By STUART COSGROVE
The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the wave of global protests that followed have been a stark reminder of the unfinished business of racial equality.
Last week, my book, Detroit 67, was reprinted for the fifth time at a time when, 53 years on, some of the most harrowing events I wrote about have a new relevance and resonance. My book is about soul music but also about its social context and the bitter social divisions that tore American cities apart in the 1960s. Urban unrest, a failing war in Vietnam and racist policing erupted into full-scale riots, destroying the inner cities of Harlem, Newark, Detroit and Washington DC over a succession of long, hot summers. Television was in its infancy and grainy back and white newsreels of Detroit on fire were among my first memories growing up as a curious teenager. But how do these events compare across history? There are many obvious similarities and yet many significant differences. Although this may seem strange now in the emotional aftermath of George Floyd’s death, much of the reaction has been peaceful and really more considered than the conflagration that engulfed Detroit in 1967. Although the masked figures protecting themselves from the Covid-19 virus appeared sinister, most protests have been dynamic and well organised. Others, like the recent destruction of the statue of the Bristol slave owner Edward Colston, were acts of theatrical symbolism rather than a threat to real people. Detroit 1967 was quite different. It all began in the last weekend of a broiling inner-city summer, when police raided an after-hours drinking den and tried to arrest an unruly group of revellers.
A rumour spread that a man had been bayoneted by the police. It was untrue but just one of many hundreds of rumours that were to disorientate the authorities in the dramatic days to come. Bricks were thrown and then a salvo of beer bottles.
Riot spread like a virus across the city and by the time the disturbances were brought under control by 7,000 National Guard and US Army troops, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, and nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned to the ground.
Palestinian artist Taqi Spateen paints a mural of George Floyd on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem
Detroit’s mayor, Jerome Cavanagh, who was a young Irish American frequently compared to President Kennedy, surveyed the worstaffected areas in the days after the disturbances and told one newspaper: “It looks like Berlin in 1945”.
It was a dramatic exaggeration but there was a semblance of truth in the way he described the destruction of soul music’s greatest city. Last week, many cities witnessed mass protests, tense stand-offs and dark nights of fighting, but the damage to people and property bears no real comparison to Detroit in 1967. If anything, the
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