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A half-century later:

Understanding The

1967 RI T

Jewish leaders
recall racial
tensions in
Detroit.

Jackie Headapohl | Managing Editor

R

acial tensions in Detroit, from
police mistreatment and economic
disparity to discriminatory hous-
ing practices, had been smoldering long
before the spark that ignited the riots in
Detroit on July 23, 1967, when Detroit
police raided a blind pig at 12th Street and
Clairmount in what from 1930-32 was a
temporary home to Congregation Shaarey
Zedek.
It took more than a week for the U.S.
Army, the Michigan National Guard, the
Michigan State Police and the Detroit
Police to restore order. Some 1,300 build-
ings had been burned and 2,700 looted.
Many, but not all of the 78 Jewish-owned
stores in the area were looted. Some 5,000
people were left homeless by the fires.
When the smoke cleared, the period of
violence had claimed 43 lives, mostly black,
and injured more than 700. Over 7,000

individuals were arrested, with property
damage estimates exceeding $75 million.
Members of the Jewish community were
actively involved in civil rights and justice
issues during the years before and after
the 1967 riot, also known as the “Great
Rebellion” among African Americans. Four
of those leaders sat down with the Jewish
News to discuss their memories.

BEFORE THE RIOT
Violence was nothing new on 12th Street,
once home to the notorious Purple Gang, a
ruthless group of Jewish men who thrived
on the illicit alcohol trade that flourished
in Detroit during Prohibition. In the heart
of the Jewish community, the street once
boasted shop after shop of Jewish-owned
businesses.
The racial makeup of the street began
to gradually change from the 1950s on.

As housing restrictions began
munity. Levin had left his
to ease, middle-class black
position as general counsel
families began to move in from
for the Michigan Civil Rights
the east side. For a few years,
Commission the year before
there was a peaceful coexis-
to help create the Detroit
tence among black and Jewish
Defender’s Office, where he
neighbors.
became appellate defender,
However, with urban renew-
handling the appeals of
al, Black Bottom, the home to
indigent people convicted of
many poor African Americans
crimes.
in Detroit and once home to
“You had a nearly all-white
Sen. Carl Levin
the Jewish community, was
police force, and the housing
razed. Those blacks now fol-
situation was segregated in
lowed the Jews over to 12th
fact if not in law,” Levin says.
Street, sometimes referred to as the “golden “Neighborhoods were strongly segregated.
ghetto,” which had begun to deteriorate in
It was a fact of life just as the tension
the years before the riot. The area had the
between the black community and police
highest crime rate in the city.
was a fact of life.”
Former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin describes
The riot began a few doors away from
the constant tension between the police
where Levin used to practice law on 12th
and the local African American com-
Street and Clairmount. Although shocked

Negro snipers turned 140 square blocks north of West Grand Blvd. into a bloody battlefi eld for three
hours last night, temporarily routing police and national guardsmen ... Tanks thundered through the
streets and heavy machine guns clattered ... The scene was incredible. It was as though the Viet Cong
had infi ltrated the riot-blackened streets.

— Detroit News Archives

12 April 21 • 2016

