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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.
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NqWN6J_-g1s" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
Rosilyn Stearns Brown
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Rosilyn Stearns Brown was born and raised in Detroit, moving to the city’s west side in 1953. She experienced the events of July 1967 firsthand.
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.
08/07/2017
Interview Length
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00:30:40
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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01/05/2018
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
WW: Hello. Today is August 8, 2017. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I'm in Detroit, Michigan. I'm sitting down with—</p>
<p>
RB: Rosilyn Stearns Brown.
</p>
<p>
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
</p>
<p>
RB: Thank you for asking.
</p>
<p>
WW: Would you please start by telling me where and when were you born?
</p>
<p>
RB: Okay, I was born September 7, 1946, in Detroit.
</p>
<p>
WW: Did you grow up in the city?
</p>
<p>
RB: Yes.
</p>
<p>
WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?
</p>
<p>
RB: Well, first we lived on the east side near the market, and then we moved to the west side of Detroit, in the Joy Road, West Grand Boulevard area. On the east side, we were across from the Eastern Market.
</p>
<p>
WW: What year did you move to the west side?
</p>
<p>
RB: 1953.
</p>
<p>
WW: What prompted the move to the west side?
</p>
<p>
RB: My mother wanted a better neighborhood, because at that time, on the east side, where we were—particularly, by the Eastern Market—it was kind of rough. There was a lot of fighting was going on and so she wanted to be in a safer neighborhood, so we moved to the west side.
</p>
<p>
WW: Can you tell me about that west side neighborhood? What was it like?
</p>
<p>
RB: It was nice, because we had a lot of businesses. Black-owned businesses in the neighborhood. You didn't have to leave the neighborhood to do too much, because everything that you needed was right there in the neighborhood. We had bowling alleys, we had grocery stores. We had cleaning, we had a black pharmacy that was right on the corner, on Blaine and Linwood, and then - well, on Gladstone and Linwood - and then right on the corner of Carter, where we lived - we lived on Carter between Linwood and Lawton - and right on the corner there was a black doctor. So, a lot of things were in the neighborhood that we could take advantage of. So, it was really nice then.
</p>
<p>
WW: So, the area was a predominantly black neighborhood then?
</p>
<p>
RB: At first it wasn't. When we first moved there in 1953, it was like half and half. And then, of course, the white people started moving out, and more black people moved in.
</p>
<p>
WW: When you first moved there, did you feel comfortable in the neighborhood?
</p>
<p>
RB: Yeah. Because everybody got along. My block, in particular, was like a family block. A lot of the people - everybody knew everybody, and everybody got along with everybody, and we had fruit trees in almost everybody's yard, and it was really nice. It was a good experience growing up there.
</p>
<p>
WW: As you're growing up, through the 1950s, did you tend to stay in your own neighborhood or did you venture around the city?
</p>
<p>
RB: No. Basically, because you didn't have cars, so people then - a lot of people didn't have cars, so you had to take the bus everywhere you wanted to go. And so we basically just stayed in the neighborhood unless you had some special activity going on where you needed to get on the bus and go, or if you need to get on the bus to go to work. Because then a lot of the traveling was done by bus.
</p>
<p>
WW: Are there any memories you'd like to share from growing up in that neighborhood?
</p>
<p>
RB: Oh yeah. We had a lot of fun, because my dad - he's in the Negro League, and he's in the Baseball Hall of Fame, because he played in the Negro League. And so we played baseball - because my dad didn't have any sons, and so he had two daughters - me and my sister - so we had to learn how to play baseball. And we did, and we played with the kids in the neighborhood. And we did a lot of stuff - not like now, with the cell phones and stuff, that's ruined the kids, always saying they're bored. But we were never bored. You know, we had a lot to do with the baseball - we were playing that almost as much as we could. And then we played hopscotch, and a lot of other games, like board games, like Monopoly and Scrabble and card games and stuff. There was a lot of activity going on. And we participated in all of that. And so it was a lot of fun.
</p>
<p>
My mother bought us a bike one time, and she was sorry she did [laughter] because we traveled anywhere on those bikes and if the other kids didn't have bikes, we just doubled up and went where we wanted to. One time, I remember, we got our bikes and everybody said "Let's go to Belle Isle!" And we were like - we didn't know where Belle Isle was, so we asked our parents and they told us, so here we go. Twelve kids - there was about thirty of us - and we had to double up on the bikes. We rode all the way from Carter and Linwood to Belle Isle [laughter] and back. We never did that again. But our parents were happy because when we came home we all fell out. The kids were real quiet that day. They didn't have to worry about us. And like I said, our neighborhood was nice. It was really nice. Everybody got along together. There weren't a lot of problems. You hear about all the killings and stuff, but none of that was going on. And we had apartment buildings. Everybody had paper routes - the kids, that's what you did then. You had a paper route. Of course, we didn't like delivering the papers to the apartment buildings, but - because you know, you had to go to every apartment - and we tried not to do that, but. Yeah, I have a lot of fond memories about that, because we did a lot of things and we were involved in a lot of things, and it was nice.
</p>
<p>
And our neighbors - they - when we first got there - they were mostly - it was half and half, caucasian and blacks, and we all got along. And we had fruit trees - we had one guy that had a cherry - he had cherry trees in his backyard - and I mean, his whole backyard was full of cherry trees. And you had to - when you went in his backyard you had to kind of lean down, because you were taller than the trees. And we would go in his yard and eat his cherries and he would get mad, and he'd come out and threaten us so we'd take off running. [laughter] But we went back, you know, to get the cherries. And we had a mulberry tree in our yard, and two peach trees. That whole block had all kinds of fruit trees, and I don't know what happened to them. But it's not like that now. But with our block, and the entire neighborhood, it was like where they say, "it takes a village to raise a child," that's what was happening then. Because if you did anything, you weren't just worried about your parents, you were worried about the neighbors, because they had permission from the parents to, you know, chastise you if it was necessary.
</p>
<p>
And then you were in double trouble, because not only were you going to get it from your parents, but you were going to get it from the neighbors too. So - and that worked with the caucasians, because they did the same thing. All of us had the same attitudes as far as behavior and keeping the kids doing what they were supposed to do, and keeping them in line. And since my mother was a teacher, you know, we got that too, so - that was - that was good.
</p>
<p>
WW: Going into the early sixties, were you aware of the Civil Rights movement, what was going on across the country?
</p>
<p>
RB: Oh yeah. I was a teenager then, when that started. We marched with Martin Luther King, when he marched down Woodward and had the black and white gloves on, and that was a wonderful experience because you had all those people together - was like three or four hundred people - marching down the street. We didn't have any problems. You know, everybody was getting along. Everybody was there for the same purpose, and it wasn't just blacks, it was all types of ethnic groups that came and joined us in that march. And I was a teenager then - I think I was sixteen - yeah. And we just had - it was amazing. I love things like that. And it was peaceful. We didn't have to worry about anybody shooting and fighting and all of that. None of that happened. It was a very peaceful thing. And I wish more people could have been involved in that, because that changed the whole perspective on life - to see people come together like that in a large group. And then you know, everybody got along.
</p>
<p>
WW: What do you mean by, it was three or four hundred people?
</p>
<p>
RB: Oh, I'm sorry, it's not. It was more than that. It was over a hundred thousand people marching together. I'm sorry. That was my mistake.
</p>
<p>
WW: No problem. I was thrown off by that.
</p>
<p>
RB: Yeah. I'm seventy. That was a long time ago. [laughter]
</p>
<p>
WW: So now, going into the later part of the 1960s, what did you do after you graduated high school?
</p>
<p>
RB: I went to college. And I got married, and I was working, because my marriage wasn't working out, so I had to pursue another career. I first started working at the Post Office, and then I went to - it was Michigan Bell then - and then they changed to Ameritech and I ended up retiring from Ameritech after 27 years working with them. But - yeah, but we were still part of the Civil Rights movement. There was a lot of civil unrest, and then what happened in '67- I was actually in that.
</p>
<p>
WW: Before we get to that, real quick - just a couple quick questions before that. Did you anticipate any violence that summer? Did you see that something could happen?
</p>
<p>
RB: No. We were caught totally by surprise.
</p>
<p>
WW: And then, where were you living then?
</p>
<p>
RB: On the west side. I was on Carter between Linwood and Lawton.
</p>
<p>
WW: Oh. Still at your parents' house then?
</p>
<p>
RB: Mm hm.
</p>
<p>
WW: Okay. Just to check. How did you first hear about what was going on, on Twelfth Street?
</p>
<p>
RB: Some of my neighbors came running down the street, and they said "Oh!" they said, "you guys better get out of the neighborhood because they're tearing up the neighborhood." And I'm like, what? And they said "yeah." Because then, I think - I was 21 years old then. And they said, you know, they were passing the word around, they were telling everybody because that particular day, we had all moved our - we had to park our cars on Linwood because they were cleaning the streets, and when they cleaned the streets, you know, they would put signs up to tell you don't park there, because they were coming by and cleaning the streets. Well, all of our neighbors' cars were parked on Linwood or on other streets, so that we could let them come and clean the streets. And then, before that, the gas station that was right on the corner of Pingree and Linwood, they had just come in and filled the tanks for the gas station. And that was one of the businesses that was there, and that was a big business then, because that was one of the closest gas stations in the neighborhood and they got a lot of business.
</p>
<p>
We were caught totally by surprise with that, and people were running around. They were excited, and then had a lot of panic in their eyes, because they didn't know what happened - because this started on Twelfth Street. And we were like three blocks from Twelfth Street, and then it was coming towards our - it was headed in our direction, because it went from Twelfth Street all the way to Grand River, and so we were right in the middle of all of that.
</p>
<p>
WW: What was your next step? How did you -
</p>
<p>
RB: Well, I went out to see what was going on. A lot of other people didn't - they stayed in the house because some of the people were afraid to go out, because they thought something was going to happen. And they really didn't know what was happening, because nothing like this had ever happened in Detroit before. Because it was a very peaceful neighborhood, you know, we never had anything like this happen. And so I went up on the corner to see exactly what was going on and I saw people I knew, and I saw people looting, and most of the stuff that they had was liquor, you know, they were really concerned about that - they were going to stores and taking all the liquor out, and they would set the place on fire.
</p>
<p>
And I was standing right on the corner, and right across the street from me was a carpet place, and that was on the corner of Linwood and Blaine, and there right next to the carpet store was the gas station. And I saw a friend of mine come up, and he had a Molotov cocktail and he had another friend with him that had a Molotov cocktail in his hand, and they were getting ready to light it. I said, what are you guys getting ready to do? And they said "oh, we're going to set this place on fire!" And I said, for what? And they said "Because. You know what happened on Twelfth Street." And I said, but that's no reason to burn down the buildings. You're in your own neighborhood! I said, why - if you're going to tear something up, why don't you go to St. Clair Shores or Grosse Pointe? Why are you tearing up your own neighborhood? I said, do you know what's going to happen after that? After you guys get drunk, and you get sober, I said, what's going to happen? What are you going to do then? "Oh, you just an Uncle Tom nigger." I say, excuse me? And then they took the cocktails and they just threw them in the carpet place. And of course, that was the wrong thing to do, because with those gas tanks just being filled up, the whole gas station blew up. And the fire trucks came in, you know, to put out the fire, but they wouldn't let the fire trucks put out the fire. They were throwing bricks and stones, and bottles at them. Anything that they could pick up that was heavy - to make a point. And so the fire trucks couldn't stay, because they were risking their lives coming down there to put out the fire.
</p>
<p>
And then, there was - right across the alley from the gas station was houses, on Pingree, and then on Blaine. And the fire - the lady in the first house that was right off the alley, she said she saw that and she had to pray to God, because she said she knew she didn't have time to get out of the house. And so she just laid on the floor. And the fire miraculously skipped her house, and burned down all of that - all the houses that were on her side of the street, and then it went around the corner, to Blaine, and burned up all of the houses on those two blocks. And that was - it was horrible - and I had to run and tell my neighbors when I saw the fire - I ran and told the neighbors, I said okay, you guys better go up there and get your cars, because they're setting fire to the gas station. It's going to blow any minute now. And so everybody started running to get their cars and when the fire first started, the heat was so intense that I went to get my car, and I burned my hand trying to open the car door so I could get in and move the car, because I was afraid my car was going to blow up too. And we got there just - everybody got there in time to move their car, so none of the cars were destroyed. But when we saw all those houses burning, that was just horrific. And we all went to other places - I had an aunt that lived closer to the Boulevard, so we drove the car down there and we went and stayed there.
</p>
<p>
But while I was standing on the corner talking to these guys, one guy came up to me and he - he had a whole - he had about two cases of Johnnie Walker Red - and he came up to me, he said, "yeah, you ought to go in here and get some of that stuff." I said, I'm not a drunk. I said, why would I just want to get liquor? And he said "because it's so good." And I said, no, I said, you're ruining the neighborhood. He said "oh, you're an Uncle Tom nigger." So he took the cases of liquor and he put them down on the street, and he was getting ready to hit me. But I saw his glance when I turned around to see what he was looking at. My boyfriend had pulled up, and he was standing behind me, and he was kind of a tall guy. He didn't look like a guy who could be messed with, so he turned around, he just looked at me. "Yeah, you're an Uncle Tom nigger." And then he just picked up the liquor and kept running. And I was like, how are they - I was thinking to myself - what a waste. We're tearing up our own neighborhood. And I said, and after this is all over, what are people going to do?
</p>
<p>
Because then, people didn't have cars. You know, they had to take the bus everywhere. Everything was right there in our neighborhood, and I was thinking, why would you want to do this? I could understand that we had some civil unrest, but that wasn't the way to solve the problem. That just made things worse.
</p>
<p>
WW: What did you do next?
</p>
<p>
RB: Well, after the riot was over, we went to my aunt's house. And then after everything started calming down, we - everybody, of course, was talking about it, and then we're trying to figure out, what were we going to do? Because now the neighborhood was messed up, and now we were going to have to recover from this. And I didn't see any way of us recovering, because this was - here we were, the neighborhood was exactly what we needed, we had everything at our fingertips, and then I felt so sorry, because we had a manufacturing company that was right there on the corner, and they would hire people from the neighborhood. So you didn't even have to leave the neighborhood to get a job, because the businesses were right there. And they would hire people from the neighborhood to get those jobs.
</p>
<p>
So now, not only did you tear up the neighborhood, but now you've created a situation where the job opportunities weren't going to be that great, because now you're going to have to go even further to get a job, than what you had before. So if you had problems then, now you really - you just added to your situation. And I couldn't understand why they wanted to loot the buildings, because that serves no purpose. You know, you just tore up the neighborhood. And there was really no reason for that. There was a better way to solve that problem than what I saw happening, and I was just really disgusted with the whole thing.
</p>
<p>
And then - being called by my friends, an Uncle Tom nigger? That really hurt. That really hurt.
</p>
<p>
WW: Was your house threatened by fire?
</p>
<p>
RB: No. No, it didn't, though. The fire just went almost two blocks, on Pingree and Blaine, and it went around the corner. It started on Pingree and then it went around, like in an "L" shape, and went around the corner to Blaine. And now that's a playground.
</p>
<p>
WW: Did you have any interactions with the Detroit Police Department or the National Guard during that week?
</p>
<p>
RB: No, but we heard about the stuff that happened at the Algiers. I knew some people that were staying in that motel, because that was the motel where some of the people - you know, there was prostitution, a lot of illegal activity was going on there, and I knew some of the people that were involved in that, and they were horrified about the guys getting shot, and so that - that added to the problems that we were having and to know that that was happening to people that I knew - that was horrific. That was a terrible feeling.
</p>
<p>
WW: Who did you know?
</p>
<p>
RB: I knew one of the guys that was at the motel and he was staying there. Okay - I'd rather not name names right now, but one of the guys that I knew - he was a pimp - you know, he was doing some illegal activity, and - but that was the only way he could make a living because he was a felon, he had been in and out of jail all his life, and so that's what he was doing, basically, to survive. And he actually saw the police came up - then they had a unit of police officers that were called the Big Four, and they drove around in these black cars, and there was four of them, and most of them were caucasians, and they were driving around in the neighborhood. And after the riots, well, during the riots - they were driving around - and they were just pulling people over for no reason - black people - and they were doing horrible things to them. They were getting beat, and they were handcuffing them and throwing them on the ground, and stomping them, and doing all kinds of things to the guys, just because.
</p>
<p>
And - and we never understood that. But that added to the civil unrest, because before then, our neighborhood was basically a peaceful and quiet neighborhood, and people were having fun and enjoying living together. And then after this happened, it was just a mess.
</p>
<p>
WW: How do you refer to what took place in '67? Do you see it as a riot? Rebellion? Uprising?
</p>
<p>
RB: You know, I've thought about that a lot. And I can understand why it started, but I just didn't like the way they handled that. I always thought that we could have done that in a better way, because violence is not the answer. Violence just creates more violence. And it creates more heartache and trouble. And like, what they did to our neighborhood - and I get teary-eyed when I talk about this - because I was right in the middle of it. And I saw people's lives being devastated because of what happened.
</p>
<p>
Because here you are, you have a lot of poor people in the neighborhood. And instead of people working together, it was like everybody was just concerned about looting, and getting what they could get out of it - instead of actually trying to figure out, how can we solve this problem without tearing up the neighborhood and destroying people's lives. Because a lot of people's lives were destroyed by that. Because we just added - the riots just added to the homeless situation and it just added to the economic destruction that was already happening. So, it just really made things worse. I didn't see anything positive coming out of that.
</p>
<p>
WW: Are there any other stories you'd like to add from your experiences that week?
</p>
<p>
RB: Well, like I said, our neighborhood - particularly our block - was a family block. And now - we weren't affected as much by the riots as some of the other people that were actually had their homes destroyed and had their businesses torn up. We had one guy that tried to come back - we had a black pharmacist that was right on the corner of Blaine and Linwood, and he tried to come back and renew the business that he had there, because then he moved on Joy Road and Linwood, and he tried to keep a business started there, but there was a lot of - he kept - people kept breaking in his shop and he just decided okay, I'm going to have to leave, because it's not going to work anymore. Because the whole attitude had changed. The riots changed people's attitudes about how to live and what they wanted to do, and after that we had - started having a lot of problems - especially with the Big Four, because the Big Four was coming in, and they were just destroying people. I mean, you know, there was no reason for them to do what they do. I like the idea that they were there to protect, but it was like - they weren't just protecting. They were just - they were out of control. And so we were glad when they stopped having the Four.
</p>
<p>
But it was good in a sense, for the protection issue, but afterwards when they started just pulling people over for no reason, that was wrong.
</p>
<p>
WW: Did you and your family think about leaving the neighborhood afterwards?
</p>
<p>
RB: Oh no. Because we knew - you know things are going to happen, and we've been black all our lives, so you expect to have some civil unrest because of certain situation, because we know there's a double standard. You know, white people get treated differently than black people do, and that's something that has not changed. It's better than what it was, but because of the riot, you know, that added to some of the frustration other ethnic groups were feeling, and they tried to stereotype black people to say, well, you know, we're just no good, and we're just a violent bunch of people.
</p>
<p>
And so that added to the stereotypes that they already had developed about black people. So - but as far as our neighborhood, especially on the street that I was on, that didn't interfere with us too much because we were like a family, on that block. We looked out for each other and we helped take care of the kids, and some of the businesses came back and we were able to, you know, participate in those things. But the riot really changed the way people lived, and it wasn't a good change.
</p>
<p>
WW: Coming up to the present for a couple final questions. What do you think of the state of the city today?
</p>
<p>
RB: I like what's happening. There's a lot going on. There are new businesses coming in, and looks like Detroit is on its way to being renovated and coming back to be one of the greatest cities in the country, because that's what we were. And we've got a lot of history here, and with Motown and that, we'd like to keep the legacy going, because - with the abandoned houses, that's a real serious problem and it hasn't been taken care of. And the city has received money to do that, but they're not doing - I don't know where the money is, but they're not doing what they said they were supposed to do, and we still have a lot of abandoned houses, so that needs to be - that's a situation that needs to be taken care of.
</p>
<p>And nothing - it looks like nothing's being done about that. But I like, especially, what's going on in this area. But they need to concentrate more now on the neighborhoods and getting these abandoned houses out of the way.
</p>
<p>
And we still have problems contacting the city officials about things that need to be done in the neighborhoods, because, like, where I'm living, I'm at Cityside Townhomes, and the landlords are taking advantage of the renovations, because they're increasing the rent every year. And like where I am, the rent - what we're paying for rent - I'm paying a thousand dollars a month, and that doesn't include utilities. But what I'm paying for is not worth it, because the building that I'm living in - the stuff is old, and it's cheap - so the landlords are taking advantage of what's going on in Detroit as far as having people come back to the city.
</p>
<p>
But I like what's happening with Belle Isle, because that's one of my favorite places. I love Belle Isle. When I was working on my degrees I would go there and do my homework, and it was so nice. Because there's something about the water that just, you know, gives you peace. And you can get a lot done. I got a lot of my homework done there. So Belle Isle has been one of my favorite places, because my mother, when she was pregnant with me and my sister, my dad said whenever he came home, he said if he didn't see her, because they didn't live too far - I think they lived about three or four blocks from Belle Isle - he said if he came home and didn't see her, he knew that's where she was. And sure enough - so I think that's where I got my liking Belle Isle. [laughter]
</p>
<p>
But there are a lot of good things going on, but we still have problems that have not been addressed, like with the abandoned houses, and with the rent going up every year, and there's no reason for the rent going up because they're not renovating the places and making them worth what we're paying for.
</p>
<p>
And - and the insurance issue. Detroit is being red-lined. And they used to ask us, well do you live north of Schaefer or south of Schaefer. Well, it didn't make any difference, because one time I called and I said I was north of Schaefer and they gave me a price. And then the next time I called I said I was south of Schaefer - they gave me the same price. So that tells you right there, that we're just being red-lined. Nobody's paying as much as we're paying. We're paying almost as much for insurance as we pay for our house.
</p>
<p>
And that's why you have a lot of people now, when they had the Driver Responsibility law, which they said changed, but it didn't change. What they did, they just changed the name. You have a lot of people driving without insurance because they can't afford it. It's because between me paying my house note, or me paying for insurance, I'm going to pay my house note, because I have to have a place to live. I can't live in my car. So I'm going to drive - I'm just going to hope that I don't get pulled over by the police. And if I get pulled over then I just have to pay the ticket. Which would be a lot cheaper than me paying for five hundred dollars a month for insurance. Because my sister lives in Auburn Hills and she has Triple A full coverage. Triple A Plus, and she's only paying $800 a year. I'm living in Detroit and I'm paying $2400 a year for the same coverage. So explain that. There's no explanation for that.
</p>
<p>
So we have some serious issues. Then we have a lot of homeless people and nobody seems to be addressing that issue. And we have enough money that we shouldn't have - nobody should be homeless. And especially people that have worked all their lives, and all of a sudden they found out - because of technology, they no longer have jobs. You know, that's hurtful, and I hate seeing homeless people, and I try to help out as much as I can, because I can only imagine. A lot of people are living from paycheck to paycheck, and they're only one paycheck away from being homeless. That's a terrible feeling, especially if you worked all your life and you're thinking, you know, you're working so that you can have a better life, and then all of a sudden the hammer gets lowered and now you're out of a job. So those are the types of things we need to be concerned about. We need to get back to a village raising a child. If we all that attitude, then some of these issues would be resolved.
</p>
<p>
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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30min 40sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Rosilyn Stearns Brown
Location
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Detroit, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Rosilyn Stearns Brown, August 8th, 2017
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Rosilyn Stearns Brown discusses growing up in a close-knit Detroit neighborhood. She also discusses her firsthand experiences observing fires and looting during July 1967.
</br>
<b>***NOTE: This interview contains profanity and/or explicit language </b>
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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10/26/2018
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
Algiers Motel
Arson
Civil Rights Movement
Detroit Community Members
Looting
The Big Four
Twelfth Street
West Grand Boulevard
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/3e4316f05cd58a5f2f7c66be5963f6fc.jpg
a85ff7e3ff5abb659566fb217c610db3
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
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.
James Peters
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
James “Jim” Peters was born in Detroit and lived in the Grand River/Livernois area until he was about ten years old. He later lived in Royal Oak and Birmingham. He was a member of the National Guard during the events of July 1967.
Interviewer's Name
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Julia Westblade
Interview Place
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Birmingham, MI
Date
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08/04/2017
Interview Length
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00:33:44
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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09/07/2018
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
JW: Good morning, today is August 4, 2017. My name is Julia Westblade. We are in Birmingham, Michigan, and this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am sitting down with -
</p><p>
JP: Jim Peters.
</p><p>
JW: Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming in to sit with us. Could you start by telling me, where and when you were born?
</p><p>
JP: I was born in Detroit in 1940.
</p><p>
JW: What neighborhood did you live in, in Detroit?
</p><p>
JP: I lived in the Grand River/Livernois area, which was the Scottish enclave in Detroit at that time.
</p><p>
JW: Okay. So was it just Scottish, or was it also an integrated neighborhood?
</p><p>
JP: There was no integration as far as white/black, if that's what you mean. Basically Scottish.
</p><p>
JW: And so what was that like, living with - in a Scottish enclave?
</p><p>
JP: It was wonderful. It was wonderful, yeah. You know, it was - it was, you know - it was like Germans or Poles or anything else - the Scotch looked out for each other, and were all friendly, and had parties and great times together.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah. Do you have - so then, where did you go to school then?
</p><p>
JP: I was going to the local grade school in Detroit until the sixth grade, at which time we went to Royal Oak.
</p><p>
JW: Okay. What moved your family to Royal Oak?
</p><p>
JP: My father's progression in his career.
</p><p>
JW: What was his job?
</p><p>
JP: It was upgrading homes.
</p><p>
JW: Okay.
</p><p>
JP: He was a steel peddler.
</p><p>
JW: Okay. And did your mom have a job?
</p><p>
JP: No.
</p><p>
JW: Okay. Did you have any siblings?
</p><p>
JP: No.
</p><p>
JW: Okay. So when you lived down in the city, did you feel comfortable moving around the city, or did you mostly just stay in that Scottish community?
</p><p>
JP: I was totally comfortable - living in the city and living in Royal Oak. But, at that time, keep in mind, all activity was in the city, so as youth we went to the city every weekend. And we were totally comfortable.
</p><p>
JW: When you moved out of the city and into Royal Oak, did you note - was there a difference the community that you were part of, or did it feel the same?
</p><p>
JP: Different in what respect?
</p><p>
JW: I don't know. I guess in any respect. Was there - did you - did it feel different living out in the suburbs than it did in the city?
</p><p>
JP: The only difference was, there was all single homes and there was space between homes, and there was youth activities, you know, Little League and stuff like that.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah. So then, leading up into the early 1960s, maybe late fifties, did you notice tension in the city as you were moving around?
</p><p>
JP: I never saw or felt or experienced any tension whatsoever, through high school.
</p><p>
JW: And you went to high school in Royal Oak?
</p><p>
JP: No, I went to high school in Royal Oak until the tenth grade, at which time we moved to Birmingham.
</p><p>
JW: Okay. And was that for your dad's job as well?
</p><p>
JP: Absolutely.
</p><p>
JW: Very nice. So then in 1967, how did you hear about everything that was going on?
</p><p>
JP: Are you - you mean about the - I hate the word "riot" - I use other words. The conflict that was going on - is that what you mean?
</p><p>
JW: Yeah.
</p><p>
JP: How did I hear about it?
</p><p>
JW: Yeah.
</p><p>
JP: Well it - it flared up early, early that Sunday morning - let's say one - one AM.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah.
</p><p>
JP: Well I woke up that morning - Sunday morning - and went and played golf all day. And got home and my wife said, "Did you hear what's going on?" No. What's going on? She told me, which was five or six o'clock in the afternoon. We turned on the television and it became apparent that they were calling the National Guard, of which I was a member.
</p><p>
JW: Okay.
</p><p>
JP: That's - how and when I heard about it.
</p><p>
JW: All right. So when did you become a part of the National Guard, then?
</p><p>
JP: Oh, in '63.
</p><p>
JW: Okay. So then, being a member of the National Guard, you were then sent into the city?
</p><p>
JP: Yes.
</p><p>
JW: Okay. So what - where were you stationed?
</p><p>
JP: I was stationed at the Durfee School. I'm not sure now if that was a grade school or a middle school. But there were three schools on one large city block - there was Durfee, Roosevelt, and Central High School. And my battalion happened to go into Durfee.
</p><p>
JW: What do you remember about being in the city that week? Do you have some stories?
</p><p>
JP: [laughter] Yeah, I have - you know. There's a million stories in the big city, right? What - I could get on a real soapbox here, or a real rampage. When we got there, it was late Sunday night. Probably ten PM or later. And we all were milling around out in the schoolyard, not knowing what to do or where to go; we were given no direction. If I can back up a minute, we reported to the armory.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah.
</p><p>
JP: And all they told us on the telephone was to bring - be in uniform. Put a uniform on. Get to the armory and they were accumulating ten or twelve Guardsmen as they meandered in, and they were DSR - you know what DSR is? Detroit Streets and Railways - buses behind the armory. And after there were ten or twelve soldiers there, they'd put us on the bus and took us down to Detroit, to this school compound.
</p><p>
And going down there, we went down - we were on Eight Mile, the armory - we went Eight Mile, we went down Livernois, through Palmer Park, and across to the school, and about halfway down we recognized that there was a tank following us. Now we're just guys - you know, we're in the Guard to avoid the draft. And - "woah, a tank? Never saw a tank before." [laughter] When we got down there, and in the middle of the night, we're milling in the yard, and by the time we got there the Salvation Army had already been there. Was already there, already, with their lunch trucks. And they told us all to line up in a long line - there must have been a hundred or more guys lined up, and squad cars - police squad cars - were pulling up in front of us. And they were putting - there were two police officers in each car - they were putting two soldiers in the back of each car, and then you're gone. You're on the street.
</p><p>
No direction from an officer. No - no understanding of what we were supposed to be doing, and we were out there all through that night, through the next day, with - riding in this police car, eating Salvation Army baloney sandwiches, which was welcome at that time and coffee. We determined - and I knew that area really well, because I grew on up in that area, you know - I was comfortable there. But we were seeing, you know, smoldering buildings. We never saw any gathering of any blacks, except one call - radio call - we went, there was looting going on at a local ma and pa grocery store. Went over there, and there were like twenty people inside. It was the middle of Monday morning. You know, ten AM. The police went out and rousted all these guys out, and there was a couple - there were people from ten years old to sixty years old in that shop, and they were - they were gleaning. They were gleaners. Everything - the good stuff had already gone. And they lined them all out, there were a couple really nice cars out there, with these adults had driven up there – big 225 Buicks and Cadillacs, and the police took them all back - the cars - all back to the station.
</p><p>
And I hesitate to tell you. They didn't - they searched everybody for weapons. Little kids, they took their hats off, made sure there were no knives under their hats, this type of thing. Which was good procedure, I guess. But the police vandalized these vehicles, which I couldn't fathom. You don't - this is not necessary. But we're just guys. We don't - we can't talk to the police.
</p><p>
And the other call I remember going on that morning was a call to go to a jewelry store which was being robbed - looted - and about two blocks away from the jewelry store they turned on all of the sirens as loud as they could. We pulled up behind the jewelry store and the police said, "okay, stand out here." We had rifles, bayonets on them. "We're going in." So the police went in. Now in hindsight, I recognize that they turned their sirens on to let everybody know we're coming - get away. We don't want any confrontations.
</p><p>
The police came out, got in the car - "Nobody's in there." Started back down Grand River, and they - they had handfuls of costume jewelry. The good stuff apparently had already been stolen. "Do you guys want any of this?" No, no, we don't any. And we went on our way.
</p><p>
Back at the police precinct, which happened to be Precinct Six at that time, we went back for a couple hours. Police were coming in and out, every which way, and I only recall ever seeing one black policeman, in this whole two-week episode, and he was in the precinct. The neighborhood ladies had brought in some food for the police, and we got a little rest, and back on the streets. Let me refer to some notes here [papers rustle].
</p><p>
This went on for a couple days. Wednesday we got back to our school and found our way to our commanding officers, who had put us up on the - the school is a three-story building. Put us on the second floor, and Battery A in here, Battery B in this room, and we had - we had nothing. We had no towels, no soap, no bedding. We slept on the wood floor. No change of underwear. It was just - our uniform, that we had on. And they tried to get things organized by this time, and we went out on - I just happened to be the driver for the captain and the first sergeant, so when they went out, I was their driver. And we happened to do nights.
</p><p>
So I remember one - first night, we got a call on the radio. There was sniper activity on Oakland Boulevard. And I knew Oakland Boulevard, I knew where it was. And went over there and we noticed there was a lot of police, military activity down the street. And we weren't going to drive right into it, and so they said "park here." Well, this is like a block or two blocks away from the activity, right under a street light. And there was other - there were four or five Jeeps pulled up together there, under the spotlight.
</p><p>
Now, the rule - the law was - the driver stays with the jeep. Always. Wherever you are, that's your vehicle, you're assigned to it, you're responsible for it. You stay with it. And I'm looking up at this light, and I'm looking at all these apartment buildings around there, and I'm saying, I'm a good target. The only bullet I fired was to shoot out that light. Which I did. And nobody said anything about it. And while we're sitting there - now, keep in mind, there's a curfew, and there's no civilian cars on the street. And Oakland Boulevard is like two lanes in each direction. It's not divided, but it's a pretty big street.
</p><p>
Here comes this vehicle coming down the street, at five miles an hour. So we stopped it, and it stopped. And this black guy - really drunk - he was on his - "Where you going? What are you doing?" He was on his way to see Jerry. He was going to fix this thing. Jerry [Mayor Jerome] Cavanagh. He was going to see Jerry. I said, well, not tonight. One of the guys - we didn't know what to do with this guy. One of the guys ran down to where the activity was - which was - there was no shooting or anything going on, they were just milling around down there. A couple cops came back, with a car - with their car - and saw this guy. They went through his car and they found a shotgun. Unloaded. So they proceeded to use the shotgun on this man, and threw him in their trunk, and off they go. The last we saw of that guy. I don't know what happened to him.
</p><p>
I hope you're hearing what you wanted to hear - I mean, you don't like what you're hearing, but I hope it's what you wanted to hear, was that this - from a guy that was on the street.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah, we just want to hear your memories.
</p><p>
JP: While out there on patrol, backing up a step, with the police, we got a call that there was sniper activity on Grand River, which was my stomping grounds - I mean, I went to the Riviera Theatre there, I went to church there, I went to Sanders for - my grandparents were buying me cherry sundaes - big, big, you know, youthful memory. And it was the middle of the night. We pulled up, and these buildings across the street were two-story buildings. There was shops in the bottom and apartments above it. And we pulled behind this church, which I suddenly realized was my church, that I grew up in - went to Sunday school there - and I'm hiding behind snipers at my church - I - what's going on here?
</p><p>
It was really a shocker. And it is emotional, even today. Because even up 'til the church burned down, probably ten or twelve years ago, we'd even go down there for Christmas Eve services, you know.
</p><p>
But back to when we got back to our school. They decided that our battalion would patrol Twelfth Street. From Clairmount south to the Boulevard, which is - I'm not sure - it's probably about a mile. And they put two soldiers on each side of the street for one block, and you would walk to this corner, turn around, and come back, walk to this corner, and that's what you did for four hours. And there was two, on all these blocks, all the way down. And we - we got - the curfew was still on. It was like from - I don't know - six PM until five or six AM curfew - no selling gasoline or no - don't be on the streets, so on. And we never knew which - four hours, sometimes they fell at night, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon.
</p><p>
But the bars weren't touched on Twelfth Street. They were - the neighbor people didn't want to burn the bars. They burned everything else, for no - you know, how many people have preached on this, but it was stupid to burn your own house down, you know - figuratively speaking. The bar owners would see the soldiers on their block and say "hey," - and the doors were wide open - "You want anything, guys? Go get it. Just go get it. Whatever it is." They wanted us to watch their shops.
</p><p>
The hookers, after a few days, started coming out, and the - the real unattractive women would come out about five AM, six AM, to catch the guys who were either going to their first shift or coming home from the night shift. And the more attractive ladies would come out at like five PM, to catch the other shift changes. And we met - you know, we talked to them, and they were fun to talk to, you know. And the neighborhood ladies came out and set up card tables and offered us food and, you know, big coolers full of Kool-Aid and head cheese sandwiches - if you know what a head cheese sandwich is. Do you?
</p><p>
JW: Oh, I've heard of head cheese, yeah.
</p><p>
JP: It's everything within the brains and head and everything else, all mixed up, and put into a loaf, and made into a sandwich. Like a pate.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah.
</p><p>
JP: First time I'd ever had it. [laughter] But we'd get hungry.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah.
</p><p>
JP: So that was kind of interesting. And there was - you know, we never had a confrontation, ever.
</p><p>
JW: So, you felt like the community was okay with you being there?
</p><p>
JP: Oh yeah. The scariest thing were the dogs. And these dogs were let out, because their homes were burned, or houses - their apartments were burned, and they didn't - you know, they just let the dogs out so they didn't get killed. You know, and they were roaming around, looking for scraps, you know. And you never knew if it was going to be a nice dog or a bad dog. Some guys had bad experiences. I didn't, particularly. But as far as the people goes, it was no big deal.
</p><p>
After - after noon on that Monday, nothing. No bad activity. Smoldering buildings. No new fires. No new gunshots. If I can back up again - when we were in line, to become in those patrol cars - that was the line - and I think I was very, very close to the guys that got in the police cars - because I knew the guys - later, that got in those police cars - that went to the Algiers Motel.
</p><p>
JW: Oh, interesting.
</p><p>
JP: Okay. So I got very lucky there. [papers rustle] The first Saturday we got - they gave us like three hours to go home, to go somewhere. If you could make arrangements. Make a phone call, and if you could make arrangements, they'd take you back to the armory. But from there you were on your own. But you had to be back. You know, if you wanted to go get toiletries, or whatever, you know. I mean, and that was - that worked for me, because I was married and we were living in Royal Oak at the time, and that was ten minutes from the armory. And I called my wife, she left work, got me some stuff, you know, and met me. Had a chat and went back.
</p><p>
JW: So as someone who grew up in the city, and then in the surrounding area, how did it feel to then see all of this happening? I mean, you touched on the church a little bit, but -
</p><p>
JP: It felt sad. It felt sad, because I could - I had no - I never had a conversation with a black person before, you know. I never had any contact. But it was obvious that they were harming themselves. You know, I couldn't figure it out. Why do you harm yourself - the emotion I felt was sad, and I still do today, you know.
</p><p>
The second week after we got home and got some stuff and came back, it was just those walking patrols for another week and then we went home. They lifted the curfews. They relieved the curfews, and tried to get things back to -
</p><p>
JW: So you were stationed in the city for about two weeks, then?
</p><p>
JP: Oh yeah. Yeah, just - exactly two weeks.
</p><p>
JW: And were you at Twelfth Street that whole time or were you in other areas of the city?
</p><p>
JP: No. Other than - other than in the Jeep patrolling, we were always on Twelfth Street. Yeah. Yeah.
</p><p>
JW: And then earlier, you said you don't like the term "riot."
</p><p>
JP: I just - I just - to me, it just bothers me. Yeah, okay, maybe it was a riot - and it was a riot - probably, but I just like using other language.
</p><p>
JW: What words do you typically use, then?
</p><p>
JP: Confrontations, uprisings - I don't know. I'd have to think on that. I just - it's like certain words, I don't like to use.
</p><p>
JW: That's fine.
</p><p>
JP: I don't like to use the word "ain't!"
</p><p>
JW: So, after that two weeks, did you still like to come down into the city, or did you - did your attitude toward the city change after that experience?
</p><p>
JP: Oh, sure. We - when I say we, either with wives, or guys - we'd go to hockey games - we'd go down to restaurants. One of my wife's and my favorite restaurants was called Little Harry's, and it was like - and it was, it was an original 1920's restaurant, bar, eventually speakeasy, back to restaurant, with the grand old decor, and it was out on East Jefferson, and it was one of our favorite places. We didn't hesitate to drive down Woodward and come home. Because if you drive from Royal Oak to downtown, what is it? Fifteen, twenty minutes, if you really think about it. You know, so we didn't - so it was hockey games, and restaurants. A couple other restaurants we'd go to, but, as I said, Little Harry's was a favorite spot.
</p><p>
JW: But you still felt comfortable coming into the city?
</p><p>
JP: I knew where I was. You know, I didn't feel that I was going to go into a bad area. I could avoid them. "Bad" being where trouble might arise again, if you didn't know.
</p><p>
JW: Would you say that was pretty typical of the people you knew up in Royal Oak?
</p><p>
JP: Oh, sure. Sure. We still felt the blacks had their own areas, you know, and you just didn't go there. They didn't really come out of their areas, you know. Like, I don't know the percentages. Today Detroit's ninety, ninety-five percent black, and that's fine. I go down there. Not very often, because - not that I'm afraid to. There's just nothing for me down there. At my age, and my experiences, and my interests don't belong in Detroit.
</p><p>
JW: How do you feel about the state of the city today?
</p><p>
JP: I knew these were coming. I am thrilled with the mayor. I mean, I can't say enough about this guy. And the business leaders, what's happening. Yeah, every night we hear bad stuff on the news. Sometimes it's five things in a row that are bad. But there's an awful lot of good stuff going on. I'm delighted. The neighborhoods are never going to be what they were, you know. I do go Brightmoor quite often, if you know where that is. You look like you don't.
</p><p>
JW: I don't know if I know.
</p><p>
JP: It's okay not to know! Brightmoor is - the hood, an area - Lahser, Five Mile, Redford Theater, do you know where that is?
</p><p>
JW: Yes, yes.
</p><p>
JP: That's Brightmoor.
</p><p>
JW: Okay.
</p><p>
JP: I go down there for a couple reasons. The Scottish bakery is right down the street. The - right next to the Redford Theater there's a really cool coffee shop, and if you ever get a chance you should go there.
</p><p>
JW: Okay.
</p><p>
JP: It is really cool. A black lady owns it. She's married to a white guy. He is in charge of Blightbusters of Detroit. It's their headquarters. They have really a cool facility there. A big back - out their back door is a big courtyard area. There's a theater off of the courtyard area, it's just a swell thing going on there. So to answer your question, I think it's - a whole lot better than it was four years ago.
</p><p>
JW: What kinds of things do you think the city needs to do to continue to improve?
</p><p>
JP: Oh boy. I don't give these things thought, and I don't like shooting from the hip, you know.
</p><p>
JW: That's okay.
</p><p>
JP: I don't know. The only thing that comes to mind real quickly is more - more police activity in the neighborhoods. More good police activity. There's a lot going on, but there could be more. And there are certain areas that these guys don't want to go into. And if you drive down the streets - and when I go to Brightmoor, I drive the back streets. It's almost like sightseeing. It's almost voyeurism, and it's kind of shameful, but it's really eye-opening if you do it, and you see for real what they're talking about.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah.
</p><p>
JP: And you'll see wonderfully well-maintained newer homes, next to three that are burned out. So there's effort being made. But they all have bars on the windows.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah. Oh, something I forgot to ask. So how long - how long did you stay part of the National Guard?
</p><p>
JP: Six years. That was your obligation. So I was back in '68, on the street for a week. Detroit didn't flare up in '68. You probably know that.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah.
</p><p>
JP: But they put us back there as a show of force, because other cities started burning up. And they were afraid that Detroit would, so they put us there. And it was for one week. Same school, same everything. Same hardwood floors to sleep on.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah. And so you talked a little bit about, you know, working with the police. Do you think the police were relieved to have you there?
</p><p>
JP: Oh, absolutely. No question. No question in my mind. They pulled in federal troops. you know, eventually. Near the end of the first week. And these were 82nd Airborne troops that had been back from Vietnam for two weeks. They didn't - they were afraid to put these guys on the street. We never saw them on the street. They parked them down by - somewhere off of Jefferson - and they parked them - parking - they put them up at the state fairgrounds. They were afraid these guys were so conditioned to doing bad things to bad people - they were afraid of what they would do if they put them on the street.
</p><p>
That's - that's a personal opinion, because I never saw them. I know guys that were in the 82nd Airborne, and we've talked about it. They came to Detroit - one of my very best friends, for a long time, was in Detroit, right out of Vietnam. Never went out.
</p><p>
They put us in the backseat of these cars and they tell us "open those windows. Put your bayonets on your rifles and stick 'em out the windows." And this was a show of force, as they would say. That's what the police - in whose squad cars we were.
</p><p>
JW: Yeah. So, are there any other memories that you'd like to share with us today?
</p><p>
JP: I had an interesting personal thing. Right across the street from the school was a fire station. Now - rumors circulate in the military, and god knows where they start, but the thing we heard was that when a fire truck was going out on a call, they were being shot at. So, they're putting soldiers on the fire trucks. Now I didn't happen to go on a fire truck. And a couple of guys I know did and encountered no shooting.
</p><p>
But when - we could hear the alarms go off in the fire station. It was scary. Really scary. Now, when I got home - in Royal Oak - our apartment - my wife's and my apartment was half a block from a fire station. For a very long time, when that fire alarm went off at the fire station, I just stopped. I didn't have a panic attack, but probably close to it. And today, you would call it PTSD. That wasn't even heard of back then. The closest anybody came was out of the war, so they called it, the guy was shellshocked. Same thing. But - and I overgrew it.
</p><p>
JW: That's good.
</p><p>
JP: So - and the other thing I would share with you is that I - I promise you that there was absolutely no - zero - zip - consideration that anything like what happened could have happened. By the politicians, the police, or the military. Shown by our total lack of preparedness. Their total lack of - their total lack of preparedness. No plans. No food for the soldiers. No accommodations. No cots. No nothing. And it was - and all the emphasis was on Vietnam at that time. And we are - my battalion had been designated not long before the uprising to be a SRF - Special Reserve Force. And we started our training as a special reserve force, which really, ultimately meant going to Vietnam. They were calling Guard units to go to Vietnam, and a lot of them went. A lot of them. And we were scheduled to go not that long after. And I contend that because Detroit flared up like it did, they changed those orders for us, to keep us in Detroit. In case.
</p><p>
JW: Interesting.
</p><p>
JP: Nobody's ever said anything, but that's - that was my read of that whole thing. And of course '68 they were glad we were there, but nothing happened. That - that was – and [George] Romney, he was the governor, and he had no clue what was going on, you know. And he finally called the president and the president acted to call up the federal troops, which - it was all political. It was a show.
</p><p>
JW: Well, is there anything else you'd like to add today?
</p><p>
JP: I'm sorry?
</p><p>
JW: Is there anything else you'd like to add today?
</p><p>
JP: I think you allowed me to vent everything I wanted to vent!
</p><p>
JW: Well, good. Well thank you so much for coming in to sit with us. We really appreciate it.
</p><p>
JP: Okay, my pleasure. Okey doke.
</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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33min 44sec
Interviewer
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Julia Westblade
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
James Peters
Location
The location of the interview
Birmingham, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
James Peters, August 4th, 2017
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, James Peters discusses growing up in the Detroit metropolitan area and his service in the National Guard during the events of July 1967.
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
09/14/2018
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
82nd Airborne
Algiers Motel
Curfew
Detroit Police Department
Looting
Mayor Jerome Cavanagh
Michigan National Guard
Royal Oak
Tanks
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/1a2544f4af34398b3aa34b99664281fc.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.
Shevon Fowler
Interviewer's Name
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Shevon Fowler was born in the city of Detroit in 1956 and grew up in the Virginia Park neighborhood. She attended Cass Technical High School and still lives downtown.
Interview Place
The place where the interview was conducted.
Detroit, MI
Date
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04/27/2017
Interview Length
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00:10:06
Transcriptionist
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Matthew Ungar
Transcription Date
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07/28/2017
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
WW: Hello, today is April 28, 2017. My name is William Winkel. I am in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am sitting down with –
</p><p>SF: Shevon Fowler.
</p><p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
</p><p>
SF: Oh, you’re welcome.
</p><p>
WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when were you born?
</p><p>
SF: I was born here in Detroit in 1956 at Herman Kiefer Hospital.
</p><p>
WW: Did you grow up in the city?
</p><p>
SF: I did.
</p><p>
WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?
</p><p>
SF: I grew up mainly in Virginia Park.
</p><p>
WW: What street did you grow up on?
</p><p>
SF: Virginia Park [laughter].
</p><p>
WW: Growing up in Virginia Park, what was it like?
</p><p>
SF: Actually, Virginia Park was a really lively, bucolic-type place. It felt like a safe neighborhood to me. I had lots of friends, there were lots of kids, I had teachers that were my neighbors. It was mainly a working class neighborhood.
</p><p>
WW: During this time, Virginia Park was integrated, right?
</p><p>
SF: Yes.
</p><p>
WW: Are there any stories you would like to share from growing up in Virginia Park? Like, did you play in the alleys with your friends, play in the streets? What were some typical things you did growing up?
</p><p>
SF: Well, the girls, you know, played hopscotch and jump rope and we played lots of games like “What time is it, Mr. Fox?” We rode our bikes. We would often leave Virginia Park, ride our bikes up to LaSalle Park and basically, that was it. You know, we went to school, we had friends after school and listened to music.
</p><p>
WW: What did your parents do for a living?
</p><p>
SF: Well, my father worked construction, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom.
</p><p>
WW: Growing up, and you rode your bike, did you go anywhere beside LaSalle Park? Did you take it around the city? You were still young then.
</p><p>
SF: No, I was only allowed to go from Fourteenth to Twelfth Street on my own. But in a group, you know, we went further.
</p><p>
WW: Going into the summer of ’67, do you remember how you first heard about what was going on?
</p><p>
SF: I do. They said it started, like, on a late Sunday night or something.
</p><p>
WW: Early Sunday morning, so Saturday night, Sunday morning.
</p><p>
SF: Right, right. Well, we weren't allowed to go outside in the summertime until after twelve o’clock. It was just kind of a family thing, and so at twelve o’clock, I got my bike out and I rode from one corner to the next corner, and I was coming down the street, I noticed there were crowds of people at the corner. So I wanted to know why they were there, so I rode my bike right into the crowd, and I sat there and watched the riot on my bike.
</p><p>
WW: So you went to the corner on Twelfth?
</p><p>
SF: I went to the corner on Twelfth, and there was just absolute chaos, but there were, you know, crowds of people just standing and watching, you know. I didn't feel any danger or anything, because, you know, there were lots of adults, there was some kids, and I was on my bike.
</p><p>
WW: Do you remember what you were thinking when you saw this?
</p><p>
SF: I didn't know what was going on and why this was happening. I remember as I sat on my bike, the cleaners was on fire, and you know, people were running, people were looting, and then suddenly, the cleaners just blew up. It was just a ball of fire, and that was the cleaners on Twelfth and Euclid, so I could see it from where I was.
</p><p>
WW: What did you do after that?
</p><p>
SF: Well, after that, I was in the crowd just looking, just sitting on my bike, and then suddenly my father tapped me on the shoulder, and turned around and said, “Turn around, let’s go home.”
</p><p>
WW: I was just about to ask you if you ever told your parents that you were there [laughter].
</p><p>
SF: No, they know that that was my route. I was only allowed to go to that corner, so I was well within my area.
</p><p>
WW: Do you remember on the way back to your house if your father said anything to you about what was going on?
</p><p>
SF: He didn’t, but he had a sense of urgency.
</p><p>
WW: So, after you got back home, what was the mood like in your house?
</p><p>
SF: There was nothing really different, you know. I remember him saying, “Oh, they're tearing up the city,” this kind of thing, but back down at that corner, you couldn't tell anything. Everything was happening at the end of the block where I was.
</p><p>
WW: Could you see a lot of smoke toward your house?
</p><p>
SF: I did see a lot of smoke when I sat on the porch, because Linwood was also burning.
</p><p>
WW: How did the rest of that week play out for you?
</p><p>
SF: Well, I remember that week we got the National Guard, and two of them were stationed right in front of our house. You know, they were on each corner, and I lived on the corner house. I remember my dad taking them chairs to sit in and my mother fixing them sandwiches, and then the block club brought them lemonade, because they just looked terrified. They were young, you know, well, to me then, of course, they were old people, because they were about twenty [laughter]. But they were young and they were white and they just looked terrified. Later in the week we did have a sniper that would, I guess, shoot at them, and so we had to take cover and all of this. I remember seeing tanks coming down the street, and I had never seen a tank before except on Combat!, the TV show. I was just amazed at how big they were. The lights went out that week, because of all the fires and you know, the wires being down. So, this church gave out ice so that people could save their food. I remember coming here to get food with my mother.
</p><p>
WW: Do you remember being afraid in seeing all this going on? Or was it like, above you?
</p><p>
SF: Well, I wasn't really that afraid, because, in fact I wasn't afraid at all, cause my father was the type of guy, I just felt like he could take care of anything, and I just wasn't afraid.
</p><p>
WW: So as this is wrapping up, do you remember if your parents talked about leaving the neighborhood?
</p><p>
SF: No, they did not.
</p><p>
WW: Did they continue to live in the city, then?
</p><p>
SF: Yes.
</p><p>
WW: Are there any other stories you’d like to share from either growing up in this time, or ’67?
</p><p>
SF: Well, it was a fun time, you know? Carefree. That’s about it, I didn't see anybody get hurt or anything like that. But I did see a lot of people, one of my girlfriend’s father, he had looted a whole can of popsicles and ice cream cones and he was just passing them out in the streets. I do remember that [laughter].
</p><p>
WW: Couple just follow-up questions. How do you refer to ’67? Do you see it as a riot, do you see it as a rebellion, uprising?
</p><p>
SF: All of the above. Because I remember what the police were like in our neighborhood.
</p><p>
WW: What were the police like?
</p><p>
SF: Well, they had a special squad, it was called the Big Four, and they were plain-clothed, they were in unmarked cars, and they would get out and beat people for absolutely nothing. You know, just walking down the street. I remember that.
</p><p>
WW: Thank you.
</p><p>
SF: Okay!
</p><p>
WW: Oh, just two more quick questions. How do you feel about the state of the city today?
</p><p>
SF: I’m really excited about the state of the city. It is coming back, I always felt that it would. I live downtown, but I have property other places, and the city is just really, really, it’s so lively. I didn't think that it would come back after Hudson’s left, you know, because being downtown when Hudson’s was here, it was like being in New York, and then after that, it became like being in a ghost town, and now it’s back. Midtown, I went to Cass, so I’ve seen the whole transition of the corridor, and I’m really excited about it.
</p><p>
WW: So you’re optimistic for the city moving forward?
</p><p>
SF: Oh, I am, I am.
</p><p>
WW: Thank you so much.
</p><p>
SF: Alright.
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
10min 06sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Shevon Fowler
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit, MI
Video
A link to the video
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iUzqA_op_0E?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" 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
Shevon Fowler, April 28th, 2017
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview Fowler describes her childhood growing up in the Virginia Park neighborhood. The weekend of July 23, 1967, she rode her bike to Twelfth Street to see what was happening.
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
07/27/2018
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
A language of the resource
en-US
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Arson
Childhood
Children
Growing Up In Detroit
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Tanks
The Big Four
Virginia Park
-
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.
Willie Horton
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Willie Horton was born in Virginia and came to Detroit as a boy. He attended Detroit Northwestern High School and signed with the Detroit Tigers in 1961. He made his major league debut in 1963. After retiring from professional baseball, he worked with the Detroit Police Department and was active in the formation of the PAL program.
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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12/07/2017
Interview Length
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00:30:44
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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1/23/2018
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
WW: Hello. My name is William Winkel. Today is December 7, 2017. I'm in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and today I'm sitting down with Willie Horton. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. </p><p>
WH: Thank you.
</p><p>
WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when you were born?
</p><p>
WH: I was born in 1942, in a small town: Arno, Virginia. My parents came north when I was about nine or ten, and I went back down south so I could play baseball down there for a year, and then I came back, been here ever since - before my early teens. Raised up in Detroit. Jeffries Projects. And, matter of fact, this is our old neighborhood. We used to run around over here at Wayne State.
</p><p>
WW: Why did your parents leave Virginia for Detroit?
</p><p>
WH: Well, my dad's mine got shut down, and that's when he came back up this way. You know, they closed down all the mines down there in Virginia, where we were living at at the time.
</p><p>
WW: When you came to Detroit for the first time, do you remember your first impression?
</p><p>
WH: Well, when I first came to Detroit, I was about five or six. My mom's people lived here. I was coming down today, I was thinking about the streetcars I used to get on and ride down Grand River. And then I - that's the first time. Then after that, just come back here, getting raised up in the neighborhood around people, and raised up around the Jeffries Projects. And you know, what fascinated me, everybody thought it was all black, but there were just as many white people in the Jeffries Projects. A lot of people went to Wayne State and stuff like that. But it was a very experience - helped me in my life - coming through that era.
</p><p>
WW: When you came up to Detroit to live, did you feel comfortable when you went around the city and hung out?
</p><p>
WH: When you're a young man you just didn't - you didn't worry about it. You just did things. I tell people, I came up during the time - my first five years in the big league were racial. And that's many years after Jackie Robinson. But our neighborhood, you know - and I talk about this a lot - was churches and schools. We need to get - them two things need to get back together. You had drugs. Drugs been here, but churches and schools, whether your race was black or white, they was your community. And that's what I think about. We did things together - maybe didn't go to school with, but we did everything in the community - neighborhood - together, so I think about that a lot, through my life, as I travel. And it helped me as I started in baseball.
</p><p>
WW: And you said you went back South to start playing baseball again?
</p><p>
WH: Well, when I was younger I went back, and for some reason they wanted to play tee ball or something up here, I forgot, and I'd always been advanced. I went back down to Tennessee and I used my brother Billy's birth certificate so I could play in a higher league. So, I stayed down there one year with my brothers and then after that Mr. Thompson was going to Wayne State - which he was, got drafted by the Rams, and he got hurt, and he was over at Wayne getting his degree, and he came by [Poe ?] School ground, and one day he stopped, and he asked you guys, do you want to play baseball? So, he said, meet me back here next Monday.
</p><p>
So, all the kids in the community, we met him back over there. That's how we got started and actually I talk about how he started the Ravens, from the Ravens to Brown Insulation to the west side clubs. And that's all that started years ago, but thanks to Ron Thompson and people like that, that's the reason I'm here speaking today.
</p><p>
WW: What year did you head south to play ball?
</p><p>
WH: I really don't know. It had been early - I'd go back - I was about nine years old, so you go back - I'm 75, so you can kind of go back in the years and figure that out, but right off, I can't say.
</p><p>
WW: No worries. When you were away from the city did you stay away, or were you coming back intermittently?
</p><p>
WH: I came back at the end of the summer. I'd go back, that first time I played baseball in Kingsport, Tennessee, and actually we had a tournament up in around Louisville, Kentucky, that area, and that's the first time I met Pete Rose as a young man - kid - and Eddie Brinkman. And we all started, the first time I ever laid my eye on them, and later on in my career, playing in Detroit, going to a tournament where I met him again. But I think if you look back, what kept me going in life, I always wanted to do try to do something. I didn't know what at the time. I'm very fortunate my parents got Judge [Damon] Keith at the time to become my legal advisor when I was 13 years old. And what I learned from him, between thirteen and seventeen I signed on - I don't think I could have gotten that learning from eight years in college. But I'm just thinking - today he's still my dad. I call him dad. And he went on - been a famous judge in this country and - but he was a lawyer and people don't realize he was the first black firm to come across Woodward. At the time, you know, on the west side.
</p><p>
WW: As you're coming back to the city and growing up, through the fifties, do you see any rising tension in the city?
</p><p>
WH: Naw, not really. You didn't think - when you were a kid, a young man - you didn't think about it. A lot of things you heard were going on, but, you know, adult, whether you're black or white, they kept a lot of things away from the kids. And we didn't know the difference. Probably a lot of things going on we didn't know - all we looked for, going out to school, going out to the playground and play, doing things together, walking out to Belle Isle and stuff like that. I think as I heard about these things, coming up a kid, I guess when I got involved and paying more attention to it, is after I signed the contract.
</p><p>
WW: Similar question. When you were in the South, did you see the Civil Rights Movement in action?
</p><p>
WH: Not really. We - like I said, down there we only - it was the neighborhood. We always did things together and - you didn't go to school - but I've been around white people, down in Virginia, in Arno, just as much as I've been around black people. Only thing was different - you noticed you just didn't go to school with your best buddy. When I did my first book, years ago, I reunioned with a kid I ain't saw since we were little kids. His name is Munson, in Virginia - but all you did, you would go fishing together - and I mean, we used to - we called them creeks, and we used to catch these fish, we called them suckers – they were like catfish – with our hands, in the creek, and I think about that, and I met him walking to go downtown to play baseball. I cut through their neighborhood, where he's living. We start walking and then I got more involved in baseball, and he did too, and I think what he learned from sports he went on and became a great man in the political world.
</p><p>
WW: Aside from baseball did you play any other sports in the city?
</p><p>
WH: I played - well, you know, I played football. I played basketball. I boxed. Boxing gym was not too far from here - I see they should put a historic site over - used to be Kelsey Recreation Center, but they're going to put some kind of power plant there. They should put some kind of historic name - a lot of people came through there, went on and had fame in life. But you know, we just kept it together. You know, my boxing coach, matter of fact, he got to be up around 90, he's still living. He's still sitting on the boxing committee on Parks and Recreation, the city now. Martin Gillgate.
</p><p>
It just - it kept us busy. You know, you get out of school, you go do one thing. You kept busy. But I think where they learn you - I'd like to see kids get involved in more than one sport. I think it helps your decision skills when you play more than one sport. You might not be good in all of it, but it helps your decision skills, where you can make better choices in life.
</p><p>
WW: Throughout the 1950s and going into the sixties, did you continue living at the Jeffries Projects?
</p><p>
WH: Back and forth. My mom and daddy had a two-room - actually, a two-room apartment, but Jeffries Projects was close to where my mom then, I stayed with my sister, Faye Griffin, and from that, I used to go home, back and forth. It just - you know, in our community, actually, your house - your door - for the people in the community, the door was open for anybody. They'd help you, feed you. I don't think - I don't think I ever went hungry, because you can eat at anybody's house. But I think - I think about that - I go by all the community where I was raised up, now they got new condos and houses over there, they just put a new baseball field several years back, at the playground where we started playing ball as a kid - and usually on the way down to the ballpark I usually drive through there. I usually drive down there two or three times a week.
</p><p>
WW: Going into the sixties, you, of course, joined the Tigers in '63?
</p><p>
WH: No, I came up. I signed in '61. I signed a hardship case to help my parents. And from the hardship case, Judge Keith got involved. There was still racial problems in baseball and stuff like that. And actually, my dad requested that I stay at home with the Tigers, because he let me - 1961, before I signed, to go see Jake Wood, the first black player - African American player - 12 years after Jackie Robinson came through this organization. And that's the reason I signed with the Tigers. I thought I was going to sign for the Yankees, Baltimore, I'd been working out with them. But going down Trumbull towards the ballpark, I asked Papa why we're going that way. He said, “I decided, young man, let you see play baseball, back in June - I mean in April - I think the eleventh or tenth - that I think you can stay home, maybe you might make it different for more black players in the future.”
</p><p>
WW: As you're now on an MLB [Major League Baseball] team, and you're growing in national significance, do you become involved in the national civil rights discussion, or do you focus on baseball?
</p><p>
WH: Well yeah, I got involved, to tell you the truth, go back when I left home. I talk about this a lot - I probably experienced what Mother Parks - Rosa Parks - experienced on the bus - but at the time the bus was full, and I went to the back anyway, but in Lakeland, I got out at the bus station, I want to get a ride to Tigertown - and I thought that - he said he can't take me. You know, at home, I see Yellow Cab, Checker Cab, I said I want to go to Tigertown. He said "I can't take you." And I - to me, I thought - thought he was playing a joke. You know, you leave away from home, you hear about people playing jokes on guys go to college - freshmen and stuff like that - I get my duffelbags, I walk six miles - between four and six miles to Tigertown. And it's funny, after I got there, it still didn't sink in until there was a white kid - I forget his name - we played baseball against each other in Detroit, and we wanted to room together, and I couldn't room together with him.
</p><p>
So, from all the hardship case that I experienced, got me where I went beyond the field. I think to Ernie Harwell and George Kell kind of helped prep me, what I was going to have to go through when I come up with the Tigers. Actually, I used to go eat at Ernie's home on Sunday, to have dinner with him and his family. And they kind of got me into doing that, and I kind of got ready for what I would have to come toward in the future.
</p><p>
And after spring training, we left, and then here going to Duluth, Minnesota my first year, and I have highest respect to [Al Lakeland ?], our manager - that we couldn't stay at the hotel and he took the older guys, and they drew - driving all the way to Duluth, Minnesota, so I think about him in life, and he kind of - people like that help you get where you want to go out and try to make a difference for everybody. And through Ernie Harwell I met Bob Hope. I got involved with the military bases and I'm still involved with the military bases. I've been overseas with Bob Hope for a time, and six other times, and you know, I just - from that, it makes you say - things that you appreciate, that you can reach back and try to put some things together to help all people. Through the military, and I think it helped me get more involved in the community. You know, if you get exposed - standing out in the woods with them at night, not just going there to say hi and goodbye, but you got totally involved. And actually I'm still doing that today with the Tigers. We've got a partnership with Fort Benning. We bring soldiers to spring training, and the families. I go down in November to graduation, et cetera.
</p><p>
WW: Were you in town in '63 for the march down Woodward?
</p><p>
WH: I was out playing in '63. My dad was a part of it. He called me, and Papa, he was part of it, when Dr. King did the march, and I learned through Judge Keith, as a lawyer, that was going to happen. Then I had the opportunity later on meeting Dr. King through Judge Keith, and that's when I said I met a lot of famous people: presidents, entertainment and movie actors through Judge Keith, but I never forget that. But I had opportunity of meeting him before I got home down in Memphis, Tennessee, when he gave a speech down there and I never forget that. And things like that keep you growing. And through life, I look back, and I think that's what keeps me going now, and I try to carry myself according to that.
</p><p>
WW: Getting closer to '67, did you feel any rising tension in the city, or sense anything coming?
</p><p>
WH: Nope. And I remember, it's a funny thing about that. Jake Wood, after he got involved, and I hear his story, and Jake – I got him back involved with the Tigers now, and Jake, he's 80, 81, still playing 72 games of softball. But to hear him speak, he didn't realize that was going on. And I - you'd think, but he'd been hearing about it, he came from New Jersey, and to hear him speak, he said he looked up to me, I looked up to him, because that's the reason I signed with the Tigers, because of him, but he made a statement many times - he didn't realize until he started reading about it.
</p><p>
And I guess because your mind is playing baseball and being part of the fan base, which I call my extended family, and I learn how to play through the fans and made them part of my game, and listen to him say that - I would do the same thing over again because I learned an important benefit of being a professional athlete is going to play the game - and I never put the game before the fans.
</p><p>
WW: In '67, were you still living near the Jeffries Projects?
WH: No. I - actually, Jeffries Projects, I got out of Jeffries Projects years before. Judge Keith became my league adviser when I was 13 years old. And he lived on Woodrow Wilson. I was going back and forth, staying at his place. And I actually, after I signed my contract, got mother and them a nice home out near Highland Park, and I set up a pension for my dad for ten years or so, and I think - I still didn't get away from the Projects because I never get - when I went off the first year, '61, I had met a guy that - like my mentor, that I looked up to, was Gage Brown, I talked him into coming home with me. I introduced him his wife, Norma Sterling at the time, and she was in the Projects. We were raised up together, and - but - I think about that. The connection, through people, and actually, I used to stop by there all the time. And I was in the big league and I used to stop, before they started building - developing that new development over there. But I used to stop through there and see people from the past. And that's - I never forgot where I came from. I'm very thankful and humble through God, that he kept me humble. That I never got away from that.
</p><p>
WW: Going into the start of the week, on Saturday night, late Saturday night, Sunday morning, how did you hear - how did you first hear about what was going on?
</p><p>
WH: Well actually, it was Sunday. I didn't hear about nothing like that until actually, I got involved. We had a doubleheader, I think, with the Yankees. Second game, they called the game off, they told us they wanted all of us to go home, and for insurance purposes. And I ended up putting all my clothes in a duffle bag and I end up in the middle of the riot and try to bring some peace to the people. I used to wonder why I did that, but I had no control. I think God had control over that, through the people that I mentioned in the past - Judge Keith, Ernie Harwell - they got me where I was - got involved in things like that. I think about the riot, you know, down there, seeing all this looting and burning, and I talk - try to bring peace - but I mean, the people that kept me going back - they weren't about my security. Go home, Willie, get out of here, and stuff like that.
</p><p>
But I didn't do that. I went home and I come back, and when I told I got involved in the city, government, trying to make it better for people in the city, and one of my pet [inaudible] in life is the PAL [Police Athletic League] program, that Mayor Greer, I think, started that after the riot. Started developing that in 1969 - 1968 - started developing the PAL program and they opened up in '69.
</p><p>
WW: Can you correct the mayor?
</p><p>
WH: It's Mayor Griss.
</p><p>
WW: Gribbs, okay.
</p><p>
WH: And it started for a program that I'm very proud of, that I came back part of that program for many years after that, after playing sports and retiring, that Coleman recruited me to come back and work through the city government, through the police department. Then I came to be a Deputy Director and a Secondary Chief, that Detroit PAL kind of helped spearhead Philadelphia PAL and other PAL around the country, and all the bylaws that they do in PAL today, that we was involved putting that together, and they still use the same bylaws through the schools and PAL around the country, that we had - Inspector Bowham, that got involved in that, and went to the national PAL convention. And they still use the regulations and rules that we established back that many years.
</p><p>
WW: Going back to '67, you mentioned that you were going from near the epicenter, or the scenes of violence, back to your home, and back and forth. Did you run into any issues going to and from your house -
</p><p>
WH: No -
</p><p>
WW: Or did you see anything?
</p><p>
WH: Actually just a few days ago, we left going into Baltimore, playing that weekend, so I didn't see anything like that. But after we came back off the road I was able to have meetings, certain meetings and stuff like that, and I started going to some of the meetings and things like that, but I'm just - and I think that's the beginning of me kind of appreciate the good Lord gave me the ability to do something, that I can get involved doing other things, far as human era of people, that I can try to make a difference in their life.
</p><p>
WW: Did any of your family members have their property damaged, or -
</p><p>
WH: No.
</p><p>
WW: That's good.
</p><p>
WH: No. We - actually, my sister and them, actually still staying living in the Projects and stuff like that. And I know some people down Twelfth Street, that's the only problem got messed up a little bit. I seen a lot of history things - and last year they did a book, a story on the riots in '67 and I never would ask. I used to wonder why I never asked to be part of that, because I was very incidentally involved in that, but I think I've seen a lot of people say the bad things about the riot, but I seen some good things come out of the riot. I seen Detroit grow at the time - whether you want to admit that, or people to admit that, you know, most black people was in the Black Bottom. And through the riot, that's when we started branching out. You might call it a hardship at the beginning when you branch out into the community, but I think that was opportunity. And I seen Detroit grow in the minority area.
</p><p>
WW: You’ve referred to '67 as a riot a number of times. Is that how you frame what it was?
</p><p>
WH: I don't know what time, we was just playing. I don't - I can't say. All I seen was black smoke, look across, over the right field stands. And I didn't have a general idea what was going on until they called the game off.
</p><p>
WW: Oh no, I'm sorry. I mean - do you see it as a riot? Do you see it as an uprising, as a rebellion?
</p><p>
WH: Well, I was concerning, to me, in life, arise - you know, you do it, but don't get away from the meaning. I was telling the people, don't burn your own stuff down. Don't be looting, taking stuff. You defeat what the purpose was. And I'm just - we're just very fortunate they didn't get away from that, because they got busy trying to handle the problem with our own, tick that off, and try to correct it for the future. But sometimes you get - you get out there, defeat the purpose, and people thing you're out there just to start a riot, looting, it wasn't about that. It was about what went on with the police officer and some private people at a club or something.
</p><p>
WW: The police are routinely cited as a major force in inciting '67. How did you feel later on when you joined the police department? Did you think it had changed by that point?
</p><p>
WH: Well, that's many years after I played. You know, I came back - Coleman had a person named Charlie Pringman recruited me. I was living in Seattle, came back and got involved through that, and through the PAL organization. And I had opportunity to get involved with the Police Academy and stuff like that, understand all the bylaws and responsibilities, respect the uniform. I got totally involved. I'm very fortunate, I ended up as Secondary Chief, but that was many years after I retired from baseball.
</p><p>
WW: You mentioned that you became much more - not more involved, but you stayed involved in the community after '67.
</p><p>
WH: Well, actually, I started back in the community involvement back after I signed in '63 - '62, '63, when I met Bob Hope and et cetera. Actually I went back down in 1968, and had the war going on, went back down - and what's the name -
</p><p>
WW: Vietnam?
</p><p>
WH: Vietnam War. And I went back down there after the World Series and I'll never forget Mr. Fessie called, so what are you doing down there? You know. And they're concerned. I came back. But it's something that through that relationship with the military, and I think, working in the community, what got me today doing the same thing in the community, down in Florida now, is through churches and schools.
</p><p>
WW: Did anybody question that? Did anybody else - did anyone wonder why you were becoming so involved when so many people were leaving?
</p><p>
WH: Not really. I didn't - you know, I did things, and my heart's always been about Detroit. And the state - the people of the state of Michigan. I never been questioned why I did, right to today, and I just did things. And you know, I think that's one reason I'm back doing things now and thanks to Mr. Illitch and his family got me involved many years ago, and - but he got me back, not only in baseball, got me involved with the people in the community and their concern of treating people right.
</p><p>
WW: Going into '68. The '68 World Series win was really big for Detroit, and many people cite it as a moment of Detroit coming together. From your personal experience, what do you think it did for the city?
</p><p>
WH: I think it did a lot for the city. It started after we lost in '67, one game, and going into the winter, going into spring training, and started to open the season. People don't realize, newspapers were on the strike then. And I think playing good baseball, and people listen to Ernie Harwell's voice, I seen people - start getting more people at the ballpark and I seen black and white people sitting together, talking together, cheering us on, and a lot of times you need that support when you're with the newspaper, but we didn't have that. I think this town grow closer, because the newspaper's on the strike. I think sometimes, political-wise, things you read might keep you separated. But I seen where we went on, I think that's one of the reasons we won. I think - I always said to myself, I think on the plat down on the ballpark, I think the good lord put us here to win, to heal the city of Detroit. So I think it played a big important role, but I think it helped us as people, the guys that are playing this game - supporters are - we didn't think about it. We started taking, leading in baseball. And I think it started from the riot, and we went to spring training, so we knew we had the best team, we're going to win. And I think that newspaper on the strike, and Ernie Harwell's voice, I seen this city kind of grow together.
</p><p>
WW: Are there any other stories you'd like to share today?
</p><p>
WH: Well, I can talk all day when it comes to people and stuff like that. You know, I'm just very fortunate, back involved, and still involved, like I said, Mr. Illitch got me involved, and his family. And I think about - I go back many years ago, and what's going on in the city now, thanks to Mr. Illitch and his commitment through Coleman Young, that things that are going on, there's been a commitment for him to move downtown, which you see going on, and I think, if you go down there now, you see things growing every week, every day. And I'm 75, and I hope, I envision, I see - I know I won't see Hudson's back, because I used to love to do downtown around Christmas time to see them light up the Christmas lights on the side of the Hudson's building - but now he's got other things down there, and I really enjoy looking at the pictures of downtown at nighttime now, you see a lot of life.
</p><p>
But I think it goes back to - thank Mr. Illitch's family for doing that, for his commitment with Coleman, what's going on now, downtown, but I always think about uproar and the riots and stuff. Most young people don't realize what's going on. It's just like, you go to college, they see things going on in college, you start one of them. I'm following this kid. I'm following this one. They don't have an idea what's going on, they're just following the crowd. But - and that's why I said a couple years back, when Baltimore was having a problem. I said, if they get the people together, the people are going to heal that. And that's what I saw. Political wise, they kind of keep you far away, getting to the truth. But if you listen to the people in the community, that's who heals things like that. And primarily I think, that's what I'm still doing. Doing here, and I'm involved in a program down in Florida in spring training and Polk County and Lakeland and it's something that it's all - the story what we're doing down there is all about what I just explained to you. Go back three years ago and Mr. Illitch told me to go for it. You know, and this thing is growing across Polk County and I hope one day it might be a model for this country, what started when our childhood, coming up in Detroit, and my vision of the future, and Mr. Illitch's support, that right now we - I think we've got over 2200 foot soldiers in the Polk County community. And it's started from incident. But the key to this is churches and schools, and I'm - it's - if you look at life, sometime in the last 50 years or so, I seen churches and schools got separated. We lost a lot of faith in our schools. But you bring them two back together, I think they'll teach you about - remind you how you know your next door neighbor's name and stuff like that. But that's what I like to see. How many more years I've got left, thank the good lord, that I can see that come together, and I think that'll be nice for here in Detroit and for this country.
</p><p>
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
</p><p>
WH: Thank you.
</p><p>
WW: I really appreciate it.
</p><p>
WH: Thank you.
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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30min 44sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Willie Horton
Location
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Detroit, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Willie Horton, December 7th, 2017
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Willie Horton discusses growing up in Detroit in the 1960s in the Jeffries Housing Projects, his impressions of the city, his actions during the events of 1967 as a member of the Detroit Tigers, and his ongoing work with the community both in Detroit and in Lakeland, Florida.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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05/18/2018
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
1968 World Series
Detroit Community Members
Detroit Police Department
Detroit Tigers
Jeffries Housing Project
Looting
Martin Luther King Jr.
Mayor Coleman Young
Vietnam War
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/46959393c5b0db9a079ed1ec21d00a51.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
An audio or video resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Joel Smith
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Joel Smith was born in Illinois in 1949 and moved to Waterford Township in 1959. He delivered the Detroit Free Press as a child and attended Waterford Kettering High School. In 1967 he was 16 years old.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Phone interview
Date
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08/22/2016
Interview Length
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00:23:10
Transcriptionist
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Julia Moss
Transcription Date
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07/28/2017
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello, today is August 22, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I am on the phone with Mr. Joel Smith. Thank you so much for joining me today.</p>
<p>JS: My pleasure.</p>
<p>WW: Could you please tell me where and when were you born?</p>
<p>JS: I was born in Carbondale, Illinois, which is southern Illinois, on December 5, 1949.</p>
<p>WW: What year did your family come to Detroit?</p>
<p>JS: My dad went to Purdue University in Lafayette. After he graduated, he moved to Holly, Michigan, and he got a job in Waterford, Michigan as a schoolteacher, and we moved into Waterford Township, which is in Oakland County, it’s a suburb or Pontiac, in 1959. And that’s where I stayed until I graduated, and I actually lived there until they were deceased.</p>
<p>WW: When you moved to Waterford, afterwards did you visit the city of Detroit at all?</p>
<p>JS: Oh, yeah. Detroit at that time was where everybody went shopping. Pontiac was kind of a quick getaway, but to go to Hudson’s or to go downtown, any event at Cobo Hall. Once I got to be a teenager we went to all the car shows, the hot-rod shows, the new car shows, any concerts. And a lot of times we went to all the Motown reviews and were in all the theaters, so we were really active in going to Detroit all during our teenage years.</p>
<p>WW: What was your first impression of the city? Do you remember?</p>
<p>JS: Oh, at that time it was hopping. It really was, you know. I guess because my parents never had any racial tendencies, even though Waterford was 99.9 percent white. There were some Latinos, but zero blacks went to our school. There really wasn’t a racial overtone to Detroit when we went there. But other times we’d go to Motown reviews and we’d be the only white people, the kids there. There would be four or five males that always went to them, and then once we got girlfriends we’d go. And we never felt that. And with Pontiac, it’s like, you know, a day. We’d go to—all the theaters were in Pontiac. Waterford was just a suburb, there was no—ever a downtown or nothing going on. So, Detroit was where the action was, and then once we got our wheels, then Woodward Avenue was an every night cruise. We started off in Pontiac which was the beginning of Woodward, which they changed then to the name “Widetrack”. But that was the move, and we’d cruise all the way down the downtown riverfront almost nightly. All during our youth that was the only thing to do.</p>
<p>WW: And you felt comfortable moving around the city?</p>
<p>JS: Yes. That’s the place that we never really had problems. And, of course, at that time we were underage, and we usually had different areas, there would be black guys that would buy us alcohol. And then eventually when we started smoking marijuana, then we could always find different black guys or Latinos that would provide us with the marijuana, so. I don’t think—that was the beginning of hippies. It was almost—California had already had the beginning of hippies, and Michigan was just beginning. There was one area in downtown Detroit called Plum Street where a few people had taken over abandoned houses and old houses and painted everything on the street purple. Fire hydrants, lamp posts, every house was the same color purple, and that was called Plum Street, and that was a mix of everybody. That’s when blacks started growing their hair out and the afros and everybody looked like Jimmy Hendrix. And, of course, we were trying to grow our hair out, but we would get in trouble. I got sent—I was the first person to get sent to the office at our school for having sideburns that went past the bottom of my ears [laughs]. And my dad was a schoolteacher in the same system. He was at junior high, I’m in high school, and they called my dad up and said, “Joel’s over here in the office,” and he said, “What did he do this time?” And he said, “His sideburns are too long.” And he goes, “Are you kidding me? He’s getting straight As and you’re worried about his sideburns?” Because in junior high I was a C, B student, and in tenth grade they said, “Well, he might just go plan on working at Pontiac Motors because colleges don’t take B and C students.” And I said, “Well, what do I got to do?” And he said, “You’ve got to get straight As.” Alright, I guess I’ve got to get straight As now. So, once I applied myself and I ended up going to Central Michigan University, but I got accepted at Western Michigan University and Eastern Michigan and University of Hawaii, which is where I wanted to go but couldn’t go because you had to pay outside tuition. So, we really felt comfortable always going to Detroit, and maybe because I had redhead and freckles. Because now everybody’s a redhead, whether it’s natural or unnatural, but in my era there was Howdy Doody and Bozo the Clown and me and two other girls that looked like Orphan Annie, and redhead and freckles always stood out. And sometimes people got teased, I would turn around and make a joke so everybody could get a laugh, you know. And Howdy Doody, you know, since people go, “Hey, you look like Howdy Doody.” And I go, “They made Howdy Doody look like me, I get a cut. Every time Howdy Doody’s on the show, I get a check.” They’re going, “Really?” Yeah!</p>
<p>WW: As you and your friends are coming to the city throughout the sixties, do you notice any growing tension in the city?</p>
<p>JS: Well, I’ll say it this time, the first time I went away to college and came back, we went down there, the beginning of maybe not feeling so comfortable. And I think it was more an economical divide, and it was the haves and the have-nots. Because I think of your car got broken into, they didn’t care whose car it was, your car got broken into. But then when we went down during the riots we were driving in a brand new yellow Catalina, with four trying to be hippie high school boys, and there was no protection, there was no police on the road. And there were small groups of black guys, and they’d stop our car and they’d come around us, they’d say, “What are you guys doing down here?” “Nothing, just cruising.” “Okay, well be careful.” And we saw young national guards—they didn’t pull out the national guard until I think the third day. But every night we went down from ten at night until five in the morning and cruised the streets in a yellow Catalina. Finally, one night his mom said, “Where are you guys going all night?” And he told them, so we had to switch to my friend’s black VW Bug.</p>
<p>WW: Why did you and your friends go down there?</p>
<p>JS: Because we were adventurous basically. And what we used to do—it’s hard to believe, but we used to do is cruise Woodward Avenue and if we saw a girl you’d—“Hi, hi, want to go to the park? We got some beer.”. Or if you saw another school—from a different high school, from Pontiac or wherever, you’d go, “Hey, pull over,” and you’d pull over and fight. And it’s hard to believe, people don’t believe this, but in ’65, ’66, ’67, fifty percent of the people would get in a fight every Friday or Saturday night. Every party there would be a fight. That was just what guys did. There was no knifing, no guns, you might fight your best friend. I mean, that was just the era. And then as soon as marijuana started coming in, ’67 and ’68, that was the end of the fights. That was the true beginning and the birth of the baby boomers, peace generation. And alcohol use and abuse—even in college, there wasn’t as much alcohol as there is now, because pot was so new. There would be keggers and there would be beer left over at the end of the night, because people would be smoking so much pot they didn’t need to drink beer.</p>
<p>WW: Going back to your little adventures down in the city during the riot, are there any stories you’d like to share?</p>
<p>JS: Well, one of the greatest stories I thought was we were cruising and there was oh, two, three at night and we come around the corner and here’s two national guard guys. And there’s nobody out in the street, so we stop. Mainly what we saw, it wasn’t black or racial tension, it was I’m poor and here’s a TV store and they’ve got a whole lot of TVs and let’s break in the windows and get the TVs. Or here’s a liquor store, we don’t have any money, let’s get in the liquor store. It was kind of like opportunity to get something for nothing. It was the beginning of looting for no reason. There was people—I would see guys carrying a box of Gerber baby food, you know. I’m going, “Really, you’re stealing baby food?” So, this was three in the morning and there was stuff all over the roads and people dropping cans and that, and we asked the National Guard guys how they felt. And they said, “We’re scared; they didn’t even give us bullets.” These two National Guard guys, and they weren’t much older than us. They were in their twenties because they joined the National Guard so they wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam. So, they were scared for being there with guns with no bullets. And then we go not even a quarter block away, we turn the corner, and there’s a mob of black guys and at the end of the street there was a car that you couldn’t tell what kind of car it was, and there was smoke coming from it but it wasn’t burning. It was more like radiator steam and just hot fluid. It’s not smoke from a fire. And we asked the guys, “What is that?” And they said that was a car that tried to run a road block and the army tanks ran over it. And we go, “What?” They said, “Yeah, there was an army tank going down the street and these guys wouldn’t stop.” And we never saw anything in the newspaper about it. And I read the <i>Detroit Free Press</i> every day since I’d been in fourth grade, because I used to deliver the <i>Free Press</i>. I’d go on vacation, I’d have people buy me the <i>Free Press</i> and I’d read them in consecutive order. And I never saw a story about this car getting run over by an army tank.</p>
<p>WW: Do remember what kind of car it was?</p>
<p>JS: It was an Electra 225, because we drove right up to it, and we couldn’t tell from five feet away what it was. But we knew our cars, and a friend of ours’ dad had one just like it. But the middle where the driver was and almost up to the front of the engine was totally flat, and the rear end was bent straight up in the air and the trunk lid was popped open. And the guys told us that they had—the National Guard thought that they were running guns, or had stolen guns in the trunk, and when they popped the trunk open nothing was in it. And we said, “What about the guys that were in the car?” And everybody shook their heads. They didn’t either know, or—how could you get not flattened? And nothing in the paper, never saw one thing about that. And we talked about it and I told my parents about it, and we talked to people at school about it. We all went to the Waterford Kettering High School and never saw a thing about it in the paper.</p>
<p>We were most afraid— we saw a few people who were on roofs of the buildings that they owned with shotguns, and they had their cars up in front of their—on the sidewalk protecting the front windows. And they shot at—in Pontiac, like the grocery store and the meat market, and it was way down, and they had guys park their trucks in front of the windows—their bread trucks or their delivery trucks. And then they were on top of the trucks with shotguns all night long. So that was I think two of the things I saw that really didn’t get reported, and it didn’t get reported that four white guys—one guy, his mom owned the yellow Catalina, had white hair, just like California surfer, dark tan. Three of us were lifeguards at beaches, not at pools. Pool lifeguards are babysitters. We were lifeguards at beaches. And so, we’d cruise around and had lifeguard jackets from where we worked, and that was a good magnet for girls. Something about a lifeguard—Ronald Raegan was a lifeguard.</p>
<p>WW: Did you or any of your friends anticipate any violence that summer?</p>
<p>JS: No, and actually like I said, before people—it’s highly debated when they know me now—but at that time there was actually so much fighting that one person would get a rumor being the toughest guy in the school, so another guy from a different school would challenge him. Just like gun fights in the old days when somebody would draw you out, come on out, let’s do it. So, we kind of were—one guy was a brown belt in karate, I was allegedly the toughest guy in school, so we weren’t afraid. And nobody had knives and guns back in those days. I mean, nobody, there was no—I mean, if people were back in the sixties or seventies, how many people died during that riot and how many people die every day from gun fights from gangs shooting each other? So, what we think is a riot back then, there was less guns-- bullets fired during that riot than on a daily basis, I give it to you. You never heard gunfire, even down in—every night, every street, you saw every burned out place, there wasn’t—and if there’s one thing I can say, I’ve travelled. I’ve seen all fifty states, I’ve been to fourteen Caribbean islands, twenty countries, and in Detroit I have driven every street in Detroit. Even the streets the prostitutes were on. We know who has weed, who has this. Detroit was never sinister to white people until drugs became predominant and we just became bait. Even now with the heroine problem, I don’t think too many white people are getting killed in Detroit because they’re white. It’s because they’ve got money, so.</p>
<p>WW: Did you and your friends stop coming to Detroit after the riot?</p>
<p>JS: No, but after I started to say that after we went away to college and came down, went to Cobo Hall, all the way, came out, someone broke in my car. I mean, I’ve been to Detroit hundreds—no, over a hundred times, two hundred. We went to the Grande Ballroom a hundred times at least. I never had my car broken into. College kids stole my five-dollar pair of sunglasses, cost me a $175 for the side window of my car, and I never could get the glass out of there. Every time I vacuumed you’d find glass. And that was it. I said, “I’m not driving my vehicle.” So, I would go—we would go to concerts and then once I got a little money, I’d take limos. Put some lamps into there, it would be a hundred bucks, and then you’re not worried about your car getting broken into, you can drink in the back, you’re not worried about drinking and driving, and I don’t think I’ve driven my vehicle and gotten out of it, been away from it, in 30 years. And I’m 66 in December.</p>
<p>WW: How do you interpret the events of July? Do you see it as a riot? Or do you see it as a rebellion?</p>
<p>JS: Well, what started off as basically—you know, I mean, I don’t know how many people have analyzed the roots of it, but the roots of it were, cops didn’t get their share of a blind pig, and when you try and harass a bunch of people in the middle of July and everybody’s broke—economically ’67 might have not been the best year, but there was jobs, so it wasn’t like it was a depression or anything. So, I basically saw it as one thing leading to another, and once somebody broke into the first grocery store—I don’t even know which store got broke into first, the corner liquor store or across the street, the TV store owned by the Lebanese guy or somebody that was different in the neighborhood. They broke into their store first and in the end, they destroyed stuff that was black-owned, they destroyed their whole neighborhood. And they tried to do it in Pontiac, and too many people were just saying, “Hey, that’s my neighborhood.” It didn’t matter who owned it, black, white. And so I really see that at the root of it was economical distress and a little bit of— 99 percent of Detroit cops were white and they were shaking down everybody. They’d shake down—I mean, I must have got beer confiscated from me 10 times, we never got arrested. They never—why should they take kids to jail for beer? They took your beer and you’d flip them 20 bucks. That’s all we got, we’d always say that. I always kept money in my socks just so if the cops took our beer and all our money I had a 20 in my sock. We cruised Woodward every night and probably got maybe pulled over a hundred times—and, you know, we didn’t cruise Woodward in the winter, I mean, in the summers—we probably got pulled over a hundred times and had beer on us maybe ten, and never got arrested. We finally learned to stash the beer somewhere on the park and then come back. But that was the era when everybody was racing on Woodward. This past week it’s been a big deal that you could race on Woodward Avenue. It was nonstop. Every stop light was racing. You had to position yourself, you’d stagger yourself so you’d be at the head of the pack at the light. But we would go to the drive-ins, there was Ted’s drive-in and Big Boy’s, things like that.</p>
<p>WW: Alright, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to talk with me today.</p>
<p>JS: Great. Well, I appreciate—I hope it adds to the wider spectrum and just one narrow view.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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23min 10sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Joel Smith
Location
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Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7CJxQPoqqWg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
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Title
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Joel Smith, August 22nd, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Joel Smith talks about his memories of growing up in the Detroit area and cruising down Woodward with his friends. They often spent time in the city and enjoyed the concerts and the parks. In the summer of 1967, he and his friends drove around the city and talked with members of the Michigan National Guard and witnesses of a tank rolling over a car. He discusses the changes he noticed the city in the sixties and after the summer of 1967 and the social changes and drug culture of the time.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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09/08/2017
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
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Plum Street
Tanks
Teenagers
Woodward Avenue
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/f25a76cb3dccc9be6bb48e1ed17eb807.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 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
Dublin Core
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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/17b465bb6bbbd05a520ef29be3b11a7a.jpg
f15604bfc61e22c230f05e306d1c8cde
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
Written Story
A written account or story submitted by an individual.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
Detroit Riots of 1967 by Jerry Janosky
My recollection of the Detroit Riots of 1967 is one of utter chaos. An early morning weekend raid of a 12th street speakeasy escalated into an inner city spread of riot, looting and arson. This culminated by many years of racial discrimination and frustration of equal rights. By the late afternoon, the situation had become crucial and out of hand. I can remember being contacted by phone about 5PM that Sunday afternoon to report to the Firehouse.
We relieved the crew on duty. They had been busy all day and needed a break. Our first response was a house fire in our first alarm district on the near Northeast section of the city. After extinguishment of the fire and return to quarters the streets had become a magnitude of people destroying store fronts & looting in a frenzy of open defiance of the law. Unless you were there witnessing this outrageous calamity you couldn’t believe that this was happening in the USA. One can only ascertain that the same events were going on in the ghetto area as we listened to the Department radio and heard of the many fires being reported by the first arriving engine companies. The city was in distress as mostly all Fire Companies were engaged in their profession of extinguishing fires and attempting to save lives and property. At times it seemed futile as the riotous crowd tried to keep you from doing your job for we were considered the establishment. In other instances the innocent people involved helped the Fire Department by stretching line in an attempt to put out their own house fire. Later, reports of sniper fire on Fire Department personnel while doing their job became more prominent. The reporting of such incidents was warranted as dangerous and central officer our communications lifeline ordered companies to leave their equipment and leave the scene. Our response to 12 Street was another unforgettable moment. Many hotel and tall buildings were on fire. Each structure in itself was a 5 alarm fire and here we were with a few companies per building to try and put out a major blaze. 12th street looked like the German Luftwaffe had done a successful bombing raid, as many structures were destroyed and the streets were littered with fallen walls and bricks. It is one scene I will never forget. Later that evening we responded on the near west side to an appliance warehouse. It was on fire but being looted at the same time as many TVs were removed. A nearby liquor store was broken into and its contents removed. We were there with another Engine Co. and as the night progressed we gradually got help as other companies appeared on the scene. We took turns aiming the heavy duty nozzles all night from outside the warehouse. I can remember entering a nearby apartment building in the area and dozing off for an hour or two in the stairway. As dawn emerged the fire was out. The police were on the scene arresting scavengers who had broken into the liquor store.
On the way back to Quarters, Woodward Avenue was a series of arrests, as would be looters of Jewelry stores, were held at bay with pistols in hand. At Quarters, the other shift relieved us as we had been busy all night and just needed a well-earned rest. The next day, it was determined that all volunteer companies from the suburban nearby cities would be manned by one fire prevention officer to direct them to fire responses in the city.
All Firemen are a universal brotherhood and we welcomed the outlying Fire Dept’s that came to our aid in a time when we needed them the most.
Another order came down that we would congregate in three separate areas in the city and respond from them. Downtown Headquarters - a Far West Engine Co. and a Far East Engine Co. was the plan.
Meanwhile, tragic news was aired over the Department Radio that we lost a firefighter on the west side. Electrocuted by high wires while on an aerial ladder. FF Ashby was the victim. Then, shortly another shocker. Carl Smith, one of our own Firefighters at Ladder 11. He came back on duty after being 5/ 6 weeks off due to an appendectomy. He responded with Engine Co. 13 and was killed by sniper.
We were ordered to Engine 52’s quarters at Alter road and E. Warren. That was the Far East headquarters that we would respond from. All Engines Co.’s were parked one behind the other, as were all the Ladder Co.’s. As the responses came in the first engine truck would respond and go back at the end of the line when they returned. Despite the Distance, we covered the whole east side. Meanwhile, the National Guard had been called in and were assigned 2 members per rig with rifled & ammunition. It was gratifying to know that we had some protection, while fighting fires. Eventually, the whole situation was declared a national emergency and a division of the US Army Paratroopers, the screaming eagles, were called in to maintain peace. They patrolled the city and a nightly curfew, finally quelled any further resistance or large scales of arson. As things died down, I was allowed to go home after 4 hectic days, reuniting with my wife & 3 daughters. (A 4th daughter was born 4 years later). I was all spent out and needed some time to relax and get back to normal. We buried our fallen comrades and resumed our regular schedule at the Firehouse.
In retrospect, the Detroit Fire Dept. performed admirably, under the adverse conditions. It will go down in history as such. Isn’t it ironic that this was our centennial year being organized in 1867.
I was proud to have served and done my part in this major catastrophe. I hope that such a situation never again exists and know that firefighters all over are there in the time of need.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Jerry Janosky
Mary Ann Janosky-McCourt
Submission Date
The date the story was submitted in MM/DD/YYYY format.
06/07/2017
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
Jerry Janosky
Description
An account of the resource
Jerry Janosky was a firefighter in Detroit in 1967.
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
07/14/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Relation
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Jerry Janosky Oral History: http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/items/show/406
Format
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
en-US
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Arson
Detroit Fire Department
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Twelfth Street
-
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
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
An audio or video resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Alys Currier
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
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
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<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
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
6min 13sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Alys Currier
Location
The location of the interview
Monroe, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Alys Currier, February 7th, 2017
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Currier discusses her impressions of the events of July 1967.
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
06/13/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/Mp3
Language
A language of the resource
en-US
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
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/5bac344ffa8c48a3903dd96b7d1af032.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.
Isaiah "Ike" McKinnon
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Isaiah "Ike" McKinnon was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1943 and moved to Detroit in 1953. He was a Detroit police officer during the events of 1967, and later became police chief and deputy mayor. He is currently a professor at University of Detroit Mercy.
Interviewer's Name
The first and last name of the interviewer.
William Winkel
Interview Place
The place where the interview was conducted.
Detroit, Michigan
Date
The date of the interview in MM/DD/YYYY format.
05/16/2017
Interview Length
The total length of the interview in HH:MM:SS format.
00:57:12
Transcriptionist
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Julia Moss
Transcription Date
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06/09/2017
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>WW: Hello, today is May 16, 2017, my name is William Winkel, this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I am sitting down with Ike McKinnon. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>IM: Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here.</p>
<p>WW: Could you please start by telling me where and when were you born?</p>
<p>IM: I was born in 1943 in Montgomery, Alabama.</p>
<p>WW: And when did you come to Detroit?</p>
<p>IM: Well, my family moved to Detroit in 1953, the reason being that there were more jobs, and my father moved us here and we initially lived in the Brewster Projects, which is infamous for so many great people coming from there. Hopefully I’m one of them [laughter]. But we lived in the projects for a bit and then we moved into the area of the Medical Center on St. Antoine. So I went to Lincoln Elementary, which is now I believe Spain or Carson. But that’s where we started.</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember your first impression of the city?</p>
<p>IM: The first impression was this big, crowded place in which there were very few empty houses. I remember that because, later on as I did research, I think the occupancy rate in 1953 was about 99 and a half percent occupancy. And to see all these people—number one, living in the projects, but number two, all these houses, and I’d never seen anything like this, you know? To see the streetcars and all the cars up and down the street, it was just amazing. Coming from Alabama as a young boy, I just couldn’t imagine, and I was just really moved by the number of people and—certainly being crowded, but stores everywhere and just loads and loads of people. What really stood out for me even more so was that I’d never been around that many people of color. I mean, in Alabama we had people of color but not the great number that we had in Detroit, and it was just amazing for me to see that.</p>
<p>WW: When you came north, did you expect the racism of the South to follow you?</p>
<p>IM: You know, I expected that things would be different in Detroit, because as a young boy, you know, you really aren’t totally aware of all the racism that’s there. Certainly, you know, I went to an all-colored school in Alabama, and when I came to Detroit and going to school there are no white kids in Lincoln Elementary, and that was kind of a surprise. And when we would go downtown, we would see whites and blacks, but there was no integration as such. I mean we saw—there were certain restaurants you couldn’t go to. The thing that really stood out to me, certainly later on in my career, I saw only one black police officer in all those years that I was here in Detroit. I never saw a black police officer in Alabama, there wasn’t any, but in Detroit it was kind of surprising. And so it stood out for me. And those are things that I took note of as I lived there.</p>
<p>And what was really interesting is living close to what was called Hastings Street, which was the place that everything was happening. And to see all these black people with businesses along Hastings Street. And you would see whites who would come there, whether for services or business or whatever it might be, but there appeared to be some interaction. But it was just interesting to me to see that the great number of black people and the businesses that they owned and the places that they went to. But certainly there were places that you couldn’t go to. There were restaurants you couldn’t go to. And my mother and I would go shopping across Woodward at a place, a market called Tomboy. And you had to leave there early because across Woodward we had a great number of southern whites who lived over there, and you were told in no uncertain terms that you had to leave by a certain time, and we would—I was 10 or 11 years of age, and, you know, the things that were said to us.</p>
<p>WW: And how long did your family live at the Brewster Projects?</p>
<p>IM: We lived in the Brewster Projects probably for six months, and then we moved to 4125 St. Antoine. People say, Ike, you have a memory for numbers. Well, you know, when you live someplace as a young boy. 4125 St. Antoine. And that’s when I first met my first group of friends in Detroit. And to see those neighborhoods—they were clean, they were not upscale, but they were clean— and the families that were there. And across the street there was a church called New Bethlehem Baptist Church, and a little store—Mr. Dean’s store—down the street, and this group of friends that I met. But interesting for me was, that’s the first time I became aware of Reverend C.L. Franklin, who is Aretha Franklin’s dad. He had a church at Willis and Hastings, and I would go into the church and hear Aretha Franklin sing, I think she was 14 years of age or younger. And so those are things that really stood out for me living in that area. Then we moved to 4211 St. Antoine, you know, because it was a better house, but that was a neighborhood that I first became aware of things that were happening in Detroit.</p>
<p>And I got my first job. I was delivering coal for 10 cents a bushel. Back in those days we had coal stoves. And I would deliver coal, and sometimes I would make five dollars a weekend [laughter]. You know, in 1953, 1954, as a young boy that was good money. So I would have my wagon and bushels of coal on it, and pull it up around through the area that is now the Medical Center. So those are things that really stood out for me.</p>
<p>WW: The racial incidents you faced at the projects, did those incidents follow you to your new home, or were you more comfortable in your new home?</p>
<p>IM: Interestingly, there were very few racial incidents in the projects, and at 4125 and 4211, except for—there was a nurse who was white who had been killed. At that time Children’s Hospital was on St. Antoine, just north of Warren. And a nurse had been killed, allegedly by a young black man. And so what really stood out for me, and my first true interaction with the police, was over a weekend—and this was really publicized—they arrested a thousand young black men on suspicion of murder of this women. And my mother cautioning me not to go outside, and she cautioned my brother who was three years older, “Don’t go outside because they can lock you up.” And in those days you could be held by the police for 72 hours for suspicion of whatever the crime might be. And what was really kind of even more of a problem was that you couldn’t make a phone call. And this was maintained on your record, that you were arrested for suspicion of murder. And so young black men, or young white men, but particularly poor people, if you tried to get a job, if you tried to go to college, they had on your record that you were arrested for suspicion of murder. So you can just imagine [laughter], you know, if you had tried for something or a job, and you had been arrested four times for suspicion of murder—I mean, there was nothing to it, but that was it. Eventually they had that overturned, but that was one of those things that stood out for me, my mother cautioning me and my brother. And thank god it never came to fruition that I was arrested.</p>
<p>But that was my first interaction. The most—</p>
<p>WW: How old were you then?</p>
<p>IM: I was 12. When I was 14—I was at—I was 13, turning 14, I was at Garfield Junior High School, and I had just graduated to go to Cass Tech, which at that time was supposed to be the second-best school in the country, behind a school in Massachusetts. And I—the first day of school back in ’57, 1957, was a half-day. So I made an effort to go over to Garfield to say some words to my favorite teacher that I’m still in contact with, Mr. Raymond Hughes, he’s 97 years old. So I let him know that I’d gotten into Cass Tech, and he was happy and so forth—because he was this person who was like a mentor to all of us young boys. Anyway, I went to school, said hi to Mr. Hughes, Mr. [Teasley ?], who I’m also in contact with now, and as I was leaving the school, probably around 1:30 or something like that, this car that was at that time called the Big Four—these four very large white police officers—they grabbed me and threw me up against the car and proceeded to start beating me. You know, 14 years old, hadn’t done anything. But the name calling, it was just—it was brutal. And they beat me between my neck and my stomach. And I was saying, “Sir, but why?” And the more I asked why, the more they beat. And what’s really stood out for me is that I remember looking as they were beating me, and the name calling—this one individual, he was just so mean and nasty, the anger on his face—but I looked around at the people. This was an all-black neighborhood. And they were standing around watching. Of course nobody came to my aid, but then I realized why, because if they’d come they would have been locked up and beaten too. And so after they finished beating me up—no reason given other than the fact that I was a young black in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the right place at the right time for them—they told me in a very angry way and disparaging way, to get my ass out of there. So I ran home and I didn’t tell my parents. And the reason being that if I told my parents, both of them would have gone up to the Thirteenth Precinct at that time, and they probably would have gotten locked up or beaten too.</p>
<p>But I made myself a promise that evening that I was going to become a police officer. And the reason being that I wanted to make sure that those kinds of things didn’t happen to people like myself, or anyone that was an innocent person who would be savagely beaten by the police. I never knew that I would become Police Chief, or Doctor McKinnon, or Professor McKinnon, or Deputy Mayor. But I made myself that promise. And in 1965 when I was discharged from the Air Force I joined the Detroit Police Department, and fulfilled that part of my promise.</p>
<p>WW: What year did you join the Air Force?</p>
<p>IM: 1961 I joined the Air Force. And went to basic training in Texas, went from there to North Dakota, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, spent three years there. And then I went to the Philippines and then to Vietnam for my last year and a day, and I was discharged.</p>
<p>WW: When you left in 1961 and came back in ’65 you said?</p>
<p>IM: Yes.</p>
<p>WW: Did the city seem any different to you, or did the city seem on edge?</p>
<p>IM: The city was really different in that the young people—what I was a lack of respect for their elders. Growing up in Detroit, we would never swear in front of seniors, we just wouldn’t do that—of adults. I mean, as a military person, as a young person, we would swear. But you wouldn’t do that in front of adults, and particularly—there was something about not swearing in front of adults and swearing in front of women. And so when I came back I noticed this was more prevalent than I’d ever seen before, and I would ask people, “What the heck is going on?” And my friends would say, Man, the world has changed.</p>
<p>And this was in the midst of all the things that had started in Montgomery, had gone through Mississippi, Arkansas, and other places, and the Civil Rights Movement. And I sensed that certainly people were upset, they were concerned. But I flash back to what happened to me as a young boy, and probably this had happened to a lot of people, in particular those people who were migrating from the South. We had an inordinate number of people who migrated from the South to Detroit for jobs, and because of the way that they were being treated in the South. So my assumption is that they came to Detroit assuming that things would be better, but in reality—it was better in a sense of, you had some freedom, but you still had those problems that existed because of the racism.</p>
<p>WW: In 1965 and 1966, given the uprisings going on around the country, did you personally feel that they could happen in Detroit?</p>
<p>IM: Initially I didn’t think it could happen in Detroit, the reason being that when I was in the police academy, when I think they had the Watts Riot, and I think there were—it was Newark? —and we were told about these things, but I didn’t think it was going to happen in Detroit. My assumption was that Detroit—we had the most single homes of any place in the world, I think, at that time. We had this incredible population and people appeared to be working. But I was naïve to believe that it couldn’t happen.</p>
<p>And so in 1966, my first full year as a police officer, I was detailed to work the area of Twelfth Street, Linwood, and Philadelphia, because there was a belief that something could happen in Detroit. So I worked undercover with a man who became police chief, Bill Hart, and a man by the name of Tom Taylor, they were two senior officers. And so we were out to scout the area and see if, in fact, things were going to go—and then nothing happened. So we got to ’67, and again, my assumption was that things were going to be okay. However, not to realize that there were other forces that were working, that there were people who were truly, deeply upset and concerned about what was happening in the country, which led to 1967.</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember how you first heard about what was going on?</p>
<p>IM: Absolutely.</p>
<p>WW: Could you tell me more?</p>
<p>IM: I was in my apartment at 3265 West Boston, Apartment 101 [laughter], and my phone rang at six A.M., and it was Sergeant [Claddy ?] Barryman. He says, “Ike,” he says, “This is Barryman.” He said, “The riot just started last night; we need you to get to work right away.” And I didn’t—maybe I was in a daze or something, but, “Sarge, you’re kidding—Sarge, you’re bullshitting,” is what I said. So I hung up the phone. So right away the phone rang again [laughter], and he says, “Ike, I’m not kidding, there’s a riot coming right here, get to work right away.” Not realizing that the riot was just a few blocks from where I lived. I was at West Boston, and Wildemere was a block from Dexter, and it was all over the area. So I jumped in my car, got my uniform, and took off for work.</p>
<p>On my way to work, I could see some stores on fire. And, my god, this is crazy. And this is 6:30, 7:00 in the morning, Sunday morning. But I also saw people on their way to church, I saw people who didn’t know things were going on, they were living their lives as they would—had been. So I reported to duty, and they assigned me, along with another officer, to go back to the Tenth Precinct, where I lived, and we were assigned to work there during that time. And as I got to the precinct, they had a scout car with four officers, and they were sets of three scout cars. So 12 officers. And we went on patrol. And it was beyond one’s imagination as to what one saw—what I saw. And the people—I mean, they were stealing, they were looting. I mean, thousands and thousands of people walking down the street with sofas, with TVs, with whatever they could have. You know, it was beyond one’s imagination that this was happen. And I said, “Damn, this is happening in my city.”</p>
<p>And so we went on patrol, and we started trying to stop people from looting. And as you locked up X-number of people, and you got them in the car and you took them back to the precinct, there were hundreds and hundreds of people that would go back into the stores. I remember this one—there was a drugstore at Rochester and Linwood, and, I mean, we went in—we caught people coming out, in the store with loads and loads of stuff. And as we got them and put them in the car, you could see in the rearview mirror, just looking back, I mean, hundreds of other people running into the stores and just taking stuff. So to me it became almost comical. Because I realized at that time that we were overmatched, and we were outmanned. We had 55 hundred police officers, but the city had a million-and-some people, you know, and if they all were going to rebel and do what those looters were doing, we were outmatched.</p>
<p>WW: What were the expectations that were presented to you as a police officer when you’re going out there? Like, go out and arrest people, or go out and just try to contain the situation?</p>
<p>IM: Go out there and contain, and arrest if you can. But there were no specific instructions that were given—you know, if you had a well-trained police department, and you were dispatched to a certain area, this is what you were supposed to do. But we were not. We were ill-equipped to handle that situation. And the belief was that, certainly, this wasn’t going to happen in Detroit. For instance, the 12 of us were driving down Linwood and I was the only black person, I should tell you, with this group of 12 officers and one sergeant. And so we’re driving on Linwood and people are looting. And my sergeant, who was not the brightest guy in the world, says, “Okay, let’s get out of the car and let’s get into a line across Linwood, and we’ll get these damn people off the street, okay?” And so I’m going, okay, you know, this is interesting. But you’ve got to be mindful of what you say and how you say it. As I said, he wasn’t the brightest guy. So we’re across Linwood just south of Davison, and so the sergeant in his inimitable way yells out, “All you fucking niggers get off the street!” And I’m going, oh my god, you know, we’re going to die out here, we’re going to die [laughter]. And the people, it’s like in unison they say, “What did you say?” “I said all you fucking niggers get off the street!” And I mean, they started stoning us. I mean, god, I’m going, this is the dumbest guy in the history of the world, you know. And here I am caught up in this, the only black guy there. Of course, I’m certainly—my history is that I’d heard this word countless times on DPD [Detroit Police Department]. And so we ran back and got in the cars, and took off.</p>
<p>So this was just one of the examples of the craziness of how it was, and of the type of people that we were dealing with on the department [laughter]. I laughed then and I laugh now because I remember I got home, I called my buddy, Jess Davis, we graduated from the academy together, and he was telling similar stories that happened with him. He said, “These guys are ill-equipped to handle this kind of situation, and you just can’t do that and hope that it’s going to resolve itself now.”</p>
<p>WW: Were there any other stories from those early days that you’d like to share?</p>
<p>IM: Sure. There’s some funny stories. And again, my attitude or disposition is that if something’s funny, it’s funny, and I’m not going to overreact to anything. I’ve always been a person who was somewhat relaxed and calm and cool. And so we had taken a group of prisoners downtown to 1300 Beaubien, and on the way back we decide that we’re going to go up Michigan Avenue and got to Livernois and go down Livernois. On Michigan Avenue, west of Junction, we see these people looting. And so we also see this big white Cadillac convertible that’s driving next to us, and we had three police cars, marked police cars. And these guys pull up in this white Cadillac and there’s two guys, one the driver in the front seat, the other guy in the jump seat, and there’s a sofa that’s across the back of the car with the convertible top down, and two guys are holding TVs. And I started laughing, I said, “This is absolutely incredible, I mean, where in the world could you see this kind of stuff happening?” And it was so comical to me that these things were over and over and over.</p>
<p>It became a reality for me when I was going home that night. A sad reality. I had my 1965 black Evergreen Mustang convertible. Back in those days, the back window you could zip out, it was plastic. So I was in uniform, my badge on, my shield on. On the lapel here you had the insignia of the precinct you worked, which was two. I didn’t have my hat on. But I had everything that identified me as a police officer. As I pulled up off the Lodge Freeway, made a left turn onto Chicago, this car pulls up with two older white police officers. And I said, “Police, police, I’m going home.” And they both got out of the car with their guns drawn. I stepped out of the car in uniform. And they said, “Tonight you’re going to die, nigger.” And I said, “What?” And it was like slow-motion. I could see the one officer with gray hair and a brush cut start to pull the trigger. I dove back into my car and with my right hand I pushed the accelerator and took off as they started shooting at me. And thank god they missed me, but I drove home and I called my sergeant. And I said, “Sarge, this is what happened.” And he said, “Well, Ike, you know, there’s some assholes out there.” And I said, “You’re telling me there’s some assholes out there?” [Laughter] That was all that ever happened. So that was a sad reality to me that here we had these two police officers who shot at me, and it hit me in terms of, if they shot at me, a fellow police officer, what are they going to do to other people in the street, the city? And I always question the number of people—we had 43 people that were killed during the riot. How many of them were like me? Because if we go back to what happened at the Algiers Motel incident, where there were three young men killed— these are the people who are supposed to serve and protect the people of the city of Detroit. And we have this code that we live by, allegedly, and the first paragraph says that as a law enforcement officer, my fundamental duty is the serve mankind, to safe-guard lives and property, protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, respect the constitutional rights of all to liberty, equality, and justice. That’s the first paragraph. And so I always tried to live by that, and I said to myself and I said to my sergeant, they sure as hell were not respecting the constitutional rights of all to liberty, equality, and justice, and this guy says, “Sarge, you’re right, they’re assholes.” So it gave those individuals who had any thoughts or hatred for people their literal license to kill. And I’m sure that that’s what happened, so— [phone rings] I’m sorry.</p>
<p>[Break in tape]</p>
<p>WW: Did you ever feel that level of unwelcome or the threat against you before this in the police department?</p>
<p>IM: Oh yeah, my very first day in the police department. I was assigned to the Second Precinct. And I experienced some racism before but my assumption was that when you joined the police department things were different, that we had this code that we live by. So my very first day I walked into the Second Precinct and went to the front desk and said to the officers there that I’m probationary police officer McKinnon, I’m here reporting for duty. The guy says, “Go upstairs, go upstairs.” I went upstairs and that was the squad room. In the squad room there was a pool table, Ping-Pong table, and it was a big room, and an area that we had roll call. And so I walked in and everybody was white. Oh god, okay. So nobody spoke. And I recognize this one guy, this guy I went to high school with. And I called his name and extended my hand to shake his hand. Didn’t do it, turned his back. So the sergeants come up for roll call. And they would say, “Roll call, fall in!” And everybody would—it’s not like you see on TV, the people sitting in chairs, you would stand at attention and you would do a movement to stand to the person next to you. So the sergeant starts calling out the names and assignments. And like, two is the precinct and one would be the territory, two-one, okay, so Smith and Jones two-one, so-and-so scout two-two—so we get to scout two-seven, and he gives this officer’s name, I still remember it, and then he says, “McKinnon, scout two-seven.” And at that point the officer says, “Jesus fucking Christ, I’m working with the nigger.” Now this is at roll call, my first night on the job, and everybody starts laughing. The sergeant said nothing, but everybody’s laughing. And when you’re faced with that horrible reality of what you’re dealing with, what do you do? But I had made myself a promise and a pledge that I was going to be on the department to try and stop those kinds of things from happening. So even if I had responded in kind and tried to fight these guys, this crazy black guy who attacked this white officer at roll call, who was going to say that I did something right?</p>
<p>Anyway, so after roll call, you would walk out to the cars, and I walked to the car with this guy who made this comment. I said, “Excuse me, am I working with you?” Didn’t say anything. I said, “Excuse me, am I working with you?” Nothing. So I turned around and walked back to the sergeant who was standing with the clipboard. “Excuse me Sergeant, am I working with that officer?” He said, “Yeah, that’s your partner.” So I went and opened the door and got in the car. Never said a word. We worked together for eight hours, didn’t say a word. Didn’t say a word.</p>
<p>At 5:30 the next morning we’re driving around—he’s driving, I’m just sitting there—and he pulls up to a restaurant that’s on Michigan Avenue just east of West Grand Boulevard—turns the engine off, gets out, walks into the restaurant, sits at the counter and orders food. And I started laughing. I said, “If this guy thinks that this is going to drive me off the job, that’s not going to happen.” So I jumped out of the car, ran to the restroom quickly, came back out, and never ate, never said a word to me. So I call other black officers and asked them about their experience. Same things, same things. It’s ironic that— the next day the same thing happened. The third day this guy by the name of Andy Parker—you remember the names of people who are good to you—he comes up after roll call, he says, “Hey, Andy Parker, what’s your name?” I said, “Ike.” He said, “Nice to meet you.” That was a true change from the first two nights. And he told me this, he said, “Listen, there are some assholes on this department, you know, and they’re going to try and drive you away.” He said, “Don’t let them get under your skin.” I said, “Thanks a lot, I really appreciate that.” And that truly helped too, you know.</p>
<p>But that—I think every black officer before me and after me—well, not after me, but about the same time—experienced the same kind of welcome on the department. But you had to be thick-skinned, you had to know that you had to be there because if you were going to make a difference in the community you had to stand tall, which is what I think we tried to do.</p>
<p>WW: Did you see your situation improving at the precinct leading up to ’67, or no? Was it more of the same—</p>
<p>IM: It was more of the same things. There were some officers who treated you better. Others, they just didn’t speak to you. They just didn’t. And of course you would see them on the street acting or saying things to people—there was not a day that went by that I did not hear a racially derogatory term, either towards me or towards someone else on the street. An example, I was working with this white officer, and this elderly gentleman, he had his lunch pail—back in those days, guys carried lunch pails—it’s about probably 5:00 in the morning, he’s walking to work. And this guy—officer who’s driving pulls over, and he says, “Hey boy, come here.” I said, oh Jesus, man, this guy’s probably in his sixties, you know? And the old man is, you can tell he’s an old southern guy, and his speech was just— “Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir.” And he said, “Where the hell are you going boy?” “I’m going to work, sir.” He said, “Goddammit boy, you shouldn’t be out here on the street.” “I’m just going to work, sir.” And I exploded. And I said to this officer, I said, “Listen, you asshole, this man is not a boy.” I said, “You will get his name and you will call him by his name, you understand that?” So the officer said, “You don’t talk that way to me.” I said, “Listen, I will kick your ass.” I said, “Right now I will kick your ass.” So this old man-- can you imagine this old man, just petrified because here’s this black guy dealing with the white officer and they’re about to fight. And I said, “Are you going to charge this man with anything?” No. I said, “Listen sir, I am sorry this happened to you. Why don’t you leave and go.” He said, “Yes sir, officer.” Can you just imagine the story that this guy told somebody later on. So this officer—I said, “Listen, let’s go, right now.” I said, “I’m going to kick your ass right now. Let’s go. You don’t treat people this way.” He said, “Listen, you’re supposed to be my partner.” I said, “I’m supposed to be your partner? You haven’t fucking talked to me the whole night and now I’m your partner?” I said, “You’re going to treat this man this way?” “I’m going to go into the station and tell the sergeant about this.” I said, “That’s fine.”</p>
<p>So we get into the station, and the sergeant was a very fair person. And I said, “Sarge, this is what happened. And I’m right, and he’s wrong.” So this officer took off sick and went home. And so the sergeant, he said, “Ike, listen, you’re standing up strong for what you believe in.” He said, “I’m sorry these kinds of things are happening.” I said, “Well, Sarge, thank you.” But that’s as far as it went with supervisors, I mean, they wouldn’t step up and say this guy is wrong and those kinds of things. But that was a start of things that I saw happening, and started taking action because of what had happened to me. And it was important—and I would talk to other black officers and white officers about the necessity for people standing up. We’re supposed to serve and protect, not to beat people’s asses or to talk to them slightingly. And that’s what I started doing.</p>
<p>WW: Going back to ’67, did you go right back into work after that incident?</p>
<p>IM: Oh yeah, the next morning I went to work. And I told guys about that and—“Jesus Christ, man.” And that was it.</p>
<p>WW: And during this week you stayed working out of the twelfth—</p>
<p>IM: Tenth precinct.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. How did—backtracking again—when you first arrived that early Sunday morning, what was the atmosphere in the Detroit Police Department? What was the situation like? Was it chaotic?</p>
<p>IM: It was chaotic because we didn’t know what we were doing. We really didn’t. They told us, if you have a shotgun, go get it, because we didn’t have the weapons, you know. And again, we were not prepared for it.</p>
<p>WW: What was the feeling in the police department when the state police and the National Guard came in?</p>
<p>IM: There was help. But there was this un-relying feeling that these guys were ill-equipped, too. I mean, no one was prepared to handle this. State police were seen as guys who did the freeways, and National Guards were seen as people who were weekend warriors, so there was not any respect for them in that sense of speaking, but they were help just in case things went crazy. But they were—these were guys who, as I said, were weekend warriors who appeared to be petrified as to what was going on in the city. And nobody wanted to get shot, you know, but they were not police people, they didn’t know how to handle those kinds of situations, and to a certain extent neither did we.</p>
<p>WW: Was there—by the time the federal troops came in—</p>
<p>IM: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Was there, like, a breath of—like a sigh of relief then?</p>
<p>IM: Absolutely. There was a sense of respect in that, the 101st, they don’t bullshit, they come in and they take care of business. And you had all these black people who had been in the 101st or in the Airborne or things like that, so they knew that things would be serious. And you never saw these guys do anything out of the way in terms of taking someone’s life or beating someone’s ass or things like that. They were strictly strong, and they were respected by the people in the community. It was amazing how that happened. I mean, there was lack of respect for the National Guard, but for the 101st, that was serious.</p>
<p>WW: Did you have any interactions with either the National Guard or the federal troops that week?</p>
<p>IM: Yeah, yeah. I was with the National Guard one night— I don’t remember which night it was. And we were on patrol in the area of Linwood and Joy Road. And all of a sudden these shots start ringing out, and you could hear the sound of shots but you could see the bullets skipping along the pavement. And so it was the first and only time I’ve been able to do a cartwheel. I dove out of the jeep and I did a cartwheel, two of them, and landed up against the wall—there’s a bank, Detroit Banking Trust it was at that time, the building’s still there—I landed up against the wall, and the bullets were still skipping along the pavement [laughs]. And me and the National Guard’s people and I think there was one older Detroit police officer. And we didn’t know where the shots were coming from. And so the older police officer said, “Shoot those lights out.” And so the comedy here was that everybody was trying to shoot the lights out, and they kept missing the lights [laughs]. And so it was a comedy, I wanted to say, I don’t believe this stuff—and with rifles and everything—and so finally this older guy, he’s just, “I got it.” And it was like the movies. He has a chew of tobacco in his mouth, you know, he spits out the chew of tobacco, shoots the streetlight out, and he’s right under the streetlight, and the damn thing falls right on his head [laughs]. There’s comedy in everything that you see, to a certain extent, but I’ll never forget that. And it’s my assessment that probably most of the shooting came from guys trying to shoot the streetlights out. And it caused problems. And maybe that was what was happening with us, when I did the cartwheel out of the jeep. It was a frightening time.</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember how you first heard about the Algiers Motel incident?</p>
<p>IM: Sometime during the insurrection, someone said there were three colored men had been killed at the Algiers Motel. I didn’t question as to why at the time it would happen, but that was the word that I got. And I think that was the first inkling that something—and then right after the riots. There was word within the police department that three white police officers had killed three young black men, and it was at the Algiers Motel, so. And I had lived at 237 Philadelphia, which was not too far from the Algiers Motel, at some time later, so it was interesting for me. And I had been on patrol in that area, too, so that stood out for me.</p>
<p>WW: How, for you, did the week wrap up?</p>
<p>IM: Well, it ended with me going back to my precinct, the second precinct, and on patrol. We were working 16, 18 hour days. It was tiring, it was hot as hell. Hot as hell. There was no air conditioning in cars. It was—we didn’t know the number of people that had been killed, we didn’t know the amount of property that had been destroyed, although we were there to see the houses burn, the buildings burn, but in its totality we didn’t know. The news media didn’t report the fatalities, didn’t report all the bad things that had happened. And so because we were working so much, we didn’t know everything that was going on. I had seen things, but to the extent of how it had impacted me, it didn’t really truly start impacting me until it was all over. And that’s when we were coming down from all these days of being on guard, and I started getting migraines. Never had a migraine in my life. Migraines. Went to the doctor and he said, “It’s stress. It’s the stress that you’re under.” And who wouldn’t have that kind of stress after all these days of being involved in these things that we had been.</p>
<p>WW: You’ve referred to ’67 as a couple different things. How do you interpret what happened in ’67?</p>
<p>IM: Well, it’s a rebellion. It’s a rebellion. It’s a riot. But probably the proper term would be to say rebellion. When I was out there in the midst of it, I said, “Man, this is a riot.” But the more you look at it, the more you think about it being a rebellion.</p>
<p>WW: Given the stress that you were under, and everything that you’d experienced, did you ever think about moving out of the city?</p>
<p>IM: No. I never thought about moving out of the city. I thought that part of my goal and mission in life was to make this a better city, and to make people better. I realized that this was a set-back for us, but it was my goal to continue to stay here and do the best that I could. And that was it for me.</p>
<p>WW: In the immediate aftermath of ’67, how did the Detroit Police Department react? Especially when—how did they react when people said they had lost the rebellion?</p>
<p>IM: Well, understanding that the Kerner Comission said after the riot, rebellion, that America was moving towards two societies: one black, one white, one rich, one poor, that’s true. Now, I mean, it’s even more so, we have more separate societies. Well, the police departments—the police department and police departments across the country felt that the best way to deal with this was to train—to arm themselves. And that’s what Detroit did, that’s what others did. We did training in prevention, but we didn’t do training in terms of officers understanding how they should talk or deal or treat people. In addition, we didn’t do a good job of the recruitment of people into the police department, black and white. And so, every police department in my estimation has to do a better job of ferreting out those individuals who might have some problems. It wasn’t just having a gun, it’s also being able to talk with people, to understand people, and everybody didn’t need to be locked up. Everybody didn’t need to be shot. And most police departments, they got tanks, they armed themselves better in case something horrible happened. We also had to think about this in terms of, you can’t arrest everybody, you can’t kill everyone, you have to look at this in terms of, how do we eliminate the potential for something like this happening again? And throughout the years I’ve seen the potential for that happening again, be it Rodney King, or other people that have been shot or involved with the police in any action. We as police people had to look at what can we do. We can’t arrest, at that time, a 1,900,000 people. We can’t beat up a 1,900,000 people. We have to look at, how do we as law-enforcement officers contain and make sure that we handle the situation better than we have in the past. And that’s what we started doing. And we went about serving and protecting, in my estimation, the wrong way. So it was—we had people who had been a part of this, who had been part of the racial climate, black and white, who had not adjusted to the reality of this changing world. That’s what happened with Detroit, in my estimation.</p>
<p>WW: Skipping now to present day—</p>
<p>IM: Sure.</p>
<p>WW: How do you feel about the state of the city today?</p>
<p>IM: I think that we are light-years ahead of then, but we don’t want to fool ourselves and say that things like that couldn’t happen. The police department’s done a great job, the political part of it has done a great job in terms of recruitment, in terms of identifying, but sometimes all it takes is one flashpoint to kick something off. We looked at the number of young men of color who have been killed across the country. And we have to understand that there’s that potential for anything kicking something off. And just because Detroit’s 81 percent African American doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. So whether it’s a black officer or a white officer, the potential’s always there. So we have to be, hopefully, one step ahead of handling those kinds of crises, and hope that it doesn’t get back to that point. Because we had, in 1943—we had riots before that, with ’43, we had ’67, and the potential is there. We had—when they killed the guy up on Fenkell and Livernois, by Bolton’s Bar. There’s always that potential. So every time there’s a potential of a flashpoint, every time, that might happen, you know. We hope that we’ve done a good job. I mean, I tried to do it when I was chief, I certainly tried to do it as a deputy mayor, and now I try to do it as a professor at the University of Detroit Mercy, to continue to educate people, to—so many people don’t know the reality of what happened then, they don’t know the history of the city, they don’t know the history of the racial strife that has been in the city, and there’s some people who still have this anger and hatred in their hearts, whether black or white. And that’s frightening to me. You know, I mean, I talk to people who live outside the city, and some inside the city, who believe the best way to handle things is to lock people up, or to beat their asses.</p>
<p>WW: Are you optimistic for the city moving forward?</p>
<p>IM: Always, always, absolutely. I think that, in the last few years, we’ve been very, very proactive in terms of working towards a community. If we go to Dennis Archer, who was mayor, who tried, who had a different set of circumstances, economically. Mike Duggan has a different set of circumstances economically because there’s more. And there are people who appear to be—I’m talking about in the city—appear to be of the mindset that we don’t want these kinds of things to happen again. If we could continue to educate people, if we continue to change their mindset in terms of what is happening in the city, how can I make a difference? If we can continue to do that, we can have a profound impact on this city.</p>
<p>Because we were just in Italy two weeks ago, and I’m on the board of Catholic Charities USA—and people were asking, are these changes happening in Detroit? They say, We’re concerned because of what happened 50 years ago. So the world knows about Detroit. As deputy mayor, I spoke with countless visitors and they wanted to talk about how they could help. I said, “Spread the word about the change that we’re going through.” And they’re trying to do that. But there will always be the people, though, who will be downtrodden and speak slightingly of the city. But we’ve got to get our own act together in terms of thinking of the good things that we can do, and that’s one of the most important things that we can do. Speak—Emily Gail used to have this thing of “Say nice things about Detroit,” back in the eighties. Well, yeah, we want to say nice things about Detroit, but we want to do nice things. And there are a great number of people who are investing in the city. The job market is so much better. And that makes—if we get people to get jobs, get people to get education, which is at the forefront of everything we’re trying to do—education is so important, and we have a lot of young people who are uneducated, and so they have to have hope for the future.</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you’d like to add today.</p>
<p>IM: Oh [laughs], you got me going.</p>
<p>I’ve lived in this city for, what, 64 years. I’ve lived through the good and the bad, and things that stand out for me are things that I hope we can educate people to. And that’s why I got into this field of education. As a law-enforcement officer, I tried to educate—I locked people up, but I tried to educate. Because it was more important for me to educate people, to get them to think about the future. During this process of living in the city and growing up, I watched a lack of men, African American men, take a role in education. When I say that, I mean, if we can get men of color to be at the forefront of education for themselves, for their families, in particular for young men, we could have a profound impact upon what’s happening in our society. That’s not just Detroit, but throughout the country. We always hear about the black fathers who are not there, but what I’m saying is take responsibility. Get those young people into some form of education. And what would even be better is if they became educators. We don’t want them to be educated in terms of the best way to do drugs and things like that, but become educators. Just think about this: in all the years I was in junior high, high school, grade school, I had three African American teachers. And 11 years I was in college, undergrad, masters, PhD, I had no African American teachers. But yet I still flash back to Mr. Hughes, Mr. Teasley, who were my seventh and eighth grade teachers, and the profound impact they had on my life. Think about how if we as a society, in particular blacks in society, talked to our young people about the profoundness of those men who could have that impact on your life. And so that’s where I’m going next, with this. I mean, it’s so important, at my age, at any age, to continue education, and that’s what I’m going to try and do.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>IM: Thank you, it’s my pleasure.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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57min 12sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Isaiah McKinnon
Location
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Detroit, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Isaiah "Ike" McKinnon, May 16th, 2017
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Ike McKinnon shares his experience of growing up in Detroit, being a Detroit police officer, and the events of ’67. <br /><br />This interview uses profanity and/or explicit language.
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 Michigan
Format
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Audio/mp3
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
101st Airborne
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Algiers Motel
Aretha Franklin
Brewster Housing Projects
Detroit Police Department
Hastings Street
Kerner Comission
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Michigan State Police Department
The Big Four
United States Air Force
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/2e0fffda92ff63ce08a5b747fb197a50.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
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
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.
Diann Cousino
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Diann Cousino lived at St. Martin's and attended Wayne State University the summer of 1967.
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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00:07:09
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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05/23/2017
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>DC: Sister Diann Cousino.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you for sitting down with me today. Would you like to share your story?</p>
<p>DC: I would. I have kind of forgotten it, but the impact of the experience just never leaves your mind. So I'm going back to Sunday, July 23, 1967, and my mother was a widow at that time, with nine children, and we were going to— she was picking me up at St. Martin's convent on the lake, and she had to drive through Jefferson to go to Newport, Michigan, where we were having a family reunion. And everything was normal. It was a sunny day, and we saw our cousins.</p>
<p>Then it was time to come home, so we left the family and came through Jefferson and I just couldn't believe my eyes. There were young men with bats and balls and rocks, and throwing them in the storefront windows, and others were running in the stores, just grabbing stuff. I didn't know what was going on, and I was trying to hope that my mom could remain peaceful and we didn't want to alarm the children in the car.</p>
<p>So then she took me all the way to St. Martin's and I was worried about her going home. But I didn't know— it just shocked me so much that this was happening in our own nation, in our own country, in our own city, and I taught in Detroit, at Jesu, and I just couldn't imagine, because we had good relationships there with people. I just couldn't understand what was going on there.</p>
<p>And in our journal it says because of the economic riots, they called it, there was no Bible School, because this was in the summer. But I was attending Wayne State, and we wanted to help out— the sisters in our convent. We called the police to see if we could help out at Deaconess Hospital. They said, No, Sisters, we don't want to jeopardize your safety. So they said, Just pray and just hope that this blows over.</p>
<p>But we were hearing gunshots, and machine guns, and we learned later that a policeman died at Jefferson and St. Jean.</p>
<p>Then on Wednesday, July 26, we decided to brave it out and go to Wayne State, which is where we were taking classes. And we had food and clothing and things, but this was terrible, to go down Jefferson. I can still see it, the— the army reserves were on top of the building with guns, to protect the city. And Belle Isle was protected. All the people they wanted to deter were sent to Belle Isle, and they had guards down the street of Belle Isle.</p>
<p>And then that wasn't enough. Then a tank came down the street. So going to class that day was really scary. We didn't know what was going to happen. We had heard there were problems in Detroit, and so— it was quite an experience. And when I taught at Jesu, it was pretty much an all-white school, and when I left, it was pretty much an all-black school. But we had a good principal and we had good education for the children, and so that went smooth, but those years were very stressful, not knowing for sure.</p>
<p>You know, we didn't even know what caused it. We just came upon it, so.</p>
<p>WW: Did it change the way you looked at the city?</p>
<p>DC: Yeah, I would have to say yes, because it had me asking questions, like, was there a different way of teaching? And I remember one of our— we had superintendents that were IHMs, and I remember when Sister Anna May came to— she brought a new series of books with us, to teach from, and— this shows you how naive I am, but she wanted us to present them to the children, so I did. And she didn't tell us anything, and she looked at the children and they didn't notice anything. Well, those books had more ethnic groups in them. They started having more black children and Spanish, and so on. So it was an introduction of changing some of our ways of things.</p>
<p>But we just— I guess, from the very beginning of our IHM community, we believed that every person was important. And the Sister brought this education system from Belgium, and it was like everyone was ready and everyone was important and you didn't have to get all As to be rewarded. It was your character. And I think we strived to do that in our teaching. But it did carry with me. I went on to Wayne State and I enjoyed all the ethnic people, but when I got to Marygrove later I got scared, because some of those people were— I wasn't sure. And I could feel the tension in some of the classrooms. But my teacher, Sister Jackie Conn, tried to— she wasn't supposed to do this, but she'd bring in a whole chest of food that we could cook there. You could make Taco Bells and tacos and you don't have to have a lot of— we just had a crockpot and that type of thing. But I noticed that really broke the ice. We all had to bring something to eat during our class. And there's something about food. And then we had to mix with different groups all the time, so it was pretty good.</p>
<p>But it did change my thinking about things, because I never knew. I grew up and I wasn't— I didn't know about race or anything. It didn't cross my mind. But that really— that was really scary, because you didn't know how safe you were. I guess that's the whole thing. We tried to make it safe for our children.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much. </p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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7min 9sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Diann Cousino
Location
The location of the interview
Monroe, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Diann Cousino, February 7th, 2017
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Cousino discusses her impressions of the events of July 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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06/09/2017
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
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Belle Isle
Catholic Community
Clergy
Detroit Police Department
Looting
Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Tanks
Wayne State University
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/1cfcf603cc7794bc29b92c664e267add.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.
Mary Ann Flanagan
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Mary Ann Flanagan was at St. Gregory's convent in Detroit during the events of July 1967.
Interviewer's Name
The first and last name of the interviewer.
William Winkel
Interview Place
The place where the interview was conducted.
Monroe, MI
Date
The date of the interview in MM/DD/YYYY format.
02/07/2017
Interview Length
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00:10:21
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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05/16/2017
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>WW: 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 sitting down with –</p>
<p>MF: Mary Ann Flanagan, a sister of the Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>MF: It's nice to be here.</p>
<p>WW: Would you like to share your story?</p>
<p>MF: Yes, I would. I was a young sister in nineteen sixty - seven? eight, was it? And I was studying at the University of Detroit. But it was a Sunday, and so my parents had come to get me, to spend the day with them, and they were driving me back to St. Gregory's Convent in Detroit. And as we were coming in from Dearborn – which was just a regular, steady drive, as usual—all of a sudden we began to notice smoke that was kind of ahead of us.</p>
<p>And my dad was a little bit concerned about continuing on, but we did, and he returned me to St. Gregory's. But at that time we began to realize that we had kind of driven right into the center of a lot of agitation and a lot of activity that wasn't usually there in that neighborhood. So I entered St. Gregory Convent door and the sisters had said, "How did you get in? There's a riot going on right around us!" And so they took me up to the rooftop of St. Gregory's Convent, and from that vantage point, I was able to see – you know, I'm not even sure of the correctness of the street, but it possibly could have been Woodward. It was a major, major street, and what we saw was just like – sofas were just walking down the street like bugs. But under them would be people carrying these sofas from the furniture stores along the route there that had been—windows had been broken and everything had been taken out.</p>
<p>So it was a strange, strange, sight, like these walking sofas. I will never forget it. But also, as we were learning from the radio—a description of what was actually happening, the seriousness—truly began to come upon us, that this was going to be a real crisis for our city.</p>
<p>I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, which is kind of well-known. I grew up under the vantage point of Governor Hubbard, who was – </p>
<p>WW: Mayor?</p>
<p>MF: Pardon me, Mayor Hubbard, who was a notable racist. In fact, I went through twelve years of Catholic education at Sacred Heart School and had never met an African American ‘til after I graduated from that school. Because it was such a racist city I never really moved outside of Dearborn and had no association, until I entered the congregation and then began education— graduate education at the University of Detroit.</p>
<p>So it was just a striking memory I will never lose, from that day. Kind of the initiation, I think, of the violence, was first of all just – the stealing and the breaking into places, and then just the walking of the sofas down the road. Then later we gathered—it had become violent, and further down into the city there were the fires and the ransacking of homes and so on. It was a sad day.</p>
<p>I had a certain understanding of being one of those racist individuals, though, who never participated in any kind of interaction with the black community. Why they would be—why that community would be so angry at us? It was understandable, really, to me. By that time I—as a sister, had done a lot of study on racism and systemic violence and so on. So—but at that time, it was just a very shocking day for me to see this acted out. And as I say, I will never forget that day. That would be my story.</p>
<p>WW: Where was St. Gregory's?</p>
<p>MF: You know, golly—it was some fifty years ago, I'd have to look on a map to see its exact location. It was on the west side of Detroit. One of the bigger Catholic parishes and during the summer many sisters who did not teach there resided there, when they would be going off to graduate education at U of D or Marygrove and so on. I'm sorry I can't help you with that detail of the geography. I'm sure I knew it then, but I don't know it now. [laughter]</p>
<p>WW: So the rest of the time did you just stay hunkered down?</p>
<p>MF: We did. We—it was like, we knew the city was kind of exploding in its own way, and so I recall that we did not go on to school, graduate school, that Monday or into that week, 'til it had kind of been agreed that the violence of it was over. But it—it was a—truly, a frightening experience. One that you could have an intellectual appreciation of, but one that emotionally was still—you were on the underside of history for the first time, and you were kind of kept imprisoned. Which would have been what many African American persons do experience in our society—did at that time, especially, and still do in some ways.</p>
<p>WW: Did it change the way you saw the city? Did you feel comfortable in the city afterwards?</p>
<p>MF: I would have to say, following that summer I was missioned to Atlanta, Georgia, so I actually did not stay in the city itself. But when I got to Atlanta, my new ministry there, I was constantly being asked about— "You were in Detroit, you're from Detroit." Everyone knew that this was a very signal event that—of a racist explosion, as it were, that for many people was frightening. I don't think, because of my—hopefully, my initial commitment to fight racism—if I had stayed in the city, I would have asked to work in the city.</p>
<p>Actually, I later was a professor at the Marygrove College, which is pretty much an African American community there, and I was never frightened. I was not ever frightened to go there, and actually even I was there the night before one of our sisters was murdered in that very neighborhood. I was the last person to see her, as we both were teaching evening classes at Marygrove. And I went to my car, and she went—kind of through the neighborhood to go back to her home, and she was murdered that night.</p>
<p>So—I think she was a woman who was convinced she would not leave the city because of its violence, and its violence killed her. But she was a witness to an effort toward integration and toward a statement. And my congregation, in respect of her values, told the judge, when they had caught the murderer, that the congregation pleaded that he would never be given the death penalty, as a statement of how we believed that too many social circles, too many social systems, gave shape to that young man, as part of a racist society.</p>
<p>But it did leave me changed. My awareness of that, those historical events, they were very few, but maybe they were more strident because of my growing up in an absolutely, totally white background, and being almost embarrassed by it. Remembering my father was one of the first leaders of the diocese to try to have circles of communication in Dearborn about racism itself, and some of his lifetime friends were both shocked and angry with him for doing this.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much.</p>
<p>MF: You're welcome, you're welcome. I kind of—those are broad-circled ideas but I hope it gives the Society something of a feel for it.</p>
<p>WW: It certainly did. </p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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10min 21sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Mary Ann Flanagan
Location
The location of the interview
Monroe, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Mary Ann Flanagan, February 7th, 2017
Description
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In this interview, Ms. Flanagan discusses her impressions of the events of July 1967.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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05/19/2017
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
Dearborn
Detroit Community Members
Looting
Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/c983e6c324d62d122bab017ec4bc083f.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
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.
Transcription Date
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03/01/2017
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
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Monica Stuhlwier
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Sister Monica Stuhlwier was born in 1939 in Cincinnati, Ohio. She moved to Detroit to attend Marygrove College from 1957-61, and joined the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) congregation in Monroe, Michigan thereafter. Although she left Detroit for a period of time in the 1970s and early 1980s, she currently resides in Monroe, Michigan.
Interviewer's Name
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Celeste Goedert
Interview Place
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Monroe, MI
Date
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12/06/2016
Interview Length
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00:19:32
Transcriptionist
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Emma Maniere
Transcription
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<p>CG: Hello. Today is December 6, 2016. This Celeste Goedert with the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Today I’m in Monroe, Michigan, and I’m sitting down with --</p>
<p>MS: Sister Monica Stuhlwier.</p>
<p>CG: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>MS: You’re welcome.</p>
<p>CG: So if you could just begin by telling me where and when you were born.</p>
<p>MS: I was born in 1939 in Cincinnati, Ohio. But I went to college in Detroit at Marygrove, 1957-61. Then I entered the Congregation, the IHM [Immaculate Heart of Mary] congregation in Monroe, Michigan. In 1967, I was studying in Detroit at Calvert and LaSalle at the Pious XII Religious Education Institute. We were taking classes at Central High School.</p>
<p>The night that the riots started I was visiting a Sister at Marygrove, Six Mile and Wyoming, and somebody told us that we’d better not try to cross Livernois at Six Mile or Five Mile because the riots were beginning. So, they took me up to Seven Mile, and I crossed over. I was staying at St. Gregory Convent, which was at Fenkell, Five Mile two blocks north of Livernois, a block down maybe.</p>
<p>Anyway, when I got home that day and the next few days we had to stay in and we were observing a lot of the rioting that was going on in the small shops on Livernois. There was a furniture store so we saw people coming down the street with TVs and lamps and there was a Honeybaked Ham Store on Fenkell, so boy, they were having a great time with the Honeybaked hams, coming down the street with the Honeybaked hams. I just remember there were a lot of helicopters above and one Sister got the idea, “Let’s go up on the roof so maybe we can see better.” Well, another Sister said, “You better get down there, the police have said they’re looking for–</p>
<p>CG: Snipers?</p>
<p>MS: –snipers up there so get down because they might shoot you.” [Laughter.] So anyway, it was just quite a time the few days. We couldn’t go to class yet, and in the meantime I think after they said that down at Central High School there were tanks</p>
<p>CG: Mmhmm.</p>
<p>MS: And soldiers and stuff like that. Then, one of our Sisters was very active in social justice, and she asked any of us that wanted to go down to the jails because a lot of the young people were taken off the streets because they had a curfew.</p>
<p>CG: Right.</p>
<p>MS: And they didn’t realize, I suppose, that there was a curfew so they were out. The girls were taken to one jail, and the boys were taken to another, and she took us to the girls’ jail. We were to interview these girls–a few of these girls each of us–to get their names, get their parents’ names, and their phone number, and we were to go home and call their parents and tell them that they’d be home within a day, not to worry.</p>
<p>CG: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>MS: So that’s what I remember mostly.</p>
<p>CG: Do you remember any of the interviews?</p>
<p>MS: No. I mean it’s been 50 years, honey.</p>
<p>CG: Yeah, a long time ago.</p>
<p>MS: 49 maybe, it’ll be 50 in the summer. It was just young kids, 13–</p>
<p>CG: They were all young kids who had just been arrested?</p>
<p>MS: Yeah, they were just out, they weren’t supposed to be out past eight o’clock or something, I don’t know what it was. I don’t remember that part.</p>
<p>CG: Do you remember where they were keeping them?</p>
<p>MS: They were in the jail, I don’t know, some jail downtown.</p>
<p>CG: Downtown?</p>
<p>MS: Yeah. And Sister Mary Gerald, Shirley Alice, was the one that standing at our convent too, there was a bunch of us. We were studying, as I said at the Pious XII Center, and there were older sisters. When Sister Mary Agnes asked me, “You know, who else was there?” I said most of them either are dead or left to community [laughter]. The Superior I know she was dead, she was wonderful. And I remember the other gal, she’s 100 now, and she was all scared, better sit down, get down to get out of the windows, you know, get into the corridors so nobody shoots you. Well there was no shooting, we didn’t have any shooting, no. I mean we could hear shots, and there was the smell of burning.</p>
<p>CG: Oh yeah? Did you see any smoke?</p>
<p>MS: Yeah, we saw smoke because we were only two blocks from Livernois and there was a lot of stuff going on on Livernois.</p>
<p>I do remember that as a result of the riots, that there were people–white people–who got together like out in Southfield I remember we had a big meeting, “What can we do? What can we do to try to help in some way or another?” Because I think most people were not aware probably of the effects of racism and all of that. I do remember that meeting in a home, I think it was one of our convents–</p>
<p>CG: That was after the riots?</p>
<p>MS: –in Southfield, yeah, yeah, after the riots to try with some laypeople and men, businessmen who wanted to know what they could do. That was a very interesting time.</p>
<p>I remember coming home and wanting to call my parents and tell them I was okay. Well, they were up at the Expo ’67 or something in Canada, was up in Montreal or something, they didn’t even know there was a problem.</p>
<p>Basically that’s what I remember. Of course, a lot of fire and stuff down where it was actually happening around the seminary. I remember they painted the face of Jesus black.</p>
<p>CG: What did you think about that?</p>
<p>MS: I thought that was neat. And then they tried to take it off, and then they painted it black again, so they just left it black. The Church was slow on the draw, but we were trying anyway. I think the Sisters were more aware, and then of course our Sister Jane Mary, who was a temporary President of Marygrove, wanted to take 68 African American students for 1968. 68 for ’68.</p>
<p>CG: And did that happen?</p>
<p>MS: Yeah, it did.</p>
<p>CG: Do you feel like that was kind of some of the response that at least the Sisters had to the riots?</p>
<p>MS: Right, oh absolutely, absolutely. I think we were very much made aware of it. Because you know, Marygrove is right in the middle. As times have gone on, a lot of people moved out of the area: white people move out, they were frightened or whatever. Some tried to stay; I know that in the Gesu area, the University District area, a lot of the people were very open to being caring and so forth and so on, but sometimes it got really tough and some of the black kids from further in would come out and they’d cause problems with children walking home from school and stuff like that, so some moved out. Now, I have a friend, however, who raised all her kids there, and is still there in the University District, and she just loves her neighbors and Gesu Perish has worked to be open to everybody.</p>
<p>CG: Yeah, I’ve heard that they do a lot of social justice work.</p>
<p>MS: Mmhmm. Yeah.</p>
<p>CG: What year did you leave Detroit?</p>
<p>MS: Leave Detroit? Well, let’s see. After we studied, I taught at Immaculata which was right on the campus there at Marygrove which is a–what do you call it?–preparing you for college, you know. These girls were very bright, ’68-’70. In ’70 I got a job because I’d been in this religious education program which was a new program, and I was invited to go to a parish, had no school, so we had to do the religious education programs, so I moved out to Birmingham, and then I was there for four years. Then I moved to Chicago, and I went to school for a year, but then I worked at an inner city parish in Chicago. Then I moved back to Detroit in ’77-’78, ’78-’82. Lived on the Marygrove campus actually, then. And then our community decided not to leave that area, to keep the college and it went co-ed and now many, many students are African American, they’re open to anybody, but urban leadership is one of the things that they are trying to offer to the city of Detroit.</p>
<p>CG: Definitely. So earlier I heard you use the term ‘riot,’ and this is often a question that comes up. Do you think of it in terms of a ‘riot,’ or others use the term ‘rebellion’ or ‘uprising’?</p>
<p>MS: Well we just heard that’s what they called it: the ’67 riots.</p>
<p>CG: Yeah.</p>
<p>MS: So, I mean I can certainly see why it was an uprising: because they weren’t being treated well.</p>
<p>CG: Had you heard of a lot of incidences of police violence?</p>
<p>MS: Then?</p>
<p>CG: Or sort of tension?</p>
<p>MS: Before that? No, not before that. But you know, it was just, we were in a culture that didn’t pay attention to it, I guess. This is what caused us to pay attention to it. But you know they had the riots out in Los Angeles right before that, and then this just blew up.</p>
<p>It’s a difficult thing, isn’t it, really we’re still in it. Really, when you look at what’s happening now, these crazy things and that election, really. But lots of people are trying to be sensitive; I just read that book <em>Just Mercy</em> by Bryan Stevenson, it was a wonderful book. It’s amazing though how racist a whole state–I couldn’t believe it. Alabama I think it was, or Mississippi, I forget which one, Alabama, wasn’t it?</p>
<p>CG: I think.</p>
<p>MS: And as somebody said who was working in one of our Sisters is working in Alabama, she said that Sessions that is now appointed to be whatever he’s appointed to be, is so racist, she said, “I can’t believe that he was picked.”</p>
<p>Yeah, it is.</p>
<p>CG: I know you have to go, so I have just one last question to wrap it up.</p>
<p>MS: Yeah, sure.</p>
<p>CG: I would just be interested in hearing your thoughts on the future of Detroit and maybe how you see 1967 affecting what’s going on now, or just your general feelings about the city right now.</p>
<p>MS: Well, you know, I love to read the <em>Free Press</em>. I always like to keep up on what’s going on in Detroit. I have to say this one thing: I went to visit my sister–and you don’t think this is connected but it is–my sister lived for a couple years in New Orleans and this was in the Nineties, probably early Nineties. I noticed that the black people in New Orleans were so different than the black people in Detroit. In Detroit, “Black is beautiful, you got to pay attention to me, you know we’re important!” They were assertive, and down there they were like meek and mosey. You know? It was just to me very amazing, and I think that’s what the ’67 riots and everything that’s happened since then has done for the city of Detroit –I guess Motown and all the rest of it. But black people, Black is beautiful, you know, and so forth and so on. I was amazed the difference in the culture. I was only there, it was a couple of weeks or maybe even just a week, but I just noticed what a difference in the culture of the black people, of the African Americans, how they were not assertive. Isn’t that interesting?</p>
<p>CG: Yeah.</p>
<p>MS: Really. And so really when you say, “What is the hope of the Detroit?” I think it’s that black people have come a long way, and they have a long way to go too because of the prejudice and the racists and the probably unconscious racism of a lot of people. That’s what we keep trying to work on in ourselves: the unconscious racism.</p>
<p>But we have a community, our sisters were founded by a black woman, she was partially black, she was not really recognizable. She was Haitian and English–her father was an English soldier, and her mother was from Haiti. The priest that brought her to Monroe was looking to make some Sisters because he felt there was no education for young girls here in 1845. So she came, and she could pass. So I think we have gotten back to, she came from a black community that she thought was going to dissolve because they didn’t get very good rapport with the Archdiocese of Boston–not Boston, Baltimore, the Diocese of Baltimore. So she though the community was going to fall apart, so she went with this Father Gillet who came here. We have now reconnected with that community, the Oblates of Providence, it’s a black community, and we have gone for retreats with them, and there’s two other branches of our community. We came together and showed us this movie which–ah, gee, I wish I could think of the name of it–but I couldn’t believe the racism of the policemen toward the black people, even well-off black people. What was it called? It was a few years ago, and it won an academy award.</p>
<p>CG: I know there’s been quite a few documentaries about this.</p>
<p>MS: It wasn’t a documentary.</p>
<p>CG: It wasn’t a documentary?</p>
<p>MS: No. I can’t think of the name of it.</p>
<p>CG: Oh, was it <em>Fruitvale Station</em>?</p>
<p>MS: No, no, no, it was just one word. I can’t think of the name of it. See when you get old you forget names. Anyway, it struck me more powerfully than almost anything I’ve seen–<em>Psycho</em>, it wasn’t <em>Psycho</em>. I don’t know the name of it, but I’ll try to find out and get back to you.</p>
<p>CG: Yeah. Did you have any other thoughts that you wanted to share, or experiences, memories of ’67?</p>
<p>MS: No, it was just, you know, kind of a shock. But, it was a good shock to us. I guess my own, I know I’m sure I’m racist unconsciously, but I remember when I was working in Chicago in that inner city, I came to really expect–I mean the whole school was black except the principal and a couple of teachers, the other teachers were black too. I just really, when I moved back to Detroit, I did live and work in Detroit, so I saw a lot of black people. Then the other experience I had was where there was no black people, and I just really missed them. You know? It was kind of funny.</p>
<p>So much is part of the culture in which you grow up in. You know? Really.</p>
<p>So I love Detroit. I have a very good feeling about Detroit and, like I say, I think that the <em>Free Press</em> is one of the best papers. When I go to other cities, I go, “Oh, not as good as the <em>Free Press</em>.”</p>
<p>CG: Yeah.</p>
<p>MS: But, it costs money, so I try to get deals. So that’s about it. That’s all I have I think that I can share with you.</p>
<p>CG: Well thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>MS: You’re welcome, Celeste.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
19min 32sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Celeste Goedert
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Monica Stuhlwier
Location
The location of the interview
Monroe, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Monica Stuhlwier, December 6th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Stuhlwier discusses her experiences of the unrest as a Sister and teacher, as well as its lasting impact. She recollects looting, smoke, looming helicopters, and tanks and soldiers at Central High School where she was taking classes at the time. Along with other Sisters, Stuhlwier visited a women’s jail filled with young women incarcerated for breaking curfews, and notified their parents. She also touches on the impact of the riots, including white folks in suburbs seeking to help the city, Marygrove’s successful effort to enroll 68 black students in 1968, white flight, black empowerment, and new (white) attention to police brutality–which she points out is an ongoing issue. She categorizes the unrest as a “shock,” but “a good shock to us.” She is optimistic about the city’s future due to its strong black community.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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03/17/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Curfew
Detroit Community Members
Detroit Free Press
Looting
Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Snipers
Tanks
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/e9d47cce39311e0a80596957408e0804.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.
Sharon McNeil
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Sharon McNeil was born on August 22, 1952 in Highland Park, Michigan. She and her family then moved to Clawson, Michigan, but relocated to Highland Park for a four-year period that encompassed the 1967 unrest. Her father owned a grocery store, McNeil’s Market, on Second just south of Davison from the 1940s to the mid 1970s. She is now a sister at the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
The place where the interview was conducted.
Monroe, MI
Date
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12/06/2016
Interview Length
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00:15:03
Transcriptionist
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Emma Maniere
Transcription Date
The date of the transcription in MM/DD/YYYY format.
03/01/2017
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>WW: Hello. Today is December 6, 2016. My name is William Winkle. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I’m in Monroe, Michigan, and I am sitting down with Sharon McNeil. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>SM: You’re welcome, glad to be here.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when were you born?</p>
<p>SM: I was born in Highland Park, Michigan, August 22, 1952.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up in Highland Park, did you stay in your neighborhood or did you venture around Detroit growing up?</p>
<p>SM: Well, I actually lived in Clawson, which is just outside of Royal Oak. Then when the white flight was happening, my father decided to move to Highland Park because he owned a grocery store there and had the store from the 1940s to the 1970s. He just decided at that time, we’d rent our house in Clawson while everybody’s moving that way, we’re into the city. So we moved near Six Mile and Woodward. My dad’s store, my parent’s store, was on Second just south of Davidson.</p>
<p>WW: Mmhmm. What year did you make that move?</p>
<p>SM: Let’s see: it was 1966. I was in eighth grade.</p>
<p>WW: What was it like to move from Clawson to Highland Park?</p>
<p>SM: As an eighth grader, all my friends and my school was out in the suburbs so it was a challenge. I kept up with my relationships there. It was hard for me, really, to be honest. I can say that. I can also say that when the riots happened, I was going to school in Madison Heights. My parents wanted me to go to school in Highland Park at St. Benedicts but they had closed the year that I would have started. So they allowed me to go to the high school that I wanted to go to, where all my friends were going to, which was Bishop Foley in Madison Heights.</p>
<p>So the year the riots took place my school out in the suburbs was all white, and they would be saying things like, “There’s fires burning at Eight Mile Road.” And I said, “Well, that really isn’t true, because I live at Six Mile Road and there are no fires.” So there was just not an understanding of–at least with my classmates who lived in that area and then where I lived. So there was a little bit of a disconnect. And it was a different city compared to the suburbs.</p>
<p>But I spent a lot of time walking around Highland Park, and it has changes a lot since my high school days, a lot. There was movie house around the corner, which is now kind of a Triple X art theatre or whatever they want to call it place, but at that time it was a regular theatre with a popcorn place next door. So I kind of liked having all these different stores nearby–Sears was down the road, and then I could walk to my dad’s store which was about a mile and a half south.</p>
<p>WW: What was the name of your dad’s store?</p>
<p>SM: McNeil’s Market.</p>
<p>That was really a great place because I learned a lot about race relations. There were people from all backgrounds. It was very, very diverse where the suburbs were pretty much all white. So it was really good; I worked in the store when I was in high school, and there was a lady who was my age, 16, and she was African American and had moved up here from Georgia, so people would call us “Salt and Pepper.” Some of the militants would come into our store, Black Panthers at the time, and she was ­– calling me a “honkie” and she would them to cut it out, so it was really good. My dad, since he had been in that neighborhood, that store, since the Forties, had a great relationship with all of the people. He knew the grandmothers and the parents and kids. And so when anything happened, it was really a community store. A lot of good things happened there.</p>
<p>WW: Going into ’67, do you remember how you first found out?</p>
<p>SM: Well, I was in high school, and I don’t know exactly how I first found out, I’m sure from the news and the radio, and just people talking–you know, it was all over. Especially at my dad’s store there was concern if it would come that way because it wasn’t that far off–I don’t know how far–but there were a number of people, black people, who said to my dad, “Do you want us to write ‘Soul Brother’ on your storefront windows? Because other people did, and that’s the way we could protect you.” He said, “No, I’m not really a Soul Brother, you don’t have to do that.” Instead, they did kind of watch his store which was a really good thing. I remember there was a parking lot across the street, an apartment building and a parking lot, and they would just kind of be out there, just watching the store that nothing happened.</p>
<p>I do remember that and I do remember that people were getting up on the apartment roof, and the police had told them to get down just because they could be snipers or whatever, and they just wanted to see the burning or the fires, gawkers.</p>
<p>I talked to my brother, who is almost five years older than I, and my dad’s store was only broken into one time or robbed one time, most of the stores in the area were robbed. I was told too, I can’t confirm this, but that there were owners that were even killed who lived in the area. Most stores at that time, there weren’t a lot of big Meijers and Krogers and things like that, they were more mom and pop type stores. So anyhow, I talked to my brother, and he did say when we were robbed–and he was at the store at the time–that was the first day of the riots. Either the first day–he said it was the first day, which I do believe him–I thought it might have been the day before; but anyhow, two men came in, who were not from the area, and had shotguns, and robbed, just took all the money, got everybody on the floor, and no one was hurt. My brother gave them the money and they left. So that was the only time anything happened, so that was the first day of the riots. But other than that, nothing really happened in that area except the fear and the tension and the worry from both blacks and whites. It was just a scary, scary time.</p>
<p>WW: Did you have any other firsthand experiences during that time?</p>
<p>SM: No. I wasn’t in the riots, I didn’t go there. Not really. Just at my dad’s store: I was still working there at the time, and I just remember how close it was and how people felt in the suburbs and the knowledge that we actually had being very close to the area.</p>
<p>WW: What was the fate of your father’s store? Did he continue to operate it?</p>
<p>SM: Yeah, he sold it probably around ’73 or ’74, and he sold it to some Middle Eastern people, I forget who they were. They had it for a long time; in fact, the pictures that I sent were from the Eighties and the storefront looks completely different. It’s all kind of bricked up where we had more glass, so it was different. I couldn’t find any pictures of when the store was–they’re around, my brother has them, and he doesn’t know where he put them, but we do have pictures of the store in the Sixties.</p>
<p>Right now, I went by that area about five years ago, and it’s gone. It’s just grass. So, somebody demolished the whole thing. There are a lot of stories there. I remember this one woman ran in the store–this wasn’t right at the riots, but it was during that time of a lot of problems–and she ran in the store and asked my dad to protect her, somebody was running after her. And that wasn’t unusual, and he kind of scared them off and called the police. So that was not an unusual time back in the Sixties. That was the way it was. So my dad did sell in the Seventies.</p>
<p>WW: A couple times you said, ‘riots.’ Is that how you interpret what happened in ’67? </p>
<p>SM: Well, that’s the word that was frequently used.</p>
<p>WW: Mmhmm.</p>
<p>SM: So probably that’s still in my mind. Probably if I was older today, I may have looked at it completely differently, but that was how it was–the looting and the riots and the tension–I didn’t know as a ninth grader what was really going on. That was the word that we used back then.</p>
<p>WW: So your family experienced it firsthand. What was it like to go back to high school and interact with your friends?</p>
<p>SM: Yeah, that was where people were really, just, saying all of these things that weren’t true, and I could say that, I’d say, “No, that isn’t true. No, all the stores there aren’t broken into. No, there’s not fires there, there’s not at Eight Mile, not at Seven Mile, not at Six Mile.” So there’s all these rumors and fears–all of that. And, “Oh, I can never go down there. My parents would never let me go to Detroit or Highland Park,” or anywhere. In fact, even to have some friends come over to our house, some parents wouldn’t allow them to come because it was just too dangerous in their mind to come to that area.</p>
<p>WW: After he sold the store, did you continue to live in Highland Park, or did you move out?</p>
<p>SM: No, we went back to our house in Clawson. He never sold it; he just rented it out and moved back. I went off to college myself, but my parents and my younger brother and sister moved back to Clawson. That was just a four-year period during the riots [laughter] we moved toward that area, Highland Park area, where my dad, he was just thinking, “You know, this is a long ride for me, I’m falling asleep, I work long hours.” He worked seven days a week. He said, “I’m tired of driving that much” so he said, “Let’s move closer.” So that’s really why he did that.</p>
<p>WW: How do you feel about the state of the city today?</p>
<p>SM: Highland Park or Detroit or both or…?</p>
<p>WW: Both.</p>
<p>SM: Well, I look at Highland Park, because that’s where I lived, and it looks like a warzone. It’s just horrible, just to be honest. It’s shocking to me. Like I said, to see all that kind of Triple X theatres and trash and many, many homes that were there are just like bombed out shells, buildings like a war was there, I find it very sad. I do. I had a really good time during that period, I met a lot of fascinating people, a lot of hippies, all types of people, and that was gone.</p>
<p>So now, how do I see Detroit? Well, Detroit is coming back so much, so I’m more excited about Detroit, I see a lot of that integration and people getting together and building gardens and local food and the bread company downtown I go to. It’s starting to come back and be a little more alive. It’s not like Cleveland, I was just in Cleveland where they had a similar thing happen, but I think we’re on the way. So I have hope for Detroit, I hope that happens for Highland Park as well, I think it’s a little behind, but I haven’t kept up with it either, maybe it’s improved more than I know now. I just remember when I went back and I thought, “Wow, this is so bad.” So sad.</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you’d like to share today?</p>
<p>SM: Well, I’d like to know about your project when it’s done or event just a little bit. What is it exactly?</p>
<p>WW: Well, let me turn it off.</p>
<p>SM: Okay, okay.</p>
<p>WW: Thanks so much for sitting down with me.</p>
<p>SM: Oh, you’re so welcome.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
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15min 03sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Sharon McNeil
Location
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Monroe, MI
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Title
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Sharon McNeil, December 6th, 2017
Description
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In this interview, McNeil discusses her divergent experiences as a student in the suburbs (Clawson and Madison Heights) as compared to her brief time living in Highland Park and working at her father’s store there. In contrast to the suburbs awash with “rumors and fears” after the unrest, McNeil describes McNeil’s Market as a site of interracial harmony where black patrons offered to protect the store, and did, in July 1967. McNeil is today optimistic about Detroit, but does not share the same optimism for the future of her native Highland Park.
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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03/17/2017
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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Audio/WAV
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en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Black Panther Party
Business Owners
Highland Park
Looting
Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Teenagers
White Flight
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/74315aebef82b38b90db274c29832fac.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.
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Detroit Historical Society
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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en-us
Date
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10/20/2019
Written Story
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Text
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I was eight years old at the time, however, I remember this time very well as my family and I live right in the center of the riot. I grew up on Calvert between Woodrow Wilson and the John C. Lodge Freeway. Of course the riot area was around 12th street where the five and dime store Ray's and the another supermarket was being burned down and looted. Memories of people running down Calvert crossing the John C. Lodge bridge heading towards Byron and Hamilton with load of all different types of items. Another memory is when the National Guard parked right across the street is what use to be a little park on Calvert right next to the freeway with tanks and armed national guardsmen. They even have units with tanks located at my school which was Durfee Middle school/Central High on Tuxedo and LaSalle. Often times during this period we as a family of eight would sit on the front porch and watch the fires burn building down.
Original Format
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Marvin Howell
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03/13/2017
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Title
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Marvin Howell
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Marvin Howell was eight years old in 1967 and remembers living close to the center of activity.
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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03/17/2017
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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
Tanks
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/74e564c8fc66c5801b1fe76e9376c3d8.jpg
a1af5fc6830e3cb021c88546b07e18ed
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
Written Story
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Text
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My view of the 1967 Riots
It was a really hot day. Temperatures were close to 90 and there was a near full moon that night. A young black teenager had been shot and killed and people were infuriated. I was a 16 year old runaway about to experience her first day as a child out in the world.
I stood on the corner of 6 mile and Livernois, near the famous Chessmate Lounge, and my favorite diner across the street, wondering what I was going to do. As I pondered my future, standing on that corner, I witnessed the strangest occurrence. Some kids were breaking into a jewelry store across the street. Not easily shaken, the only thing that seemed odd was that it was broad daylight. A few minutes later some other people broke into another jewelry store, and that really got my attention. What was to happen next was beyond my ability to fathom.
As I stood there, just trying to take in what was going on around me, a parade of every conceivable type of law enforcement vehicle started heading full steam down Livernois. There were city police, state police, army vehicles, even tanks speeding down Livernois, and the didn't even stop! The thieves kept right on with their business and the were totally ignored.
Finally a group of friends pulled up and said, "There's riots going on, let's go".
Now, anyone with any sense would have tried to find a safe place to escape the mayhem, but we were young and stupid so we started following the fires, listening to updates on the radio, and trying to arrive first to the next show. Oddly, although we were white, no one tried to accost us, and again due to our age and naivety, we did not feel in danger. We drove from one part of the city to another watching people smashing storefronts and removing anything portable. People say this was a race riot, but I believe it was a gathering of oppressed people who had few of the resources and opportunities we white people take for granted every day.
After watching the city burn we returned to our neighborhood and watched Livernois, "The Avenue of Fashion", go up in flames.The fancy clothing stores were emptied of their expensive contents, and TV's, stereos. and anything that could be carried was quickly whisked away. Our local hardware store, Merchandise Mart, went up for hours, due to all of the combustibles.
The police finally arrived on the scene and got control of the neighborhood, but the damage was done. I remember walking in the alley behind the stores and noticing an interesting tie lying on the ground. I bent over to pick it up when I heard a voice say "I wouldn't do that if I was you". I looked up to see a cop with a very large German Shepherd eyeing me from a short distance away. Needless to say, I left the tie alone.
I ended up down in the cultural center that night, which would be my home for the next several years. My boyfriend wouldn't let me stay with him because I was underage, so I ended up with some friends holed up in their apartment. Curfew was imposed for 5 days but we would sneak out at night. On one of those nights, one of my genius friends decided that it would be a good idea to try and break into our local drug store because we were running out of cigarettes. As we headed down the street we heard gunfire, which we ignored, as it had become quite commonplace. All of a sudden shots started whizzing around our heads and we realized that we were the targets. We ran back to our apartment, narrowly escaping.
In the days that followed we became bored and decided to taunt the National Guard who were patrolling our neighborhood. These kids were only a little older than us and looked so out of place in their official uniforms with their baby faces. We put together a bunch of water balloons and started an attack. All of a sudden I heard boots pounding up the stairs and knew we were in trouble. A couple of us escaped to an apartment down the hall, but the others weren't so lucky. The Guard beat up all of the people in the apartment and were particularly brutal with this poor guy innocently taking a bath. We quickly learned that angry young men don't like to play!
The riots finally ended after 5 days and the city of Detroit and my life were inexorably changed. Thus began my life as an adult.
Original Format
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Email
Submitter's Name
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Sue Schmittroth
Submission Date
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02/16/2017
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Title
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Sue Schmittroth
Description
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Sue Schmittroth was a teenager who was staying in the cultural center of Detroit in July of 1967. She and her friends explored around the city during the unrest to quell their curiosity and got into more than one altercation with law enforcement.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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02/16/2017
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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Text
Language
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en-US
Type
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Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Curfew
Detroit Police Department
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Teenagers
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/e1de8a8d67dd87e842788a6a9b69480c.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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Darryle Buchanan
Brief Biography
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Darryle Buchanan was born July 28, 1955 at Hutzel Hospital in Detroit. He grew up in Conant Gardens, Highland Park, and Virginia Park between Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets, right at the epicenter of the unrest. He characterizes the events of the summer of 1967 as a “rebellion” primarily in response to police brutality. Buchanan still resides in the city, and is concerned with the contemporary issues facing the black community.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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12/13/2016
Interview Length
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00:54:26
Transcriptionist
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Emma Maniere
Transcription Date
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02/03/2017
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello. Today is December 13, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project, and I am in Detroit, Michigan. I am sitting down with Mr. Darryle Buchanan. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>DB: Thank you for having me.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when were you born?</p>
<p>DB: I was born in Detroit on July 28, 1955 at Women’s Hospital, which is now Hutzel Hospital.</p>
<p>WW: Did you grow up in the city?</p>
<p>DB: Yes I did.</p>
<p>WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?</p>
<p>DB: I lived in several neighborhoods. When I was born, my father was in the military, so my mother–single woman, 20 years old, she was living with relatives–at one point we lived down on Hastings and Canfield. It was kind of interesting going back and remembering that because that whole area has been replaced by I-75. We lived there for a moment, and for the most part though I remember growing up on the Northeast Side in Conant Gardens, that’s where I first started school. We moved from there to Highland Park, which I absolutely loved living in Highland Park. My parents divorced and we moved onto Virginia Park which probably is where I would say where I grew up.</p>
<p>WW: What were some of the differences between those neighborhoods? Do you remember them being staunchly different or kind of along the same lines?</p>
<p>DB: Highland Park was probably the most different of any of the communities that I lived in. It was very integrated, and very viable in those days because Chrysler Headquarters was still in Highland Park, and a lot of management and executives lived in Highland Park. I would actually see them walking to and from work everyday. It was interesting because even at lunchtime, they would leave, go home, have lunch, and then go back. It was just a very different time. This was the early Sixties, ’61 to’63 is when we were living there.</p>
<p>WW: Are there any other memories you’d like to share from growing up in either Virginia Park or in Conant Gardens?</p>
<p>DB: In Highland Park, I was eight years old, and we were practicing for my first communion. I was raised Catholic.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p>DB: I went to Blessed Sacrament, which is not too far, Belmont, where we were in Highland Park. During the rehearsal, I remember one of the nuns running into the church and telling us all to get on our knees and pray, that the president had just been killed. That was something that you never forget, I don’t care what age you are, I was eight years old, and that’s a day that I remember like yesterday.</p>
<p>WW: Wow.</p>
<p>DB: Especially being Catholic, all of the excitement around having a Catholic president, what he meant to that. In that time period, that was the thing that stuck out most to me.</p>
<p>WW: Wow.</p>
<p>DB: Funny thing: you know how little boys are, especially back in the early Sixties, we’re just coming out of World War II and Korea, we all had army helmets and guns and we played war and did all that stuff. You don’t really know the difference between ethnicities or anything like that. Going to a Catholic School, you have a lot of Chaldeans, a lot of Filipinos as well as white and black students, and I had this one Filipino friend, and we were all just kids, we weren’t shy, you know, we’re walking down the street and he said he was talking about, “What are we going to do? What’s going to happen to us?” Then he said, “What if the Japanese attack us?” All the little boys looked at him like, “What are you worried about?” you know? Because we didn’t make distinctions, we just know that he looked Asian, and that was it. We just said, “You should be okay.” That’s the most memorable thing about that time for me.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm. Given the diverse community that you grew up in, both in your neighborhood and at your school, did you tend to stay in your own neighborhoods growing up or did you venture around the city? And if so, did you feel comfortable venturing around the city?</p>
<p>DB: That’s the one thing that caused me a lot of problems when I was a little boy: I had wanderlust. I just, for whatever reason, I had no problem walking around the city, catching the bus around the city.</p>
<p>On the east side and west side of Woodward, streets have different names. I knew that my favorite cousin lived on Glynn, and Glynn is Belmont, where I went to school, on the other side. So I just happened to look over there one day, and seriously, I was about seven years old, Friday afternoon, I looked over there and I said, “Glynn? My cousin lives on Glynn.’ So I just started walking down Glynn, and I walked down Glynn all the way, got to the expressway, had to go around, come back on the other side and keep going down Glynn. Eventually, I got to my cousin’s house and walked in and they were sitting down getting ready to have late lunch, so I sat down and next thing I know it’s Friday evening and we’re just running around playing, and my mom is panicking, she’s calling looking for me, and my aunt was like, “What are you talking about? He’s sitting at the table with us right now.” That’s just how it was for me. It was just an adventure. I just loved growing up then. It was a different time. It was just easy just to get around. I mean a seven year old on the bus? I’m talking about getting on the DSR [Department of Street Railways] bus and you can’t event imagine, people worry about their kids getting on school buses now, let alone getting on DOT [Department of Transportation] buses. East side/west side, and it’s funny because even now my sons are always asking me, “Dad, how do you know this?” I say, “I grew up here. I know everything about Detroit.”</p>
<p>WW: [Laughter.]</p>
<p>DB: Just drop me off and I guarantee you I can find my way back home. It was a good time, a very different time.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up, do you remember any tension growing in the city? Either economic, racial­ – ?</p>
<p>DB: Until I moved on Virginia Park, I never really noticed anything. I was friends with, as I said, Filipino kids, Chaldean kids, white kids, I would go to their house, we would visit with each other. I didn’t notice anything different until I moved onto Virginia Park. Then some stark realities started to set in for me that I wasn’t ready for but I lived through and it was just a stark difference going from one environment to the other. Not to say that it was bad, it was just different.</p>
<p>WW: Would you mind elaborating on some of those differences?</p>
<p>DB: Well, one, just the number of people that lived in the community. We moved in with my father’s parents, and they owned a two-family flat on Virginia Park, and right next-door was an apartment building, and up and down the street, there were all two-family flats, multi-level and multi-unit dwellings. So small apartments, big apartments, four units, and that kind of thing. So there were way more people living in that area than I had seen either growing up in Conant Gardens or in Highland Park. But it was good, a whole lot more people to play with for sure, and a whole lot more people to get into trouble with as well.</p>
<p>Along with that, I noticed differences just in poverty rates and things like that. I had really never seen people that were struggling financially, families struggling. It wasn’t like I separated myself from them, they were my friends so it was no distinction in terms of me versus them or income or those kinds of things, but I did notice just the difference there.</p>
<p>The other thing that I noticed was the police presence that was in that community. I barely ever saw the police before in my life until I moved over there. And then it was just a regular occurrence, seeing police. You know, I think my first time being involved with the police or the police saying anything to me, we were little boys, we found a pack of cigarettes and we’re running around trying to find matches so we could light them up. We were in the alley–because we used to play in the alleys, the alleys were actually pretty nice to play in then–and then these police rolled up on us, and, “Hey, what are you doing?” and started chasing us because we were smoking cigarettes. I was scared, for sure, but couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. It’s like why go to those extremes when you could have just as easily said, “Put those down” or “Give them to me” and they’ll throw them away? But to chase us, I thought it was a little bit extreme. So, just from that aspect, I noticed there was a difference from being a little boy kind of naïve growing up in Highland Park, now I’m a young man–not even young man yet, I’m still nine, ten years old growing up over there. All of the sudden, I started seeing that it’s a little different over here.</p>
<p>WW: Going into ’67, were you still living on Virginia Park?</p>
<p>DB: Yeah, yeah. I actually, from ’63 until adulthood, that’s where I lived. Grade school, high school, and college, that was the base for me living there. So yeah, in ’67 I was right there. I actually, I turned 12 that week. I turned 12 that week. It’s one of those things that you’ll–like the assassination, this is burned in my memory. Sights, smells, sounds, things I just, I have flashbacks of them.</p>
<p>WW: Where in Virginia Park where you?</p>
<p>DB: Right on Virginia Park between Twelfth and Fourteenth Street. Yeah, right at the epicenter. Our house was – it now is on the corner of Fourteenth because they tore down the apartment building that was next-door. So I got to see and feel the entirety, the intensity of the whole event.</p>
<p>WW: Did you and your family go onto Twelfth Street at all growing up? Was that your main thoroughfare?</p>
<p>DB: When I first moved over there my mom was telling me, “Now, we’re moving to a different neighborhood, you stay off of Twelfth Street.” You know that’s the worst thing you can tell a little boy, what not to do, because I started going on Twelfth Street. I didn’t have a choice really because the school I went to, St. Agnes, was right on the corner of South La Salle Gardens and Twelfth Street. It didn’t make sense to walk all the way back to Fourteenth a lot of days when I can just walk right down Twelfth to Virginia Park and come home.</p>
<p>I’m going to tell you, man, there were so many things that I saw, it was just alive. It was alive. There were stores, there were theatres, there were restaurants, I mean, it was a fully self-contained area. There was no reason for you to ever leave that neighborhood to do anything. Just think about on my block, on Virginia Park, just Twelfth Street between Virginia Park and Seward: just in that strip, in my block, there was Dr. Maben’s Pharmacy, there was Hope Brothers’ Barber Shop, there was Fishman’s Hardware, there was the Chit Chat Lounge, there was a beauty shop in there, but then there was Picnic Barbeque, and then there was actually a dairy on the corner where we would go and buy milkshakes, Boston Coolers, ice cream, all that, and then a market on the opposite corner right there. There was no reason to ever have to leave the neighborhood to do anything. You could just go up and down Twelfth Street: clothing stores, you name it, gas stations, everything right there. I thought it was probably the best time of my life in terms of growing up and being able to see life from every aspect. There were church people, there were hustlers, there were regular, everyday folks, families, just doing what they do. It was – economically, there was a way for everybody to do something, make some money. I remember as a little kid–just because of the way the neighborhood was, the people that lived there, I was a little boy that never, never had to go without money. All I had to do was walk down the street and just ring the doorbell: need somebody to pull your weeds, cut your grass, shovel snow? I would even make money just walking up to the store and I’d ask people, “I’m going to the store, you need anything?” And they would say, “Yeah, bring me back whatever.” And I’d bring it back, and they’d give me a nickel, a dime, or whatever. That was good money. If you had a quarter back then, you could buy a pop and a bag of chips. For a little boy, that was good. I saw jitneys, I don’t know if you know what a jitney is, but a jitney is, they’re the original Uber drivers. So you go to the market and not everybody had a car, and so the jitneys would see you shopping, and a lot of them just had regular folks and would see you coming, and say, “I got you on your way out.” No problem. So they would load up your groceries, take you to your house, unload them, and go back to the market and get the next one. When I saw the Uber thing, I said, “Seriously? That’s nothing but a jitney. That’s wild.”</p>
<p>WW: How did you first hear about what was going on on Twelfth Street that night on July 23?</p>
<p>DB: Well I told you I went to Catholic School. At St. Agnes, I was an altar boy, a safety patrol boy, I did all that stuff, right? So, throughout the summer, you still had a schedule as an altar boy and I remember getting up to do 8 o’clock mass and my mother was an emergency room tech at Henry Ford Hospital. So she knew I was getting up to go, and I was actually up and ironing my cassock. So I was up ironing, and I could hear activity, and I said, “Man, wow, people are partying early today.” I could smell some smoke, and I was thinking people are barbequing or something. So when my mom called, she said, “You’re not going to church this morning,” I said, “Mom, I have to. What are you talking about?” She said, “There’s a riot going on on Twelfth Street and you’re not going to be able to get to the church anyway, so just stay, I’ll be home in a minute.”</p>
<p>Immediately, I went out to the front porch, and I noticed that all the noise that I was hearing was people milling about and going up and down the street. The looting really hadn’t started yet, but it was just a matter of time before all that broke out. My grandparents were there, we woke, and then we were just on the porch for the most part just looking up and down the street, neighbors milling about, talking about what was going on. Then my mother came home in a police car, and I was like, this is interesting she always caught the bus. But I guess bus service was disrupted, so the police brought her home in a car.</p>
<p>Now, my social consciousness is starting to come about, and by the age of 11, now I’m about to turn 12, and it concerned me seeing my mother in a police car because now I’m trying to get a feel for what’s going on up there but then seeing the police bringing my mother home, I was worried about how the people in the neighborhood were going to see our family because later, as my parents, my grandparents got away – well I got away from them, and of course you know I went right up to Twelfth Street just to watch everything. It was really something to see. It was really something to see. So many people so angry all at once. But I understood what was going on, because, as I told you, I had been dealing with this whole police presence for quite some time. What I’m saying is when you grow up in that neighborhood, you learn to play cops and niggers when you are young. The story about the cigarettes, that was typical of the kind of things that happened to us in that neighborhood.</p>
<p>For the older guys, I could see that it was even worse. There were guys that were teenagers that I saw growing up, and I just thought they were the coolest guys in the world; they used to wear their crisscross sweaters and their mohair slacks and their gypsy split shoes–that’s how they dressed going to high school. I was like, “Man, when I grow up, I want to be just like them.” Well, in the interim, a lot of those guys ended up going to Vietnam, and so they’re coming back from Vietnam about the same time that this is going on and they weren’t the same. They weren’t the cool people that I knew when I was little. They were dark, they were disturbed. You could tell something was wrong with them. They’re in the mix now too, coming home to have to deal with those same conditions. I remember seeing a guy that lived in the apartments that I told you were next-door to us, and just hearing all that going on that night, he just clicked into survival mode, and I saw him with his gear on jumping out the side window of the first floor of the apartment. I don’t know where he went, and I don’t think I ever saw him again. But I just remember seeing that and I was thinking, “Man, this is way worse than anything I could have ever imagined.” All that happening at the same time that we have this police presence in our neighborhood, and naturally knowing all these things, we’re now wearing naturals and we’re talking about Black Power.</p>
<p>I remember my mom used to, I said she worked at midnight, so in the daytime, she would sleep and certain things had to be done, and she would put me on the bus to go–and I mean, again, you know, it’s no big deal – go downtown, pay the Hudson’s bill, pay the light bill, take these light bulbs and exchange the light bulbs–that’s when light bulbs were actually free. That was part of my growing up, that was my responsibility as the oldest boy in a single-parent household. Inevitably, every time when I’d catch the Fenkell bus, they’d either be somebody from the Nation of Islam, or somebody from the Black Panther Party who would be there talking to me, telling me, “Young Brother, this is how you need to conduct yourself. And when you’re stopped by the police, you need to know how to answer, how to respond. You need to know these things in order to survive. Young Brother, do not wear your hair so long, you won’t be able to escape the pigs. Don’t wear bellbottom pants and do not wear platform shoes, you will not be able to get away.” These are things that were engrained in us as little boys in that neighborhood. Then, when I would have a conversation with somebody form the Nation of Islam and they started talking to me about how I should I take care of my body, and how I should eat, and how I should dress, and how I conduct myself in public. It was a different time in that I really feel like most of the young men of my generation, we were kind of raised up to be soldiers in terms of the Civil Rights Movement and just all of the turmoil of those times. This was all just a part of that. So seeing my mom get out of that police car caused me a little bit of concern.</p>
<p>That night, we’re now moving into where the National Guard and the Federal Troops were coming in, and there was basically martial law, so the curfew, lights out, and at night, they came and picked my mother up again to go to work but this time they picked her up in an unmarked police car, I had never seen one of those before. Totally blacked out, no insignia on it whatsoever, and when they came and knocked on the door, and she left out with them. They left and they didn’t even turn on the lights in the car and I mean they shot down Virginia Park so fast, it was kind of shocking to see.</p>
<p>You look at all that and my concern now is how’s that going to be taken in the neighborhood, how are they going to feel about us? Because I had seen black businesses on the corner of Virginia Park and Twelfth Street was Dr. Maben, he was a pharmacist, and I couldn’t believe that they actually broke into Dr. Maben’s drugstore and looted it because it was a black business. So right then I knew that black, white, Jewish, whatever, none of that mattered right now. That’s just how out of control the situation was. So my concern for my mother was real. Okay?</p>
<p>Then you add to that, the next morning when they brought her back, she came home – this armored personnel carrier came down my street ‘ding, ding, ding, ding,’ it’s like making this noise and you can’t help but notice that, right? So I run to see what is all that, and the thing pops up, the soldier pops out, and here comes my mom, popping up out of this armored personnel carrier, like, “Okay, thank you,” came on in the house, and I was like, this is unbelievable, totally unbelievable. But I think because most of the people in my neighborhood knew my mother and my grandmother. They were both nurses, and they just knew them as healers, so I don’t think that they looked at them as being compliant with them. They’re just healers, that’s what they do. We didn’t really have a concern, but I’m 11, I don’t know that.</p>
<p>WW: After your first trip up to Twelfth Street, did you go back at all, or did you, after what you saw the first times, did you stay hunkered down at your house?</p>
<p>DB: You couldn’t keep me off of Twelfth Street, and I just kept going back. Each time I went back, there was less and less of Twelfth Street than I remembered. I actually saw a building, and if you’ve ever seen a building on fire, the building’s on fire, when it collapses, there’s this rush of cool air that comes out of the basement–because remember this is in July, so you’re thinking everything is just hot–but when the building collapsed, you can actually feel this cool air rush all the way across the street. So I’m standing on the corner of Virginia Park and Twelfth and this cleaners was on the opposite side of Twelfth Street, and when that building collapsed it was weird. I actually saw rats running out of the building on fire down the street. I saw some things that day, I saw some things. Just the smell of the burning building, and then it was just everywhere; that smell was everywhere.</p>
<p>One thing that I always think about is back in those days, the police sirens now, they kind of give you like a ‘whoop-whoop’ kind of sound, back then it was like a long drawn out ‘wwrrrr-wrrrrr’ and normally you would hear it and it would be a police car, fire truck or something going by and that was it, but it was constant, it never stopped. It was like a constant drone of sirens that just never went away. After a while, it just started to sound like wailing, like crying. It’s almost like the city was dying and it’s that crying sound that you heard. It was eerie, you can’t forget it, you never forget that. The worst thing is that, as I said, it was probably the most vibrant neighborhood community and then it wasn’t. It was like it just died, and it never, ever came back. There’s been attempts trying to rebuild. I know my grandfather was part of the Virginia Park Association, and they put in a Community Center and a little shopping area right there, and that was a source of pride, but it was nowhere near as robust as Twelfth Street was on its own.</p>
<p>WW: That week, was your house threatened by fire at all?</p>
<p>DB: No. We were far enough away from Twelfth Street that there was really no–and there were no fires on my block. The buildings were looted, but none of them were set on fire.</p>
<p>WW: Oh.</p>
<p>DB: The fire I was telling you about was across Twelfth Street, so it was between Twelfth and Woodrow Wilson. So it wasn’t on my side. Actually, that was separated because it was a trailer rental lot that was next-door to it, so when it burned, it just kind of burned on its own, separate from anybody’s community. There may have been a house that was behind it, that was I think it was singed, and I think it may have had some fire damage, but on my side of Virginia Park, nothing really happened. So, no, there was no threat of any fire.</p>
<p>The one thing that I did see a lot, was a lot of just the police presence more so. Living next-door to that apartment building was interesting because on the roof there was an antenna on the roof, with everything blacked out, the lights out. I woke up to the entire apartment building being surrounded by state troopers and federal troopers and they all had their guns drawn pointing at the top of the apartment building. There was a state trooper in our backyard that was next to a tree that was in the yard, and he had the gun drawn on the top of the building, and I remember crawling all the way to the window and peeking up and trying to see, look up there, and the guy looked over and he said, “Get out of that window”. I got away from the window and crawled back. We slept in my grandparents’ dining room that entire week under her dining room table. There’s no air conditioning, so the windows are up, so you see and hear everything that’s going on, so when that happened, I immediately started running toward the windows to see what was going on. That’s another one of those things that you don’t forget.</p>
<p>WW: Were you, granted you were really young, did you understand what it meant for the National Guard to be coming in?</p>
<p>DB: Well, I knew that–</p>
<p>WW: Or did you see them any differently as you saw the police?</p>
<p>DB: Well, yeah I did. As I got older, then I found out that there was a huge difference between where I was and other portions of the city. See where I was, on the west side, we were at the epicenter of everything; I mean Virginia Park is only like five blocks from Clairmount, where it originated, and so the federal troops were the ones that came there. Now the interesting thing about them is that they don’t spook easy, man. I mean, they would talk to us. They were stationed on the corner, and we would just go and stand there and talk to them and the guy would talk to us; he was just mellowed out. He wasn’t in Vietnam, and I’m sure he’d been there, so he wasn’t sweating this very much. I just remember sitting there, talking to him, he took his helmet off, put it on the ground, and he sat on his helmet, and we just sat there talking to the guy. Just mellow. Now, what I heard is that my cousins lived on the east side, and they said the guys that they were dealing with were nothing like that. Now, I didn’t know at that time that that’s where the National Guard was, so those are Reserves that are pulled up and these guys are being called up to duty and being put into this situation; they’re coming from wherever in the state of Michigan and they just, they didn’t know, whereas the federal guys they were like, “This is not a big deal.” I mean it’s a big deal, but they’ve seen worse, just the way they responded was totally different. I did know that there was a level of seriousness and concern for safety and everything else, but I didn’t feel like these guys were a threat, like something was going to happen. If anything, I felt like they were going to stop things from happening. And it did, it did really settle things down in the neighborhood for the most part. And then it just seemed like from there, it spread out from where we were–which it had to do because they had to calm that area down first –but it spread out the other areas of the city, and I think that’s what prolonged the whole rebellion.</p>
<p>WW: Awesome segue: how do you refer to what happened in ’67? Do you see it as a rebellion?</p>
<p>DB: When I was younger like everybody else, we called it a ‘riot,’ and as I got older, I started to understand it more, because, as I was telling you, the confrontations that we had with police, and actually confrontations Ihad with the police made me change my opinion about it, that it wasn’t a riot. Because typically when you think about a riot, you’re looking at people going after each other. In ’43, people were going after each other, okay? In ’67, nobody was attacking anybody. They were against the police and there was some economic tensions that were going on so people were looting, stealing, doing all that, but it wasn’t like people were being attacked. No specific group was targeted, so it couldn’t really be a riot in the classic definition of a riot because there were no groups going at each other other than people going after a system that was very oppressive for the people in my neighborhood, myself included.</p>
<p>I remember once my mother, when she did get a car, she got this Olds 88 which was like a tank, I think it was like a ’66, just an absolute tank. She picked me up from basketball practice, and my brother and sister were in the car. She said, “Stay in the car.” This is right on the Boulevard and Twelfth where there was a Cunningham’s and an A&P. She said, “Stay in the car, I’ll be right back.” I said, “Okay.” She gets out, and I’m coming from basketball practice, I’m thinking, “I’m cramping, I need to stretch,” I got out the car. And when I got out the car, my brother and sister locked the door, so now we’re playing. I opened the door, so I jumped on the bumper of this tank and I’m jumping up and down on the bumper and I’m telling my brother, I’m yelling, “Open the door! Open the door!” They’re laughing, saying, “We’re not going to let you in! We’re not!” I didn’t notice out the corner of my eye that an unmarked police car had pulled up on me while I’m jumping up and down on this car. I turned and looked, and it’s The Big Four. They got out, and they started walking toward me, and this is when my Black Panther training kicked in, and I’m standing there and talking to them and I had my hands where they could see my hands and I’m telling them, “What’s the problem, officer?” So this one cop walked up and grabbed me by the lapels of my coat–this is how small I was and how big this guy was–he picked me up by the lapels of my coat, my feet were dangling, and he was shaking me, and he was saying, “Where’s your knife?” I said, “Officer I don’t have a knife. Why are we doing this? I haven’t violated any rules, I’m playing with my brother and sister. What have I done, officer?” I’m just trying to humanize this whole thing, I’m not, “Where’s your knife? Where’s your knife?” My mom came out of the market, she has on her work clothes and she looked at them, and they looked at her: they knew each other. Remember, she was an emergency room tech. These cops had brought in some young men before, and she recognized them. The words that started coming out of my mother’s mouth right then, I couldn’t believe it. The officer looked over there at her, they eased me down back on the ground, got back in the car and drove off. So I was standing in that parking lot, looking at their car pulling off, I was like, whoa. Then I looked over at my mother, and I started thinking, “I think I want to go with those police officers.” That’s just how it was. I was playing.</p>
<p>I was a little boy playing with his brother and sister, and my brother and sister, they’re in the car, now they’re crying, it’s a mess, and it’s for no reason whatsoever. Because a little boy was playing in the parking lot. That’s just the kind of stuff that was going on until it got to the level of S.T.R.E.S.S. [Stop The Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets] – and this is after the riot but the riots didn’t stop that. If anything, it intensified it. Those are the issues that we had to deal with, that I had to deal with, from the age of eight ’til the age of 18 when I left and went away to college. Those are the things that were going on. So, looking back, I can’t say that it was a riot, it was a rebellion. Because being a rebellion, it did result in some changes being made. The Big Four, S.T.R.E.S.S., all of that, they were abolished, and it had to be, otherwise, we would’ve lived in constant fear of the police. We just didn’t have a good relationship with the police department in my neighborhood. It was not, it was not a riot, it was a revolt; it was us saying to the system, “Get off our backs.”</p>
<p> WW: Earlier you said children of your generation were raised to be soldiers. Do you think that was a benefit?</p>
<p>DB: It should have been. It should have been. I say that because we were raised with a certain consciousness about what we were supposed to be doing to advance the civil rights movement. The doors opened wide, opportunity started coming our way, and I was up at MSU [Michigan State University] and there were more black students at MSU at that time than they’d ever had. Clifton Wharton was the president then, and there was intentional work on recruiting and graduating black students through MSU. So when I say that the doors opened wide and the opportunities came, we got caught up in the me-ism of that time. When I look at a lot of the things that go on, and what’s happened since then, I really feel the personal responsibility that it was my generation that dropped the ball on this because we were raised with a certain mindset, a certain consciousness, and then we bought into the me-ism of the Nineties and the corporate life and all of those things. We forgot about the movement. I jokingly say to people all the time, “We went from ‘It’s Nation-time’ to ‘Hey baby, what’s your sign?’” We weren’t doing what we were prepared to do in terms of community building. Yeah, we were successful, corporately, and things like that, but we took our eye off of how we got there, and how we got there is that those in front of us, when they paved the way, they made sure that they brought us in behind and said, “Okay, this is what you need to do.” That didn’t happen. So that generation of young men who started to fill prisons and get caught up in all of the drug trade and all of those things, those are my sons. These are my grandchildren that I’m working now trying to save. That’s why I do what I do, and it’s more, not personally failing, I mean I’ve got two sons who are doing exceptionally well, but overall we forgot what we were supposed to be doing. Yeah, there were challenges, but there’ve always been challenges. There are challenges now. What are you going to do? So that’s my motivation when I get up in the morning: just to remember that I was called upon to do something, and how do I do that now?</p>
<p>WW: Very nice. Is there anything else, any other stories you’d like to share from either that week before we move on, just to go past it?</p>
<p>DB: I had never seen that kind of madness before in my life in terms of it just seemed like there was everybody just kind of lost their compassion, they lost their soul. To just go and just destroy property like that, especially–I mean I was standing in front of Dr. Maben’s Pharmacy, and I was begging people, I was crying, I was like, “What are you doing? Dr. Maben is a black man. What are you doing? He serves our community.” But the madness overtook everything, and it destroyed which was once a very viable, strong, black community. Strong in terms of, we weren’t quite there politically, but economically, for the most part, we were self-sufficient.</p>
<p>My uncle, when I was talking about Hastings earlier, he was a pharmacist. When I was a little boy, I used to think all the time about my family was rich, I just thought we were the richest people on earth because my Uncle Smitty was a pharmacist, my Uncle Joe down the street was a barber, he had his own barber shop, and my Uncle Clement was a mechanic and he ran his little mechanic shop out the back of Digg’s Funeral Home. Diggs, they had a funeral home that was around the corner on Canfield, but in the back, my uncle said, “Hey, let me rent that out, and I can fix cars back there and I’ll fix you cars.” They were like, “Cool.” That’s what he did. But the one I loved the most was my Uncle Bunch, and I didn’t know Uncle Bunch delivered coal in the winter and ice in the summer and he picked up junk but Uncle Bunch had a horse, and for a little boy, a horse is like the coolest thing in the world; I just used to think, “Uncle Bunch has a horse.”</p>
<p>So I saw all of that, and then I also saw, when I-75 came through there and it just wiped out all of that. Then we moved into the other areas, onto Twelfth Street and then like that, and then I watched how just the madness made us destroy our own economy. It just changed a lot of things; I think it changed our own perceptions about who we are. And it was really nobody that could stand up and speak in a way to help understand what we were doing, and how that was going to impact us.</p>
<p>So, here we are, 50 years later, we’re seeing a resurgence here, Midtown, downtown. Twelfth Street’s not coming back. Anybody that lived on there and saw that, they know what I’m talking about. Just being over there, you didn’t have to go anywhere else. Northland was like an overnight trip as far as I was concerned. There was no reason to go to Northland, didn’t have to. We were totally self-sufficient. We don’t have that anymore, we don’t have that self-sufficiency. Our neighborhoods are dominated by other people who – I’m not blaming anybody, it’s the way it is but we don’t have a viable black economy anymore, not like we had then. When I was talking about Dr. Maben and my uncle, they were pharmacists, there was a group of black pharmacists who would get together and have fundraising events, big dinner dances, those kinds of things – they were real big back then – and they raised funds, they had scholarships and all kinds of things. There’s no black pharmacist group like that now. So a lot of those things don’t exist anymore since 1967. That was kind of, when I talked about that wailing, those sirens, truly was the death of our community and our economy. It just kind of cast us out to the winds.</p>
<p>So we see that now, and it’s like we casts dispersions on people who live on the other side of Eight Mile and all these kind of things, and it’s like we’re caught up in things that had nothing to do with how do we bring back what we once had? How do we do that? So if I want to leave on anything, that’s probably it. That’s my biggest concern because now I have two sons who are capable, they’re educated–I mean my oldest son graduated in four years from college, and he’s working, my youngest son is about to graduate from college–in these times, a lot of people say, “Well, that’s it, I’ve done it,” but I haven’t. Because there’s so many young men that they interface that need the same opportunities, that need to be able to do the same things. How do we make sure that we do that? Not to the detriment of anybody else, that’s not what I’m saying.</p>
<p>WW: Uh-hm.</p>
<p>DB: I’m talking about me, just like anybody else would be concerned with themselves.</p>
<p>WW: Thanks so much for sitting down with me today, I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>DB: It was a pleasure, man.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much.</p>
Original Format
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54min 26sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Darryle Buchanan
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Detroit, MI
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A-_XWCrs4jE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Dublin Core
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Title
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Darryle Buchanan, December 13th, 2016
Description
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<p class="Normal1"><span>In this interview, Buchanan discusses his experiences growing up primarily in Virginia Park during the 1960s. He notes the escalated police presence in the community, and details several anecdotes of police brutality he experienced as a child. During the unrest, his mother was transported to and from work by the police and National Guard, once in an armored personnel carrier. He recalls the events in great detail, remembering the smell of burning buildings “everywhere” and the constant police sirens which sounded like “wailing.” Buchanan discusses the importance of Twelfth Street as a site of black economic self-sufficiency, which he claims no longer exists, and will not exist in the near future despite the revitalization of Midtown and Downtown Detroit.</span></p>
<br /><strong>***This interview contains profanity and/or explicit language</strong>
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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02/03/2017
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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
101st Airborne
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
82nd Airborne Division-US Army
Arson
Black Business
Black Panther Party
Childhood
Children
Detroit Police Department
Growing Up In Detroit
Highland Park
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Nation of Islam
STRESS
The Big Four
Twelfth Street
Vietnam War
Virginia Park
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/6193864d16ea22563180d4c5557e4106.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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Regina Vaugn
Brief Biography
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Regina Vaugn was born in Highland Park in 1948 and grew up in Detroit's Boston-Edison area.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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10/10/2016
Interview Length
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00:14:51
Transcriptionist
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Julie Vandenboom
Transcription Date
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02/03/2017
Transcription
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<p class="Normal1"> </p>
<p>WW: Hello, today is October 10, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Detroit '67 Oral History Project. I'm in Detroit, Michigan and I'm sitting down with -</p>
<p>RV: Regina Vaugn.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>RV: You're welcome.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when you were born?</p>
<p>RV: I was born in Highland Park, Michigan, November 13, 1948.</p>
<p>WW: Did you grow up in Highland Park?</p>
<p>RV: I grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Highland Park was just the closest hospital, and I wound up being born there.</p>
<p>WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?</p>
<p>RV: Primarily on the Boston area - Boston-Edison area, on a street called Atkinson and later we moved to what's called the University area on a street called Wisconsin.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up, were those neighborhoods integrated?</p>
<p>RV: Boston-Edison was pretty predominantly black when I lived there and the University was, and I think it still is, pretty much integrated.</p>
<p>WW: What did your parents do for a living?</p>
<p>RV: My mother was an elementary special ed teacher. My dad was a time accountant, and that's all - and he also worked part-time for the school board. Detroit School Board.</p>
<p>WW: Would you like to share any memories of growing up in those neighborhoods?</p>
<p>RV: Well, pretty much it was a stable neighborhood. Probably most of the residents were probably professional - what we would call black middle class - and you know, for instance, the - the publisher for the <em>Michigan Chronicle</em>, which is the black newspaper, lived two doors down from us and the doctor who actually delivered my sister lived a block from us. And that area, back then, was - that's where a lot of the black professionals lived, because I don't think we'd experienced a lot of flight to the suburbs.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up in the Fifties and early Sixties, did you tend to stay in your own neighborhood or did you venture around the city?</p>
<p>RV: I went all over the city.</p>
<p>WW: How did you do that?</p>
<p>RV: Probably my mom and dad took me or I took myself after a while after I learned how to drive.</p>
<p>WW: Growing up during that time, did you sense any growing tension in the city?</p>
<p>RV: Sure didn't. Sure - I mean - okay, what was I? 16, 17 when the riot occurred. I never sensed anything. I thought things were going well, because for one thing, we had a mayor that people pretty much liked. His name was Mayor Cavanagh. And I don't think there was a big problem with unemployment. I didn't sense it myself, but I guess there was something underlying there that I didn't know about.</p>
<p>WW: What schools did you go to?</p>
<p>RV: I went to a school called Angel, I went to a school called Durfee, and then I graduated from a school named Cass Tech, and then I graduated from Michigan State University.</p>
<p>WW: Going into the Sixties, in your late teens, and you're at Cass Tech, right?</p>
<p>RV: Mm hm.</p>
<p>WW: How old were you in '67?</p>
<p>RV: I was probably 19 - I was probably 18 that summer.</p>
<p>WW: So you said even going into that summer, you didn't sense any tension going?</p>
<p>RV: I didn't. Nope. Things seemed to be going well. You know, if you're talking about tension - high unemployment, high crime - no.</p>
<p>WW: Any police/community tension?</p>
<p>RV: Probably - probably - I don't know if we had what they call STRESS then. STRESS was a program - I think we didn't have it. I didn't - because like I said - I think that mayor, who we had then was pretty much well-liked, and there was full - as far as I knew, there was full employment, because when I was - you know, I had a job. My brother had a job - he was just 15, you know. No problem.</p>
<p>WW: Where were you living then? Were you still living in the University district?</p>
<p>RV: When the riot occurred?</p>
<p>WW: Yeah.</p>
<p>RV: No. We were living - okay, I'll tell you where we were living. We were living on a street called Atkinson. That's in the Boston-Edison area. It's a block from Edison, okay. If I could draw you a map - this is Atkinson, okay. The riot occurred on a street called Clairmount. And it used to be called Twelfth Street, but it's now called Rosa Parks. Okay. The riot occurred here - we were right across the street. Excuse me, right around the block from where the riot occurred.</p>
<p> WW: How did you first hear what was going on? Or how did you first see what was going on?</p>
<p>RV: Okay. Well, we - I think we were all home, and it was a time when I brother and I used to have parties, because our parents - you know, they were sort of skeptical about it, but we'd have our friends over, because we had a huge finished basement. And kids liked to come over there. And I remember my mother thought that somebody was giving a really wild party down the street. Because we just saw cars, and a lot of noise, and we didn't learn until - later we saw people were actually, at some point in time, they were using our yard to come across, because they, you know, had looted some items from some of the places.</p>
<p>And then my brother worked at a place called Perry's Photographer. And Perry was - he did most of the photography for high school grads. My brother worked there, and Mr. Perry's store had gotten broken into. It was on Twelfth Street, Rosa Parks. And he called my brother and asked, could he store some of his stuff over in our basement. And so my mom and dad consented to that, and then we knew it was a full riot.</p>
<p>WW: Did he successfully get his equipment into your basement?</p>
<p>RV: Yeah. He did. Yep.</p>
<p>WW: So what was it like on that first Sunday, seeing everything - people coming through your yard, people looting?</p>
<p>RV: It was something that I had never seen before. And then we could see, actually look out and see Twelfth Street burning down. And that was the street where we had just a lot of thriving businesses. We had grocery stores, we had like places to go to - you know, like, they call it - I don't know what they call it - you could order pop and sodas and stuff.</p>
<p>WW: Soda fountains?</p>
<p>RV: Yeah. We had those. Barber shops, beauty shops, I think restaurants. Stuff like that. And it was all burning.</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember how your parents were reacting to it?</p>
<p>RV: They were terrified. Of course. They were terrified. It was shortly after that, that they - we all moved, of course. I mean, after everything died down. Not during the riot. They were terrified. They didn't know what was going on. My dad, for some reason, continued to go to work. And National Guard was going all around the neighborhood and he continued going to work and he was stopped. Because, I guess, perhaps there was a curfew of some kind in effect - but he was just a hard-working guy who had to support his family so he just kept going and he would get stopped.</p>
<p>And I guess, looking back on that, he probably was endangering his life. Because the National Guard, they were just young. There were like 18, 19, 20 years old. And they were scared too, you know. So, yep.</p>
<p>WW: How did you feel about hearing that the National Guard were coming in?</p>
<p>RV: You know, I don't remember how I felt. I just know that, you know, it was a time when - we were experiencing, you know - what we thought was a riot and we just didn't want our place to burn down, and we just wanted it to stop. I don't know if I felt good about National Guard coming into our neighborhood but I just wanted it to stop. So it did stop.</p>
<p>WW: Was your house threatened by fire during that week?</p>
<p>RV: No. No. I think some residential property on Clairmount, or maybe further down there, Clairmount, Hazelwood, like that but none of ours were. Mostly single-family dwellings, and they were not - none that I know of.</p>
<p>WW: Did you or your brother or your parents ever go out to see what was going on first-hand?</p>
<p>RV: My brother did, and I, well, I think I went out with my brother just to see, briefly, what was going on. My dad, of course, he was - it was business as usual for him, you know.</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember any stories from him, or you going out to see what was going on?</p>
<p>RV: Well, he just said that people were - you know, just – that the grocery store near our house, they were taking a lot of stuff from the grocery store, and my guess from - and then there was another shoe store, it was called Cancellation Shoe Store, and he said they were, you know, looting, pretty much in all the areas.</p>
<p>WW: Did seeing the fire, seeing the looting and the violence firsthand did that change the way you looked at the city?</p>
<p>RV: Trying to think. Let me think back. Probably, it changed the way I looked at the area where I lived because it was so close to where I lived, but, you know, when my parents started looking for other places for their family, they didn't look outside the city. They just looked in northwest Detroit. So I don't think that - you mean, was I fearful?</p>
<p>WW: Mm hm.</p>
<p>RV: No.</p>
<p>WW: Did you become uncomfortable moving around the city afterwards?</p>
<p>RV: No. No. I never was.</p>
<p>WW: You've called it a riot a couple times now. How do you interpret what happened in '67? Do you see it as a riot? Do you see it as a rebellion? Uprising?</p>
<p>RV: I probably - I probably see it as a - I don't know how I see it because what happened was that the areas that were burned and destroyed were areas where we lived and areas where we shopped and areas where we lived. I don't know if you call that a riot. If we had gone out to Grosse - if people had gone out to Grosse Pointe and done something, maybe that would be a riot, but I don't know how you - I don't know how you define "riot" vs. "rebellion" vs. "uprising," you know. I don't know which of those it might be classified under.</p>
<p>WW: Do you think the shadow of '67 still hangs over the metro area?</p>
<p>RV: Nah. No. Most people don't even know! You know, I have - my kids - what are they now, they're like in their thirties, you know, and nobody talks about it. And I don't think I shared any experiences that we had, you know. They don't know unless they're really involved in history, or they know the history of the city, or they know anything about history during that time - during the late Sixties, where they had uprisings all over the country. But they don't - a lot of kids are not really historians, so they don't know.</p>
<p>WW: How do you feel about the state of the city today?</p>
<p>RV: I think right now that the state of the city is improving, and I think that we're going another direction, that we had hit probably, maybe bottom, rock bottom, and we're starting to get better.</p>
<p>WW: So you're optimistic for the city moving forward?</p>
<p>RV: Sure. I really think so. Yeah. Look outside.</p>
<p>WW: Is there anything else you'd like to share today? Either from '67 or for the city today?</p>
<p>RV: I can't think of anything about - '67, what I'm - probably if I sat down and really racked my brain, or maybe talked with my, you know, people who were around there, I could probably come up with some more, but just offhand, I can't think of too much more. You know, it was - and you know, a lot of what I'm saying, probably is coming from after, you know. Doing some reading, you know, there are several books that I read - required reading, as a matter of fact, when I went to school. Years of doing that. I don't know if I'm mixing up those memories, or my assessment with what I read, okay.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>RV: You're welcome.</p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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14min 51sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Regina Vaugn
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit, MI
Video
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0cLS4DcabLc" 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
Regina Vaugn, October 10th, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Vaugn discusses her experiences during the events of July 1967 when her family lived just around the block from some of the violence.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Detroit Historical Society
Date
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02/03/2017
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
Looting
Teenagers
Twelfth Street
-
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
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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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10/20/2019
Oral History
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Narrator/Interviewee's Name
The current first and last name of the person speaking or being interviewed.
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
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Detroit, MI
Date
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08/17/2016
Interview Length
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00:29:00
Transcriptionist
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Emma Maniere
Transcription Date
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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
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29min
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Buddy Atchoo
Michael Dickow
Location
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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
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Title
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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
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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01/27/2017
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
Arson
Business Owners
Looting
Twelfth Street
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/cc761ffbe2b6de7d94329c29a2aa326d.JPG
00fd017d4ac97e7fafab1378949df8cf
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
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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Glendly Thompson
Brief Biography
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Glendy Thompson was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1949. She grew up in the city of Detroit but frequently visited relatives in the South. She participated in the student walk-out at Northern High School in 1966 and attended Freedom School for the next several months. She married in August of 1967 and lived in the city for many years.
Interviewer's Name
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William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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08/23/2016
Interview Length
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00:27:04
Transcriptionist
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Julia Westblade
Transcription Date
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01/20/2017
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello, today is August 23, 2016. My name is William Winkel. I am in Detroit, MI. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project and I am sitting down with –</p>
<p>GT: Glendy Thompson.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>GT: Thank you.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when were you born?</p>
<p>GT: I was born in Montgomery, Alabama, June 1949.</p>
<p>WW: And what’s the story of your family coming to Detroit?</p>
<p>GT: Well, my father and mother they were both raised in Montgomery, Alabama and he married my mother in ‘43. And he wanted a better life for my mother and this is the story that my parents told me. So he came to Detroit just before I was born. So he came here to see the city because what brought him here, his aunt told him that he could get a job here in the factory and so he decided that he wanted Detroit to be his home because he could provide a living. So they came here to Detroit, they lived with his aunt, which was my great-aunt, for a while. They moved out of her home into a rooming house because most people when they came to Detroit was told that there wasn’t places that blacks could live in the area so they had rooming houses and they brought me here when I was a baby.</p>
<p>WW: Did your parents find a neighborhood to settle in after the rooming house?</p>
<p>GT: Yes, they always lived on – well, they moved after the rooming house they moved on the west side and eventually they moved to the east side. So, really, my siblings we grew up on the east side and we finally settled to what some people know as the north end of Detroit. I went to school, graduated from Northern High School in June of ‘67. I’m the oldest out of six and so we all – they settled in a home down the street from this great-aunt eventually because she told them there was a home being emptied so my father bought it. And we moved this particular home in 1964 because it was before I graduated from high school.</p>
<p>WW: The neighborhood that you moved into, was it integrated?</p>
<p>GT: Yes, it was somewhat integrated back then. It was a Catholic school in the area so it was still a majority of whites still going to the Catholic school. And then Hamtramck was across the railroad tracks so that’s where we practically shopped sometimes when we couldn’t find what we needed on a street called Westminster which is on the north end. Because they had everything there because a lot of Jewish people had businesses there and so that’s where I was raised. I can’t say that it was heavily populated with white people but it was a melting pot. Yes.</p>
<p>WW: Did you feel welcome in that neighborhood when you moved in?</p>
<p>GT: Yeah, the thing about it, we met people by visiting the neighborhood. My parents, they used to take us for walks in the neighborhood and everything. We’d see some white people. They would wave and speak to us so they were basically friendly. And where we shopped at on Westminster, because there were two markets and there were clothing stores, there was a five and ten cent store so in that area right there we never had to travel out of the north end to get what we wanted. There was a fish market and it was basically owned by Jews so we would go up there and shop. The thing about it, my father didn’t really have a car at the time so we walked up there to go to the grocery store and things like that.</p>
<p>WW: What work did you father and your mother do?</p>
<p>GT: My father worked at Chrysler. My mother was a teacher at Northern High School. Yes.</p>
<p>WW: You were going to Northern High School in ‘66, then, correct?</p>
<p>GT: Correct.</p>
<p>WW: Were you involved in any way in the student walk-out?</p>
<p>GT: Yes, I walked out and I supported, as far as the school, because we had a principle and it was a police officer. His name was Black Diamond. He wasn’t very nice and we wanted a better education and so those were values that my mother and my father stressed to us to always want for better. So I supported it and then my mother didn’t know that I had walked out, but I did and I went to, what’s the name of the church? St. Joseph? St. Matthew’s?</p>
<p>WW: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>GT: That’s where we went for school and we called it Freedom School back then. Eventually they were like okay. We got what we wanted because that’s the first time I got involved in being political and standing my ground for what’s right and everything. Believe it or not, one of my teachers at Freedom School was Ken Cockrel Sr. Yes.</p>
<p>WW: Do you remember any of your other teachers?</p>
<p>GT: That were there in the Freedom School? I can’t remember. He stood out. He stood out.</p>
<p>WW: I bet.</p>
<p>GT: He stood out and I was, you know, it was an honor to have him as the years -- and I said, you know, he was my teacher when I walked out for Freedom School. Because my other brothers and sisters, they went, but see, I was the oldest so I took the chance.</p>
<p>WW: As you were growing up in Detroit throughout the 1960s, did you notice any growing tension in the city?</p>
<p>GT: Well, not really because I was just really focused on – they used to call me a bookworm. I didn’t have good social skills because when other kids were playing, I was on the front porch reading a book and so I didn’t see that. I just seen it was tension between my brothers and sisters because they wouldn’t listen to me being the oldest when my parents would leave to go to church or whatever. That was the tension that I felt but any racial tension, I didn’t feel it at all.</p>
<p>WW: Okay. Going into 1967, given the mood across the country, were you anticipating any violence in Detroit that summer?</p>
<p>GT: No.</p>
<p>WW: Okay, how did you first hear what was going on July of 1967?</p>
<p>GT: I believe it was July the 23. It was on a Sunday. My father, he was a minister and we got up for church early to go to Sunday School and he told us that we weren’t going to church. So, you know, we were happy as kids not to be going to church on a Sunday. And he told us that something happened that was bad and it wouldn’t be a good idea – I can hear his voice right now telling us that he wanted us to stay at home. Their thing was don’t let nobody in. He told us that something happened on the west side and there was fire burning and whatever and for some strange reason, we went out of the front porch and I could look towards the west and I could see smoke. So he said – and my mother was going to church – children, young adults, we went outside to see. So we went down to the corner and we was looking up and down the street and it was real quiet. It was like a cloud over the street. Nobody was really out so we went back to the house and I think my brother, he turned on the radio and we could hear what was going on and that’s when the fear factor came that we better stay in the house. We better stay in the house.</p>
<p>WW: Did any of you venture out after that or did you hunker down?</p>
<p>GT: We hunkered down until our parents came back from church and my father told us that he could see fire and so he said we got to hook up the water hose and everything and he told us it was bad. He said he heard it was a blind pig. Of course, we didn’t know what a blind pig was. I was always the curious one, What is a blind pig? What is it? He said, “A after-hours joint,” as I recall. And he said they raided it. And I said, “Raid?” So he kind of broke it down that it was illegal gambling or whatever going on there so but after that, he told us to stay away from the doors and don’t go outside. And it was hot. It was very hot as I recall.</p>
<p>WW: You mentioned seeing the fires from your front porch. Was that a normal occurrence for the rest of that week then, seeing the smoke from your porch?</p>
<p>GT: Yeah, we could see the fire because it came on the north end, the rioting. We had a corner store about five houses down from us on the opposite side of the street. I recall that the man that owned the store, his name was Sharkey and he would give people credit in this store. You’d pay him when you’d get paid if you needed groceries or whatever. And he had just got a delivery that Saturday. I remember it because it was a delivery truck out there because I was in the store getting some candy or whatever and his storeroom was down in the basement. We actually seen people looting. We seen people having a bunch of groceries and there was a furniture store on Oakland Avenue and people were carrying couches and chairs and furniture, you know. But with my father being a minister, we had to get on our knees and start praying. We had prayer all the time for the city. And then later, here come the National Guard. We were very fearful then because they were coming down in the tanks with their guns like this. You see that was very frightening because that’s something we were never exposed to. I saw a lot of fire and a lot of looting as they say. On our block, where we lived, our neighbors we were close knit neighborhood on our block where no one let their children go out. We basically stayed in the house. We didn’t go out.</p>
<p>WW: Did you go around the city after that and see the damage that had been done?</p>
<p>GT: It was a long time before my father drove around. I know he ventured out. It was a long time before he took us around to see the damage that was done because the neighborhood that I was telling you about, that area was like one block over. But it was a long block because my sisters still live in the house that we grew up in. And everything was gone. It was destroyed. I mean, nothing. All the stores, I mean everything that you needed back then was on Westminster or on Oakland Avenue. They had restaurants. They had clubs. There was a club on Oakland, Phelps’ Lounge, and there was a club on Owen Avenue. It was Lee’s Sensation. So the north end was a hub. You had everything that you needed. But if you didn’t have it you would always go – because we even had a movie theater on Holbrooke but it blew up. It wasn’t because of the riot but we had everything we really needed and really if my parents wanted something, they would go to Federal’s Department Store in Hamtramck. But had everything right there. More or less. We didn’t have to venture.</p>
<p>WW: Given how afraid you were and the violence that went across the city, did you ever think about moving away?</p>
<p>GT: That particular year?</p>
<p>WW: Or afterwards? When you had the ability to move away, did you think about moving away?</p>
<p>GT: No, because in August of ‘67 I married my children’s father and he went to Vietnam so I was still living in my parents’ home and I didn’t actually move until he came home from Vietnam in ‘68. So he went off to the army but I never really wanted to move until I got older because my family was here. My parents was around and I thought about moving in ‘74 but I was going to move to Atlanta and I thought about it and it was selfish on me to move and take my children with me when all my family was here.</p>
<p>WW: How do you refer to what happened in July of 1967?</p>
<p>GT: Detroit Riot.</p>
<p>WW: Okay.</p>
<p>GT: And I guess, because my father informed me that there was a riot here in –</p>
<p>WW: ‘43.</p>
<p>GT: Yeah, ‘43. So when he told me that story, my father would always tell, since I was the oldest, my father would always give me history about what he did, where they stayed, lived, and all of this. And he said there was a riot here. I’m like, a riot? And he said in ‘43. And he said it was a race riot. It was a race riot. I didn’t really consider Detroit Riot a race riot because somebody was really – they were breaking the law.</p>
<p>WW: So you just see ‘67 as a riot and not racial?</p>
<p>GT: You know, what I heard that was going on the other cities as I recall, to me it was not a race riot. People were doing what they wanted to do but as I got older, I began to understand that the division between black and white in this city, I understood that the whites would get more and we would get the leftovers. As I got older cause, you know, I was married. Still young but as I got older, I began to understand a lot of things about race and I experienced some things about race myself when I went to Alabama when they had the boycott in Alabama because we would go down South every year. Rosa Parks. We would always visit my grandmother in Alabama and my aunt, she was a maid for this hotel. So I went to work with her. We’d get on the bus, I stopped up front and she’d go into the back and she turned around and she saw me sitting there and of course she snatched me and she said you can’t sit up there. And she said you can’t sit up there and I’m like – I remember it just because it was downtown and then found out there was a bus boycott and later on, because we were down there and that’s when they started really boycotting the buses because she had to get rides downtown to go to work. I can go backwards; sometimes I can’t remember what’s going on today but I can remember back there. [WW laughs]</p>
<p>WW: A couple of final questions: How do you feel about the state of the city today?</p>
<p>GT: I feel good about what’s going on with the development of downtown but I wish I could see more when they come into the inner city and develop. And I know that you have to bring people into the city for work or whatever to bring revenue but what about the inner city? I see that they might throw up some housing here, some housing there, but people need jobs. I wish that we had more police presence in the neighborhoods in the inner city because I see so many things and I made a few calls and I never got a return call for the issue that I see right here on my street. I hope I live long enough to see that things are being done in the inner city. It’s not about downtown all the time. You’ve got to develop and put things in place in the inner city and I don’t see that happening. I mean, it may take I don’t know how many years but that’s what people want to see. I volunteer in the spring and the fall when they need to clean up around the city. I volunteer for that because even though I live over here and I have family and friends in the neighborhood I volunteer for, I just want to see something better for all people. Not just blacks; for all people. I mean, the car companies, people made their living working in the factory and I’m a stickler for education. We need better schools because at one time I taught remedial reading for Detroit Public Schools and we had the kids that come from the Catholic school that was a boys’ home on Finkel, I forgot the name of the school. They were bussing these kids in for this reading program that the Detroit Board of Education offered and some kids right now, they can’t read. I know technology has, it’s all about technology now but get back to the basics.</p>
<p>WW: Do you think the shadow of ‘67 still hangs over the city today?</p>
<p>GT: Yes, because the area that I was talking about not too far from where I grew up, that area never developed back. Never, never. They build a few little homes down there but to build up the north end, that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen, so yes.</p>
<p>WW: Are you optimistic for the city moving forward?</p>
<p>GT: Yes. Change is good. I’m one for change but educate, jobs if that comes into play, maybe this city can move forward. Above all have good leadership for this city.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me. I greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>GT: Well, thank you for having me.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you. </p>
Original Format
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Audio
Duration
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27min 04sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Glendly Thompson
Location
The location of the interview
Detroit, MI
Video
A link to the video
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/src54uW_McA" 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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Glendly Thompson, August 23rd, 2016
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, Glendy Thompson remembers her childhood in Detroit and her education – most notably her participation in the Northern High School walk-out and attending Freedom School. She remembers the summer of 1967 and the changes she has seen in the city since that summer as well as her thoughts of the future of the city of Detroit.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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01/20/2017
Rights
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
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Audio/WAV
Language
A language of the resource
en-US
Type
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Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Public Schools
Freedom School
Looting
Northern High School
Teenagers
Walk-out
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/40ed213c9f9e40054d937216a1ded011.JPG
3abdd214e2e7000c7383b0810601a202
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
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.
Frank Watts
Brief Biography
A short biography of the Interviewee
Frank Watts was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1948 and moved to Detroit when he was two years old. During the 1967 unrest, Watts lived on Taylor between Twelfth Street and Woodrow Wilson.
Interviewer's Name
The first and last name of the interviewer.
William Winkel
Interview Place
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Detroit, MI
Date
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11/14/2016
Interview Length
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00:29:46
Transcriptionist
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Kate McCabe
Transcription Date
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01/20/2017
Transcription
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<p>WW: Hello, today is November 14, 2016. My name is William Winkel. I am in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit ’67 Oral History Project, and I am sitting down with Mr. Frank Watts. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.</p>
<p>FW: You’re quite welcome.</p>
<p>WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when were you born?</p>
<p>FW: Born in Atlanta, Georgia, 1948.</p>
<p>WW: When did you come to Detroit?</p>
<p>FW: I came to Detroit in 1950.</p>
<p>WW: And who did you come with?</p>
<p>FW: With my parents and my older brothers and sisters. It was like, 8 of us.</p>
<p>WW: Do you know why your parents came to Detroit from Atlanta?</p>
<p>FW: My father came to Detroit for work. He came and he was hired at Chrysler. He worked and retired from Chrysler.</p>
<p>WW: When your family came here, what neighborhood did you grow up in?</p>
<p>FW: North end. Russell which is now 75. But you know, the north end, and we was there from 1950 till ’63. Then we moved to the west side, to Taylor, between Twelfth and Woodrow Wilson.</p>
<p>WW: And you moved to the west side because of the freeway construction?</p>
<p>FW: Yeah, right.</p>
<p>WW: What was your neighborhood like before you had to move?</p>
<p>FW: The north end? North end was, well, it was nice. It was, you know, compact. A lot of kids. So it was good. It was good. It wasn’t as bad as it was in the Seventies, okay. Things really changed a lot. But in the Fifties and Sixties on the north end, it was nice. It was nice.</p>
<p>WW: Was the neighborhood integrated?</p>
<p>FW: No, not really. There were some whites on the north end, but not a lot. The whites on the north end had businesses but pretty much it was black.</p>
<p>WW: So after you moved to the west side, was the neighborhood similar to the one you had left? When we moved to the Westside, it was ’63 -’64. We moved there it was ’64, and it was like, well it was a “moving on up” sort of thing, at that year. It was different than the north end, okay. The north end had been, with 75 coming through, a lot of people were moving out. We were uprooted. Then you had, in the Fifties and the Sixties, you had that migration west. So the thing was to move west and northwest. You didn’t have suburbs then. Blacks weren’t moving into the suburbs in the Fifties or the Sixties, really. That was pretty much a Seventies thing. So Twelfth Street was a move up for north enders. Right.</p>
<p>WW: Are there any stories you’d like to share from your move to Twelfth Street, and what it was like becoming new to that area?</p>
<p>FW: When I moved to Twelfth Street, I left, I was 16, okay. I was 16, and to a teenager moving to another area, Twelfth Street was rough, but no rougher than the north end. So a kid from the north end moving to Twelfth Street or moving to the west side wasn’t a big deal if you were, how should I say, plugged in? I was I don’t want to say a street kid, but a rough kid. So it was the same. But Twelfth was different now. Twelfth was like that one-mile stretch, from Grand River to Claremont, that’s where everything took place. As far as Twelfth Street, and there was a lot going on on Twelfth. I mean, a lot of businesses. It was booming. On that one-mile stretch, okay, Linwood and Dexter and all, it was a lot different. Twelfth had a lot of things going on there. So in that respect, it was a lot different than the north end, okay.</p>
<p>But growing up there, now I was on Twelfth from 16 to 20, I got married when I was 20, and for those four years went from Twelfth Street, you know, being in its heyday, as far as I was concerned, to the disturbance, the riot, if you will. Which shut everything down. That just ended it.</p>
<p>WW: You said there was so much going on. What were some of the things, what were some of the businesses that were on Twelfth Street?</p>
<p>FW: Businesses? Twelfth Street had—hold on one second—okay. The things that were on Twelfth Street that were businesses, on that one-mile stretch, both sides of the street, you probably couldn’t find a vacant building, okay. There was something in every building, that ranged from pawn shops, clothing stores, restaurants, cleaners, you know. Whatever you wanted, really. Whatever you wanted, you could find, in those businesses, on Twelfth between Claremont and Grand Boulevard. So that was unique, back then. Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: So you said that the Twelfth and Claremont area was just as rough as the north end. As you were going through ’65 and ’66, did you notice any additional tension building up in the community?</p>
<p>FW: The tension in the community, not with the people. The tension was law enforcement. Okay now, back then, the law enforcement was ninety-nine percent white. So, you know, in the Sixties, when we did Twelfth Street, when we were young people on Twelfth, law enforcement was not going to be black. So you didn’t see black officers. So it was, you know, you have laws, but it was always white officers. So you had some tension there, which was, you know, that’s natural, at the time, you know. So when the riot happened, it was, on Twelfth Street, on any given night, you could find, twelve o’clock at night, on a summer day, a summer evening, you’re going to have two hundred people on the street, just out. From two hundred people, if two or three of those bars had something going on and had some entertainment, now you’ve got a lot of folks. So this is just folks going about their business, entertainment or shopping or whatever, okay.</p>
<p>When the riot happened, it happened at the blind pig. But this is what—my take on it was this: there was a blind pig there, but the night that it was raided, that isn’t what was going on. Now you also had Vietnam. You had soldiers going on and coming home, now we had some guys who had come home, and they was having a party. So it wasn’t what it normally would be. They would go there, raid the place, arrest some folks, find some money, gambling or whatever, drugs, whatever—but not that night. Okay. That night it was just a party for a guy coming home. Now a combination of that and the folks that were out there and saw law enforcement go in there, and start bringing people out, that particular night, the two, three hundred people out there just got fed up. Wasn’t having it. So, I always, my idea on it was a bad call from the commander that evening. He should’ve left that one alone, because it wasn’t worth it. Because if he had looked at it, he would’ve seen that to bring these 10 or 12 people out of there now, it’s not good. But he did it, and now you’ve got the two hundred or whatever, now you’ve got four hundred. In 20 minutes, you’ve got a thousand. Now everybody’s out there. So along with the times, the race thing at the time, folks just started to breaking windows and the looting started.</p>
<p>WW: How did you first hear about what was going on on Twelfth Street?</p>
<p>FW: On Twelfth Street, I heard about it. I was 19. My younger brother woke me up, I was asleep. He woke me up, said “Something’s going on.” So I woke up, came out to the front. Now, I’m like half a block down, so I could see everything going on. I came out, now I’m 19, but I’m dealing with, this is my girlfriend, okay, and she’s not having it, my mother’s not having it, it’s like, “Don’t go up there.” She’s right on Hazelwood, next block over. But at the time, my mother’s like, “Don’t go, don’t go up there.” But I’ve got to, I go up anyway. I went up, it was scary to see what was going on, what was happening because I’d never seen anything like that in my life. So I saw what we going on then I came on back home.</p>
<p>Then things took place the rest of the evening, the rest of the night. By sunrise, you could see what had happened over night. A lot of damage had happened, and it was just, you know, some days of the looting and the whole thing, I had to go. Her mother had a nervous breakdown from it. It was just too much for a lot of the older folks because first you had the riot squad came in, and then you had the riot squad, then the National Guard. Right. And when the National Guard came in, that was like, it was like Vietnam. It was soldiers, you see soldiers on Twelfth, with machine guns and all of this stuff, tanks—driving up and down Twelfth, it was just, amazing! Something, you know. But that was the way that it went. And it was like, what, 5 days? Five, six days, whatever, and a lot of damage was done. And that pretty much ended it. It ended that, you know.</p>
<p>WW: After you went to see what was happening, did you explore any more, or did you stay home and hunker down?</p>
<p>FW: Hunker down. I had brothers and sisters at home. My wife, I think, Judy wasn’t here? It was just my wife and her mother, so I went there, I stayed at her house. Her mother allowed me to stay downstairs, you know, but she was afraid, she was so afraid, because you didn’t know how this was going to go. You didn’t know what was going on. The police were saying get away from the windows, then you had snipers, and this thing happened. So it was just uneasy, you know, so I stayed there for some days—all day—and then in the evenings, a couple of times I stayed there and then I was at home. But I didn’t do Twelfth Street, I couldn’t. That was like, I didn’t get into that part of it. It was scary. That was scary, yeah.</p>
<p>WW: During those five days, was your house ever threatened by fire?</p>
<p>FW: No. No, neither of our houses were threatened by fire. But we both lived in the middle of the block. But there were houses, the houses that were right next to a business were in jeopardy, and a few of those people lost their homes. If they were right off the alley, then when the building went up then the fire would jump over. But no houses were burned, that wasn’t a thing. It was the stores. And they had the, most of the businesses were white, so they had the “soul brother” signs in. You did have the black businesses, but not a lot of them, not at the time. They were, that was pretty awesome, the amount of buildings that burned, it was like about eighty percent of them.</p>
<p>And again, I used to say that, you know, based on nothing other than my little mind, but I used to say that there was more money, in terms of businesses on that one-mile stretch in ’67, than any other block, than any other one-mile in this city—than any other one-mile in this city. But if you look at that, all of those were thriving businesses. They were all gone. That’s big. You know, for one mile. Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: Did you have any run-ins with the National Guard or the police that week?</p>
<p>FW: Personally? No, no. I wasn’t up there. I was home, and at her house. And if I wanted to go, no! And to be honest with you, the thing was, I had, I had jobs. I was working, I was working at Chevrolet. And so I had money. Things were for sale. So the little things, I bought a couple of items. I bought a camera, I bought a ring. That type of thing. Because folks were, you had kids up there stealing, I mean, it’s looting. And then folks that were looting were selling it. There were a lot of folks that went up, a lot of kids and young people went up there and got stuff, but they couldn’t take it home. They had to sell that stuff before they went home, because Mom or Dad wasn’t having it. So they would come out, and they would be walking around with this stuff, you know, you would buy a little stuff. That was happening, but the only folks that went up there - that took a lot of nerve. As far as I was concerned. To go into buildings—you had buildings burning, and then they would. You woke up that morning, you had a lot of businesses where, they hadn’t burned yet, the burning started a couple of days later, okay, but the first thing was breaking windows and all. So you had buildings, you had businesses where the whole front was torn off it. But that’s took a little nerve to go in there because law enforcement was there. A lot of folks got arrested, a lot of folks got hurt, a lot of young people.</p>
<p>We had, her neighbor, a young fellow lived on her block, he went up there, he was only like, 11 years old, something like that and he went up there and went into the five and ten cent store and he came out and they shot him. Paralyzed him. He ended up suing and got a million dollars or something, whatever, but you had a lot of people got hurt and lost their lives for little, petty stuff. Just for going into those stores. Because law enforcement was rough and the soldiers were rough during those times. And it wasn’t a thing of them being in a conflict with the people, the people were looting, so there was really no need to shoot somebody that’s looting. You either get him or you let him go. But there’s no need to shoot them. They did a lot of shooting, and you had a lot of people lost their lives for that reason, so.</p>
<p>WW: How did the neighborhood change afterwards? With all of those businesses gone, how did the neighborhood change?</p>
<p>FW: Okay, it changed where Twelfth Street was pretty much wiped out. Okay. Then for the next—now, that’s ’67—for the next, till around ’71, ’72, it was just, it looked like Beirut or something. I mean, the buildings were there, burned out, and it was just there. You could imagine how it was, where, one day it was this, okay, and the next day, that’s gone. So that’s a heck of a switch. I mean, you know, all of the clubs were gone, all the stores were gone, all the restaurants were gone, and everything is gone. Burned out. It’s over. So that, for the next few years, folks just had to sort of put a blind eye to it. Because it was there, the ruins were there, but that was over. The fun, the shopping, whatever was going on on Twelfth, that was all over.</p>
<p>Now, personally, I got married in ’68. So, and then, we moved away. We moved here when we got married. So, and my buddies, you know, the 20-somethings, there were a lot that stayed and a lot moved away, you know, but Twelfth Street was done. Then, about, maybe, I don’t know when they did the thing that’s there now, the apartments and all. They came through and they built the little shopping areas there, they built new apartments and all. First they leveled everything. So they brought everything back. The houses now, on Twelfth, that are on the corner, the first houses, they were like three houses back, okay, so they leveled all of that and then built the apartments. And when I talk with folks—I started doing these shirts, here, I did that thing about five years ago. The 40-somethings, they look at that, that’s their only view of it. When they look at that, they go, “Wow.” Those that know Twelfth Street, when you try to tell them what it looked like, they don’t get it. They can’t really visualize that, you know. Hustle, bustle. You know. They thought it was—when I tell them it was, like, two lanes. It was one way, but, just two lanes. Small street, you know, and they just can’t get to this. So, for the years afterwards, it went into, just nothing for a lot of years. They built the apartments and all, and then, from the apartments, it’s like now. It’s just there with the memories. So they only know what folks tell them that was there and pictures that they can see. So there’s a lot of stuff on YouTube. Now, I’ve noticed, the last three years on YouTube, when I first started going on YouTube the first thing I started punching in was Twelfth Street. Very little, very little stuff, you know. I was finding a little stuff here, a little stuff there, Twelfth Street riot, or whatever, and you’d get a couple of little slots on it. Now, phew. The whole thing is out now. And a lot of footage is available, a lot of stories are available. And you know, it’s history. But it’s sad.</p>
<p>I had one guy say something to me, and I felt bad. It’s only happened once, but I was telling him, because I tell the story about Twelfth Street a lot to the folks, the 20-somethings, 30-somethings, 40-somethings, and I was telling him about it and he said, “Wow!” And I said, yeah, it used to be, this is how it was and that was how it was, and he said, “Wow.” And he said, “And you all burned it down.” And I went, Wow, we did. Yeah, burned it down. You know, gone forever. And I don’t know what it would be like today had there not been a ’67 thing. I don’t know, but it was something. It was something. I mean, had we not had that migration out from the city and lost all of the folks moving away and all. If that was still on, it would be something else. Yeah.</p>
<p>WW: When the two of you got married, did you know you were going to stay in the city of Detroit? Or were you going to look elsewhere?</p>
<p>FW: No, it was in the city. We moved here in ’71, ’72? And, I’m Detroit. I mean, I have four sons. My three oldest sons are all suburbanites. One of my sons is in real estate, and he used to come, “Dad, Mom, look, you got to get this one.” No, no, no. This is me. This is our home, we’ve been here. This is my town. And then I’m a believer that it’s not about a geographical thing, it’s about a time thing. This is 2016. It doesn’t matter where you are. It can happen. It can happen. It’s happening everywhere, so you might as well have a 2016 attitude about the streets, period. And society. And really not focus a lot on your neighborhood, because we’ve got whackos everywhere. I feel safe, I love my city, and we’re not going anywhere. Unless she wants to, she’s sort of [laughs].</p>
<p>But a lot of real changing, but we will have this house. We will have this house. This is—and it works great for us. Our youngest son is autistic. This is a two family here so he lives upstairs. He’s 32-years-old, and this works for us. He has his privacy, and we can take care of him. It just works, so we’re blessed with this. This is all in the Lord’s hands. He worked it out for us, so, that’s the way I look at it.</p>
<p>WW: Are you optimistic for the city moving forward?</p>
<p>FW: Yes. Oh, yes. We are moving forward. I’m looking at -- we talked about the north end. The north end was -- that’s where blacks started in this city, okay. The blacks that came here in the early 1900s moved to the north end. The north end is right along the railroad tracks. That’s where African Americans were. That’s Black Bottom, okay. Then they moved west. So, now, I have a friend on the north end who’s born and raised there, still lives in the house he was born in, and he’s like, “Man, I’ve got so many white neighbors.” And he’s right, that’s what it is. It’s beginning to be -- See, what I liked was a mixed city. Back in the Fifties when I grew up here, we had Belle Isle. It was mixed and it was beautiful, it was great. But when all of the stuff happened, the riots and all, and the migration and the uprooting, and the people were all moving out—that changed things. But that’s in reverse now. Folks are coming back into the city. Twelfth Street, go to Chicago and Boston and all, you know, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s coming back fast. Houses are going up, old homes are being torn down. Not as fast as we want them to be, but they’re being torn down, you know. In due time, Detroit’s going to be great. Because this is a great city. Geographical, it’s a great city. We’re right on the water. At a period of time, we had given up our water. You had bums living on the water. You can’t have that. But we went through a lot of different things with politics and the race thing and all of this. But now, it’s a thing of them coming back now, and money’s being brought in. Even with our new mayor, we needed -- we got really messed up with politics. We needed Duggan for whatever, Duggan’s—we needed a white mayor in this town. This is my thing, we needed a white mayor in this town because you need all races, you need to have everybody in this. And what Detroit didn’t have was investors, and people willing to put money up, because so much was going on. Well, if it’s crooked going on, I’m not putting my money in there. Doesn’t make sense. It’s not happening now. Not to the degree that it was. So we’ve got folks, in the last 5 years, we’ve got a lot of big things happening. And a lot of things to come. The city itself being right on the water and what it has to offer. This is the Motor City. People love this town, you know.</p>
<p>We are both blessed with large family reunions, okay. We’re hosting both of them next year. Back to back. And we’ve done this before. And whatever folks say around the country about Detroit, whenever, with her family and mine, whenever we say, we’ll take it. They coming. They’re ready. And they are ready, and so many of them. "Cuz, are we going to this Belle Isle thing?" Oh yeah, oh yeah. You’re talking about a picnic area, on an island. [Laughs] The worst picnic I ever went to, and I’ve been everywhere—we’ve been a lot of places—was Los Angeles, California. A lot of Rolls Royces and Bentleys, but man, up on that hill, it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t happening. They couldn’t compare. So here, I mean, cities have things to offer. Detroit is home. I feel great about how it’s going, and I’m really—it’s going to be, it’s going to be back. 15, 20 years, a lot will have happened. 40 years? We’re back to the Fifties, only a lot tighter. I believe. That’s my vision. I see that.</p>
<p>WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>FW: I hope it was worth it.</p>
<p>WW: It was!</p>
Original Format
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Duration
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29min 46sec
Interviewer
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William Winkel
Interviewee
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Frank Watts
Location
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Detroit, MI
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rPyf48CnMi0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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Title
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Frank Watts, November 14th, 2016
Description
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In this interview, Watts discusses growing up in the north end and moving to the west side as a teenager. He talks about living near Twelfth Street during the unrest, and describes what the area was like during and after the disturbance.
Publisher
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Detroit Historical Society
Date
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01/20/2017
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Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
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Audio/WAV
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en-US
Type
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Oral history
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Black Bottom
Blind Pig
Looting
Teenagers
Twelfth Street