metro »

continued from page 13

‘All Lives Matter’

Detroiters react to violence involving
black men and police.

Barbara Lewis | Contributing Writer

M

embers of the Jewish
community were saddened
and concerned by recent events
involving black men and law enforcement
officers — the killings by police of black
men stopped for minor offenses followed
by the murder of white police officers by
skilled black marksmen
in Dallas and Baton
Rouge.
“We are tired of
the violence,” said
Oak Park Mayor
Marian McClellan.
“Congressman John
Lewis said, ‘We are
Marian
one people, one family,
McClellan
one house.’ In our
one family, we grieve
together when any of us are hurt.”
Jeremy Salinger of Southfield, a past
president of Ameinu Detroit, a progres-
sive Zionist organization, said, “The lives
of all people matter.
Both blacks and police
officers have a common
concern: They both
have more reason to
fear for their lives than
most of the rest of us.
The recent killings of
innocent people in both
Jeremy
groups are tragic.”
Salinger
Some urge white
America to be more
sympathetic to the plight of Americans of
color.
“We have a serious and significant racial
divide in our country that we cannot
ignore,” said Alyssa Martina of Huntington
Woods, publisher of Metro Parent and
B.L.A.C. (Black Life
Arts and Culture)
magazines.
“Those of us
who aren’t from a
community of color
don’t know what it’s
like to live in fear of a
Alyssa Martina system that is supposed
to keep its citizens
safe.”
Eleanor Gamalski of
Detroit, community organizer for Detroit
Jews for Justice, agreed. “For people like
me, who grew up in white suburbs, the
violence faced by black and brown com-
munities can seem unimaginable. But it’s a

reality.”
Others are less likely
to blame systemic rac-
ism for the deaths and
have little sympathy for
the Black Lives Matter
movement.
“It’s easy to be an
Eleanor
armchair quarterback,”
Gamalski
said Eugene Greenstein
of Farmington Hills,
a past president of the Michigan Region-
Zionist Organization of America.
“The police may have unjustly killed
two black men; however, the investigations
are incomplete and the
videos do not tell the
whole story.”
Rabbi Sasson Natan of
Keter Torah Synagogue
in West Bloomfield
says police officers put
their lives on the line,
and videos may not
Eugene
tell the whole story. No
Greenstein
one knows what goes
through an officer’s
mind in the split-second when he decides
whether or not to shoot, he said.
True respect for the law can help prevent
such tragedies, said Eric
Zacks of Huntington
Woods, assistant
professor of law at
Wayne State University.
“Recent events are
troubling to the extent
they reflect a weakening
of our collective belief
Rabbi Sasson
in, and respect for, the
Natan
rule of law,” he said.
“People are not upset
about the law as written. On all sides,
people are upset about
how the law is applied,
abused or rejected,
which is a much more
complicated problem.”
Another attorney,
Jonathan H. Schwartz
of Plymouth, a leader
of the Jewish Bar
Eric Zacks
Association, says
police should be held
to the highest ethical
standards. “If they overreach or break
the law, they should not be exempt from
justice,” he said.
What to do going forward?
continued on page 16

— up to the defining moment of the March
on Washington — was reflective of the
community’s belated interest in it.”

A SIGNIFICANT ‘AGENDA ITEM’
Avern Cohn, now a senior judge in the U.S.
District Court for the Eastern District of
Michigan, marched with the ACLU during
the Detroit Walk to Freedom. He has an old
black-and-white photograph in his office
where he is seen walking with his late wife,
Joyce, as the group carries a sign that reads,
“ACLU supports equal rights and liberties
for all” (see page 1).
In 1967, he was a member of the Jewish
Community Council, which considered
black-Jewish relations a significant agenda
item as did the Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit. Cohn recalls an eye-
opening visit from the late Arthur Johnson,
former head of the Detroit chapter of the
NAACP, who spoke to the council and gave
members a wake-up call.
“He said there was a lot of trouble on the
horizon because the closest relationship
between blacks and the white community
was the Jewish portion,” Cohn says.
“They claimed they were being
discriminated against by Jewish business
owners.
They weren’t being hired; they weren’t
being promoted. I mean, Jews were
discriminated against by the rest of the
community. You’ve got to remember as
the Jewish community moved from the
lower east side, up Oakland and crossing
Woodward and on into Linwood and
Dexter, as they emptied out, the black
community came in.”

BLACKS, JEWS AND HOUSING
Other significant issues included
employment, affirmative action, quotas,
even a lack of black doctors on staff at Sinai
Hospital, originally founded to serve Jewish
patients. Housing was also a major concern.
“In 1967, prior to the riots, there were
black-Jewish relationships organizationally,
individually — and there were tensions,”
Cohn recalls. “In 1967, you had housing
tensions, the problem of blacks moving into
a neighborhood and whites moving out.
“There was a rule of thumb, so to speak.
If an apartment building exceeded 30 per-
cent black, it would soon be 100 percent
black — that was the tipping point. There
were problems with race busting. In other
words, real estate agents would try and stir
up activity, particularly, as I recall, west of
Livernois … less expensive housing. Blacks
would move in and then they would try and
panic whites to sell.”
The Jewish Community Council and oth-
ers made desperate attempts to try to stop
white flight.
In her book Metropolitan Jews: Politics,
Race and Religion in Postwar Detroit,
Temple University history professor Lila
Corwin Berman recounts the council’s pub-

This flyer was created by the Jewish
community to help stop white flight from
Detroit.

Leonard N. Simons Jewish Community Archives: Jewish Community
Council Records, Box 68, Folder 1, Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of
Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University

lic campaign against panic selling.
“A flyer distributed door-to-door and
reprinted in local newspapers, asked
readers a series of aggressive questions,
starting with the flyer’s title: ‘Neighbor,
Where Are You Running To?’” she writes.
“The text continued, ‘Why not wait until
you meet your neighbor before you judge
him? … Are you being panicked by some
unscrupulous real estate dealers? Are you
going to sacrifice your life savings because
of a lot of unfounded rumors by men who
will profit by it?’”
The flyer, on file in the Leonard N.
Simons Jewish Community Archives of the
Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor
and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University,
closes with the bold and underlined
statements: “So, don’t do anything foolish!
The old neighborhood where you raised
your children and made your friends is still
the best located in our city. So why run,
neighbor?”

JEWISH MIGRATION CONTINUES
Published reports made it clear Jewish
businesses were not specifically targeted
during the 1967 Detroit riot, but, in the
aftermath, the community’s migration
north and west, first to Oak Park and
Southfield, continued.
“City Restored to Sanity; Firm Action
Ends Rioting; Community Aids Sufferers”
was the headline emblazoned across the
front page of the July 28, 1967, edition of
the Detroit Jewish News. The cover story
described the unrest this way:
“There is near-unanimous conclusion
that the rioting that started on Sunday was
not a race incident but the work of gangs of

continued on page 16

14 July 28 • 2016