Poo& SiTHE MICHIGAN DAILY Saturday, July 23,~i ) DETROIT '67: Memory-searing holocaust Part One-DETROIT, 1967 By KEITH B. RICHBURG It began in the pre-dawn hours of July 23rd, a decade ago. The Sabbath day. Temperatures reached a weekend high somewhere in the 80's, and temp- ers were at a boiling point. Just weeks earlier, rumor had hit the streets that a 12th street prostitute had been murdered by Detroit Police vice- squad officers, a rumor never substan- tiated. AT ANY RATE, Sunday, July 23rd, 1967 was the wrong-time for the twelve officers of the 10th precinct to stage a routine raid on a neighborhood "Blind Pig," an after-hours gambling spot for ghetto Blacks. The bad timing also coupled with the hand of fate that Sunday morning. In- stead of the usual 30 people netted in such busts, the twelve officers arrested some 80 patrons, and back-up wagons had to be called. Says Ms. Ray Girardin, widow of the then-Detroit Police commissioner, "It was a raid and it just took a little too long. They took too long getting the peo- ple in the wagon. A CROWD HAD GATHERED at the corner of 12th Street and Clairmont and as their numbers grew, so did their hostility. United States Congressman John Con- yers thinks the police themselves added to the crowd's anger. "It was clearly precipitated by illegal police activity," says Congers. "If the police hadn't thrown women down the stairs when they raided that blind pig it wouldn't have happened." , Within minutes after the last police car left the scene, came the first re- ports of fires being set, and store win-f dows being broken. By 9:30 that morn- ing, all available units of the DPD were ordered into the 12th Street area; The FBI, state police, and prosecutors of- fices were notified. By 11:00, Congress- man Conyers, representative of the dis- trict, was atop a car hood trying to dissuade the mob by speaking through a bullhorn. CONYERS -RECALLS, "There was clearly the anger and frustration of be- ing left out of a system that had no use for them. "I didn't look at it and say 'Gosh, this is a riot - it could last a week,' " Conyers said. Reports of the uprising spread faster by word-of-mouth and ghetto telephone contact than by the media, which was on the scene almost instantly. Within hours of the initial disturbance the up- rising had spread north of Clairmont, as far west as Grand River Avenue, and all the way south to West Grand Blvd. ' BY 7:00 P.M., under the order of Governor George Romney, National Guardsmen were on Detroit's streets. The following day brought no let-up as it had just a year earlier when rain averted a potential riot on Kercheval on the city's East side. Now, the riot of 1967, in full-scale, moved east of Wood- ward. And as the riot spread outward from its original confines, so began the fierce sniping battles on both sides of Woodward. The second day, Monday, also brought in President Lyndon Johnson's personal envoy, Cyrus Vance (now Secretary-of State). Vance surveyed the scene and decided to cancel Governor Romney's plea for Federal troops. THE STORY OF Federal troops could be called a prime example of bureauc- racy in action, even in the heat of a crisis. The first request was made on Sunday, only hours after Detroit erupt- ed. Not until Wednesday was the 82nd Airborne Division deployed under the command of General John Throckmor- ton. Even when troopers had occupied the city the General ordered no Federal paratroopers east of Woodward Avenue, leaving the most intense area of riot- ing to the younger, inexperienced Na- tional Guardsmen. During no other time was the guards inexperience more tragically depicted than in the Tanya Blanding incident. Responding to sniper fire on 12th Street near Euclid, near the site of the original insurrection, a guard batallion sprayed the window of a corner apartment with gunfire, killing four-year-old Tanya Blanding. AND IN THE same manner Tanya Blanding personifies all that is tragic in violence, the Algiers Motel incident re- veals that which is the most disgust- ing'- the basest instincts of man un- leashed during times of crisis. The Algiers Motel at Woodward and Virginia Park was a one-story transient inn, frequented by the world of prosti- tution and drugs. At pre-dawn Wednes- day, July 25, troopers found the bodies of three black males in a rear annex of the Algiers. Seven other patrons had been sadistically beaten. A week later, Officers Ronald August, Robert Paille, and Donald Senak of the Detroit Police Department were charged with murder. THE 'OFFICIAL' END of the 1967 riot is a matter of debate, but by most accounts, peace was restored the Sun- day after the eruption, although the Guard would not vacate the city until the next wekend. The toll for Detroit, however, was costly indeed. - The Motor City, once considered a "model city" for having avoided the tragedies of Watts and Newark, had just *experienced the most destructive up- heavel of civil disturbance in the 20th century. In the aftermath, 43 were dead, some 7,000 injured. Over 40,000 fires had been set, and strips of once proud shop- ping districts lay gutted. The cost was estimated at $22 million, but Detroit suffered a cost that could not be meas- ured on the monetary scale, a loss of prestige she is still fighting to recover a decade after 1967. most destructive civil disorder in American history-a five 43 lives and cost nearly $22 million in damages. sed as "social criminals and misfits," their campaign mere- ly "another ploy in the sixty- year-old U. S. capitalist-imper- ialist policy'.. ."It In any case, argues the CP, Look Homeward, Jimmy Car- man rights question is found America is so corrupt and deca- ter: The State of Human in this recently printed 67- dent, that we have no right to Rights, U.S.A. page booklet. give lessons in ethics to Cum- Prepared by: The Communist A polemic effort like Look munists" with our own "putrid Party, U.S.A./June, 1977 Homeward might have served system stinking up the atmos- a very useful purpose in to- phere." By MATTHEW BERKE day's troubled America. It Look Homeward presents an might have stood as an import- image of modern America HE American Communist ant statement on the need for which is somewhere in-between Party, unlike its Western democratic and humane social- the Great Depression of the European counterparts, has al- ism as the basis for a just so- 1930's and Devil's Island. It ways followed the Moscow ciety. seems as though hardly any- "line." Throughout the current Unfortunately, however, CP body escapes the misery of the human rights controversy, in 'ack writers churned out no 'eeming slums or unsafe and which President Carter has giv- more than a piece of loud de- low - paying factory jobs. The en public support to Russian magoguery, complete with his- only people taken care of are dissidents, the American CP torical prevarications, unsub- "a tiny handful of profit swol- nas stood firm in its support of "tantiated facts, and shocking- )en monopolists." American all Soviet policies. ly bigotted one-sidedness. elections are a "fraud" and They have, in fact, turned ree speech is a "myth." the tables on President Carter, THE RUSSIAN dissidents, There is so much exaggera- accusing him of perpetuating whose plight has been the spark tion and distortion here, that human rights violations in the of the present controversy, are one might seriously ask who US while using fabricated in- given short shrift in the CP - the CP wrote this book for. justices in the USSR to divert statement. There is too much Indeed few Americans, includ- attention from his own domes- 'umping on the US to give their ing many people on the left, tic problems. The CP's most struggle much discussion. The would fail to be offended by concise statement on the hu- dissidents aie blithely dismis- Look Homeward. Of course there is some un- deniable truth laced through- out this whole book - the in- excusable persistence of pov- erty, for example, or the il- tegal and repressive practices of the FBI. But all of these problems are already being dis- cussed and combatted in -the US, albeit inadequately and of- ten insincerely. THE MAIN POINT here, however, is that Looking Home- ward adds virtually nothing to a constructive discussion of so- cial problems - except per- haps a touch of hysteria. But the most courageous, yet predictable, aspect of Iook Homeward is its praise for the Soviet system, as a positive model to contrast against the US. Page after page, the CP statement rails against FBI "dirty tricks" and duplicity. No freedom - loving American would fail to share the same indignation. Hopefully, however, they. would not seek to, remake their government after the So- viet system, where KGB agents do not have to practice dirty 'ricks if they want some one to lose their job or their lib- erty. The KGB can just order it done. One could go on and on point- ing out similar examples of hypocrisy in Look Homeward. In the end, though, it would probably be an exasperating and nseless effort - one in whic the critic might sound as narrowly partisan as the CP propagandists. The really important thing to be said about this document is that it represents the pro-Mos- "ow Communist line on the question of human rights. That line, sadly, will probably do nothing to advance the cause of human rights anywhere. Have a flair for artistic writing? 11 you are interest- ed in reviewing poetry, and msic or writing feature stories anout the drama, dance, tlm arts: Contact Arts Editor, c/o The Michigan ttaily.