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Lessons Unlearned from ’67 Race Riots
Detroit Tigers left-fielder Willie Horton. (Louis Requena/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
A long time ago, in a Detroit far, far away, the Tigers split a doubleheader with the Yankees. Tiger pitcher for the first game, Mickey Lolich, had just lost his 10th straight game, a club record. During the second game, left fielder Willie Horton hit a home run to help the Tigers beat the Yankees. Radio announcer Ernie Harwell had been instructed to say nothing about the thick, black smoke billowing north of iconic Tiger Stadium.
In the long, hot summer of 1967, a tinderbox had been constructed of police distrust by black citizens, unemployment woes, a war far away, agitators, and “politics out of doors,” as it was called a century earlier. A raid of an after-hours bar struck a match when more than 80 people attending a party celebrating the return of a couple of soldiers from Vietnam were arrested and someone threw a bottle at police, then a brick through a window. Hours after the early morning raid, some described a carnival atmosphere in the neighborhood. The pastor of a local church later recalled a scene of “…gleefulness in throwing stuff and getting stuff out of buildings,” first a clothing store in the neighborhood, later grocery and retail stores in other neighborhoods. The media didn’t want to incite a spread of the violence so nothing was reported, deliberately, at first. But the violence and looting by both black and white spread anyway. Aided by a hot windy day, Detroit was in flames.
After the ball game, Willie Horton left the stadium wearing his Tiger uniform and drove north to his childhood neighborhood at 12th and Clairmount. He got out of his car and climbed onto the roof. In his autobiography, he recalled:
“Why are you burning up and tearing up the neighborhood you live in?” I asked. I kept asking why are you doing this, but no one had an answer. I told them this wasn’t the way to do it. Don’t loot. Don’t destroy your neighborhood. This is your neighborhood. Your schools.
People recognized Horton in his Tigers uniform. They urged him to leave for his own safety. He did.
Congressman John Conyers tried to do the same thing. He went out into the crowd without the benefit of a baseball uniform. He was pelted with bottles and bricks.
Pitcher Denny McLain sat up all night with his uncle and a rifle. “The fear some of the media put into us was uncalled for.”
A 16-year-old black boy was shot and killed. A 45-year-old white looter was shot by the store owner. After ignored curfews, armed store owners and homeowners, 800 state police, 8,000 National Guardsmen including pitcher Mickey Lolich and 4,700 members of the 82nd Airborne, the smoke cleared and the riots ended. Five days, five nights. Businesses and homes destroyed. Thirty-three blacks and ten whites killed. Nearly 1,200 wounded. Thousands arrested. Millions of dollars in damage. Blocks and blocks of Detroit laid waste for years and years.
1967. Detroit, Cleveland, Newark, Tampa, Buffalo, Portland, Toledo, and many, many more. Burnt-out buildings were bulldozed and never rebuilt. Black and white families fled Detroit and other cities.
In 1967, the tinderbox was built by economic and racial inequities, fears and opportunities, war, anger, and greed.
In 2020, the tinderbox was built by illness and fear, unemployment and lockdowns, confinement and frustration, race and the politics of outdoors. Handcuffs and knees and necks. A police officer who failed to close his cover before striking the match.
Riots are not a way for members of the press to make a name for themselves. Riots are not an opportunity to “stick it to the man.” Riots are not an opportunity for a five-finger discount. Lives and livelihoods are destroyed. Neighborhoods never recover.
Riots still kill and destroy. They still frighten children, who will ask their fathers if the rioters are mad at us, will they come and hurt us, will they destroy our home or your business. But the tinderboxes continue to be built. And the matches continue to be struck.
Heaven help us.
Published in General
One thing to add. After the riots in Detroit, every significant African-American business moved out (including Motown Records).
In the summer of 1967 (between my junior and senior years in high school), I lived in the Detroit suburbs, but I had a summer job in the New Center area of Detroit with Burroughs Corporation (it later merged with Sperry Rand to become Unisys). The New Center area was where the General Motors headquarters building was located (now owned by the State of Michigan); it was about 5 miles north of the downtown area on the Detroit River, but it was only a couple of miles from the 12th and Clairmont location where the riot started. After the riot began I received a call telling me not to come into work and it was several days before I returned. A motel a couple of blocks from the building where I worked was the site of a shooting that left one man dead, though I can’t remember whether he was a rioter or an innocent man who happened to be staying at the motel.
One of the men I worked with was in the National Guard, so of course he was called up. He happened to be a crew member on a tank. He told me about one incident that occurred while they were cruising down a street and came to a stop because someone had positioned two cars across the street to block it. A Detroit police officer was apparently assigned to each tank to guide the tank crew around Detroit (since it couldn’t be assumed the crew would be familiar with the streets). The tank driver was hesitant to proceed, so he asked the cop assigned to his tank what he should do. The cop asked the driver which of the cars he preferred. The driver didn’t understand the cop’s question, but he pointed to one of the two cars blocking the road. The cop said, “Well then drive over the other one.” The tank proceeded to crush that car and continued on its way. That riot really accelerated the “white flight” from the city and Detroit tumbled from being the vibrant manufacturing hub of the automobile industry and the sixth largest city in the US to a shell of its former self. Though there has been a notable influx of small businesses and young people back into the city in the past 10 years, it still hasn’t recovered from the 1967 riot.
With regard to the Tigers, the following year riots broke out in many cities nationwide following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., but Detroit did not participate. Many people give credit to the Detroit Tigers bringing the city together with their run to the World Series title. Individual players (and most notably Willie Horton) had built solid connections into the inner city and had enough prestige from the success of the Tigers to help keep the lid on. However, it is just as likely that Detroit was “rioted-out” after the conflagration of 1967 and the citizens just couldn’t go through the same thing all over again a year later.
I got a ringside seat to the Rodney King riots, courtesy of the National Guard. This whole thing is bringing back unpleasant memories, mostly coming down to lessons about the dark sides of humans. I saw little of the active destruction. Most of it stopped when the National Guard showed up. It seems that our weapons were bigger than theirs.
The King riots were about nothing but greed.
My team was assigned to guard an area that included several small businesses, and one medium – size Sears store. We arrived for our first watch in the late evening. All but one of the small businesses were destroyed. At least one of them was a black – owned business. Gone. Smoldering shells. One business remained: a small 24 hour convenience store. What set this business apart? Ringing the roof were men, each holding some type of long gun. The LAPD officer assigned as our liaison went over and told the men on the roof what was going on. A big cheer went up, and by morning, most of the men had set down their guns, but the men remained for at least another night.
But I found the Sears store most interesting. No fire, but it had been destroyed. Even things of no real value had been carted off. An eyeglass frame display had been carried away. There was no wondering where it went – you couldn’t miss the trail of eyeglass frames across the parking lot and into a nearby apartment complex.
Actually, there was one area of the store that was not looted. It was untouched. And here’s the greatest irony and lesson. When you think of Sears, there is one category in which they stood tall. Most people interested in such things would go out of their way to shop for Sears’ brand in this one area. And it was untouched. What was this totally ignored section? Yep:
Craftsman Tools.
Another team from my battalion was assigned to a portion of Hollywood Boulevard. A friend told me of the shock when a limousine pulled up, and man got out, thanking and praising them, handing out soft drinks. Then he got back in and the limo drove to another group of soldiers. Turns out the man was Axel Rose.
New member, first comment…
Riots and sports have a lot in common when it comes to individuals subsumed by crowds.
The first professional baseball game I attended was as an 11-year-old with my father and older brother on a beautiful Saturday afternoon on July 22, 1967, at Tiger Stadium, Yanks versus Detroit. Our family had just moved from Nebraska to Flint a month earlier. My favorite player, Mickey Mantle, slugged a homerun in his first at-bat. But the loudest sound I’d ever heard was the cheers for Norm Cash’s grand slam in the 8th inning. People went nuts. It almost was scary to witness. The Detroit riots flared up a few hours later. That truly was scary.
My father was a physician. He also was an ordained Lutheran minister, a former steelworker and an Iwo Jima veteran. Nothing scared him. He was perhaps the only white doctor to do house calls in black neighborhoods. When MLK was murdered, two large black men showed up at our door to tell us, “Don’t worry. No harm will come to you and your family. Everyone is grateful for what Doc does.”
Hi Cliff. Welcome to Ricochet and thanks for reading my post. My dad was a doctor and made house calls anywhere as well. I think that was part of being a physician then…house calls by docs who truly took their vocation seriously.
And I’m lucky to say my first baseball game was a Tiger stadium as well. No matter where you were you were part of the action. And you bought your peanuts outside from a guy on Cochrane and Michigan.
Welcome, Cliff.
Welcome, Cliff.
Looking forward to your first post, Cliff. Welcome to Ricochet.