1967 Detroit Riot - Aftermath

Aftermath

Blacks and whites in Detroit viewed the events of July 1967 in very different ways. Part of the process of comprehending the damage was to survey the attitudes and beliefs of people in Detroit. Sidney Fine's chapter "The Polarized Community" cites many of the academic and Detroit Free Press financed public opinion surveys conducted in the wake of the riot. Although Black Nationalism was thought to have been given a boost by the civil strife, as membership in Albert Cleage's church grew substantially and the New Detroit committee sought to include black leadership like Norvell Harrington and Frank Ditto, it was whites who were much more likely to support separation.

One percent of Detroit blacks favored "total separation" between the races in 1968, whereas 17% of Detroit whites did. African-Americans supported "integration" by 88%, only 24% of whites did. Residents of the 12th Street area differed significantly from African-Americans in the rest of the city however. For example, 22% of 12th Street blacks thought they should "get along without whites entirely". Nevertheless, the Detroit Free Press survey of Black Detroiters in 1968 showed that the highest approval rating for people was given to conventional politicians like Charles Diggs (27%) and John Conyers (22%) compared to Albert Cleage (4%).

One of the criticisms of the New Detroit committee, an organization founded by Henry Ford II, J.L. Hudson, and Max Fisher while the embers were still cooling, was that it gave credibility to radical black organizations in a misguided attempt to listen to the concerns of the "inner-city Negro" and "the rioters". Moderate black leadership like Arthur L. Johnson were weakened and intimidated by the new credibility the riot gave to black radicals, some of which favored "a black republic carved out of five southern states" and supported "breaking into gun shops to seize weapons." The Kerner Commission deputy director of field operations in Detroit reported that the most militant organizers in the 12th Street area did not consider it immoral to kill whites.

Adding to the criticism of the New Detroit committee in both the moderate black and white communities was the cynical belief that the wealthy, white industrial leadership were giving voice and money to radical black groups as a sort of "riot insurance". The fear that "the next riot" would not be localized to inner city African-American neighborhood but would include the white suburbs was common in the black middle class and white communities. White groups like "Breakthrough" started by city employee Donald Lobsinger, a Parks and Recreation Department employee, wanted to arm whites and keep them in the city because if Detroit "became black" there would be "guerrilla warfare in the suburbs".

Detroit Councilman Mel Ravitz said the riot divided not only the races- since it "deepened the fears of many whites and raised the militancy of many blacks" - but it opened up wide cleavages in the black and white communities as well. Moderate liberals of each race were faced with new political groups that voiced extremist solutions and fueled fears about future violence. Compared to the rosy newspaper stories before July 1967, the London Free Press reported in 1968 that Detroit was a "sick city where fear, rumor, race prejudice and gun-buying have stretched black and white nerves to the verge of snapping". Yet ultimately, if the riot is interpreted as a rebellion, or a way for black grievances to be heard and addressed, it was partly successful.

The black community in Detroit received much more attention from federal and state governments after 1967, and although the New Detroit committee ultimately shed its black membership and transformed into the mainstream Detroit Renaissance group, money did flow into black-owned enterprises after the riot. However, the most significant black politician to take power in the shift from a white majority city to a black majority city, Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor, wrote in 1994:

The heaviest casualty, however, was the city. Detroit's losses went a hell of a lot deeper than the immediate toll of lives and buildings. The riot put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earnings taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money. The money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the white people who fled as fast as they could. The white exodus from Detroit had been prodigiously steady prior to the riot, totally twenty-two thousand in 1966, but afterwards it was frantic. In 1967, with less than half the year remaining after the summer explosion—the outward population migration reached sixty-seven thousand. In 1968 the figure hit eighty-thousand, followed by forty-six thousand in 1969.

According to economist Thomas Sowell:

Before the ghetto riot of 1967, Detroit's black population had the highest rate of home-ownership of any black urban population in the country, and their unemployment rate was just 3.4 percent. It was not despair that fueled the riot. It was the riot which marked the beginning of the decline of Detroit to its current state of despair. Detroit's population today is only half of what it once was, and its most productive people have been the ones who fled.

Nationally, the riot confirmed for the military and the Johnson administration that military occupation of American cities would be necessary. In particular the riot confirmed the role of the Army Operations Center as the agent to anticipate and combat domestic guerrilla warfare.

Though this was such a devastating event. New employment opportunities came about due to the tragic event. Men who had been unemployed before the riot are now employed. And men who had criminal records were able to find a job. Before the riot these opportunities did not exist for these men. Many people thought this was a growing period for Detroit were black and white people could finally get along with each other.

“As the disorder in Detroit continued President Johnson finally called into action regular United States Army personnel and these integrated units were in many instances welcomed by black Detroiters. Johnson had delayed sending the troops, influenced by such factors as Governor Romney's vacillation and Johnson's interest in making things difficult for the governor. Fine suggests that had the federal troops appeared on the city's streets earlier at least some of the deaths and destruction could have been averted.”

In response to the riots, in February Johnson proposed a five-year, $6.2 billion program for urban development. Promising to produce twenty-six million new homes in the next decade, six million of them for poor and working-class families.