MB: Would you please state your name?
AD: Alee Darwish. 59 years old, I grew up here. I worked at Ford Motor Company for 32 years, I retired April 1, 2006. We originally resided in Highland Park. My father was auto worker he retired in 1963. Started at Ford’s in 1916 and we used to live in a neighborhood that was basically a melting pot: a lot of Europeans, we had Native Indians, we had Armenians, Hispanics, Middle Eastern, and we also had a handful of Jewish families.
MB: Can you tell me how old you were in 1967, when the riots occurred?
AD: In 1967 I was 12 years old, it was summer vacation from school and every day six in the morning we used to go out and play baseball. We used to call it the alley, Alley Stadium. We picked teams, get out there six o’clock, six-thirty a.m.; eleven thirty everybody’s mother would be on the back porch to call their kids in for lunch. We’d be back out in the alley in about twenty, twenty-five minutes. Six o’clock dinner, be a rerun of the mothers on the back porch again calling all the kids for dinner. We’d play outside in the alley until eleven, twelve o’clock midnight, but we had the huge street lights in the alley.
MB: So you said your father worked for Ford at the time. Would you consider yourself working class, middle class, high class, how would you consider yourself and your family?
AD: My father was a middle class. As I said he worked for Ford. He was a butcher by trade. He originally came — he had uncles on both sides of the family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota little lake. He came at 13, and he came to Highland Park in 1915 and he started at Ford’s.
MB: In ’67 you said he was already retired correct?
AD: He was already retired four years with 47 years.
MB: What do you remember about Detroit in the mid-1960s before the riots? How was it? How was the city?
AD: Downtown Detroit, it was like a metropolis. There was a lot of heavy foot traffic, not only during the week, but also on the weekends. There was festivities, there was old Olympia Stadium. There was the old Tiger Stadium which was referred as Briggs Stadium, Walter Briggs Stadium. And in the summer time the Tigers would play there, in the winter time the Detroit Lions football team franchise would play there.
MB: And how was the city life? Like where would your family shop? Was it more into the city or more into the suburbs where you lived?
AD: Everybody shopped up and down Woodward between Manchester and Davison. You had clothing stores, you had shoe stores, you had hardware stores. You had women clothing stores, Winkleman’s. We also had Sam’s, which, basically, catered to men, to kids, people who were too tall or if you had a heavy waistline, I mean they had all kind of stores. In fact one of the first Coney Island’s, not the first, was on Victor, it was called Red Hot’s, it was there in 1921, and once a month my late father would take us for a haircut, and on the way back we had a choice; either go to Red Hot’s which was a Coney Island, or there was a place called Red Barn Restaurant which was on the corner of Davison and Woodward and we’d go there and have a big party. So we’d kind of switch every other month.
MB: During the time, in the sixties, how would you describe the relationship between the people in your community and neighborhood and the city government?
AD: City government at the time I guess it was an easy flow, I mean, we didn’t have a whole lot of crime. I mean, even now, every now and then you probably have a minor incident but in terms of the community as a whole collectively, whether your ethnicity was European or southern American or Middle Eastern everybody knew everybody’s kids and all the parents knew everybody’s family. And if one of the parents seen somebody else’s son or daughter doing something wrong, or using vulgarity, they would bring in the house wash their mouth with soap. And you wouldn’t dare go home and say, “So- and-so’s mother took me in washed my mouth out with soap because I used vulgarity.”
MB: How’d you feel about Mayor Cavanagh? How would you say the community felt towards him? Before the riots, how did they feel about him?
AD: Before the riots, Cavanagh was a very young mayor. He had a good administration. There was a little bit of tension between the African American community and the white community, but it wasn’t major until the ’67 riots erupted. In fact that wasn’t the first civil disturbance, they had a first riot in 1943.
MB: Did you feel before the riots that the African American community at the time were being treated unfairly?
AD: Yeah. They were treated unfairly. There was no such thing as equal opportunity back then, and the police department at the time, I think was roughly 80/20 or maybe 70/30. The majority of the police force, the supervisors, the deputy chiefs, all your department heads were basically white.
MB: And what was the living conditions like for an African American family in an area of segregated housing and school?
AD: Well, we all shared the same schools, there was a handful of families that were Catholic that could afford to send their kids to private schools. Most of the melting pot children in our community we all went to public schools, we all went to public parks, we all played together collectively. After school, during the week, when you’re done with your homework or on the weekend, and a lot of times if the alley was taken, we would walk to Ford Park which was between Manchester and Six Mile on Woodward, right next door to the Ford Motor Company Model T assembly plant.
MB: Do you feel that their living conditions were any different than yours, or do you feel like it wasn’t as segregated as people may think?
AD: In terms of living conditions I think that the non-African American households back then weren’t, in terms of upkeep, as good as the rest of the homes in the neighborhood. I’m not saying their lawns weren’t always mowed and manicured and clean, but everybody else in the neighborhood, their homes were much better. Now we had a handful of African American neighbors, which, their lawns were manicured the grass was watered, it was fertilized in terms of lawn nutrition and so forth .
MB: How did you first hear about the civil disturbances that became known as The Riots?
AD: Well that Sunday, in July, we were coming back from a mosque on the south end of Dearborn. We had two routes, usually since we lived in Highland Park we would take Davison all the way down to Oakman, make a left on Wyoming from there we went to the mosque. And sometimes on the way out, we’d take Vernor all the way downtown, hit Michigan Avenue, go north and that would take us to Highland Park. That particular afternoon, my Ma decided to take Woodward, which was a good thing, because otherwise if we would have took Wyoming to Oakman via Davison, we would’ve been caught right in the middle of the civil disturbance, which detailed rioting, looting, and burning down stores.
MB: How did your family react to what was going on as a whole? How did your parents deal with the events that were unfolding?
AD: Well after we got home and we found out, what had happened, it kind of startled the family. But in terms of kids in the neighborhood, the parents first top priority were the kids: stay in the house, don’t go outside”. And then they implemented a curfew. They called in the National Guard and they thought that the National Guard could handle the civil disturbance. They thought wrong; they had to call in the 82nd Airborne Division. And when they called them in, they really clamped down: five o;clocl, nobody on the street and if they found anybody on the street they would take them in. They would ride up and down Woodward with halftracks, tanks up and down the neighborhoods, and jeeps with .50 caliber machine guns on the hood. They also had helicopters roving the skies too.
MB: As a kid, it must have been pretty cool playing in the streets, walking out seeing National Guard members and members of the 82nd Airborne . Can you please explain some of your memories of witnessing all this first hand?
AD: Well as a kid, you’d think it’s cool because you see the army and military equipment being used on certain TV shows like Combat, but this was live. You would see the army people at the gas stations, you would see them at the stores, you would see them patrolling the neighborhoods, but as of five o’clock, you better be off the street. So every parent made sure their kids were off the streets. You could sit on your front porch or back porch you’re not gonna go out in the street, and you’re not gonna go out and play in the alley.
MB: Growing up only three blocks away from the riots did you hear any of the rumors of police brutality going on or any of the unfair treatment of African Americans?
AD: I’m assuming that they were treated not with justice, not with fairness or not with discipline, whether it was from the shopkeepers or to the police department and it kind of got out of hand and the African American community — which I don’t blame them— they started to rebel, they said enough is enough.
MB: And did you, your parents or any of your siblings witness first hand any of the events that occurred during this disturbance?
AD: If you walk out in the alley and you look towards Davison and Hamilton, you can see clouds of black smoke, you can hear the gunfire, you can hear the sirens during the day and sometimes in the evening.
MB: As a child, it must have been pretty scary hearing the stories of looting and burning down buildings. Can you tell me how you felt back in the day, as a child, hearing rumors of possible violence reaching the suburbs? How you felt and how your family must have felt?
AD: Well, it never reached the suburbs because in conjunction with the Airborne Division and the State Police and the Michigan National Guard they contained the violence they contained the area so it was limited it didn’t go outside the boundaries.
MB: So, did you notice an immediate migration of the whites from the city of Detroit to the suburbs, or was that something that happened slowly?
AD: Whether it was Detroit or Highland Park at the time, after the riots, the area started to go south. Most of your white Anglos, predominately Catholics, started to move out of Detroit, started to move out of Highland Park. Tax base shrunk, cities were in the red, and what really put the icing on the cake is years later when Chrysler moved out of Highland Park, they were on the verge of bankruptcy. No tax base, no industrial tax base, was available because they took care of the bulk of the tax base. Ford Motor Company had a limited production facility they were making the jeeps for the military back then. And they had a test rack on the corner of Manchester and Woodward. And as kids we would go there and hang on to the side of the fence watch the jeeps go around the agility track. The would have fast stops, sharp turns and they would check to see if the jeep was durable and that it could handle that type of terrain once it was shipped overseas.
MB: Being a Muslim American man, how was the Muslim community at the time in Metro Detroit during the sixties.
AD: Muslim community back then it wasn’t a tenth of what it is today. You had certain pockets and certain areas and certain neighborhoods. We had basically maybe 30, 35 families that was it. And they were not only Lebanese, they were Lebanese they were Palestinian, we had a handful of Jordanians. And back then everybody was known as Syrian. Syrian bread, Syrian cheese, Syrian food. It’s not until the late nineties all the sudden everybody all the sudden Lebanese. I eat Lebanese food, et cetera.
MB: Leadership-wise, how did the leaders in the Muslim community react to what was going on in ’67? Was there any planning any rejoice —
AD: They were concerned about the health and welfare of the family, the kids getting to and from school safely, but back then everybody walked to school, you had a handful of families that were very apprehensive that they would take their kids to school and they would drive them back. But the riots were not directly towards the ethnic melting pot, it was between the white administration and the African American and how they were treated. Did we have a plan? Not to my recollection but we had very few politicians back then. We had Mike Barry who was the Wayne County Road Commissioner, we had Jimmy Karoub which was one of the most effective lobbyist in the State of Michigan, he represented all the major sports teams and the car dealerships.
MB: Would you consider all these very prominent names, would you consider it a tight knit group or was it more broad spreading out through Metro Detroit.
AD: It was a tight group because they were a minority. And when you’re small you gotta stay intact versus what we have today, just in our area between Dearborn and Detroit, businesses, residences, law firms, medical doctors, cardiologists, you got about 250,000 people—that comes a long way going 50, 55 years back.
MB: Was there any instances of violence coming from members of the Muslim community? Did any members see themselves facing any backlash whether it was the storeowner who owned the store in downtown Detroit or violence reaching their areas?
AD: Most of the storeowners back then, yeah, you had a handful of Lebanese, you had a handful of Palestinians. But most of the party store owners and the liquor store owners were Chaldean. They’d come from Iraq. They are a Christian, Catholic minority that basically come from a town called Telkaif and Baghdad and they have other pockets.
MB: Do you remember any instances of one of their stores getting burned down or robbed during the riots?
AD: There was a couple robbed back then, I can’t remember their names but my father knew them and his friends knew them too.
MB: A big role you could say coming court of these riots was a group called the STRESS [Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets] unit.
AD: STRESS was a decoy unit of the police department—average guy was probably six-foot or better—and they were supposed to make the streets of Detroit safe. How did they make them safe? They would pose as vagrants, homeless people, sitting on the corner, and they would wait for somebody—whether they were African American or white—and when they came to try to rob them or beat them up there was other scout cars in the area, and when they seen this particular action taking place on one of the STRESS members they would come and beat them up, a lot of them got killed, and they were incarcerated.
MB: Did you know or your family know any STRESS officers personally or was it something where they had to hide their identity?
AD: Personally my dad didn’t know any STRESS police officers but he knew a lot of police officers in Highland Park, detectives, sergeants, patrol people but not in the City of Detroit.
MB: How do you feel about them, how do you feel about the STRESS unit, do you think that the way they did their job was a little too extreme at times, do you think they were always fair, or were they a little radical in their approach?
AD: Well, they were radical and the purpose of STRESS was to clean the streets of Detroit and make them safe and that was—STRESS was in action until Mayor Young ran for mayor I think, in 1973, ’74. The first thing he did when he took office and he took that oath was abolish and dismantle STRESS which he did. Not only did he do that he integrated the police department and the fire department which is—if we look back now you gotta say the police department in Detroit is about 75/25, 75 African American and 25 percent are a little bit of everybody else.
MB: Some folks like to refer to the incident that happened in July 1967 as a rebellion or a revolution—how do you see it, do you see it as a riot, rebellion or a revolution?
AD: I see it as a civil disturbance. I see it—people being rebellious, we shouldn’t have to be treated like this. We pay our taxes, we go to work every day, why are we treated as second hand citizens?
MB: After the civil disturbances were over, what did your family do? How did they react? Did they have to rebuild? Did they consider moving?
AD: We didn’t have to rebuild and we didn’t consider moving. We just mind our own business. The kids have to be home by a certain time. We could play in front of the house, we could play in the back of the house, we had a handful of kids, which we always got together collectively and if we went to the show our parents dropped us off to the show, and if wanted to go to at park the parents took the kids and by such and such a time they would say well seven-thirty, eight o’clock, that’s when the street lights went on in the summer time, roughly eight o’clock, they would come pick up the kids. We’d play shuffleboard, we’d take sandwiches, and we’d make a picnic out of it.
MB: Did you notice a difference within the City of Detroit after the riots were over?
AD: Yeah, there was still a lot of tension, I mean, people were killed, a lot of people were killed, they were hospitalized, terrorized, it just was horrible and a lot of feelings got hurt, I mean you don’t forget if you lose a family member or someone got incarcerated or someone lost a limb during the civil disturbance.
MB: Experiencing both incidents do you see any similarities between what happened in ’67 and what’s going on now in Ferguson and New York City, et cetera?
AD: What’s going on or what went on in New York or Ferguson is a little bit more extreme today, and not only is it extreme it’s getting nationwide media coverage. Let me add something: it’s getting worldwide media coverage not just locally, not just nationally. I mean I read foreign correspondence every day and when these incidents took place you could read them on European correspondence German, Russian which are all translated in English.
MB: But police-wise do you notice any similarities between the unfair treatment of African Americans then and now? Do you feel like we’ve gotten better, or stayed the same if not gotten worse towards how we treat minorities?
AD: You’ve had a few major incidents if you read the news, you read the paper sometimes you got cops getting killed, you got white cops terrorizing African Americans, you got a couple of cops get shot in Ferguson, you got a few in New York. Some were fatal and some weren’t. So basically this world is changing. It’s not changing for the better. But the police departments should have guidelines, which they probably do, but they got to enhance them. Because the responsibility of city government is to protect their citizens. Once the public loses interest in the police department and then they feel they have to take matters into their own hands: the violence, the guns. Things are not getting better today. They should be getting better because we live in a world of technology. More people are going to school, they’re getting educated, they’re being professionals, they’re sending their kids to college. We should be going north not south.
MB: As a movement, the African American movement nowadays. Do you see any similarities with them back in ‘67 to how they are nowadays. You know, standing up for their rights against, what’s the unfair treatment of their people? Do you see any similarities movement-wise?
AD: Movement-wise, they are much more organized. You’ve got the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]. I don’t know what kind of headcount they had back in ‘67, but now they’ve got NAACP chapters all over the country. And then you’ve got another guy, you don’t hear much about, Louis Farrakhan, he was very militant and, and he was the type that taught “the white man is evil.” The white man is not evil. There is good and bad in everybody.
MB: So would you say we’re more organized now where they were more radical back then, or?
AD: They’re more organized now. Yes, you have a few radicals. You have people like Al Sharpton. You got people like Jesse Jackson. And power is in numbers and they have the numbers. And the African American community as a whole, they’re starting to go to school now. They’re starting to get educated. They’re starting to educate their kids. Which everybody should be educating their kids, because at the end of the day they can’t take education away from them.
MB: Is there any particular memories that you remember, you know, from what happened back in ’67. Anything that you’ve taken with you til today?
AD: As I said, we were three blocks away, but we never shared any civil disturbance with the other side of Davison or with the other side of Hamilton. We always got along. Yeah, there was a little bit of tension in the neighborhood with the other African American kids. However, but, as I said, the parents knew each other. And you would have a couple of scrimmages, arguments, maybe a handful of fistfights, but next day you’d be playing ball in the alley.
MB: And, you mind me telling me a little bit about your father? I’m sure working at Ford, he did work with a lot of African American men. Did he hold those same relationships as he retired, while going through on the riots. Do you remember any stories he would tell you about how they were being treated and what not?
AD: My father- Let’s backtrack. Henry Ford, when he started production in 1903, there wasn’t a whole lot of people here in this country. He went to South America, he went to Europe, and he went down South. That’s why the majority of the African American communities that work for the Big Three, they still to this day they got family down south. Whether it's aunts or uncles or grandparents. There’s still a connection to states like Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas. One example is when somebody dies up here from the African American community, which I have experienced, they keep the body out for one week. The reason behind that, so they can all drive up here and express their condolences. But the base for most of the African American people here in these northern states, or the Midwest, all came from down South.
MB: So, they held a very very prominent role. Can you just give me a little background knowledge about your father, you know, what type of man was he?
AD: My father had a very dear friend. I never knew his real name, but he was African American and his name was Cadillac. And a lot of times Cadillac would give him a ride home. My dad didn’t have that sense of prejudice or bias. My father got along with everybody. As I said, he worked 47 years, his last 25 years he was a relief man. Weekend recreation, they would go out to coffee house. We had a coffee house for basically all the foreign people. Whether you are Armenian, Lebanese, or Palestinian, Italian. They played backgammon, they played Rummy, they played Gin, they played Pinochle. It was just something for them to do. Never had a problem at work. My dad was a very respected individual, in the neighborhood and in the community as a whole.
MB: Culturally, did you notice a difference with the times, as early on in the sixties where, you know, music, fashion would be one way, whereas towards the later parts where the riots happened you see any of the changes culturally where the music became more radical, the clothing became more radical. You know, or was it steady through on?
AD: I remember back in the sixties going to school, we wore dress pants and jeans, but the African American kids, I mean, they dressed up like they were going to a banquet, like they were going to a party. I mean, they were clean, thick and thin socks, pinstripe slacks, silk shirts. And then later in the seventies, if you recall, you had the platform shoes, you had the huge bellbottoms, you had the big disco hats, you had the baseball shirts, you had the fluffy shirts, the button-downs, the pullovers, the fancy colors on the cars, the spokes, the horns of a bull on the frontend of a Cadillac or a Lincoln. Yeah, there was a culture-change in terms of music. The music back then you can comprehend every word, every note. Yeah, that was something. In this day and time, the only thing you recognize is the lyrics, which are all four or five letter obscenities.
MB: So there wasn’t really a big difference in the style of music or lyrics from the beginning of the 1960s towards the end, there wasn’t a big change?
AD: No, up until 72, 73 it was okay. In the eighties and nineties then rap came along. And rap came along and I guess if you knew how to curse, you knew how to sing.
MB: Is there anything you’d like to say about how the Muslim community was structured back in the day? Clergy-wise?
AD: Clergy-wise, you had a handful of clergies. You had an Imam, which is clergy in Arabic. Back then I remember an Imam by the name of Kalil Bazzy, he was from south Lebanon, God bless his soul. You had Imam Shaykh Karoub [sp?]. He was the first one here, he came here in 1912. In 1962, they had a fiftieth anniversary commencement for him. Later on in the sixties, you had Shaykh Chirri who originally came to Michigan City, Indiana, and then he came up to Michigan. Today, you got 10, 15 different clergies and you got X number of mosques, masjids as we call them, or you call them house of worship.
MB: In the sixties, how were they organized clergy-wise? Was there, leadership-wise, was there just one main Imam everyone would come to or was it spread out?
AD: Back then, we had two, three masjids. We had the Hashmi Hall on Dix which is south end of Dearborn. We had the other mosque down the street. And then we had the mosque on Joy road and Greenfield in the city of Detroit. That’s the only mos- Oh, and the Albanians had one over on 9 Mile and Harper off of I-94.
MB: Would you say, how were these funded through the community? Was it organized where there would be a board? Or was it just a community effort?
AD: Every house of worship, whether you’re Muslim or not, they had a governing body, they had a board of directors, they had a women’s auxiliary, and they had a men’s auxiliary, and they also had a youth club. Board members consisted between six and eight, and you had a member from the youth, so it was basically between seven and nine members totally. Most of the funding came from the worshippers, but a lot of times you would get money that came from overseas. You know, from Muslim countries.
MB: Finally, overall, how do you feel that the riots affected Detroit? Do you feel like it ultimately held us back for 50 years or is it something that just had to happen in order for Detroit to move on?
AD: I think the city of Detroit is still scarred from the riots. Because you still have a lot of people who are citizens of Detroit, and the outskirts, who still remember the riots. Who knew somebody who was killed, brutalized, locked up, or abused. Detroit is upcoming now, but I think we still lack behind in terms of being a major player. What made Detroit, or Detroit wouldn’t be where it is today, if it wasn’t for the Big Three. The Big Three pay a heavy tax base in the city of Detroit, whether it’s a manufacturing facility, or administrative, or whatever. But I think we’ve still got a long way to go. Affirmative Action, I’m totally against it. It should be based on your qualifications and your education, not your background, not your skin color, not your faith, or religion, or ethnicity.
MB: How long after the riots did you live in Highland Park? And what did you and your family do afterwards?
AD: We moved out Highland Park in 1969. My mother feared that she would lose us to the integration of the American society and we would end up marrying outside our faith, our ethnicity, so we all moved to Lebanon. That was my mother’s idea. My father didn’t really want to move back because he had no family left. He had many nieces and nephews and cousins on his mother’s side and his father’s side, but he had no siblings left. His mother and father died back in the twenties and thirties. And I said, he came here over, what 1913, he came over here 114 years ago. But after we went, we moved back, we realized we had grandparents. There was a culture behind us. There was a culture that we can create an appetite for, learn our faith. We never knew we had all this family there because we lived here all our lives. So when I moved back here, I had the best of both worlds. I’m American-born and I can just infiltrate society, but at the end of the day I’m an Arab of Muslim descent.
MB: Alright, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.
AD: You’re welcome.
**NL: Today is June 24, 2015. This is the interview of Roman Gribbs by Noah Levinson and Lily Wilson. We are also accompanied by Jakub Szlaga and Paula Rewald-Gribbs, and we are at Mr. Gribbs’s residence in Northville, Michigan. Mr. Mayor, can I call you that?
RG: By all means, yeah. That’s a very nice title.
NL: Could you start by telling me where and when you were born?
RG: Born in Detroit, December 29, 1925.
NL: Where were you living when you were growing up?
RG: Well, mostly on a farm about sixty miles north of Detroit. It’s in the Thumb area of Capac, in between Emmett and Capac about three miles from Emmett, which was a small town. Capac, a little larger, still small, but they had a high school. Emmett doesn’t so undergrad—grade school—I went to a one-room schoolhouse, grades one to eight with one teacher. I graduated eighth grade, there were three of us. Some of the classes were just one or two. Then when I became high school age, I went to Capac High School and graduated from there in 1944. I was a good student, I was number two. Number one was all A’s—I didn’t quite make it.
NL: And at what point did you move to the city of Detroit?
RG: Excuse me, the farm, yeah, it was a one hundred acre farm.
NL: When did you move to the city?
RG: Well, I went to the service first, because my parents—my dad—always worked at Ford, because when we bought the farm it was only one hundred acres and we did make some money but not enough money to pay for a living. So my dad, who had been employed at Ford Motor for many years, decided to keep working and he’d work during the weeks and then weekends he came to the farm. Afterwards, when there were only two of us and my brother had decided that he wanted to become a priest so he went to the seminary, it was left just to me, with just the two boys and the farming, and I decided I didn’t want to be a farmer after milking cows every morning, every night, Christmas morning, night, New Year’s Eve—gotta milk the cows.
So I decided, that’s not for me and the folks, they sold the farm. I went into the service in 1946. They sold the farm and built a home here in Detroit, and when I left the service, came back to them in Detroit.
NL: Where were you living in 1967? Specifically, what part of the city?
RG: I was in northwest Detroit, on Indiana Street. Yeah, I married, my top daughter next to us here was about eight-years-old?
PG: For the--for the--?
RG: ‘67?
PG: No, I was twelve. We were in Rosedale Park by then.
RG: By that time? Oh, that’s right. It was Rosedale Park.
PG: North Rosedale.
RG: A different street in Rosedale Park, not Indiana. Edinborough Street.
NL: And what were you doing in 1967?
RG: I was a traffic court referee. It was a municipal judge for the city of Detroit. We had three judges of the traffic division and they had six referees would rule on municipal ordinances. So if you got a ticket, or a violation of some sort, a city ordinance violation, you’d come to the referees. By that time the city was about a million and a half—well, a little less than that—but it was just normal business activities of city violations ruled on by the referees.
NL: What do you remember about the city of Detroit in the early and mid-1960s? How would you describe the city?
RG: How much time you got?
NL: [laughter] As long as you—
RG: [Speaking at the same time] What do you mean? What I remember? What again now?
NL: Just about the city: what it looked like, what it felt like living there? The people?
RG: Oh, it was a huge municipality in my view at that time. We were then the fifth largest city in the United States. So there was anything you can think of—except the popular name was the Motor City because the auto industry began here and grew here more so than any other major city, and so we got to be the Motor City. And it was just a thriving, wonderful, all kinds of activities: baseball teams, football teams, you know, all the athletic sports, and all kinds of activities you could talk about at the end of this. There’s a river, there’s all kinds of tourist activities, and so it was just a big, wonderful municipality.
NL: Do you remember where you were when you first heard about the violence and the unrest in late July, 1967?
RG: Yeah, I woke up in the morning and I was in the—now correct me, I think it was Sunday night when the—okay, my memory’s right, then it did start Sunday night. Because the police were making a normal raid—they thought it was normal, and it was normal—as to a gambling facility that somebody had on the second level. It was so huge, I mean the participants—instead of being, a little after two o’clock [a.m.] when they raided the place as they were accustomed to do with maybe two paddy wagons because they thought there might be twenty or forty people—I guess there was over a hundred: it was just a massive, big gambling facility. When the police made their arrests—I just remember reading about this, that they didn’t have the capacity to take them promptly to the jail for facilitating because they had maybe two paddy wagons and they probably needed four or five.
So they were waiting outside and guiding them and the dishevel around the outside and somebody started throwing rocks and breaking windows and there were so many of the people that were around that area—because it was known, obviously, as a gambling facility—that they started apparently breaking windows.
Anyway, Monday morning I heard on the radio that there was turmoil in that area, in that vicinity, and I think I went downtown to work normally to traffic court where I was working, but I’m not sure. But at any rate, yeah, I did go downtown. I waited until about noon and then things were getting tough so we closed down the operation and I was told to go home and wait to see if they could use me in a judicial capacity, as things developed, because there were a lot of people in turmoil going on. So you listen to the radio. I even was asked just to stay there to be available, so I stayed there for the next several days during all the time as the riot began and it continued for several days—whether it was three days or five or seven days depending upon where they put a stop into it. But you know after a couple of days then the governor was called and of course the National Guard came in, and then I was at home, at least that afternoon. I stayed there for instructions.
NL: Who was it that asked you to wait and sort of be on call?
RG: The traffic court referees. I was a referee. The traffic judges were the ones that directed us what to do.
NL: Okay, and did they end up calling on you that week?
RG: No, because I was not a judge, a referee, and they were using judges. There were many judges and they closed the courts by that time and they were simply arraigning. They had hundreds and hundreds under arrest, and they had problems of housing the arrestees, and the judges were then asked to participate in setting bonds for those that were entitled to bonds. So they had to have hearings, and had to have the place, and as a matter of fact, because the jail became overcrowded they opened up facilities on Belle Isle for the reason that they didn’t have the buildings to hold them, even if they took them to Oakland County—there was just so many people. So they were taken to Belle Isle because the access at the bridge and that was one way of containing the people until there was some facility, some basis—a courtroom for a hearing, and a determination by a judge as to whether he should be released or post bond.
NL: Do you remember for how long after those events was your court dealing with all of the civil infractions that came out of that week?
RG: Oh—weeks, weeks. In fact, trials—because several were charged with murders, there were—what was it, forty-two?
NL: Forty-three.
RG: Forty-three, I knew it was forty-something that were killed. That took years before the trials were completed, there were all sorts of lawsuits as a result of that. So there’s no time limit other than saying it was many years for all of them to be done, but after the riots, assembling and arranging and determining who should be released or a short trial—is it going to be an hour, is it going to be three days? The numbers were so high that they—I did not participate, because again, as a referee we didn’t have the judicial capacity as a Recorder’s Court judge or a Circuit Court judge, by statute and by law. They had final authority in a lot of legal decisions and many of them were around, of course, and they didn’t need me and at that time I didn’t have the capacity as a judge.
NL: Do any specific courts or appeals, et cetera, stand out in your memory related to those events?
RG: Not really, there was so many, I read up on all of them. I remember there was a church where some people that were being hunted down started to hide in the church and there were shootings when the police went to arrest them and there were some deaths—anyway, that was one of the famous places. Now it’s a few years ago so I don’t recall specifics because I wasn’t a participant in those proceedings directly.
NL: I see. What are your first memories of being in the city immediately after the violence had subsided? The first time you were going around the city, or going back to work, what are your memories of what things looked like?
RG: The devastation was really amazing—just almost an unrealistic amount of destruction and violence. What do we have—buildings, fires, and stores broken into, and merchandise cleaned out in some stores. There was about $50 million dollars’ worth of property damage—fifty million dollars—and I don’t know how many blocks were covered, but others would tell you that but there’s got to be at least twelve, sixteen or eighteen blocks tore down--and just destroyed and it was very, very sad and unfortunate. I was just an observer like all other citizens because I didn’t have a direct authority to participate other than go back to work within about ten days when things became normal again. But, as you may recall, the National Guard had to come in here to quiet down the rioting and the violence, the destructions and the fires and the thievery—you name it—it just was wild.
NL: Do you think that was necessary, to call in the National Guard for that—
RG: As far as I’m concerned, yes. I know that the mayor, first of all, called—Jerry Cavanaugh was the mayor. He was a classmate of mine as it turns out. He was in night class at the University of Detroit, I was in day classes, but were the same graduating class. So I knew him, Jerry, and I knew that he been calling in the governor for help. The state police came in. That was inadequate, so then he and the governor decided to call in the National Guard. So the National Guard and the semi-tanks or trucks with all their uniforms came in, that quieted down the riots when they were traveling up and down the roads and it stopped the violence. The Detroit police, the state police, and any other additional police—cities that were sending over policemen to help the city were inadequate—they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t quiet the violence. So the governor and the mayor, at the governor’s request, brought in the National Guard and they quieted that.
Let me give you an interesting note, later years—when I went to the service I skied a little bit there because there was a hill nearby. So I later went to college, I enjoyed skiing. And about twenty years later I was skiing out West one of the first or second times, and I was lining in the chair and started chatting with a fella and he was a colonel and I said “You’re from Detroit?” and he said, “Yeah, I was there and I was in charge of the riots.” I said, “What?” and he was the colonel that was sent here and he was in command. He was telling me he was at the Book Cadillac Hotel and he took over about half of the hotel for the armed services that were coming in. And we chatted and I think we had dinner that night. It was just a shared coincidence, odd things that happened in the world.
NL: Yeah, small world.
RG: I may have been at Vail or someplace in Colorado when we were skiing at that time. Interesting.
NL: What were your thoughts on the race relations between the citizens and the government or the police at this time?
RG: Well, it was obviously inadequate because of the riots. I mean, it wasn’t just the beginnings of a handful or a dozen, or gamblers, but when you get to the level of the participants that are that large—of wrecking houses and starting fires and the looting, avoiding the police, and shooting police and with weapons, and various homicides, and it’s so vast—it’s a community problem, obviously, that has so much discontent to such a level that they do the violent things, and I think under the normal circumstances that those things don’t happen. There’s always some reason that gives them the momentary rationale to become violent and not uphold the law. It was a disappointment. It meant that the city has to review what they were doing and in some manner or fashion develop the community with the kind of responses that they were seeking. And among other things, I was looking at all those things, of course, when I became mayor and I had the responsibility then to improve the city and improve conditions for the people.
For example, when I became mayor and I took a hard look at the number of leadership that were black, and in the police department they had about eight to nine-percent of the police were black. Now that’s four thousand cops at that time, in round numbers, and so one of the first things I did is to hire a personnel person—that I took from one of the, maybe General Motors, and he was a talented personnel, really—to train the police. With that large number of police, every year you have to train what, three hundred, four hundred new police officers. I said to him, “Improve the academy, and I want at least fifty-percent of each that you hire to be black, but I want them competent black.” And he did and he more than doubled the black representation, we had a little over twenty-percent of the total policemen were black in that four-year period based upon that director. All that means is that the Negro community, the black community, sees people in authority that they recognize and will listen to, even if they’re inclined to be anti-white or anti-black or whatever, but it’s the mix that was warranted.
At that time, when I took office, about 45 percent of the people were black. And after the riots, many people were leaving—not the blacks—but there were white people that could manage to leave, that were apprehensive about their safety and kids, particularly if they had kids. Schools, schools were a problem then—they’ve been a problem since—so there were many reasons for moving.
Really, the very first thing I did when I took office as mayor was to appoint the deputy mayor. There wasn’t a position but I appointed it, made him deputy mayor and I made him a black man. He was a black man: Walter Greene. He was in charge of the State of Michigan [Civil Service Commission] —it wasn’t activities, I forget. He was an agency of human relations working for the State of Michigan. He was an outstanding guy. His wife was a principal at one of the schools in Detroit, so he lived here. I had heard him talking before I became mayor, I was sheriff, and I heard him talking and became familiar with his abilities. So I said, “I need someone like you, would you be deputy mayor? I’ll give you full authority if I’m out of town, you’re the mayor and you’re running it.” That was helping to the integration that should exist. So anyway, that’s one of the many things that I tried to do to bring the black community into the administrative phase of running the city. At that time, we had almost 25,000 employees. Now think of that: 25,000, 4,000 police officers and by the time I was done, I raised the police department to 7,000, because crime was the number one issue even before the riots. And crime was an issue, of course, after the riots, so what we needed was trained law enforcement people.
And so we got the funding and, in fact, I was in Washington a number of times and we got several grants dealing with law enforcement, and I was able to hire quickly within a couple of years, an additional 2,000 policemen and women. That helped stabilize the city and as a matter of official record, crime went down every year—somewhat—as a result of increased police officers and better law enforcement, understanding law enforcement. Now most cities were proud to have instead of an increase, that the increase was reduced. My four years, it was not just a reduction in the increase, it was an absolute reduction, and we balanced a budget, too. Those are matters that maybe you’re not interested in, but I had an accounting background among other things and it’s like anybody else: I don’t spend the money unless we have it.
As a matter of fact, I should tell you this little episode: within three months, my budget director and my auditor did an analysis and Jerry Cavanaugh left me with about a thirty million dollar deficit. To balance the budget, we had to lay off [some] of those existing 25,000 employees. So after an analysis and after about four months, each department head was told what they had to do to balance the budget and eliminate the deficit and they have to, by union rules, give them at least a month’s notice, so they sent out notices of layoffs in about a month. So I’m in office for about six months, page one of the newspapers: “First layoff since the Depression.” Now you know the Depression is ‘30s and the first layoffs—the Depression—that’s a terrible way to have a new mayor but that’s what I did and it worked. It worked out fine, because we balanced the budget that year, we did after that, and that’s the way it should be run. Anyway, that’s part of the job.
NL: Understandable. I wanted to rewind a little bit, but continuing to talk more about your professional political career, starting in the late ‘60s. Can you tell me first about your role as the Wayne County Sheriff?
RG: Oh, well, I was a traffic court referee and I did that for about a year and then I went into private practice. The sheriff of Wayne County got into trouble and he quit. He was charged with payola. He was, among other things, if you gave him a hundred dollars, he’d give you a badge as honorary sheriff. Well, people were using that, “I’m an honorary sheriff,” and so forth, among other things. Buback was his name, and he was a good guy, but he made some mistakes and he was charged, but he got—he resigned because he had a pension from the City of Detroit. And the Appointing Authority, appointed me as sheriff and then I was up for election and that was in early ‘68. Then in the fall I was running and I was elected sheriff of Wayne County. So I was sheriff at the time of ‘68, and I did that until—Jerry Cavanaugh was gonna run for another term, and he decided late not to run and [there were] other friends of mine, like councilmen, that I thought would be competent to run.
I was politically active of course and I wanted to run—and they decided not to—so finally somebody pointed at me. I said, “Well,” and let out some feelers, so to speak, and tested the waters and they looked good, so I decided to run. Had no idea before that to run for mayor, that there would be an opening, didn’t ever want to be. But having been sheriff, having seen what had happened, I figured maybe I could do it, and I was elected. And it’s interesting, that for the first time, one of the two nominees was black! So that brought up the racial matter again and consciously, if you will. And he was a good guy, he was the county auditor. He went on to state office even though I defeated him, but not by much, it was a close election! But it was a good election, and I really enjoyed the four years as mayor.
NL: Can you tell me more about the campaign that year with you and Richard Austin and what the mayoral campaign was like and what your platform was?
RG: Well, my platform was: I am sheriff. I’m experienced in law and crime so I hope to solve the criminal problem, number one. And then the economic problem, I said I’m going to balance the budget, okay. And I did balance the budget, it did a number of years but not all of them. My responding to all the questions, I’m going to bring in everybody and representation for the black community. And I did. It was the standard primary, Noah: “Are the lights working? Are the streets clean? Are the parks clean?” Well, you have 25,000 employees, the Department of Parks and Recreation probably had 1,200 employees. You know they had a lot of parks in the city and at that time we had between million three and million two people, we had a million five up until the riot and then it went downhill because a lot of people were moving. But there was still about a million two and a half or three when I took office and I hopefully stabilized the city sufficiently that people would be more inclined to stay here, and that’s the way it worked out for me. I think that we had a good four years.
NL: Do you remember were there specific measures taken in the campaign to attract black voters since their other choice was the first black candidate that they had seen for mayor before?
RG: I don’t understand your question.
LW: How did you appeal to black voters?
RG: Same as the white—you know, I treated them equal. The only difference is the skin in my view and that means nothing. Such as one of the greatest guys in communicating to everybody was Walter Greene, he was the Deputy Mayor. When he would go out to speak at churches—as Mayor, I had four invitations every night for the whole four years: because all of the churches, the organizations, there’s the Eastside, there’s the Northside, there’s the Southside, and the Westside. When you have 1,300,000 people, that’s a lot of churches and you can only go to so many. The saying kind of got: “Well, if Greene is here, Gribbs ain’t coming!” [Laughter] So I was able to send him to speak to the communities on behalf of the City and it was great to have him. When I announced I was leaving office, he then took a job with a Detroit bank, went to—was an official with one of them.
NL: Did you consider running for another term as mayor in ‘74.
RG: Another term?
NL: Another term as mayor, yes.
RG: Yeah, I considered it. But at that time, I had five kids and that’s a long time to be away from the family and the kids. So I had to develop a system, and I said to my secretary and others “I’m going to be home at least two days and I’ll try to make it three nights, at least, to be home for dinner in a week.” I’ll never forget the first July week when we had the fireworks and other events, there was always something going on. Every night I was out, dinnertime, doing something or another and I said I’m never going to do that again, because you gotta have time with kids, because you want to and you should be home.
That was one of the reasons. And I thought I had made a lot of changes and hopefully established, with personnel we had, I had some great people that worked with me and for me—my auditor, Bob Roselle, he went on to be the Executive Vice President for Campbell Ewald, and my attorney went on to work for Chrysler and he became an official within Chrysler’s in an executive position. My police department—because crime was the number one issue—I made a national search for a police chief. We called it Chief of Police then, and so I hired a fellow named [Patrick V.] Murphy. He had been president of the national Police Foundation. He became a cop in New York City, then went to Rochester, New York, and was Deputy Chief or something, and then he became the head of the Police Foundation. I had a search committee, they had heard that he was unhappy about doing the organizational work and wanted to get back into police work. So I interviewed him, boom, he took the job. He came over here in Detroit and he did such a good job that the mayor of New York, [John] Lindsay, called me a year after he’s here. He said, “I gotta have a new police chief. Do you mind if I talk to Murphy?” I said, “Come on—he’s good.” He said, “He is good.” I said, ‘No, go head, talk to him,” and so Murphy took it. I tell you why, because he had a department of five or six thousand police officers here and New York is 25,000 cops. And because he was initially a patrolman there, started his career there, he ended up with a full retirement. If he only worked a day as a police chief in New York, he gets full retirement. So all those benefits! Besides, it was his city, so he went back home as Chief of Police. So I lost him and promoted the assistant chief at that time.
NL: What was it that made him such an effective leader of the police, do you think?
RG: Well, he said “You want to be a command officer? Get a degree. Up to lieutenant, we’ll promote, but beyond lieutenant, I want you to get a college degree of some sort or at least a couple of years of police training, academic training.” That was just one of the things, and the integrity and the training—he’s the one that helped me pick out the personnel director that hired the cops. He was just inspirational, he was very sharp. He worked for Lindsay for I think three or four years, long time in New York, yeah.
NL: So before that there were no educational requirements in the police?
RG: No. As a matter of fact, the police chief was, I think, just a street cop. Well, a lot of them would take college classes sometimes on their own, but it was not required. Just as long as you’re a high school grad, you could become a policeman.
NL: Could you talk about the S.T.R.E.S.S. [Stop the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets] units in the police department?
RG: Oh yeah, have you read up on that?
NL: A little bit.
RG: Well, S.T.R.E.S.S. unit was simply a law enforcement technique that went bad. Went bad in that it was not properly supervised and before I became aware of it, they had a couple of misfortunate and too-aggressive events that they became notorious and I had to change it officially. What S.T.R.E.S.S. was is a group of eight to ten policemen who would go into a high-crime area—not as cops, but just walk the streets in regular clothes—and became familiar with the business people and the community there, and get their confidence so they would help point out the criminality that would come into that high-crime and high-stress crime community. And as a result, they would learn within a couple of weeks—cause it doesn’t take long if you’re walking there every day and talking to the neighbors and the store owners and so forth—as to where the bad men were and they would circle on some of it and once they were identified, they would make the arrest. Well, there was such violence that the groups, they would resist and there were shootings in the effort to arrest. And that’s what the S.T.R.E.S.S.—I forget, what were the words for that?
NL & LW: Stop the robberies, enjoy safe streets.
RG: One in particular, but there were several of the police were very aggressive. Now, we’re talking at a time when we’ve had shootings that almost start riots in other cities where policemen killed a black man, several of them in the last six months as we’re talking. Ferguson and what other place?
NL: Baltimore.
RG: Baltimore, yeah, talk about Baltimore. So it’s that kind of event that arouse the people and it was getting the very rabid, agitating kind of community leaders that were not the best for anybody – anyway, were agitating and S.T.R.E.S.S. was then becoming a basis for the election when I decided not to run for mayor. I announced right after Christmas a year before my term was ended, so it was known that I was not gonna run again. And I did it primarily to give my good people an opportunity to find another job, really. I asked them to stay, but I said to my department heads, I said, “Hey, find yourself a job, because I don’t want to surprise you in the middle of the summer and say ‘I’m not gonna run’ late.” There was no reason to wait because I had made up my mind. We had started enough things, I thought the city was financially sound, and was improving. So I made the announcement and that became an issue during the campaign. So, Coleman Young said, “Oh, I’m going to ban them” and he did. But no big deal—it was just a police group of eight or ten cops that were put into another responsibility. It was just mismanaged.
NL: What made it so difficult to manage that group or to keep things organized regarding their work?
RG: Say again, what made it?
NL: You said a couple times that the idea behind S.T.R.E.S.S. is sound, but that they were mismanaged. What aspect of that was mismanaged?
RG: Well, you don’t put an aggressive cat in that job, because it’s too sensitive. You know you’re gonna have a shoot ‘em out, because you’re going after the shooters. You’re going after the guys with guns, you know, or gamblers or sophisticated crooks is what you’re going after, not going to the guy that steals a book from the bookstore. You’re going after the organized crime and you’re going after those that are non-organized but violent and use guns. So, you have to have the right personnel, not only in charge, but doing that kind of work. And they had a couple of guys that were quick with a trigger—cops. Like most recently, I don’t know each one but, we’ve all read about Ferguson: that they claimed the shooting was inappropriate—shot in the back—it’s inappropriate, obviously, if that’s the case. But there were others, you know, the cops were justified in shooting, and that’s always a serious question when there’s a death involved, “Did you have to pull the trigger?” That’s always a delicate matter, and you don’t have time to discuss it before you pull the trigger, that’s the problem. Bang, bang, something’s happening. Either he’s going to shoot me or I’m going to shoot him, I guess. Then those circumstances arise.
LW: When you left office, did you feel that—you mentioned you had balanced the budget and the police force was becoming more integrated. You felt that there was a good chance that Detroit would come back from ’67.
RG: Oh, I thought so, very positively. I even started a lot of programs one was called Little City Halls. It wasn’t my idea, they did that in Boston. I went up and I heard about that in Boston. At mayor’s meetings, I talked to the mayor of Boston—White, Mayor White. What you do is open a store, and here again you gotta remember it’s a 1,300,000 people. So you got a neighborhood, well let’s say the south side, and we opened a store and had a policeman and other city representatives there, so that they’re there, not 24 hours, but at least eight hours a day five days a week, where people can go there and get their license renewed or “How do I get the roof fixed?” or “How do I get a job?” So the people could tell you from a police point of view and from the other kinds of services this city would have, it only takes one or two people to run a directive to help people do what they have to do with the city. “Oh, I think I want to improve the house, what do I do? Do I need a license?” “Oh yeah, you gotta get permission if you’re gonna tear the wall off,” and so forth. “Just file the application and make sure it’s the right people” and that kind of thing and if a light isn’t working, file a complaint here instead of going downtown.
There’s nothing worse than—I remember working with traffic court, we had three sessions and they did a good job. When you get a ticket, they’ll tell you go to court at eight o’clock or at ten o’clock or at one o’clock, and as a referee we would have maybe ten cases at 8:00 and we’d be done with them within two hours. Then we’d get the next bunch, and what you do is provide efficiency so you don’t go there at eight o’clock and wait 'til twelve o’clock, three hours to talk about a five dollar fine I don’t want to pay, you know.
That was a real education for me in justice because, you see, as a traffic court referee, you see the world right in front of you. Here comes a little old lady walking and soon she’s sitting in there and she’s one of about ten people and the court officer. We wore a robe, and we’d open court, and then I’d make an announcement as to the standards, and what we look at and then the clerk would call the case and this lady would come up and she says,
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Tell me what happened” and “You’re charged with doing this—” say—not speeding—maybe a traffic light.
And I said, “Do you have a bad record?” I had the records. “Do you have a bad record?”
“Oh, I haven’t had a ticket for 20 years.”
“Case dismissed. Good-bye!”
That’s the way it should happen. You forgive them for that one violation and that’s what justice is about. On the other hand, come over here and this woman is selling whatever merchandise and parking all over improperly in downtown Detroit and other places, and well here she’s got twenty-two tickets in three months and bingo, that would add up to, well, let’s see about one-hundred seventy dollars for these tickets and boom, “One hundred seventy dollars, thank you.” If she doesn’t like what I said then she’d go right up to traffic court and talk to the judge. That’s the way the system worked and it was a good, efficient system. Anyway, you try to provide that kind of service for other municipal operations that are necessary.
LW: So after you left office, you had a sense that you had done some good work you had gotten the city to a place that was stable, or hopeful, and I’m wondering what happened after that, from your prospective. How did you see this as now, not mayor, but how did you see the city develop or digress?
RG: All forty years? [laughter]
LW: [Laughter] No, during the next mayorship…
NL: We could start during Mayor Young’s tenure, maybe.
LW: Yeah.
RG: Well, I think Mayor Young was close—he could have been a—people think he was an outstanding judge. I don’t think he was outstanding. I think he had a good term and a half, roughly two. I was watching him closely, and I think he just stayed too long. I think he was efficient, and in my opinion the facts of the first two terms, term and a half, were good. After that, things began to happen.
One of the worst things he did, though, is essentially say to [the] community, but also outside of Detroit, “This is my city and I’m gonna run it my way.” Okay, now what does that mean? Well I talked to other mayors and people that I dealt with and they would say, “Well, we tried to get a cooperative effort in so many things” that cities deal with each other—traffic, lights, regional facilities, water, sewers—and they’d say that “It’s okay when he deals with his people that way, but we don’t like it when he’s trying to tell me what to do.” I’m talking about the other mayors, so the cooperation was lacking and his aggressiveness went further than it should have gone, is my criticism of his.
There are plusses and minuses. Historians have said, “For example,” historians, “I [Coleman Young] started—the Ren Cen [Renaissance Center] was started by me in 1972. Henry Ford and I were talking about—well first of all, they started—the Chamber of Commerce—oh, think of his name [unintelligible]—said “Let’s have a group like they had in Pennsylvania. They had a Committee of [One] Hundred that helped Pittsburgh, and let me get the group together and we’ll need your cooperation” when I was mayor, I said “Oh, that’s terrific!” So he established Detroit Renaissance and the Renaissance was all the executives of the major industries here, and he added up about thirty, we ended up with about thirty-three, starting with only the executive of each organization—which meant for Ford, Henry Ford II had to be there to vote, and General Motors, it had to be Fisher, or whoever it was, Murphy was then the Chief Executive of General Motors and Chrysler was Townsend, and then the banks and then the utilities. So a committee of thirty-three and Max Fisher was the chairman. It was that committee that established the fact that we needed something new downtown Detroit. So they hired [John] Portman—is it Portman?—to establish the Ren Cen, a plan for the whole downtown area. And the announcement was made in September, 1971. Where’s the plaque? I don’t know where the plaque—anyway.
PG: Where is the plaque? Is it in your room?
RG: Maybe, I don’t know. No, it’s not there, not where it’s opened up.
PG: Okay.
RG: But anyway, we announced, and it’s covered by TIME Magazine with pictures of me and Henry Ford sitting down making the announcement. What he announced was, “We’re starting a $350,000,000 project: we’re gonna have a central hotel, four offices, another wing over here with two to four buildings, another wing over here with two to four buildings, all right in front of, right across the water and on Jefferson Avenue.” And it’s there now. When I left office, the steel was still going up—cause you had to condemn the land and all of that—but that project came about under my administration, and they suddenly started to give credit to Coleman Young because three years after he took office, they dedicated the building—it took them that long to build it. Anyway, all he did there was watch the brick go up.
Anyway, the good historians are giving me credit. It’s an attitude and an atmosphere that permeated the city, and the community. And the executives in the community had confidence in my administration to then announce and to build and to give money. And the announcement was that Ford, as seed money, was giving six thousand, Chrysler five, GM five, and the banks, three each. So there was about thirty million dollars. Did I say thousands? Millions—six million—so thirty million dollars’ worth of seed money to get it started and the rest was mortgage money. It took, I think by the time they were done building the hotel and the first four buildings, I think it was supposed to be about $300 million, and it went up to about $370 [million] by the time they were done for the first four, and the rest is history.
All you guys, pardon me, and madam—look at the buildings that are there. But I helped start it, it was my great joy. I had good leadership and department heads that could deal with their department heads that could deal with General Motors executives and the lesser ones and so forth and build confidence in the community that the city is worth rebuilding, it just needed rebuilding—let’s start with downtown. So we started with downtown, and we had a great start and it went well for a while and then it started to go downhill.
LW: When you say it went downhill, from your perspective, how did you see that happen?
RG: How’d I see it happen?
LW: Yeah, how did you see that, when it went downhill, so to speak, how did you see—what were the signs to you that was going on?
RG: I really don’t know except to—to answer the question—except to say that it really broke my heart. I think the attitude of Coleman as “My city,” which means “Hey, it’s going to be all black.” It’s not going to be that. I mean, what do people think? If Coleman says, “My way!” or use swear words, “You hit the road,”—you know. And he was very open about the cuss words and his command, and so forth. And then Dennis Archer came in and it was different, it was better. But during that time it went downhill, and that’s why I said his first two years [terms], when he had two more years [terms], it was a long time for that kind of attitude to stay in the community. What you needed is a community, “Oh! He’s a nice guy.” “Oh! That city has promise, they’re building downtown,” and “Oh, I think I’ll go to Detroit.” But if you have the other attitude and you’re gonna start a business or put a branch in Michigan, oh, instead of Detroit they’ll go to Flint or they’ll go to Westland, or whatever—Dearborn, lot of good towns.
That went downhill for a lot of reasons: that’s one of the reasons, and if that situation arises people leave and leave and leave, and that’s what happened—when people leave and leave. Now, one of the things that I should mention that I’ve always had a problem with is that the mayor has nothing to say about the education.
LW: Okay.
RG: The educational system traditionally has been a—not only here but throughout the United States—primarily a separate entity with a separate board and a separate command and administrative people. When I was mayor, I spoke to the school board at the beginning of the first year and I spoke to them in the last year when I was leaving office, and they were very courteous and everything, but they said “Nice to see ya” and essentially they said, “Goodbye.” I said “Thanks for listening to me.” But essentially, as you know and history has shown that over and over there are different leadership in the school system. Now, if you’re gonna have kids and you want to move someplace, what you have to have is safety so the kids can play, you have to have that and you have to have a good school system, not just a system, but a good one. And Detroit was having trouble back then forty-two years ago when I was mayor, it was not a good system. And I spoke to them directly and they hired the superintendents—two years later, boom, they hire another superintendent, three years later, another one—money and all that. I’ve been always close to education, I lectured at the university—I taught for three years at the University of Detroit—and I’ve been close to education.
At any rate, some cities, some major cities—I think Chicago, San Francisco, and some others since I’ve been in office—the city has given the mayor the authority to appoint the superintendent of education. [inaudible] But that’s just a thought of mine, that if an educational system is not working, the citizens should appoint the mayor and put him in charge. If you’ve got one man, it’s different because either you’ll get someone good or else you get him out of there. But if you have a committee and you change the committee, they have someone then years later you got a different committee—oh, they’ll appoint him. I don’t know if you have experience working with committees, but you know if you have more than three people—you have three people, you have three opinions, you know. If you have ten people, you have ten opinions. And you compromise. It’s always a second, or third, or fourth compromise to get somebody appointed. But that’s my view. Like I appointed an outstanding Chief of Police and they worked—both of them were outstanding. And if they wouldn’t do it, they were gone. I hired one fella that I didn’t—I made a mistake by taking not enough time to interviewing him— and I hired him. Two weeks later I fired him. I just made a mistake, but you can do that and if you find something that’s not doing right, you’re in charge. And it’s a massive responsibility, but if you do it right and he or she does the job—
Now, for example, Ridgeway, sure [directed to daughter, Paula]
PG: What? Bill, June?
RG: Pardon me?
PG: June?
RG: Yeah, June Ridgeway. June Ridgeway was a neighbor of ours and she helped me in my campaign. I said, “Hey, why don’t I give you something to do?” and I made her secretary to the auditors. No, not auditors. The secretary to—
PG: Tax assessors?
RG: Yeah, that’s right, yeah, the taxing department and she then became an expert by going to classes and within a year she was a Class Four Assessor. That’s the word, assessor. So she would go then and look at a plant and establish its value, and we would tax according to the value that she set, that the assessor set. And she was such an outstanding person that later on I put her in charge of other work, and she ran Cobo Hall under Coleman Young. She, uh, well whatever. And its good people like that I was able to find, and when you see them you recognize it. I really recognized it in her so I moved her up the ladder as quickly as I was able to. She became one of the assessors and—because she was trained for it and she was doing her job.
NL: Back tracking a little bit, you mentioned before your interactions with Jerry Cavanaugh, that you guys were classmates together.
RG: Yeah.
NL: Could you tell me your thoughts about his tenure as mayor of the city?
RG: Oh, I thought it was pretty good. He, in fact, was so effective that they were thinking that he’s going to go up the ladder and maybe run for senator or something. And he did try to run later on, but the riots broke his heart because that was a devastating factor in his administration. In his election, they attributed the black community to electing him because he was treating the black community—now that’s eight years before I went into office, he had eight years, two four-year terms—and because he was a thirty-three-year-old kid, but when he campaigned, he campaigned among the black community. And they liked him and he was well received by the black leadership. And he was elected mayor. And he was easily elected a second time he was doing work and he was getting acclaim nationally.
I got some acclaim nationally because I ended up being the president of National League of Cities, which is another chapter we could talk about: going to Lansing, going to Washington, and getting their support and their money—particularly when they needed it—both the State of Michigan and the Feds at that time. I remember Nixon was the president. I remember that Martha Griffiths was a congresswoman, she was effective in the House. And I knew Martha, she would listen and she was effective, she was a no-nonsense legislator. I got her, others too, and Ford was the leader of the House at that time, Gerald Ford.
I remember going there and telling them, “The Feds need to give money to the cities because the cities have the responsibility to take care of the poor, and it’s a disproportionate responsibility.” So, the city of Lansing has some poor but nowhere near the number of poor that the city of Detroit has or the city of New York, or San Francisco had. As a matter of fact, at the second meeting of the National League of Cities, there were two organizations: U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities. And the National League of Cities is the bigger one in terms of participants because they had department heads and not just the mayors, where the others, just the mayors. So anyway, I was active and I said to the mayors, “Let’s have a meeting. Why don’t you come to Detroit? If eight of you guys come to Detroit, eight of us went to New York and went to Chicago, went to San Francisco at one time and say, ‘We need these monies! It’s a federal—because we’re assuming a responsibility that’s broader than the cities, the cities should not have the financial burden.’”
And sure as hell, we got aid. We got aid from the Feds, about a year later. But the first meeting was held in Detroit and Mayor Lindsay here—the mayor of Chicago, he wasn’t one of the group, he was sort of an independent—but San Francisco was Alioto, and Los Angeles, I forget. Anyway, I gave each one five minutes, so there was eight of us, maybe ten of us—and, man, all the press and the TV—and we got that notification when we went to Frisco, and we told the people and the legislators in Congress about that. So federal aid—we finally got legislation passed by talking to Gerald Ford and talking to Martha Griffiths and talking to the community, by meetings with mayors and anyway, I became an officer and the fourth year in office I was President of National League of Cities. I enjoyed that very much, it’s a big operation.
I remember being there for the signing of the legislation and being the personal guest of Nixon and it was an exciting time. I really enjoyed being mayor, I’ll tell you, I wish I had stayed for a second term for many reasons, but for many reasons I didn’t want to stay, too. I had established a number of programs like the Little City Halls, and the police—crime went down. It was a safer community and people were starting to stay, and I was trying to get the education help to the extent that I could. But we had a good four years and it was okay for about six years, and then it started to go—more people started to move. When you have that sort of attitude, as they said, “If you don’t have safety, don’t have a school system, I’m living someplace else!” Same rent, same health costs—
NL: Could you tell me about meeting with Richard Nixon when he was president? You said you met with Richard Nixon?
RG: Yeah.
NL: What was that like?
RG: Oh, it was very exciting! It was exciting, press and all that. Washington—everything is news, cameras, and all that. No, it was very pleasant, and I was sort of surprised that he finally came—when we started this effort and we got things going in the House, cause Jerry Ford was there and Martha Griffiths, and then I spoke to Senator—Hart was then the senator, and, um, what’s the guy that—
PG: Reigle? Reigle? Were you looking for the other senator?
RG: Yeah, the other senator.
PG: Wasn’t it Reigle?
RG: No, it may have been Reigle at the time, I forget, it’s only forty-two years ago, forty-five years ago. Anyway, we got it going there and finally we had to get—cause the president was in sort of a “wait and see” [indecipherable] from his staff—we finally got him aboard, and so it was a pleasure. I was invited to—because I was an officer with the National League of Cities—I was invited to the meetings that the president would have in his cabinet room. And he appointed the—who was the vice president and then resigned?
NL: Um, Agnew?
RG: Yeah, Agnew. He appointed Agnew. In the first meeting we had in the cabinet room, he said “I want you mayors to stay in touch and I’m going to ask Vice President Agnew to be available to you people all the time.” So he was our entry into the president’s operations. And he was easy to work with except he disappeared in short order when he resigned. Once a year we were invited to meet with the president in the cabinet room and I was there starting with the first year, each time, and then the last year I was president of the National [League of Cities], so I was sitting right next to him in the cabinet room. Down there it was ex-Governor Romney, who was then head of HUD [U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] and I was next to the president and he’s at the end of the table—sort of a strange relationship [laughter], I thought.
But anyway, it was exciting, it was a great four years really. When you think back as to the responsibility and if you do your best and it works out, then there’s great satisfaction. I was satisfied in the fact that we turned the city around for a while, anyway, didn’t turn it around for twenty-five years but turned it around for at least ten years, and it was a good place to come to live and to be a citizen. Then things started to go down when good people, good people started to move out, people that had initiatives either with businesses or getting houses fixed and all of that. But if you get just the lazy ones or the ones that don’t do anything, then the good ones move out and that’s what happened to Detroit, unfortunately. Where is it now? Now it’s about 700,000 people [indecipherable] of a million three, in less than forty years, really—
NL: It’s about half.
RG: —they’ve been going for about thirty years. And the employees: I had 25,000 employees now they have what, 7,000? No maybe ten, it’s about maybe 10,000 now because fewer people are needed.
NL: Well, I guess, following up on that note, in your experience as mayor and your decades living in Southeast Michigan since then, what would be sort of your advice to Duggan and to other city leaders to help, either to turn Detroit around or help keep it moving forward in the direction that some things seem to start to be moving in?
RG: I didn’t hear the last part—be what?
NL: What would your advice or ideas be to Duggan, the current mayor, and the leadership of the city to help keep things moving forward—
RG: [Speaking at same time] Oh, the city, it’s like running any business that has 10,000 employees—period. You start with that premise and it’s a business. Well, the business of running a city, but if you just kind of analogize with a corporation or whatever you want it to be, and you have that many people as employees, you have to run them, manage them—like department heads—and that was my good fortune. I had the good fortune to find people, that had competence, that were willing to work with me. And that makes a difference, because sometimes you have competent people and they don’t want to move. But I got, as I say, some of the people, all the ones that were my appointees—and they all knew that if they’re working at my pleasure and only to the extent, [indecipherable] “you run the city!” For example, the Chief of Police, I said “Hey, I’ve got law enforcement background, I was assistant prosecuting attorney for ten years, then I was a city judge and I was sheriff,” I said, “But you’re running the police department and I want you to keep me advised as to any serious problems or major efforts. But by and large, you hire and you fire and you’re in charge of that but do it right and that’s all I want.” And they all did. When you have people—whether it’s running 1,200 at parks and recreation or eight people with the planning department—you know the city planning department has eight or ten people—it’s same responsibility: do the job and do it efficiently. And it works.
But you gotta have the people and I was lucky enough to have the people that made the city turn around. Jerry Tannian, for example, Jerry Tannian was one of the people in my office—I had an office of about six assistants sitting at my right hand, and Jerry was my coordinator for my law enforcement [and] fire department. He was a former FBI agent and I hired him when I became mayor because I knew of him and his work. As a matter of fact, it was Jerry Tannian—when the police chief left toward the end of my last year around September—I appointed Jerry Tannian Chief of Police because he was familiar with it and it was only about four months left. And I made him Chief of Police and he was so good that Coleman Young kept him more than three years longer than many of the—police chiefs last about from one to two years, generally, sometimes three, and Tannian with Coleman. Then as Jerry says, the FBI was checking into some of Coleman’s activities and Jerry didn’t tell Coleman Young. And Coleman Young got wind from somebody that the FBI was checking out whatever the activities were and he called Jerry in and said “Why didn’t you tell me?” He said, “Hey, I was in confidence. They told me in confidence, I couldn’t do it.” So he fired him. But that’s the way it goes. Jerry is an outstanding guy. He’s been practicing law. I still visit with my colleagues from time to time, and it’s a pleasure to continue to visit with them all after the years where they do other things.
NL: Alright, just one last question for you today. Bringing it back to the focus of this project is July, 1967. Many people categorize those events as “riots”. Would you use that word?
RG: Yes I would, yes I would. Yeah, what other words do they have?
NL: Some people have called it a rebellion or an uprising or a civil disturbance.
RG: Whatever description says it all. How can you say a rebellion when you have forty-three murders, fifty million [of] damages, fires—blocks and blocks of fires—that’s not a rebellion, that’s a riot. Anyway, that’s my view.
NL: Alright, well thank you for sharing that with us and thank you for sharing all your memories today.
RG: Pleasure, take that off. [Speaking to Paula Rewald-Gribbs] Is there any things you want to mention?
PG: Hmm, the only thing is—actually I was going to ask you a question, but I don’t know—it’s up to you, whatever, whenever.
RG: Why don’t you turn that off.
PG: No, no, no, no. You know what, I was curious because when you went and were working with Nixon, how was Detroit chosen for that Chinese ping-pong diplomacy for this term? The Chinese system changed, it has nothing to do with them and the reality of ‘67, so it was just from my own point of view. Why did Detroit get chosen as the first place the Chinese would come?
RG: The Chinese to come? I had nothing to do with that except that at that time, I don’t know who was in charge—
PG: It was the ping-pong championships.
RG: National ping-pong contest. Somebody in that contest, in that fighting, thought that it would be great for the city. I said “Oh, by all means!”
PG: Yeah, but this was considered part of a larger move by the Nixon a demonstration to normalize relations.
RG: Yeah, relations were terrible—
PG: So I’m sure that wherever they were going to go, the first appearance that they would make was very strategic, and I was just wondering—
RG:I think it’s a compliment.
PG: Do you remember did it have anything to do with the federation working on the National League of Cities?
RG: Maybe, all I can say is maybe. I think the city was on an upbeat—
PG: You had a relationship so that he knew about you and he knew about the city?
RG: Could be, all I can say is that I became aware of it. I said “Open up all arms!” You know, of course, because this is a breakthrough—I had forgotten it—for the first time when Nixon made contact with the Chinese and had a national relationship. And so when they came I said, “Let’s have a festival. Let’s have a dinner for them at the mansion.” I didn’t live at the mansion, but I used it for events like that. So we had a dinner, and I invited all of the officials of the ping-pong contest—they had it at Cobo Hall—and then they had the event at it. And you were about twelve years old.
PG: Yeah, a little bit older maybe by then, no I remember.
RG: Yeah, maybe [laughter]. That’s right, that’s right. And, it was great.
PG: It all started here.
RG: This is why being the mayor of a city, when it’s the fifth largest, was a wonderful experience. It’s all the people that—just think of that—that somebody from China was here in Detroit for the reason that Detroit still stands out and it’s the place to go and to make a ping-pong visit--first visit in the United States! In Detroit? Wow, that’s terrific! And that’s what leadership and good governance is all about “Hey, they’re friendly people, this is the place to be! They’re not antagonistic. They did have a little problem they called a riot but way past. It’s over, it’s now four years of stability and safety—and that literally means safety.” I forgot about that, I’m up in years. I’m no longer forty-years-old.
PG: One other question, really fast was—‘cause I don’t know if you covered this, or I think you might have just skimmed over it—at the time that you were running the campaign against Austin, did people talk about, did you talk about with Austin—were there debates? Did you deal with the issue of the riot during the campaign? Was it a big topic?
RG: Oh sure, oh sure. We answered any—it was an open question usually, the two of us before a panel of questioners or a group. We had, as a matter of fact, we had seven public debates for at least an hour each, each channel, we had three. And Channel 62, I think had three more by themselves, there were six or seven altogether. So we’d ask “Any questions?” I said, “We gotta heal any problems we had that caused the riots, and that’s illegality and that’s crime.” And so crime was and is still the number one issue, and then we have to keep the school system—improve that—and just answer the questions as they were posed. But it was always out in the open, particularly since you had a black man, for the first time, one of the two nominees for the final election.
There were about ten people, including remember Mary Beck—was from the city council—she was running and the former—Ed Carrey, Ed—another councilman, was running. Anyway, and me was the sheriff of Wayne county, he [Austin] was the auditor of Wayne county, and the two of us were the two that got the top votes. And I forget what the primary was but in the final vote, I barely won. The margin of winning was about 7,420, something like that, out of 400,000-plus votes. So it’s a teeny margin, it’s less than one percent, but it’s a winner. And it was that close because I like to think it’s two good men and I happened to get an edge on him, that’s all. Looking at the changes in the city, I knew we were going to have a black mayor after a short period of time because the majority of the people as the people are moving out, eighty percent were white and ten percent were black moving out—because they wanted to move out, whatever reason they had to move out. And by the time I left, I don’t know what it was particularly, but it probably fifty-five percent black by that time, in the four years, percentagewise in terms of the number of whites and blacks.
Anyway, good question, I’d forgotten about that. That was a wonderful event when the Chinese—we got national news! Now that was a big plus for the city that nationally they know that the first Chinese ever to come over here came to Detroit. And it’s like, “Oh yeah, did you build that building?” “No, it was during my administration.” [Laughter] Detroit Renaissance. Anyway, that’s it. Anything else?
LW: No.
NL: I don’t think so, thank you so much for sharing your stories with us today.
RG: It’s been a pleasure! As you can see, I like to talk.
NL: And that’s good, we like to listen.
RG: It’s a pleasure.
**Ric Mixter: Tony, can you tell me first your first and last name? So I have it on tape.
Anthony Fierimonte: I’m Anthony Fierimonte.
RM: How do you spell that?
AF: I was born Antonio Luigi Giuseppe Fierimonte. My mother thought I was going to be the Pope. She was mistaken [laughter]. Anthony Fierimonte. F-I-E-R-I-M-O-N-T-E.
RM: Tell me about your folks. Your dad did what?
AF: My dad, Pasquale Fierimonte, worked for the city of Detroit. The Department of Street Railways, which was the bus line. Streetcars and the bus line.
RM: What was his job specifically? What would he do?
AF: He was a mechanic and unfortunately one of his jobs was grinding brake drums that were made of asbestos and that’s what killed him. He died of —but I gotta tell you a story about my dad. When he retired – it was in the sixties – he retired and got a job somewhere else and then he retired again, but he wanted a new house. And he informed me that because the city of Detroit hired him and gave him a job for all those years, what he’s gonna do is build a new house in Detroit. So in the sixties he built a new house in Detroit. And he told me, “Son, you’re a policeman now and you've got to do exactly the same thing. You've got to live in Detroit.” So, I bought a house about eight blocks from him in Detroit. And he was so dedicated to the city, it was amazing.
RM: I’ll bet.
AF: Really, really nice.
RM: What age was it where you thought, “I want to put a badge on.” When did you become –
AF: Well, I went to Pershing High School and I got so many tickets from speeding and stuff. I really said, “Boy, I’m in trouble.” And there was a police cadet program that you could start at age 17 and then you worked in different police stations, in downtown and headquarters. And you answered switch boards and bank alarms and all kinds of stuff that came into the switchboard. And I said, “Well maybe if I became a police cadet I’ll quit getting all these tickets" [laughter]. But my buddy’s father worked in a cruiser called “the Big Four” and there were three plainclothes officers and one uniformed driver and he told us stories about the Big Four. And they had DeSotos or Buicks, while all police officers had Fords. So I thought, “Boy, this is great!” So that’s really what— It was Mr. Jepson. I remember his name and I applied for the police cadet program and I made it, and I started 17 in the police department.
RM: Woah.
AF: Right out of high school.
RM: Now, you took it very seriously, because I saw you were first in your class when you –
AF: Yeah, I was scholastically and that was a lot of fun.
RM: Why was it so important for you to achieve like that?
AF: I just – I wanted to be the best at whatever I did. And I said, “If I’m gonna be a policeman—” Oh! I gotta tell you another story. So there was an Italian inspector, Pete DeLuca, and he used to live with my dad in a rooming house. And he said to me, “What precinct would you like to go to? I can send you anywhere you want.” And I said, “It doesn’t make any difference.” And he sent me to the tenth precinct and I worked the area where unfortunately the riot started. But I said that and so, therefore, that’s where I ended up.
RM: Describe the city at that time, what was happening?
AF: Oh my god. Great! It was the biggest single family residential city in the United States of America. And there were probably between 1,400,000 and 1,600,000 people at that time, so vibrant. And the black community came in Detroit [during] World War II because there were jobs here in the factories and stuff. And that’s how Detroit became a terrific city to live in and I just love Detroit, it was great. J.L. Hudson’s downtown, the toy department on the twelfth floor [laughter] and we’d take the street car down there. And it was just a great place to live.
RM: What was the department like was it becoming more integrated at that point?
AF: That’s really interesting because I actually became a police officer in 1962 and they just started integrating [squad] cars. So having gone to Pershing, where [it was] half black and half white, I didn’t understand this integration as being a problem. Yet, a lot of white police officers really fought it. They didn’t want to be part of the integration. Some police officers quit and I just didn’t see any problem with it. So, we got integrated and it was a slow process, but it worked. It worked because later in the ’67 era, the Federal government started having civil rights classes for police officers. Plus, the Law Enforcement Assistance Act (LEAP) started paying for college if any police officer wanted to go to school. And then when you went to school, they taught police service in the community and race relations and slowly it broke the ice. And I was so excited; I signed up for the first class and went for 16 years until I got my doctorate [laughter]. And I really appreciate the federal government. What they did and it was just wonderful. And it really helped break the ice for the police department.
RM: And still in the city there were dark sides, where you needed a VICE team. And you kind of gravitated towards that didn’t you?
AF: Yeah what happened, I had about 40 or 50 days on the police force and a sergeant, Gus Cardineli, pulled over one day – I was walking the beat on Twelfth Street, no PREP radio, by myself, no problem. And he said, “Hey kid, you want to go undercover?” I couldn’t believe it! I had 50, 40 days on the job. I said, “Absolutely!” So he took me under his wing and he says, “Show up. You’re going to be arresting prostitutes, going at the illegal gambling casino, blind pigs where the illegal liquor is sold, and you’re going to do that kind of stuff. And oh my god, I went home just jumping up and down with joy. It was just great. We worked every other month nine at night till five in the morning and then on days, we looked for numbers men. Do you know what numbers men–? Numbers men is just like when you go in and play three numbers. It was illegal then and the people would go around and say, “You want to bet today?” and they would give them a quarter or fifty cents and they would bet three numbers and then at a certain time, based on horse races, they would calculate different horse races and come up with a number. Now, the number was the mafia number. The Italian community ruled that. They ruled that for probably about 15 years, but half way through that there was the black Pontiac number. There was a black number and a white number and the numbers were different. It was supposed to be the same scenario [laughter]. I think when too many bets came in on a certain number, they changed it. I don’t know. But anyway, that was on the day shift and on the night shift we did the other thing and it was really exciting.
RM: Was there a bigger crackdown when Cavanagh came into office?
AF: No. I've got to correct something. Every precinct had a “clean-up crew” that did this type of thing: liquor enforcement, beer and wine stores selling to minors, bling pigs. Every precinct had one, white community and black community. It wasn’t singled out for just the black community at all. And I've got to admit to you, working in the black community was twice as much fun as working in the white community and I’ll tell you why. Because as we made these raids and stuff, they would go along with it and say, “Hey, you busted us. This is it.” And I did eventually go into the white community and do the same thing, and they always had a friend who was a judge and a police commander or lieutenant and “you can’t take me in. It’s going to be the end of my life,” and I said, “What B.S.” You know? It was much more fun in the tenth precinct. And that’s the true story.
RM: Can you explain the Blind Pig, what’s the origin of the name?
AF: Yeah, it started during prohibition because you couldn’t get booze anywhere, so people – oh I don’t know where the world started “blind pig” but that was the nickname they gave it in the prohibition days. And this is what’s happening with Detroit which was really kind of exciting. The Baptist ministers, especially the black Baptist ministers they were all tight with any administration it was, Cavanagh, Cobo. Who was the Italian mayor? Miriani. And what they would do, they would say, “Hey you've got to stop these people from doing, going drinking all night, you know, we’re the church.” And so they made sure all the bars closed at 2:30, liquor quit being served at 2 o’clock, so you got this element saying, “This is it, come to church tomorrow” then you got this other element saying, “I’m not ready to quit drinking I want to have some fun.” I always wondered what would have happened if the city would have allowed bars to be open until 4 or 5. Las Vegas of course does, some other cities, Florida allows – you buy a longer license so you can stay open till 4. But they didn’t, the Baptists were strong, so you had this dichotomy. And so we were told to enforce the law, and that was the law. You couldn’t do anything in that venue after 2:30 in the morning and you had to be licensed. And now a blind pig you could, mostly to sell liquor, then a step up there was prostitutes and you could go in a room and do whatever you wanted the prostitute to do. Then there would be dice tables and you would gamble and you could do all that stuff in a blind pig. Any time somebody took a cut of the money it became illegal and that gave us the right to break in to rescue the undercover officer that was inside the place. So we would give him, after we saw him walk in the door, we’d give him five minutes to make a wager or buy a drink and see the guy accept money, see him take his cut, gambling table take his cut, and then we would raid the place. And it was, from ’62 when I started, to the riots, the night of the riots July 23, 1967, a crowd would gather when we made a raid it was something to look at, you know. But we never had a problem. But the country was getting tense and things were happening all over, and a lot of the black community was unhappy [with] what was happening. Because they felt they were segregated and they couldn’t get employment that they wanted, and they were stuck in, apartments that had been cut up and one apartment became two. And just a few people had air conditioning in the hot summer nights and they would go out on Twelfth street and Linwood and Dexter and they would go out to see what’s happening and it got out of hand.
RM: You sent in two officers in to the one that happened in ’67?
AF: Yes, yes, we had a Sergeant Howison who told me he would kill me if he ever saw me again [laughter] he was a relief sergeant, he was a patrol sergeant but he was filling in for the night. I was the crew leader and we had two black officers, Charles Henry and – my mind just went blank.
RM: That’s okay.
AF: So, Charles Henry and [flipping through notes] I’m not going to tell you ever [laughter]. Joseph Brown. Charles Henry and Joseph Brown. And Charles Henry ended up becoming a commander, and he was a really, really nice guy – and I don’t know the career of the other officer. Sergeant Art Howison stayed in the patrol. But I've got to tell you a side issue, so now Congress calls the police commissioner in Detroit, I’m guessing Ray Girardin—no it wasn’t Ray Girardin. Anyway the police commissioner, the number one guy, he was an appointee, and Sergeant Art Howison went with him to Washington, DC to testify in Congress and Sergeant Art Howison was really clever on the way back I believe on the train, he asked the commissioner if he could have permission to live out of the city, because at that time nobody could live out of the city, police or fire, and he gave him permission. So I was always, wondering what if I would have gone along, I could be living on a lake somewhere, in a cottage but anyway. He was a fine sergeant, and all the guys were great, really great.
RM: The day you went in, what was the cue that you guys could come in then? Did you have wireless?
AF: I had an informant, and the informant, I would, he would give me stuff, you know, you work with informants and you gave him breaks because you've got to barter. And he says, “I got a hot party going on tonight at 9123 Twelfth Street, Twelfth Street just north of Clairmount, two buildings, upstairs,” and so got together with Henry and Brown, and I says, “Hey, let’s give it try, you go down there and see if you can get in.” They did and they couldn’t get in so then they came back and I says, "You know what, wait ‘til some beautiful ladies go up to the door and go in with them." Sure as heck, they got in. So then it was real simple, all we had to do was wait five minutes and they knew they either do it or come back out, you know. And they actually were able to get up there and make an illegal buy and so I says, “Hey this is easy we’re going to break the door down," so we went up and we, just four or five of us, because we had no problems with blind pigs, and we couldn’t get the door down. We couldn’t break the door down. And you know, now they have all those [gestures a ram], but then we didn’t. And the fire truck happened to come by and says, "You wanna borrow our ax?" and I says, "No, you do it," and they were able to break the door down. So we went up these tall flight of stairs and we go into the room. We expected 15 people, 20 people. There were 85. 85 in a room that fit, tops, 40. And we went in and announced, “Police, everybody calm down it’s a raid, dah dah dah dah dah.” And they started throwing cue balls at us, there was a pool table. So I grabbed my police officers to pull them out of the opening into the hallway and other blacks held onto the black police officers. "You’re not taking anybody to jail!" [laughter], they meant well. Anyway, we got them out there, we closed the door and they started throwing things out the window. Chairs, throwing cue balls and they drew a crowd so then we had a PREP – I think we had a PREP by that time, PREP radio – and I called for a paddy wagon, you know to take the prisoners in. And I says, "I think I’m gonna need two or three paddy wagons," I says, "They’re really a fight in there." I could hear them fighting. And the dispatcher says, "We don’t have enough personnel in the city,” honest to god truth I can’t believe this, “to send you the paddy wagons.” We have 204 – I learned later, we had 204 police officers working the whole city of Detroit, 1,600,000 people. And we had 5,000 police officers at that time, but it was a weekend and all kinds of people got time off. I don’t know, I don’t know. So, they had a special patrol force, these are people just out of the academy that are being trained and the sergeant that is in charge of the patrol force heard my calls and he came with the men, and then the cruiser, remember I told you about the cruiser, they pulled up and a crowd gathered and somebody broke the back window out of the cruiser, the Buick—great looking car—and it got out of hand. We finally got paddy wagons and we loaded the paddy wagons and took them into the tenth precinct, which was brand new on Livernois and Elmhurst, brand new police station. We were at Joy and Petoskey before in a building that was built around 1900. So this was such a nice improvement and I told one of the police officers, go into the deli on the corner and call us on the phone every once and a while and tell us what’s going on. And I go into the police station with the prisoners and Lieutenant Ray Good, I’ll never forget this guy loved him, older gentleman, and I says, "Boss, you better get out there. There is a big problem brewing." and he said to me, "Fierimonte, you’re always exaggerating, every time you do something you exaggerate." I said, "Boss, I’m telling you, go." He says, "You know what I’m going to 5 o’clock mass, I’ll stop out there and take a look, but you know Tony, I’m wasting my time." Half hour later he comes in he’s bleeding from his forehead, [laughter] somebody threw a stone at him, "Fierimonte, I’ll never talk to you again! What did you do, you dumbass? What the hell is going on?" Anyways, he then started the ball rolling for MO4, which means calling all police officers in. A huge crowd had gathered and they started to break in to these stores. Now what was interesting, I consider it a riot; I don’t consider it anything else, because unfortunately they broke into black businesses, they broke into white businesses, they started stealing everything out of the stores and then the mayor was notified and he went out there with Senator, god who was it, state Senator. I think he’s still a state senator.
RM: Levin?
AF: No, no, no, black senator.
RM: Oh.
AF: Conyers! Could have been Conyers. I’m almost positive. And they gave the order, don’t shoot, be cool, just let it go. That was the order they gave them, and word got out. Word got out, and suddenly there’s, you know, 50,000 people on Twelfth Street just helping themselves to everything. I think part of what they said was okay, but part of it was not, because people started dying. They got into a fight in a meat market, looting the meat and they hung one of the guys on a meat hook, and killed him. Then on Seward and Twelfth was a liquor store, and while they looted the upstairs, some guys went down to get the cases of booze downstairs and the guys upstairs put the place on fire and everybody in the basement died. And that really started to escalate, and the most – I’m jumping ahead a little bit because this was a 14-day situation. I’m jumping ahead a little bit, but picture this: when the fire department came out, they would shoot at the fire department. So on Linwood – and I have pictures of this for an eighth of a mile – on Linwood they were breaking into the stores on Linwood and then they would set the stores on fire and then they would go down Pingree to put the stuff they’d taken into their homes. Now you gotta understand, this is very important, this was probably ten percent of the people in the community. This wasn’t everybody. I mean all kinds of blacks came up to us, saying, "Please help us" and ten percent of the rioters, easily, were white. It was a festive occasion but it was deadly. Then every single house on both sides of the street for an eighth of a mile burned to the ground, and I have the pictures and everything. And it was just mind boggling.
Now I want to lighten this up. So two guys stole a Munzt TV with a stereo and a radio. These were really long – you probably got them in the museum here, and they got into a fight. One guy split the damn thing in half and the other guy called the police. So, that was the easiest two arrests ever made. [laughter] Another thing, they went into a carpet store and stole a ream of carpeting and put it on the roof of a Volkswagen and all four tires splayed out and it was just funny and tragic at the same time. Now you've got to remember the majority of the black community wasn’t involved in this but then you've got to look at it another way, they were destroying the stores in their neighborhood that they had to shop in and a lot of people in the neighborhood – it was a poorer neighborhood – didn’t have cars and they had no place to shop to. And this lasted for years after all this fire and everything. I became an anti-sniper, working 12 midnight to 12 noon and I got that silly police car that I loved with no back window. And we put a piece of plywood under there and we put a Thompson submachine gun on the trunk and we were supposed to shoot back at the snipers. Trust me, I couldn’t hit anything with that machine gun, if I had thrown it at them, maybe I would have hit it. That thing danced all over the place, it was a .45 and it was a joke, you know. Then a company called Stoner lent us weapons that could go through brick, and they brought in a special squad, dressed in all black who – they would go out, if somebody shot out a window they’d shoot back. 47 people died during the riots in 1967, but what really stopped it was not us. The State Police couldn’t stop it, the National Guard couldn’t stop it, the 101st Airborne came in from Vietnam and they brought tanks and the tanks went down the street, and I only have one story about the tanks that I was involved in. We had somebody shooting out of a church steeple and we were at Davidson and Woodrow Wilson, and south was the church steeple, we could see the flashes. And the guy opened the lid on the tank and said, "Block your ears," and he shot the steeple right off the church [laughter] with the gun and once that started happening and, there was you know, military in there and they treated it very aggressively, everything stopped. Now if I can go aside for a minute there was something else to think about, a year later unfortunately, Martin Luther King got killed and the instructions from the police department – I was 28 when that happened – was to take enforcement action immediately and within two or three hours everything had stopped and nothing happened. There was no problems, but for the first two or three hours there were. They were looting on Grand River and everybody’s coming home from downtown Detroit out Grand River to the Redford area and everything stopped. So, you know, it’s easy to Monday morning quarterback, do you go back and say, "Well we shoulda done that," you know. But Cavanagh was feeling for the community, you know, and they were suppressed and they note they had problems with jobs and a lot of it exists today unfortunately. You know it amazes me that there isn’t even good bus service to the suburbs so people can take a bus and get a job in the suburbs, a lot of people would like to do that. Now I know Detroit’s making a comeback and I love it and the community, it’s going to be strong and great but it’s going to take time. I went on to become an adjunct professor at Wayne State University and I taught Police Service in the Community and some race relation classes and when they put my name on the syllabus they would say police officer and I’d get 98 students because what police officer could say anything about race relations? We had a ball. We had a ball. We did a lot of role reversals and all kinds of really neat things and it was so much fun. And when I got my doctorate, I had retired, and I started helping troubled police officers. I worked with a physiatrist in St. Clair Shores and then when the patients would not show up, because police officers have a tendency to not show up because they don’t want to deal with the problems they have. I started investing in real estate and that became my third and final career, I have a Fierimonte Street in Clinton Township, we built a couple hundred condos, I was a small partner —25 percent— shopping centers, built a restaurant called Tony Pepperoni’s and retired from there moved to Florida and now I buy condos on the intercostal, fix them up and sell them. I’m on my twenty-ninth one.
RM: Wow.
AF: I did volunteer work in Broward County, Florida, which was really really nice, it was in a major crisis situations I worked with the families of the deceased. And I’m also on the Pension Board for the City of Deerfield Beach and three other organizations. I don’t wanna bore you to death.
RM: No, you’re not.
AF: But, I’m 74 years old and the police department was the greatest job I ever had. Really the greatest
RM: Tell me a little more about when the tanks rolled in. What did the Police Department feel? What was the feeling of this massive military force was coming in? What were you feeling?
AF: Great relief, really great relief. It was, we needed it. We couldn’t handle it, it’s just sporadic shooting and you’re driving down the street and suddenly somebody’s shooting at you from a window and they came in. Now, there was a Lieutenant Bannon, he retired as I think a deputy chief, now he could hear radio communication between people. The Panthers, you remember or have you ever read about the Panthers? So there were groups and they’re organized to do the shooting and everything. And I always wondered what did they think it was the end of the world? Now the flip side of that was there were some police officers, I know one that got fired, who thought it was gonna be the end of the world, who thought we were gonna rule the community with, you know, all force. But the Black Panthers were a big issue with the sniping.
RM: Let’s talk about once the tanks came in, you said you saw the one steeple get blow up?
AF: Yes
RM: Did you see that it was starting to calm down at that point?
AF: Yes, it really calmed down quickly, in a matter of I think three or four nights.
RM: Wow, and then what happened? How did—?
AF: Everything got back to normal, it just ended. And that’s how they happen that way today. They just end. You know the Rodney King thing in California, they do 3-4 million dollars’ worth of damage and then it ends. And, did Rodney King deserve to be beat up that night, you know? It’s up to the courts, that’s the court’s decision to make not a policeman’s. That’s how it goes.
RM: Was there a grudge by the police then because of what had been happening?
AF: Yes, after the ’67 riots there was a grudge, and that’s when the Federal government came in and there was some great reports, the Kerner Report on the riots and all kinds of instructions of how to quell – how to improve the relationships between the police departments and the community. Now, I gotta tell you an interesting story, when Coleman Young became mayor in 1974, the black community was seventy percent of the population and in the police department they were thirty percent of the population, so I mean something to think about. I had the honor of working for Deputy Chief Frank Blount, who is deceased now, and he became one of my best friends, and he wanted to make that right. I proposed to him and the mayor at a meeting that we hire – they were laying off at Chrysler Corporations in ’74, the gas crisis and everything – I said, "Let’s go after the black community those people that worked at Chrysler for 5, 10, 15 years, let’s hire them as policemen." I says, "You know they’ve got a proven track record and everything," and the mayor said – it was his call – "I got elected by the people of the City of Detroit and I don’t care if somebody was arrested once, let’s lower the qualifications, let’s hire the people off the street, that’s the people who voted for me," and I always think that was a problem because why not go for the best? But he felt we’re going to hire black people that live out of Detroit? Should we do that, shouldn’t we do that?’ And he made it clear we’re not doing that. And I got involved – if I can go for a minute – I got involved in Boston Bussing, Judge DeMaso ruled that they had to cross district [bus] in Detroit. So they sent me to Boston with Deputy Chief Frank Blount, Sergeant Vivian Edmonds and two other officers and we talked to the police department there, how did it go, what problems did you have? And one police officer that was on a motorcycle between buses as they were being crossed district, somebody threw a brick out of a window. It didn’t hit him, but he died of a heart attack and so the Boston Police Department was up in arms a little bit. But, Boston is segregated. The Italians, the blacks, and the Irish, they’re segregated geographically because there’s water between the neighborhoods, and there was a third way. And I’ll never forget this as long as I live, I went up to an Irish superintendent, I mean he was like number one, and I says, “How do you feel about blacks being cross district into your schools and your neighborhoods?" He says, “Blacks? We don’t even want the Italians!” [laughter] I thought this is great, you know when I teach college, this is going to be great. You know, it was a great response. It brings back a lot of memories.
RM: I’ll bet. What happened right after the riot?
AF: They decided they had enough of me at the tenth precinct. I don’t know why. [laughter] So they sent me to the fifteenth Precinct on Gratiot and Connors and there —
Oh I've got to stop for a minute. So, my mother was from the old country and my dad, and my mother didn’t want me to be a policeman. So I told my mother because I took business in high school, and I knew how to type, I’m a clerk in a police station. [mimics Mother] “Bless you son, bless you. You have this wonderful job, don’t go outside. You could get hurt. You can get hurt” And then the riots broke out [laughter, mimics mother] “I should spank you like I used to when you were young!” But I got transferred to the fifteenth precinct and I worked plain clothes, I was a patrolman still, I applied for a job as Chief of Police of Clinton Township, MI and I came in number two and there was an inspector in the police department that didn’t get accepted and nobody could believe it. Anyway, I didn’t take the job, I had no choice. But interesting how I didn’t get the job, there was a black constable working the black community in Clinton Township, this is a good lesson, and they says he’s been there forever, we’re going to become a police department, would you make him a police officer and he’s really good with the community. And I had been reading managers associations on police departments and how to organize them and everything and I say, "Yes, I definitely would, but he’s got to pass the basic test." And I didn’t get the job because of that answer, they wanted me to say, "Of course I’ll make a policeman out of him." What I should have said is, "Yes, let me train him, let me talk about how to pass the test, let me work with him, and we can get him through, once he qualifies." I made the wrong answer. And they told me why I didn’t get the job and that was why. They hired a Police Sergeant from Grosse Pointe who ended up stealing from the property room, you know where evidence is stored. He lost his job. I then applied for Chief of Police in Lighthouse Point, FL and I came in number one. 300 applicants. I was a Lieutenant and came back and I told them I’d accept the job and I hired an attorney to do the negotiating, Calkins was his name, and they started calling me at the Detroit Police Department. I was Head of Staff for Deputy Chief Frank Blount, and somebody cut out an article in the Sun Sentinel and sent it to the Chief that I had accepted this job and Frank Blount got wind of it. Oh my god, between him and my mother! My mother: "You can’t move, you can’t leave, you’ve got two sisters here to take care of. This is terrible how can you do this!" I says, "Ma, come to Florida it’s a great place, you’ll love it down there." “No, no, no. You can’t go.” I turned the job down, but I got two more promotions from Coleman Young, I became an Inspector and then a Commander. So I was number 3 out of 5,000 men. That wasn’t bad. But there was a lot of Commanders, it’s not. But, I went to the fifteenth precinct and suddenly they asked me if I wanted to work white rackets, clean up, morality, or whatever you want to call it. And I said sure. But it wasn’t as much fun like I said previously. Everybody, "You can’t do this to me I’m important,” you know, “I’m this, I’m that.” But I did it there, then I was sent to research and development as a writer and I stayed there a year and a half and I became a detective and got transferred to the fifth Precinct. Then three months later I became a sergeant – you had to take tests for this. And sure enough, they put me back in morality in charge of this crew and then I became a lieutenant of special operations which included all that stuff. Then I went to work for Deputy Chief Frank Blount, then I went to the FBI Academy, I did three months there, session 112 they call it. That was an honor. And that’s about it.
RM: How about the police department itself in ’67 did you see a big change? You mention all this stuff coming from the federal government to kind of change the mentality a little bit?
AF: It was a very slow process. Very slow process.
RM: What did you see?
AF: When affirmative action started, they would take an exam. People would take an exam, and if you were an officer in the first ten then they would pick an officer that was 40 and promote him over you it became embitterment, really, really — you know. And Frank Blount used to always say, “I got all my promotions by being on top of the test and I earned them” but the mayor had a point because we gotta get supervisors of the black community as supervisors to even out the score card because every time somebody called the people it was all white. So it’s a tradeoff, and it was a slow process. Let me ask you a question, what do you think of the police department now?
RM: It’s tough for me because I’m from Saginaw, I don’t follow this close.
AF: Oh are you? [laughter]
RM: Yeah, I’ve got family members that are officers.
AF: Do you?
RM: Yeah, so I guess I’d be a little more jaded. Do you think it could have been done different? Would you have done anything different during that blind pig or during the time that you were there?
AF: Well, we made a raid, a crowd gathered like always, but suddenly they started breaking into windows and stuff and stealing, and they never did that before. So how can you do anything different, you know? And when we made raids after that, it was totally different. There were a lot of police at the raid and – we didn’t even have uniformed policemen when we made the raid. There was nothing to it, just nothing to it. It was just a "hey you’re drinking, you got caught, you’re running a blind pig" and we would normally take the engagers to court, the ones running the place.
RM: A lot of the same faces then? Would you see a lot of the same people?
AF: Yeah, mostly in the numbers rackets you’d see a lot of the same people. And, I was working with a guy nicknamed Harry the Horse and we caught a guy with a stash of numbers and money and stuff. And he says, “Hey you can’t arrest me I know Harry the Horse” and he was talking to Harry the Horse [laughter] stuff like that, you know. We had great cooperation, remember, all of our information was coming from the black community, so they wanted these places closed down because they couldn’t sleep at night and it was in residential neighborhoods, with the exception of the one on Twelfth Street, but still there were houses right behind it, you know.
RM: People might think that riots are inevitable, if you look at what’s happening in Ferguson. What are your thoughts on that? With people and all the studies you’ve done.
AF: You know that’s a good question and that’s one I don’t have the answer too. I really don’t. Now there saying that the Ferguson Police Department is too white, you know, but how many black citizens applied for a job to be a policeman. That’s another way to look at it too. And can you pass the qualifications?
RM: Do you think the police are under fire?
AF: Oh! [nods head]
RM: Do you see that at once every kind wanted to be an astronaut, a cop, or a firefighter? Do you think that’s true today?
AF: No, not at all, it’s dangerous. Not because black or white, because of dope. You get people on drugs and they need a fix. I mean they kill you even though you start to give them the money, they’re so jittery they’ll kill you. And that’s the biggest problem. You know, forget about race. In Detroit the crime is high, Flint is higher, right by where you live in Saginaw and it’s the drug issue over and over and over again. I always wondered if we would legalize this stuff in some kind of orderly way so they can get it, would it really make a big difference and stop a lot of these crimes, it’s an interesting issue.
RM: Tracy mentioned, when I first started talking about you, that you came to the museum and said, "I started the riot!" How do you fit into all of this, what do you feel?
AF: I was sitting at home flipping through my scrapbook for the first time in ten years and I says I wonder if anybody would be interested in hearing my story” and I went to — I forgot where I went. I was talking to somebody and he says, "Go to the Detroit Historical Museum. They’re really down to earth and nice people, and they’d like to hear it." So I called and I talked to Adam Lovell and suddenly they were interested because they were going to do this presentation in 2017 and I met them with Joel Stone and we talked for an hour until they got sick of me and they says, "We’ll get in touch with you."
RM: Why do you think it’s so important to preserve this, this piece of our history?
AF: Well, to learn from our lessons, of course that’s always the case and we gotta put all these civil disturbances all together and come up with a way to put a stop to them. Because the end result: nobody wins, nobody wins. Communities are destroyed, businesses are gone and nobody wins. And that’s why I’m here.
RM: What did I miss? Is there anything else, I mean what’s the number one thing I can’t miss when we tell this story? What do you want, I guess you kind of put it in a nutshell right there.
AF: Yeah, don’t forget the comedy part, because there was a lot – Oh! I got another one but I don’t think you want to tell it. [Laughter]
RM: Well, let’s hear it! I’ll be the judge of that. [Laughter]
AF: We were, there was an African Antiquities place and they broke in and as I’m running down the alley after one of the guys he turned and threw a spear at me [laughter] and I still have the spear! [laughter] Course it was funny at the time but I felt sorry for the business owner, they had destroyed the place, and it was a black owned business, you know
RM: It’s hard to put any kind of, I guess any kind of reason, into a lot of that isn’t it?
AF: No, it is. They’ve – all the fires, you know. The fires have been a big thing in Detroit, at least the day before Halloween it’s kind of subsided, you know. And everybody loves this new mayor, so I think if he tears the burned out houses down —and look at the renaissance of the Grand Boulevard area and Downtown and its exciting, you know.
RM: So you think something was learned in ’67?
AF: Well, it never happened again. Never happened again. Wait let me knock on wood [laughter, knocks head].
RM: That’s awesome.
GR: Well I was born ironically about a mile from here on Warren Avenue between Hastings and Rivard Street and it’s now Chrysler, but anyway I was born in 1938, April 8, 1938. I lived there for the first eighteen years of my life. My first memories of growing up there ironically were the riot in 1943. I remember that distinctly because I was about five years old and at that time Detroit had a lot of fruit trees in our back yard we had a lot of fruit trees, so I was playing in my backyard and I heard the noise around front and I ran around front and my mother was standing on the porch and I saw this crowd of black men on the other side of Warren Avenue and they were throwing bricks at cars that you know had white folks driving in them and so I stood there in shock and then my mother let me go and so she ran down to the side walk and a white guy had been hit and his car had been hit and he came out of his car bleeding and my mother directed him to behind our house. That was the juvenile detention home, still some of it is still there in existence, but she directed him to that to get away from the crowd and the crowd ran up to my mother and I distinctly remember this, they saying something to my mother but she said something back to them and they turned and left. But I mean at five years old, it was embedded in my life so that was my first memory.
TV: What were you feeling during that? When that was all going on?
GR: I was kind of fearful of it at that instance — and I don’t remember too much more I think right after that instance, my mother might have made me go inside in the house, but I remember after the riot had subsided she and I took a walk along Hastings and because we had lived there for 10, 15 years so my mother was known along the strip there and my dad was working in the post office, which was you know a pretty good job, obviously, at that time, but he had died in 1940. So like I said, we walked along Hasting Street and then I came on back, but anyway that was my first memories of growing up in the city of Detroit as a kid.
TV: Wow.
GR: And like I said I was only less than a mile from the [Detroit Public] Library, the Art Institute so my friends now, this is what we did, we spent a lot of time in the Institute of Arts you know we would walk, we’d stand there and watch the mummies of course a very big exhibit and the knights, they had the horse and they had the I guess that that’s still in existence at the museum, I haven’t been over there in years, but it was so fascinating to me as a kid growing up and I think that it impacted my life because culturally I think I’m tuned to that because of how I grew up in the Art Institute and the library.
TV: I’m going to put you alright we’re rolling.
GR: Do you want me to continue just talking.
TV: Absolutely.
GR: Okay. So growing up here, like I said, me having been born and I lived in this community, so my friends and I and I have a dear friend now he’s deceased his name was Ron Milner, he was a local playwright, a black playwright, probably Detroit’s most popular playwright, such and such, but we grew up as kids went to high school and elementary school together and we often talked about how important this community was because he became a great writer and we used to talk how much time we spent in the library and in the Institute I mean the Institute of Arts I mean we used to call it – what did we used to call it? Anyway, but Detroit at that time had almost two million people there so it was quite busy and we had a lot of activity going on in the neighborhood unlike like the situation might be now, but I was a paper boy and when I turned 12 I became a paper boy and I delivered papers along Hastings Street you know which again the popular street in Detroit for the black community. And I had two blocks on Hastings Street with my paper route and I often talked about the businesses that are black businesses and how important it was to us culturally and it wasn’t a lot of robbery we had a lot of ways to make money we called ourselves hustlers not in the negative sense because we were always hustling things. That was during the time when we could sell newspapers to the fish markets, this what they wrapped the fish in, we could sell coat hangers to the cleaners, you didn’t find a lot of glass and materials in the street you know iron, steel, things were still being recycled shortly after the war ended so we had a lot of ways to make moneys, and growing up as a kid, shoe shined, we had a little portable shoe shinning stand, we’d walk up and down Woodward Avenue primarily or one of your major thoroughfares trying to shine shoes, but it was just a lot of activity that was all positive growing up because it stemmed from I think the cultural awareness that we had as people growing up then it was a lot of dancing a lot of singing a lot of festivities. Every week there was a reason to celebrate for some reason so Detroit was a very, very stimulating city during those years and for myself like I said I just loved being – having said that I was born in Detroit when I ended up in the military. We often talked about how important Detroit was during the war years this was the Arsenal of Democracy and Defense, so I personally took a lot of pride in the fact that I came out of Detroit especially like I said when I went to the military because prior to that during the school years we celebrated after the war, after the Second World War. On our bikes we had flags, people had decorated their cars with flags as a matter of fact there was a lot of businesses selling flags. You know you would drive down the street and there was a person that had a stand on the street and they were selling flags. It was a very, very enriching time in the history of Detroit, so I’m happy that I [was] able to experience that like I said I’m 77 now. I see Detroit, the growth, I see the newness of it I enjoy it, I relish it, and I welcome the change that’s happening. Some people seem to say that it’s replacing the old, and that’s how life is you know. The new replaces the old, the young takes the place of the seniors and this is what’s – our generation is come and gone and Detroit will be a city that is gonna be driven by technology it’s not going to be a city that was driven by just muscles and labor as it was when I was a kid again during my formative years up until the seventies and eighties you could still get jobs in Detroit; there was a lot of industry, but now the technology is taking over so that’s what Detroit is of the future it’s a town with technical design and people that can understand the importance of education. So again I guess we’re talking about how Detroit was and like I said I experienced the one riot in ‘43, but when I came out of the service in 1960, I started working at the post office.
TV: Let me ask one quick question going back because you had mentioned you were born around Warren and Hasting Street, which we all know now is the Chrysler Freeway, so how did that, was your family still living there when that came in? How did that impact your family?
GR: Oh no, well I went in the service in 1956 and they had just started demolition starting the whole process of demolishing that community, so my mother and them, they moved over to the west side near Henry Ford Hospital in 1956, so that’s when the Chrysler freeways was built during that time, but when they moved over on Kipling Street about two blocks from Henry Ford Hospital off West Grand Boulevard and Twelfth, so when I came back in 1967 we would call it a riot, but really it was a rebellion , because in ‘43 it was a race riot, but in ‘67 it wasn’t a racial riot. It became racial in the sense that the black community was attacked by the police and you had National Guard men came in and they did some things that was uncharacteristic you know for law and order people. But anyways the riot in ’67 I remember that, and the irony of that was I was on my porch in ’67 with my mother when it first happened, because it happened – it began on Twelfth street which I was only living two blocks from Twelfth street and it was a neighborhood a grocery store that one of the Chaldeans owned it at that time, it was on the corner of Poe and Pallister and that was one of the first stores that was hit that Sunday morning , because that’s where, you know they started doing some milling around that Saturday night, from my understanding was that Sunday was when it really broke and like I said the grocery store around the corner from us was one of the first ones that the alarms went off, and then it was a party store on Delaware and Woodrow Wilson — which again is only a couple blocks from where we were standing, that alarm went and we noticed it was ringing and the police were not responding to it so myself I went up on Twelfth street and I was sitting in front of St. Agnes church which still sits there on the boulevard – I mean on, where it’s Rosa Parks now but it was Twelfth and Pallister and I was sitting there that Sunday morning and I was watching the crowd, they were milling, they was coming down, this was – I noticed black and white guys carrying – distinctly saw them carrying couches down the street because it was – you know this community was integrated, you still had whites and blacks that were living in that community all around that Twellfth Street. So it was not racial in the sense that blacks and whites were attacking one another, they just took over the town, you know, I think it was one of the situations where most the police department was off enjoying the summer and it just happened at that time when they could not respond and then it became racial that Monday, I remember distinctly because like I said I was a mail man. I delivered mail out of a north end post office which still stands on Milwaukee and Woodward and my route was down on Leicester, Kenilworth, and Owen. I delivered from Woodward to Oakland, but my friend, another friend of mine, his route was on Virginia Park and that was where they had the infamous Algiers Motel. This is where the police officers killed these three black men in the motel there, and that Monday — I think they shot these boys that Sunday they said they found them in a room with some white girls from Toledo, Ohio. I think it was, but anyways the police officers August, Prieve [Paille], and Sincy [Senak] I believe that was their names. I remember Officer August distinctly because on my route there was a school down on Leicester. I think that was that school, Algiers school and the National Guard had their equipment down on the school grounds and these police officers was there protecting them from that standpoint, but August —these guys were police officers— and I remember that Monday when I saw him, no it was a Tuesday because we didn’t deliver mail that Monday after the riots, that Tuesday, when I went in to deliver mail I saw that, and I remembered his face because they publicized him all doing the town investigative of the killing, but it was horrendous the way they did these guys because one of the boys’ body was on my route at the funeral home the Wilson Funeral Home on Owens and Brush, I think it was. But, the undertaker there he told me that the boy’s body – I mean he said they shot down – he said the boy was on his knees in the begging position because they shot through his arms through his groin to his, you know to his private areas, but anyways it was just terrible, that was the worst thing about the riot from my standpoint. But another thing that I had on my route was a fellow named J. Edward Bailey. I think that was his name he was a black photographer and he worked for Detroit News and a friend of mine who was a coworker that Monday after the riot we didn’t have to work that day. We came to the post office and they told us to go home, etcetera, so this friend of mine he had a car, I think he had a Ford, he had a convertible and so we got in his car and we decided to ride down Twelfth Street you know because everything had subsided you know they came in and the police — and so we were riding down the Twelfth Street and I saw Mr. Bailey walking and I knew that he was a photographer so I called him and he came and got in in this friend of mine’s car and what we did, he had the convertible and so Bailey was able to sit in the back seat and take shots until some guy saw us and he told us to stop because he said it would be kind of dangerous. But, anyway so Bailey got out the car and we left and we went and drove around the city just looking at some of the scenes, but anyway Mr. Bailey ended up winning some award he had some of the only or some of the best pictures that was taken of the riot and I quit shortly thereafter the riot I resigned from the post office , but prior to me resigning when he found out he won that award I jokingly told him that he needed to give me some of that money that he made. But so those were some of the major memories I have of the riot again that Algiers Motel Incident and having one of the boys’ bodies was on my route. I didn’t view it, you know, but again it was not a race riot it was a rebellion it definitely was a rebellion and a lot of the instances that happened from my understanding is that a lot of the store owners set those building on fire because it was an insurance factor. As an example, I had on my route it was a pawn shop that was on the corner of Owens and Oakland and as a mail man often times I needed some money, so I had a little diamond ring and I would pawn my little ring and I’d get it out, and just then I had pawned my ring prior to the riot and when I went back there to get it the pawn guy he said that I lost my ring in the riot so I mean, that happened and I couldn’t tell him – because he had insurance that would cover the losses and a lot of the things that people supposedly lost they kept themselves in a lot of the pawn shops.
TV: Really?
GR: Oh yeah.
TV: But his store was still standing he just said he was looted.
GR: Right, right, he said that when he came in and it might have happened, I don’t know but I’m saying I know I lost my little diamond ring, I didn’t do any looting, I got looted you know? But I mean I knew people that supposedly got a lot of loot out of it and some guys, a good friend of mine said that they were driving down Grand River around Oakland, I think Oakland Boulevard, and when they got at that corner some people broke into – it was a jewelry store, Meyers I think it was and so they said they parked their car went in there and looted also, so it was a lot of that happened like that. There was a lot of looting done in the early parts of the day but I know that they talked about snipers. I know the only snipers, actual snipers that they took out of there were some guys – some white guys that was on the corner they had a house it was over on Euclid and La Salle Boulevard. It was a nice, stately home. They had tanks in front of this house because these guys had some weapons and they didn’t have shotguns, I mean these guys had rifles at that time and it was unusual, but it was not a lot of black snipers. I mean you hear people talk about the snipers, but I don’t think that they could convince me that there was black snipers; it might have been someone up there trying – but I know that that was one group of – and these were some white guys that were radicalized you know because in Detroit at that time you had a group called the White Panthers who were similar to the Black Panthers, they would challenge the community— I’m not saying that these folks were but what I’m saying is there were a lot of radical white guys and John Sinclair, these guys came out of the same struggles that blacks came out and they had a lot of philosophies. Yeah but that was one incident, you know what I mean, one thing about the riots is characterized by the sniping and it was not a race riot.
TV: And it’s interesting – I’d like to know a little bit more about – you mentioned it was not a race riot but you mentioned a couple times that it was a rebellion, could you talk a little bit about what made it a rebellion?
GR: Yeah it was true because, again, they had a group of police officers called STRESS, Stop The Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets, and the concept was good you know, they need something [unintelligible] but anyway and these guys, their primary job – I think one of the police officers’ name was Peterson, I think he ended up shooting three, four, five people. But, what they would do is the police would take advantage of us in many ways and STRESS was one way they would try to set you up – if you stopped to ask them for a cigarette they would – you could be accused of attempted robbery and you could get shot dead, I mean these things happened and it wasn’t like every day some people you know but it certainly happened and police you know were doing the same kind of thing then that you here about police officers doing now with the exception of they’re killing more blacks now shooting black but you know they took advantage of us if you were a black male and we didn’t have a lot of black police officers at that time. And because at one time, we had an incident over on the east side in Detroit the police station over on Jefferson, this is after the riot when some black police officers challenged some white police officers with how they were brutalized the prisoners and so that was one of the things that came out of the riots because we ended up getting more blacks on the police force because I know – I was working at the post office three guys that I worked with the resigned from the post office and got on the police force.
TV: Really?
GR: Oh yeah, because it was very important, our generation would go around and police ourselves, you know, and right now it seem like you don’t have that same kind of attitude about your police department. You have some complaints about your police departments and you should want to police your own community and that was what was and because again because we came out of the revolutionary mindset supposedly and that was one of the things the self-governance: who you wanted to police you and so that was one of the facts that led to the riots because folks were working, there were jobs, there plenty of them you know you could get a job. The brutality they inflicted on us and the lack of movement and we was restricted in a lot of ways to certain areas only but you know it never was a race riot it was it definitely was a rebellion because folks were upset, very much so.
TV: So you were so you had mentioned that you went in the service in ‘56 and you got out in ‘60 then you came back and started working for the post office?
GR: Exactly.
TV: Were you living with your mother?
GR: Yeah right because I didn’t get married until I was 60 years old you know. I had kids out of wedlock. So I stayed with mom because we had a two family flat and it had an attic apartment so, which it was great for me because I was single and I didn’t want the expense of the house, and when I stopped working at the post office and I started working at Motown you know, I left the post office in ‘67. I went to school when I went to Fleetwood and got injured then I started at working at Wayne County Community College and when I graduated I moved out to California I worked at Motown you know for—
TV: Motown when it was in California?
GR: No I started here yeah.
TV: Oh what did you do for Motown?
GR: I was just the road manager for some recording artists.
TV: You were just the road manager?
GR: Yeah right, but which was great because like I said having grown up having been around so much music culture that was what I gravitated towards. You know I was always singing and I played in my high school band and sung in its choir and I came out of Northeastern High School that I refer to as Motown University simply because so many artists from Motown went to Northeastern. Barry Gordy had attended, I don’t think he graduated, but so yeah and it was always — and like I said this fellow Ron Milner who I spoke of earlier today we talked of that even he was a writer and he wrote for Motown but Barry Gordy – Motown started right around the corner from my house on St. Antoine, it ended up moving to the Boulevard, but Barry Gordy’s fist business was right in this neighborhood here but this is where it all started, it’s all about the culture Motown came out of the cultural community of Detroit. See it didn’t just spring out of nowhere it was a reason in my opinion that Motown because there was a theater called, the Warfield Theater. It was comparable to the Apollo. Barry Gordy, I thought, I think Barry played piano there on one of the empty shows and Hastings Street and his father his family were business folk, so it was a lot of reasons that I think Motown developed in this community because again it was part of the — because right now they call it the cultural center back then it was just the neighborhood but yeah.
TV: So you started with Motown after ‘67?
GR: Yeah right I started with because a fellow a friend of mine at the post office his name was Freddie Gorman and Freddie was a mailman he and I was in a high school band together and he was one of the writers on the song “Please Mr. Postman”. He wrote that while we were carrying mail.
TV: Really?
GR: And so he started singing in the group The Originals and there was some songs that were moderate successes and so he asked me to come work with them after I quit the post office and I said well ok and I thought about it and I went there with the guys and I loved it and I fell in love with it because it kept me close to the music and I enjoyed that role that I played and then I did that for like two or three years with them. Then my son was born and I went back that’s when I went back to school was when my son was born and I stayed there for a couple years and when they moved out to California they asked me to come move out there with them and I went out there with them and I started working with Lamont Dozier , Holland- Dozier-Holland fame, you know. I worked with Lamont and worked as his road manger so it was just great, but it all started from that day on the cultural center, where we are now.
TV: That’s amazing. Any really good road stories of being on the road with them?
GR: Oh yeah, some things. One story I like to tell, first time we went to New York with these guys, we were playing at a— No, this was in Newark, New Jersey. And we were playing with this guy, he had a bar and my job as the road manager, normally I just sit in the dressing room, but this guy had an office; he didn’t have a dressing room and so the guys had to change clothes there and one door in one door out. And so they went out there and when they were getting ready to perform and they had a shake dancer on the show— you know a female shake dancer— and so when she finished that you know the guys went out there and they did there show. And so we’re sitting there and I’m sitting there and she walked and disrobed and started drying her clothes with a towel! Well I had never been around nothing like this before, so I found champagne bottle and so I picked up the champagne bottle and poured her a shot and threw it down to drink, but it was champagne cologne, so they started calling me “Champagne Ram” after that. You know? But, I mean there are a lot of different things some things that I won’t, I can’t talk about, but yeah it was a lot of fun I really, really enjoyed it and like I said I lived out there it was Lamont , Holland-Dozier-Holland fame and he exposed me to a lot the activity that I normally wouldn’t have seen got a chance to go to Hugh Hefner’s house. Aretha Franklin cooked a dinner for us, met Boz Scaggs, Henry Mancini; it’s just so many folks that I was able to say I was in their company. Have Henry Mancini say, “It was nice meeting you, George.” [laughs] “Come on Hank.” So yeah, have a lot of good memories of my life at this stage and I’m writing about these things you know that I’m sharing with you. So that’s why I’m so enthused about what you’re doing here I think that it’s so great for you to encourage folks to talk about the riot and other aspects about their lives and such you know.
TV: Okay, so you were in California, so how did you get back? I mean you’re here.
GR: Well, I got, you know, like I said my youngest son, you know I had two boys, but my youngest son — I had him out in California with me when he was five. I thought that his mom was going to let him stay with me, but she wouldn’t she wanted me to bring him back and I brought him back and I really didn’t want to, because I enjoyed being a father. My dad died when I was two, you know. So I really missed that aspect. So, I was out there, I stayed out there for him until he turned seven, no, six or seven. So I just had to come on back. I came on back to be with my son. And then you know I’m happy that I did, but I you know, I was disappointed in the guys because I didn’t move out to California just, you know just – I mean you enjoy the sights, back then during the seventies it was a much different community, a much different world even, but I always wanted to do something that was a little more satisfying to me. Once they stopped traveling, they didn’t want to travel, they didn’t want to sing, so I said let me come back to Detroit. A friend of mine had a television show and I started working with him and I started working with some folks developing television WGPR television. Yeah, it was just getting started then, so I had an opportunity I had just gotten a very fast a broadcast license. I had a license, so it kind of fit right in there and then with the entertainment background I had I always wanted to do something with television. And when I was in California, I was in the minority writers’ workshop, when I was in California, Warner Brothers sponsored it and Lamont Dozier he ended up marrying a woman named Barbara and she had been a secretary at Warner Brothers and one of her jobs was reviewing the scripts. And so she and I she knew that I had been writing for a little bit, so she convinced me for us to sit down and do a movie to try and write a movie. So we did that and we got registered with the Writers Guild, but we never did anything with that. I enjoyed that you know I enjoyed that writing and I enjoyed things of that nature you know I enjoyed what you’re doing and enjoyed, so I just had a great life.
TV: How long were you at WGPR?
GR: Well, I wasn’t with them I worked with another fellow that I worked with Jim Ingram. He worked with a television show that aired on WGPR years ago which was great because we interviewed Rosa Parks, we interviewed a lot of— because Jim was a very articulate guy very community oriented. He had been deputy chief of police. He was one of Coleman Young’s earlier supporters, so I mean I was on his coat tail, so we had a great show, I mean a great television show. And then Jim died unexpectedly in 1994, but yeah, so I came back to get involved in what was happening here in Detroit. Like I said love it that’s why I love what you’re doing and what’s happening here with the city of Detroit you know the future looks good.
TV: Good. Anything else you want to share any thoughts about today, lessons learned if any from 1967?
GR: Well, again the thing that I hoped would come out of that even with these turbulent times that we’re going through now that still you know Detroit is still a great city you know America is still a great place to be, you know. And when I joined the military, in the interview I was doing through the Library of Congress, I told them I didn’t join the Air Force which I did for four years, I didn’t join it because I was black I joined it because I was an American and that’s how I view myself and that’s how I view everybody that’s a part of Detroit or anywhere else is being American. I’m just pulling for America.
TV: That’s great. Well I don’t have any more questions for you.
GR: Okay, yeah I appreciate it.
**ZS: Okay. My name is Zachary Shapiro. Today is November 19, 2015 and today we will be interviewing Reverend Wendell Anthony for the Detroit Historical Society’s 1967 Oral History Project. We are holding the interview at Fellowship Chapel in Detroit, Michigan.
Can you please start by telling me where and when you were born and when you moved to Detroit?
WA: Originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Was born in St. Louis in 1950 and I moved here with my mother in 1958. Went to Detroit Public Schools — Central High School, Durfee, Roosevelt — and joined the St. Marks Presbyterian Church and the rest is history.
ZS: Why did your family decide to move to Detroit from St. Louis?
WA: My mother did. I stayed in St. Louis with my grandmother. I didn’t want to come to Detroit so I stayed, all my cousins, relatives, friends were there. My mother remarried. She came to Detroit so naturally I had to come with her.
ZS: Would you like to briefly describe your parents and family?
WA: Well, I have a great family. As a small boy I was raised by my grandmother in St. Louis in a small town called Kinloch, a lot of relatives. We were not middle class. We were kind of poor economically, but rich spiritually. I don’t regret any of my childhood experience. I wish my own kids could have experienced some of what I experienced as a child because I enjoyed every moment of it. My cousins and I lived in a little red house on the hill down in the basement and we had a very good life. So that’s where I got a lot of values. Church being a part of that all day experience and then coming to Detroit later on when my mother remarried and meeting a guy by the name of Jim Wadsworth. She joined the St. Marks Presbyterian Church and I followed that and connected with him. He was very much involved in the community. As a matter of fact he was president of the NAACP, back in the middle-sixties and was instrumental in helping Coleman Young become the first African-American mayor. So, that was a part of that. I used to come up here on the train. My grandmother would give me a shoe box filled with food — pound cake, pie, chicken — and with a note "Wendell Anthony for Detroit," pocket full of change, so I could get some pop. We called it soda on the way. And then when I stayed up here, my mother would, when I went back to St. Louis in the summer she would do the same. Put a note on my chest, "Wendell Anthony St. Louis," shoe box of food, pocket full of change. My grandmother and cousins would be waiting on me and that’s how I spent my summers and school time period so for me it was a great learning and growing experience.
ZS: Alright. Could you talk about where exactly you grew up at in Detroit and describe what living in that area was like while you were growing up and what the neighborhood was like and everything?
WA: Two areas basically. When I first came in we lived in an apartment over on LaSalle and Elmhurst near Central High School, near Tuxedo. Apartment life was good although there wasn’t a whole lot of play space, but I had a few of friends over there and then we moved to Linwood and LaSalle to West Buena Vista near Davison. I remember going to the old Avalon Theater, which used to be at Linwood and Davison. I used to go there every Saturday basically at that time. I used to go in the show for fifty cents and I would take bags full of goodies and you have two movies, cartoons and previews and we would stay in movies all day basically. So, Linwood I went to McCulloch elementary over there and nice neighborhood a lot of trees played running, football, baseball in the streets and on playground. There was a time period in which folks could sit on their front porch and you could do what you want to do until the street lights came on. Street lights come on everybody had to be at the house. So Linwood, LaSalle, pretty much in the Dexter area.
ZS: Dexter area, alright. Could you talk about where you went to college and what you studied in school and why you decided to study that?
WA: I went to Wayne State University from Central High School. Met a guy by the name of Noah Brown Jr., who was the first African American vice president at Wayne State. He was very much committed to young people. He got me in school, gave me a job helped me to go to Africa. My first trip to Africa was in 1970. I was not quite sure what I was going to study. I wanted originally to be a lawyer because at that time period Ken Cockrell Sr. was the preeminent lawyer around here and every young brother who was thinking about anything wanted to be like Ken. Ken was so brilliant in terms of his articulation of issues and his use of the king’s language and he bamboozled so many people by his wit and his brilliance so we all wanted to be like Ken. I thought that’s what I wanted to do. But then I was always in the church. I was with Reverend Wadsworth and I did not know how strongly that was weighing upon me but the church seemed to be able to give me everything. The church really helped me to go to Africa. We raised money — we were originally gonna go to Africa in '70 through university, but the trip fell through.
ZS: What country?
WA: We were going to go to East Africa we were going to go to Tanzania and Kenya but that trip — and Wayne State University was planning that trip — Brown was going to send us but the university could not — something happened and that trip fell through, but Noah Brown said, “Y’all still going,” Talking about me and Ron Massey, a guy that came through school with me. I was president of the student council at Central High School. He was president of the senior high class. We graduated together and so we were very close and we also got involved and we went to Wayne State. We were in Project Fifty at that time. Came in in the summer worked and all of that. So he said, “Y’all still going,” so he called all his friends he said I want thirty dollars from you, thirty dollars from you, thirty dollars from you. Talking about that time was like Horace Sheffield, it was Judge Wade McCree, it was Blaine Denning, it was used-to-head-of-the-Urban-League; I’m looking at him and his name will come to me: Francis Kornegay. All those guys gave us thirty dollars and then the church Rev. Wadsworth raised the rest and so we got binoculars, we got tape recorders, and some friends over here contacted some people over there and instead of going to East Africa we went to West Africa. We went for a month. It was the best experience I ever had. I’m so glad that Wayne State’s trip fell through because we went to Ghana and to Liberia for a month. That trip was only two weeks, Wayne’s trip, but this trip was for a month. We had a chance to stay in the homes of the poorest to the the mansions of the president of the country. And so we were really hot on Black activism back then, because this was in '68, '69, '70. We graduated in '68 right after the rebellion and so we were still talking about Black history classes and Black folk needed to be a part of everything that went down and we needed power and economic — the same thing folks talking about today. And so to be able to go to Africa and to see all of this was mind blowing for us. And so that was a part of it those were the countries and that experience really has mirrored this experience.
ZS: Did you say what you studied, what your major was?
WA: What I majored in was political science. Originally I was going to law school, but having met Wadsworth I decided to go into another law, this law, His law, which is higher than that other law and so I decided to go into the ministry because the church was doing everything. It’s where I learned how to speak publicly. It’s where I first met my wife. They supported me in school. They did everything and so it just seemed that no matter which way I turned there was a church and that’s why — let’s see I went to Wayne State, I went to Marygrove college, majoring in pastoral ministry. I have a master from Marygrove and I also went to the University of Detroit [for] advanced studies in black political theology.
ZS: Great. Okay, so again what year did you say your family moved to Detroit?
WA: Fifty-eight
ZS: Fifty-eight, okay so —
WA: Well, that’s when I moved here. My mother I think she came maybe in, I would say '55, '56 and then I settled here because I stayed in St. Louis. She came, started working and got remarried and then I came maybe three years later. Because I mean, I was still coming up here, but I didn’t come to live until 1958 because I didn’t want to come here. I wanted to stay in St. Louis but had to go where mama went.
ZS: And how old were you roughly?
WA: I was eight.
ZS: So I guess from 1958 through the sixties we’re talking about now, can you just describe what you observed as the relationship between the city of Detroit, your community, and the city government and the police?
WA: Well, it was a rocky relationship obviously because I grew up under the “Big Four.” You familiar with the “Big Four”?
ZS: I’m not.
WA: Yeah you probably wouldn’t be. The “Big Four” was four big burly white police officers that would ride around in a big black car, a or blue car and they would tell you to get your ass of the street and they would beet down Black people. And we would call them the “Big Four” because that’s who they were. You didn’t have a lot of Blacks on the police department — basically none back in those days, fire department same way. And so you didn’t have a lot of ownership of Black folk. So it was a trying time. Plus it was the sixties, fifties and sixties, era of Dr. King, you know, Civil Rights, voting rights back in that day we would see the Civil Rights marches and dogs biting folk on TV every day. Vietnam was popping and kicking and so it was a real activist time. Motown was strong. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," Stevie Wonder, 4 Tops, Supremes and all of that. So it was really hopping in Detroit and a lot of people had come and migrated to Detroit, Black people, for obviously for economic relief. So we were here, saw all of that. We wanted more Black history in our schools. Because I remember when I first started Central High School in '64 protesting about the fact that we didn’t have Black history, Black studies, like we should. We did walk-outs. I was a part of walk outs, which is a part of the reason I was matriculated to the student council.
ZS: Because they weren’t teaching about Black history enough?
WA: Not the way we wanted and they weren’t — It was not emphasized. And the sixties, that was a time when all of this going on like what you see going on at the colleges, Living Out, MSU [Michigan State University] and Howard and Mizzou, that was going on back then because the same thing you see going on now was going on then. Sit-ins shutting down universities; this is not new. It’s almost like reliving what we went through back in the sixties, which is a good thing because it shows this generation of young people ain’t dead, ain’t oblivious to what’s going on, that they are paying attention that they are in it and now it's their turn, so they going to make their own mistakes, their own gains, but it’s their time, so do something with it. So, that’s what was going on at the time and which propelled us to the — I guess moving us towards ;67 and —which should not have been a surprise for anybody. Because if you couple what was going on with Dr. King, his assassination, his march in Detroit in '63, Detroit being the first place where he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech downtown, and birthplace of the labor movement, UAW [United Auto Workers] and I can remember the excitement around that, and John F. Kennedy being president, I mean, which gave us some new hope and insight that maybe here’s a guy that’s going to come in and change some stuff, which he tried to but he didn’t live long enough to really effectuate change. And when you saw all the things that were going on down South it affected us and so being up north, it was no bundle of joy because we had our issues to: Detroit, Chicago, New York, California. So, a lot of issues were happening in cities all around this country, not just in the South, but here too so all of that impacted what we were going through.
ZS: Could you talk specifically about your memories of the events that took place in the summer of 1967?
WA: I remember seeing the smoke, the streets with tanks coming down them. I’ll never forget that I saw the corner stores — we lived on Linwood and Buena Vista near Davison. I remember the curfew and all of that and burning up on Twelfth Street because our church, St. Marks Presbyterian Church, was up on Twelfth and Atkinson and I had friends that lived over there who were right kind of in the thick of all of it. But I remember seeing the tanks come down Linwood. I remember Governor Romney and I think [Mayor Jerome] Cavanagh on Linwood. I remember Romney coming down with his sleeves rolled up — not his son, the daddy, his son was totally different than the daddy. I had a lot of respect for his father, because his father, former Governor George Romney, had a sensitivity. As a matter of fact, he started the HUD [Housing and Urban Development] program, he was the governor that helped initiate that and I think when he went to DC. And he started the Michigan Civil Rights Commission. So he was very sensitive, unlike Mitt; I don’t know what — he didn’t fall of the tree; well, he fell off but he might have fallen off on his head or something, I don’t know what the hell happened to him. But at any rate, his father was much more sensitive than he is, appears to be. So I remember seeing them comedown Linwood.
ZS: They were giving a speech or what was it?
WA: They were trying to calm, just being out there showing that they were concerned, telling people to kind of calm down, just their presence I think was demonstrative of the fact that they were not oblivious to what was happening, because you had these police officers with real long guns. I remember them standing out in front of stores because people had broken windows and they would get out of these cars and I guess trucks and stand in front of the doors. I remember because we had a curfew and I was looking out of my window over at 2683 Buena Vista, it was the address of the house, and I was looking out the window to see what was going on and I remember this officer, this police, taking this long gun and he turned it and he pointed it right at me and I immediately closed the curtains because I didn’t know if he was going to shoot me or not.
ZS: Was it a police officer or the National Guard?
WA: It was a police officer. He had a long, long gun. Different than the kind of gun they have today, I don’t know what kind of gun it was, but it was just a long-ass gun and he was pointing it at me. I will never forget that. And that came as a result of discontent and folk called it a riot, others called it a rebellion, to us it was more of a rebellious in terms of what was going on as opposed to just riots for the sake of riots and out of that it emerges a new Detroit to address some of the economic social ills in the community and I think the following year, the next year, the year that I was graduating from Central, and being a part of that and having experienced that, that heightened my level of consciousness to the degree that I began to focus in on the social economic needs of our community.; I remember in '68 Reverend Wadsworth asked me to do a youth day at Fellowship Chapel. Our church had split in 1966. St. Marks. He was a pastor at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church; that church split. I went, we went, my family went with Reverend Wadsworth. It split over his activism in the community. People didn’t like him being active with the NAACP. Interesting. And they didn’t like the way he related to the community. Because Twelfth Street was real popular; you had Twenty Grand, you had all these black businesses, you had pimps, prostitutes. He didn't have a problem talking to the pimps prostitutes, but the Presbyterian church in those days was very conservative. And everybody couldn’t get with that. And but he was his own man, and so it split eventually and so we went with him and Fellowship Chapel was formed in 1966 and he and I were very, very close and as a result of that I began to be more and more in tune with the church and all of that. The way that happened was he would give us tests. I was in his Sunday school class. He would give us tests like, you know, who was this character? What’s this person’s name and how do you spell this? And one Sunday he asked. “Who in the class can spell Nebuchadnezzar?” and so I was the only one I raised my hand and I spelled it and he was so excited and was like, “How did you know that word?” Because you know Nebuchadnezzar isn’t an easy word and so he gave me a little gold cross with a metallic base and I thought that was the end of it. Well, during the service in worship he said, “Before we leave today I just want to tell you all something, Wendell Anthony,” I was sitting there with my mother and I was like what did I do? Because I thought I had done something. “Wendell Anthony” and so he said, “Stand up Wendell.” and so I stood up and I was what in the world, he said, "We had a test today and Wendell Anthony spelled Nebuchadnezzar and you all know that’s not an easy word, give Wendell Anthony a hand.” And everyone the whole church I was blown away from that one word from that moment on we were like this together for 28 years. My point on that is that you can never know what you can say to a young person or someone else that’s going to make a life changing difference and it did, because from that point on there ain’t nothing you can tell me about Jim Wadsworth, he was the man. And so we continued to grow together and there was a group of us that kind of hung with him but I would walk to church and walk home in the winter from Linwood and Buena Vista to Twelfth Street and Atkinson, which is a little ways. My mother would sometimes go with me, drop me off, we would come together. She would leave and I would stay until the end of the service just to be around him and that continued when we split and he said we going to have a you know our first youth day in '68 and I want you to be the youth day speaker. Well, my theme was the Black church in revolutionary times. Dovetailing off what had happened, dovetailing off Dr. King had been assassinated and all that and my thing, was the NAACP wasn’t really as relevant as it should be. And so I remember that and so I spoke and some people left the church when I got through and because I’m 18, I’ve got fire. I’m throwing the stuff out there. I used to wear a leather dashiki and a bullet in St. Louis and that was my M.O. and so but on that Sunday I wore a black suit and a white shirt but I didn’t change my dialogue and so when I got through some people left the church. I never knew that until years later Reverend Wadsworth and I were having a conversation and some kind of way it got on the early days of the church and he said you know, “Remember Dr. Smith,” I said “yeah” he said, “You know he left the church back then,” and I said, “Yeah, I knew he left him and his wife and his family." He said, “They were big donors,” I said, “Yeah” and he came to me and said and he wasn’t the only one who said, “Either him or me.” “What you mean either him or me?” Meaning he said, “That young man that you had in the pulpit here, he said some things that kind of disturbed me and Jim”, that was what they called him “Jim, either he’s got to go or we going to go," meaning they wanted me to get out the pulpit and never have nothing else to say. And so the Rev said, “Well, you know the church is a place where I think young people, even though we may not agree with them, should be a foundation, a platform, for them to speak and to be raised up and I know we don’t always agree with what they say or how they say it, but I think that it should be something where they’re able to come and do that and therefore I think Wendell is going to stay.” So, they left. I never knew that until years later. Now, if he had eaten chicken and said, “Oh, I didn’t know he was going to say it. I ain’t going to never have him up there again because I don’t want to lose you all as members and certainly the ties and offerings that you bring,” you and I would not be sitting here today, but he didn’t eat chicken he stood up, and as a result of that we’re here and now I’m president of the NAACP, which I used to be twelfth term, 24 years, which I never thought I’d be doing.
ZS: Going back to something you mentioned a little bit ago you talked about how you called the events of 1967 a rebellion as opposed to a riot. Can you talk about why you would refer to it as that?
WA: Because it was a response to what many folk felt. The only way you can get certain folks' attentions is to do things of that nature and it was now some people might have used it for their own means, but other used it for means of expression. It’s interesting because back in that day there were — when Dr. King was having his marches in various cities and a news person asked him, “You know, Dr. King, you are having all these non-violent marches and then you see these riots.” The press called them riots. Rebellions places like Detroit, LA, Chicago. There were 125 cities that went up in flames during the time King was having his stuff. And so he said, “you know,” Dr. King response to that was, “Yeah, I understand that and I still believe that peaceful non-violent assembly is the best way to do this but it would be contradictory or hypocritical for me to talk about non-violent protests over economic issues if I don’t at the same time talk about the root causes of why they occur. So riots are really the language of the unheard." That’s what Dr. King said and I think that’s the way many of us view the rebellions, the language of the unheard. You’re not necessarily getting at the — by having a press conference the attention of folk that will make a difference because as a result of that New Detroit was created, structure with business people, political people, community people to address the social, economic, and political concerns of the city of Detroit. Funds were created to do economic development. Race relations were then beginning to be talked about. The whole issue of police controlling the city being an occupying army. And as you know that’s what certainly lead to the propelling of Richard Austin to run as — you may not know — as the first black mayor for the city of Detroit. I remember wearing a button saying “Black Mayor 1969.” We wanted Richard Austin, who was the Secretary of State, first Black Secretary of State for Michigan, real good guy ran but unsuccessfully, but that’s who we wanted. And then a few years later you have Coleman Young. We move from the “Big Four” to S.T.R.E.S.S., Stop the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets. That was the decoy unit that was formed by the police department. They killed about 19, 20 people and they were decoy units set up to trap Black folk and community people into criminal behavior and in most cases they would have folks guns were planted on the people they would have folks in certain positions where they had to make certain moves and then they could take them out, so it was a very detonating unit. And Coleman Young came in vowing to eliminate S.T.R.E.S.S. and to integrate the police department and the fire department and to make Detroit much more representative of the community in which it exists and a lot of us support it. That’s how he became mayor, he rode that horse into public office and so that’s why.
ZS: You mentioned viewing the police as an occupying force. Were the police viewed that way prior to the rebellion?
WA: Absolutely. Yes. Totally. That’s part of what led to it. And most of them don’t live here. Didn’t live here. The sad commentary in all of this is that we are going back to that. Residency means something. Residency means that you have a stake in the community. Well, the police were white for the most part. They came in in the morning and they left in the afternoon, meaning you didn’t see them and so they didn’t have no stake in the community. They would view us as like folk they had to control and contain not citizens or people or neighbors or friends or Mr. Jones' children or Mrs. Smith’s daughters. These were just indigents that they had to contain and control. So that’s why residency was so important and it’s interesting that the Kerner Commission report that came out 60 years ago in that time period says that residency is most important and we’re losing that. Now we don’t have residency, so what we fought for we fought for affirmative action. We don’t have that anymore to the degree that impresses upon the community and the police department in that those things are good but the president’s commission twenty-first century policing now says that we should have that, that it’s important for police officers in a community to have relations through the report following the situation in Ferguson where they oppose a board of police commissioners. Now they say they want a board of police commissioners controlled by the local people and so we go through these circles. On one end we saying we shouldn’t do it and were saying we coming back to doing it. The Kerner Commission also stated that the police should not be utilizing these militarized equipment and looking like they are on patrol in Beirut or the West Bank or in Syria, because these are American citizens, these kids don’t have no bazookas and tanks. I mean they had rocks and most of them ain’t even doing that and so we’re simply saying that and they didn’t follow the edict of the Kerner Commission report. It was not forced. President Johnson did not push it like that. It was done most folks didn’t read it. But we’re repeating the same stuff in it. And unfortunately we’re going back now and so things changed and things remained the same, so that’s my response to your question.
ZS: Alright great and you also mentioned what was the unit?
WA: S.T.R.E.S.S. (Stop the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets).
ZS: Yeah and you said they were setting people up planting weapons on people and things like that.
WA: They was killing people basically.
ZS: And this was a very well-known thing in the community?
WA: Oh yeah everybody knew it.
ZS: You think that this was a factor that led to the rebellions for sure?
WA: Well they had the decoy units, the “Big Four.” All of that. The lack of African American involvement and representation in the police department, in the fire department, Black business, the fact that you had folk who felt that they were being exploited in their own communities, the high prices, a lack of jobs, all this all these factors led to this. It was not just one, but it was several factors that had a piling on effect and so at some point it’s like water behind a dam and there’s a crack in it. Pretty soon the pressure is going to bust the whole thing wide open and that’s what happened here.
ZS: Now I guess switching over to after the events of 1967. Could you talk about what you think were the effect of 1967 on the city in the years after and even leading up to today?
WA: You said after '67? I think — well, after '67 there was a heightened sensitivity on the part of some that we needed to do some things in Detroit that we had not done before. That there was great division between the races, that the leaving, the exiting from the community, the lack of economic empowerment was a factor and it coupled with that — and you still got all of this stuff going on in the country. You still see the lack of opportunity for Blacks, the demonstrations, the lack of voting, capability and access, so all of those are still factors, national factors, that weighed in on the city of Detroit, it’s no different. You had King coming here, you had the fact of his death, his assassination and what that meant to a lot of people. You had [John F.] Kennedy’s assassination, you had Robert Kennedy’s assassination. So all of those were things like saying and you know who ever is standing up seems to be taken out by certain people and so all of those are factors and I think with Coleman Young’s election that certainly changed some things in Detroit because he began to build a coalition of people and the first thing he said is I’m going to have an administration that’s going to be fifty-fifty. Fifty percent white folk, fifty percent Black folk. Now it’s interesting, no white man ever said that before. Coleman Young said and that pissed of a whole lot of Black people too. “Like man they ain’t never said that why you coming at it like that?” So that’s what he did and so a lot of folk forgot that he said that and he did that which, you know, saying that all of us should partake in this, unlike his predecessors. And things began to happen: the police department began to be integrated, S.T.R.E.S.S. was eliminated, economics began to develop, later on the Renaissance Center began to emerge, up until the time I think he called Reagan “prune face” and then stuff kind of went south because we didn’t get a whole lot of development from funds from DC. He had to go through his friends Max Fisher and Al Taubman and those guys. Coleman had a great relationship with Bill Milliken, who was a former governor, republican, and a lot of us supported Milliken. He was a very fine guy, different than these guys today, these Republican governors I mean they’re off the chain, but he was reasonable. I mean I voted for Milliken because he was a good man, he is a good man; he is still with us. And he was a good governor and they don’t make them like that too much today unfortunately.
ZS: I know you touched on this a little bit earlier, but you just explain again how and why you became involved in the NAACP?
WA: Well, a lot to do because my mentor Reverend Wadsworth was a part of it. We used to sell tickets for the Freedom Fund dinner we used to sit out there in the audience with my mother from the church we had a table see the big fellows up there on the stage and it just matriculated. Joanne Watson, who lived next door to me on Buena Vista, she was head of the Central High School NAACP and I was head of the student council, we used to argue all the time about the relevancy about it and she used to tell me all the time, “You ought to get involved and join it.” And I said “I don’t want to do all of that because you all are a regressive organization and all of that,” but Ernie Lofton came to me and he used to be — he was with the NAACP in Detroit, and he came to me because of stuff we were doing in the community. He came to me because I was a very active minister. We did a campaign called “Detroit is Better than That” when the Detroit News, when the Detroit Free Press was really writing bad stuff about the city all the time and so we had a boycott of the paper and sometimes the Free Press seemed to be writing better than the News, sometimes the News writing better than the Free Press; I mean it’s so you can take your pick depending on the time and so we had a boycott and wore pins that said “Detroit is Better Than That” we started that and Ernie knew of my activism along with other and so he came to me and asked if I would consider running. I had been recognized by then Arthur Jeffery Johnson, who was the president of the NAACP, he and I were friends. And I had friends in the organization they gave me the key, gave me his President’s Award, and I said, “Well, you know Arthur is president but if he don’t run then I might consider.” And they said, “We don’t think he is going to run.” So I wrote him a letter certified Art Johnson, saying, “If you are a candidate, I will not run and therefore I am just letting you know.” He didn’t respond. I know he got the letter, certified and all, but they didn’t respond and soon enough they start announcing that a guy named Charles Wash was going to run. But I had made no commitment to him; I didn’t know him so I told Ernie and them that I would run, that I’d be a candidate. And so the rest is history. We ran in 1992, they changed the election — the first time that ever been done. They cancelled election nationally did Ben Hooks, William Penn in conjunction with the local people here because they knew we were going to win and they had more votes than them. They did their best to postpone the election to give them more time which we knew, but so it was postponed until I think February of '93 and we had that election and we won. And that’s how I got involved and I’ve been president since that time period.
ZS: Alright, could you share some of your knowledge of the history of the Detroit branch of the NAACP and I don’t know if you have anything to say about its involvement with the 1967 events too?
WA: Well, I don’t know if it was involved with the '67 events, I know—
ZS: Just a general history then.
WA: Well, the Detroit branch is obviously been around a while. It came in around 1912, I believe. The Ossian Sweet case was a very prominent case. This was about an Ossian Sweet who moved into a certain housing area and he fired and his house had been attacked by white folk who didn’t want him to live there and shots were fired he was arrested and all of that. Clarence Darrow, the great lawyer, was retained to deal and defend him and that’s how the NAACP Detroit really began to get on the map. The NAACP Detroit through its Fight for Freedom Fund dinner began to grow and to expand and this year was its sixty-first year starting way back in the mid-fifties and I think that through the work with the Fair Banking Alliance, which comes out of NAACP in Detroit to get banks to do more banking with this community, working. We also had champion issues like Affirmative Action are folk lead that coalition, I led a coalition, a few years ago a governor’s task force for a new beginning education committee in Detroit. We had 150 folk creating a document and now we’re doing it again with regards to the Detroit coalition feeding Detroit school children with the Skillman Foundation. We did — when I first came in, I wanted to do a tribute to Dr. King, the march in 1993, celebrating the first march in 1963, which the NAACP by the way opposed, they did not support his original march in '63, there was a lot of folk who didn’t support it. We were one. They though first of all that he would take all the money raise the money and go take it South. He was a little militant; they didn’t really understand. Now everybody supports Dr. King. But in '63 they didn’t. Now at the last minute they did come out. I’m talking about Detroit. They did come out they had signs and all of this, but they were not really supportive of his march. That was through Reverend C.L. Franklin, James Del Rio, the Reverend Albert Cleage, Walter Reuther the UAW, Tony Brown at the Detroit National Black Journal — those were the people in Detroit — the Human Rights Coalition — those were the people that really helped to bring Dr. King here C.L. Franklin because they were friends and what I did and what we did in '93 was have a tribute to the march. We had 250,000 people in the streets of Detroit in June of 1993. So we celebrated the thirtieth anniversary and then the fortieth anniversary and in 2003 we had about 50,000 people and then we did the fiftieth anniversary to Dr. King in 2013 and again 200,000 people in the streets of Detroit. So I think we more than made up for the lack of support that we did not give him in '63. I was not a part of the NAACP then but those are some of the things. The whole “Take Your Souls to the Polls” campaign — you may have heard that term used — comes out of an idea that we had, I had. I wanted to get the hip hop community involved in the elections and so over — it’s probably been about twelve years now, I asked a young lady to design me a flyer, a poster, that would appeal to the hip hop community, young people, put some gym shoes on it and a cap. “Take your Souls to the Polls” and soles was on the back of the shoe, so S-o-l-e and then take your souls, S-o-u-l-s, or the church community and the faith based community, so sole for the secular, soul for the spiritual. That campaign comes out of right here and so that’s gone all over the country now but it comes out of Detroit a lot of people don’t know it but you’ve heard that term?
ZS: Yeah.
WA: But that’s your looking at the originator.
ZS: That’s interesting.; Could you talk about your thoughts on the state of the city of Detroit today and how it compares to the 1960s?
WA: I think it’s moving in the right direction. I think that Detroit’s best days are still in front of us. Downtown is going to be fine, Midtown is going to be fine; it’s the neighborhoods. That’s why we’re doing housing development right here. That’s why when Kevin Orr came here I had him here at the church and I told him, the emergency manager, that “Your job don’t mean nothing if it don’t benefit the community here.”; And I said “What do you hope to leave here? First of all you got a lousy job.” As a matter of fact I used some other language that I won’t use on your tape and he laughed and I said, “I wouldn’t want your job, but you know you’re a nice guy, but it ain’t about that. When you leave here what do you hope to leave?” And he said, “That’s what I got to figure out, that’s my challenge.” And I said, “Well, if all you do is sell all the assets, cut, slash and burn and sell, it ain’t helping us. If you don’t move into the neighborhoods it’s of no benefit.” He said, “I agree.” Well, he has not moved into the neighborhoods. He has opened the door through the bankruptcy process forced on us. So, we’re trying to absorb the benefits of that and eliminate out of this lemon that we’re left with. And so I can see certain things happening. I think we’re doing more to emphasize the neighborhoods now. I think that city council and the mayor are starting to emphasize that. I think some of the business people are starting to see that they got to spread this out, because you can’t build a moat around Detroit and say you can’t come in, because this is our city, too. I tell people all the time, “Don’t move, just improve” right where you are, because obviously we have a stake in it we have to act like it and let’s take advantage of it.
ZS: Well, so you kind of talked about it there, but do you have anything else to say about how you see the future of the city turning out?
WA: No, I’m optimistic about it. I think that I see a lot of young people who want to do something significant, both Black and white, but I think we all have to be around a common table, it can’t just be one group, one segment. I think the business community has to do more in terms of partnering and in terms of building like bridges, providing incubators for economic development and for opportunities. It cannot just be the downtown. If Detroit is really going to have a renaissance, it’s got to be a renaissance that involves all the people not just some.
ZS: And one thing that I wanted to ask you before we wrapped up pretty soon is you mentioned the Human Rights Coalition. Can you talk about that a little?
WA: That was something that was formed by Del Rio and [C.L.] Franklin and folk back in the day. Tony, Brown, they were part of that, because that was the group that helped to facilitate bringing Dr. King up here. Because there was no other [unintelligible] to do this. Preachers weren’t going to do it. So they formed that kind of coalition basically to address that issue and to address issues in the city of Detroit which the other institutions weren’t. That was before New Detroit, that was before some of these other coalitions that you see. That was an adjunct outside of the NAACP because a lot of people had issues with the NAACP at that time period, so they didn’t see it as moving in the direction that they wanted, so they formed the Human Rights Commission back in the day through those preachers and some labor folk.
ZS: Well, do you have any other additional thoughts that you would like to share?
WA: No, I just think that from '67 to 2015 we have come a long way. I think the hope of our city and really our nation is going to be people who are going to think beyond themselves and willing to take certain risks and do some stuff that’s different. And you’re not going to make everybody happy. You are going to make some people unhappy. But if everybody is happy that means you’re not doing nothing, so somebody got to be unhappy. Just like your granddad, I mean he was a hell of a man. Which I’m sure you know and he made a lot of people unhappy, but Nate spoke truth to power he didn’t give a damn who it was and he was the same no matter who he was talking to. That’s why I loved him. That’s it.
ZS: Thanks Reverend Anthony, I appreciate it.
**WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel. Today is April 21, 2016. This is the interview of Berl Falbaum for the 1967 Oral History Project. Thank you very much for sitting down with me today.
BF: My pleasure. Thank you for being here.
WW: Can you please tell me, where and when were you born?
BF: I was born in Berlin, Germany, in October 8, 1938.
WW: When did you come to the United States?
BF: Well, it was during the rise of Hitler – of course, he's already been in power – we escaped from Nazi Germany in August of '39, and escaped to Shanghai, China, where twenty thousand Jews escaped to. And I spent the first ten years of my life in Shanghai.
WW: What brought your family to Detroit?
BF: Well, after the war, different countries were starting to pick up refugees, and this country – the United States opened its borders, and we applied, and fortunately got accepted, and we came to Detroit, landing first in San Francisco, in August of '48.
WW: Who came to Detroit with you?
BF: Just my parents. I have no siblings.
WW: Okay. What was your first experience in Detroit? What was your first impression?
BF: Well, my first impression was the plentiful nature of the United States, given that we were poor – extremely poor – in Shanghai, war-torn, you know, and drug-infested, and war-torn – and so the plentiful nature of food was my first impression. And we moved into what is now called Rosa Parks Boulevard – it was Twelfth Street at the time – and I was enrolled in the fourth grade. But those were my impressions of – you know, first of all we had freedom, we could move around unlike in Shanghai, and we had, you know, enough food, and so forth.
WW: The time when you moved into Twelfth Street area – that was still predominantly Jewish, correct?
BF: No – not at the – well – yes and no. It was changing. There's a history in Detroit, as you know, probably maybe even better than I do, of movement of Jews from Hastings, way down south in Detroit, to Twelfth Street, then Dexter, then Seven Mile and Shafer, then Oak Park. And at the time we moved into Twelfth Street, that neighborhood was already dramatically changing.
WW: So how much time did you spend in the Twelfth Street area growing up?
BF: Fourth grade, I'm going to say, until the ninth or tenth grade, and we moved to Dexter. Dexter, roughly south of Davison – about a mile south of Davison – and I went to Central High School.
At Twelfth Street I went to Crossman Elementary, which is closed – it's boarded up, but it's still there – then I went to Hutchins Intermediate – we called it intermediate, which is middle school, and that's still there and active – and then I went to Central High School, which is still active – when I went – moved to Dexter.
WW: What were your experiences growing up in the city, especially in an interracial area?
BF: Well, I had, you know, very good experiences. I moved – always grew up in interracial atmosphere, which, of course, is very positive in terms of your education and interrelationships. So I had, you know, extremely good relationships growing up there. I wish it had stayed interracial, you know, again the white flight caused it to be almost predominantly, if not exclusively, a black community, and that's bad on the other side, so to speak. The interrelationship aspect would have been better, so – we already experienced the white flight from Twelfth Street, then Dexter and Seven Mile and Shafer.
WW: Growing up, what did your parents do for a living after they moved to the city?
BF: Well, my dad was a tailor. And he was a tailor in Germany, he was a tailor in Shanghai. He worked in a variety of shops. And my mother became a domestic to help out, because we were obviously extremely poor.
WW: How did growing up in a poor neighborhood affect you?
BF: Well, it affected me in a sense that I – I am not at all materialistic, and I raised my family on having what it needs – and I think that's good. One thing that I notice is the materialism of this country, you know – always see a new car – and one of the things that always – hasn't left me – is now we have cars which warm your seats. I mean, that's sort of indicative of my philosophy. You know, I wouldn't have thought of that in a million years. I'm a utilitarian kind of guy, you know, I have a – I never bought a new car – and I think that's because of my background. I've always bought a used car. I don't care the car it is, just gets me from A to B. So that's how my background impacted me, you know. I buy my clothes at thrifty stores – not because I don't want to spend the money – I don't see the point. And you know, I'd be glad – I like spending money for travel – so I think that's basically because of my background. You know, I use paper, I cut it in half, and use scraps of paper, and I think that's not because I'm cheap – I'm delighted to spend money, you know, on travel – but materialistically, I had a tremendous – that had a tremendous impact on me.
WW: Growing up in the 1950s, did you notice any tension growing in the city?
BF: Oh yes, yes, yeah. There was a lot of tension in the schools. I – you know – you could feel the tension between the blacks and whites – you know – there – again, discrimination they suffered, and the white flight caused a lot of problems, you know, and I understand that now, of course, and sympathetic to it. So there were a lot of tensions already in school, between the races, you know, and so to answer your question, yes. I noticed it. Yeah.
WW: Do you remember any particular instances where it was right in front of you?
BF: Yeah, yeah. I was a paper boy, and, you know, I'd be confronted with blacks who – I had good relationships, and I liked interrelationships, but – there were these confrontations from time to time, and especially with young kids, you know – so you'd have confrontations in school, on the streets. You know, I think they understood my view too, and so to answer your question, overall, yes. There were confrontations in school between blacks and whites. There were confrontations on the streets. I understood it, as much as a fifteen, sixteen year old, you know, understood. Of course I understood it better as I grew older.
WW: Moving into the 1960s, what year did you graduate from high school?
BF: From high school? January '57, and I went to Wayne State University, and I graduated from Wayne State in the summer of '61, because I was already hired by the News as a reporter full-time before I finished, and so I finished at night.
WW: What work did you do for the Detroit News?
BF: I started out as – where everybody starts out – you do a variety of beats. I went to the police beat, where you cover crime, and then you went to general assignment, meaning you do soup to nuts, you do a little of everything, and in '65 I was sent over to City Hall to cover politics.
WW: When you were covering the police, did you notice any – did you cover the Big Four at all?
BF: Big Four?
WW: The police tactic used in the early 1960s.
BF: I don't remember it by that name. What you do – what I did at the police beat is – there's – it's closed now, it closed many years ago – but there's an office that the press has in police headquarters. At the time it was manned by three – well, three newspapers – one died quickly – the News, Free Press, and the Times, and you covered murder from that desk. And you went to a different office in that building – you never left the building. And you'd call around to suburban bureaus to see what was going on every few hours. You had, you know, hundreds of phone calls to make. So when you say did you cover the Big Four, there was a very controversial program called STRESS [Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets.
WW: Yeah, that was later on.
BF: That was later on. So the answer is, I didn't cover it as such. I covered the crime, and so forth. I didn't really cover the politics of the crime – I covered the crime.
WW: Okay.
BF: I – you know, if there's a murder I'd go cover that. Don't go – you cover it from your office. And if there's a good story – meaning a terrible story – required a reporter on scene, that was done out of the office.
WW: Okay. Was moving from crime – the police department to City Hall a promotion, or -
BF: Yeah.
WW: Was it just a different assignment?
BF: Well, a different assignment. Those who stayed with the police would say it's a different – I know I didn't like doing that. It was a good learning process, but I don't – I love politics. So next I went on general assignment – there were people on police beat which have been there for thirty years. And so they would say that's heaven to them, but it wasn't my kind of – similarly, I didn't want to cover sports, but – I went to general assignment, which you cover everything, and I did that for about three-four years, and then I went over to City Hall.
WW: So you were covering City Hall in 1967, correct?
BF: I started in '65 at City Hall and yes, I was at City Hall in '67 when the riot broke out July 23, 1967.
WW: Where were you living in 1967?
BF: I was just inside the border of Detroit, on Schoolcraft and Telegraph – the other side of Telegraph. I was on the east side of Telegraph and the other side was where Redford Township. And we were on the Detroit border. Matter of fact Sunday I was sitting on my porch – well, we – a little step, it wasn't a porch – when I heard on the radio, the riot, and I said to my wife I've got to go downtown and go to work. She said, "You're not leaving the family for a riot.” I said yes I am.
WW: What was the atmosphere going in – driving through the city and then getting to City Hall?
BF: Well, at the time, I didn't encounter any police or military yet. It was just broke out. So I didn't go to City Hall, I went to the main office. We had an office in City Hall where you covered the politics, you never went to it, but I knew right away I'd go back to the city room and see what my assignment would be. But I didn't encounter anything on the streets. And I didn't see anything because I didn't go into the – driving down, I didn't pass the 12th Street – devastated area.
WW: Can you share some of your experiences you had during that week?
BF: Sure. In '65 I [unintelligible], by '67 I think I was head or chief of the bureau and my job was to cover the mayor. So what I did, was I just attached myself to the mayor, meaning wherever he went, I went. Whatever meetings and press conference I'd cover. And so, the answer is yes, one of the pictures I gave to – uh – what's his -
WW: Joel.
BF: Joel is, I have a picture of the mayor and Senator Philip Hart, democrat from – U.S. Senator, from Michigan. They were touring the area, and I have a picture – I'm behind them, and I gave him that photo, and we toured – he toured, I followed, and took notes – you know, what they were saying, and so forth. So that was my major assignment, and I covered the press conference between Mayor Cavanagh, Governor Romney, who came in of course, George Romney. Cyrus Vance, who was sent in from Lyndon Johnson, I think he was Secretary of State at the time was -
WW: Defense.
BF: Huh?
WW: He had stepped down as Secretary of Defense.
BF: Yeah, okay. He came in as the federal representative, and so I covered those. So I didn't really cover the riot itself, the violence, and so forth. I did go by myself once back to tour it – and a fellow I knew, who I covered as a community activist, his name was Joe Williams – I see him – who suggested I leave – he said it wasn't safe for me to be alone, walking, you know, in the streets. So I didn't cover the actual devastation, and the fighting, and the looting, and the violence. I covered the political side of it.
WW: Going – so you said you were part of the meetings and you were Mayor Cavanagh's shadow. Can you speak to the disagreements he had with Governor Romney, and especially President Johnson?
BF: Yes. I came across – and I gave it to Joel – by accident I came across an oral history that Cavanagh did for the Lyndon Johnson library in the 70's. They were doing oral histories for anybody that had a relationship with Lyndon Johnson. So they did Cavanagh. Now they weren't focused specifically on the riot, but as a result, about ten of those hundred pages deal with the riot. And he talks about the friction and the – yes, there was a lot of friction. One, you know, pure political, without egos – you know, Romney feeling that he's the governor of the state, and he perhaps should take the lead – Cavanagh feeling “this is my city, and I'm the chief executive officer.” And then you had political issues with, should you have the federal troops – is it too early to come in – what are the politics of it. So the federal government was, according to Cavanagh, and I tend to agree with him – is they were a little slow to react.
Some of it may have been based on waiting for a good assessment of the situation, or some of it may have been politics. I'm sure it was a combination of both.
So there's tremendous friction between Cavanagh and the powers to be, of when to send in the troops, and how, you know, and how quickly, and Cavanagh was of the opinion – send them right away. And that was the major disagreement. There were, you know, little ego issues between, that always happens, who conducts the press conference, and who's first, and all that.
WW: Can you speak to how Cavanagh himself handled the situation?
BF: I had covered Cavanagh, by that time, about four – three-four years. And what I noticed, is that this took a tremendous personal toll on Cavanagh. And the reason is, here was a mayor who was elected at, I think thirty-one or thirty-two years old, in '61 – the youngest mayor ever elected to the city until, I think, Kilpatrick came along – and he got national headlines. He was on the covers of major magazines for doing all the right things in Detroit. Integrating the police department, you know, being responsive to discrimination against blacks. He was doing everything right. He became president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the National League of Cities, at the same time. Unheard of. He was a national figure. Matter a fact, a lot of people already started talking to him as a presidential candidate somewhere along the line. [coughs] – excuse me.
This took a personal toll. Basically, I've done everything right, and he ended up having not just a riot, but the worst riot in the country. I think forty-three died. And he had the worst fatality record, and that was the irony of it. And I don't think I saw him at ease - and I don't mean at ease, sitting back and just relaxing – but just at ease, throughout those days, and I don't think I ever saw a smile on his face for anything. I remember him coming back to the office, about twelve, one o'clock in the morning, and our office – not just the News, but the Free Press – was right down the hall. But I was the only one there. So he walked into his office and I walked in – he let me come in – we sat down. It wasn't to do a story, just to talk. And I could feel the pain. I could feel the pain. You know, we had a drink – he had a little bar in the back – and I could feel the pain. I don't think I ever saw him smile after the – for a long time after that.
WW: Wow. Can you speak to the time following the riots? So, the gradual – with the Cyrus Vance taking over – General Throckmorton taking over the National Guard, and federalizing the troops?
BF: I don't remember a lot of that. Only because the years have gone by. But the next steps that I recall is, after everything calmed down again, Cavanagh was instrumental, if not the lead character in creating New Detroit, which was – the first president, if I recall, was Joe Watson, you know, from the Hudson department stores, and the – the insistence of New Detroit that members could only be the heads of organizations – you know, staff people couldn't come – which was the right thing, because these are people making the decisions, and you don't have to worry about staff. And I don't remember some of what you're referring to, I don't think I could speak to it, 'cause I don't recall that. Fifty years. [laughter]
And he started the so-called reconstruction. The problem was, for him, his political strength has been ebbed, dramatically. One, you had the riot. He, unfortunately, had a lot of other political issues which had sapped his strength. Some of his own making. He had – he challenged Soapy Williams for the primary nomination for U.S. Senate – which hurt him badly, because the democrats felt it was Soapy Williams' turn – he should wait - but the party was very angry at him for challenging Soapy Williams. And he – he lost. And that sapped his political capitol. And then he had a messy – it's not of his own making, it's just one of those things – he had a terrible, messy personal divorce that became highly public, and messy, and so that sapped him. So unfortunately, a lot of things I think he could have and would have achieved, he couldn't because of – you know, he had all these other issues to deal with.
WW: How long did you stay in the city after 1967?
BF: Well, I – he did not run again in 1970 - funny story, how I learned that – but that's not – too long for you to tape – it's a cute story but it's a long one.
WW: Feel free to tell it.
BF: Well he and I had a good relationship, so that when he would announce something major, like a budget, he'd give it to me three-four days in advance, so I could study it. I couldn't use it until he's ready – so come his announcement, whether he's going to run for a third term – it was on a Tuesday he was going to announce, so I asked him if I could have his decision on the weekend, so I could write all the stories. He said “no, I can't give you this one.” And I said don't you trust me? He said “It's not that, I just [unintelligible].”
So I negotiated with him, that if I came to the Manoogian mansion, say, at three in the morning, that day – just so I have time to write, 'cause we're on deadline. So he agreed to that. So I drove done to the Manoogian mansion at three in the morning, and security opened it up and said “there you are,” and I get ready to write, and I take out a piece of paper, and it said something like “I will run again.” And just before I start, I see another piece of paper, which says “I will not run again.” [laughter]
So I said which is it? They said “I don't know!” I said, wake him up! “Yeah, we're going to wake up the mayor at two in the morning, or three in the morning.” I had to wait. He came down about seven o'clock with a big smile on his face. “So how's it going?” But I couldn't write anything - [laughter] – it was his practical joke.
So he didn't run again, and I covered Roman Gribbs, who just passed away, about two weeks ago, at 92, I believe – or 90, 92, I think he was 90 – and Nick Hood, who I covered, died about a week later at 92. And I covered him for a year. Gribbs – and then I quit, and went into Bill Milliken's office as administrative aide to Lieutenant Governor James Brickley who has passed away. So, to answer your question, I left the News in '70.
WW: And when you left the News, did you move to Lansing?
BF: I didn't move, but -
WW: Oh.
BF: Basically, my job was – we should have moved – I commuted almost daily, and that was a terrible – how I did that for four years, I don't know. We knew it was a political appointment and we didn't want to buy a house there and come back – terrible mistake. It was awful. Especially in the winters, you know – the drive. And we didn't have the kind of full expressways we have now, and it was awful – but. So I worked in Lansing for four years.
WW: When did your family leave the city? When did they move out, I mean?
BF: I think I want to say – Phil? - I want to say – I know that we left before Gribbs was - Gribbs was elected – because he offered me to become press secretary, and I was living in Oak Park, so I couldn't take it then – so that's one reason I took the Milliken job. Phil?
Woman's voice: Yeah?
BF: When did we move to Oak Park?
Woman's voice: I can't hear you. What?
BF: When did we move to Oak Park?
Woman's voice: Oh, Julie was three. So, forty-eight years ago -
BF: So '67. So the year must have been -
Woman's voice: '67.
BF: So one month later, before the riot, so I didn't know that.
WW: So your – you moved out before the riot happened?
BF: I guess -
Woman's voice: Wait a minute, no no -
BF: You said June of '67?
Woman's voice: No – I said Julie was – no – I remember -
BF: '65?
Woman's voice: I remember, in the apartment in Detroit, you were called down – the riots broke out when we were in Detroit. We moved in October when Julie was past three and a half.
BF: So '65. Yeah. So we were out -
Woman's voice: She was born in '64. She was born in '64 -
WW: So October of 1967?
BF: That's when -
Woman's voice: She was born in June of '64 -
BF: So she was three. I said '67.
Woman's voice: But we were still living in – because we moved to Oak Park in June – in October of '67.
WW: Okay. Why did you move? Did you move – were you planning on moving ahead of time?
BF: Schools -
Woman's voice: We were ready to buy a house. [laughter]
BF: You mean, we – why we moved to Oak Park?
WW: Yeah.
BF: Primarily school system. Yeah.
WW: Okay.
BF: Primarily school system.
Woman's voice: At that time -
BF: Oak Park at the top school system in the country – in the state, I believe -
WW: Okay -
Woman's voice: Well -
BF: Close to it.
Woman's voice: It was a very, very good school system.
BF: It was one of the best in the state.
Woman's voice: And -
BF: Yeah, so -
Woman's voice: Yeah.
WW: What are your impressions going back to the city now? Like seeing how – how do you believe the riot has affected the city? You talked about how it sapped the strength of Mayor Cavanagh -
BF: It sapped the strength of Mayor Cavanagh, and if caused – first of all, it accelerated white flight. It already began, with the building of expressways and shopping centers in the suburbs, so that made it easier for – unfortunately, for whites to leave the city, but the riot accelerated it. And so it sapped its – not only bad for the integration process, but it sapped its economic strength. Businesses moving out and white residents moving out. So I think it had terribly detrimental impact from that standpoint.
Then along came Coleman Young. And I happen to be an admirer of Coleman Young. But I also understood the tension he was creating, and I think unfairly – he was unfairly judged, with his comment about Eight Mile Road, which you've probably come across in your research. I think it was a bum rap – I don't think he meant “go rob the white people in the suburbs.” I think he meant there was a new sheriff in town, you know – And I – I happen to be a big admirer of Coleman Young – read his – couple biographies and I think he was a great hero, frankly – political hero in this country – taking on the unAmerican committee in Washington, and his union activities, and his army activities. But he – but – the perception of white people was that he didn't like white people, and so they left – which, again, I think was wrong, and unfair to Coleman Young and the city.
So there were a lot of issues which accelerated – I don't know, I don't think the riot was the beginning of it – I think the expressways and the shopping centers, things, started – the Davison Expressway, I think was the first one in the country. That helped – they went east/west, not north/south – but once you went north/south, it made it even quicker.
So I think that – the riot, obviously, accelerated the white flight, then came up wrong Coleman – who, Mayor Young, who I think, like I say, got a bum rap from the white community, especially the conservatives out in the suburbs, and I thought that was terribly unfair to him, and the city.
WW: You spoke about – you spoke about earlier, how it was unfortunate that your neighborhood in 12th Street became - went from being integrated to all black. How do you see – well, do you see that hampering the metropolitan Detroit now, given that the suburbs are primarily white and the city is primarily black?
BF: Yeah, I think so. Again, I – I'm a supporter of integrated – you know, I understand the value of living in an integrated, you know, community. And I think it – the segregation, if you will, between the communities now, I don't think helps either side. I don't know if we'll ever see that again, you know -
WW: The integration?
BF: In the city – in the city. I don't know – I don't know if we'll see that again. I think we see it somewhat in Southfield, I'm not an expert on that – you're much more – and we have it here in this community, you know. My subdivision now, taking a census, it's wonderful. I don't know if we're fifty/fifty now – I don't know. But it's certainly much more integrated than when I moved here thirty-five years ago – which is good!
And my kids went to integrated schools, and I thought they, you know, they – a lot of value in that, and made them better people, but I don't think – I don't see Detroit becoming a vibrant, integrated city along those lines again. Matter of fact, there seem to be a lot of complaints – I heard it just the other day. I heard a speaker on - on Detroit. That as well as Detroit and Midtown is doing, there seem to be a lot of complaints that the entrepreneurs are all white, and that the population of downtown is white, and not integrated. That they're young people, yes, but they're all white people. By the way, I don't know that to be true, 'cause I don't study it. I've heard those complaints. So I don't think – to answer your question, yes, I think there's tremendous value in the comprehensive integrated community.
WW: Is there anything else you'd like to share?
BF: No, you've done a good job. You've worn me out!
WW: Thank you very much for sitting down with me today.
BF: My pleasure, my pleasure.
WW: Hello, my name is William Winkel. Today is June 15, 2016. We are in Sterling Heights, MI. This is an interview for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project and I am sitting down with Michael Krotche. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
MK: You’re welcome.
WW: Can you first tell me where and when you were born?
MK: 1941.
WW: 1941? And you grew up in Detroit?
MK: I grew up right on the border of Hamtramck and Detroit.
WW: What was your neighborhood like?
MK: Polish. Very Polish. I went to a great school that taught Polish, masses were in Polish—well, I say mass, sermons were in Polish, at that time it was still Latin mass. Very, very ethnic, very stable, everybody knew everybody. Just a great neighborhood.
WW: What did your parents do for a living?
MK: Dad worked at Plymouth automotive plant. My mother had a myriad of jobs. She worked at some factories, she worked at the Fisher building doing maintenance. We weren’t poor, but we certainly weren’t affluent. Both my parents worked to put us through parochial schools.
WW: What school did you go to?
MK: I went to Our Lady Queen of Apostles for grade school, then I went to Catholic Central for high school.
WW: What year did you graduate high school?
MK: ’59.
WW: ’59? What was it like growing up in the city? Did you stay in your neighborhood or did you venture out?
MK: Yeah, yeah, very much in the neighborhood atmosphere. I can’t say, other than the fact that—I started caddying when I was eleven years old—
WW: You started what-ing?
MK: Caddying, at the Detroit Golf Club. So I started caddying at eleven, and the fact that I went to Catholic Central, which was like a new neighborhood for me, it was Outer Drive and Hubbell. So I wasn’t very familiar with it, but we were pretty much neighborhood oriented, and that was just the times I guess.
WW: Throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, did your neighborhood become integrated or did it stay—
MK: No, it was an ethnic, Polish neighborhood. Most of the people there spoke Polish. Not in their daily lives, but they certainly were capable of it. Like I said, the parish was Polish. The schools were Polish. I wasn’t a Pole! In fact, my mother was Irish, but my father was born in Austria of Polish descent, but I certainly wasn’t being considered Polish.
WW: Are there any experiences you’d like to share from growing up in that neighborhood?
MK: It was just a great neighborhood. We had a lot of kids, we did things together. Probably my first really leaving of the neighborhood was when I went to high school. Ten of us took the test at Catholic Central—I didn’t want to go there, but my buddies did—and two of us made it. And I ended up going out there, and it was probably one of the best things I ever done. But I can’t say I had a lot of really outside exposure until I went to college. I went to Wayne out of high school for basically two years, and in the middle of my sophomore year, my dad died. I was nineteen, I was the oldest of four siblings, I had to go to work. So I quit in my sophomore year and I joined the police department as a cadet and I was in an administrative position for two years until 1963 when I turned 21 and I became a sworn officer.
WW: When you went to Wayne State, did you move down there or did you stay in your neighborhood?
MK: No, I lived at home but I drove myself to school every day. I was selected to play freshman basketball. That was probably my first exposure to African Americans. Cause half the team was white, half the team was black. The coach was black. So that was probably my real association because like I said, the neighborhood that I grew up in was white and Polish. It was a very ethnic neighborhood.
WW: What did you study when you went to Wayne?
MK: Early on, it was just general studies. I had intentions of becoming a cop, even though I was kind of forced into joining the department earlier than I had planned to, because of my dad’s death, but I had always envisioned myself as being a policeman. Always what I wanted to do.
HS [Hannah Sabal]: So would it have been a degree in criminal justice?
MK: They didn’t have a criminal justice program at the time. I went into the general studies with the idea that at some point in time, probably in my second year, I would start looking for a major to declare, but it would be something in the law end of it. In the back of my mind, there were times I thought about being a lawyer, but that didn’t really turn me on.
WW: And what year again did you join the police department?
MK: ’61. February of ’61.
WW: What precinct were you placed into after you joined?
MK: When I joined the police department as a sworn officer, it was February of ’63.
WW: Okay.
MK: And I went to the 7th Precinct, which was Mack and Gratiot. I was there for a year, and one of the precincts had a ticket strike of the officers, and as a disciplinary process, they transferred a bunch of them out and a bunch of officers that were in my particular class, academy class, had just completed their probation so they went out and said, “okay, we’re going to replace these guys with younger officers,” and I got transferred without any say-so, just got a phone call saying, “You’re going.” I was there from ’64 to 1970.
WW: At that time the Detroit police department was all white, correct?
MK: Well it wasn’t all white, we probably had—on my particular shift—out of probably fifty officers, we probably had four or five that were black.
WW: Okay.
MK: And there was nothing any different about them than any of the white guys. I mean, everybody got along. Nobody thought of them as black and nobody thought of us as white. I mean, we were all cops.
WW: Was that just the mode in your particular precinct or do you think that that was city-wide?
MK: I can’t speak for other precincts. You know, I can only speak to the precinct I was in. We had probably out of maybe—and again, I’m guessing—150 total officers in that precinct, we probably had ten that were black. There weren’t any problems. Everybody got along. They were all integrated crews: blacks work with whites, whites work with blacks. There weren’t any problems.
WW: For being a police officer in the 1960s, did you notice any tension growing in the city?
MK: Yeah. I think in our precinct maybe a little more than others, because we had a group—basically they were the Black Panthers, is what they were. They were over on Kercheval right near McClellan in a storefront. The year before the ’67 riots, they had created a little turmoil and it resulted in us—not us, but in the department bringing in extra resources. It was kind of tense. It was the prelude to the following year. And that particular group had some people that were known as Black Panthers, and at the very least had an allegiance to the Black Panther movement at that time. And they did some things to try to stir up the pot. There were a couple situations where they got involved in arrests, or they weren’t a part of it, but they intervened. But we had some broken windows, we had some stuff that lasted a couple days. It was kind of a prelude. I certainly never saw ’67 coming.
WW: You didn’t?
MK: No. I mean there were issues—obviously there were issues—but I don’t think, I think if you talk to most of the guys at that time, the vast majority would say they didn’t see it coming. I mean, there were some incriminations, you had some people that were obviously stir up the problems from both sides, but it wasn’t something that I would have forecast.
WW: Where were you living in 1967?
MK: In the area of 8 mile and Gratiot.
WW: On the Detroit side?
MK: Yeah, on the Detroit side. In fact, the very first block in the city limits.
WW: Were you on duty that Saturday night, Sunday morning?
MK: I sure was.
WW: Can you speak about that?
MK: [speaking at the same time] I was working midnights. I had requested a couple hours of comp time because my mother was going to have a little family get-together at my mother’s house. And my mother lived right on the border of Hamtramck and Detroit, where I grew up. About 5 to 6 that morning, we were driving into the precinct lot, and the dispatcher came on and said, “There was a little incident on the west side.” And that was all that was said. Nothing else. “Just a little incident on the west side.” So I went in and I said to the lieutenant, “What do you think?” in light of what we had just heard. He said, “If it were any big deal, we would’ve heard about it by now. Get outta here.” I said, “Okay,” and I left. I went home, I got my wife, got my kids, and I went to my mother’s. I was working midnights, so by the time that we got there, it was roughly ten o’clock probably, by the time we fed the kids. And my sister’s bedroom faced to the west, so that’s where I went to sleep. I went to sleep about ten o’clock, and about twelve-thirty, one o’clock my wife came upstairs and she said, “The station’s on the line.” And I said, “The station?” And she said, “Yeah!” So I get up out of bed and as I did I looked out the window and I could see big rolls of black smoke to the west. And I thought, there must be a hell of a fire somewhere. That’s probably why they’re calling. So I went downstairs, and I answered the phone, and the lieutenant’s on the phone, and the lieutenant says, “How fast can you get here?” I said, “What the hell’s going on?” He said, “We’ve got a big problem right now.” He said, “We need you to get in here as soon as you can.” I said, “Okay.” She took me home, dropped me off, I changed, got my uniform on, I went to work, and I got home the next day at three o’clock. So I was gone roughly twenty-four hours. And that was my introduction to it, like I said, we had no idea there was anything going on! Other than this thing coming on saying there was a little incident on the west side.
WW: Throughout that first day and into the second day, did the police department feel like they could control what was going on?
MK: Yeah, I think they did, but it was starting to escalate. On the east side, particularly, where I was. We started getting looting, little bit of burning, more looting of stores and so forth. There was a liquor store that I think was at Mack and—I think it was Bewick. The State of Michigan liquor store. That thing got cleaned out in no time flat. I mean, they went through the doors in, man, no time flat. It’s funny because I watched Baltimore and I thought, man there’s a repetition, same thing that we saw. We had some shooting, there was some sniper fire. Like I said, there was some burning but we didn’t have a lot of fires, it was more looting than everything else. By Monday it had really escalated. Monday, it took off. I think by the time I left on Monday, it had to be three o’clock, three-thirty, we knew we had our hands full. And we knew that we were losing it.
WW: Given that sense, was it a relief when the National Guard came in?
MK: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. They had some things—if nothing else, a show of force that we couldn’t exude. I mean they brought in certain vehicles and weaponry—just the sight of it had to be a deterrent in some respects.
WW: Was it the same feeling when the federal troops moved in? The 101st and the 82nd?
MK: Probably, at that point in time, I think we started to feel like we were getting a little bit of a handle on it, but yeah, without a doubt. I mean when you see army, when you see a tank driving up and down the street, yeah, it gets your attention. They had a command post set up at Southeastern High School. They had a fifty-caliber mounted on the, kind of a round-a-bout, on the lawn of the school. That got your attention. You see that big gun out there, you knew that people weren’t playing games anymore. But yeah, the Guard was probably the first big thing because we started to feel like we were getting some support. When the army came in, that was—I think once the army came in, things started to calm down real fast, whether it was because those that were involved in the damaging and the looting and the rest of it, just [16:04??] but now they’re serious. Now maybe we better pull our lines a little bit, but I’d say start of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, it was probably Wednesday before we started to get the feeling that maybe we’re starting to get a grip on this. More so on the west than on the east side, where I was at. The west side had a lot more burning, a lot more fires, we may have had more shooting. We had a sniper that somehow that got into an old abandoned show across from the 5th precinct, and he took some shots at the precinct. And there were some other sniper instances. We had one sniper from Kercheval and St. Jean. You knew he was a sniper because you could see the tracers coming in. We knew we were under fire. He was shooting tracers at us. It was a strange time because you were scared to death, I’m sure most of us were, you didn’t know if you turned the next block if someone would take a shot at you. People were running around carrying stuff that you know is stolen. But at the same time you could go after some of them, but you knew if you did, you’d be sticking your neck out. There could be a whole lot more waiting for you. So some of it was allowed to slide for the first couple days. But the liquor store, they hit that. It was a State of Michigan liquor store, and it got cleaned in no time flat. There was a market, they cleaned that out, and that one they burned. They burned it and it was robbed. Over on Willowbridge and Mack.
WW: After the federal troops moved in and the disturbances quieted down, was there a sense of relief or anger? How did the police department react?
MK: You know, I can’t speak for the department. I can only speak for myself. It was a feeling of frustration, in some respects, because we had seen the city terribly damaged. We were in the national—probably international—headlines. It was never going to be the same. 12th Street was never going to be the same. The east side was never going to be the same. Just the attitude in the city was never going to be the same. One of the godsends was the Tigers. That World Series in ’68 was a godsend because it created a kind of unified approach to something that everybody became a part of. That had a big, big impact on maybe lessening what could have been some really bad feeling after the fact. There was a sense of relief after it finally subsided, but there was also a sense of depression because we had seen so much done, so much damage. 12th Street was basically eradicated. A lot of people lost homes that shouldn’t have lost homes. Businesses that shouldn’t’ve closed. White and black. It didn’t matter. We knew then that it was never going to be the same. It was never going to be the same.
WW: You spoke about how your first shift lasted nearly twenty-four hours. What were the rest of your shifts like that week?
MK: I got off Monday around three o’clock, and I had to be back for the midnight to 12pm shift, so I worked midnights to noon for the next, I would say, week. I can’t remember exactly when we went back to an eight hour shift, but it was at least a week. Usually we would be busy from the onset, from around midnight until, maybe six, then there’d be a lull, and then it would start to pick up again around, after daylight, around nine o’clock. We’d start to get some incidents and some problems. The other shift, the guys that worked the noon to midnight, they caught bad times. Certainly much worse than we did. In part, because there was a curfew and you had to be off the street—and don’t hold me to the hours because it’s been a while—but it was like eight o’clock to eight o’clock, so we could be driving around at two o’clock in the morning and you wouldn’t see a soul. You wouldn’t see headlights, you wouldn’t see anything. Then all of a sudden you hear, “Pop! Pop! Pop!” The officers that worked the noon to midnight, they got their butts kicked at times.
WW: You spoke about how looting wasn’t heavily—arresting for looting was heavily done because you were sticking your neck out.
MK: We made a lot of arrests for looting, but there were a lot that you just didn’t have a choice, because number one, you were outnumbered. Severely outnumbered. We had four-man cars, and in a lot of cases, they would have caravans of three cars with four officers each. And still, if you pulled into that liquor store, you talk about being outnumbered. You’re outnumbered. There was a safety blanket that you had to maintain.
WW: Was the curfew heavily enforced?
MK: Yeah, and I think a lot of the arrests that were mandated during that time were because of the curfew. A lot. Some people just didn’t take it to heart at first, and when they end up in the bowels of the Bastille, they realize, yeah, I guess they’re going to enforce it. Oh yeah, we had, oh I can’t tell you how many people at one time in that precinct under arrest. 100? And probably at least 50% were for broken curfew. Because that was the one way they had to convince people that you had to stay off the streets. You have to get off. We were going to enforce it rigorously and they did. We arrested—myself, probably a dozen. And most of them were after midnight, and they were out there foolishly. Why would you be out there under the circumstances, unless you’re potentially up to no good? The precinct itself, we had upwards of a hundred prisoners at one time. In fact, we had to store them in the garage because that was the only place, secure place, that we could do it.
WW: How do you interpret what happened in July 1967? Do you see it as a riot? Do you see it as a rebellion?
MK: I’ve always referred to it as a riot because in my connotation of a riot, it’s where public law has been allowed to be trampled on and it was. I mean, there were some individuals that came out that thought that they could talk to the group that started the whole thing, which was the blind pig, and there were some public officials that found out quickly their voice wasn’t being heard. Now I wasn’t there, but I’ve read enough about it that I know that’s what happened. It was a warm night, blind pigs were a dime a dozen. Every precinct had them, every neighborhood probably had them. Certainly in the black community, they were just a social entity. They were illegal, but they were there. It was just a fact of life. And I had done some raids on blind pigs, and we never had any problems. People knew that what they were doing was wrong, you weren’t after the people that were the party-goers; we were after the people that were running it. So maybe two or three people would go to jail, all the stuff would be confiscated. Some of the customers might or might not get a ticket, life went on and they’d be open the next weekend. I mean, seriously, they would! But that particular night, whatever the mood was over there—and I wasn’t there, so I can’t speak to it—must’ve got a little out of hand, and once it got out of hand, six o’clock on a Sunday morning is probably the weakest time for law enforcement. You’ve got the fewest resources. And that’s what happened.
WW: Backtracking a little bit, when you were with the police department, what was your primary work? Just a moment ago you said you did a couple raids, were you on the vice squad?
MK: I was a patrolman from ’63 to ’70, to ’71, and ’71 I got promoted to sergeant. And that entire time I spent in the precinct on the street. Then I was a sergeant on the street for about a year and a half, and I was asked if I would take over the Police Athletic League program, which at the time was miniscule. It was very, very small, but they had visions of advancing the program, and they had an agreement with Chrysler Corporation to come in as a big sponsor and really expand the program. I had a reasonable background in athletics. I had some experience in buying equipment and that. And they asked me if I would come in and take it over as a sergeant. I had bosses above me, but basically I was running it for a time. Chrysler came in and that thing took off. They started spending money, they started sponsorships, it went from a very small program to where it’s at today. I mean, they’re renovating the site of the old Tiger’s Stadium. They’re going to put their new offices down there. So it really took off. And I was there for almost two years, and I was ready to be a cop again. I was an athletic director, but I was ready to be a cop again. So I went back to a precinct and I stayed there, and then I got promoted to lieutenant. Basically I spent my last fourteen years on the street.
WW: And when did you leave the police department?
MK: I left there in April of 1987. Chrysler made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. They came to me and offered me the job as Lee Iaccoco’s body guard. Driver/bodyguard. I really didn’t want the job, but they recruited me, recruited me, and I took it as a one-month trial. I was there two days and said, am I nuts? What am I thinking about? So I left the department officially in April of ’87 and I was with him for eight and a half years. And then I did internal investigations for Chrysler for eight and a half years, and I retired, and just before I retired, they made me another offer I couldn’t refuse, which was a part-time position doing kind of what I was doing towards the latter part of my career, which was investigating people that were out on disability and on workman’s comp that were suspect. They gave me that position. I ran everything from Boston to Vancouver. What I did basically was manage the cases. I contracted out a lot of surveillance work, I reviewed all the surveillance work, and if I thought that there was a basis for discipline against an employee, I would take it to the higher-ups and they would make the decisions, and then I would go interview the employee after he’d been interviewed by our doctor. It was a fun job, probably the most fun job I ever had. You really got a sense of the human psyche. Some of the people…we had one that was blind, couldn’t see; she could drive everywhere better than me! I spent almost 25 years with the department and my only regret’s probably the last couple years, because it got to be so political. It really, really became political. I went through Affirmative Action, I was one of those passed over, bitter about it. I’m probably a little bitter about it to this day. I had to go back and retake, retest. I was 22 on the promotional list, and they promoted about sixty, but I didn’t get it. Because what they did is take one white male, one white female, one black male, one black female. So if you were 22 on the list, are you number 10 white male, or number 22? Cause that’s how it went. But later on, the union took it to court, and because of a labor issue about a year and a half before, the commissioner then made the comment as Affirmative Action was being invoked that if there were any openings in any rank, we’ll fill them. Well here come like twelve openings for the rank of lieutenant and he wouldn’t fill them because they had promoted all of the black males, all of the females, white and black, there was nothing left but white males, so he didn’t want to promote. They gave him another test. Next test came along, they couldn’t pass me because I got so high up. I actually got promoted, and they went back and went to the union, I ended up getting 10 months of back seniority and 10 months of back pay. That was kind of an after-effect in the long run of the change in the city. Because when Coleman came in, things changed dramatically. Particularly the police department. Particularly the police department.
WW: When did you move out of the city?
MK: 1988. I had three cars stolen in a period of nine months, three of my cars. And at the last one I said, okay, I had a new car that I had purchased for my wife got stolen and torched, and I said, “Okay,” I told her, “Go find us a house,” and she did a rock star job and here we are.
WW: Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
MK: Like I say, in some respects I kind of had a sheltered life until I went to college because that was just the neighborhood I was raised in. The city, to me, the real change came with Coleman Young. That’s when the real change came. Even after the riots, STRESS, which came in under John Eccles, probably a major factor in Coleman’s election. But after he came in, everything started changing dramatically. Certainly, certainly with the police department because we went from, probably we had 85% male white, maybe even more than that, to suddenly we were getting a large influx of recruits that were blacks and females both, a lot of females. And that caused some problems, a lot of problems. Did the riots affect the city? Oh, absolutely, no question about it. The election of Coleman I think was probably the major factor. In fact, I’m convinced it was the major factor. Because things were turned upside down. His vision of the city was much different from previous administrations; pretty much different than probably the populous as a whole.
WW: How do you see the city going today?
MK: You know, it’s funny I see a turn-around that I didn’t think I would’ve saw three years ago, four years ago. My biggest fear for the city yet remains the residential aspect of it. My wife and I lived, like I said, near 8 mile and Gratiot. I drove through there about a month ago. It was enough to make me sick to my stomach. I mean, it was a bedroom, bungalow kind of community. Brick homes, nice. You drive down the street, they’re burned out, they’re vacant, they’re abandoned. That’s probably the one area that’s going to take the longest. Until people feel safe to come back. Downtown—I love what I see downtown. I’m glad to see that they’ve finally got the M-1 Project going, I’m glad to see the arenas, the casinos, the housing down there. You’ve got Gilbert, and the Illitches, and other people who have committed their resources to bring that area back, but until the residential areas are brought back, Detroit as a whole is not going to come back. We had 1.7 million people living there in Detroit, when I graduated from high school in ’55, to 700,000 now. That’s where it’s at. It’s in the residential areas. The east side of Detroit is decimated. I mean, absolutely decimated. When we got married, we lived on a street called Lindhurst which was basically 6 mile, well maybe between 6 and 7 Mile on John R. street. You can’t drive down those streets. They’re so strewn with garbage, you literally can’t go through them. You don’t know what street you’re on because there are no street signs. Until that gets turned around, individual homes, people wanting to live back in the city, they’ve got a long haul. Downtown, magnificent. Some of the business areas I’m really pleased to see come back. My granddaughter goes to Wayne. She lives off of Ferry and Cass in one of those 120-year-old apartments, and we go down there occasionally to pick her up and we’ll go have breakfast. It’s amazing to see what Wayne State’s done. I mean, I started out there, but in a different era. To see where that’s come, to see the medical center. My wife was an RN down at Harper Hospital for years. She’s only been gone ten years, but in ten years it’s amazing how much has changed for the good. I’m optimistic for the city. I hope that they continue on the same vein that they’re going on right now. The mayor is a former graduate of my old high school, so I got a little special place for him, but I think he’s done a good job. But he’s got the Gilberts, he’s got the Illitches, he’s got the big money that’s willing to invest, and that’s what it’s going to take. You didn’t have that ten years ago. That’s why, if you drove down Woodward, it looked like a ghost town. It was funny because one night, Mr. I and I were driving home one night from the ball game, we’re driving down Woodward, and there was nothing. He said to me, “My God,” he says, “You could shoot a cannon down these streets!” Yeah. And I said, “This isn’t unique. This is the way it is.” But some of that is starting to turn around, we’re starting to see some of those buildings being renovated, businesses coming into it, so I’m optimistic for the city. I think it’s got a hell of a start to come back. But the residential area, that’s got to be the key. Number one, the biggest reason I think the residential area has to come back, taxes. You don’t have that revenue right now that the city desperately needs. And that’s where it’s going to be. The tax base in the city has been totally eroded, totally. Business can support a lot of tax, but until they get the residential areas up and running, get that and the schools. The school system is pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. I can remember one night when I was still with the department, we had to go up to Northern high school, which was on Woodward; they’d had a break-in. And for whatever reason, they had a bunch of papers, essays, term papers that were outside the building, outside the window. I’m certainly not a professor of English, but I picked them up, starting reading them, and they were horrific. I mean the English, the spelling was horrific! I thought, my God, these are kids that are getting cheated. They’re getting short changed if this is acceptable. They’re getting cheated. I went to Wayne, I’ll never forget. We had a guy who was a professor, he was a Hungarian Freedom Fighter, and he’d come here in 1957, I think. He taught a class and one of the subjects in this day was schools, public schools versus parochial schools. And he made the comment, “I can tell by reading a paper who went to public school and who went to parochial school.” Some of the kids that went to public school took offense to it. He said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a paragraph. All I want’s one paragraph. I’ll grade them and I’ll tell you which is which: who went to public and who went to private.” He missed on two. And I’m not downgrading public education, don’t get me wrong. But that night at Northern, I read some of those papers and I thought, oh my God, how can you accept this? We’re cheating these kids! These kids are being cheated if that’s acceptable! They’re being cheated.
WW: One final question that I did miss earlier: Of the arrestees, were they primarily black or a solid mix?
MK: I would say probably 90% of those arrested—maybe I’m a little off, maybe 80% of those arrested were black. The area that I patrolled was probably 90% black. I can think of one Hispanic that we arrested and the only reason I think of him was because to this day, we’re convinced he was one of the snipers. Couldn’t prove it, but we knew damn well he was.
WW: All right. Thank you very much for sitting down with us today!
MK: Thank you. I don’t know what I’ve contributed, but…
WW: Greatly appreciate it.
[INITIALS OF INTERVIWEE:] MJ
[INTIALS OF INTERVIEWER:] BB
BB: This is Bree Boettner with the Detroit Historical Society Detroit 67 Oral History Project. We’re here at the Detroit Historical Society with Maxine Jones. Thank you so much for sitting down with us today. Can you please tell me where and when you were born?
MJ: March 20, 1941. Detroit, MI.
BB: And where did you live?
MJ: At the time of 67, 4711 Joseph Campau off of Fourth and Joseph Campau. My mother lived at the other end of the block at 4771 Joseph Campau and Hancock, which you find will be significant in this story.
BB: Fantastic. And when you were growing up, before 67, what did your parents do?
MJ: Well, my father worked in a mattress factory. It was called Wolverine Bedding that used to be on Beaubien and Illinois which is a street that does not exist anymore. And my mother, she, at this time, had a community center down on Chene Street off of Farnsworth.
BB: Okay. Did you have any siblings?
MJ: Yes, I have one brother and one sister. I am the middle child.
BB: Would you like to say their names and ages?
MJ: My sister, who is four years younger, is Ingrid Jeter and my brother who is eight years older is Samuel Dorsey.
BB: Fantastic. So in the neighborhood that you grew up in, what schools did you attend?
MJ: Well, basically, I grew up on the - well, I’m an Eastsider. Still an Eastsider. The first I attended was called Balch. It’s over here off of the expressway. It’s now called Golightly. But that was the first school I attended, Balch Elementary School.
BB: And your middle school and high school years?
MJ: My middle school – my favorite – Jefferson Junior High School. It’s still on Fourth and Seven, but they gave it another name. In fact, I know the gentleman, Joe Landy, that purchased the building, and he leases it out, I think as a charter school. I went there from ‘53 to ‘56. Also, another elementary school I went to that does not exist anymore. It was on Willis between Woodward and Cass and it was called Washington Irving School and it was the next thing to a little one room school house.
BB: Wow, that’s fantastic.
MJ: I passed by there and naturally it’s long gone. And for a brief moment when my mother went to the hospital, I went to Trowbridge School that used to be on Forrest over near John R.
BB: So growing up in your area, what was your neighborhood like?
MJ: It was different than it is today saying that the people in the area, they worked together more. If you did something that wasn’t right as a kid, the neighbor told on you, they watched out. It was a poor neighborhood from the Canfield and Beaubien, John R. area I went to, which at that time I went to a St. Leo’s Catholic School on Forrest near Grand River. Everybody watched out for everybody. You didn’t hear about gun violence and even the guys that hung on the corner they had on suits, their hair was done. And my dad had an afterhours place on Erskine and Brush and the rule then was be home before the street lights come on, or at least in front of your house. And even the guys on the corner, they’d see me, they’d call me Little Mac because they called him Mac. And they’d, “Little Mac, you don’t want me to have to take you home now. You get home.” You know, it was much more camaraderie in the neighborhood.
BB: And then bring us up to ‘67. The events leading up to ’67. How were things in the months leading up to that July in the city of Detroit?
MJ: Just normal. At that time, up until about twenty-five years ago, we didn’t lock our doors when we left. Nobody bothered anyone and we had moved a couple of times but primarily – and another school I went to, Northern High School, which is not called Northern anymore. It’s an all girls school on Clairmount or Owens and Woodward. We had a lot of foreign exchange students there, too. It was interesting. Anyway, leading up to it, it was just normal existence. Then I know, too, which is unlike it is now, your corner stores, your businesses, your small grocery stores, your gas stations were all black owned.
BB: Can you state again how old you were and what you were doing working? What kind of job did you have in the city?
MJ: [at the same time] I worked with my mother at her center that she had on Chene and Farnsworth. Just part-time work cause I was raising my kids and at the time I was getting public assistance. Like I said, I was living in the upstairs of a two family flat right there on Joseph Campau. Across the street was Campau Elementary School that does not exist anymore. My mother lived at the other end of the block.
BB: That July, how did you hear about the events when they started?
MJ: We first heard about it on the radio and TV because it started on the West side and, see, I’m over on the East side. We couldn’t believe it when they were showing the pictures in a day or so of everything burning over there on 12th Street, now called Rosa Parks. I was upset because I had some things in the pawnshop over there because 12th Street was a vibrant business. See, what a lot of people don’t understand, the old Hastings Street, 12th Street, the stores and all were primarily ran by Jews and the Jewish people worked with the black community and hired them and some of them even left their businesses to them. And when we saw this burning, it was just unbelievable. Also at the time, here’s a picture of my niece. She was born the 22 of July five days before the riot. She has since deceased. She was very depressed and took her life in 2013 –
BB: Oh, I’m so sorry.
MJ: – but my sister, who was living with my mother, at 4771 Joseph Campau and Hancock, had just birthed her. And we were going crazy trying to figure out where my sister’s husband was, Al. We couldn’t find him anywhere. Now that’s a whole story if you want me to go into that briefly.
BB: Okay, sure.
MJ: Okay, back in those days, when a woman gave birth, they kept them in the hospital, like seven to ten days. Now they herd them out. So Bridget was born the 22nd of July, so this is the 27th, my sister is getting ready to come home in a couple of days and we could not find her husband anywhere and this was their first child. And for those days I was running to morgues, to the morgue, Wayne County Medical Examiner to look at photographs to see if he was in there. People were getting killed. We were calling the police stations, you could not get through the lines were so busy. All of the police stations, their jails were full plus they even had prisoners in the garages of the precinct. That’s how many people were getting arrested. Well we found him. He got in touch with us about a month later. He was way up in Ionia because they had to ship prisoners up there because they had no room for all of them.
BB: Wow. So he did get caught.
MJ: Well, he made the biggest, stupid mistake in life. The rioting and the looting, I’m sorry, I just didn’t participate in that and then you find a lot of the smaller Mom and Pop stores, hey, those people was spending the night in their stores with guns. I talked to people that were stealing liquor. One guy even told me, “Oh, my little boy loves chocolate chip cookies so I got a case of chocolate chip cookies out of the store.” I remember Federal’s Department Store was on Van Dyke and Harper and we drove by there and people were rolling racks of clothes out of the stores because that Van Dyke and Harper area used to be a real nice business area. In fact, they just recently tore down the East Town Theater that was there where we used to go and see movies and see the concerts and different groups. Everyone from Iggy Pop to everybody, okay. That was quite distressing, well, of course we were so worried because we didn’t know where he was. So I’m at home and my mother’s at home and then they declared, I believe, Marshall Law. It was a curfew; you could not go out. Well, the crazy thing was, and here’s the significance of my mother on Hancock and Joseph Campau. The park is still there, it’s called Perrian Park, well, right there was Northeaster High School and the 82nd Airborne commandeered the whole area. So they were there. We saw tanks rolling down Forest, down Chene and different streets. The funny part about it was since the 82nd Airborne was there all of a sudden, every woman in the neighborhood had to take a walk around the park everyday [laughs]. And my mother’s house was right there on the corner so my mother was giving them cookies and we were making Kool-Aid for them. A couple of the young men in the neighborhood were making money shining their boots for them and guys was out – they were housed in Northeastern High School but they had commandeered the school plus the park and that was real interesting.
BB: That sounds like it would have been a hoot.
MJ: Now if you ask me or want to know why I believe the riots started, I know it was a blind pig or after hours joint, whatever you want to call it on 12th and Claimount. But what a lot of people tend to forget at this time in Detroit, one of our nicest mayors ever was Jerome P. Cavanagh and Girardin I believe was the police chief and he had at the time instituted something called STRESS. STRESS was very stressful to everybody because the police were given carte blanche. They could stop and frisk. They could harass you in any kind of way. Being mixed, I had gentleman friends of mine, we were actually stopped in cars by black and white cops, which there was a few black cops then, and their motivation for stopping us was to ask me what I was.
BB: Huh.
MJ: They could do what they wanted to back then. Yeah, they had carte blanche. They could see a young man walking down the street and just throw him down for no reason and it was called stop and frisk plus if you ever look up the STRESS in Detroit you’ll see, it was stressful and people were so against this. It went on for a few years, too, cause it was giving a citizen no rights. They could just do what they wanted to.
BB: How do you label the events of July? Cause you mentioned riots so I just want to clarify for me how you perceive the event in general.
MJ: Well, I perceived it as being bad because where they burned was over there on Twelfth Street was a major black business area, the black and the Jewish community had the stores, and fire doesn’t take names like bullets. It gets whatever it can get and a lot of people lost their homes because while the stores and all were burning, the fire licked over and burned a lot of people’s homes. And that was just terrible. One funny thing, which in a way it wasn’t funny, I was walking on Chene Street, I had went to the store and I saw one guy pushing an upright piano up Chene Street. I was told at the time that people that looted and robbed and maybe got money or jewelry or things like that, especially on the east side in that Harper Van Dyke area, that buckets of money and coins and stuff were buried in the ground. Who knows? They might still be there. But I viewed it as yes it was an uprising and it was against the way people were being treated but it was kind of the wrong thing to do because when you burn your own businesses and your own people’s homes that was pretty bad. Because now the places like downtown, that’s how my brother-in-law got arrested. You weren’t going to go down to stores like Hudson’s, Crawley, Kearns and loot. That was the first place they protected and you weren’t going to go St. Clare Shores or Grosse Point and cause any problems so you burned your own.
BB: Good to know. I was going to ask, in your community, cause you mentioned that you were on the east side, where did your family shop? Where were you guys centrally located in where you shopped, where you entertained yourselves?
MJ: Well, we kind went everywhere. We went in that Harper – Van Dyke area, we’d go downtown. Even then, Highland Park was a nice place to go. We were kind of all over the place. Of course, downtown was the main thing and Hudson’s, oh I remember it so well. We had little neighborhood stores, cleaners, places like that that we went to and your supermarkets weren’t really – they were independent like a lot of them are in Detroit now. Spartan stores are independent. Primarily Middle Eastern. We just went grocery shopping wherever, Hamtramck, wherever.
BB: And then the months following July, after the riot, uprising started and after you finally got your brother-in-law back, how did you see the city change?
MJ: A lot of places that were burned out, like I said, the riots to me began the loss of black owned businesses because some where burned out, some just went out of business. It kind of began a downhill swing. Like I said, I feel the last best mayor we had was Jerome P. Cavanagh and he was the mayor during the riots and he was a really nice guy. And after that, it didn’t do so good and it hasn’t done really good for the past forty years.
BB: Why do you think that is?
MJ: Mismanagement. People taking privilege downtown instead of looking out for the people that live in the city. I live on the Northeast side, I’ve been on Let it Rip at least three times and Charlie Langton, who calls me the “Crazy Lady on the East Side,” and I call him the “Crazy Attorney on Channel 2.” Right now where I live, which is a few blocks from Denby High School, I’ve been there for 41 years. My block on both sides has only one, two, three, four people living on it. And the houses across the street from me have been abandoned about ten years. Eight to ten years, maybe give or take a little bit less, and on my side of the street six to eight years. And I live in fear with an abandoned house next door to me. They finally came after the Channel 2 got after them enough and boarded the house up next to me but my car sits in the driveway and I’m in fear of it catching on fire. And of course, like I said, fire doesn’t pick who it gets. Plus it makes our car insurance, our house insurance, and everything just sky-high. And I take care of my property cause I’ve been in my house 41 years and our zip code, the -05 zip code, used to be the nicest zip code in and around because it was the last, should I say, lily white zip code in the city and it was primarily where your Detroit Police and retired ones lived. Unfortunately, we had a gentleman in the area named Donald Lobsinger who was over the John Birch Society which we know is just another arm of the Ku Klux Klan. One family, right before I moved there in ‘72, I believe because I moved there in ‘74, over on Alma Street had their home burned down because they weren’t wanted there. I won’t even go into the story about me and my kids on Seymour because it was rough. And I’ll tell you this, the first three years we lived there, and we’re a mixed family, every Saturday around noon when they would test the sirens, like for tornados or something, there would be three or four cars driving up and down the street with a dummy of Coleman Young hanging from it and banners on the sides of the cars, “Niggers get out.”
BB: Oh my gosh.
MJ: And we’d wake up, well my house that my lived in on Warren off of Chene, 2256 E. Warren, it caught on fire because those houses down there, and if you notice in Hamtramck all down on that East side part of town, the houses are so close together that the roofs overlap and this was an empty house next door and I was in fear of it and one night while I was in the house with my kids and a friend of mine was helping me fix it up, my one daughter, she kept – we were tiling the floor in the living room. It was a shotgun house. You could stand in front and see straight to the back but it had eleven rooms on one floor. The bedrooms were all on that side next to the house that was empty and I had a real bad feeling about that and my daughter Gabrielle, she kept saying, we had kind of hooked them into their bedrooms so they wouldn’t come out and walk on the glue we were putting the tile down. She kept saying, “Momma, Momma, let me out. There’s something wrong with the house next door.” And I’m like, “Be quiet, you just want to come out.” And she said, “No, Momma, no. Something is wrong.” And I opened the door to fuss at her and I could see the flames roaring at her bedroom window and I went to the next bedroom and opened the door and my two boys, thank God their bunk bed was on this side of the room, ‘cause their window side, their chest of drawers was already burning. And I had to get my kids. That was a horrible situation there. That’s when I moved in the house I am in. I said I will never live in a house again that doesn’t at least have a driveway in between but now I’m put in a situation with an abandoned house next door to me that could catch on fire and that doesn’t mean that someone could deliberately set it, there’s electrical. We’re always getting power – we just had one last week – power outages in that area. Oh yeah, I had to have a whole house beside individual surge protectors because it could just catch on – cause you know a few years ago, over in the Van Dyke and Seven Mile area they had that big fire storm and those houses are old and once they catch, it’s just a tinderbox.
BB: We talked about your views of what happened. Can you explain a little but about how the unrest in July affected your family in the broader picture? You mentioned that Bridget was born then—
MJ: It was scary but we were on the East side so we were not that worried. There was not the abundance of fires on the East side and then we were further out east. It was scary. It affected me because my mother and I both had things in the pawn shop on 12th because we had lived over there previously on – I just had the name in my mind a few minutes ago. It really kind almost doesn’t exist anymore, that street. But 12th Street was a nice place. You could walk up and down, I remember my mother and I would get corned beef sandwiches and a bottle of Stroh’s you know and you could buy anything you wanted and whatnot and nobody bothered anybody. There was bars, there were all kind of little stores and everything and it was just sad to see it go like that.
BB: Next question would be what message would you like to leave for future generations about your memoires of Detroit before, after, and during?
MJ: Well, my message would be to these younger people, wake up. Stop killing each other, murdering really. Murdering children. There is no camaraderie whatsoever. True, the riot was bad but it still expressed a form of camaraderie because of the way the police would treat people and all. It was extreme but it was a form of camaraderie. But now I find the apathy in Detroit is bad. It’s like, well as long as it doesn’t happen to me, I don’t care because I’ve been a community activist and leader on the Northeast side now since ‘93. In the organization I’m over, out of 286 blocks, I can’t get three people that want to help. I can’t get two but everybody wants everything but nobody wants to do nothing. It’s like the old Bella and the Cat Story, do you know about it?
BB: No.
MJ: Aesop’s Fables, do you know about that?
BB: Mm-mm.
MJ: Well, those are old, ancient fables and one of them was called Bella and the Cat. Real quick. There was these mice and they were always getting eaten by the cat and they said, “We’ve got to get a solution to know when this cat is coming so we won’t get ate.” Okay? One of them said, “I’ve got it, we’ll put a bell around his neck and when he comes, we’ll hear the bell and we’ll be able to get away.” But then the situation of who’s going to put the bell around his neck? So it’s the point of it’s good to have ideas but if you’re not acting upon them, it’s wasted and I find that parts of Detroit, like Southwest Detroit, the Hispanic community, yes they work together. And some pockets of the city but no, it’s the apathy and, “Oh I want mine,” or, “I’m going to do my own thing,” and that’s what’s bad.
BB: Well, I don’t have any further questions. Do you have anything you’d like to add to your interview today?
MJ: Well, I thank you for the opportunity.
BB: Oh, thank you. [Laughter]
MJ: I am writing a book on the perspective of being a female and black growing up in the city of Detroit because no one has wrote that. Being 75 years old and remembering all the way back to the age of 4 in detail, I’m doing it. I purchased a new version of Dragon because I hate typing. But yeah, when it comes to the riots, it was scary and it really didn’t solve anything.
BB: There’s still issues.
MJ: Yeah, oh please. Everything started on the downward slide, yeah.
BB: Well, if you think of anything after, please don’t hesitate to contact us. I will give you our contact information after that and if you don’t have anything to add, we will stop this. Thank you so much.
MJ: And thank you.
[TAPE ENDS 00:29:15]
[End of Track 1]
[INITIALS OF INTERVIWEE:] HS
[INTIALS OF INTERVIEWER:] WC
[REPEAT INITIALS EACH TIME EACH PERSON SPEAKS]
HS: Hi, my name is Hannah Sabal. Today is June 18, 2016. We are here at the Detroit Historical Museum interviewing William Charron for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project. Thank you for sitting down with us today.
WC: You’re welcome.
HS: Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?
WC: I was born in River Rouge, Michigan, October 1st, 1944.
HS: And what was your neighborhood like growing up?
WC: I grew up in Wyandotte. I was not a post-War baby, I was born during the War. And we lived with my grandparents and when my father came home from the War, we bought a home in Wyandotte and we lived in Wyandotte. It was a all-white, working-class, mostly Polish and Italian neighborhood. Bungalow-style home. Later, when I was probably in the first or second grade, my father had built a home on 13th Street in Wyandotte, and we moved into that and then he built one down the street for my grandparents. We lived on 13th Street, Wyandotte—Colonial-style home this time. It was a wonderful place to grow up. It was somewhat insulated, it was not racially mixed—if you want to count the Polish and the Italians. I felt a little jealous that I was neither.
HS: Oh, yeah?
WC: I grew up a better person because of it I guess.
HS: What did you parents do for a living?
WC: Ultimately my mother was a secretary to the Board of Auditors in Wayne County. She was Bob Ficano’s secretary when he was Deputy County Clerk. My father was the President and Executive Director of Metropolitan Council 23 of AFSCME. He was also the International Executive Vice President, and he was the President of the largest Local: Local 101 Wayne County Road Commission.
WC: I was deeply involved in Wayne County politics when I was growing up, when I was younger.
HS: Which schools did you go to? Did you go to school in Wyandotte?
WC: I went to elementary and junior high in Wyandotte, and high school in Trenton.
HS: Okay, alright. So, moving into 1967, where were you living in 1967?
WC: Well I was living in Trenton, and my wife-to-be was living in Detroit on Mark Twain on the Northwest side. I met her in college up in Marquette and we would have never have met—I was from Downriver and she was from Detroit. We met in school and she had dropped out of school to help defray the expenses for the family for the wedding that was coming up in July. She worked as a long-distance telephone operator for Michigan Bell. It was right here on East Bethune across from the Detroit Police mounted stable. The mounted police were right across the street from that. She was considered a critical occupation, and so the National Guard picked her up from her home, brought her to work, and they took her home in the evening. She had an armed escort–that was scary–to and from work because the telephone facilities at Michigan Bell were completely surrounded 24 hours a day by the National Guard.
HS: That’s amazing.
WC: So that communications would not be interrupted in the city. It was a scary time.
HS: Yeah, I’m sure.
WC: My father-in-law owned Midwest Produce at the Eastern Market and his brother owned a liquor store on Joy and Dexter. We were very personally touched by the riot.
We were married at Precious Blood on the Northwest Side. Our reception was at Piedmontese (??) Hall on Puritan–that’s halfway between Five Mile and McNichols, between Fenkell and McNichols. I’ve never been able to find this damn letter. I don’t know what my mother did with it. But we had written permission from Gov. Romney to have a champagne toast at the reception because there was no alcohol allowed to be served or sold in the city during the riot.
HS: Wow.
WC: And they figured champagne wasn’t flammable so they allowed us to have that. People brought things to drink and they were hiding it under the table like a speakeasy. The National Guard broke up our reception at nine o’clock because there was a curfew in the city. My wife’s family had a kind of a place in Southfield at a hotel where they went, and my parents had my side down to our home in Trenton. My dad had gone down to Toledo with some of his friends and they bought things to drink. Little aside, when we were leaving, this is our wedding day, right? I forgot to grab a bottle of champagne. We ended up in our hotel drinking orange pop that I got out of a vending machine on my wedding night. [Laughter] That’s the one humorous part I remember about the riot.
HS: Just to clarify, you got married during the riots?
WC: July 29.
HS: July 29.
WC: Right in the middle of the Riot. Our rehearsal dinner was at the Pontchartrain, it was brand new. The ride down there was scary. The ride back was even scarier. We were the only people in the place. The only people in the place. Other than the paid help. They were nervous, they wanted to get out of there. It was an unbelievable time.
My mother worked at the City County Building right downtown, and my Dad’s office was at 2345 Cass Avenue, which is right in the middle of the city. Of course my father-in-law had Midwest Produce at Eastern Market and my wife had worked part-time at her uncle’s liquor store growing up. So we were just devastated by the riot, devastated by it.
My wife’s cousin, who literally ran the liquor store, I tease him about causing the riot because he used to make deliveries to the blind pigs, and it was a raid on a blind pig that started the riot, and it was one that he had made deliveries to. I don’t know that he made one that night, but [laughter]. He and his brothers rescued the bridal gown and bridesmaids’ dresses from Suzy’s Bridal Salon–I can’t remember where it was–but the buildings on both sides of the bridal salon had been burned to the ground. We got the dresses out just in time. And they had to go right in the middle of the riot area to get the dresses. We were personally affected by everything that went on.
HS: Yeah.
WC: I went to graduate school here at Wayne, and I had a 12-hour class that ran over three-academic terms, it was called PPBS: Program Planning and Budgeting Systems. And it was taught by a panel of professors and one of the professors was an African American female social worker. How she got on the panel, I’ll never know. But she kept referring to the riot as the Rebellion of ‘67. I couldn’t take it anymore, I blew up at her in class one day. And the class applauded me for it. I won’t tell you what I said [laughter] but it wasn’t nice. I got an A! Which was really surprising in the class because I thought I was doomed for my outburst. But that was how personally affected everybody that lived in the city at that time was. It was really traumatic. When we saw people lose their livelihoods, lose their businesses, some lost their lives here in the city. It was such a wonderful place before that. For it to be taken away–just boom!–just like that on a whim and I’ll never, ever be convinced that it was spontaneous. There were riots going on all over the country in ’67 and ’68, don’t tell me they were spontaneous. They started and they stopped.
HS: So on that vein, your explosion at the graduate professor, how would you classify the events of 67? As a riot, an uprising?
WC: It was a riot. It was a riot. It was portrayed as an attack. There was a thing in the city called STRESS, it was a police program, and it as about safe streets, that’s what they asked of. The culture in the city–I won’t attribute it just to African Americans–the culture in the city hasn’t changed a lot, but the culture was to ignore the law. They just obeyed the laws the felt like obeying. They didn’t buy insurance. They didn’t pay their taxes. They didn’t pay their utility bills. They employed what they called “blockbusting” where they would go into a neighborhood that was predominately white or all white, and they would start offering ridiculous prices for a home in the middle of the neighborhood. Finally somebody would sell at a greatly inflated price, they would move a family into the home–“protected class family,” let’s put it that way–and they would move them into the home and they would do the same things at one or two other homes in the street, and before you knew it everybody had for sale signs on their lawn. And they bought up the rest of the property really cheap. And of course they were all rental properties, they were all owned by somebody, they were rented out, and now you see they reaped the benefit of that because all the neighborhoods, with the exception of Palmer Park and maybe part of Indian Village is redeemable, the Boston Edison area maybe is coming back, there is no, literally no hope for the neighborhoods. There is no place to shop, there is no place for the kids to go to school, and heaven help you if you have a police or a medical emergency, nobody’s coming. And that’s just the way it is. For anybody to argue against that fact, I’ll take them there, I’ll show them neighborhoods right now, I’m an Uber driver, and there are neighborhoods where I don’t even feel good about stopping at a stop sign.
The riot produced the most racially polarized city in the country, and it’s still that way. Now 1968 was a little different. Things were a little peaceful because the Tigers and the World Series and everybody was feeling good, a little bit relieved, it seemed life relief was on the way and things were smoothing out, and then they got ugly again. There seemed to be all this racial animus, and there still is. You can’t have the discussion with anybody of opposite race about the riot that was here at the time. It’s just too emotional.
HS: I was just going to backtrack a little bit. How did you–or your wife–first hear about the Riots?
WC: We were in them.
HS: Okay.
WC: We were there. I mean she worked downtown. We heard the gunshots. We saw the smoke. Then we turned on the radio and heard the reports of things that were going on. The liquor store was right in the middle of the riots. We heard from her cousins, “Hey, we have got to close the store, people are looting. Stuff was going on, people are being shot in the street.” And then the National Guard pulled into town, and the stories you heard about them, it was just unbelievable. I couldn’t believe that the city was under martial law. You can’t imagine–I don’t care what color you are–you can’t imagine how awful that is.
There was a movie I saw it recently on one of the movie channels on cable. Denzel Washington was an FBI agent, and Bruce Willis was a General in the Army and New York City had been put under martial law and they got all the Arabs and they put them in a—you know, that was Detroit during the riot! People can’t imagine how it was, but that’s the way it was. I mean you could not drive. Anybody driving on the street for any legitimate purpose was under suspicion. You stopped your car, and you got it searched. People were looking for anything, any reason. It was traumatic.
I’m not embellishing. My wife could have offered a lot more detail, I wish she could, and I wish she was here because she could’ve gone through some of the emotion that was caused at the time. I go through photographs of my wedding and it triggers little memories here and there.
We went to Toronto on our honeymoon because things were happening all over the country and I didn’t want to accidentally run into one, so we went to Toronto. We were married on Saturday the twenty-ninth, and I had to be back the following Saturday to take my test for law school here at Wayne.
HS: Mm-hmm.
WC: I took the L-S-A-T the following Saturday and it was still kind of smoldering but things had calmed down by then a little bit.
HS: So your father-in-law’s brother’s liquor store, was that looted during the riots?
WC: Yes. They did reopen it eventually, they did reopen it. It was funny. Family worked at it for a while, then they sold it. But my wife’s uncle who owned the liquor store, his son ran the liquor store, and he had a commodities business out of the Buhl Building in downtown Detroit, and they lived in Grosse Pointe, and the bartender from the Caucus Club lived right behind him. [Laughter.]
HS: [Laughter.]
We were so deep involved in the city and in the county and everything that we took everything so personally, more so than other folks that were just suburban dwellers and weren’t really affected by it, except they may have been inconvenienced.
HS: So how do you think that the city has changed since the riots?
WC: Well, as I indicated, it’s the most racially polarized city in the country, and it still it. I feel racial tension everyday here. The African American community is still grousing about not participating in the redevelopment of the downtown area. I get so sick and tired of people standing around with their hand out wanting to participate. You have to earn it. They don’t - earn it! Go to school like I did. Do work. I had a morning Free Press route. The last paper had to hit the porch by 6:30 or you could lose your route, and there were guys standing in line for those routes back then–this is back in the 50s.
HS: [Laughter.]
WC: [Laughter.] I would hitch-hike, I would get a ride from my neighbor to the Free Bridge at Grosse Isle; I hitched across a free bridge to Cadillac Grosse Ile Country Club. I’d always be the first caddy there and I’d catch a loop and be done by noon and I’d hitch-hiked back to Wyandotte and I umpired little league games in the afternoon. I worked my butt off. I saved money for college. I saved. I’ve done that my entire life, my whole being, my family, pursuit of education–reading was part of our culture, we discussed things at dinner, we had dinner together, we talked about things that we had read about. My whole being was dedicated to my adult life and my work ethic. Nobody handed me anything.
HS: Mm-hmm.
WC: Nothing’s changed. Everybody’s standing around expecting what? What do you want from me? I give you everything I’ve got. That’s it, the best I’ve got. I can only do what I do. I can only be what I am. You know, I’m an Uber driver, it’s what I do, it’s not who I am. [Laughter]
HS: So on a similar thread, what message would you like to leave for future generations in Detroit concerning before, during, after the riots?
WC: We have to become truly colorblind, or there is no hope here. And I mean truly colorblind. That means don’t expect something because you’re Black, don’t expect anything because you’re white. I don’t know what white privilege is, maybe I’ve seen it but not recognized it, but I was brought up in an ethnic community where people worked hard their entire lives. And they were moral and they were honest and they were hard-working, that’s all you can ask for. Nobody locked their doors there! It was that kind of town, you didn’t have to worry about it.
Detroit was that way at one time, there were a lot of neighborhoods that were that way. They lost it, they lost it. If anything they lost their innocence. I lost mine. I was so naïve I could not believe that that was going on, that that was a problem, but it was a real problem.
HS: Well that’s definitely a very powerful message, I feel. Is there anything else you’d like to add or that you feel we haven’t discussed.
WC: Not really. I’ve got lots of stories but they wouldn’t be germane. [Laughter]
HS: Okay. [Laughter] Alright, well, thank you so much for sitting down with us, we really appreciate it.
WC: It was fun.
HS: Good, I’m glad.
WC: It was fun to reminisce.
HS: Oh I’m sure.
[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 24:05]
HS: Hello, my name is Hannah Sabal. The date is July 1st, 2016. We are in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, with William Winkel and we are conducting an oral history interview for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project with Dick Billotto. Thank you for sitting down with us today.
DB: You’re welcome.
HS: Can you start by telling us where and when you were born?
DB: Born in Detroit, 1944.
HS: Where did you grow up?
DB: I grew up in the Corktown area right behind Briggs Stadium, right in the shadow. We used to catch foul balls in our backyard.
HS: Oh, that’s cool.
DB: That was when I got to work at the stadium, I got to meet a lot of the players.
HS: Cool. What was it like growing up there?
DB: Oh, that was the greatest neighborhood, Corktown. We had a mixture of every nationality: Irish—well, of course, “Corktown” is an Irish name—and I went to the Catholic school, and I went to a public school for a while. All the kids that I grew up with, you name it: Irish, Mexican, Maltese, blacks—we all got along, we all loved each other. There was nothing. I never heard the “n” word, I never heard any prejudice, there was no bullying. We did have our own little gang. I was in the Stilettos, and then there was such a thing as the Bagley Boys. Other than that, we didn’t go around shooting each other like they do today.
HS: And what did your parents do?
DB: My father worked at the Fisher Body for General Motors; he worked at Briggs Stadium as an usher, since 1935 until the Lions moved to the Silver Dome. He also worked at the Olympia when Gordie Howe played hockey. Those three jobs: the Fisher Body and two usher jobs. My mom was a stay-at-home mom.
HS: Did you have any siblings?
DB: Yeah, I have an older brother, Freddie, and Sandy, my younger sister, and my youngest, Janet. Do you have some questions for me?
HS: Moving into the 1960s, were you still living at home in Corktown?
DB: Yeah, actually the freeway came through and took my house. We were at Vernor and Harrison, which like I said, the third base side of Brigg Stadium at that time, and the freeway tore our house down and we moved actually across the street diagonally where the freeway ended, and we still lived on Harrison in the neighborhood. We stayed there until I graduated from high school.
HS: What year did you graduate high school?
DB: ’62. 1962.
HS: What did you do after high school?
DB: Well, I worked as an apprentice for a printing company in a Detroit neighborhood, there. It was called George Willins and Company. I had a four-year apprentice, worked with the newspapers off and on. I got married in ’67, that’s when we bought our first house down on the west side around Martin and Michigan area. I remember, I had to give them $1000 down, and I had a land contract. $78 a month for a house payment. You believe it?
HS: It’s not fair!
DB: We paid $8000 for the house.
HS: Wow!
DB: And I paid it off in half the time because I doubled the payments. Other than that, we lived there, and then we moved to Dearborn Heights in 1977. So we lived there around ten years, then we moved out there.
HS: Were you married before the riots or after the riots?
DB: I was married in ’67, which was the year, just before the riots happened.
HS: So you were living on the west side when the riots happened?
DB: Yeah, we were all living in Detroit, all my family—brothers, sisters—we were all living in Detroit.
HS: Did you notice any tension in the city in that summer?
DB: All I can tell you is that was a year when they had a STRESS unit, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. Cops would go out in plain clothes and put themselves in situations where they would make arrests. There was a lot of—what do you call today when you abuse people?
HS: Police brutality.
DB: Police brutality. That was happening because we had a strictly, like, white police force. And I had police friends, I almost became a police officer but I was too short, thank God. But I had police officers, friends that I grew up with. Wonderful human beings, but they had a real bad problem. They were racists. And I heard stories that I don’t even want to talk about.
HS: Okay. How did you first hear about the riots?
DB: We were coming home from Metro Beach, me and my wife, on a Sunday. We had no children at the time, and it was around six o’clock in the evening, seven o’clock. The night before—Saturday—was when it all started, the big commotion with the police and Twelfth Street. Well, by that time it was twenty-four hours later almost, and we’re seeing, everywhere I turn—I’m coming down 94, coming home, going west—I see fires everywhere! Couldn’t figure it out, I didn’t know what was happening from the night before and all through the Sunday afternoon. The rioting started and there were fires starting all across the city. Then when we got the news, we realized what was happening, there was a riot actually; people were burning and looting. Then, the next day they said, “Curfew, nobody goes out.” So I went out there in the daytime, I went riding around. I was on the west side, and I rode to the old neighborhood where I grew up, because I had just moved from the old neighborhood. I went riding down Twelfth Street and I see people just running around, no police. They did whatever they chose. They were pumping gas at the gas stations for free, they were going in stores and bringing out whatever they wanted. There was no police presence. For a couple days, you know, it was, like, really bad. And then, the governor called in the National Guard, and I think the president called in the 101st and 82nd Airborne, so they were all here trying to quell the rioting. I was riding around, my wife and I, taking pictures. I went down Forest and there was a Cunningham’s that had just burned down, I have some pictures of it. Boys were out there, and I said, “Hey, young man, can you go in there and get me some film?” Because I was taking pictures. Told them I was a newspaper man, he didn’t know the difference. He brought me some black and white, and I was taking photos with it. So the rest of that week, we had people in my neighborhood walking around in fatigues and their guns, you know, these gun fanatics people, and guys on their porch all night, waiting. And my neighborhood, where it was, it was basically an all-white Polish neighborhood, there was not anything going on there. It was mainly the intercity and the main streets, so even though we had tanks coming up our street, and, you know, you saw the National Guard here and there, it was happening mainly in the mostly intercity area, where all the looting and stuff was taking place. For quite a while, quite a few days, that was happening: curfew, people were—I think there was 44 people, or how many?
WW: 43.
DB: Killed. That was my experience so far, and then I knew a family on Twelfth Street over there, Twelfth and Temple. Kids I grew up with, mind you, don’t get me wrong. We grew up, played baseball together, it was a black family. I still knew them, they lived in the old neighborhood. I never quit, you know, seeing my friends from the old neighborhood just because I moved. They had all new furniture in their house and they put all their old furniture outside for the garbage man to take. Well, two weeks later, the police came because they heard about the furniture they had gotten free, I guess you could say. They actually confiscated their new furniture, so now they have no furniture! It was kind of funny at the time.
HS: Did you have any other experiences while you were out taking photos that you witnessed?
DB: Well, yeah, just the fact that people were doing things, no one was watching, there was no police presence; it was like everything was free for those few days until they got it under control. That’s all I can remember at this time.
HS: Do you know what your family was up to during that week? Did they stay in their house?
DB: Well, yeah, we all stayed in the house. We were all basically on the west side where it was mostly a Polish neighborhood. They had all home owners, there were no renter type, and people cared. They just stayed in their own backyard or front porch until everything calmed down. That’s all we did. We didn’t get involved.
HS: Was there a sense of relief when the National Guard and then the 101st and 82nd came in?
DB: Oh yeah, that was important that they got that under control, for sure. It was like almost a fun time for people, because it was something exciting to see the tanks going down the street. I was never really worried about problems because, like I said, it was concentrated and they didn’t start coming into our neighborhood. A lot of these gun-toters were waiting, “Boy, let ‘em come!” As if they were going to come down our street. They just stayed on the main streets with the big stores and stuff where they could loot.
HS: What changes did you witness after that in Detroit?
DB: Well, after that, I think Coleman Young ended STRESS, he put an end to it because they were definitely abusing it. Then he told everybody to hit Eight Mile Road, so all the white people left. I think he could’ve been, maybe, trying to bridge, instead of bridging the gap, he wanted to build a wall, just like our friend Trump. He wants to build a wall and say, “You white people hit Eight Mile and we’ll own our city.” Now, how many years later, we finally are starting to get it together again.
HS: How do you see Detroit today?
DB: I’m shocked. I can’t believe it. I never thought I would see it come back. Because I grew up, Detroit was a great city, I grew up in the city. I had a paper route, I was a Detroit Times carrier. I had over a hundred customers, and I delivered to people. I would go canvassing, I don’t care what part of the city, trying to get new customers. It was a fun time when I grew up in Detroit. We had parks on every corner, played baseball, they had recreation, people opening up and giving us the balls to play with. They made hockey, they would dig a hole in the winter time, fill it with water so we could skate. We had a lot of wonderful things in Detroit growing up. Great city. And then as the white flight, you lost money, you know, tax base and then the crime started because the kids were uneducated.
HS: You said you moved out to Dearborn Heights in 1977. Why did you move?
DB: Well, number one, it was getting to be where I wanted my children to have a better school. That was the main reason. And getting away from the crime that was starting to take over Detroit. They had gangs, and even though I still lived in a fairly nice neighborhood, we were surrounded by criminal activity. It was for safety reasons.
HS: A lot of people perceive the events differently. Some people call it a riot, some people call it a rebellion, a civil uprising. How do you perceive the events?
DB: Yeah, I kind of look at it as a rebellion. I could understand the folks getting upset. It’s a constant, you know, it seemed like it was white police abusing blacks and one thing led to another, and that night they had some altercations and it just grew. Plus it was a hot summer, time of the year, and that tends to make it worse. You can see all the problems that have happened. Gosh, and the riots, when they let those policemen, in Los Angeles, you had those four or five policemen beating Rodney King. We saw it on camera. They all should’ve went to jail. They all got off! Well, there was a riot. Of course, I would’ve rioted. If I was black, I’d probably be in the Black Panthers right now. I would be so upset. It’s no excuse. But I could understand them being upset. God bless them, they try to do it peacefully, but sometimes there’s too much of the, you know, Good Ol’ Boy people, they stick together no matter what. And that was awful. And I think that’s what led to OJ Simpson being released. They knew he was guilty, but the folks on the jury said, “Eh, we’ve been hung every Friday night for 200 years,” they would hang them. I know a lady, friend of mine, my wife’s friend Betty. She’s a black girl, grew up in Mississippi. Come home one day, her neighbor’s father was hanging from a tree. There was no investigation, there was no charge. It was just part of growing up in the south where they had the Jim Crow, they call it.
HS: If you had a message for future generations of Detroit, what would it be?
DB: Well, what’s happening now, you have so many people coming back to Detroit, young people, which gives us hope. There are people who are not racist, who are not prejudiced, they’re young people with decent education. I could see the black folks appreciating that, because they even voted for a white mayor and he’s doing the best he can. And there’s none of that, “Oh, I’m not voting for a white mayor, oh, I’m only voting for a black guy.” No, no. They want what’s best for their city, black or white. If they’re going to be honest, they’ll vote for them. I think it’s great, what’s happening in Detroit. Being a Detroiter, I never thought I’d see it before I died.
HS: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
DB: I guess that’s enough, don’t you think?
HS: Okay, well thank you for sitting down with us today.
JY: Hello, this Jason Young and I am here with Dana Daley for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. Today is July 7th, 2016. Thank you for joining me today.
DD: You’re welcome.
JY: Right off the bat, could you please start by telling me where and when you were born?
DD: I was born in Detroit, September 19, 1948.
JY: Could you let me know a little bit about your parents and what they did?
DD: My mom was a single mom, basically, with five children in the family. My dad didn’t have too much interest in being a father. My grandparents used to own a restaurant, Fenson Feathers Fish and Chips on 7 Mile and Evergreen area. That’s kind of where we all hung out. I also grew up around Livernois and Davison, and that was in the heart of the riot, there. A good portion of it.
JY: Really quickly, about your siblings. Could I get some names?
DD: I was the oldest, then my brother Spike, my sister Pinky, my little brother Rocky, and then Aaron.
JY: What was it like—you named two different areas growing up—what was it like growing up in those areas?
DD: Livernois and Davison, Russell Woods, is a beautiful neighborhood. Very nice. I would say probably a little upper middle class, but everybody worked hard. My mom’s house, 7 and Telegraph, was very blue collar. Being a single mom as she was, I say we lived in the worst house in the neighborhood, five kids in a 720-square-foot home. We had many animals. She was trying to make up for, I guess, a loss of not having a dad by bringing home every animal that she could find. There was a time where we had, actually we had 22 animals and a monkey and five kids in that house. Needless to say, we were feral.
JY: All right. 22 animals and a monkey.
DD: It was crazy. Then she had to go to Detroit to appear in the courts in front of a judge, and they were trying to make her get rid of all the animals, and she raised a ruckus there. So anyway. It was never a dull moment.
JY: Before we get ’67, is there anything special or anything that you remember about Detroit in the mid-60s?
DD: It was beautiful. My godfather worked down at the old county building, at 600 Randolph, which is a beautiful beaux arts building. He was Detroit city clerk with the traffic court referee. He took care of all the traffic cases and odds and ends cases. Anyway, it was a treat, sometimes he’d bring you to downtown Detroit to go to work with him. Or you’d go downtown Detroit to go to Hudson’s, and when you went downtown Detroit, it was special. You would dress up. You would dress up nice. Back then it wasn’t going to downtown Detroit in your jeans, you would dress up in a nice dress or a skirt or something like that. Hudson’s was magical. The buildings down there, all the action, it was so much energy. It was wondrous, it was beautiful. It was amazing. The Detroit waterfront back then was nothing like it is now. There was no, you know, river parks and all that. It was kind of rough, the river front. It was all factories and industry. But downtown itself was very, very nice. I used to work downtown in 1969 at the Cadillac tower building for Blue Cross. I used to take the buses—I’d take two buses—from one of my neighborhoods—Grand River and Evergreen is another area where I lived—to downtown Detroit. I enjoyed it, it was fun taking the buses. You could always count on that bus being on time back then.
JY: Did you notice any tensions or, you know, anything in the city growing up?
DD: I am so trying hard to remember because, yeah, sometimes you would—I didn’t get the full grasp of the unfairness of how African Americans were treated. Reading about it actually gives me a better grasp than living in the area because I didn’t see it or feel it as much back then. Many of my wards that I worked with were African American girls, and we just had a lovely time working downtown. There was no thought that she was African American and I’m white. There was no thought of it. I just didn’t feel a lot of tension until the riots. Then it started coming. But later, in later years, I learned of things that had happened by some of the parents that we didn’t hear as children. Some of the parents, we heard some crazy stories. Not the parents that I knew, but I heard of a Mr. Glover—he burnt down a house that African Americans had moved into along 7 Mile and Evergreen area. I had recently learned about that, in say the last 10 or 15 years by getting together with the old friends. “Oh, didn’t you know—” you know. Things like that. I started getting more of it later in life because I think that being young, you’re just young, dumb, and silly. Plus at that time I became a new mom at 18, so I was kind of, what you might say, I had a lot of responsibilities going on right then. As far as any negative racism in my inner circle with my family and my friends, there were none. My mom being a single mom became friends with Ruth Anne Connors. Ruth Anne Connors is an African American woman who was also a single mom. She was absolutely beautiful, as well as my mom. They were quite the scene on the nightclub circuit. They’d get a sitter and they’d go out night clubbing and they watch Bobby Darin and all that. They were great friends, and Ruth Anne and my mom—my mom loved to go out to coffee. In fact, my mom said, “Ruth Anne, let’s go for coffee,” and Ruth Anne said, “I don’t think they’re going to serve me here.” Ruth Anne told me all of this in later years. My mom says, “If they don’t serve you, then they’re not serving me. We’re not going to stay.” In our inner circle, in our family, there really wasn’t negative racism. However, you would hear about it. You would hear about, like, when African Americans would move into the neighborhood. You could sense that the neighbors were upset that the neighborhood was not going to be taken care of. I’d say you started learning more of it after the riots, is when I became fully aware of racism. I had a friend—her husband was a Detroit cop. I think he was one of the cops—in fact he was—what they called S.T.R.E.S.S. He was one of those cops. You would hear all kinds of things from him, and that was starting to be a negative time. That would’ve been the late ‘60s, early ‘70s. That’s when I felt the racism. But not when I was growing up.
JY: All right.
DD: Ruth Anne is still alive today.
JY: Earlier you said, Ruth Anne was still alive, and you said—
DD: She looked, I mean she was young, like Rihanna. She was stunningly beautiful. She was always proud to say—to this day, she’s proud to say, “I would never accept the welfare. I worked, and whatever work I could get.” She was a housekeeper, and she was also a housekeeper for Holiday Inn. She became head housekeeper and bought her very own first house, and she still lives in it. She was a beautiful person. She still is! She’d be so much fun, she’s very spiritual.
JY: Well, then, we may have to contact her.
DD: I could call her now, see if she’d want to come down! I loved Ruth Anne.
JY: That would be great. Now, moving closer to ’67, where were you living in July of ’67?
DD: Grand River and Evergreen. The riots were about two miles up Grand River. You could hear all the sirens, and the fire engines and the police, and all the commotion from two miles away. All that activity I think was around Grand River and Warren or something like that. I really can’t remember, but my sister and I said, “Let’s go down and check it out.” So we got her boyfriend, Denny Golf, and so Denny, Pinky and I—I don’t know how we got down there. Down there we did a lot of walking. We took buses, but I could tell you buses wouldn’t take us in that, so we probably kept on walking. We got right into the heart of the riots.
JY: Quick question, was this during the day?
DD: Yes. This was during the day.
JY: Do you know which day? Because the events started early on a Sunday.
DD: I could look at my diary, I could find that out, probably, because I still have some of my old diaries, I think. I remember it being—it might’ve been more like evening. I remember all the tanks, the National Guard; you could smell all the smoke from the fires, you could smell that from a long ways away. Anyway, Pinky, Denny, and I, we got down there and we thought, this might be a little more than what we bargained for, because we got circled. We were in trouble. Some African Americans circled us, like, okay, you’re on our turf and now you’re going to pay, and we’re pissed off anyway. Denny said to them, “I don’t care if you beat my ass; I don’t want you to hurt my girlfriend,” and they thought that was pretty cool, it was the weirdest thing. They actually walked along with us and no one bothered us. That’s one experience I’ll always remember, because that was my, like, oh, my god, what did we get ourselves into? To, phew, we’re okay now. I can’t remember much more than just being down there, and it was like an apocalyptic movie. There was so much—it was like a war. It was almost like a war. And, yes, the tanks gave it a war feeling, but the fires and the police, the soldiers, the people, the yelling, the screaming, the burning. It was—I can’t think of a better word. I guess just extremely intense. Just intense. That’s when it really, I think, when it all hit, to me. God, there really is racism, or racial problems—I shouldn’t say racism. There are problems, too, with the African Americans that they would have to go to this length to be heard, I guess, because they did go to that length. But what really started it, as we all know, was a blind pig that was busted on 12th street, and who knows what transpired. Then, we went out—there was a curfew put on, you had to be in by 10. So now, don’t ask me how this was, but we all end up in Royal Oak and I don’t know if it was that night or the next night, I think it might’ve been the next night—there was a curfew there too, and the police pulled us over and we were in trouble. I can’t remember if we went to jail, but we had to go to the police station, and then we had to go to court for breaking that curfew. The judge was really nice, this was where we got saved. He said, “You can either be on this many years’ probation, or you’re going to have to go to school.”
JY: School for…?
DD: Yeah, school, an education, a trade! I went to school at that time for what they called key punch. It’s like data recording, like computer work. I thought, that was really great. I had a baby and I thought, you know, I’m 18, I need to get some sort of trade. And I did. I went to school, downtown Detroit above the Michigan Theatre, the old Michigan Theatre. That beautiful theatre is now a parking garage. That was awful. It was Detroit School of Business. And again, you know, I’m taking busses along with the white, the African Americans. I just never, ever felt anything about it. Why would I think anything about that? There was no problems. Nobody bothered me, I didn’t bother them, nobody cared. We just didn’t care. No one cared. I don’t know how it all came to be like this, except for the complete—I would say definitely after watching later in life, movies like Help and all that stuff. How badly African Americans were treated in the south. I just didn’t see it so bad here. Not where I grew up. I’m sure it was alive and well somewhere, you know, racism, but not in my inner circle.
JY: Okay. Actually, backtracking really quickly, how did you first hear about the riots?
DD: You could hear it from where I lived. The sirens—oh, the news, the sirens, I think we could almost smell the fires, you know, being out on Grand River. We were a block off of Grand River. I was kind of wanting to go down there and my godparents wouldn’t let me go. “No, stay in the house, stay in the house.” They were all afraid. Everybody was afraid. It was almost like you were feeling, almost like the end of the world. Everybody’s afraid because of all the burnings. Are you next? You know. The fires were coming closer and closer, and then the aftermath of it all. We drove down there—I was with somebody—the aftermath, like a few weeks after—I don’t know, could’ve been days after, I don’t remember—of the buildings so burnt, buildings that you knew and grew up with and were part of your life, gone or burnt or, just like a ghost town, those areas. It was terrible. Just awful.
JY: Are there any other particular moments or memories that you have of the events during—?
DD: Basically just being in the riot, being in the middle of it. We weren’t protesting or nothing. Again, we were stupid teenagers just wanting to see action, because that’s how we were. It wouldn’t have to have been necessarily the riots, if something else going on, we’d have to go wherever the action was. That’s just how we were as teens. We wanted the action. I hate to refer to that as the action, but at that age, that’s how we considered it. That was our thought. We weren’t thinking that this was a racial thing. We knew it was, but our mindset was let’s go down and see what’s going on. Let’s go down and see what it’s all about. We didn’t think that we would be in any danger, but we were. We were the only, I think, white people, white teens there that I remember. And then those guys came up, very menacing, threatening us, going to kick our asses and everything. And that’s when Denny said, “Please, you can kick my ass, just don’t hurt my girlfriend.” They thought that was really—I’ll never forget it!—they thought that was really cool, those guys. They kind of walked along with us. It was really nice, in the midst of all that.
JY: I don’t think I’ve heard that before.
DD: I know! I don’t understand what we were thinking.
JY: Some people describe the event as a riot, while others refer to it as a rebellion or uprising. What term do you think best describes the unrest of that July of ’67?
DD: First word that comes to my mind was a riot. That’s the first word. “Uprising” is not what I really heard until later years; they called it an uprising. But at the time, it was a riot, and at that time, being a teen, I really didn’t know what it was all about. I didn’t understand how unfair a lot of the African Americans were treated at that time. At that time, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know about it; I was ignorant of it. I knew it was there. I mean, I knew there was some racism there, I remember. I remember when Ruth Anne would come over, sometimes she would talk a little bit.
JY: Knowing what you know now, would you still label it as a riot?
DD: I can understand why there was an uprising. I can understand, but I don’t understand why did it have to come to burning all the buildings? What does that do? I guess you have to do something pretty strong and powerful like that so people hear you, and it’s a shame that it has to come to that—to burn your own buildings, to burn your own houses, and the looting! I don’t understand why stealing? You’re stealing from your own! You’re ruining your own buildings! And even if they weren’t your own, why do that at all? But is there another way? I don’t know what the other way would be so people could hear them. I think the better way was the Martin Luther King way. That’s something people want to listen to and can listen to. The riots, burning, and fire, and shooting, and looting—no one’s going to listen to you! I didn’t. I just didn’t get it. I didn’t understand all that. I would understand Martin Luther’s message, they way he delivered, not the way the people of Detroit took it upon themselves—and not just Detroit, but other cities—to take it upon themselves to just burn up the place. That I don’t understand and I don’t agree with it, as an adult. Back then as a teen, I didn’t care if those buildings were burnt. I would care now.
JY: What was the impact of the riot on the rest of the city, do you think?
DD: That was when everything started changing when many people up and left. The whites. They panicked, they were in fear. Their city, their Detroit has gone now. Not that it’s all burned now, but it’s like, if this can happen now, it can happen again, and that’s why so many people left. I know they’re talking about people leaving in the ‘50s, you know, the 1950s is when white people started moving, but again, I was a kid, but where I grew up, there was tons of kids! How could anybody be moving? And everybody was working at Ford Motor or Detroit Diesel. Everybody was Detroit through and through: they worked in Detroit, they lived in Detroit, our schools were in Detroit. Everything was Detroit until 1967, then things changed.
JY: Did your family stay in Detroit?
DD: Yeah. My godparents did stay in the same house because they’re older. I lived with my godparents a lot, because my mom with all those kids and all the animals, you know, there was a little more room there. Anyways, we stayed, but they were too old to go anywhere. It just wouldn’t have worked out for them to just up and go to the suburbs. My mom—this had nothing to do with the riots—but in 1966, she moved to Royal Oak just to get out of Wayne County. Not to get out of Detroit, because again, her restaurant, everything was in Detroit. It was because she was getting in a whole lot of trouble in Wayne County with all of her animals. The judges and my godfather had a lot of power, being at the old county building with the judges, because he didn’t like what was going on in our house with all the animals and no supervision. He was getting her hauled into court, so she says, “Screw you! I’m moving to another county.” Had nothing to do with the riots. She moved before the riots. She moved to Royal Oak.
JY: Did you, yourself, live in Detroit for a few years after?
DD: Yeah, I lived with my godparents. I lived with them, at Grand River and Evergreen. They had moved from Livernois and Davison. They had moved there, to Grand River and Livernois, because it was a little bit closer to our house at 7 and Telegraph. They could pick me up to school What they would do is Friday, pick me up from school and Monday bring me back, and therefore home with my mom. Detroit was never the same after that. It was never the same. Downtown Detroit really starting declining, and I think that was mostly due to the malls. You know, Northland Mall, Oakland Mall. People could shop indoors, why go outside? That was a lot to do with the malls. Plus a lot of the big companies that were in Detroit moved out to the suburbs. I don’t know if that’s because of the riots, why they moved, but I don’t know. I really don’t know. But then, also, too, Detroit wasn’t taken care of politically correct afterwards. It’s like everybody started pillaging and stealing and not caring. Just not caring about the city or the citizens. Downtown turned into a ghost town. You were afraid to walk downtown during the day, afterwards. In the ‘70s, ‘80s. Everybody disappeared from downtown Detroit. The Whitney building was empty, the county building, the old county building slowly but surely emptied. [Unintelligible], Hudson’s, Hudson’s of all emptied. I think a lot of it was to do with—not just after the riots, but the political leaders of Detroit. Just as they are doing to the schools right now, the DPW? People don’t care. They just wanted to enrich themselves and not take care of the city.
JY: Is there a message that you would like to leave for future generations about your memories of Detroit, before, during, or after the unrest of July of ’67?
DD: I think of Detroit, my memories are beautiful memories of a beautiful city bustling, thriving. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, it was pitiful; my memories are sad. And my memories are sad up until the last year because now I see all this rebirth again, and now I feel that Detroit is coming back around, and it makes you proud. I’ve always been proud to be from Detroit, always will be. It’s just sad, like today I just drove around and took quick photos of St. Agnes Church, over by Henry Ford Hospital. All busted windows, and it wasn’t even looting, just to break the windows. Rocks through a church window! Why? So you still have those people that need to be educated on what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s wrong to bust church windows. It’s wrong to steal from your neighbor. Mother and father, get your kids to pick up their litter, and be proud of your neighborhood. Start taking care of your neighborhoods. Most of all, mom and dad at least, be there for your kids. They just don’t treat them, they send them to school and think, well, that’s their job. It’s not right. That’s what’s wrong with this city. The parents aren’t being—I mean, midtown and downtown are all on the move, but the surrounding areas, especially my old neighborhood at 7 and Telegraph—the schools are closed, everything is damaged around there. It’s pitiful. Just pitiful. That you have to blame directly on the parents. You can be poor and still teach your kids right from wrong. It has nothing to do with race and it has nothing to do with wealth or poverty. It’s about teaching your kids.
JY: Is there anything you feel we haven’t discussed or should be added to the interview?
DD: Oh, I’ll probably remember something later, but I sure loved living in Detroit. It’s good to see it alive again, down here. But the outer areas, it’s awful. It’s sad. Especially my old neighborhood, oh my god. It’s terrible. There’s no reason for it. You can be poor—I was poor, my mom was poor—but if your kids do something wrong, swat them upside the head. You know? You got to stop it. That’s the parents. And the leaders, the DPW leaders stealing from those children.
JY: Sorry, you mentioned that before, DPW?
DD: Oh, Detroit Public Schools.
JY: Oh, DPS?
DD: I’m sorry, I said DPW. I meant to say DPS. Yeah, DPS, how they could do that to those kids! Those people! They should throw away the key! They’re stealing from these children! The kids have it bad enough at home with parents that aren’t teaching them, and then the schools, their leaders on top of that ripping them off? I don’t understand. These kids aren’t going to have a chance.
JY: Anything else? Thank you for joining us today.
DD: All right, okay.
GS: Hello, today is July the sixth, we are in Detroit Michigan. My name is Giancarlo Stefanutti and this is for the Detroit Oral History Project. Thank you for sitting down with me today. Can you first start by telling me your name?
TW: My name is Thomas A. Wilson Jr.
GS: Okay Thomas, and where and when were you born?
TW: I was born in a place called Landgraff, West Virginia. I was there until I was about six years old, then we migrated North—and I say we—the family, and we came to Detroit. My father was looking for work.
GS: Okay. Do you have any siblings?
TW: I got two brothers and I have a sister. My sister next to me is named Cheryl, my brother after her is Michael, and the last brother is David.
GS: Okay. So then where in Detroit did you guys move to?
TW: When we first got here that I can recall—and I don’t exactly remember, all I know is somewhere on the East Side. The places I do remember—and we were kind of like nomads so to speak—the first place I can visually remember living at was on Roosevelt, believe it was just off Buchanan.
GS: Okay.
TW: Then maybe about a year later, we moved around over on a place called—it was 1139 Jackson Street. We stayed there for a while, we were with my cousins at the time. We were all living together. Then we moved from there over on the Boulevard, 1269 West Grand Boulevard. That should’ve been around 1956, ’55 summer, about there. We stayed there for a little while, then my mother and father, they landed this job being an apartment building manager. We moved from 1269 West Grand Boulevard over to a street 100 Harmon, right there between Woodward and John R., four blocks south of Highland Park.
GS: Okay. So when you moved to Detroit, what was your childhood like? Was it similar to your experiences in West Virginia?
TW: Well, you got to understand that West Virginia was coal mining, and we lived, I mean, we lived out in the hills. So when we came to the city, you know, it’s all level ground, sidewalks, streets, houses, trees, and that kind of thing, but you know, when kids, you’re not really used to that kind of cultural shock so to speak. So it was like we really just went from one place to another, and when we finally landed and settled, we were over on Harmon between Woodward and John R.
GS: And what was that neighborhood like?
TS: It was funny, Detroit period was a hustling, thriving, bustling city. There were a million eight hundred thousand people in the city in that time, and I often say this, in terms of where we’ve gone from then to now, it’s obvious that the change that the winds of time has brought has not been good for the city. But, the city’s getting better, but getting back to, you know, the past. Like I said, we were up there, it’s like ’55,’56, went to public school for a couple years, then we went to Catholic school, Blessed Sacrament, right over on, I think it was 60 and Belmont. And then from there, when we graduated eighth grade, went to Detroit Cathedral, which is next door, right behind the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral. 14 years of my life, I mean from like ’57 to ’71, 14 years of my life was over in that neighborhood. I had to school, I turned Catholic, was baptized, communioned, confessed, confirmed, married a Detroit girl who lived right down the street down from us, and you know, the city’s been real good to me. Everything within reason, other than having been a transplanted West Virginian, everything I’ve attained in life literally has come from this city.
GS: Wow. Were these communities that you were living in, were they racially integrated?
TW: Well at the time when we moved, we moved into an apartment building, and, you know, it was integrated to use that word. But, you know—I’ll say the Caucasians, whites, you know—as things started to change, they started to move out. But it was a good neighborhood. You had a mixed neighborhood of professional people. You had school teachers, you had doctors, you had police officers, lawyers, and you know, it was just a good mix of people and professions, And I mean very well-kept neighborhoods. Very well-kept neighborhoods. Nice, you know, manicured lawns, you know, trees and all that kind of thing, and I mean we were a couple blocks away from Boston Edison. So you know, things were good then. Things were good then. Now racially, you know, my mother and father, they let us be kids. We weren’t caught up into all this racism stuff, you know? We knew that there were certain places that, you know, kind of like say wouldn’t serve us, but I mean, it wasn’t about pushing an angle. I mean, we were kids—I’m going to speak for my brother too, it was just us two at the time with my parents—we were happy kids. I mean, we went out, we played, I can say this, I never experienced any racial discrimination that I can recall, okay? So in terms of me saying “Yeah, I can remember when somebody said this or called me this,” no.
GS: Okay. So when did these changes you mentioned earlier, when did those become more apparent?
TW: Good question. Like I said, when we moved into the apartment building, it was a mixed building, but it wasn’t that many whites who were still there. But you know, they’re leaving. And then, you know, it became a neighborhood of black Americans, okay, and that kind of thing. And like I said, from Woodward to John R., that’s all the street. It was a nice place to live. It was a nice place to live. And as far as, like, changes, the biggest change that I saw was during the quote unquote “civil disturbance of ’67,” also known as the riot, that’s when, you know—I remember riding that night. We got down to the Boulevard, and I guess this must have been about eight o’clock at night, and I mean “Bang.” That was a Sunday night. The Boulevard just exploded with glass breaking, and we were up on Twelfth. Twelfth Street burned for like a week. My aunt is named Lucille, she was at the blind pig where this whole thing happened, and she said that it all started with a thrown bottle. You know the police were there and, you know, blind pig, you’re doing illegal stuff, so they come in on a raid and, you know from there, it just mushroomed and things got out of control and there we had the riot.
GS: So moving back a little bit, just before the riot, did you notice any tensions growing within the city in the sixties?
TW: Like I said, we were kids. My mother and father, all the racism kind of stuff, you know, they kept that away from us. We were happy kids. We went out and played every day, and like Stevie Wonder said, “With a child heart, go face the worries of the day,” and I mean, we had fun. We weren’t bogged down with, you know, somebody—my mother and father filling our heads with, you know, this racism stuff and that kind of thing.
GS: Okay. So moving to the riot itself, where were you when you first heard about the riot and how did you hear about it?
TW: If I remember correctly, I was at home and saw it on the news on television. It tickled me, that Sunday night, some of my friends, they were up on the corner and they got busted. I mean this was after the curfew had been issued, and they got busted. They were downtown in jail for four days. I remember, you know, during the course of this going on, I remember this one guy, he said “I just wasn’t out stealing for the sake of stealing.” He said his basement looked like Louis the Hatter Department Store. Bunch of suits. He said he was up on Twelfth Street, and he was in there picking out, you know, colored silk underwear to match his suits and what have you. And he said the National Guard rolled the tank up, lowered the turret on the tank, and he says “It’s two ways out of there. You can come out with your hands up, or we can pull the trigger and we’ll have to put your body in pieces in a bag.”
GS: Wow. So how did your parents react when this started?
TW: Well, you know, they knew it was a curfew, and you know, we weren’t exactly stupid kids, and we knew that at eight o’clock, we were supposed to be home. And I remember a friend of mine who lived right across the street from us, one of the amphibians was rolling up and down the street and he made a dash across the street, got to the door, stuck his key in the door, and you heard like a rifle cock, and I heard some guy, you know, in that tank, says “When we say eight o’clock off the street, we don’t mean you putting the key in the door. You go in the house.” I mean that’s how close that guy came to, you know, not seeing the next day.
GS: That’s crazy. Were you generally fearful for your community’s safety?
TW: Not really. Not really, because I mean it wasn’t like you had roving groups of people out on the street just destroying property. I mean you know, during the day, it was like any other day, it was just that with martial law, if you did not have something in your hand saying that—especially if it was after, you know, the time kicked in, that you were either coming from work or going to work, then I mean you know, you had to be real not so smart to be out there on the street.
GS: Wow. So just thinking about what you said, talking about the National Guard and everything, so when they came in, did your community feel relieved, you know, that someone was coming in for back up or was it more tense because they showed up?
TW: I guess it was kind of like, you know, fifty/ fifty kind of thing. I mean, you know, no you don’t like to see amphibians rolling down your street and that kind of stuff. But when you look at what was going on and, you know, all the destruction—because 43 people were killed during that riot. You know, I’m glad to see that they got it under control and, you know, and it was over. Because I mean, you know, you got an eight o’clock curfew and if you’re out on the street after eight o’clock without—basically it was just like South Africa—if you didn’t have a pass, you we’re going to be hauled off to jail.
GS: Wow. So kind of moving towards the post-riot period, did your perception of the city change at all?
TW: No. I mean, you know at that time, like I said, I was a young 20, I was over at Wayne State playing football and, you know, it was just business as usual. You know as far as like say jobs or anything, I mean I didn’t have a problem finding a job. I had a part-time job down at [unintelligible] after the, you know, the football season is over and that kind of thing. And during the summer time, I mean I’d go out to Gear and Axle a lot down Holbrook, get hired and work, and I know that say that there was a, you know, a lot of unemployment, but most of the people I knew and most of the people I lived around—like I said, it was a working-class neighborhood that I was in. During the summer, there was a lady who worked for the MESC, the Michigan Employment Security Commission, her name was Ms. Halnita Simmons. We would go to her for the summer and we’d fill out an app and we’d end up getting jobs. I remember one time I got a job downtown working with the Internal Revenue, just pulling income tax returns and things like that. So, you know, thing were, from my own vantage point, they were not that bad to the point where, you know, you had to have this insurrection so to speak—to use that term—but you know, I imagine—but then too, you know, we had what was called STRESS, Stop the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets, and obviously they were being very, I guess racial in terms of the people that they were stopping, and you know, harassing them, what have you. But you know, I’m pretty sure that added fuel to the fire and what have you. But like I said, it was a mix. It was kind of like—I guess depending upon where you lived and what was going on, it was good or bad.
GS: Okay. So you just used the term insurrection, and we’ve heard when we’ve interviewed people a lot of different terms, whether it’s riot or rebellion, so what would you call it? Is insurrection more accurate than riot you think?
TW: No I would say more than likely I’d actually like to use the word—and that was used—was riot. I mean, because that’s basically what people did. I mean, they rioted. I remember up on Twelfth Street—and Twelfth was a very, very viable business community—you had restaurants, you had nightclubs and the whole nine yards, and you know people actually lived up over some of those stores that were burned, and it was probably some of the people who lived up over those stores that set the place on fire, and it’s like “Uh-oh, where are we going to sleep tonight?” You know, and that kind of thing. And so it’s kind of like some people looked before they leapt, and you know, once you jump off the diving board, you can’t get back on it.
GS: Okay, so how do you see Detroit today?
TW: Alright, from there to fast forward to today, like I said, when I was here in 1953 in this city, there were a million eight hundred thousand people in the city. As we speak today, there are roughly about six hundred and eighty thousand people in the city. We’ve lost a million, one hundred and twenty thousand plus people. That’s enough to make up about the fourth, fifth largest city, sixth largest city in this country? And that’s tax base, and that’s what really hurt Detroit. When you have that many people leave—and not only people, but businesses—there was a disinvestment of people and businesses. But I mean, you know, as I said before, the change that the winds of time has brought has not been good. And I mean, you know, Detroit, it’s doing okay now. Will Detroit be—I say this all the time—Detroit’s going to be alright. Now will it be great again? Second World War, we were the Arsenal of Democracy. Planes, tanks, and all that kind of stuff. There was this lady, a very famous popular DJ in the city, named Martha Jean McQueen. She used to do a program called Taste the Time, it came on at noon. James Cleveland would play in the background, Song Without a Song, and she would say this about the automobile industry, and she says “You put the world on wheels and don’t you ever forget it.” We were the automobile capital of the world. And then, we were the sound of young America. Motown. Now, it were going to be great again, I care not. If we’re going to be a million populated again, I don’t think I’ll live to see it. I got more sunshine behind me than I do in front. But Detroit’s going to be alright. Detroit has better days and a brighter future ahead of itself.
GS: Wow. Well is there anything else you’d like to add?
TW: You know, right now in terms of what’s going on, especially like say downtown and midtown, a lot of bourgeoning, you know development and activity, I remember Dan Gilbert said this, this is about three, four years ago, and I’m going to paraphrase a little bit. He said “If the neighborhoods are not participants in the development that’s going down in downtown and midtown,” he said “All of this stuff in downtown and midtown, it’s going to be all for naught,” and he ended that statement with this statement, he said “And failure is not an option.” And you know, Dan Gilbert, God bless him and people like him like Roger Penske and Mike Illich and, God rest his soul Ted Gatzaros and the movers and the shakers, I’m glad those people are here because they are making an investment. Dan Gilbert’s not buying up downtown for nothing. Dan Gilbert, he’s looked down the road, and he’s seen the potential in terms of what this place can be. Hopefully, I will be around long enough to see this thing coming, especially with the neighborhoods. I tell people, I say “Listen. Other than police, fire, and trash being picked up, the neighborhoods are our responsibility. Summer time comes, water your grass, cut your lawn. Winter time comes, shovel your snow.” But I mean you know, we’ve got skin in this game, and I mean things are going to get better. I mean you know, it’s not going to be the wow appeal that you see downtown, but you know, the neighborhoods, they’ve got an area called “Liv Six,” Livernois Six Mile, there’s a development that’s happening there. Just North of here at the Lodge Freeway, the old Herman-Kiefer complex, something’s going to happen there. So things are starting to happen with the neighborhoods. Like I said, Detroit’s going to be okay, it has better days ahead of itself and a brighter future.
GS: Alright. Well thank you for sitting down with me today.
TW: Okay.
GS: Hello, my name is Giancarlo Stefanutti, today is June 18,2016, we are in Detroit Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Thank you for sitting down with us today.
DM: Thank you.
GS: Can first start with telling us your name and you’re date of birth?
DM: My name is Dominic Kevin McNeir, I was born January 13, 1960.
GS: Okay and where were you born?
DM: Burton Mercy, as I recall, here in Detroit, Michigan. That hospital is now gone, but yeah. In Detroit.
GS: Okay. Growing up, what was your childhood like?
DM: I thought it was very typical. As I’m understanding now, it may have been a little less typical, maybe even atypical. My parents were both from the South, my mother from Baltimore and then Virginia, and my father from Alabama. Both were educated by historically black colleges, Tuskegee and Hampton, and both went on and got master’s degrees. So by the time I was born, they had moved up to Detroit, were established as it was a middle class family. We lived in a Jewish neighborhood on the West Side of Detroit, Seven Mile [and] Livernois area on Santa Rosa, and it was, from my ideas when I’m talking about it, it an idyllic kind of birth—childhood—not birth. Childhood. We were very comfortable. We travelled, we had what we wanted. Money was good in Detroit, particularly for educated blacks at that time. So upwardly mobile family, and my family’s very connected to Motown. So my babysitter babysat for Marvin Gaye. And so I grew up in Marvin Gaye’s home as a little boy, and all the stuff that could’ve happened to a child happened to me. One of these days I’ll finish this book on it growing up, Motown For Me. But it’s something I really want my children to know. I’ve told these stories to people and they say, “You should publish that.” I just wanted my kids to know what it was like. But now that I have grandchildren too, I’ve been writing these for myself for ten years now. It was a great childhood. And I wish Detroit were like it was then. I don’t think many people really know, can understand, how it was, particularly before the riots. Parts after the riots still too, but particularly before the riot.
GS: Where did you go to school?
DM: I went to Louie Pasteur Elementary, which is in between Seven and Eight Mile off of Pembroke and I remember my favorite teacher—she’s long gone—was Onita Lewis, she also was my piano teacher so I took piano for about—forever. About ten years actually, but with her about five or six years. And then I went to Hampton Junior High, also in the same neighborhood, and then I went to U of D Jesuit High off of Cambridge. My son, when he was of age also went to U of D High. When my grandson gets of age, we’ll send him to U of D High, it is our school of choice for my family, so yeah.
GS: Very nice. You said you lived in a Jewish area of town, was the school integrated racially?
DM: Well, yeah. It was interesting, we lived closer to where the riots began—and I’m going to use “riots” quote unquote because a lot of people still don’t agree it was actually a riot, that it was other things but that term may be a little misleading when you look at the way words are used and how riot is defined—
GS: I was going to ask you about that actually.
DM: —I’m willing to yield it for the moment but I’d say riots quote unquote, I wouldn’t call it actually a riot. Nonetheless, my family lived on Monterrey off of Linwood, because that’s where our church home was, Saint Andrews A.M.E. My sister’s still here, she’s the only one here from the immediate family. And my mother spends time with my sister, me and Marilyn and my sister here and so we went to from our home on Monterrey off of Linwood, we moved to Santa Rosa right before I started kindergarten. So we moved around four, going on five. And in the neighborhood, we were the fourth black family in that block. Seven Mile, Livernois was all very Jewish, the avenue was stylish, they called the Avenue of Fashion, I’ve seen a little—they’re trying to come back—but it was avenue of style, all of the shops were Jewish, all of my classmates were Jewish, my closest neighbor across the street, the Schwieg family, they had three girls and I played with their daughters. Nora was my age, when they would do Yom Kippur and we would do Christmas, and they would do Hanukkah and we’d just exchange holidays. And we played together. I remember my first fight in elementary school was when a black friend of mine jumped on one of my Jewish friends. And my father said, “You should protect your friends,” so I bashed him in the face with my steel lunch pale, you know? I just thought that was the right thing to do. So, you know, they were picking on Aaron, I said, “That’s wrong. Don’t pick on Aaron.” [laughter] So I didn’t know there was anything in terms of racial tension at all as I grew up. Now, by the time I went from kindergarten to fifth grade, the neighborhood had transitioned, it was all black, I think that was the last Jewish family left by the time I was in fifth grade.
GS: What year was this?
DM: That would have been 19—what year did I graduate from elementary school?
GS: Just an approximation is fine.
DM: Well, ’70—’68—’69—‘around ’70 I guess. Yeah, ’70. Now, I can tell you I graduated high school in ’78, so I’m moving backwards, I started high school in ’74—’72. Around ’71, ’72.
GS: Okay. Just kind of thinking about the riot itself, you said growing up was pretty nice, you didn’t notice any immediate tensions in the city?
DM: Well, I mean, I don’t know how much you can discern when you’re eight, ’79, ten, eleven, twelve, particularly my parents were quite protective, and there were rules, they were followed. You know, so that was just kind of the bottom line, I was more afraid of my father than anybody else. And if my father said do it, it was going to be done. So we didn’t really—and my father was also protective, you know, so I never really felt threatened by anything. But, I just noticed as my elementary school, as Pastor changed, there became more tension. But it’s interesting because the tension was short-lived. All of a sudden, there were no Jews in the community. They were just gone. I don’t remember how quickly it happened but it seemed like it happened pretty rapidly. Like I said, when we moved in in ’65, we were one of four black families. By the time I got to the third grade, there was only one white family left. So in only three years, the only Jewish reminders we may have had were several of the businesses stayed for a while.\
GS: I see. So just moving into ’67, what were you doing when you first heard that the riot was happening?
DM: That was kind of interesting, because my mom’s older sister lived in Philadelphia. She had a brother in Baltimore, she was the youngest. Her side of the family was interesting because my grandfather was Native American, my grandmother was black. His father had been thrown out the tribe for marrying a black woman, so we already had experienced that kind of racism, between Native Americans and blacks. Anyway, so my parents—we went to Philadelphia to see my aunt, and it was early July, and we did this trip every year. So we would go south and east. We could go down to Alabama, well Pensacola, Florida, Mobile, Alabama, my grandfather lived in Camden, Alabama, 45 miles outside of Selma, then we would come back up east and do D.C, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, Virginia, and that’s where my parents would leave me. In Williamsburg and my aunt, and that’s where I would stay for the rest of the summer. This particular year, we did Virginian first, an East Coast swing, and then we went south—I’m sorry we went South and then we went East. And so we were in Philadelphia, and they start talking about problems in Detroit. Well my father was a hunter, so my father had rifles, he was, you know, a veteran of the Korean War so he had knives, samurais, and all of those things. But he was a hunter so he was very comfortable with them, we had become comfortable with them, and we knew where our weapons were, they were on every floor, they were locked up, “You don’t touch this.” I never touched it. You know, children would go play with guns, I didn’t touch them. I knew where they were, I didn’t know how to use them, I wasn’t going to try. But our home was stocked. But it was not because of the crime, because we sat on the porch then on Santa Rosa—there was a little porch [until] one, two, three on William and the weekends. All the neighbors knew each other, we were in and out each other’s homes, it was, you know, that’s what it was like. We didn’t even have to lock the doors. I didn’t even have a house key until I was in high school. You know? Because I didn’t need one, my parents didn’t lock the door. And so it was just very, very different. But as they start talking about these skirmishes in Detroit and, you know, police activity and unrest of blacks, we started noticing things. My mother told my dad to have one of our cousins go over to the house with my sister. My sister was home by herself. So Pearl is 15 years older than me, so she was in her early to mid-20s. She was working, she couldn’t get the summer off like I could, you know, school, so she stayed home by herself. Not a big deal. When all the activity started happening though, my mother felt a little uncomfortable and did not want her there by herself, so I had a couple cousins who were her age or older. And one was in the navy, he was, you know, pretty reliable with our arms and things, and she had a couple of male cousins go over to come help my sister, help her at night mostly. So the riot was over at Twelfth, Rosa Parks—it wasn’t Rosa Parks then—Twelfth Street area. And it kept moving westward. And so we could look in the newspaper, in Philadelphia, and see in the paper, it would show you how it was moving. I don’t even know how we saw the paper, there was no internet, but somehow my parents were able to know what was happening in the newspaper. And this is over four or five days. My father did not want to rush back, he was enjoying vacation. My mother was extremely nervous with my sister being home alone, even though my cousins were in the house with her, and even though they had weapons, she wanted to come back home. Well my daddy said “No it’s okay. They’re alright.” So noticed about the third day it had gotten around Fenkell. My mother said “Well it’s only a couple miles away, we really need to go home.” My dad said, “I’m not gonna be rushed home, we’re gonna stay.” So, I think a day later, there was a huge store, like a—I don’t know what you call it—a garden store—what’s the big garden store that we have—with garden supplies and things for your home, like a Home Depot kind of place but it was called Merchandise Mart. Merchandise Mart was on the corner of Seven Mile and Livernois, on the east side of the street. It took up the whole square block, and it was bombed, and the whole Merchandise Mart was gone. The entire square block was gone. So that was two blocks from my home. My mother told my father, “We’re going home now.” So we didn’t plan anything, we threw everything in the car and started driving from Philadelphia nonstop. So when we got to the city limits or close to the city limits, the National Guard was out, and you could not enter the city after night. So my mother said, “We’ll stay in a hotel tonight,” which incidentally there had places we could not stay in a hotels in the South because they didn’t let black in the South, even though it was illegal. But I remember on peeing—I’m sorry—urinating on the side of the road, my mother carrying a bucket on the side, and felling totally like “What is this?” Because I’m a child growing up in the North, but I have southern parents. So I’m learning racism. Subtle racism in the North, but blatant racism in the South. So we were going in a hotel, at that point we weren’t going to get a hotel, my father said, “Pearl’s home alone”—although the cousins were there—“I have a home with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. I’m not staying in a hotel, I’m going to my house.” So we crossed into the city. When we crossed into the city, we were quickly picked up by helicopter. Helicopters had the lights on us, and my dad used to buy a brand new car every three years so I think at that point we had a Riviera that was a year old, a light greenish Riviera, hardtop, four-door. They pulled us over and they checked us, we told them what we’re going on, why we’re in town, they said, “You know, you’re illegal after curfew.” My dad started to argue, my mother said, “Don’t argue.” They went to the trunk and of course they found guns, my dad brought his rifles back from Alabama. Because we had just done the South-East trip. By that time we had four, five police cars around us, helicopters over us, they took everything out of our car. They emptied the entire car. I remember crying because they took everything. They just threw it out! Just threw it out like it didn’t matter. We had the license, the rifle—we had a couple rifles, couple handguns, all registered, all very legal, called Philadelphia, etcetera, etcetera. So the last thing I really remember about all of that, they were gonna take my dad to jail. Then my mother started crying. She said, “I don’t know how to drive.” Now she was not telling the truth, but she was not gonna let them take her husband to jail. So she said “How will I get home? I have my little boy here,” and she spun this long story and they said “Okay, we’ll let you go home, but we’re gonna have to accompany you.” And that was really what was frightening to me. So if you can imagine, we had one of those tanks in front of us, and they had a tank behind us, and two police cars on each side, and a helicopter over top, and all this noise going on from the time we entered the city limits until eventually we got somehow from Woodward to Livernois—I don’t remember around now, until we got to our home on Santa Rosa. And then, we walked in the house, the phone rang, and it was the National Guard, who then had to speak to my mom, my dad, and me, to know that we had gotten in the house, and that someone had not sneaked out of the car with these weapons, to try to go arm someone else for whatever illegal things they were going to do. The riots, quote unquote, the acts of civil disobedience kind of ceased after that. The only other thing I recall as the time went on was just seeing how many parts of the black community had been destroyed. And how no parts of the white community had been destroyed, and wondering why if we’re so unhappy with things that are going on, why are we destroying our own places? That’s what I recall. It made me very very sad.
GS: That is sad. So you called it quote unquote “riot.” What is the word that you would have instead of riot? Would you call it maybe an uprising?
DM: I guess I’d be more comfortable to say that. I mean, now I’m a newspaper editor in D.C. and we’re covering the Freddie Grey case and in Baltimore and they use the word “riots.” And I think “riots” is a term that is often loosely used. I have a good friend who grew up next to me, Terry Halcott, she was also a writer. She’s never willing to use the word “riot,” because she says, “It wasn’t a riot. It wasn’t a riot.” But, you know, if I use that term as a descriptive to talk about what happened in Baltimore, then I’d have to use it as a descriptive to talk about what happened in Detroit. The unfortunate thing about it for me is not so much—I mean for me it’s an issue of semantics, for some others it’s not. I would call it an issue of semantics but I think what troubles me more is 40 years later, the same kind of stuff that got people upset enough to bomb their own places and destroy their own businesses and hurt and kill folk in Baltimore is the same people were angry about in Detroit when I was seven. You know, police brutality, infringing on people’s rights, those kinds of things. It’s not a whole lot different.
GS: Were there any, that you could see before the riot, as a child, did you notice the tension between police and Detroiters?
DM: No. But I do remember—it just came to me too, I don’t even know where this memory came from. The Detroit police had a program called STRESS. That was the acronym. “Stop the robberies, enjoy safe streets.” I’ve never thought about that until now, and I had to do a report on it in junior high school, the year before McGovern ran [as the Democratic nominee for president], which would have been ’71, I had to write a report on it. And the only reason why it kind of comes to me is, see, I never had issue with police. I never did while I was here because eventually, my sister would marry a deputy chief of police. But by that time I’m in my 20’s now, so, you know, I graduated from U of D then University of Michigan—U of D High then Michigan then go on to start work in corporate America and stuff. But I remember the STRESS report was talking about way before the riots and subsequent following the riots, there continued to be these times where the mostly white police department attacked the mostly black citizens of Detroit. At that time, in the sixties and early seventies, Detroit was mostly black and the police department was mostly white. So there tended to be these constant flare-ups that did not stop. In fact, probably got worse. I can’t back that up with fact, but what I remember, got worse after the ’67 encounter.
GS: I see. Well is there anything else you’d like to say?
DM: No I think—So my oldest child is a daughter, Jasmine, is 26, and my baby’s a boy, Jarred, and he’s 22. So, I’ve been riding around with both of them the last couple of days, since I’m here for Father’s Day, and as we’re going around, showing them places. Pointing out things. What was quite interesting, we just went into the barber shop, my son and I, and the guy that sits down to talk with us is a nephew of Congressman John Conyers. My sister was on John Conyers’ first campaign, because John Conyers lived a block away from us on Santa Rosa.
GS: Wow.
DM: And so I’m mentioning this just to say in those days, in the Motown days, and Cornell West would call it the golden days of Detroit, when Detroit was a little like Harlem, and I like that description because it was. There was such an exchange, it was so comfortable between celebrity figures, political figures, because there weren’t a lot of them but they were just coming into their own. It was never, “I got more than you,” or, “You got more than me,” or, “He’s an entertainer. He’s a whatever,” or, “He’s a politician.” Like I said, I didn’t have to make an appointment with John Conyers, I walked up the street. His wife opened the door. And they called me Nicky from Dominic, “Hi Nicky!” You know, so it was that kind of deal. And that was all the Motown folks. I mean, The Tops, I was connected with them and The Miracles, of course Marvin Gaye, and I went to school with Gladys Knight’s kids and so we used to play together. Gladys Knight, she’d make us kool-aid and spaghetti and garlic bread and we’d play basketball in her backyard ‘cause—I was telling the guy in the barber shop today—it was the only yard in the neighborhood that had big lights that you could see at night. So it was a full court, lights on both sides, we played basketball till we dropped. It wasn’t aggression, “Well, you gotta check your gun, you’re gonna come here and hurt us, what if you lose but you wanna fight?” No! We played. We lost, we’d get mad, we’d hit somebody in the nose or kick him down and they’d get up and say, “Oh man, I’m sorry.” “I’m sorry too.” We’d just play ball again. So one of the things I really miss is just how we got along with each other. Conflict resolution was something you did by yelling and punching maybe, and going home with your nose bloody. And the next day, you got up, “Hey, let’s go play ball again.” “You think Ms. Knight’ll let us come back?” “Well, we didn’t tear up anything.” You know, we didn’t curse anybody out, we didn’t shoot anybody out. I look sometimes and just wonder, you know, have we really come anywhere, progression as a race? Because our young people now—I don’t fault anyone—but the way we resolve issues now, the way we encounter one another. It’s just so not what I experienced as a child, particularly what I experienced here in Detroit. And I’ve been riding around, you know, I see Detroit rebounding slowly, finally, and I think that’s a wonderful thing. But I don’t see it rebounding to bring more people of color here, and that, I think, is sad. You know, just like D.C., where I am now, I don’t know if D.C. will ever be Chocolate City again, you know? I don’t know if Detroit will be, you know, the place for soul for folk, because it’s not anymore. And that’s not to say change is not good, I understand change. But, as I discern Detroit, it has become a place where generations allowed property to devalue to purchase it—these weren’t black people buying this property by the way—and now, they are starting to reinvest in boatload, they’re gonna sell high, that’s what you do in econ, I get it. But unfortunately and tragically once again, many people who look like me got caught in between all of that, have lost their homes, been forced out of the city, I mean it’s a typical thing that’s happened all over the United States but it’s still wrong and it still makes me very sad. When I remember growing up on that street in Santa Rosa with trees overlooking the—arch of trees like in the Arboretum in Ann Arbor, all the neighborhood block clubs and we had parties, you know, block of the street and have Halloween parties, and block off the street and have summer parties, and block off the street and they’d open up the fire hydrants and you’d have pool parties in the street, we burned our leaves together, we cried when someone died in the family together, we exchanged food. You know, Detroit was a real, real beautiful place and I just wished my children could have experienced what I experienced, the joy I had. There was no place on the planet I could’ve ever imagined or wanted to live, besides the West Side of Detroit. Yeah.
GS: Wow. Well thank you for sharing this experience with us.
DM: Thank you, I enjoyed it. I appreciate it.
GS: As did we.
[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 28:24]
JW: Good Morning. Today is August 23, 2016. My name is Julia Westblade. I am here in Detroit, MI with the Detroit Historical Society’s 1967 Project. Can you tell me your name?
RN: My name is Ronald Navickas.
JW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. Can you tell me where and when you were born?
RN: I was born November 3, 1936 in Pontiac, MI.
JW: Did you grow up in Pontiac?
RN: No, I did not. My family moved from Pontiac, actually from Michigan to the state of Maryland when I was very little. We spent probably the first four or five years of my life in Maryland and then at the beginning of the World War II we moved back to Michigan to Pontiac and then in 1942, I believe it was, we moved to Highland Park, MI where I attended the schools and lived until I went into the service in 1954.
JW: What brought your family back at World War II?
RN: I think it was monies. Due to the fact that we were living on a farm in Maryland and when push came to shove the demand for workers was paramount here in the area. So my mother worked out at Willow Run. She was a line inspector when they were building the B-24s. My dad was a draftsman for Lincoln at that time and living in Pontiac, she had to commute every day from Pontiac to Willow Run and my dad rode the train from Pontiac to Detroit to his job.
JW: Did your mom continue to work after the war ended?
RN: Yes she did. My mother and father divorced when I was ten years old. We were living in Highland Park at that time. She continued working. She worked for Burroughs – at that time it was Burroughs Adding Machine Company. I have no idea what my father was. I think he was working for Fischer Body but I’m not sure at that time but we had nothing in common and he had departed and end of story as far as he was concerned.
JW: What was your neighborhood like growing up in Highland Park?
RN: Very diversified. A lot of different ethnic groups, in fact, I still meet with some of the guys I went to high school and grade school with even to this day. We had a very unique city. It was independent of Detroit even though it was surrounded by Detroit we had our own water supply, our own fire, our own police. We had two hospitals, our own educational system and it was the best of both worlds living there at that time.
JW: Did you primarily, when you were growing up, did you primarily stay in your neighborhood or did you explore around the city?
RN: Well, we could explore because we had a transit system at that time, the DSR, where we could jump on a streetcar, go downtown. We did a lot of walking in Highland Park. Everybody basically knew everybody. It was a situation where we were a little enclave very much – I would say not cloistered but we were a very proud little city.
JW: So you primarily stayed in Highland Park but did you go explore with the bigger city of Detroit at all?
RN: We did. Sunday back in those days was a typical Sunday drive. We would get in a car and we would of course drive over to Belle Isle and we would have to do the routine of going across the boulevard, getting to the bridge, and going under the tunnel and having to honk the horn. That was traditional. And then of course getting out and walking around Belle Isle and seeing what was and what wasn’t. It was always families that were out at that time, something that you don’t see that much of anymore.
JW: What were your impressions of the city at that time in the 50s and early 60s?
RN: I thought it was a box of gems to be discovered. It had anything and everything that would boggle your mind. Things today that we look back and we laugh at but, I mean I remember the huge stove down on Jefferson as you went going to Belle Isle and I was always amazed by that because I could never figure out who would stand there and cook on it. Going up the State Fairgrounds, you used to have car races there years ago and so many different aspects of the city that were just beautiful to go look at.
JW: Then you said you entered the service in what year?
RN: I went into the regulars in 1954, I was originally in the reserves. I was stationed out at Selfridge. I was an air policeman out there at 17 years old. Still wet behind the ears but I went into the regulars in 1954. Left Detroit. Went to San Antonio, TX. Did four years and was a nuclear and thermonuclear weapons mechanic when I was in the Air Force. Came back out of the service in 1958 and couldn’t find a job because nobody needed a hydrogen or atomic bomb repaired so I went to work for an armored car outfit and they were located on Seldon between Cass and Second. We had started out there as a rookie driver and worked my way up to a messenger were I had my own route and my own vehicle and everything.
JW: Is that where you were working throughout the 60s?
RN: Yes, I started there in 1958. It actually was 3 months after I got out of the service. I left there in 1969 and moved to Florida where I went and married my wife.
JW: Very nice. In the early to mid 60s, did you notice any tension in the city or anything?
RN: Towards the – about 1966 – correct that, I would say 1965, I noticed that there was a lot of stress and of course I think it was created by the Detroit Police Department. At that time they had a STRESS unit and it was looked upon as though it was a special tactics type of outfit who predominantly went after minorities which I didn’t see. Of course I was never involved in it but there was a lot of – I could see ethnic slurs, I could see tension in places especially when I worked in downtown Detroit. I worked all over. I worked from Eastern Market to Western Market. I worked down in the Port Authority and all the wholesale houses for all the produce companies and I could notice that there were attitudes then that were displayed that because more and more evident as time went on but when the civil unrest I’ll put it – it wasn’t a race riot as people want to call it in my opinion, it was an upheaval. We first noticed, it was a Sunday morning, I had finished playing golf at I can’t even remember the name of the golf course now. Anyway, Glen Oaks, I believe it was at 13 Mile and Orchard Lake Road, we were coming in off the golf course and noticed a huge, huge fire and at that time we went in to actually have a drink after our round of golf and they had the television on and we saw what was going on. I immediately left there and went home to get my family. Low and behold, one of my golf partners was my wife’s uncle and what I ended up doing was taking my family from Highland Park to Northwest Detroit to get them out in what I thought was a safe area. As I drove back into Highland Park, I could see madness. People breaking windows, just looting and I didn’t care what store it was. They were just grabbing anything and everything. I got my family out to my friend’s house. I went back to the house and it was all hell broke loose. I was in the house and I could feel the building, my house start to shake, it was rumbling and then I realized it was tanks heading from one of the armories down Hamilton through Highland Park and going down the Davidson and about a half hour or so afterwards, I heard the gunfire, the 50 caliber open up and that in itself was a very, very sobering moment. I stayed at the house. I could hear gunfire. Monday morning I got up and went to go to work and in the process I was driving down Hamilton in Highland Park. I was approaching Davidson and I saw an individual standing out in the middle of the street, armed and come to find out it was either a paratrooper from the 101st or the 82nd Airborne who was questioning me where I was headed. I was in full uniform and I had my sidearm on, my weapon, and I had another weapon in the vehicle to take with me. And in the course of it, he actually warned me not to go in which I totally appreciated. And then I noticed there was a sandbags off to one side and they had a 30 caliber machine gun trained on me and that sort of made my mind up. I wasn’t going to go into town. I turned around, came back, called into the office. I told them what had just transpired and come to find out all of the armored cars that we had with our company had been not commandeered but had been requested and taken over by the Detroit Police Department and the rest of the State Police, they were using them to transport people from point A to point B for safety reasons. When I finally did make it back into work, it was almost total devastation. Places that you would never feel that would be touched by any of this were gutted. Going past tall apartment buildings and windows smashed out and curtains flapping in the air. It looked like a bombed out city and there was still sporadic gunfire. In fact the Saturday after I was making a stop. My driver had gotten out to get the deposits from the company and as he came back out, he needed some other bags or whatever, I can’t remember, he went back inside and as I was sitting there doing some paperwork, I felt the truck rock and I thought he was back to drop off more money and there was no one there and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Did it I think two more times and finally he came back out. I opened the door and I asked him had you been out knocking on the door. He said no, I was inside. Come to find out we had taken three shots to the side of the armored car which came from a burned out building and we had no idea. We couldn’t hear the reports from the rifle because they were firing from inside. It was – even that, almost a week later, there was still chaotic conditions. There were still squads of police going after idiotic snipers. It was something that no matter who relates it, it’s unbelievable.
JW: You said you took your family to a friend who lived out of the danger zone, why did you then come back? Why didn’t you stay with your family?
RN: I think it was a little bit of, I don’t think it was false bravado, but I think it was a little bit of I don’t want anybody messing with our house. Because I was allowed, and legally so, to carry a weapon, I figured that I could protect the house. I knew almost every police officer on the force in Highland Park. I had three or four of them that were very, very close friends of mine and I figured if push came to shove, I could give one of them a call if something happened. Of course, that was the days with no such thing as a cell phone and you needed a landline and if I needed help, I could be there rather than just leave it open to somebody looting it. But I guess it was just, I wanted to protect the property.
JW: So did you stay alone in the house for the rest of the week?
RN: Yes, I stayed – I went and I picked up the family, I think it was about three days later I picked them up. Brought them back and I was totally, totally blown away by what we witnessed on our ride back from the Northwest side of Detroit to Highland Park. It was one stop that we used to have that our company used to service was Star Furniture which was on Livernois just south of Puritan and it was now just a smoldering hulk. There were so many things that you wouldn’t believe. Safes that we had in stores that had been melted right down to the concrete. The only thing left was the capsule that contained the monies. There was just things that I don’t even know how to describe some of it. I won’t say it was horrific or horrendous but it was unbelievable.
JW: As you were driving out to pick up your family, how far out did the damage go out?
RN: When I went to pick them up, I would say from where we lived, at that time we lived on a little one block street called Kirwood, it was between Pilgrim and Puritan, one block west of Hamilton. To drive out Puritan, I would say, if I went across Livernois to going toward Schaffer, there were signs of looting out about that far. I don’t know anything that transpired other than that area or from me going in town because I made no attempt to go anywhere else. I do know that the curfew was on. People were having, if you needed gas you had to get outside the city to buy gas. You couldn’t buy gas in Highland Park, you couldn’t buy gas in Hamtramck. You had to go north of 8 Mile because the idiot fringe was using it to make Molotov Cocktails so they figured they would restrict the flow. Well, where are you going and where are you going to get it. As far as any type of incendiary makeup fuels and oils and whatever, but as far as the devastation that I saw, I would say it would be to Puritan up toward Shaffer and that was it in that area, but heading into town, south of Highland Park, I never saw anything happen in the city of Highland Park.
JW: Okay,
RN: Which to me was a compliment to all of the people, all of the residents, but once I crossed from Highland Park into Detroit, it was a different world, totally.
JW: Did the Highland Park police stay in Highland Park or did they go out into the city and help there?
RN: They basically were protecting in the city, I don’t know if a few of them were handed off to other agencies. My buddies all stayed in Highland Park. My one brother-in-law had just graduated the day before from the Detroit Police Academy when this started and it was unbelievable. He ended up going to Vietnam and he said it was almost the same way when he saw what was happening here in the city back during the riots. Or I shouldn’t say he went to Vietnam. He had been to Vietnam and had come back and said it was just as chaotic here as it was there. Unbelievable.
JW: So then you said you stayed in the area until 1969?
RN: Yes.
JW: So why did you move?
RN: Number of reasons. The situation that took place created a carrying a gun. I almost killed a person.
JW: We can stop for a minute if you would like.
[End of Track 1 00:21:51]
[Start of Track 2]
RN: I had been making a stop and in the course of I had ten thousand dollars on me and an inebriated person who was joking at the time created a scene and in the process I was forced to draw my weapon and I found out at that particular moment that the gun had become mightier than me. I decided at that time that a change of venue would be best. Thank God it happened because I went into partnership with a friend of mine. We decided to go into business. We ended up – he was a Detroit Cop who had had enough, too, and we both moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida where I met my wife. We got married, lived down there, moved back here it was three years later, wasn’t it? Have resided in Michigan ever since.
JW: When you came back did you move back to Highland Park?
RN: No, Highland Park was on the demise then. People had used the terminology “White Flight” for reasons that I will never know. No, my wife and I moved back to Detroit. We hadn’t two nickels to rub together at the time so we moved back to 6 Mile and actually Seymour and Gratiot Detroit’s northeast side and we lived there for a period of time and then we moved out to Sterling Heights. Lived out there for 25 years in our house and we now reside in Shelby Township.
JW: How did you find the city when you came back?
RN: Changed. Drastically changed. Polarized. I see a city even today that is polarized but to me it’s just my opinion, I see a city that is following in footstep with our country. I don’t understand it but for reasons that certain factions have, it’s divide and conquer right now as far as I can see. I see a city that is building. I see a city that is predominantly putting a lot of rouge and lipstick on but I don’t see any substance. I see a town that right now has looking here, I can look across at the Detroit Institute of Arts, a place I used to go to when I was a kid in grade school, loved it. Still do. And my wife and I used to go for the Wassail Dinners years ago and now we hardly even come into the city and not for fear but there’s really nothing here that we would want to become part of anymore. And we’re members of the Detroit Zoological Society. We used to volunteer there. So many different things that we used to be a part of in this city and now sadly to say, we just don’t want to be a part of it and we feel in the past there was some commonality to it. I would go to ball games all the time. I would be at Olympia all the time. When I was a kid I was hung up on sports. Now I don’t even want to partake in any of it and it’s because of, I find, attitudes that – and it’s always using the same terminology. “White Flight.” It’s “You people did this and you people did that.” I don’t know why. I can’t figure it out and nobody can explain it to me.
JW: What do you think would need change in the city to change that view?
RN: People’s attitudes towards each other. I see there is so much I would say individualness if there is such a word. I see people today who think more of themselves than they do of the whole. I see more selfishness. I mean, think when you sit back and look at the city of Detroit, 40s and 50s when I was grade school and high school, it was nothing to jump on a streetcar and go from here to there. To go to amusement parts, we had so many of them around the area. Today, I mean, they reopened up Belle Isle and it turned into a beautiful park. Prior to that, if you drove over to Belle Isle, you had to be careful where you drove because of the broken glass. It was just the attitudes and we some that is still there. There’s a lot of beauty in this town. Beautiful stuff, but you only see about four different factions that are benefitting from it. Why do we need another hockey arena? We had one that was torn down, this one of course is on its last legs so we’re building another one. We’re going to have a soccer arena in town. Not we. Detroit’s going to have. And if you get a chance and just a plug for the, what is it? United States Baseball League out in Utica. Grassroots place, but people feel comfortable. People feel safe there. And to cross 8 Mile Road, I don’t know. I have no idea just what my own personal thoughts are about trying to create, it wouldn’t be a Utopian situation because you’re going to always have people who begrudge others something but just the decency towards each other would be appreciated.
JW: So do you have any wisdom for the city of Detroit?
RN: Yeah, don’t relive the past. Right now all I can say is that I enjoyed my time when I was here working here. I enjoyed my time visiting and seeing all the jewels that were on display for the city and for the people of the city. And now I just see, I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m not that knowledgeable in the English language, I’ll put it that way.
JW: Is there anything else you’d like to add or any other memories you have?
RN: Oh, memories? Geeze. I could start singing the song. No, I just, I do appreciate what you’re doing here because there’s so much of that year that should be remembered. Not for the tragedy that took place but things that took place with people actually coming together to help each other during that time. Everybody hears about the Algiers Motel incident. Everybody hears about so much negativity and there was a lot of people who bent over backwards, like in our neighborhood in Highland Park. The street I lived on, we had a diverse neighborhood. People, black, white, pink, purple, plaid. It was every group you could think of. And we all liked each other and even after the riot, or the civil unrest, let me correct that, even after that, we still liked each other. It wasn’t a situation where somebody held a grudge against you because you were of a different color. They liked you for who you were. Now that seems to have changed. If you’re of a certain color, you’re frowned upon. You are thought less of and I don’t think that’s right.
JW: Why do you call it a civil unrest rather than a riot?
RN: Well, I would say it’s a civil unrest of the simple reason that it was basically the whole city. It ignited so fast and spread so fast, I mean, when you say a riot, a riot had to me, my definition of a riot is something that happened in one locality. This was throughout the city. There were people who were just aching to get involved. I had stocks that I didn’t even recognize. I had about three or four places I had to go on Trumbull and we had no idea what was left, what customers we still had with the company. And I would have to call in to my office if a specific customer wasn’t open. Well, the day that I went out, that Saturday after the unrest, the reason, I was on the two-way radio and I was on Trumbull where I must have lost it was six customers in a row. And it wasn’t because they were closed; it was because they were no longer there. The buildings were torched, they were gone. Burned to the ground. They were still removing bodies from the basements of some of these stores where people had been looting and got trapped inside and it was something like I say. It was from here to there. It was a situation you had to experience. You had to sit there and say to yourself and say I can’t believe human beings would do this to each other and for what? And a lot of hate. A lot of hate came out of it but it was everybody. It wasn’t just one specific ethnic group. People shot for looting, I mean, it’s just. I told my wife, I still remember going into one store that was a customer, in fact, it was just around the corner from here. It was over on Third near Seldon and when I pulled up to make the pickup I noticed that the front plate glass window had been smashed out. It was boarded up. The brothers who owned the inner city market that serviced the area were being brought up on murder charges because the people who had come through, had broken the window out, jumped through the window and when they jumped through the window, the brothers were waiting inside with shotguns and blew them back out onto Third. Because of the attitude at that time, because they were protecting their property, the city didn’t see it that way. Or somebody didn’t see it that way and they were charged with murder. I’d have no idea what took place afterwards if they were found not guilty or whatever but it was a time that the city after all these years is still trying to heal. Hopefully it will.
JW: Alright, well, thank you so much for coming in to share your story.
RN: I appreciate it.
WW: Hello, today is August 16, my name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society's Detroit '67 Oral History Project. We are in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and I am sitting down with -
RA: Ron Acho.
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
RA: My pleasure.
WW: Can you please tell me, where and when were you born?
RA: Yes. I was born in Baghdad, Iraq, on December 18, 1945.
WW: How did your family come to Detroit?
RA: My father had wanted to come to America to escape, basically, discrimination in Iraq, because Iraq was predominately Muslim, and the Christians, for the most part, were treated as second-class citizens, and so he wanted to leave the country, and his older brother, Joe, came to America in 1928, and he told him about all the opportunities. And so he applied to come to America shortly after that. Anywhere from fourteen to nineteen years he waited, in order to be able to come to America, and eventually he did.
WW: Wow.
RA: And then, a year later, he sent for my mom, my brother Andy, and my sister Margaret and I, and we came here on Thanksgiving Day in 1949, which is why Thanksgiving Day is the most important day of the year in our family.
WW: And that year was 1949?
RA: Mm hm.
WW: Did you come to Detroit immediately?
RA: Yes, mm hm, we did.
WW: Why did your father pick Detroit?
RA: Well, he picked Detroit because there were other Chaldeans here, especially his brother, but the story of how Chaldeans came to Detroit is kind of odd, because they really weren't going to come to Detroit - it turned out to be a mistake. I think they were going to go to Chicago. But they wound up being in Detroit and then Henry Ford advertised the five-dollar-a-day job, and so it became a great draw, except Chaldeans couldn't work in the plants because they were all farmers and merchants. So they really couldn't survive in a plant. So that's why you never saw a Chaldean work in a plant.
WW: Do you remember what your first impression of the city was, as a child?
RA: It - yes, I do, because I was born in, essentially, a rural-type setting, and there weren't a lot of people, and they're all homogeneous - they're all people who look like you, and, you know, you had family around you, because that's one thing that Chaldeans do. They gravitate toward family. So basically you lived around family, and that's who you saw, and your whole life consisted of a few blocks. But when I came to Detroit, I couldn't believe what I saw because it was so big, and then you saw cars, and - it was just - it was overwhelming. And part of it, too, you didn't know the language, so it's like being put on a planet, okay, that you really don't know anything about. And so it was very overwhelming.
WW: What neighborhood did you move into?
RA: Well, we lived in a few places. The first place, we lived with some family for a week or two - we - we slept on the floor. You know, they let us, I mean, they took care of us. Then my dad sublet a flat on Virginia Park and Hamilton. My whole life consisted almost of Hamilton Avenue, I'll tell you that in a minute. And we lived above a movie theater, called Virginia Park Movie Theater, which would be near Midtown. And we lived there for a few months, then one day I came home and all our possessions - meager ones - were on the street. We were evicted. And what happened is that the man that my father paid - who had the lease - didn't pay the landlord. So we were evicted, so I saw my mother in the street, crying. It was pretty traumatic.
Then we wound up moving to a - we stayed, again, with family for a couple days. Then we had a flat for a little while on Hamilton near Milwaukee, and we lived there for a while. And then we wound up moving, on Hamilton and Burlingame - there's a reason for that - and then years later moved three blocks away, to Hamilton and Tuxedo. The reason is, my dad didn't drive. He never drove. So he took the bus. So you take the Hamilton bus, and then the Dexter bus to our store. So that's why we always lived near Hamilton, until, you know, years later. So.
WW: Given that you couldn't speak the language, did you feel comfortable when you came to the city?
RA: No. In fact, something unusual happened that wouldn't happen today. I remember this, even though it happened sixty-six years ago. We went to register me for kindergarten. My dad takes me in to the school - Fairbanks Elementary - and the woman asked him, what is your son's name? He said "______." She said "what?" "______" "Oh, no, no, no, no. You can't call him that. You have to give him an American name."
So my father says to me in Chaldean, "what do you want to be called?" Well, I didn't know English! You know, I don't know! So he looked up in the air and says "Ronnie. Call him Ronnie." No - he asked me, "Is Ronnie okay?" Okay. He says, "Call him Ronnie." That's how I got my name.
So, do you want me to just tell you a little story?
WW: Go right ahead.
RA: So, you have to understand something. Chaldeans are very hard workers, okay? When we came to America, my brother, mother, sister, and I - all we had was a trunk, with our things in it. Just one trunk, for four people. That was it. So we were poor, no question about it. Poor by any standard. My father worked for my Uncle Joe, who had a store, and he and my younger uncle, who came with him, who wound up living with us, worked there for a couple of years, then they bought a store called Hamway Supermarket, in 1951. They worked seven days a week, sixteen, seventeen-hour days. For years. They - we wound up being somewhat prosperous, which is why, when the riots occurred in '67 - and my uncle didn't believe in insurance - so we had very little. The insurance we had did not even cover the money we owed on the inventory. So here you have a store - we didn't own the building - we had fixtures and inventory - and the riots took everything away. So we went from poor, to somewhat prosperous, to poor again. All within the span of one day.
So the experience always left an indelible mark on me, and still to this day.
WW: Growing up in the city, did you travel around, or did you tend to stay in your own neighborhood?
RA: No, no. We, no. You didn't do that. I mean, you stayed in your neighborhood, and that's something else. The thing that changed Detroit more than anything else - more than the riots - are the expressways. Because what happened is - we had neighborhoods - like Mary would know - we lived in neighborhoods. And you had family around you, you had neighbors, you knew your neighbors. And you took the bus wherever you went. The furthest you went was wherever the bus would take you. So you stayed in those areas. It wasn't until the car became more prevalent, we had the expressways, that you then wound up driving. But my family never took a vacation. So it isn't like we went anywhere. So it was a very confined, you know, area that we stayed in. Work, or school, home, school, work. Back and forth. Home-school-work. And that was it. Three things. That's what you did.
WW: Growing up throughout the 1950's, did you see the city changing?
RA: Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. I remember Detroit in its heyday. Detroit was the fifth-largest city. It had over two million people. You could do to Detroit, downtown, you'd have trouble walking down Woodward, because there were so many people. And what happened, again, we talked about the expressways, right? I mean this is my philosophy.
[Break in the recording here?]
AR: Yeah, we can continue, go ahead.
WW: [Unintelligible.]
RA: So anyway, Detroit was a wonderful, wonderful city. It had the Detroit Historical Society, had the Institute of Art, had a great library. Belle Isle - I mean, Detroit was wonderful. Now, for people like us - we really didn't go to those places, particularly, because we worked. I mean, we're - we're country people. But living in Detroit meant that you had freedom, you had opportunities, which you did not have in the old country, okay. In fact, I'll tell you a story of my father.
Every single day in the store - every day - he'd hold up a banana. He said "you know, Ronnie, what this is?" Yes, baba, it's a banana. "You know, in the old country, only the rich could eat a banana. Here in America, you can have a banana every day." And finally one day I said, baba, why do you keep telling me - you keep telling me. He said, "I want you to remember how lucky you are to be here. To have the opportunity to be in America, where you can do whatever you want. You can be successful. You don't get that." So he ingrained upon us, the fact that we were lucky to be in America, which is why immigrants, I think, appreciate America more than people who have lived here their whole lives.
That may not necessarily be true, but at least from the immigrants that I see, they appreciate the opportunities. So yes, Detroit was phenomenal. Did I see the changes? Yes. I saw the changes beginning with the expressways, because more people started living in the suburbs. And they then built - which you may not be familiar with - Northland. Northland was the first enclosed mall in America, as I recall.
So what happened is, a lot of well-to-do people started moving to Oak Park, and then Southfield, okay. And what happened is, they left their homes. And a lot of the people who were ethnic, especially, took very good care of their homes. A lot of people moved in from the south. Did not have the same work ethic, didn't have the same pride in their homes. So you could begin seeing a deterioration in the neighborhoods. That was one. Two, the tax base diminished, because you had people moving out. Third, there was an increase in crime. Detroit really was not a crime-ridden city. It wasn't until the changes.
So then, starting in - probably early sixties - you started seeing crime. Now, what happened then, is you had the Detroit Police Department putting things in place like STRESS, and the Big Four. Well, it turns out that they were viewed as targeting African Americans. And that's how Coleman Young eventually became mayor, saying that it was a racist police department. Remember, this was in the sixties, okay.
And so, as a consequence, there was a lot of discontent. The other thing, too, remember, was the auto industry has its ups and downs, okay. When people are off work, there's financial problems. And you wound up finding more unemployment. More unemployment, more crime, more people leaving the city. As you had the people leave the city, you had more problems. Then Detroit did away with the residency requirement for their police. Used to have police living in Detroit. That ended. So as a result, every - virtually every Detroit police offer that I knew - moved outside of the city. So then you didn't have that off-duty presence.
So it kept - it kept multiplying. It kept getting worse, and worse, and worse. A hundred Chaldeans have been murdered in their stores. I've known fifty of them. Some of them friends, relatives. So how many people know fifty people who have been murdered, okay. So Detroit became a problem because of crime, and because people moved to the suburbs. You had your flagship department store, one of the biggest in America, close. So you then had no anchor in downtown Detroit. All the businesses moved out, and up until several years ago, downtown Detroit was a ghost town. Absolutely a ghost town. I wouldn't even take people from out of town downtown.
So you saw a deterioration of the city. You also had a polarizing figure in Coleman Young. I knew the mayor. I knew him on a personal basis. But he was a polarizing figure. So the more he agitated, the more white people left. And it also created more discontent. He had his reasons for being upset, for things that happened to him. But the problem is, as the leader of the city, he did not help the city in that regard. So - getting - do you want to get to the riot down?
WW: I was just about to ask you. Did your family continue living in Detroit throughout the sixties?
RA: No. Because, I told you about the increase in crime - and the expressway made it easy to go to Southfield, especially when my sister got beat up, okay. My mother said "No, we can't live here." We actually lived in Highland Park, which is right across the street from Detroit. But the two were similar. In fact, in '59, Highland Park was selected as one of the ten most beautiful cities in America. But by 1964, it had so much crime that we left. So that's why we moved out.
WW: Why did your family pick Southfield?
RA: Because there were other Chaldeans there. Because Chaldeans, believe it or not, tended to follow the Jewish people. They would - the Jewish people moved to Oak Park and Southfield. And the Chaldeans have an affinity for the Jewish people. There are so many similarities. That's why, when you hear about conflicts in the middle east, that's foreign to Chaldeans, because Chaldeans love the Jewish people, and Jewish people have been very supportive.
In fact, the man who owned our store, the building, couldn't have been a nicer landlord. He was Jewish. So Southfield was the new suburb, and it was also close to Detroit, because it was the town next to Detroit. So we just take the expressway and we could go to the store.
WW: How did you first hear what was going on in July?
RA: I got a call at home, saying, "Ronnie, be careful, there's some problems on 12th Street. There's some burning." Now, 12th Street was not really close to us. It was a couple miles away - I mean, it wasn't something that immediately caused me concern.
WW: By "close to us" do you mean to your home?
RA: To our store. Our store. So I go into the store that morning, and there's no - no news about this, nothing reported. In fact, I was told it was purposely not reported, okay, so as not to get people anxious. But what happened is, I saw the smoke started to come closer. And then at one point - our store wasn't very far from Grand Boulevard and Grand River. And there was a fire at Grand Boulevard and Grand River, at a furniture store. I think it was called Charles Furniture, as I recall.
And so then I became alarmed, then. Called my brother Andy. I said Andy, you oughta get down here because I'm concerned. So as things began to heat up, we put tobacco - the cigarettes - and money in our car. Then I saw two guys with torches coming down the street. Yeah. Just like out of a movie, like a Frankenstein movie - there were two guys with torches, walking towards us. Now they're only like a block away - I mean, where are they going? They weren't - they weren't torching any houses, and there were no other stores or buildings, other than ours. So we got out quickly - had my butcher knife.
And then customers started to call us. And they were essentially telling us what was going on . "They're breaking your windows, they're doing this, they're doing that." They actually burned our store three times. They couldn't get it the first time, they couldn't get it the second time, but they got it the third time.
WW: When you say they didn't get it the first or second time - the store just didn't catch on fire?
RA: No, it caught fire - but it didn't burn down.
WW: Okay.
RA: And there was a lot of looting. Now there's something else too, that was controversial. Mayor Jerome Cavanagh gave a do not shoot order. As a result there was widespread looting and you'd see National Guard doing nothing. For the first few days. So it was an open invitation.
WW: How did your parents react to what was going on?
RA: What do you think? Devastated. It was what my father worked his whole life for. He had nothing now. I mean, you - you have to understand. When you're poor, you appreciate whatever you get, okay. Whether it's a pen, a book, whatever it is, you appreciate it. Then you built up a store. It becomes very successful. And then someone takes it away from you.
And it wasn't our customers - our customers who were African American were wonderful. They treated us well. In fact, some of them even offered to give us some money, okay. I mean, that's the kind of people we had. So when they talk about the race riots, and they refer to African Americans, I don't view it that way. Not at all. I view it as insurrectionists, anarchists, who may have happened to be African American, but were not representative of the African American community. They certainly weren't representing the African American community that I knew. People I went to school with, people I - I worked with. Not at all. These were people that used their anger to promote a violence. You know, it's a justification for what they did. So my father was extremely depressed, and I was bitter, frankly. I was angry with God. How could you allow this to happen? And, again, letting people do whatever they want with no police action. None. None. If someone breaks into your house, and you know it, and the police know it, and they don't do anything, how do you feel? And they take everything you own. Everything.
WW: Did your family immediately - what was your first reaction? Just to abandon the store, or to rebuild?
RA: Well, we wanted to rebuild, but we had cheap rent, because the building was old. This building was probably built in the thirties, okay. It was called Hamway Supermarket, but you'd laugh today, because it was about twice the size of a Seven Eleven. So it wasn't a supermarket, but in the thirties and forties, it was, because they had fresh meat, produce. The landlord said "I will build, but I can't charge you the same rent, because I have to build this new building." So we couldn't afford the rent. And we didn't have any insurance money, because the ten thousand we had paid off some of the creditors.
See, what we used to do in the store business, you would pay for your groceries the week after you got them. Like for instance, we would get bread twice a week. On a Monday and a Thursday, okay. Sometimes three times - but just so - Monday and Thursday. The Monday bread you didn't pay for. When they came in with the Thursday bread, you paid for Monday's bread. And then the following Monday, you paid for Thursday's bread. Same thing for all the other groceries. Some you paid right away, okay, that's different. Like the fresh meat you had to pay for right away.
But a lot of the food, you got on credit, so you would pay a week later. We had a lot of inventory, but we owed a lot of money. So that was never an option.
WW: What did your family do afterwards?
RA: Well, struggled. What happened is, in fact, turn that off for a second - by the way, that judge just died.
WW: Were you and your brother able to salvage anything else from the store?
RA: No. And the problem is, once you have a fire, you have smoke damage, so there's always a risk of contamination, so we - we salvaged nothing. Nope. You asked what we did -
WW: No, no -
RA: For money. I'll tell you. What happened is, I had to get a job. And I got a job at Ford, thanks to my brother Andy. He made an introduction, he helped me get this job. But I didn't have a degree, and this job required a degree. And this is where the good comes out. Like I say, I was very angry with God, because I wanted to have a chain of supermarkets. That's what I wanted, and I knew I'd make a good living, because I was good at the grocery business. And that's all I knew. Anyway, so they said to me, "we're going to hire you, but you've got to go back to college and get a degree. You don't have a degree."
Well, the day I went, I met my love of my life, my future wife, and my cousin Mary down there. If I didn't lose the store, I had no intention of going back to college - none at all. I only had like a year, a year and a half, that's all. I wasn't going to go back. They required me to go back. Well, what happened is, I met her in the cafeteria line. She was behind me, she caught my eye - and then we wound up dating, and became married. And last week was forty-seven years. On top of that, because I was at Ford, I had employment, and I had six promotions in eight years. And I won three awards, and I graduated summa cum laude from college. And then law school, I did well, which Ford paid for.
Well, I wound up becoming a lawyer and I have six offices now. And had we not lost the store I would have never met my wife, never married her, and would never have become an attorney. I had no dreams of becoming a lawyer. So it was the best day and the worst day of my life, at the same time.
WW: You speak about how bitter your family was. Did you avoid coming to the city after that?
RA: No, no. Again - this was not about race. People keep saying "the race riots." Yes, there were people that were African American and vented, okay - but that doesn't mean it was about race, because the stores that were torched were not stores that gouged people, they weren't stores that mistreated - in fact, most of the stores re-opened, and they re-opened to the same customers. If they were not good people, why would they re-open, and why would the people shop there? The African American community has been very supportive of the Chaldean community.
Now I also played on an all-black baseball team for five years, okay. So this business about race is really over-done, okay. I mean, you can talk about the police shootings, and there's a whole gamut of things. The reality is, the riots were spawned from a variety of things, and it isn't because it was strictly people of color. That really isn't it. I don't believe it. Never have.
WW: Backtracking -
RA: But there is discrimination; it goes both ways. There are white people who discriminate and there are black people who discriminate. People are people - that's what you have to look at. Not a class of people. Mary and I are Chaldean, but are we representative of all the Chaldeans? No. There are some that might be better - although I don't think so, Mary - but there'd be some that aren't as nice. So you have to look at people individually, and not as a class.
WW: Backtracking, really quick, because I skipped a question.
RA: I sound like I'm lecturing, I don't mean to do that.
WW: Did you or any of your family members sense anything coming that summer, in July?
RA: No. No. There was a problem with unemployment, okay, and there was a problem with people leaving the city - things like that - but no, not a sense that there's going to be something occurring, no. No.
WW: Are you optimistic for the city today?
RA: Well, yeah. I mean, if you'd asked me ten years ago it would be a different answer, but the answer is yes. First of all, most everything comes in a cycle, okay. The automobile industry is a perfect example. Wall Street's an example. Real estate's an example. Detroit was going to come back - it was just a question of when. Now, thanks to the Ford family, thanks to Mike Ilitch, thanks to Dan Gilbert, it hastened the renaissance of the city. And having good mayors, like Dave Bing, Mayor Duggan, who's excellent.
So the right things are happening and you can see it, because major parts of the city - downtown, midtown, Corktown - are all very strong. It's a matter of transferring that growth and vitality into the neighborhoods. The crime is still - crime and education are still the two major problems, and Detroit doesn't have the money. It really needs three times as many police it has. It really does.
And education - if you don't get that straightened out, people are not going to want to have their kids here. You see the explosion in downtown Detroit, but they're all young people. Not with families.
So those are two issues that I'm confident that the mayor and the legislature will do the things necessary. So I'm very, very high on the city - I own a duplex in Detroit. I've looked for other properties - not to flip - I mean, my wife Rita has always been a champion for Detroit. In fact, we were going to buy the Ransom Gillis mansion, okay. We didn't get it, but she wanted it, and the reality is, because she wanted - not for money - she wanted to fix it up, and have it as a testament to the grandkids to see what the grandparents did, for Detroit.
So the answer is yes, unequivocally.
WW: Well, is there anything else you'd like to share today?
RA: Well, first of all, I appreciate the opportunity. I think this is a very noble project. I don't think people really grasped what happened. The - you have to look at the totality of the years - of the fifty years, and the twenty years before sixty-seven - not twenty years, ten years - where things occurred. And again, I know the expressway sounds like it's silly, but - it's just some other thing. Because Detroit didn't have - also didn't have mass transportation, which is another problem. Had they not built the expressways, and continued with mass transportation, Detroit would have not had all these things occur. So things change, and what it is - you evolve, and you deal with it.
And the city is - and I think the whole secret is really jobs. That you cannot have high unemployment and have as many children out of wedlock. It's a major problem, and people don't talk about it, but the numbers I hear are staggering, in Detroit.
Chaldeans - which I'm proud to say I am one - were blessed to have a strong family structure, starting with the grandparents - not the parents - the grandparents. Then the parents. Then the children, because when children have parents and grandparents, they have a strength and a support.
Part of the reason the Chaldeans are so successful is that they work hard, but there's another component, that is not typical. They help each other in the community. Like my uncle helped my dad. But also people like Mike George, and his father - other Chaldeans loaned money to my dad and uncle. Then my dad and uncle did the same thing for others, and they brought people from the old country to work for them, for us. So you had all of that support, which is what people need, okay.
Life is hard, and if you don't have the direction and you don't have the support, it makes it very, very hard, you know. So I'm optimistic that things have turned in Detroit. The Chaldeans are an instrumental part of that, too. You have to understand. Chaldeans have so many stores in Detroit, and they help the community, because they do things for those neighborhoods, okay. You could - you should really talk to some of the other people, and that is why Detroit will get stronger, because of the Chaldean influence.
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I really appreciate it.
RA: You're welcome. I enjoyed it. Enjoyed it.
[INITIALS OF INTERVIWEE:] RP, JP
[INTIALS OF INTERVIEWER:] GS
[REPEAT INITIALS EACH TIME EACH PERSON SPEAKS]
GS: Hello, my name is Giancarlo Stefanutti. Today is June 23, 2016. We are in Detroit Michigan at the Detroit Historical Society, and this if for the 1967 Oral History Project. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
JP: Nice to be here Gian.
GS: So can you start by telling me both you names?
JP: I’m Janice Powell.
RP: And Richard Powell.
GS: Okay. And Janice, where and when were you born?
JP: I was born in Ferndale Michigan, and it was back in May of 1947.
RP: Detroit Michigan, February of 1942.
GS: Okay. So what were your childhoods like?
RP: Standard childhood, I grew up here in the city. Spent a lot of time doing various things around town. Was not a very athletic kid, but we did spend a lot of time out at Belle Isle canoeing, ice skating in the wintertime, out at Rouge Park, swimming, hanging out with boy scouts out there. Just the normal average kid. That was back when you could, of course, ride a bicycle without a helmet. You know, you could jay walk with impunity. Some of my earlier memories revolved around riding streetcars, and at that time, a streetcar may have been electrically powered. I remember riding the Woodward line out to the end of it, which was at Palmer Park, and then the conductor would get off the back of it and pull the cord that held the electrodes up to the wires, and actually physically turned the car around for the trip back downtown.
GS: Wow.
RP: We lived out for a while on the Southwest side of Detroit, we used to ride a trolley car again up over—I forget what the railroad tracks were called—but it was over the Rouge River, etcetera, etcetera, in the area of the Detroit Salt Mines, and it was kind of neat because where that freeway now bridges all of that, there used to be an actual railroad track that went up there and the trolley car would you know, sway and bump and whatnot. It was great fun for a kid. I remember waking up and hearing thumps in the middle of the night, very dull thumps, and it turned out that they would be dynamiting down in the Detroit Salt Mines, which were active underneath the city.
GS: Oh wow.
RP: So it was a quote “normal” growing up. [laughing]
GS: Very normal. How about you Janice?
JP: Well the first eight years, I was in Ferndale, and that was just fun fun fun, back when Ferndale was still quite country, not populated like it is now and the downtown was nothing like what it is now. But at eight, we moved into the city, we moved over on West Side of Detroit, and me and my brothers, we all attended school here in Detroit. They graduated from McKinsey, I graduated from Cass Tech, the old Cass Tech, the one with seven floors, the warehouse, lots of steps, and then I met this guy. We got married, it was kind of funny because at the time of our marriage was the time that the riot began. So I was actually having a wedding shower in a backyard, just off Twelfth Street and LaSalle Gardens South, and we could hear the noise, the commotion, of the people on Twelfth Street as they ran up and down, because it had started the morning of, and we had to end our shower. We had to grab all the gifts, throw them in the car, and everybody went home because we were afraid, we were hearing gunfire and we were just afraid of fires and things like that. So it ended that wedding shower. So right in the thick of things, we were planning our wedding.
GS: Wow that is crazy.
JP: Very. [laughing]
GS: What were the professions of your parents growing up?
JP: My mom was a stay-home mom, she took care of us. Dad worked at General Motors, he worked at the Cadillac Plant.
RP: My dad worked for Michigan Bell Telephone back then, he also had a small janitorial business that he ran. My mom was pretty much stay-at-home, although as I hit teenage years, she did some interviewing for the University of Michigan.
GS: Oh, wow.
RP: Yeah.
GS: Do you have siblings? Either of you?
JP: Yes. I have three brothers.
RP: I’ve got two sisters, one here in Detroit, one in Chicago. I did have a brother, but he died back in 1985.
GS: I see. And where did you two go to school growing up?
RP: I went to David Mackenzie, 9275 South Wyoming, Detroit Michigan.
GS: Oh wow.
RP: I started off—I guess I should be honest and tell you I started off at Boynton Elementary off in Southwest Detroit. And then later on, I spent some time here at Wayne State, and ended up at University of Michigan up in Ann Arbor, which I enjoyed greatly.
JP: I started off of course the eight years, through third grade, in Ferndale, Harding Elementary. Then we moved to Detroit, I was at Ruth Ruff Elementary, and from there I went to Tappan Junior High—and all of these schools are gone now—went to Tappan Junior High. From Tappan Junior High, I came downtown and I went to Commerce Business School. It was a school mostly of girls back then, it was right across from Cass Tech, and they eventually tore it down to make the freeway, so we had choices of where to go, so I ended up at Cass Tech. That’s where I graduated from, then I did some time at Wayne State, I did community college in Ann Arbor when he was in Ann Arbor, and that’s pretty much it.
GS: I’m assuming that’s when you two met?
JP: No, we met here. We met at the old Fairground. They used to have ice skating out and they had ice skating every fall, and I would go with my brothers and we would skate—and I didn’t know him then—and he would go with his friends and it took me about three years to finally meet him. [laughter]
GS: Oh wow. [laughter]
RP: Well, there were a bunch of us that skated out there rather rigorously until the outdoor natural waters froze, so we skated at State Fairgrounds and when it froze up, we’d go down to Palmer Park which had a concession stand there, etcetera. We always made it a goal to help out the kids who were new to speed skates, the guys that I hung out with—and there was one girl in the group—were all speed skaters. So any time we saw somebody on speed skates, we’d give them some tips and pointers, but we did not spend a lot of time with them. And I saw this young lady on a couple of occasions. One occasion, she showed up with a pair of speed skates and I think I told her something like “If you don’t look around over your shoulder, you won’t stumble into the curves,” and that was the first thing I ever said.
JP: First thing you ever said, yeah. And he didn’t know it, but I was really looking for him so it was kind of cute what he said. And of course I told my girlfriend “He spoke to me! “And that was that.
RP: She’s a stalker. [laughter]
GS: So with your school experiences, how racially integrated were they?
JP: Back then. Ferndale, where I first started—and I was only there until I was eight, so I got limited—it was not too many blacks, the school I went to. It was mostly white. I think the few blacks that were there were probably all my cousins, me and all my cousins. But when we moved into Detroit, well it was pretty much the same thing at elementary school. It started out pretty much all white, but then slowly blacks started to move to the West Side of Detroit.
RP: Yeah, we were over in—of course Southwest Detroit at Boynton Elementary—Southwest Detroit, to me, does not mean Vernor. It means where Ecorse and Lincoln Park bought out against Detroit, and I lived right in that corner. I was half a block from E Course and about three blocks away from Lincoln Park, so we’re really Southwest. Boynton Elementary was primarily white at that time. There had been a nice development of homes over in that area, primarily for the benefit of factory workers. A lot of Poles lived in the area, some Germans of course, but mainly Caucasian and everybody who lived over there worked pretty much. It was a fairly isolated existence. You were very much aware that there were black and white and it was pretty separate. Kids played together like kids always do. We would go down to a place called Pepper Creek and catch tadpoles and that sort of thing. School yard, you’d play in the schoolyard and it was fairly well-integrated, and we had a Boy Scout troop there—I think it was troop 762 I think—and we all got together pretty well and did the camping thing and all that normal sort of stuff. As kids, I think we were fairly unaware of racial divisions, but we did know that there were more of them than there were of us. Then in high school, at Mackenzie, there was a rat pack of kids, maybe 15 or 20 kids or so, who kind of hung around together and we were all black, white, Latino, kind of mixed up. But we were a distinct minority within the school at the time. All of the teams were primarily white, all the activities were primarily white oriented, so you were aware of the division. It was back in the days where you had the rockers, the rock fashion and whatnot, the Beatles and all that sort of thing. You had the jocks, sports, captain of the football team—I knew him—I knew the girlfriend who he later impregnated, she was the captain of the cheerleader team, and I remember their names but I’m not going to say them out loud. [laughter] But again, we got along, but we weren’t great boon friends and life just kind of proceeded.
GS: Did this sense of racial division become more apparent as you got older?
RP: I think so. You started to go out to get your first job and you were aware that there were some jobs you were probably going to get a little easier than other jobs. I was frankly really lucky. My dad worked at Bell Tel, and he made it possible for me to get an entry into Bell, Bell had no slots to hire people so I ended up working for Western Electric and I got a pretty nice job there. I was making pretty decent money, got my first car, my dad cosigned for me. But again, if you didn’t have somebody to get you in, either at the plant or in some other apprenticeship or something of that nature, you were pretty much out there, and it was pretty much along the racial lines at that time.
GS: Okay. And what year was this would you say?
RP: Boy oh boy, you’re going to date me like crazy here.
GS: You don’t have to say anything. [laughter]
RP: Back in the sixties. Yeah, I would say ’55, ’55 through ’60, yeah.
GS: So kind of moving towards the sixties, pre-riot, could you sense a level of growing tension within the Detroit community?
JP: I really couldn’t. I don’t know if it’s you know, call me naïve or not, but I was very surprised by the riot.
RP: Well it was a surprise that the riot jumped off, but I think I was aware of folks like Angela Davidson and the Black Panthers and Carmichael and things like that, but those were things that happened over there, out there. They weren’t in my community. We became aware of course of you know, kids being unhappy locally and to me as a kid at the time, it seemed to be along class structures, you either had or you had not. And so things broke down that way rather than racially and it wasn’t until a little bit later that I was able to say “Yeah, the reason you don’t have that is because you’re black and you’re getting disenfranchised and shit’s happening that you don’t like,” you know, and so you’re unhappy about it. But at the time, it was awareness, but not deeply involved in it.
JP: And in the sixties, when I think drugs really entered the seen for Detroit, I noticed things changing in the area where we lived over on the West Side of Detroit. When I was a kid, I mean it was a beautiful area to live in. but by the time I graduated from Cass Tech, that was ’65, it had started to change. I was still very naïve to drugs, I mean I had no idea what was going on, but I could sense change around me, but I had a job, I worked, I did a co-op deal where you go to school half a day in your twelfth grade and you work half a day. So I got a job with the S.S. Kresge Company over at the Olde Building(??) over at Temple Avenue—Temple Avenue that way—and anyway, so I was working every day, and I really was just kind of focused on that. You know, going to work, doing my job, coming home, still lived with the parents, the slowly like I said met him in that two year period from 18 to 20. But that’s when I really started noticing the big change that seemed to be happening in Detroit.
RP: Of course around that time you had the Ann Arbor Hash Bash, it like pretty much jumped off. Cops there, if you respected and you treated half way differentially, you got the five dollar Ann Arbor ticket. If you were a prick about it, you got the more severe state ticket, which wasn’t too cool. It was kind of a fun time. And Jan’s right, drugs really started you know, to kick off back then—
JP: In the sixties, after ’65.
RP: —free love you know, Post Street(??) jumped off here in Detroit, psychedelic music and stuff like that, and there was a whole awareness that there was a counter culture. There were people out there who were different than us, whether you called them hippies, you know, druggies, whatever you wanted to call them, they were different. They didn’t get up at the crack of dawn and go to work and slave for 12 hours and come home and you know, want their dinner on the table at a certain time, meat and potatoes, etcetera. Things are starting to change and we were aware of it.
JP: Yeah. And by the time we were married, we got married in ’67 and by then, yeah. Things had really—well, there was all the movement for the blacks to march with Martin Luther King, and I remember us participating—
RP: Shrine of the Black Madonna.
JP: —yeah, I remember us participating in some of those marches and being at some of those speeches, but you could really see, from when I graduated in ’65 to ’67, Detroit did a major change. And then beyond ’67, you know, after the riot.
RP: And it may have been a change it was some time coming, but we just weren’t aware of it.
JP: Yeah.
RP: The kids started wearing afros when we moved up to Ann Arbor, she had her fro—
JP: Angela Davis’s.
RP: Yeah.
JP: So, it was coming, it was just—
RP: That was also the time when, literally, you talk about drugs literally, most drugs were of recreational nature. They had LSD back then, but I remember that a kid could walk down the street literally with a pipe full of herb and people thought it was an aromatic tobacco and nobody said very much about it. [laughter] But that was also during the time of “Stop robberies enjoy safe streets,” STRESS, I myself got put on the hood of a squad car by the Big Four.
GS: Wow.
RP: That was an interesting experience. I don’t understand people that stand and argue with the guy with a gun and a taser, that’s bad politics. That sort of thing went on and I think it was probably more in nature of growing up, becoming more adult moving into another area of life and becoming aware that “Oh, that’s a little bit different than I thought it was,” you know you had to look at things very differently.
JP: And then you worked some during the riot, I mean you worked—didn’t you do some riding around with a—
RP: If he wants to talk about that now—
GS: Sure.
RP: During the riot itself, when the riot actually broke out, I was working for a drug store down on Linwood Avenue, just south of Clairmount, owned by a guy named Marvin Middledorf, and I’ve often thought I should look around to see if he’s still around. Marvin Middledorf was the owner and a pharmacist, and a guy named Robby worked for another pharmacist and his store was subsequently burned down, so I had no job to go to. So I think I got somebody to take me down—my folks took me down to the tenth precinct out on Livernois Avenue, down near Euclid I think it was—I could be wrong about the cross street but it was down on Livernois, tenth precinct—and I volunteered for the emergency police reserve. They put me in a squad car and took me over to the Bibwack(??) area which is behind Herman Kieffer Hospital over here on John Lodge and Claimount, and there I helped stand guard duty while they had National Guardsmen, police officers, state police, they could come in there and park their vehicles, rest, get a bite to eat, take a nap, whatever the case may be, we stood guard outside, and we got rather aggressive about it after the curfew period. Things were not pleasant if you were driving after curfew, and I just thought it was part of you either did something or you took part in something, and so I did something, and I didn’t realize how involving it was until I got a chance to take a break and they took me home. I lived up near the University of Detroit up on Six Mile and Livernois. Squad car took me home so I could take a break, and I went the house and my parents later told me that they dropped me off at about three in the afternoon, I did not wake up until eight or nine o’clock the next night.
GS: Oh wow.
RP: So I slept 24 hours. Then they picked us up, and we went back to the area. But it was a very intense time. We had gotten married around that time—
JP: Remember the tanks going down Livernois—
RP: And it was thunder, thunder, “What the hell is that? I’ve never heard thunder like that.” I get up to look and see and our bedroom window overlooked Livernois, in the area of Livernois and Finkel. And we look out and there’s a line of tanks moving down the middle of Livernois Avenue—
JP: And I thought “Wow, you know, this is too much like war,” you know? But that’s what was going on. Even just before we got married, I was still living on the West Side with my parents, I’ll never forget us turning off the lights maybe after ten o’clock at night, and just going up and looking out Mom’s windows—her bedroom windows because they faced the street—and watching street lights being shot out too. Now I can’t say they were all by good guys, some of them could’ve been the bad people too—
RP: The good guys shot out a lot of street lights so that you couldn’t take aim at them—
JP: So it was dark, yeah. So it was dark and you had to be off the street. So it was a Detroit I had never imagined. Never.
RP: They gave me a twelve gauge shotgun, a riot gun. They gave me a helmet, they gave me a nightstick, and when you came by and you were after curfew, we would stop you and ask you did you have permission to be out? Did you have a letter or what kind of job you had.
JP: Why are you out?
RP: “Why are you out here?” And if you did not give the proper response then things happened and they weren’t always very pleasant things, won’t go into that here, but you end up paying a price for it. People learned that you needed to follow the laws. In fact, after the immediate need was over and they sent the National Guard home and I think the 101 Airborne was here and somebody else—another Airborne unit was here—after they sent them home, I was working at a local FM radio station, WCHD right down on [inaudible] Forest, and I literally had a letter that said what my shift was, I worked midnight to six a.m., and the letter gave me permission to be out and about at that time of the night. It was a crazed time, did divisions and did things change after that? It was rather intriguing, my personal observation that again it was haves and have nots. However you came to be one of those two classes of people, that was it, because I saw many instances where the storefront would be open and there would be some black guys and some white guys both going into the store and both looting, no animosity between them, they might argue over who’s going to get this TV or not, but other than that they’re both ripping stuff off down the streets and whatnot.
JP: And just so many burned out stores, you know. Really, the area I lived in, I mean it was great. You could walk up to Grand River and everything you ever wanted was on Grand River. After the riot, everything was gone, and they either burned it down or the storeowners closed up and left Detroit. So, it really was devastating.
RP: To me, a lot of white flight seemed to be accelerated after that period. A lot of the Jewish communities that lived in the area of Dexter and Davidson began to move out, and they built the Sharrey Zedek out there at the Nothwestern Highway out near Telegraph Road.
JP: Yeah.
RP: And of course, all of these things made other possibilities happen, Jewish people moved out that opened up some housing potential and some blacks and other people who didn’t have adequate housing would move into those areas and that worked out pretty well for them.
JP: East Side kind of moved more to the West Side, because when I was a kid, East Side of Detroit, for most blacks—the side of Grosse Pointe, was not a nice place to live. It was pretty rough and I think they lived quite differently than we did. So we always sort of talked about the East Side. Well once the riots happened, those people, houses burned out and everything, now they’re starting to move, so West Side, North Side, Southwest Side, so things changed.
RP: And ballpark around that time, you also had the introduction of the freeway system, which of course in downtown Detroit ended in the tearing down of Black Bottom, so a lot of black businesses went by the board, a lot of the low- cost land went by the board, because that’s where they build these freeways, where the land is cheap and where the black people were living, the land was pretty cheap. I actually remember over on John Lodge and Warren here, when they were building that, literally crossing the street at that point. I stopped and took a leak in the middle of what is now the freeway. [laughter]
JP: Well 96 did that too, because it really came through where I lived at that time, and a lot of people you know, had to move away or for whatever reason. So it really divided Detroit a lot.
RP: So personally, I still think it’s a question of you know, have and have nots. However you come to be in one class or the other, there does not seem to be an awful lot of interaction or crossing between the groups. In some social institutions, The Art Institute, The Historical Society, the libraries and whatnot, you will find some crossover for lack of a better term. But outside of those accepted areas, I don’t think there’s very much at all. I think it still remains very segregated. We live out in Southfield now and it is rather interesting to see that you can still tell by terms of who shows up in your kid’s school—
JP: Where they come from.
RP: —where they come from, and you can still identify by what their car looks like, etcetera, etcetera, where they came from. You might get to know the person and you might find something very different than what you expected. But you do have some preconceived notions and in many cases they’re born out, and it’s kind of a sad thing. I’m not sure if Detroit will ever be the—
JP: The Detroit we knew.
RP: — the homogenous society we would like it to be, but it’ll get there.
JP: Well with the school system too, you know you can get a lot of young, professional, career-minded people moving back to the city now to enjoy the downtown area. But the minute they decide to raise a family, out they go, because of the Detroit public school system, you know?
RP: True. When they built the really nice condos up here at Woodward and Boulevard, a lot of urban guys and gals came in, it was close to work, etcetera, and same in downtown. It had a lot of good housing, a little on the expensive side, and so the blacks who did move outwards to take advantage of housing opportunities and jobs, they vacated land which is now being refurbished, and [inaudible], you know? The white guys and gals are coming in to take advantage of the jobs you’re starting to get downtown. Illich and the guys and gals that are building the great places downtown, and Gilbert, are going to make some great opportunities for people. But again, I see the whole thing working as a big churn if you will. The cycle going from downtown cheap, moving outwards and then eventually, you need service people, so you have some service people who come back downtown to service the [inaudible] that are downtown. But remaining through the whole thing is this schism between us and them, and it’s always there. East Side/ West Side, black/ white, ethnicity, everyone call it—
JP: Spanish.
RP: —Spanish, Polish. In fact when you think about it, I think about in the old days, I think there was more homogeneity. You can still run into black guys and gals who speak beautiful Polish because they grew up in Hamtramck.
JP: Hamtramck.
RP: You can still find some blacks who grew up in the more modern version of Southwest Detroit around Vernor who speak beautiful Spanish, but you don’t find an awful lot of them, and to me that’s kind of a sad thing in this city, which really has a possibility of being a very cosmopolitan area.
GS: Just to backtrack a little bit, I should’ve asked this earlier, so you said you heard about the riot celebrating your wedding—
JP: Wedding shower.
GS: Wedding shower, and so where was that exactly?
JP: Where was…?
GS: Where was this wedding shower?
JP: We were in the backyard of my girlfriend’s aunt. She lives on Lasalle Gardens South, right by Twelfth Street, which is now Rosa Parks Boulevard, and the riot had happened earlier that morning, I think two a.m., but in that area.
RP: Linwood and Clairmount.
JP: Yeah, Linwood and Claimount.Yeah, so everything in that area was pretty noisy. You can imagine we’re outside in the backyard and we’re listening to police cars, sirens and shooting and we kind of said “Oh okay, we need to go.” So you know, we just grabbed everything and left the area.
GS: And just going back, you mentioned you’re run in with the Big Four, I’m not sure if you would like to talk about that but you’re welcome to share that experience if you wish.
RP: Oh that was right after we got married. We lived in the area of Wyoming and Finkel at that point, it was right along the side of the John Lodge Freeway, about four doors off of the freeway, and there was a pedestrian crossway, you could cross over and go to this little supermarket and some businesses down in the area. I’d gone to the store, and I left the store and I’m coming back up this—I can’t even remember the name of the street—Washburn(??). The street was named Washburn(??), coming up Washburn(??), and this car swoops around a corner and whips to the curb and it’s the Big Four. Uniformed driver and three guys in plain clothes. They jump out and “Come here.” Said a couple of rude things actually. Put me on the hood of the car, literally spread eagle, pat you down front and back, stand you up, “Where you coming from, where you going?” I had some groceries in my hand and a bag and I said “I just left the store over here, what’s this about?” And they stopped me because they had a robbery in the area, and the guy fit my description. I said “What kind of description was that?” Tall, slender, black male. Well, I weighed about 185 pounds, I was six foot four, and while I could be a little bit darker you know, I guess I fit the description close enough for them. So they rousted me and they ran my name and information, told me “Thank you and have a good night.”
JP: Just doing their job.
RP: Just doing their job, and I [inaudible] the hell out of there and got home. Never had really many run ins with police, spent my time out in Belle Isle, foolin’ around, fartin’ around, never—you know, back when I was a kid, you knew to keep your nose clean, you knew when to answer and how to answer which was the more important thing. That was the subtotal of it, never came of it, you know. Don’t know if they ever caught the guy either.
JP: Yeah, right.
GS: Kind of thinking about this schism you were talking about, how do you think we can get rid of this schism to help Detroit? That’s a big question but I’m just curious.
JP: Well, I’m glad to see Detroit moving forward. This is what I wanted to see for a long time. But, when I listen to the problems that we’re having right now with Detroit, number one is schooling, probably transportation, reliable transportation. A lot of people that choose to live in the city still don’t have maybe quality transportation but they rely on buses. And this city ran so well before on buses. I spent a good majority of my working years and school years taking buses back and forth. So they need that, and until they can provide it, I just keep seeing these divisions between the masses of people.
RP: I would agree. In part, I would think of public transportation and public education. If the person can’t get transportation to the job and can’t elevate himself, can’t get a little better car, can’t live in a little better place, then he is continually made aware of by the things that go on around him of that disparity.
JP: Exactly.
RP: You see the Tigers games going off downtown, you’d like to get there but your car can’t make it and you can’t afford that game either. You need to stay in and watch it on TV. And every other thing that you do, it’s constantly in your face that you’re a little bit less. The educational system I think could do a lot in mitigating that, providing you could bring in quality teachers into functioning buildings with a hierarchy and a structure that actually functions, because there are enough kids from enough ethnic groups in the city I think, to make it a very intriguing and worthwhile experience. A kid can learn all kinds of foreign languages here within the city. You can learn Russian, you can get German. You can get Farsi, you can get Arabic, certainly Spanish, etcetera. If you could have a building where you could bring these kids together and bring those parents together in a PTA or some kind of parent group, etcetera—
JP: Right.
RP: —where the barrier is socially broken down by people who have the financial means, employment, to come together meaningfully, then we would find out that we are not so much different as we would like to think. We’re more alike than we’d like to be maybe. You’re needs are the same as my needs.
JP: Right.
RP: You’re ability to meet them is a little different than my ability to meet them, okay? And as long as we are continually made aware that we’re different—no. We need to be aware of the similarities and we need to make it such that there are less and less dissimilarities through education and through employment as possible, so that we can do this come together thing again. The Beatles said “Come together,” yeah.
JP: That’s very true.
RP: She was at the Beatles when they were at [inaudible].
JP: I sure was! Yeah—what was I going to say—Mr. Duggan, I think he’s probably one of the best things that has happened to Detroit in a long time, I would say since Mayor Archer because I feel he was a good guy. But then after Archer, things started, you know, go down, so it’s good to see Duggan on the job now. I worked with him at Detroit Receiving Hospital, I worked there for 30 years, so being in the city every day—part of it I was living in the city but then being in the city every day, and watching his positivity, you know, within the medical center and then wherever he went, I’m very happy that he’s, you know, the mayor now for sure. So I think it’s off to a good start, but just lots of work to do.
RP: And there remains a lot of work in the area of cleaning up what had gotten into a very, I don’t know what you want to call it, but “Me, myself, and I” mentality, where I’m going to get all that I can get, I don’t give a damn what it costs you, but I’m going to get mine.
JP: Can’t have that.
RP: And all that crap has just got to go and the more they can do to clean that sort of thing up, take a look at the school principals. What? You got how many of them indicted? This is ridiculous. Until these things get cleaned up and people believe they are being cleaned up in a meaningful and structured way, then we’re going to continue to have people not having faith in the educational system. I surely ain’t going to bring my kids in the city of Detroit if that’s what you got educationally, and if I could bring them here into the city and live in the city safely, and I thought I had to educate them outside of the city, I’ll send them out to Roeper, you know, or someplace like that. Then obviously why the hell am I going to move into the city? Why don’t I just move out to West Bloomfield or Southfield or wherever, you know, the suburb might be and educate the kids there. So much has to happen I think, in my mind, public transportation and public education I think are the biggest things.
JP: Yeah.
RP: We’ve got one of the better colleges right here in town.
JP: Yeah, Wayne State.
RP: Wayne State is probably one of the few institutions in the United States where the guy that you work beside the line in the summer for your summer job, he might be the guy that’s your history professor in the fall, you know? So people have a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of feeling and wealth of emotion about the city, and I think that can do much to carry us forward.
JP: My three brothers still live in the city of Detroit, they’ve never left. We left originally because he was going to University of Michigan and so we were in Ann Arbor for a few years. Then when we came back, we came back to the city. That was a real eye opener because the city had really taken a dive while we were gone and you know, looking around where we lived ,we still put our two sons at that time in Detroit public schools, but we knew that you know, things in the neighborhood, things we were seeing right outside our windows, we thought “No, we need to make a move.”
RP: And that move didn’t come very quickly, our sons finished up their high school educations here in the city of Detroit.
JP: In the city of Detroit.
RP: I have always felt that in any school in Detroit, you could probably find students who turned out on the top of the heap.
JP: Exactly. We all do.
RP: Our two sons turned into United States marines.
GS: Oh wow.
RP: They served, they’re out of the corps, one of them married a marine. So it’s very possible—we didn’t move out of the city until two things happened, at the point in time we were living in the area of Grand River and Lahser Road, I got a phone call one day and the neighbor said “I don’t want to scare you, but there’s a cop car sitting on your lawn and the doors are open. And they’re running around your house waving guns around.” “Oh, really?” I called my alarm company and it turned out that a bird had gotten into the kitchen vent. It was a motion alarm that got set off. That was cool, but the neighbors knew that I had an alarm system. Shortly after that, I got a call at work and one of the boys was calling me and he said “I don’t want you to get scared,” and he said—he named this kid—he says ran down the middle of the street with an AK-47.
JP: And we’re like “What?”
RP: I said “What?”
JP: Time to move!
RP: So at that point in time—
JP: That was ’99. 1999.
RP: We did move, it wasn’t just the fact that this kid had an AK-47, there was a known problem in the neighborhood—
JP: Drugs.
RP: —and everybody knew exactly where the problem was and who the problem was. Why nothing was getting done about it, I don’t know. But we started moving after that, and we ended up moving to Southfield. Otherwise, we would’ve still been in that area—
JP: Still have been here.
RP: —which was a really neat area, it was called the Old Redford District. The Old Redford Theatre is still there.
JP: Is still there.
RP: They bring back the old movies, they have the organ in there that plays, John George and the Motor City Blockbusters are out there and do some neat things in the area.
JP: Your sister is still there.
RP: Yeah my sister went to school in Wayne State, she went to work for the board of education, she retired from the board of education. She worked at one job in her entire life, just one career and one employer. I have a sister that lives in Chicago, she went to school here, I think she went to Wayne for a period of time. I’m not sure.
JP: Yeah. Detroit was a great place. It really was. You got a good start here.
RP: I’d start here again if I had to start all over again.
GS: Was there anything else you two would like to add?
JP: I don’t think so, I think we told our life story pretty much. [laughter]
RP: It has been fun watching Detroit Institute of Arts grow and change. We’ve seen most of the modifications that have taken place there. We’ve seen many of the changes that have taken place here at the Detroit Historical Society, it’s been watching Belle Isle transition from city-owned to state-run.
JP: Yes. Yes. It’s a beautiful place.
RP: My mother and dad met on Belle Isle, they used to play softball out there, it just fell into disuse and disrepair, disreputable, over a period of years, but now it’s really made a change. We like going out there and we’ve driven around there many times. Other institutions here like the Pewabic Pottery down on Jefferson that I’m currently taking classes at of all things.
JP: We like Detroit.
RP: Yeah, we like Detroit.
JP: We just like to see, you know, the move is happening, we want in to continue. That’s for sure.
RP: Right and you’re going to make it happen. [laughter]
GS: I’ll do my best. Well thank you for sitting down with me today.
JP: Thank you.
[TIME STAMP END OF INTERVIEW 42:32]
[End of Track 1]
CL: Okay, this is Carri Lee and I am in Northville, MI with Michael Schiavi and we are talking about the riots of 1967 for the Detroit Historical Society oral history project. Well, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for us.
MS: You’re welcome.
CL: And let’s just start by asking you where you were born and when?
MS: I was born in Detroit, MI in August of 1947.
CL: And how did your family come to live in Detroit?
MS: Well my grandparents on my mother’s side came right after World War I and my father came from Italy in 1939 and my father lived in Dearborn and my mother lived in Detroit. My mother went to Commerce High School and she was working as a secretary at the same factory that my father had a job and that’s when they met, before World War II, and then they got married after World War II.
CL: So what, what area of Detroit did you live in?
MS: Well, I grew up for the first seven years on Livernois and Fenkell area.
CL: And then where did you move after that?
MS: Well we moved to West Chicago and Southfield area near Cody High School. That’s where I went to high school
CL: And what year did you graduate from high school?
MS: 1965.
CL: So, when you were living in that area, near Cody High School, was it integrated or was it a white area?
MS: It was white. It was only white.
CL: And did you notice any racial tensions in the city in terms of like what, what areas you were allowed to go to or what areas you wanted to go to?
ML: Well, I wasn’t really allowed to go to many areas. So, we didn’t really have much racial tension because we never saw any black people. Then when I started to go to Wayne State in 1966, or '65, then obviously I noticed a big difference because Wayne State was in the heart of the city. People were there were all different races and that’s when I, my first exposure to multi-racial climate
CL: Was it surprising to you that it was so different?
MS: Oh, yes.
CL: That close by.
MS: Yes. It was.
CL: And then, so leading up, after you moved from your, well you lived at your, near Cody, but you commuted to school or you lived at school?
MS: Yes. I commuted to school, took the Warren bus every day to school.
CL: And when you were at Wayne State did you feel different moving around the city than you did when you were back near your neighborhood?
MS: Well, you get used to it pretty fast so it really didn’t bother me much. I, I wasn’t a candidate to be mugged because I didn’t have any money or anything. So, no I didn’t really feel afraid or anything. I didn’t, I didn’t have any worries at all.
CL: Okay, and then did you always live at home the whole time you went to Wayne State?
MS: Yeah. Yes, always.
CL: Okay. So when you were going to Wayne State did you, were you part of any groups or anything?
MS: Oh I was in, I was in a lot a groups at Wayne State. I was in the Mackenzie Union and then I was in a fraternity at Wayne State
CL: Which fraternity?
MS: Tau Kappa Epsilon.
CL: Okay.
MS: So, yeah I was, I was really involved in student activities.
CL: And what was Mackenzie Union?
MS: Well that was the Student Union and we put on all the dances, concerts, a lot of recreational activities went through the Union, Mackenzie Union.
CL: And so—
MS: It was basically the men’s student activities.
CL: Oh, okay. So when you were going to school and planning all this did you notice tensions leading up to 1967 or was something like was about to happen in ‘67 completely off your radar?
MS: Well, there was other riots in other cities. That was a big eye opener. I believe the Washington riots and the Newark riots were before the Detroit riots but I’m not quite, I don’t, I may not be remembering that correctly. But there were other riots, so when it happened in Detroit everybody was shocked but kind of expected it, too, because the conditions were pretty ripe for a riot. The black people were really, oh there’s just all the horror stories that are all true, that they were treated by the police, well everybody was treated by the police poorly, really. And, so really, you know, the marches down South, it had to happen. It was, it was, it got out of hand quickly though. The National Guard came in. There was a lot of burning. Our fraternity house on Wayne State’s campus burnt down. We lost our house that day. So, it was, it was a shock and an eye opener, but it, if you look back it could be expected. Now for the white people, we were, like people like my parents, they we were really in shock because they had no contact with black people at all. So when that happened, their first reaction was to move, which they did. They moved to Livonia.
CL: And what year did they move to Livonia?
MS: They moved to Livonia in about ‘69 or ’70.
CL: So their move was in direct correlation to those happenings?
MS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That really gave them the push.
CL: So when, backing up for a second to when the, you were saying “black people were treated poorly and kind of had to happen like the other cities”. Do you mean just in terms of racial discrimination or did you witness anything specific from police or any other—?
MS: I never really witnessed anything myself but every day in the newspaper, you know the Black Panthers had a real presence on Wayne’s campus at that time and they had a newspaper that came out weekly or every other week, and we used to read that and there was a lot of, there was a lot of fear down there and a lot of hatred and for, in the black community, and the radicals just pushed it and it was a powder keg and it just took one little spark to blow the whole thing up.
CL: And I know you had mentioned in a conversation we had previous to this interview that the police were kind of viewed as people that just kind of, quote, “busted heads” so—
MS: Oh, yeah.
CL: —what gave you that impression? Is it things you’re reading or things that you’re seeing?
MS: My only experience was not racial it was anti-war. It was an anti-war demonstration on Wayne’s campus. People were burning the American flag. There was a lot of students watching this, they weren’t really agreeing with them. It was just, they were just watching them do this and they, the Detroit Mounted Police came in and they beat the hell out of everybody. Students who were participating and those who weren’t. I got hit with a night stick on my elbow.
CL: Wow.
MS: Yeah.
CL: So, your impression was there was, it was a powder keg because of discrimination and then the police were also kind of violent. Would that be fair?
MS: Yes. They were violent. There was a unit I think was called STRESS [Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets]. They busted heads first and asked questions second. There was always something in the newspaper about those guys beating people up and it just sooner or later it had to happen. There was just not a way for those people to live anymore.
CL: How did you find out? Were in your house or, your fraternity house, or how did you first learn that the riots were occurring?
MS: Probably through the TV or the radio because it was during the summer and I was working at the time and living at my house.
CL: Your parents' house?
MS: My parents' house. And just a few of my fraternity brothers were still living in the house on campus because there was no school then. It was August I believe.
CL: So did you try and go down there to your fraternity house when you learning about it or did you just stay away until you knew it was safe?
MS: I stayed away and after about three days I went down and, to look at, look at the fraternity house, and then when I got home I got into a lot of trouble with my mother for going down there [laughing]. Because the National Guard was still in, you know, patrolling the streets and there were curfews I think. So she was probably right.
CL Did, what did the fraternity house look like when you got there?
MS: It was smoldering. The whole back end had burned. It was smoldering.
CL: Do you know who burned it, or how it got burned?
MS: I believe it was just a Molotov cocktail type of thing, like all the other houses.
CL: Did you see any other buildings on Wayne State’s campus that got burned?
MS: Well, the off-campus, right, yeah there was a lot of houses where our house was that were burned. A lot of stores, broken windows.
CL: And after everything settled down, did there ever become a point when you felt comfortable going back down there?
MS: Well, yeah, school started that following September and really I didn’t have any problem going down. Things had calmed down quite a bit.
CL: And was it your impression, also from your parents' experience, that that was the impetus for what we now call the “white flight”?
MS: Oh yeah. There was a lot of things that lead to white flight. That probably was one of the bigger ones.
CL: And what year did your parents move to Livonia did you say?
MS: ‘69 or ’70.
MS: So, what is your impression of the city after the riots until now, with the quote “revival of Detroit”? Do you think stayed the same from ‘67 on or is it still the same?
MS: Well there’s two Detroits. There’s the downtown Detroit that everybody talks about that is so great, and it is. But the problem is, is you have to get there and those neighborhoods have only gotten worse through the last 30 or 40 years. There has been no investment in the neighborhoods. Many blocks are abandoned. Some with just one or two houses. I remember going to see my grandparents' house, they lived on Santa Rosa, that’s at Livernois and Finkell where I lived. And I probably went there in the Eighties and that whole block was pretty well gone. That, the whole block, my grandmother’s house was gone and it was just garbage and it just was terrible, terrible. And obviously I never went back there then.
CL: Did you or your family ever have conversations about what you thought would make Detroit better after you left?
MS: No. No, that, my parents gave up on that. And, and, I did too. I ended up living in Detroit for a while after I graduated from Wayne State but then I got married and in 1973 moved out to Plymouth and I’ve been in, you know, Western-Wayne County ever since. So I’ve never moved back to Detroit because terrible school systems and it’s unsafe.
CL: And do you think there was a huge difference in Detroit right before and right after the riots, or do you think it had been declining from some other previous point in time?
MS: That, I don’t know that. I don’t know that. I, I do know that one of the things that was better was when the Tigers won the World Series in ‘68. And I was downtown when they won that final game and it was really pretty cool. Black and white people together sharing beer and anything else, wine, or whoever had anything they would share it. It was a big party. There was really no incidents and that, that was a good thing, the Tigers won the World Series. That was, went toward healing a little bit but the neighborhoods need massive investment to bring it back to where it was in the Fifties and Sixties when I was a kid
CL: Okay, Is there anything else that you remember or that you want to sure?
MS: Okay, well, thank you.
MS: Thank you.
CL: Okay, bye.
William Winkel: Hello, today is October 7, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society Detroit 67 Oral History Project and I am in Birmingham, Michigan. I’m sitting down with Norman Lippitt. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
Norman Lippitt: You’re welcome.
WW: Please start by telling me when and where were you born?
NL: I was born in 1936. My mother gave birth to me in Harper Hospital. I spent my youth in our home at Indiana and Seven Mile Road in Northwest Detroit. I went to public school. Then I went to Country Day School before the war. Country Day was on Seven Mile and Ilene in those days. I left Country Day, went to Mumford High School, left Mumford and went back to Country Day School.
WW: Why did you leave Mumford?
NL: No football team. It was the second year the school was open and they didn’t have a football team. I wanted to play football so I went back to Country Day. I played football and then went to Michigan State University. I was a walk-on football player. I didn’t make the team, so I transferred to the University of Detroit and played a little ball there, ran track and then decided to go to law school before I graduated. In those days, you could go to law school after 90 college hours. I went to the Detroit College of Law, which on those days was on East Elizabeth Street. I graduated in 1960, passed the bar, and immediately joined the prosecutor’s office in 1961. I was an assistant prosecuting attorney for four and half years. I left and opened a private practice in downtown Detroit.
WW: A couple follow-up questions: what made you want to become a lawyer?
NL: I didn’t want to go into the jewelry business with my father. I knew I wasn’t qualified for medicine or dentistry. I was a political science and philosophy major. Law school seemed like a logical step. I had no ambitions of being a trial lawyer or anything like that. It just happened.
WW: Just for clarification, prosecutor’s office is Wayne County?
NL: Yes. Sam Olsen was the prosecutor at the time.
WW: Why did you leave the prosecutor’s office to open your own private practice?
NL: Well, I wanted to make a living. I was only making $10,500 a year as an assistant prosecutor. That was the pay scale in those days. I tried over a hundred major felony trials as assistant prosecutor. There was nowhere else to go and I wanted to go out and make a living. Simple as that.
WW: After you completed law school, did you want to stay in the area or was it just by default that you did?
NL: Well, actually that’s a good question. I was married by that time. Obviously, I had very strong ties to the community. I had thought about perhaps going to Arizona. They were dying for lawyers in Arizona in those days and Hawaii and Alaska but I stayed in Michigan.
WW: Are there any stories you’d like to share from being a prosecutor?
NL: Well, there’s a million stories. When you’re down in Recorder’s Court, that’s where the action was. I wrote a book of my early years; I’ll give you a copy of my book. It doesn’t say a lot about my criminal background, but it talks more about – I was a circuit judge in Oakland County too in ’85-’88. It talks mostly about my civil career so talks about my civil career, but the first few pages talk about my early days in the prosecutor’s office. In those days the Detroit Police Department had a superb detective bureau, one of the best in the country. These detectives and the cases came very quickly. There weren’t all these pretrial motions like they have today. I would try and do one two jury trials a week, felony juror trials. The only time we seemed to file in advance to prepare was for a murder case. All the others – robbery, breaking and entering, drugs, anything – we would see the file at 8:30, 9:00 in the morning and bingo we were off and running, selecting the jury and trying the case. And the detectives, they were the best because they really taught me about business. They knew what was necessary and the defense lawyers were great in those days; they were terrific. There were a lot of important, good lawyers. You learn from them what to do and what not to do. I tried 100, 200 cases, which is an incredible feat today; you couldn’t do it today. That’s why lawyers can’t get the trial experience like they could in those days.
WW: At what point did you start working for the Detroit Police Department’s Officers Association?
NL: 1967. That was my best recollection. I left to go into private practice in ’65 and it was I would say early ’67, late ’67, late ’66, early '67 when Bob Columbo Sr., who at that time was running for circuit judge – excuse me, Recorder’s Court judge – asked me to take over a trial board. Detroit Police Department internal investigation disclosed to them, at least, that two police officers had been associating with gamblers in Greektown. Bob asked me to take it on because the Detroit News – I think it was the Detroit News – said they would not endorse him for Recorder’s Court judge if he represented these two cops. So I took it on and won the case and that’s how I came to work for the DPOA. Just a month or two after that, the Piggins Grand Jury indicted seven police officers for associating with gamblers in Greektown and I won all those cases at the preliminary exam; they were dismissed. Come July 1967, the riots. I was in the midst of the riots.
WW: Did you represent them through your private practice?
NL: Yeah, the DPOA paid me. The DPOA hired me, beginning at about the time of the Piggins Grand Jury. They were paying me an hourly rate for my services. The DPOA always paid for the defense of officers in those days.
WW: I just didn’t know if you were paid by the police department or by them.
NL: No, the police department wasn’t going to pay me. The DPOA union paid me.
WW: So going into ’67 itself, how did you first hear about what was going on?
NL: I was called down to the Detroit Police Department because Ronald August was being interrogated by the Homicide Bureau. The incident had already taken place. I don’t recall if it was that night or the night after.
WW: August was interrogated the next day.
NL: Okay, so that’s when I got called. I had forgotten this because I’d reread part of the book, that August denied any involvement in the death of Pollard – at first. I don’t know if I was there for that interview or not. You said no? I did come down for the second interview, I believe. That’s when August said he had a shotgun, I believe, and he shot him in self-defense. Am I recalling it correctly? Okay. I recall stopping an interrogation.
WW: Senak.
NL: Was it Senak that I stopped? That created a procedure that went on for 14 years. As an aside, there was a case that was known as Garrity vs. the State of New Jersey. A U.S. Supreme Court case -- they had come down and said that a police officer is entitled to the same constitutional rights of any other citizen. Based on that case, I said “He’s not talking.” For 14 years thereafter every time a police officer shot somebody – at it would happen weekly – myself or someone from my office would go to Homicide and talk to the police officers and assist them in creating their preliminary complaint report before any homicide officer could talk to them. I would go down 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m.; we did it for years. I don’t know what they do today. So anyway—
WW: How were you alerted to August, Paille and Senak being questioned?
NL: The DPOA would call me. They would call their union rep and they would call me. The union president at the time was Carl Parcell. I believe Carl was the president and Charlie Withers was the vice president – one of those fellas would call me. I lived in Detroit at the time at 8 Mile and Lahser. Charlie would pick me up usually because he lived on the Northwest side and we would drive down to the Homicide Bureau, 1300 Beaubien.
WW: So what was the next step? You stopped the interrogation of Senak, August and Paille.
NL: Well, I don’t remember what the next step was. I remember what they were charged with. August and Paille were charged with murder. August, Paille and Senak were charged with conspiracy to do an unlawful act in an unlawful fashion. Subsequently, and I can’t tell you how many months went by, the feds – the federal government – charged all three of them plus a private guard Melvin Dismukes, who was black by the way, with the violation of their civil rights, Title 18, 1893 – Like Mississippi Burning, same thing. So the preliminary exam – and don’t ask me which judge handled what because I don’t remember, DeMascio was involved, Schemanske was involved, but I can’t remember.
WW: DaMascio threw out Paille’s charges.
NL: Did he bind over August for trial?
WW: Yes.
NL: Was their preliminary examination a joint preliminary examination?
WW: No. He appealed to Schemanske, Cahalan did, and then he tried to charge them with conspiracy.
NL: I know August was bound over for trial for murder. Who was the magistrate, do you remember?
WW: I do believe it was DeMascio.
NL: Paille was also charged with murder, but I was successful in getting his case dismissed at the preliminary. Was that DeMascio too?
NL: Then Cahalan appealed Paille’s decision to Schemanske. That case went up to the Michigan Supreme Court. Was Paille number two or number one? Those are published decisions. Who was the examining magistrate for the conspiracy case?
WW: Schemanske.
NL: That’s right. I think you’re right. So now we have all three of them charged with conspiracy, right? That’s when Conrad Kohl called me. Conrad Kohl now Conrad Kohl then Conrad Seacrest -- I forget the name of the firm at the time. They were a very prominent insurance defense firm downtown. Conrad Kohl was very prominent insurance defense attorney and friend of mine. He called me on the phone and he volunteered to help me with the case pro bono. That’s when Hersey came in to town. If you look at the book, if you read the book, you’ll see that there are excerpts of cross examination by Conrad Kohl. So a conspiracy case – there were the two of us trying it together – I don’t know if Conrad entered an appearance for Senak; I think he did. I represented August and Paille. That case was dismissed. So now we’re left with a murder case, August. Had the feds indicted him yet? I don’t remember exactly the timing. So Conrad Kohl helped me on the state conspiracy case and then he co-counseled with me on the federal case. Nick Smith, an attorney by the name of Nick Smith, represented Melvin Dismukes. The federal case was assigned to Judge Steven Roth. Steven Roth moved the case to Flint. Now Flint is not a change of venue. Flint is the southern district of Michigan’s federal – when I say federal District Court, Southern Division of Michigan, that’s two places to sit, Detroit and Flint. So he just moved it to Flint to get it out of the limelight. I don’t know if it accomplished that purpose. I don’t know if it was on our motion; I think we probably made a motion for change of venue.
WW: You didn’t.
NL: I made a motion for change of venue in the August case. I don’t remember what the basis was. Was it Robert Kennedy getting assassinated?
WW: There were two delays. One for Robert Kennedy getting assassinated and then you argued that when Hersey’s book came out that made Detroit an unreasonable venue.
NL: I want you to know for your information, for the Detroit Historical Society, that I obtained the last change of venue that any lawyer ever got in the state of Michigan. Neil Fink, who recently passed away, very, very prominent criminal defense lawyer, worked for a more prominent defense lawyer at the time by the name of Joe Louiselle. There was a serial murderer in Ann Arbor by the name of John Norman Collins. This was a year after the Algiers case. He was charged with murder. His mother came to see me. I turned the case down. She didn’t want me anyway because she didn’t like what I had to say. She went to Joe Louiselle and Joe Louiselle handed the case over to Neil Fink. John Norman Collins is still in prison to this day, by the way. Neil Fink asked for a change of venue out of Washtenaw County. It was denied, he appealed, and the case went to the Michigan Supreme Court – I think it was the Michigan Court of Appeals. I don’t even know if we had a Court of Appeals yet. I’m trying to remember the timing. In any event, the precedent that was set was this: you first have to try to obtain a fair and impartial jury before the court can order a change of venue. Now, you think about that as a practical matter. If you’ve got a hundred people sitting in the courtroom, put 12 people in the box, and you say to them, “Could you be fair and impartial?” Every single one of them – well, some of them will say, “No, I can’t be,” and leave but out of a hundred people, fifty are going to want to be on that jury. You’re never going to get everybody in the room to say they can't be fair and impartial. So, nobody has ever gotten a change of venue since that time. So I got a change of venue; I don’t know who granted it, which judge.
WW: Beer.
NL: No, Beer was assigned to it.
WW: Well, Pointdexter asked Beer.
NL: Are you sure about that? Are you sure it wasn’t the state court in Venice that assigned Beer?
WW: Pointdexter asked him.
NL: Then the Supreme Court had to agree to it. They had to agree to it because he’s an Oakland Circuit judge at the time.
WW: From my understanding, Thomas Pointdexter got on the bench and then asked Beer to make the decision.
NL: Oh, to make a decision on the change of venue?
WW: Yes.
NL: Oh. I don’t know how one circuit judge – I don’t know how that could happen. Somewhere the Supreme Court or the State Court administrator had to be involved -- somewhere. So we get this strange guy by the name of William John Beer. You know his story?
WW: I do not.
NL: You don’t know William John Beer’s story? William John Beer was an Oakland County Circuit judge. He looked like Hollywood’s ideal judge. If you were to cast someone as a judge, William John Beer would look like the judge. Spoke with a Shakespearean accent. His parents were Shakespearean actors. He was very, very honorable looking. William John Beer had two families, one in Detroit, one in Pontiac— with kids, and he carried on with two wives and two sets of children for thirty years. If you look at the newspaper articles about William John Beer – this was years later this was discovered – you’ll see that. He was infamous. So anyway, William John Beer gets assigned to the case. William John Beer wants to try the case in a historical courtroom. He had two choices: Marquette, Michigan, where Volkers’ book was written, George C. Scott was in it, Jimmy Stewart, what’s the name of that movie, famous movie? Marquette was too far. So he chose Mason, Michigan to try the case. That’s where we tried the case. Avery Weiswasser was the prosecutor. I hired a Lansing law firm to help me, although I did most of the work, an attorney by the name of Jimmy Burns, Leo Farhad was his senior partner. He was also a very important Lansing lawyer. So we tried the murder case for a couple weeks in Mason, Michigan. Now the important part of that case …am I talking too much?
WW: No, please give all the detail you want.
NL: The two most significant things about that case were these: first, Avery Weiswasser really messed up. He was trying to prove that no police officer or National Guardsman could have possibly heard a gunshot go off in the Algiers motel. And that’s what caused them, as they say, to invade the motel. But they did find a starter pistol. Avery Weiswasser asked the judge for permission to fire the starter pistol in the courtroom in front of the jury. I objected, judge granted it. The courtroom, if you’ve ever been up there, is historical. The ceilings are high. It’s like an opera house, the acoustics are wonderful. So he fired the gun off and it sounded like a howitzer. The jury went, “My God, you could hear that from five blocks away!” So he totally defeated his purpose. Actually, there were three significant things. The second significant thing – and I’m not going to get credit for this in any Hollywood movie I don’t believe – but I cut the hell out of the witnesses. They were terrible. I impeached them all over the place. I don’t know if Hollywood got a hold of the transcript or what. That case was not appealed, so the court reporters notes were probably never transcribed. I don’t know if anybody has ever found the court reporter or the notes, but I did a hell of a job on the witnesses and everybody said so. The third thing that happened that was significant was when you try someone for murder, there are what is known as included offenses, second degree and manslaughter, so the jury has four choices: Murder 1, Murder 2, manslaughter, not guilty – and that’s pretty standard operating procedure. Beer decided there were going to be no included offenses and gave the jury two choices: murder, not guilty. I objected for the record, scared to death, because I thought maybe they would convict him of manslaughter, but in the end obviously it helped me, because if they didn’t find premeditation and malice, then they had to find him not guilty, which they did. The interesting part about it from my personal perspective is there were three people in the court room that I did not know at the time and I only learned it later: Coleman Young, Jimmy Del Rio and Jim Blanchard – all watching my trial. Jimmy Blanchard became the governor of the state of Michigan and appointed me as a circuit judge in [1983 - correction]. I made headlines with Jimmy Del Rio representing the cops many years later when he called me a smart-ass Jew lawyer and pulled a gun. That’s in the News. Coleman Young and I fought for years while I represented the DPOA. He was a state senator at the time. Jimmy Del Rio was a rep and Blanchard went to Michigan State but I don’t know what he was doing up there. So, that’s that case.
WW: Before we move to the federal trial and process in Flint, how did the mock trial put on at Albert Cleage’s church play into —
NL: I know nothing about the mock trial. What mock trial?
WW: The mock trial that Reverend Dan Aldridge and Lonnie Peek put on?
NL: I know nothing about it. I might have read about it at the time.
WW: Okay, no worries. So moving on to the federal charges that Judge Steven Roth presided over in Flint, could you talk about that process?
NL: Well, in the federal system there is no preliminary exam. The grand jury indicts you, you go to trial or you get the case dismissed on motion. We all drove up to Flint, tried the case; I don’t know how long it lasted, a couple weeks. I don’t remember the detail but they paraded the same witnesses in, the government did, same ones that testified in the murder case. Conrad Kohl and I cut the hell out of them. They were not consistent; there was a lot of impeachment. Nick Smith, who represented Melvin Desmukes, who has since passed away, said he was conducting a “stretch and yawn” defense. The jury was out several hours on that one, as I recall. The officers were found not guilty, Melvin Desmukes was found not guilty, and that was it. I don’t have any recollection of who called who or witnesses. I don’t even who the U.S. attorney was, to be frank with you.
WW: I wanted to ask you about a quote. During the selection for the grand jury--
NL: Not the grand jury. What grand jury? We don’t select grand jurors. They’re called-
WW: Just the jury then at the federal trial.
NL: We call it the voir dire.
WW: You’re quoted as saying of the 96 people that were on the jury, only six of them were black. You removed four of them.
NL: You mean 96 people called to the courtroom to be potential jurors, six of them were black.
WW: You were quoted as saying that you removed four of them because you doubted that blacks could have judged the case fairly. Why? First of all, is that quote accurate?
NL: I don’t remember it, but certainly I would have removed black jurors, if I could. Absolutely! I’ve got white police officers accused of killing black youths. I’ve got evidence of brutality. I’ve got evidence of white girls being in the motel with them. I’d have to be a fool to keep them on the jury. I have to do my job. It has nothing to do with my personal view. I’m not there to be fair, I’m there to win. I think any criminal defense lawyer would tell you the same thing. I’m not ashamed of that at all.
WW: Not to worry! I care about the accuracy.
NL: Selecting a jury is a science, by the way. I tried a very famous case many years later, Mad Dog Peterson, Ray Peterson from STRESS. I don’t know if you know about that case. That was my case too. I was one of the first lawyers in the country to have a jury consultant, a psychologist, long before O.J. Simpson had one. We selected a jury for Ray Peterson. Ray Peterson was accused of killing a white person not a black person, although he’d been accused of killing six black people before that while he was a STRESS officer. We had a jury of 12 people – one black man or woman, I’m not sure which. I think it was a black man. My jury consultant wanted to keep him on the jury; I wanted to throw him off. He was the only one who hung up the jury for 10 hours. Ray was found not guilty. But he hung it up, he wanted to find him guilty. It’s an interesting story, I think.
WW: Did you get a new jury consultant?
NL: I never had to use one again until many years later when I represented Ford Motor Company. No, excuse me, I used one again in a different case out in Oakland County. I don’t want to bore you with that.
WW: As the federal case concluded with not guilty verdicts, was that the end of the saga? Or was there more?
NL: That was the end of the saga. I don’t think any of them ever went back to work for the police department.
WW: They did.
NL: They did? Who did?
WW: All.
NL: All three of them?
WW: Senek remained until 1979; Paille left July 23, 1976; and August left early Seventies.
NL: You know, I don’t believe I had any contact with any of them after the case was over. I don’t think they ever called me. We never had a drink together. I never saw them as far as I recall. I didn’t even remember what you just told me.
WW: Are there any other thoughts you’d like to share from your experience dealing with the litigation?
NL: With this litigation?
WW: Yes.
BL: Well, there really isn’t. I remember there was a reporter who used to cover – who is the guy who used to cover Lansing. What’s his name? Stubent? You know who I’m talking about. His predecessor was a guy by the name of Tom Green. He used to cover all of Lansing. Tom Green during the trial took me out to lunch because he wanted to get an exclusive. My client, when the jury verdict came in, I never forgot it Ron August, said I don’t want to be interviewed. I said to Tom “I’m sorry but I can’t get that interview for you. My client doesn’t want it.” I went across the street with my group and we stayed around and had dinner in Mason, East Lansing – I don’t remember where. My client was escorted to the Ingham Country border by the Ingham County Sheriff’s Department. Channel 7 caught up with him as they went over the county line, stopped him and got an interview. Tom Green never forgave me. He said it was my fault, that I engineered that. I felt worse about that and it really took away the pleasure of winning. Can you imagine I was worried about some newspaper reporter? It just bothered me that he thought I lied. I didn’t. In any event, I really didn’t let it go to my head. There were mixed emotions about my role. Some people thought I was a good guy, some guys thought I was a bad guy, and I always tried to emphasize that DPOA was a good client and they paid me $50 an hour at the time for all my work and General Motors hadn’t hired me. So I was doing my job as a lawyer. I never got emotionally involved with the cops – ever. I never went out in a squad car when they offered. I never went to a crime scene. I never got involved with them in that way. I just didn’t give a damn about it. I just did my job. I never wanted to exclusively be a criminal lawyer. The reason that I accepted a judgeship in [1983 - corrected] was to get rid of that. I hadn’t tried a criminal case in 25 years. Interestingly enough, a decade later Kenny Cochrel came out, Justin Rabbits came out of Wayne. Those two guys were activists. I tried the 10th Precinct Narcotics trial for seven, eight months solid before [Justin Ravitz -correction]. They interviewed me here recently for Kenny Cochrel’s memorial. Elliot Hall was an activist. All those African-American lawyers respected me. We were all friends. There was no hostility. They knew that I was just being a lawyer. They were being lawyers. That’s all we did. We had a lawyer society; we didn’t give a damn about all this other stuff, so I never felt guilty about it. I represented doctors, lawyers. I represented black police officers charged with murdering a white person in a bar. I represented three black officers that were charged in the Rochester Street Incident where they shot at Wayne County sheriffs and almost killed them. In fact, my most infamous client in the Tenth Precinct Parks case was Richard Harold, who was black. I just got tired of doing that kind of work. That’s about it.
WW: I did remember one question that I forgot to ask you.
NL: Ask me. Take your time.
WW: What was the impact of John Hersey’s book? I know you used it as reasoning to move the trial, but did it have a greater role, inflaming tensions or anything like that?
NL: No. It’s probably the most difficult book I’ve ever read. To understand, he went around with a tape recorder and started interviewing all these people and back and forth and back and forth. It didn’t make any sense to me. Here’s a Pulitzer prize-winning author. I guess it was published by [Knopf - correction] and I guess it was number two on the best-seller list in the New York Times. I just think it’s a crappy book. Have you read it? How many times have you read it?
WW: I got through it once.
NL: Did you have a hard time with it? Yeah. Everybody I have known has had a hard time with it. I never read a page in that book, to tell you the truth, because every time I tried to read it I put it down. It just doesn’t flow. He made a mistake, in my opinion; he should have waited. He was so busy trying to be anti-police and pro-African-American, he was so busy trying to be a “civil rightser,” that he rushed to publication. So, it was half a story. So, now we’ve got Hollywood – very strange. I told you the sequence of events, I believe, about the journalist calling me and Kathryn Bigelow coming into town. They spent three hours with me, one hour here, two hours at the Townsend Hotel. Asked me if I would drive to Mason, Michigan with them, which I said I would be willing to do. I wouldn’t mind seeing the old courthouse. They had to leave town early. Next thing I hear – I never asked them what they were going to do; they wouldn’t have told me anyway. I’ve been speculating all this time about what ever happened to Kathryn Bigelow. Said she was going to call me back, never called me. So my speculation is that it is Hollywood. All around the country we’re hearing about police brutality, they’re going to do a “bad cop” movie – bad cops brutalizing black kids. The trial is going to be a postscript. By the way, these guys all got acquitted by all white juries outside of the city of Detroit and not do the trial at all. Talk about the case. Without the transcript, I don’t know how they even could do the trial. But the fact that they visited Mason, Michigan last week, what are they doing in Mason, Michigan, shooting in Mason, Michigan? They are going to have to do some part of the trial, obviously. So, I have no clue what they are doing. It’s just very interesting.
WW: I’m looking to find out too.
NL: I talked to the Free Press reporter the other day. I called her. I said, “You know, could you guys try and get some information. Do you have any clue what these people are doing?”
WW: One final wrap up question. What was it like having this massive headline-garnering case at 30?
NL: Was I 30 or 31? I don’t remember.
WW: You were 30 or 31.
NL: I wasn’t walking around with my chest out, I can tell you that. That I know for sure. I know that I spent many, many, many days getting ready. I know that I was under a lot of pressure. I know that the DPOA and the families of the police officers were getting calls from all over the country from all over the country. “Idiot, why don’t you get a more experienced lawyer?” I know that, for example – you kids are too young – one of the most famous lawyers in the country at the time was Percy Foreman, out of Texas, criminal defense lawyer. He was as famous as F. Lee Bailey and all those people. He called me on the phone one day and said, “Hey boy, let me come up there and help you try that case.” Of course, I had to report that to the DPOA. DPOA never interfered with my defense. That’s the other thing that I want to point out. The union paid for it, but never interfered in the defense strategy, never told me what to do, suggested what I should do or not do. They never took a political view on these things. As far as how I felt about getting all this publicity, it went on for years. I had a commercial practice. I did some real estate work, wasn’t all trial work. I did some divorce work. I never wanted to be beholden to one client, even though the DPOA was my biggest client. So my biggest concern with all this publicity was all these years was Norman Lippitt, criminal lawyer. Sam Bernstein, automobile accidents. You wouldn’t think of going to Sam Bernstein to draft a will. I never wanted to be typecast. I was typecast. That’s why I took the judgeship when Blanchard offered it to me, because I wanted to change my image. I didn’t want to be a criminal lawyer. It was the only job I could get when I graduated law school. Actually, the job I really wanted was the Corporation Counsel, which is now the Law Department. [Phone rings] The city of Detroit’s Corporation Counsel was run by a fellow by the name of Nate Goldstick. He ran a very good law department. It was very well known, very respected. That’s where I wanted to work. But he didn’t have room for me and suggested I go over to the prosecutor’s office and talk to Sam Olsen. Olsen was his chief assistant, actually. So they hire me on the night staff. I stayed on the night staff for six months and then they put me into felony trials. So I ended up doing that kind of work and that’s how I became a criminal lawyer, I guess, not because I had any childhood ambitions. But I was pretty good in the courtroom. That’s where I learned my business.
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
NL: My pleasure.
WW: Hello, today is October 5, 2016. My name is William Winkel. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society’s Detroit 67 Oral History Project. I am in Detroit, Michigan, and I am sitting down with Mr. Bill Goodman. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
BG: You’re welcome. I’m happy to be here.
WW: Can you please start by telling me where and when you were born?
BG: I was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1940, April 1940.
WW: What neighborhood did you grow up in?
BG: It was northwest Detroit. It was the area between, it was Green Acres. The area between Seven Mile and Eight Mile and just east of Livernois.
WW: What was that neighborhood like growing up for you?
BG: Well, it was, you know, for me, I experienced it as the only neighborhood I knew. It was single homes. It was, east of Livernois it was all white. It was middle class families mostly. People with mid-level corporate jobs, a few lawyers here and there, a few doctors here and there, that kind of thing. It was quiet, pleasant, and easy to take. As a kid I had no beefs with my neighborhood, back in those days. Other than the fact that it was a segregated neighborhood, and that was an issue to some degree, even in my childhood.
WW: What issues arose from it being a segregated neighborhood?
BG: I went to Pasteur School, which was on Pembroke and Stoepel, just west of Livernois. There was a small African American community that was in that school district, although it was, it bordered Eight Mile Road. There were a few, as a child, there were a few black kids in our school. We had a little neighborhood baseball team in the neighborhood that I grew up in, and the local drugstore sponsored our team. And [Boyan] the owner of the drugstore bought us little shirts that we wore as our uniform, and we recruited – one of our players was one of the kids that I knew in school, a black kid, and we wanted him on our team. His name was Melvin. And so, when the pharmacist, the store owner learned that we had a black kid on the team, he said, ‘No, this is only for children who live east of Livernois. You can’t be on the team if you live west of Livernois.’
So we had a little protest. We walked into his store, we all threw our shirts down and walked out.
WW: Was it successful?
BG: You mean, did the store owner give in?
WW: Yeah.
BG: No, no, he withdrew his support of our team, but we did have a slightly integrated baseball team anyway.
WW: That’s awesome.
BG: Yes, that’s one of my early protests.
WW: Growing up, did you tend to stay in your own neighborhood or did you venture around the city?
BG: Well, in those days it was easy, even as a kid. I would take the bus downtown, even before high school. I’d get on the bus, take the Second Avenue bus or the Hamilton bus, the Woodward Avenue bus, all the way downtown, and then I’d go over to my dad’s office and go in and say, "Do you want to go to a baseball game?" or something like that today. In those days, all the games were played during the day, there were no night games. So, sometimes he’d say yes and sometimes he couldn’t, and then I would then get on the Michigan Avenue trolley and take it out to Tiger Stadium to the old Briggs Field, Briggs Stadium, and go to the game by myself. And then come back downtown and he’d drive me home at the end of the day. So, I think, and I did the same thing when I wanted to go downtown just to Hudson’s or something like that. I did that. And so, no, I wasn’t confined to my own neighborhood. I mean, I spent most of my time in my neighborhood, but no.
WW: You mentioned how easy it was going around the city, did you also feel comfortable going around the city?
BG: Yes! I did, and I’m sure my parents did too. I think I would be – I’m talking about when I was 10, 11 years old and I think parents of 10 or 11 year-olds today would be much less sanguine about their children traveling around on buses throughout the city of Detroit.
WW: So going into the Fifties, and later on in the Fifties when you were a teenager, did you notice any growing tensions in the city, this is at the point where the Civil Rights movement is starting in the South, or anything like that?
BG: Well, the Civil Rights movement really got going in the South probably about in ‘58, ‘59, several years after Brown vs. Board [of Education], and by that time I was in college. And yes, there were issues when I went to college, sure. When I was in high school, I wouldn’t say I noticed anything going on in the city in terms of racial tension or issues with the police department, which was really what the rebellion was all about.
Except that I know as a young kid, going around with my dad on weekends, he would get calls from people whose kids had, or husbands had disappeared, trying to track someone down to represent them, who was being held by the Detroit Police Department. And they hid prisoners like that often, and because he had a bit of a reputation as a civil rights lawyer, he would often get calls from black families which were often targeted for this kind of thing and get into fights with cops or at police stations – not physical fights, but arguments that I would observe, so I did see some of that.
WW: Did this interaction, this relationship between your father and the police department, did that echo the relationship that your community had with the police department?
BG: My community? Meaning northwest Detroit?
WW: Yeah.
BG: No. My community had a very sanguine, pleasant relationship with the police whenever we saw them, which was rarely.
WW: Growing up and seeing that positive relationship that your community has, between the police department and themselves, and then seeing the relationships that other communities have, was that a wake-up for you?
BG: Well, I grew up a little differently than many. I grew up being conscious and sensitive to these issues anyway, because my father was very conscious of racism and segregation and did his best to fight for civil rights, so I had a different perspective on things. He had a black law partner when I was young, a kid, George Crockett, who is well known in Detroit. And Crockett, who later became a judge, had a son, George the third, who also later became a judge. And George the third and I were the same age and became friends and he would come over to my, come visit our house from time to time, and I would – there was always a lot of very racist comments among the other kids on the block when they saw a black family visiting or saw me with another black kid my age. So I had some awareness of that through that mechanism.
WW: You mentioned the racist comments the kids in the neighborhood had.
BG: Yeah.
WW: Did they have those comments about Melvin on the baseball team?
BG: Melvin, no. Melvin was a good baseball player [laughs]. I mean, we all, they all knew Melvin and it wasn’t a social – we weren’t interacting with Melvin as social friends. Melvin just was a teammate, which was somewhat different. But to see, for example, a black family visiting our family, or having young George Crockett sleep over with me at my house, this was something that was taken somewhat differently in the neighborhood. Not by everybody, but by a few people.
WW: You mentioned that you did run into problems when you went to university. What university did you go to?
BG: I didn’t have have problems, I ran into them, that’s when the Civil Rights movement started to get rolling, and there were a lot of issues. I went to the University of Chicago. So, one of the issues while I was in the – well, one of the things that happened was the sit-ins started at that point in the South. So we started to boycott Woolworth’s, for example, and other chains that ran segregated facilities in the South. And we’d have picket lines in front of these places. There was a lot of tension around those picket lines. Those were days, you know, when the picket line had to do with strikes, not with social issues or political issues like Civil Rights. So, yeah, there was a lot that went on around that, and then the University of Chicago itself owned buildings that were racially segregated. And that was a huge protest, the fact that it was a sit-in at the administration building at that time. I think by then I was in law school.
Bernie Sanders claims to have been involved in that, I don’t know if he was. But he says he was and I’m sure he was. And he sat in at that time and a number of students were disciplined over it, and so on. So those were a couple of examples of the kinds of things that happened in my college experience that I can recall.
WW: What organizations did you do the picketing with? Was it a student group, or–?
BG: There were student groups. I’m not sure if I remember which ones they were. We had a political party called “Polit.” P-O-L-I-T. Maybe they did it, I don’t know. I don’t know.
WW: And when you went from Detroit to Chicago, remembering ack to your neighborhood back when children would make the racist comments and stuff, was Chicago along the same lines?
BG: What do you mean?
WW: How did they address racism? Or, how did you experience racism, or witness racism, in Chicago versus Detroit? Was there a difference, or was it the same strain?
BG: I’m sure it was the same thing. It was, you know, the northern racist United States of America. I mean, Chicago was more, I don’t know – I remember I went out on a date once, took a girl to a park and we had a picnic. And the Chicago Police Department rolled by and said, "White people never come to this park, you should get out of here." That was a small example, but a memorable one, since I still remember it.
The Woodlawn, 63rd Street was the heart of Woodlawn at that time, and it was, having never spent any time in New York or been to Harlem that I could recall. This was amazing to me, to see so many black faces walking up and down the streets. When I would walk up to 63rd Street, which was not often, but when I did and I was with friends, who would show their fear of being around so many black people, the people in the community on the street would react to that and make comments about that, "oh, all these white kids" and so on.
But I don’t think the nature of racism was any different between Detroit and Chicago. Detroit was segregated, and had a virtually all-white police department which was vicious to some degree, and Chicago was just more of the same but bigger.
WW: What year did you return to Detroit?
BG: When I graduated from law school, 1964.
WW: When you came back to Detroit, was Detroit the same city it was when you left? Or did you see any changes?
BG: There was a lot more political activism in Detroit at that point. There were progressive political organizing. John Conyers ran for Congress that year. First time, and he was running against Dick Austin who was the UAW [United Auto Workers] candidate for that particular seat. And Conyers’ campaign was a grassroots campaign, fought from the ground up, from my law firm, by the way, was a major part of it. That kind of thing was going on all over the place, because the beginnings, well, the Civil Rights movement had blossomed by ‘64 – I’d been involved a little bit during, while I was in school, by the way, in the South. And you could see, you know, political activism wherever you looked, in those days, at least among middle class and intellectual people, both white and black.
WW: And what did you do when you came back to Detroit, you had your law degree?
BG: Yeah, I worked for my dad’s law firm, for the Goodman- Crockett Law Firm. And I, basically, the law firm used to describe itself as a firm that engaged in a lot of political activism and supported itself by representing plaintiffs in personal injury cases. So I did both, but I did a lot of just of plain old auto accident, personal injury litigation, that kind of thing, yeah. That’s what I did.
WW: So while you were doing that, what political activities did you undertake?
BG: The first political client that I had – and this actually is a good segue into discussing the rebellion, I think – was a group called the Northern Student Movement. Did you ever hear of them? You did? I’m impressed that you’ve heard of them, that’s good. Have you talked to Frank Joyce, by the way? You should.
WW: I’m about to, yes.
BG: So Frank Joyce was, sort of an organizer of something called the Northern Student Movement here in Detroit. And he called me one day and he said that he’d gotten my name, he heard I was raring to go with political cases or something like that, and here’s the case. He and a group of his constituents who were members of the Northern Students Movement on the eastside of Detroit had gone over to the old Fifth Precinct on Jefferson Avenue on the day that was designated as “Tour Your Local Police Station Day” or something like that. And when they got inside, one of them, a fellow named Moses Wedlaw, asked to see the room where the cops beat the people up in. This was the question that was asked. So as they were then kicked out of the police station, as they left, they were all attacked in the parking lot, beaten up, charged with assaulting police officers and arrested. So this was my first political case I undertook. And basically got all the charges dismissed. We were in front of the judge on that case, was George Crockett, the elder George Crockett, who by that time was a Recorder’s Court Judge. A man of enormous courage in so many ways. And Crockett somehow dismissed all of those cases. If you ask Frank about it, he’ll remember. In fact, I’ve talked to him about it recently, he does remember.
So that was one of the things I got into at that time. There was a lot of, at that point, the anti-Vietnam protests were developing, and I represented a lot of anti-war protestors, both in Detroit and Ann Arbor and in East Lansing. There was quite a bit of activity in East Lansing over that. So I did those cases, and some police misconduct, police brutality cases. It was a very different legal environment back in those days, but we did a little bit. It was much harder, but we were able to bring such cases because in 1961, the United States Supreme Court decided a case called Monroe vs. Pape, which allows individuals to sue under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. It only took 90 years to be able to do that. So, yeah.
WW: So you primarily – this is a recap – you primarily defended left-wing activists and organizations, and then, when you were able to, you did police misconduct?
BG: Uh-huh.
WW: Okay.
BG: Yeah, I wouldn’t describe it as left – some of them were left-wing for sure, but, I mean, some of them were just student activists, protestors. I guess you could call them left-wingers, but they were just people who were waking up to the injustice and inequality and racism that surrounded everybody in those days.
WW: And, I forgot to ask, when you came back, what neighborhood did you move into in the city?
BG: Lafayette Park. Well no, first I moved on to East Jefferson, a place called River Terrace Apartment. And then we moved to Lafayette Park.
WW: And as you are doing this work, did you notice any tension in the community increasing? Between the police and the community?
BG: As I was doing this work? You mean back in that time? Well, I think that the story I just told you about the Northern Student Movement tour of the Fifth Precinct was emblematic of things that were bubbling up to the top at that time. People were getting tired of the cops arresting, targeting and arresting black youth primarily, and beating them up. This was something that was becoming untenable, or at least unacceptable. So to that extent, yes, I noticed it.
WW: Going into the summer of ‘67, was there any thought that Detroit could blow up like other urban areas were in the Sixties?
BG: You mean, did I have such a thought?
WW: Yes, you.
BG: Right, I mean, we all could look around and see. What ended up, well, Watts was in Sixty–
WW: Six.
BG: Six. I was in Watts at that time, just coincidentally. Well, I was in LA and just drove through Watts. And Newark was in ‘67, wasn’t it? Yeah. Ah, sure. This was not, I’m sure we talked about it. I don’t have a concrete recollection of a specific conversation, but yes, we, the answer is yes to that question.
WW: Okay. And then going into July, the night of July 22 and July 23, how did you first hear what was going on?
BG: I was visiting my parents, with my wife and small baby at the time on that particular Sunday. And we started to notice – we were in the house that I grew up in, and we started to notice that there were smoke all around us, coming from Livernois, which was the business area at that time. And it became very obvious very quickly that we were experiencing an urban riot, so-called. And leaving that neighborhood and driving south on Livernois, I remember seeing people climbing into the Grinnell’s, which used to be a sort of electronics/appliance store, and coming walking out with their hands filled with television sets and so on. And other stores as well. So that was the way in which I first became aware of it, yeah.
WW: Was this a shock to you?
BG: It was a little shocking, but yes, I was a little surprised. I don’t know if “shock” is the right word, but it certainly caught my attention. It concerned me to the extent that who knows what could happen? We lived at that time in Lafayette Park, as I said, close to Gratiot. There were a lot of fires on Gratiot. I did not view it then, I never viewed it as a situation that communicated racial animus. In other words, as a white person, I would drive through these black neighborhoods and no one would pay attention to me as a white guy doing that. It was more experienced as a protest, outrage, and lawlessness, really. It was a lot of lawlessness and all of that. So-called looting, real looting, yeah.
WW: Did you have any other issues while you were going home?
BG: No, no. When I got back to Lafayette Park, one of the people in the neighborhood wanted to organize a gun patrol – pull your guns out and march up and down the street, and I thought that was, to be blunt, just a lot of horse shit. I wasn’t about to get involved in that. So, no, I didn’t have any trouble.
WW: So from where you were in Lafayette Park, could you see a lot of the fires?
BG: I could see fires. Our offices were in the Cadillac Tower, at the time, on the 32nd floor of the Cadillac Tower, and I went up there, the next day I think, no matter where you looked, and our offices looked in all directions, I think maybe, north, south and east. We didn’t look so much west, but you could see fires ringing the whole city of Detroit. So, it was dramatic, yeah. In all directions.
WW: While you were going into work, what was downtown like on that Monday morning?
BG: I don’t remember. I’m sure it was dead, but I don’t have a clear, you’re asking me to summon up memories, that it’s too long ago. I don’t remember what downtown was like. Well, vaguely I remember that no one came in to work and it was dead, yeah. I was there. That’s right. Yeah, no one was at work. I remember that, yup.
WW: Why did you go into work?
BG: Well I, first of all, I wanted to take a look at the city from that vantage point, and secondly, I figured that, in addition to my workaholism, I thought that there might be something going on that we could work on, so I did. And, I don’t know when it was that I went over to Recorder’s Court, whether it was that day or the next day or two days, but shortly after that I went into court.
WW: Feel free to keep talking about it. You’re talking about Recorder’s Court?
BG: Yeah, I was close friends at that time with Justin Ravitz, do you know who he was?
WW: Yes, I do.
BG: And I don’t know if he called me and told me I should meet him over there, but he was involved, he and Kenny Cockrel were involved in organizing, or trying to represent people who had been swept up and detained during the early hours and days of this rebellion. Those people were being held, and there were thousands of them. And they were being held, as I’m sure you know, not only in the Wayne County Jail, and the Detroit Police Department lock up on the 9th floor, they were being held in the outhouses, in the bathrooms on Belle Isle, and on buses and in horrible places, under horrible conditions, nowhere to sleep. If you’re on a bus, nowhere to easily use the bathroom. All of these things were going on, and I’m not sure how I became aware of it, I’m not sure if Chuck, if Ravitz told me this or if I had learned elsewhere, but there was a need for lawyers in these courtrooms who, when people would be brought in to be arraigned, in front of these judges in large groups, we would go up to the groups and we would say, "We’ll be your lawyers." You know, take names, and people were happy to have lawyers. So then we would ask the judges to have personal bonds, reasonable bonds so the people did not continue to be held and routinely, all of these judges in Recorder’s Court would set expropriatory bonds. $25,000 I can remember, $50,000 bonds being set for curfew violations. This was the basis for most of these arrests. Horrible. And, you know, we all stood up and screamed and yelled about the Constitution but it didn’t –
There was only one judge in Recorder’s Court who paid attention to the requirement that bonds and that reasonable bonds be set, and that was George Crockett. And he was commended by the Kerner Commission later on because he was exceptional. He was unlike any other judge on Recorder’s Court bench in that way. He paid attention to the Constitution. He would not grant these outrageous bonds that would force people to continue to be held for long periods of time. So that was the issue that we were constantly fighting. And we got a lot of animosity from the cops for taking these positions and so on and from the judges and prosecutors and their staff. So anyway, that was that story about Recorder’s Court back then. Eventually I think almost all of those curfew charges were dropped. I don’t remember anybody fully, I don’t remember anybody being prosecuted and found guilty of any of those.
WW: You mentioned the outrageous bonds that you particularly remember. Were there any other, any individuals or cases that you remember that stuck out during those few days?
BG: Yes, there certainly was one. It involved a young kid named Albert Wilson who I think was 12 at the time. And Albert had lived in the area of Twelfth Street and Hazelwood. And he had gone into a store that was, you know, some kind of dry goods – maybe it was a little corner grocery store or something, I don’t remember. But he went into the store and people were taking stuff out of the store, and he was in there and a cop came in. And when the cop came in, everybody hid – ducked down behind things, walls, and so on. And cases, or whatever. So Albert, was I said he was about 12 at the time, I think, and he either moved or made a noise or dropped something, but the cop heard him and fired his gun. And Albert sustained a spinal cord lesion which left him a paraplegic. So we sued the Detroit Police Department over that shooting. And eventually, I don’t remember when we went to trial in that case, but we did try it and we got a verdict, a large verdict. It was the first verdict, I think, in Michigan in a personal injury case that exceeded a million dollars. So that, I remember that case very well.
WW: Wow. Do you remember how long you spent at Recorder’s Court?
BG: You mean how many days I was there?
WW: Yes.
BG: At least a week. A week, week and a half, something like that.
WW: Okay.
BG: And then I had a hundred, hundreds of clients, because I had signed up all of these people, so I had to retreat and then sort of deal with managing this overwhelming number of clients and cases, which as I said, for the most part were dropped, as far as I recall.
WW: What was the mood at Recorder’s Court? What was the atmosphere like? Because you mentioned that there was growing tension between the defense attorneys and the prosecutors and the judges and the police. Was it chaotic there, or was there–?
BG: Yes, it was chaotic. The halls, the hallways were chaotic. I was not a Recorder’s Court regular, as were some of the people who were over there. But what you saw during those days, as during, you know, throughout my experience at Recorder’s Court back at that time was that the cops and the prosecutors and the courtroom staff, the clerks, and the judges, were all very close and friendly and we as young lawyers were trying to do something a little different, we were outsiders and we were treated like outsiders. So I remember that. And I’ll never just forget the image of these large groups of people, often just still handcuffed or chained, being brought into court in front of these judges, and you know, these judges setting these horrible bonds for what were minor violations.
WW: You call out Judge Crockett for being exemplary. Do you recall any other judges that you worked with that did set these harsh bonds?
BG: I don’t remember very many names, so I hate to single anyone out, but one of the names I can remember from those days was Don Leonard. There was a Schemanske, I think it was Frank Schemanske over there at the time. I don’t know. I don’t remember any of the others.
WW: Okay. For you, do you remember when the National Guard came in, and then later, the federal troops?
BG: Yeah. I do. I don’t remember what day it was. What day was it?
WW: The National Guard came in on Monday and the federal troops came in on Wednesday.
BG: Wednesday. I remember driving around and just wanting to see what was going on in the streets and driving around with my brother. So we drove up Linwood, past Central High School, and again, there were all these people on the streets, and nobody paid any attention to the fact that we were white, although sometimes there would be a friendly shout or something like that. But I remember seeing either National Guardsmen or military people perched on the roof of the old Central High School or Durfee Middle School – Junior High it was called then. Or maybe Roosevelt. Perched on these roofs with guns pointed at the population in general. That was the image I had. Now, when it was exactly that we did that, that I don’t recall but it was a striking image and is still in my mind.
WW: You’ve repeatedly referred to what happened as the “rebellion.” Why do you interpret the events of 1967 as a rebellion?
BG: The Detroit Police Department was, at that time, racist, brutal, unlawful, you know, an institution that allowed for – basically declared war on the black community in the city. And as I said, it wasn’t simply a riot. This was something that was designed to say, "We are not going to take any more of this targeted racism from public officials, from the cops." And so I view it as an uprising or a rebellion more than a blind, insensate violence. No. I didn’t see that.
WW: And then after the rebellion has calmed down, did you begin to see the city differently? Or is Detroit still Detroit to you?
BG: Well, Detroit is still Detroit but whether I saw the city differently is a different question. I’m trying to think about that now for a moment. Yeah, I think that there was some political push back against the rebellion by the white power structure. That’s when the STRESS unit of the Detroit Police Department got rolling, one of the most bleak and sad parts of DPD history. STRESS was just awful, and eventually it resulted in the counter-reaction of the election of the first black mayor of the city, Coleman A. Young, in 1972.
WW: And then after the rebellion, did you continue working civil rights cases in the city?
BG: Oh yeah. Lots of them. And around, not only in the city, but outside the city also. Warren. Dearborn. Lots of places.
WW: Given that you were going around to all of these places, do you believe that the rebellion – how do you believe that the rebellion affected the metro area? If it did at all?
BG: Well, what happened, this is what, I’m sure you’re familiar with Sugrue’s book about Detroit and the structures that created structural racism, but it was obvious. Immediately what happened was, the white people who lived in the city of Detroit put their houses up for sale and moved to the surrounding suburbs. These suburbs which were all white and were created through various public policies, including the articulated racism of the Federal Housing Act and a number of other things, were all white, and they ringed a city that had been, hemorrhaged white population, and now became majority black and remained poor and without transportation as jobs and things fled the city. And housing became devalued and people who owned houses lost huge amounts of investment, and the city – I think ‘67 was the beginning of a very difficult period for the city of Detroit which has lasted until recently, in my analysis. I think Tom Sugrue’s book explains it well.
WW: Oh yeah. For sure. And the book you are referring to, for the record, is Origins of the Urban Crisis?
BG: Yeah. That’s the one.
WW: Are there any other thoughts you’d like to share, any other memories you’d like to share from the rebellion?
BG: My mother owned a little antique store over in the Park Shelton Hotel, right around here. And she had an African American assistant named George Jordan, who, as soon as things started to get rolling, Monday morning, he took a bar of soap and wrote “Soul Brother” all over the windows of this antique store, and nothing happened to it. So I think that is interesting the way in which identity was perceived, at least, and the importance of it. That’s the only other memory that immediately comes to mind. I’m sure if I read my journal from back in those days I would find more, but, sadly I never wrote one.
WW: Just a couple of quick wrap-up questions. What do you think of the state of the city today?
BG: I think it’s complex. There is certainly growth and development, and it’s always heartening to see crowds walking around. I took a walk on the Riverwalk recently from, let’s say, Rivard down to the Renaissance Center and it’s exciting. It almost looks like New York City there. There were hundreds of different kinds of people out, extremely diverse and as many different ethnicities and races as we can gather in this city and it was wonderful to see it. People were comfortable with one another. So, those kinds of things you can observe progress. It’s not the old baseball team where you couldn’t have a black teammate. On the other hand, there are vast swatches of neighborhoods that are still blighted with houses that are vacant and being used as drug houses and all the rest of it. That’s not comforting to see. One would want to see development, you want to see the whole community pulled up and neighborhoods looking better than they have. And you do see some of that. So I guess on the whole it’s good. I think that the whole situation with water shut-offs is disgusting. That’s a political and financial crisis. The fact that the city of Detroit has been basically abandoned by the traditional role of government, the state government, the federal government, to solve some of these problems itself is distressing. Education is desperate. So, it’s complicated. That’s what I would say.
WW: Are you optimistic for the city moving forward?
BG: Well. I guess, slightly optimistic. I’m not jumping up and clicking my heels, but yeah, I see some progress
WW: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
BG: My pleasure.
WW: I really appreciate it.
BG: Okay.
CG: So today is Tuesday, November 29, 2016. My name is Celeste Goedert and I'm here at the Detroit Historical Museum. This interview is for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project and today I'm sitting down with Jesse Davis. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
JD: Mmkay.
CG: Can you start by telling me where and when you were born?
JD: Okay, I was born in 1944, on Mother's Day, May 14, in Benham, Kentucky. Coal-mining country.
CG: Okay. And -
JD: In the Appalachian Mountains.
CG: All right. What was it like growing up there?
JD: Well, my family - my father didn't want us to be in the coal mine. So there was ten of us - six brothers, four sisters - so he moved us to Detroit. I got here when I was two years old.
CG: Okay. So most of your memories -
JD: So most of my memories are the city of Detroit. And I was raised up on Davison, at the end of the underpass, you know, the first expressway in Detroit. It was a full neighborhood, you know. I can say it was integrated, you know, like - or segregated - they had different spots of the neighborhood - we had Hamtramck right there, a lot of Polish people, then on the other side of Joseph Campau a lot of white people, then our section, was separate - where the underpass start - it was a neighborhood called Davison - it was a lot of - full neighborhood - everything, three or four movie theaters in the neighborhood, grocery store, everything. Everything you needed was right there in the neighborhood.
This was before Chrysler Expressway came through. You know, then when they start building on the Chrysler Expressway kind of tore the neighborhood up. You know, a lot of people moved out, this and that. Even today we still - the old timers and stuff - because we learned a lot - there was a lot of black-owned business and stuff there, and they taught us a lot of stuff, you know, like - when my father died I was young. I was about six years old. When I was about eight, guys in the barber shop knew my father so they gave me a job there and stuff, you know. That was - you know - because they knew my mother had a lot of kids. [laughter] We had a large family, you know. Every little bit helps.
CG: So you were eight years old when you started working at the barber shop?
JD: Yeah.
CG: And what was that like?
JD: I wasn't doing too much. Sweeping up hair off the floor. Going to the store for people, stuff like that. But they taught me a lot, you know. Taught me a lot about life and stuff. Because they knew my father, so they took to me. They taught me how when I go to the store - that little change, don't give the change back. [laughter] Keep that in your pocket. Break the five dollars down into singles and stuff, so if they want to give you a tip, they'll give you a tip. They don't, they don't. So they taught me how to respect money and stuff, you know. They took their time teaching me little stuff, how you got to respect money and money will respect you. Always keep your job, do the best you can on your job and stuff.
I grew up with some - when I said, a lot of morals about life. And like a lot of the things I learned back then stick with me now. And then my mother, you know, she knew how to deal with all those kids she had. Lady of few words.
CG: You said there were ten of you?
JD: Beg pardon?
CG: There were ten of you?
JD: Ten of us. And then she - we had three cousins stay with us too, so we had a lot of people in the house. And then my older brothers and sisters going back and forth, they were in the military and stuff like that. So everybody helped out at the house and stuff. We was a close family, you know. Still is. Life wasn't that bad. We didn't have much but we didn't know that. We didn't know we was poor. [laughter] Everything's, you know, everything.
CG: Do you have any other memories of growing up in that area?
JD: Sure. You know, like, the area was a full area. We had recreation and stuff, before Motown and all like that, we had a recording studio, we had a baseball team, a football team, basketball team, swimming team, boxing team, all from this recreation - Elizabeth Recreation Center on Davison. Before the expressway came through there. So like - again, it was today, we have a luncheon once a year for the elementary schools and the junior high schools because everybody was close, everybody knew everybody, you know, from house to house, we all knew each other.
So Davison, Cleveland, and Washington. Cleveland was a junior high school, Davison and Washington was elementary schools. It was today – we have a luncheon once a year, you know, so all the old-timers and stuff get together. We also - that neighborhood today is depleted. A lot of vacant lots, this and that. But we get - we got a club, about two hundred of us and stuff. We get a picnic once a year. Four or five thousand people there at the picnic. We cut the grass at the vacant lots, have DJs out there, but the tents up, have horseback riding. These are the people from the old neighborhood, trying to teach the new ones how close we was. A lot of us still close, we're still good friends and stuff, and that's fifty, sixty years. But like, we just try to keep things going so the younger people - you know, there's more to life than at each other's throats
And then a lot of them that moved out of town, they come back in town just for the picnic or for the luncheon. They come back as far away as California, Colorado, different places. New York. Those people have moved out. They doing their things. Then we find out who's no longer with us and stuff - they read obituaries and stuff on the people in the neighborhood. Like I said, it was a close-knit neighborhood.
And then the expressway came through there and - Chrysler Expressway, 75, they kind of divided everything, scattered everybody out.
CG: Do you remember when that happened?
JD: Yeah. You know, it was before I went into the service. I went into the service when they drafted me, in 1967.
CG: They drafted you in 1967.
JD: Yeah. May 1. The same day Mohammed Ali posted - went to the draft. And we supposed to go to the same place, Fort Knox Kentucky. I was there, you know, but he didn't show up. [laughter] You know, they had started on the expressway when I left for the military. So it was in the middle Sixties, I guess, when they started the expressway. Then when I came back in '69, they still was working on it.
CG: Had you noticed how things had already changed at that point?
JD: Yeah. Started changing because they tore down a lot of the businesses and stuff, because they came straight down Davison. A lot of the black-owned businesses were no longer there, because - it was different. It was different. And before then, Detroit had - we had some millions of people in Detroit. We had a lot of stuff, that a lot of the young people could go to, like they had dance places and stuff, they had roller-skating rinks, they had all kinds of stuff. They had Belle Isle. Everything, you know. You could - life was okay.
And then things started changing. Especially like - okay. I went into the service in 1967. Okay, had basic training. And you asked me about the riot and stuff. I finished basic training, they gave us a 24-hour pass. We wasn't supposed to go but about a hundred miles, so I could have went to Louisville, Kentucky, this and that, but I had made a little money playing poker. And a friend of mine that I knew from Detroit, we both was from Detroit, we say, we can make it and get back in time. And so I pay for him and me. Plane ticket, to get to Detroit. We was going to come right back. Stay overnight, catch a flight out that morning, so we would be back.
CG: Was this in July?
JD: Yeah. In that 24-hour period, that weekend pass we had, we could have made it in time. But the people running us from the airport, they dropped us off on Twelfth, because I knew quite a few people on Twelfth and stuff, that was on Twelfth. We had our uniforms on. And then - in the evening, later on at night - we was enjoying ourselves, we went to a couple clubs, this and that - enjoying ourselves. And then chaos broke out on Twelfth and Clairmount. A lot of people was - police was - running these people out of this building. Somebody told me it was an after-hours place. They was arguing with the police, police trying to keep order and this and that. There was a couple police, so they call for some more police. So another car - police car - pulls up. And then this lady - because the police was manhandling her boyfriend or whatever it was - somebody seen it - she argued with the police, got up in his face, and he hit her with a flashlight.
CG: Where was this?
JD: On Twelfth and Clairmount.
CG: Do you remember where - which establishment you were at?
JD: Well, I was in the street, with the crowd then. Because the crowd had got big, because there was a lot of people coming out the after-hours place. And then cars of police was coming up, and they was - the crowd was unruly, the police got rougher. Like, they hit the girl with the flashlight - they hit the police. Throwing stuff at the police cars as they pulled up and stuff. But the crowd was so big. Chaos broke out. The crowd was big. That's when they started breaking windows and stuff and pawn shops and all kinds - clothing stores, everything. Because Twelfth Street was a full street. There was quite a few streets in Detroit had all kinds of stuff. They got to breaking windows and taking stuff out of the buildings and stuff. It got real rowdy and stuff. So me and my friend, I stayed a little bit too far. He stayed closer. He stayed in the projects, in Brewster Projects. So me and him left and went there. But so much trouble in Detroit had got to breaking out. Fires and all kinds of stuff, all parts of the city, so it was like a curfew, and I couldn't get from his house to my house. So I was stuck down there a couple days.
CG: And what street was your house on?
JD: On Fleming, right off of Davison. You know, like - I called my people and stuff. Let them know I was in Detroit. They wanted to come get me but it was so much stuff happening in Detroit. In the daytime, a couple days later, or a day later, my family came down and got me, because the curfew wasn't in the daytime, it was in the evening. And then like, stuff was all over the city. But so much stuff going on, the police let the people do what they wanted to do. So they was - it wasn't no race riot. It was like - people just getting stuff, breaking windows, furniture, TVs. It was everywhere, because the police be right there but wasn't doing anything, I guess they had orders not to do anything. And then it got so bad then the military came in.
CG: Were you still there when the National Guard was called in?
JD: I couldn't get out the city. I tried, man - my friend -
CG: You were stuck?
JD: Allan Trice, the friend of mine - was the next day, trying to get a flight out of there, but they had shut all that down. I couldn't get out of there. So I called my base in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and tried to tell my commander that I couldn't get out the city - "You got no business being there, that's over a hundred miles!" Said I'm sorry about that, but this is what the truth is, this is where I'm at. I let him know, so I knew I was in trouble, so he told me, said like, "What I want you to do is bring me some newspapers from Detroit." So that's what I'll do, bring some newspapers, as soon as I can get out of here.
It took me ten days to get out of Detroit. Before they opened up the airport, before they opened up the streets. I got back to Fort Knox, had three or four newspapers for him and stuff, let him know that this is where I was at. And then they had it on - they shut the city down, and all like that. So I didn't get in too much trouble and stuff, but I had to do a whole lot of extra work.
And then when I got back, Detroit was different, because they had burned down a lot of stuff.
CG: Just to go back really quickly - you were there just before everything broke out?
JD: When it broke out.
CG: Were you near the after-hours joint?
JD: I was right on the street, a couple blocks away, and hurried up to see what was going on down there. And was right outside the building where they was coming out, so I was right there. It was just - had been in the military, this was the first time I had got a pass - a weekend pass - and this is what I run into. But like before I went into the military, it was a lot of unrest in a lot of different cities, and Detroit got to feeling it too because we had - to be truthful, we had a police force that had - what they call it - STRESS -
CG: Or the Big Four.
JD: The Big Four. And they had a special force called STRESS. We called it STRESS, because they used to set a lot of people up, that wouldn't even be thinking about a crime. And come to the crime, and then - the way I believe, in the neighborhood, if they set you up and would kill you, or hurt you and put a weapon on you, you know. Because, like I witnessed this white guy going into this club, acting like he was drunk, flashing money, dropping money all on the floor, acting like he's unstable, then when he went outside, a couple guys, I guess they was going to rob him, when they went out there and confronted him - STRESS or the Big Four, they surrounded these guys, beat them pretty bad. So it was a lot of unrest.
CG: Do you remember what year that was? Around what time?
JD: Well, okay, I was in the military - I went to Fort - it was like in the early '68 because I was in New Jersey, came home on a weekend pass, went to this club. And I witnessed that. It was a club - kind of a little club, it was on Woodward and - Woodward and Collingwood, something like that. And then when we come outside to see what was going on, four, five police cars, unmarked - had the two guys, beating them. Because back then, slowly turning your head - what they call it, black power, everybody stuck together. So there was so much stuff happening, that wasn't right with the police and the communities and stuff. We stopped everything and gathered around. We wanted to know what they did, this and that. Don't be beating them and stuff like that. If they did something wrong, you ain't got to beat them like that. Lock them up but don't be beating them all out here in the street and stuff.
So there was a lot of unrest, not only in Detroit, a lot of other cities and stuff. When I was up in New Jersey, I'd go on leave, I’d go to Philadelphia, I'd go to New York, Boston, everything was right there near Fort Dix, New Jersey. You know, didn't take long to get to - there was a lot of unrest in a lot of big cities, you know.
I believe that's where a lot of stuff came from - Vietnam. Then the military - I was glad I was in the military because a lot of this stuff was going on and I didn’t have to be a part of. You know, when I went to Germany in '68, that's when Martin Luther King got killed. Even over in Germany was a whole lot of unrest and stuff. You know, in the military, black soldiers - and we didn't take it out on the white soldiers, but it was like the establishment, you know. Like something needed to be did. The only thing our people can do is black power. We stuck together. We wasn’t trying to do this and that. We just stuck together with each other. We're in this together, you know. And it was like that across the country. I was out of the country, but I had letters and you know, all kinds of stuff was going on, including in my neighborhood and stuff. That things had changed. In Detroit, all these burned out buildings, this and that, there was a lot of businesses got wiped out - the expressway wiped a lot of stuff out - but after the riot, a lot of business owners, they moved out of the city.
And then Coleman Young, when he got elected - he dismantled STRESS and all like that, because that's what the people wanted. They wanted the police to be from Detroit. Not the suburbs. So it was a lot of unrest in a lot of places. But to me, Detroit was never a race riot because the neighborhoods - we might have stayed in another neighborhood but we played sports together. I played basketball, I used to go down to Hamtramck and play basketball and stuff, with the guys, no problems. No problems. And we went to school together. No problems, no problems.
I could never say it was a race riot. Because to me, I didn't see it. It was just like - when that broke out, it was like - people just took stuff they thought they needed, or it was there so they took it. They had to break a window or run into a store, whatever, because there wasn't nobody there to stop them. The police - they was - until the military came in, and the military, they put their foot down. So they came in with some rules, with the curfew, with the set down, with everything. And I was glad I was in the military so I could get out of there as soon as they opened up the airport. And that's what I did. I was here ten days.
CG: Do you remember seeing the National Guard and the federal troops around?
JD: Yeah. It was everywhere. It was everywhere. And they - the word was, that they had just come from Vietnam, so they was combat-ready. You can hear some of the tanks, because they had tanks and everything. You could hear, every now and then, one of those tanks firing. And they were saying on the news and stuff it was snipers in the building. They evacuated the building, they got the snipers out, they let off a few rounds from those tanks and stuff. Then they had opened up Belle Isle - the people they were arresting and stuff, the jails were so full. They were just packing them all in Belle Isle. Like a camp or something. So I'm glad - right. A lot of stuff was going on those ten days I was here. My family wouldn't let me go out there.
CG: Did they mostly stay in the house?
JD: Well, in our neighborhood, because we knew everybody. And we even knew the police and everything. Because when I was younger, you're standing out, hanging out, the police tell you to go home, and then they come back, you're still there and stuff. They wouldn't take you to jail. They'll snatch you up, might slap you upside the head, but they take you home and throw you on your front porch because they was part of the neighborhood.
It's a lot different now. And then, that's why I was telling you earlier - it's a lot of unrest in the country now. I hope things don't get back like that, because everybody lose. Don't nobody win. So why should you tamper your own stuff? Because that's what they did. A lot of the businesses left Detroit, so Detroit been hurting a long time, so I'm glad it's coming back. Because I hadn't witnessed a lot of it - you know, for two, three million people down to seven thousand - that's a lot of people left here. And it hurt the city. But now, there's hope. There's hope, because people coming back - they're building and stuff. You can see some kind of hope, some kind of future for Detroit.
Always been the Motor City. Motown, Motor City and stuff. To me, like, I love Detroit. We put the world on the road. World War Two, we helped turn these assembly lines in. So we had a big hand in winning World War Two. Turning the assembly lines into making tanks and jeeps and stuff, airplanes and everything. The assembly line helped a whole lot of businesses, so I'm kind of proud that Detroit was the first one with the assembly line, the first one with the expressway. A lot of stuff. So Detroit has a lot of history. A lot of history.
CG: Could you talk a little more about - you said you came back in 1969. And you saw that your neighborhood had changed because the freeway had been built and changed things. Was the barbershop still there?
JD: Yeah. Not - not the one that I was raised in, but some of the barbers that worked there did open up their own shop. They had to move locations and stuff, what was still left there, like the service drive - the service drive. I was older, I was doing my own thing - I had worked in the factories, so I went back to the factory.
CG: Oh, you did work factory.
JD: Okay, I started when I was like 18 at the forging plant - that was General Motors. I worked there four years. And then I got drafted. I was trying to get out of the draft. And then back then they had unemployment offices at the plants. So I took a friend of mine over to the Chrysler plant on Jefferson, so he could fill out an application, so I got hired there too. So I was working at General Motors and Chrysler. And so, like, it was the wrong time for me to get drafted.
CG: You got drafted while you were working at GM.
JD: Right. They gave me a notice - okay, back then, they had the draft cards. And you know when it's getting close, because you'll start off with one number, like 4-F or whatever it is, but when you get down to 1-A, you know it's getting close for them to draft you. Because they had Vietnam War going, and didn't nobody want to go there, because we didn't even know where Vietnam was. And then we thought it was political. That was another unrest in the country. Because - the same - okay, they had it, so if you go into school, then college or something, you didn't have to get drafted. And if you had a felony, you couldn't get drafted. But if you weren't in school at a certain age, you're going to get drafted nine out of ten times. And to be truthful - I tried to get a felony. Because I didn't want to go to Vietnam. Because in our neighborhood, it was like - it seemed like - every eligible black guy there was drafted.
CG: You knew a lot of people in your own neighborhood.
JD: Yeah, they was getting drafted, so I tried to get out of the draft, because I'm working at General Motors and Chrysler. Got my own apartment, had a brand new car. Didn't want to get drafted, so I tried to get a felony. So me and this friend of mine, had a convertible car. We go to the Brookside Motel. He get a room, I get a room. He 1-A, he had a draft notice too. So we took down pictures, lamps, all kinds of stuff. Put it in the car, so it could be seen. He had the top down. So we sit and waited on the police.
And so when I went to court, I had one of those mammas went the court with me. Told the judge, “He ain't never got in trouble in his life. Always had a little job, since he was eight years old. He got drafted, that's why he did this. He didn't want to go in the military.” So the judge gave me a choice. Go in the military for two years, or go to jail for five years. So my mama made my mind up for me. "He's going in the military. All his brothers were in the military. He's going in the military." And that's - okay, my mamma has spoke. I can't go against her. Went into the military.
CG: Your older brothers had already gone?
JD: Yeah.
CG: Were you the youngest?
JD: Out of the boys, I had one younger brother. He's deceased now. I had one younger brother, younger than me. But all my older brothers, the four were already in service, or had been in service. Two in the Marines, one in the Air Force, one in the Army. So they drafted me in the Army.
CG: And so you - just to go back a little bit, can you describe a little more what things looked like when you came back in 1969?
JD: When I came back in '69, I stayed about a half block off the street - Fleming off of Davison. They had started building the expressway, and I had worked at the barbershop. That was gone. I had worked at a little small grocery store after the barbershop. That was gone. Cross Davison, across the street, I worked at the supermarket called the Twin Store. He hired people in the neighborhood, so there was about three of us teenagers that worked there. This is before I went to General Motors. That was gone. They were still building on the expressway, so all this was tore up. The recreation was gone. That we had all the sports activities at. Everything was gone. The black-owned businesses and stuff, they was gone, because there was about three cleaners there, they all was gone. Barbershops, grocery stores, black-owned businesses and stuff, all them was gone. The shoe shop. Everything. The pawn shops. Everything. The movie theaters, they was gone. And then - I look at it today - on Davison it just was an extenuation of the underpass, they used to call it. They didn't have to tear that down, but they was building the Chrysler Freeway and tore up the whole neighborhood that I was raised up in.
And so like, everybody had moved out and that's why we give those little things once a year, so - it's like our reunion. Neighborhood reunion, because we was that close. Everybody on the street, in every house, I knew everybody. Same with everybody. We knew everybody in every house. The neighbors - my mom would be at work, I know not to do stuff in front of my neighbors, because they're going to come out there and get me. It's like that's the way it was. You didn't have to lock your doors. You could sleep on your front porch. Wasn't anybody going to mess with you.
And then like - kids played together, we all knew each other. And then the schools and stuff. And then that was another thing in Detroit. Different neighborhoods had a lot of stuff. Boxing team, swimming team, baseball - we challenged each other. Get track meets and stuff. Different neighborhoods and stuff. And then like there wasn't no time for no trouble. We had stuff to do. We had to train, so we could beat them swimming, or beat them boxing, or beat them playing basketball. It would just be another neighborhood that we'd be playing, but everybody got involved. The kids and the parents and everything else.
When I came back, a lot of that stuff was changing. Because we had all those burned out buildings, tore up buildings, burned out houses, vacant lots. A lot of the businesses moved out and stuff, that would hire the young people, kept them busy and stuff. A lot of them sponsored us, made sure we had uniforms, just to challenge other neighborhoods. These was the businesses and stuff. All this was gone.
So I'm grown to it now. But the people that was coming up behind me, they didn't have what we had. So it's a big difference. It's a big change in Detroit. A lot of people moved out, got to moving into the suburbs, moving out of the state, you know. Just getting away. After '67. They slowly started - as soon as they was able, they got up out of here. That's why, for millions to a few hundred thousand. You can see part of it now - a lot of these buildings that was occupied with businesses and stuff, factories and stuff like that, they're just vacant.
And then a lot of big businesses left and left their debris. Left their garbage and stuff. Didn't clean up their area. Just left. Big difference.
CG: Do you still live in Detroit now?
JD: Yes. Yeah, I'd say on the north end. Down right off of John R. Down Woodward, right across the Boulevard, they're building all this stuff, so we the next neighborhood from where they're building the rail and stuff at. But me and my wife, we're neighborhood activists. My wife, she's the president of the block club and stuff. I used to be the treasurer but it was like a conflict of interest so I stepped back. I'm just my wife's supporter now. We've got committees and stuff. Have a lot of volunteers coming in. We clean up a lot of blight and stuff like this. And we help the senior citizens, we get their porches fixed, get them painted and stuff like that. We do a lot of stuff. At this church down on Woodward, 8000 Woodward, that's where we have our meetings and stuff, once a month. And we - third Wednesday of the month - six o'clock. We deal with the City Council. We deal with the city. We do what we can.
And then she knew how I was raised, so she knows it's in me, because I kind of get upset when I - but after I take a second look at it because a lot of people wasn't raised the way I was raised, didn't have the family that I had, because I had a large family and we all stuck together then, the neighborhood stuck together and stuff. When I see people don't want to stick together, don't want to work together, I get upset. So a lot of times in the meetings I have to be quiet, because I will say something, you know. But my wife, she handles it pretty good, she run a pretty good meeting, and she has the right people and stuff there. And then when we need dumpsters and stuff, she's got people she can call from the city and get dumpsters when we're cleaning up the blight and cleaning up the neighborhood and stuff.
Then we've got senior citizens and stuff - it works out. Just ain't a lot you can do, but every little bit helps.
CG: So have you lived in Detroit your whole life?
JD: Well, I did a lot of traveling in the military, and then when I got out, me and my wife traveled a lot when we first got married and stuff. Vacations and stuff. We went to California, San Francisco, Miami. A lot of places and stuff and then I got a lot of family - family reunions, we have them in different spots, so we still go places.
CG: So is your family, are some of them still in Detroit? Are you guys -
JD: Well yeah, basically my immediate family is in Detroit. I lost two brothers and a sister, so there's seven of us. We all stay in Detroit. We keep in contact with each other and stuff.
CG: Then just to go back, you said - you said, it definitely wasn't a race riot. But I know some other people will call it the "uprising" or the "rebellion." Do you -
JD: It was like a rebellion. But I don't know if it would have started - but it was like a ticking time bomb. When that happened on Twelfth and Clairmount, it was like it lit the fuse. And then just spread it, because once they start knocking out windows and taking stuff, it's like somebody had poured gasoline on the fire. It just spread it. But it went on - because every nationality in Detroit, out there taking stuff because it was there. And then - I said it was like a rebellion against the establishment. And then I guess they joined the other part of the country because a lot of stuff was going on in different cities and stuff. And they might have been race riots - I don't know. Because I couldn't see it in Detroit. We had a lot of different nationalities in Detroit, but we all worked together.
I look back at it now. When I was growing up and stuff I played basketball with Davey Bush and Rockets Coach Tomjanovich and stuff. And they stayed in Hamtramck. Let's go down there and play ball with them and stuff. All kinds of stuff, like play football together, be on the same teams and stuff. A couple blocks, I want to be on y'all team. Yeah, you can play, we want you on the team. The only thing we wanted to do, could they play, you know. Yeah, you're on our team. A lot of - you know - a lot of stuff you can do. But like now, it ain't that - there's stuff out there but it ain't like it used to be. We had pool rooms, we had all kinds of sports, all kinds of everything. But people - something for somebody to do at all times.
Now they ain't got - they going to get in trouble. They have a attitude. We didn't have no attitude. I, how do you say it, idle time is the devil's workshop, you know. You got to - these kids, coming up, you've got to keep them busy and stuff. You got to keep them something to do. If you don't give them something to do, they going to find something to do.
And the same way with grown folks. They need something to do. Keep their mind occupied. Otherwise you end up doing the wrong thing. But if you're doing some of the things you're supposed to be doing, okay - but then, you know - ever since the day I worked in all these factories - but I've been taught a lot of stuff. I've got a lot of trades and stuff. That I learned when I was a kid. I learned landscaping from my mother because she knows the way, all us ten in the house, she wanted the house straight. So I worked with her with planting flowers and this and that. But she wanted it like a picture. They used to call our house - all us stayed in there - called our house "the doll house," because we had the little picket fence and stuff, you know. Wasn't no grass growing between the sidewalk. Line up perfectly straight because if it wasn't, she's going to make us do it over again. She was the kind of mom and stuff like, me and my brother arguing and stuff, she'd just walk past and say "Okay. The one with the most sense, shut up." Keep on walking, keep on walking. We'd be looking at each other. She'd know how to deal with all of us, with very few words because we'd know she was serious. And then we'd have stuff right. I learned how to make a bed up from my mama. Because she made me make it up about ten times, until I got the corners tucked in right, with the forty-five degree angle at the ends. All kinds of stuff.
So when I got into the military, I already knew how to make a bed up. And I do it now, because I been raised this way. Okay, we spoil a lot of kids, our next generation, because we got in those factories and was making money. Pretty good money. See, back then, we had to earn everything, what we had to do. We had to earn it. But we want our kids to have more than what we got, so we gave them. They didn't have to earn it. But we didn't know they wasn't learning nothing because you're just giving them. Back then you had to earn everything that you did. And you had to do it right. It was like we call "old school." There's a big difference in attitudes and stuff now, because a lot of kids got spoiled. They didn't have to do nothing. But then you look at some of them now, they don't know nothing, neither.
But then, I had like uncles and stuff, taught me home improvement. Learned landscaping from my mama because they used to take me to work with them when I was a little kid. "Pass me this, pass me that," but I was learning what tools was. A Phillips from a flat-head screwdriver, stuff like that. I know landscaping, I know home improvement, I know a whole lot of stuff. So they - I used to hate to go but they used to tell me like "We're trying to teach you something so you ain't got to go look for a job. People are going to look for you." You know, because my uncle, he had all kinds of licenses. When he died, he had an accident in his car coming from school, learning some code on electrical work.
I know electrical work, I know welding, I know brick work because he knew all of this stuff, and he taught me. And then when I went and stayed with grandfather in Alabama, he built houses. So I've been blessed, and had the right people in my life. Although my father died when I was young. I had a large family, my grandfather, my uncles and stuff. And then we taught each other stuff. It was in my family - I used my GI Bill for tailoring, because I took up tailoring in high school. You know, so I used to make a lot of my own clothes, until me and a couple other guys opened up a little business and stuff. But after we split our money up, went four different ways, then had to pay bills and stuff, sometime I didn't get paid. So when I got a chance to go back in the factory I went back in the factory. But I know how to do that too. Anything with a pattern and stuff, I know what to do.
So folks back then - attended high school, I learned how to read blueprints in junior high school.
CG: Which school was that?
JD: That was Cleveland Junior High School on Conant and Davison.
CG: And which elementary?
JD: Elementary, I went to Davison Elementary on Joseph Campau and Davison. We had everything in our neighborhood. They used to call it "drafting" in junior high school, cause they -
Okay, another thing I see in Detroit, we had a lot of trade schools in Detroit back in the day. You get in trouble in school, instead of kicking you out, they'll send you to Jacoby. We used to call it Jacoby College. It was an all-boys school. But they'd teach you trades, or they'd send you to mow. Or Washington Trade, they taught auto mechanics. They didn't send you to Juvenile or lock you up because you got in trouble in school, or kick you out of school and you're idle that year. They made you go to these special schools. They was hard on you, but when you come out of them, because the teachers get on your case, but now it's against the law for teachers to chastise a kid. Sometimes you have to when you're teaching.
So there's a lot of things have changed. They think you're doing - they think they're doing society good by taking some of the rules, but a lot of those old rules worked. It's a big difference.
CG: Definitely. So just to wrap it up and to go back a little bit, what you were saying before, you said you do have hope for the city moving forward? But you also were talking about how you don't want to see things that happened in '67 repeated.
JD: The reason why I said I don't want to see that, because in different parts, in different cities, in different - you know, like there's a lot of unrest with young people and the police. And that's the way it started before. A lot of unrest in different spots. You don't want all of this connected, because it's like a bomb with a fuse, and sometimes it don't take much to light it. You can see now that a lot of the stuff that happened back then to lead up to some of those riots in the cities and stuff, is getting close to it now. They ain't looking at the whole picture so it don't take much for - they might not even know the fact, of what happened, but it's something - there they go again and they're all out there again. And what they're protesting about, they might be on the wrong wavelength. They might be wrong. That all of this was justified for this to happen, but you just don't agree with it. And so -
CG: Which protests are you thinking about?
JD: Okay. Okay. The one that comes to mind is Black Lives Matter. Black lives do matter. All lives matter. But some of these young people, they're ready to protest, they're ready to join the crowd, and don't know what they're protesting about. And some of them, they're justified on doing it, but some of them, if they was to know the facts, they wouldn't be out there. But they're so uptight, it don't take but a little bit, they jump to conclusions. Instead of learning what they're protesting about.
This situation might not be the same as this other situation. It might be a different situation. Know what I'm saying? I might not be explaining it right, but I'm trying to say it the way I feel about it because all lives matter. But there's a whole lot of other times the police be wrong. But it's a whole other time, they be right because this is their job. And they're doing their job appropriately. But there's a lot of them don't do their job appropriately because sometime, in the police’s head, their culture might be different than where they're patrolling at. Might be a different race or different financial situation, or whatever it is, and they ain't understanding what's happening there.
Okay, for instance, the security guard that killed Trayvon, because he had a hoodie on, you know. All kids with a hoodie on ain't bad. So, only thing I'm going to say is back in the day, we had some leaders of people that talked to people in masses. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, he wasn’t all the way right, but he was still - people listened to him. There's still leaders out there but they, a lot of them ain't listening to them. We had Obama. And then Trump won because people don't trust the government, they don't - they don't trust nothing no more.
The country morals, it ain't the same. So we need real educated people that can communicate with people, then understand it, and put it out there in layman's terms so people can understand. And sit back. Because we're all in this together whether we believe it or not. We're in this together. This is our country, this is where we live. And then I look back the way it used to be. Christmastime, Hudson's downtown. It was like a party, you know. Everybody enjoying themself. You go on down to Hudson's. Eat lunch and stuff at Kresge's, like that. It's the attitude. It's different. And you can't blame people, because just like yesterday, day before, Ohio State, at the college because a person mad, he's going to take it out on some people that got nothing to do with this.
And there's a lot of them out there, because I don't believe there's a lot of terrorists in this country. Most of the time it be an individual with an attitude, and they take it out on people.
CG: Just to wrap it up, did you want to share any last thoughts on the future of Detroit?
JD: Well, not really, but I'm looking at Detroit. You can see a lot of hope.
CG: You're hopeful.
JD: Yeah. You know, the housing thing is coming back and stuff. People moving back into the city and stuff. They building the city up and stuff. Then the Pistons coming downtown, you know, and I'm a basketball fan. So there's a lot of hope for the city, you know, and you can see it, and I feel good about it. And then like, I don't care what nationality is. We need more people in the city with more stuff to do. People need people. Whether they believe it or not. Because I believe, how they say it, because I was a substance abuse counselor and I used to talk to people and stuff. God works through people so you need people. Because a lot of times, you be all bent out of shape, this and that, and you look up, the right person will come right there. Because God will send them.
So you have to have a balance in your life. Life ain't that hard. A lot of people just try to go through it without thinking. First they go to know who they is. Their dos and their don'ts and stuff. And treat - I used to have rules and stuff - they say, how you do this? It spells it out, how. H: Be honest, be truthful to yourself. Be honest with other people. The O: be open-minded, because a closed mind can't learn nothing. And that W: Be willing. Be willing to go to any lengths. Education, or whatever it is that you need, be willing to do it. And then add three more things to it. Talk to people the way you want to be talked to. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Give respect, then you can demand respect. If you forget any of those you're in trouble. You need them all. So you need people and stuff. So that's about the only thing I can add to it. But the city got a lot of hope. It's coming. You can see it.
So only - and then like we don't have the problems that a lot of cities have, because I believe the police is working with the public. Working with the people. I used to coach Little League football a few years ago, and we dealt with the police. In the PAL unit, there's a lot of police involved in that, a lot of these Little Leagues. So Detroit is okay.
CG: Well thank you so much for sitting down with me.
JD: Okay.