ay, July 23, 1977 -T HE M~~~C~ N ~~Y DETROIT '77: Learning to forget j CIOvuu Part II-DETROIT, 1977 By KEITH B. RICHBURG There is a grass median down the center of 12th Street, now called Rosa Parks Blvd. Newly planted trees are held upright by support wires at the curb. On either side of the street, there are only grass lots, some fenced in, others open. The fire-gutted tenements and store- fronts have all been torn down. The rubble of the remains has mostly been carted away - the last visible signs of 12th Street, 1967, are gone. WILLIAM BOND, a resident of 12th and Hazelwood, is disabled now and spends most of his time sitting in the newly constructed city park at the cor- ner of 12th and Clairmont, the site of the first violence a decade ago. "I think 12th got the worst of all. I don't know what would be left from it, 'lessen that old hardware store," Bond said, gesturing south. a "A lot of them old buildings prob- ably needed burning down," he added. "But that wasn't the way to do it." BOND THINKS THE RtIOT of 1967 "could've started from a Blind Pig raid," but, he cautions, "Police brutality, that starts riots too. That's probably some of what it was." Bond remembers the riot days well. "They had National Guard and curfew and shit goin' on." Have things changed since 1967? Is Detroit any better off? "Oh yeah, things got quite a bit better. It's been quite an improvement after the riot." HE HESITATED and said, "Still got room for quite a bit more, though." Another who thinks there is room for improvement is Congressman John Congers, who states flatly that "very little" has changed since 1967, and he cites unemployment in the ghetto as case in point. "We have the same problems that are manifested by having unemployed people, which we aren't doing anything about." CONYERS SAYS any advancement has to come from the Federal level, and he gets in a quick and thinly veiled jab at President Carter; "The post-riot efforts have failed, especially at the Federal level ... Mr. Carter. brought about a setting by which bal- ancing the budget was predominant. We are now busying measuring oil and energy and blackouts." (The recent New York City blackout saw widespread looting in the poor ghet- to areas.) Classically, the President wants to get a report in two weeks on why New York blacked out, instead of making a statement on the underpriviledged lower class." Detroit, 1967, sent a flurry of sociolo- gists and analysts out to find answers - Was it a race riot? To what ex- tent was the Police Department the target of unrest? More importantly, can it happen again? WE NOW HAVE a decade of hind- sight, and at least some of the answers have become readily apparent with the passage of time. Was 1967 a race riot? The answer is a resounding "no," in the sense that 1967 was a far cry from the riot of 1943, when white mobs battled black mobs in the streets. THE 1967 UPHEAVEL was the revolt of ghetto-residents, Black and White, against the Establishment which they- held responsible for their plight and their poverty. The stores looted and the tenements burned, at least at the outset of the uprising, were owned by those "establishment" figures who did not live in the area, but exploited the residents with high prices, high rent, and unfair credit systems. Black store owners were usually by- passed by the plunderers, as most had posted hastily-scribbled signs in their window: "Soul Brother." But perhaps ,no area of the Establish- ment was a more visible target for re- bellion than the Police. And for those civil libertarians searching for a personi- fication of police harrassment, the Al- the Saturday Magazine giers Motel became the stereotype for the racist, oppressive men in blue prey- ing on the poor and the innocent. WHAT MADE the Algiers tragedy, where three Blacks were found mur- dered allegedly by police, the perfect manifestation was that the officers in- volved were so average - young, for- mer boy scouts and camp leaders, a Baptist and two Catholics, all three with Police honors and commendations. Their "averageness" gave credence to the charge that it wasn't the individual officers, but the community at large from which they were recruited that had to be changed. As Ms. Ray Girar- din, widow of the police commissioner of the 60's put it, "let's face it, most of them didn't like Black people." The change has been slow and pains- taking. Detroit now has a Black police chief and a 25 per cent Black force. Residency, which the department is fighting all the way to court, would force the officers to live in the city. But Congressman Conyers warns "We live in a police state that is much lar- ger than who is the police chief in De- troit." He cites police surveillance and harrassment at the pighest levels of law enforcement. "WE HAVE MORE of a police state than we had ten years ago," Conyers says. And it's that police state that makes some, like Conyers, believe that another riot is not possible "What you see is not the potential for a riot as there was in the 1960's," Conyers says, noting that today, even the ghetto dwellers know that another riot would be "very futile." "THERE IS, IN THE Pentagon, a department of urban unrest. They are highly coordinated and prepared for civil riots. It monitors civilian popula- tion center that could explode, usually with large amounts of Blacks," he adds. In the event of another riot, Conyers says, Federal troops would quell the disturbance almost instantly. The basic problems, however, at least to this U.S. Congressman, are still there: "We are still in the same situation that we were in ten years ago." IF THE PROBLEMS are indeed the same, then the people make the onlI marked difference, aside from the land scape itself. The Algiers Motel is no the Desert Inn, and the desk clerk wil shout at you from behind plexiglas: "I don't know anything about the riot.' So is the feeling of most area resi- dents. Either they weren't around at the time, or they simply can't remem- ber. Or simply choose to forget. As William Bond put it, "Almost ever'thing been turned over since then - different people, different ever'thing." There is a new Renaissance Center on the Waterfront of Detroit, and a new stadium is under construction. Wood- ward Avenue, which never saw any of the rioting of 1967, is being converted into a glass-domed mall. Rosa Parks Blvd., however, is still barren, save a few newly planted trees and a grass median and a park. Plans for a shop- ping center are still on the drawing room table, "I don't ,know how long it'll take 'em to build it back 'up," William Bon said. "They did a lot of tearing down in a week or so." Keith B. Richburg is a Daily staff reporter who lives in De- troit.