IDYMYDE: #MM Detroit 1943 and 1967

In this episode of #IDKMYDE, join us as we delve into the tumultuous events that gripped Detroit during the race riots of 1943 and 1967. From the initial clashes to the underlying causes and long-lasting repercussions, discover the profound impact of these tragic episodes.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Massacre Monday. The city Detroit, Michigan. The year nineteen hundred
and forty three, nineteen hundred and sixty seven. I didn't know.
Maybe I didn't know. No, I didn't know. Maybe I

(00:21):
didn't know. I didn't know I did. The Detroit riots
of nineteen forty three were one of five that summer.
It followed the ones in New York City, La Beaumont, Texas,
and Mobile, Alabama. The first Detroit massacre took place June twentieth,
nineteen forty three. It was some youngins out at Beilile Park.
They got to fight some sailors, and that joint trickled

(00:43):
all the way into the city to the point where
white folks was in front of the Roxy Theater, catching
black folks getting off the trolley to go to work
and beating them and killing them in the streets. They
flipped over twenty cars of black families. It was chaos
for three days June twentieth June twenty second. It only
shut down when six thousand federal troops pulled up. They

(01:04):
had to restore peace in the city set curfus. Thirty
four people were killed that weekend, twenty five of them
were black. Most of them at the hands of the
white police officers. Four hundred and thirty three people got hurt,
seventy five percent of them black. Two million dollars worth
of property damage that weekend, the equivalent of thirty million
dollars today. There with nineteen forty three, y'all were not

(01:26):
to be outdone by the nineteen sixty seven Detroit riot.
This one happened in the early mornings of Sunday, July
twenty third, nineteen sixty seven. By the end of this
one that have been forty three people dead, one thousand,
one hundred and eighty nine people were injured, over seventy
two hundred arrest and over four hundred buildings were destroyed.
Another one of those situations of the Great Migration. Black

(01:48):
folks leaving that Jim Crow South, trying to better their lives,
move into Detroit, not even realizing that the kkk OH
they posted up in Michigan as well. In nineteen sixty seven,
twenty three percent of the police force in Detroit was white,
even though thirty percent of the city's residents we're black.
So again, early morning, Sunday, July twenty third, nineteen sixty seven,

(02:11):
the cops run up in the Blond Pig. They just
expected it to be a couple of people there for
the after hours. But now the Blond Pig were jumping.
They were celebrating the gi have returned from the Vietnam War.
So the police said they wanted to arrest everybody in there,
so they waiting for transportation to get there so they
can rest all eighty two of these black folk. Of course,
it draws a crowd, and the owner of the Blond
Pigs set it off. He threw a bottle of the

(02:32):
police officer. After that, the folks start looting the stores.
The Michigan State Sheriff's Department, the National Guard have to
pull up. But it's Sunday, so it took a little
while to get sufficient manpower. And in that little while
black folk would wreaking habit and see the Detroit police.
They very inaccurately assumed that the rioting and the looting
would just eventually stop, but it didn't. They didn't make

(02:54):
their first arrest until seven am, which was three hours
after the raid on the Blond Pig. What alarming to
anyone else to some of the same gripes and complaints
that black folk have in twenty twenty four, the way
we're treated in retail stores in comparison to our white counterparts,
underfunding for the schools for our babies, the discrimination in
housing for black folks, employment opportunities are lack thereof, and

(03:17):
the high unemployment rate for black folks, the communication issues
we have with the police officers in our communities that
aren't a direct reflection of the constituents in the community
that they serve, and just the blatant racism. Those same
exact gripes and complaints are what started the race riots
in Detroit in nineteen hundred and forty three and nineteen

(03:38):
hundred and sixty seven. And I didn't know. Maybe you
didn't either. No,