was only 13 at the time.
I recall riding in the car with my mother that Sunday morning on a journey home from church when we noticed large clouds of smoke riding the horizon, as it traveled in all directions. The billows expanded into the air as their size grew, traveling outside of the city, dissipating.
Our avenue of travel was west on Clairmont St., west of the John C. Lodge. As we neared the commotion, the traffic began to slow. My mother and I had been trying to figure out what kind of fire was causing so much smoke. The only thing we were able to confirm for sure was that more than one building was burning out of control on the legendary one-way strip known by all in Detroit as the infamous “Twelfth Street,” later named Rosa Parks Blvd.
As we approached the intersection we, too, could see much of the upheaval. There were hundreds of people in the street. Some ran in our direction while others walked, draped with goods over their arms and shoulders. Some carried boxes. Some carried clothes. Some pushed shopping carts that were filled beyond capacity, with shoes, TV’s, and almost anything you could name.
Fire trucks, police, and smoke filled the street. It seemed as if the civil rights rivalries had broken out on a street that racist White men would have never stepped foot on.
Officers at the intersection urged us through, as we witnessed the embryonic stage of what would later go into the history books as a weeklong tumult of looting, rioting, and killing. We would learn later, according to news reports, White cops who mistreated a couple of brothers in an alleged after-hours joint is what started it all.
As the smoke of the first day melded with the obscurity of night, sirens of fire trucks could be heard in multitude everywhere. Sparks from burning cinders rose to the heavens, floating through the sky, sometimes landing on a house nearby and then setting others on fire. The darkness of night didn’t slow the pace of things much; it only gave looters the opportunity to do their deeds behind curtains of cover. And by the second morning, the smoke was appearing from stores and businesses in neighborhoods throughout the inner city. Even those who didn’t believe in stealing were lured into the idea of taking or receiving stolen goods and food; not knowing when or where they would be able to find a market or corner grocery that wouldn’t be looted when the mess was over. Anyone with sense knew if they didn’t help themselves they’d have to suffer the anguish of watching it burn and going hungry.
The liquor stores and pawn shops were the first to go, then the supermarkets, clothing stores, and eventually any building with something that had valued goods; which seemed like every store in a ten-mile radius from where the riot began.
After three days of disturbance, the National Guard began to move into place in the neighborhoods, setting up bases on school grounds throughout the community. Military tanks scarred the street surfaces with pathways through the rubble, leaving the impressions in them as well as in us that we were no longer living in the city of Detroit, but in a war torn country with the residents being the victims.
And after five days, when mostly all the fires had been extinguished, half the stores and businesses in the city had been looted, burned, or both, along with almost every landmark on Twelfth. Ashes, cinders, and the ambiance of smoke were the remains of a desolate town that resembled those in movies.
We got real stupid then. Burning the city didn’t solve anything. Animosity toward those cops for dogging some of us in that raid turned out to be nothing more than an excuse for some to steal. For those who felt anger, getting pissed with the cops may have been justified, but to destroy the whole city because of it was like cutting off our noses in spite of our faces. It was stupidity in the least.
In the end, the destruction of the easily accessible emporia eventually prompted the majority of Whites, and all the Jews, to move from the city, conveying their businesses and money with them.
We lost a great part of our history, our city, and our culture. And even to this day, we’re still suffering from it.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Alvin Woods
Submission Date
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06/28/2017
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Title
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Alvin Woods
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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07/14/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Arson
Childhood
Children
Civil Rights Movement
Growing Up In Detroit
Looting
Michigan National Guard
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/4abdc02b96a2d8280d04ae47e8b11ff2.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Alys Currier
Brief Biography
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Alys Currier lived in the Birmingham, Michigan area during the summer of 1967 while commuting into Detroit for school. She later taught in Detroit.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Monroe, MI
Date
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02/07/2017
Interview Length
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00:06:13
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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06/13/2017
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello. Today is February 7, 2017. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I am in Monroe, Michigan. I'm sitting down with -</p>
<p>AC: Sister Alys Currier.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me. Would you like to share your story?</p>
<p>AC: I was not in Detroit at the time of the riots, but was living in Marian in - it's in Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham - and commuting in to the University of Detroit in order to - where I was in class when we got word of the riots. And so they ask us if we would bring down food for the people that were working to - in the churches downtown, and helping out, feeding whomever needed to be fed, and so on.</p>
<p>So we went out in the kitchen and we made an assembly line, and we made - I don't know how many sandwiches, but we made a lot of them. And then Sister Rose Ange and myself was asked to take them downtown. So we got in the car and we took other things down that they needed, like clothes and things that people might need, and we drove downtown, and as we pulled into the alley in back of the Baptist church where we were going to deliver all of our goods, all of a sudden I looked up and the car was surrounded by all soldiers and their guns were pointed at us.</p>
<p>And we just looked at them with surprise, and they came running out of the Baptist church. Said, "Oh no, no no no no, they're just delivering things." The soldiers thought we were looting. And so the helpers unloaded our car and the soldiers stepped back but they didn't go right away. They just stepped back and then we left. Went back to Marian. And that's about the substance of the story.</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember what it felt like for you driving into the city?</p>
<p>AC: No different, I mean - I didn't think a lot about it because I was not in - you know, we just heard about it in Marion, so I didn't think a lot about it.</p>
<p>WW: Did you see any smoke or anything on your way into the city?</p>
<p>AC: No, I don't remember - I have to go back - did I see? - I probably saw the soldiers and things as we were driving down the streets, but that's -</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember what Baptist church it was?</p>
<p>AC: No, I have no idea. We went into an alley in the back of the church and we didn't even get out of the car. I mean, they took everything into the church. We didn't even go in to the building.</p>
<p>WW: Did that experience - being surrounded by soldiers and such - did it change the way you looked at the city?</p>
<p>AC: No. I didn't - No, it really didn't change the way I thought about the city. I was missioned in the city later - a couple of years later - and I saw the changes, and that was different. I saw the changes, because I lived right down where much of that happened, and I think I experienced it more a couple or three years - I don't know how many years later - when I actually taught in the city. But not during the riots itself, what it did to the streets and the - it was in Twelfth Street. I think Twelfth Street was kind of hit hard, well, that's where I lived. Right down near Twelfth Street for a couple of years. And that's where I saw. But that wasn't during the riots itself. It was after the riots, so that's - you know.</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you'd like to add?</p>
<p>AC: Hm?</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you'd like to add?</p>
<p>AC: No. Except that Rose Ange said to me, "I'm glad I brought you, you're calm." [laughter] You know, I didn't react. Which is a good thing.</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember what kind of sandwiches they were? [laughter]</p>
<p>AC: No, I really don't! [laughter] I just know we made a lot of them, and we didn't go to school that day. But we - I think we went to school the next day. I went back to U of D the next day. I'm not sure, but I don't remember - the thing I remember mostly, is the driving in that alley, stopping, then all a sudden look up and see all these soldiers with your guns pointed at you. That's - it kind of, you know, I kind of think I reflected on it a little bit after I left and thought, you know, that was - not for myself, but for the people in the city. Because it didn't really bother me that much. I didn't think about - myself, that much about it. But I did think about the city after that. But before that, it was - it was kind of removed, because I wasn't living there.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>AC: Mm hm.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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6min 13sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Alys Currier
Location
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Monroe, MI
Dublin Core
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Title
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Alys Currier, February 7th, 2017
Description
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In this interview, Currier discusses her impressions of the events of July 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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06/13/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/Mp3
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Catholic Community
Clergy
Immaculate Heart of Mary Church
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/84ec7c1fd8d48e6573f7c534b1741316.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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I was 5 years old. I remember lots of noise outside our apartment window. I looked outside. I saw lots of people running in and out the corner store. I saw people taking thing out the store like potatoes chips and bread etc. without a bag. I heard the police cars. I saw the police put lots of people in the big police wagon. Later on that day, it was quiet no one could go outside. I saw army trucks and army men. My parents told us to stay away from the window. I remember our lights were off and I felt afraid. We could not watch television. My father was the only one who would leave the apartment to go to work. He worked at the Fisher Building as a security guard his name was Earnest Smith. I loved my father and mother for taking care of us.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Angela Smith
Submission Date
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03/13/2016
Search Terms
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Looting, Michigan National Guard
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Title
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Angela Smith
Date
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03/13/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society
Description
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Angela Smith recalls being a child and witnessing looting and later National Guardsmen in Detroit in July of 1967.
Publisher
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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
Childhood
Children
Growing Up In Detroit
Looting
Michigan National Guard
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/c904cf6730173b7a56d00c7e8b027aef.jpg
bce8ca7fb0b587ac9538f4f0dbad11fc
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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What inspired me to paint this particular painting? One day in 2013, in a discussion with several Detroit artists, I brought up the question: Has anyone painted the 1967 riots? I remembered that time well. The images came back. I was eleven years old.
I was going to the supermarket with my mother on that hot day. The supermarket was Bi-Lows and we were going there to purchase milk for my baby brother. The trip that day was different from all other days. On that day, we had to be careful walking, as on the earth was millions of pieces of shards of glass. White soldiers gripped fearsome-looking M-14 carbine rifles. Then I caught sight of a black face. The man was wearing army-green and he also gripped a rifle. At the sight of the black man, I felt relief. He was one of us. Everything would be okay. As he stood there guarding what was left of a burned-out pet store, I looked at him with admiration. He was a hero.
But the sight of the pet store troubled me. When my family moved into the neighborhood, the second black family on the block, that pet store was alive with puppies that we children loved to play with; a tap on the window, and the little spider monkey acknowledged you with delight. Kids of various races stopped in that pet shop or bought and discussed comic books or candy elsewhere. Now, I could not believe what was there. Busted widows, angry mobs and an atmosphere of fear and hatred. I heard and saw new words: Burn, Baby, Burn, Black Power, Die Pigs, and Soul Brother, which was spray-painted on store front windows—a codeword supposedly letting rioters know that a store was black owned. That eleven year old boy that I was learned the word “sniper” and what a sniper does. I heard “loot,” and “looter.”
At night, mom watered the roof of our house down in a preventive measure in case the flames of the riot reached our neighborhood.
Those images and others were in my head, and with paint I captured that chaotic time in both my past and Detroit history. Maybe not a race riot as some have referred to it, but a time of angry rebellion at the status quo. A Revolution.
Angelo- David Sherman
Original Format
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Painting
Submitter's Name
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Angelo Sherman
Submission Date
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08/05/2016
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Title
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Angelo Sherman
Description
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A painting and explanation from Angelo Sherman who was a child in 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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08/26/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Image
Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Painting
Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Childhood
Children
Growing Up In Detroit
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Snipers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/3feeecd96feb0e49146870c27be115b8.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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.
Arlene Niskar
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Arlene Niskar was born in Detroit in 1944. In 1959, she and her family moved to Oak Park. She was married on July 23, 1967 and still lives in the Detroit area.
Interviewer's Name
The first and last name of the interviewer.
William Winkel
Interview Place
The place where the interview was conducted.
Detroit, MI
Date
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08/04/2016
Interview Length
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00:14:55
Transcriptionist
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Julia Westblade
Transcription Date
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11/29/2016
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello, today is August 4, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am in Detroit, Michigan and I am sitting down with –</p>
<p>AN: Arlene Niskar.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AN: Thank you.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please tell me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>AN: I was born in Detroit. I lived on Dexter Boulevard until I was 14 years old and then we moved to Oak Park.</p>
<p>WW: What year were you born?</p>
<p>AN: I was born in 1944.</p>
<p>WW: What was your Dexter neighborhood like before you moved away?</p>
<p>AN: Oh, it was lovely. It was just beautiful. You could walk anywhere to buy anything. There was bakeries and fish markets and fresh poultry stores where you could go in and pick out a chicken and there was the Dexter Show and dime stores where they give away goldfish on Saturdays. Half-dead goldfish to the kids that would come in. Oh, that was a big deal. There was a lot of drug stores. There was a malt shop called Danny’s. We hung out there when I got a little older. It was a lovely neighborhood.</p>
<p>WW: Was the neighborhood all white?</p>
<p> AN: Yes. Mostly Jewish.</p>
<p>WW: While you were still living there, did it integrate at all?</p>
<p>AN: When the first black family moved in to my neighborhood, everybody was in a panic. My father was so mad at the man that sold his house to the first black family. And everybody put up their signs and started moving and the whole neighborhood just changed in a short time. My junior high school, because I was on the Broad Street side of Dexter was already integrated. There were kids from Grand River and Elmhurst and farther down so it was all kinds of kids that I went to junior high school with.</p>
<p>WW: Do you know why your father and the other neighbors were so upset?</p>
<p>AN: I hate to say it but my parents were terribly prejudiced. I never realized it. They never said it to me until I brought a black girl home from school one day and my mother said to me after, “Don’t you ever bring that girl back into this house again. We’re trying to stay away from them.” It was terrible. It was just terrible. We had a black cleaning lady and, oh, my mother used to put her sandwich and drink on separate dishes and it was like the book <em>The Help</em>. That’s what it was like. It was unbelievable then.</p>
<p>WW: Did you witness any other signs of racism across the city?</p>
<p>AN: Did I witness any other sign of racism? Yeah, when I moved to Oak Park and they were going to move and it was all white again and then they were going to move people from Eight Mile on Meyers and integrate them, the kids, into the Oak Park High School and oh, everybody was all upset about that. Then, must have been in the Sixties where integration started and, yeah, to tell you the truth, I didn’t know what to think because you heard the news and it was all negative about integration. And then we had horrible governors in the United States, Wallace and — that were saying “We’re never going to integrate.” And then we started seeing on the news these poor kids. The Sixties was horrible. That’s all I can say. It brings back a lot of very bad memories. I’m so glad that my kids don’t feel that way and they were never raised that way.</p>
<p>WW: Going into the Sixties in Detroit, from moving around so much, did you sense any growing tension in the city?</p>
<p>AN: We moved in 1959. We moved –</p>
<p>WW: To Oak Park?</p>
<p>AN: Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: So while you were living in Oak Park did you come to visit Detroit at all?</p>
<p>AN: Oh yeah, I used to come back and visit my friends that hadn’t moved yet that lived off of Twelfth Street and Linwood.</p>
<p>WW: How did your parents feel about you doing that?</p>
<p>AN: Well, I used to go on – I was about 14 and I got on the bus and came back here and stayed at my cousin’s house and we had all kinds of friends then.</p>
<p>WW: Going into 1967, were you still living in Oak Park then?</p>
<p>AN: Yes.</p>
<p>WW: And how did you interact with what was going on?</p>
<p>AN: You mean when I was downtown here?</p>
<p>WW: Yes.</p>
<p>AN: In shock. I mean, really, talking about the day of my wedding.</p>
<p>WW: You can tell the story of your wedding.</p>
<p>AN: Okay. I moved in 19 – I believe ‘58 or ‘59 to Oak Park and graduated from Oak Park High School in ‘62. People stopped going downtown. They just stopped going downtown and we always would go down to Hudson’s and it was wonderful. I maybe was too young in my teen years to realize what was going on but the city was getting more and more integrated because my uncle lived on Glendale and nobody could understand – he lived there until the day he died and that was years later after everybody else moved and he loved his neighbors. But everybody out in the suburbs thought he was crazy and that was the mindset at that time. Thank God, it’s changed, I hope.</p>
<p>WW: What were doing on that Sunday the first day?</p>
<p>AN: Oh, that’s the day I got married. We were at the Book Cadillac. I was married at noon and everybody got downtown just fine but about 2:30, after the ceremony and the lunch, I went up to change and I came back down with my bouquet to throw it out to people and there wasn’t anybody left there. [laughs] It was crazy because my brother-in-law was running around telling everybody, “You’ve got to go! The whole city is burning down.” And then when we were driving out to Chicago and we were driving past Grand River in the downtown area, everything was in flames. And we just couldn’t believe that it could possibly be happening. It was just a shock and then driving to Chicago there were all kinds of National Guard trucks coming, racing to Detroit with State Police and we kept saying to ourselves, “Oh, it can’t be. It just can’t be.” But we had a lot of Canadian relatives that were just terrified because some had to come back through the city to go across the tunnel and people were in such panic going across the tunnel, my sister said they were driving on the sidewalks and cutting each other off to get in front of other people to get out of Detroit and you could go over to Canada but you had to be born in the United States to get back. They heard gunshots. She said it was so loud, the noise level was so loud driving down to the tunnel that they couldn’t believe it. My cousins were all crying. There was fire everywhere and screaming. And she said it was like being in a war zone. That’s basically what she said. And then my other relatives they wouldn’t even let them through the tunnel. They had driven so they drove through the Blue Water Bridge up in Port Huron.</p>
<p>WW: How do you identify what happened in the city? What do you call it? Do you call it a riot, do you call it a rebellion?</p>
<p>AN: It was riots. It was riots because my husband’s grandparents lived on Seven Mile and Livernois in a small bungalow and they could not believe their neighbors that were looting and bringing all this stuff into their houses. They just kept saying to us, “They’re schlepping things into their homes.” And they loved their neighbors and couldn’t believe they were a part of this. Nobody had a mindset like this. We couldn’t believe it was happening in Detroit. But then I found out that there was a previous riot that was horrible in 1920s?</p>
<p>WW: ‘43.</p>
<p>AN: ‘43? Oh. Okay, yeah. So, I just hope it never happens again.</p>
<p>WW: Did this event change the way you look at the city of Detroit?</p>
<p>AN: We were all terrified to come back down here. And we didn’t come down for years.</p>
<p>WW: Did it make you want to move away?</p>
<p>AN: Well, I felt safe in Oak Park. And then they integrated the Oak Park schools from Meyers and Eight Mile there was a group of homes where the kids went to Detroit schools but then they brought them to the Oak Park schools.</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you’d like to share today?</p>
<p>AN: I think that’s exciting enough for me.</p>
<p>WW: Then, final question, how do you see the city today?</p>
<p>AN: Oh, it’s fantastic. It’s fantastic and I just wish that people would learn to get along and I think eventually, hopefully, when the crime level starts to go down –it’s still frightening. It’s still frightening to think that if you’re not in the downtown area where you feel rather safe, that there’s still all these things happening with gangs. Like, I think of that little girl that was with her friends and just drove down near I think it was Eastern Market and somebody shot them. He was never caught. This was a couple years ago. She was supposed to go away with her brother and decided to come with her friend and these miscellaneous shootings, you hear about them all the time and it’s very scary. And until people get educated, I don’t think things are going to change that much until the schools become better and the economy becomes better.</p>
<p>WW: Well, thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>AN: You’re very welcome. </p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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14min 55sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Arlene Niskar
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LwWWXzdfggM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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Title
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Arlene Niskar, August 4th, 2016
Description
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In this interview, Arlene Niskar discusses her family’s decision to move when a neighbor sold a house to a black family. She also talks about her memories of her wedding day on the Sunday that the unrest began as well as her Canadian relatives’ difficulty getting back across the border.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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12/02/2016
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Detroit Historical Society
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Community Members
Looting
Oak Park
Wedding
Windsor-Canada
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/580fb0a11eadd16aec85e0b9ad068183.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Bessie Williams
Brief Biography
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Bessie Williams was born May 18, 1931 in the Cultural Center neighborhood of Detroit. Bessie Williams went on to get several college degrees and worked in the Detroit school system for 43 years before retiring. She then continued to work for five years at Hope of Detroit before returning to full time retirement. Bessie Williams is also an author of a book of poetry centering around the events of 1967
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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06/13/15
Interview Length
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01:06:39
Transcriptionist
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Melissa King
Transcription Date
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02/15/16
Transcription
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<p>LW: Today is June 16, 2015. This is the interview of Bessie Williams Ernst by Lily Wilson. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Bessie, can you tell me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>BW: Well I was born over eight decades ago in the city of Detroit, and I lived here most of my life. Educated schools here, Universities here and just done a lot of things and I love Detroit absolutely love it. </p>
<p>LW: What was your birthday?</p>
<p>BW: May 10, 1931.</p>
<p>LW: What neighborhood where you born in, in Detroit?</p>
<p>BW: I was born in the Cultural Center neighborhood, I was very fortunate in doing that because I was on a street called Medbury just east of Woodward about four, five blocks down. And I said I was lucky because I had in my backyard -- and visit every week with my father and my sister and brothers -- the art museum on the east side of Woodward and the Detroit Public Library on the west side of Woodward. And we went to story hours here and whatever we were studying in school my father would take us to the museum. He would find an area that dealt with that particular area or subject we would sit on the floor and he would tell us about everything that he would see; it’s a marvelous background.</p>
<p>LW: What did your dad do for a living?</p>
<p>BW: My dad worked at Ford Motor Company he came to Detroit one of those people, you know the job, so many dollars a day. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t educated, he was, through high school. That was his education that is what he does, my mother was a homemaker. I had lots of brothers and sisters to grow up with. I was the oldest and we had lots of fun. We loved Detroit.</p>
<p>LW: How many brothers and sisters?</p>
<p>BW: Um, I have four brothers and -- I have to figure this out -- four brothers and I had six sisters but in growing up in the early years, I was the oldest, seen a lot of things that some of my siblings never saw. They never saw the east side of Detroit or not remember it. And I remember very painfully when I graduated from college my mother could not attend my graduation because she was expecting my little brother. And she I guess she felt the ashamed because of her age and being pregnant. I never felt ashamed of her and my father, who worked at Ford, could not get the day off without losing pay. Nobody came and that was kind of painful for me, kindof painful for me, because I was the first one in my family to graduate. So I’ve made it a policy that with my children and my grandchildren. I will always and have always gone to their graduations. Because children remember things like that.</p>
<p>LW: Where did you go to college?</p>
<p>BW: Oh where didn’t I go? I got my first degree from Wayne University, my second degree from the University of Detroit, in between I took classes at the University of Michigan. I ended up doing some graduate work and studies at Harvard and was invited to speak at a forum at Oxford in England. So I’ve kind of been around awhile.</p>
<p>LW: What were your degrees in?</p>
<p>BW: My degrees are primarily in education. I started out in library sciences; my masters was in education and I worked for the board for many years. I ended up being assistant director of labor affairs negotiating contracts. I did teach and then once I left Detroit, once I retired from Detroit, I became a principal of a charter school which I dearly, dearly, dearly loved. I still write and do things. I go over to Wayne County Community College and take classes and trying to catch up with these young folks on the computer. I’m not doing too well on that but I’ll listen to some of them talk and I have to laugh and say if you only knew, if you only knew.</p>
<p>LW: Now you wrote the, this book of poetry that we have in front of us. In 1968 you published this, right?</p>
<p>BW: I published it in ‘67 because the riot was in ‘67 and that year instead of sending Christmas cards to my friends, I took all them and put them in a booklet like this and published it and that was their Christmas present. It was our memory of what we had seen, what we had done and what we had felt at that particular time because you really were confined, it was all over, it was all over the city. It was, you know, you could say your parents would sometimes say things like, “This is gonna hurt me more than it hurt you” and then they would give you a whipping. Well, the riots you can say, “Oh, I heard about that, oh I know about that,” but they didn’t live through it, they didn’t know the feeling. It’s a totally different kind of thing. When I think about it, when I talk about it, I become emotional, you heard me mention that I had a very large family, so when I got married, I moved away but I still had a brother and a sister, younger brother and sister who lived at home with my mother and they lived in a different neighborhood than I lived in with my family. And with everything that was going on there were certain streets that were blocked off, one of them being Grand River and you couldn't cross certain lines and my family, my mother, my sister and brother were in a quadrant where we could not cross that line to go where they were and my little brother called me to let me know. He said, “I just want you to know that we have to move because of the fire,” there was one about a block away from us. Where my mother lived on Grand River there was a furniture store and a few stores down from there was a gas station. That gas station was almost on the corner of my mother’s street. There was fear they would burn the furniture store and the gas flames would go over to the gasoline station and they would be burnt. And we had no way of contacting them so there were hours where we really didn’t know where they were or whatever. I had a sister that lived in a quadrant on the other side of Grand River. We were not allowed -- they were not allowed to cross that street because you had tanks and things and whatever. And so it was kind of a horrible feeling to know they are out there so there is a poem in here called “David” and every time I read “David” I think about the call I got from David telling me that they had to go and it was a period of uncertainty. In another neighborhood I had a friend whose sister’s son had to stay in their area and so he had a motorcycle and he would ride up and down the motorcycle. He was a young kid and the motorcycle hit a telephone poll. I was told he was killed on that particular day because he was in --he couldn’t go out. There are lots of things that happened, the looting and the burning and the calls that were made to, I believe it was President Johnson who was the president at that particular time when they called. The mayor called, it may have been [Jerome] Cavanagh, and he tried to get the president to send troops in but they didn’t do it. It was frightening because what started out on one street, which was Twelfth Street, sort of spread all the way, just spread all over the city. It happened so fast. Then all of a sudden it was there and we had to face it if you hadn’t done your grocery shopping. They were looting and burning and the people were just frustrated and the cause of it was supposed to have been related to these men that the police had picked up and mistreated more and more and that was a time when we had in our city mostly white police and a lot of our citizenry was black but you cannot have a government or police force consisting of one group and not be representing another. We see that all over this country, we see that in places all over the world where one group is dominant and unless you represent all the people; it’s a sad thing. The schools kids who were in summer school closed schools and that reminded me of 1943 because I was around in 1943 and enrolled in summer school and that riot was devastating. I read a little bit about it because the neighborhood I lived in, which was this cultural center. Here we didn’t have all these things happening that were happening in other parts of the city and you just, you would hear different things. I was so happy when they finally brought the police in or the army and where did they park them? Right there on Northwestern High School lot, right there on Gratiot and the Boulevard and there is a little poem in here and it’s kind of funny because it’s true. It’s true when they brought those troops in here you know what they forgot? That those men were supposed to eat, that they had not ordered food for them so that presented a kind of a problem yet it was kind of a welcome thing because we knew that some of it would be quelled. There used to be a helicopter that flew over at night and I really was so happy to hear that because I knew nothing was going to happen in the neighborhood I was in at that particular time because they could see it from that. There were other things like one night, it started to rain but you’ve got thunder and I just I woke up and I heard this noise and I could not distinguish it as thunder because of the other things that were going on around us. But then there were some things that happened that were just beautiful things. On Dexter Boulevard there was a black woman, Mrs. Hawkins, had a women’s clothing store and I was in a particular group that was going to have a big party that November and she would go to New York to buy things Because I was a customer I said, “Look you’re going to go to New York. I say such and such and such think you could find this for me?” and she said, “Yes.” You paid down on it at that particular time because she hadn’t bought it she was gonna look and see. Well, she brought that garment back to the store that was maybe Friday or Saturday the riots started Sunday and the store was looted. All I could think about at that time was my dress but the neighbors around her were protective of her and they went into the store and everything that she had on hangers that they could take out they took out and they saved those things for her, and they saved my dress.</p>
<p>LW: What did the dress look like?</p>
<p>BW: It was at that time it sort of came out, it was an A shape dress and it had a black underlining slip and the top was a sort of a [mock-cosette ?] but it had embroidery on it so you could see through it but, you know, the design --it was just a gorgeous dress, just a gorgeous dress and I just was so thankful for her. And then I saw after the riots you know we have over here Chicago and Linwood the big Catholic Sacred Heart and on the corner there was like a grotto and Christ was there with light and everything and I always pass by there and look at it and after the riots I passed by there and someone had painted the face and the hands black and I saw for the first time people going up those one or two steps getting down on their knees saying a prayer which made that statue more relevant to them and I thought that was just, just beautiful. People helped people, people shared things. Water was rationed, [noise interrupts in background] groceries were rationed and you could only get so much gas. If they let you have a lot people were learning how to make Molotov cocktails and things like that so you could only get a certain amount. My husband was a physician and he was in a medical building over on Joy Road and Grand River and I think it was the first time a group of black doctors had gotten together and had their own building. And the rioters came past there but the man who was like the watchman told them, “You better not come in here” and this and that and, “You just try it. He actually stood guard so they did not bother the building. There were difficult things like that that would pop up and it made you feel so good. But there was a terrible, terrible time, a terrible feeling. One of the little incidence with my son because everything was on TV all the time. The TV stayed on. My eldest son I guess it was, was about eight or nine at that time, we had one of those pools where you put the rubber thing, the kids were in the back yard whatever and I guess a helicopter went by and he jumped out of that little pool and ran and told me, turn on the television quick cause I think we are on TV and I had to laugh because they were showing everything and they got a picture of that. The family that lived next door, the husband had a birthday during that time, and we had taken down the fence between the two houses because we got along so well and we had like a little celebration for him but you couldn’t have a lot of people gathered at one time. It had to be early because there was still a curfew. So we stayed inside, you know, it was still a horrible feeling and when I talk about it I become emotional which you probably heard in my voice and I see certain pictures and it brings it back. It’s real, it’s real to me, but to my children who are grown now and to the younger people this is not an event. It’s like something happened a long time ago except when you see things like what happened in Baltimore, like what’s happening in Washington, like what’s happening in various places, Ferguson. When I wrote this book I sent a copy of it to Robert Kennedy because he was at that time a representative in government and I got a beautiful letter back from him. I sent a copy of this to the Mayor of Baltimore along with a letter because my thing was "Take a look at what is written down here because this is what happened, this is what is now happening in your neighborhoods and this is what can happen if you don’t put other things in place. Detroit was never, ever the same.” That was as far as I was concerned the real beginning of what we call “white flight.” We had a very integrated city but after that time some of the real estate people, I put it on them, say “You don’t want to live here, you want to move, we have this, they have that.” Like a fear tactic almost people in certain neighborhoods saying, “We’re not gonna stay here, we can’t stay here.” Houses that should have been repaired were not repaired. Some places, perhaps I don’t know if they didn’t have enough insurance but they just left them there, they just left them there and nobody tended to the sheep once the gate was open. So to me that was the beginning of urban blight as we know it, it was the beginning of our integrated, we did elect, eventually elect a black mayor, Coleman A. Young, who was there a long time. We change the police chief and we got a black police chief. I don’t remember, I don’t remember his name. I know Frank Blunt came after he did, I don’t remember his name but it made a difference; it made a difference in the way people were handled. Our school system changed and we got a young black administrator, Martha Jefferson, as far as I’m concerned was young, gifted and black. Our school system, you may not know it at that particular time, was one of the best in the country; people came to us. All that changed. Our city, which was beautiful, do you know when Edison invented the light bulb and we dealt with that, that in the world Paris was a city because Paris had lights, Edison lit up Detroit, did you know that? And it was called the Paris--</p>
<p>LW: of the West</p>
<p>BW: of the West, you’re absolutely correct. But you see, that’s history. It’s not anymore our city. I’m hoping it will be like a phoenix and rise but those were all the wonderful things about our city. Our schools, our police force changed and they kept saying insurrection and it wasn’t -- it was a form of insurrection but you know what it was it was a lack of representation, lack of understanding and you can’t just rule and control people if they don’t have representation.</p>
<p>LW: Where exactly where you living in July of 1967?</p>
<p>BW: In July of 1967, I was living in the area of southwest Detroit near Curtis and Wyoming and the year after that we moved.</p>
<p>LW: Where did you move?</p>
<p>BW: We moved into Sherwood Forest.</p>
<p>LW: Have you lived there since?</p>
<p>BW: We lived there until many years ago. When you get older you don’t need all of that.</p>
<p>LW: Now did your decision to move to Sherwood Forest, was that impacted by 1967 or not?</p>
<p>BW: In a way it was because we really needed, our kids were growing up and we wanted a bit more room and the area was open and our school at that particular time with our children was Jesu, so it gave us access to everything that we wanted. Plus we wanted our children to grow up in an integrated neighborhood, there’s just so much to be learned there.</p>
<p>LW: Now your husband was a physician.</p>
<p>BW: Yes.</p>
<p>LW: How many children did you guys have?</p>
<p>BW: Four.</p>
<p>LW: Four. You continued working after you had children?</p>
<p>BW: Sure. He had no problem with that and I certainly didn’t because I loved what I did. I was with the Detroit school system for about 43 years. </p>
<p>LW: Now I want to just back up to this: I think it’s interesting your communication with RFK, what year was that?</p>
<p>BW: 1967</p>
<p>LW: So that same year that you wrote the poems here in this book.</p>
<p>BW: I sent him a copy</p>
<p>LW: And he wrote you back?</p>
<p>BW: He wrote me back.</p>
<p>LW: What did his letter say do you remember?</p>
<p>BW: Yeah, it was a very basic kind of letter. He thanked me, he had an opportunity to read it and he enjoyed it and basically that was it. And at that particular time I think they were working on the Kerner report, or something like that, but he acknowledged it.</p>
<p>LW: In terms of what you mentioned about a lack of understanding, a lack of communication, you think that was the root of the uprising in ‘43 and in ‘67?</p>
<p>BW: In ‘43, from what I know because I was just going into intermediate school at that time, that was a true race riot and it was connected with jobs and things like that. When a lot of people came in from the South after World War One you had people blacks and whites, predominantly whites, who were in segregated areas had attitudes toward black people these are the people they were competing with for jobs you see and economics came in there so in ‘43 supposedly something happened on Belle Isle and supposedly someone threw a baby in the river or whatever you know and anyway the whites attacked the blacks, they pulled them off street cars and all that stuff you can look it up on the computers. It really was hate, it was hate. The neighborhood I lived in over here called the cultural center had Croatians and Serbians and Poles and Afro-Americans and Greeks and we were all in one big melting pot we were all, you know, same economic level everything all of us being taught in order for you to do anything or be anything you must go to school. Common values everything and it was absolutely great. That’s the area that I grew up in. There are some people who may have lived in that area because on one side of Warren we were really integrated down near the market we were, but on some streets it was like all black or all white and so those kids went to schools that were predominantly black schools did not have, I don’t think they had access to the kinds of things that we had growing up. I went to Balch I went to Garfield I went to Northeastern, very integrated community, very, very integrated community. And I take that working and being in that kind of environment made me the kind of person that I am.</p>
<p>LW: What street was your family living on?</p>
<p>BW: Medbury.</p>
<p>LW: Bedbury?</p>
<p>BW: Med, m-e-d, and you know what killed us? [Interstate] 94. 94 cut right through our neighborhood and it destroyed our community and our people went other places and then the Chrysler [Freeway] came through and that made a difference. Another thing which I always said was contributed by the government. When the men came home from the war in ‘48 you had the G.I. Bill and many of our men, and when I say "our" men I mean black community, who went to college, went on the G.I. Bill. They were going out here to Wayne University, which was one big building, and Quonset Huts. You remember Quonset Hut, signs those little rain kind of things, ok, but at that particular time they only, also at that time were dealing with housing and the people that came back that were white had access to those G.I. loans and they bought houses and moved out and began to establish little cities like, I think of Southfield, Farmington and whatever and they left us with Detroit. Many whites stayed, and we had an integrated community in certain sections but it became sort of racially divided in terms of the community.</p>
<p>LW: This was in the 1940s late-forties early-fifties?</p>
<p>BW: Late-forties, early-fifties.</p>
<p>LW: So you sort of see that as the first wave of what we call now call “white flight” or segregation.</p>
<p>BW: Do I see that now?</p>
<p>LW: Do you think that that in the late-forties, early-fifties was the first wave of “white flight,” segregation?</p>
<p>BW: Exactly!</p>
<p>LW: And then later in the sixties after July ‘67</p>
<p>BW: Yeah, then they begin to move out they had a chance to build up their streets, their schools the universities began to put out their little, what shall we call them? extensions. Ok because my first work for the University of Michigan, first job, first classes I took, were over here where the building on Fordham, the engineer society. The University of Michigan had a Rackham and you could take classes there, Wayne University set up -- maybe it was out in Livonia or near Southfield I don’t remember, which they had the little temporary buildings so people who lived there could go there and get their degrees. But the thing that more than anything else with the government loans for housing initially blacks could not get those and whites could. I have a book at home called <i>The Mustard Tree</i> that was given to me when we were getting rid of a lot of books over at the school center building and the library was right across from where my office was, and so we were invited to take a look at those books and I saw this one and it was the history of the credit union, and in there, in there, there is a whole story of the first black person to get a mortgage loan from the credit union.</p>
<p>LW: In Michigan?</p>
<p>BW: From Detroit Teachers Credit Union. The first one and I had to look at it and laugh because when that freeway came though people had to move and they couldn’t always find a place. With my family, because my grandparents lived upstairs, we lived downstairs, my family and father had to buy a home. They didn’t have finances. I went to Detroit Teachers Credit Union and they helped us and that’s when my family moved over on the northwest part of the Boulevard and Grand River, so that begins to get emotional kind of thing with me, just a lot of stories there. A lot of stories, a lot of love, a lot of pain but it was still a good life in Detroit. I love Detroit and I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it.</p>
<p>LW: What were some of your favorite things growing up in this cultural area near the Detroit Institute of Arts, near Wayne State, near the various museums and libraries right down here? You said Medbury is off of Warren? </p>
<p>BW: No, Medbury is -- we're on Kirby, do you know where Our Lady of Rosary the Catholic Church down here with the statue on the top, that’s Medbury. You see all of the freeway in front of it? That’s Medbury, that’s Harper.</p>
<p>LW: So 94 really did cut right though that neighborhood then? That is where 94 is.</p>
<p>BW: That is where 94 is, and let me tell you what they did some of the things that they did they came though and they offered you a certain price for your home. It's like a public domain kind of thing and you accepted or you had to wait and go to court. I had a friend whose husband had a wonderful, wonderful cleaning business. They offered him a certain amount of money and apparently he didn’t accept it and he stayed and he stayed So, what they did --I say "they" I mean the government or whatever you want to call it -- they bought all the property around him the houses, when you buy the houses and the people leave, what are you going to do with the business? They kind of put him out of business, but he came though and they did fine. I belonged to a group with Northwestern, I mean Northeastern, a group composed of Northeastern graduates, okay? and the east side, we called the east side Detroiters who wrote a history of what things were like when we were here the wonderful things that we had we loved the area so much, so much. Near east side, near east side extended from the Boulevard almost down to the beginning what they called Black Bottom and you know Black Bottom doesn’t mean black people. I saw where a writer once wrote, “How can they say that name because of the soil if you know how rocky the soil was?" Well, in 1701, when Cadillac came here, there wasn’t anything down there, it was down the river. You know it was good soil and that is how we extended our streets out this way like the spokes and these were ribbon farms all around here because the soil was so good. So no, now it’s not the rich soil all the buildings and things but it was not named because black people lived there.</p>
<p>LW: I’d like you to read one of your poems but I was gonna ask you before that to talk a little bit about growing up in the thirties and forties here, what were some of your favorite things to do in addition.</p>
<p>BW: Let me tell you what we did every now and then, we’d go to a show on a Sunday. If we did, we went over to the Fisher because the Fisher Theater was a theater at that particular time and the styling on the inside was like being in an Aztec temple. Maybe once every two weeks or so our mother would take us to the show at night because certain nights if the adults came you could get a glass plate, have you ever heard about that? They had special nights and this might be they had well, ruby china, ruby glass, so the show might be featuring that so along with the ticket the adult got a ruby glass. Next week it may have been the saucer for a cup so you could get your dishes. So that was one thing, so we would go there. We would go, went to the Art Institute we would go into the library and we played games, we played games at night. It was warm outside, nobody had air conditioning so you would sit on the steps and you would play all kind of old games. We played hopscotch in the backyard we would play baseball, that’s the kind of things that we did. And we did go that one day a week to the library. Get our books and we read our books, we read our books. There was one book called <i>I Hear America Singing</i>, I loved that book. It was a book of poetry so I would check it out this week and then my brother or sister would take it out the next week so we kept going until we had a chance to go through all the -- We did a lot of reading we did a lot of reading, we didn’t -- and on Saturday if you were lucky you could go to the theater then because it was inexpensive. They had they chapter pictures, you heard of the chapter pictures?</p>
<p>LW: No.</p>
<p>BW: Oh, on Saturday they had matinees and it might be a series of 16 chapters all with Roy Rodgers or Tim McCoy or whoever the hero was and there was a chapter here and you would go back because it would continue the next week so we would go to things like that. We visited and we had work to do inside the house, too, you know, and we had chores that we had to do. People had gardens in the back and certainly during World War Two they had victory gardens things like that. There were lots of things to do, lots of things to do. It was a great time, it was a great time.</p>
<p>LW: So you really go to see Detroit when it was thriving.</p>
<p>BW: Right, Right, Right. Christmas time everybody went to Hudson’s. The twelfth floor was magic land because it was toy land, just beautiful. Then they had a Thanksgiving Day parade, they had Santa Claus at Christmas time, just people were concerned about people and our teachers were just wonderful, teachers were just wonderful. I could go back and name so many of my elementary, not so many junior high, some high school teachers. You know they say things to us like, you've got to do this and you've got to do that and it was like, yes, I've got to do that because the teacher said I've got to do that. And in the summer time we would play school because if it was the end of the year and the books were kinda messed up and the teacher would give you a book and you would take that little book home. My fifth grade math teacher Mrs. Eschmann, I loved math because I loved that teacher, and we’d play school and I would be the teacher and I had, I had, I had the book and I could check their papers and things like that, but they were inspirational to us. We had a music teacher Mrs. Filler, she lived over here at the park shelter. She was magnificent. We learned all the songs. We learned the hymns of all of the armed forces, we knew the Christmas songs, Thanksgiving songs and we were just happy. And then when we got to intermediate school I had a teacher who said lined us all up listening to us sing I didn’t have a voice so she said, “Louise, you don’t sing you hum, I’m humming” she come past me and she says “Louise, you don’t hum, you just mouth it,” and it crushed me and I said “Mrs. Fillers said I could sing.” I sing all the time and I don’t care and it’s just such a different time.</p>
<p>LW: But you had a good childhood here?</p>
<p>BW: Oh I had a wonderful childhood, I had a wonderful childhood. I hope my children did. Children today, that is another story, because they don’t respect their parents. I mean mama said it, you did it, that kind of thing. Teachers, don’t let the teacher, nobody called you because you didn’t have telephones, you know, like that, send a note home. Parents always would do parent meetings, just a wonderful time. But the riots changed that. You see some of the people never had a chance to know what Detroit was. It’s sad.</p>
<p>LW: Do you think, as you say, the riots changed things, did you sense anything else leading up to that time did it seem to come out of nowhere to you?</p>
<p>BW: Um, you know there was things that you would hear about, some people were more involved in it because they lived in other parts of the city, but we knew there were prejudices and things like that because there used to be a -- downtown there used to be a -- there was a series of restaurants, I can’t think of the name of them anyway and black people would have a -- "colored people" they called us -- couldn’t go into any of those. But I guess my parents never took us to any of those you know, but we lived over here, over here where I lived we could go and do anything but I know in other parts of the city it was not like that. When I started teaching, my first semester I taught was in a school that was on the lower east side. We had to put up bulletin boards. I’d go looking for colored paper: I had brown, I had grey, I had purple, black. So I had to buy my materials. When I got pregnant, of course, I had to leave. When I came back from maternity leave they sent me to a school in another neighborhood. I had red, green, yellow, orange, light blue, but, you know, what I didn’t have, I didn’t have black, brown, purple and it seemed to me like you don’t give these children the bright colors they need and the kids over here who don’t need all of this, you give them all the bright colors and the dark colors I have to go out and buy. So there were, yes, there were things that I saw as I grow older that were inequities but coming up younger you don’t see, you don’t really see all of this. I guess a very prejudiced kind of environment for some. The police they were something else, they really were. I can remember one night going home from a meeting. I was on the board for Marygrove, just about 8:30, 9:00. A police car stopped me going down Seven Mile wanting to know, "Why was I over here?"
"I live over here."
"Where are you coming from?"
"I’m coming from Marygrove."
He didn’t want to believe I said Marygrove. He said, "Marygrove?"
"Yes," I said," I’m on the board over there."
"On the board over there?" anyway I ended up getting a ticket from him. He said I had done something, I don’t remember what it was, but I went to court on it, I went to court on it and they dismissed the ticket, the only reason he stopped me is because I was black in a neighborhood that as far as he was concerned was white and I should not have been there and I had every right to be there because I lived there. So there were things yes, there were things.</p>
<p>LW: And this is when you lived in Sherwood Forest?</p>
<p>BW: That was before I moved to Sherwood Forest because when I lived in the area over there on Curtis near Wyoming right there on Seven Mile right down near Woodward, what was I doing there you know.</p>
<p>LW: So you did sense as a teacher as an educator some --</p>
<p>BW: Yeah, inequities, yes and I never had in all my elementary school days I never had a black teacher. When I got to my junior high, yes I had a number, when I got to high school this was the first time that something really hit me. I had -- you heard me say earlier that I love math. I love math. I had my algebra teacher. She always ask, “And what intermediate school did you come from?” and I kept wondering, why is she asking that, why is so important that she knows what schools? And then you would say something like, maybe Garfield “mhm” what does “mhm” mean, you know. You say Griswold, oh Griswold; that was one of the white schools. That teacher in my mind had just categorized kids and as much as I love math, I passed that class with a D. I’d never gotten a D. My mother said to me, “You’re going to summer school. You’re going to take that class over because you are going to college.” I went to summer school and I met a young bright teacher by the name of Mrs. [Makula ?]. She was, I learned algebra up and down, she was so wonderful, she was so wonderful, she was so different in her presentations. So yeah it was there, it was there not always overt but there are other kids that have other kind of memories because you know many of the students that were on the other side of Warren went to Miller and Miller has a great name and it was prominently black, it had a wonderful name with sports and whatever, you knew that students that were white went to Denby or they went to Cooley to learn, places like that. Northeastern was my school and I loved it, I loved the teachers I just had a wonderful time. You know, everybody can’t say the same.</p>
<p>LW: I want you to read one of your poems before we run out of time.</p>
<p>BW: I would love to I read this one before.</p>
<p>LW: So this one is called--</p>
<p>BW: “Ode to Twelfth Street” because supposedly the riots started on Twelfth Street, and there was an interesting street so it’s called “An Ode to Twelfth Street.”
<p>Everything’s calm now so peaceful and quiet,</br>
but you should have seen what they did to Twelfth Street during the riot. </br>
It was a street of prostitutes, pimps and deceivers, </br>
Black Nationalists, Muslims, and non-believers, </br>
churches, nuns, entertainers and ministers, </br>
mamas and papas and even old spinsters, </br>
dirty children, stray dogs and cats, </br>
loan shops and markets and people of wealth </br>
made of the sight of the street called Twelfth. </br>
With barbeque joints and soul food tins, </br>
delicatessens, bars, night clubs and pig pens. </br>
A Chinese restaurant on one corner [did stand ?]</br>
and yes, don’t forget the old chestnut man. </br>
Lawyers, optometrists, dentists and physicians </br>
shared offices along with the soul save missions.</br>
And whether you loved it, liked it, or viewed it with fear, </br>
it thrived with life and it was held dear.</br>
One main artery through that Negro ghetto, </br>
a life giving artery but destruction it lead to. </br>
A street you could stop on during the day </br>
but come night fall, you better get out the way, </br>
for all kinds of vile crimes that would endanger one’s health </br>
was available to anyone after dark on Twelfth.</br>
But it’s all gone now. In its place devastation, </br>
burnt out frames as viewed by all of the nation,</br>
but the people who lived near the heart of this city</br>
cried unabashed and think, “what a pity."</br>
For, in spite of its grimness everyone you would meet </br>
knew about Detroit’s infamous Twelfth Street.</br>
But it’s all gone now all buried in disgrace </br>
and with it many dreams of the negro race. </br>
It was synonymous with our struggle, its destruction our pain, </br>
it was our street now but nothing remains. </br>
It’s gone, just gone, nothing to see </br>
but the tear streaked faces of the people you meet, </br>
wondering what really happened to our Twelfth Street.</p>
<p>LW: Thank you, that’s beautiful. I’m wondering what specifically inspired that were you driving through the neighborhood, walking?</p>
<p>BW: It was things that I could, things that I could see, we used to live one of the places when my husband and I first got married we lived on a street called Pingree which was right off of Twelfth it was right around the corner from Twelfth, the apartment building we lived in. So we had restaurants like [Cream de Michigan ?]. You know, nightclubs everything was right there. I knew the street, you know when we moved it was still there and there were things that we could go back for, the delicatessen, just things like that, so it was something I knew. I could see the people. I lived there several years; no one ever bothered me or anything like that. At one time I heard that one of the restaurants there -- which I will not name -- was supposedly that restaurant that the Purple Gang came to because they were supposedly on Collingwood but, um, you learn your neighborhood, you walked around in it things like that so that’s how I knew that street. All these things in here are things that I -- that happened to me that I saw or that I read about or something that someone else told me about that they saw. There’s a cute little one you didn’t ask me for this but I like this one because it's humor. This one is called “The Portable Bar” because you could go right in when they break the glass and go in stores and take out whatever was there and stuff was left and people were just walking around inside and pick up things.</p>
<p>LW: During the looting?</p>
<p>BW: During the looting. This is called “A Portable Bar” and I kinda like it. </p><p>
Whiskey, Whiskey ten cents a shot, </br>
yeah I know this whiskey's hot</br>
but the bars are closed, you know </br>
and one monkey don’t stop the show. </br>
My bars portable can’t you see </br>
picked it up yesterday and the liquor was free. </br>
No overhead expenses,no bills to pay </br>
free and clear man just take home the pay.</br>
Whiskey, whiskey, stop where you are </br>
and have a drink at my portable bar. </br>
Page 23.</p>
<p>LW: So what that was inspired by people walking around inside the store?</p>
<p>BW: Yes, and people walking around and take things and someone saw this person who had this portable bar and hey the liquor stores were closed and everything was closed so hey you had people selling things on the street, a lot of it stolen. You know and afterward police were busy picking up stuff and people had a period in time where if they had anything you could turn it back in, you know, and it was all right. But if they caught you with anything after that you know it was time to pay the piper, that kind of thing.</p>
<p>LW: So you think in the sort of aftermath which you wrote about in “Ode to Twelfth Street” in particular, in all the aftermath, who were you and the people around sort of most upset with most angry at, where did you sort of place the blame for what happened?</p>
<p>BW: They put in on the police. They would riot through the neighborhoods, not as much my neighborhood where I lived on Seven Mile, but where I lived before. They would stop you on the street and ask you what you’re doing. They had a group called the Big Four: four policemen sitting in cars just driving down the streets. There was a place called Hunt Street Station and that was infamous in terms of the way people were treated. There was a place over here on Vernon, the Vernon Street station, where we would hear about certain things that were going on plus we had our black newspapers, we had <i>The Chronicle</i>, we had <i>The Tribune</i>, we had the <i>Pittsburgh Courier</i>. There was another one but they were like black newspapers and we could once a week get the newspaper so we could see what was going on in our city and things like that. The Polish people had their <i>Dziennik Polski</i> I think it was called or something like that and <i>La Princea</i> was part of the newspaper that you could get. The Mexican or Spanish speaking, all the foreign newspapers would come into the Detroit Public Library and I worked while I was in high school and I worked when I was in college at the library. I told you my major was essentially library sciences and it was my high school librarian that got me a job with the Detroit Public Library and I worked one day a week on Saturday. You could only work certain hours. I worked at the library and they sent me to the downtown library in the foreign language department. So all these newspapers you see them coming in, and people came in and they would read their ethnic newspapers people kept up with things that were going on.</p>
<p>LW: So you felt that you saw this sort of trend about police with racial profiling and things like that. And did that exist in the Polish and Spanish speaking newspapers?</p>
<p>BW: I cannot speak to that because I did not live there but the neighborhood I lived in right over there we had the Polish people and the Serbian people. We even had some Armenian people lived around the corner from where we lived, we had Yugoslavs, so you know. But in certain neighborhoods you hear about things that might go on. But it was still a good city and you hear things and you hear people that go to other parts going to the South and things like that where they couldn’t stop along the roads and go to a restaurant where they had to go around the corner and drink water and stuff like that. I didn’t run into a lot of that here, I didn’t, I really didn’t. But you might run into somebody who’s my age living in another part of the city, totally different story, and when I talk to my sisters and brothers --my brother that I told you about that was born in the time right after my graduation, he didn’t live through this. My younger sister, my youngest sister whom I talk to almost daily, it was almost like I raised her she was 363 days older than my baby brother so I almost like raised her, so we talked all the time but they didn’t bother, so by the time they had grown up we had moved from Detroit’s east side over to the west side of Detroit and they went to Angell School and from Angell they started --the schools I guess were crowded then so I can’t think of where they had to go out near Eight Mile and Greenfield -- but totally different environment, totally different group of people, totally different teachers and I was in a school system by that time and I was down over here in the area that they were calling Black Bottom and I had some southern whites, I had some black students and a few Mexican students. When I moved out here, I was sent out here to Atkinson school. I had a lot of white students because that area was like that at that particular time. I remember when the area started to change and I remember one little youngster, I can’t remember his name right now, I loved the kids I worked with, I loved the kids I worked with, and he came up to me one day and he had tears in his eyes and I said “Well, what’s the matter?” He said, “Oh, Miss Williams, were going to move because the niggers are moving in” and I said, “Oh, don’t you worry about it my dear.” He didn’t see me, he saw me, I was his teacher, no idea of what he had been hearing. That’s the innocence of children, the innocence of children and I think about them and I see many children and I call them the children with the black coal eyes because they can look at you and their eyes are just dancing and you know this child’s really got it going on in here.</p>
<p>LW: When did you retire?</p>
<p>BW: I retired almost 20 years ago and that’s when I went into the charter schools.</p>
<p>LW: Which charter school did you?</p>
<p>BW: Hope of Detroit.</p>
<p>LW: Where is that located?</p>
<p>BW: It’s off of Buchanan near Livernois and I loved that school I loved that school. Our ethnic groups we had a mixture we had Hispanics, we had blacks and we had whites and we did lots of things. Tried to brush up on my Spanish and have people there who could serve the needs. I loved it, I just loved it.</p>
<p>LW: When did you leave there? </p>
<p>BW: About five years later and I came home. I had a good life and I love Detroit and I still go to church. Sacred Heart is still my church. We celebrate our hundred and fortieth anniversary this last Friday. Our pastor, Father Thomas, has been there for 60 years. I was baptized there, my children were baptized there, my daughters were married there, married by the priest, but they weren’t married at Sacred Heart, they were married at Jesu because we lived over there at that time but Father Thomas was still our minister so we did things like that.</p>
<p>LW: I appreciate you talking with me and sharing your stories and poetry with me.</p>
<p>BW: I hope I didn’t talk too much.</p>
<p>LW: No, I loved it. And I liked that you read your poems for us so other people can hear them, too. Thank you so much.</p>
<p>BW: You are quite welcome and I appreciate your taking the time with me.</p>
<p>LW: My pleasure.</p>
<p>BW: I hope people remember everybody has to be conscious of what they want and what other people want. I still think in our country there are people fighting, the Civil War is over so and when they talk about slavery sometime I remind people there isn’t one nationality group in this world that wasn’t sometime in their history slaves of some other group and you can not maintain a slave mentality. You remember the past but you build a future. That’s it but I thank you for inviting me.</p>
<p>LW: Thank you for coming, we appreciate it.</p>
<p>BW: I love this place, my pleasure.</p>
<p>LW: Thank you so much. </p>**
Original Format
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WAV
Interviewer
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Lillian Wilson
Interviewee
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Bessie Wilson
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tlLJsMQglDI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
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Title
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Bessie Ernst Williams, June 16th, 2015
Description
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In this interview, Williams discusses growing up in a multi-ethnic community in Detroit and the causes and effects of the 1967 disturbance. She also discusses working in the Detroit school system and the changes that occurred over the years she both attended and worked in the Detroit school system. She also recounts some of the inequalities she encountered over the years and reads some of her poetry about the unrest in 1967.
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Detroit Historical Society
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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WAV
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en-US
Type
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Sound
1943 Detroit Race Riots
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Community Members
Detroit Police Department
Grand River Avenue
Housing
Looting
Michigan National Guard
The Big Four
White Flight
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/e1a5377febf2f21e5b6e8202cc97e3a8.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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<p>I was 14 years old at the time of the Detroit riot. I remember wakening up to my mother and father chastising my older and younger brother coming home with a wagon full ice creams, different types of snacks and chips. My mother told them you both know better. Why did you go up to the corner? This is stealing throw it away. She suddenly turn around to my other brothers and sister and told us not to go to the corner and stay home. I had no ideal what was going on. I ran to the backyard and look down the alley. People were running back and forth down the alley with food, packages of groceries, liqour and bags of anything they could pick up. I didn't notice any sadness in their faces but happiness. It was amazing to see. I only wonder what's going on.</p>
<p> Still in confusion I went to my best friend who was two years older to see what had happen. She told me it is a riot. The color people are mad and they are taking it out on the white people in the neighborhood. They are breaking into the stores and taking everything. I ask what had happen but she didn't know. I still didn't understand so I went back to my mother who was on the phone talking to her sister about my brothers and complaining about how crazy the world had become over night. So due to my curiosity I left home and walk to the corner.</p>
<p>I could not believe what I saw. The Wileys drug store was gone, the bar where I often look into when I went pass every day was gone, the beauty parlor where I would often see white women getting their hair done was gone and the grocery store that I had went to all my life no longer stood there. Everything was burning down. The awful smell of burning buildings, papers and the smell of liqour all mix together was to much for me. Why would they do this why would they destroy our neighborhood? What was the reason? I cry that day and many days afterwards. I even wonder today what would Detroit be like today if the riot had not occurred.</p>
<p>I remember when the national guards came, but they didn't come until later. When they did come they were often seen driving their jeeps and trucks down the streets. They stood at the doors of empty and burn down building to protect what I didn't know. Everything was gone. </p>
<p>Our neighborhood was mix with whites and blacks. During the riot the whites stay in their houses and know one bother them except one night the neighbors came to our door knocking hard. We ran downstairs to see what was happening. The man at the corner who own the ice cream business was trap inside and some men were trying to make him come out. They wanted my father to go and try to calm the men down. My father was a minister, he was a quiet man and never want to be boasterous or loud. He was friendly and love talking to everyone. My mother would often tell him to leave people alone because my father would speak to everyone and hold a conversation. But this was something I could tell he was nervous about. My father finally went after pushing from the neighbors and walk to the corner. When he return he smile and said we were able to quiet things down. They didn't hurt the ice cream man.</p>
<p>Once everthing quiet down my neighborhood would never be the same. The whites move out and we move from the eastside to northwest side of Detroit to a majority jewish neighborhood the next year. Everyone was upset we were leaving but my father didn't want to stay on our street anymore. He said . it didn't feel the same and everything had change.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>--</p>
Original Format
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email
Submitter's Name
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Beverly Spears
Submission Date
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01/27/2016
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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Beverly Spears
Description
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Beverly Spears recalls her childhood memories from July 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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text
Language
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en-US
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Looting
Teenagers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/79e9c538b265955cb24abef6c560b3b2.JPG
44e1e42405567f079516243f9f7b9acb
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
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Bill Goodman
Brief Biography
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Bill Goodman was born in the city of Detroit in 1940. He attended college at the University of Chicago where he participated in Civil Rights protests. He moved back to Detroit after college and joined his father’s law practice.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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10/05/2016
Interview Length
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00:43:06
Transcriptionist
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Kate McCabe
Transcription Date
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11/22/2016
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello, today is October 5, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am in Detroit, Michigan, and I am sitting down with Mr. Bill Goodman. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>BG: You’re welcome. I’m happy to be here.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>BG: I was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1940, April 1940.</p>
<p>WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?</p>
<p>BG: It was northwest Detroit. It was the area between, it was Green Acres. The area between Seven Mile and Eight Mile and just east of Livernois.</p>
<p>WW: What was that neighborhood like growing up for you?</p>
<p>BG: Well, it was, you know, for me, I experienced it as the only neighborhood I knew. It was single homes. It was, east of Livernois it was all white. It was middle class families mostly. People with mid-level corporate jobs, a few lawyers here and there, a few doctors here and there, that kind of thing. It was quiet, pleasant, and easy to take. As a kid I had no beefs with my neighborhood, back in those days. Other than the fact that it was a segregated neighborhood, and that was an issue to some degree, even in my childhood.</p>
<p>WW: What issues arose from it being a segregated neighborhood?</p>
<p>BG: I went to Pasteur School, which was on Pembroke and Stoepel, just west of Livernois. There was a small African American community that was in that school district, although it was, it bordered Eight Mile Road. There were a few, as a child, there were a few black kids in our school. We had a little neighborhood baseball team in the neighborhood that I grew up in, and the local drugstore sponsored our team. And [Boyan] the owner of the drugstore bought us little shirts that we wore as our uniform, and we recruited – one of our players was one of the kids that I knew in school, a black kid, and we wanted him on our team. His name was Melvin. And so, when the pharmacist, the store owner learned that we had a black kid on the team, he said, ‘No, this is only for children who live east of Livernois. You can’t be on the team if you live west of Livernois.’</p>
<p>So we had a little protest. We walked into his store, we all threw our shirts down and walked out.</p>
<p>WW: Was it successful?</p>
<p>BG: You mean, did the store owner give in?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah.</p>
<p>BG: No, no, he withdrew his support of our team, but we did have a slightly integrated baseball team anyway.</p>
<p>WW: That’s awesome.</p>
<p>BG: Yes, that’s one of my early protests.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up, did you tend to stay in your own neighborhood or did you venture around the city?</p>
<p>BG: Well, in those days it was easy, even as a kid. I would take the bus downtown, even before high school. I’d get on the bus, take the Second Avenue bus or the Hamilton bus, the Woodward Avenue bus, all the way downtown, and then I’d go over to my dad’s office and go in and say, "Do you want to go to a baseball game?" or something like that today. In those days, all the games were played during the day, there were no night games. So, sometimes he’d say yes and sometimes he couldn’t, and then I would then get on the Michigan Avenue trolley and take it out to Tiger Stadium to the old Briggs Field, Briggs Stadium, and go to the game by myself. And then come back downtown and he’d drive me home at the end of the day. So, I think, and I did the same thing when I wanted to go downtown just to Hudson’s or something like that. I did that. And so, no, I wasn’t confined to my own neighborhood. I mean, I spent most of my time in my neighborhood, but no.</p>
<p>WW: You mentioned how easy it was going around the city, did you also feel comfortable going around the city?</p>
<p>BG: Yes! I did, and I’m sure my parents did too. I think I would be – I’m talking about when I was 10, 11 years old and I think parents of 10 or 11 year-olds today would be much less sanguine about their children traveling around on buses throughout the city of Detroit.</p>
<p>WW: So going into the Fifties, and later on in the Fifties when you were a teenager, did you notice any growing tensions in the city, this is at the point where the Civil Rights movement is starting in the South, or anything like that?</p>
<p>BG: Well, the Civil Rights movement really got going in the South probably about in ‘58, ‘59, several years after Brown vs. Board [of Education], and by that time I was in college. And yes, there were issues when I went to college, sure. When I was in high school, I wouldn’t say I noticed anything going on in the city in terms of racial tension or issues with the police department, which was really what the rebellion was all about.</p>
<p>Except that I know as a young kid, going around with my dad on weekends, he would get calls from people whose kids had, or husbands had disappeared, trying to track someone down to represent them, who was being held by the Detroit Police Department. And they hid prisoners like that often, and because he had a bit of a reputation as a civil rights lawyer, he would often get calls from black families which were often targeted for this kind of thing and get into fights with cops or at police stations – not physical fights, but arguments that I would observe, so I did see some of that.</p>
<p>WW: Did this interaction, this relationship between your father and the police department, did that echo the relationship that your community had with the police department?</p>
<p>BG: My community? Meaning northwest Detroit?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah.</p>
<p>BG: No. My community had a very sanguine, pleasant relationship with the police whenever we saw them, which was rarely.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up and seeing that positive relationship that your community has, between the police department and themselves, and then seeing the relationships that other communities have, was that a wake-up for you?</p>
<p>BG: Well, I grew up a little differently than many. I grew up being conscious and sensitive to these issues anyway, because my father was very conscious of racism and segregation and did his best to fight for civil rights, so I had a different perspective on things. He had a black law partner when I was young, a kid, George Crockett, who is well known in Detroit. And Crockett, who later became a judge, had a son, George the third, who also later became a judge. And George the third and I were the same age and became friends and he would come over to my, come visit our house from time to time, and I would – there was always a lot of very racist comments among the other kids on the block when they saw a black family visiting or saw me with another black kid my age. So I had some awareness of that through that mechanism.</p>
<p>WW: You mentioned the racist comments the kids in the neighborhood had.</p>
<p>BG: Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Did they have those comments about Melvin on the baseball team?</p>
<p>BG: Melvin, no. Melvin was a good baseball player [laughs]. I mean, we all, they all knew Melvin and it wasn’t a social – we weren’t interacting with Melvin as social friends. Melvin just was a teammate, which was somewhat different. But to see, for example, a black family visiting our family, or having young George Crockett sleep over with me at my house, this was something that was taken somewhat differently in the neighborhood. Not by everybody, but by a few people.</p>
<p>WW: You mentioned that you did run into problems when you went to university. What university did you go to?</p>
<p>BG: I didn’t have have problems, I ran into them, that’s when the Civil Rights movement started to get rolling, and there were a lot of issues. I went to the University of Chicago. So, one of the issues while I was in the – well, one of the things that happened was the sit-ins started at that point in the South. So we started to boycott Woolworth’s, for example, and other chains that ran segregated facilities in the South. And we’d have picket lines in front of these places. There was a lot of tension around those picket lines. Those were days, you know, when the picket line had to do with strikes, not with social issues or political issues like Civil Rights. So, yeah, there was a lot that went on around that, and then the University of Chicago itself owned buildings that were racially segregated. And that was a huge protest, the fact that it was a sit-in at the administration building at that time. I think by then I was in law school.</p>
<p>Bernie Sanders claims to have been involved in that, I don’t know if he was. But he says he was and I’m sure he was. And he sat in at that time and a number of students were disciplined over it, and so on. So those were a couple of examples of the kinds of things that happened in my college experience that I can recall.</p>
<p>WW: What organizations did you do the picketing with? Was it a student group, or–?</p>
<p>BG: There were student groups. I’m not sure if I remember which ones they were. We had a political party called “Polit.” P-O-L-I-T. Maybe they did it, I don’t know. I don’t know.</p>
<p>WW: And when you went from Detroit to Chicago, remembering ack to your neighborhood back when children would make the racist comments and stuff, was Chicago along the same lines?</p>
<p>BG: What do you mean?</p>
<p>WW: How did they address racism? Or, how did you experience racism, or witness racism, in Chicago versus Detroit? Was there a difference, or was it the same strain?</p>
<p>BG: I’m sure it was the same thing. It was, you know, the northern racist United States of America. I mean, Chicago was more, I don’t know – I remember I went out on a date once, took a girl to a park and we had a picnic. And the Chicago Police Department rolled by and said, "White people never come to this park, you should get out of here." That was a small example, but a memorable one, since I still remember it.</p>
<p>The Woodlawn, 63rd Street was the heart of Woodlawn at that time, and it was, having never spent any time in New York or been to Harlem that I could recall. This was amazing to me, to see so many black faces walking up and down the streets. When I would walk up to 63rd Street, which was not often, but when I did and I was with friends, who would show their fear of being around so many black people, the people in the community on the street would react to that and make comments about that, "oh, all these white kids" and so on.</p>
<p>But I don’t think the nature of racism was any different between Detroit and Chicago. Detroit was segregated, and had a virtually all-white police department which was vicious to some degree, and Chicago was just more of the same but bigger.</p>
<p>WW: What year did you return to Detroit?</p>
<p>BG: When I graduated from law school, 1964.</p>
<p>WW: When you came back to Detroit, was Detroit the same city it was when you left? Or did you see any changes?</p>
<p>BG: There was a lot more political activism in Detroit at that point. There were progressive political organizing. John Conyers ran for Congress that year. First time, and he was running against Dick Austin who was the UAW [United Auto Workers] candidate for that particular seat. And Conyers’ campaign was a grassroots campaign, fought from the ground up, from my law firm, by the way, was a major part of it. That kind of thing was going on all over the place, because the beginnings, well, the Civil Rights movement had blossomed by ‘64 – I’d been involved a little bit during, while I was in school, by the way, in the South. And you could see, you know, political activism wherever you looked, in those days, at least among middle class and intellectual people, both white and black.</p>
<p>WW: And what did you do when you came back to Detroit, you had your law degree?</p>
<p>BG: Yeah, I worked for my dad’s law firm, for the Goodman- Crockett Law Firm. And I, basically, the law firm used to describe itself as a firm that engaged in a lot of political activism and supported itself by representing plaintiffs in personal injury cases. So I did both, but I did a lot of just of plain old auto accident, personal injury litigation, that kind of thing, yeah. That’s what I did.</p>
<p>WW: So while you were doing that, what political activities did you undertake?</p>
<p>BG: The first political client that I had – and this actually is a good segue into discussing the rebellion, I think – was a group called the Northern Student Movement. Did you ever hear of them? You did? I’m impressed that you’ve heard of them, that’s good. Have you talked to Frank Joyce, by the way? You should.</p>
<p>WW: I’m about to, yes.</p>
<p>BG: So Frank Joyce was, sort of an organizer of something called the Northern Student Movement here in Detroit. And he called me one day and he said that he’d gotten my name, he heard I was raring to go with political cases or something like that, and here’s the case. He and a group of his constituents who were members of the Northern Students Movement on the eastside of Detroit had gone over to the old Fifth Precinct on Jefferson Avenue on the day that was designated as “Tour Your Local Police Station Day” or something like that. And when they got inside, one of them, a fellow named Moses Wedlaw, asked to see the room where the cops beat the people up in. This was the question that was asked. So as they were then kicked out of the police station, as they left, they were all attacked in the parking lot, beaten up, charged with assaulting police officers and arrested. So this was my first political case I undertook. And basically got all the charges dismissed. We were in front of the judge on that case, was George Crockett, the elder George Crockett, who by that time was a Recorder’s Court Judge. A man of enormous courage in so many ways. And Crockett somehow dismissed all of those cases. If you ask Frank about it, he’ll remember. In fact, I’ve talked to him about it recently, he does remember.</p>
<p>So that was one of the things I got into at that time. There was a lot of, at that point, the anti-Vietnam protests were developing, and I represented a lot of anti-war protestors, both in Detroit and Ann Arbor and in East Lansing. There was quite a bit of activity in East Lansing over that. So I did those cases, and some police misconduct, police brutality cases. It was a very different legal environment back in those days, but we did a little bit. It was much harder, but we were able to bring such cases because in 1961, the United States Supreme Court decided a case called Monroe vs. Pape, which allows individuals to sue under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. It only took 90 years to be able to do that. So, yeah.</p>
<p>WW: So you primarily – this is a recap – you primarily defended left-wing activists and organizations, and then, when you were able to, you did police misconduct?</p>
<p>BG: Uh-huh.</p>
<p>WW: Okay.</p>
<p>BG: Yeah, I wouldn’t describe it as left – some of them were left-wing for sure, but, I mean, some of them were just student activists, protestors. I guess you could call them left-wingers, but they were just people who were waking up to the injustice and inequality and racism that surrounded everybody in those days.</p>
<p>WW: And, I forgot to ask, when you came back, what neighborhood did you move into in the city?</p>
<p>BG: Lafayette Park. Well no, first I moved on to East Jefferson, a place called River Terrace Apartment. And then we moved to Lafayette Park.</p>
<p>WW: And as you are doing this work, did you notice any tension in the community increasing? Between the police and the community?</p>
<p>BG: As I was doing this work? You mean back in that time? Well, I think that the story I just told you about the Northern Student Movement tour of the Fifth Precinct was emblematic of things that were bubbling up to the top at that time. People were getting tired of the cops arresting, targeting and arresting black youth primarily, and beating them up. This was something that was becoming untenable, or at least unacceptable. So to that extent, yes, I noticed it.</p>
<p>WW: Going into the summer of ‘67, was there any thought that Detroit could blow up like other urban areas were in the Sixties?</p>
<p>BG: You mean, did I have such a thought?</p>
<p>WW: Yes, you.</p>
<p>BG: Right, I mean, we all could look around and see. What ended up, well, Watts was in Sixty–</p>
<p>WW: Six.</p>
<p>BG: Six. I was in Watts at that time, just coincidentally. Well, I was in LA and just drove through Watts. And Newark was in ‘67, wasn’t it? Yeah. Ah, sure. This was not, I’m sure we talked about it. I don’t have a concrete recollection of a specific conversation, but yes, we, the answer is yes to that question.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. And then going into July, the night of July 22 and July 23, how did you first hear what was going on?</p>
<p>BG: I was visiting my parents, with my wife and small baby at the time on that particular Sunday. And we started to notice – we were in the house that I grew up in, and we started to notice that there were smoke all around us, coming from Livernois, which was the business area at that time. And it became very obvious very quickly that we were experiencing an urban riot, so-called. And leaving that neighborhood and driving south on Livernois, I remember seeing people climbing into the Grinnell’s, which used to be a sort of electronics/appliance store, and coming walking out with their hands filled with television sets and so on. And other stores as well. So that was the way in which I first became aware of it, yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Was this a shock to you?</p>
<p>BG: It was a little shocking, but yes, I was a little surprised. I don’t know if “shock” is the right word, but it certainly caught my attention. It concerned me to the extent that who knows what could happen? We lived at that time in Lafayette Park, as I said, close to Gratiot. There were a lot of fires on Gratiot. I did not view it then, I never viewed it as a situation that communicated racial animus. In other words, as a white person, I would drive through these black neighborhoods and no one would pay attention to me as a white guy doing that. It was more experienced as a protest, outrage, and lawlessness, really. It was a lot of lawlessness and all of that. So-called looting, real looting, yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Did you have any other issues while you were going home?</p>
<p>BG: No, no. When I got back to Lafayette Park, one of the people in the neighborhood wanted to organize a gun patrol – pull your guns out and march up and down the street, and I thought that was, to be blunt, just a lot of horse shit. I wasn’t about to get involved in that. So, no, I didn’t have any trouble.</p>
<p>WW: So from where you were in Lafayette Park, could you see a lot of the fires?</p>
<p>BG: I could see fires. Our offices were in the Cadillac Tower, at the time, on the 32nd floor of the Cadillac Tower, and I went up there, the next day I think, no matter where you looked, and our offices looked in all directions, I think maybe, north, south and east. We didn’t look so much west, but you could see fires ringing the whole city of Detroit. So, it was dramatic, yeah. In all directions.</p>
<p>WW: While you were going into work, what was downtown like on that Monday morning?</p>
<p>BG: I don’t remember. I’m sure it was dead, but I don’t have a clear, you’re asking me to summon up memories, that it’s too long ago. I don’t remember what downtown was like. Well, vaguely I remember that no one came in to work and it was dead, yeah. I was there. That’s right. Yeah, no one was at work. I remember that, yup.</p>
<p>WW: Why did you go into work?</p>
<p>BG: Well I, first of all, I wanted to take a look at the city from that vantage point, and secondly, I figured that, in addition to my workaholism, I thought that there might be something going on that we could work on, so I did. And, I don’t know when it was that I went over to Recorder’s Court, whether it was that day or the next day or two days, but shortly after that I went into court.</p>
<p>WW: Feel free to keep talking about it. You’re talking about Recorder’s Court?</p>
<p>BG: Yeah, I was close friends at that time with Justin Ravitz, do you know who he was?</p>
<p>WW: Yes, I do.</p>
<p>BG: And I don’t know if he called me and told me I should meet him over there, but he was involved, he and Kenny Cockrel were involved in organizing, or trying to represent people who had been swept up and detained during the early hours and days of this rebellion. Those people were being held, and there were thousands of them. And they were being held, as I’m sure you know, not only in the Wayne County Jail, and the Detroit Police Department lock up on the 9th floor, they were being held in the outhouses, in the bathrooms on Belle Isle, and on buses and in horrible places, under horrible conditions, nowhere to sleep. If you’re on a bus, nowhere to easily use the bathroom. All of these things were going on, and I’m not sure how I became aware of it, I’m not sure if Chuck, if Ravitz told me this or if I had learned elsewhere, but there was a need for lawyers in these courtrooms who, when people would be brought in to be arraigned, in front of these judges in large groups, we would go up to the groups and we would say, "We’ll be your lawyers." You know, take names, and people were happy to have lawyers. So then we would ask the judges to have personal bonds, reasonable bonds so the people did not continue to be held and routinely, all of these judges in Recorder’s Court would set expropriatory bonds. $25,000 I can remember, $50,000 bonds being set for curfew violations. This was the basis for most of these arrests. Horrible. And, you know, we all stood up and screamed and yelled about the Constitution but it didn’t – </p>
<p>There was only one judge in Recorder’s Court who paid attention to the requirement that bonds and that reasonable bonds be set, and that was George Crockett. And he was commended by the Kerner Commission later on because he was exceptional. He was unlike any other judge on Recorder’s Court bench in that way. He paid attention to the Constitution. He would not grant these outrageous bonds that would force people to continue to be held for long periods of time. So that was the issue that we were constantly fighting. And we got a lot of animosity from the cops for taking these positions and so on and from the judges and prosecutors and their staff. So anyway, that was that story about Recorder’s Court back then. Eventually I think almost all of those curfew charges were dropped. I don’t remember anybody fully, I don’t remember anybody being prosecuted and found guilty of any of those.</p>
<p>WW: You mentioned the outrageous bonds that you particularly remember. Were there any other, any individuals or cases that you remember that stuck out during those few days?</p>
<p>BG: Yes, there certainly was one. It involved a young kid named Albert Wilson who I think was 12 at the time. And Albert had lived in the area of Twelfth Street and Hazelwood. And he had gone into a store that was, you know, some kind of dry goods – maybe it was a little corner grocery store or something, I don’t remember. But he went into the store and people were taking stuff out of the store, and he was in there and a cop came in. And when the cop came in, everybody hid – ducked down behind things, walls, and so on. And cases, or whatever. So Albert, was I said he was about 12 at the time, I think, and he either moved or made a noise or dropped something, but the cop heard him and fired his gun. And Albert sustained a spinal cord lesion which left him a paraplegic. So we sued the Detroit Police Department over that shooting. And eventually, I don’t remember when we went to trial in that case, but we did try it and we got a verdict, a large verdict. It was the first verdict, I think, in Michigan in a personal injury case that exceeded a million dollars. So that, I remember that case very well.</p>
<p>WW: Wow. Do you remember how long you spent at Recorder’s Court?</p>
<p>BG: You mean how many days I was there?</p>
<p>WW: Yes.</p>
<p>BG: At least a week. A week, week and a half, something like that.</p>
<p>WW: Okay.</p>
<p>BG: And then I had a hundred, hundreds of clients, because I had signed up all of these people, so I had to retreat and then sort of deal with managing this overwhelming number of clients and cases, which as I said, for the most part were dropped, as far as I recall.</p>
<p>WW: What was the mood at Recorder’s Court? What was the atmosphere like? Because you mentioned that there was growing tension between the defense attorneys and the prosecutors and the judges and the police. Was it chaotic there, or was there–?</p>
<p>BG: Yes, it was chaotic. The halls, the hallways were chaotic. I was not a Recorder’s Court regular, as were some of the people who were over there. But what you saw during those days, as during, you know, throughout my experience at Recorder’s Court back at that time was that the cops and the prosecutors and the courtroom staff, the clerks, and the judges, were all very close and friendly and we as young lawyers were trying to do something a little different, we were outsiders and we were treated like outsiders. So I remember that. And I’ll never just forget the image of these large groups of people, often just still handcuffed or chained, being brought into court in front of these judges, and you know, these judges setting these horrible bonds for what were minor violations.</p>
<p>WW: You call out Judge Crockett for being exemplary. Do you recall any other judges that you worked with that did set these harsh bonds?</p>
<p>BG: I don’t remember very many names, so I hate to single anyone out, but one of the names I can remember from those days was Don Leonard. There was a Schemanske, I think it was Frank Schemanske over there at the time. I don’t know. I don’t remember any of the others.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. For you, do you remember when the National Guard came in, and then later, the federal troops?</p>
<p>BG: Yeah. I do. I don’t remember what day it was. What day was it?</p>
<p>WW: The National Guard came in on Monday and the federal troops came in on Wednesday.</p>
<p>BG: Wednesday. I remember driving around and just wanting to see what was going on in the streets and driving around with my brother. So we drove up Linwood, past Central High School, and again, there were all these people on the streets, and nobody paid any attention to the fact that we were white, although sometimes there would be a friendly shout or something like that. But I remember seeing either National Guardsmen or military people perched on the roof of the old Central High School or Durfee Middle School – Junior High it was called then. Or maybe Roosevelt. Perched on these roofs with guns pointed at the population in general. That was the image I had. Now, when it was exactly that we did that, that I don’t recall but it was a striking image and is still in my mind.</p>
<p>WW: You’ve repeatedly referred to what happened as the “rebellion.” Why do you interpret the events of 1967 as a rebellion?</p>
<p>BG: The Detroit Police Department was, at that time, racist, brutal, unlawful, you know, an institution that allowed for – basically declared war on the black community in the city. And as I said, it wasn’t simply a riot. This was something that was designed to say, "We are not going to take any more of this targeted racism from public officials, from the cops." And so I view it as an uprising or a rebellion more than a blind, insensate violence. No. I didn’t see that.</p>
<p>WW: And then after the rebellion has calmed down, did you begin to see the city differently? Or is Detroit still Detroit to you?</p>
<p>BG: Well, Detroit is still Detroit but whether I saw the city differently is a different question. I’m trying to think about that now for a moment. Yeah, I think that there was some political push back against the rebellion by the white power structure. That’s when the STRESS unit of the Detroit Police Department got rolling, one of the most bleak and sad parts of DPD history. STRESS was just awful, and eventually it resulted in the counter-reaction of the election of the first black mayor of the city, Coleman A. Young, in 1972.</p>
<p>WW: And then after the rebellion, did you continue working civil rights cases in the city?</p>
<p>BG: Oh yeah. Lots of them. And around, not only in the city, but outside the city also. Warren. Dearborn. Lots of places.</p>
<p>WW: Given that you were going around to all of these places, do you believe that the rebellion – how do you believe that the rebellion affected the metro area? If it did at all?</p>
<p>BG: Well, what happened, this is what, I’m sure you’re familiar with Sugrue’s book about Detroit and the structures that created structural racism, but it was obvious. Immediately what happened was, the white people who lived in the city of Detroit put their houses up for sale and moved to the surrounding suburbs. These suburbs which were all white and were created through various public policies, including the articulated racism of the Federal Housing Act and a number of other things, were all white, and they ringed a city that had been, hemorrhaged white population, and now became majority black and remained poor and without transportation as jobs and things fled the city. And housing became devalued and people who owned houses lost huge amounts of investment, and the city – I think ‘67 was the beginning of a very difficult period for the city of Detroit which has lasted until recently, in my analysis. I think Tom Sugrue’s book explains it well.</p>
<p>WW: Oh yeah. For sure. And the book you are referring to, for the record, is <em>Origins of the Urban Crisis?</em></p>
<p>BG: Yeah. That’s the one.</p>
<p>WW: Are there any other thoughts you’d like to share, any other memories you’d like to share from the rebellion?</p>
<p>BG: My mother owned a little antique store over in the Park Shelton Hotel, right around here. And she had an African American assistant named George Jordan, who, as soon as things started to get rolling, Monday morning, he took a bar of soap and wrote “Soul Brother” all over the windows of this antique store, and nothing happened to it. So I think that is interesting the way in which identity was perceived, at least, and the importance of it. That’s the only other memory that immediately comes to mind. I’m sure if I read my journal from back in those days I would find more, but, sadly I never wrote one.</p>
<p>WW: Just a couple of quick wrap-up questions. What do you think of the state of the city today?</p>
<p>BG: I think it’s complex. There is certainly growth and development, and it’s always heartening to see crowds walking around. I took a walk on the Riverwalk recently from, let’s say, Rivard down to the Renaissance Center and it’s exciting. It almost looks like New York City there. There were hundreds of different kinds of people out, extremely diverse and as many different ethnicities and races as we can gather in this city and it was wonderful to see it. People were comfortable with one another. So, those kinds of things you can observe progress. It’s not the old baseball team where you couldn’t have a black teammate. On the other hand, there are vast swatches of neighborhoods that are still blighted with houses that are vacant and being used as drug houses and all the rest of it. That’s not comforting to see. One would want to see development, you want to see the whole community pulled up and neighborhoods looking better than they have. And you do see some of that. So I guess on the whole it’s good. I think that the whole situation with water shut-offs is disgusting. That’s a political and financial crisis. The fact that the city of Detroit has been basically abandoned by the traditional role of government, the state government, the federal government, to solve some of these problems itself is distressing. Education is desperate. So, it’s complicated. That’s what I would say.</p>
<p>WW: Are you optimistic for the city moving forward?</p>
<p>BG: Well. I guess, slightly optimistic. I’m not jumping up and clicking my heels, but yeah, I see some progress</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>BG: My pleasure.</p>
<p>WW: I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>BG: Okay. </p>
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43min 06sec
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William Winkel
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Bill Goodman
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Detroit, MI
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o64FN18Dgg8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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Title
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Bill Goodman, October 5th, 2016
Description
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In this interview, Bill Goodman discusses growing up in Detroit and describes how racism affected his family growing up. He also discusses his career as a civil rights attorney in Michigan during the 1960s.
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Detroit Historical Society
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11/22/2016
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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Audio
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en-US
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Civil Rights Movement
Government
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Public Servant
Recorder's Court - Detroit
STRESS
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/ec289d79ae9802be902bdfc0f3a7f5ff.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
Dublin Core
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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
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We were celebrating my next day birthday on Saturday. Mrs. Frank and I went home late in the evening and about 5:30 AM I received a call from ADT that there was a civil disturbance on 12th Street and they could not respond to the alarm nor would the police respond. I turned to my wife and said, “I think we are out of business”. I was right. We operated a very large pawnshop called the US Loan Office. Our stock included hundreds of rifles and shotguns (all gone). We had two large jewelry safes. One was rolled out of the building and pushed down the street with a car. The other, larger one was finally opened after a long time and, according to the owner of a bar in the building, the person that got it open was assaulted and knocked unconscious while others cleaned out the safe. The building had a very large rotating sign that the National Guard shot out because the light outlined them. The building, about 12,000 square feet, was totally emptied. We later went to court when a few of the weapons turned up and all the defendants were more or less known to me and my partner. We never re-opened.
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email message
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Bob Frank
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12th street, pawn shop, looting, Michigan National Guard
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Title
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Bob Frank
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Bob Frank recalls the theft and looting of his business, a pawnshop on Twelfth Street.
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Detroit Historical Society
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08/03/2015
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Text
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en-US
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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||||osm
12th Street business district, Detroit, MI
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Business Owners
Detroit Workers
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Pawn Shop
Twelfth Street
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/2b67b2917831611b7ef70660cb0ab08f.jpg
950bc52a54c863ba13b92dbebefadf47
Dublin Core
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Title
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Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward
Subject
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Stories gathered to commemorate the summer of 1967 in Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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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
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01:11:24
Transcriptionist
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Hannah Sabal
Transcription Date
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05/10/2016
Interviewer
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Lily Wilson and Noah Levinson
Interviewee
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Bob Roselle
Location
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Grosse Pointe, MI
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<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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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
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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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20ba87d0842b420d7a60129dd9a41232
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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
Brief Biography
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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
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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
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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/42fb0a2242bd953e2bbc54825f3e64ff.JPG
11078a821a2efc79b6f65726f555b056
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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Brian Fountain
Brief Biography
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Brian Fountain moved to Detroit when he was two months old in 1957. He grew up on the west side of Detroit, near Tireman and Livernois, which is where he and his family lived during the 1967 disturbance. He has lived in Detroit his entire life.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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06/18/2016
Transcriptionist
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00:11:25
Transcription Date
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07/07/2016
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello, today is June 18, my name is William Winkel. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum for the Detroit Historical Society’s 1967 Oral History Project. Can you please state your name for me please?</p>
<p>BF: Brian Fountain.</p>
<p>WW: Alright, thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>BF: Say it again?</p>
<p>WW: I said thank you for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>BF: Oh, oh, thank you.</p>
<p>WW: Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>BF: I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but I’ve been in Detroit my whole life.</p>
<p>WW: When did you come here?</p>
<p>BF: When I was two months old.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. What year was that?</p>
<p>BF: 1957.</p>
<p>WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in in Detroit?</p>
<p>BF: I grew up on the west side of Detroit in the area of Tireman and Livernois.</p>
<p>WW: What was that neighborhood like for you?</p>
<p>BF: Wonderful. Growing up in Detroit in the 1960s, I had a lot of fun. Enjoyed elementary school, enjoyed middle school. A lot of things for kids to do. My big thig was baseball; I played baseball every day, or every chance that I could get. My father, he worked at Ford Motor Company, my mother, she was a housewife. I have two brothers and three sisters, and my grandmother stayed about maybe a 10 minute walk from my house. She stayed on Northfield and Tireman which was probably a mile and a half or two from where the riot started.</p>
<p>WW: What’d your parents do for a living?</p>
<p>BF: Oh, I just mentioned it! My father worked at Ford Motor Company–</p>
<p>WW: Oh sorry, I missed it.</p>
<p>BF: –and my mother was a housewife, yes.</p>
<p>WW: Sorry, I missed that. Where were you in July 1967?</p>
<p>BF: In July of 1967 I was at my grandparents’ summer cottage in Carlton, Michigan.</p>
<p>WW: Why were you there–just a family vacation?</p>
<p>BF: Yeah. Well we would go pretty much every weekend out there, during the summer months.</p>
<p>WW: Mmhmm. How did you first hear about what was going on back in Detroit?</p>
<p>BF: I was in the garage area of my grandmother’s cottage, and a special report came on Channel 7 News, and it said that there was rioting going on in Detroit, and all of us kids and grandparents got around the television. We saw aerial photographs of just big plumes of smoke coming from all these buildings all over the city.</p>
<p>WW: How’d your family react?</p>
<p>BF: My grandmother, she panicked. She told my grandfather–she called him "Daddy" –she said, “Daddy, we gotta go back, we gotta go back to the city.” So she told all of us kids to start packing up our stuff, and probably within an hour we were en route back to the city.</p>
<p>WW: What was the drive home like? Was it anxious?</p>
<p>BF: For my grandmother, probably. For us, we were more curious because the only recollection I had about a riot was in Watts out in Los Angeles. So I knew what a riot was, and from the pictures I saw from the Channel 7 News report, it looked like exactly the same pictures I saw and videos that I saw from Watts. So the ride back for us, again, was more of curiosity. The route that we took, coming in 94 Eastbound, we came up around McGraw, we didn’t see anything that was unusual at that point.</p>
<p>WW: At what point did you see something unusual?</p>
<p>BF: When we got back to my grandparents’ house, she stayed on Northville off of Tireman, I was in the backyard–and my grandparents were just relieved that the house was still there. I was in the backyard, and I was at the fence by the alley, and I saw two guys carrying a brand new couch down the alley. Being a 12-year-old kid, in my mind I’m thinking, “I wonder where they got that brand new couch from?” And I had heard about looting on the news reports, and I’m thinking they got that from some store.</p>
<p>WW: So you didn’t see any smoke in the sky or anything from where you were in the city?</p>
<p>BF: At that point, no.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. After getting home, did you and your family explore the city at all, or did you stay hunkered down?</p>
<p>BF: Yes. My grandad took me and some of the kids up to Grand River and the Boulevard, and that was probably a half mile from where the riot started on Twelfth Street, and when I got down there, it looked like some World War II bombers had flown over that area and dropped bombs. It reminded me of the same photos that I saw from Dresden. I mean the buildings were just burned out, you could see smoke everywhere. There were still firetrucks there, people milling about, and the furniture store–and I don’t know if this was the furniture store where these guys got that couch from–the furniture store was burned out, Cunningham Drugs was burned out. At this point you could see smoke. I don’t really remember any flames, I just remember little embers of fire burning and little wisps of smoke coming out of all these buildings.</p>
<p>WW: Were any buildings that you frequented affected, or no?</p>
<p>BF: Yes. This had a big impact on me as a 12-year-old. My father was also a bowling instructor at the Lucky Strike bowling alley which was located on Grand River and the Boulevard across the street from the present Tabernacle Baptist Church. It was owned by a guy by the name of Mr. London, he was a white guy, but most of the people that bowled there were African-Americans and everybody loved Mr. London. On Friday and Saturday nights, that’s where we hung out at; it would be the equivalent of kids hanging out at a skating rink or a recreation center. The Lucky Strike was our recreation center. We went there every Friday, every Saturday until the parents of the kids would finish bowling.</p>
<p>Well I had heard the next day that they had set the bowling alley on fire, and I didn’t believe it. I’m thinking in my mind, “Well it’s just probably partially burned, Mr. London will repair it.” So my grandad took me back up there and when we got up there, I was in absolute shock. The whole building was burned out, and I was crushed because that was a place when you think about your childhood memories and some of the places that you hung out at, that was our hang out. The ironic thing about that was all those kids that we hung out with, I never saw most of them again, it wasn’t until later on as an adult I would see a few of them and all of us would reminisce about the good time we would have at the Lucky Strike.</p>
<p>So as an impact on me, that was probably one of the biggest impacts, was not having a place to go, a place that you went for probably the last–I think I started going there when I was eight, and at the time it burned down I was 12. That was a big, big thing for me as a 12-year-old.</p>
<p>WW: Was your family further impacted by what happened?</p>
<p>BF: Not from the standpoint of economics. My dad still worked at Ford’s, my grandad, he worked at Ford’s. My grandmother, she was a homemaker, my mother was a homemaker, so from an economic standpoint it did not impact us in any way.</p>
<p>WW: How did your parents react to what was going on?</p>
<p>BF: My parents, we all talked about it, but they didn’t really get into it from the standpoint of the impact it was going to have overall on the city. At the time of the riots, I think the city was around 70 percent white and 30 percent black. They didn’t talk about it in terms of how it was going to impact the neighborhood or anything, we weren’t looking at it from that standpoint, we were looking at it from the standpoint of people telling us that Twelfth Street was gone, and at that time that was probably the closet shopping area for African Americans on the west side.</p>
<p>WW: What kind of shops were there?</p>
<p>BF: They had clothing stores, they had jewelry stores, cleaners, a lot of night clubs. Just a nice mix of different places–shoe shops, barber shops, some were black-owned, some were Jewish-owned, but it was a nice mix of places where you could go to get just about anything.</p>
<p>WW: As a kid did you notice any change in atmosphere in the city from before the riot and then afterwards for you?</p>
<p>BF: As a 12-year-old, no. Later on, in looking back, I saw a transition in the racial make-up of the police department, but I didn’t know it was because of what had happened in 1967.</p>
<p>WW: Are there any other experiences you’d like to share?</p>
<p>BF: Yes. There was two other experiences. One was at night, the tremendous amount of gunfire heard one particular night. It was coming from the East, and later on I found out that at Henry Ford Hospital, there was a gunfight between some snipers and they had pinned down some National Guardsmen and it was like a gunfight that you would hear like in Vietnam. It lasted for more than five, seven, eight minutes.</p>
<p>The other thing that impacted me was we took a drive down Linwood, and I looked down one street, and I’ll never forget this: it was like the first ten houses on this street were burned out. It was like each house was just a shell, and it looked like some bombers had hit this whole block. I don’t recall the name of the street, but later on, I think the street was Pingree. I’ve seen pictures of a street that look similar to this in research that I’ve done on the riots, but I’ll never forget that. And I’ll never forget the devastation that I saw on Linwood.</p>
<p>WW: You said the word “riot” a couple times. Is that how you identify what happened?</p>
<p>BF: Yes. Some people call it an “insurrection,” some people say it was a race riot. I don’t think it was a race riot, I think it was the climate that existed in the city of Detroit between a predominately white police department and a black community that was being mistreated.</p>
<p>WW: Have you ever thought about leaving Detroit?</p>
<p>BF: Oh yes. You know I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve always entertained thoughts of going other places–Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Virginia. If there’s a place better than here, I owe it to myself to find out. This is what I always tell people: I don’t want to live here wondering if I could have had a better life somewhere else.</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you’d like to add today?</p>
<p>BF: Ah, no.</p>
<p>WW: Alright. Thank you very much for sitting down with us.</p>
<p>BF: Alright. Thank you.</p>
Original Format
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Audio/WAV
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
11min 25sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Brian Fountain
Location
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Detroit, MI
Interview Length
The total length of the interview in HH:MM:SS format.
Emma Maniere
Video
A link to the video
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NmspeTt_8xs" 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
Brian Fountain, June 18th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Fountain describes the unrest from a 12-year-old’s perspective. For example, he recalls seeing two men carrying a new couch in the alley behind his grandparents’ house, and realizing the men had looted the furniture. He repeatedly compares the destruction–which he recalls vividly–to warfare, mentioning Vietnam gunfire and World War II bombing. The unrest also demolished his favorite hangout, Lucky Strike Bowling Alley, which was located on Grand River on the Boulevard.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
11/01/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Oral History
Language
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en-US
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Channel 7
Childhood
Children
Growing Up In Detroit
Looting
Snipers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/162a51dcbdb72b111bbd67fe140057bc.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.
Buddy Atchoo
Michael Dickow
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Buddy Atchoo immigrated to Detroit from Baghdad in 1947 to study engineering. Michael Dickow was likewise born in Iraq and immigrated to the city in 1959. Both owned grocery stores where they employed family members who later immigrated to the United States; both stores were also looted–and Atchoo’s burned down–during the 1967 unrest.
Interviewer's Name
The first and last name of the interviewer.
William Winkel
Interview Place
The place where the interview was conducted.
Detroit, MI
Date
The date of the interview in MM/DD/YYYY format.
08/17/2016
Interview Length
The total length of the interview in HH:MM:SS format.
00:29:00
Transcriptionist
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Emma Maniere
Transcription Date
The date of the transcription in MM/DD/YYYY format.
01/27/2017
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>WW: Hello, today is August 17, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. And I am joined by</p>
<p>BA: Buddy Atchoo. </p>
<p>MD: Michael Dickow: D-I-C-K-O-W.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. What years did the two of you come to Detroit? Were you born here?</p>
<p>MD: No. We weren’t.</p>
<p>BA: You want to ask one at a time?</p>
<p>WW: One at a time.</p>
<p>BA: Yeah, one at a time.</p>
<p>MD: Me, I was born in Iraq, North of Iraq, __________<span style="text-decoration: underline;">?</span>.</p>
<p>WW: And what year did you come here?</p>
<p>MD: ’59.</p>
<p>WW: What brought you here?</p>
<p>MD: I’m sorry?</p>
<p>WW: Why did you come?</p>
<p>MD: I came here, my brother was here and I came too. I heard about United States, and I came. When I came. First person came of all the brother and sister: it was me, come from Iraq.</p>
<p>BA: I came in 1947 as an exchange student to study engineering, and that’s why I came. When I finished, I was really in love with the country, so I married my own people–which, she was born here–and I stayed. Then I brought my parents and my sisters, the whole family.</p>
<p>WW: What was your first impression of Detroit?</p>
<p>BA: Honestly, my impression was– I was not upset but in disbelief because the home I had in Baghdad was much better than the house I came here to. I thought the homes would be big [laughter], so that was my impression.</p>
<p>WW: What was your impression?</p>
<p>MD: I came here, I love it. I prayed to God that explain if I go down that, I would appreciate to come here. Because I heard about it and I came here and I loved it, everyday I was in United States, everyday. The greatest country in the world. The freedom’s country in the world. How could you beat that? No country in the world, no.</p>
<p>WW: And when you came here, what neighborhood did you move into? Where did you live?</p>
<p>MD: I live in Tuxedo and Hamilton.</p>
<p>BA: No, when you first came.</p>
<p>MD: First came?</p>
<p>BA: You stayed with your brother, didn’t you, or?</p>
<p>MD: Yeah, I stayed with my brother for a couple, three, four months, and my wife came. My kids, they came in ’62, so we had an apartment at that time. After a couple of years, my brother moved to different house, I took his house on Tuxedo and Hamilton.</p>
<p>WW: Buddy, where did you live when you moved here?</p>
<p>BA: First, I stayed with my cousin, and after that, I rented a room by the University of Detroit. That’s where I attended college.</p>
<p>WW: And, when the two of you came, did you find the city welcoming?</p>
<p>BA: At that time, yes. It was more than welcoming, like you are not afraid, not worried.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p>BA: Of course, you know, the transportation was good. Even when I used to work at Chevrolet here on Axel, I used to take a Woodward streetcar, then take a transfer, and go all the way to the East Side. And I used to work midnight shift. You see when you are a third year engineering University of Detroit, you work three months and you study three months. I used to wait sometimes 45 minutes, an hour, way on the East Side, never been bothered, never occurred to me one day somebody’s going to bother me. The difference was, later on, unimaginable for me.</p>
<p>WW: Did you find the city welcoming?</p>
<p>MD: Yeah. I work with my brother’s store, called Consumers’ Fruit Market. From the end of ’59 I work there until we bought–me and my partner–we bought the store, Consumer’s, ’63 until ’75 I stay there. And all the riot and all that’s happened, burning up, I stay there until ’75.</p>
<p>WW: Where was that store located?</p>
<p>MD: Blaine and Twelfth, Consumer Food Market.</p>
<p>WW: How long did you stay at Chrysler, you said?</p>
<p>BA: No, GM [General Motors].</p>
<p>WW: Oh, GM, sorry.</p>
<p>BA: I worked for Chevrolet Gear and Axel, and go back to school, then I worked for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Douglas and Lomison Company</span> (??) in Detroit twice – I used to go back to school and then they would hire me again.</p>
<p>WW: Going into the 1960s in Detroit, you had just bought your store, you were working in the city, did you sense any growing tension in the city at all, or was the city still the same welcoming place it was?</p>
<p>BA: To me, it was the same, tell you the truth.</p>
<p>MD: As far as I’m concerned. I stayed there.<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> I do not remember, on Twelfth Street, which is the, at that time, Twelfth Street was peril (??)</span>. But I stayed I stayed there until the riot came out in ’67. They burned the whole street about a mile from my store. They just stayed at the front of my store, nobody touch.</p>
<p>WW: In 1967, were the two of you still living in Detroit?</p>
<p>BA: When I got married, I lived in Detroit for like six months then I moved to Highland Park in an apartment. And then later on, I bought a house in Highland Park. We opened up in 1957, the biggest independent supermarket in the city of Detroit on Brush and Brewster –it was the whole block. 2900 Brush–I remember. We had about 35 employees.</p>
<p>WW: Was this a family venture?</p>
<p>BA: We were five partners. Yes, I mean if you–cousins and friends, you know, but we were five partners. We bought a <span style="text-decoration: underline;">body (??)</span> company, and then bought – it was on Brewster – and then bought on Brush, apartment building, and tore both of them down, and built a brand new building. 13,500 square feet. At that time, A&P was the biggest, and all these–like Kroger–all their stores were 8500 square feet. So we were almost double the size of their stores.</p>
<p>WW: What made you want to go from engineering to owning a supermarket?</p>
<p>BA: The reason, I tell you honestly: I could have worked for Chrysler at the time, $600 a month for a graduate engineer. Now, you know, we are born–like my dad–in business. We have a saying that when you work for a salary, you have few walnuts numbered, but when you work in business, there’s no limit, especially over here.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p>BA: So, we had to take a chance by doing this, and I figured, if we succeed, fine. If we don’t, I can always go back and get a job. [Laughter.] The name of the store was Big Dipper, on Brush and Brewster–it was a whole block from Brush all the way to Beaubien.</p>
<p>WW: At each of your stores, who were your clientele? Were they primarily black residents of Detroit or white Detroiters?</p>
<p>BA: At that time, I would say about 85 percent were black, and about 15 percent white.</p>
<p>MD: When I was at Twelfth Street, it was 95-98 black, 2 percent white.</p>
<p>WW: With people coming into your store, did you sense any tension in the community?</p>
<p>MD: Me, no.</p>
<p>BA: What do you mean by that, what tension?</p>
<p>WW: Were your customers and purchasing from your store, were they comfortable with you being white, or was there any antagonism?</p>
<p>BA: There was nothing of the sort. They only thing they were interested in was in price and service, and we offered them that.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p>BA: And that’s why we used to do a big amount of business. Support five families.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm. And did you continue to own your store in ’67?</p>
<p>BA: Yes. What happened, the day of the riot, see, we used to work like two weeks and then take one day off, Sunday. So that Sunday, it was the two partners worked together, and that Sunday, when I came, usually there would be people lining up waiting for us to open the store. I drove: there’s nobody. I was shocked, “What’s going on?” You know? I don’t know. So we opened the store, and the business was not there either. So I was wondering what happened, you know? Then, around twelve o’clock, one of the partners called and said, “Are you okay? Is there anything wrong there?” I said, “No, why, what’s happening?” He said, “They are burning Twelfth Street.”</p>
<p>MD: My street.</p>
<p>BA: So, then, later on, we usually used to close at 5 o’clock. So they said, “We don’t want you to stay there.” We closed at either two o’clock or three o’clock, and then left. At night, that night, they burned the store.</p>
<p>WW: Before you left, did you take anything with you, in case the store did burn?</p>
<p>BA: No. It never occurred in my mind that it would be burnt.</p>
<p>WW: Your store on Twelfth, being so close, were you there that day?</p>
<p>MD: I’m sorry?</p>
<p>WW: Were you there that Sunday?</p>
<p>MD: I closed Saturday night, the store. The first time I left Monday and checked, I put them in the safe that night. I never did that before. Somehow I put it in the safe and I left. I got up, well I was up, five-six o’clock, and I heard Twelfth Street is burned. I called one of my brothers, police, George Wallace I called him, he says, “You stay home. Don’t you come out here.” They burned 10-15 stores, left to right. Nobody touched my store. But they took everything: all the groceries, meat, whatever there is. And they took safe, they took it out in the street and they broke it. I ask him, I said, “You took the cash, give me the checks. You cannot cash the checks.”</p>
<p>We built again, I have insurance, they pay for it all. I opened until ’75, I was there by myself. Even my store.</p>
<p>WW: Right after your store got looted, did you think, “I’m done here,” or did you immediately start planning to rebuild?</p>
<p>MD: ’75 the city took the street. They wanted the street, they called it Rosa Parks Boulevard. I’m sure you heard about it, it still is, same name now. And I never lived there. I don’t know how the street now, since ’75.</p>
<p>WW: In ’67 when your store was looted did you immediately plan to rebuild it or did you think about going somewhere else?</p>
<p>MD: No, the people took everything out of the store. Then, after one week, it was clear everything was okay, we call insurance company, they give us the money, and we open just like normal. I stayed there until ’68 when Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. There happened a riot in my store too. That time was very danger[ous]. I used to have one worker, I told him, “Take me home or take me somewhere.” I stay in a pickup car and I sleep there until I moved from that last street. He took me somewhere, you know. But really nobody bothered me. I just did that because I want to make sure everything’s okay. And they broke just our windows, that’s all they did. They don’t touch everything else. Two days I went and open the store until ’75. The city took over, they said we’re going to widen the street. Everything was okay. I used to love there, I used to go there without thinking anything damage, anything. I used to open the store by myself in the street, which was ____________ (??), even police was scared to walk that street. Nobody touch me, nobody say anything. I appreciate what they did there because I used to treat them like myself and better. They ask me $10 and I give them $5, and I give them $1. I never turned nobody down.</p>
<p>BA: After we were burned down, we had intentions of rebuilding. It took us two years because restrictions and all that. So what we did, we made the store smaller, and we built three stores next door, so we made it like a shopping center. At the time, we borrowed money from the federal government as a disaster loan. Three percent paid in 25 years, so that’s how we built back again.</p>
<p>Then, during these two years, the partners each–you got to survive, you have families, you have kids, you know–so each went on his own way for a while ’til we build the store. Then even after we build the store, we did like we used to go, I would go Monday, my other partner would go Tuesday, the other one go–for a while, you cannot run the store like that. You have to be there to know what’s gong on. Because I go there, I don’t know what the hell’s going on–what they did, what they ordered. So what we did, we leased it, to a guy named Bob Coverson. He was with PUSH, Jesse Jackson, you know, PUSH: People whatever.</p>
<p>US: People United for Self-Help.</p>
<p>BA: Yeah, yeah. Because never, they used to say, well you are employing your cousins, your– well of course! Every cousin that came to this country, my cousin, my partner’s cousin, of course you give them a job. But the majority of our workers were black. So, after this happened, so we figure well, we will lease it to a black man, and even when he went to get groceries to fill up the store–you need about $50,000–the wholesale people will not give them a penny. So we have to co-sign for him to get the groceries. Two years later, he went broke. So we took the store back, and we ran it for a while, then we sold it to a Chaldean and actually we owned the building, the fixtures–the only thing the guy who leased it from us, it was a lease. He had to bring his own merchandise.</p>
<p>WW: Was there any talk amongst you and your partners about whether or not the rebuild or just to move away?</p>
<p>BA: No, no. See, like I told you, we used to do big business. Five families used to live like a king. We built homes in the suburbs. But, we worked hard. We were there 8 to 10 hours a day, every single day. Only day off you could take, two weeks, one Sunday off. So we were on top of it, each of the partners took one department and managed that department. We used to take care of it. I used to work, take care of the produce department. I would be there at 4-5 o’clock in Eastern Market to buy vegetables and stuff, then I come to the store, I had a driver with a tuck, then I go to the Terminal, Produce Terminal, where they get stuff from all over the United States. We all worked hard. And we never left unless everything was okay: you mopped the floors so when you come the second day, you open the store, and you are in business.</p>
<p>WW: Did either of you feel any bitterness after ’67 because of the fact that your stores were looted, and yours was burned?</p>
<p>BA: Of course. I mean if I tell you different, it’s not true. Sure, we had remorse. But you blame it on few people because the majority of our customers, they used to love us. We were there 11 years, never been held up, never had any problems, like real problem. The only thing they used to break the windows at night. So what we did, one side, we took all the windows and we break them. We had no, no any serious problems. Of course you catch this guy stealing or this guy this, but other than that. As a matter of fact, our manager was a black woman, one of the most trusted person. That’s why we leased it to this Bob Coverson, but he couldn’t make it.</p>
<p>MD: I used to work 70 hours a week. Me and my partner, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">we took part in it (??)</span>, because we start, we have family. We started from zero and God help us and we work very hard and me and partner, my partner he was so hard worker, he was one of the best, he was butcher, he was everything. He did everything. Much better than me, to be honest with you. But I was just talking to the people, be nice with the people, and thank God we’re still here. I don’t have no problem. They hold up the whole street, maybe mile, two miles from us, nobody touch me, nobody say one word to me, nobody, nobody. You can’t believe that. The place I was, nobody harmed me, nobody.</p>
<p>WW: After ’67, did you open up a new store?</p>
<p>MD: No, I was -</p>
<p>WW: Er not ’67, sorry ’75.</p>
<p>MD: No. I close it because they took it over, and I went I bought a store in Royal Oak for five years, four years, and after that we went to Pontiac, we bought big store over there. Trucks, there was a pharmacy in it, everything in it, meat and all that, and we stayed there until ’96 and we sold it. That was retirement, thank God.</p>
<p>WW: How do the two of you feel about Detroit today? Do you see the same problems that affected us in ’67 affecting us today?</p>
<p>BA: In my opinion, Detroit will recover provided they have security. When you go downtown, or anywhere, when you walk and you are afraid, of course you’re not going to go. But, the only time the city is going be flourish is when you have security. Like, my granddaughter is getting married in October. She’s going to get married at DIA [Detroit Institute of Arts], the reception is going to be there. So, it’s a shame. When I first came, I used to go downtown 10 o’clock, 12 o’clock, one o’clock in the morning, people walking, going, what they call window shopping or whatever, and it never occurred in your mind that somebody’s going to attack you. There was nothing of the sort. You were free, you did everything, whatever you want to go, restaurant, bar, whatever. Never bothered, nobody bothered you. So that’s my opinion. Unless there’s security, it’s going to be – You know, when I first came, the population was almost two million people. What is it today? It should have been five million. Like you take any other big cities, they doubled and tripled. Now, instead of maintaining, we went down. Now it’s less than three quarters of a million.</p>
<p>Everywhere you go, like, my granddaughter bought a house in Grosse Pointe, and the first time we want to go there, we went and they have this navigator and they took us through Detroit; honest to God I’ve never seen so many abandoned homes, so many burned homes. Unbelievable. You get scared. And we are driving. Tell you the truth, you don’t know. It’s a shame. I’ll be honest, it’s a shame.</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else the two of you would like to speak about today?</p>
<p>MD: I’m sorry?</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you’d like to add today?</p>
<p>MD: I don’t know what more you want to ask. You have any more questions?</p>
<p>WW: Nope, pretty good. Thank you so much for sitting down with me, I greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>MD: Thank you very much.</p>
<p>BA: Okay.</p>
<p>MD: Thank you.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
29min
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Buddy Atchoo
Michael Dickow
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pSw_A4sDv4c" 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
Buddy Atchoo and Michael Dickow, August 17th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Atchoo and Dickow discuss their recollections of the 1967 unrest as recent immigrants and as grocery store owners. Dickow owned Consumers’ Fruit Market which was on Blaine and Twelfth; his store was a mere block away from where the burning on Twelfth Street ended, though his store was looted. Atchoo’s store, the largest independent supermarket in the city, the Big Dipper, was on Brush and Brewster and was burned during the unrest. Both stores served a predominately black clientele but neither Atchoo nor Dickow sensed any growing tensions in the summer of 1967 and neither business relocated immediately after the unrest.
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
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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
Arson
Business Owners
Looting
Twelfth Street
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/24201a81f1ecdbdb84fffaab8f8382e0.jpg
aa0cf8a43a0f406db73ae3bfc2bf817f
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.
Carter Grabarczyk
Nancy Grabarczyk
Interviewer's Name
The first and last name of the interviewer.
Noah Levinson, Lillian Wilson
Interview Place
The place where the interview was conducted.
Detroit Historical Museum, 5401 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI
Date
The date of the interview in MM/DD/YYYY format.
06/18/2015
Interview Length
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00:37:28
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Carter Grabarczyk was born January 11, 1945 in Detroit Michigan. During the summer of 1967 he worked as a film soundman for Channel 2 WJBK-TV news in Detroit. His wife Nancy was born November 2, 1953 in Detroit, Michigan. Nancy’s father was a sergeant for the Detroit Police Department during July 1967.
Transcriptionist
The first and last name of the transcriptionist.
Melissa King
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>NL: Today is June 18th, 2015. This is the interview of Carter Grabarczyk and Nancy Grabarczyk. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan and this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Carter could you tell me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>CG: I was born in Detroit, Michigan on January 11th, 1945 just shortly after dinosaurs roamed the earth. [Laughter]</p>
<p>NL: And Nancy when and where you were born?</p>
<p>NG: I was born in Detroit, Michigan—Booth Memorial Hospital which doesn’t exist anymore. November 2nd, 1953.</p>
<p>NL: Where were each of you living July of 1967?</p>
<p>NG: I was living in Detroit, the Detroit area, by Plymouth and—</p>
<p>CG: Milford Green?</p>
<p>NG: No, that was later.</p>
<p>CG: Oh, that’s right.</p>
<p>NG: Plymouth and would have been Stahelin. I remember the [unclear] – by Southfield and Plymouth, that area.</p>
<p>CG: You gotta speak up—I don’t know if that’s picking it up or not—but that’s okay.</p>
<p>NG: [unclear]</p>
<p>NL: There we go. And where were you living at that time?</p>
<p>CG: East Dearborn.</p>
<p>NL: How would you describe the makeup of the neighborhoods you were living in at that time? What was the sense of community there? What types of people were living there?</p>
<p>CG: Well East Dearborn was probably, this was the era of Orville Hubbard as mayor which is a whole other story unto itself and basically it was fifty percent Polish and fifty percent Italian. That was pretty much it in the east end of Dearborn at least.</p>
<p>NG: Where I lived it was small brick homes, all white neighborhood, we all played in the streets ‘til the street lights came on then you came home. Pretty much middle class neighborhood.</p>
<p>NL: What are your memories of Detroit and the region in the mid-1960s?</p>
<p>NG: Well my dad was a Detroit Police sergeant so, he was tied up in all of this quite a bit. I was just in junior high school so my dad was obviously part of the police crew downtown during the riots. He came home with—they wore green battle helmets like army helmets.</p>
<p>NL: You’re talking about in 1967 specifically? </p>
<p>NG: Yup. And I remember snipers were aiming for the officers so he had my mother ripping the sergeant’s stripes off of all of his clothes and he’d wear them down there so he wouldn’t be as much of a target. And we also had a sniper on the elementary school around the corner that I use to go to so I remember the whole neighborhood was just afraid. They were – nobody turned their lights on everybody stayed in the dark just in case the guy decided to take a walk and start shooting at anyplace that had lights on. And nobody, nobody went to bed until my dad came home those nights because we wanted to make sure he was walking in the door. But, that’s basically my story.</p>
<p>NL: Do you remember how long some of his shifts were then? Was it out of the ordinary compared to the usual working day, working week?</p>
<p>NG: They were, as I’m recalling, twelve hour shifts and it was rough. I remember my dad saying it was rough because the following year he had twenty five years in and he said, “That’s it I can’t handle it anymore. It’s too rough that’s enough.” [Laughter]</p>
<p>NL: So he retired?</p>
<p>NG: He retired.</p>
<p>NL: What was his name?</p>
<p>NG: Robert Steele.</p>
<p>CG: With a “e.”</p>
<p>NG: Yeah, S-T-E-E-L-E. Sergeant Robert Steele.</p>
<p>NL: Do you have any other specific recollections about growing up at that time especially—I imagine you were watching the news— </p>
<p>NG: We were watching the news of all the stuff. That area of Detroit was really safe, we never locked our doors, unless you went away for a vacation, you never locked your doors especially with a policeman in the family.</p>
<p>CG: Her dad did have to live in Detroit because at the time police officers were required to live in the city</p>
<p>NG: It was required.</p>
<p>CG: So they had these various neighborhoods where the police, fire department, you know, lived.</p>
<p>NG: Yeah</p>
<p>NL: So most of your neighbors were police and fire?</p>
<p>NG: Well actually no, I didn’t know any other police or fire in our neighborhood.</p>
<p>CG: Oh, alright. ‘Cause I thought that—</p>
<p>NG: [talking over each other] No, actually. There were areas like that when I went to high school there was an area like that just borderline of Dearborn Heights where police and firemen all lived. But no when I was growing up we didn’t, I didn’t know any other police officers or—</p>
<p>CG: I got it confused. [Unclear, talking over each other]</p>
<p>NG: Fire people. Regular middle class, played out in the streets until the lights came on, you know, folks didn’t see you all day. It was safe, real safe, nobody, like I say, locked their doors. Kids were able to run around free, you know, ride their bikes where ever, played ball in the streets [laughter] all that kind of stuff, walked to school. No particular issues until all of this came up in ‘67, snipers and that business we never even thought about it, it was a shock to us kids because we use to everything being so safe, it was our safe haven. Like I say that particular area was an all-white area and the schools were all white.</p>
<p>NL: What did your dad say about his day’s work and the police efforts at that time?</p>
<p>NG: It was rough. The looting and people lighting stuff on fire. He said it was just crazy, that people had no—seemed to have no value for human life or things. They just went berserk. He used to say maybe the heat drove them berserk. I don’t know they went crazy breaking into places and stealing and looting and burning down things, like that was gonna help anything but it wasn’t. And the police were afraid because they were aiming at them, it was like war basically is what he said it was, like being in a war. We breathed a sigh of relief when he walked in the door.</p>
<p>NL: Carter could you tell me about where you were working at this time? </p>
<p>CG: Yes, I was working at two places. I don’t know if you want me to begin at the beginning at this point or not, but basically I’ll set the stage. Ever since 1963 I was in broadcast engineering I was a ham radio operator, my dad was a radio guy, just liked radio all my life so ‘63 I started in broadcasting at local radio stations like WGPR and so on WLIN. I ended up being the chief engineer at WGPR which has nothing to do with anything. But in any event, the ultimate goal back then of people in broadcasting was to get into television and the hot TV station back then was Channel 2, CBS, WJBK-TV. They had Walter Cronkite and that was the number one station in Detroit. So, one of my ham radio acquaintances was the chief engineer there. He said, “Anybody that has a ham license and their first class radio telephone license I will give you a summer job.” It’s what they call the VRT, a vacation relief technician, which is just what it implied cause most of the full time guys wanted to go on vacation in the summer you, had college kids that said, okay fine we got a job for you. So, that was my full time forty hour a week job for the summer of 1966 and 1967. In the summer of 1967 I also had a part time job as what they called the contract chief engineer for WQRS which was the classical music station in Detroit at the time. And we were in the Maccabees Building, which I guess it is again but it was called the School Center Building at the time. That’s where the WQRS studios were and their transmitter was in that building and their antenna was in that building. So long story short I had a key to the roof to get up on the roof. So that’s—if you want to start about the riot stuff that was the beginning of the beginning I guess. Basically that Sunday afternoon I was home listening to the radio and heard some news broadcasts saying there was some kind of disturbance in downtown Detroit. They made it sound, you know little something is going on not a big deal blah, blah, blah. So this is Sunday and I called a friend of mine another ham radio buddy I said, “You know, why don’t we go downtown I got a key we’ll get up on the roof of the School Center Building and see what’s going on?” He says “Great.” He lived a couple of blocks away we get in the car in East Dearborn and drive down to the School Center Building, go up on the roof and that was—that was the mistake. ‘Cause we thought we would see some minor stuff when we were on the roof it was just crazy, it was going wild. It was to the north, to the south, to the east, to the west. You kept seeing power lines going down, power transformers lighting up, you heard burglar alarms going off, you heard breaking glass. Quite frankly, I was twenty-two at the time my buddy was the same age, we were sort of scared, we said, “You know, maybe we got in over our heads.” What started out as a school boy lark, maybe wasn’t. It looked a lot more serious than they said on the radio, a lot more serious than we expected it to be, so we said “Well, let’s get the hell out of here and get back home.” So we did. So the only problem with that was your humble narrator had to work on Sunday evening, Channel 2 had swing shift so I had to work at five o’clock or six o’clock that evening. So, bottom line, an hour or two later after my buddy and I got back I had to turn around and go back downtown only now I was – real white-knuckle trip driving back down to the Channel 2 studios which was on Second just north of the Boulevard is where they were located. I got there okay and then, as it turns out typically the summer kids had one of three jobs either you were a camera man or you ran the audio board in the master control room for the live TV broadcasts or, you were on what they called film sound. Back then they didn’t have video tape, it was actually film. The news crews were a three person crew they had a sixteen millimeter camera man, an actual film camera man, and they had the talent or the announcer or who do you wanna call it, and they had what they called film sound guy which was me. You were sort of the driver, the general gopher, and you had a maybe six or eight foot cable you hooked up to the sixteen millimeter Arkon film camera and you tagged along behind the film camera man, wherever he went you ran the sound. You had your earphones and your little audio control box. So, having said all that, he said, “Guess what boys? You’re gonna be on the film sound crew.” This was okay with us because heck we were twenty-two and we were immortal and the old guys were no fools, they said “You know, it’s probably a lot safer here in the studio so we’ll let the kids go out.” That is basically how it all started on that Sunday afternoon and once that started, by the way, all the regular shifts were off, all bets were off and basically you literally started about five o’clock each evening till about eight, nine or ten the next morning for the entirety of the whole riot. Again kids, we liked them, we got a lot of overtime ‘cause it was a union shop so if we worked overtime they had to pay us. Having said that, that is basically how it started.</p>
<p>NL: How does that compare to a normal shift during the rest of the summer?</p>
<p>CG: Normal shift was eight hours a day, and they had—swing shift, isn’t quite the right term for it. They just had a screwball shift, I don’t know any other way to describe it—you might be on days one week, you might be on evenings the other week, you might be on midnights the week after that. One week you might have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, the next week you might have Thursdays and Fridays off. So it was just –</p>
<p>NL: Very irregular.</p>
<p>CG: It was very irregular but it was a forty hour week.</p>
<p>NL: Can you tell me about the rest of your experiences working on the film sound as the week progressed and what you observed in that time.</p>
<p>CG: Well yes, that first Sunday night – maybe it was six or seven o’clock, [unclear] the film sound or the news reel crews were directed by our news office. We had a big news office, news director that had all kinds of police radio so they knew where the action was, so then they would call on our radio, on our Channel 2 station wagon, and tell us where to head and where the action was, if you will. They wanted us to go down to a hospital and I think it was Detroit Receiving, but I can’t remember for sure, ‘cause again it was almost fifty years ago, duh. But we had a three man crew, we had the film camera man, and myself, and our so-called stand up talent was Jerry Hodak. You know as it turns out—</p>
<p>NL: The weather guy?</p>
<p>CG: Yeah, but he started out at the most lowly level at Channel 2 doing what they called film cleaning, which is literally you have the two cranks, you’re holding a little cloth and cleaning the film so not a rocket science job, but then he went to being a booth announcer, and then just at that time I think ‘66, ‘67 he was doing booth announcing and he was just starting his weather career. So he was the stand up talent. The three of us we went over to this hospital, probably Receiving Hospital, and I got all the stuff out, the lighting and the camera man got his stuff set up, put in his new film. Jerry Hodak, you know, got all spiffed up. While we’re doing this we’re outside of the door of the emergency room and here is is this gurney that they’re rolling a person on, male, African-American male, and what I noticed about him of all things was the socks he had on. Bright, bright, bright, glow-in-the-dark orange socks. So they rolled him in the doors to the emergency room closed, blah, blah, blah, and then Jerry is doing his little stand up bit saying, “Here we are at the hospital blah, blah, blah.” Then we’re just putting things back together and getting ready to leave when the door to the ER opens again here comes this gurney with a sheet over the guy’s face. And the only reason I knew it was him, because the sheet was pulled up over his face so you knew he was dead, but you could see it was the bright orange socks, so he’s got to have been one of, if not the first guy that—first, you know, casualty. </p>
<p>NL: Where else did your work take you, what other parts of the city?</p>
<p>CG: Well basically everywhere, literally everywhere. From as close as the roof of the building to wherever there was trouble, they would dispatch us; go here, go there, go wherever. One of the other film camera men, a guy named Sid Siegal, we went up on the roof of our building which was a two story building. We were on the west side of Second and on the east side of Second was a place called Annis Furs, so we just filmed these guys looting Annis Furs. Let me just check my notes here, let’s see where else did we go? Over on Belle Isle the old bathhouses it’s the same position as the current bathhouses, but those aren’t there anymore, they knocked them down and put up the current ones, but apparently the jails were becoming overflowing so they needed someplace to put these perceived trouble makers, whatever you want to call it, into these bathhouses. What struck me as odd about that was, in front of each bathhouse, they had a thirty or thirty-five foot scaffolding. They had guards on top of each scaffolding, they made it into like a guard tower with machine guns. I’m thinking, “Geez what are they going to do, machine gun somebody if they try and get out?” Be that as it may that struck me as a little odd on that. Another time, like I said it was very surreal, we were going north on 12<sup>th</sup> Street which is where the riots started, this was maybe two or three or four days into the riot. Many of the homes were burnt out, I mean literally burned right to the ground, the only thing that was left was the basement—no walls, no nothing just literally the basement. No lights cause all the electricity was out, power lines had burned down, transformers shorted out, blew up. What was just really eerie and surreal, was the gas pipe coming out of the basement wall was still on fire, it was flickering. so there was literally three or four or five foot vertical flames of the natural gas just in all these burned out basements it was just eerie as hell. Really, really spooky looking.</p>
<p>NG: And you wonder why the cops were scared. [Laughter]</p>
<p>NL: No, I don’t actually.</p>
<p>CG: This is a side story, as a professional courtesy I guess the guy from, the reporter from <em>Die Welt </em>which means “The World” in German that was their newspaper in Germany and he was here he said “Gee can I ride around with you guys?” so we said sure. So we had an extra passenger with us.</p>
<p>NL: Were there any other people from foreign press and correspondents that you had contact with? </p>
<p>CG: I’m sure there were others, but that was the only one that we had contact with.</p>
<p>NL: Do you know what brought him there?</p>
<p>CG: Well the riots brought him there obviously.</p>
<p>NL: I mean from Germany, like who he worked with.</p>
<p>CG: Like I said it’s called <em>Die Welt</em></p>
<p>NL: Oh that was the name of— [talking over each other] Got it.</p>
<p>CG: —which means in German “The World” which is their newspaper that he was from that he worked for. Another minor misadventure, we had what they call a loading dock at the back of the studio, where you stored all the flats and the scenery and so on. It had a big, maybe fifteen foot high corrugated steel door so you could load and unload stuff. Our art director was out there having a smoke. All of a sudden we heard something come rattling through the steel door, corrugated steel door, oh, look at that, and he went over and picked it up. It was a fifty caliber, stray fifty caliber machine gun bullet. So he picked it up, drilled a hole through it and put it on his key chain for a good luck charm.</p>
<p>NL: What’s the most striking visual memory of that time for you?</p>
<p>CG: Probably on Twelfth Street with the natural gas flames, that was one of the most vivid although they all were. That was another thing that was strange was they had a curfew. I think it was either eight or nine or ten o’clock at night. Our studio was up in the New Center area. Jerry Cavanagh, who was the mayor at the time, was having a press conference somewhere downtown at city hall or whatever. So we were driving down Woodward, literally other than armed personnel carriers and tanks, that was the first bizarre thing, was seeing tanks going down your home city driving down the street. The second thing was nobody else was out, we were just literally going fifty, sixty miles an hour blowing through red lights. Just no traffic which was, you know, I thought, quite weird. Then on this one sound news reel somebody asked Cavanagh if there were any snipers he said “No,” and you can hear some laughter in the background, and it was our film crew because we had been sniped at! No! [Unclear] we didn’t say anything, but…</p>
<p>NL: Did the news teams have permission to be out past the curfew because of the nature of the work?</p>
<p>CG: Oh yeah, because we were news, oh yeah, like I say, we were literally out from five or six at night until eight, nine, ten the next morning.</p>
<p>NL: And the police and National Guard didn’t harass or take issue? </p>
<p>CG: Well one time, we did have a police officer ride with us—I can’t remember the reason, but we did have a police officer in the car with us. We were going again around the 12<sup>th</sup> Street area I just remember someone was sniping at us so we all bailed out and hid behind the car. The cop pulled out his service revolver, but he didn’t shoot back ‘cause we couldn’t tell where it was coming from.</p>
<p>NL: In your travels around the city that week, do you remember coming upon any neighborhoods and parts of the city that seemed not to be affected by looting and burning and rioting, or less so than others?</p>
<p>CG: No. To state the obvious again they dispatched us, and they dispatched us to where the action was. So they’re not going to say go to this nice quiet neighborhood and take film of that, it’s like, what’s the point? Everything we saw was where bad things were happening.</p>
<p>NG: Although, I was gonna say, even in the nice quiet neighborhoods there were things happening like a sniper on the school roof, places where you wouldn’t expect it.</p>
<p>CG: Well that’s true—</p>
<p>NG: We expected it downtown you didn’t expect it in our little cove.</p>
<p>CG: I guess we did, when they brought in the National Guard or the 82<sup>nd</sup> Airborne or whoever and they were camped out at the fairgrounds so we went up there to film that, so that was – there wasn’t any shooting going on then, we just filmed all the guys, the military and the guard and everything being camped out but usually we went where the action was, matter of fact I remember one time they sent us to where a fire was, a building that had been torched ‘cause that was the big thing, there was a lot of, literally, torching going on, the fire department was there and they started sniping at the firemen. So the firemen got out and we got the hell out rather than get shot. We said oh, no. The camera man I was working with most of the time was a fella named Mike Weir—W-E-I-R. He was, I don’t know five, eight, nine years older than me. He was, talk about fearless, even more immortal than a twenty-two year old kid. So here I am with a six foot cord dragging behind this guy: I said, “Take it easy, keep us out of danger.” Literally no fear, that scared me a bit.</p>
<p>NL: Historians often use the word riot to describe this moment in Detroit’s history and you have used it a few times yourself. For each of you is that the most accurate word to describe the events of July 1967 or would you call it another way?</p>
<p>CG: Well as opposed to what?</p>
<p>NG: That’s what I was used to hearing.</p>
<p>CG: That’s what we heard.</p>
<p>NG: That’s what we heard, I mean as a kid, that’s what they talked about, that’s what they talked about on the news, that’s what my dad talked about when he came home, that’s what he called it.</p>
<p>CG: For better or for worse that’s what we called it. For lack of a better term, I guess we’re just playing semantics here a little bit, when people are throwing Molotov cocktails—</p>
<p>NG: Yeah, everybody refers to that time as the ‘67 riots.</p>
<p>CG: Yeah, you know you see tanks going down Woodward Avenue and the neighborhoods – some of the neighborhoods we saw about tanks in other places too. I guess for lack of a better term, maybe it was possibly the wrong term, but that is the term that everybody used was “The Riot”.</p>
<p>NG: In the Sixties it was one of the biggest things. You had the Kennedy assassination, which I totally remember and then you had the ’67 riots and those are the things you remember about the Sixties in Detroit. </p>
<p>CG: Oh yeah I guess one other—though I wasn’t directly related to this, we had heard this—this was right near our studio between us on Second and between the John Lodge [US-10], there was a Howard Johnson’s hotel. There was some out-of-town lady that was a visitor there and she was on the second or third story somewhere up [indistinguishable]. Bottom line, she got killed, they don’t know if it was an actual sniper or if it was just a stray bullet but she was, I wanna say Connecticut, again going back fifty years, but she was definitely out of state and definitely visiting, she was like “Look at all that’s going on” [mimics a gunshot] killed her dead.</p>
<p>NG: Not a place you wanted to be.</p>
<p>NL: No not at that time at least.</p>
<p>NG: Yeah and in our neighborhood we went from being extremely safe as kids you know, to wondering if somebody was going to come get us in our home. It was fear.</p>
<p>NL: That was pervasive throughout?</p>
<p>NG: Oh, extremely, especially, you know, there’s a lot of kids in that neighborhood, and it was – with that sniper thing, it didn’t occur to us that the stuff downtown could touch us, until the sniper thing. Then it was like, my God this could—you know, somebody could kill us out here.</p>
<p>CG: I remember when I went home to Dearborn every morning after our shift was done good old Mayor Orville Hubbard had the streets entering Dearborn blocked off with police. He had police guarding it, he was obviously a well-known racist for lack of a better term,</p>
<p>NG: Extreme.</p>
<p>CG: Extreme racist, for lack of a better term, but he literally had armed policemen at every entrance to the city. I remember specifically Michigan Avenue, Ford Road, where it crossed into the west side of Detroit. He had the roads blocked I didn’t see this for a fact, but I am pretty sure if you were black you better have a damn good reason for wanting to come into Dearborn before the police would let you go through.</p>
<p>NG: They knew you didn’t live there.</p>
<p>NL: Do you remember other instances of discrimination against non-white people either specifically as a result of the events of July 1967 or even earlier in the Sixties in Detroit, was that something pervasive in your lives?</p>
<p>NG: Well, in mine, yes, because of my dad being a police officer. It was, among the white police officers it was, you know – I used to say – I mean my dad was a good guy, but I used to tell people that my dad made Archie Bunker look like a liberal [laughter], look like a liberal, but it was because of all the experiences he had.</p>
<p>CG: Well that was, let’s face it, that’s the way it was in that era. It’s not like today by a long shot. It was literally a whole different world.</p>
<p>NG: And it was rough and you know you’re in a job like police in those areas of Detroit, let’s face it.</p>
<p>CG: Although in my case not so much ‘cause like I said, even starting in ‘63 I was chief engineer at WGPR. And they were basically a ninety-nine percent black radio station, so I never, quite frankly, never noticed it there particularly.</p>
<p>NG: See yours was different I went from a total all white neighborhood to all white schools.</p>
<p>CG: Well so was Dearborn, duh.</p>
<p>NG: Yeah, but to having my dad being right down there and then…</p>
<p>CG: Just a side story, the one of the black secretaries at WGPR, very nice lady, very pretty and that— I asked one the other guys why she was there, he said “Eye candy for the boss.” [laughter] He might have been a little sexist, be that as it may. Long story short, she was one of the people who did sadly drink the Kool-Aid down in Jonestown. Sorry, had nothing to do with the riots. Other than that I never really had much racism, my mother I guess pretty liberal and you know “don’t use the n-word” so I was pretty much brought up that way, not like her dad being a Detroit cop.</p>
<p>NG: See, I heard it all the time, it was a totally different life that I grew up in. But, I grew up wanting to be totally different from what I heard growing up. Once I actually got out into the world and was working with all these diverse people I was like, this is nuts, you know, from the way I grew up I’m totally a liberal now so—</p>
<p>CG: Your father would be so proud.</p>
<p>NL: [laughter] But that was his environment that he worked in for twenty five years, it was dangerous. It was a dangerous era, more so than when he got into the police force. You know the Sixties was just like ‘I can’t take this anymore I’m out of here’. But we did remain living in Detroit even when he retired. Bought a house in Detroit.</p>
<p>NL: So in the last year we have seen some things in the United States and the world that are sort of reminiscent as you think about events in Baltimore and Missouri that are sort of reminiscent of 1967 in Detroit.</p>
<p>NG: It’s scary.</p>
<p>NL: It is scary, and the same issues are still very real in so many people’s lives. From your vantage points, do you think that those tensions and issues regarding race in Detroit specifically in the last fifty years—has it increased, decreased, stayed the same? What do you notice that’s different and the same in that regard? </p>
<p>NG: I think it’s decreased somewhat, but now lately with all of this unrest, those of us that lived through those times worry about it happening again.</p>
<p>CG: I would agree. I would say it decreased but it’s still there, still keeps rearing its ugly head here and there.</p>
<p>NG: There is a fear of it happening again especially with you know, Baltimore and Missouri and all that, it’s like ‘oh my god, it’s not going to be happening again, we already went through this, this should be over’.</p>
<p>NL: What part of town do you guys live in now?</p>
<p>CG: Farmington Hills.</p>
<p>NL: And how long have you all been out there?</p>
<p>NG: Thirty-seven years.</p>
<p>NL: Wow.</p>
<p>CG: Yeah it was thirty-three years in Dearborn, and about thirty-seven--</p>
<p>NG: We got married in Detroit, I lived in Detroit until I got married so, we got married in ’78, got married in Detroit. It’s a really rough area right now where we used to live. [Laughter]</p>
<p>LW: What was your address in Detroit?</p>
<p>NG: 19629…</p>
<p>CG: West Chicago.</p>
<p>NG: West Chicago. It was a couple blocks off of Evergreen. That’s where people are getting shot now, down by Cody, and Cody High School and stuff. I didn’t go to Cody I went to Catholic school, Bishop Borges at Plymouth and Telegraph. Now in that area, it’s pretty dangerous.</p>
<p>NL: Is there anything else that either of you would like to add about your recollections of this time period and the history of the City of Detroit?</p>
<p>NG: Well like I said most things I remember about the Sixties have to do with music. I grew up in the Motown era—with all of that which really thrilled my father—[laughter] playing all this music.</p>
<p>NL: Do you remember at that time did—a good chunk of those recording artists are from Detroit born and raised did they take on any specific role in talking about the riots and addressing what was happening?</p>
<p>NG: Not that I really recall, I mean that’s about all we listened to.</p>
<p>CG: My contact with Motown was before the riots when I was with WGPR, like I said it was a black radio station and one of the DJs had a connection to Motown. So he got early releases or pre-releases but that was four years before the riots. [talking over each other]</p>
<p>NG: I remember I was a kid walking around with my transistor radio listening to it and I had older siblings who had all the record albums and stuff so I was playing all that stuff, everything not just Motown, but being from Motown you were proud of being from Motown because that’s where all this good music came from.</p>
<p>NL: We still are today.</p>
<p>NG: Absolutely.</p>
<p>NL: Well thank you both so much for coming in and sharing your memories and stories with us.</p>
<p>CG: Thank you.</p>
**
People
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Hodack, Jerry
Search Terms
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Annis New York Furs, Detroit Receiving Hospital, Channel 2, WJBK-TV, Dearborn, Detroit Police Department, looting, snipers
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CCOYeaKQOFA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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Title
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Carter and Nancy Grabarczyk, June 18th, 2015
Subject
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1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Annis New York Furs—Detroit—Michigan
Channel 2—WJBK-TV
Dearborn—Michigan
Detroit Police Department
Detroit Receiving Hospital
Hodack, Jerry
Looting
Snipers
Description
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In this interview, Carter Garbarczyk discusses his work covering the 1967 unrest for Channel 2 WJBK-TV. Nancy Garbarczyk discusses her father’s work as a sergeant for the Detroit Police Department during July 1967.
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Channel 2
Curfew
Dearborn
Detroit Police Department
Detroit Receiving Hospital
Detroit Workers
Looting
Motown
Snipers
Tanks
WJBK-TV Dearborn
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https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/4442021a65db9b33b813a3ed6964a788.jpg
75ae214b4d14fe425c6262d4910b4509
Dublin Core
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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
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10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Cecile Jenson
Brief Biography
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Cecile Jensen was born in Detroit in 1950 and grew up on the west side of Detroit where she lived during the 1967 disturbance. Jensen worked as a school teacher for Rochester Hills for thirty years. She currently lives in Rochester Hills, MI with her husband.
Interviewer's Name
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Noah Levinson
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West Bloomfield, MI
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07/16/2016
Interview Length
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00:38:03
Transcriptionist
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Hannah Sabal
Transcription Date
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6/01/2016
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>NL: Today is July 17<sup>th</sup>, 2015. This is the interview of Cecile Jensen by Noah Levinson. We are at the Polish Mission located at Orchard Lake School’s campus in West Bloomfield, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Cecile, thanks for taking the time to meet with us today. Could you first tell me where and when were you born?</p>
<p>CJ: I was born in Detroit in 1950, at Crittenton Hospital.</p>
<p>NL: Do you recall where that was?</p>
<p>CJ: Well, it was the old one. It was along the expressway and it was the forerunner to the one that’s in Rochester today.</p>
<p>NL: What neighborhood do you first remember living in?</p>
<p>CJ: I only lived in one, for the first 18 years of my life. It was on the west side of Detroit. West Chicago and Wyoming were the cross streets. And when I was growing up, as a Catholic school girl, we would never really ask somebody, “What neighborhood are you from?” We would say, “Which parish are you from?” So that was the way we organized our life, by the parish we were in, and we had an elementary school as well.</p>
<p>NL: Was there a correlation that was understood by most people that certain parishes correspond to certain parts of the city or people just went to different ones they liked for various reasons?</p>
<p>CJ: There was a guidance map throughout the diocese of metro Detroit, so if you lived on certain streets, then there was a designated parish for you to belong to and support.</p>
<p>NL: Were you allowed to support a different one if you chose to, or was it pretty strictly adhered to?</p>
<p>CJ: It was pretty strictly adhered to. We have stories of families who got into a discussion with the pastor because they wanted to go somewhere else and that was being allowed. But this was the fifties, now I think a pastor would be very happy with a new parishioner.</p>
<p>NL: I would think so as well. Can you describe that neighborhood, Chicago and Wyoming, where you were growing up?</p>
<p>CJ: Sure. I think now when we look back, it’s sort of like one of those dream sequences. You could walk up to the grocery store, you could walk up to the drug store. If you went in the other direction on Wyoming, there was a toy store. I was always sent up to the German meat market to go to buy the lunchmeat for the family. There were five kids in our family, and I was sort of like the grocery girl. Get on my bike, and go through the neighborhood. So it was close-knit. Not only did we know our neighbors well, but my aunt and uncle lived around the block, and my grandparents lived two blocks away, and down the street from them was yet another aunt and uncle. So we all congregated in that neighborhood because right after World War II, when the expressway went through, our family homes were condemned, and our family had to resettle. So they had been at, like, Michigan and more into a Polish community when they were growing up. And then after World War II, they condemned the houses so they could put in the expressway, and so a new neighborhood was sought. So there are a lot of Poles in our parish, but there were also Irish folks, and other ethnicities as well.</p>
<p>NL: At that time, to the best of your memory, was the Polish community pretty well-spread around the city of Detroit?</p>
<p>CJ: Yes, the Polish community in metro Detroit really started on the east side. Then it went to the west side, and then eventually to Hamtramck, which people are more familiar with. But the core parishes first started on the east side and the west side.</p>
<p>NL: And when did that—I would be part of that camp, the association between here and Hamtramck, the Polish community, they’re synonymous—when did that transition start happening from the neighborhoods more closer to downtown up toward Hamtramck?</p>
<p>CJ: I would say maybe when the plants opened, so maybe around 1910 or so? When I’m talking about the first parishes, I’m talking about the 1880s, so our seminary was actually part of the very core, first Polish community in Detroit, at Canfield and St. Aubin. So St. Albertus church still stands. There had been our seminary; that building does not stand there anymore. And there was also a mother house for the Polish nuns—the Felician sisters—and that really was like a transplanted village from Europe, and then they transplanted that same type of community into Detroit.</p>
<p>NL: You mentioned that you were one of five growing up. Where were you in the pecking order?</p>
<p>CJ: I am the middle girl, but I’m the fourth of five. So I think when I do my Facebook quizzes, I don’t think that gives me any badge.</p>
<p>NL: And what were your parents’ occupations when you were growing up?</p>
<p>CJ: When I was growing up, my mother was a bookkeeper by trade, or by training. She raised us as a stay-at-home mom, and once it was time to go back into the workforce, she became a controller at Mercy School of Nursing on the boulevard. My father was the first generation born in the United States for his family, and one of the things I love so much, I see one of the documents his mother signed with an X, and then my father became a lawyer for the City of Detroit. So I like to see that progress.</p>
<p>NL: Do you know what type of work, more specifically, he handled for the city of Detroit?</p>
<p>CJ: Yes, condemnation. He would start taking down neighborhoods. They would condemn part of the neighborhood, whether it was for the highway that his own family was impacted by, but also for other areas so they could build factories or thoroughfares, so he went to court a lot, to be able to settle those matters on behalf of the city.</p>
<p>NL: What do you remember about Detroit in general, beyond the neighborhood you grew up in, in the fifties and sixties?</p>
<p>CJ: Well, I thought it was pretty exciting to be able to take my dad to work, because first he was at the city hall, over where Kennedy center is right now, and then eventually he did have an office in the Coleman Young building. We used to call it the city-county building. That was super special. When he would take his daughter to work, and I would get to go into the law offices, I’d get to see all the mimeograph machines, all the high-tech that they were creating things with. And then, I got to go into the City of Detroit Chamber, I got to meet the mayor, I got to meet some of the council people, and that really impressed me, that my father would have that level of access to people. So I really loved going downtown. As we approached the city hall, when I was very young, they still had trolleys in the street, so you would see the little snaps of electricity in the overhead, so that had to be in the early fifties. Then my dad died in 1964, I had said goodbye to him and went to Girl Scout camp, and he died when I was at camp. So for me, my idea of Detroit in the sixties, first of all, cozy neighborhood, excellent going down to the city county building, getting to enjoy everything that was on Woodward, walking, enjoying Freedom Festival with Windsor and Detroit, and then all of a sudden, it started falling apart. Being a Catholic, one of the things that happened was the pope died. Then in the sixties, JFK was assassinated. Then Robert Kennedy was assassinated. And then Martin Luther King was assassinated. It’s like, we’re always in mourning, in the early sixties, we’re in mourning! And my own father’s death, and then the riots! So everything that had a beautiful, strong foundation for me was crumbling.</p>
<p>NL: Speaking of the riots, could you tell me where you were and how you first heard of that in late July 1967?</p>
<p>CJ: I was selling snacks at Tiger Stadium. I was at stand 22, and I wasn’t selling beer—I wasn’t old enough—but we were selling hot dogs, and filling the ketchup, and reconstituting the dry onions, and making sure we had enough for everybody, and it was a pretty exciting day. I didn’t first hear about it, I first smelled it, because I could smell things burning around Tiger Stadium. And then we got the word that the city was burning, and I was with some older women, I didn’t have a car, I relied on them to drive me to work and back, and at first we were kind of panicked, and we thought, “What are we going to do? How are we going to get home?” And so at first, we went, “Why don’t we turn off the freezer and hide in the freezer?” Because, you know, it would warm up pretty quickly, and we would have a pretty good defense, but who would know we were there? So that’s how I first—I smelled it.</p>
<p>NL: And how was your commute home, eventually, that day? How did that take place?</p>
<p>CJ: I talked her into driving—I think there were three or four of us that were all carpooling. And we had to get back to the west side, of course, and so we were taking Grand River, and we started to see all the looting going on—shop windows were being shattered, and people were walking out with washing machines, radios, record players, stereo record players. We saw a lot of that that was going on. We just tried to watch and move forward. I also noticed a car that was next to us, and they were calling so many firemen that there weren’t enough vehicles for them, so these were firemen in full uniform but they were driving around in a private car. So that kind of put the panic in us.</p>
<p>NL: As you saw that looting there on Grand River, were there police, other members of law enforcement starting to help tone down the looting and the violence?</p>
<p>CJ: The only thing that I saw were those firemen that were going by, and I don’t know what their destination was, so no, I did not see any law and order out on the streets.</p>
<p>NL: How did you spend your next few days while the looting and the violence continued?</p>
<p>CJ: I got back home on Orange Lawn and nobody was home. So one of my older brothers was at our family cottage on Lake St. Clair in Canada. Another brother was out of state for his summer job. My widowed mother and my younger sister were also out at the cottage, and then my older sister was at Michigan State. So I gave her a call asking her what she thought I should do. I was most concerned, what if mother and Margot start coming across the bridge? And then end up right in the middle of it? So her advice to me was only tears. She started crying. And I was sort of like, “But you’re in East Lansing, and I’m in Detroit! So actually that day made me start to believe in my own judgement, because I was 17, and I had to try to get a message to my family. I did know that there was one phone—I mean nowadays, what are we going to do? We’re going to text somebody, send it by our smartphone—but at that point, it was a rural beach community, and there was only one permanent resident that had a telephone. So I was trying to find that phone number so I would be able to warn them not to come home. But in hindsight, I found out that they didn’t need me to tell them that because they could see flames across the lake. They could already see the burning that was going on.</p>
<p>NL: You said this was on Lake St. Clair, on the Canadian side. What town or area is that?</p>
<p>CJ: Stony Point. The French is [unknown]. It’s nearby Tillberry, nearby Chatham—well Chatham is pretty far away, but it’s outside Windsor.</p>
<p>NL: Okay. How long did they remain there past what they expected?</p>
<p>CJ: That night, I got ahold of my cousins that lived around the block. And my cousin Gordon said, “You know what, we’re going to all go out to the cottage. We’re going to go to our summer homes, and we’ll do that by going through Port Huron.” So I got to leave the neighborhood shortly thereafter, so I spent a week in Canada, at the cottage.</p>
<p>NL: And you were able to drive from your neighborhood, which was not too far away from the nexus of a lot of the violence—you were able to drive on the expressway out of the city that way without being impeded by the curfews or law enforcement personnel with no-drive orders?</p>
<p>CJ: Right. Well, we left the next day. So a lot of those curfews and patrols, I don’t think, were quite in place yet. Because I did hear additional stories that my older brother that had stayed, kind of went snooping around in the daytime with my grandfather. They would go down to see where the National Guard was at, gawking a little bit. He denies it now. I was telling him I was going to tell that story. “No! No! It had to be another cousin!” But I think that they were able to go out a bit, but I was very grateful that my cousin who was just a couple years older than me would agree to drive us out. I think we used back roads to get up to Port Huron.</p>
<p>NL: How long, approximately, did you stay at the cottage?</p>
<p>CJ: I would say a good week.</p>
<p>NL: What do you remember about coming back, crossing the border, and re-entering the city? What did you notice?</p>
<p>CJ: Looked like a very different place. We were noticing all the boarded up buildings. I think people were a little more fearful as we drove. Myself, I was concerned about my younger sister and my mother as well, because she worked on the boulevard. She worked very close to that area, and I’m not sure how long the nursing school stayed closed. Because they had a running school, but maybe because it was in the summer, maybe they didn’t have a session running at the time.</p>
<p>NL: Do you remember anything unusual about the border crossing on the way back?</p>
<p>CJ: No, that’s a good question. I think we just had the regular questions, you know, like, “Where were you? Where are you going? How long were you there? Do you have any meat in the car?”</p>
<p>NL: Did you feel that your neighborhood was affected—which is to say physically was it affected? Obviously all the residents of Detroit were affected in a number of ways, but the actual neighborhood, was that affected at all by the violence?</p>
<p>CJ: No, not immediately. I didn’t see that any of our storefronts were broken into. I saw that more further toward the stadium and along Grand River, even though Grand River was one of our main thoroughfares. I don’t remember our neighborhood specifically suffering. Eventually it did because there was white flight, because so many people wanted to get out of the neighborhood, and that had already started with people going into the suburbs. But that, I think, did eventually take our neighborhood down.</p>
<p>NL: Can you talk a little bit more about that transition in the neighborhood?</p>
<p>CJ: Yes, I mentioned how my family had to relocate from Detroit, from Michigan and Fullerton—well, Fullerton that was later, but Michigan Avenue and Warren, that kind of area, the Polish parish. So they had to relocate. So in the late forties, they relocated in this west side community, we called in Epiphany parish. That was stable, into the sixties, but then people started moving. They started moving—they now had expressways to get faster, they could communicate on them. Some of the areas of choice were Livonia and Dearborn. Some of my classmates, their families started moving out.</p>
<p>NL: Where did you first live after your family residence where you grew up in?</p>
<p>CJ: I graduated from high school in 1968, and we were still living on Orange Lawn at that time. And then, in the course of the next two years, I went to Michigan State, I was in college, and my mother bought a new home in Troy. And she picked that neighborhood because there was some extended family out there, we were still doing that tradition.</p>
<p>NL: And after your time in East Lansing, where did you live?</p>
<p>CJ: Then I came home for short semesters, but I got married in 1972 and so, we were finishing our education—my husband and I were finishing our educations at Michigan State, so we lived in Lansing and East Lansing, eventually coming back to metro Detroit five years later.</p>
<p>NL: And what part of the metro area did you come to?</p>
<p>CJ: We bunked up at my mom’s house for a little while in Troy, and then we bought our own home in Huntington Woods, and we were there for a number of years. And now—you know, we’re really not the regular American demographic because we really stayed put for a long time—we’re probably in Huntington Woods for fifteen years, and I think we’re surpassing twenty years now in Rochester Hills.</p>
<p>NL: Wow. What do you recall about your time in those neighborhoods? Anything specific?</p>
<p>CJ: Well, I like them both very much. I loved Huntington Woods because it had that old neighborhood feel again. You could walk to the library, you could walk to the doctors, you could walk up to the drug store. We had great neighbors, and everything’s on Woodward. Who doesn’t love Woodward? So Huntington Woods was great, and it was halfway between my husband’s job at a brokerage house in Detroit, and halfway between my job teaching in Rochester Hills. We each left in the morning and went different directions. And then, in Rochester Hills, I’m devoted to that community because I spent thirty years teaching in that school district. And so even today, when I go up to the market, even though I’ve been retired for twelve, thirteen years, I still see my old students. I’m lucky that I still have a sense of community, but it’s a different community. It’s not all those kids I went to school with, but it’s children I schooled.</p>
<p>NL: In the years that you’ve lived in the various cities and suburbs of the metro area, do you frequent the city of Detroit?</p>
<p>CJ: I’m a big fan of the city. In fact, when I had the opportunity to take an early retirement, I thought, “What shall I do?” and I had gotten that genealogy bug very early on in my life. My dad had shown me that document when I was fourteen when I was doing a school project, and they said, “Interview one of your parents about their family history.” So I interviewed him, he showed me these very cool documents, but they’re written in German, and I thought, “But we’re Polish! What’s that all about?” But he died two months later, so that really got me interested. I wanted to start asking questions of aunts, uncles, and grandparents. “How did we end up in Detroit? Why did we end up in Detroit?” I began that when I was very young, and when there was an opportunity to take early retirement, I said, “I’m going to do what I can for Poles in Detroit.” So one of my first projects was doing one of these arcadia pictorial histories and I did that on Detroit’s Palonia, so it was wonderful to go back to the Reuther library at Wayne State and look at their negative morgue and start picking out images that would relate to the polish story. Then after we had that one published, so many people were enthusiastic. “Tell my ancestors’ story! Use my picture!” that we started working on two other books, again related to Detroit. One of the oldest active cemeteries in Detroit, Mt. Elliot Cemetery, and also Mt. Olivet Cemetery. That was great fun—yeah, I do like cemeteries. It was great finding the depth of information and compiling it because everyone had a unique, individual story, and just like you’re doing, you’re going to make a greater whole of everyone’s individual story. So we were able to do that with the arcadia books and I go back to the old neighborhoods—not the safest place to drive around—but yes, I’m still devoted to Detroit. Every fall, the burton collection has a genealogy fair, and we always encourage people to document their Detroit history as well.</p>
<p>NL: The project, the Detroit’s Palonia, that was your first involvement with the Mission here? Or was that a separate group?</p>
<p>CJ: This was before I joined the mission. So it was just the art teacher and history teacher and me coming out, and I saw they didn’t have a title that dealt with Detroit—they had some ethnic groups, they had some sections of Detroit, so I had to write up a proposal, and I worked with a number of colleagues in the genealogy group here in metro Detroit. Ran around, met people at different libraries, took my scanner, made big old .tiff images so they would be published, and then turned all that digital information and all the captions over to Arcadia.</p>
<p>NL: What are your observations of the city in the last fifty years compared to your observations pre-1967?</p>
<p>CJ: I’ve been very lucky that my husband has a good eye for travel. And so, I’ve been able to visit many major cities throughout the world, and I always think, you know, we have the essence of a lot of these other cities right here in Detroit, and I really wish it would shine more. But we have a very interesting history, and I think there are core pieces that are just waiting to be harvested and rejuvenated. I guess that’s one of the benefits of travel, that I see the rough jewel that Detroit is and can be again.</p>
<p>NL: Well put. Could you elaborate a little bit about what you mean by that we here in Detroit have that essence that you see abroad? Could you describe that?</p>
<p>CJ: Well sure, we have a mixture of cultures, we have many different cultures. We can explore different ethnic groups, different food waves, different arts in our community. We have that lively mix that generates a lot of energy. We’re not homogenized. We’re still inviting and we’re still getting a lot of immigrants to come into our community. We might have 21<sup>st</sup> century minorities now, and the people that came in the 20<sup>th</sup> century are now assimilated, better assimilated, but that is part of the energy, I think, that will move us forward. And I’m not a Pollyanna.</p>
<p>NL: Why do you think it’s been so difficult then for the city to capitalize on that essence and that hotbed of cultures colliding and making for interesting things?</p>
<p>CJ: Well, we have to talk about some leadership issues that have happened to us in the past. People that would rather redline than look for a way to merge things. Maybe all the communities needed to mature a little bit more, and realize this is a good spot on the mitten to be. We still have the water resources, we still have roadways. I just saw that that one defunct factory by the river has been opened to look like a nature reserve from up north—I think it just opened this week. And that’s a cool thing, look at Belle Isle, as well: what a beautiful sanctuary for everybody as well, with the Botanical Gardens, with the aquarium there, and some of my other colleagues and I, we were remembering when there was a petting zoo there as well. That has been, why can’t it be revived? I mean 21<sup>st</sup> century people want that in their lives, as well as 20<sup>th</sup> century people.</p>
<p>NL: Absolutely. Where do you live now?</p>
<p>CJ: I live in Rochester Hills.</p>
<p>NL: Still in Rochester Hills. Are you working here in West Bloomfield, regularly, every day?</p>
<p>CJ: I’m here three days a week. My Monday-Wednesday-Friday.</p>
<p>NL: Do you notice a difference in the ability or just the end result of people living in the Oakland, Macomb, suburban communities collaborating together for the types of projects that you do here, is that any different than collaborating with people in the city?</p>
<p>CJ: I would have to say yes, because one thing, we’re one ethnic group here on campus. So there’s a demographic that’s going to come here. But I will say that the prep school does have a number of Asian students as well, we have black students here. Our Chaldean neighbors are sending their boys here. We have a mix at the high school, at the prep school. I would say we probably don’t—we’re not going to necessarily avail ourselves to the ethnic mix that you’re going to find if you go in Detroit. And maybe you have to go to Dearborn for some of that, but let’s also think about the beauty of going to Eastern market, because that’s a pretty nice level field for everyone, I’d say.</p>
<p>NL: For your personal life, what has been the largest lasting impact of the events of July 1967?</p>
<p>CJ: Well, as a teenager, it was a turning point where I couldn’t find an adult to give me direction, and I had to rely on whatever I had been instructed throughout my life to make some decisions about how to stay safe. And then, watching the neighborhood kind of dissolve. That was sad. And it’s only in the last few years because of Facebook that I have actually found elementary school friends! Because everybody scattered! And I tell people, what’s very interesting is that I cannot go back to my grandparent’s parish in Detroit, I cannot go back to my parents’, and I cannot go back to mine but ironically, I can go back to all four of my ancestral villages in Poland, and they’ve been in existence for 750 years. And you would think it would be the exact opposite, you would say, “How can you go back to anything in Poland? They’ve had two major wars!” And yet, I have been able to trace back to 1690 of my European heritage, but no vestiges, really. And that’s why, we actually think of ourselves—Poland talks about a nest, that you want to be in your group, your community, so we actually say, we’re the Polish nest for the metro Detroit because your parishes are gone, or they’ve merged, they’ve vanished, but you can come back here and look at our shelves, and find your history books, find vintage photos, and find someone to tell your story to.</p>
<p>NL: I had just a couple other questions. Backtracking a little bit in our conversation, that day at Tiger stadium, you mentioned the smell as what really stood out to you. What do you remember visually? I’m wondering, was there enough knowledge of the events of that time, do you remember the crowd? There were maybe almost 50,000 people there that day. Was there a big reaction in the crowd?</p>
<p>CJ: There wasn’t, no. I don’t even remember an announcement being made, that it’s time to leave the stadium. I don’t think they swept the stadium of people. I would have to go back and do a little research on that. But I think people just left at the end of the game, and then we were there cleaning up and realized what’s happened. That’s a good point, I would really have to go back and read a news report about, “It’s a great day for a Tiger game!” and see what’s written up that way.</p>
<p>NL: For the events of that day, that week, July 1967, historians and people who lived through it are often calling it a riot, the Detroit Riots of 1967, the Twelfth Street Riots. In your estimation, in your experience is that the most accurate word to describe the events of that week?</p>
<p>CJ: That was our vernacular at that time. That’s how we spoke about it. “Upheaval,” “Crisis,” “Cataclysmic event,” all of those would be good, because it did have that huge of an impact on the tri-county area. Because where did a lot of these people go? They went into Oakland County, or they went into Macomb County, and left the neighborhoods behind.</p>
<p>NL: Lastly, if you could leave a general message for the city of Detroit, going forward on what is soon to be the fiftieth anniversary of these events, what might that be?</p>
<p>CJ: Might be a turning point to change the tide. Might be a day to remember and say, “Well, let’s see what we can go forward with.” Not forgetting our history, but talking about those good elements we do have, I mean a rich history. Look at the flag of Detroit. You have the British influence, you have the French influence, you have the American. We have a lot to talk about. We have a lot of things to be pleased about. Maybe a little more positive and a whole lot less negative.</p>
<p>NL: Well, thank you so much for sharing your stories and memories with us. Is there anything else that we did not touch on that you would like to share?</p>
<p>CJ: I think I told you earlier today of the sad news report I was watching. They said, “Alert! The police have never found a 500-pound pig in the basement in metro Detroit! But now we have.” So there was all day coverage of trying to get this poor porker out of the basement that had two feet of refuse around his feet and the staircase was gone from the basement, there was only a ladder. Unfortunately it was the home of a hoarder who had died like a week before. So I’m watching it, and they say west side Detroit, and I go, “Oooh, I’m going to watch this!” And they go and say, Orange Lawn, I’m like, “Oh my!” And then they show the visuals, and I’m looking at the Shuckle’s house, which was our next-door neighbors in Detroit, and I actually felt very, very sad, not only for the pig, but to see that that now is the condition of my old neighborhood. It was a very sad feeling. Everybody else is like, “The pig! The pig!” and when I saw the video, it’s like, “That’s the Shuckle’s house, that’s the lot our home stood on, that’s where the McClays lived,” and I don’t know what to make of it, but it’s like, what an ending to that neighborhood.</p>
<p>NL: Could you see your house at any parts of that report?</p>
<p>CJ: Our home is not standing anymore, but I could see the neighbors on the other side. I mean, I could tell everybody’s house. I could still recognize their homes and then all of a sudden, I started getting text messages from friends: “What do you now about Orange Lawn? What do you know about the pig?” and the happy ending is that the pig was removed safely and is now at a shelter, a barn, shelter-barn for animals outside Monroe.</p>
<p>NL: Now with that behind us, the city of Detroit can finally move forward, I think. Thanks for sharing your time and your stories with us today, Cecile.</p>
<p>CJ: My pleasure. Thank you. </p>
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Noah Levinson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Cecile Jenson
Location
The location of the interview
West Bloomfield, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KtTc6PE8dmQ" 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
Cecile Jenson, July 16th, 2015
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Cecile discusses growing up in a tight-knit, Polish community on the west side of Detroit and her recollections 1967 disturbance, including the ensuing white flight. She also discusses her work in the Polish community of metro Detroit and the degradation of the neighborhood in which she grew up.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Date
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6/01/2016
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Language
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en-US
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Arson
Catholic
Detroit Tigers
Looting
Michigan State University
Polish-American community
Rochester Hills-Michigan
Teenagers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/76f3a45d57dac163123ac33e1191fc77.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
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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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Collette Cullen
Brief Biography
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Collette Cullen was born in Detroit in 1953 and lived in the city as a teen during the unrest. She went to Catholic schools during her education. Her family moved from the corner of Finkel and Dexter Streets to Grosse Isle in 1968. Cullen attended Wayne State for college and lived in the city.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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08/20/2016
Interview Length
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00:29:00
Transcriptionist
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Maddie Dietrich
Transcription Date
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12/12/2016
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello, today is August 20, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am in Detroit, Michigan. I’m sitting down with—</p>
<p>CC: My name is Collette Cullen. </p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>CC: I’m glad to be here.</p>
<p>WW: Can you start by telling me where and when were you born?</p>
<p>CC: I was born in Detroit in 1953 and my family lived on Mural when I was born. When I was an infant they moved to Fairfield, which is at Finkel and Dexter. We lived at 15114 Fairfield.</p>
<p>WW: Was that neighborhood integrated?</p>
<p>CC: It was when I was—in my first memories of it. Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: It was?</p>
<p>CC: Yes and it wasn’t just integrated, it was primarily, our block at least, was primarily African American. It was maybe 70:30. So 30 percent Caucasian and 70 percent Black. </p>
<p>WW: What was it like growing up in that neighborhood?</p>
<p>CC: Well, it was my neighborhood. So, you know, you played outside until the streetlights came on. You played under the sprinklers. You would take Sugar Daddies and squash them between rocks. You’d go play in the field and climb up the middle of the sign, the big billboard, and it was like climbing Mt. Everest. You’d go over to the chicken shop and you’d peek through the back window and see them chopping off the heads of the chickens. Then you’d hang out at Greg’s Pizzeria, hoping that they’d be friends with you and maybe you’d get a free slice of pizza. Yeah, it was just our neighborhood.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up, did you tend to stay in your own neighborhood or did you go around the city more?</p>
<p>CC: Oh, we went all over the city as a family. My grandma lived at Woodward and the Boulevard. We would just take buses on our own to see grandma. Or my dad would drop us off at the DIA [Detroit Institute of Arts] and we’d hang out at the DIA and walk down to Grandma’s. We’d go up to the avenue of fashion and go shopping. My friend and I, we would go down to the Six Mile area, which was much more affluent than our neighborhood, so we would go down there and rake leaves. My dad had a side business of black topping driveways and so we would go with him on the jobs. He would drive all over the city looking for work. When he would get those jobs, we would be his crew, bringing buckets of tar to put on the driveways. He’s squeegee it all in. So, yeah, we went all over the city.</p>
<p>WW: Did you feel comfortable as you were going around the city?</p>
<p>CC: I felt very comfortable going around the city. It was, you know, I love the city. I would go downtown with my friend. I mean, this is like an excursion downtown. We would get a bunch of bread and just feed all the pigeons or we would go to the fountains and jump in. You know, we’d just hang out downtown. Went down to Plum Street to see what all that broohaha was about. We went all over.</p>
<p>WW: Going into ’67, you were about 14 then?</p>
<p>CC: So I was 14 in 1967.</p>
<p>WW: And you were still living in the same house?</p>
<p>CC: We lived right at the corner of Finkel. Next to our house was a parking lot and then next—out our windows we could see all the businesses that were on Finkel. Finkel turns into Twelfth Street at the curve down by Linwood. There was grocery stores, banks, bars, cleaners. That was sort of our world view, always peeking out the window. Anyways, back to the question, what was the question, again, please?</p>
<p>WW: I was just asking if you ventured around the city and if—well, no I asked if you were still living in the same house, then. So you were?</p>
<p>CC: Right.</p>
<p>WW: How did you first hear what was going on in July?</p>
<p>CC: The way that I recall it is my brother Joe, who’s older than me, his friend Tyrone called him and said, ‘There’s a riot going on.’ I think Joe called my mom from his job and said Tyrone said there was a riot. It was a Sunday afternoon. It was hot out. My brother was home from college. We were hanging out on the porch, just watching the city go by. That’s my memory from finding out about it.</p>
<p>WW: Could you see any smoke or anything from your house?</p>
<p>CC: You mean when we first heard? I mean, we saw everything from our house. Buildings across the street from us burned. They all got broken into. Everything got vandalized and looted. It was like we could see the actual riot, we weren’t just in it. More than most people, we could see it all. People running up and down the street and the cars and the tanks and everything like that.</p>
<p>WW: You spoke about the houses across the street from you went up in fire?</p>
<p>CC: No, we lived at the budding of Finkel Avenue. Finkel is the business street so no houses went up in fire, but a couple of the businesses did. </p>
<p>WW: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>CC: But, the place where we did our grocery shopping, we saw the people break out the windows and come in with the carts and filling them with food and heading back down Finkel. We had an alley right next to our house so people were bringing goods and just leaving them in the alley so they could come back and do one trip and come back and get another. We left them by our bushes.</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember how your parents reacted to seeing all this? Or how your older siblings reacted?</p>
<p>CC: You know, I think what strikes me is there wasn’t a big reaction. I think that’s always been striking to me. You know, my dad was a World War II veteran so who knows what he saw. He also himself was in Detroit his whole life. He grew up in a primarily African American neighborhood himself. So maybe it changed the perspective. This was our neighborhood and our community and I don’t know. I don’t remember them being really reactive to it at all. I know that we stood outside on the upper porch and watched what was going on. I mean we were—had to stay inside, but I don’t remember them being that reactive. I know that, from my memory, at some point they got up early in the morning and they just drove around the city and looked at what was going on. Like they took a little car tour or something.</p>
<p>WW: How did you react to what was going on? Were you surprised by what was happening?</p>
<p>CC: No. I wouldn’t say I was surprised. How would I say? I know. It just—it didn’t—it never felt menacing to me and I don’t know why. That has always been interesting to me, too. But we were kind of wild kids. We wanted to get out into the mix. It was like, wait a minute, there’s stuff to be had out there, everybody else is out there. I don’t remember being afraid. More I think I had that sort of—I was kind of a spirited, bold kid so I was like, ‘Oh look what’s going on!’ As I remember. But, I also, you know, we had kind of a sort of chaotic house. A lot of drama in our own house. I always felt like the outside world matched our inside world or something.</p>
<p>WW: How do you refer to what happened in July ‘67?</p>
<p>CC: I am one of seven siblings and each and every one of us were in that house. We all saw it. We all experienced it differently. I’m saying that to sort of set the landscape as your perceptions get colored by other peoples’ narratives. But, my brother, my older brother, the one that was working at the Dairy Queen, and he’s the one that Tyrone called, and I was telling Tobi, downstairs, that during the riot, from his story, his boss called him up and said—here me, referring to it as a riot— but, his boss called him up and said, ‘Give them anything they want.’ So my brother started making banana splits and ice creams and just handing them to anybody that was out on the streets. They didn’t close right away. They just fed the masses. But, my brother always calls it Detroit’s alternative shopping day. I guess I always called it the riot. But, I mean, that’s what the media always called it, too. There was no other language for it. But, since then, from things I read, I think about it a little differently. But, it never felt racial to me. I will say that. I think probably because of what we went through. We were the only white family on our block by that time. Nobody came and circled our house and said, hey, hey, hey. My friend, Ann, at the cleaners, she was like this sweet woman that owned the cleaners, an African American woman. She was my friend and I would go over there when I needed a little money and run errands. She would give me a little quarter and send me up to the post office, or give me some little job to do so I could make a little money. But, she owned a business and her business was at risk. During the rebellion, the riot, or whatever, she stood in front of her business with a rifle. There’s a woman that was just like my heart of hearts and she’s standing out on Finkel with a rifle, but I just felt like if there was any problem, Ann would take care of it for me.</p>
<p>WW: How did you feel when the National Guard, and later the Army came in?</p>
<p>CC: How did I feel?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah.</p>
<p>CC: Well we didn’t see them directly. What we saw, I mean, I didn’t see them going up and down Finkel at all. But my cousin was in the National Guard and so at some point I remember that the tank pulled up in the alley next to our house. I don’t know if it was Eddy getting out and saying hi or if it was like he was just checking in on us. But a tank pulled up right next to the house. So anyways.</p>
<p>WW: After the riot ended, did you feel comfortable in the city still? Did the city change to you at all?</p>
<p>CC: You know, I’ve been doing a lot of writing about this and I’ve thought about it deeply through the years. It was a very pivotal year in my life because I went to a small, Catholic, parochial school. It was a community school. We went to school with—it was just dynamic. The people there were committed to social justice, activist, Catholicism. Everybody played basketball. The play that they did at that school was West Side Story. So we’re seeing on stage plays that talk about diversity. The basketball team won all-city that year. Judge Gershwin Drain was a graduate of St. Gregory’s. That was our community. It was like pulled from all over. That was our grade school. It wasn’t just that we lived in a neighborhood, but we were in this community called St. Gregory’s. Many of the people that lived in that neighborhood sent their kids to that school or stayed in that community because they wanted to be in that kind of environment. It was very diverse and they worked actively towards it. Now, I was at the age of 14 during the riots, right, and I had just completed eighth grade. Somehow, through some miracle—because we weren’t great academic students by any means, but I was one of the better students in my family—somehow, some way, I got accepted to Immaculata High School. </p>
<p>Immaculata High School was an all-girl, Catholic, elite school. Pretty much down at Six Mile and Livernois was a very affluent neighborhood. A lot of the judges and lawyers of Detroit, and political elites and their children lived in that community. The girls went to Immaculata. [Judge William] Cahalan, who was in the video, his daughter was there. I got accepted to Immaculata. Now, Immaculata’s at Six Mile and Livernois, you know, up by Greenfield. So, why I’m telling you this whole long story is I’m in the eighth grade, I finish eighth grade. I don’t get to go back to my community school, right. I’m accepted to Immaculata. The community school was maybe going to close. I get into this school where I don’t even fit. I don’t even know how people are supposed to act. I’m a girl from Finkel and Dexter. We’re city kids, you know. You grab a little candy, you do a little bit of shoveling snow for the old ladies to make some money. You scam for some coin downtown so you can go to Quickie Donuts because you got nothing. We were these like just ruffling city kids. Now I’m going to school with all these very beautiful, affluent people. It was diverser. </p>
<p>The reason I’m being so long winded with this is because I walked from Finkel and Dexter to the school that I went to. And so I walked the streets, or took the bus, the streets, to Immaculata afterwards. It was just like I was on this walking tour. I never felt afraid. I never felt intimidated. But, it was just something about, you know, there’s this whole ruin porn that goes on now. It was like a gawker at a roadside accident. It didn’t scare me, but I was influenced by it. I looked at it a lot. Just the same way when somebody behind us got murdered when we were kids. I used to go over there and just bring my little brothers and sisters and say, ‘Look, there’s blood on the sidewalk!’ But, one of the things that I think about a lot, so we’re in the riots, we see the riots. It’s worse on TV than it is right in front of us for some reason, which makes no sense to me. Because see, we’re living in a community. We have a family. We have neighbors. We love our neighbors. They love us. We have a church. I have Ann at the cleaners. So even though everything was going on right in front of us, I never felt threatened. But, the TV was scary. When we started seeing the images, it seemed like there was two worlds going on.</p>
<p>But back to this Immaculata piece, at the same time that the riot’s going on, for the first time ever, it’s more horrifying to me that I saw our president’s motorcade on TV, and him getting killed. And then I saw his assassin getting killed on TV. I’m seeing the images of the Vietnam War on TV. TV was powerful in that day. We didn’t have much TV access so lots of times we didn’t have a TV. We’d go to somebody else’s house so it was more riveting. All these people are getting killed. All these things are happening in the media that we never really saw that until that period of history. So that piece of it makes it really, really strange.</p>
<p>So now, was it scary? No, it wasn’t scary. Then I go to this very interesting school. An interesting piece of my life is that I always had a weight issue. While I’m going to this all girl school, I’m also getting—my family starts having me go down to—I have to go down to a diet doctor. So once a week, I was taking the Six Mile bus, going down, it curved down, it’d go down Twelfth Street, go down Linwood, blah, blah, blah. So I took a bus tour every week through Highland Park and down through Twelfth so I could get down to the doctor’s. It’s the visual of seeing all that that was so different. That was kind of compelling.</p>
<p>The other reason I mention the school is I didn’t know there were people that were different than we were. When we lived at Finkel and Dexter, we were all just poor people. We were all just barely scraping by working class people, whose daddies carried lunch boxes, who frequently got the food baskets from church, who had one pair of shoes to get through the school year, and maybe not enough toothbrushes. Then I go to this school so my own experience of the dichotomy of cultures happened simultaneously. Although that was a very lovely school, I barely could make it academically. It wasn’t so diverse, as embracing. But, it was when I was there—it was an all that kind of school—we did our concerts at Ford Auditorium and I’m a singer. What I remember almost more than the riot was—not more than the riot, but it was just this moment where I did feel traumatized was when they killed Dr. Martin Luther King. I was on a bus heading downtown. The riot was an anomaly, except now we’re seeing it on TV. We’re seeing Watts. We’re seeing it from all over the world. Now, Dr. King got killed. You could just, this pulse in the city that day, I don’t even know how to describe it. We had just had a riot and now the peacemaker, who had been advocating for peace and justice, got slaughtered in a city that’s already been traumatized through race and oppression. And that day was disturbing.</p>
<p>WW: Did your parents ever think about moving out afterwards?</p>
<p>CC: We did move out, but that’s what was so weird. They already owned the house. They owned this house. But, they didn’t move until after the riot, it’s like finally—or the rebellion or whatever—it was like my dad finally convinced my mom we could leave.</p>
<p>WW: Where’d they move to?</p>
<p>CC: Unbelievable. Grosse Isle. So you know Grosse Isle. Grosse Isle during the riot, the rumor is that they put the bridges up so no one could get across. But, the house, it was like the hut house. It was a falling down old farm house. In the summer of ’67 was the riot. I went to Immaculata for a year. In ’68 they sold the house on Fairfield and then moved to Grosse Isle. At some level, that was more traumatic. For me, I was a very independent, autonomous child. But, I was kind of wild. I was kind of like taken to the streets and so was my brother. We were kind of free souls. Maybe we were a little at risk, if that makes sense. Just, you know, at risk somehow of not following society’s rules. </p>
<p>But, we moved to Grosse Ile, and all of sudden I’m a 15 year old whose been taking buses all over, going anywhere she wanted, and I’m prisoner like I’m on Alcatraz already. It’s an island. I can’t get anywhere. I can’t even—I’ve told you already I love cookies and sweets—I couldn’t even get a candy bar without walking two miles. I couldn’t go anywhere unless I begged my mother to take me. Then, I went to an all white school. I’d never been anywhere where it was all white. That was like, does this make sense? That was somehow more unsettling. I didn’t know what the cultural norms were in an all white school. I knew what the cultural norms were in my neighborhood. That’s kind of what I’m saying. Like at Immaculata, I’m living at Finkel and Dexter, I’m going to this local Catholic school, I knew what the cultural norms were. Now all of a sudden I’m an adolescent. You’ve got to find your culture, your clan. I’m first put in an all girls school where I don’t know the cultural norms and once I figured them out, I don’t belong anyways. I don’t have the money to belong or even the prior knowledge to know how to conduct myself in it. There’s some sad stories that went on there. Then we moved from there. I now live on an island. We’re bussed off the island to go to Gabriel Richard. Now I’m at this all white Catholic school that kids are coming from—that was more traumatic for me. I didn’t know what the cultural norms were there either. I just wanted to come back to Detroit and that’s what I did as soon as I could. Plus, even academically, if this makes any sense, at St. Gregory’s, I was a decent student. At Immaculata, I failed everything. At Gabriel Richard, I was barely passing. It was like too much social-emotional pressure to know everything else. I mean, I passed. There was a lot of acting out on my part, at that point. A lot of acting out.</p>
<p>WW: Do you continue to live in the suburbs or live in Detroit?</p>
<p>CC: I think that’s a good question. I came back to Detroit. I lived in Detroit. I went to Wayne State. Before there were ever urban hipsters, I lived at my grandmother’s house. She let her grandchildren all live with her. There’s like 15 of us that lived with her down at the Boulevard and walked or took the bus to Wayne. That’s how I got through it. Then I’d go down to Grosse Isle and do cleaning on the weekends so I could pay my tuition and then I’d come back to Detroit and live at Grandma’s.</p>
<p>So moving forward to your question, and where do I live, I live in a ringed suburb, but it was an active choice. I think about it a lot because I always wanted to be in a community of diversity. There wasn’t any communities of diversity in Detroit. Plus, I’m an educator and there were no schools I could send my children to when they were born, in Detroit. People who stayed in Detroit of affluence knew the schools weren’t able to serve the kids because of many deep reasons. So I raised my family in Dearborn. But, I chose Dearborn because it is diverse because of the Eastern European population, its proximity to Detroit, its more working class background, and so, there you go.</p>
<p>WW: How do you feel about the state of the city today? Are you optimistic for it moving forward?</p>
<p>CC: Am I optimistic? That’s a good way that they word that question. Am I optimistic about it moving forward? I have a very interesting view of the city. I worked for the universities and I’ve worked for Teach for America so I’ve been in the schools in some of the most intriguing neighborhoods. I’m not talking I’m hanging out on Woodward Avenue down at Campus Martius. I’m talking I’m going into these EEA [EAA: Education Achievement Authority] schools watching these children’s educations get —not get. One day I drove out of a school through security and they opened the gate and the guy sitting on his porch picked up a rifle and shook it at me.</p>
<p>Am I optimistic? Am I optimistic? When we include all of Detroit, I’ll be optimistic. When we’re just keeping it sort of at the epicenter? No, I’m not optimistic. When I see that Wayne State—when I see people can’t afford to live in their neighborhood anymore because of the gentrification of midtown, no, I’m not optimistic. When I go into restaurants that are, “Oh, they’re all that” or when my friends who live in the suburbs are like, “Oh, let’s go to Detroit” I’m like, Detroit’s been there. I’ve been going for the last 40 years. All of a sudden because there’s a Whole Foods, you’re going into Detroit? I’ll be optimistic with projects like this where we’re asking deep and reflective questions. I am optimistic because of my children. I can see where—we didn’t just live in the suburbs. We lived in Detroit. They went to Belle Isle before it was made a state park. They went to the DIA. They went to the Historical Museum. They went to the riverfront. We were city people. This was our city. We went on our Thanksgivings down to Focus: HOPE. We went and fed people at the Mother Waddles soup kitchen. We went to urban churches. I go to a beautiful church now. If you want to be optimistic about Detroit, go to the nativity and see the kind of community they have there on the east side. Those things make me optimistic. I’m optimistic that my daughter, who’s lived all over the world, she’s lived in Germany and Amsterdam, she’s trilingual, I’m optimistic that she bought a house, not in midtown, but she bought a house right at the corner of—between Hamtramck and Detroit. She’s created a performance space that isn’t just like, “Oh, the artists are moving in and it’s an enclave” but she created a space called Joe’s Garage where she opens the door to Carpenter Street. She’s got all her music system and people come in and do music with her. I’m optimistic because of her. Because she understands that when any voice is oppressed, we’re all oppressed. See, I get very philosophical about this. So yeah, it’s all pretty. But, if I think the restaurant is really lovely, I ought to vet it. I ought to vet it with my eyes and if they’re not making equitable hiring choices, then I’m not being the right person to be in Detroit. So we all ought to be vetting the city and asking everybody to raise the bar. See, there I go, I can get very outspoken about it. </p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me. I greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>CC: There you go.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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29min
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Collette Cullen
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IHXlZy5QIGM" 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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Collette Cullen, August 20th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Cullen discusses how she felt with cultural norms in her all girls, Catholic school, and also when her family moved to Grosse Isle. She could see a lot of the unrest from outside her window because her house was close to commercial properties.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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01/13/2017
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
Catholic Education
Gentrification
Linwood Street
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Teenagers
Twelfth Street
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/600efccdb07b09ead59448293cb1b1f9.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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"I was 15 years of age. I guess you would say that it is the 40th Anniversary of the 1967 Detroit Riots, but it is an anniversary I don't care to celebrate! I don't know about you, but the summer of 1967 was a traumatic experience for me.
At the time of the riots, I was living on the eastside of Detroit. Though the riots started on 12th St., it left a profound effect on me for the next three summers. I hated to see summer come due to being afraid that a riot would happen again.
What I was were angry people, death, destruction and greed! Why would you loot and burn to destruction your own neighborhood/ It did not make sense to me then and it doesn't make sense to me now and I'm in my fifties.
I stayed close to home, so the curfew implemented for the evenings did not affect me. People like my mother, who worked in the afternoon and evening, were supposed to be given some type of pass to show why they were out after the curfew.
I remember my mother was not home at her regular time from work. I waited at the back door worrying that she was in jail due to not having that pass. It was stated, if you did not have an excuse why you were out after the curfew, you were hauled off to jail.
When my mother came home, I broke down and cried. Matter of fact, due this time, I could not eat, sleep and my nerves were shot!
I remember my father woke us up at 2 am telling us that the music store around the corner and the pawn shop were on fire. People had looted those establishments earlier in the day. I'd asked myself, why did my father wake us up? I was finally sleeping. Well, I was messed up after that.
My parents and our neighbors hosed down their garages with water because it was a threat people were going to burn down our street. It was one the nicest streets in the neighborhood. Again, I was messed up.
What also disappointed me is when the firemen were attempting to put out the fire at our corner drugstore and I saw a couple of the deacons from our neighborhood church taking pictures of the firemen's efforts with cameras that had price tags HANGING from them.
I've read reports that police brutality, economic and social factors contributed to the riots.
I will agree that there were problems with the Detroit Police Department, but to loot and burn down your own neighborhood to get a new camera, clothing and furniture does not make any SENSE! Also, did it make sense that LIVES were lost during this time?
Though I don't know what a person feels from their experiences in a war-torn country, I know I never, never want to see anything like the summer of 1967 again!
Let us PRAY that some day all Nations can come together in Peace!
Chrystal J. Edwards
Note: This event was 49 years ago and the article was written over 9 years ago and it does not seem to get any better.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Crystal Edwards
Submission Date
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07/11/2016
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Crystal Edwards
Description
An account of the resource
Crystal Edwards remembers scenes from her neighborhood in July 1967.<br /><br /><strong>NOTE: Edwards' account was previously published in July 25, 2007 by the Michigan Chronicle - Volume 70, Number 45, called "Eyewitness Account of the 1967 Riot"<br /></strong><br /><strong>and </strong><br />
<p><strong>Then published again, called, "At The Time of The 1967 Detroit Riots", pages 67-68, Passager, Martin Luther King Issue, <a href="mailto:passagerbooks@ubalt.edu">passagerbooks@ubalt.edu</a>, March, 2008.</strong></p>
<br /><br /><br />
Publisher
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Michigan Chronicle
Passenger Books
Date
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08/19/2016
Rights
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Michigan Chronicle
Passenger Books
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 Fire Department
Detroit Police Department
Looting
Teenagers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/42c08549043b1779ed03a3e670f2b056.JPG
8e4fc4968ee64461013eda77dec9b4dc
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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Cynthia Garner
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Cynthia Garner was born October 7, 1941 in Danville, Virginia, and grew up in Detroit, Michigan where she lived and worked during the summer of 1967. Garner worked for the City of Detroit Treasury Department and Recreation Department. Cynthia is African American and continues to live in Detroit.
Interviewer's Name
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Katie Kennedy and Billy Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit Historical Museum, Detroit, MI
Date
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10/10/2015
Interview Length
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00:18:22
Transcriptionist
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Hannah Sabal
Transcription Date
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04/15/2016
Transcription
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<p>KK: My name is Katie Kennedy and I am here at the Detroit Historical Society, on October 10, and I am interviewing Cynthia Garner about the 1967. Just to start off, where were you born?</p>
<p>CG: I was born in Danville, Virginia.</p>
<p>KK: And just some background about the early part of your life?</p>
<p>CG: I was born in Danville, Virginia, October 7, 1941, and I lived in Virginia. My father came here and worked for what is known as DDOT [Detroit Department of Transportation] now. It was Detroit Streets and Railways. In 1942, I came to Detroit, and he brought all our family here. I went to all Detroit Public Schools, [Mara ?], McMichael, Northwestern, and Cass Tech. And then I also went to Detroit Institute of Technology, it was like what they would call a junior college, and then I transferred to Wayne State University.</p>
<p>KK: Did you have siblings here with you?</p>
<p>CG: Yes, I had one brother, Sterling, and one sister, Margaret. My maiden name is Phelps.</p>
<p>KK: And where did you live in July 1967?</p>
<p>CG: I lived on Scovel near Roosevelt; that’s near Northwestern High School.</p>
<p>KK: And what were you doing?</p>
<p>CG: My sister was working for the Detroit Urban League and we were trying to get in touch with her. So initially, when the riots started by her employer, the Detroit Urban League, she was right near it. So that was what we were initially doing, when it jumped off. The blind pig got raided.</p>
<p>KK: And what do you remember about Detroit in the mid-1960s?</p>
<p>CG: The 1960s prior to – ?</p>
<p>KK: Mhmm</p>
<p>CG: I had graduated from Wayne State University in ’64, and had become employed as a civil servant with the Treasurer’s department downtown in the City County Building. I was single; I used to take a bus to work. I could take one bus and it would get me there. [Laughter] Chas N. Williams [Charles N. Williams] was the City Treasurer that we worked for. Then I went back to college, in Rochester, a college up there.</p>
<p>KK: So were you at Northwestern High School in 1966?</p>
<p>CG: No, I was at Cass.</p>
<p>KK: And did you know what was going on in Northwestern High School in 1966?</p>
<p>CG: What was going on at Northwestern High School?</p>
<p>William Winkel: It was the school with the school walkout, with the student walkout.</p>
<p>CG: Do you mean Northern High School? They had a walkout at Northern. A guy just gave a speech on that, it was at Northern High School, not at Northwestern that I know of.</p>
<p>WW: Oh, sorry about that.</p>
<p>KK: Okay.</p>
<p>WW: And then in ’67, how did you first find out was going on in Twelfth Street?</p>
<p>CG: I guess the radio, pretty much.</p>
<p>KK: Can you describe your neighborhood and community?</p>
<p>CG: It was a close-knit neighborhood, the houses were not connected, we lived in an individual home my dad had purchased with pretty friendly neighbors. Right nearby was Northwestern High School. We could go out the back door, cut through the alley and be at Northwestern in about 3 or 4 minutes. That’s where [Mara ?] Elementary, McMichael, was also located. What was the other part of your question?</p>
<p>KK: How was your community like, the neighborhood? Just describing it.</p>
<p>CG: Okay. It was what I thought was a beautiful neighborhood. Very friendly neighbors.</p>
<p>WW: Did your neighborhood change after 1967?</p>
<p>CG: The freeway came later on. In ’68 we had to move because the freeway was coming through, so they purchased my dad’s home and all the neighbors’ homes, and we all had to move with the Jeffries freeway coming through.</p>
<p>KK: How did that affect you and your family?</p>
<p>CG: My siblings and me, it affected us okay. My sister had already moved out, I believe. My mom, she didn’t like the move, because she said, “We’re moving into a dollhouse!” It was an upgraded one, in terms of the structure, but our home was, the structure was all our rooms were huge. And she would say, “Goodbye, home, I’m going to a dollhouse!” [Laughter] She went through every room and said goodbye to each room before we departed. But we were okay with it, because we knew it had to be done. And I don’t think they gave my dad enough money for that, because he had to go in debt again when we purchased a home out in Northwest Detroit.</p>
<p>WW: Going back to what you said earlier, you were working as a Civil Servant at the Treasury, you said?</p>
<p>CG: Yes.</p>
<p>WW: Were you working extensively during what was going on in 1967 or in July, or were you stuck at home because the city wasn’t—</p>
<p>CG: Oh! I was working with the city, but I had transferred to the Recreation Department, I was working for the City of Detroit, but I was working in different recreation centers. I was working at a center called Delray Recreation Center. It was a lot of Latinos, African Americans, Caucasians. I worked in recreation there, and 30 years later, I was reassigned there, and the little children had grown up and they remembered me. They put on their festive colors, the Latinos did, and they came over, “Do you remember me?” and now they’re grown more than me! And they remembered me.</p>
<p>WW: Do you have any definitive memories from what happened during that week in July?</p>
<p>CG: Yes, my job had gotten temporarily suspended, and in other words I wasn’t working. The tanks were located, the people who came to put the insurrection down, they were located on Northwestern Field with the tanks and all of their armor and everything. And they would patrol, particularly those who were disobeying the law, the curfew, a lot of people got arrested just for that, and for looting and different things like that. But by the National Guard being so close by, I don’t think it deterred people from looting, although they were there.</p>
<p>WW: Was there a lot of looting in your neighborhood?</p>
<p>CG: Oh, yes. Right on the corner, West Grand Boulevard and Grand River, used to be a little shopping area. It was Cunningham Drug Store, Charles Furniture, and then a lot of other small little boutiques. And what happened, Charles Furniture, they were known for—just like now they have repossessed cars?—they would repossess your furniture if you got more than three payments behind. So what happened on the riot, people remembered this, and were not much in love with Charles, and they made sure they looted that Charles furniture first, and they never really recovered. They did move out to Thirteen Mile and Woodward, they had a store there for years, but it eventually closed. They not only looted Charles Furniture, but Cunningham, all those stores up there. There was one young man that came down our street and he had been up there in one of the shoe stores up there, and he had boxes and boxes of things he had looted. And he’s running down our street, and he sees a cab, and he tries to tell the cab driver, “Can you take me?” and before he could get it out his mouth, the cab driver said, “Hell no!” And so, as he was trying to run, all the shoe boxes tumbled, and he looked at them, and they’re all for the left shoe, the left foot. [Laughter] And he was thinking to himself, “Well, I put myself in harm’s way where I could’ve gotten arrested just for all these shoes that aren’t worth anything.” And there were a lot of people running this way, crisscrossing through my streets, looting because West Grand Boulevard and Grand River wasn’t that far, looting up there. And all of the grocery stores, I can’t remember all the grocery stores at the time —oh, A&P was on Grand River and McGraw. They were looted, so how were we supposed to eat? All the grocery stores were looted, all the furniture stores, especially Charles Furniture store, so it was a puzzle. What became my brother-in-law, he was from Inkster and out that area, and he knew how to go through the back roads and get us food and come back, just outside of Detroit and come back before the curfew. And my mom always kept extra food in the pantry in the basement, so we did have a little supply of food on hand.</p>
<p>WW: How did your parents react to what was going on?</p>
<p>CG: My dad had been through the 1943 riot, and my mom was more concerned about my sister than anything, in terms of her safety, because she was right in the midst of it, and the telephone systems went down. I don’t know if you know that or not. But for us it did. And she wasn’t able to get in touch with her, her mom was still living in Virginia, and she couldn’t get through to Detroit. She looked on the TV and saw nothing but fires, so she didn’t know if we were safe. So basically, my mom was thinking of her daughter, my sister, whether or not she was safe. Other than that, we tried to abide by the curfew, and not loot or whatever it was at the time, but I did see plenty of looters.</p>
<p>KK: Going back to the ’43 riot, what does your father remember?</p>
<p>CG: My father was very fair-complexioned, and he worked as I told you at the DSR, and at that time he was working for the railroad. Not the railroad, not the buses, but they were on a rail line. He could put on his hat and you would think he was white. And he would tell us that when the African Americans got on, he would take his hat off so they could see his hair was like theirs and that he was not white. When the white ones got on, he’d put his hat back on, and he continued to work, but a lot of people were not able to continue to work because that to me, from how he described it to me, was a real riot against race. Whereas to me, the ’67 one was more like looting and I know there were race issues into it, later on I found out, but the ’43 riot started presumably, which we found out later wasn’t true, a black baby got thrown over the Belle Isle Bridge by a white man. Is that what you heard?</p>
<p>KK: Yeah.</p>
<p>CG: But they found out that’s not even true, but that’s what sparked it, according to my dad.</p>
<p>KK: And going off that, a lot of people refer to this event as a riot, rebellion, uprising, which one do you prefer and why?</p>
<p>CG: I would say an uprising. Like I’m comparing it, the ’43 riot to what happened in ’67. To me, it was an uprising; it more people looting than actually, from my perspective, actually going after white people, but I know that was going on later. So that would be one of the differences between ’43. People were actually getting, just for being a certain color, they were actually being targeted in ’43. Whereas people were all, “Oh, we’ll go get Charles Furniture, that’s some nice furniture, since they came and repossessed all our furniture when we couldn’t pay.” To me, that’s my perspective. Did I answer that question?</p>
<p>KK: You did. Going back to the night in ’67, or one of the nights, what in particular do you remember?</p>
<p>CG: I remember at night — our homes had alleys back then. All the lights in the alley got shot out. And then you could hear somebody racing down the alley, and the next morning it was all quiet and calm again. I did not know what happened to the person who was fleeing the police. I guess they were out after the curfew — not the police, the National Guard. And then, the looters, they ran out of jail space, and when they got caught, because they ran out of jail space, they were taken to Belle Isle Zoo and put in the elephant cage. Which, they had gotten rid of the elephants by then, so it was empty. Later, what became my brother’s sister-in-law, she was very fair-complexioned, and they thought she was white, and they weren’t going to put her in the zoo, in the elephant cage, but she let them know, “I’m black!” She told them. You would look at her and you would not know, the hair and everything. So they put her out there in the elephant cage as well. It was crowded out there, they said.</p>
<p>KK: How did this impact your neighborhood?</p>
<p>CG: Well, we were still very close-knit, but as I said, the freeway came through the next year, we had to move, everybody moved in different ways, and we still try to keep up with each other. In ’68 we all had to move.</p>
<p>KK: What about your family, did it have any long-term effects?</p>
<p>CG: No. They took it in stride.</p>
<p>KK: And what message would you like to leave for future generations about your memories of Detroit before and during?</p>
<p>CG: Like the New Detroit, Focus: HOPE, organizations like that. Fortunately, Focus: HOPE is still around, join and get in touch with the ones that are trying to be peaceful and seek solutions through talk and stay up with the neighborhoods. If you don’t have a Block Club in your area, start a Block club. Get to know your neighbors, get to know the area, the community, and volunteer if necessary. Do what it takes so if anything comes up—these block clubs are very important, nowadays, and even the New Detroit was at Henry Ford and other coalitions. Focus: HOPE is still around today, because Father Cunningham knew what to do with the money, was accountable for it, and then even the lady under him, after he died, she became in charge, and they still doing beautiful things. It all started, I believe, right after the riot.</p>
<p>KK: Great. Is there any other particular moments or memories you’d like to share?</p>
<p>CG: One. My husband—he later became my husband—was on leave from the military, and was about to be shipped to Vietnam. And he was very disappointed, he could hear the guns in the alley, and it sounded like combat to him. And he was about to be shipped out to Vietnam, but we weren’t able to enjoy anything because everything was closed, it was inaccessible, of course, and everything was being looted. People on Dexter would sit out in front of their buildings, the private buildings, retail, and have their shotguns there. They didn’t wait for the police. My boyfriend later became my husband, and we had two children, 3 years later—not the children, but 3 years later we got married. [laughter] That’s it.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you very much.</p>
<p>CG: You’re welcome.</p> **
Original Format
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WAV
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Katie Kennedy and Billy Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Cynthia Garner
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit Historical Museum, Detroit, MI
Video
A link to the video
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P2IWGwWmXYA" 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
Cynthia Garner, October 10th, 2015
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Cynthia discusses her neighborhood relationships growing up, where she and her family were during the unrest and her particular memories of it. She also compares the events of 1967 to the 1943 riots, as well as discusses how the unrest changed her neighborhood and her family, and shares advice for future generations with regards to racial tensions.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
05/23/2016
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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WAV
Language
A language of the resource
en-US
1943 Detroit Race Riots
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Cass Technical High School
Charles Furniture
Curfew
Detroit Community Members
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Parks and Recreation Department