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Old Posted Feb 6, 2013, 1:03 AM
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1967 Detroit Riots

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot

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In the early hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967, Detroit police officers raided the unlicensed after-hours drinking club, expecting to find only a few people inside, but instead there were 82 people celebrating the return of two local veterans from the Vietnam War. The police attempted to arrest everyone present. While they were arranging to transport the arrestees, a crowd gathered around the establishment in protest.[3]

After the last police car left, a group of black men began looting an adjacent clothing store. Shortly after, full-scale rioting began throughout the neighborhood. At 7 am, the police made their first looting arrest. State police, Wayne County sheriffs, and the Michigan National Guard were alerted, but because it was a summer Sunday, it took hours for the Police Commissioner Ray Girardin to assemble full police manpower. On Sunday, 12th Street was described as having a "carnival atmosphere" as police watched looting but rarely arrested people, partially because of their inadequate numbers and partially because of the belief that the riot would be localized and would soon end. The pastor of Grace Episcopal Church along 12th Street reported that he saw a "gleefulness in throwing stuff and getting stuff out of buildings"[4] The police conducted several sweeps along 12th Street, which proved ineffective because of the unexpectedly large numbers of people on the street.
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The violence escalated throughout Monday, resulting in some 483 fires, 231 incidents reported per hour, and 1800 arrests. Looting and arson were widespread. 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 said, "you were going to get looted no matter what color you were." Rioters shot at firefighters who were attempting to fight the fires. During the riots, 2,498 rifles and 38 handguns were stolen from local stores. It was obvious that the Detroit and Michigan forces were unable to restore order.
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2,509 stores looted or burned, 388 families rendered 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.
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Detroit Councilman Mel Ravitz said the riot divided not only the races- since it "deepened the fears of many whites and raised the militancy of many blacks" - but it opened up wide cleavages in the black and white communities as well. Moderate liberals of each race were faced with new political groups that voiced extremist solutions and fueled fears about future violence. Compared to the rosy newspaper stories before July 1967, the London Free Press reported in 1968 that Detroit was a "sick city where fear, rumor, race prejudice and gun-buying have stretched black and white nerves to the verge of snapping". Yet ultimately, if the riot is interpreted as a rebellion, or a way for black grievances to be heard and addressed, it was partly successful.
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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 riot, totally twenty-two thousand in 1966, but afterwards it was frantic. In 1967, with less than half the year remaining after the summer explosion—the outward population migration reached sixty-seven thousand. In 1968 the figure hit eighty-thousand, followed by forty-six thousand in 1969.--Coleman Young, former mayor of Detroit
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Before the ghetto riot of 1967, Detroit's black population had the highest rate of home-ownership of any black urban population in the country, and their unemployment rate was just 3.4 percent. It was not despair that fueled the riot. It was the riot which marked the beginning of the decline of Detroit to its current state of despair. Detroit's population today is only half of what it once was, and its most productive people have been the ones who fled.--Thomas Sowell
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