1
20
3
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/817c8a895aebf1ae21c80df5b8990964.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
Written Story
A written account or story submitted by an individual.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
Graduated High School 67. The summer of the inseruction. Lived in a downstairs flat in a once glorious victororin home . A little neighborhood sandwiched between the Cass Coridor and Skid Row. The house was on the Cornor of Fourth and Plum street. , the best view of Plum Street , from my front porch.
Robert Cobb was a teacher at my school, (Westren Hugh) he had been my slum landlord before we moved to the house on Fouth and Plum . One of the owners who refused to sell to Cobb and Sharprio .
July 67 we watched the shop owners run around Plum street , guns in hand , meeting in little pods planing how to defend the burning and looting, which never came. Tanks with soldiers sitting atop with riles rolled by . Patrol cars reminesice if the Big Four patrolled by . The burning and looting never came.
Our whole neighborhood is now engulfed by the dam MGM Casino We were far in the middle , kinda isolated we looked to the northwest, could see lots of smoke.
The poorest part of town was always integrated. Black, White, Hispanic, Eastern Europeans . Grew up running the streets, playing ball, eating at each other's houses. We all stood on the corner wacting.
I like to suggest your really from Detroit if no part of your family history has stories of hiding in a barricaded basement waiting for the " Roit " to engulf the city.
The third day we took my 58 Ford Fairlane drove up Twelfth Street up To Clairmount , people in cars looked a little timid, usually a raised fist or Two fingers got a response.
A few years back I was visting my old JR High ( Pelham) The nice young Principle told me " the school was built as result of the neighborhood being burnt down during the "roits " . I looked at him and laughed , " no homes in this area were burned down. Besides take a look atop the school"s Front passage , this school opened in 1963, I attended that first year. We need to get our stories together .
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Email
Submitter's Name
The first and last name of the submitter.
Jay Williford
Submission Date
The date the story was submitted in MM/DD/YYYY format.
07/01/2016
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jay Williford
Description
An account of the resource
Jay Williford had just graduated from high school the summer of 1967 and remembers watching nearby shop owners prepare to defend their stores.
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
07/01/2016
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
en-US
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Written Story
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Looting
Plum Street
Teenagers
-
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
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.
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
The first and last name of the interviewer.
William Winkel
Interview Place
The place where the interview was conducted.
Detroit, MI
Phone interview
Date
The date of the interview in MM/DD/YYYY format.
08/22/2016
Interview Length
The total length of the interview in HH:MM:SS format.
00:23:10
Transcriptionist
The first and last name of the transcriptionist.
Julia Moss
Transcription Date
The date of the transcription in MM/DD/YYYY format.
07/28/2017
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<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
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
23min 10sec
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
William Winkel
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Joel Smith
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/7CJxQPoqqWg" 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
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
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
09/08/2017
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio/WAV
Language
A language of the resource
en-US
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Looting
Michigan National Guard
Plum Street
Tanks
Teenagers
Woodward Avenue
-
https://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/files/original/23e9637780e8d9f1806594bf5d46067f.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
Written Story
A written account or story submitted by an individual.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
In 1967 I was 12 and totally into the Mod thing. At that time Plum Street was in full swing and my mother decided to take my friend and I down there for a look. Before going to Plum Street we stopped at my Grandmother's house(Harper and Van Dyke area), at which time my uncles informed us about what was going on. But my mom just shrugged it off and off we went.
Driving down Gratiot toward Downtown we could see smoke rising from the city skyline, but weren't sure where it wad coming from. We did make it to Plum Street, but found it all but deserted, so we returned home.
Later in the week, when things seemed to have settled down my mother and I wrnt to visit my aunt and uncle, who lived off of Van Dyke and Outer Dr, the area was sometimes called Polish Grosse Pointe. As we turned onto Van Dyke a patrol car with two officers were going in the opposite direction and the officer in the passenger seat had a gun pointing outside the window. After a brief visit with the relatives we returned home.
I really wasn't all that aware of what happened until relatives told stories about things that happenef in their neighborhoods. But the thing that had the biggest impact on me was driving down Michigan Ave months later and seeing all the boarded up store fronts and my Grandmothet telling me how it used to be.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Email
Submitter's Name
The first and last name of the submitter.
Marcia Suminski
Submission Date
The date the story was submitted in MM/DD/YYYY format.
07/14/2016
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Marcia Suminski
Description
An account of the resource
Marcia Suminski was 12 years old in the summer of 1967 and remembers driving down to Plum Street and later seeing police cars patrolling.
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
07/15/2016
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
en-US
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Written History
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
||||osm
Plum Street
1967 riot—Detroit—Michigan
Detroit Police Department
Plum Street
Van Dyke