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| The Detroit Riot of 1967[1] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the long, hot summer of 1967 | |||
 Destroyed buildings in Detroit, July 24, 1967 | |||
| Date | July 23–28, 1967 | ||
| Location | 42°22′35″N 83°05′58″W / 42.37639°N 83.09944°W | ||
| Caused by | Police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar | ||
| Methods | Rioting, protests, looting, arson, murder, assault | ||
| Resulted in | See Effects | ||
| Parties | |||
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| Casualties and losses | |||
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Civilian casualties 23 killed[2] | |||
The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street Riot and the Detroit Uprising, was the bloodiest of the urban riots in the United States during the "long, hot summer of 1967".[3] Composed mainly of confrontations between black residents and the Detroit Police Department, 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, known as a blind pig, on the city's Near West Side. It exploded into one of the deadliest and most destructive social insurgences in American history, lasting five days and surpassing the scale of Detroit's 1943 race riot 24 years earlier.
Governor George W. Romney ordered the Michigan Army National Guard into Detroit to help end the disturbance. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the United States Army's 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions. The riot resulted in 43 deaths, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 400 buildings destroyed.
The scale of the riot was the worst in the United States since the 1863 New York City draft riots during the American Civil War, and it was not surpassed until the 1992 Los Angeles riots 25 years later.
The riot was prominently featured in the news media, with live television coverage, extensive newspaper reporting, and extensive stories in Time and Life magazines. The staff of the Detroit Free Press won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for general local reporting for its coverage.
Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot wrote and recorded the song "Black Day in July", which recounts these events, for his 1968 album Did She Mention My Name?. The song was subsequently banned by radio stations in 30 American states. "Black Day in July" was later covered by The Tragically Hip on the 2003 anthology Beautiful: A Tribute to Gordon Lightfoot.
- ^ "Uprising of 1967 – Detroit Historical Society". detroithistorical.org.
- ^ Sidney Fine (2007). Violence in the Model City The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967. Michigan State University Press. ISBN 978-0-87013-815-7.
- ^ Harvard (2000). Postwar America. Oxford University Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-19-510300-7.