1967 riots (Detroit, Dearborn, Wyoming: houses, rent, income)

[STLCardsBlues1989]

I've been reading up about it. Do any of you have any memories of it? Just curious. Thanks.

[simlifgal]

no. but I have heard about it a lot from my great grandma, who lost her house, and my dad. my dad remembers being in the car with his dad on the way to see his grandma. they had turned on the radio, and he said a news flash came on, but by the time it did they were so close they could see the smoke and hear the shouting. One of my great Grandma's nieghbors had convinced her to leave with them before the riots acctually reached their block I guess. There are only 5 houses left standing on their old block to this day.

[MidwesternBookWorm]

I grew up in Royal Oak, just north of Detroit, and I was 10 years old that summer. I remember the fear, even 10 miles from the epicenter of the violence, that pervaded our neighborhood, as we wondered how far the violence would spread, and the sense of sadness as the death toll mounted. We could see the smoke downtown, and I remember the feeling of unreality, of moving in a dream, as we watched the tv footage from the helicopters panning over the devastation.

My grandmother lived in Detroit on Fullerton in a 1920's-era apartment building, and absolutely refused to leave her apartment. We were terrified for her safety, but fortunately her building survived. She spent the entire duration of the riots with her police scanner beside her, listening for any signs that the violence was getting close, and later told us some things that weren't mentioned in the news at the time. It sounded to me then that not all of the violence originated with the rioters.

At this point, four decades later, a lot of my memories are in bits and fragments, but I remember my parents having heated conversations at the dinner table about police brutality in the months before the riot. My father, whose job required him to interview people all over the city in all walks of life, later described a very uneasy sense to the city that spring and summer.

When my spouse was in college, he had a friend who had been an ROTC student at Wayne State University that summer. His friend described how he and the other ROTC students in town spent the week stationed on the roofs of the university buildings with sniper rifles, in case the violence spread too close to the university.

Sniper attacks went on sporadically throughout the rioting, and the various news agencies made a big deal about them. I remember feeling uneasy every time we went downtown for months afterwards, looking at roofs and wondering if we were safe.

I wonder at times if anything like that would ever happen in the US again today. We hear about sectarian and ethnic violence tearing cities apart elsewhere in the world, and it seems sometimes as though the news commentators are so smug, so certain that it could never happen here. I hope that enough of us remember when it did, in fact, happen here, and what the reasons were, that we can prevent a repetition.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by MidwesternBookWorm

I wonder at times if anything like that would ever happen in the US again today.

Perhaps you were not aware that it happened in LA (and spread to Orange County) just a few years ago? I was there. It was scary.

Relatives and older friends have told me that what they found the most frightening about the Detroit riots was seeing tanks in the street. I do not know if these were real tanks or just armored vehicles mistaken for tanks. I cannot see how a tank would be of any see in a riot.

Older people in Grosse Ile told me that the bridges were guarded during the day and left open (they are swing bridges) at night so that no one could come across if the rioting spread that far. If you were not on the island by the set time, you were out of luck.

Some relatives who were here told me that the whole thing was blown out of proportion by the media. they lived in the city bad said that it was not that big a deal. they still went shopping and went to work. I have no idea if that is only because they are applying their limited experience of the riots to the whole thing or whether they are generally accurate.

[downthathighway]

Most of the riot activity was near the center of Detroit.
..I lived at the far northwest city limits.
..We saw alot of city busses come up Grand River Rd to the 'end' of that route, in Redford Twp. Lots of bullet holes and shattered windows. A few times the busses looked to be empty but the passengers were all scrunched down below window height!
...Last year the Detroit News ran a series of stories about the riots, then and 40 years later:
Special Report: Where we stand, 4 decades after that fateful summer

[trinkit]

I was living at Junction and Michigan Ave with my husband and 6-month-old son when the riots started. It was a low-income, mostly Polish neighborhood where most people took pride in their homes and their surroundings.

Business owners all along Michigan Avenue were on their roofs, attempting to save their buildings from the looters and rioting.

Coldjensens: I can assure you that there were, indeed, REAL tanks on the street. The National Guard was called out to help.

Mayor Hubbard CLOSED the city of Dearborn at Wyoming with orders of "shoot to kill". The riot never reached that far, but it gives you an indication of how serious the threat of it spreading was.

Now, years later, the epicenter of the riot has been rebuilt, but the outlying areas -- the "nice" Polish neighborhood that was then "low-income" can now be classified as "ghetto".

[downthathighway]

Originally Posted by trinkit

I was living at Junction and Michigan Ave with my husband and 6-month-old son when the riots started. It was a low-income, mostly Polish neighborhood where most people took pride in their homes and their surroundings.

Business owners all along Michigan Avenue were on their roofs, attempting to save their buildings from the looters and rioting.

Coldjensens: I can assure you that there were, indeed, REAL tanks on the street. The National Guard was called out to help.

Mayor Hubbard CLOSED the city of Dearborn at Wyoming with orders of "shoot to kill". The riot never reached that far, but it gives you an indication of how serious the threat of it spreading was.

Now, years later, the epicenter of the riot has been rebuilt, but the outlying areas -- the "nice" Polish neighborhood that was then "low-income" can now be classified as "ghetto".

That neighborhood is a 'textbook' case what happens without 'new blood', but has been dying a sad slow death for the last 25 years.
I wouldn't call it a ghetto yet though, but it has lost it's little neighborhood feel.
As the 'old timers' die, no young Polish families have moved in, so there are different ethnic groups moving in. Many more Mexican families, it seems.
One by one all the corner markets, bakeries, meat markets and bars have also closed.
I was surprised when my daughter moved to Wyandotte a few years back, to see that town really resembles the old Polish area of SW Detroit we remember.

[MainStreet]

I write a nostalgia blog from time to time and here is how I remember the riots and the aftermath on my grandma's life in Berkley.

Wednesday, October 11th

{Disclaimer. My story is in no way meant to offend. It is about my grandmother living in post late 60's Detroit race riots.}

Mary Ida Didn’t Die a Racist

As much as I loved my grandmother, she was a racist. An old white Kentucky born, coal-miner’s wife, racist. It was a part of her consciousness that she must have picked up from her parents, who I never knew, because Marvin wasn’t outspoken and their children certainly weren’t, despite her.

When my sister and I were school aged, every time we set foot in her house, if a “treasure” wasn’t thrown at us, we were immediately questioned before we even took off our coats.

“How many blacks are in your school?”

Mind you, this line of questioning started when my sister was five and I was seven. For many years the two of us would simply look up at our parents because we didn’t have a clue as to what grandma was talking about. My mother would shuffle us into the guest room to put our coats on the bed while my dad spoke to his mother, presumably about our age and her topic. When we returned to the livingroom to sit with her, she would never bring it up again, until the next visit. This went on for years.

Eventually, once I understood, I would answer “three” as my mother pushed me into the next room, my rubberneck twisted like an owl in my grandma’s direction so that she would hear me above my father telling her to be quiet. I was still naive and didn’t understand why she needed to know; I just thought I was being respectful for answering her. I think I believed she knew something that I didn’t know and I was craving a moment when we could be alone and she would explain to me why she wanted to know about the Childress kids. Maybe they were famous.

Years later, I learned that the Detroit riots of 1967 were only thirteen miles from Ellwood Avenue, where we and my grandparents lived three blocks apart. Eminem had his 8-Mile but years earlier my life was at 12-Mile, complete with an A&W Drive-In and the Schwinn bike store. I know that we moved to the country in 1969 and there is a good possibility that grandma, who rarely left her home in those days and eventually stayed in for twenty years, was terrified in 1967. I know it’s no excuse, but she was a shut-in for the most part, because of her size and had very little contact with the outside world other than her family and her television set.

Fast forward to the late 1980's. Mary Ida, living alone, but cared for primarily by my wonderfully eccentric Aunt Norma (think Anna Nicole Smith at 65.) Norma did everything for Mary Ida and to this day, I believe she worked Norma to death, literally. After that, the family arranged for a home health nurse to come to Mary Ida’s house and cook a meal and give grandma a bed bath, everyday.

Mary Ida’s rotary phone burnt up the first day the agency sent over a black nurse. On that day, my grandma became the agency’s worst nightmare. Eventually, the agency won, as there were no other nurses available and my grandmother finally unlocked her door and let the poor woman in. I cringe when I think how badly Mary Ida must have behaved. I’m sure she spoke her mind and didn’t censor a bit of her thoughts as she talked on the phone all day while the nurse straightened up and cooked. It was a very small house. Months went by and occasionally the agency would send over a white nurse. Something clicked within Mary Ida, maybe it was the extra care the black woman took with her, making sure that she was clean and her bed sheets were always fresh. Maybe it was her humor or her cooking. No one knows but these two women. A kinship developed under a roof where all had seemed hopeless. Eventually, Mary Ida requested that no one be sent on her nurse’s days off, she would fend for herself.

This is exactly what needed to happen. Mary Ida lived in her home right up to the final old-age illness that resulted in a brief hospitalization, where she died. What little fear or hate grandma had in her had been healed and she was called home with the brightened soul that had been patiently and tenderly cared for by one very special nurse.

[marmac]

I believe the race riots that spread across the US was a "copy cat" occurence.
Every week was a different city from large city descending on downwards,

By the end, even smaller cities with small minority populations were in the news for rioting,burning, and looting.

[and the]

The 1943 riot it Detroit was a race riot. The 1967 riot was not, despite the efforts of a lot of people with agendas to make it so. From what I've heard from people who were there, it was not uncommon to see a sofa "walking" down the street with a white guy on one end and a black guy on the other. That would not have happened in '43.