Thirty-five years later, Jews join in recalling
a time of turmoil for Detroiters.
the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said he thought a
root cause of the event was disappointed expectations.
Congress passed civil-rights legislation in 1964
and, with the election of Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, a
Democrat and Kennedy-esque, pro-civil rights liber-
al, "there were all kinds of hopes the situation would
With the daylight, when the fever and the fire both had change in Detroit," Bolkosky said. "But it was too
soon for anything to realistically happen."
cooled
Bolkosky believes the riots should have come as no
when the whirlybirds were hangared and the tanks
surprise,
given events in other cities at that time. Inner-
again garaged
main.
6
some looked around with shame at what they'd wrought city unrest began in Rochester, N.Y., in 1964, followed
in 1965 in Los Angeles' Watts district and
Upon their own
in
1967 in Newark, N.J. By 1967, he said,
while others, without bluster or apology,
you
had to be nearly oblivious not to see
l
patients
and
went
hugged their gratefu
the imposed segregation and the discrimi-
home.
nation that were rampant in Detroit.
[Read the full poem online at
Bolkosky agrees that discriminatory
www.detroitjewishnews.corn]
police action added fuel to the fire. "The
Such was Tell's introduction to the
mayor was on his way to changing that,
Detroit riots, which started at 3 a.m. on
but not soon enough," he said.
July 23, 1967, when police raided a blind
Some Detroiters were feeling desperate.
pig (an illegal after-hours bar) in a build-
"The people were fed up with the
ing on 12th Street and Clairmount —
Marianne Mahaj5,
shooting and killing of blacks by the
once the temporary home of
police, who were able to walk away from
Congregation Shaarey Zedek in the 1930s.
it [without being brought to justice]. The police
A mob filled the street, a fire started, police arrived
were like an occupying army," said David Hamilton,
in too few numbers and the riots were on.
60, of Detroit, an African American businessman.
"Coupled with the heat, and the specific circum-
Setting For Disaster
stances of that one night — the crowd, the behavior
of the police — it all came together and exploded,"
Economic conditions, racism and police brutality
Bolkosky said. "[The police] had no idea what they
are some reasons given for the tumult.
were walking into when they raided that blind pig."
Detroit City Council President Marianne
According to the Rev. Nicholas Hood Jr., 79, a
Mahaffey, then a social worker and teacher at Wayne
Detroit
City Council member from 1965-1993, the
State University, said racism and police brutality
riots
were
economic based. The looting was not black
were major causes of the riots.
versus white, he said. Black businesses also were hurt.
Mahaffey recalled a high-powered meeting with
Hamilton had one of them, losing his hair salon
state Sen. Coleman Young, the future Detroit
at 12th and Euclid streets to the riots.
mayor. He ticked off the reasons for the riots:
Remembering the old neighborhood, "everybody
racism, high unemployment, housing restrictions,
knew everybody, from [Grand] Boulevard to
expensive and inadequate housing and mistreatment
Clairmount," Hamilton said. "We still had Jews in
by an all-white police force.
REMEMBERING THE RIOTS on page 18
Sidney Bolkosky, an author and history professor at
were almost a model of housing integration," he
said. "I used to take out-of-town visitors through
these neighborhoods to show them what I thought
was possible in terms of racial harmony. Unfor-
tunately this turned out to be an illusion."
A published poet, Tell wrote about his experience:
DEALER ANNOUNCES•
SUPER SALE
VOLVOS IN STOCK
CW_Y E R
YA" Fil 1
14 PI
Viola Palmer
African American Viola Palmer, 61, of Ann
Arbor was a 26-year-old single mother working
as a bank teller when the riots disrupted her life.
"I was cooped up in my apartment near Dexter
for three days with my baby. We couldn't get
out," she said. "I was too frightened to go out."
She remembers looking out the window and
seeing the National Guard stationed in a big red
brick building on the corner.
"I saw them ducking behind cars with rifles
cocked, and realized this is really serious," she said.
"It changed my whole perception of the city.
It became more segregated and, for me, I under-
stood I needed to have some direction in my
life. I had to get back in school," she said. "It
made you look at life and how you were going
to live it."
Palmer became a teacher and eventually head
Of the English Department at Cass Technical
High School in Detroit. She sent her daughter
to Catholic school.
"I felt abandoned by the Jewish community in
the following years and into the 1970s," she
said. "The neighborhood emptied and moved."
ALL NEW 2002
C70 COUPE
IMMEDIATE DELIVERY
139 MONTH LEASE
1
• XC WAGONS $
11 Mg<
• S60s
LOW
AS
*39,000 miles, 20c per mile for overage. 5575,00
refundable security deposit. Plus tax, title &
license. 51,645 due at delivery. M$RP 538,150.
Offer ends 8/30/02.
/26
2002
17