LW: Today is June 17, 2015. This is the interview of Ed Deeb by Lily Wilson. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Ed, Can you begin by telling me where and when you were born?
ED: I was born in Detroit, you want the year?
LW: [affirmative]
ED: 1936.
LW: Who were your parents and what were their occupations?
ED Parents were George and Sarah Deeb. She was a homemaker, my father worked in convenient— owned convenient stores and eventually my mother joined him in the business.
LW: Tell me a little bit about your job and what you were doing in July of 1967.
ED: In 1967, I was the President of The Associated Food Dealers of Michigan. Our office was in Detroit and we had 3,500 members at that time. All of a sudden later that day I heard we were getting phone calls and there were some problems. I asked what these problems were and they said they were having problems in the community. The police are on the way out, there has been some fires, there had been some shooting, and they just wanted you to know. And I kind of left it at that, until an hour later, I started getting a deluge with calls. So I started creating a log of who was calling and what was the damage. We had about 400 retailers who were affected by the riots, so we kept that log. That was everything from a broken window to a completely burned down store, everything in between. Then the Senate investigations committee in Washington, D.C. heard that I was creating this log and they wanted to meet me in Washington and have them hear about what I was doing. So I was subpoenaed to go to Washington, meet the Senate. I was there and I followed Governor George Romney, Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, myself and the police chief at the time. We all did our own interviews. They eventually printed this all up and sent us copies of what we said. It was a very tense moment, as you know we had the United States Army involved they were roaming the streets in their jeeps and so on. The retailers were worried they were trying to protect their property. Some were carrying armed weapons; some were on top of the roofs preventing fire and all kinds of things like that. It was a very tense and tragic moment in the city of Detroit.
LW: Tell me a little bit about this log you created and you started that, we are talking about July, the last week in July and this was the Sunday that you got a phone call.
ED: Sunday and then almost all day Monday
LW: Of Course.
ED: The reason I probably took the log is I was a Journalism major at Michigan State. The first couple of calls didn’t register I should be doing any log until they started really coming in. I remembered the first few and marked those down and then as they came in I marked them down. Eventually I had them typed up and that’s what would happen. I’m very good at keeping records and knowing what’s happened, so I’m filing in case we have to do anything with it. That was the reason.
LW: How did the Senate use that? What was their purpose for subpoenaing you?
ED: When they heard that there was a log of industry organizations and we had four hundred affected members, they definitely wanted to see me in a hurry. So I get a subpoena in the mail and I had to fly to Washington. I had no idea Governor Romney and Mayor Cavanagh were also gonna be there testifying in their own way. So when I got there they asked me a whole bunch of questions and repeated what I was telling you and they thanked me. I didn’t have to stay any longer than that one day, that two-hour period that I was with them and I flew back.
LW: So what kinds of questions were they asking you?
ED: They were asking me questions like: Were any of your members creating problems in the community? Were any of your members having any altercations with anybody? And as far as I knew at the time there weren’t any, if there were I didn’t know about them. I said no I didn’t know of any, but there may have been problems that I didn’t know about. So as a result of all of this I met with the New Detroit President Walter Douglas, and I said “Walter, you and I better get together and create some kind of community advisory group that any problems that come up that you and I will handle them and put out the fire and create the solution.” And so we did we created the Michigan Food and Beverage Advisory Counsel. From there on in any problem that came in, we would communicate with each other. One of us would go out to the store, talk to the people and the people complaining. I became a negotiator, a troubleshooter, a peacemaker, so I would go to the stores and talk to everybody and get them all together and my job was to make everybody happy at the end of the meeting and I would say goodbye, thank you then leave. That’s what happened and I did that.
LW: What kind of problem, especially around 1967, 1968 in this aftermath, what kind of problems are we talking about?
ED: Well after the rioting, within a year later, most of the food chains left Detroit. There were six food chains at the time: Chatham, Great Scott, Farmer Jack, A & P, Meijer, and Kroger. They were all operating in Detroit. We had the lowest food prices in the country, but after the riots slowly but surely they were all leaving Detroit. That left the balance of the industry— smaller independent stores. These independent stores were mainly of Arabic heritage or Chaldean Iraqi heritage. They were worried that they were operating these stores and were going to get feedback and they were gonna be blamed for something they didn’t do. It was a good thing I was the liaison, I took charge as the association of all of these people. So any problems came to me, they didn’t go to fifteen people and they all went different directions, they came to me. I met with people, I had them at our office I went to meet them at the stores and made sure when I was finished everybody was happy. That was my goal and it worked. I met also with the head of the Detroit Urban League, Dr. Francis Kornegay, and Walt Douglas of New Detroit, myself of the Food and Beverage Association and we formed a coalition that any problems would come through us so we can keep the peace. Now the smaller stores that were left were trying their hardest to provide the nutrition, the produce and whatever needs that were required in the community but they weren’t able to do as much as when they had these larger stores. So, eventually, to go down the long run here, those empty stores that were left by the chain stores were taken over by these smaller stores or they’re family operated and they moved into larger quarters, opened bigger stores and started to provide what the chains did, but it took a while to get that going, they couldn’t just do it over night and that did help. And I’ll bring you to the present time, we’re happy now that all of a sudden Meijer is coming back into the city. They just opened one last week. We’re happy that Whole Foods brought two new stores into the city. So all of these larger stores are coming back, they are realizing the potential sales and profits are there and maybe they shouldn’t have left. So I’m glad they’re coming back. I’m still involved, people call me, what happened, what should I do, how do I prevent a problem. And my basic thing is you got to treat your customers right, you got to be honest, you’ve got to be sure that they are getting a fair deal with the prices and that you are not cheating them in any way shape or form and you’ll be okay, basically.
LW: Do you notice that there’s relatively consistent problems from the 1960’s when you began this venture to now, are some of the problems consistent?
ED: Well, in the thirty years or more that has eclipsed, things are much better now. Those smaller independents have opened up large stores, they are beautiful stores and there are about seventy of them in the city now. Plus the other stores are coming back, the Meijers , the Krogers, the Whole Foods and whatever. So that is good for the consumer because they are going to have a better choice, more choice of product, meats, produce and whatever. That’s good for everybody. I think that will continue for the next twenty, thirty years.
LW: So more options for the consumer. In terms of the problems you get calls about, what are those often related to? Prices or interpersonal interactions?
ED: What do they lead to in which way?
LW: Well no, I was just wondering what kinds of problems are you getting phone calls about or having to go to meetings about?
ED: Before or today?
LW: Both.
ED: Ok, well before they were wondering what do I do, I’m getting hassled, people are picketing my stores and they are throwing rocks at the windows and whatever they are doing, they were trying to protect their property and I would try to guide them to be calm, be cool, and the police were involved at that time. But today, the questions are mainly: I’m thinking of picking up the store on certain cross streets, what do you think? And I say well it’s really up to you. I say, “That’s a great neighborhood, a lot of homes around there, if you really think you can handle it, fine go ahead. If you can’t handle it, forget it because it’s going to be a big job.” You’re going to need maybe forty, fifty employees compared to a family of three.
LW: And where the other neighborhood stores that you mentioned sort of came in the late sixties when all of the bigger chains left, you’re still involved with them and where are they mainly concentrated?
ED: This is my fifty-third anniversary of running a food industry trade association. I probably am considered in the state of Michigan as the Dean of the Association Executives, I don’t know of anybody else, that’s what they are telling me, I don’t know. What do I think about it? I think it’s very nice that they think highly of me to be able to continue to do all of this because there was a lot of work involved. I try to be as professional as I can. I’ve received numerous awards for what I was trying to do and I wasn’t asking for any, but they were coming in. I think that I had been a stabilizing force, if you will. They trusted me, they knew I knew the people in Washington, in Lansing, in Detroit if there was a problem and we would call a meeting or whatever. But hardly – today we are very happy, we hardly get any calls today or once in a while we get a call, but more calls that are coming in a: Do you have anybody you know that we can hire? They are looking for people to hire. Or the other thing is: do you of any locations that we might consider? So that’s what I’m getting today compared to years ago.
LW: And these are phone calls from both large chains and smaller stores?
ED: Well mainly the smaller stores, the chains are big operators, they got their own big staff. We work with them, we have meetings with the big chains, we have quarterly meetings with several of the larger chains. We invite them to a special meeting. We invite the food industry to a luncheon and we have one of the chain store executives be the main speaker and we get along very well today. At one time it was, oh they’re the chains and they’re the independents, but right now everybody is happy, nobody is hurting anybody.
LW: So there’s no worry among the independent store owners that they‘ll be pushed out of business by the big chains coming in?
ED: No I don’t think so, we are providing better service. We have more minority grocers who are in there and that’s helpful to the people who are minorities, they like to see that. We see more people who are reaching out to provide community service, what can I do to help your charity?, or a Salvation Army, a Red Cross, or Forgotten Harvest, or whatever. We’re getting more of that today. I sit on all of those boards, but I’m not telling them to do anything, it’s all on their own. It’s been very, very interesting. Today you have the government providing more food in the area and you have more local people acting as the liaison for the government like United Way, provide getting food and having a local group disseminate the food; like we have Youth Day at Belle Isle. That’s another thing, as a result of those riots we formed Metro Detroit Youth Day at Belle Isle and we have today 40,000 kids coming there and this is our thirty-third one coming up July 15. It’s jammed with kids who love what’s going on, we have all kinds of activity, free lunch in the middle of the day, the Lions are putting on an expo for them, the Pistons are putting on an expo, all kinds of things, free lunch in the middle of the day. So as a result of that we as an association even wanted to do something for the community and that’s what we are doing.
LW: So how did you sort of come up with that idea as an association, how was that inspired specifically by the riots?
ED: Well, shortly after the riots, Mayor Coleman Young was elected and he said, what are you guys doing for the community? He was very active about that. I said, well, following the riots we’re trying to get more businesses to come back to Detroit and get more people hired. He says, well I’m going to call a meeting in my office and keep the parents calm and some of them are edgy and nervous and I’m going to be calling about fifty organizations, talk to them about what they’re doing. That’s how we got the Youth Day started. So in the meeting, in the big conference room that the mayor has, everybody introduced themselves. He points his finger at me and he says, “Ed, what are you guys gonna do next year?” This was in November, “what are you gonna do next summer to prevent this from happening again?” I said, “Mr. Mayor are you talking to me or are you talking to everybody in the room?” [He says] “Oh, I’m talking to everybody in the room, but I want you to carry the ball.” The next day I get a call from Tom Fox of Channel 2, Jerry Blocker of WWJ radio, ‘we hear you’re looking for a project.’ How did you hear that? He said, the word gets around. I was floored really, and he said, “why don’t we meet for breakfast tomorrow morning?” So we did and we came up with Metro Youth Day. We’ve received the Point of Light Award from the first President Bush and we are the largest youth group the state of Michigan and in the Midwest. If you get a chance you go to stop by and see this thing on the 15.
LW: And it’s on July 15?
ED: At the Belle Isle athletic field.
LW: Every year in July?
ED: Every year. Remember July was the riots.
LW: So it’s one of the positive things you’ve seen sort of come about since 1967. Going back to July of 1967, could you just tell me where specifically you were when you got the phone calls about the stores in distress? Where were you specifically?
ED: Where was I? Well, remember that it was a Sunday, beginning Monday I was in my office. That’s where the calls were coming.
LW: Did you hear anything over the weekend? I mean, on Sunday.
ED: Oh yeah, we were listening to the radio and watching TV, seeing all the flames, seeing all the problems, people running. Yeah, we saw all of that. It was very, very traumatic.
LW: Where were you living then?
ED: At that time I was living in an apartment with my wife, I had just gotten married, in Grosse Pointe Park. It was very close to Detroit; I was very close to the office at the time. So I would go to the office to be sure I was there getting the calls and they were coming in. We didn’t have email at the time, we did have faxes, but most of them were phone calls.
LW: And as soon as you saw the news did you anticipate getting phone calls from store owners?
ED: At the present time?
LW: At the time, in July 1967.
ED: Was I expecting more calls? Oh yes! We were getting the calls; we started a regular flow of calls. We had a staff of six people and I finally had everyone at a different phone so if somebody was busy they could get the phone for somebody else.
LW: So how did you handle, you had four hundred stores at that time?
ED: We had four hundred that were affected, we had thirty-four hundred members.
LW: So with that much volume with four hundred stores that were affected, what did you tell people on the phone when they called?
ED: I told them to be careful, stay out of the problems, don’t do anything illegal, be kind, try to help your customers in the area, if you’re really not burned and you have extra food invite them in and offer some apples and things to the kids and whatever. You had to do something. Or they closed up completely and stood guard with the family around the store. It was one or the other.
LW: How did either of those tactics work out? What did you see being the most effective?
ED: Well I think the fact that they were – and that some of them started being interviewed on radio and television, that’s another thing. They said, “Hey look”, you know, “my family and I are in the business, I don’t know why this is happening, I’ve done nothing wrong. And I want to get open again and get going,” that kind of thing helped because at that time there were no stores really open in the center city. They couldn’t go anywhere; they had to go to the suburbs. Many of them didn’t have cars. So they had to hurry up and solve this problem so these guys can get back in and do their jobs.
LW: So people were leaving the city in July of 1967, driving to the suburbs to get food?
ED: Some of them, some of them, not all of them.
LW: If they had cars?
ED: Oh yeah, because you know this thing lasted a week or more and you needed to provide some food for your family in that time, so where do you go? You didn’t go to the normal local grocery store where the army is patrolling the streets and the fires are burning. You go somewhere where you have safety.
LW: So did you end up going and having to survey any of the stores that had been damaged?
ED: I did, yes I did.
LW: What were some of the things you saw?
ED: Well, most of them were happy to see me because they know me. And they’d say, oh there’s Ed, he may do something about it. So I did what I could, I told you I met with all these organizations; Detroit Urban League, New Detroit, Ursells, Eastern Market people .That’s another thing, I formed the Eastern Market Merchants Association and today it’s a fabulous place, it wasn’t that good at the time, but today it’s beautiful. So, I mean you know, we did what we had to do to survive, that’s a good word: survive, and not have people think we were out to get them or to capitalize on their problems. So we had to be gentlemen, we had to do what we can to show that we were a good community-oriented people. You had to do that, even today in peaceful times you have to do that. And you notice how many people now are supporting Gleaners and the Forgotten Harvest, and that’s part of the deal, Salvation Army, United Way, Red Cross and other groups that are around. Everybody’s getting a lot more support than they ever got, which I think this is an immediate effect from the riot as a reaction, it took a little longer, but they realized they had to do something.
LW: So you see things as having improved, as more peaceful now, at least as far as stores are concerned and people have been inspired to give back via various charitable organizations.
ED: Yeah, people are more comfortable today. They are comfortable because there are more stores available, good stores with good product and fresh produce and new stores coming in all the time. So they’re comfortable, they’re happy and we want to keep them that way. We don’t want to go back to those old days you know. So it’s a much better situation. The retailers are happy, they are running good stores, they got good customers and they are growing. Some are opening a second and third store, different neighborhoods. I think that a result of that we’ve learned a big lesson; you got to be good to your customers, you cannot intimidate them, you cannot battle with them, you cannot be arrogant with them, you got to be a good business person and if you are they’ll appreciate it and you will succeed.
LW: So do you think some of the problems that happened, that sort of erupted in 1967 were the result of discrimination against certain customers?
ED: Yeah, I think there were some situations, not a lot. Some people may have thought maybe a store is over charging or something like that. I didn’t hear many of that but I’m sure there were one or two cases that came along. But if that happened and they were picketing the store, I would be at that store, I would go to that store. I even had a situation right after that, you’ve heard of—who’s the Hispanic from California that’s very well popular with the Hispanic people—Cesar Chavez. I was at the store one time and one of the members, a bigger store operator, called me and he said, Ed, what’s going on here? I said, what’s happened? He said, there is a big group of people picketing my stores, they want me to stop selling grapes. First of all, I don’t hardly have any grapes and I don’t know why they are picketing me I said, who is it? He said, I think it’s Cesar Chavez. I said give me your address. I rode right out there. I saw Cesar Chavez and I met him. And I said, Mr. Chavez, you’ve got such a wonderful reputation and all that, I said, what are you doing here? [He said] Oh I don’t want them to sell the grapes. I said, well I understand that you can say that all you want, but you know when you picket the retailor and ask the retailor to stop buying the grapes so you can hurt them you are violating the law, that’s an illegal third party kind of thing and you can’t do that. [He says] “Oh no? Oh I didn’t know that.” In about three hours they were gone. They left Detroit completely
LW: Why were they picketing?
ED: Well ‘cause they knew they couldn’t do it that way. If you want them to stop, run advertising or something. You can’t go to the store and picket somebody for nothing.
LW: Why were they upset about the grapes?
ED: Because it was a – there was some type of situation in California, where the grape growers and pickers were not getting a fair wage. So he was saying to them, so let’s go to the stores and have them stop selling grapes so maybe the retailers—well they were picking the wrong guys, they should’ve picked people over there.
LW: What year was that? Do you remember?
ED: That was about a year later, about [sic] ‘78. I don’t think they were connected. I just thought I’d let you know that.
LW: I see, interesting.
ED: It’s been interesting. I helped found the Gleaners Organization at one time, and then I stepped off the board for a while. I’ve been involved in so many organizations helping the city, everything I did I tried to have the organization giving something back. Whether it be college scholarships or funding or whatever. That seems to be the trend today. Detroit is in a better situation than they’ve ever been and it should be better along the way. There is an attitude now, when we dedicated Shed 5 of Eastern Market three weeks ago it was phenomenal, the people were thrilled and packed and this is great. So I know we are doing the right thing right now.
LW: Long term, what is your sort of goal? What would you like to see happen with the grocery stores?
ED: You know as I said earlier, we had six chain stores with the lowest priced foods in the country. I don’t know if we’ll ever get there again, but I would like the retailers to have a good image, treat their customers right. They have the customers say, hey, I have confidence in where I shop. That alone, those two things would be great, I’d be happy with that and have them continue to give something back to the community, and I think we are there now. You know we have a whole big group from Iraq, which is an Arabic background, that came after the Iraq War and everything. We must have 60,000 of them today and most of them are in the food business. We have lawyers, we have doctors, we have all of them, but that is one area, well they come in with nothing. And what do you do? You open up a store, you put some canned goods and potato chips and whatever; you don’t have to cut meats or anything because you don’t know how. Just some packaged goods and cigarettes and hope you can make a living. That’s what they were doing. Well those same people today are running big supermarkets. Hard work, you know if you work hard and do good, you’ll be a success.
LW: Is there anything else you want to talk about?
ED: No, I think that – I’m so happy I’m here talking to you about it. I never thought we’d have a chance. I was so happy that the Historical Society or the museum was doing this because I thought we were all done with the ‘67 riots.
LW: So you think it’s worth talking about and bringing up?
ED: Absolutely. Let me say something to you; let’s think about today and the future. There was a big lesson here, in Detroit. The lesson should’ve been taught to the people in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland. You don’t have to have a big rioting and skip the whole community thing just to get something going that you think should happen. You do it peacefully, you don’t start burning down the stores and this and that. And I’m very sorry that happened in those communities. It’s like repeating what we saw in 1967, I didn’t like seeing that at all. I’m saying to myself, hey, what’s that matter with you people, why are you doing this? Now I know in those cases there were murders, we didn’t have the murders here at the time, but still, there are ways to deal with them. That’s all I’m saying, we should be able to respect one another, come together as a community, not everybody can have 100 percent of what they want, so let’s compromise, everybody compromise, help each other, be peaceful, good neighbors. If we do that we are going to have a great community, if we don’t do that we are going to have problems forever. And I don’t want to see that. That’s it.
LW: Thank you for talking to us and taking the time we appreciate it.
ED: I just hope I’ve enlightened you or given you some background.
LW: Of course. Thank you so much.
**NL: Today is June 18th, 2015. This is the interview of Carter Grabarczyk and Nancy Grabarczyk. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan and this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Carter could you tell me where and when you were born?
CG: I was born in Detroit, Michigan on January 11th, 1945 just shortly after dinosaurs roamed the earth. [Laughter]
NL: And Nancy when and where you were born?
NG: I was born in Detroit, Michigan—Booth Memorial Hospital which doesn’t exist anymore. November 2nd, 1953.
NL: Where were each of you living July of 1967?
NG: I was living in Detroit, the Detroit area, by Plymouth and—
CG: Milford Green?
NG: No, that was later.
CG: Oh, that’s right.
NG: Plymouth and would have been Stahelin. I remember the [unclear] – by Southfield and Plymouth, that area.
CG: You gotta speak up—I don’t know if that’s picking it up or not—but that’s okay.
NG: [unclear]
NL: There we go. And where were you living at that time?
CG: East Dearborn.
NL: How would you describe the makeup of the neighborhoods you were living in at that time? What was the sense of community there? What types of people were living there?
CG: Well East Dearborn was probably, this was the era of Orville Hubbard as mayor which is a whole other story unto itself and basically it was fifty percent Polish and fifty percent Italian. That was pretty much it in the east end of Dearborn at least.
NG: Where I lived it was small brick homes, all white neighborhood, we all played in the streets ‘til the street lights came on then you came home. Pretty much middle class neighborhood.
NL: What are your memories of Detroit and the region in the mid-1960s?
NG: Well my dad was a Detroit Police sergeant so, he was tied up in all of this quite a bit. I was just in junior high school so my dad was obviously part of the police crew downtown during the riots. He came home with—they wore green battle helmets like army helmets.
NL: You’re talking about in 1967 specifically?
NG: Yup. And I remember snipers were aiming for the officers so he had my mother ripping the sergeant’s stripes off of all of his clothes and he’d wear them down there so he wouldn’t be as much of a target. And we also had a sniper on the elementary school around the corner that I use to go to so I remember the whole neighborhood was just afraid. They were – nobody turned their lights on everybody stayed in the dark just in case the guy decided to take a walk and start shooting at anyplace that had lights on. And nobody, nobody went to bed until my dad came home those nights because we wanted to make sure he was walking in the door. But, that’s basically my story.
NL: Do you remember how long some of his shifts were then? Was it out of the ordinary compared to the usual working day, working week?
NG: They were, as I’m recalling, twelve hour shifts and it was rough. I remember my dad saying it was rough because the following year he had twenty five years in and he said, “That’s it I can’t handle it anymore. It’s too rough that’s enough.” [Laughter]
NL: So he retired?
NG: He retired.
NL: What was his name?
NG: Robert Steele.
CG: With a “e.”
NG: Yeah, S-T-E-E-L-E. Sergeant Robert Steele.
NL: Do you have any other specific recollections about growing up at that time especially—I imagine you were watching the news—
NG: We were watching the news of all the stuff. That area of Detroit was really safe, we never locked our doors, unless you went away for a vacation, you never locked your doors especially with a policeman in the family.
CG: Her dad did have to live in Detroit because at the time police officers were required to live in the city
NG: It was required.
CG: So they had these various neighborhoods where the police, fire department, you know, lived.
NG: Yeah
NL: So most of your neighbors were police and fire?
NG: Well actually no, I didn’t know any other police or fire in our neighborhood.
CG: Oh, alright. ‘Cause I thought that—
NG: [talking over each other] No, actually. There were areas like that when I went to high school there was an area like that just borderline of Dearborn Heights where police and firemen all lived. But no when I was growing up we didn’t, I didn’t know any other police officers or—
CG: I got it confused. [Unclear, talking over each other]
NG: Fire people. Regular middle class, played out in the streets until the lights came on, you know, folks didn’t see you all day. It was safe, real safe, nobody, like I say, locked their doors. Kids were able to run around free, you know, ride their bikes where ever, played ball in the streets [laughter] all that kind of stuff, walked to school. No particular issues until all of this came up in ‘67, snipers and that business we never even thought about it, it was a shock to us kids because we use to everything being so safe, it was our safe haven. Like I say that particular area was an all-white area and the schools were all white.
NL: What did your dad say about his day’s work and the police efforts at that time?
NG: It was rough. The looting and people lighting stuff on fire. He said it was just crazy, that people had no—seemed to have no value for human life or things. They just went berserk. He used to say maybe the heat drove them berserk. I don’t know they went crazy breaking into places and stealing and looting and burning down things, like that was gonna help anything but it wasn’t. And the police were afraid because they were aiming at them, it was like war basically is what he said it was, like being in a war. We breathed a sigh of relief when he walked in the door.
NL: Carter could you tell me about where you were working at this time?
CG: Yes, I was working at two places. I don’t know if you want me to begin at the beginning at this point or not, but basically I’ll set the stage. Ever since 1963 I was in broadcast engineering I was a ham radio operator, my dad was a radio guy, just liked radio all my life so ‘63 I started in broadcasting at local radio stations like WGPR and so on WLIN. I ended up being the chief engineer at WGPR which has nothing to do with anything. But in any event, the ultimate goal back then of people in broadcasting was to get into television and the hot TV station back then was Channel 2, CBS, WJBK-TV. They had Walter Cronkite and that was the number one station in Detroit. So, one of my ham radio acquaintances was the chief engineer there. He said, “Anybody that has a ham license and their first class radio telephone license I will give you a summer job.” It’s what they call the VRT, a vacation relief technician, which is just what it implied cause most of the full time guys wanted to go on vacation in the summer you, had college kids that said, okay fine we got a job for you. So, that was my full time forty hour a week job for the summer of 1966 and 1967. In the summer of 1967 I also had a part time job as what they called the contract chief engineer for WQRS which was the classical music station in Detroit at the time. And we were in the Maccabees Building, which I guess it is again but it was called the School Center Building at the time. That’s where the WQRS studios were and their transmitter was in that building and their antenna was in that building. So long story short I had a key to the roof to get up on the roof. So that’s—if you want to start about the riot stuff that was the beginning of the beginning I guess. Basically that Sunday afternoon I was home listening to the radio and heard some news broadcasts saying there was some kind of disturbance in downtown Detroit. They made it sound, you know little something is going on not a big deal blah, blah, blah. So this is Sunday and I called a friend of mine another ham radio buddy I said, “You know, why don’t we go downtown I got a key we’ll get up on the roof of the School Center Building and see what’s going on?” He says “Great.” He lived a couple of blocks away we get in the car in East Dearborn and drive down to the School Center Building, go up on the roof and that was—that was the mistake. ‘Cause we thought we would see some minor stuff when we were on the roof it was just crazy, it was going wild. It was to the north, to the south, to the east, to the west. You kept seeing power lines going down, power transformers lighting up, you heard burglar alarms going off, you heard breaking glass. Quite frankly, I was twenty-two at the time my buddy was the same age, we were sort of scared, we said, “You know, maybe we got in over our heads.” What started out as a school boy lark, maybe wasn’t. It looked a lot more serious than they said on the radio, a lot more serious than we expected it to be, so we said “Well, let’s get the hell out of here and get back home.” So we did. So the only problem with that was your humble narrator had to work on Sunday evening, Channel 2 had swing shift so I had to work at five o’clock or six o’clock that evening. So, bottom line, an hour or two later after my buddy and I got back I had to turn around and go back downtown only now I was – real white-knuckle trip driving back down to the Channel 2 studios which was on Second just north of the Boulevard is where they were located. I got there okay and then, as it turns out typically the summer kids had one of three jobs either you were a camera man or you ran the audio board in the master control room for the live TV broadcasts or, you were on what they called film sound. Back then they didn’t have video tape, it was actually film. The news crews were a three person crew they had a sixteen millimeter camera man, an actual film camera man, and they had the talent or the announcer or who do you wanna call it, and they had what they called film sound guy which was me. You were sort of the driver, the general gopher, and you had a maybe six or eight foot cable you hooked up to the sixteen millimeter Arkon film camera and you tagged along behind the film camera man, wherever he went you ran the sound. You had your earphones and your little audio control box. So, having said all that, he said, “Guess what boys? You’re gonna be on the film sound crew.” This was okay with us because heck we were twenty-two and we were immortal and the old guys were no fools, they said “You know, it’s probably a lot safer here in the studio so we’ll let the kids go out.” That is basically how it all started on that Sunday afternoon and once that started, by the way, all the regular shifts were off, all bets were off and basically you literally started about five o’clock each evening till about eight, nine or ten the next morning for the entirety of the whole riot. Again kids, we liked them, we got a lot of overtime ‘cause it was a union shop so if we worked overtime they had to pay us. Having said that, that is basically how it started.
NL: How does that compare to a normal shift during the rest of the summer?
CG: Normal shift was eight hours a day, and they had—swing shift, isn’t quite the right term for it. They just had a screwball shift, I don’t know any other way to describe it—you might be on days one week, you might be on evenings the other week, you might be on midnights the week after that. One week you might have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, the next week you might have Thursdays and Fridays off. So it was just –
NL: Very irregular.
CG: It was very irregular but it was a forty hour week.
NL: Can you tell me about the rest of your experiences working on the film sound as the week progressed and what you observed in that time.
CG: Well yes, that first Sunday night – maybe it was six or seven o’clock, [unclear] the film sound or the news reel crews were directed by our news office. We had a big news office, news director that had all kinds of police radio so they knew where the action was, so then they would call on our radio, on our Channel 2 station wagon, and tell us where to head and where the action was, if you will. They wanted us to go down to a hospital and I think it was Detroit Receiving, but I can’t remember for sure, ‘cause again it was almost fifty years ago, duh. But we had a three man crew, we had the film camera man, and myself, and our so-called stand up talent was Jerry Hodak. You know as it turns out—
NL: The weather guy?
CG: Yeah, but he started out at the most lowly level at Channel 2 doing what they called film cleaning, which is literally you have the two cranks, you’re holding a little cloth and cleaning the film so not a rocket science job, but then he went to being a booth announcer, and then just at that time I think ‘66, ‘67 he was doing booth announcing and he was just starting his weather career. So he was the stand up talent. The three of us we went over to this hospital, probably Receiving Hospital, and I got all the stuff out, the lighting and the camera man got his stuff set up, put in his new film. Jerry Hodak, you know, got all spiffed up. While we’re doing this we’re outside of the door of the emergency room and here is is this gurney that they’re rolling a person on, male, African-American male, and what I noticed about him of all things was the socks he had on. Bright, bright, bright, glow-in-the-dark orange socks. So they rolled him in the doors to the emergency room closed, blah, blah, blah, and then Jerry is doing his little stand up bit saying, “Here we are at the hospital blah, blah, blah.” Then we’re just putting things back together and getting ready to leave when the door to the ER opens again here comes this gurney with a sheet over the guy’s face. And the only reason I knew it was him, because the sheet was pulled up over his face so you knew he was dead, but you could see it was the bright orange socks, so he’s got to have been one of, if not the first guy that—first, you know, casualty.
NL: Where else did your work take you, what other parts of the city?
CG: Well basically everywhere, literally everywhere. From as close as the roof of the building to wherever there was trouble, they would dispatch us; go here, go there, go wherever. One of the other film camera men, a guy named Sid Siegal, we went up on the roof of our building which was a two story building. We were on the west side of Second and on the east side of Second was a place called Annis Furs, so we just filmed these guys looting Annis Furs. Let me just check my notes here, let’s see where else did we go? Over on Belle Isle the old bathhouses it’s the same position as the current bathhouses, but those aren’t there anymore, they knocked them down and put up the current ones, but apparently the jails were becoming overflowing so they needed someplace to put these perceived trouble makers, whatever you want to call it, into these bathhouses. What struck me as odd about that was, in front of each bathhouse, they had a thirty or thirty-five foot scaffolding. They had guards on top of each scaffolding, they made it into like a guard tower with machine guns. I’m thinking, “Geez what are they going to do, machine gun somebody if they try and get out?” Be that as it may that struck me as a little odd on that. Another time, like I said it was very surreal, we were going north on 12th Street which is where the riots started, this was maybe two or three or four days into the riot. Many of the homes were burnt out, I mean literally burned right to the ground, the only thing that was left was the basement—no walls, no nothing just literally the basement. No lights cause all the electricity was out, power lines had burned down, transformers shorted out, blew up. What was just really eerie and surreal, was the gas pipe coming out of the basement wall was still on fire, it was flickering. so there was literally three or four or five foot vertical flames of the natural gas just in all these burned out basements it was just eerie as hell. Really, really spooky looking.
NG: And you wonder why the cops were scared. [Laughter]
NL: No, I don’t actually.
CG: This is a side story, as a professional courtesy I guess the guy from, the reporter from Die Welt which means “The World” in German that was their newspaper in Germany and he was here he said “Gee can I ride around with you guys?” so we said sure. So we had an extra passenger with us.
NL: Were there any other people from foreign press and correspondents that you had contact with?
CG: I’m sure there were others, but that was the only one that we had contact with.
NL: Do you know what brought him there?
CG: Well the riots brought him there obviously.
NL: I mean from Germany, like who he worked with.
CG: Like I said it’s called Die Welt
NL: Oh that was the name of— [talking over each other] Got it.
CG: —which means in German “The World” which is their newspaper that he was from that he worked for. Another minor misadventure, we had what they call a loading dock at the back of the studio, where you stored all the flats and the scenery and so on. It had a big, maybe fifteen foot high corrugated steel door so you could load and unload stuff. Our art director was out there having a smoke. All of a sudden we heard something come rattling through the steel door, corrugated steel door, oh, look at that, and he went over and picked it up. It was a fifty caliber, stray fifty caliber machine gun bullet. So he picked it up, drilled a hole through it and put it on his key chain for a good luck charm.
NL: What’s the most striking visual memory of that time for you?
CG: Probably on Twelfth Street with the natural gas flames, that was one of the most vivid although they all were. That was another thing that was strange was they had a curfew. I think it was either eight or nine or ten o’clock at night. Our studio was up in the New Center area. Jerry Cavanagh, who was the mayor at the time, was having a press conference somewhere downtown at city hall or whatever. So we were driving down Woodward, literally other than armed personnel carriers and tanks, that was the first bizarre thing, was seeing tanks going down your home city driving down the street. The second thing was nobody else was out, we were just literally going fifty, sixty miles an hour blowing through red lights. Just no traffic which was, you know, I thought, quite weird. Then on this one sound news reel somebody asked Cavanagh if there were any snipers he said “No,” and you can hear some laughter in the background, and it was our film crew because we had been sniped at! No! [Unclear] we didn’t say anything, but…
NL: Did the news teams have permission to be out past the curfew because of the nature of the work?
CG: Oh yeah, because we were news, oh yeah, like I say, we were literally out from five or six at night until eight, nine, ten the next morning.
NL: And the police and National Guard didn’t harass or take issue?
CG: Well one time, we did have a police officer ride with us—I can’t remember the reason, but we did have a police officer in the car with us. We were going again around the 12th Street area I just remember someone was sniping at us so we all bailed out and hid behind the car. The cop pulled out his service revolver, but he didn’t shoot back ‘cause we couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
NL: In your travels around the city that week, do you remember coming upon any neighborhoods and parts of the city that seemed not to be affected by looting and burning and rioting, or less so than others?
CG: No. To state the obvious again they dispatched us, and they dispatched us to where the action was. So they’re not going to say go to this nice quiet neighborhood and take film of that, it’s like, what’s the point? Everything we saw was where bad things were happening.
NG: Although, I was gonna say, even in the nice quiet neighborhoods there were things happening like a sniper on the school roof, places where you wouldn’t expect it.
CG: Well that’s true—
NG: We expected it downtown you didn’t expect it in our little cove.
CG: I guess we did, when they brought in the National Guard or the 82nd Airborne or whoever and they were camped out at the fairgrounds so we went up there to film that, so that was – there wasn’t any shooting going on then, we just filmed all the guys, the military and the guard and everything being camped out but usually we went where the action was, matter of fact I remember one time they sent us to where a fire was, a building that had been torched ‘cause that was the big thing, there was a lot of, literally, torching going on, the fire department was there and they started sniping at the firemen. So the firemen got out and we got the hell out rather than get shot. We said oh, no. The camera man I was working with most of the time was a fella named Mike Weir—W-E-I-R. He was, I don’t know five, eight, nine years older than me. He was, talk about fearless, even more immortal than a twenty-two year old kid. So here I am with a six foot cord dragging behind this guy: I said, “Take it easy, keep us out of danger.” Literally no fear, that scared me a bit.
NL: Historians often use the word riot to describe this moment in Detroit’s history and you have used it a few times yourself. For each of you is that the most accurate word to describe the events of July 1967 or would you call it another way?
CG: Well as opposed to what?
NG: That’s what I was used to hearing.
CG: That’s what we heard.
NG: That’s what we heard, I mean as a kid, that’s what they talked about, that’s what they talked about on the news, that’s what my dad talked about when he came home, that’s what he called it.
CG: For better or for worse that’s what we called it. For lack of a better term, I guess we’re just playing semantics here a little bit, when people are throwing Molotov cocktails—
NG: Yeah, everybody refers to that time as the ‘67 riots.
CG: Yeah, you know you see tanks going down Woodward Avenue and the neighborhoods – some of the neighborhoods we saw about tanks in other places too. I guess for lack of a better term, maybe it was possibly the wrong term, but that is the term that everybody used was “The Riot”.
NG: In the Sixties it was one of the biggest things. You had the Kennedy assassination, which I totally remember and then you had the ’67 riots and those are the things you remember about the Sixties in Detroit.
CG: Oh yeah I guess one other—though I wasn’t directly related to this, we had heard this—this was right near our studio between us on Second and between the John Lodge [US-10], there was a Howard Johnson’s hotel. There was some out-of-town lady that was a visitor there and she was on the second or third story somewhere up [indistinguishable]. Bottom line, she got killed, they don’t know if it was an actual sniper or if it was just a stray bullet but she was, I wanna say Connecticut, again going back fifty years, but she was definitely out of state and definitely visiting, she was like “Look at all that’s going on” [mimics a gunshot] killed her dead.
NG: Not a place you wanted to be.
NL: No not at that time at least.
NG: Yeah and in our neighborhood we went from being extremely safe as kids you know, to wondering if somebody was going to come get us in our home. It was fear.
NL: That was pervasive throughout?
NG: Oh, extremely, especially, you know, there’s a lot of kids in that neighborhood, and it was – with that sniper thing, it didn’t occur to us that the stuff downtown could touch us, until the sniper thing. Then it was like, my God this could—you know, somebody could kill us out here.
CG: I remember when I went home to Dearborn every morning after our shift was done good old Mayor Orville Hubbard had the streets entering Dearborn blocked off with police. He had police guarding it, he was obviously a well-known racist for lack of a better term,
NG: Extreme.
CG: Extreme racist, for lack of a better term, but he literally had armed policemen at every entrance to the city. I remember specifically Michigan Avenue, Ford Road, where it crossed into the west side of Detroit. He had the roads blocked I didn’t see this for a fact, but I am pretty sure if you were black you better have a damn good reason for wanting to come into Dearborn before the police would let you go through.
NG: They knew you didn’t live there.
NL: Do you remember other instances of discrimination against non-white people either specifically as a result of the events of July 1967 or even earlier in the Sixties in Detroit, was that something pervasive in your lives?
NG: Well, in mine, yes, because of my dad being a police officer. It was, among the white police officers it was, you know – I used to say – I mean my dad was a good guy, but I used to tell people that my dad made Archie Bunker look like a liberal [laughter], look like a liberal, but it was because of all the experiences he had.
CG: Well that was, let’s face it, that’s the way it was in that era. It’s not like today by a long shot. It was literally a whole different world.
NG: And it was rough and you know you’re in a job like police in those areas of Detroit, let’s face it.
CG: Although in my case not so much ‘cause like I said, even starting in ‘63 I was chief engineer at WGPR. And they were basically a ninety-nine percent black radio station, so I never, quite frankly, never noticed it there particularly.
NG: See yours was different I went from a total all white neighborhood to all white schools.
CG: Well so was Dearborn, duh.
NG: Yeah, but to having my dad being right down there and then…
CG: Just a side story, the one of the black secretaries at WGPR, very nice lady, very pretty and that— I asked one the other guys why she was there, he said “Eye candy for the boss.” [laughter] He might have been a little sexist, be that as it may. Long story short, she was one of the people who did sadly drink the Kool-Aid down in Jonestown. Sorry, had nothing to do with the riots. Other than that I never really had much racism, my mother I guess pretty liberal and you know “don’t use the n-word” so I was pretty much brought up that way, not like her dad being a Detroit cop.
NG: See, I heard it all the time, it was a totally different life that I grew up in. But, I grew up wanting to be totally different from what I heard growing up. Once I actually got out into the world and was working with all these diverse people I was like, this is nuts, you know, from the way I grew up I’m totally a liberal now so—
CG: Your father would be so proud.
NL: [laughter] But that was his environment that he worked in for twenty five years, it was dangerous. It was a dangerous era, more so than when he got into the police force. You know the Sixties was just like ‘I can’t take this anymore I’m out of here’. But we did remain living in Detroit even when he retired. Bought a house in Detroit.
NL: So in the last year we have seen some things in the United States and the world that are sort of reminiscent as you think about events in Baltimore and Missouri that are sort of reminiscent of 1967 in Detroit.
NG: It’s scary.
NL: It is scary, and the same issues are still very real in so many people’s lives. From your vantage points, do you think that those tensions and issues regarding race in Detroit specifically in the last fifty years—has it increased, decreased, stayed the same? What do you notice that’s different and the same in that regard?
NG: I think it’s decreased somewhat, but now lately with all of this unrest, those of us that lived through those times worry about it happening again.
CG: I would agree. I would say it decreased but it’s still there, still keeps rearing its ugly head here and there.
NG: There is a fear of it happening again especially with you know, Baltimore and Missouri and all that, it’s like ‘oh my god, it’s not going to be happening again, we already went through this, this should be over’.
NL: What part of town do you guys live in now?
CG: Farmington Hills.
NL: And how long have you all been out there?
NG: Thirty-seven years.
NL: Wow.
CG: Yeah it was thirty-three years in Dearborn, and about thirty-seven--
NG: We got married in Detroit, I lived in Detroit until I got married so, we got married in ’78, got married in Detroit. It’s a really rough area right now where we used to live. [Laughter]
LW: What was your address in Detroit?
NG: 19629…
CG: West Chicago.
NG: West Chicago. It was a couple blocks off of Evergreen. That’s where people are getting shot now, down by Cody, and Cody High School and stuff. I didn’t go to Cody I went to Catholic school, Bishop Borges at Plymouth and Telegraph. Now in that area, it’s pretty dangerous.
NL: Is there anything else that either of you would like to add about your recollections of this time period and the history of the City of Detroit?
NG: Well like I said most things I remember about the Sixties have to do with music. I grew up in the Motown era—with all of that which really thrilled my father—[laughter] playing all this music.
NL: Do you remember at that time did—a good chunk of those recording artists are from Detroit born and raised did they take on any specific role in talking about the riots and addressing what was happening?
NG: Not that I really recall, I mean that’s about all we listened to.
CG: My contact with Motown was before the riots when I was with WGPR, like I said it was a black radio station and one of the DJs had a connection to Motown. So he got early releases or pre-releases but that was four years before the riots. [talking over each other]
NG: I remember I was a kid walking around with my transistor radio listening to it and I had older siblings who had all the record albums and stuff so I was playing all that stuff, everything not just Motown, but being from Motown you were proud of being from Motown because that’s where all this good music came from.
NL: We still are today.
NG: Absolutely.
NL: Well thank you both so much for coming in and sharing your memories and stories with us.
CG: Thank you.
**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.
**NL: Today is June 30, 2015. This is the interview of Kathleen Kurta by Noah Levinson. We are at the Sparrow Hospice House of Mid-Michigan, which is on West Saginaw Street in Lansing, Michigan, and this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Kathy, could you start by telling me where and when you were born?
KK: I was born on Valentine’s Day, 1950, in a little hospital called Brent General across from the University of Detroit.
NL: And where were you living when you were growing up?
KK: We had a little home—my dad bought a honeymoon home for my mom when they were married—and it was in northwest Detroit on Carlin Street and it was one block west of Schaefer and right in the middle between Plymouth and West Chicago.
NL: And where were you living in 1967?
KK: In 1967, that was my home. I was a junior in high school.
NL: So, you spent all your years growing up there.
KK: I did, we didn’t move once.
NL: What do you remember about that neighborhood around Schaeffer and Chicago?
KK: I remember that we had a lot of friends in that neighborhood and we got along. There were elderly people in the neighborhood; there were kids in the neighborhood. My dad always helped some of the elderly women in the neighborhood, and taught us how to do that—we shoveled snow, we raked the leaves, we took food over to them. There was an elderly lady across the street—both directions across the street—we had a corner house.
The thing I didn’t like about that was that I went to school off West Chicago and Mendota area at Epiphany School—it was a Catholic school—and we were a mile and a quarter away from our friends—our school friends. So—it didn’t stop us—we continued to ride bikes back and forth, but, our immediate friends from school were a little farther away from us. But, it was a good neighborhood. We liked it—we never moved—we stayed there, and it was a great place to grow up.
NL: Was it an integrated neighborhood very much?
KK: Initially no, it was not integrated. As I got older, we started to get more African American families that moved into the neighborhood. One of the elderly women that my dad used to help was one that was across the street. I remember her first name, Mrs. Hogue, and he used to do favors for her—like I said, rake the leaves, shovel the snow, push her car when she got stuck, and so on—but it became more integrated as the years went on, but not initially.
NL: Do you remember noticing any changes around the neighborhood as it became more integrated, or was it just that different people were living there?
KK: You know, I don’t know if it was because it was becoming more integrated, but what I noticed was that there was more crime in the neighborhood, and I have no idea what the—what the “why.” I can’t blame it on anything. I know that we had—a body was found in the alley behind our house; there were homes that were robbed; our house was robbed, on the corner. So I don’t know if it had to do with integration or if it just had to do with that was those were people and that was just what happened, and eventually my folks moved from there in the mid Seventies—also into Detroit—but my dad changed jobs and moved. But my dad was also an insurance salesman for a while and he worked with National Life Insurance, and his debit was 12th Street and some of the inner-city neighborhoods, and he used to walk from place to place. He loved it; the people watched out for him; but he, too, was robbed several times. Not hurt, thankfully—once he had a gun to his head and another time he had a knife at his neck. That was not our neighborhood, but it was also was one of the reasons why he got out of that job and we found him a different one, and that made them have to move from the neighborhood.
NL: What do you remember about Detroit in general, growing up in the fifties and early/mid-sixties as a whole city?
KK: I loved Detroit—absolutely loved Detroit—and when I meet people in my work here as a social worker and they’ll say “Detroit?” and they make a face, and you know when I grew up in Detroit, it was a wonderful place. I would as a teenage girl would take the bus anywhere in the city of Detroit. I went to Immaculata High School—we had a lot of research papers to do. By myself as a teenager, took the bus, two buses, three buses sometimes, down to the Main Library, down to the Historical Museum, shopped at Hudson’s, shopped at Kresge’s, loved to go to Baker’s shoes, all the stuff that was on Woodward Avenue. And I would do that myself, or with girlfriends, and so I loved it. I felt safe. My dad took us always—we lived in the summertime at Briggs Stadium, Tiger Stadium. Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays—Ladies’ Day—you could sit in the bleachers for fifty cents. And now I sound like my father, getting old with his, with all of his old stories.
NL: No, frankly I’m jealous. I would love to spend my Saturdays at Briggs or Comerica—
KK: You know, Briggs Stadium, and then it was Tiger [Stadium]—
But it was a great place, we weren’t afraid. We loved it. We were involved in things. You know, as a little child my mom took me on the bus, we went to Sears, we paid the bills. Went to the—we lived on the west side; my mother had friends on the east side; we would take buses to go from our northwest Detroit to the far east side, that’s just what we did.
NL: Tell my about your experiences in July 1967, please.
In July 1967 I had a summer job. I was 17, and that was the year between my junior and senior year of high school. And just to back up, one of the traditions in my family was—for years— was every Sunday morning we went on a picnic out to Island Lake. We would pack up the car the night before as much as we could, we went to 6:30 mass on Sunday morning, and by eight o’clock—it was a short mass—and by eight o’clock we were already on the road out to Island Lake, so we would have breakfast, lunch, dinner, swim, do whatever.
NL: Where is that place?
KK: Island Lake is near Kensington [Metropark].
NL: Okay.
KK: I think it’s called the Island Lake Recreation Area now. But that July—whatever Sunday that was—was a beautiful day, and my family was going on a picnic, and I could not, because I had a summer job and I had to work, and I was mad, cause I didn’t want to go to work.
My job was behind the counter at Greenfield’s Restaurant on Woodward in downtown Detroit. So we made salads, you know, just kept the—it was a cafeteria-style restaurant—and so my job was to keep things supplied, and mostly I was behind the salad counter and the desserts, running back and forth.
So that’s where I was on Sunday in that July, and I can’t remember what time in the afternoon, but somehow the managers there got word that there was a riot breaking out in Detroit, and they began to send the employees home. I had taken the bus there. My family was out on a picnic. I was not afraid to take the buses. I had taken the Grand River bus—the Plymouth bus, and I transferred on to the Grand River bus—and took that down to work.
What we saw eventually, was just masses of people running in front of the restaurant. Some had bats, some just were waving their arms, but it was just a huge mob of people.
NL: Even downtown?
KK: Downtown Detroit. Well, and Greenfield’s was not downtown—as you look at it, it was a little farther out, but was still considered downtown.
NL: Where was the restaurant, would you say Woodward and what, approximately?
KK: Oh, I knew you were going to ask me that. [laughter] I can’t remember, it was beyond—do I want to say, Kirby Park? It was, hmm, beyond where the museum, beyond the library—you know what, I can’t tell you.
NL: Like further from the river than the museums are?
KK: Maybe. I can’t recall the street names.
NL: It’s alright, we’ll do some research, why don’t you go back to telling us about, you said you saw lots of people running around in front of the restaurant.
KK: Yeah, you know, I was working there and they were saying on the radio they were sending people home—but eventually, it was just a huge mass of people, and the front of the restaurant was all picture windows.
And at the time, besides the regular restaurant manager, we also had a district manager who was visiting, who was from Ohio. And—just a little aside—if you can think of Don Knotts, and Barney Fife, and The Andy Griffith Show, that’s kind of how his personality was. So he got really excited, but as the people were going, they locked the restaurant doors, they had turned the tables over, and he was hollering in the restaurant like Barney Fife, “Hit the dirt, hit the dirt.”
And we all were afraid, so we were behind the tables, some of us were behind the counters—the food counters—some went back into the kitchen, but people were just laying low because they weren’t sure what was going to be happening. So, those who could go home, left. Very few had cars, but some were able to catch a bus and get out of the area. The bus I needed to catch to go home was the Grand River bus, and Grand River—according to the reports that they had heard—was the area that was mostly being affected and they were not running busses on Grand River.
So I was stuck—downtown—and what I learned later is, in the meantime my dad had come home, my mom and dad from the picnic, and my dad wanted to come down and pick me up. He was having a conniption at home that I was not safe. He called the police, and the police had already at that time put a curfew in effect. And they said to my dad, “If you do go down and pick her up, and we find you on the street, you’ll be arrested.”
And my dad just, he was a wreck at home, and my mom later said he just paced back and forth, cause he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t want me there—but he had no choice.
So the district manager at the restaurant—the one that was visiting from Ohio—said to me that I would have to spend the night in the YWCA. He asked me if I knew where it was, I said I had not a clue where the YWCA was, I didn’t frequent it, so I didn’t know. So eventually we got out, we went into his car, and we were going to drive around downtown Detroit looking for the “Y.” I didn’t want to go to the Y, I was scared, I wanted to go home, but he wasn’t going to drive me home. I think he didn’t know the area, so he didn’t know quite where to go with me in the car.
So as we drove around downtown it was—actually downtown was kind of dead—when we really got to the downtown area where Hudson’s and the other stores were, there was hardly a car on the street. But we were approached by a taxicab, and the taxicab was driven by an African American driver, a cabbie, and he came up, he kind of put his car next to us, when the light changed, rolled down his window, and he asked if we needed help. And what he said was, that he noticed the out of state license plate. He saw the Ohio license plates on the car, wanted to know if we were lost, could he give us directions. So the district manager told him that he had this young girl in his car, they were looking for the Y, because she couldn’t get home and she needed to stay someplace. And as I said, the last place I wanted to be was in the Y because I didn’t want to be by myself. I had no money. I had no transportation. I had no way, and I had no idea what was happening. So the taxi driver said to the manager, “I would be willing to take her home.” Well then I kind of inwardly panicked over that one, because they were all taking about this was being a race riot, and a 17-year-old white girl going in a taxicab with a black man at that point was not cool.
But I wanted to go home. So I took a chance and I got out of the car, I went in the cab with the driver. He told me to sit in the front seat rather than in the back seat, and as I did that the district manager just drove away, and there I was. So I had no chance to change my mind if I wanted to change my mind. And so he asked me where I lived. I gave him my address. I told him the cross streets and all of that, and that I had usually gone up Grand River to go home, and he thought from the reports that he had heard on the radio, that if he went up Michigan Avenue instead of Grand River, that we might be able to get to my house. So we were going to head in that direction.
The other thing he told me, you know he looked right at me in the front seat, and he said, “If I tell you to get on the floor, get on the floor.” I wasn’t sure why at that point. I later learned, again, that if a black man was seen with a young teenage white girl in the car, this would not be good for either of us. So as we drove up Michigan Avenue—actually he was a wonderful man, and he shared about his family—and what he told me was that he was not able to go home either.
He lived on West Grand Boulevard, and West Grand Boulevard was up in flames and smoke as well, and so he had no way of communicating with his wife to see if she and his family were safe, to see if his house was safe. So he asked me about my family, so we had a wonderful conversation actually on the way home, just about life, and things that were important to him, things that were important to me.
It was interesting because I learned that this gentleman was as scared as I was. Older, married, kids working already, you know, versus my 17 years—but he was just as afraid as I was and afraid for his family. So, he eventually got me home, parked the car in front of the house, came around, opened the door, let me out of the car, and literally walked me up to the front porch, where my dad was just standing by the door. He gave me to my dad, and my dad was so excited—he had tears in his eyes—he was happy, he thanked the guy, offered to pay him whatever he could pay him that he got me home safely, invited him in for something to eat, invited him in for a drink, but he didn’t take any of that. He accepted no money, he declined to drink, he declined any kind of food, but what he did ask my dad was, “Please say a prayer that my family is okay.” And so obviously my dad was a praying man anyways, and so he did, and we did pray for him.
As I look back, I wish I knew his name, I wish—he told me his name, but I don’t recall what it was—I wish even through this project, I wish there was a way that that man, if he’s still alive, would come forward with his story.
NL: I’ll let you know if we find any similar stories from a cab driver.
KK: Would you do that? Seriously, from a cab driver, you know! So he was older than me, so he might be gone already. But I learned a lot from that man: that people are people, and it didn’t make any difference what your background was, what your color was, and I think—you know, I had gone to Catholic school and we were minimally integrated in my high school, at least when I was there—but you know I was taught by the IHM [Immaculate Heart of Mary] nuns, and they taught us well, that you accept people, that you care for people, no matter what.
My dad worked in insurance, and like I said earlier, his debit was right in the heart of where the riots broke out. People watched out for him, but he was always very kind to them, and anybody—it didn’t make any difference who—but if they were on his debit, and that’s what we were taught by our parents, that you treat people as you would like to be treated.
And so, it was just—I look back, and I was thinking about this story the last few days, and I thought, What did I learn from this? And my job—I entered a religious community—and so it was the same thing you work on: you live by social justice, for everybody. I taught school, I principaled in the school, and the teachers would say, “Why did you accept that child in our school?” and I said, “Because we can help them.” It didn’t make any difference, what their disability was, what their race was, what their background was, what their religion was. It was a Catholic school, but, you know?
And now I do social work, and it’s the same thing here. I meet with people of all different cultures and backgrounds and religions.
And that man taught me well, that taxi driver taught me well.
NL: Do you remember any of the details of your conversation about your respective families and things while you were driving home that night?
KK: He talked about his wife, he talked about his children. But the biggest thing I remember and I think the thing that made the biggest impression on me, is as I said, he was afraid, too.
And everything in the restaurant, they were saying, “It’s a race riot! It’s a race riot!” Well, of course, as a young white girl, I’m afraid. But the experience in that taxi was the opposite. He was afraid, and so was I. And so that was basically—yeah, we talked about school, yes, and what I wanted to do—but, you know, we talked about his home on West Grand Boulevard, and that was obviously before cell phones, you couldn’t call your wife and say, “Hey, you doing all right?” There were no ways to do that, so—.
NL: Do you remember the sights of that cab ride as you were driving up Michigan Avenue and through different parts of the city?
KK: Michigan Avenue was Michigan Avenue. There was nothing unusual except that there was no traffic, or very little traffic out there. The sights I do remember is when the curfew was lifted some days later—and I still had the job, so I still had to go to work—I still had to take the Grand River bus down to work, which I did. And I think probably if I had a camera, my jaw was probably down to my knees! It was the burned-out buildings, and the broken glass, and the rubble on the street. It really—it looked like the pictures of cities I had seen after World War II in Europe.
The other thing I remember during the curfew, I was at a friend’s house, one of my school friends—so it must have been maybe after the curfew—but we were sitting on her front porch.
She lived on Pinehurst, not very far from Mackenzie High School. Mackenzie High School was one of the staging areas for the National Guard and the police. We were sitting on her front porch, and we could see police cars—Detroit Police cars—with machine guns out the window. And then there was a god-awful noise, and we looked, and there was a tank going down Pinehurst.
At that point we went in the house [laughter] because we were still afraid—but that’s what I remember, and that was very frightening, because we played baseball on these streets, we skated on those streets, and we did all kinds of things, and those pictures—but seriously, I try to focus on the good stuff, because he was good for me—he taught me, he taught me some things.
NL: How long after do you remember it sort of staying looking the same way before things started to look more cleaned up or more—less burned out?
KK: More normal, if you will?
Time wise, I don’t know. But I do remember it other times driving down Grand River while I still lived in Detroit, and I don’t think it ever recovered. I mean it was better than it was, obviously, the rubble was cleaned up and some businesses did reopen, but—I don’t think even when I was living there, even in the seventies—I don’t think it ever recovered in terms of the vibrancy and the vitality—that corridor, anyway. And there were the different scenes there, I think Olympia [Arena] was still open at that time, and so there were entities that would attract consumers there, but it was not—. You’d see that, and then you’d see an empty lot. And then you would see a decrepit-looking building. So it was very sad.
NL: Do you visit the city much in the forty-some-odd years since you’ve moved from the area?
KK: You know, I have to say I, once in a while—I have not done [so]often because I haven’t always lived in Michigan—and I’ve gone down—I go to the Tiger games, I do have to say that—but I don’t get a chance very often. Once in a while we’ll go down to the art museum, for an exhibit.
I have—I know—I have a friend, who actually lives in the Wayne State [University] area, and I hear wonderful things.
So I have not had a chance very often to go back to Detroit—and not because I don’t like Detroit—my life has taken me in other directions.
NL: Sure.
KK: And I have responsibilities elsewhere, but I pull for Detroit, I just—I love Detroit.
NL: What are your thoughts and memories of the last few times you’ve been in the city for games and events, and—just how the city looks and feels to you compared to the sixties when you were growing up?
KK: It looks very sad. When I go down, and if I take the freeway, and I look and I still see damaged buildings and glass out—you know, empty—and it makes me feel very sad. And when I get on the surface streets, and I see just huge patches of nothing—you know, fields—and I guess that’s better than a burned-out, abandoned house, but I see those as well.
And unfortunately, that’s the image that I hear, where I’m working now, of people—that’s their image of Detroit. They look at the bad stuff. They’ll always ask me—whenever I find anybody up here and meet families up here, in Lansing, and they say they’re from Detroit, I always [ask], “Well, where in Detroit?” cause we might have been neighbors. And they will tell me, “Well, Southfield,” or “Farmington,” or “Sterling Heights” and I say because I’m from Detroit, and they’ll say, “Well, where in Detroit?” and I’ll say “Detroit,” and they say, “Yeah, but where in Detroit?” and I’ll say “Detroit!” and then finally I just look at them and I say “Detroit, Detroit—What part of that do you not get? You know—‘City of.’”
What I would love to do is get a t-shirt that says “Made in Detroit.” I’m thinking they’re on the Internet someplace—
NL: They have those—oh yeah, there are a lot of stores around the city you can find that specialize in Detroit logos and things like that.
KK: So, you know, “Made in Detroit and Proud of It.”
But people’s impressions—you know, I lived in southern California from about 1979 to 1993, something like that—and those were the days when you had the big Devil’s Nights fires, and that was the only thing I ever saw on the national news about Detroit. I was teaching then, and it always made me very sad, because I could just tell people what I knew of Detroit, and that that’s not Detroit. That’s a piece of something that’s happening, but that was not my city. And I was always saddened because it seemed that was the only thing that ever made national news. I always tried to just counteract it and just share my experience of that.
I understand it’s coming back and I’m hoping, I’m hoping that it does.
NL: I want to shift gears a little bit, just some things you said earlier. You said that, I think your exact words were, that you used to “summer at Briggs Stadium.” So, from one big Tigers fan to another, I would love to hear about, if you have any particular memories from the summer of ’68—that was such a memorable season for the Tigers.
KK: I was at the World Series—
NL: Yeah?
KK: You betcha I was. [Laughter] And I’ll tell you how we got tickets: There was some advertising on some tuna fish can company. [Laughter] I don’t know what brand my mother bought, but if you sent so many labels in, you could get so many tickets. Don’t ask me, but we—
NL: I don’t think you can do that anymore—
KK: Well, I don’t think so, either! No. But however we got those tickets, I know there was something with the labels on the tuna fish. And my mother was able to get four tickets to one of the games. My grandpa, when he was living, lived in Pennsylvania, and he had played on a minor league team—he was the catcher on the minor [league], not the Tigers, but on a minor league team.
So we flew my grandpa out from Pennsylvania; and my grandpa, my dad, my brother, and me—
NL: Wow!
KK: —went down to one of the World Series games.
And then when they won, and they were flying back from St. Louis—I can’t believe my father did this—he pulled us all in the car and we went out to the airport, in a huge traffic jam on I-94, everybody trying to go to the airport to greet the Tigers, who ended up coming in at Willow Run [Airport] instead of Metro [Detroit Metropolitan Airport]—
[laughter]—
And we’re all on the field at Metro, and any plane that landed, we were on the tarmac—we swarmed the plane. But, yeah, it was a lot of fun, and I guess that we were down there all the time—my dad, my brother, myself, sometimes I’d bring a girlfriend. My mom would always stay at home and watch it on TV, and cheer for us on TV.
But, always we were at the ballpark.
NL: Do you have any particular memories of games from that season or plays or players from that [season], or from that World Series game? Or it all blends together?
KK: You know, I’ll tell you—I don’t know who played when, it all does blend together, but you know obviously, [Al] Kaline, and my brother’s name was Allen, so he thought he was Al Kaline. And actually my father would always get seats—I want to say it was Section 6—but it was in right field, so we could always sit behind Kaline. And then sometimes he’d get them in left field so we could sit behind Willie Horton. So, I remember that, I remember Mickey Lolich, and we just hooted and we hollered, and we would go home hoarse, and we just, we had a ball. I don’t remember plays. I think Gibson’s home run was in ’84—
NL: Yes.
KK: —so in ’84 I was elsewhere. I was in California, actually.
NL: What do you remember, if any, was the impact of the World Series—when the year after the devastation of 1967—on the city and people? Did that change things, that season, at least temporarily?
KK: Well, I think it did, temporarily, because I think everybody—everybody!—was at the stadium. It didn’t make any difference what color you were, [or] where you came from, but everybody pulled behind the Tigers. And I remember them all talking and saying, “This is what the city of Detroit needs. We need to pull together here. Bring us back together.” And they did. At least we had a common cause that everybody could rally around. And the team, as much as we could see, was an integrated team, and so we had, you know, we rooted for every player, and so did everybody else in the stands. That was fun. That was fun.
NL: I have just one last question for you. And that is, speaking of the events of July 1967, many people refer to them as “riots.” And you, in recalling your story, said that you recall people calling them “race riots” typically. From your experiences, do you think, and from everything you saw, is “riot” the most accurate term to describe that week in July, or would you use something else?
KK: I think from my standpoint, and the age I was, the memories that come to my mind is that it was a riot. I was 17—I was dumb in many ways—and so I don’t know, you know, at that age, what brought it on. It just, it was there!
The whole racial issue was not something that I was involved with or really aware of. I just wasn’t. It wasn’t an issue for me.
But the term “race riot” was what they had used in the restaurant. You know, “Hit the dirt, it’s a race riot!” Hmm, okay. And that’s what I remember, having looked at, and watching things that are going on now, maybe I would use another term for it, but in my mind as a 17-year-old, and in my memory, it was a riot cause people were rioting. They were looting. No matter what the cause, it was a riot, I think, but—
NL: Well, all right. Do you have anything else you would like to share with us about your memories of this time or other things?
KK: I just want to reiterate again, I absolutely thought Detroit was a wonderful place, and I hope for Detroit to come back, and I appreciate your doing this, because I think this is a great way to have people sharing stories, the human piece of it. And I think that’s important.
NL: That’s our goal. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your memories with us.
KK: Well you are very welcome. Thank you.
**
NL: Today is July 7, 2015. This is the interview of Dr. Carl Lauter by Noah Levinson. We are at the Medical Office Building in Royal Oak, Michigan on the Beaumont Hospital campus, accompanied by Lily Wilson and Thea Lockard and this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Dr. Lauter, could you first tell me when and where you were born?
CL: I was born in Detroit, Michigan, December 30, 1939 at the original Providence Hospital, which was on West Grand Boulevard at that time.
NL: And where did you live growing up?
CL: When I was just a little baby, first born, family lived in an apartment on a street called Pingree. Pingree was near Twelfth Street. Twelfth Street is now known as Rosa Parks Boulevard. And when I was about a year or two old, my family moved into an up-and-down flat on Gladstone. And Gladstone was also between, which was only a block over from Pingree, between Twelfth and Fourteenth street. And I lived there until I was nine years of age, when the family moved to an area known as the Dexter-Davison neighborhood. And I lived on the street Burlingame. 3012 Burlingame. That was between Lawton and Wildemere, and a block and a half on either end was Linwood to the East and Dexter to the West. And I lived there most of my childhood and young adult life and my mother and my younger brother were actually living there still in 1967.
NL: Could you tell me where you were living and what you were doing in 1967?
CL: In 1967 I was a second-year internal medicine resident, that is a training physician learning to be an internal medicine physician, and I was at Detroit Receiving Hospital, which was the main teaching hospital of the Wayne State University Medical School.
NL: And where exactly was Receiving Hospital?
CL: Receiving Hospital at that time was in the city in the downtown area, not where it is now in the Medical Campus area, and it was basically in Greektown. It was right across the street from what was originally the main police station, and I wish I could remember the street address. I think the main address was a Saint Antoine address, and it was right on, just to the west of the Chrysler Freeway Service Drive.
NL: Can you tell me where you were and how you first
remember hearing about turbulence and civil unrest in the city in ’67?
CL: Yeah. Well, maybe a little background. I had started my residency in July of ’66, so I was technically done with that second year in June, but I was slated to join the Air Force. There was an obligatory draft, including doctors’ draft and I had joined a program called the Berry Plan where you get to choose your branch of service and defer until you finish some of your training, but I was called up to start duty sometime in early September. So I had asked my chief of the department, Dr. Richard Bing at that time, since I didn’t know what to do between June 30 and September, I asked if I could keep working as a third-year resident even though he knew I couldn’t finish the year for the next couple of months and he said yes, so I was in the very beginnings of a third year internal medicine residency. I’d finished a second year and I shouldn’t have been there anymore, I should’ve been somewhere else, but I was working at the hospital. I was off on the weekend that the riots started. I was off duty, and it was a Sunday morning that I first found out that there was something going on in the downtown area. I actually had been driving my mother grocery shopping. And since I usually got bored sitting around inside the market, so I was sitting in my car listening to the Beatles music and my mother was in the market. And I listened to the news and it described that some rioting was going on in the city of Detroit they said something about, I don’t remember the exact details, but there had been a police raid on a blind pig, that when they tried to arrest people, then a crowd gathered and then there was civil unrest, and shooting and fighting and throwing things, and by ten or eleven in the morning when I heard about it, it was quite a bit of problem going on in the city. So I took my mother home and when I was at the house I called Receiving and talked to some of my friends or colleagues that were working and I said “What’s going on?” And they said, “Pretty hectic.” And I said, “You need any help?” And he said, “Absolutely.” And I said okay. But they said, “But don’t drive your car, it’s hard to drive through some of this, it might not be that safe.” So I said, “How am I gonna get there?” Not gonna take the bus, it sounded worse. So they said, “Try and see if the police will bring you.” So I called the police and the police said, “We know you’re probably needed, Doctor, but we really are too busy to do this.” And they suggested that I call a black cab company. Now you have to understand that I didn’t know there was such a thing as a white cab company and a black cab company. But there apparently were two black-owned cab companies in the city at that time and the police gave me the numbers, they knew who they were, and I called and they said yeah they’ll come and get me, and they came to my house to pick me up. At that time, now I’m more grey than blonde, but I was blonde and very fair-skinned, and I walked out of my door and got into the cab and the cab driver was a really wonderful African-American gentleman and as we’re driving toward Chrysler Freeway to get on the freeway, I could see him looking at me, and he was starting to get nervous. And he said, “Doctor, it wouldn’t hurt your feelings, would it, if I asked you to scrunch down in the back seat?” Those were his exact words. And I said, “No, no problem.” He was afraid we might be a target. So we headed down the easiest way at that time from where I was living, which was in that Dexter-Davison neighborhood. So normally you would go down Chicago Boulevard where there’s an entrance onto the John C. Lodge or US-10 and then we ended up on the Chrysler. I think he took the Davison over and we ended up on the Chrysler, somehow. Somehow we got across to the Chrysler. And we’re driving down the Chrysler and it’s dawning on me that things are happening. You can hear a lot of gunshot wounds, gunshot noise, you can see fires already and that was just Sunday afternoon. And when we get the exit to get off into Greektown area where Receiving Hospital was Lafayette exit, which is still there, and we couldn’t exit the freeway onto Lafayette because there was a roadblock set up there by the police. So they wanted to know who we were, and [I] said “Doctor, going to the hospital.” And they let us through. When we got to the top of the ramp there was another checkpoint or roadblock and there were already state police there. And same thing, we had to say who we were, and they let us through. And then the cab driver dropped me off at the front door of the hospital, and he went on his way. I had the foresight, I guess, to realize that I might not be leaving in a while, so I had packed a small suitcase with shaving equipment and extra underwear and some shirts and so on. And it turned out to be a good thing that I did that because I was stuck there for almost seven days. At first I didn’t have a car, I couldn’t get out of there, and most people felt it was not a good idea to drive in the city of Detroit at that time, especially if you were white, you might be a target of snipers or things like that. So I ended up spending the week there at the hospital, there were a number of doctors there working really hard. Most of the activities, as you could imagine, were surgical rather than medical. There were gunshot injuries and knife wounds. I can say that after this all finished and I did go into the Air Force, I was in the Air Force for two years and I never saw anything in the Air Force two years like I saw in that one week at Receiving Hospital as far as those types of injuries. I’m a medical doctor so I wouldn’t normally see the trauma type of things, that surgeons were taking care of, but we were all chipping in to take care of that. The hospital, which I think at that time was much bigger and was probably 400 or 500 beds, basically by the time the week went on, every single patient almost in the hospital was a prisoner. You know, there was so much civil unrest and lawlessness, not just people shooting other people or trying to hurt other people, but all of the looting, and so a large number of people were arrested. Police had no place to put them, so if they had any injuries they obviously went to different hospitals and Receiving was the main hospital. But the Detroit Street Railway (DSR) Busses were parked all over the downtown area mostly surrounding the police station which was across the street from the hospital, and there must have been twenty or thirty of those busses filled with prisoners because the jails were totally filled. And so they would have to live in the bus and they would only get out of there to stretch or to go to the restroom and other than that they were in the bus for several days before they were able to process them all when things settled down. Well I think as you might know from reading the history or you’ve been going through all this, the police and the state police could not handle it and then the Governor, I’m trying to remember who it was at the time--
NL: Romney
CL: Romney, mobilized the National Guard on about the second day and then Lyndon Johnson, a day or two later, sent in the soldiers. So the city was under full martial law and by the third or fourth days when I would make my rounds going patient to patient to see how things were going, my typical doctor rounds, I was going around on rounds with four soldiers with me, dressed in full uniform—82nd Airborne—full dress uniform, carbine on their back helmet, that’s how I made rounds every day for the last three or four days of that week. And there were soldiers all over the city and my mom told me at her house, that was in that Dexter area, that one block over on Collingwood, there was a synagogue on the corner at that time called B’Nai Moshe, which is now out in West Bloomfield somewhere, and there was a tank, the military had a tank there to use to keep peace in that area and there were troops everywhere trying to maintain order. Back at the hospital, as you could imagine, mostly they were trauma—knife and gun, or people hit on the head with different things—but the medical patients that I was mostly involved with would be people like diabetics, who would run out of insulin and they couldn’t get to the drugstore because everything was closed. So they would come in, the police would have to bring them in because of that problem. We also had injured police and injured firemen, who were being shot at by snipers. The most amazing one that I was not in the emergency room when this gentleman came in but everybody was called down [because they] couldn’t believe this, was a fireman was brought into the emergency room, he had been shot right between the eyes. The entry wound was here and there was an exit wound here and he was absolutely normal. The bullet had apparently ricocheted inside around his skull, or the calvarium, and had not hurt him. It was like a miracle. So that was like one of these crazy stories that you hear. Wayne also ran the Veterans’ Hospital, which now is downtown, of course, in the Medical Center, but at that time was in Allen Park, and some of the surgeons were going back and forth so they were riding down I-94, and that was a disaster. One of the surgeons when he arrived said, “I’m not going again.” Because he said he heard a gunshot wound and a bullet went through his car. So people didn’t want to leave anymore, no matter what they were afraid. So this was the kind of activity that was going on at the hospital. At night we would sleep in the resident on-call room, so Receiving Hospital was just a little on the east side of the downtown so we were just a couple of blocks off of Gratiot. You could look from the eighth floor where the resident sleeping quarters were, where we would go at night and was dark at night and if you looked down Gratiot, as far as the eye could see, both sides of the street were on fire. There was fire all the way down, you couldn’t see anything but flames and we couldn’t even sleep because it was so bright, it was like daytime out at night because of the bright lights from the fire. And finally, when things calmed down, one of the other doctors who had been trapped there earlier, so his car was there, his name was, I guess I shouldn’t use his name, Felix Liddell, he was a resident with me, he was leaving and he drove me home. Felix went on to practice, and I think he might still be practicing if he hasn’t retired, he became a lung specialist later. None of us were specialists in anything, we were in training. When I got home I was still surprised to find that even in our neighborhood, there were still some issues. My mom had told me that, when I would call her on the phone, and for awhile you couldn’t call on the phone either because the phones were down, and we didn’t have cell phones in those days, and she told me that my mom and younger brother were sleeping on the ground floor or in the basement because they were afraid of bullets, turned out none came into our house luckily, but they were afraid of that, or they were sleeping under their beds, you know. Even after I got home, the power was out in a lot of areas and I was watching out my window, like the second day that I was able to get home and the Detroit Edison crew came to fix the electric system and they came and it was a convoy—four Jeeps with four soldiers in each Jeep, two in the front, two Jeeps in the back and then the Detroit Edison truck. The people from the Jeeps, the soldiers, would fan out and basically control the neighborhood, so that then the Edison people could safely climb up the poles and do their work. They were afraid to go out, because they were afraid someone might try to take a pot shot at them. So it was that type of a fearful environment. Now my father-in-law, who I didn’t know at the time, was a family practice doctor downtown in the city of Detroit, his name is Dr. George Mogill. He’s still alive, he’s going to be 98 at the end of July. He had an office in the inner city and he had a lot of African-American patients and he had a lot of suburban patients, he had a typical practice of that era for many people who had offices in downtown. His office was saved, or spared, from destruction because some of his black patients actually parked themselves in front of his office with a shotgun and wouldn’t let anybody loot it or break in. He was able to actually go down a few times, I thought later this is just insanity, and when things settled down he was able to go back and see that his office was in good shape. So that was the story and then, of course, I finished up that month for a few more days and I headed to the Air Force, and I spent the rest of ’67 in a place called Rantoul, Illinois. When I got my orders I thought that is was Rangoon or something, I’d never heard of Rantoul, Illinois. Turns out it wasn’t in Myanmar or Burma, it was right here in Central Illinois, surrounded by cornfields. So I spent two years in a place called Chanute Air Force Base. C-h-a-n-u-t-e. Which has since been one of the air force bases that has been closed by our government, cost-cutting. But I spent two years there, and as I said I didn’t need to go to Vietnam or Thailand, the only war injuries I saw were people who were well enough to be air evacuated from Vietnam, which we saw them within sometimes 48 hours—amazing—so I saw war injuries but nothing like the type of thing I saw in the city of Detroit during that seven days.
NL: I have a couple more questions especially about your time in the hospital during the riots.
CL: Sure, oh yeah.
NL: Are there any other specific injuries or treatments where you provided the medical or surgical care that you care to share?
CL: Sure, well we all had to help out with minor suturing even though generally internal medicine doctors don’t do that stuff. You know, so people had cuts and bruises, so we would take turns because people in the emergency room were exhausted and they needed a break. We all went down and helped with cuts that people needed sewed up and so on, we all did that. I didn’t deal with digging out bullets, I had no idea what to do, and things like that but, mostly medical treatment. We were treating pneumonia, heart attacks, diabetics, so things that were just routine but they were precipitated or aggravated by the fact that there was no way they could get healthcare anywhere else. They had to go to a major hospital, there were no doctors’ offices to go to. There was no such thing as walk-in clinics in those days anyway, you know like we have urgent care today. And so you had to go to a hospital if you ever had anything wrong with you, and many went to Receiving, which was the hospital of last resort anyway.
NL: What do you remember about the collective mentality of the residents and the doctors of staff there, as compared to any other time you went to Receiving?
CL: Interestingly enough, it was mostly upbeat. And I think that there’s a certain type of nervous energy and adrenaline that you work on when you’re not getting a lot of sleep and you’re very busy and you’re not really thinking too much about what’s going on, you’re just doing stuff that you need to do. There wasn’t a lot of time, maybe at night, we would think about it, but we didn’t even know the big picture that was going on outside of where we were locked in to this sort of protected environment. We were very safe, we had soldiers and military around us, as long as we didn’t go outside, it was like a fortress. So we were very secure and we were just doing our medical work and we didn’t even know ourselves the magnitude of what was going on outside. I’d get a little inkling when I talked to my mother on the phone or if we listened to the radio, but we didn’t really know until we went home and we started to really see the details of what had been going on. So at night when we were going to bed, or sitting up for a while and looking at those fires on Gratiot, is when we would say, “I can’t believe this, I can’t believe this.” You know that type of amazing, how can this be happening. Now the funny thing is, is it brought back some memories to me because my father was no longer alive, my mom was a widow at this point, but when my father was alive, when I was a youngster, he had told stories about a previous riot in Detroit that took place in the forties. I don’t know exactly what year it was.
NL: ‘43
CL: ’43. And then when he told me the whole story about it because he used to work in the city, so he was very much about them at that time and he said it started with some type of melee on Belle Isle, actually. And it exploded into the city and the city was also under martial law, and soldiers had to be brought in for a period of time, but I don’t think there were the deaths, there were forty people eventually who were dead, one way or another from the Detroit riots in ’67. I don’t think they had that type of situation earlier, people didn’t have guns in those days either, probably. So this was not the only time that this has happened in Detroit, but of course what had happened in Detroit in 1967, we know that this has happening around the United States. There was the so-called “Long Hot Summer,” there was a lot of racial tension, you know Newark, Watts, Chicago, a number of other places had riots of this type. Interestingly enough, the people doing the looting, we all find out later by the prisoners we saw, were not all African-American at all. Many white people participated in the looting, which was hard to understand what was [going on], they were just opportunists. They were just taking advantage of the unrest and trying to get free shirts and free clothes or a free TV and breaking in to the store fronts and so on.
LW: What was the function of the soldiers that follow you around during your rounds?
CL: Well I think they felt like they had to do something and they were doing their duties and they couldn’t just sit there all the time so they were assigned to the doctors. They were also there to protect us, because not all the prisoners were actually shackled to their beds. They had to be on a certain amount of good faith that they would behave themselves. Yeah, there were prisoners that were there for serious behavior, and they were shackled to their beds.
NL: Do you remember every seeing what you perceived as a difference in the care provided to somebody in the hospital based on their race?
CL: Never. That was never an issue. I’ve never seen it ever in my life. I don’t know if it ever occurs, maybe in other parts of the United States, you know where there’s more issues like that. I don’t know what people feel like in their personal life about who they want to date or who they want to go to a movie with or go to dinner with, but I can tell you, I’ve never ever seen that in the healthcare situation, where doctors or nurses ever differentiated. A sick patient was a sick patient. And I’ll tell you a vignette, since it’s about the same time frame, that had nothing to do with Detroit, but when I was in the Air Force, and here I won’t mention the name, but one of the doctors that was with me in the Air Force was from New York, and he happened to be a Jewish doctor. We had a number of other people from other militaries training at the base we were at, so we had Egyptian pilots that were at our base, and remember this was 1967 and there was the war in the Middle East, the ’67 war. And this particular doctor said, “Well, if any of them come to the hospital, I’m not gonna treat them.” We’re talking about Air Force, we’re in uniform, we’re doctors, and I said, “You’re absolutely full of baloney. Of course you’re going to treat them, and don’t say that out loud, you’re an idiot! You’re a doctor it has nothing to do with anything like that. You’re going to treat anybody who’s sick, and don’t open your big mouth and say stupid things.” You know, quite frankly. But almost never would you hear of people doing that. And we know for instance in Israel, the Israeli doctors take wonderful care of the prisoners that they capture, and so on.
NL: Do you remember how it was that food and drugs and supplies and things were shipped into the hospital during that week?
CL: That’s a really good question. I wasn’t really involved in that. I know that we had food, we did not run out of food. So somehow or another it was either arriving or we had a good supply. I can also tell you that the food at Receiving Hospital at that time was mostly inedible anyway. In fact one of the jokes we used to have, because the food was so bad, I used to carry a lunch because the food was just not very good, if you’d eat it, pardon the expression, and you’d get diarrhea half the time you’d eat the food. It was like traveling to Mexico, you know? Oh God, I can’t say anything bad about Mexico, I’ll get in trouble like Donald Trump. [laughter] So the big joke among us residents is if you stand out at Receiving, there was a big loading dock where things will be delivered and also there was garbage taken away and when food would be delivered and garbage was taken away, we always jokes about the food being delivered and we’d want to know if was shipping or receiving. [laughter] Because you couldn’t seem to tell the difference. But we had plenty of food to eat, you know regular food that was adequate to meet our needs.
NL: And the medical supplies were adequate?
CL: Yeah, generally we were fine. That’s a major hospital, major trauma center and we had all the bandages and needles and syringes. We had a good supply of medicine, so we were okay. Now I don’t know how much longer it might have lasted, but we were okay for the week.
NL: So by the time you were able to leave it had been almost fully a week later ahead that the frenzy and the excess of patients and beds and prisoners and things, had
that started to decline?
CL: Yeah, it was much better. The city was obviously much better, though there were pockets of misbehaving people. And there were still many, many hundreds, maybe thousands of prisoners. They were slowly being processed and most of them were just released because they were minor infractions but they just had to get them off the street and so it was a winding down, but of course there was major damage to the city. Many buildings were burned and destroyed and had to be cleaned up and quite a mess. And there are still some, as we know.
NL: When did you come back from Illinois?
CL: I was in the Air Force for two years and I didn’t return to Michigan, I actually went on to finish my residency in another city, in Philadelphia. So I didn’t come right back to Michigan at that time.
NL: Okay. What point did you come back to Michigan?
CL: I was in the Air Force between 1967 and 1969 and I left Philadelphia in July of ’69 and I returned to Detroit, pardon me, I left in ’70 and I returned to Detroit and I completed my specialty training in infectious disease, I have two specialties one is infectious disease, at that time right back at Wayne State at Detroit Receiving Hospital and the affiliated hospitals in that network which is Harper, Hutzel, and those hospitals for another three years and then I became part of the teaching faculty at Wayne Medical School for another six years and then I took a sabbatical year and did my allergy training at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and then after that I came to Beaumont in 1980 and I’ve been here ever since.
NL: So 1970 when you first came back in the summer, so that’s a full three years after the riot. What do you remember at that point, physically about how the city had changed? Obviously the fires had been put out by then. What was the difference?
CL: The city looked pretty much back to normal. The only difference was, obviously, there was an acceleration of the white flight that had been going on ever since the fifties, but had been more of a trickle over time, it had just moved very quickly. So a lot of people moved out of the city, a lot of businesses moved out of the city and it contributed obviously to the problems that eventually Detroit had to go through the next thirty years.
NL: And how did it compare to your visions of Detroit when you were growing up?
CL: Oh well, you know it’s very hard, when I try to explain to my own children, and to young doctors or students here at the teaching hospital or the Medical School that we’re part of, at Oakland University, you know if I try to tell them what Detroit was like in the fifties, they just can’t imagine it. And I say have you been to Chicago to the Miracle Mile? You know where all of the nice stores, the beautiful stores and high-rise department stores and high fashion, and I said well, Downtown Detroit was identical. It was identical. There were three major high-rise department stores: J.L. Hudson’s, Crowley Milner and Kerns. There were innumerable other stores. In fact, when I was in high school I worked as a stock boy in a men’s clothier called Harry Suffron, and then later there was a competing company called Hughes Hatcher. Their main office used to be right next door to where the Fox Theatre is, you know. I would work on Saturdays and sometimes after school for a few hours, unpacking pants, putting them up on the shelves, you know, stuff like this. I’d go to lunch, and if I’d go to lunch on a Saturday, I probably had 150 restaurants to choose from. And the library, which is still there, right behind where Hudson’s used to be, I used to go there and sit and read or, if it was a nice day, sit outside in one of the parks and it was such a beautiful downtown area. Of course there were fancy restaurants that I didn’t go to and there were bars and cabarets and stuff for nightlife. It was just an amazingly healthy and viable city. I would go to Saturdays sometimes when I was even younger and my mom would go shopping and she would drag me along, we would take the bus downtown, or even before that the streetcars, then they got rid of the streetcars, one of the hugest mistakes the city ever made, and here was a relatively low energy, clean form of transportation. I didn’t realize even then as a kid how extensive that Detroit Street Railway system was until when the Detroit Historical Museum reopened after they had been closed for a while, and my wife and I went down to see what it was like and there was a wonderful exhibit on the history of the Detroit Street Railway system, which you may know about. And what I didn’t realize as a kid growing up, because I lived in the city and I used it to a limited degree, I used to take that streetcar, there were two people there was a conductor and the guy that took your money, you know. And you’d get on, you’d get off, you know just like in San Francisco with the cable car, but it was a real streetcar, you know it was electrical stuff. But what I didn’t realize was that you could go up on a streetcar from Downtown Detroit to Port Huron. You could go on the streetcar from Downtown Detroit to Ann Arbor. You could go on a streetcar, I live out in West Bloomfield, and beyond me there’s an area called Keego Harbor with a lot of lakes, I was looking, I was shocked, that streetcar went out to Keego Harbor, people would go out to lakes for the day, you know, pack a lunch and they’d go to the lake. I mean it was an amazing, wonderful network where you didn’t need to rely on the automobile. And it was cheap, of course, in those days it was probably 20 cents or something like that for the whole ride. So, you know the automotive industry, are you familiar with a book called J’accuse?
NL: No.
CL: Emile Zola?
LW: No.
CL: You ever heard of that one? Alright, so the auto industry, J’accuse. I accuse you of being in collusion with the legislature, they ruined the bus system, got rid of the streetcars. Our streetcars still running in Mexico, by the way. And we were proud of having the best highway system in the world, and we did, at one time in Detroit because they wanted to sell cars. But look at ours now. We have no rapid transit, essentially, and we have the worst highway system because we haven’t’ been fixing it. So, I remember, as you say, going back, great highways and great public transportation. Clean and safe. And a downtown that was a beautiful place to visit. My mom as a treat would take me to, she’d get a cup of coffee after shopping at the Mayflower Coffee Shop, which is obviously no longer there, and I would get a glass of milk and a donut. You know, that was my treat. And, you know, there’s things you don’t forget, you know, there were just wonderful experiences growing up and, you know, when you see Detroit is coming back, you know, it’s making a wonderful comeback but it’s obviously slow and it’s gonna take a long time and there’s a lot of work to be done and there’s a lot less people there, so there’s a lot of space to figure out what do with, but the fact of the matter is that it’s very hard for people who didn’t see that when they were younger, growing up, to imagine how wonderful and viable and healthy the city of Detroit was as late as the fifties, when I was growing up. Now in 1924, I was reading about this, Detroit was not just the richest city in the United States, it was considered the richest city in the world. Could you imagine the change that we’ve seen in less than a hundred years? And the reason why I learned that is when the Book Cadillac reopened there was a lot of literature with that, and my son had his wedding at the Book Cadillac and they had a lot of reading material, so I was reading about the history of the hotel and the history of Detroit. And there’s also a wonderful book and I can’t remember the author, and I feel really bad about it, but my brother-in-law insisted that I read it. My brother-in-law is a teacher at Cranbrook Schools and one of the books that used to be mandatory reading for the middle school, he’s a middle school math teacher, is a book called Arc of Justice, and that book takes place in Detroit in the twenties, and it’s a true story, but the beginning of the book paints a picture, what was America like in 1910, 1920, talks about Detroit. Actually if you aren’t familiar with that book it’s an amazing book about Detroit history. And what really happens is later on after they set the stage and tell you all about Detroit, there’s the events of a black doctor, a young doctor who trains in the South and comes to Detroit and he marries the daughter of a successful black businessman and they buy a house in a white neighborhood, in the city, they were large [homes], mostly white. And they’re not accepted, and there is all kinds of turmoil and their house is surrounded and there’s some gunshot wounds, and one person is killed and one is wounded and there’s this huge trial of the century going on, not the Scopes Monkey trial, but almost as big because the NAACP, a fledgling new organization, this is all in the book [that] I learned [this], wanted to make sure to have the best representation for the black people who were being basically lynched on this because they were under attack in the first place, they were trying to defend themselves from the white crowd. So they were able to get the best lawyers in the country, they debated black lawyers and white lawyers, they debated this and they decided they’re going to forget the racial stuff, and they got the best white lawyer and they actually worked pro bono, or for minimal money, and Clarence Darrow, the same lawyer that was in the Scopes trial was in Detroit for almost two years with his whole team defending these black people because they were trying to put them up for murder. At first there was a hung jury and then there was another trial and they got everybody off. And when you read the book you realize this must have been the most exciting thing you could ever imagine, but in the meantime, it’s giving all this background about Detroit and what’s going on in the twenties, you know, in that time. The judge who presided over that was Frank Murphy, and the police station downtown and the courthouse is Frank Murphy Hall. He later became the mayor, he became governor, he became a justice, and he became a Supreme Court Justice. He distinguished himself in this trial by keeping it fair. And he was a great man obviously because he was under a lot of pressure to stick it to the black guys. It was a white city at that time, and you know the police were all white, everything was white at that time. So it’s an amazing story and if you really want a good background of Detroit, obviously not ’67, but the type of thing that Detroit was like before things changed, you read that book, it’s an amazing book.
NL: I’ll have to check that out. Do you have any other questions?
LW: I don’t, but is there anything else about ’67 that you want to share with us?
CL: Well, I’m trying to think. Obviously ’67 started, I was a first year resident at Henry Ford between ’65 and’66, July to June, so ’67 started and I was halfway through that second year of the residency and you know, I don’t think there was that much eventful, at that time, you know, the Tigers were playing pretty good baseball, I wasn’t a big Red Wings fan. Basketball, nobody watched. I don’t know when the Pistons arrived from Fort Wayne, but it wasn’t a very popular sport at that time.
NL: If they had arrived though, the NBA wasn’t really popular until the eighties.
CL: And NFL, the last time the Lions won a championship was 1957, so that was already ten years before. So that was it. Detroit was otherwise like any other big city. When I graduated high school in 1958, the population of the city of Detroit was 1.8 million, it was the fourth largest city in the United States, and it was just a few years after that, that we were passed by Houston. Remember when we went from four to five [in the rankings], now we’re like 20. Okay.
NL: Alright. Thank you.
LW: Thank you so much, that was great.
NL: Thank you for sharing your memories with us today.
CL: I hope this was something that can help you.
LW: Of course.
NL: It’s tremendously helpful and we appreciate your time and willingness to sit with us and share this.
LW: Thank you.
CL: Thank you.
**
LW: Today is June 26, 2015. This is the interview of Dr. Marty Levinson by Lily Wilson. We are in Royal Oak, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Marty, can you start by telling me where and when you were born?
ML: Sure. I was born in Detroit 1952, February, so that puts me at age 15 during the time period we're discussing.
LW: Okay. And who were your parents and what did they do for a living?
ML: My parents were Louie and Rosa Levinson. They were refugees from World War II and they came to Detroit in 1947, and they made a home here. I grew up here along with my two brothers. They ran a business. They had a business in Oak Park, which will come out in the story.
LW: Okay. Where did you live in July of 1967?
ML: We moved in December of ’64 from Detroit – from Northwest Detroit to near Mumford High School. So we lived in Southfield near Nine Mile and Evergreen. During that time I was already living in Southfield and my parents had a store that was on Coolidge in Oak Park, just south of Nine Mile.
LW: What was the reason that you understood, around age 15, for your family moving from Detroit to Oak Park?
ML: Oh, that's an interesting question. I mean it was clear that people were moving out. There was no question there was a big change. I didn't – I was sort of an airhead kind of kid when we moved, in terms of understanding anything. I knew that there were a lot of blacks moving into the neighborhood and a lot of whites moving out of the neighborhood. By the time we moved, I would say my school was probably about fifty-fifty or maybe slightly less, in terms of white versus black. So, I didn't understand what that meant as far as why we moved, but I knew that that was somehow behind the reason.
LW: What do you remember about when your school was integrated? What do you remember about the relationship between black and white students there?
ML: So, when the first black students showed up, it was clear that they stood out, and notice was made that they were the first black students. I mean, the fact that I can remember, by name, the first three black students who moved to my school says that it was a big deal because I wouldn't be able to tell you who were the white students that moved into the school while I was there. There was definitely some negativity. There were kids who would overtly make comments about the black kids and they were usually negative comments. I'm sure that this was something picked up through their parents. I don’t think they were intrinsically racist at the time, but they obviously heard it someplace. It's interesting in my family that my parents often spoke Yiddish, which we as kids understood but didn't speak. But the word in Yiddish for black is “shvartz,” like “Schwartz,” and a black person was known by that in Yiddish as “schwartza,” which developed the pejorative meaning, but it wasn't in our life because when you spoke in Yiddish and you said “a black person,” just like I just now said “a black person,” you would use that word “schwartza” and it was not used in a pejorative way but Americans who did not speak Yiddish, it was a term among Jewish Americans to use in a pejorative way. So, it was confusing to me as a child because I thought that was a normal way of calling a black person “black” and then I had to learn that publicly that was not how you speak. And it's interesting that even when I started dating Elise, my wife, who grew up in Detroit all the way through high school, and I would just use it in passing in a very – to me – innocent way, she would get very upset and angry with me because she thought I was putting down a person when I would – in my mind – I was being descriptive and in her mind I was being racist.
LW: Tell me a little bit more about your house growing up and how your parents dealt with subjects of race. Did they ever talk about black and white, Jewish and non-Jewish? Did they ever talk about those things?
ML: I grew up in an unusual household because my grandparents lived in the same house with us the entire time. My mother was an only child; my dad was the only survivor from a very large family from Poland. The rest of his family perished in World War II, so I didn't have any cousins, uncles or aunts, but we had a big extended family and most of my parents' friends were fellow refugees. A lot of them were Holocaust survivors. And I grew up knowing everybody's story and knew who was in a camp and knew who was in the Freedom Fighters in the forest, and I knew these stories about my parents' friends. So, having been a minority that was clearly picked on, I think my parents were pretty sensitive to that. My first girlfriend, if you can call it that, in sixth grade – excuse me, in first grade – there was a girl that I was friends with and she was black. And I don't even know that I noted it, to be honest with you. I think I noted that there was a difference but there was no discussion about it. My parents had no problem me being in first grade going over to her family's house or her coming over to us, but I do remember my older brother being very upset. And he asked me if I intended to marry her. He was three years older than I was, and I said to him, “I don't know. I might.” And his response was very interesting. He said, “Well, what about your children? Are they going tp be Jewish?” And I said, “Of course!” [laugher] And he said, “No, that's not the case.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Because she's black.” And I said, “Yeah, so?” And he goes, “She's not Jewish.” And my response was, “You're kidding,” because I thought I lived in a Jewish neighborhood—
LW: And everybody was Jewish.
ML: And everybody was Jewish. And it was striking that that was not an issue to him whether she was black or not, he wanted to know whether our kids were going to be Jewish. Now, to be real particular about this, she was very light-skinned black, but it was a black family, because I went to their house for meals and things like that.
LW: What do you remember about going to their house for meals?
ML: Just like any other kid that I went to at that time. Other than the fact that it was a girl as opposed to a guy, being most of my friends were guys, but this in particular was a girl. You know, we didn't do any hand holding or kissing in first grade. But it was clearly – you know, it was different because she was a girl, but I honestly can't remember that I noticed anything different about going to her house than to anyone else's house.
LW: Now, you're a pediatrician.
ML: Yes.
LW: What is your understanding of how children – or what can you sort of shed light on about how children's – when do they start to make that differentiation between race and gender and things like that?
ML: Well obviously in my case, later than usual. I think it's very dependent on their family philosophy. I think kids pick up things from their parents. When it comes to politics, you know, kids don't come up with their own politics. It's very rare that that happens, although I do have a 14-year-old patient who decided that he's a communist and he wants to move to Russia. But that's the exception, not the rule. I think you pick up the cues from your environment. Initially you pick them up at home. You obviously have a broader environment at your school and you pick up things at school, so I do not feel that my parents had racist tendencies. My dad employed a number of black people in his store – he had a tailor shop – and growing up one of the tailors was black. I don't know that I ever noted that he was treated any differently from the others. Now, one of the jobs in the store was a lower-level job that was pressing clothes. And I remember noting with my brother that all the pressers that we had happened to be black. It's something that we just noted that we never had a white presser; we had white tailors, we had black tailors, we only had black pressers. On the other hand, when my older brother, at one point at school, he was asked to write something about what he wants to be when he grows up and he said, “Either a doctor or a presser.” That obviously didn't bother him – the racial component.
LW: So he didn't see the limits – he didn't see race or gender being a limit on the type of –
ML: Not at that time. I don't know how old he was at that particular time. I think the fact that in first grade I did not notate a difference between this black family and our family being white is – I think that's more me being unaware of the environment around me. I think that's sort of how I was.
LW: Do you think –
ML: Most kids by that age – by age six or seven – are going to have an understanding that there's differences in races. And religion, too, again, I thought everybody in my neighborhood was Jewish and I assumed that of all the white people in my neighborhood and I'm sure that's not true as well.
LW: So tell me more about the tailor shop that your dad owned. What was the name of it?
ML: It was called Radom Tailors and then later on it extended into a clothing store. It started in Detroit. It was on Dexter and Burlingame. It was walking distance from the house I grew up in – my first house. Not the one near Mumford, but in the Dexter-Davison area. It was just across the street, down the block from the Dexter Theater, which was a movie theater that everybody knew where it was. So, we moved when I was in second grade from there to the Mumford area. Now an interesting thing I learned many years later that I had no idea is we did move because the neighborhood was suddenly changing very quickly at that time, which I was totally unaware of. But, it was interesting now to me as an adult that I found out we moved from a larger to a smaller house. And I said to my parents, “That doesn't make sense. It makes sense that if you would move you would move to a bigger house.” And they said the neighborhood was changing so fast that they felt they needed to move and that was what was available. Now I didn't learn that 'til I was a young adult and it sort of blew me away, but it was interesting. So, their store was a fixture in the Oak Park community. Most people knew the store. My dad was a quadriplegic from the time I was two-and-a-half years old. He had a diving accident here, after he came to the United States in 1954, but he continued to run the business as a quadriplegic, so it was pretty outstanding and people knew – if they didn't remember the name of the store – if I told someone about us I said, “My dad who runs the store is in a wheelchair,” then everybody said, “Oh yeah, I know that store.” And because – well that was our family business. My grandfather was Radom, that was his name—my mother’s maiden name. My mother worked in the store after my dad's accident full time. So, it was a family business. My brothers and I worked there growing up, we knew people in the neighborhood. My younger brother, who was a physician, we often talked about the old days when we worked in the store and he would – where I see kids, he sees adults and elderly patients – he'll say, “Oh, you know who I saw last month? I saw Mr. Goldberg that used to come into the store.” And I would say, “Which one? The 42-short or the 44-long?” [Laughter] And we would remember that stuff because I worked in the store from the time I was maybe 11, 12 years old.
LW: So the store moved from Detroit to Oak Park when your family moved?
ML: It moved before we moved.
LW: Okay.
ML: It moved in the – sometime in the late fifties.
LW: Okay. And do you think that your parents made the decision to move the store because of changes that they saw in the neighborhood that early, or was it just economical?
ML: I think it was economic and I think their clientele that they catered to were moving, so they were moving to keep up to where their customers were going.
LW: I see. So tell me a little bit more about the types of people that worked in your parents' store and shop, and if your parents ever—maybe not at the time because you were young, but later on told you about any difficulties or any challenges that they encountered, whether it be because they were Jewish and a minority or whether it be because they were hiring black people who were a minority?
ML: So, most of the tailors were not American; they were European because it was a trade that was learned and it wasn't a trade that was particularly nourished here in the United States. They had one black tailor, as I mentioned. I remember him very well. I can picture him. We used to sit and have conversations when I was a kid working in the store. Most of the tailors were actually from Poland. It just worked out that way. That's who – we had a Hungarian tailor. In terms of clerks and sales people, we had all kinds. We had Jewish; we had non-Jewish. I don't recall that we had any black sales people, and I don't know if that was a purposeful decision of any concern about effect on clientele or not – I, uh, I just can't say. I just don't know. But the store ran very nicely and I think people had good relationships. It was very unusual to have friction within the store itself; it ran pretty smoothly. And as a kid coming in as soon as I started to drive I'd come in and open the store myself. People knew me and trusted me, and of course as a kid I'd be able to go for a run out to the bakery down the street to get some snacks, for coffee, for the people, but we had a nice relationship. The tailors taught me how to use a sewing machine, so as a kid I used to just sew for fun. So that was pretty neat. Was there another part to your question?
LW: Well, I was just wondering if you – about certain dynamic –
ML: Oh, yeah. So then I will mention a couple of other things. The only time we had difficulty with an employee was a young man – to me he was an adult, but he was a young man. He happened to be Jewish and he worked as a salesman and he was a very effective salesman. He was a schmoozer and was really good. But it turned out – I found out later that he'd had a history – he had done some jail time. My parents knew this and they hired him. It turned out that one time we were out as a family to – we went to Meadow Brook. We had a family in from out of town. We took them to Meadow Brook and we came home and our house had been broken into. And there was a small window leading to the basement that had been broken, but we found out retrospectively that the window was just, you know, to make it look like it was broken into; it was too small of an area for somebody to really climb through and it was this man who was the salesman who made a copy of the key and didn't do the robbery himself, but he set it up and he was part of it. He ended up disappearing and never showed up again. And that's what the police finally told us that they caught him and he was doing other things and he ended up back in jail. We had another tailor that was a young, white man who I knew had just done jail time and he actually learned how to be a tailor in jail. He was working and my parents hired him, so I found it interesting that my parents were willing to give this guy a chance and he worked successfully except for one thing – when he was trained to be a tailor in jail, he was only trained to do certain things – to not do everything. He'd thumb by pieces, so he – I remember worked on sleeves and few other things, but he couldn't do all the tailoring that was necessary, so we had to parcel it out as far as what he did. And I asked my dad about it, he says, “That's just how they did it in Europe.” You were trained initially as a kid. You were apprenticed to a tailor and you learned the trade completely and totally, and even watching how he worked with his hands compared to the other European tailors, I could see was not the same finesse. He was a nice guy. I asked him why he was in jail and it was for passing bad checks – not passing bad checks, but counterfeiting checks. I don't remember when he stopped working and why, but it was never because of a problem. And I was actually pretty impressed as a kid with my parents who were willing to hire a guy that they knew was a convict – ex-convict.
LW: So lots of diversity in a few different ways at your parents' store.
ML: Right.
LW: Why do you think that they took these chances when other people might not have?
ML: Well, listen. They came here with nothing. My grandfather had a trade. My dad was not the tailor, but he got a job in a factory before he even spoke English. They did whatever they could do to get by, so they – it was not that far distant in their past to see that you – that people need help. That people need to be willing to hire – just like people were willing to hire them without the language. My mother worked in a bakery. It was her first job. The first day she quit because at the end of the day they told her to sweep the floors. She grew up in Kiev, in a big city in Russia, in a cultural city and she thought that was beneath her. And she said, “I don't sweep.” And she quit. Of course, later on she came back and apologized and took the job and decided she could sweep. But that was just her mindset. But I think that they – as being underdogs – I think that they really had no problem going out of their way to give people a chance.
LW: What do you remember about your conversations with the black tailor that they had? Anything in particular?
ML: The biggest thing I remember that had an impact on me is that he was the victim of a gunfire incident. He was shot. And I don't know what the circumstances were. He lived in Detroit. I remember he lived on Tuxedo. I don't know why I remember that, but that's the street. And I remember we went to visit him at his home when he was in bed recovering from this gunshot injury. I don't remember – I'm sure that I asked him what happened because of, you know, curious kid, but I don't think I felt any different towards him than the other people. I remember that there were differences in how people were paid. This just came to mind. He, in particular, was paid by the piece. In other words, whatever work he did he kept track of it and he was paid a certain amount for each job he did. Other tailors were paid by the hour. And I remember asking my dad why this was, and he said he gives people the choice and they decide. So it had nothing to do with a racial consideration. He rather – he chose to keep track of what he did and get paid per job, and other people just would take hourly and that's what they chose to do.
LW: Why do you think that he would have chosen that?
ML: That's an interesting question. I honestly have no idea. I'm just guessing he figured that this way he could be assured of being paid for his work. If it got slow in the summertime I guess he would – summertime is usually when things got slow in the store – he might take off some more time. But this way if things got really busy and he was pushed to work harder, he would get paid more. I think that was what was comfortable for him, but I'd be speculating to tell you if I had any more feel for it than that.
LW: So you went to his house on Tuxedo and visited. What was the cross street? Do you remember?
ML: No. I just remember it was on Tuxedo. I remember it was funny because my dad rented tuxedos at the store.
LW: Sure. The name is interesting.
ML: Yeah, tuxedo. But I remember going to his house and I met his family and his kids. I remember his son's name and what he looked like. I mean, it's not like we socialized together, but we were very comfortable going and paying him a visit with our whole family as opposed to – we didn't see him in the hospital. We didn't do that. I don't know if my parents did or not, to be honest with you. But there was no level of anxiety or discomfort for me to travel to go to his home.
LW: What was his name?
ML: His name was Baron. I don't remember his last name. And his son was Baron, Jr., easy to remember.
LW: Did you ever find out from your parents or Baron later on about how he got injured?
ML: I don't have any memories, so I'm sure that I would have asked and I heard a story, but I'm not sure that I was given, you know, as a kid, the full story either, so…
LW: Interesting.
ML: I think I just dropped it at that point.
LW: Where was he shot? Do you remember that?
ML: In his neighborhood.
LW: Okay, so it was somewhere –
ML: So I knew that it was in his neighborhood, but I don't remember if it was a break-in or it was a drive-by or whatever it was, I mean I'm sure I didn't know the term “drive-by” at that time. So, I just don't know. He was not doing anything. He was a victim. He was not doing anything inappropriate. And he came back to work after he was better.
LW: So, when your family moved to Oak Park –
ML: We moved to Southfield. The store went to Oak Park and we moved to Southfield.
LW: Okay, got it. Tell me about what your school was like there. You had come from this school that was racially integrated, fifty-fifty by the time you left, right? You were about 15, so sophomore in high school?
ML: No. By the time we moved, I was 12.
LW: Oh! Okay.
ML: Almost 13.
LW: So, the school in Southfield – tell me about the racial breakdown of that.
ML: At that time we had no – it was all white. We had no black students in my middle school. When I went to high school, we had a couple black students. It was actually a set of twins. It was interesting to me that I had gone into – got to seventh grade and seventh grade I went to a new school. This was in Detroit. So, it was a lot of new people and it was very difficult. It was a very challenging school. I had a B average in that school, working as hard as I could. We moved to the suburbs and I don't think I got anything less than an A for at least the first few years. I found it much easier.
LW: Interesting.
ML: Yeah, I think looking back it's interesting, too, that the being in the racially integrated school, it was more academically challenging than when I moved to the suburbs.
LW: What school was that?
ML: I went to Bagley Elementary School and this was called Hampton. And Hampton was one block east of Livernois, near Curtis. I would either walk or take a city bus to school.
LW: Before you moved to Southfield from Detroit, do you remember any of the changes that you mentioned your parents had attributed the move to and the way the neighborhood was changing. Do you remember any specific incidents, looking back, that you think is apparent now you might understand your parents' desire to move?
ML: It clearly was obvious to me that there were lots of black families moving in to the neighborhood and white families were leaving the neighborhood. In terms of my comfort level, I think I felt a certain level of discomfort not being in the majority anymore. I'm not sure if it was just that fact of not being in the majority as opposed to the cultural differences. I mean, there were troublemakers in the white kids; there were troublemakers in the black kids. As a rule, the black kids—now it's going to come off wrong, but I think they were given more freedom from their parents in terms of where they would go and they were a little bit quicker to get angry as a rule, I might say. But, you know, it's not universal because I noticed – in other words, I never got into a fight. I never had a physical fight with anyone, but I noticed – my recollection is that tempers would get out of control quicker with the black kids in general. I remember feeling very badly for the first two or three who moved into the neighborhood who were clearly made fun of. They were not made fun of to their face, that I recall, but I knew that people were making fun of them, and that was uncomfortable for me. But, clearly, I think that my parents felt that as the neighborhood continued to change, the value of their house was going to go down, so they would be able to economically recoup less for it. Then eventually they were going to move because, frankly, all their friends had moved into other neighborhoods, so you do tend to follow your people and your friends as well. We weren't the first to move out, so we clearly weren't running, but I can see as an adult that if I felt that my house was losing value, if I would anticipate that the level of schools might be going down, that that would make me interested in seeing, “Ok what should I be doing right now?”
LW: And did you notice — can you think back to any times, or did your parents later tell you about any times where safety might have been an issue?
ML: I do not recall any safety issues.
LW: So it was just the shift in the economics and all of that?
ML: And just people moving out and wanting to be around where all their circle of friends were living.
LW: So, when you got to high school in Southfield, when you were there, how was that – you said that it was a majority white—what was that experience like for you in terms of being a teenager and starting school, and going from a racially integrated to a —you said it was less academically challenging, but how was it socially?
ML: I frankly didn't — I mean, other than the fact that I knew that I was now in an all-white school, I don't know that I felt differently. I was not uncomfortable in my other school, but, clearly, there was an intrinsic level of comfort being an all-white school.
LW: Okay. Interesting.
ML: The first black kids that came to our school – this was Southfield High School – were clearly wealthier black kids. My impression was they were wealthier than my family based on what they did and their clothing, et cetera. I knew them. I was not particular friends with them. I didn't avoid being friends with them. I don't think I ever had a class with them, so I think if I had a class with them I might have become more friends with them. I remember when the school did a program about Martin Luther King and someone was chosen to read the speech. You know, the “I Have a Dream” speech. Well, duh, I mean it was one of the black kids because there were three of them. That was the logical thing to do and I didn't particularly think that that was wrong. I thought that made sense [laughter].
LW: When you would go – did you go back to Detroit at all – whether for sporting events, or restaurants, or fun things, family things, whatever – after you guys moved out? After your family moved to Southfield?
ML: Sure, we would go into town.
LW: What was that experience like after 1967?
ML: Clearly there was the obvious difference of going into a—I'm quoting now— “black neighborhood.” We would go to Tiger Stadium to go to games and we would park in neighborhoods around there. I remember a particular incident where probably a ten-year-old black boy came up to me after I parked the car, legally on the street, and he said he'd offer to watch the car for me and wanted to get paid for it. I remember telling him no and remember him looking at me and saying, “I can't guarantee your car will still be here when you come back.” He's probably about a ten-year-old kid and I was probably in my twenties and I just remember looking at him and saying, “Okay. I know what you look like and I'm going to remember what you look like and I expect my car to be here.” I wondered throughout the game, but the car was fine, no problem, but that was an interesting experience that I had. I guess I had a little bit of discomfort related to that. But otherwise, I didn't avoid going into the city. We went to concerts. We went down to Cobo Hall. We didn't go downtown. I mean when I was a kid we would take—me and my brother —would take the bus downtown and hang out downtown and then take the bus back. By this time, that we had moved out, I don't think I would ever had been comfortable enough to take the bus downtown. Or I didn't really know my way around all that well by myself. Again, I was going with my older brother, three years older, so I don't know that I would have gone totally by myself when I did go, but I don't think—when I think about would I let my kids take a bus – from here there's a bus a block away. It goes down into the city. I don't think I would have ever been comfortable. I don't know if it was a racial issue or just that they have no clue where they're going or where they are, I didn't think they were worldly enough to be able to handle themselves. I imagine there's some racial-based worry about that.
LW: What year was it that your family moved to Southfield again?
ML: In December ‘64.
LW: So you were watching, I assume, coverage or radio, TV coverage, of July of 1967 and what was going on?
ML: Right.
LW: What was your reaction as a teenager at that time to this news?
ML: It was actually sort of exciting. You know? For Detroit to be in the news. My first exposure to it was actually the Sunday night.
LW: Okay. Tell me about what you were doing.
ML: We went to dinner at a restaurant called Darby's.
LW: Who were you with?
ML: My family. We just went to Sunday night dinner. We often went out Sunday night for dinner. That was our family tradition. Darby's was on 7 Mile Road near Wyoming. We had gone there quite often. We were there and they served us part of the meal and I just remember looking around and noting that none of the black staff were there anymore. The black staff were either waiters, busboys, et cetera. And then the manager of the restaurant came up to our table and I think he came to us first because my dad was in a wheelchair and he was getting ready to vacate the restaurant, and he just said, “We're asking everybody to calmly leave the restaurant. We don't know what's going on. We've heard that there's some rioting going on in the city of Detroit.” This was that Sunday night. He said, “We don't know anything more than that, but just to be safe, we're asking people to leave. There's no charge for your meal.” This was probably around, between six-seven o'clock, I'm guessing. I remember asking him, “Is this why your staff is gone?”
LW: Wow.
ML: And he said, “Yeah.” And that was all. So we drove home. We listened to the radio. I don't remember that we heard that much on the radio. We came home and we got whatever news was available. Back then I think we only had three channels—
LW: —two, four, and seven.
ML: and a couple of UHF channels. We had Canadian Windsor channel nine that came in snowy at the time. So I obviously eventually learned there was rioting going on. And the next day the news was that it was building up. There was all kinds of speculation. There was speculation. We knew that there were fires; we knew that there was looting. I'm sure we saw something on TV Sunday night news about it. And there was speculation that this was going to continue to spread. So my dad's store was just less than a mile from the border of 8 Mile Road. Again, we didn't know how far it had gone. We didn't have that kind of internet capability to know what was going on. My dad checked with the people they had their insurance for the store for the fire insurance or whatever. You know, what happens if there's looting in the store? And they said that you don't have coverage for that. So, that next day, Monday, my dad and mom—as many as we could get together and just start taking trips to the store. It was from Nine Mile and Evergreen to Nine Mile and Coolidge, so that's – one, two, three miles. We just started loading stuff, inventory from the store, into cars, into vans, and just taking trips back and forth twenty – I don't know how many trips it was – we just got a bunch of friends together that were – that had either car access to a car or a driver's license. I actually had a driver's license at that time when I was 15, but I had – I was specially given a license because of my dad's condition so that I could drive him places. So it was a restricted license; I couldn't drive by myself. I had to drive with somebody else. We had friends – I was one of the youngest in my class. A lot of my friends were a whole year older than I was. We just made trips and we filled up our house; we filled up the living room; we filled up the den; we filled up the, you know, bedrooms that weren't being used at that time. My grandmother was still living with us, but my grandfather had passed. And we had just filled the house from floor to ceiling with clothing. Just because we had at that time I remember we – there was over a hundred thousand dollars worth of merchandise. In 1967, that was quite a bit of merchandise in the store. And what I don't remember is when it settled down, when we finally took stuff back, I think it was the following weekend. I believe so. I mean, basically, the store was closed. My parents would go in just so they would be in charge. They were still tailoring and dry cleaning, but there really wasn't much action; it was pretty dead. And at some point when we reached the reality that things had settled down, then we grabbed the same friends and – I don't remember how it worked. I think my parents just gave them a few bucks cash, you know, here and there, whoever was willing to help us out. I don't remember getting paid for it.
LW: Were there people working out of your parents' house during that week?
ML: No.
LW: It was just business was closed? It was just quiet.
ML: The business was open but there was really no business, and people understood. I don't think we told people we moved the merchandise because we wanted to make sure that this wasn't going to spread to our area—and once it was clear that it didn't, then just reopened for business. We tried to be as organized as we could. There's a lot of clothes – suits, pants, sports coats, shirts, ties, et cetera – and we tried to keep it organized by size, just so we could put it back in a reasonable way. We did a pretty good job. I do remember on one of our trips, not going back, but one of the trips home when we were really in a rush to keep going back and forth, I was—we were in my dad's van and the back door open somehow hadn't been adequately latched and just flung open right on Nine Mile Road, right in front of Providence Hospital. And a bunch of suits were just falling into the street and we just – whoever was driving just stepped on the brakes, right in the street. We didn't pull off and just got out, whoever was around, and picked up all the stuff and threw it back in the car. It was probably like just a pit stop, but it stays in my memory. Taking the stuff back was not as urgent. There was urgency in taking the stuff out. Taking it back was just a pain in the butt. You know, take the stuff back. So we did and that summer I was already working in the store. That was my summer job. The next experience I had that was a significant experience to me was that week that we reopened the store, it was still quiet. July, in general, was a quiet time. July and August were quiet times in general. There could be an hour could go by without a customer in the store, et cetera, where sometimes there would be eight customers in the store at a time. There usually wasn't more than a couple of people. We had some black clientele, but I think we had a pretty strong majority of white clientele. A couple of younger black men came into the store and they were just looking around. I would usually — the first person that would meet somebody at the door and I asked them, you know, could I show them something, what they wanted to look for. They said, “Nah, we're just looking around.” And that's fine, so we – I was there and they were looking around, you know, once it was clear that they weren't looking for anything in particular, I kind of would ask, “Hey, do you want to see where your size is or anything?” They said, “No. We just want to look around,” which is not unusual. That was fine. On that little strip mall where we were, there were maybe nine stores and it was very common if we ran out of singles, I would run over to the TV shop or the bike shop and ask if they could break a twenty so we could have singles or quarters or whatever. There was a bank but it was like a block-and-a-half away, so it was much easier. And this would be done all the time, and the guy that owned the bike shop happened to come by and asked for change for a twenty. I gave him change for a twenty, and I noticed that he started eyeing these two black men who were in the store and he specifically asked my dad, “Is everything okay?” And my dad said, “Yeah.” And made him the change and he left. About three minutes later he shows up at the back door of the store. There was an alley through the back, so he came into our store in the back and he's holding a gun—a handgun. And I was like, my eyes – I had never seen a gun up close. I looked at him, I said, “What are you doing?” He goes, “I just want to make sure if there's any trouble with those two black guys in the store, I'm here to help.” And it totally blew me away. It had never crossed my mind to treat these guys any differently. I was 15 years old. They're two black guys in the store. It could have been two young white guys. It wouldn't have made any difference to me at that time. Now, maybe thinking about it, maybe it should have because of the riots being just so new, but I don't remember noticing anything or feeling uncomfortable.
LW: And that was right after July of '67?
ML: Yeah. That was the following week.
LW: Wow.
ML: So that had to have been a week after we brought the clothing back, so it would be a week after. And it just opened my eyes to – you know. And then I found out later on from my parents that this guy was an outspoken racist. So they were not surprised, but I was surprised. My dad told him to get – to take his gun and get the hell out of the store. [Laughter.] So that was an interesting experience for me as a kid.
LW: I can imagine. Is there anything else that you want to talk about that you remember during that time?
ML: Those were my memories vis-a-vis the actual time of '67, July '67. After that went back to business as usual. I know we did – and I don't know what time interval – we did take a drive down into Detroit, and that was totally out of curiosity to see the tanks, you know, to see the National Guard. I remember seeing the smoke from – I don't think I saw any active fires at the time, but there was a lot of smoke around. Smoldering fires. Oh, yeah. There is – so, in 1968, my dad decided he wanted to try to make a trip to Israel. He had a lot of people that he hadn't seen since he came to the United States, when they were living in Israel, and it was hard for him to travel as a quadriplegic in 1968, so they took me out of school – I was in eleventh grade – and I went for a month with him, to help take care of my dad. We went to Israel. I was an amazing trip for me as a teenager – so now I'm 16 years old – had a girl that I fell for, you know, kind of learning about things, et cetera, learning about my heritage has had a very big impact on my life. But it was really interesting because I'm a talker and with people to talk to, we were clearly tourists and whoever you talk to, or even the friends of my dad, would ask, “Where do you live?” That's the first question. They knew we were from the States and I would say, “Detroit.” And it was almost a hundred percent, that when you told somebody – especially if it was like a stranger, like a waiter in a restaurant or something – and I would say I was from Detroit. They would always ask two questions, and they always asked them in the same order. The first question is “Do you like Motown?” Okay? And the second question was – this is in April of 1968 – the second question was “Is the city still on fire?” And people were dead serious. So, in other words, nine months later, the mention of Detroit in the country of Israel immediately brought back memories of a city burning. And they were serious about this. They weren't tongue-and-cheek. They were dead serious. “Is the city still burning?” And when I would tell them no, they were like, Oh, that's cool. [Laughter.] I gave them news that they didn't know. They had assumed the city was still on fire, which was pretty eye-opening to me about the impact that this had on other parts of the world.
LW: Sure.
ML: And there was one other story that I had mentioned about, an experience with racism that was a new experience to me, this already happened now in my professional life. So this was in the early 80s, probably, '81 or '82. I had fairly new practice and I got to know my patients pretty well, I still do now. I think then I had a much less number of patients, volume. I had this one couple that both the mom and dad were police officers. They were Detroit police officers. I remember them telling [me] they all lived in the same – all the white police officers in Detroit lived around Telegraph, just south of 8 Mile because they had to live in the city itself. That was the law at the time, I don't think it is anymore, but that was the law at the time. So, this is a couple – I mean, to me it was cool they were cops. It was cool that the woman was a cop because she went back to work after having the baby. And on one of the visits I discovered a new heart murmur in the baby. It didn't seem to me like this was a serious or urgent scenario. I thought it was what we call an innocent murmur. But we wanted to get it checked out and I suggested that they see a cardiologist and, of course the first question was, “Do we have to go right away?” And I said, “No. This is not an emergency. If it was, I would call a cardiologist and say, ‘I'm sending this patient.’ This is something that you can just call and make an appointment and have it checked out. And I gave them the name of the cardiologist at Children's Hospital, who I think was the head of the department at the time, but I gave them the name because this is the guy that I had gotten to know the best and I really liked him. His name was Bill Jackson. And I wrote down the name, Bill Jackson, and the number and I handed it to the dad and the dad looks at it and he says to me, “This Jackson. Is he black?” And I really paused for a second because I totally wasn't expecting that. And then I said, “No, he's not. He's white. But now I got to ask you a question. If I said to you he was black, but this was the best doctor you should go see, would you not go?” And they both immediately said, “Absolutely not.” And I said, “Whoa.” I said, “You're kidding me, right?” And they said, “No, we're serious.” And I said, “You got to explain to me – I need some more input here.” And the dad said to me, he said, “You don't know how life is in the Detroit Police Department.” He said, “There is absolutely a schism between the black police officers and the white police officers.” And I said, “So strong that if I told you that the best doctor for your baby was a black doctor, you wouldn't go?” And he said, “I would not go. I would not be comfortable there.” And I was totally shocked. Again, early 80s and it blew me away. And I remember asking, I said, “is this like universal among police officers in Detroit?” And he said, “Absolutely.” I said, “Wow.”
LW: Wow. As late as the 80s.
ML: In the early eighties. And I was shocked.
LW: Wow. Well that is interesting. Brings it up a little closer to today.
ML: I don't remember having more discussion about it. It made me uncomfortable and I remember—was there any reason that I should bring this up again? You know I continued to see them and they actually then had another child, so I took care of both of their kids and I never brought it up again because I wasn't sure of the context why it would make any sense for me to bring it up.
LW: Of course.
ML: But, I could tell you for a long time, every time I saw them, as soon as I walked in the door I remembered that story. And then, later on I hired a nurse who has worked for me for probably 25 years now, maybe even close to 30, and her husband was at that time a police officer. This was a black couple. I remember asking him – and we had like an office party for Christmas—and in that many years I had met him a number of times and we spent some time together. I remember sharing this story with him and he was not the least bit surprised. He said, “Yeah. I would totally expect that.” It just corroborated that this was not unique to this particular couple; but it was more of a universal statement.
LW: Interesting. Well thank you for sharing that with us. That was great. Thank you so much for your time and is there anything else you want to add, on the record?
ML: I think I'm done.
LW: Okay [laughter].Thank you so much. That was great.
**NL: Today is June 17, 2015. This is the interview of Felton Rogers by Noah Levinson. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum on Woodward Avenue in Detroit Michigan. And this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 oral history project. Felton, can you first tell me where and when you were born?
FR: I was born in Detroit, Michigan, 1941.
NL: And where were you living in July of 1967?
FR: I was living in Detroit on Fairview Avenue. On the east side of Detroit -
NL: And can you tell me what you were doing in 1967?
FR: Do you mean as far as employment?
NL: Yes
FR: Oh I was a Detroit police officer. I was a rookie at that time.
NL: So you had graduated the academe the year before and started in 1967? Can you first tell me your memories of Detroit in the early and mid-1960s? Before 1967, what the city was like?
FR: I, ah, I enjoyed living in Detroit. I don’t recall any major problems especially where I lived and where I grew up. I did grow up in Detroit, and left for a while to go to college, and came back, then go into the military, and I came back. So, ah, I can’t say I had any major problems in Detroit, in my community.
NL: And what were your impressions of downtown at that time?
FR: Downtown was a great place to come to. Ah, there were a lot of movie theaters and a few restaurants. It was an enjoyable place.
NL: Did you go there frequently?
FR: Sure.
NL: Alright, so can you tell me about your experiences on the force in the summer of 1967 and the events that were leading up to the last week in July of 1967?
FR: 1967, I was a rookie police officer. I had been assigned to the Fifth Precinct, which was on Jefferson and St. Jean, on the far east side of Detroit. I was a patrolman, scout car duties with a partner usually, sometimes by myself. And Sunday morning, one Sunday morning, on the 20 - I think it was actually the 23, I reported for duty for day shift. After roll call, the–advised us that there were problems on the west side of Detroit, the Tenth Precinct, and some of the officers from our station was gonna be shipped over there, which indeed happened. I think it was four of us that went to the Tenth precinct. When we got over there, we found out that there were officers from other precincts also gathering there. Okay. We had no idea at that time what really was going on, okay, just that they needed some extra manpower. We were issued helmets and shotguns, and placed on the Blue Bird bus, which was a big bus that the Detroit Police Department uses for transportation. And taken over to the Twelfth Street area. As we got closer to Twelfth Street, I remember, hearing burglar alarms going off, more than one, you know. And as we got closer they got louder and louder. Ah, once we became in sight of the Twelfth Street it was like a mess. It was like a carnival. There were people everywhere in the streets, alarms were going off, store windows were broken out, ah some stuff was scattered out in the street, on the sidewalks. And we exited the bus and our Sergeant had as form a scrimmage line. And I forget what street it was, but at an intersection to protect the violence and looting, and whatever, from going further south. We were not to shoot anyone. That was not going to be the case, to shoot anyone, unless you were shot at and you had to defend yourself, okay. And, you couldn’t arrest the looters, we just didn’t want it to go further south. Because there was just too many people, just moving back and forth. A few of them were taunting us, but most of them were just looking at us. They didn’t care. And they’re still knocking out windows, and just going on about their business. This was about, I think, probably ten o’clock in the morning, something like that. Around that time. This went on for quite a while. We noticed that there was smoke behind us, heading south on Twelfth Street. It appeared that someone, obviously, had set fire to some buildings behind us. So half of the squad was turned around, to protect anyone coming from the south toward us. The other officers remained facing the crowd. Okay, so it was like protecting our back, you know. We remained that way for some hours. There was no relief at that time. Presently, after a while, we noticed that the hardware store that was about a half a block away from us had caught on fire, and flames were coming out of the top apartment in the front. We also noticed that the windows started pulsating out, in and out, in and out, in and out, so we backed up, and sure enough, it just blew out into the street, you know the paint and the whatever was in that hardware store, you know. Um, I believe the fire department came and tried to start putting out some fires in that area. We remained in that area until night time. There was no relief. We didn’t have any relief, or food or water or anything at that time. Ah, when the night came what we did was the whole squad moved into a vacant — well a looted — grocery store. And just watched the street, you know. But, shooting started at that time. People started shooting and it was getting closer and closer. So, we didn’t know if they were coming after us or what, okay. One of the street lights, across the street and to our right, was illuminating the store that we were in, pretty much. So, I remember, one of the officers went and shot that light out, so that we could darken that area. There was no food, or anything in the store, but of course there was a restroom, and water, we could get that, but we still didn’t have any food, so we weren’t relieved, and we hadn’t heard from anyone. About two or three o’clock in the morning, we heard a growling or rumbling, type of sound. And, it got closer and closer, and so a few of the officers looked out and they said, “Come here, quick, quick.” And we stood out, came out, looked out, and coming down the darkened street, Twelfth Street, was two State police cars, side by side, with their running lights on, two jeeps, with National Guard, a tank, and maybe three or four trucks with National Guardsmen on it, okay. So, we flagged them down, and they were asking about the situation, and so we told them pretty much, you know, and they were still headed south so we ask them that they would contact someone so that we could get some relief, because – and where we were, okay. And now, that didn’t happen until approximately seven o’clock in the morning. So it was daylight, and we got a relief at that time and I went back to my precinct, and was told to go home and report back the next day for twelve hour shifts. Beginning twelve hour shifts. Which I did, went home, went to sleep.
Came back the next morning, day shift, and I was assigned to be put on a jeep with two national guardsmen. And myself as the supervisor of the jeep, to move around in the area to look for looters and prevent looters. You know, just move around within the Fifth Precinct. This was back in the Fifth Precinct, okay. We did find a few people that were looting and arrested a few people. It was a very hot day. I remember coming back after one journey out in the precinct and this is a Salvation Army truck sitting just inside our driveway at the Fifth Precinct, so we pulled in to get some refreshments and coffee and water and juice or whatever. We were there about five minutes, and there was some shooting again. Officers started saying “Duck, get down, get down”, and the firing was very close. What it was, was someone had got on the top of a building, a tall storage building that was across the street from the precinct. They were on the roof and they were firing at us, into our parking lot, at us, okay. So we were taking cover, and there was ‘pings, pings’. I distinctly know something like a bee went by, fairly close, and I don’t know there’s a bee in the area, I’m sure I knew what that was. And I distinctly saw one of our sergeant’s cars took a bullet hole right in the middle of his windshield. This went on for about 10 or 15 minutes, you know. So, no one could do anything, and all the sudden – Well, let me also tell you this, that, during that time, when the fire departments were showing up to put our fires, some people were shooting at them. And, at that time, a couple of firemen had been killed, okay. So, the National Guard had been assigned to protect the fire department, you know, they would make runs with them. Well, evidently, someone from our precinct called down to the fire department, which was a few blocks from us on Fairview and Mack, I believe. All of a sudden a jeep with a National Guardsman pulled up, and a .50 caliber mounted machine gun on it. And he started popping off rounds at that building and just chipping away at it, you know. And I don’t know if any rounds went over the building, or whatever to antagonize who was ever there. I distinctly saw that he was pumping those rounds off. He stopped, no more firing from that building, and then officers, some officers got together and rushed the building. And went inside and went up to the top. There was no one up there, there were some shell cases up there though, but there was no one up there. That shook us off for sure. We went back on patrol, and finished off the shift. The day after that, ah, I was assigned back to my regular scout car duty because the paratroopers had come in, Federal soldiers, airborne people had come in, and surrounded the, you know, city and we had the National Guard, so the precincts pretty much went back to what they were doing. And that’s my recollection of that time.
NL: As you recall, did you find that the different—the Detroit Police, the National Guard, the airborne, did they work will together, was it well organized as far as responsibilities?
FR: I don’t know if it was that well organized. I think the National Guard may have been a little quick on the trigger. There was just so much going on; it was so chaotic. Everything was burning. I mean, it was, you could see smoke for days, you know. And I do recall seeing a couple people that were – That had been, shot, you know, they were, they were laying in the street in my precinct, ah. So no, I don’t think it was – It was just thrown together, and people were doing the best that they could basically.
NL: Just trying to get as much manpower as possible?
FR: Manpower and suppress it, you know, suppress it. And you know, a lot of people died. Lot of people.
NL: Forty three, I believe.
FR: Yeah, yeah, okay.
NL: I believe. That's the number we were told. I read about.
FR: Yeah.
NL: You remained in the police department another five years or so, after this?
FR: Yeah, six years.
NL: What did you notice, both as a citizen and as a police officer, what did you notice about the city during that time following 1967?
FR: At that time, I think – Obviously, everything cooled down, as far as the relationship between the police officer and the citizens. It was more cordial maybe people tiptoeing a little bit, I don’t know, but it was better. I remember also that the PAL program [Police Athletic League] came into effect, and I was selected to be on it. And we started the first PAL program in the city with the kids on the east side and the west side. With basketball and baseball at that time. A lot of activities for the kids to do. It was really good. It was really good for this city at that time.
NL: Can you tell me more about the PAL program? What that was, and how it got started?
FR: Yeah, it was a copy of the PAL program that they have in New York City, where you involve your local community and the kids in activities. They can be local activities, and they would branch out to national activities. We go to churches, meetings, and ask if anyone in the community was interested in coaching a team. We provide the equipment for them. We provide the location. We provide the officials, okay, and we had the money to do that. We got very good response from both the east side and the west side. And we had kids participating in a league at fourteen year olds and up, and the sixteen and up leagues. Okay, in basketball, and in baseball. In basketball, we secured a couple of facilities, gyms, and had the officials. We had round robin tournaments during the winter time. Very successful. In the summertime we sponsored, I think, maybe four teams. One of the teams, the sixteen year old and older team, went to the national finals in Danville, Virginia, and took second place. Quaker Oats sponsored us. We were given vans from, I forget what auto dealership, but they gave us a couple of vans. My partner and I and another officer, the three of us, four of us actually, drove the kids to Danville, Virginia. It was a week tournament. Very successful. And the program is very big now I understand. I think it’s humongous and they’re still doing go work. I was proud to be a part of it.
NL: That’s great. Switching gears a bit, can you go back, can you tell me about the police’s undercover efforts, the blind pig that was at Twelfth and Clairmount.
FR: Sure. When a new officer comes into a precinct, and that precinct has complaints from the community that there are illegal activities going on in house, or someplace around, they want it closed down, they want police attention, they want it over with because it’s affecting the neighborhood, for sure. Usually, when a new police officer comes into a precinct, they ask him to do an undercover sting, because the officer is not known in that precinct. I did them in the Fifth Precinct. What you do, is you have an officer go in, in plain clothes, into the facility, get into the facility, any way he can. And he’s to identify who let him in, who sold him liquor, approximately how many people are in there, if there was any gambling, who was the one that was cutting the pot, okay. And there’s a ten minute time frame from the time when the officer goes in, to the time when the officers on the outside are going to knock on the door and say, “Police,” you know, “open the door, were coming in.” Okay. And that’s how it works. When the policemen come in, obviously, they’re going to arrest everyone there. And the next morning, there’s the arraignments of all the people that were arrested. And, they pretty much give them tickets. In this case, it appears that, there were so many people in the place that, it took a long time for them to garner transportation to get all those people out of there, which meant a crowd starting forming; that’s basically what happened in this case. And a mob mentality took over. And that’s the results of what happened, you know, later on.
NL: Do you know who the police officer was that first entered that blind pig?
FR: Yeah, I know one of them, he graduated with me from the police academy.
NL: Can you tell me about him?
FR: His name’s Joe Brown, Joseph Brown. I wasn’t assigned a precinct with him. But obviously, I knew him, we’d see each other, you, know. Black officers, saw – there weren’t a whole lot of black officers anyway at that time. So, everybody pretty much knew everybody. And I ran into him a few times over the years. Last time, I think I saw him in Hart Plaza and we talked for a while. That was some years ago. I don’t know the other officer, I knew of him, I’ve seen him, I didn’t know him personally, and I can’t recall his name.
NL: You said that there were not many black police officers at this point. Did you feel, either in your own experience, or sort of a perception of the city of Detroit, did you ever feel that the police force discriminated against non-white citizens?
FR: Discriminated?
NL: As far as their practices?
FR: Well, I was never – I don’t – I never saw any discrimination, I’m sure, obviously there were some things going on that, and it continues today, that policemen shouldn’t do, or shouldn’t be in that position, you know. So I can’t say, I mean sure things were going on, but I don’t recall seeing anything from Detroit police officers regarding a citizen, a black citizen.
NL: As a police officer, did you feel that they had fair hiring and training practices for you as a young black officer?
FR: Yeah, yeah, most definitely, everybody got the same treatment. Going through the police academy, learned the same thing, you know, yeah, I think it was definitely fair treatment.
NL: Do you have any idea why it might have been that there was such a small number of black officers at the time?
FR: I mean, it was the times. Just, you know, what was it, the sixties, it was just the times. I mean I could speculate on it, but we know it was the times, they just weren’t ready to hire more black police officers. That’s all, and there’s been some change obviously, there’s a lot more today, as it was in the military, many years ago, and now the military has many, many black officers, I mean soldiers. So it was the times, yeah. The only discrimination I ran into was when I was working a one man car, on the day shift. That’s where, basically, you’re just patrolling, and you’re taking reports, you know, somebody calls in like a barking dog or a B and E [breaking and entering], or something, and you go there, and you make a report, you know, of course you do. So there was report out, that a man wanted to make a report, obviously, so I was dispatched to his house. I went up on his porch, and I knocked on his door, he opened the door and said, “Oh, hell no. Get off my porch.” And I said, “Ah, what sir?” and he said, “Get off my porch, I don’t want your ass on my porch, and I’m going to call the precinct.” “All right, mister, I’m wearing a uniform.” This was a white guy, an older white man. [Chuckling] And that’s exactly what happened. I got of his porch, got into the car. And, when the shift was over, my lieutenant said, yeah, he said, “That guy called here and said he wanted me to send a white officer there, but I told him he better bring his butt in here and make a report if he wanted to, but I wasn’t sending nobody else.” I recall that vividly, obviously.
NL: Yeah.
FR: Yeah, sure.
NL: People use a lot of words and phrases to talk about the events of July 1967. A lot of historians refer to it as the Detroit Riots of 1967. What do you think, from you experiences, would be the appropriate way to refer to that last week in July?
FR: Riot. I don’t know if it was a riot. What’s the definition of an insurrection? I don’t know. I’ll have to look it up.
NL: Uprising, violence, yeah.
FR: Yeah, I don’t know if I would call it a riot, I would just call it a disturbance that really got out of hand and people took advantage of it as best they could.
NL: You have lived in south east Michigan since then, correct?
FR: Yeah, that’s right.
NL: What have you noticed most about the changes over time since then and how the city of Detroit and the surrounding area has changed since those events?
FR: Well, we obviously know that there’s has been a lot of flight from Detroit. The population is way down. I think it was over a million, definitely over a million when I was here, and I think it’s half of that now. Obviously, the crime is terrible. People taking advantage of people as often as they can. And I think there’s hope. Ah, the bankruptcy, they went through the bankruptcy, that cleared up some stuff, because of people in office that were taking advantage of, obviously, the city, the wrong way. I think it’s on a good path. I think the police officer and the mayor that are in charge are doing good jobs. And it will continue on hopefully. I think they’re very good, honest people, dedicated people.
NL: Have you had any specific or direct involvement with the Detroit police since you retired?
FR: No, I haven’t had any. Ike McKinnon was police chief at one time, and he and I were friends. And I just ran into him a few years ago in Ann Arbor in a grocery store. That’s about it, you know, but know, no direct relationship back to the Detroit Police Department. All the people that I knew are obviously gone at this point.
NL: Where has your career taken you since that time?
FR: My career took me to – back to college. I went back – I had a year and a half of college left. I went to Eastern Michigan University to complete that year and a half. I had originally been in Iowa. To complete that year and a half, I received a bachelor’s degree, and then a few years later I got a master’s degree in guidance counseling. I worked with people with closed head injuries for quite a while. I also worked for the Boysville of Michigan as a director of treatment for quite a while. And I wound up as a counselor in the Michigan Department of Corrections, for ten years, a little over ten years and retired from them as a human resource person. So I’ve been retired now for eight years, I think.
NL: What would you say, if anything, have you taken with you from your experiences in 1967 on to the rest of your career and life?
FR: Well, I think, people are good, and you need to give everyone a chance. You need to not hesitate to give a second chance, if the opportunity arises. And treat people the way you want to be treated. Treat them fairly, obviously. Help if you can. Pay it forward, and those type of things.
NL: Is there anything else you’d like to share with us about your memories of that time? Or anything else?
FR: No, I think that’s about it.
NL: Alright, well on behalf of the Detroit Historical Museum, thank you so much for sharing your stories and memories with us today.
FR: Thank you.
**NL: Today is June 12, 2015. This is the interview of Girard Townsend by Noah Levinson. We are at 250 McDougall Street in Detroit at the River Town Assisted Living Home. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Girard, can you tell me where and when you were born?
GT: I was born 1951. April 23, 1951.
NL: And where?
GT: I was born in Wayne, Michigan—Second Street and Van Born.
NL: Where did you live in July 1967?
GT: I lived on Saint Jean and Mack.
NL: What neighborhood would you say that is?
GT: Eastside.
NL: And what were you doing at that time?
GT: When the riot broke out I was leaving Saint Jean and Mack going on to 2717 Blaine and Fourteenth. I was leaving my girlfriend’s house and I was going over to my brother’s house and he lived on Blaine and Twelfth.
NL: How far away was that?
GT: That’s coming from the east side to the west side.
NL: What do you remember seeing, hearing, and noticing that day?
GT: It was 3 o’clock in the morning, I was leaving my girlfriend’s house where I was staying with her on Saint Jean and Mack. I was on the crosstown bus going down Clairmount to Twelfth. And, at the time, about three in the morning, I saw someone laying out in the street, and the guards had him covered up. And there were a lot of guards with the shields and the masks, and they had the street blocked off, Twelfth and Clairmount. And they said at the after-hours joint that they had threw the white girl out the window, from my understanding. Anyway, so when I got off the bus I just went on into my apartment because I was living on Blaine between Twelfth and Fourteenth, went on in my apartment with my girlfriend. We had caught the bus. Got up the next morning, I hear fire department, fire engine, I smelled smoke and stuff. So I came out the apartment and I looked down the street, I see people running with televisions, clothes, all kinds of clothes, pants, refrigerators, stoves, little kids carrying micro–, not microwaves, but carrying all kinds of stuff out the grocery stores. And they was looting and everything was on fire on Twelfth. So somebody said, “It’s a race riot.” It never was a race riot. It was us. Black people destroying their own property where they live and looting in the stores that they go into every day. And they was burning up the stores, they was breaking into the jewelry stores, breaking into supermarkets. Wherever we could steal at, we stole. But it wasn’t such thing as a race riot, it was everybody looting and stealing from where they lived at. That’s what it was. There was not black people fighting no white people. None of that. We used that riot to steal and loot our own place where we lived at. And I watched this because I was one of the looters. I was 17 at the time. And my wife was pregnant with my daughter which is 47, and it been 47 years ago. I was 18 — 64 now. And we just destroyed everything where we lived at. We didn’t go out in the white people neighborhood and do none of that. I’m keeping it real, everybody grown. We stayed in our neighborhoods. Tore up Twelfth Street, Twelfth Street was the worse street we tore up in Detroit because we burned out everything on Twelfth, supermarkets, liquor stores, pawn shops everything that we used every day in our normal lives the stores that we went into every day we burnt that down stole out everything out the stores. Put everybody out of business. We broke into jewelry stores, supermarkets, liquor stores, clothing stores. We just burnt up everything on Twelfth. You go down Twelfth now, I’ll tell you something, I’ll say from Clairmount all the way down to the Boulevard, all the nice stores and stuff that’s on Twelfth, none of that’s there now. Everything is burnt down. Only thing over there now is they got, little- you know how they had little shopping malls in the neighborhoods? They got that and they built up a lot of new houses from the state, and they built up the new condominiums, but there ain’t nothing over there now that there used to be on Twelfth 47 years ago cause we burned it down. We burnt down everything, every building where we used to have to go to take business or either go shopping and get food and stuff. We burnt it down. We burnt down our own neighborhoods. We burnt down the grocery stores, supermarkets, clothing stores. And we make people – a lot of people said the ’67 riots, where for white and black races, none of that, no they weren’t, never was, not like that. I don’t care where you went to in Detroit, there wasn’t none of that. It was looting. We used that riot for an excuse to rob and steal and loot where we lived at, in our own neighborhoods and that’s the gospel. The reason I know that because I was a participant in it. I was stealing too, I had clothes, refrigerators, stoves, putting them in the back of my car and all that. One time, me and my brother we stole a TV and the guards was coming, my brother got scared, he dropped the TV down and I still had it, so the television fell on top of me and the guards came past, they seen the TV on me, lifted the television off me and went on about their business, and I drug the TV in the garage and waited till night and come back with the car and got it. That’s why my back’s kind of messed up. Anyway, that’s the truth. And I got a daughter name of J’wanda. See my wife was pregnant with her during riot. And we took liquor out the liquor store. And we transferred the liquor on the bus, and we took it and sold it at the after-hours joints and stuff. And my girlfriend was pregnant which I married her, in ’67 she was pregnant with my daughter. And she had my daughter whose name of J’wanda in July and she was a ’67 riot baby. Got a daughter right now, she’ll be 47 next Monday, July, right, it’s June—yup, she’s a riot baby. My wife, I married her, in ’67. Yeah, I was 18. I know 47 years ago, that riot was horrible. And I think the guards shoot up some people’s cars and stuff like that, but it was after curfew. We wasn’t supposed to be on the street, and they were still out there stealing and looting and stuff, and the guard shot and killed some people. But it was never a race riot. Whoever told you that is wrong. The majority of the black people coming, they gonna tell you it was niggers stealing and looting and tearing up their own stuff where they live at. That’s right. That’s what we did. But it’s the gospel, I’m just keeping it real with you. Anything else you wanna know?
NL: Yeah, I’m curious. So I’ve heard you describe these events as a riot, but then you also said, you think they’re not a riot.
GT: It wasn’t a riot! It was you that named riot, like it was white and black. It was never no white and black issue like when they say “riot” it’s black against white and such. It wasn’t that! We use that name when they say, “Oh, it’s a riot out there.” So they used that to loot and steal and destroy their own property. You hear me? They used that riot to loot and steal from their own neighborhoods and property. It was never a white and black issue. So they say, “Oh, it’s a race riot.” Oh no it wasn’t. It was stealing. They used that name, “riot,” like it was a white and black riot. There was none of that. When they find out everybody talking about a riot, they start burning up, stealing, and looting. They use that riot for looting and stealing. That’s all that was about. That’s the gospel. And the majority of people that’s my age, they’ll come in and tell you the same thing. They used that riot to loot and steal because they didn’t know better. A lot of these people older than me, and I’m 64. But I was participating in that riot. I was doing that same stuff. I was in the jewelry stores and that, getting some of the fake jewelry, the supermarkets getting food, in the appliance store getting appliances. I had an apartment, it was full of every kind of stolen stuff. I was participating, I was 17. That’s what I was doing, and I saw white people doing none of that.
NL: What do you think, before July of that year, what was happening that sort of led to that moment? How did it get to be that extreme?
GT: As far as I know, they tried to say when the white girl got thrown out of that blind pig. Blind pig back in that day were after-hours joints with alcohol. So they throw the white girl out the window at Clairmount and, between Twelfth and Blaine on Clairmount. And that’s what I thought, the police had the streets blocked off. They threw the white girl out the window, and then that’s where the riots supposedly started at. They started on the west side. Some people say they started – what I saw started on the west side, on Twelfth and Blaine between Fourteenth and Twelfth on Clairmount. On Clairmount you go Twelfth and then you go Fourteenth.
NL: What about before that night at Twelfth and Clairmount? Before that, earlier in the year of 1967, let’s say. Was there a lot of hostility in that neighborhood?
GT: Are you talking about like when Martin Luther King was alive? When did he pass, when was he murdered?
NL: 1968, I believe, is when he was assassinated.
GT: Well, I think a lot of that came from Martin Luther King in the South and stuff, it resonated up here. That’s where a lot of it, I believe, came from. In Detroit, it wasn’t no race riot, but a lot of hostility came from—he got assassinated in ’68, right? A lot of that kind of originated up here in the cities. People you know, talking about the white people. You know how that shit goes, you know. I think of a lot of it came from that. But it wasn’t a race riot here in Detroit. It wasn’t that. It was us stealing and looting and burning up our own places where we liked to go and shop and live every day. We set it on fire after we stole all the stuff out [laughter]. We did.
NL: How have you seen Detroit change since then?
GT: I seen them build up a lot of low-income houses. Then the drugs wasn’t like it is now. When they built up all these low-income houses, where they tore down all the houses and stuff on Twelfth and put up all the condominiums? Here come the drugs, here come that crack shit. And when that crack shit came out, man, it just messed up everything. But it was never—I ain’t never seen a race riot. They might have had them down South; I never lived in the South. I saw a whole lot of pictures about that shit. I never seen nothing like that in Detroit. When we was in Detroit, we just burn up our own shit we used that for an excuse to loot and steal and stuff. A lot of hostility could’ve come from the assassination of Martin Luther King, and it resonated up here. You know. It’s strongly possible, I never thought about it either until you just said that. But, a lot of that could’ve been, you know. But it wasn’t no white and black thing, I can’t stand why they say riot, race riot. It was a something that – we used that to rob, steal, and all that. It wasn’t a race riot. Might have been down South in Alabama and all of them down there. You know it could’ve been that, it was like that down there, but it wasn’t like that here. Because you know black guys had white girlfriends and everything at the time. 1968, up here? Yeah. We was doing our thing, but you couldn’t do it down South, you know. It’s altogether different, but anyway, I believe a lot of the hostility came from Martin Luther King’s assassination down there. It made the people up here mad. But we weren’t killing no white people or none of that. We were stealing. Man, there were little kids running with meat and stuff in their hands! It’s horrible. We used that riot to gain profit and stuff for ourselves. That’s what we used that riot for. It wasn’t no white people and black people fighting and killing each other. If there was, we wouldn’t have been stealing and robbing and burning up that shit. I'm just keeping it real. I was in it.
NL: I want to ask you, so knowing what you know now, we’re looking back at almost 50 years since then
GT: 47 years ago.
NL: If you had a chance to do it all over again, do you think you still would have participated in it that way?
GT: I don’t know. I don’t know what to say to that. In my state of mind, like the majority of the people, they used the riots to gain. You know we getting free this, we getting free that. We can burn it down and take all that stuff. You know, we used that. We used that to loot and steal from our own stores that we lived in every day. That’s what we did. And then they do it now, all the time.
NL: You think so?
GT: Yeah, they’d do it all over again, if it’s free. Come on, let’s keep it real.
NL: Free is free.
GT: Yeah, it’s free! We’ll do it better this time. We’ll do it better this time.
NL: All right, Girard, thank you so much for sharing your stories with us today.
GT: Okay, buddy.
NL: Take care.
GT: Alrighty.
**LW: This is the interview of Father Michael Varlamos. Today’s date is June 25, 2015, we are at the Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in St. Clair Shores. My name is Lily Wilson. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Father Mike, can you tell me where and when you were born?
MV: I was born in Highland Park, Michigan on August 14, 1962.
LW: And what street did you live on?
MV: I lived on Cruse, which was right off of Fenkell between Hubbell and Schaefer, if memory serves.
LW: Okay. Who are your parents and what were their occupations?
MV: My parents were Nicolas and Olymbia Varlamos. My father, at the time I was born in the early sixties—I don’t know if he was regularly employed at the time. He was discharged from the army, I believe, in 1959 and as was the custom, he came back here, worked at a gas station in the area and then he went back to Greece, met my mother on June 1, engaged June 8, and married June 15. After a month of what was considered a honeymoon visiting all of their relatives they flew—actually they came by boat, back to Detroit. And my mom thought she was marrying an American who had a lot of money [laughter] and my dad was in between jobs, he was broke, so they ended up living with his parents on Ardmore which was the street right behind the street that I grew up on. So, my mother knew absolutely no English when she came and shortly after she arrived she found she was pregnant. Her first child was a miscarriage.
LW: Okay.
MV: She always used to tell me the stories of how she was not – the doctors were telling her that she had lost the child and she didn’t understand what they were saying to her. So she always used to tell us this story. Then after a year she had my sister in ’59. So she came in ’58. And then in ’62 or early sixties my dad had purchased a party store and was a store owner on the east side of Detroit on Mack and Lemay and he was told when he opened up the party store by a Greek sage who was very, very involved—his name was Pete Peluras—I can’t believe I still remember—I had buried him, that’s why I remember, I did his funeral. But he told my dad, because the neighborhood was in an African-American community there, and he said, “The first thing you are going to do, you are going to hire a black man to work with you.” And so, my dad did. He was really following his advice word for word. How he should account for the expenditures, and income and we can talk about that a little bit later. But that was his party store, it was a liquor store and also comic books, candies, and milk, eggs, and bread they sold there. My mom, of course, she didn’t work because she really didn’t speak English and after my sister was born three years later I was born in ’62. So for the record I’m 53. Okay?
LW: Okay. And what city in Greece did your parents come from?
MV: My dad was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1933 and his family had flown to Greece in ’39, I believe it was, and they went just to fix the patriarchal home there. The home where his father was from, so they were going to spend the summer and what happened is the Second World started and they were unable to leave. So, essentially right after the Second World War—so my dad grew up in Greece and they were not able to leave until 1948, ‘49 after the Greek civil war that took place right after the Second World War. So, my dad grew up in Greece ten years of his childhood. He left when he was four and he came back when he was fourteen. So, he grew up in Greece, we would say. And then he came—my grandfather had—he and his two brothers came and brought them to Detroit, put them through the schools. My dad was not known for being a very good student, he was more of a hands-on person, but he did end up going to the National Guard and served in the Army. My mother was from a small village in the central part of Greece. And it’s called the Megalo Chorio, which means literally “the big village,” and it’s near a town that is affectionately known as the Switzerland of Greece.
LW: Okay.
MV: And it’s called Karpenisi.
LW: Okay.
MV: But they met in Athens.
LW: They met in Athens. So tell me about the neighborhood that you grew up in and what it was like, who your neighbors were, who you played with?
MV: It was a very long time ago but I still have very vivid memories of growing up in Detroit. We were there until 1970.
LW: Yeah.
MV: So, in our neighborhood, right next door to us was my dad’s brother and my two cousins, the third weren’t born yet. They lived right next door to us on one side. Across the street and kitty-corner was my dear friend Timmy and behind us on the other side of the alley was my dear friend Allen. And Timmy, Allen and Mike were always together. I mean, we used to roam the neighborhood. We were five, six years old at the time, we were very young but it was a beautiful—We used to, I remember, making piles of leaves and we used to jump and roll around in the leaves and then it was a custom back then that they used to rake the leaves into the street and set them on fire. That’s how you got rid of the leaves and we’d just like to watch the smoke and jump through the fire. There was an old abandoned car at Allen’s house, who was an African American and we used to spend an entire day just, you know, it was an old ’50 DeSoto or something a real old car. And we used to just like sit the driver seat. The windows were all broken. It was a very dangerous—now that I think of it. [Laughter] I mean it was rusted. [Laughter] We could have scraped ourselves, there was broken glass. We were sitting on top of it, you know there was a big steering wheel I remember, we used to just pretend—it was just a great—I loved my childhood, that I remember then. And then of course, two houses down from us, on the left was an Italian woman, and she—the neighborhood was pretty much—there were not very many African-Americans that I remember, early. There was a lot of immigrants, Greek, Italian. And I would just say Americans. We didn’t identify them with any ethnicity. There was a little old lady at the end of the street—her last name is Lionakis—and I met her daughter not too long ago. And she was from the island of Crete.
LW: Okay.
MV: And she used to sit in her window and she would just watch us. And I would remember everyday going to school and I would always see her up in that little bungalow, that little window that was up there. She would always wave, this frail old hand. The Italian woman she had a little child who was even younger, it was an infant, even younger than me, but I remember that she and my mother would talk a great deal but neither one of them spoke English. My mother would speak to her in Greek and she would speak in Italian and that made an impression on me that they were able to communicate. She was a young mother she was asking about advice.
LW: Of course.
MV: About what to do with a baby, I’m assuming. And I’m thinking—now this is what my mother told me after the fact—I witnessed this but I didn’t know it was being said and going on.
My mother came to find out that her father was killed in Greece during the Second World War. He went to Greece and then she never saw him again. And at first she was very angry at Greece and at Greek people.
LW: The Italian woman shared this with your mom?
MV: Right. Yes. Until she met my mom. She fell in love with my mom. So they became very good friends until they moved away.
LW: Okay.
MV: So the neighborhood began to change. I would say in the—well, I really don’t know. I just remember it was rather sudden.
LW: Okay. Do you remember about what age you were then, when it changed?
MV: Five or six I would say. So we’re looking at ’66. I just remember that I—there were more restrictions because when I was young I was able to run down the street. I could go over to Allen’s house which was across the alley and I remember that I wasn’t allowed to go into the alley anymore which was behind our house. They don’t have alleys anymore, do they?
LW: Well, they do. I don’t think any kids would want to play in them.
MV: Right. But it was a very common thing.
LW: Sure. Of course.
MV: That was one way of going over to someone’s house, instead of going all the way around the block.
LW: Yeah.
MV: You would just go through the alley, and maybe a few yards down and then just jump the fence and be at your friend’s house as opposed to going all the way around the block.
LW: So you said Allen was black?
MV: He was black.
LW: What about Timmy?
MV: Timmy was white.
LW: And you were Greek-American?
MV: Mm-hmm.
LW: So do you remember ever thinking around those ages four, five, six when you were playing with them, do you ever remember thinking about any differences?
MV: No.
LW: Or do your parents say anything? Nothing?
MV: No. My mother nor my father. My father worked essentially in a black community. His worker who was a black American, his name was Mike.
LW: Mike.
MV: We had the same name. He showed me how to play paddle ball. We used to sit on the corner there on Mack and Lemay watch the cars go by. My dad would be yelling at him to come inside and work. [Laughter] But I learned paddle ball and there was just little things.
LW: Sure.
MV: He was just a wonderful person. I never could remember difference. I would play with Timmy and next door was my dad’s brother and my cousin, named Chris and we would play together. But I was not aware of any difference. That didn’t come until much later. Even in ’67 when the riots were taking place I didn’t know that that was happening. The only thing was that we weren’t allowed out of the house.
LW: Okay.
MV: I remember a jeep driving up and down our street and on the rare occasion that we went on Fenkell because was a Sam’s Drug Store there, I don’t know if it’s still there, there was a Kroger—not a Kroger an A&P—that we used to shop at. And my dad—I distinctly remember my dad giving my mother five dollars to do the grocery shopping. She would walk me and then put me in the buggy and do her shopping. But I remember seeing large, I don’t know if they were tanks or not but I know they were large military vehicles. There was definitely a military presence and I was really, at that age, into army and things like that.
LW: Of course.
MV: And every stick became something for me to pick up and play army with, with my friends, which I did. But Timmy, my good friend Timmy, he moved out before—that I know—before ’67, right before the riots. My uncles moved out. We were—we and the Lionakis family at the corner were the only ones. And as people were moving out the Italian family that was good friends with my mom, she moved even sooner. We just saw that the neighborhood was changing very quickly and I think I realized it when there were more restrictions put on me. I was not able to go into the alley. I was not able to go to the end of the street. I wasn’t allowed during the riots to play in the front yard, only in the backyard and not near the alley. So, it was all these new restrictions. When I happened upon my friend, Allen—and I don’t remember if I went over to his house or if I saw him in the street and I said, “Come on, you know, let’s play,” and he just kind of shook his head and I couldn’t understand why.
LW: Oh.
MV: He told me—if I can remember correctly—“My dad said I’m not allowed to play with you.” And it was right around then—the only thing, Lily, I don’t know if that was before, I think that was after ’67, after the riots.
LW: Okay, okay.
LW: Because everything—when there was like a calm after the violence, there was almost like a numbing from what – my dad and I have talked about this—there was like this numbing effect, that kind of appall that hung over the city. I remember that he was not permitted—I told my dad that, “He’s not allowed to play with me.” And that’s when I remembered my dad explaining to me, not so much that, “Well, the black people and the white people in this country have a lot of things to work out.” Something like that. And I never thought—he was more of a light skin black—
LW: Allen was?
MV: Allen was. But we had great—we had a lot of fun together. But if you told me he was black, if you told me he was different, I don’t remember there being a difference.
LW: And you were about five?
MV: Yeah, five, six years old.
LW: Going on six, in ’67, because you had an August birthday you said?
MV: Right
LW: So, that must have been somewhat traumatic for you at that age to hear your best friend basically tell you “Well, I can’t play with you anymore.”
MV: What was traumatic was that Timmy left. And my uncle, well, my cousin Chris was a little too young, he was younger than I was so he wasn’t much fun at that age. And Allen was really the only one I had left but then he wasn’t allowed to play. And then I remember this was in’69, ’68 or ’69 on my way back from school I was assaulted by four black girls. I think it was in the alley.
LW: You were about seven? Six, seven?
MV: Yeah.
LW: And what happened?
MV: Because, I finished second grade, we left—I was assaulted. I don’t even know what started it. All I know is I was walking down the alley and I don’t know if they wanted either a backpack or lunch box that I had and I wouldn’t give it. But I don’t even remember the assault I just remember coming home and I was completely scratched up, my neck especially. My dad was fixing the fence in the backyard and when I walked up and I said “Dad!” I remember just saying “Dad!” And he looked at me “What happened?” And I just remember him throwing the hammer and he said “That’s it,” he said “we’re out of here, we’re leaving.” I remember he couldn’t sell the house that was a difficult time. So my grandparents who lived on the other block, on Ardmore, they, moved into our house and they rented out their house because their house was a brick house, so they could get more money renting that, and they moved into ours. Ours wasn’t a brick house it was essentially wood, it was not a very good home—house—it was a very nice home. Next thing I remember is that we were living in Detroit but then we were registered in Livonia schools. So my dad—or my uncle George he had just come from—so the last two years of second grade I think it was—the last two months or the last month I did it in Livonia schools.
LW: Wow.
MV: Because it was just – we bought a house we couldn’t afford. So my grandparents gave us – our house wasn’t really worth that much. But the neighborhood I know was changing very quickly. And I have this image, my uncle George would pick us up from school, my mother’s brother, and then we would drive, I don’t know if it’s still there but there was a McDonalds—It’s the first time I had McDonalds at Fenkell and Grand River. And I would get my two hamburgers, and small fries and a Coke, and I remember seeing a scene there were four black men that were beating up on a white man.
LW: Wow.
MV: And that was like the last image that I had. It was almost—that was the feeling that this isn’t our neighborhood anymore. So we were going to school—were we living in Livonia—we couldn’t because we hadn’t moved out yet. I remember he was driving us to school—no. What I can’t recall is if we were living—did we get into the house? Were we living in Detroit—were we living in Livonia going to school in Detroit? I don’t think so, I think it was the other way around—we were still living in Detroit, so he would drive us to school and then drive us back. And then when my grandparents rented their house and then they came and moved into ours, gave my dad, you know, money, we put a down payment on a house in Livonia which we couldn’t afford but we just needed to leave because the neighborhood changed, you know, very quickly. And it really was a change that we were not welcome. So, we felt like we didn’t know what was happening. My dad took a significant loss because after my uncle left, he went to Livonia. My dad bought the house from my uncle so my uncle could leave. And so now he had two pieces of property and he took a bath on both of them.
LW: You moved to Livonia and finished school all the way through high school in Livonia?
MV: Yeah.
LW: Where in Livonia did you move to? What street?
MV: It was on Barkley—it was Five Mile and Middlebelt. We always kind of stayed on Five Mile going all the way. And we were there for three years. The store was vandalized, toward the end of the sixties, I think in ’69—the party store.
LW: The party store. Okay, so tell me about the party store during July of ’67, tell me what happened?
MV: Well, the party store was doing very well. My dad was making—had a good reputation. There were two other party stores I know of one that was owned by a Lebanese family and my dad used to brag that he put Lebanese man out of business and the way that he did it, he hired a black man to work for him—
LW: Mike.
MV: Mike. They had a very good relation—Mike would go into the neighborhood and even attract people to come he says, “Why are you going to the Lebanese person, he’s charging you an arm and a leg. Come over here to Niko’s party store.” [Laughter] That’s what it was called—Niko’s party store. My dad had the reputation that if you didn’t have enough money for bread, for milk or eggs—those three things—you know, he would see what you have and whatever you have you can buy what you need. But when it came to beer or alcohol—candy with the little kids, he was always generous. They would buy a Tootsie Roll and he would throw in a Sugar Daddy.
LW: Okay.
MV: My dad was always, to this day, was very generous.
LW: How wonderful.
MV: So because of this reputation he was very much admired and he would try and treat a lot of the customers that would come in—not the people who were coming in to buy beer and wine, but the regulars who were buying milk and bread or the kids would come in for a comic book and he would try to teach them Greek, right? “Kalimera, you know, good morning.”
LW: Yeah.
MV: So he tried to – it was kind of an interesting to see, you know, black people speaking Greek, or something that we only heard in the home. I guess maybe that is what made an impression on me that there really wasn’t—I didn’t see a difference Just like I don’t see a difference in people if one is a brunette and one is blonde, right.
LW: Okay, I see.
MV: There’s different hair colors, there’s different eye colors, there could be different skin colors. So, this was my father and I think my mother both made this impression on us that there’s only one race, and that’s the human race.
LW: Okay.
MV: Unlike my uncle, but I won’t digress into that. Because he had a very different experience. But when the riots started and there was a great deal of vandalism going on—in the vicinity of my dad’s store, the neighbors came out and they wanted to protect the store from being damaged so they had formed a human chain around – at a time that there was the most destruction going on. There were places burning left and right. The building next door did catch fire that was connected to my dad’s. But my dad’s store didn’t sustain damage but nobody came and attacked directly, my dad’s store, in ’67. There were other instances, but even the neighborhood there changed, you know, it seemed that the black American community afterwards became even more militant, aggressive—I’m searching for a word, but even Mike had turned on my dad.
LW: Wow. How did he turn? Can you give me an example?
MV: I don’t know the reasons but he pulled a knife on my dad.
LW: Wow.
MV: And, you know, my dad let him go. But then there were break-ins to the store. So it was almost – it was considered a high crime area, you know, even at that time. There was a railroad tracks and my dad said that someone was found dead on the railroad tracks, you know, almost on a weekly basis. There was a great deal of drug trafficking that was starting to come in, and gang violence. So, that neighborhood was changing as well. So it wasn’t, the way my dad described it, it wasn’t the poor black people that were just trying to survive, just trying to make a living, families, now you began to see a more—almost like a criminal element with again, gang violence. So they were looking at taking whatever you had.
LW: Okay.
MV: So the store was broken into on two or three occasions. So, then my dad, he just – I don’t think he even sold the store I think he just left.
LW: Wow.
MV: You know, whatever inventory he had left he had to return it, he took a loss. He did very well up until the neighborhood—and now I’m just thinking back, if I was to analyze it, it wasn’t just like the white flight from our neighborhood that changed the neighborhood, I mean even the black neighborhood where my dad’s store was located, even that neighborhood changed, you know, from people who were working, perhaps menial jobs, they didn’t have a very strong income. But the people that came in afterwards, the black people that were frequenting my dad’s store were not the little kids who were coming to buy eggs or milk or cereal. Now, it was a different—it was more people coming in to buy liquor, more people coming in to buy other alcoholic beverages.
LW: And had the store been broken into before the ’67 uprising?
MV: Maybe right before, but in the early days, like from ’60 to’66 or ’67, maybe there may have been one. And a lot of times they attributed it to drugs, people looking for drug money.
LW: So, I want to just talk a little bit about—well, when did your dad actually end up leaving the store? I want to get that.
MV: It was in ’69’ or ’70.
LW: Wow, okay so right around that time.
MV: So two years, you know he stayed two years after the riot.
LW: And after you moved out of the city into Livonia?
MV: Right. Which is why we ended up going into Livonia because he got a job. He just put in a job to work at UPS. They were building a new center. So, he got the job and he was shocked. So the job was on Industrial Road between Middlebelt and Merriman, and I-96 and Plymouth Road. Right in that corridor there.
LW: So, you were going to school, living in Livonia, while your dad was still working at the party store? For some time, for a little bit?
MV: Very short time. Because then he left – that’s what prompted us to move to Livonia, when he got the job at UPS.
LM: So, big changes right after ‘67 for your family. Within a year or two your family had - your dad changed jobs, left the store, you were in a new school, new kids, new everything, new neighborhood. So I want to talk about your church and a little bit about what you do here and also the changes that happened to this congregation, or perhaps a couple generations back congregation, after ‘67. Tell me what your title is here at the Assumption Greek Orthodox Church.
MV: My title in English, I’m the senior priest. That meant something when there were two other priests, now I’m the only priest. So, my title is the only priest at the Assumption Church.
LW: If you could just tell us a little bit about the congregation and who it’s made up of?
MV: The congregation is the second oldest in the city of Detroit. The oldest being the Annunciation Cathedral, which was founded in 1910 and this parish, as the Greeks were beginning to migrate away from what is present day Greektown, toward the eastern parts, the near eastern part of the city, they founded this church in 1928.
LW: What was the original location?
MV: The original location – well they did rented on top, I think, the second floor of a movie theater for a while, but they don’t consider that. The year that the church was incorporated was in 1928. So, probably three years before that they were renting various venues to have the church services. There was, you know, the cathedral downtown. So that was a full functioning – most people, that was the only church. And then as the population began to grow in the first two decades, by 1928, there was a critical mass of Greeks that you could establish a church. So, the first major church was on Beniteau and they were there, that was built, I believe, in 1933, and they were there until 1955 and then they built a church on Charlevoix. And both of these churches are still standing, the buildings, are still standing.
LW: And the church on Beniteau and the church on Charlevoix, we’re talking about in Detroit?
MV: Yes.
LW: Not Charlevoix Street here?
MV: Ah, it doesn’t go all the way through but it’s the same Charlevoix.
LW: Same Charlevoix, just the Detroit side?
MV: Right.
LW: So, the cathedral that was built in 1910 was the first Greek parish and that is not affiliated directly with the Assumption Greek Orthodox Church.
MV: Yeah, it’s the Cathedral Church, which is, it’s the Church of the Bishop.
LW: The hub.
MV: Right.
LW: Okay.
MV: And then, you know essentially the parishes are, I like to think of it as satellites of the Cathedral.
LW: Okay, okay.
MV: So, the parishes that formed, the Greeks that kind of migrated from Greektown toward the east essentially became part of the Assumption Church. And then, on the west side there was Saints Constantine and Helen, and then along Woodward Avenue was St. Nicholas Church. So there were more Greeks moving out, where there were two churches serving the Greek community on the west side and then eventually a third, St. George—which is now in Southgate. There were three—the west side kind of splintered into three groups, where the east side everybody just came to the Assumption.
LW: So, the cathedral is on Beniteau? Do I have that right?
MV: The cathedral is on Lafayette downtown—
LW: In Greektown.
MV: And then we – the Assumption Church migrated out to around Beniteau, which is between, what—Mack and Jefferson, if you will.
LW: And then the second?
MV: The second was on Charlevoix, just a couple of blocks over.
LW: Okay so two, sorts of, satellite churches off the cathedral.
MV: Right.
LW: Okay, I just want to make sure I have that straight. So after the World War I, an influx of Greek immigrant’s necessitated additional space to worship.
MV: Mm-hmm.
LW: Can you tell me about what those churches experienced after 1967, or during 1967?
MV: Well, in ‘67 the cathedral, I can have you speak with a few people that were there at the Cathedral, that’s the Annunciation Cathedral, it’s a different church. The Charlevoix church—and I’ll show you photographs when we go into the church—
LW: Great.
MV: the Charlevoix church was there from 1955 until 1976. And this facility that we are at now, construction began in late seventies. So by ‘76 the Assumption parish moved out to Saint Clair Shores.
LW: Okay.
MV: It became a very – and that parish, where the old Assumption Church was on Charlevoix, where my dad’s party store was, you can see the dome of the Assumption Church. So, it was like two blocks away, three blocks. It was right across the street from Southeastern High School. And in ’67 there was an apartment building across the street from the church and there was a snipper, who was just –I don’t think it was a hate crime, or, I just think it was just a random act of vandalism. That he took a riffle and started shooting at the church. I don’t think he was – from my discussions, nobody knows why people do these things, but I don’t think it was – that the person who did this was actually targeting Greek people. But the neighborhood used to be a very strong Greek neighborhood around the church. But, the Greek people began leaving right after the Second World War. In fact, I was speaking with one of the old members of this parish at length about his – about the Greek community on the east side. And he said that the white flight began right after the Second World War. He said, “We looked at the parish roasters and saw that a lot of the addresses were already in the late forties, early fifties in St. Clair Shores, in the Grosse Pointes, in Harper Woods, so there were already a great deal of Greek people. But, you know, where the church was, there still were quite a few Greek people there. By ‘67 many of them had left and a lot – it was still an African-American neighborhood, so the person who was shooting, we don’t know if he was – was he African American? Was he white? We don’t know. It was just somebody who took a riffle and started shooting.
LW: And that was in July during the riots in 1967? Wow.
MV: So, and, there was actually, on the grounds of the church was where the helicopters would be launching—or was it at Southeastern High School? There was a vacant lot that the helicopters would be landing, so it was a landing zone where the church was.
LW: I believe it was at the high school, but they may have also utilized the church grounds, I’m not sure.
MV: Well, they did, because the church filed a claim because a tank had busted one of the curbs. So in fact, I went and found the parish council minutes in ‘67 to see what damages the church had sustained in the riots and there was broken glass. There was, you know, the curb was crushed by a tank. But then, there was, apparently, a sniper who was just shooting randomly at the church, broke some windows, but had damaged an icon of the Resurrection of Christ.
LW: Tell me about that?
MV: Well, there was an icon that was hanging in the narthex of church, in the vestibule and one of the bullets came and pierced the icon and it was taken down, it was put in a box. It was identified as being damaged during the riots. But it was put in a box and kept in storage for the longest time. When I came to this community in 2002 we had suffered a fire. In 2003 I came but the fire was in 2002 and I found a lot of these old icons and I found this particular icon—and it even stated, there was a plate on it that says that “This icon was damaged during the riots of ’67.” There were other things I found that I said, “These should not be in boxes or in closets, they need to be displayed.” So we made an effort to display a lot of these church artifacts and that icon is one of the things that we thought should be displayed. I’m rather surprised that the church still continued to function in Detroit after that because things continued. This was not my church growing up, I only know from what people have told me. They had hired security guards, even on Sunday mornings cars were being broken into and people were being mugged. None of the evening meetings could take place, at church, you only could only go to the church on Sundays and it was only during the day otherwise people didn’t feel safe. Cars were being stolen. There was just a great deal of—the area was not very safe so they eventually decided to sell the church. They had just paid the church off actually, the mortgage. And they sold it to a black Baptist congregation that still owns the church. They still operate it but they no longer worship in the main—in the church they’re now in the Sunday school or in the community center and the church now is in complete disrepair. It’s been condemned by the City of Detroit because the dome is caved in, it’s a sad thing to see. But it’s still standing there as a monument—
LW: On Charlevoix?
MV: On Charlevoix—of what once was. But the one on Beniteau from thirties looks like a dollhouse. It’s gorgeous. It’s another Baptist congregation that has it. But the Charlevoix church, when you see it—you know, you bring any of our old parishioners—sometimes we go by it, down to our old neighborhood and you know they just start crying.
LW: Difficult to see that like that.
MV: Yeah.
LW: What was your home church growing up?
MV: My home church was St. Nicholas church.
LW: Okay, on Woodward you said it was?
MV: On Woodward—at McNichols and Woodward.
LW: So, further up north closer to Highland Park—where you lived?
MV: I was born in Highland Park but I never lived there. I was born at Detroit Osteopathic Hospital, which I think has been torn down as well [laughter].
LW: Okay… interesting. Is there anything you want to talk about while we’re on the record? About ‘67? Or your experience as a leader in the community?
MV: Well, in ‘67 again, I had very vivid memories. I loved my friends. I can say that I learned what friendship was and there was no color. There was no—there was nothing as far as prejudice, discrimination or bigotry. These were all words not only that we didn’t know what they meant, but we didn’t know what they felt like.
LW: Sure.
MV: And I think I knew what it felt like before I knew what these words meant, after ‘67. So I think that was – not only did our neighborhood change, but we changed as well. But I think we were reacting to what we felt was being imposed upon us. So I didn’t know what it meant to be prejudiced or bigoted but I knew what it felt like.
LW: What do you think helped you sort of experience that feeling? Was it Allen telling you that he couldn’t play with you anymore?
MV: That was the first thing. I don’t know, I probably still bear a scar deep inside but I think when I was assaulted by the four girls, I didn’t know why and it was for no apparent reason. I think it was the lunch box.
LW: They were about how old?
MV: Oh they were older than I was, they were in middle school. Yeah. There were four of them. I know I swung that lunch box [laughter] and I defended myself but they were on me before I could—I just remember I was just scratched up. My mom was in a panic and my dad was furious.
LW: Sure.
MV: But that was such a long time ago and, you know, my mom used to always say it’s okay to get angry but never hold a grudge.
LW: Do you think that those experiences when you were little helped shape your decision to become a priest?
MV: Well, I’m sure they have. Because one thing, as I was trying to figure out what to do in life, I began to see there’s a lot of wounded people. I always wanted to do something that involved either protecting or healing. So, I contemplated going into the military, I contemplated going into the police department. My eyes were not good enough [laughter], so I could never pass the eye exam. I was thinking about medicine, because I always wanted to help people and then I realized to be a doctor you have to go to school for so many years and I don’t want to do that. So, I started pre-med, I shifted to engineering and I only needed one semester to get my bachelor’s from Lawrence Tech and then I gave it up. I was called to a different ministry. And that’s what I feel I’m doing—I’m healing people.
LW: You’re also working on your PhD?
MV: Yes.
LW: And tell me about your dissertation topic for the people that don’t know?
MV: My dissertation topic is on Archbishop Iakovos and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and their involvement in the civil rights movement, and specifically in his march in Selma, Alabama with Dr. King.
LW: And where was that archbishop from?
MV: He was actually from the island of Imbros which is in the Aegean and it was—when he was born it was part of the Ottoman Empire in 1911.
LW: Wow.
MV: The island was annexed by Greece, remained in Greek hands for about ten years and then it was again given back to Turkey. So, the Archbishop had to grow up in a very difficult—he was someone who was very much discriminated against. Because of his—not so much because of the color of his skin but because of his ethnicity and because of his religion.
LW: Here in the United States?
MV: In Turkey.
LW: In Turkey. I see.
MV: So, this is what prompted him, he knew what it felt like to be discriminated against. He had to serve. It was compulsory military service. He had to serve in the Turkish army and to serve in the Turkish army as someone who is Greek and someone who is Christian was two strikes against you. And then when they found out he was a clergyman, he was a deacon at the time, they treated him very poorly and this is what really inspired him to get involved in the ecumenical movement and later to be a very strong advocate for civil rights and human rights.
LW: So some parallels to some of the conversations that are still going around about ’67 too
MV: Yes.
LW: At that time. Well thank you for your talking, on the record, about your experiences and your family’s experiences.
MV: Thank you for allowing me to share.
LW: Of course, it was my 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.
NL: This is the interview of Shirley Schmidt by Noah Levinson and Lily Wilson. Today is July 9, 2015. We are in Sanilac County in the home of Shirley Schmidt right on Lake Huron, and this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Shirley, could you first tell me where and when you were born?
SS: I was born January 1, 1941 at Parkside Apartments, which is on Conner, near Detroit City Airport. It was a home birth.
NL: And where did you live when you were first growing up?
SS: When I was very young, we lived at Parkside. I don't think we moved – I don't remember moving from any place except from there to Harper and Van Dyke area on Burns. My grandparents had bought, or they had built, a home and we moved there. It was an income with an upstairs that had one bedroom and downstairs there was two.
NL: How many people lived in the house with you?
SS: There was my mother, my dad, myself, my two grandparents at the beginning.
NL: Tell me what you remember about that neighborhood at the time you were growing up.
SS: It was a wonderful neighborhood. It was a mixed neighborhood. The man two doors down was German, and my best girlfriend was an Italian. The young man across the street was a good friend of my brother's and I'm not quite sure which he was. He had a darker, swarthy complexion. He might have been someone from Croatia, but they were basically European, from what I can gather, of all the people that moved in there. And it was friendly. It was fun. You sat on the front porch. You talked to people. It was great.
NL: So, you described it as a “mixed neighborhood.” Do you feel that these different families and different people knew that they still had – seemed like everybody had their strong particular national identity –
SS: Oh, yeah.
NL: – or whatever ethnic identity of significance they had?
SS: Yes, they did. They had big families and they were probably within, I would say, a couple miles because when they got together, it never took long for people to come and they would have parties in their back yard and be on their front porches. When Halloween came, my mother would send just my brother and myself out and we'd use pillowcases and we'd walk the streets and we'd go all the way down from ours, which was probably half a mile from Van Dyke and we'd walk the streets, fill the pillowcases – god, I hated it when people gave us apples. It made it so heavy. My mother loved it because she used them for cooking. But we could go in the bars. The drunks would give you a quarter. We walked down to a Better-Made potato chip store. The Eastwood Theater was down there and we were just by ourselves, and all the kids were. There were a few parents, but most of the time it was just you went around and you went home and no problems.
NL: Do you remember there also being non-white families or children in the neighborhood?
SS: One family moved in on the street in the back of us, and I can't remember if that was Iroquois or not. But they moved into a small house. Yeah. That was probably in ‘50, ‘52, in that area.
NL: Can you tell me about your schools that you went to?
SS: The original school I went to was Stevens Elementary and it was a great school. We had the safety patrol helping across streets and it was probably half a mile from home, and we would walk down the street and get to school. There were no school buses. It was a multiracial school because I had blacks in my classes. We all played together. We didn't after school. We didn't because they lived in one direction and I lived in another, but we were friends. There was no hesitation on standing up for someone if they were a different color. It didn't make any difference. It was just, everyone was – we were kids. That was it.
NL: So you didn't have any sense whether that was the norm or not for that time in Detroit?
NL: Whether most schools fit that description?
SS: I don't know. I thought so. I mean, when you're in a school and everyone's –you know, we're all getting along really well, you think everybody does it.
NL: Where did the black children live? You said they lived in a different direction of the school, so do you know what neighborhood that would have been?
SS: No, I don't because after school you just head on home. Mom was waiting. Dinner was waiting. We had homework to do. But everybody walked so it had to be within walking distance. I wouldn't think that people would live more than half a mile/mile from the school for kids to walk.
NL: Did you ever get any impression that any of your teachers treated white or black students differently?
SS: No.
NL: Good.
SS: No. There was nothing. Spelling bees–whatever. Whoever was sharp enough to spell the words, and you stood against the wall and you spelled until you couldn't spell it and you sat down. No one was picked on. No one said, Okay, I'll skip them. Everyone was the same.
NL: Where were you living in July of 1967?
SS: I was married and I was living in East Detroit.
NL: Okay. Do you remember what street?
SS: Yes. It was on Holland, between Kelly and Wilmont, one block south of Nine Mile Road.
NL: Can you describe just what that neighborhood was like at the time?
SS: Predominately Italian Americans and they owned fruit stores. They had family get-togethers. The lady next door was like a grandmother to my kids and she was Italian. She spoke very little English. Well, I guess she did, but you couldn't understand her. Her accent was really heavy. But I would say in that area it was predominately Italian Americans.
NL: Do you identify as Italian as well?
SS: No. I'm not – I'm Polish.
NL: Okay.
SS: Polish, German, American.
NL: How do you remember first hearing about the civil disturbance at Twelfth Street?
SS: My husband at that time was a firefighter for East Detroit and he called home and said, “There are riots happening in Detroit. They're asking us – they're sending us down. Could you please bring my gun?” So, I walked up there with the kids and – no. I just had my son at that time. I walked up there with my son. I was pregnant with my daughter. And I took his gun to him and the guys took them in case they needed protection on their own. They were too busy fighting fires, but if something happened, they would be able to at least protect themselves because it sounded probably much worse than it was. I don't know if you realize that, but the media has a tendency to over-exaggerate many times and blow things up so that you go, “What? Oh, my god!” When really, it's, “Oh. That's too bad.” So I took him his – saw him up there. We came back home and that night, after I put my son to bed, I sat on our front porch, which faced Detroit and my neighbor across the street was also pregnant and she came and sat with me. We were on a little glider and we looked at the sky as it turned redder and redder over Detroit. You could see that over the tops of the houses.
NL: How long do you remember your husband being out working on the shift before you saw him the next time?
SS: I think he came home late the next day. So he was down there – by the time they went down – and it was still light when I walked down, so it had to probably been about five or six o'clock, and his shift ended at eight the next morning. And I think he came home fairly quickly after the shift, so he was down there one day totally.
NL: And how was that for you? So you were at home with a small child and pregnant with one more?
SS: Yeah.
NL: How was that being home alone under the circumstances without him?
SS: I was fine. I was more concerned about him because I knew it was dangerous down there and the way they said with the National Guard coming in and I just had to think, well, I hope they're watching over the guys as they're down there. But for myself, I was fine.
NL: How many other times or shifts did he have down in the city that week?
SS: That was the only one. We were to start vacation the next day, so when he came home, he said, “We're still going. They seem to have things kind of under control.” At least I think that's what he told me because we packed up the car and we went camping for a week.
NL: Do you remember what day of the week that would’ve been? The riots started over the weekend, so if he was there the first day, maybe Monday?
SS: I would think probably Monday is when he came home and we packed the stuff up. We kind of were wondering if they were going to call him to fill in again, but nobody called, and so we packed up and left and went on our vacation.
NL: What do you remember about that vacation?
SS: We camped at a place and I believe it was the one that was up near Grayling, Grayling Roscommon area. It was a nice little place. They had a lake, I had Doug, my son, and it was fine, we had a good time. We usually went to a place where there was no electricity. It was primitive camping.
NL: Did you have radio?
SS: Primitive camping, no electricity.
NL: I didn’t know if you had a transistor or—
SS: No we didn’t. No, no.
NL: And how long did that trip last?
SS: A week. We came home the next Saturday or Sunday.
NL: Okay. So can you describe coming back into the city that next week? What did you notice?
SS: I don’t remember noticing anything, so I don’t think there was anything out of the ordinary. And he went to work the day after we got back, and that was it. It was life as usual.
NL: What was the next thing or the next time you read or heard about something regarding the riots or their aftermath?
SS: It was in the newspaper. The daily newspaper after we got back. We read those and I don’t think we got a newspaper while we were on our camping trip because you were just by yourself out in nature. But when we came home and you read about all the things that were happening, or had happened, he told me that they were told that the Ramona Theatre and one other place—Wards, Montgomery Wards at Seven Mile and Gratiot, both of them—because that was further up than Ramona. When he was down at the riots, he was told, I believe, that they were burning. When we came back and we looked, and we were wondering, what’s happened down there? How much different is it? And we found that those reports weren’t right.
NL: Do you remember a changing or a different atmosphere in your neighborhood at that time, after you got back from that trip?
SS: Not in the neighborhood. I just know that Ron wasn’t too excited to go down there. Of course, we didn’t really go down at that time. I started going down with my kids later on, when they were old enough to enjoy what I was taking them to.
NL: So, like, when would that have been, approximately?
SS: My daughter was probably—she was born in ’67, and she was about seven years old, and my son was about ten. I would drag them down there to the DIA [Detroit Institute of Arts] and we’d go to Emily’s, and Belle Isle, places like that, or over to Windsor.
NL: What do you remember about those parts of the city? So this is, we’re talking late seventies it sounds like, so about a decade after?
SS: Mid to late seventies.
NL: Can you describe your memories of the city at that time?
SS: Lots of burned houses. That’s the worst part. You know, if something happens and then they have to leave, the buildings stand there and they’re gutted and that; that’s the worst part of all. And they stood there for the longest time. It wasn’t just when I was taking my children down. When I remarried and my husband came here from Germany, we would go down and I’d want him to go by the house that I lived in as a child on Burns, and I’d say, “Here, let’s go check it out.” And I do have some pictures of when we lived there, and the last picture I took was back in 2008, but in between there he took me by, and to see the street just dissipate before your eyes. House by house, it disappeared. If they weren’t disappeared, they should’ve been taken down. To see the fact that the scandal with Kwame and what he didn’t do with the money to help the people who lived in Detroit, they had to live in neighborhoods like that. It was horrible. I just couldn’t believe that that could happen.
NL: When did you first move out of the metro Detroit area?
SS: Would you consider Center Line out of the metro Detroit area?
NL: No, I mean, that’s a suburb of Detroit. I meant more like where we are now, up on Lake Huron. When did you first leave the immediate metro Detroit area?
SS: We moved up here—
NL: Up to the thumb.
SS: Up to the thumb—we moved here permanently in 2002. Before that we had started to build this house. My ex-husband and I had purchased the property back in 1980, and after we got divorced, I met my current husband, and Ron had put it up for sale. And Utz loved it. He decided to move here from Germany and the first thing he said was, “Let’s buy it.” So we bought it from my first husband, and we kept it and then we said, we want to retire up here. So he designed a house around the furnishings and our hobbies, and we had the old place torn down, and every time we got some money we did something. First was the basement, then was the outer portions, and then we lived in it with nothing except walls: no toilet, no plumbing. You have to go out in the lake for showers, and every time we got any money, we did something to finish the house. It took until—we started the house in 1990, I believe it was, and it’s pretty much finished now, but we moved up here in 2002 when it was basically kind of like this.
NL: It sounds like a little bit more of a desire to move to this neck of the woods than specifically moving out of the city?
SS: Yeah. It’s amazing, it’s beautiful up here. And we have so much to offer. But there are very few people of color who come up here, and it’s not because anybody would be against them, because everybody’s friendly to anyone. We have some parks, and there’s a camping ground south of us. And I notice when – I deliver a little local newspaper, and when I took it in last year, there were people—black people—who were coming and renting the little cabins there or camping there and I was so excited. And I was hoping that they come to our museum because it’s an interesting thing to go to. I don’t know if they ever did, because I’m not there all the time, just most of the time.
NL: Are there any factors, that you know of, in the area here that make it hard for black communities in larger numbers to mobilize and move to this area?
SS: If you live here, most of the time, you’re a farmer. The houses on the lake, for the most part, are cottages and they’re places of weekend retreats for most people, second homes for most people until they decide, wow, it’s really nice, I want to retire, and some don’t last that long. But if you live here, most of the people are farmers. That’s what we do up here.
NL: So there’s not an enormous year-round population up here then?
SS: No.
NL: When you’re here in the middle of winter, how many people would you speculate are here in town?
SS: Within two miles, there are two, four, seven, ten people that live within a mile, not including us. Including us, it would be twelve people. And then the farmland starts. It’s pretty desolate. You have to really enjoy watching the lake in all weathers, solitude, and have hobbies.
NL: But you still go down to Detroit fairly frequently?
SS: Oh, yeah.
NL: Can you tell me about your more recent experiences of going back to visit the city since you moved out to the thumb area?
SS: The last time we were down there was an exhibit at the DIA [Detroit Institute of Arts] and I believe it was a Van Gogh exhibit—no no, I’m sorry it was Monet. I wanted to see that. We have some friends in Oxford, so we went down and spent the night with them, and then the four of us went down and went to that. We’ve been down to the Detroit Historical Museum, I can’t remember the last exhibit. Was it the eating? The Detroit Eats exhibit? So we drove down for that. It’s a little difficult now what with Woodward being torn up to try and navigate, but I said, “No, I think we can go one block further west then cut south and then get to it around the back streets.” We haven’t been to Belle Isle this year. Last year we went two or three times, because it’s another great venue. We’ve gone on tours with the Detroit Historical Museum. When people come from Germany, one of the things we like to do is take them down and show them the different buildings. Like the Fisher Building. They get out of their car and they’re kind of looking around because it’s not the best looking around there, and then you take them in the building and they just lose any objection to being down there because the beauty of the different places just overcomes any qualms you have.
NL: What do you notice or feel differently about seeing the city, seeing the places in the city these days compared to different points when you were raising your kids or when you were growing up yourself in that area?
SS: I don’t understand, can you reword that?
NL: What changes do you notice in the city from now compared to when you were growing up or when you were raising your children?
SS: When I was growing up, my dad had a car, but we walked everywhere and we took street cars. Public transportation was extremely good. Buses were around, but not that much. The streetcars were fantastic. They were always on time and you can fit lots of people, you could jump on and off. It was really great. In fact my brother, when you talk to him, one of the things he told me later on, and I didn’t know at nine years old, he’d hop on the street car and he’d go to Belle Isle and fish. Spend the day down there. Now how many nine year olds nowadays would go so many miles—and it had to have been at least ten miles to get from our house down to Belle Isle—with his fishing rod and go down there and fish? And that was something that you could do. And Eastern Market—I haven’t been down there in probably about five years, but I think it’s a great place to go. It’s really helping. I notice that there are more people and a lot of younger people that are moving into some of the buildings that were abandoned and they’re turning them into lofts. But they’re almost all white. If we go to dinner, if we go to events downtown, they’re mostly white. Where all the black people to enjoy what they have down there? I don’t see them participating as much. I find that sad. And I’d hate to be called racist, and when people say, “Oh, the whites, they don’t care about us,” but we go down there but where are you?
NL: Do you have any ideas why that might be or what the city can do differently to help promote better diversity at these events in the city?
SS: The events are there. They’re there for everybody. I think the black people have to get over their anger at whites, and I don’t know why they’re so mad at us. My grandparents, on my father’s side, came from Germany. He came with nothing. My grandmother and him, they came on steerage on different boats. They knew nobody, and they made their way to Buffalo, New York. Eventually he got here. He worked in factories doing things that nobody nowadays would like to do, but he did until he had enough money for a house. My mother’s people came in 1854—well, actually before that, I have the deed of their land—up here to the thumb with nothing. The settlers had nothing. And they had to clear 40 acres of land with trees and stumps, build a house—that they probably didn’t know how to build out of logs—and farm. My husband’s writing a book on the settlers up here. Most of the people that he’s writing about are Germans who came and settled here. They were weavers, they were tailors, and they worked in grocery stores and that. They had to come here and learn how to do anything to survive. We had nothing to do with that. Most people here now had nothing to do with slavery. So why are they afraid of us? Because that’s what it seems like to me, to be angered and afraid. And I don’t know why.
LW: What was your ex-husband’s name?
SS: Ron Subjeck.
LW: I just had a couple questions about when he came back from working that weekend during July of ’67. When he came home and you were going on vacation, do you remember him telling you about any of the things that he had seen that weekend?
SS: He did say that he was glad that I had taken the gun down to him because when they were fighting one of the fires in the back of a store, there were some young guys that came back there, and they looked like they were ready to start some trouble with the guys. So he kind of made a motion like he was going to pull something out of his jacket and they left. But other than that, he said, “They’re crazy down there!” I think they said they were throwing bottles at them. “They were trying to fight us off and we’re down there trying to save their stores, and they don’t want to be saved! They want to burn everything down!”
LW: Was he frustrated? Angry? What was your read on his emotions?
SS: I would think he was probably both, frustrated and angry. He says, “Let’s get out of here. We’re going camping, let’s go.” And so we went.
LW: So we’re looking at pictures at your house, the house that you grew up in, 6713 Burns. Your grandpa built this house?
SS: He had it built. I’ve got the deed some place up in my papers, too.
LW: And we’re looking at pictures of your family—your grandma and grandpa, and your dad and his brother, and you and your cousins—standing out in front of the house, then we’re looking at a picture from 2008 that you and your husband took—
SS: My current husband.
LW: Your current husband, not Ron. You took these in 2008. Do you blame what happened in 1967 for the deterioration of this house that your family lived in for so many years?
SS: I don’t blame it on it, I’m just sad to see that the deterioration has happened. This was almost the only house left on the block. The thing that I see with some of these houses: when the people moved out, and the poor people moved in, I don’t think they know how to take care of a house. I think they were used to having someone provide housing, or they might have lived in an apartment, but they wouldn't have known a thing about how to replace a broken windowpane or how to change a water heater. And in this house that we lived in, it was a huge old coal furnace. It was like an octopus downstairs. We had a coal bin where the coal man used to bring coal and drop it through, and it was like a chute and he would fill it with coal. What would these people have known about coal? Where would they have gotten the money to buy coal? And if a faucet broke, or anything, I don’t think the people who took over—the older neighborhoods that started to fall apart because they were so old—knew what to do to upkeep them. That you have to paint, or else your wood dies. It makes a big difference. I don’t know who’s supposed to teach them. Are they supposed to go out and try to find out themselves? I have no idea. It’s a sad situation.
LW: What year did your family sell this house?
SS: We moved out in 1954. My grandmother still lived upstairs, and she lived there for another four or five years until she became — a point where she needed someone to take care of her. Then we moved her out.
LW: Who lived downstairs?
SS: You know, I don’t know. They must have rented it to someone, but I don’t know. I don’t remember.
LW: So your grandmother essentially owned it until she could no longer take care of herself. And that would have been the late fifties.
SS: Yeah.
LW: So looking at these pictures of your family and where you grew up, what does it feel like for you now, going back? We’ve talked about how it’s deteriorated, but how does that feel for you looking at these pictures and then looking at pictures of the house today?
SS: Just very disappointed and sad, that this has happened to the city. They’re working on the gardens, and they’ve got a lot of green space. I’ve looked at some of the videos and that that are out there. But what are you going to do if you have one house, by itself, with maybe one or two acres or empty land around it? And then another house with that amount of land. Do you take and consolidate the people in those houses in one area? They don’t want to leave their homes. So how are you going to go ahead and fill the void between the places where people are? I don’t know who’s going to figure that out. That’s a really drastic thing to do.
NL: The ultimate question of the city for probably, like, 30 years now, at least.
SS: Yeah.
NL: No city has ever really been built up to look like that before.
SS: No. It hasn’t. You’ve got a population that can’t afford to move anyplace else. If you had the money where you could build a housing area and then tell the people, “We will give you X amount of dollars for your home and move you,” that would be something that might be possible if people would go. But then what do you do with all the extra space that’s going to be left? You’d almost have to shrink Detroit down considerably. I don’t know what the answer to something like that is. You know?
NL: Me neither. I have one other question. So you were born in 1941. In 1943 there was also a riot in Detroit that was known as the “Detroit Riots” until the ones in ’67 occurred. Obviously you were very small. Do you remember hearing anything about that ’43 riot from relatives, from parents when you were growing up?
SS: No, no my parents never, I never heard them talk about anything like that. My grandfather and grandmother would have been in this house on Burns at the time, I don’t remember anyone talking about it. So how big was it?
NL: Not as considerable as ‘67. We’ve not researched it as much, but in ’67, ’67 it just kept spreading, the area of looting and burning and things like that. That did not happen, so the city was not scarred to the same effect in ’43 as it was in ’67, I think. I mean, I don’t think the National Guard was called in in ’43, or the Army, for example, or Air Force I should say.
SS: Maybe it was contained in a certain portion of the city?
NL: Exactly, it was contained, it didn’t spread as much, and I think that city was just not – it was before the biggest population boom, I think, too, so there were less people to be affected.
SS: It could be.
LW: And in ’43, it’s widely regarded as an actual race riot, whereas 1967, using the term “riot” has become a bit more controversial. So, I’m curious what you think about calling what happened in 1967 when you were living in Detroit and your now-ex-husband was a firefighter. Do you think that it was race related in ’67?
SS: You know, I can’t answer that for sure. I’ve been watching some of the programs on TV, and how it started because of a blind pig operation. I’m not saying that the police are angels, because it didn’t seem to be. It looked like someone was just—they went too far in doing something. And the people that were in there said they were tired of being pushed around. You know, were they pushed around for years and years? Who’s going to know? And then it started like that. I don’t think it started as a race thing so much, just as anger and they thought that something should have been kept open when it was against the law to keep it open. The police could’ve maybe turned a blind eye for a while, but it just carried on, everything out of proportion. One person hits one, the other says, “Hey look at him man, he’s a white guy, and he’s beating him!” Who knows? And then, a lot of people say in their own minds, “Oh man, let’s go see what’s in that store, well it’s happening, I can take what I want.” It just got out of control, and I don’t know if it was all based on race. I think it was based on a lot of other things.
LW: Thank you so much. Is there anything else you’d like to add to the record?
SS: I don’t think so, except if you can talk to my ex-husband, I’m sure he can add a lot, and he’s got a couple firefighters that you can get.
NL: I think we’re talking to him next week. Thanks so much for sharing your time and memories with us.
SS: Oh, thanks.
**LW: Today is July 17, 2015. This is the interview of Rosemary Konwerski by Lily Wilson. We are at the Polish Mission in Orchard Lake, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Rosemary, can you start by telling me where and when you were born?
RK: I was born in Hamtramck, Michigan at St. Francis Hospital October 7, 1947.
LW: And who were your parents and what did they do for a living?
RK: My parents were Roman Joseph Konwerski and he was a quality management specialist and instructor for the Army Tank Automotive Command in Warren and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. Her name was Dorothy Josephine Szafran Konwerski.
LW: And when did they come to Michigan?
RK: Both of my parents were born here in the Detroit area, both on the east side of Detroit. My dad, his parents were Joseph and Mary Konwerski, my mother’s parents were John and Josephine Szafran.
LW: How do you spell Szafran?
RK: S-Z-A-F-R-A-N
LW: Both sets of grandparents were from Poland?
RK: My paternal grandparents were born in Poland. My maternal grandfather was born here and I am not sure where my grandmother was born—that’s the stuff I’m looking for here.
LW: I see. Tell me about where you were living in July of 1967.
RK: July of 1967 my family—we moved—for the first 18 years of my life—’66, ’67—we lived in Hamtramck on Oliver Street. Half of the street was in Detroit, half was in Hamtramck. In April of ’67—the previous year, in 1966, my dad bought a house in Warren, in Eleven Mile and Hoover area. And so our family moved out of Hamtramck in April of 1967 and when the riots occurred three months later we were living in Warren already.
LW: And where were you going to school at that time?
RK: I was working. I graduated from St. Ladislaus High School in 1965 and started working at the Lafayette Clinic in Detour t in July of 1965 so I was, again, when the riots broke out I was already working at the Lafayette Clinic which is located at Lafayette and the Chrysler Freeway downtown Detroit.
LW: And what was your job there?
RK: At that time I was a typist in the Steno Pool, Medical Records Department.
LW: So what do you remember about July ’67 and the riots in particular?
RK: I was only 18 years old and it was an emotional time because I left Hamtramck, that was where our family was born and raised, we lived in a two-family flat that belonged to my grandmother and my dad’s younger brother and his two children lived upstairs and our family lived downstairs; there were four girls and two boys lived upstairs. So it was like leaving my two brothers behind. It was different moving out to the suburbs. It was new. I remember the ride downtown was longer for me before I would jump on the freeway and I was at work in five, ten minutes. This way coming from Eleven Mile and Hoover, I dropped my sister off in Hamtramck to finish her high school education and then drive downtown.
LW: Okay. So why did your dad decide to buy a house in Warren?
RK: My mom and dad never owned a home. They were always living in my grandparent’s—my grandparents owned the two-family flat. And my dad worked at Eleven-and-a-half Mile and Van Dyck—that was the Army Tank Automotive Command.
LW: I see.
RK: And so he finally he promised my mom that we were going to get a home and that was it. We didn’t move for any racial reasons.
LW: Okay.
RK: Hamtramck at that time was still very Polish predominately. So it was just that my dad promised my mother that one day she would own a home of her own because she lived in an orphanage when she was little—her mother died when she was only nine years old. So it was a happy move in that my dad was doing something better for his family.
LW: I see. So what do you remember about having to go downtown?
RK: The riots broke out early on a Sunday morning, my dad would not let me go to work on Monday. I was only 18 years old, just purchased a new car after working for two years—well, it was a year old but to me it was new but my dad was still very concerned about me driving downtown by myself. I didn’t go to work until Thursday of that week.
LW: Wow.
RK: So I was home Monday, Tuesday Wednesday. When I did finally drive downtown, I used to take Van Dyck to Gratiot and then Gratiot over, once I crossed and got south of Eight Mile Road and got closer to the downtown area, there was a high school there called Borroughs High, and the National Guard was set up with camp there and what struck me most of all was that they were standing all around a playground, sort of, with guns in their hand. And that was when it first hit me that this was something very, very serious. I remember seeing on TV, but we always thought it was so localized in one area, but to see the National Guard with machine guns and tanks and this was a school I had driven past hundreds of times, I used to walk there from my old neighborhood and to see it become a military base was upsetting and I was only 18 years old.
LW: Sure. So you brought some papers with you today. Can you explain what these are?
RK: At the time, when the riots started, there was money made available from the National Institute of Mental Health and researchers were clamoring to get applications—grant applications—to study the civil disturbance. So Dr. Elliott Luby, who was the author of this article that ended up in the William & Mary Law Review—Dr. Luby was chief psychiatrist on the adult inpatient service and he also was a lawyer and he had a practice and he was on staff at the law school at Wayne State University. Mrs. Hicks who was the supervisor at the time, they asked her to pick one person to be the secretary on the grant. They had one social worker who was going to be the coordinator, Dr. Luby was the initial administrator, there was another psychologist I think his name was Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, he was on staff at U[niversity] of M[ichigan] also and my supervisor picked me. She asked me, “Would you be the secretary on this research study?” It was exciting because I hated typing and I had the chance to do something different. So I was the secretary on the grant, Jackie Giering who was the social worker on the adult inpatient service, she was the coordinator so she and I were coordinating and I was responsible for doing all of the clerical things. Years ago when I was moving I threw out the actual report but when I went up online Dr. Luby did take as the basis for this publication in the [William & Mary] Law Review all of the data he collected from the Lafayette Clinic study. The only thing different in this report than from the original report is that he studied controls also. In the study that we did we had a year, and I think in about a year-and-a-half we published it. It probably went just to Lansing to the Department of Mental Health and I don’t remember there being a lot written about controls. It was simply what he found in interviews. We interviewed prisoners, we interviewed store owners, people in the neighborhoods that were affected by it one way or the other. Interestingly enough we interviewed prostitutes who were arrested at that time. And I remember going to the Detroit House of Correction and there was—but they don’t mention the prostitutes in this report for some reason—
LW: Interesting.
RK: But I remember going to the Detroit House of Correction with another psychologist who was—and I can’t remember her name and I don’t know if she wrote a report based on that. It was a hectic time. I remember I was being called in a lot on weekends because just to get the grant in, to get it written, and everyone was applying and all of the major universities in Michigan and really anyone that was affected by it was really trying to get a piece of the pie. I remember probably that following week my dad said, “No, I don’t want you going down there on a weekend because there are not—” As the week went on more and more of the businesses started to open and there were more people down there but like early on a Saturday morning and I didn’t feel that comfortable so I didn’t wanna argue. I put in a lot of overtime. We had questionnaires that were done over and over again, lists of arrestees. So it was a pretty hectic time but it was very, very interesting.
LW: When you would go to the Department of Corrections, when you would talk to people who had been arrested, prostitutes, what was being—what was the type of question that they were being asked?
RK: Well, I didn’t do the actual interviewing.
LW: Right. Dr. Luby was doing the interviewing?
RK: Well he had—they hired interviewers. There were staff members from the clinic that volunteer, some of the social workers but they also had people—I highlighted some of the things in there [Dr. Luby’s report] that were interesting.
LW: Okay. Thank you.
RK: I just can’t remember what the actual questionnaires were about. “Where were you when the riot started? Did you live in the area? Did you come from outside of the area?” And family demographics and so a lot of that is in there as far as the demographics that has to do with the individuals who were arrested.
LW: There were 233 subjects in this study?
RK: Right, for the purposes of this particular paper. What they did is we had a whole list of names of people who were arrested and we randomly selected so it was like— I can’t remember if it was every tenth or fifteenth person—until we had the number that he wanted. He didn’t take say like the first hundred so it was a random selection and I can’t remember—I can’t remember the number of—somewhere in here they list the number of people who were actually arrested and that was very high.
LW: Oh yeah.
RK: So for the purposes of this paper he had 233 subjects.
LW: Randomly selected.
RK: From a total of—there was 7,200 arrested.
LW: So when you heard these interviews taking place, because you were—
RK: I didn’t hear so much the interviews. I saw the interview questionnaires because I would type them up.
LW: Okay. I see.
RK: The only place that I went to was the Detroit House of Corrections where the prostitutes were. I did not go to the jails because they were in Wayne County Jail. Some that were arrested were kept in Burroughs High School and they were you know just kept in there. I did not go to any of the jails except Detroit House of Corrections.
LW: I see. So this was in late July, early August of 1967.
RK: August, September.
LW: So immediately following, while these people were still in jail. Waiting on some sort of hearing or sentencing or something?
RK: Mm-hmm.
LW: So what was the conclusion or the gist of what Dr. Luby found out about all of this.
RK: It’s in the paper here.
LW: Okay. Based on what you remember. It doesn’t necessarily have to be—
RK: Well, in the paper, and maybe it was me being young and naïve and in the area that I lived in, I didn’t see a lot of unrest around me. But Hamtramck at that time was Polish and white. And there were pockets of the area that there were black people living, some small amount of Chinese people or different—
LW: Okay.
RK: But I didn’t see that kind of animosity. Hamtramck High School, which was just down the street from where I went, St. Lads, had a large black population there. We used to play basketball against them sometimes, the schools, and I don’t remember there being fighting going on after that. I knew there were parts of Detroit that you just didn’t go into because certain areas, like Hastings Street and that, the buildings were run down and that’s in Dr. Luby’s paper that that disparity between what the white people had and what the black people had at that time was one of the major underlying causes for the riot. Again, being 18 years old I, you know, things didn’t bother me. And I wasn’t aware of the economic differences. Even in the paper it says that Detroit was looked at as almost a model city for racial balance. We had a very liberal mayor, Mayor Cavanagh, at the time and this really came almost like as a shock but as things started to unfold then you realized that that difference in economics, availability of jobs—even when I was reading this now—how many years later?
LW: Fifty.
RK: Fifty years later. Oh my gosh I’ll be 68. It just shocks me it really—it was very eye-opening reading this 50 years later. And again if I was at a point where—when I was still in high school I interviewed for two jobs, I got hired and I started the day after high school at Blue Cross Blue Shield I worked for six weeks and then the second job I passed the civil service test and I was hired at Lafayette Clinic. So I never had the problem of getting a job. And then you read that—I mean I was hired before I even graduated.
LW: Wow.
RK: I was overwhelmed by the amount of animosity from the black people at the clinic. That we worked with.
LW: Yeah.
RK: And these were some very, very educated people, some psychologists. And I guess that’s one of the things that—I’ve always worked with educated people. So there are educated blacks there are educated everything so I—to me, I’ve always grown up in my work environment where I was surrounded, working in the medical field, medical situations—Lafayette Clinic and then the VA then I was an account manager—the people that I dealt with mostly were very educated people. But some of the clerical staff were very, very upset that we were doing this research.
LW: Okay.
RK: And I remember when Dr. Luby presented the findings almost a year-and-a-half after the grant was closed and we had a formal report and we held it in the auditorium to release the findings to the rest of the staff.
LW: Yeah.
RK: And one of the chief accountants, a young black lady, got up and she just started crying and said, “I don’t know why you did this, it was a waste of time and I am tired of people putting black people under a microscope and analyzing us.”
LW: Now—
RK: That came to me as a real—because I was real proud of the work we did. But I’m a Polish, white lady—or young lady at that time—and to me it was a research study.
LW: So what types of findings in Dr. Luby’s study that you were a part of do you think would have upset her or somebody else who had a more similar perspective?
RK: One of the interesting things—and I wrote over here—most of the rioters came from outside the riot area. And the riot happened in an area, at a blind pig in downtown Detroit and we had arrestees that came almost from the Grosse Pointe area and same from the Dearborn area. And it’s much like when you have on a college campus today when they think somebody’s playing for a championship—
LW: Yeah.
RK: Say like Michigan State, it’s not the kids who riot from Michigan State and party and burn, but it’s the people that come there.
LW: I see.
RK: And that to me, I thought that was really significant.
LW: Sure.
RK: And even when you see riots on the television today, the people in that area—like in Ferguson, they had signs, the owners said “Please keep out.” I don’t think it’s the people that lived there that wanted that part of Detroit destroyed.
LW: I see.
RK: Interestingly enough at that time, my cousin Ed, who lived upstairs from us and he was like my brother, he was in Vietnam. And the news that was filtered back to Vietnam was that the city of Detroit—the city of Detroit was burnt to the ground. And my cousin Eddie—at that time there was no social media there was nothing it was whatever little bits and pieces of information were filtered there. So he had no idea what happened to his mother, his father his brother or us or any of his friends.
LW: That must have been difficult.
RK: I just wrote some notes here, it said here how the samples were collected. First we selected the eleventh, the twenty-first and the thirty-first so that was randomly.
LW: From the 7,000 arrestees?
RK: Right. There was a median age of 18 to 24. And you take a look at some of the areas—and there were older people were living in those areas.
LW: So it wasn’t people in those areas necessarily—
RK: It was the arrestees were younger ones that came in and started burning. The only thing, it must have been so ripe and ready to go and that’s what I was surprised at, just being me, was the little sheltered area that I lived in.
LW: So it looks like here most of the arrestees were married? Or most were single?
RK: 46 [percent] were single, 39 [percent] were married, and then divorced, separated or widowed. On here most of the arrestees were employed—which was very surprising. 16 percent unemployed and 13 percent—almost 14—were students. All of the arrestees were unskilled or semi-skilled workers. So they may have been young ones that worked in the factory.
LW: Okay.
RK: For whatever reason. That’s it, right here—“A large percentage of whom were working in the automobile factory and making on the average $115 a week.”
LW: Okay.
RK: As far as socialization—and that was one of the things that—most of them came, 61 percent, were from a large city. The arrestees, also were more likely to have spent their early developmental years in Detroit. I was very surprised, it still happens today, though, that you would want to burn down your own neighborhood. But then again if it’s not you, it’s going to be someone that comes from someplace else. Most were born in Detroit or came under the age of 11.
LW: I see.
RK: And then 36 percent migrated before the age of 11. So again the higher percentage of arrestees were actually born and raised in the Detroit area. So I don’t know if for so long they felt depressed and kept down.
LW: Did Dr. Luby ask the subjects of this study about that?
RK: It might be more in here.
LW: Why do you think he did this study?
RK: He was such a brilliant man, he’s still alive but he’s probably close to his nineties and his wife, unfortunately—I saw him a couple years ago at a funeral service for someone that we worked with whose wife passed away. Dr. Luby’s wife just passed away two weeks ago. And I went up to him, I said, “Dr. Luby it’s Rosemary Konwerski” and he goes, “Oh, I remember you.” I mean a smart man. And just—why did he do it? I think to bring—he was just such a smart and intelligent man and I really think that he did it not to offend anyone but really—because he worked with some really high level people and had an excellent reputation in the city of Detroit, still does, but the money was available and it also brought some prestige to the Lafayette Clinic. We were the only agency in the Michigan Department of Mental Health that got the grant. At that time Lafayette Clinic was a research facility, a state psychiatric hospital, and we were also the Department of Psychiatry for Wayne State University. So when [Gov. John] Engler shut the place down—I was there the day state troopers shut the place down, I was director of medical records at the time.
LW: What was that like?
RK: Very traumatic. Our acting director, Dr. Sullivan, who was my boss at the time was in New York visiting his daughter and that’s when Engler sent the state troopers in because he knew that Dr. Sullivan—we had a two-and-a-half -year court battle going on with the Department of Mental Health. And so he knew our leader was gone. And I was sitting in a meeting and they announced over the PA system it was two o’clock, it was a Friday afternoon, “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon the Lafayette Clinic is closing.” And you had patients, children, adolescents and adults and they had staff from Northville and a couple of other state hospitals and went up to the wards and they told our staff to leave and they had state troopers up and down the hallway. Now you have psychiatric patients who are very attached to their attendants, we had adolescents who—that’s their home, the average length of stay is six months and for children they stayed there for more than a year because you deal with family dynamics. And—I know—I was allowed to come back on Monday, you had to make an appointment to come get your—all you could do was take your purse out that day. And I was at the front desk and Cheryl Chodun was out in the lobby and she wanted to interview me and I said, “No Cheryl, I don’t want to go on TV.”
LW: Sure, sure.
RK: But I came back—you had to make an appointment to come back and get your personal belongings. I was allowed to come back on Monday morning because I was director of medical records. I could bring two staff with me. And I went up on the wards and the medical records were thrown around, patients were taken to Northville, they had no idea what medications they had.
LW: Wow.
RK: They had to wait in the back of the clinic for buses. Patients were lined up there for at least two hours with nothing to eat and we had appointments because I was also patient affairs officer and I was the court liaison and I supervised admissions—I was there for 27 years so I grew up there. We had medical appointments for patients and they were never kept. I took pictures of what the ward looked like and I gave them to the recipient’s rights officer but Engler had a couple of judges in his hip pocket. That stuff went nowhere, it went nowhere.
LW: How do you think that has impacted the City of Detroit today?
RK: The entire State of Michigan. We have no place for psych patients, not just Detroit. Engler came from—I tried to, I worked on his recall campaign—but he came from the Grand Rapids area, an area that is a very affluent area. When you take a look at Lafayette Clinic we had two adolescent units, male and female and we had a total of 40 beds I think, 20 and 20. The only family that most of those children knew were the attendants because they did not have a strong family structure; that’s why they were in there. And we had adult patients there, their average length of stay was usually three months. And some of their families would dump them there and never pick them up. A lot of them were sent to Clinton Valley, Northville and Ypsilanti Regional for long-term care and then when they would start closing the larger state hospitals down I testified before the Senate and House hearings because, not as an employee, I had family members, I had a cousin who was in there. And I had an uncle who had psych problems. So I told them, I said, I’m not here as an employee but I said I have relatives and unless you have someone who has mental illness in your family—it’s terrible. And the adolescents were just traumatized because these attendants—as clinics started closing down and there were threats of that, the staff members who were leaving always had to sign out in medical records so I had to clear them, I would sign out attendants that had 30 years seniority, 40, 25. Every day I would see over 100 years of experience going out the door. When I left there I had almost 28 years. So the clinic at the time that this study was going on was the jewel in the Michigan Department of Mental Health. The other hospitals did not have research and they were not the Department of Psychiatry—they were state psychiatric hospitals.
LW: In the sixties, when you were working there in the late sixties, and early sevenites, well, basically until it was shut down—what was the year that it was shut down?
RK: 1992. October of ’92.
LW: So before 1992, while you were there, what was the racial makeup of the patients.
RK: I think at beginning it may have been equal, maybe more white. But then being located in downtown Detroit, we serviced all of Macomb, Oakland or—it didn’t have real boundaries.
LW: I see.
RK: If there was an opening and unless you needed long time care for like a year or two then you would go to the larger state hospitals. But we had two adult wards, one was an admitting ward which was—all of our wards were locked but it was more severe, it was four south, and then as the patients progressed they were transferred to—it was still a locked ward but it three north which was preparing them to go home or into a halfway house.
LW: I see.
RK: And we had two adolescent units, we had a children’s unit that had 22 beds, we had 40 adolescent beds I mentioned and at one time we had two neurology units, one was adult and the other one when it was open was patients who were probably under the age of five years old that had such severe epilepsy that they couldn’t even sit up. And this is what Engler shut down. And what he kept reporting was that the census was so low, but he refused to let us admit. And so the things that you saw in the paper or news was that it was too expensive to keep Lafayette Clinic open, you told us we could not admit anymore. As I said we had a two-and-a-half year court battle going on and we were doing real well until he had a couple judges in his pocket for some—for whatever reason. And when you get into more affluent areas from where he came, people on the west side of the state don’t want to pay for someone to stay in a hospital. It was based on your ability to pay. We would bill insurance if we could but if you didn’t have any insurance, your liability to pay was zero and the state picked up the bill. But it wasn’t a freebie, I mean these patients—the Lafayette Clinic had just an unbelievable staff, such a dedicated—and if it didn’t close I would have retired from there.
LW: Do you visit Detroit today?
RK: Oh yeah, I love downtown Detroit.
LW: So having this perspective with a large sort of institution closing that would maybe have helped a lot more people had it stayed open, and then you go to Detroit today or we think about things that happened to Detroit from the nineties and the 2000s, do you think that the lack of mental health care has impacted the city negatively at all?
RK: I think it’s impacted the entire state not just Detroit. When I started working at the VA hospital in 1996, the Allen Park VA Hospital closed in June of ’96 and I interviewed in November of ’96 at the new hospital—I interviewed in September and I was hired in November. And when we had surveyors come to, you know, it was joint commission surveyors and then Council on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities who did our homeless programs and the surveyor said to us, she said, “You know your patients are so lucky, your veterans, because there is no inpatient psych anyplace anymore.” And when I started at the VA in’96 the average length of stay was probably close to two to two-and-a-half weeks, when I retired two years ago it was four to seven days. They get patients in they stabilize them on medication and they go out the door. And you had this revolving door syndrome. It’s not just the mental health—after the riots, as I said I used to take Gratiot, I used to take Van Dyck down to Gratiot, and when I was small my mom and I used to take the Gratiot bus downtown shopping. I saw the businesses on Gratiot close one after another and it was like driving through a ghost town, year after year it got worse and worse.
LW: This was in the sixties and seventies? Late sixties?
RK: Yeah, the seventies, right after the riots and I personally believe that Coleman Young buried the city for 20 years. When he told everyone to hit Eight Mile, people hit Eight Mile. He drove out businesses, there was no tax base in the city and where were people who had no education or transportation to get a job anyplace? I think Dennis Archer really tried, he was driven out and then we had Kwame Kilpatrick. I remember because I’m a big sports fan, and the fact that I said Detroit even to this day is like any other big city. You have to know where you can go and where not to go, you use common sense.
LW: Sure.
RK: But I’ve always worked downtown so I go to Tiger games, Red Wing games, football games. I still shop at Eastern Market, stuff like that. But I could see if after a sporting events even in the eighties and nineties you could shoot a canon down Woodward Avenue, you wouldn’t even hit anyone. And it is so nice to see that this stuff is starting to get so much better. One of my sisters—I have three sisters, and I’ll be honest with you, I’m the only one that will go downtown. I worked most of my life downtown. For two-and-a-half years I had a job in Troy, Michigan.
LW: Okay.
RK: I couldn’t stand it. I was on the road a lot, too, but that was our base, Troy. Sixteen Mile and Crooks and I was an account manager so I had eight hospitals in the Detroit area, downtown Detroit at Receiving Hospital, the Rehab Institute, then I had two in Pontiac, two in Grand Rapids, two in Muskegon. I didn’t like Troy.
LW: You liked the city more.
RK: And to this day, when I go down to baseball games I know enough to cut through Hamtramck so I don’t have to get on the freeway.
LW: So you know all the local secrets.
RK: You could really see after the riots the city just darkened. It just got—it lost its aura.
LW: Yeah.
RK: And I would go on vacation and people would say, “Well, where are you from” “I’m from Detroit” “Oh my god!” I go, “Well, where are you from?” “Milwaukee” I said, “I don’t consider that the garden spot of the world.” [Laughter] You know I was never ashamed to say I was from Detroit. And they would say, “Well, you carry a gun?” No, I don’t. And maybe it’s because I’ve always worked down there, the good portion, except for the two, three years I worked as an account manager. I was so happy to get back at the new VA hospital downtown and then it was in the early 2000s—you know, beginning in 1999 to 2000—you could just see the city just starting to wake up a little bit.
LW: So when you were at the Lafayette Clinic in the late sixties, seventies, and right during the time of the riots how did the riots impact the type of patients coming into the Lafayette Clinic—did it at all?
RK: No. Referrals were made from private psychiatrists from other hospitals. It really didn’t impact the type of patients. The patient care, I’m very proud to say, was not affected by that. We had a very, very dedicated staff of individuals. Again, I was in the administration part of it, I was a clerical staff, I didn’t have much to do with admitting at that at the time but I don’t remember patients suffering at all. The staff was very protective of the patients we had there. We were like a big family. And people have 35, 40 years of seniority and there was enough autonomy within the metal health system and even in civil service in Michigan you could go anyplace in the state. In fact I still keep in touch with Jackie Giering who was the coordinator and I was her secretary and a couple of the doctors I worked at Lafayette Clinic with. We’re all much older now but I have been very lucky that I had two jobs that I loved. I loved working at Lafayette Clinic. I grew up there professionally, chronologically, emotionally and the ties I had there for 27 years were unbelievable. Working at the VA hospital, I loved it. In fact when I went to the VA I was hired because of my mental health background. They were looking for a quality management coordinator for the mental health services. And Dr. [John] Grabowski who did his residency at Lafayette Clinic was the chief psychiatrist at the VA, so I was hired to work with him. And when I went on the wards half of the nursing staff was from Lafayette Clinic, four of the psychologists were from Lafayette Clinic, the chief psychologist was. When Lafayette clinic graduated at least 90 percent of the doctors or the professionals stayed in Michigan at the time. So I stayed and I worked at the VA, there were two—I just loved both—I was very, very lucky in my lifetime for 48 years to have two jobs that I loved.
LW: Thinking back to, you mentioned reading Dr. Luby’s report that you, you know, played a role in, you said that it sort of surprised you to go back and read it today. What do you think the most surprising thing about reading this report is for you today?
RK: That some of these things still exist.
LW: Like what types of things?
RK: I said to Ceil [Jensen] that there’s been some areas when I was reading this and some of the types of problems there are—some people still have a hard time getting a job, some people still have a hard time getting into school. When you take a look at some of the areas that are just what they called Black Bottom before, there are still pockets. When I worked at Southwest Detroit Community Mental Health, I was there right after Lafayette Clinic closed. I was hired there for three days, to work three days a week, they bumped it up to four, and then Engler cut the community mental health budget so they cut me back down to three. And I was teaching part time at Schoolcraft College at night. I was teaching Introduction to Allied Health and Quality Management and then I interviewed at the VA and I was hired a couple months later but it was just that there was the Mexican pockets, the Spanish down in Southwest Detroit and the only thing that down there—I saw so much that the areas in Southwest Detroit, even though it was very poor, you could see there was not a lot of money but the people took really pride in what their neighborhoods looked like. And you’d go to some of the areas for the African-Americans or blacks, whatever, and houses are burned down and stuff like that and that to me was such a big difference and I go, “Wow. These people in Southwest Detroit don’t have a heck of a lot of money either.” Some of these things that probably—that were the basis for the riot or the inequalities—a lot of them still exist 50 years today.
LW: I see.
RK: I can even see it in some of my family and friends. I mean it’s the prejudices. And I don’t know why. And like I said I worked with a lot of highly educated black people, Chinese people. I mean at one time we had so many foreign graduate residents at Lafayette Clinic, we had one English speaking one. We had so many foreigners one year when I was director of medical records somebody typed, dictated, that the patient—it was in the record that the patient said her husband had two heads. And the typist brought it up to me and she goes, “You know, Rosemary this doesn’t look right.” So we called the doctor and I called one of the supervisors down and said “You know this doesn’t sound right,” and I said, “Is the patient hallucinating you know, what is it? Because the typist was typing it.” And the patient said to the foreign doctor, “My husband is a two-faced son of a bitch.” While the foreign doctor thought her husband had two heads.
LW: Lost in translation.
RK: Right. And they had no idea when the adolescents would throw them the finger or somebody was throwing salt over their shoulder or the patients talked about where they came from. So we—Dr. Valerie Kling, she was a staff psychologist and I, we took the clinic bus, we put the foreign residents, doctors, on the bus and we took them around the Cass Corridor to show them where the patients came from. Because during the seventies—and then they finally put a limit on the number of foreign medical graduate students who could come into the country. But we had doctors that patients couldn’t relate to. I don’t even know what the question was.
LW: Well, I’m wondering, you know, looking back at this report today, how you mentioned it was eye-opening to read this again and I wondered what about it—
RK: Well, even here, back: the arrestees, zero completed college, zero had some college, 39 percent completed high school, 43 percent had some high school. These numbers have gone up. I think—
LW: I see.
RK: But today, these individuals who are more educated, these people still feel they’re being depressed and that they don’t have equal opportunities where the rest of us do. The other thing that was real important was talk about affiliation.
LW: I see.
RK: If some people, like the arrestees, were affiliated with a church or some kind of racial group, PTA or a block club. And if you take a look at the controls, most of the controls were—they felt if you belonged to some kind of a group it was important. And I think that sort of shows where if you think you’re a rebel, I don’t belong anywhere today, and today this is where you see the shootings. People don’t belong—feel like they don’t belong anyplace and so they’re going to take it out on someone. And that’s what happened at the blind pig and this thing snowballed—it really, really did.
LW: So this—what we’re looking at here, 39 percent of arrestees had a church affiliation.
RK: They did. But if you take a look at the control group, controls who—
LW: 42 percent.
RK: 42 percent and--
LW: What is a race group?
RK: Probably some kind of affiliation from either maybe NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] or something like that.
LW: I see. So eight percent of the arrestees belonged to a race group, but 27 percent of the controls belonged to a similar group
RK: Right.
LW: So the sense of not belonging or being an outsider—
RK: To me it’s you have so much in you that you want to get out.
LW: So Dr. Luby’s study, it would seem, supports the idea that people that are—feel isolated that feel like outsiders are more prone to civil disturbance or—
RK: Act out.
LW: Or acting out.
RK: Right. And I think you see that today in individuals more and more. You know, was this person a loner? And you know I guess even back when I was in high school, not everyone could be a cheerleader, not everyone could be—I mean I was a cheerleader in grade school but I didn’t make it in high school. But you know we were still at the games and things like that. But I belonged—there was a Future Business Leaders of America, you know, the library club, and as you go on more and more there are different groups. And it’s still very, very important to belong somewhere. After I retired I took a year off and I started volunteering here. I felt like, yeah, okay, I had enough to myself. I just want to go someplace. And I can’t imagine somebody not wanting to be that.
LW: To contribute.
RK: To belong to something.
LW: So the sense of belonging—
RK: It gives you a purpose.
LW: So the sense of belonging and you think that in the city today that one of the problems is that people feel like they don’t belong.
RK: No. Honestly, I think, to me—and I don’t want this taken the wrong way—it’s just the pendulum swings from one way to another and it’s going so far from the left to the right, and this sense of entitlement and not just by race but I think of groups. Young children, I can see it in some family members where, “What are you gonna give me.” You know, you work for it. I started working when I was 17 I had to go get working papers. I didn’t think anything of it. I started the day after I graduated. And “What are you gonna give me now?” And the sense of entitlement, it’s not there for the taking, you got to work for it. So I get a little upset, not with ethnic groups or whatever but anybody. And I think that is more and more in our society. I can’t see wiping out history—
LW: Okay.
RK: Of any kind. I mean, it was there, slavery was there, the labor camps were there in Poland and that and it’s part of history that we need to learn from, but not to say that “I think I’m entitled for you to give me something now.” And I don’t know, I just see that more and more today. And our government just gives stuff away to me—just gives things away. Instead of making people say, “Hey, it’s there, if you wanna work for it.” I always worked for it. Nobody ever gave me anything.
LW: Did you feel that same sense of entitlement or people feeling like they deserved something when you worked at the Lafayette Clinic?
RK: No. No, I didn’t. And again, I guess it’s because the people that I worked with were so professional. You know, not all the attendants were high schooled but they were dedicated people that really had a purpose in life. And it was like we had at one time close to a thousand employees in different shifts, you know, because we ran—I think it was on average 800 employees but we were like a family and we took care of each other. And I was there for 27 years. And I didn’t—when I got over to the VA in the late nineties I could see more of a divide in race groups. We had a group of black nurses who were very, very powerful in the hospital. Very powerful.
LW: So it was an incredibly diverse place to work.
RK: Yeah. Lafayette Clinic was just—it was just so different, it was just different. And during and after the riots patients did not suffer at all. They suffered when Engler closed it, they really suffered then. And I think they’re still suffering today because your homeless population is up.
LW: Well, thank you for sharing all of this with me. Is there anything else you want to add to the record?
RK: No, no. It’s just—I was surprised like, I said, when we presented our findings to the staff that there was so much animosity toward those of us that did work on it.
LW: Interesting.
RK: I just remember her first name was Alice and she just got up on stage and really tore into us. And I was like, “Woah.” But I never looked at is as if you were putting black people under a microscope and dissecting them. And again I was 18 years old, I was brought up in a nice Polish community and I was very sheltered. As time went on, like I said, when I started working at the VA I could really—it’s almost like things got worse over the years instead of better. And now I hope that with the things that are happening in downtown Detroit and in Detroit proper is that more people will start working together with groups and organizations and businesses that you don’t have that—I think you always will—you will always have—and for someone to say “I’m not prejudice,” that’s a lie. Because you are. In some form or another. I wish I could have gotten Dr. Luby to talk on it. But—that’s yours.
LW: Thank you so much.
RK: Thank you for the interview.
**