[News] A radical’s oral history of the Detroit Rebellion in 1967
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Jul 26 17:56:30 EDT 2017
A radical’s oral history of Detroit in 1967
Rebellion
By Michael Jackman
<https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/ArticleArchives?author=2135253>
@michaeljackman - July 19, 2017 <https://twitter.com/michaeljackman>
National Guardsmen patrol Detroit during the summer of 1967. - THE TONY
SPINA COLLECTION, WALTER P. REUTHER LIBRARY, ARCHIVES OF LABOR AND URBAN
AFFAIRS, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY
* The Tony Spina Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of
Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University
* National Guardsmen patrol Detroit during the summer of 1967.
/*This perspective on* the events of the summer of 1967 comes from a
few/ Metro Times /fellow travelers in the form of John and Leni
Sinclair, and/ Fifth Estate /staffers Harvey Ovshinsky, Peter Werbe, and
Frank Joyce. We also sought out John’s old pal Pun Plamondon, as well as
author, activist, and longtime/ MT /editorial adviser Herb Boyd, and
scholar, journalist, and Hush House co-founder Charles Simmons.
Additionally, we talked with Reggie Carter to represent the teenage
black radical contingent of the day. Between all of these folks, we
hoped to gain some insights into what political radicals and the “hippie
counterculture” — a phrase many of them privately grimace
<https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/was-it-a-riot-a-rebellion-what-other-terms-deserve-a-closer-look/Content?oid=4618883>
at — have to say about that time./
/In our interviews, we heard the words “rebellion,” “riot,” and even
“ri-bellion” to describe what happened 50 years ago, but the “rebellion”
in the title of this feature is not a reference to the incident. It’s
rather an allusion to the subversive spirit of those who were generous
enough with their time for this entertaining oral history. Find more
detailed narratives from this uncommon group of freethinking Detroiters
here
<https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/snapshots-of-our-1967-oral-history-contributors/Content?oid=4619154>./
*Charles Simmons:* Why did '67 occur? What led up to that? When I start
thinking about it, well, the coming of Columbus was the beginning of it.
There's an unbroken continuity of struggles against injustice all the
way back to that period. [/laughs/]
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* It started when we took Belle Isle from the Indians.
It's inherent. Detroit was an American city. It has American problems.
And slavery is the curse of America. Until we work it out, it's just
going to bite us all in the ass.
*Charles Simmons:* It's like Langston Hughes said: "What happens to a
dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? ... Or does it
explode?"
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* It was incremental. It was both big and incremental,
but mainly it was incremental. I mean, how much shit can you put up with
before ... You put a pot of water on the burner, and if you don't lower
that heat it's going to boil over. And that's what happened.
*Charles Simmons:* There were so many issues. Economic issues: At that
moment, you've got the speed-up in the factories with the new
technology. There was also the Vietnam War. And we're seeing this war on
television, and then we've got the soldiers going back and forth, and
they're sharing their experiences about racism in the military, as well
as the racism at home. Discrimination: We didn't have any black foremen
or any black people working in the offices. And then you've got the
housing stuff. We were paying high rents. And, earlier in the decade,
the City Council had actually voted to support segregated housing.
*Peter Werbe:* Just 24 years earlier, there had been this horrible race
riot in Detroit, and so the contradictions of race were still really
throbbing. You add to that the beginning of the disintegration of the
economic structure
<https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/white-flight-did-not-begin-in-1967/Content?oid=4618876>
and this brutal, corrupt police force, and it's a prescription for what
we saw.
*Herb Boyd:* Relations between police and black Detroiters have a long
and troubled history.
*Frank Joyce:* Enough can't be said about the politics of the white
police as an occupying force in the city of Detroit. This notion that it
was the job of the police to sort of keep control of the black community
in general, and black males in particular, was a very entrenched feature
of life at the time.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* There were two policings of Detroit citizens. If you
were black, you got one style of policing, and if you were white, you
got another style. If you were white, you didn't worry, you respected
the police. If you were black, it was another story.
*Peter Werbe:* We always got treated very badly by the Detroit cops.
Even when I was 13 and 14 years old, these cops regularly would stop us
and steal our cigarettes. They'd say: "Got my pack today, Pete?"
*Frank Joyce:* Joining the civil rights movement was eye-opening in many
ways, including being with black people when they had police encounters,
which were, of course, nothing like anything I'd ever experienced, in
terms of the hostility, the fear.
*Peter Werbe:* We began running into cops when we were with the civil
rights movement. When they attacked the group, they didn't discriminate
then.
*John Sinclair:* I don't know if they had 10 percent black officers.
I'll bet it was less. Certainly in the command structure, there might
have been two blacks.
*Reggie Carter:* The police department was overwhelmingly white, and
even the few blacks that they had on the police force had a reputation
for viciously assaulting blacks.
*John Sinclair:* They knew they were wrong, too, in terms of policing
the populace in a rough, and rude, and illegal manner. So I guess they
expected something to happen. They had to. They were probably shocked
that it took so long. [/laughs/]
Harvey Ovshinsky at a Vietnam War protest. - LENI SINCLAIR
<https://media1.fdncms.com/metrotimes/imager/u/original/4618450/harvey_ovshinski.jpg>
* Leni Sinclair
* Harvey Ovshinsky at a Vietnam War protest.
/Some of the roughest, most illegal policing came from elite units known
as "the Big Four."/
*Frank Joyce:* The Big Four were beefy white guys who rode around in
Chrysler 300s. They were correctly reputed to have in the trunks of
their cars an arsenal of shotguns and other weaponry beyond the pistol
and nightstick of the average beat cop.
*Peter Werbe:* They were just the meanest, ugliest, stupidest guys you'd
ever run into.
*John Sinclair:* The Big Four could do whatever they wanted. They were
patrolling the black community to make it safe for the white merchants,
and landlords, and city government, and white people in the suburbs.
*Charles Simmons:* I knew of the Big Four since childhood. And I
witnessed them beating up people, young teenage boys. Young black guys
would stand out in front of the pool halls. Standing outside, in the
black community, is a cultural thing. But the police would threaten you
and curse at you and say, "If you don't give me that corner, I'm going
to kick your ass when I come back, motherfucker." That was their style.
The composition of the Big Four was one uniformed white dude and three
big brutes in suits, and they had baseball bats, billy clubs, brass
knuckles, all sorts of torture stuff, and they would whip your ass. And
God forbid they should take you to 1300 [Beaubien St., Detroit Police
headquarters]. You'd just get stomped, and you were lucky to leave there
alive.
‘He was throwing a bottle because of slave ships and chains and whips
and what have you that coalesced right in that moment.’ click to tweet
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A//www.metrotimes.com/detroit/a-radicals-oral-history-of-detroit-in-1967/Content%3Foid%3D4618445&text=%E2%80%98He+was+throwing+a+bottle+because+of+slave+ships+and+chains+and+whips+and+what+have+you+that+coalesced+right+in+that+moment.%E2%80%99>
*Herb Boyd:* You knew when the Big Four was cruising around the
neighborhood, really harassing and intimidating people, saying, "You're
kind of dark over here, gang. You better get away from here." It was
like a continuation of the plantation experience, you know — unlawful
assembly: too many black people in one place. We may be plotting,
scheming to do something. So we were always wary of that growing up,
even in our little doo-wop sessions under the lamplight in the North
End. Because we knew: They come through, they'll hit you upside the head
if you disobey.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* We had been reporting on the relationship between
the police and the black community for a while. The troubles that were
brewing were not a surprise to us.
*John Sinclair:* They just harassed you at all times. And the thing
about hippies was, like black people, you could see them. You could tell
them by their long hair, different clothes, headbands, so we stood out
against the landscape, and that was all they needed for "probable
cause," you know? In our neighborhood around Wayne State, you couldn't
walk from one side of the expressway to the other without getting
stopped. And they'd go through your pockets. "He's gotta have some weed
in his pocket." And usually you did.
*Leni Sinclair:* They would stop and frisk anybody they didn't like.
They called us names, like "longhairs." But we just kept on doing what
we were doing. The only thing that they could hold against us — and did
us in eventually — was the marijuana laws. I mean, making poetry and
music were not against the law. But smoking a joint is. And it was so
much against the law that they used that to bust John three different
times.
/Against the backdrop of repressive policing, Detroit was a fermenting
hotbed of liberation groups. Far from dampening the expectations of
inner-city residents, the unfair conditions seemed to radicalize people./
*Reggie Carter:* In 1967, I'd had some exposure already to radical
politics. I had an older brother at the time who was involved, and I was
heavily influenced by him. Detroit, primarily because of the Great
Migration, was a center for social movements. It had [the] Nation of
Islam, the Republic of New Afrika, black Christian nationalism with
Albert Cleage, the All-African People's Union, Grace and Jimmy Boggs,
Dan Aldridge, what emerged as the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement,
the Pan-African Congress. Ed Vaughn's bookstore on Dexter was a hive of
activity, where anybody with a social conscience came through at one
point or another.
Herb Boyd. - LENI SINCLAIR
<https://media2.fdncms.com/metrotimes/imager/u/original/4620604/herb_boyd_1_.jpg>
* Leni Sinclair
* Herb Boyd.
*Charles Simmons:* There was something wrong with the economic and
political system that had to be changed. Organizations like the Black
Panther Party, Uhuru, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and
some of the SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] people, the
activist youth of the 1960s, raised some fundamental questions about the
system that our elders in the civil rights organizations did not
address. NAACP and CORE — their position was that desegregation was the
solution, period. And after that, we'll live happily ever after. But
they couldn't restrain the young people. In the '50s and '60s, the youth
didn't want to hear anything about "go slow." Martin Luther King
appealed more to the older people and the Southerners. But Malcolm X
appealed more to the young men in the North.
*Herb Boyd:* We realized we could go ahead and flex our muscles
politically and otherwise. We were empowered and emboldened, I think, to
a great degree. And of course it was happening internationally too. We
were being fed and energized globally because of the winds of change
that blew across Europe, Asia, South America, and, of course, the
African continent, and many of us began to connect with revolutionary
movements across the globe. Those were very powerful symbols of change
and self-determination, and many of us bought right into that. Hey, we
thought the revolution was right around the corner.
*Charles Simmons:* So you've got the Vietnam war, you've got economic
conditions that are physically brutal, and racism, and, because of
segregation, we generally only interacted with whites who were police.
It's cumulative. You could never say, "It's going to happen this year."
Every year they would announce, "Well, there might be a riot this year,
when it gets hot." You know: Negroes like to come out and riot in the
hot weather. [/laughs/]
/The mostly young and white radical contingent had created a small
community
<https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/a-glimpse-of-the-detroits-hippie-art-community-in-1967/Content?oid=4619017>
at Warren Avenue and the Lodge Expressway, with the Detroit Artists
Workshop, the/ Fifth Estate /offices, the Committee to End the War in
Vietnam, and a couple of Victorian townhouses dubbed "the Castle." The
group's own troubles with the police were already boiling over./
*Leni Sinclair:* On Jan. 24, 1967, the whole Detroit police department
came swooping down, "Lightning Dope Raid on Wayne Campus: 56 people
arrested for marijuana." Oh, man. Including myself. The next thing I
know I've got handcuffs on, and I'm off to jail with 55 other people.
[/laughs/] And my case got thrown out by Judge Cockrel. And everybody
else's case got thrown out. They were only after John Sinclair. They had
to arrest 56 people just to arrest John. Yeah, those were the "good old
days."
*John Sinclair:* At the end of April we'd had our maximum hippie event,
a Love-In on Belle Isle. The police raided it and drove everybody off
the island. So that was our relationship with the police. We hated them.
And when the black people rose up against the police, nobody could have
been happier than us.
*Leni Sinclair:* I remember how it started. The evening before the
rebellion, we were invited to a party by people who had a house on
Grosse Ile that extended over the water. I remember it was kind of the
very tasteful, classy, laid-back atmosphere of the beautiful people. The
lady of the house had a long dress on that was topless. At the time,
even fashion was rebelling. And then at midnight somebody took us on an
enchanted walk through this incredible garden at night. It was just
mind-blowing. And then we went home, and then the next day it started. I
just remember that it started with such a beautiful evening.
/In the early morning hours of July 23, 1967, a crowd confronted a
police raid on an unlicensed bar — or "blind pig."/
*Peter Werbe:* There were longstanding grievances. When that man threw
that bottle at the cop, it wasn't just because he was a little pissed
off. He was throwing a bottle because of slave ships and chains and
whips and what have you that coalesced right in that moment.
*Charles Simmons:* What happens in a riot is that all of those years,
decades, centuries of abuse just explode.
*Reggie Carter:* When police went up in that blind pig, they found more
people than anticipated at a party for returning black vets from
Vietnam. Police made the decision to arrest these people. They went off
and fought a war. You come back and this is how you get treated. You put
your life on the line for a country that you come back to and nothing
has changed.
*John Sinclair:* It was just a party at an after-hours joint. They
weren't hurting anybody. Booting those people out of the blind pig at 5
in the morning into the paddy wagon, people just said, "Wait a minute.
Fuck this!" and started throwing shit at them. And then they set some
shit on fire and they overturned some police cars, and then people said,
"Wow! Finally! It's bustin' loose!" That's the way I looked at it. You
heard about this isolated incident, at 12th and Clairmount, and by the
time you heard about it at noon it was already raging. Raging!
*Pun Plamondon:* The corner of John Lodge and Warren was a real center
of the community in a lot of different ways, aside from being a
gathering place at the Detroit Artists Workshop. It was the real
heartbeat of the community, and I just happened to come down one morning
and was asked if I heard about the riots.
*Charles Simmons:* I was sitting on the porch over [on Wabash Street]
when it started. I saw smoke and then I saw people coming around with
shopping carts full of stuff. [/laughs/] I ventured out ... I think
neighbors told me there was a riot going on, and then I heard about the
curfew.
*Herb Boyd:* When the thing went down, I was living on Richton between
Lawton and Linwood, about 10 blocks north. That Monday, as soon as I
heard it happened, I jumped in the car with my two sons. In fact, while
we were driving around, we ran into Kenny Cockrel. [/laughs/] We ran
into Kenny out there. And we had a nice discussion about what was going
on, and then I drove on off and started to survey and look at all of the
stores and people. I mean, there was still a lot of action in the
street, because this was early, before the police or National Guard or
any kind of Airborne could come in there and do anything.
“We ran into Kenny Cockrel. We ran into Kenny out there.” - LENI
SINCLAIR
<https://media1.fdncms.com/metrotimes/imager/u/original/4618451/ken_cockrel_1965_1.jpg>
* Leni Sinclair
* “We ran into Kenny Cockrel. We ran into Kenny out there.”
*Reggie Carter:* I wanted to go out in it, and my stepfather stood at
the back door and said, "You aren't going anywhere." He and I didn't get
along the best, but I thank him even today for that. Because I had no
reason to go out in it. Anything could have happened.
*Frank Joyce:* On July 23, 1967, I was in London, England, at the
Dialectics of Liberation Congress, meeting with people from worldwide
liberation movements. As news of what was going on in Detroit was
reaching London, all of a sudden I became a person of interest in a way
I had not before. Here I am at a conference where people are talking
about anti-colonial struggles all over the world, and then come the
headlines of Detroit in flames and troops being called in. And I was
frantically trying to rearrange my travel to get back to the United States!
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* Where we were, the Warren-Forest area, the looting
was more like a circus.
*Herb Boyd:* The A&P and the Kroger, some of the larger outlets — they
didn't have a chance. People running up and down, cars pulling up,
loading up with all kinds of groceries. If you were near anything like
that or a pawn shop, or jewelry store, or something like that, it was
obviously like a domino effect.
*Leni Sinclair:* We published some fliers during the rebellion. One of
the fliers said, "Loot: It's the American way!" [/laughs/]
*Peter Werbe:* On the front page of the /Fifth Estate/ was the headline
"Get the Big Stuff."
*John Sinclair:* We went over on Trumbull and did some looting. We had
our Trans-Love Energy cars that we used to ride around the neighborhood
and pick up hippies and give 'em free rides. We saw you walking down the
street, we'd stop and pick you up. That was our concept, you know? We
were hippies. On acid. [/laughs/] So we would give people a ride with
their goods that they'd gotten from the store. [/laughs/] We'd drive
them home. We got a few goods ourselves. I remember we went into a store
on Trumbull by Forest. It was a yard goods store.
*Leni Sinclair:* I have a picture of someone from the Artists Workshop
walking down the street with a bolt of material that he had liberated
from the five-and-dime. For years afterward, we used that material to
sew band clothes for the MC5. [/laughs/]
*John Sinclair:* If you showed a picture of them, I could tell you which
parts came from the store.
*Peter Werbe:* Harvey and I were out in the streets and found no
hostility toward us whatsoever. We were around Trumbull and Forest,
which was an integrated neighborhood, so there was integrated looting.
And I remember Mayor Jerry Cavanagh took a tour while the riot was going
on and said he was horrified there was a "carnival-like atmosphere." And
I always wondered, "What did he want? Did he want it to be like a race
riot like 1943?"
"Where we were, the Warren-Forest area, the looting was more like a
circus." - LENI SINCLAIR
* Leni Sinclair
* "Where we were, the Warren-Forest area, the looting was more like a
circus."
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* The looting was biracial. [/laughs/] ... The looting
was permission to fight back anonymously, in a way that you couldn't get
caught. Because things were out of control. I mean, when Peter and I
were down there, we couldn't believe what we were seeing. There was a
picture in the /Fifth Estate/ that covered the riot of this young kid —
he must have been 13 or 14 – carrying a rifle around. That was weird. It
was a Fellini movie.
*Peter Werbe:* At the A&P [supermarket] at Trumbull and Forest, there
was a young black kid about 12 years old, the whole front window was
shattered and people were entering, and he had all these bags. And he
would snap open these bags, like a bag boy, and hand them to people
going in. [/laughs/]
*Herb Boyd:* People wandering down the street with a mannequin? I mean,
come on. Just to grab something. Like mismatched shoes!
*Leni Sinclair:* When the rebellion started, on the first or second day,
I think, we had a ball. We thought that it was just the greatest. We
could drive down the street ignoring all the traffic signs. There were
no cops. There were hardly any people on the street. We would see fires
and everything.
*Pun Plamondon:* I guess you could say this was thrill-seeking: John
Sinclair and I rode for three or four miles on the wrong-way side of the
Boulevard, which was just unique. It was just unusual; there were no
cops around. Where were the cops? The cops were out protecting the white
property or firemen putting out fires. So if you were away from the
action, it was true freedom.
*Peter Werbe:* My favorite counterculture thing was that people were
playing out of the windows, "Light My Fire" by the Doors. And the cops
would go running into these apartment buildings on Prentis, which was,
like, student housing from one end to the other, trying to find out who
was playing it.
*Pun Plamondon:* Have you ever gone 100 miles per hour in a car,
squealing around corners and throwing gravel, losing your hubcaps and
then you end up at the bar saying, "Man, wasn't that cool?" That's what
it is, it's just a rush of dodging the cops. If you get caught up in it,
you either get grief from the police or get shot or firebombed.
*Leni Sinclair:* And some of the hippies who lived in the Castle took a
TV up on the roof, probably a case of beer, and were watching the riots
on TV, and at the same time you could see the fire. I thought, "Wow.
This is great." [/laughs/] But you know, that was in the first moments
of rebellion. You think this is the end of the old order and the
beginning of the new!
*Pun Plamondon:* Me and my wife at the time, we crawled up through the
ceiling; there was an access door in the attic, and we got up to the
roof, where you could see what looked like about 12 blocks or 15 blocks
that were on fire. When you looked to the east side you could see fires.
And then in about two hours you looked back to the east side and those
fires had doubled. Fires on the west side had doubled. When you looked
down toward downtown, you could see Grand River was ablaze. We were just
smoking joints, listening to tunes and making reports to each other.
*Peter Werbe:* That's right! I haven't thought about that. We went up on
top of the roof of John's apartment. And people were dropping acid too,
which wouldn't have even occurred to me to do. And I just remember
seeing fires everywhere. It looked like a city that was being bombed.
And I remember thinking this was the end of Detroit.
An aerial view of Grand River as buildings are consumed by fires. -
WALTER P. REUTHER LIBRARY, ARCHIVES OF LABOR AND URBAN AFFAIRS, WAYNE
STATE UNIVERSITY
* Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs,
Wayne State University
* An aerial view of Grand River as buildings are consumed by fires.
*John Sinclair:* On our second floor, we were watching the riot coverage
on television. We never watched television, so it was extraordinary to
be sitting there watching this, 'cause then you could look and see all
the fire and see smoke and all of that right out your window. We were
watching TV to see what they were doing in other parts of the city,
because they had kind of a secondary riot area on the east side. The
report we watched most avidly was when they said the 10th precinct was
pinned down by sniper fire. We were exhilarated! [/laughs/] I have to
say the truth. We thought this was the beginning of the end.
*Pun Plamondon:* I had a pretty significant attitude against the
government when I moved to Detroit in May. Seeing the relationship
between the Detroit police and the citizens, primarily the black
citizens, added to an already organic distaste for government and
oppression. So that people were kicking the Detroit police's ass was
just a thrill. I never took a joy in anyone getting killed. I was just
thrilled about the resistance of the population against the police.
‘It looked like a city that was being bombed. And I remember thinking
this was the end of Detroit.’ click to tweet
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*Reggie Carter:* You could hear gunfire, particularly at night, and
there was looting on Dexter and there was looting along Davison, but it
didn't penetrate into the residential community. Thing is, one or two
blocks away, houses were burning up. People were living in stark fear
that they were going to lose their homes, their investment.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* Depending on your socio-economic-racial situation,
that generally impacted how you felt. I knew black middle-class parents
who were furious at the rioters.
*Herb Boyd:* Fires were raging all over the place. A lot of people got
burned out. You had a whole block that was extinguished, on Euclid and
Woodward Avenue — boom-zoom: The gas station went up and took out the
whole block.
*Peter Werbe:* People put up "Soul Brother" signs. We had one on the
/Fifth Estate/ office — which could have been why the National Guard
threw a tear gas grenade through the /Fifth Estate/ office window.
*Pun Plamondon:* There was a historical marker that identified a house
as the birthplace of Charles Lindbergh. In big 3-foot letters across the
front porch, someone wrote, "Lindbergh was a fascist," and I just
thought this was so cool. And then someone burned it down.
*Charles Simmons:* I had lived on Philadelphia between 12th and 14th, so
I was aware of the various businesses that were burned down, and I
remember there was one store, the owner was a very mean person. He was
just nasty to everybody. He got burned out. So it seemed like they were
selective about who they got. I'm told there was one of these rip-off
furniture companies on Grand River where they had extended credit at
high interest rates and all that, and people broke in there and stole
all their records, [/laughs/] so they couldn't catch up with all the
debtors.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* The neighborhood of the Grande Ballroom, at Joy Road
and Livernois, that was pretty much on fire, and buildings were being
destroyed. And Russ Gibb came down with Tim Buckley to get their
equipment, and they were shocked to see that everything was still
standing at the Grande — but not around the Grande so much. And Russ
asked one kid, "Why is our building still here?" And the young black kid
said, "Well, that's where they make the music, man!"
*Pun Plamondon:* In the daytime, there'd be three or four black dudes
riding down the street in their car, hanging out the windows, pumping
their fists, giving the "V" sign. At night it was a lot different.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* At night it was scary. There was the night riot and
the day riot. By day, at least in the Warren-Forest area, it was a
circus. By night, you didn't know who was going to hurt whom.
*Pun Plamondon:* There weren't civilian cars on the road. The only cars
I remember were police cars, and they were driving around with their
lights off, and some of them would have four cops to a car. And the back
doors would be open, so they could jump out real quick with their
shotguns. That was scary; there's no doubt about it. They would creep
along at 5 miles per hour down an alley, and you wouldn't really see
them unless the streetlight reflected off their chrome.
*Frank Joyce:* I don't remember what day I arrived back in Detroit, but
by the time I got back to the city it wasn't that there were lots of new
fires starting — there was just this enormous military and police presence.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* It was surreal. You were watching the president on
television saying, "I'm calling in the troops" — and then you'd look out
your window and there were the troops. It was like he was narrating our
own story.
*Herb Boyd:* As the National Guard and Army arrived, it was a whole
different climate then, in terms of clampdown. It was just the Detroit
Police Department in the first day or two. But then quickly Governor
Romney unleashed the armed forces. They came here in, like, in waves,
you dig it?
*John Sinclair:* We were clearly on the side of the residents, not the
police. And especially not the National Guard.
*Reggie Carter:* Then you've got these weekend soldiers, folks who lived
up in the northern part of Michigan and come down here with all of their
prejudices. I talked to black people who were part of the National Guard
at that time, and they say they overheard some whites saying they were
"going out to kill some niggers."
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* Most of these rural folks had never really set foot
in Detroit or an all-black community, so I think they were out of their
element. And as a result, people got hurt. People got killed.
*Charles Simmons:* The guardsmen were looking very frightened. They were
white guys from upstate. They had never been in Detroit. But then also
some of the Regular Army, who had been in Vietnam, came.
*Reggie Carter:* Federal troops had experience in Vietnam, and they were
more disciplined and more accustomed to dealing with situations.
*Frank Joyce:* To this day, one of my memes about 1967 is that the
reason the 82nd Airborne federal troops really came to Detroit was to
get the National Guard under control. They basically had a shoot-first,
ask-questions-later mindset.
*Peter Werbe:* The National Guard was just shooting all the time. They
shot so much they ran out of ammunition.
*Herb Boyd:* Many of them were as terrified as some of the people they
were supposed to be corralling. I came face-to-face with several of
them. They were a little nervous in the face of all the stuff that was
going on. And their reflex! They heard a noise or a flash of light,
their reaction was: boom! They were shooting first, asking questions later.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* I do remember saying, "Well, the war is now home.
It's official. Welcome to the '60s. It's there and it's here. It's
everywhere."
*Charles Simmons:* I was listening to the radio, and they were in this
neighborhood, on 12th Street or something, and the reporter was riding
along while they were going to wipe out this sniper. The sniper had some
small-caliber weapon compared to what the soldiers had. And you hear
this pop-pop-pop-pop-pop, and then the military opened up with tanks and
all kinds of shit: "WHAM!" You know, it sounded like Vietnam.
*Herb Boyd:* The tanks in '67, boy, you got .50-calibers on top of these
tanks. They'd damn near knock a building down.
*Charles Simmons:* And they said, "Well, we got the sniper's nest," and
they drove off. And then a few seconds later you'd hear the
pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. [/laughs/]
*Herb Boyd:* I lived not too far from La Salle Boulevard. We drove over
there and, in the night, we cut all our lights off, because the word got
out, "Man, you don't want to have your lights on." You could see the
tanks drove right across people's lawns. You could see some of the
pockmarks where these .50-caliber shells had hit up against the
buildings and left gaping holes.
“We had a banner … and it said ‘Burn, Baby, Burn!’ … We were flying the
freak flag.” - LENI SINCLAIR
* Leni Sinclair
* “We had a banner … and it said ‘Burn, Baby, Burn!’ … We were flying
the freak flag.”
/The hippie contingent on Warren didn't escape encounters with police
and the National Guard. In some ways, they invited them./
*Leni Sinclair:* Just before the rebellion started, Gary Grimshaw had
taken a bedsheet and painted a black panther on there and "Burn, Baby,
Burn," and hung it out the window. Even though that "black panther"
looked more like a little black kitty-cat. [/laughs/] Oh, god. And then
the riot started, of course that thing came down in a minute. I can't
blame them for thinking we had snipers in the closet.
*John Sinclair:* The Grimshaw flag! I don't remember the taking-down
part, but certainly we had a banner that had a picture of a black
panther and it said "Burn, Baby, Burn!" hanging on the downtown side of
our building at Warren and John C. Lodge. We were flying the freak flag.
See, I don't think they liked that very much.
*Leni Sinclair:* When the National Guard came into our apartment, John
had a confrontation with them. Now, mind you, our daughter Sunny was
born May 4, so she was just a few months old, and I was standing there
with the baby in my arms while John was hollering at the National Guard:
"Get out of my house! You don't have a warrant! You can't come in!" He
always had a bad temper when it comes to the police.
*John Sinclair:* I'm sure a lot of my memories are warped ... by terror!
[/laughs/] It was frightening. Because they came up to our apartment and
banged on the door, and then they called me by name. That was the worst
part of the whole thing. And I just had my baby daughter, who was three
months old, and I just snapped and said, "Well, shoot us or get out of
here! You can't do this! If you're going to do this, you might as well
shoot me, because I don't even care about living in this kind of an
environment if you can walk into my house and just put a gun in my face!
Fuck you!"
And they left! [/laughs/]
*Leni Sinclair:* The commune members in the Castle were very
adventurous. They thought they would hold off the police by barricading
the street, and they put out sofas and couches on the John C. Lodge.
That was no deterrent to the tanks. And the cops went in and beat the
people up. I think some of the people in the MC5 got arrested too. I
never got the whole story.
“The tanks in ‘67, boy … they’d damn near knock a building down.” -
WALTER P. REUTHER LIBRARY, ARCHIVES OF LABOR AND URBAN AFFAIRS, WAYNE
STATE UNIVERSITY
* Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs,
Wayne State University
* “The tanks in ‘67, boy … they’d damn near knock a building down.”
/Meanwhile, in many quarters of the city, an unsympathetic occupation by
inexperienced, trigger-happy soldiers ensued. News reports talked of
"snipers," and tanks rolled down main streets./
*Charles Simmons:* I remember going down on 12th Street and I ran into a
guy who I knew who was a hustler. He had gone into a jewelry store or
pawn shop and stole a lot of jewelry. He had all kinds of bling, and the
National Guardsman, the soldier, was standing right there while I was
talking to him. They didn't know what was going on.
*Peter Werbe:* All the hostility I saw, with numerous incidents
personally, was threats to me from National Guardsmen and the cops. One
of the bivouacs was at Central High School, and we rolled up there. This
guy sees these two white guys, and says, "Can I help you?" And I said,
"Yeah, we're from the /Fifth Estate./" And he raises his Garand and
says, "I know who you are. Get the /fuck/ out of here!"
*Herb Boyd:* You had this feeling that obviously it's an occupying army
and the best thing, my mother told me very well, as she learned in 1943:
Take cover. Go in, cut off your lights, and get down, because there's a
certain madness out there. You flick the light in your apartment and
suddenly they start shooting at the apartment building, scattering
bullets all over the place.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* And then coming home to hide under our beds because
the tanks are rolling down our street, and you daren't light a
cigarette, or turn on a flashlight, or attract any attention because
there were reports of snipers everywhere. ... Yeah, the war came home —
and we were in it.
*John Sinclair:* And then they had the National Guard coming down the
street. Whew. That's pretty severe. I'd never seen anything like that in
my life. What? A tank? On Warren Avenue? Are you nuts?
*Peter Werbe:* One morning, we were in a friend's apartment on Jefferson
and Rivard. Why were we smoking dope in the middle of the day? Probably
just because we had it. And someone says, "Wow. Look what's rolling down
Jefferson." And we look out the window at personnel carriers and go,
"Whoa."
*Frank Joyce:* Now, everybody says this, but I have to say, there is
something about just seeing tanks rolling down the streets of your city
that is powerful.
*Peter Werbe:* My wife Marilyn and I lived on Third and Delaware. After
we'd gone to sleep, we heard some commotion outside at like 3 in the
morning. We look outside, and this National Guard contingent in front of
a Jeep has this black man spread eagle on his face wearing just a tank
top and boxer shorts. I have no idea where he came from or why he was
there or anything, and they're all yelling and nervous as hell, pivoting
around, pointing their guns everywhere, and there was nobody on the
street — at all. And they were yelling at this guy, and I said to
Marilyn, while we were crouching down by this window, I said, "Those
sonofabitches."
And I didn't realize on this carport right below us there was a
guardsman and he turns around. I guess I'm lucky I didn't get my head
blown off. He said, "Get down!" and Marilyn and I both froze, and I
remember he put the bayonet — they had fucking bayonets — and pushed it
against the screen and said, "I said, 'Get down.'" And I just took
Marilyn and just pushed her head down and we just lay there. And I
remember they got in their Jeep and they went. I don't know what
happened to the guy.
Marilyn said, "Can we get up?" And I said, "Let's just wait a minute or
two."
*Frank Joyce:* It was already known on the street, meaning in the black
community, that the police, and the military, and the National Guard in
particular were out of control. That they were randomly both arresting
people, shooting people and killing people.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* In our very earliest reporting, we took for granted
that it was the rioters who were doing the sniping and the shooting. We
didn't find out until later, with our investigative reports and from
elsewhere, that a lot of the shootings were done by the National Guard.
*Frank Joyce:* I don't think there were any snipers. If there were any,
it was like one or two people. And not necessarily because they were
part of any political group, but simply because then, as now, we're a
weaponized country.
‘I’d never seen anything like that in my life. What? A tank? On Warren
Avenue? Are you nuts?’ click to tweet
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A//www.metrotimes.com/detroit/a-radicals-oral-history-of-detroit-in-1967/Content%3Foid%3D4618445&text=%E2%80%98I%E2%80%99d+never+seen+anything+like+that+in+my+life.+What%3F+A+tank%3F+On+Warren+Avenue%3F+Are+you+nuts%3F%E2%80%99>
*Herb Boyd:* They were talking about [how] there was some kind of armed
resistance. Well, you might have one or two that may have fired back at
the National Guard, but there was never a concerted effort in that
direction because it would have been absolutely suicidal.
*Peter Werbe:* /The Detroit News/ and /The Detroit Free Press/ were
essentially just bullhorns for whatever the established powers in
Detroit wanted to see in print.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* I remember it felt like they were getting it wrong
because they were focusing on what was obvious. It didn't feel like they
were on the ground. You have to understand, in those days, the black
community was pretty much invisible. Unless you were in trouble or
arrested, young people and black people were mostly invisible to the
media. And women, forget about it: They were quarantined to the society
section.
*Frank Joyce:* I wrote a front-page piece for the /Fifth Estate/ called,
"Who killed John Leroy?" Leroy was shot in cold blood by, I believe, a
National Guardsman. We were really reporting on the rebellion from the
point of view not of what the rebels were doing, but what the
authorities were doing.
*Peter Werbe:* Frank Joyce found out that a carload of black men coming
home from their jobs were stopped at a National Guard checkpoint, these
frightened young white guys from Escanaba. Who knows — maybe somebody
made a sudden move. And these guys just shot up the car, killed a man
named John Leroy, and severely maimed somebody else. I thought this was
pretty deep investigative reporting that nobody did about the riot dead
in Detroit until a few years after that.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* We really rose to the occasion. It really tested our
skills as journalists. The paper demanded that we not cover it but
uncover it. And obviously the /Michigan Chronicle/ did too. And I'm sure
there was some fine reporting done at the /News/ and /Free Press/; I
just can't speak to it. Because their sources were mainly in the police.
We had different sources. Who were we going to call?
*Frank Joyce:* I recall having a sense that there's going to be hell to
pay for this, there's going to be a backlash for this, and just this
physical destruction is going to have profound and difficult effects for
the city and the people who live in it. It was sobering in that way. I
do remember saying, "Hmm, maybe this isn't the whole romantic thing we
imagined."
*John Sinclair:* After the National Guard and Regular Army troops had
established control of the streets and stopped the fires, they just
started picking up people, getting them off the streets. At least 4,000
people were arrested. And most were arrested just for being out after 8.
People of every kind got swept up. If you went to the store after 3
p.m., you didn't get home, you know?
*Herb Boyd:* It was a very nervous time for a lot of our friends who
were taken out to Belle Isle, getting brought into night court where
Judge Crockett was letting them go left and right.
*Charles Simmons:* When you look at who got locked up, I'm sure some
white people got arrested, but it was mostly black people. And the
houses that got burned were our own houses.
*Leni Sinclair:* We had to leave. We gathered a few people and went to
Traverse City for refuge, because we didn't know what was going to
happen. It was very scary after the National Guard took over the city.
It was like war, with tanks driving down the street, and we had to escape.
*John Sinclair:* We fled to Ann Arbor in '68 because of the street-level
relations between the hippies and the police. Because after the riot,
the police were really in charge then, and we just had to get out of
there. We thought, "Ann Arbor? They've got like 10 police cars."
*Frank Joyce:* I wrote one thing in early '68 that was about the
repressive response that was coming. The City Council passed a bond
issue so they could buy machine guns and armed personnel carriers. There
was a transition from the Big Four to the Tactical Mobile Unit. That
was, in turn, followed by STRESS.
*Charles Simmons:* What I remember most was that the attitude of the
people had changed so radically. There had been this fear of police. And
that vanished after that week. And the idea of racial pride and black
pride in general, and identification with African and African-American
culture, there was an explosion of it — suddenly. After '67, immediately
you saw people identifying themselves culturally with the dress, the
attitude, and the pride, that all spread immediately after the rebellion.
*Herb Boyd:* The '67 rebellion kind of fueled our struggle at Wayne
State University. We could put pressure on Wayne State University
because they were so fearful that possibly we would have another
eruption. So we created the Association of Black Students.
*Charles Simmons:* I wanted to be a journalist. But when I had applied
for jobs as a student in Detroit, they basically laughed at me. All of a
sudden, they wanted us to come in. Well, one reason was that white
reporters were not allowed into the hood because of the rebellion. They
would chase them out. So they had to hire people of color to go in and
do interviews and stuff in the midst of all the fires and people getting
shot. [/laughs/]
*Pun Plamondon:* I wouldn't say it improved things, but it definitely
changed things. There's more black cops on the force, though I hope
everyone quickly learned cops are cops — it doesn't matter the color of
your skin.
*Charles Simmons:* We said we wanted black people on the board of
directors, we wanted black foremen, we wanted black people as
secretaries and all that. Well, they did all that. But that didn't
change the nature of the exploitation of the system that continues to
rip us off. We saw the face of the exploitation change its color.
*Reggie Carter:* Even when you have the ascendancy of Coleman Young in
'73, a black mayor, and a significant black presence on City Council,
and suddenly you get black judges, and so on, in the long term we've
seen how meaningless that can be. Because what happens is you get a
black mayor on one side of the coin and then you get disinvestment on
the other side of the coin.
*Harvey Ovshinsky:* It was exciting. But in retrospect, it's only worth
exploring, investigating, and remembering if you learn from it. If
people are just commemorating and having exhibitions and writing
articles and books, and the intention is just to recall it and remember
it, then I think an opportunity is wasted. I think we have to try to
learn from it and understand it and make sure it doesn't have to happen
again. It had to happen. It had to happen. Make sure it doesn't /have/
to happen again.
*Leni Sinclair:* The rebellion was a wake-up call. But you know, people
never woke up. [/laughs]/
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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