Welcome to this panel. I will introduce our panel. We will look forward to the responses with you in the audience for a broader conversation. First we will have beth hates. F is a professor in the department of africanamerican studies at Wayne State University. Excuse me. Departmentis a professor at Wayne State University. She is the author of two books. Porters s pullman the politics of black america. 19141917. Her second book is, the making of black detroit in the age of henry ford, 1920 1945. She is currently completing another book on detroit titled, black detroit and the promise of america, 1940 11970, which she is coauthoring with timothy hs. Awill have michael fellow in the michigan test in the of egalitarianism metropolis at the university of michigan. He is currently working on a manuscript entitled, wildcat of the stritch streets, which examines Police Reform and postwar detroit alongside social organizations. We will have Heather Thompson. Heather is a strain on the faculty of university of michigan in the department of afro studies come in the department of history, and the residential college. Her recent look blood in the water, the attica prison uprising in 1971 and its legacy has just been awarded a prize in american history. This book prize and a j surprise it was also a finalist for the National Book awards and is currently a finalist for the soon to be announced Los Angeles Times book prize and history. Attica was also named on the 14 best books for 2016 including those supplied by the new york times, newsweek come out and the boston globe. Detroit inbook on the election of 1960 the 1967 development rebellion. This one has just been released with no instruction by Cornell University press. Next will be taking elma cryer. Danielle is an awardwinning author book at the darkened of the street, race command resistance. Is an associate professor of history at Wayne State University and is working on it about the lg is murders and trade. I give you the order run. Beth first, mike second, Heather Thompson fourth. Please welcome beth bates. [applause] thank you. I want to thank you all for doing all you had to do to make it here for one of the first panels of the first session of the oah. The four of us are going to take different text tests as we take on the rebellion of 1967. I will start by looking at its roots. For one thing that set detroit apart from other urban areas exploded during the 1960s, were its roots, which were very deep. That is what i am going to argue the unique feature about detroit, and influenced the nature of the rebellion in detroit. Thethe rebellion during 1960s before the rebellion, journalists looking at the detroit also thought there was something that sets the city apart. The National Press raised to try to come calling in a model city for its progressive race relations. That assessment was based on the biracial coalition of liberals that throughout one mayor for targeting africanamericans and his war on crime and floated in another mayor. , a city councilman at the time and a longtime activist, said wait a minute. Warning the public, not to take too much and make too much of the quote, bright, attractive, well publicized face of the biracial liberal alliance with the new mayor. Serious dangers he warned, lurked beneath the surface where they could not be readily seen. Kind of like the other 9 10 of an iceberg. Danger, the on one influence the raised expectations had on a generation whooung black activists supported whether they were actual participants or fellow travelers. The expectations i am referring dating back roots before the rebellion on black who left the jim crow south between world war i and world war ii found work at ford motor company. This was starting in the late teensearly 20s. They chose to try for one reason. That a job at mr. Fords company was the ticket. That even black men could get an equal place equal opportunity in the modern industrial economy. The reason . Henry ford rejected the notion that better jobs were for white men only, hiring africanamericans across by the thousands across the economic occupational sector. To theord came closer other large any private corporation between world war iworld war ii, doing so two decades before gm and chrysler were able to match his opportunity. Black supporters felt they had won the lottery. In many respects, they had. Well some america could like men workers,ed as skilled tool and die workers, and get a job in modern industrial economy . But in detroit you could at ford motor company. Unprecedented policies not only raised expectations of africanamericans about what was alsoble in america, but for laid the foundation anchoring those raised that ford had to civil rights unionism, the belief that a labor oriented civil rights agenda provided a means,o commit a viable for the promise of economic and racial democracy. The 1920s and 30s were heady times for black detroiters as they navigated away as pioneers across this new economic landscape. We see the potency of these raised expectations and how strong it was when it was passed along to the next generation. Those born in the 1940s and detroits. General gordon baker junior was one of those brought up on the promises and expectations that were initially raised in the interwar. His profile is representative of many black activists, men and duringwho came of age the late 50s, early 60s. His father worked in the Auto Industry the home revolved yourethe church and union. The morality taught in the church overlaps with that of the civil rights you fast by the uaw. Most autofamily, like working families, attended union picnics and social events. Grew up feeling included in secure within this integrated union family they lived in. They think union has there back and that they would always be able to get a job at the auto plants. , when50s change that under Walter Reuthers programs of the United Auto Workers shifted from emphasizing civil rights unionism, and turned into a program of bet bread and butter unionism. Decided pensions, plans, and Health Benefits at the expense of democracy. Postwar structural changes meanwhile in the uaw structural changes itself, not in the companys, Auto Industry meanwhile delegated power to local Union Officials and Regional Directors postworld war ii that limited the ability of the uaws fair ableices department to be to initiate investigations into suspected racial inequalities on the shop floor. While workers who sought to maintain the color line regarding issues like seniority and job upgrading, could do an in run around the unions rules in the meantime. They can run around union rules because of the shift in terms of who has power and where it was, was, was, was, granted. They could do a shift around the unions rules for fair practices by trotting out the locals right to local autonomy. Which they consider to be sacred. , the youngerward generation increasingly turned their attention away from the union and toward black freedom struggles across the country. And around the world. The munching on my emmett till in 1965, a conference in indonesia in 1955. The montgomery bus boycott says well. By the time the general and his generation finished high school in the late 1950s, recession had hit the Auto Industry hard. World cradled the expectations and dreams of Young Detroiters was crumbling. The new reality that they faced bys perhaps best illustrated the unemployment figures represent black male unemployment versus white male between 19501960. Unemployment in 1960 was 6. 1 , down 4 10 of 1 from what it had been in 1950. Thats for white males. Like male owner unemployment 1960, which was up 6. 5 from what it had been in 1950. Another fact about these figures does this does not this aggregate black youth. We havent done this yet from the black total total for black male employment. Had it done so, it is looking like it would have roughly been for black youth, around 30 in 1960. Work in the Auto Industry and Union Membership no longer represented the great leap forward that it had for their parents, the parents of this younger generation. The hopes that they were weaned on work just as they were coming of age. So alienated and frustrated, young black detroiters found movingtive visions for forward. They were unemployed or underemployed, they have lots of time in their hands to explore vast networks of places where young people gathered, seeking answers, asking questions, pondering alternatives. There were reading like the one held a jamaican grace home. Classesrms, lectures of. Byday nights were reserved the time we get to the early listening to robert broadcast called, ready a free dixie chemistry from cuba. Those broadcasts connected what was going on in the United States, places like mississippi. Going on in the larger world. Very powerful. Reverend Robert Albert clegg messages which criticized had a very powerful critique of the black middle class numeral alliance what appealed to him to true increasingly large groups of young people to his. Hurch his messages resonate has resonated. His illustrated news, a bimonthly newspaper he put out was not only a knowledge for black nationalism and trusted sources for analyzing the citys problems in education, jobs, and police and community relation. By the time we get to 1963, fewer and fewer young blacks trusted car companies. Union, the white establishment, or the black middle class. But they were beginning to trust themselves. Under the halo of optimism in , theit for the rebellion biracial liberal uaw alliance was not listening seriously to the frustrations of young activists who had grown up expecting so much more than a second class seat on the freedom train. Is city was a powder keg expectationsaised turned into hopes for young black activist and thank you. On, thenother followup ok, thank you. Ok. Im going to shift gears now, a bit. To introduce, the scholarship of professor robin spencer, who was scheduled to be part of our roundtable but had to cancel unfortunately at the last minute. What follows is a summary of. Emarks professor spencer sent to us and her could in her current work she is tracing the development i will have to read this because it is not my work. Tracing the development of an International Component and the radicalism in the earlymid1960s. The working titles of her book is quote, to build the world a new. Politics andism the movement against the vietnam war. Baker and many of his andeagues on the activist radical front increasingly radical front, is an important figure in her investigation, between 1963 where i left off a baker ago and 1965, increasingly espoused a black operation politics that overlapped with international struggles. The seed for thinking about struggles of his generation and a larger context was planned by robert williams. Its robert and mabel williams, robert williamss wife in the radio free dixie broad casts , which were connecting struggles, not only in the United States, but connecting them to other similar struggles throughout the world. In 1953, baker and his activist friends, many of them who were sitting in and taking classes at a university, formed a group a cold, which means freedom in swahili. One important thing about this group represents how young globally were thinking , while acting locally. By the challenges of their brothers and sisters in the congo, south africa rhodesia for so long, for selfdetermination. Them. Aw common cause with and their international as international activists. As they worked in the choice fighting housing discrimination, educational agent inequalities, police brutality, they thought of themselves as part of a global struggle, no longer alone. In 1964, after spending about 2. 5 months in cuba, bakers political agenda was broadened considerably. By 1965, he becomes one of the first draft resisters in the United States. Resisting the call to fight in the vietnam war war. When he responded publicly to that call in resisting it, he was looking at it through an antiimperialist lens. His stand was not just therefore against u. S. Involvement in vietnam, but imperialistic throughout the world, including a 12th street in detroit, michigan. This is a brief snapshot of robin spencers work. This will hopefully contribute to the larger conversation we have a few minutes. Her contribution reminds us of the importance of framing the increasingly radical activism of thatblack detroiters emerged in this midlater part of the 1960s, putting it into an international context, framing it in an international context. Alienated from the world they had been raised in, they saw themselves increasingly as part of a Global Network hoping to make not just insurance trite, but the whole world anew. Thank you very much. [applause] ok. First of all thank you very much for organizing this panel. On which i am to participate. I like the idea that there were beginning to trust themselves. That really connects with what im examining, which is the youngence of a city that people have met city both before and after the riot as well as during the events of 67. Actions produce dreams and ideas, not the reverse. Restaurantsrcent revoked describe the paris commune. To produce new dreams and ideas myself parisian workers. Perhaps the most significant of these is what ross calls a lived experience of quality and action. It was that lived experience that connects the other was distant events of the paris communal to detroits own insurrection and 19 six 1967. Those days were a lived experience of a holiday. They changed how collective traders thought of their city, how they thought of themselves, even how they thought about the future. Before discuss those genetic transformations, i will like to contextualize how black people in spirit thats pretty before the uprising. Juvenilele comes from justice. In detroit, young peoples experience of the city was shaped james lincoln, the traits wont Juvenile Court judge from 1960mid1970s. Hasdministrator of the called a liberal law and order, which consisted of reforms intended to purge racial bias from the administration. Part of themportant nations cold war political calculations. Things begin to change is a movement emerged in the north to take on that region in the mid1960s. Itd been easy to keep them separate to northern urban liberals, the north had liked liquids, south had black civil rights protesters as well as legal segregation in the form of jim crow. After 1960 five it appeared to lincoln and people like him that the north had acquired more black delinquents. The emergence of militant movements for social policy in the north challenge this. When this happens liberal policy makers began to conflate those as a couple of examples of a progression before and after these things happen. By 1964, lincoln ordered the release of 3 00 of a group of juveniles arrested during a picket organized by the naacp. They consider those arrests quote, a serious abuse of the rights and dignity sees of these people. By relating that releasing them lincoln hoped to avert the controversy of the Police Department that liberals often accused of accusing bringing in officers from the south. With the emergence of massive urban disturbances, lincolns position change. Following a competition between imagery Multiracial Group of residents and ministers and workers tied up to carry an eviction lincoln complains quote, the question of what is right and wrong is no longer stable. Theoln was incensed that ministers involved quote, openly defied the law and police. Delicacy was a mirror of the adult population. Ithout proper leadership was Little Wonder that these were becoming increasingly wayward. Observing a deserving trend of protest that defines the law and exasperated, lincoln concluded quote, the no longer is any such thing as respectable poor people. Perhaps the most telling incident in the evolution of his views the care occurred across the street from where he resided. Official fromocal one of detroits World Property programs acquired a home from a local businessman and created a clubhouse for what was once quote, one of the toughest of the predatory gangs in detroit innercity. Arson saw the clubhouse as an opportunity to convince these the areas and people to go straight. Three weeks after a profile of the groups Reform Efforts appeared in a local newspaper, tensions emerged between lincoln and another. In the aftermath of this positive coverage, lincoln insinuated to local papers that the opening of the clubhouse coincided with a resin represents a handle some in the coup juvenile parking lot. Club members responded with an insinuation of their own. I quote. There are some people across the street that wear white collars and think they got a little class and are better than some people, and the members of the krakow club these are people that work bluecollar jobs Juvenile Court employees expressed as tension themselves in a petition they circulated. Technically it read, it may be true that some of the roots of this group may have been infringed upon, but they continue and turn this same group has infringed on the rights of lawabiding citizens in this area. Here Court Employees admit that their accusations are the also invoke therell presumed rights to freedom from fear. A right that was so central to and order. Surveillance was the answer. After members of the krakow club were arrested for allegedly just Detroit City Council agreed to the local war on poverty affiliate, that program established in agreement with the Michigan Department of corrections to quote, from five supervision to organizations like the krakow club or it is lincoln response before the uprising in detroit had happened. When detroit happened in 1967, lincoln ratchets up this surveillance, begins to corresponding with officers to conduct surveillance on that young people in the citys high schools that were expressing black power sentiment as they were getting more organized. This was important to lincoln because he saw education as central to the rehabilitative framework that he was proposing. The fact that high schools are being plagued by this was very disturbing to him. Experiencesegory of related to how people experience the city before the uprising those that accompanied the transgressions of the citys racial. I conducted with Charles Rudolph, a vietnam veteran, and the participants in the citys later formal economy, its clear the unspoken racial boundaries were strictly enforced. I used to be driven down the street rudolph told me not doing any, and police would give you a ticket for nothing. When you pay the ticket, the whole line was all black. Its just a line running out of the office. The cash registers overflowing. The campanale many bad drivers. Rudolph called this corruption. We might give it as a form of lease brutality. Though this experience go abroad and leave no marks it was infertility that followed black to wherever they appear in public. Not long after the smoke cleared in 1967 a series of hard it appeared called, the people beyond 12 street. Twelve street the epicenter of the uprising. It interviewed a lot of the participants. The headline of one article was, mental attitude of police is called art of brutality it read, the celtic singer but most negroes the main cause of writing is more into plus an arbitrary grousing and frisking and beatings in the night. It is an attitude, a state of mind found individually and collectively. This attitude might included policemen who gives a white and a friendly wave and ignores amy wrote, the article said, or include prostitution and other instances were allowed to flourish in black neighborhoods, Something Like residents couldnt help but observe. Of the over 400 people interviewed agreed that the Police Stopped and searched cars unnecessarily. An additional incident, rudolph told me about driving to mt. Clemens as part of a black one just on club. He was going to arrange to shoot. Backts in his car, driving to detroit, gets pulled over, confiscate his gun, his watch. When officers wheres the watch at the precinct house. He gets the watch back at the two confiscate his gun. Instances like these give us pause when we considered effective segregation. The region prided itself on its absence aggregation but as the streets of pointed out segregation in housing and education and employment often emerge as support. Reality that the black Freedom Movement in the north sauce to expose. Gardens tetramer tonight 65 after the first of these urban insurrections emerged in the wonder is that there have been so few. Detroit changed the suppressive experience of the city for black people. To give a sense of this i will turn now to an interview conducted for the free press series, with an anonymous part of some detroit insurgency interviewed thereafter who describes how they felt him before and during his participation. He talks about what it was like to attend and after hours unlicensed drinking spot. Said, waspig he grand. Were delighted to be up there with your friends. It was like a big family reunion. Nobody would bother anybody. It was just talk and having fun. Socials one of those spaces of black workingclass detroit in which it was one of the social spaces in which over 80 people were celebrating the return of vietnam with two back black veterans that voice intruded on july 23, 1967, sparking the uprising. For the person interviewed is talking about that when he described seeing a black person being dragged out during an interview. To me it was horrible. You never see white policeman pulling white men out like that it left a deep impression on him. This person then describes participating in the looting. Everybody wants down 12 streets they broken the stores and everything. I followed the crowd because i was feeling good. With the is a contrast way his father had experienced the city. Said, used to try to borrow money to get us through school, come up to me and say, i am sorry that he couldnt give me any money. I is to go to school have bragged and indecent. The samebed watching pair pants night after night to wear to school the next day. He also describes the effect this had on his father. Sometimes that she told the interviewer youd get very angry. Moneymes if he would make he would come in and say, lets go to a show or Something Like that. Most of the time he was very frustrated and angry. In this when this person looted clothes during the operating uprising, he said what, i fold proud of what i did. I was proud of the fact that i was a negro. He continued. A fella goes the first a firstclass citizen. This is important in thinking about what the uprising meant. In 191560 8 two chooses a date several months afterward when a maker of artificial flowers took the podium at another Public Meeting and addressed the crowd as citizens. Wars, nors endless is honest people, both of which were ticket typical at those meetings. But as citizens as a nation that it is said only in the minds of the people assembled, who were breaking the law to assemble. When they were addressed in this way, the people cheered. They were citizens of the nation of the future. In the streets of detroit less than a century later, young black men described looting the stores in his neighborhood in much the same way as a freedom in which a place and nation opened up for the first time. Causes were he said quote, the people got tired of waiting. In just a matter of a few days they got all that they wanted. I also had the privilege of interviewing a person called, detroits reticle. Im speaking of general baker who needs no introduction. Above all else he told me one anecdote that stuck with me. It was about returning to the factory after the rebellion. Baker said, people were different. The difference was visible in their style, enormous afros, also a piece of jewelry that couldve existed nowhere else but was ubiquitous in detroit. The shot so many bullets baker recalled, we picked up was picked 50 caliber machine gun casings and drilled holes in them. Put rawhide string on them, use them as necklaces. That was another difference of rebellion made visible. Another was the relations of the factory. The guys baker told me, they walk into the plant with their hair standing that high, bullets on the neck. Scared the foreman to death. There was a Different Group people coming back in there than there was when they left. They were not taking it long. Thats the difference the rebellion made. The experiences of general baker, the anonymous participant in those events in july the person interviewed extensively, the hundreds of people who attested to the practice of counting in policing or in housing or other areas. The experiences of Charles Rudolph and the countless other juveniles as they crossed the citys unspoken unspoken racial boundaries. The detroit uprising changed that. It gave people the opportunity to experience a quality and action, to destroy what a contemporary observer is going, ceaseless social regulation of charles rilke observed ticket ticket since i last black faces extending out the door. The difference was experienced determinatea set of inheritances from the past but is something contingent, their created as shape quality was a live experience. Thank you. [applause] i moved my slides down. So thats it would work. I am glad you noticed. Thank you, everybody, for being here today. Thank you for including me in this great panel, its really exciting. Aboutriting a new book Algiers Motel murders. Im interested in how one singlestory during one insightsg week brings to this much longer and more complicated history that both mike and beth have touched on today. Let me tell you about the algiers. In the Early Morning hours of july 26 1967, a flurry in intoit Police Rushed the Algiers Motel in the Virginia Park neighborhood of detroit after they heard reports of sniper fire nearby. The algiers will motel was a what john hersey her she called a reputation among police for narcotics and prostitution. That night because of the uprising and the citywide curfew, all kinds of people sought refuge, including teenage boys, the dramatics, doowop and a returning vietnam veteran named robert greene. The National Guard warned officers by the guard melvin to sikhs and three Detroit Policeman model robert pele, and david seneca played a central role in what one witness later called quote, a night of horror and murder. Midnight, police and soldiers tore through the ran backotel, they closets and drawers, turned beds and tables over, shut into us, beat guest with their rifle butts and disparate efforts to find quote, the sniper. When they completed the search without finding any weapons, they ordered all of the guests to line up in the first floor lobby. One of the young men at the hotel that night was 17 euros carl cooper who was on his way dumpsters being chased by the police when another officer accused him of being the sniper. According to a witness, cooper said, take me to jail. I dont have any weapons. This was just before an officer fatally shot him. Police herded the other guests of downstairs into the lobby where they undoubtedly had to walk around coopers corpse. They were told to face the east wall with their hands over their heads. Of what the beginning john her she called, the desk in. The details are convoluted and unclear. Memories lost forever to time committed disparate wretch of dutch recollections of survivors. This is the just of what we know. Policemanhose detroit come august, paley, senate, wanted to know who have begun, which one of them were the snipers, and who is doing the shooting . Everyone there denied that they had done many shooting, but they have any weapons, or anything. Police officers beat them with rifle buttsand leaving gashes on the victims heads and back. Police officer quote struck a negro boy so hard that it staggered him down and sent him to his knees. Violence was not only racialized, but also sexualized. A military policeman part of a contingent of guards and paratroopers on the scene later said he said Detroit Police officer quote, stick a shock in between the legs of one male and threatened to blow his testicles off. Karyn malloy and julie herself, the two white women there that that policemand tore off their dresses, push wall,faces against a smashed the goods is full of their back. According to one witness, one of the officers hold down one of the girls dresses and said why wh y youo fox fm got to f them . One by one police pulled unarmed men into different rooms, beat them and interrogated them at gunpoint. Davisdavis rodrick testified that an officer shot pushed into the floor and said i will kill you if you move. Another officer pulled Michael Clark out of the line, took him into a separate room, roughed him up, pushed him to the ground, and fired into the ceiling and told him to stay there and be quiet. Truman davidson expanded dpd officer ronald august and shot them said, you shoot one. Now the guys in the lobby didnt that some of it and other officers were not actually killing these young men. When ronald august at the shotgun, he wrote in the confession five days later, now comes the tragic part in the confession he describes the circumstances under which he killed over colored 19 years old. When it in this confession which he did with the help of his attorney, he said powered lunged at him try to take his gun and he has no choice but to defend himself by fatally shooting this teenager. That confession was at least the second one he had given. The first one that he wrote without an attorney present he didnt say anything about selfdefense. Even j edgar hoover, the director of the fbi, said in the files after reading the official statements of Police Officers involved in the Algiers Motel case, they are quote for the most part untrue and were undoubtedly fended furnished in an effort to cover their activities in Nature Series of events. By the time police, left the algiers about 30 minutes after they arrived, Aubrey Pollard, carl cooper, and fred temple, had been killed. When homicide detectives arrived a few hours later, their initial report stated that three of men had apparently been shot to death in an exchange of gunfire. And the detroit news followed with the story the next morning saying, these deaths were the result of the gunfight, and sniping from the roof and windows on all floors of the algiers kept the police and guardsmen pinned down for several minutes before the firing stops. Tot story didnt feel right many observers, especially witnesses. Journalists from the Detroit Free Press especially kurt lucky and Barbara Stanton one reply if there was a gunfight, no gun had been found on the seat scene, and whether were only a handful of bullet holes which pointed into the interior of the motel. Kenny medical Examiners Office reported that each victim had been shot by 12 gauge shotguns at close range and a nondefensive postures. Witnesses there that night and managed to escape told anyone who would listen that the police committed straight up murder. It was this testimony forward passes and from the newspaper reporters that compelled congressman john conyers to notify the Justice Department. s knew that local people pleas for help and reports of police protective would note go nowhere in the system. He had seen too much. He called john doerr in the Justice Department and demanded an fbi investigation. Because of these efforts, brave journalists, witnesses, and one steely eyed congressman. Three officers in the private guard were finally charged in the death of Aubrey Pollard. And carl cooper, as well as in a conspiracy against their civil rights. Dismissal the quick of all but one murder charge set off a Major Campaign in the black community for justice. Beense so many people had liberated, abuse, frisk, just, and railroaded by police and the model citys justice system, no one honestly believe justice was possible. Distrust of the judicial system ran so cheap that local black activist held with the call the peoples tribunal one month after the shooting at reverend albert cleggs shrine in the black madonna, where the officers were charged with murder. Hundreds of local activist showed up on a jury set none other than rosa parks whose own experience documenting and investigating racialized and sexualized violence in alabama made her choice. It reminded everyone that this kind of silence was not just limited to the south but was a national problem. While the peoples tribunal found the officers guilty of murder and indicted the systematic abuse of police of black citizens by police in detroit, there were at least two real trials in this case, both of which were moved out of detroit to all white towns and were judged by a white juries. Trails, one in 1960 and for murder, ronald august, and the other for conspiracy to deny the segment civil rights, which brought all the officers together as defendants both ended in acquittals. That was not surprising at the time. Motherhood watched both trials with increasing hopelessness said the jurys decision was quote, the latest phase of a stepbystep whitewash of a police senator Coleman Young who would become detroits future mayor said the decision quote, demonstrates once again that law and order is a one way street. There is no law and order where black people are involved, especially when they are involved with the police. No one was held accountable for the death of fred temple and upper pollard and cart Aubrey Pollard and carl cooper. Also mothers received outofcourt settlements, the money could never replace their sons. He the violence was not limited to one night. While three young men had their lives snatched away, the survivors and family members lived with the memory of the violence in pariss restaurant that followed. For many come a witnesses and their families, the violence that night reverberated for decades. Motelory of the algiers andures the often hidden deniable infrastructure of northern racism and White Supremacy. While Police Harassment and violence may have served as the spark that united the riots in 1967, the truth is the entire system was rotten from to job discrimination to racialized and sexualized violence to the everyday injustices and unequal sentencing in the court and equalitysystem, and and segregation and segregation in the socalled model city was every that is. Once as it was in the south. Maybe it was worse. Because this is still a work in progress for me i will leave you with a feat few thoughts im pondering. One of them is that, i am interested in the aftermath of violence. Aftermath,s in the what happens to the survivors of violence. How does it affect them over time . What about the victims, their families . Not end up when the child was called in the victim is buried. And so anyways filed through sharing im wondering what psychological scars remain, what happens to peoples sense of themselves and the world they live in and the perpetrators of crimes are not held accountable . How does fear it at their sense of security and safety . What else is lost . Aubrey pollard senior told john hershey he lost a son. Said. A son, he theres a magnitude in that simplicity. Bats. T more than his marriage fell apart after the Police Killed his son, he became separated from his other children, they lost daily interactions with their father. Mr. Pollards oldest son in vietnam soldier returned from the battlefield to identify his brothers body at the coroners office, basically had a nervous breakdown. He wound up in a mental hospital. Theres another son gone. Mittens pollard tried to carry on to the best of her ability but her life was forever changed. In a 1967 interview she focuses on arbors art and how talented he was my mentioning again that he won a prize for his painting of a boat. There is more loss, lost , aortunity, talent, futures lost sense of humanity and citizenship is she knew the system was corrupt. In other words, this loss echoes , multiplies khamenei tapes, reemerges. If we pull these threads, ask singleuestions of even a offense during a long and terrible week in detroit, perhaps we can get closer to what irvin painter calls, a fully loaded accounting of White Supremacy and racism. Of the 1960oses rebellion. At the very least, understanding racialized andch sexualized violence function to maintain power and control the helpcan give us tools to us destroy it today. Thank you. [applause] good afternoon. Thank you so much. There are a couple of mics up here. Herea treat it is to be up speaking a new about the detroit rebellion, and getting to hear brilliant scholars doing all this new, new work on detroit which we have needed for a long time. Im so grateful to hear it. I guess what i want to do is kind of maybe offer some musings on the broader project of writing the detroit rebellion. For me, i spent much of the last half of the 1990s thinking about the detroit rebellion, thinking about detroit for the book i wrote called whose detroit politics, labor, brace and a modern american city. For me writing the book was very much a personal journey. I grew up in detroit. College, andy to this was an undergraduate honors thesis, it was about trying to reconcile the city i grew up in with the city everybody in the media was talking about. The city that was a hellhole, the murder capital of the world. It had such disconnect from the city i grew up in as a high school student. For me the first order of business was to really rethink detroits history, not in terms of what outsiders thought, but what but in terms of what the people inside the city had made it and hoped it was. As a scholar that met on to guess a couple of very prominent narratives at the time, which historians will be familiar with. For lack of a better term, the urban crisis argument that there was something had happened to all cities by the 1980s. They had completely collapsed and we were seeking to understand what had happened. Why had cities collapsed so far, why have they completely fallen apart . There was a real question to underlie all this about urban crisis as a crisis of black politics in particular, or black leadership. What was it about cities that it come under black leadership in particular that seemed to collapse. To me that was something i really wanted to write against. Take black politics seriously, but also not just black liberal politics. And toack left politics really rethink what the legacy of black cities were. For me growing up everyone i knew in a position of power in the city of detroit, whether it was the mayor or the teachers or the local banker, everyone was africanamerican in my city. I saw that very differently. Not as a sign of collapse or crisis, but as a sign of enormous empowerment. Telling the story of what it meant to grow up in detroit, what it felt like after the rebellion, i think that was the way people experienced it. I was thinking a lot about detroit but perhaps not for the reasons many might suspect. Not because it is the 50th anniversary that looms this july, or even because i was asked to do a new dictation of addition of whose detroit, but because i felt the better half of the 2000s working on a different issue that has come full circle. The issue of policing and prisons. About 2003 i been consumed to have a sort out how it was the United States came to lock up more people than any other country on the planet. In the last 50 years. Trying to sort out the origin of that term, but with a policy meant for our nations cities, and in particular the already most marginalized communities that were overwhelmingly populated in inner cities. As i began going to places like ferguson and baltimore in chicago at the height of their urban uprisings, and then doing a series of popular pieces about why all these cities were now on fire, why there was so much insurgency in the cities, for me it meant having to sort out in new ways with the connections were between urban rebellion and policing, between policing and mass incarceration, and between mass incarceration and urban rebellion. Has ledactually what me internally profound ways back to detroit and back to the rebellion that rocked the city in july of 1967. It has caused me to think a lot again about why that rebellion happened in the first place. I think this panel has really made clear that the roots of the rebellion were deep. I want to shout out maguire for this deep type shes doing into the Algiers Motel murders. Book,sentences in my 2001 and i just sense they were something so profoundly important about the story. Her book is going to eliminate and is beginning to illuminate that for us. Shout out to Rodney Spencer and our moderator. Their new books have really shown again this kind of deep, deep politics. Notp politics that only made the rebellion perhaps inevitable, but made it a ritually political experience. Really an experience of fundamental participatory democracy, the black politics. Bogs, the the trips that detroiters made to cuba in the 1960s. We are now seeing that rich tapestry thanks to this work. Im very grateful for it. Im also interested personally one of the main arguments i the made in whose detroit, First Edition about why the rebellion started, was one of the time met with not a lot but a certain amount of pushback. It is one that now seems so obvious but it has a lot to do with my history unfolded. I argued at the time that the 1967 rebellion, in addition to being deeply rooted in black politics, was deeply rooted in police brutality. In the hyper criminalization of black spaces in that city. Im really grateful looking back and all this we have now settled that it seems. Yes. Police brutality leads to urban insurrection and leads to a fundamental rethinking of power in cities. Therefore it really infuses politics with a new urgency and a new energy. Of course we know because we have really been schooled in nothing else by this recent explosion in cities like ferguson or baltimore. Interesting because also these recent rebellions have caused me to look back on that first book and realize there was so much i had actually missed. I also argued one of the consequences of the rebellion touches off this white flight and white abandonment of the city. I talked about the consequences of that. Namely one of the quotes is Coleman Young is an summer spent in some respects the cap tain of a sinking ship. Economically. Ping of the city of its tax base and resources meant for detroit. Even though the whole book was about lease brutality and criminalization, i missed the fact that the increasingly impoverished and increasingly isolated black leadership of 1973 andurned after 1970 41 Coleman Young takes office as the new black mayor. Turned in the same way white liberal mayors returning everywhere to the car several state for its resources to solve the ever deepening social crises of poverty in cities like detroit, but i could pick any city in america. Black Political Leadership was political, same liberal Political Tool bag of white Political Leadership was left with. Which was if you want to solve social problems, there are no more resources in health, education or welfare. You get your resources from the carseral state. When Coleman Young moves in as mayor, johnsons war on crime had been in full gear for a full 10 years. There was no money in the scheme of things for housing or for education, in other words investing in the common good. He turns, again like is white, liberal and friendly conservative city counterparts, he turns to dollars for policing. That he to funding would Call Community policing and all kinds of things, but it was trying to solve social problems through the criminal justice system, not through the social welfare system. On that score im deeply grateful to scholars who are now fleshing out this underappreciated relationship between detroit and the war on crime. I daresay this is a relationship that current detroit gentrify years and rebuilders and boosters themselves still miss. That is the extent to which the motor city was completely unmade by mass incarceration, and therefore if we imagine a new detroit, we imagine a new baltimore, imagine a new ferguson, we dont deal with the fundamental things that happened in the wake of rebellions like the detroit rebellion. We will get right back there. How does this relate to wrap up with whats happening today . Cities today are in this is a little humbling. Everyone has painted a grim picture of what detroit looked like, particularly for black detroiters on the eve of the detroit rebellion. Cities today are in a more inere crisis than they were 1967. There is no Great Society that tried to be launched in 1964. The resources that went into a city like detroit between 1964 and 19 67 are completely unimaginable today in a city like ferguson or detroit for that matter. Police brutality, because now the world crime is been waste or 50 years, is worse. Almost hard to imagine. By the way, very similar to it. Aggressive policing on misdemeanor issues. The same kind of thing that led , thee rebellion of 1967 final kind of misdemeanor kind of policing is exactly what led to the death of eric garner. Exactly what led to the death of freddie gray. It is exactly that kind of lowlevel intensive policing. Here we are again and here we are again with similar responses in cities. Why does detroit matter . In closing, detroit matters because if we dont learn from that isreal this time, to say not getting the history wrong, we might end up in a far worse situation than we are now 50 years from now. Just to sum up and reiterate, the detroit rebellion of 1967 matters because winning the full import of ferguson today to resonate. The full import of baltimore, chicago, philly, detroit today to resonate. We dont want to end of year again because we also believed the problem was just housing and equality, or income inequality, or just the lack of schools. All of those are severe, severe problems and matter. If we falsely believe, and i think we have believed this for a long time about the detroit rebellion, that that was the problem as opposed to recognizing it was the problem ultimately of maintaining White Supremacy through the apparatus of excessive are s excessive policing, and if we fail to recognize it is perpetually the careral state used to respond to poverty and maintain racial inequality, we will be here again and again and again. We need to learn from detroit. Community policing was not enough. Just like body cameras today will not be enough. Many stations are not enough. Putting the idea of more police in smaller doses in the community as opposed to finally waking up and understanding the problem is you solve social justice questions or social problems through the carceral state. I think this is an Incredible Opportunity on the 50th anniversary of the detroit rebellion to finally learn and finally listen. Thank you. [applause] now we can invite questions and responses from the audience. Do you just want to jump in . I would love for you to give us any thoughts or reactions first to any of this given your recent work on this. I can. This mic is not working. Here we go. There you go. I can and will put it want to do it i want to see if there are any burning questions from the audience. To do it heather asks and try to elicit responses on the floor so to speak, but the question heather ended on which is implicit in all the presentations is why it is 1967 matter . What is the retrieve detroit rebellion matter . The answer to that are multiple, and the way that the director it goes depends on who is asking and more importantly who was answering. So for scholars of detroit and people from detroit and residents of detroit, the answer is pretty clear. A pretty clear set of answers. The rebellion continues looming large in the citys history, but not only his history. Its understanding of itself and even beyond that peoples conception of how detroit came to what it is now and what type of actions and programs, ideas are appropriate. Thathe rest of the country the direct import, but the detroit rebellion is part of and in some ways the height of the socalled long, hot summer. Push to get johnson to an almost exactly one year from now we will be marking the 50th anniversary of the release of the kerner commissions report. It had the famous line in the prologue that we are now moving towards two societies, one black, one white, separate but equal. A placeholder to that, i will say why was the commission saying that in those terms in 1968 . But back to the prior question about the significance and importance of the detroit rebellion. Narrative which heather referenced, and you can tell in the way she describes it there may be other ways. There was a lot packed into that naming. Metanarrative where she was challenged that narrative where she said her book challenges. 1967 features prominently in that narrative. To put it succinctly, detroits rebellion was called a riot. It initiated the citys downfall. Heathers book and other scholars have critiqued on that. That opened up space for other narratives. I will close by saying another way to understand the history of the detroit rebellion one of its legacies is the political thought and action that led to it and more portly came after it. Importantly came after it. In 50 years there have been a range of organizations and ideas and projects committed to reshaping detroit. Point,s an important important in that regard. I will mention one contemporary matter that the history is leaving. The publication by a group of activists and writers, journalists in detroit. Riverwise. Titled its lead story by local journalist looks at the 50th year. Much of these publications are looking ahead to the next 50 years. Activismcling a lot of thats trying to reshape detroit. If you would like a copy, you can go to the website. Boggscenter. Org. Copy or multiple copies if you want to share in reading groups. The inaugural issue of the magazine entitled riverwise. I thank you for a wonderful panel. Could he speak for a minute about some of the more radical [indiscernible] and throughout it is a little bit of this critique in a global context. What did that at the black freedom dreams coming out of the rebellion that may be parted from politicians is in her hands were tied . What kind of things do you see emerging on the ground in detroit they can be framed im thinking in the background, it provides a alternative geology of colonialism. Thinking about racism on a global scale, are there other ways they are thinking about leading to alternative form of Global Politics . We have one mic here. I think the legacy of 1967 in some ways remains an unfulfilled promise. There are all sorts of organizations they come out and turn towards cadre, Party Building marxism, which general baker was a part of. Thats an important part and im not as when i say sectarian, s not necessarily that is part of it. The thing to meet exciting about 1967 is it opens up the space to think differently about how Society Might be organized. I dont think necessarily people follow through on it. If you think about those organizations that developed this criticism of imperialism, many had deeply problematic internal politics. I have interviewed a lot of people involved with this. They were beating each other. There was ugly internal violence within these organizations. But there were many of them, especially the more violence oriented one number homophobic, patriarchal, that kind of thing. On the one hand the rebellion does open up a space for people the kind of go beyond further be on the politics they had until then that animated these organizations. On the other hand i want to think of it as this idea that an unfulfilled promise. Something that emerges. I guess it is partly because there is all these young people that are totally unaffiliated that just want this notion of equality in action. They want to be taken as equals and the rebellion gives them that sense and allows in the think of the city is belonging to them. Thats another part of it. Can i quickly jumped on the question. Ithink its important and feel remiss because even in my comments i jumped straight to Coleman Young. Is important to note in that space between 1967 when there is a rebellion and when he is elected, actually my entire book focuses on that exact period. It is an extraordinarily rich period of political experimentation, argument, imagination. Organizationsiple that are making that a rich fabric. What i argue is that in that moment ditch work fully up for grabs in a way we have completely lost our imagination about today. The title of the book is whose detroit, meaning whose city is this going to be . That the deliberate choice. After the rebellion, rather than collapsed detroit becomes one of the most contested terrains in american history. You have a vision of the city as a law and order city in the white lens. You have a black left imagination of the city is very complicated. Yes, there are many different threads in trends. Hugely international, and africanist. Pan presencepoint is the is what makes it even possible for Coleman Young to be elected. Detroit sible for it makes it possible for detroit voters to have enough imagination that the system could be something you can own and lead and work with. A vote for young. That ends of being a sad outcome for the city in many respects. But in that moment i think there is a huge imagination for what detroit could have been. Frankly its a mistake to think it died after young. Even though its true that young men the races war on crime and there is massive devastation. The entire east side of the city. One in 22 people under correctional control. That is the legacy of this on the one hand, but stephen says, and we cant let this pass, the other legacy is all of that imaginationolitical after 1967 and before young is a lack lays the groundwork for generations of scholarship. Like the boggs center is one example, of there are multiple grassroot opportunities for detroit that were in that moment after the rebellion. I really appreciate that question. Quickly [indiscernible] sometimes they take it in sometimes they stand up and fight. 1967 was an example [indiscernible] the factors that oppressed people stand up and face their oppressors. Are you talking about after . Today. Or any point in history. Whether in paris or oakland, california for detroit. Im not sure this is an there are think these moments where you have possibilities for change. There are some people willing to risk it all in that moment because of the possibility and the opportunity for justice or for retribution, or four any kind of assertion of ones agency. And then there are moments with the political moment changes and there is no possibility for change. Those opportunities are closed. I think the rebellion of 1967 opened up all these doors. People see that moment and took the chance and used it as an opportunity to express a kind of radical politics and change. You see moments like that throughout history. And then there are moments where that is just less possible. And work ininward their communities and a local organizations and build up internal support for their dreams and hopes and for their childrens futures. Canink people ask when they and when the moment is right act when they can in the moment is right, and some people never act for lots of different reasons. Im not really sure how to answer that. That is my mom answer. She had to apologize for slipping out. Its her daughters birthday. She wanted to make sure we apologized for her. I would kind of answer that by mentioning two books that speak to part of that question and to the previous question as well. Once an upcoming book. On theains a study different trajectories, different revolutionary ideologies and political expressions that emerged in the period before the rebellion and after. B end clay, gracefully Grace Lee Boggs and others. They were thinking how they Work Together intellectually and how they were relying on the figures leading up to these rebellions. Shows this is a rich ground of political activism and ideology in detroit in the early to mid1960s. Grew andee how they they verge in the years after the rebellion. Secondly, there are two upcoming books. The other will be out later this month and i think well have an exhibit. Is a study of the rebellion and its political impact in detroit in the last 50 years. We have a hand here. You are talking about the far left and the revolutionary black said it impact for a while had an impact for a while. It ended up just, you know, dissolving itself. The with the rest of the left did in the later 1960s and 70s. Mentioned james. I was at the university of michigan. I was a graduate student then. We invited james to talk to our course. We had a special course organized by sts in 1969. We had a lecture. We scare the wits out of the university of michigan. James came. He spoke in 1969 about the detroit riots. Sense the organization on a local level that had continued the rebellion somehow. We already got this. He was extremely excited about it. It wasnt wonderful lecture. Watching james was an astounding experience. It was a wonderful thing. Do you know anything about that . You know what his position on all of this was . Anarchist so he believed these things existed. But he seemed to know that they actually did. I was wondering what that was about. First of all, i dont know. I will be imagining what james was just reporting on in terms of his connection with the local level in detroit. Yes, but talking about drum, the league. It could be considered an elephant in the room in a sense. A huge elephant. We have all been talking about general baker. Book is think heathers so important for many reasons. I think it is. Of a fair is a period imitation and everything was a work in progress. I used to tell my student, these young students. All they hear is all this horrible stuff about detroit. The least favorite place for anybody to be. Rebellion, after the detroit was under the global spotlight. That peoplelace referred to because of the experimentation and had connection. People wenetwork of would look to to try to talk about this radicalism, these experimentations. When you say radical, all youre saying in many cases is doing Something Different from the conventional wisdom says you should be doing it. It doesnt really mean he will blow something up. It is thinking. That is what they were Critical Thinking about how people should organize. Make a living and make a life. Those relay critical questions they got explored in every dimension you can imagine. It must of been so exciting to be there as you were at that time. Thats all i think i really want of fraud at this point because we have a time thing. I will end there. One thing that exciting to c. L. R. James. He lighted and talk about this amorphous notion of direct democracy he was a proponent of, a little Informal Networks in something more formal. He mightve been promoting his own personal Organization Called facing reality. Their work on the ground mightve also been a sectarian thing he was doing against the boggs because of that time they had split. [indiscernible] but he was sort of his man in detroit. In any case we are running out of time. I like to say more about james. Would have his argument over time so i apologize to those responsible for maintaining the room. I want to close my thinking our panel. [applause] thanking our panel