Gloria Holzman, Southfield, Michigan:

I remember the riots of '67. But I never really understood the full reason for those riots. Your history lesson, especially in the light of the Ferguson incident and other like recent events,was particularly enlightening. I grew up in Detroit and lived there until about 1970 when bussing was introduced and my 12-year-old daughter was to be bussed to an inner city junior high school., People in my fine, middle-class neighborhood all vowed to stay put and not move away. In the middle of the night vans took them away and they all fled to the suburbs. Our "perfect" little world splintered and my family and I were left with only one original neighbor and ourselves remaining. Outnumbered and feeling awkward, we finally said "uncle" and moved, too. None of us, I dare say, understood the underlying causes [of the uprising]. We were bewildered and unaware. My uncle owned a grocery store and meat market in the area that was burned down. They had friendships with their customers, mainly African-Americans, and gave credit when they didn't have the cash. Black people cleaned our homes, helped raise our children with love and kindness and were an inherent part of our lives. Never did we expect that there would be the anger of a hundred years seething inside of some of them. We were bewildered at the mayhem and lawlessness which ensued. In my small mind and many others, we could not envision the reaction to that. When the school segregation issue came to our attention and a Southern governor stood outside of one school and deterred an African-American girl from entering, it all became clear to me how wrong we had been. As a person of Jewish heritage, I knew that the people I saw on the television screen were suffering the same kind of treatment that we had suffered throughout history and I knew that we, of all people, should stand by

their side. Your remarks need to be published as a history lesson for young people to study in school. The lack of education of this subject of racism and injustice is one of the causes of its continuance. Thank you so much for writing on this subject. As always, it is an education and enlightenment to read your essays.

 

Blayney Colmore, La Jolla, California:
As a white man raised in the segregated South, I, too, am haunted by racism, both personally and as a citizen of the country that holds herself up to the world as the cradle of liberty. I learned a lot from your essay about Detroit and the attempt of southern blacks to find a better life in the north. I, too, was a young cleric in an urban city (Akron) in 1967, and it was then I learned that even we "right-thinking liberals" have tight limits to the change we are willing to sponsor. I recently took an online course from Penn, History of the Slave South, which opened my aging eyes wider yet to how much pervasive racism is imbedded in our nation's history. And in me. The sober sadness in the face of President Obama, the weariness, strangely mirror the famous photos of President Lincoln the last couple of years of his life. Though I am among those who now see how naive it was to believe Obama's election signaled our national emergence from racism, I so profoundly want to believe those photos will one day be regarded with the same kind of reverence, and for some of the same reasons.

Joanne Chamberlain, Tucson, Arizona:
What a wild ride July 1967 was! I was between my sophomore and junior year at Wayne State doing volunteer work that summer. I lived through that time, too. A year or so later, you were a guest lecturer in one of my philosophy classes. You had come to talk about Spinoza, as I recall, but many of us had seen your picture in the paper doing that relief work you mentioned. We insisted that you use the class time to talk about the riot as you experienced it. It changed my mind about a lot of things. Thanks for all the reminders of things past.

John Bennison, Walnut Creek, California:

Your historical rendition of Detroit's example is illuminating. It is true and self-evident, as you, that human beings can only take so much, and it's d�ja vu all over again. What we need to fully acknowledge and accept is the reality that it is the consequence of other human's capacity and volition to exceed the limits of what can be withstood. Until we subordinate such human capacity for dominance and self-aggrandizement over the care of others and the common good we will continue the cycle. Collectively, it is always a self-inflicted malaise.

 

Larry Peplin, Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan:

I drive by the Ossian Sweet home at least a couple of times a week, which now has a large historical marker out front. It always reminds me of the "difficult" history Detroit has experienced since its founding. It is a history still in the making, of course, but I have hope. We must have at least that, if nothing more.

 

Carol Lauhon, Chicago, Illinois:

Bravo. I'm more completely informed and deeply moved.

 

Tom Hall, Foster, Rhode Island:

By attesting to the cash nexus of the oppressive social policies and practices that have once again brought shame upon our nation by exposing our warped notions of democracy and freedom, you have identified the underlying issue that nearly everyone is loath to acknowledge. Love of neighbor necessarily includes economic justice -- a notion that most comfortable people apparently find hard to take.

 

Fred Fenton, Concord, California:

Thank you for rehearsing those stories of cruelty and violence against African Americans in this racist society of ours. Most white people are unconcerned about the inhuman treatment of minorities in this country from colonial times to the present. You recount the arrest of a four-year-old child at the time of the Detroit riots. That would never have happened if the child had been white. Thousands of unaccompanied children keep crossing our southern border fleeing cruelty and oppression in their home countries. They are arrested and kept for 30 days in bleak holding centers where some children, who "can only take so much," beat their heads against the walls. When will we ever change, and who will lead the way?

Eunice M. Rose, Southfield, Michigan:

Your article got me to thinking about how I became a social activist. My twin and I were eight years old. We were very well-behaved, having been taught that grownups were to be revered. Our third-grade teacher was Ophelia Smith (how's that for an intimidating name!). One day when she had to leave the classroom for a few minutes, she put my twin in charge of the class. She instructed our classmates to be quiet. Sure. The minute Miss Smith left the room, all hell broke loose. Kids were jumping on desks, throwing stuff at each other, and definitely NOT listening to my sister. Among our classmates was a really nasty boy ... one of the many black kids in our school. He had always been rude to Eudi and me; calling us "dirty Jews." Suddenly he leaped up and screamed, "LISTEN TO EUDICE! SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!" At that moment, in walked Miss Smith. She immediately hauled William and all of us into the scary principal's office. Each kid was told to tell the principal exactly what had happened. One by one, each kid told the principal that William had started the riot. Eudi and I were last. There was William, sitting there with a murderous expression on his eight-year-old face, as the scary principal said to him, "William, you need to thank Eudice and Eunice. They were the ONLY ones in your class who told the truth." With those words, the three of us were dismissed. One would think William would become our best friend. Nope. He still called us "dirty Jews," but we didn't care. We knew we had done the right thing. Fast-forward to the years in which Eudi and I were professional singers, performing all over this country and Canada. Our mother, bless her heart, always found relatives and friends in almost every part of this land so her daughters would have someone to call in case of whatever awful thing she imagined could happen. One year we found ourselves in a club outside of Pittsburgh, at Thanksgiving time. Sure enough, there were relatives there who invited us to share Thanksgiving with them. We had become friends with the young m.c. in the club, also someone who was far from home, and also black. We told the relatives that we would love to come to their house and would appreciate their including our new friend. These relatives had seen the newspaper ad with our picture plus the photo of the m.c. Silence on the other end of the phone. Then, words that chill me to this day: "No, we don't allow 'schvartzes' in our home." Notwithstanding their maid who would be serving the meal. We politely declined and spent Thanksgiving with our friend in a dingy diner. Best meal we ever had. The birth of two activists who have never given up on "repairing the world."

Thomas Bradford, Boulder, Colorado:

I heard you speak about 10 years ago here on campus and spoke to you after about the very thing you wrote about this morning -- that is, the riot of 1967. My aunt and uncle were among those who fled the city in the wake of that terrible event, and I could never blame them. I'm sure, as you indicate, that it will never be the same. The home my relatives left behind was the nicest house they'd ever had or would ever have. They hated the suburbs, but they felt safe there. I'm sure they died, both of them, disappointed in how their life turned out.

 

J. Theodore Everingham, Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan:

Good essay today. I remember July 1967 vividly.

 

Tracey Martin, Southfield, Michigan:

When, probably pre-WWII, I half-opened the front door of our east side (FHA) Detroit neighborhood and noticed two burly black men walking down our dirt street with shovels over their shoulders, I inquired of my mother: "Who are they?" To which she replied: "You don't want to have anything to do with them." Huh. And huh? My high school, Denby, was notoriously exclusively white and deliberately kept that way. The only black person I actually "knew" was the woman with whom I exchanged pleasantries as she elevated me from the first floor to the second of my father's downtown shoe store. But he served black and white women equally, and demanded of his white staff that they treat all customers accordingly. (The only color identified was green.) Glimmerings emerging. Blooming, into repudiation of racism during college as I began to befriend black students. From there, evolving experience led eventually to demonstrative activism and marching with M.L. King in '63. By '67, I agreed with colleagues that the "race riot" of that year was really an insurrection instead. The one of '43 I understood was black against white. Actually, white attacking black.