I remember it like it was yesterday, even though I was just a young boy of 7. Back then, we lived near the far northern border of southwest Detroit, on 18th Street, not all that far from the initial incident on 12th Street that touched off the days of rage that followed (a police raid on a purported after-hours gambling joint known as a 'blind pig').
Soon enough, we had the National Guard and active US Army troops camping in our nearby neighborhood park, cops and firefighters everywhere, a strictly enforced city wide curfew and more trouble than you could imagine. My dad and his brothers, all armed -- one with an honest-to-God zip gun -- sat on our porch through several nights, just to make sure no passing rioters decided to make an example of the house he'd painstakingly saved up for as a journeyman construction ironworker.
By the time the riot was over, 43 people were dead and 342 more injured. More than 1,400 buildings were put to the torch by rioters, and the event signaled the beginning of the end for Motown, the engine of industry and prosperity for those lucky enough to get jobs in one of its many factories.
In the 1960 to 1970 time period, for example, city population ranged from nearly 1.7 million people in 1960 to 1.51 million in 1970. As of 2016, a city originally built to house nearly 2 million people had a population of only 672,795. White flight to the suburbs, urban crime that's legendary at times, a series of hammer blows to the once-dominant auto industry which has left it a pale imitation of what it once was in the Motor City, a wave of drug epidemics that struck hard at the working middle class and the poor, acute past corruption by a political class, including several mayors and their machine cronies...you name it, and Detroit has suffered from it.
1967 Detroit Riots
"Politics is just show business for ugly people."
Soon enough, we had the National Guard and active US Army troops camping in our nearby neighborhood park, cops and firefighters everywhere, a strictly enforced city wide curfew and more trouble than you could imagine. My dad and his brothers, all armed -- one with an honest-to-God zip gun -- sat on our porch through several nights, just to make sure no passing rioters decided to make an example of the house he'd painstakingly saved up for as a journeyman construction ironworker.
By the time the riot was over, 43 people were dead and 342 more injured. More than 1,400 buildings were put to the torch by rioters, and the event signaled the beginning of the end for Motown, the engine of industry and prosperity for those lucky enough to get jobs in one of its many factories.
In the 1960 to 1970 time period, for example, city population ranged from nearly 1.7 million people in 1960 to 1.51 million in 1970. As of 2016, a city originally built to house nearly 2 million people had a population of only 672,795. White flight to the suburbs, urban crime that's legendary at times, a series of hammer blows to the once-dominant auto industry which has left it a pale imitation of what it once was in the Motor City, a wave of drug epidemics that struck hard at the working middle class and the poor, acute past corruption by a political class, including several mayors and their machine cronies...you name it, and Detroit has suffered from it.
1967 Detroit Riots
"Politics is just show business for ugly people."