Detroit
at
crossroads
50 years
after
riots
devastated
city
By
COREY
WILLIAMS
ap.org
DETROIT
-
Deborah
Chenault
Green is
62, a
writer.
But 50
years
ago she
was a
pre-teen,
sleeping
on the
porch to
escape
the
oppressive
heat,
awakening
to see a
sky that
glowed
unnaturally.
Azerine
Jones is
a
retired
baker.
But in
1967 she
was the
12-year-old
daughter
of a
barber
who
watched
his
business
go up in
smoke.
Gerard
Townsend
is 66
now,
living
in a
seniors
building
near the
Detroit
waterfront.
But a
half
century
ago, he
was just
a kid on
a city
bus.
The bus
stopped
near
12th and
Clairmount
streets.
Townsend
stepped
off -
and into
the very
start of
the
Detroit
riot.
"I saw
all
these
guys
with
masks
and
shields,"
he said
- city
police
officers,
most of
them
white,
far
outnumbered
by a
seething
black
crowd.
In the
days
that
followed,
he would
witness
- and
take
part in
- an
epic
eruption
of
violence
that
still
reverberates
in his
life and
the life
of this
city.
Five
days of
violence
would
leave 33
blacks
and 10
whites
dead,
and more
than
1,400
buildings
burned.
More
than
7,000
people
were
arrested.
A
decline
that had
already
begun
would
accelerate;
Detroit
was the
nation's
fourth
biggest
city in
1960,
but
would
rank
21st by
2016.
The
middle
class
fled,
and a
proud
city
fell
into
poverty,
crime
and
hopelessness.
There
are
signs of
rebirth
in
Detroit.
But the
men and
women
who
lived
through
the
riots
are
getting
older,
and most
doubt
they
will
live to
see
Detroit
reclaim
its
former
glory,
when its
very
name was
synonymous
with
American
know-how
and
industry.
"Detroit
still
hasn't
come
back to
where it
was,"
Townsend
said
sourly,
sorting
through
50 years
of
memories.
---
Detroit
wasn't
the
first of
the
riots in
the
summer
of 1967,
and it
was far
from the
last.
Buffalo,
New
York,
and
Newark,
New
Jersey,
preceded
it; in
the
course
of the
summer,
more
than 150
cases of
civil
unrest
erupted
across
the
United
States.
Detroit's
started
after a
July 23
police
raid on
an
illegal
after-hours'
club - a
"blind
pig" -
at 12th
and
Clairmount.
The
raid,
though,
was just
the
spark.
Many in
the
community
blamed
frustrations
blacks
felt
toward
the
mostly
white
police,
and city
policies
that
pushed
families
into
aging
and
over-crowded
neighborhoods
.
"We had
a fear
and kind
of a
hatred
toward
the
police
department,"
Green
said.
"They
would
harass
people,
especially
young
black
men.
Stop
them for
no
reason.
A lot of
men and
women
were
beaten.
A lot of
that led
up to
the city
exploding."
When
Gerard
Townsend
got off
the bus
that
night,
he
stumbled
into the
immediate
aftermath
of the
blind
pig
raid. By
the next
day, the
riot was
in full
bloom:
"I got
up the
next
morning
and the
whole
west
side was
on fire.
Everything
was
burning.
People
were
running
around
with
clothes
in their
hands,
TVs and
all
kinds of
stuff."
Townsend
was
among
them. He
made off
with a
television
from a
furniture
store.
"We
stole
liquor
and
stuff,"
he said.
"I
watched
it. I
lived
it. I
was part
of it."
There is
general
agreement
that the
rioters
did not
focus
their
fury on
whites.
Theresa
Welsh
and her
husband,
David,
rented
an
apartment
early
that
summer
about
eight
blocks
from
where
the riot
started.
"Nobody
bothered
us. We
were a
couple
of white
people
wandering
around,"
said
Welsh,
71.
Deborah
Chenault
Green
recalls
she was
at a
cousin's
home.
They
slept on
a
mattress
on the
porch
because
it was
such a
hot
night.
"The
noise, I
think,
is what
woke us
up," she
said.
"You
could
hear
cars and
people
and
police
sirens.
I looked
in the
sky and
I saw
red.
There
was
looting.
It was
mayhem
everywhere.
Everybody
was just
going
crazy."
National
Guard
tanks
and
other
armored
vehicles
rumbled
through
the
streets.
There
were
reports
of
snipers
firing
on law
enforcement,
the
National
Guard
and even
firefighters
from
rooftops
and
other
secreted
spots.
Authorities
fired
back.
The city
lost
more
than
2,000
shops to
fires or
looting,
many of
them
owned by
blacks.
Among
them was
the
barbershop
on
Warren
Avenue
owned by
Azerine
Jones'
father.
"They
were
burning
some of
everything,"
she said
"It
wasn't a
matter
of them
saying
this was
white-owned
or
black-owned.
Stuff
just got
caught
on
fire."
---
When the
smoke
cleared
and the
military
rolled
out,
Detroit
stood
bruised
and
battered.
"A lot
of the
fires
may have
started
in
white-owned
business
and
spread,"
Green
said. "A
lot of
black
businesses
were
destroyed.
A lot of
people
had jobs
in those
shops.
The
majority
of them
didn't
reopen.
After
the
riot, it
looked
like a
war zone
and the
burnt
smell
still
lingered."
Jones
said her
father
never
rebuilt
his
barbershop.
He took
on other
jobs
after
the
riot.
"Owning
your own
business
as a
black in
the
1950s
and '60s
was an
accomplishment
in
itself,"
she
said.
"Before
the riot
it was a
really
good
comfortable
neighborhood,"
added
Jones,
who now
lives
west of
Detroit
in
Farmington
Hills.
"We had
the
things
that we
needed
there: A
theater,
a
butcher
shop,
dairy
shop,
shoe
store.
Since my
mother
didn't
drive it
was nice
having
everything
in
walking
distance.
That's
what
really
got us
when
they
burned
everything
down.
She had
to take
a bus
with the
groceries.
It just
really
killed
everything."
In the
end, it
was
Detroiters
hurting
themselves,
she
said.
"The
silly
people
who did
this
didn't
really
realize
they
were
burning
down
their
neighborhoods,"
Jones
said.
"The
(white)
business
owners
were
able to
pick up
and go
somewhere
else.
The
people
who
lived
there
lost a
lot. We
lost a
lot."
The
departure
of white
residents
and
businesses
to the
suburbs
that had
started
years
earlier
accelerated.
Between
1970 and
1980
more
than
400,000
more
people
would
leave.
"Some
white
people
were
rooted
in
Detroit,"
Townsend
said.
But
after
the
riot,
"they
moved
out.
They
didn't
want to
be here
anymore."
After
the
riot,
David
Welsh
took a
job as a
photographer
in a
town
just
north of
Detroit.
He and
his wife
moved
from the
riot
zone.
"It
didn't
make
sense
for us
to be
down
there
anymore,
all
things
considered,"
said
David
Welsh,
74. "We
didn't
feel
comfortable
there
anymore."
The
couple
would
move to
other
parts of
the city
and
eventually
settled
north of
the city
limits.
So did
many
middle-class
blacks.
Altogether,
Detroit's
population
has
fallen
by about
1.1
million
people
since
the
1950s.
Even as
the
Motor
City was
diminished,
Murder
City
grew.
More
than 700
homicides
were
committed
in 1974.
Within a
decade
of the
riot,
the car
plants
that
provided
jobs and
helped
keep the
city
running
were
hiring
fewer
people.
Three
years
after
the
riot,
Detroit's
unemployment
rate was
just
over 7
percent.
It
reached
25
percent
by 1990.
Green
was
hired by
Chrysler
in 1978
to work
on one
of the
automaker's
assembly
lines.
"That
job
didn't
last
long,"
she
said. "I
got laid
off."
Today,
nearly
four in
10
Detroit
residents
live in
poverty
compared
to about
15
percent
nationally.
The
city's
$26,000
median
income
is less
than
half of
the
national
figure.
---
Now, two
years
out of
insolvency
and free
of
billions
of
dollars
of debt,
Detroit
is
working
to fix
up its
battered
neighborhoods
and its
image.
Though
more
than
twice
the
national
number,
unemployment
is down
to 11
percent.
Downtown
is
thriving
and some
nearby
neighborhoods
are
filling
up. The
city, 80
percent
black,
even
elected
Mike
Duggan,
Detroit's
first
white
mayor
since
the
1970s.
The
population
is
leveling
out at
around
670,000
people
and
families
are
taking
advantage
of
special
home
buying
programs
through
the
city's
land
bank.
Between
2010 and
2014,
the
city's
white
population
grew
from
just
under
76,000
residents
to more
than
88,000.
"We're
in the
first
period
of
growth
in 50 or
60 years
- people
are
moving
back,"
Duggan
recently
told
business,
philanthropic
and
elected
leaders
at a
statewide
policy
conference.
"Our
principle
is this:
It's one
city for
all of
us."
To get
there,
Detroit
has had
to
correct
mistakes
of the
past
that led
to the
1967
riot and
eventually
bankruptcy.
Duggan
said
many of
those
decisions
were
"rooted
in
racial
discrimination"
and
included
forcing
poor
black
residents
into
ever
smaller
areas
where
housing
stock
already
was
aging or
substandard.
Loans
backed
by the
federal
government
allowed
whites
to buy
homes in
the
suburbs
in the
years
leading
up to
1967.
"Few
loans
were
given to
blacks
to buy
or
improve
houses
in
Detroit,"
Duggan
said.
"By
1970,
half of
the
population
of
Detroit
was
African
American
- and it
still
was
segregated.
This is
our
history
and it's
something
we have
to
overcome."
But some
who
lived
through
the
riots
say any
progress
will not
wipe
away
their
distress
in those
five
days of
violence,
and in
the 50
years
that
followed.
"It's
part of
everyone's
story,"
Green
said. "I
look at
the
people
who
suffered
through
the riot
as going
through
a
war-like
environment.
What
happens
when you
go
through
a war? A
lot of
people
come out
with
post-traumatic
stress
disorder.
We were
traumatized.
We never
got the
help we
needed."