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The 12th Street Riot in Detroit began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967. Vice squad officers executed a raid at a blind pig, an illegal after-hours drinking establishment on the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount on the city's near westside. The confrontation with the patrons there evolved into one of the most deadly and destructive riots in modern U.S. history, lasting five days and far surpassing the 1943 riot the city endured. Before the end, the state and federal governments sent in National Guard and U.S. Army troops and the result was forty-three dead, 467 injured, over 7,500 arrests and more than 2,000 buildings had burned down. The scope of the riot was eclipsed in scale only by the riots. Detroit has never fully recovered from the after-affects of the riot.

Background
The seeds of the 12th Street riot had been planted in the extraordinary growth of Detroit as the auto industry that placed the city at the industrial center of the nation. The availabilty of high-paying and unskilled work in auto plants attracted many from the south, both black and white, who brought their often conflicting cultures into the community. The civil rights movement was in full swing at the time, and black demands for power and the antipathy of the white establishment created a tinderbox. Detroit mayor Jerome Cavanagh had been elected less than two years previously with promises of progressive reforms and an end to the cronyism that had marked his predecessor's tenure. The federal government, with Cavanugh prodding, pumped money into the city's urban renewal and Head Start programs. Despite this, the confrontation occurred that many viewed as inevitable.

Chronology
On that summer Sunday morning, the officers had expected to find only a handful of individuals in the bar, but instead there were 82 people celebrating the return of two local veterans from the war in Vietnam. Despite the large number, police decided to arrest everyone present. A crowd soon gathered around the establishment, protesting as patrons were led away. In 1967, the Detroit Police Department's Tac Squads, each made up of four police officers (predominantly white), had a reputation among the black residents of Detroit for harassment and brutality. After the last police car left, a group of angry black males, who had observed the incident, began breaking the windows of the adjacent clothing store. Shortly thereafter, full-scale rioting began throughout the neighborhood, which continued into Monday, July 24, 1967, and for the next few days. Despite a conscious effort by the local news media to avoid reporting on it so as not to inspire copy-cat violence, the mayhem expanded to other parts of the city with theft and destruction beyond the 12th Street/Clairmount Avenue vicinity.

National Guardsmen were deployed to quell the disorder and their numbers had swelled to some 8,000 within 48 hours, but their presence only fueled more violence. Willie Horton, a black Detroit resident, and left fielder for the Detroit Tigers, arrived after a game and stood on a car in the middle of the crowd while he was still wearing his uniform. However, despite his impassioned pleas, he could not calm the angry mob. U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) likewise attempted to ease tensions but was equally unsuccessful. Michigan Governor George Romney and President Lyndon Johnson disagreed about the legality of sending in federal troops. Johnson said he could not send federal troops in without Romney declaring a "state of insurrection"; Romney was reluctant to make that declaration for fear that doing so would relieve insurance companies of their obligations to reimburse policyholders for the damage being done. Almost 48 hours after the disturbances began, Johnson sent in federal troops from the 82nd Airborne who had earlier been positioned at nearby Selfridge Air Force Base in suburban Macomb County&mdash;without a "state of insurrection" being officially declared. The national guard troops were federalized at that time.

The Toll
The toll of the ‘67 riots included forty-three by the time the 1967 Detroit riot ended on July 28 and 1189 injured. The majority of riot fatalities were black. Tonya Blanding, aged four, was the youngest victim. The oldest victim of the riot was Krikor "George" Messerlian, a 68 year-old white male who owned a shoe repair shop.


 * 467 injured: 181 civilians, 167 Detroit police officers, 83 Detroit firefighters, 17 National Guard troops, 16 State Police officers, 3 U.S. Army soldiers.


 * 7,231 arrested: 6,528 adults, 703 juveniles; 6,407 blacks, 824 whites. The youngest, 10; the oldest, 82. Half of those arrested had no criminal record. Three percent of those arrested went to trial; half of them were acquitted.


 * 2,509 stores looted or burned, 388 families homeless or displaced and 412 buildings burned or damaged enough to be demolished. Dollar losses from arson and looting ranged from $40 million to $80 million[1]

The dead included:

Sources:

Detroit Police Department, Homicide Bureau, Inter-Office Memorandum October 26, 1967;

“The 43 Who Died: An Investigation Into How and Why Detroit’s Riot Victims Were Slain” Detroit Free Press 9/3/67 B1-B5;

Sauter Van Gordon and Burleigh Hines. Nightmare in Detroit: A Rebellion and Its Victims. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1968
 * 467 injured: 181 civilians, 167 Detroit police officers, 83 Detroit firefighters, 17 National Guard troops, 16 State Police officers, 3 U.S. Army soldiers.


 * 7,231 arrested: 6,528 adults, 703 juveniles; 6,407 blacks, 824 whites. The youngest, 10; the oldest, 82. Half of those arrested had no criminal record. Three percent of those arrested went to trial; half of them were acquitted.


 * 2,509 stores looted or burned: One month after the riot, a city tally showed 388 families homeless or displaced and 412 buildings burned or damaged enough to be demolished. Dollar losses from arson and looting ranged from $40 million to $80 million.

Contrary to popular belief, black-owned businesses were not spared. One of the first stores looted in Detroit was Hardy's drug store, owned by blacks, and known for filling prescriptions on credit. Detroit's leading black-owned clothing store was burned, as was one of the city's best-loved black restaurants. In the wake of the riots, a black merchant noted "you were going to get looted no matter what color you were." (Thernstrom, Abigail and Stephen. America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible:  Race in Modern America. Pages 162-4).

Beyond the immediate destruction of a considerable section of the city, the disturbances are thought to have accelerated white flight (and also middle-class black flight) to the surrounding suburbs and led to an increased fear of the city among many suburbanites which continues to this day. While the city of Detroit still had a white majority in 1967, it would gain a black majority by the early 1970s. Furthermore, Detroit's overall population within the city limits (today more than 80% black) has been sliced in half within the space of five decades. In the 1950 census, there were more than 1,800,000 residents within the city limits, more than three-fourths of whom were white. By the 2000 census, however, there were only about 950,000 city residents&mdash;the first time since the 1910 census that Detroit had officially recorded fewer than a million inhabitants&mdash;and whites making up less than 15% of the population. As conditions have deteriorated in the city&mdash;notably in the performance of its public school system and in its (at times) notoriously high crime rate&mdash;some of the city's suburbs have become predominantly black, such as Southfield in neighboring Oakland County. Many observers trace the dramatically quickened pace of these developments to the 1967 unrest and to public school desegregation orders by federal courts in the early 1970s.

The Aftermath
President Lyndon Johnson formed a Commission on Civil Disorders to explore the reasons for the riots that plagued Detroit and other cities beginning in 1964. Known as the Kerner Report, the commission stated that the nation was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."

Detroit's Mayor at the time, Jerome Cavanagh, whose political career ended with the riot, lamented upon surveying the damage, "today we stand amidst the ashes of our hopes. We hoped against hope that what we had been doing was enough to prevent a riot. It was not enough."

Reflecting on the riots, Cavanagh's successor, Mayor Coleman Young, wrote:

"The heaviest casualty, however, was the city. Detroit's losses went a hell of a lot deeper than the immediate toll of lives and buildings. The riot put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earnings taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money. The money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the white people who fled as fast as they could. The white exodus from Detroit had been prodigiously steady prior to the rebellion [sic], totally twenty-two thousand in 1966, but afterwards it was frantic. In 1967, with less than half the year remaining after the summer explosion&mdash;the outward population migration reached sixty-seven thousand. In 1968 the figure hit eighty-thousand, followed by forty-six thousand in 1969." (Hard Stuff, page 179)

Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot commented on the rioting in his song "Black Day In July", and Iggy Pop's observations of the riots inspired David Bowie's "Panic in Detroit". John Lee Hooker wrote "The Motor City is Burning" with the lyrics "It started at 12th and Clairmount", a song later covered by Detroit's MC5.

The Battle of the Overpass
The Battle of the Overpass was an incident on 26 May, 1937, in which labor organizers clashed with Ford Motor Company security.

The United Auto Workers had planned a leaflet campaign entitled, "Unionism, Not Fordism," at the pedestrian overpass over Miller Road at Gate 4 of the Rouge complex. Demanding an $8 six-hour day for workers, in contrast to the $6 eight-hour day then in place, the campaign was planned for shift change time, with an expected 9,000 workers both entering and leaving the plant.

At approximately 2 p.m., several of the leading UAW organizers, including Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen, were asked by a Detroit News photographer to pose for a picture at the top of the steps of the overpass. While they were posing, men from Ford's "Service Department", an internal security force led by Harry Bennett, came from behind and began to beat them, then was soon joined by more than 50 employees of the company.

Frankensteen endured perhaps the worst punishment of the 16 people injured in the melee. He had his jacket pulled over his head and was kicked in the stomach, and when he went to protect that area of his body, the group hit him in the head. They then proceeded to continually knock him down, while also spreading his legs apart to kick him in the groin.

The group then beat some of the beret-wearing women arriving to pass out leaflets, along with some reporters and photographers, while Dearborn police at the scene largely ignored the violence.

The mob also attempted to destroy photographic plates, but one News photographer was able to smuggle his away and photos of the brutality were spread across the country. In spite of the many witnesses who had heard his men specifically seek out Frankensteen and Reuther, Bennett claimed, "The affair was deliberately provoked by union officials. . . . They simply wanted to trump up a charge of Ford brutality. ... I know definitely no Ford service man or plant police were involved in any way in the fight."

The incident greatly increased support for the UAW and hurt Ford's reputation. However, it still took 4 more years before Ford agreed to collective bargaining with the UAW.

Detroit, Michigan


Detroit, Michigan is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat for Wayne County. The city is located on the Detroit River, north of Windsor, Ontario. Established in 1701 by French fur traders, it is the center of an industrial area in the American Rust Belt. Today it is known as the world's traditional automotive center and an important source of popular music—legacies celebrated by the city's two familiar nicknames, Motor City and Motown. As of 2004, Detroit ranked as the United States' 11th most populous city with 900,198 residents; this is half of the peak population it boasted in the 1950s, and Detroit leads the nation in terms of declining urban population. Detroit's crime rate has created international notoriety and a tarnished reputation. The city continues to struggle with the burdens of racial disharmony between itself and its suburban neighbors, and an antiquated economy. In the 1990s and 2000s the city experienced a moderate revival with the construction of the Compuware headquarters and three gambling casinos, amid budget shortfalls and cuts in city services.

Alpha Phi Alpha


Alpha Phi Alpha (ΑΦΑ) Fraternity is generally recognized as the first intercollegiate Greek letter fraternity established by African Americans. Founded on December 4, 1906 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, the fraternity has initiated over 125,000 men into the organization. Alpha has declared 2006 the beginning of its "Centennial Era" to celebrate its first 100 years. The student founders are collectively known as the Seven Jewels and they swiftly expanded the fraternity. Today there are over 700 Alpha chapters in the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the West Indies.

The national organization has established a number of community programs and combined its resources with other organizations on philanthropic projects. Some fraternity initiatives include the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial. The memorial, which Congress authorized in 1996 with Public Law 104-333, has been beset by problems, including a request from the King Family in 2001 for licensing fees. Other Alpha sponsored programs are the "Go To High School, Go To College" and "Voteless People Is a Hopeless People" programs. Alpha members have included former Jamaican Prime Minister and Rhodes Scholar Norman Manley, Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King, Jr., former U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Olympian Jesse Owens, Justice Thurgood Marshall, Atlanta, Georgia Mayors Andrew Young and Maynard Jackson.

Bath School disaster victims
The victims of the Bath School disaster were those killed and injured on May 18, 1927. In Bath Township, Michigan, farmer and school board member Andrew Kehoe killed 45 people and injured 58. Most of the victims were children in second to sixth grades attending the Bath Consolidated School. The attack claimed more than three times as many victims as the Columbine High School massacre.

Died before the bombings
Ellen (Nellie) Kehoe, age 52, was the wife of Andrew Kehoe. In poor physical health, Nellie suffered from tuberculosis. Sometime after her discharge from St. Lawrence Hospital two days prior to the event, Nellie was bludgeoned to death and her body was found inside a wheel barrow next to the family farm's chicken coop.

Killed in the school bombing
At approximately 9:45 a.m., a timer Kehoe planted in the school's north wing triggered an explosion at the school. It was at this point that a majority of the victims were killed, with the blast

Arnold V. Bauerle was eight-years old and a third grade student at the time of the attack.

Henry Bergan, age 14, sixth grade student. 4. Herman Bergan age 11, fourth grade student. 5. Emilie M. Bromundt, age 11, fifth grade student. 6. Robert F. Bromundt, age 12, fifth grade student. 7. Floyd E. Burnett, age 12, sixth grade student. 8. Russell J. Chapman, age 8, fourth grade student. 9. F. Robert Cochran, age 8, third grade student. 10. Ralph A. Cushman, age 7, third grade student. 11. Earl E. Ewing, age 11, sixth grade student. 12. Katherine O. Foote, age 10, sixth grade student. 13. Margory Fritz, age 9, fourth grade student. 14. Carlyle W. Geisenhaver, age 9, fourth grade student. 15. George P. Hall Jr., age 8, third grade student. 16. Willa M. Hall, age 11, fifth grade student. 17. Iola I. Hart, age 12, sixth grade student. 18. Percy E. Hart, age 11, third grade student. 19. Vivian O. Hart, age 8, third grade student. 20. Blanche E. Harte, age 30, fifth grade teacher. 21. Gailand L. Harte, age 12, sixth grade student. 22. LaVere R. Harte, age 9, fourth grade student. 23. Stanley H. Harte, age 12, sixth grade student. 24. Francis O. Hoeppner, age 13, sixth grade student. 25. Cecial L. Hunter, age 13, sixth grade student. 26. Doris E. Johns, age 8, third grade student. 27. Thelma I. MacDonald, age 8, third grade student. 28. Clarence W. McFarren, age 13, sixth grade student. 29. J. Emerson Medcoff, age 8, fourth grade student. 30. Emma A. Nickols, age 13, sixth grade student. 31. Richard D. Richardson, age 12, sixth grade student. 32. Elsie M. Robb, age 12, sixth grade student. 33. Pauline M. Shirts, age 10, fifth grade student. 34. Hazel I. Weatherby, age 21, teacher. 35. Elizabeth J. Witchell, age 10, fifth grade student. 36. Lucile J. Witchell, age 9, fifth grade student. 37. Harold L. Woodman, age 8, third grade student. 38. George O. Zimmerman, age 10, third grade student. 39. Lloyd Zimmerman, age 12, fifth grade student.

45. Beatrice P. Gibbs, age 10, fourth grade student.

Killed by explosion of Kehoe's car
40. G. Cleo Claton, age 8, second grade student. 41. Emory E. Huyck, age 33, superintendent. 42. Andrew P. Kehoe, age 55, Bath School Board/perpetrator. 43. Nelson McFarren, age 74, retired farmer. 44. Glenn O. Smith, age 33, Postmaster.

Wounded
Babcock, Lloyd Babcock, Vera Babcock, Norris Barnes, Ruth M. Braska, Anna Chapman, Earl Delau, Arthur Delau, Ida Detluff, Ida Dolton, Adabelle Echstruth, Iva Echstruth, Raymond Echstruth, Marian England, Josephine Foster, James Frederick, Aletha Fulton, Dorothy Fritz, Mr. F. M. Geisenhaver, Kenneth Gutekunst, Miss Leona, teacher Gubbins, Miss Eva, teacher Hart, Elva Hart, Perry Hobert, Helen E. Hobert, Ralph R. Hollister, Carlton F. Huffman, June Rose Huffman, Donald J. Hunter, Florence Edith Komm, Helen Komm, Florence King, Lester Matson, Miss Nina, teacher McCoy, Pauline Mae McCoy, Willis McKenzie, Harold Mast, Lee Henry Medcoff, Thelma Nickols, Ruth Nickols, Ottelia Perrone, Mrs. J. Proctor, Earl Fred Proctor, Ralph Edmund Reasoner, Lee Reed, Lillian M. Riker, Oral Richardson, Virginia Blanche Richardson, Martha Harriette Rounds, Jack Sage, Norman Seeley, Ivan Freemont Stolls, Lester Stebleton, Gail Edmund Stivaviske, Steve Sweet, Ava Thelma Wilson, Ardis Witchell, Kenneth Zavistoski, Cecelia