oralhistorynotes

lasted from July 23 to 27 led to the flight of affluent, mostly white, people from the inner city to the suburbs worsened the city's failing economic conditions and further polarized the races. Sunday July 23 - the  Detroit   police vice squad used excessive force in a raid of an illegal after-hours bar on   12th Street  , in the center of   Detroit   's African-American ghetto. The police arrested 82 patrons and brought them outside to wait to be transported to the police station. As word spread that the police had used excessive force in the raid, a crowd gathered to protest. looting broke out in the immediate vicinity of the arrest and quickly spread throughout  Detroit  , leading to further violence erupted Detroit  did not respond with an increased presence stores burned to the ground, snipers began shooting at the firemen Initially, the rioters targeted only white-owned stores, but soon black-owned stores were also targeted. gun and knife fights broke out in the ghetto. Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh imposed a curfew on the entire city and requested the National __Guard__ to help suppress the violence Governor George Romney declared a state of emergency – he had to use the Michigan National Guard to suppress the riots, as the state could not request the use of federal troops until it had exhausted state resources. Monday Monday, July 24 - Romney sent a telegram to the White House stating, ". . . there is reasonable doubt that we can suppress the existing looting, arson, and sniping without the assistance of Federal troops." LBJ sent paratroopers to go to a base near  Detroit   and sent Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance to the city as a representative. Vance and the commander of the paratrooper unit toured the city; by that time, some of the fires were contained, and the two officials did not witness any sniping, so federal troops weren't called in. By Monday night, sniping had resumed, so Johnson authorized the deployment of federal troops to  Detroit   and addressed the nation on the need to maintain law and order in   Detroit. About 4,700 federal and National Guard troops converged on the city. National Guard fired at looters and people suspected of violence - guardsmen were ordered to empty their guns of ammunition; however, some did not get the order, and shooting continued into Tuesday night. police shot and killed three innocent African Americans at the Algiers Motel city was "saturated by fear"; federal troops were fearful of the looters, and the residents of the ghetto were fearful of the troops.
 * " **** Detroit **** riot of 1967." __American History__. 2008. ABC-CLIO. 4 May 2008 <[|http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com>.] **

The riot eventually  spread out over 14 square miles 43 people were killed (33 blacks and 10 whites) and 1,189 injured police and guardsmen killed 27 people, only 17 of whom were looters; police detained 7,231 people in 20 locations over six counties, and more than 4,000 were charged with crimes Of the 27 people charged with sniping, only three cases went to court. The looting and the 1,680 fires caused about $50 million in damage. led to t  he New Detroit Committee - community leaders discuss and solve the problems that had led to the riot committee also worked on projects to develop  Detroit   's rundown communities riot and the failure to significantly improve pre-riot conditions ultimately damaged the strength of political liberals in  Detroit  , which had been known for federally sponsored antipoverty programs and other progressive city government programs. Most of the businesses destroyed during the riot were not rebuilt within the city. Much of  Detroit   's affluent population, both white and black, migrated to the suburbs after the riot, which further depressed the economy in the ghetto. More than 30 years later, many buildings and lots remained vacant. The uneven distribution of housing that confined African Americans to overcrowded and filthy ghettos, as well as the sentiments of the civil rights movement and black power movement, are believed to have provided the conditions for such extreme urban unrest.

In the violent summer of 1967, Detroit became the scene of the bloodiest uprising in half a century and the costliest in terms of property damage in U.S. history. Mourned Mayor Jerome Cavanagh: "It looks like Berlin in 1945." At week's end, there were 41 known dead, 347 injured, 3,800 arrested. Some 5,000 people were homeless (the vast majority Negro), while 1,300 buildings had been reduced to mounds of ashes and bricks and 2,700 businesses sacked. Damage estimates reached $500 million. upheaval started with a routine police action Looting, at first dared by only a few, became a mob delirium as big crowds now gathered Arsonists lobbed Molotov cocktails at newly pillaged stores - fires started in the shops, spread swiftly to homes and apartments Snipers took up posts in windows and on rooftops For four days and into the fifth, mobs stole, burned and killed as a force of some 15,000 city and state police, National Guardsmen and federal troops fought to smother the fire - city was almost completely paralyzed. So far this summer, some 70 cities—40 in the past week alone—have been hit. In the summer of 1967, "it" can happen anywhere, and sometimes seems to be happening everywhere. Detroit's outbreak was followed by a spate of eruptions in neighboring Michigan cities—Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Flint, Muskegon, West Michigan City and Pontiac, Some of the looters were taking a methodical revenge upon the area's white merchants, whose comparatively high prices, often escalated to offset losses by theft and the cost of extra-high insurance premiums, irk the residents of slum neighborhoods. Most of the stores pillaged and destroyed were groceries, supermarkets and furniture stores; of Detroit's 630 liquor stores, 250 were looted. Many drunks careened down Twelfth Street consuming their swag. Negro merchants scrawled "Soul Brother"—and in one case, "Sold Brother" —on their windows to warn the mobs off. But many of their stores were ravaged nonetheless. Michigan's Governor George Romney called in 370 state troopers to beef up the defenses, then by late afternoon ordered 7,000 National Guardsmen mobilized. Detroit's jails were jammed far past capacity, and police converted part of their cavernous garage at headquarters into a noisome, overflowing detention center. National Guardsmen, jittery and untrained in riot control, exacerbated the trouble where it all started, on Twelfth Street (see box). Suspecting the presence of snipers in the Algiers Motel, Guardsmen laid down a brutal barrage of automatic-weapons fire. When they burst into a motel room, they found three dead Negro teen-age boys—and no weapon. George Romney had a terse evaluation of the chaos: "There were some civil rights overtones, but primarily this is a case of lawlessness and hoodlumism. Disobedience to the law cannot and will not be tolerated."