Detroit:
Revisiting the Site
of the 1967 Riot
The event that accelerated the depopulation of Detroit |
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My memories of the 1967 riot in Detroit are vivid, since I was living so close
to where it started. Read my personal memories in this article:
Detroit: From Industrial Giant to Empty Landscape.
The riot left 44 people dead, more than 1000 people injured, over 7000 arrested
and disrupted life in Detroit for
more than a week. The National Guard occupied the city
and helped avoid even more violence; they parked their tanks right around
the corner from where David and I, newly-weds, were living at the time.
It was scary and it was unforgettable.
David and I recently made a trip back to the area to locate the former
hot spots where clashes between black residents and the mostly white police
sparked the riot. Housing in the city was segregated with black and white rarely sharing
a neighborhood. The black neighborhoods were located along Linwood Ave
and 12th St (now called Rosa Parks Blvd.) and the cross streets in between.
Twelfth Street had a thriving African-American commercial strip, with stores,
night clubs, barber shops and other business establishments.
David and I remember once being the only white people
in the Chit Chat Lounge on 12th street, listening to Earl Van Dyke. He led the backup
band you heard on many Motown records.
Businesses were generally located on the ground floor of
apartment buildings that lined both sides of the street.
Linwood street also had many commercial buildings and was a main thoroughfare for
the residential side streets that had larger brick homes and two- or four-family flats.
In the 1960s, these buildings were fully occupied and
the commercial districts were bustling with people. The area held a substantial
population.
We began our trip down Linwood from where we lived in 1967 at
the corner of Chicago Blvd, driving south into the heart of the old commercial
district. We found very few remaining businesses and many empty lots and even
more abandoned buildings.
Linwood is also known as "C. L. Franklin Blvd," named for Aretha Franklin's father, who
was a well-known pastor whose New Bethel Baptist Church is still located on Linwood.
Rev. Franklin died in 1979, the victim of house robbers who shot him while attempting to steal the
antique windows in his house on nearby LaSalle Blvd. He remained in a coma for over five years. Further
south on Linwood is the Shrine of the Black Madonna, founded in 1953 by Rev. Albert Cleague, another
black activist pastor from the civil right era. There's lots of history and lots of stories in
these blocks along Linwood.
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Speaking of Aretha Franklin, have you wondered where she got that outrageous hat she
wore at Barack Obama's inauguration? Here's where: Mr Song's Millinery on West Grand Blvd
in the New Center area. I snapped this picture during one of my walking forays when
I worked in the New Center area. The store was having a sale because they were
moving to a suburban location -- too bad, but of course the Queeen of Soul also lives in
the suburbs now (in the toniest of areas, Bloomfield Hills). The Smithsonian asked
her to donate the hat for their Obama inauguration exhibit.
The New Center area is also full of historic sites; it is just a short distance from the
wonderful Motown Museum on West Grand Blvd. |
We next headed for 12th St, which is also known as Rosa Parks Blvd now, renamed for
the civil right icon who lived in Detroit until she died in 2005. We found very little
of what 12th street used to look like. It turns out that 12th street has seen substantial
redevelopment, including a suburban style subdivision that you enter off its
only entrance which is on 12th street. This block of new homes, with its meandering,
circular drive (called "Estates Drive"), is completely surrounded by an iron fence.
There is also a suburban style small shopping plaza across 12th street and a few
blocks north of the new subdivision. Surprisingly (at least, to us),
the new homes were all occupied and well-kept. I told David we could be
in Livonia, a prosperous Detroit suburb that has a lot of subdivisions with this
type of home.
There is nothing original left of the block where the riot actually started
(when police raided a "blind pig" -- an after-hours, illegal drinking establishment).
This was located at 12th street and Clairmount. The blocks near here are mainly empty lots
facing 12th street. Perhaps because of a desire to
put the ugly memories behind, the city fathers seem to have bulldozed more of 12th street
than Linwood.
We drove north on 12th street (Rosa Parks) and found mostly abandoned commercial buildings
and empty lots. We stopped and explored several interesting-looking ruins and saw
very few other people, nor was there much traffic along what used to be a major thoroughfare.
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