This week is the 50th anniversary of the Detroit riots. At the time, the Detroit Police Department was viewed as a white occupying army. Accusations of racial profiling and police brutality were commonplace.
In the early morning of July 23, 1967, Detroit police raided a blind pig, an illegal after-hours bar, and began to arrest all 85 people there. A crowd gathered after hearing about police brutality in the arrests and began throwing bottles and rocks. This spiraled into a riot which lasted several days resulting in over 2500 buildings being damaged, over 7,000 people being arrested and 43 people killed, mostly by the police or National Guard.
Blind pigs were everywhere in Detroit. They were really needed since bars closed at 1 AM, and few people wanted to end their evenings so early. They were an open secret.
The riots started on 12th street, then a hotspot of inner-city nightlife in Detroit. I missed being in the middle of the riots by just a few days, as I visited the area with my cousin, Robert Sullivan. At one AM we walked out of the legal bar, down 12th Street–as I recall, some of us had drinks in hand–into a basement of a house, which functioned as a well-appointed after-hours joint.
The 12th Street rebellion in Detroit is considered the third-worst riot in U.S. History. However, just 11 days before the Detroit rebellion a relatively large one occurred in Newark, New Jersey. The Newark uprising was caused by the beating of a black man by police. It lasted four days, resulting in 26 deaths, over 700 injuries, and 1,500 arrests.
The Newark rebellion was only seven miles from where I lived, in Jersey City. In the beginning, I foolishly thought about going over to Newark to check it out. But common sense prevailed.
With Detroit and Newark being the big ones, there were 164 riots/rebellions in 1967. Please note that in these rebellions African Americans attacked property and the police attacked African Americans.
After four days, the Detroit rebellion ended on July 27. On July 28, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson formed an 11-member National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (NACCD) to explain the riots that plagued cities each summer since 1964 and to provide recommendations for the future.
The NACCD was popularly known as the Kerner Commission, after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois. The Vice-Chair was New York City Mayor John Lindsay. Kerner was a Democrat, Lindsay a Republican. The other nine members reflected the standard political compositions of such commissions:
Four Members of Congress: Senator Edward Brooke (R-MA), Senator Fred Harris (D-OK), Congressman James Corman (D-CA), Congressman William McCulloch (R-OH).
One corporate executive: Charles Thornton, CEO, Litton Industries.
One labor leader: I.W. Abel, President, United Steelworkers of America.
One state government executive: Katherine Peden, Commissioner of Commerce, Kentucky.
One law enforcement official: Herbert Jenkins, Chief of Police, Atlanta, GA.
One civil rights leader: Roy Wilkins, Executive Director, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Nine Commissioners were white, two African-American; ten were male, one female.
Because of the “establishment” membership, many of us thought the Commission would just do the usual white-washing of the issues. To our shock, that is not what happened. (To be continued in Part 2)