jkca1 wrote:
I lived 2 miles north of 8 mile when the riots took place. I was 12 at the time. We heard rumors of the National Guard and tanks being placed on Greenfield Ave. You didn't want to go outside and even a trip to the supermarket was scary:
"The Detroit riots began 50 years ago Sunday, after a police raid on an unlicensed, after-hours club. They lasted five days, and by the time they stopped, 43 people were dead, hundreds were injured, thousands had been arrested and entire neighborhoods had burned to the ground.
The new film
Detroit depicts the beginning of the riots and one of their most horrifying events: the Algiers Motel incident, in which three young black men were killed (some would say executed) by white police officers."
http://www.npr.org/...lgiers-motel-incidenI lived about 8 blocks from where the 12th Street (initial) riot took place, though I was only about 7 years old at the time. But my memories of the uproar are very vivid, believe me. We had National Guard troops and tanks and APCs and whatnot in our neighborhood park, and we could see the night sky aglow from the various fires. The pop-pop-pop of gunfire was also noticeable. I think one night, 13 people died and the next night another 12.
The thesis nowadays is that while the '67 Detroit riots -- the worst of the 400-odd riots to take place in the 1960s -- intensified the city's loss of population and its general decline, the city had been heading downward since at least the early 1960s. The automakers building plants in the suburbs rather than in the city, and the rise of the interstate highway system through Motown, which made it easier to commute into and then out of the city, were both equally strong factors.
Detroit began losing population in 1951, after peaking at about 1.86 million people in 1950. By my year of birth, it was down to about 1.51 million residents. Today? About 672,000 people. The decline has been very sad.
"Politics is just show business for ugly people."