Fire, smoke, gunshots, shouting, screaming, looting, rocks, bottles, Molotov cocktails, blood spilling and some people dying, and hundreds of injured. Citizens mostly. Spiraling confrontations all over the city proper.
Wow!
Detroit’s finest, and the Michigan National Guard had a hell of a job that week. Was this the beginning of the second American Revolution? It sure seemed like it. This indeed is what a modern day mini Armageddon looks like people.
Scary tension. Hundreds of arrests were made and jail time for many. And an BIG EFFING TANK parked right across the street from the Artist’s Workshop, which doubled as the MC5 band house on the second floor.
Couple of members of the MC5 were arrested for assault, I believe. Broke down our doors and crashed in ala Swat at it’s best Whew!
There were fires everywhere. John Lee Hooker wrote “The Motor City’s Burning” and we began to play that song in our set as an homage to all the strife and pain suffered by all the victims on both sides.
“It started on 12th and Claremont ya’all…”
I escaped on the first day and holed up at my parent’s house in Lincoln Park. After all, it was safer to watch on TV then to get killed. Wasn't ready to die just yet. Still had work to do. After this maelstrom of hate and fear there wasn’t a doubt in my soul as to where I stood as a human being.
End the ugly Vietnam war, the riots, the racism and bigotry. Go out as minstrels spreading the word that we all desperately need to ban together and hopefully, or forcibly, change this damn stupidity.
“Kick Out The Jams Motherf***ers!” Imagine looking out your bedroom window and having a tank pointing it's gun right at you!
The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 1967 Detroit Rebellion or 12th Street riot was the bloodiest race riot in the "Long, hot summer of 1967". Composed mainly of confrontations between black people and police, it began in the early morning hours of Sunday July 23, 1967 in Detroit, Michigan.
The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, on the city's Near West Side. It exploded into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in American history, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit's 1943 race riot 24 years earlier. READ MORE
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