Memories of the 1967 Detroit Riot

James E. Williams

I interviewed my husband, James E. Williams, about his memories of the Detroit riot of 1967. I edited out most of my questions in the transcription below for easier reading.

Hello, this is Akbar Lee, James Williams sitting here July 24, 2017 talking about the rebellion in Detroit, 1967, July 23. I don’t exactly recall how I first heard about it. I remember it was a Sunday morning. What I do remember is being with the Inner City Voice Newspaper.  We had just gotten press cards, press passes from the Detroit police and myself and another person from the newspaper, were out on the street.  It must have been about 10 o’clock Sunday morning. I had my press card in my hand, showed it to a policeman, I was on 12^th street, about Blaine, near where the riot began. I was telling the photographer to take pictures (of what?) of the people in the street and the police in the street. They were milling around. The police came driving around in cars there was maybe 4 police in each car, would drive up 12^th street and turn on one of the side streets and turn around

They went around and then they went around again there were about 3 or 4 cars. There were about 12 or 16 police. About 75 people. They were everywhere. I don’t think anybody was throwing bottles at the police. Stores had been broken into. I just remember people, men and women. So, the cops, they stopped, they jumped out of their cars with their clubs drawn running fast and started beating people that were watching.

One policeman came up toward me and I showed him my press pass, police press pass and he knocked it out of my hand and chased me up on a porch on Blaine, as I recall. And Maybe he knocked it out of my hand on 12^th street and I ran, yeah to get away. He hit me in the head and knocked it out of my hand.  I showed it to him and he knocked it out of my hand, hit me upside the head. I ran off the street.  As a matter of fact, he brought it up to me and said, “This is yours.” I don’t know if it was the same policeman.  I just ran up on the porch, the police were like on the adjacent street. They were just beating people back off the street. They wanted people off the street I assume and that’s what they got.

That’s my first memory, being beat off the street with my police pass that was worth nothing.  It was an eye opener, so to speak.  I expected they would back right down since the police chief had signed it.  It was 1967 so I would be 22.

I was with another person from the inner city voice. Kurt Slaughter. He was also working with the newspaper. The Inner City Voice was a newspaper that hadn’t come out with its first issue, but it was getting ready to.  We were gathering news, we thought.  I don’t recall Kurt being hit. He had a camera because I thought I was telling him to take this picture, take that picture.

(Did he get a photo of you getting hit?) I never saw it. Kurt got away.  I don’t remember much more after that day. Maybe I had a concussion.

Anyway, I was living at 1111 W. Canfield, Jefferies projects, in the student housing part of it. That was on the 23^rd. I think that I was out on the street after getting hit in the head just observing people moving around. I don’t have much recollection of anything else, just the being beat in the head   and my press card not being worth a damn.

Next thing I remember is the army coming, being in the streets. That was later in the week. And what I remember next is…. I think that what happened after being hit in the head I left the scene and didn’t go back. Went home, put ice on my head, tended my wound and had a fear of going back out there. However, what I can remember is, being a part… well, I had a feeling that this was something different, that people were fighting, that it was really going to be us against them, But it wasn’t real, my feeling.  What I thought was us, the people rising up against the power of the police, was really the police using their power to push us back. There was burning, there was looting, but the police were still in control of the streets, so it seemed to me.

I remember at night laying in the bed thinking this is the revolution. I could hear gunshots tatatatatat it was quite an experience to live through. A lot of people didn’t make it through, 43 people were killed.

My fear was the police, getting shot, getting beat. I could hear those machine guns going at night. My neighbors didn’t have any machine guns. I must have been up and about during the daytime. The area where I lived on Wayne’s campus, I don’t remember a lot of police there. I had to go back up to 12^th street, but the rioting was taking place in more places than just 12^th street.

I remember somehow or another. I got the opportunity to go to Belle Isle where they had turned it into a temporary prison and interview some people that were being held.  This was because I worked with a group of black social workers and they were going in to check the conditions of the people on Belle Isle because Belle Isle was not a prison but they had made it into a prison. We went inside buildings where the people were, in buildings.  In my mind it was like a concentration camp, but I’m sure it wasn’t that bad, but for some reason, this was at night time too.

There was a curfew so I remember being in a police car driving down the street to wherever we were meeting, the meeting of the group of people they were going to select to go on Belle Isle and interview the people. (How did they pick you up? Were there other people in the car with you?) That’s not at all clear to me. I do remember being in a meeting with people and they were selecting us. And everybody didn’t get to go. They were asking questions like “What have you heard?” and some people were saying that people were being killed and they had been stuck in cages with monkeys and those people didn’t pick. Whoever those people were. I think it was the Justice Department but I’m not sure. I was caught up in the excitement of it all.  

I don’t remember hardly anything because so much was happening, but anyway it went on for five days. It was almost like, they talked about after the soldiers got there, the army came, they were talking about going door to door to people’s houses and if they didn’t have recites for stuff in their house they were going be arrested and the stuff taken. It appeared there was nothing to stop the police from doing whatever they wanted. (Nobody keeps recites for everything). That’s true but it doesn’t matter if they come busting in your house and say this is looted. I know from my experience with my press pass. I do not believe that they did that and once they drank the bottle they felt pretty loose.

So, I lived on Canfield and Lodge Freeway. About the 3^rd day I can remember going out to see what was happening. We were in the house trying to be protected from it.  Not certain if Rosie was still there. Kathy would have been there. There were other people in the building that we knew, Edna, John Watson.  Anyway, going out, I don’t really remember too clearly, just me going out. Milling in the crowd,  a whole group of people taking stuff out of a store on Trumbull, which wasn’t very far. I can’t imagine this store that was selling this furniture but… The police were no place to be seen and people were just taking stuff and I got caught up in the moment and I got the table and put it in the front room and not really but probably in the back of my mind thinking of that beating. (Did you scratch it up?). No, no I probably polished it. The police never came. I never saw the police in the building.

The National Guard was there first and then the army came. They drove around everywhere.  I don’t remember them going though the projects. Mostly I remember being out at night, going with observers. I don’t remember anything other then there was nobody out there but police. Whoever was the observers.

They had a zoo building on belle isle? And that’s where they were putting people. I don’t know what they did with those animals.

I don’t remember much else about the action part. Except for hearing the machine guns at night, hearing sirens all the time. I guess I wasn’t really out in it other than that first day when I got hit, and then when I got the table. I might have gone out one more day, but I think I was traumatized a bit about being out there with my police pass. So we just stayed in. I can’t really recall how I was communicating or who I was communicating with. The phones were working and I’m sure I was talking to people. The people I was working with on the newspaper, I eventually became pretty distant from them, but at the time we must have been going to the newspaper office which was on Warren, a little ways away, across the campus, to the other side of the campus. Once the newspaper became the organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the voice of today, it didn’t last long. Eventually the Algiers Motel Incident, but I think that came out after. What did happen, the inner city voice had worked out a speaking engagement for Rapp Brown with the local Friends of SNCC to bring Rapp Brown as a speaker, as a fundraiser for the newspaper.  We had some problems with the location we ended up using the Dexter Theater, but I think we had tried to use some other spot first. How we ended up using the Dexter Theater. What I remember is that SNNC made off with the money, which they were known to do, I don’t know if the voice got any of that money. That probably happened a week later.

Related posts

My Detroit Rebellion Journal – 1967
Riot or Rebellion? July 23, 1967
Rebellions Create Strange Leaders – By Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman
“D” is for Dexter