The 1967 Detroit Riot, also known as the Twelfth Street Riot or the Detroit Rebellion, was the worst American race riot of the 1960s. For five days during the Summer of Love Detroit burned. At the end 43 lay dead. In American history only the 1992 Los Angeles riot and the 1921 Tulsa riot were worse. It came less than a month after the Newark riot, which killed 25.
It took 17,000 armed men to put it down: the governor called in the National Guard and the president called in the army. Tanks rolled through the streets of Detroit.
- Dates: July 23rd to 28th 1967
- Deaths: 43 (33 black, 10 white)
- Injured: 1189
- Buildings destroyed: over 2,000
- Property damage: $40 to $80 million (20 to 40 million crowns)
Part of what made the riot so bad was the heavy-handed approach of the Guardsmen. They shot a four-year-old girl dead, for example, when they saw her father’s lit cigarette in a darkened window.
How it started: At 12th and Clairmount on the West Side at three in the morning the police broke into an after-hours bar with a sledgehammer: they found themselves in the middle of a party for two servicemen coming home from the Vietnam War. Now they had to arrest four times more people than expected.
It took an hour and a half to arrest everyone. In the meantime word spread and 200 onlookers gathered. One of them kept shouting at the police, “Motherfuckers! Leave my people alone!” Then people began to throw bottles and the police tried to get out fast. As the last police car pulled away the riot broke out.
Causes:
The main things that blacks in Detroit were unhappy about before the riot:
- Police brutality: This was the main cause given by the rioters themselves. The police force was nearly all white and nearly half were “extremely anti-Negro”. Because whites wanted the police to be “tough on crime” they refused to set up the civilian review board demanded by blacks. So the police were unaccountable: they beat people to death, shot a woman in the back, thought that ordinary women were prostitutes, called men “boy” and stopped people for no reason, arresting those who could not produce ID.
- Housing: The city tore down the heart of black Detroit to make way for Interstate 75 so that people from the suburbs (mainly white and middle-class) could get into the city more easily. It cut black Detroit in two. It not only destroyed businesses but a good share of what limited housing space was open to blacks, thereby worsening living conditions and making more of black Detroit into a slum.
- Employment: more than a sixth of black men were out of work – what whites would call hard times. The car makers were moving their plants out of the city and replacing men with machines.
After the riot the president set up the Kerner Commission, which found that America was:
moving toward two separate societies, one Black, one white –
separate and unequal.
It advised the government to pour money into helping blacks get better housing, education and employment opportunities.
See also:
Thanks for posting this, abagond, as it will be really useful for my students.
I think we should just rename your site “Racewiki”. 😉
Back in the day when I was finishing my senior thesis, I sat down and started counting all the deaths caused by the riots, by COINTELLPRO and by the activities of the cops-Klan in the south from 1960 on to about 1975.
Turned out that they were comparable in number with the deaths caused by the Brazilian military dictatorship during the years 1964-1979.
And yet people still consider the U.S. during that period to be a relatively blemish-free democracy.
Go figure.
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Great comparison!
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About the only thing which the U.S. didn’t engage in during that period, in comparison with the Brazilian dictatorship, was systemic torture (at least I haven’t found any indications of this to date).
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It’s funny, I think of the Westside of Chicago. The riots of the sixties, that took place out of so much frustration and anger, pretty much destroyed that side of town.
And even today, it’s so sad to see.
The poverty, bad housing, no housing, drug/alcohol abuse, food deserts, etc., etc., etc. And so much of this continued degradation, is retaliation by the city’s White political structure.
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I’ve got to believe that the damage rioting like that in terms of subsequent white flight, business reticence in locating in the city, and city self-esteem is more significant than the actual dollars lost. I know that here in DC it took awhile for the U St. neighborhood to make a comeback and even now that area has lost much of its soul.
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Frank Zappa’s take on the Watts riot…
TROUBLE EVERY DAY
Well I’m about to get upset
From watchin’ my TV
Been checkin’ out the news
Until my eyeballs fail to see
I mean to say that every day
Is just another rotten mess
And when it’s gonna change, my friend
Is anybody’s guess
So I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ’em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
Wednesday I watched the riot . . .
Seen the cops out on the street
Watched ’em throwin’ rocks and stuff
And chokin’ in the heat
Listened to reports
About the whisky passin’ ’round
Seen the smoke and fire
And the market burnin’ down
Watched while everybody
On his street would take a turn
To stomp and smash and bash and crash
And slash and bust and burn
And I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ’em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
Well, you can cool it,
You can heat it . . .
‘Cause, baby, I don’t need it . . .
Take your TV tube and eat it
‘N all that phony stuff on sports
‘N all the unconfirmed reports
You know I watched that rotten box
Until my head begin to hurt
From checkin’ out the way
The newsman say they get the dirt
Before the guys on channel so-and-so
And further they assert
That any show they’ll interrupt
To bring you news if it comes up
They say that if the place blows up
They will be the first to tell,
Because the boys they got downtown
Are workin’ hard and doin’ swell,
And if anybody gets the news
Before it hits the street,
They say that no one blabs it faster
Their coverage can’t be beat
And if another woman driver
Gets machine-gunned from her seat
They’ll send some joker with a brownie
And you’ll see it all complete
So I’m watchin’ and I’m waitin’
Hopin’ for the best
Even think I’ll go to prayin’
Every time I hear ’em sayin’
That there’s no way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin’ every day
Hey, you know something people?
I’m not black
But there’s a whole lots a times
I wish I could say I’m not white
Well, I seen the fires burnin’
And the local people turnin’
On the merchants and the shops
Who used to sell their brooms and mops
And every other household item
Watched the mob just turn and bite ’em
And they say it served ’em right
Because a few of them are white,
And it’s the same across the nation
Black and white discrimination
Yellin’ “You can’t understand me!”
‘N all that other jazz they hand me
In the papers and TV and
All that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day
Each time you hear some nitwit say
He wants to go and do you in
Because the color of your skin
Just don’t appeal to him
(No matter if it’s black or white)
Because he’s out for blood tonight
You know we got to sit around at home
And watch this thing begin
But I bet there won’t be many live
To see it really end
‘Cause the fire in the street
Ain’t like the fire in the heart
And in the eyes of all these people
Don’t you know that this could start
On any street in any town
In any state if any clown
Decides that now’s the time to fight
For some ideal he thinks is right
And if a million more agree
There ain’t no Great Society
As it applies to you and me
Our country isn’t free
And the law refuses to see
If all that you can ever be
Is just a lousy janitor
Unless your uncle owns a store
You know that five in every four
Just won’t amount to nothin’ more
Gonna watch the rats go across the floor
And make up songs about being poor
Blow your harmonica, son!
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Will 2010 be the new 1967? Only time will tell. Things are getting worse by the moment as the number of people lose their jobs, people losing their homes, and families being torn apart due to financial problems. It is all so sad. I believe that this may be a reflection of what is to come, if we don’t all start doing something to help others. Peace & Blessing Abagond for this insight.
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Reality: the blacks in Detroit had critical mass in terms of population to create their own economy even if they were excluded from equal participation in the broader economy. The truth is they weren’t talented, ambitious or smart enough to figure out how to improve their own situation and instead spent their efforts protesting that nobody would give them “jobs, housing and money”. The riots grew out of frustration driven by envy and self loathing. The excuses of police brutality and racism are just that, excuses. A truly capable people would have been able to create success. Instead nearly 50 years later the same people live the same way complaining about the same things despite billions of dollars of subsidies and give aways!
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I’d love to know what John would say about Tulsa.
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Fifty years ago on this day Detroit burned…
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…and the powers that be have been punishing the people of Detroit and their descendants ever since.
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I think it’s odd that both progroms (like Tulsa) and violent protests (like Detroit) are called “race riots”.
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Detroit the movie comes out in theaters next month.
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I have looked up and studying the word “pogrom” Organized destruction of an ethnic group. And in parentheses (Such as Jews) I am curious why black Americans and other African people are omitted? There have been many atrocities in American where black people in this country and African people across the globe have been on the receiving end of these heinous acts.
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@Kartoffel: Dear Potato I wonder the same thing.
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The city still seems to be in urban blight .
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@ Mary Burrell
“The city still seems to be in urban blight.”
Detroit used to have one of the highest levels of home ownership in the nation.
The loss of factory jobs and thousands of city residents shut out of the city water system left residents staggering.
The 2007-2008 Financial Crisis was the knock out punch for many families who lost homes by the hundreds of thousands.
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Apparently, Detroit is making a comeback:
http://herneith.d.pr/FwEQ3n
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@Mary Burrell
“The city still seems to be in urban blight .”
Dramatically improved, but still mired in politics. Contracts to demolish homes and clean up public spaces are still awarded according to the “friends and family plan” and overpaid… attempts to bring new development are labeled as gentrification… perhaps rightly so, but in the end, abandoned and vacant land remains vacant without development so, jobs and transportation are scarce for the residents. Millions get spent on stupid trains to nowhere while kids can’t get a decent education because the corrupt and jacked up school district declines even more under state “supervision”.
Still, it doesn’t burn down every Oct. 30 anymore, most street lights are on, water system is getting fixed, parks ARE getting cleaned up, it’s not nearly the food desert that it was 10 years ago, museums are re-opening, and businesses are returning.
In the ‘burbs, there’s still a significant part of the population that have never been and think of going “into the city” as something dangerous and foreign, but if the suburbs and the city could ever get together on a real transportation system… to unite the residents of both places with the jobs, resources and opportunities that the other has to offer… I do believe Detroit would respond rapidly and dramatically because a lot of groundwork has been done. Instead, they build a temple to the hockey team and name it after cheap food.
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@Open Minded Observer: Thanks for the comment i was enlightened.
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@Afrofem: Thank you also for your insightful comment as well.
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@ John
Gotta love the drive-by sh*tposters, even years later. I wonder what he’s up to these days…
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I grew up in Portugal and remember seeing this and other riots on Portuguese TV.
I remember my mother (who is Brazilian) asking why the rioters were burning down their own neighborhoods!
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Fascinating, not one post on the equally bloody Hong Kong riots May – December 1967, yet, tons of posts on Occupy Central, Tiananmen Square.
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