On January 14, 1967, the Human Be-In took place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate State Park, setting the stage for the Summer of Love. On March 26, in New York City, ten thousand young people gathered for the Central Park Be-In. On November 9, 1967, Rolling Stone magazine published its first issue. American troop levels reached 450,000 in Vietnam. The Beatles had released Sgt. Pepper’s, and Mohammed Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing induction into the U.S. Army.
The Summer of Love didn’t make a stop in Detroit.
Playing the Belle Isle riot on my nineteenth birthday was a turning point for me. It marked the end of my youthful naiveté about the character of the Detroit Police Department and those in authority in general. Witnessing police brutality with my own eyes, seeing the blood, hearing the anguished cries of the young people being beaten mercilessly changed me, and now the same violence was happening across the country. The divisions between my generation and my mother’s were now starkly clear. The way America treated people of color and limited economic means, the war in Southeast Asia, the irrational drug laws and oppressive sexist norms held by the establishment fueled my defiance. A line in the sand had been drawn, and I knew which side I was on.
After the Belle Isle carnage that spring, I’d rented my own apartment on Alexandrine Street in the Cass Corridor for $10 a week. The two-room studio came with its own toilet and a hot plate to cook on. The MC5 had landed the house band gig at the Grande Ballroom, which paid $125 per night. We usually played Friday and Saturday nights, so my share was $50 a week. I thought I had life perfected, but when I got back to my quiet little apartment, I suffered the most intense loneliness. I hadn’t been this alone since I was a little boy on Michigan Avenue, and those memories were too uncomfortable to bear.
I decided I needed a girlfriend. I was intrigued by a very smart and cute Armenian brunette from the neighborhood. Her name was Eve, but everyone called her “Little Chick.” In the beginning, I didn’t take her seriously because she seemed to be playing the role of a naïve adolescent in a young woman’s body. She spoke with an affected, squeaky, childlike tone of voice that put me off.
One day, Eve and another girl stopped in at our rehearsal to pick up Michael, and we got into an argument over a movie. I couldn’t convince her that my take on the film was the correct one, and she displayed a wit and intelligence that knocked my puny ideas out of the park. She understood the characters in the film, the story arc, the meaning of the conflict, and more. I was really out of my league on the subject; I’d had no idea she was that smart. There was a substantial person inside the goofy façade, and I went after her. Fortunately, she liked me, too.
The news reports were predicting a “long, hot summer,” and I had an uneasy feeling about it, given the recent police violence across the nation. On July 23, 1967, my pal Frank Bach and I were driving back from Whitmore Lake in his old red Ford panel truck, which stank of motor oil and reefer. It reeked, and so did we. We had attended a picnic organized by Russ Gibb, with Tim Buckley and some other musicians from the Grande Ballroom. I liked Tim; we shared a passion for music, and talked endlessly about politics, music, and girls. I was intrigued with his performances the last few nights at the Grande. He was working with a conga player, and they seemed to go into a trance-like state on a couple of songs, with Tim’s vocals becoming a primal scream–like exploration. Neither of us had achieved much recognition yet, but both felt that the future was looking very bright. It had been a beautiful Michigan summer day, with warm but not oppressive temperatures up at the lake.
Frank and I were driving back to our apartments as the sun was going down. We were on Grand River Avenue, one of Detroit’s main commercial arteries, since we thought Frank’s truck might blow up if we ran it at freeway speed. Suddenly we noticed a fire in the distance—a big one.
“Check it out!” Frank said. The flames were climbing above the tops of some of the four- and five-story buildings that lined Grand River. Fire engines and flashing red and blue emergency lights were all over the streets.
“Man, that’s a big one!” I said, as I finished the last hit on a joint.
As we got closer, I noticed a couple of brothers running across the street carrying TVs and other appliances. At first this didn’t make any sense; I couldn’t put together what was happening. Then a couple of guys ran by with a bolt of carpeting. “Hey, Frank, what the hell?” I said.
Traffic slowed to a crawl, and I saw whitewashed signs on store windows: “Soul,” “Black Power,” “Soul Brother.” Many of the shops had broken windows, and goods were strewn on the sidewalk with people rummaging through them, taking things, and running in all directions. Just then, I realized what this was.
There was a sinking feeling in my heart. Everything that I knew and depended on was coming apart at the seams. The structure of daily life as I had known it was breaking down. America had been in a spasm of urban violence for the last few years: Philadelphia in ’64, Watts in ’65, and Cleveland in ’66. Newark had just exploded in July, where at the conclusion of six days of rioting, 23 people were dead, 725 were injured, and almost 1,500 were arrested. All but two who were killed were African American. Now it was here in Detroit, my city, on streets I had grown up on and traveled my whole life. And it was on, full-force.
The world had detonated while Frank and I were up at the lake, and now we were dead center as the shit hit the fan. I wasn’t afraid of the people running down the street carrying TVs; they were preoccupied with the tasks at hand. And at that point, I wasn’t afraid of the police too much either. They seemed to be in a state of confusion as to what they should be doing. They weren’t chasing anyone on foot; instead, they were staying in their cars. My fear was focused on the breakdown of regular life. The disintegration of the normal social order was something I had no frame of reference for. It was exciting and terrifying all at the same time.
As we made our way further downtown, we came upon a phalanx of police cars in the lane next to us. In each car were three or four cops with shotguns angled out of the windows. We decided to get off Grand River Avenue and take side streets back to our apartment building on Alexandrine. We took the expressway as a short cut. It was deserted, and smoke blanketed everything. Two new convertibles came screaming past us, each with a young brother at the wheel. We gave them the “power to the people” fist-in-the-air salute, and they returned it. “The chickens have come home to roost,” Frank said, referring to Malcolm X’s prediction.
We came off the freeway, and at the first intersection there had just been a collision between a police car and an old Ford. The detectives were viciously clubbing a black man with nightsticks as they pulled him from his wrecked car. I was shocked at the brazen beating; the degree of violence was overkill. It was sickening and unnecessary—the guy wasn’t even fighting back. Since there was nothing we could do, we drove around the scene and continued home.
We made it back, and all of us who lived in the dozen or so apartments in the building assembled in the attic unit that belonged to one of the guys. Our neighborhood, the Cass Corridor, was a bohemian/ghetto area surrounding Wayne State University. It was no big deal to smoke weed, have long hair, or play music loud at night around here; it was a live-and-let-live type of neighborhood. We all knew each other, and there was a nice community vibe. A few musicians, a couple of single girls, and a dope dealer or two lived in my building. It was a nonstop party, and life had been sweet, up until today. Everybody was freaked out about what was happening. We gathered around a little black-and-white TV, and got up to speed from the local news.
The city was unusually calm at first; just a few sirens in the distance. The TV reporter was saying that late Saturday night, the police had raided a “blind pig,” an afterhours club or speakeasy at Twelfth Street and Claremont. The patrons had resisted the police.
That was all it took; just a spark.
BUT THAT SPARK hit a pool of gasoline that had been collecting for a long time. Racism had been a part of Detroit’s social fabric since the city’s founding. When rural southern blacks came up to Detroit in the postwar period for auto-factory jobs, they were last-hired and first-fired. Black workers were routinely assigned the worst, most dangerous jobs, and decades of abuse by white foremen had created an atmosphere of intolerable frustration and occasional violence on the shop floors. The unions didn’t help the plight of black workers; instead, they usually sided with management to quell any friction.
Through the ’40s and ’50s, Detroit’s African American communities had endured “urban renewal” projects where whole neighborhoods were bulldozed in the name of progress. But for them, there was no progress. Poverty was systemic and widespread. People of color weren’t getting their slice of the prosperity that Detroit whites were enjoying. Unemployment for young black men rose to 25 percent, and city fathers were quick to blame Detroit’s problems on the poor. Virulent racism on political, social, and economic levels combined to make the Motor City a tinderbox.
In the ’60s, the Detroit Police Department was as bigoted and thug-like as any in America. A notorious, much-feared crew of vice squad cops called “The Big Four” spearheaded the heavy-handed tactics. The three detectives and one uniformed officer driving black sedans were avoided by anyone in their right mind. Their attitude was, “We’re the biggest, meanest squad in town, and we’ll do what we please—including arresting, beating, and even killing someone, if we feel like it.” Working prostitution, drugs, and gambling, they were entirely corrupt. These thugs, armed with badges and guns, were at the center of the raid on the Twelfth Street club that fateful night.
Think about it: this afterhours, private club was the one place where friends in the black community could go and relax. The club members were dancing, partying, and celebrating the return home of two local Vietnam War vets. Then who barged in? The lily-white vice squad. And they were assholes about it, knocking people around in the process. They arrested over 80 people, but nobody was going quietly. People were sick and tired of having their asses kicked by the police, and finally they bucked.
The situation got out of control when the cops started to assemble their prisoners on the street to wait for more paddy wagons. Understandably pissed off, people hanging out on the street started pitching a bitch. Someone threw a bottle that smashed a police car window. Chaos erupted when the prisoners wouldn’t get into the wagons, and people on the street started interfering with the cops, who were outnumbered. The cops changed their plans and backed off to wait for reinforcements. This was their second big mistake.
As the cops started to leave, more bottles and bricks started flying. In a flash, all hell broke loose. The remaining cops jumped into their cars and retreated. They called for backup, and in the interim, the anger felt by the crowd grew exponentially. When the cops didn’t regain control, they were further emboldened. The spark had found its fuel. Fires erupted in businesses all over town, and looting began.
By noon on Sunday, the Michigan National Guard had been called out. Police from all over the state were racing into Detroit. State police as well as small-town cops from all over southern Michigan and northern Ohio were reporting for duty in big, bad Detroit.
You could exit the attic apartment of our five-story building through a window, walk out on the roof, and see in all directions. We watched from the roof as the fires increased and the gunfire moved closer. Around midnight on Sunday, something was happening down the street at the corner of Alexandrine and Second. Cop cars had rolled in with sirens and lights off, then cops and National Guardsmen spread out in the dark. They moved in around the building on the corner. From our high perch, we watched intently at what was unfolding. Shots rang out, then it was quiet. The cops got back in their cars and took off. Later we heard that they’d shot and killed a 23-year-old maintenance man who had gone up on the roof with a mop and a bucket of water to protect the building from sparks. They claimed he was a sniper. This murder was a harbinger of the horrors to come.
I called my mother, who was living over on the northwest side. She asked me if I had any guns.
“What would I need a gun for”? I asked.
“What about the rioters, the coloreds?” she said.
I explained that I wasn’t worried about them, but I was worried about the police. They were the ones doing all the shooting.
I stayed up all night with my friends, watching from the roof as the sirens, smoke, fires, and gunfire increased. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced: uncertainty, mayhem, a total breakdown of order. It was appalling and breathtaking.
The next day, Monday, a smoky haze settled over the city. You couldn’t escape the smell of burning buildings and the sound of sirens in the distance. The gunfire came in waves of varying intensity, sometimes with a pop, pop, pop! Then quiet, followed by a barrage of fire. After a while, you got used to it. It sounded like the soundtrack from a World War II movie. It was the sound of my city at war.
Governor George Romney declared a state of emergency. The sale of gas, booze, and guns was outlawed, and a curfew set. By then, over 2,000 rifles and handguns had been stolen from area gun shops. TV newscasters said that traditionally the second night of a riot was the worst. The rebellion had now spread all across town. Cousins called cousins, friends called friends. The reaction of the Italian, Irish, and Polish neighborhoods was predictable. They all got out their hunting rifles and handguns, waiting for the marauding hordes of blacks to invade. They never came, but what did happen was that the police and National Guardsmen shot first, and thought about it later. The National Guard responded to unconfirmed reports of sniper fire with massive firepower. Poorly trained young guardsmen with little supervision drove Jeeps with .50 caliber machine guns mounted on top, and they used them. Children were slain by these heavy-caliber weapons that could easily pierce brick walls.
The people of Detroit who had been on the short end of the stick for so long lashed out at everything that represented the generations of racism and poverty they had endured. They took their revenge on slumlords and neighborhood businesses that they’d resented for years. In spontaneous rage at an America that didn’t include them, they even set their own neighborhoods afire. The Detroit Fire Department could not keep up with the inferno, and soon whole blocks were burning out of control. The usual rules that held everything together were suspended, and my city became a twilight zone of violent irrationality.
There were no organized groups of revolutionaries building roadblocks. There were no cadres of militants sniping at the police. These were regular folks who’d been pushed too far for too long. When the fire department pulled out, the fires spread, and block after block burned. Solid, working, middle-class black neighborhoods were destroyed all across Detroit.
By Tuesday, President Lyndon Johnson had called out the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne. By Wednesday, 4,700 paratroopers and 360 state police joined 8,000 National Guard on the streets of my hometown.
U.S. Army tanks drove down Woodward Avenue. Armored personnel carriers and U.S. Army trucks with troops in the back patrolled the neighborhood. The city was blanketed in smoke, and the sounds of gunfire continued; steady single shots punctuated by heavier weapon bursts. This went on all week.
ON FRIDAY, I moved into a house over on Warren Avenue, about six blocks away. I had been planning this move before the rebellion, and I saw no reason not to go ahead with it. The new place was a whole house that I would share with a few friends who were music fans. I needed a space to rehearse the MC5, and this was perfect.
It was also near the home of poet John Sinclair, founder of the Artists Workshop. John was an imposing figure, at least 6’3”. He was larger than life, with a twinkle in his eye and an infectious laugh. Boisterous and genial, he took center stage in any room he entered. His wicked smarts and sense of humor left me in awe. Tyner and I were huge fans of John’s, and thought of him as a mentor. John’s place was at the corner of the John C. Lodge Freeway and Warren Avenue, just down the block from my new abode. His building was a two-story commercial structure that covered the whole corner with three storefronts on each street. This was where the Artists Workshop, a rehearsal and performance space, was located. On the corner was the Detroit office of the Committee to End the War in Vietnam. On the Warren side was the office of Detroit’s popular underground newspaper Fifth Estate. Upstairs was a dental office that John and Leni Sinclair, their baby daughter Sunny, artist Gary Grimshaw, and others had converted into living quarters.
It was a great place to hang out. Sinclair had a massive jazz and blues record collection, and music played nonstop. It was here that I first heard the wondrous sounds of Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, and so many others. I was in heaven there. John and I would smoke reefer, listen to music, and have deep philosophical, political, and cultural discussions. I loved his informed and visionary analysis, and considered him a champion of everything that mattered to me.
During the insurrection his place was raided by the police, who’d taken exception to the “Burn, Baby, Burn!” sign John put on the roof. The scene in his living room had been a serious confrontation, culminating with John, holding his newly born daughter, telling them to “either shoot me or get the fuck out of my house.” Fortunately, having nothing to arrest John for, the police and army retreated.
At my new place that Saturday night, we all went to sleep with the city starting to calm down after a week at war. Suddenly there was a massive crash as the front door was busted in. “Everybody up! Everybody up with your hands in the air, or you’ll be shot!” The house was filled with men screaming orders. I heard our German shepherd yelping as it was beaten in the stairwell.
Eve and I were startled to see soldiers and police in our bedroom pointing shotguns at us. “Get up and out into the hall!” the state police officer barked. We always slept naked, so I got up off our mattress on the floor and pulled on some jeans. Eve asked the cop to leave so she could put on her clothes. He refused, and grinned as she got dressed at gunpoint. Out in the hall, we all had to lie facedown with shotguns and rifles pointed at our heads, while the cops figured out what they were doing.
They saw a telescope that one of the guys owned in the front upstairs window, and concluded that we were snipers. Searching our house, they found a bow and arrow, and connected us to a reported bow-and-arrow attack on firemen. Bow-and-arrow attack? Really? One of our guys dealt weed, and he’d saved up the seeds for planting. When the raid started, he threw the brown paper bag of seeds out of the window onto the roof in front. A guardsman found it, but didn’t know what it was. His superior’s response was, “Call that colored officer in here; he’ll know what this is.” The black policeman said, “This here is marijuana seeds.”
We were all put in handcuffs and led out of the front door to see an army tank pointing its cannon at our house. A fucking U.S. Army tank. By now, our neighbors had gathered around to watch as the police hustled us into an armored personnel carrier for the trip downtown to police headquarters and central booking. Our neighbors liked us, and they started asking questions and voicing their concerns about what was going down. This reaction made the cops nervous, and they got us out of there quickly.
Central booking at 1300 Beaubien Street was a war zone command center. It was still very warm out, and everyone was dripping sweat. Army and police smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, hanging around, resting and regrouping. Bloodied prisoners were waiting to be booked. Three of my male roommates and I were taken upstairs to the cells. There was a lot of confusion in the building, with guys yelling and radios crackling. Walking past cells full of mostly young black men who were bloodied and understandably pissed-off was damn scary. They put us in a cell by ourselves. Later in the afternoon, investigators questioned us, and we complained about the arrest and the unprovoked invasion of our house.
The charges were dropped, and by sundown all of us were released. We were small potatoes; the cops had their hands full of real death and destruction. Walking free out of Detroit Police headquarters that evening was one of the sweeter moments of my youth. We all whooped and hollered as we ran down the street.
The horrendous result of a week of lawlessness and police murder was 43 dead, over 1,100 injured, 2,000 buildings burned down, and 7,200 arrests. It was also the beginning of Detroit’s long slide down into the abyss. After the uprising, whites fled to the suburbs in increasing numbers, leaving people of color behind in a smoldering and shattered city.
One of the worst results was that Detroiters started arming themselves. It seemed as if everybody bought guns. As time went on, this turned Detroit from the Motor City to the Murder City. Before the rebellion of ’67, if two neighbors had a beef, at worst, they would have a fistfight. But after that, someone usually got shot or killed.
The criminal world had access to guns on a whole new scale, and as a result, as jobs declined, violent crime skyrocketed. In 1967, there were 271 homicides; by 1974, that number had risen to 714. Over the next ten years, Detroit would go from a working-class boomtown of union jobs and solid brick houses and endless possibilities, to the American murder capitol. By the mid-1980s, it was an empty shell of a great city, ruled by crime and despair. A city of leftover workers with no work, no hope, and no future.