Witnesses to history tell stories of Detroit riot (Detroit Free Press)

[inanna]

5:06 p.m. EDT June 18, 2016

The late 1960s came back to life in third-floor conference rooms at the Detroit Historical Museum on Saturday as stories were spun into audio recorders

William Charron, 71, of Bloomfield Hills was among a steady stream of visitors who came to tell how the Detroit riot in July 1967 affected them for a new collection called "Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward."

"I felt the riot was intensely personal to me and my wife," he told the Free Press after telling his story. "We got married during the riot. My wife's family owned businesses in Detroit. The riot changed everything.

"I read about the project in the Free Press and wanted to add my story to the collection."

<snip>

Rioting began when Detroit’s nearly all-white police force in July 1967 arrested scores of black revelers at an after-hours drinking club on 12th Street — since renamed Rosa Parks Boulevard — triggering the city’s most devastating period of violence, which ended only after Gov. George Romney ordered the Michigan Army National Guard into the city, and President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions.

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Link: http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/06/18/witnesses-history-tell-stories-detroit-riot/86085456/

[forest444]

1. The police chief (and future mayor) Roman Gribbs and his ´special´ units had a major role.

They had been brutalizing and allegedly shaking down black residents and businesses for years. That nightclub was almost certainly one of them.