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Rosilyn Stearns Brown, August 8th, 2017
In this interview, Rosilyn Stearns Brown discusses growing up in a close-knit Detroit neighborhood. She also discusses her firsthand experiences observing fires and looting during July 1967.
***NOTE: This interview contains profanity and/or…
James Peters, August 4th, 2017
In this interview, James Peters discusses growing up in the Detroit metropolitan area and his service in the National Guard during the events of July 1967.
Joyce Ross, July 13th, 2017
In this interview, Ross recollects her childhood growing up and moving around the Detroit area and broader areas of Michigan. She remembers early encounters with racist ideals that she did not like and talks about her deliberate choices to ensure her…
Al Calvert, July 18th, 2017
In this interview, Calvert recollects his childhood growing up in the Jim Crow South and the impact he believes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had. He the discusses his move to Detroit and how he fell into a life of drugs, parties, and prostitutes. He…
Brenda Peek, May 15th, 2017
In this interview, Brenda Peek discusses her impressions of Detroit, as well as both her own and her former husband Lonnie Peek’s work after the events of July 1967 including the People’s Tribunal and mock trial of the Algiers Motel Incident and her…
Melvin Dismukes, August 3rd, 2017
In this interview, Dismukes discusses his childhood growing up in the Jeffries Projects and the many jobs he had. He talks about his memories of the week of July 23, 1967 and specifically his memories of what he witnessed at the Algiers Motel and the…
Isaiah "Ike" McKinnon, May 16th, 2017
In this interview, Ike McKinnon shares his experience of growing up in Detroit, being a Detroit police officer, and the events of ’67. This interview uses profanity and/or explicit language.
Frank Joyce, October 17th, 2016
Joyce was a committed New Left Activist in Detroit in the 1960s. Here, he discusses the fragmentation–exacerbated by governmental and police surveillance–of many Detroit organizations. He was a member of the Northern Student Movement, People Against…
Mary Petlewski, August 25th, 2016
In this interview, Petlewski remembers her initial reactions of moving to the city of Detroit as a young child and her happy life in her neighborhood. In the summer of 1967, she was a student at the University of Detroit and worked full time in the…
Connie Griffith, August 18th, 2016
In this interview, Griffith discusses growing up near Woodward, witnessing Diego Rivera work on his famous murals at the DIA, her experience of witnessing violence during the 1943 race riots, her family’s relation to the Algiers Motel, and how she…
Norman Lippitt, October 7th, 2016
In this interview, Lippitt discusses joining the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office and working as the defense counsel in the Algiers Motel shooting case.
David Bruce, October 19th, 2016
In this interview, Bruce focuses primarily on his experience as a Black Detroit Police Officer during the 1967 unrest. He was at the blind pig on 12th and Clairmount the night it was raided, and discusses the racism that plagued the Detroit Police…
Karen Minard
***NOTE: This account contains profanity and/or explicit language.
Karl Mantyla, September 9th, 2016
In this interview, Mantyla discusses growing up in Detroit, the racial situation of 1967 and his feelings about Detroit today. Also, he speaks of his time as a reporter, focusing on the fatal shootings at the Algiers Motel in Detroit.
Michael "Doc" Holbrook, August 15th, 2016
In this interview, Michael shares the differences between living in the north and south, coming of age as a black male in Detroit, living during the time of the 1967 unrest, and his observations of the city past and present.
LeeRoy Johnson, August 8th, 2016
In this interview, Johnson discusses the racial transition of his neighborhood in the Near East Side in the 1950s and 1960s. He recalls being chased and beaten up by white children on the west side of Chene Street. During the disturbance, Johnson and…
Don Handy
Don Handy wrote a poem about his memories of the summer of 1967.
Reverend Dan Aldridge, June 22nd, 2016
In this interview, Aldridge describes growing up in Harlem and moving to Detroit as a young man. He tells of his involvement in Black Nationalism movements, how he heard about the unrest in ’67, and his involvement in the Algiers Motel incident. He…
Muriel Earl and Albert Colbard, June 29th, 2016
In this interview, Earl and Colbard tell of their upbringing on the west side of Detroit and their memories of what happened the night the blind pig was raided a few houses down from their house. They discuss what happened during the week, and how…
Reverend Lonnie Peek, April 5th, 2016
In this interview, Peek discusses growing up in New Jersey and the early encouragement and prejudices he experienced, attending college in West Virginia, and his time in Detroit during and after the events of July 1967. Reverend Peek discusses his…