The facts in brief
The Detroit riot began in the early hours of Sunday 23 July 1967, when police raided an unlicensed after-hours bar on 12th Street on the city’s west side. The worst of the violence lasted about five days, and the fighting ended on 27-28 July. By the usual official counts, 43 people died, about 1,200 were injured and more than 7,000 were arrested. It was the largest and deadliest of the American urban disturbances of that year and one of the most destructive in the country’s twentieth-century history. Some residents and later writers call it the Detroit uprising or rebellion, and others call it a riot; this article uses the word most common in contemporary reports.
Sunday 23 July: the raid and the first fires
Shortly before 4 a.m., police officers entered an unlicensed bar, often called a “blind pig”, at 12th Street and Clairmount. It was run by a civic group and was reportedly hosting a party for two Black servicemen who had returned from Vietnam. The police expected a few patrons and found more than eighty people inside. Arrests took time, and a crowd gathered on the street while the patrons were loaded into vehicles.
After the last police car left, a bottle was thrown through the window of a police vehicle, and the crowd turned to looting nearby shops. By morning, fires had started and the small police presence in the area could not stop them. Mayor Jerome Cavanagh went into the neighborhood himself, and he and Governor George Romney talked over a request for the Michigan National Guard. The Guard was brought in on Sunday, and a curfew was set. Crowds were still large, and the fires multiplied through the afternoon and evening.
Detroit was also hosting a baseball doubleheader that day. Tigers outfielder Willie Horton is reportedly among those who went to the riot area in his uniform to appeal for calm, though accounts differ on how much effect he had.
Monday 24 July: the spread
By Monday the disturbance had spread well beyond 12th Street. Firefighters were meeting heavy resistance, and reports of sniper fire were common, many of which were later doubted. Guardsmen with limited urban training and police under strain were operating in a city where neither knew the streets well.
Newark had suffered its own riot only days earlier, and the Newark riot was still on officials’ minds. In Washington, President Lyndon Johnson weighed a request for federal help. Late on Monday, after Romney and Cavanagh asked for troops and after Johnson’s emissaries had assessed the city, Johnson ordered paratroopers into Detroit and spoke to the nation that night. The timing of that decision, and a dispute over delay, became a lasting controversy over the federal troops deployment.
Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26 July: the heaviest fighting
Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division arrived at Selfridge Air Force Base and moved into the city on 25 July, followed by elements of the 101st Airborne. Several thousand federal troops were eventually involved, alongside the Guard, state police and the city police. The paratroopers were generally regarded as more disciplined than the Guard in their handling of crowds, though they too were fired at or believed to be.
The shooting was heaviest on the nights of the 25th and 26th. A number of civilians were killed by gunfire from law enforcement and troops, including children and bystanders in their homes. Early on 26 July, three young Black men were killed at the Algiers Motel in an episode that became the most infamous of the riot, and the conduct of the police there remains disputed. Large fires burned across the east and west sides.
Thursday 27 and Friday 28 July: the end
By Thursday, the number of new fires dropped and the heaviest shooting ended. The curfew stayed in force in some form and the troops remained, but by Friday 28 July the city was calmer. The federal forces began withdrawing in the following days. On the evening of 27 July, President Johnson addressed the country and announced the creation of what became the Kerner Commission, formally the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.
The toll
The commonly cited figures are 43 dead, roughly 1,200 injured and more than 7,000 arrested, and the arrests strained the jail system so badly that detainees were held in temporary sites such as garages and buses. Of the dead, a large majority were Black. Around two thousand buildings were reported destroyed or heavily damaged, many of them shops on 12th Street, Grand River and other commercial strips. Counts of Detroit riot casualties vary by source, and estimates of the losses are rougher still.
Daily life under curfew
Beyond the shooting and the fires, the week was marked by disruption of ordinary life. A curfew limited movement at night, and the sale of alcohol, firearms and gasoline was banned. Many shops and plants closed, and food and medicine were hard to obtain in some neighborhoods because stores had been burned or shut. Churches and community groups organized food and supplies in places. Large parts of the metropolitan area, particularly the suburbs, saw little direct disorder, which meant that people’s experience of the week depended heavily on where they lived. Reporters from across the country flew in, and the images of smoke over the city and soldiers on street corners shaped how Americans saw the summer.
Why Detroit
The riot surprised many observers because Detroit had a reputation as a city doing comparatively well, with high industrial wages and a mayor supported by the national Great Society programs. Black residents, however, faced overcrowded housing, an overwhelmingly white police force and unequal opportunity at work. The Kerner Commission would later name these conditions in its report. Detroit was also one stop in a much wider pattern: the national press had been calling the season the long hot summer since at least 1965, and 1967 delivered dozens of disturbances in American cities.
The riot’s effects lasted well beyond July. Detroit lost population and businesses, the city’s politics shifted, and the memory of 1967 shaped racial relations in the region for decades. The exact figures, as with most counts from a chaotic week, are best treated as approximate.