“Detroit turned out to be heaven, but it also turned out to be hell.”

April 30, 2015 10:42 AM

1967 NBC News Special Report: "Summer of '67"[YouTube]

The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street riot, was a violent public disorder that turned into a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan. It began on a Saturday night in the early morning hours of July 23, 1967. The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, on the corner of 12th (today Rosa Parks Boulevard) and Clairmount streets on the city's Near West Side. Police confrontations with patrons and observers on the street evolved into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in United States history, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit's 1943 race riot. [Wiki]

posted by Fizz (15 comments total)

The Prelinger Archives site has a short promotional film made by the City of Detroit in 1965. Watching this is a bit surreal, knowing what was about to happen two years later, and knowing what has happened since.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 11:05 AM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

A year after the Detroit Riot, the Soviets would invade Czechoslovakia to put down the Prague Spring. Beyond the perfunctory protest, we didn't really do anything about it because .... you know, we also deploy tanks against our unruly minorities.
posted by Avenger at 11:07 AM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also I have no idea how the US government is going to legitimately protest the Chinese or Thai government next time they decide to repress street demonstrations. "Respect for free speech, freedom of assembly and democratic values" is only something we demand from foreigners, apparently.
posted by Avenger at 11:10 AM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

obligatory Gordon Lightfoot song ...
posted by philip-random at 11:29 AM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

"While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime," he said. "And I don't think there's anyone in any of those pictures ... (who wouldn't) accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom."

Donald Rumsfeld
posted by dilaudid at 11:37 AM on April 30, 2015 [25 favorites]

I was four when this happened and lived in a suburb 14 miles north of Detroit. My dad's parents lived near downtown Detroit and my parents picked them up and they came to stay with us for a couple days. I have a memory of a lot of smoke and wanting to see the tanks, but I really don't think my parents would take me down there to get Grandpa and Grandma. I probably made that last part up and don't even know it.
posted by marxchivist at 12:11 PM on April 30, 2015

Obligatory MC5 song
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:07 PM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

The Decline and Fall of the
Spectacle-Commodity Economy
Situationists on Watts (1965):
Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state’s monopoly of armed violence.
posted by PHINC at 2:10 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

"wowsers. i don't know which regime he's talking about, but i sure as heck know which one he's NOT talking about."

Rhymes with Madam Insane.
posted by klangklangston at 2:10 PM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

And John Lee Hooker
posted by AJaffe at 2:33 PM on April 30, 2015

Had a client who was Natl' guard. Surreal.

Saddam Hussein Helped Detroit Church, Got Key to City.

Also, my favorite Young qoute.
"Fuck Robert Mugabe... This is DETROIT!"

I saw Young once, river entrance by Cobo during auto show in the 70s'.
Dude was a powerhouse and utterly imposing because of the two burly guards and quick look and nod our way. Expressionless, perfunctory, move, I'm late.
posted by clavdivs at 6:52 PM on April 30, 2015

The Charles Wright museum in Detroit has a display about them.
posted by brujita at 11:51 PM on April 30, 2015

"Saddam Hussein Helped Detroit Church, Got Key to City."

I worked on the 2000 census, and one of the guys I had to interview was an Iraqi immigrant who ran a party store. I got stuck there for almost an hour because every answer derailed quickly into, "You have to tell your government about the crimes of Saddam Hussein!" Which, yeah, is not exactly how the census works in America. But he got his wish just a couple years later.

Southeast Michigan has a huge Iraqi population, and I remember positive jubilation about our invasion. Kinda wonder what the attitude is like now.
posted by klangklangston at 9:58 AM on May 1, 2015

Utter bewilderment.
posted by clavdivs at 12:27 PM on May 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Flowers Are Still Better Than Bullets 45 Years After the Kent State Massacre

"Despite government assertions that the killings were a spontaneous act of self-defense by frightened soldiers, the tape irrefutably established that in fact there was an order to shoot."
posted by jeffburdges at 2:10 PM on May 4, 2015