Detroit riots had life-long impact
I peeled back the shade and peeked out the bedroom window, defying my big sister’s specific instructions, because I was just too curious.
Right there on the corner, a few hundred feet from our house, I saw a tank surrounded by soldiers in full riot gear “patrolling” a neighborhood that was literally on fire. The tank stayed there all night, probably all week, as part of the military presence ordered by Governor George Romney.
It was July 1967 in Detroit. I was 7. Our home was roughly a mile from Clairmount and 12th Street (now Rosa Parks Boulevard), the epicenter of one of the worst civil disturbances in our nation’s history, which began on July 23, 1967 after police raided the after-hours club where people were celebrating the return of two Vietnam veterans. Over five days, 43 people were killed, 1,189 injured and 7,231 were arrested, with hundreds of stores burned to the ground or beyond recognition.
I can’t tell you what it was like in the active riot zone – I was 7 – but so many impressions from that ordeal 53 years ago are etched into my memory. I remember the tank, the smoke, the sirens and the noise. Some people spraypainted “Soul Brother” on their properties as a signal that they were down with the cause. I remember my sister, Karen, passionately warning me not to look out of the window after night fell. I’m guessing that it was maybe on the second or third night when she said that I could be misidentified as a sniper and shot, with no questions asked, and that someone had already died in that fashion.
I remember being perturbed when we found out the riots had erupted with a phone call from someone at our church, telling us that services on that Sunday were canceled. Shortly after that, my adventurous older brother Kevin bolted up to Linwood Avenue. My mom bolted, too, to retrieve Kevin, but she didn’t come back for more than a week.
My mom, who was nobody’s looter, was swept off the street without cause or reason, put in a paddy wagon and hauled away to a makeshift jail with hundreds of others, she later explained. In my adult view, it reeks of unnecessary aggression in the name of “law and order.” She wasn’t even afforded as much as a phone call, so for days, the three of us in our single-parent household, nervously wondered about her whereabouts. A few days after she disappeared, my grandfather picked us up, and we spent the next several days under the watchful eye of Grandma Bell.
A quick slice of my late Grandma: She was my introduction to sports, the biggest Detroit Tigers fan, the person who would be most proud of my career. She religiously listened to the Tigers radio broadcasts and after my cousin, Larry Bethea, started playing at Michigan State, she began listening to the Spartan football games, too. And oh, how I loved pushing her in her wheelchair up the ramps at Tiger Stadium when we’d attend games on “Ladies-Retirees Day.”
Which reminds me of another impression born from the riot: Willie Horton.
Horton, who grew up in the Jeffries Projects and starred at my old high school, Northwestern, is a legend in Detroit in part because of his actions during the 1967 riots. After a doubleheader against the Yankees -he hit a solo homer to help the Tigers win the second game, while part of the city burned –
Horton drove straight to 12th and Clairmount to plead for peace.
Talk about social activism. Horton didn’t even shower or change into his street clothes before leaving Tiger Stadium. In full uniform, he stood on top of his Ford Galaxy and implored protesters to calm down, to stop the looting and burning. He knew the underlying issues that boiled over with the riots – heinous brutality by an overwhelmingly white police force in AfricanAmerican neighborhoods, economic distress and other social issues.
“To this day, I still don’t know why I had to be there,” Horton, 77, said recently. ”It was the good Lord. I think God was controlling me, using me to bring peace.”
Horton remembers the instant feedback he got from people who were rioting.
“They were telling me, ‘Willie, go home for your safety,’ “he recalled.
Instead, Horton, the most prominent of the four AfricanAmerican players on the 1967 Tigers, stayed for hours on the night of July 23rd. He returned at least two more times, he recalls, over the following days. This was his city – 12th and Clairmount was in the zone where he had delivered The Michigan Chronicle on his paper route – and he was not about to abandon it in its hour of need. The destruction was unnerving.
“If I had to do it all over again, I’d get scared,” Horton told me, “but I’d do it.”
His message to protesters: “If you’re burning and looting, you’re getting away from the purpose.”
It wasn’t until a few years after the fact that I caught wind of Horton’s actions as a 24-year-old during the riots. It added quite the layer of respect and appreciation I had for my all-time favorite Tiger. And, of course, Horton’s legend has long stayed with me as a reminder of the social activism that athletes with big influence can have along with the rest of us.
A few weeks ago, I was compelled to try to recreate Horton’s drive from the site of Tiger Stadium to the riot’s epicenter about 3 1⁄2 miles away, which is now a city park with a plaque that acknowledges the historical significance.
Once on the scene, Horton wound up striking a connection with a state representative, Coleman A. Young, who later became Detroit’s first African-American mayor. Horton committed himself to numerous equality initiatives in the ensuing years, in addition to establishing a charitable foundation.
Naturally, Horton, with wife Gloria, parents to seven children and grandparents to 45 (including great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren), has been moved by the activism that has occurred across the country since the death of George Floyd and before that, the social justice causes undertaken by athletes in recent years, including banished NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
“It’s sad to see all the stuff going on now,” Horton said. “We need a world’s prayer.”