HS: Hello, this is Hannah Sabal. The date is June 18, 2016. I’m here at the Detroit Historical Museum with Bruce Carr for an oral history interview for the Detroit 67 Oral History Project. Thank you for sitting down with me today.
BC: I’m glad to do so.
HS: Can you first start by telling me where and when you were born?
BC: I was born in Tennesee, where my father was born, Christmas day, 1938.
HS: Awesome.
BC: And then our parents moved us to Detroit when I was five years old. I grew up in the Livernois-Finkell area. We were there for nine years. All of my public schooling was through the Detroit Public Schools, from kindergarten through graduation from Cass Tech.
HS: Which elementary and middle schools did you go to?
BC: Clinton elementary, which is no longer in existence, and likewise Post, which is no longer there.
HS: I’m sorry, what was that?
BC: Post Middle School. At that time it was called Post Intermediate School. Then my parents moved us to Royal Oak when I was not quite sixteen, but I had already started at Cass Tech in the printing curriculum, and I told my parents I would like to stay at Cass instead of going to high school in Royal Oak. And the tuition was $256. I said to my parents, “If you’ll let me go to Cass Tech, I’ll pay my own tuition,” out of what I was making as a part time employee bagging groceries at one of the supermarkets. They said, “Okay, if that’s what you want to do, you can.” And so I completed my high school years at Cass Tech, came out in January of ’57.
HS: And why did your parents move from Tennessee to Detroit?
BC: It was the early 1940s, and pure and simple, people were almost on the edge of going broke. Detroit was known as the arsenal of democracy. People from all over Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta and other impoverished parts of the United States would come here, and I’m told it was much easier to get a job than it was to get a house in Detroit at the time, or even an apartment or whatever else. Fortunately, my dad had a friend who lived right behind the house that we bought, close to Livernois and Finkell, so that’s how we ended up being there.
HS: Okay. What did your parents do for a living?
BC: My mother taught in rural schools in Tennessee until they got married, my parents got married. My father was also a teacher in rural schools, and he had a farm of about 110 acres, but again it was just so much more difficult to support a family on their limited earnings, so they came here. Hundreds of thousands of other people did. And US 25, along with several other routes, became known as the Hillbilly Highway because of so many people who came from Appalachia up here. I was in Ypsilanti a few weeks ago, people from the church there were talking about how they had friends and family that came over from Paducah, Kentucky, over on the western side of Kentucky, and there was a bus that ran from Paducah to Detroit and back to Paducah, or vice versa every weekend. Rather common thing. Detroit was essentially a melting pot that brought together people from all different backgrounds, different nationalities. And one of the things that struck me as a five-year-old kid coming to Detroit was the extreme diversity, the nationality diversity. Living in the hills of Tennessee, I never met anybody who was of any recent European heritage. Nobody was Greek, nobody was Polish or anything else like that. There was a small number of people that were African American, but just very, very small. Then we moved to Livernois and Fenkell, I had my first experience of eating baklava because there was a Greek neighbor right behind us. I had the first experience of meeting a Jewish family because there was one right across the street with a youngster same age as me. One of the things that amused me a little bit was when they had parent teacher conferences, some of the parents would go, and they were not able to speak English, so the kids would go and be the interpreters for the parents. I thought they probably had a little inside advantage. They could probably tell the stories the way they wanted it told instead of maybe the way the parents want it told. I didn’t have that advantage.
HS: Now just out of curiosity, in Tennessee with your parents, was it a crop farm?
BC: It was a crop farm, mostly corn. It wasn’t anything big agricultural like they had today. Like almost everybody else around us, everybody did the same thing.
HS: And did your parents continue teaching when they came to Detroit?
BC: No, they did not. My father got a job in 2 or 3 different factories, and then he ended up going to a place called Shedbarsh Foods [6:16 sp??], which was on Dexter avenue, just north of Davison, and he stayed there for 34 years. He could have gotten some credits from Wayne State or some other place and got a certificate to teach, but he chose not to do that. And my mother only taught one day in her life when she got up here. She was a substitute teacher and then she decided she didn’t want to continue. She said it was too hard on her nerves.
HS: Can you tell me a little bit about the neighborhood that you grew up in?
BC: In Detroit?
HS: Yes.
BC: Like I was saying, it was quite multinational. At the time, there were almost zero African Americans. The closest African American community was about a mile, mile and half away. My parents had African American friends through their church, so oftentimes people from the churches that were predominately African American, churches that my parents belonged to, they would get together for social occasions. And there were a few African Americans from the town of Livingston Tennessee, which is the county seat of the county where I was born, and sometimes they would get together. But there were not any African Americans at Clinton or at Post when I was a student there. It was not until I got to Cass Tech that I had any experiences with African American teachers or any significant number of African American students. Some other things about memories of being in Detroit at that time, everything was really close together. The house we lived in was built in the early 1920s, standard 30-feet lots, so they’re all scrunched together. We had a retired Detroit police officer on one side of us, and then on the other side of us, there was a building, three floors, and two recent graduates from U of M, University of Michigan lived in the basement, and he was an architect, then there was a physician on the second floor and a dentist on the third floor. So if we had any medical or dental problems, we didn’t have to go very far. And then Livernois and Fenkell was the crossroads of two major streetcar lines, so they would go clanking and clanking all night long, and it took a little while to get used to that. Everything practically was in walking distance, so we had one car, we didn’t need another one. My mother would easily walk to get her shopping, there were what were called dime stores that would be similar to dollar stores today. Kresge’s was—course the same Kresge that later on became Kmart and the Kresge Foundation—and then Neisner, and Woolworth. Neisner is long gone. Woolworth became famous with the Woolworth Building in New York City. And Kresge’s, like I said, became Kmart. And incidentally, in case you want a little more history, the original Kmart is in Garden City, but there’s no historical marker in front of it.
HS: That’s unfortunate.
BC: I could easily walk to school, and one thing that’s a little bit humorous was that back then, there was a guy that delivered milk, and he had a horse-drawn wagon. And so sometimes I would get a ride to school on his horse-drawn wagon. [Laughter]
HS: That must have been fun.
BC: It was. I remember as a kid, when we would go out to the playground, it seemed like they had the tallest swing sets. Again, when you’re five, six, seven years old, everything looks big. Today, as I was reading, very, very few neighborhoods are walkable. Now there’s a big effort to try to get more walkability in Detroit, and other communities. At that time, you could go anywhere you wanted to go on the bus. Now, that’s another story. People, I thought, were a lot more friendly, they’d sit on their front porch, talk to each other. You don’t have that kind of connection nowadays that was true back then.
HS: All right, so we’re going to jump ahead to 1967. How did you first hear about the events of July of 1967?
BC: Well, first of all, I taught in Detroit Public Schools, starting in 1964. I began teaching at Mackenzie High—no, I’m sorry, ’63—I started teaching at Mackenzie High in ’64. I had a summer internship with the Detroit Urban League close by to here, over at the corner of Mack and John R. I was one of about four or five young teachers who were fortunate to get that. It was under the leadership of Dr. Francis Carnegie, PhD. Very fine gentleman. And then there was a man by the name of Roy Levi Williams, who was just a year or so older than I am. So we became good friends, and Roy lived over close to Clairmount, maybe a little south of Clairmount, and 12th or 14th, one of those. It was just south of the main disturbance area—well, I’ll call it “riot.” When I heard about that by the way of the news media, my first thought was, “How’s he doing?” I had his phone number so I called and he said, “Well, there’s flames all around here, but we’re okay on our block.” And we talked about how some of the neighbors had taken their garden hose and they were spraying water all over the house to try and protect it. That was like, maybe, half a mile south of where the main rioting started at the infamous blind pig. Okay. About half a mile north of there, at the corner of what is now Rosa Parks and 12th street and Webb, a place called World Medical Relief—and I’m wearing one of their shirts at the moment. It’s the largest building in the neighborhood. Seven floors, plus the basement, and it’s built like a fortress. Not intentionally like a fortress, but it was originally built as a storage warehouse for one of the automobile supply companies. Rock solid. National Guardsmen came in and they went up to the top of that building, and while the whole neighborhood was in flames, they were standing on top with their guns and essentially putting out any of the—what shall I call them?—any of the—shall I use the term “insurrectionists?” “Rioters?” Whatever would be most appropriate to say—again it was like the advantage of being on top of a fort when you’ve got other people who are rioting on the ground. I had a responsibility with the Detroit Urban League. They asked me to go take pictures. So that was with a standard 35mm camera. So I was walking all through the area without any weapons, without a police escort, and I was walking right down streets like Linwood; Rosa Parks, when it was 12th; 14th, all around there, taking pictures. And some of the memories that particularly strike me are so many of the people who had their individual businesses, most of whom were Jewish, Jewish shopkeepers, and they were just standing, heartbroken, as their buildings were still smoking from all of the damage. And there were firetrucks from everywhere. Obviously, Detroit Fire Department. All the suburban fire departments. They came from as far as Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Lansing. They came from Ontario. Certainly Windsor, and probably a few other communities not far away. They came from Toledo. Then the national guardsmen were all over the place, in addition to Detroit police. They came from all over the state. When things got worse, after the governor called out the National Guard, and president Johnson called out the 101st airborne from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Essentially, the responsibility of the 101st was to quell the disturbances on the east side, and the National Guard was to take care of the disturbance on the west side. It took about a week before—they were here for about a week, maybe slightly more than a week. I don’t recall the exact dates, I’m sure that’s something you could easily find out. I took these pictures, and I gave them all to the Detroit Urban League. I’m not sure what happened to them after. I don’t have them, I wish I did, otherwise I’d give them to you. But then, several other things happened, like for example, a lot of these guardsmen came in so quickly that they didn’t have a chance to pack socks and underwear. So one of the things I was asked to do was to go to J.L. Hudson’s downtown and I had a letter to authorize me to do this, pick up all the socks and underwear you can. They gave it to me, and I brought them back, and then the National Guardsmen were happy to get that. We were living just south of eight mile, one block south of 8 mile, between Southfield freeway and Evergreen, right next to the athletic field for Henry Ford High School. There was an electrical substation just slightly across the street from us, just barely across the street. They had National Guards there because it was part of the electrical feed, and they didn’t want anything to happen that would cause all the power to go out. So one of the things we’d do sometimes is we’d go over there and take them some sandwiches and other things, and the guardsmen really appreciated it. And I did meet some of the people that were victims. And what was also interesting was returning to teach at Mackenzie that following September and to say the least, there were a lot of stories. There were students who had, in some cases, lived in the area where major damage took place. Mackenzie was on the periphery. We did not have anything immediately in our neighborhood. Central High School, that’s another story. Central High was right in the middle of it, as was Northwestern and a few of the other schools, and of course the elementary and middle schools. Central neighborhood in particular. But many of the students had grandparents or aunts and uncles or they had other family, friends, church connections, people who they knew who were in the middle, where their houses were burned up or seriously damaged. And then I’ve got a friend I know through the rotary that I belong to in Farmington, and he’s a physician, retired physician, and he talked about how he was working at Henry Ford Hospital, and the Lodge freeway was shut down, and the National Guardsmen would come and put him and the other physicians into armored vehicles and they would take them down to Henry Ford Hospital and then they would bring them back at the end of an extended work shift because they didn’t want the physicians to be victimized. It had a major impact. There are some things that were for the good, especially the New Detroit, I’m happy for that. Detroit has in many ways gone through a renaissance for the better. You look out here and you see the new railroad track that’s under construction, and even in the neighborhood where we originally lived, over by Livernois and Finkell, although it’s an old neighborhood, many of the houses are vacant or torn down, there’s some new housing, thanks to a pastor on the same street where we lived, and he was somehow able to get some grant money to go around and buy vacant property, or property that was virtually ready for demolition, where they had been originally 30-foot lots, he combined them into 60-foot lots and get nice new houses with an attached garage and driveway. I’ve been through there several times and from what I can gather, no problems. I’ve got a friend who’s a pastor very, very close by there, and he says that that’s the case.
HS: That’s awesome.
BC: I wish the same thing were true in more places. People always hear about the negatives in Detroit. That’s an example of a success story.
HS: Do you have any other experiences that you wish to share with us about what you saw in 1967 or heard?
BC: I guess I’ve told you most of them, I’ll probably think of some more after I leave here. I know that my family was very concerned for my safety. My wife and I were only married for 2 years at the time, and we didn’t have any children yet. We tried to do what we could to help. I will say that teaching in Detroit did change somewhat, Mackenzie changed. There were a lot of families that moved out of the city following 1967. The Mackenzie neighborhood took a major hit, not because of the rioting itself, but people were just simply afraid. The school population went down, not just there, but all over. What else to say? Like I say, good things have happened. I’m happy about that. I salute everybody. In the words of the city motto, “We shall rise from the ashes.” I think if I didn’t say it exactly right, I came close to it. You’ve got it right out here in front. After the destruction in, 1803, something like that?
HS: 1805.
BC: 1805. Well, I was two years off. Do I get a pass for being that close? [Laughter]
HS: Yes. You mentioned that your family was worried about yours and your wife’s safety. Was your family no longer living in Detroit at that point?
BC: No, they had moved to Royal Oak. They were living in Royal Oak at that time. I also had family members in Tennessee and they were concerned when they heard. The whole country knew about it because it was all over the national media. There are people, unfortunately, who still believe you can’t do anything in Detroit, everything is shot, but I’ve had a lot of out-of-town guests who come and they say, “Well, tell me about Detroit.” And I say, “Okay, you tell me what you want to see and I can probably show you. You wanna see the good, bad, or ugly? I can show you some of each.” And I like to show them places like right here. I like to show them places like where I grew up. And I show them the new houses as well as the old. I show them places like over around Sherwood Forest and U of D. I had a man visiting me from Tanzania, a country in east Africa, last summer, and he wanted to get some medical supplies for medical relief, and he had a little extra time, so we were driving down the Southfield Freeway, and I said, “Let me show you another side of Detroit.” And so we got off and drove through the Rosedale Park neighborhood and he said, “Oh, I didn’t know there was anything like that in Detroit.” These kids were having their little street fair, and they had their own park, they were all having a great time. “Oh, you mean this is Detroit too?” Yes, this is as much Detroit as any other place is. Of course, Belle Isle—oh, the other thing! A story you’ve probably heard about how Belle Isle was closed off, and they were using Belle Isle as a place to hold inmates until their court dates came up. Am I right or wrong on the Belle Isle elephant house? I can’t remember if that’s true or that’s false.
HS: I’m not sure. I’ve heard people say that it was, and I’ve heard people say that it wasn’t.
BC: I can’t remember definitely one way or the other, you’d probably have to look it up on Google and determine. But certainly Belle Isle was closed. I also covered part of the east side for taking pictures with the Urban League. I just wish there were some way of getting those pictures. But you’d have to contact the Detroit Urban League and see if they have any records of them. Another thing that’s not related to 1967, but I had my master’s thesis in history from Wayne, and I wrote my thesis on a topic called, “Negroes in Detroit in the 1890s.” Before the ghetto in Detroit. At that time, the term “negro” was used much more commonly. That was right about the threshold when the term “negro” was fading out, and then “black” was coming in, and now, of course, I say “African American.” I was debating whether to say “negro” or “black,” but “negro” was the more commonly used term at the time, so that’s what I said. But it’s on file across the street at the Burton collection. It’s also on file across the street in the Walter Reuther Library. And I also had another interesting experience when I was writing that. I went over and interviewed a gentleman who had the responsibility of editing the Michigan Chronicle in the 1930s. He lived on the eastside, couple miles from here. I went over to his home, and he had back copies of the newspaper in these big binders and he said that when he was publishing the paper, he would, every week, send a copy to the Detroit Public Library, right there, and the Detroit Library always kept the news, always kept the Free Press, but they would throw away his papers after getting it because they didn’t think it had any historical value. So he was very happy when I got his several bound volumes, put them on a cart, and brought them over. So instead of getting them there, because they threw them away, I gave them to the Reuther collection. They were very glad to get them, so at least they’re in a safe place. I don’t know if they put them on microfilm since, but at least they got them. That’s my one little grudge against the Detroit Public Library.
HS: I want to backtrack just a little bit. You said your family moved out of Detroit into Royal Oak—
BC: In ’54.
HS: ’54. And why did they move out of the city?
BC: Why did they move out of the city? It was largely because of a church. They were particularly interested in a church in Royal Oak and felt it would be a nice place for my sister and I, who was four years younger than me, to grow up in, so I was part of that church until going off to college.
HS: And then you and your wife no longer live in Detroit, correct?
BC: We live in Farmington Hills.
HS: And when did you move out of Detroit?
BC: We moved in ’76.
HS: And why did you move out of the city at that point?
BC: We moved, well I have to be honest and say better schools.
HS: Okay.
BC: We started off at Pitcher school, but both my wife and I are retired educators and we just felt that there were more opportunities for our children in Farmington schools. And I might also add—nothing that’s any secret about that—that many, many, many other African Americans have done the same thing. I have African American neighbors who live next door to me. Few years ago, there was an African American lady who was retired from the Detroit Police who lived two doors away. The church to which my wife and I belong, it has a membership that’s roughly half and half between African American and members of European descent. The flip side, I’m very happy about the fact that an increasingly large number of people who are of European origin are coming to live in Midtown and Downtown Detroit. I was at a special event at 2nd Baptist Church in Detroit, which as you probably know is one year older than the state of Michigan. I was at a special event there not quite a year ago, and I met a biracial couple and the guy was in medical school here at Wayne State. And they said, “We’re looking for a church, we just thought we would stop by, visit your church and see how it is.” I don’t know if they stayed or not, but at least it was nice to meet them. To me, that’s an encouraging sign. As I’m sure you know, about two or three years ago, National Geographic magazine had a special 23 or 24 page article about the resurgence of the neighborhoods of Detroit. Not talking about midtown. Not talking about downtown, or even Corktown—well maybe they mentioned Corktown, I don’t recall, but the neighborhoods of Detroit. I thought that was very hopeful, and some of my friends who are out of town say, “Everything’s going to pot in Detroit!” and I said, “Do you know anything about National Geographic?” “Yeah, we know about it.” “All right, do you get National Geographic? Well check out this particular month, if you don’t get it personally, go to your local library, pull it out, read it there, see what it says, then let me know what you think of the article.” I’m very happy about that. And then, you were asking about the community where I was born. Like I said, I was born on a farm. And the county where I was born has a county seat in Livingston Tennessee and it has a population of about 4,200 people. Only about 6 or 7% of the population of Livingston are African American. They’ve been there since, way over a hundred years. Now, you have a town 100 miles east of Nashville and the population is overwhelmingly white, small Hispanic, but it’s like about 6 or 7% African American. What would you think would be the likelihood of them having an African American mayor?
HS: Probably slim.
BC: His name is Curtis Hayes. He was elected once, twice, and in the last month, he was re-elected for the third time.
HS: Wow.
BC: Every time he gets a bigger margin. Last time he was elected by a two-thirds margin.
HS: Wow, that’s impressive.
BC: So when some of my friends say, what’s going on in Oberyn County, Tennessee? I say, “Do you know anything about Mayor Curtis Hayes?” I’ve met him twice now. Fine guy, and his wife, she is of European descent, he is of African descent. That in itself says something because I remember when I was a kid down there the worst thing that could possibly happen would be for anybody to be biracial. And that was something that was set up here, I mean when I was in high school, I remember my parents thinking that could be the next worst thing to sin itself. That’s one side of the coin. The other side of the coin, you know, Mayor Duggan, the margin by which he was elected. And from what I’ve heard, if he were running for re-election today, he’d probably be in with a landslide.
HS: Probably. Getting back to the riots or disturbance, how do you perceive it? As a riot, rebellion, uprising?
BC: Well first of all, there were a lot of cases—I’ll use the term “riot.” But I guess one of the things that surprised me was that—and I know it happened in 1943, I read the records of that—but one of the things that surprised me was that it could’ve happened sooner. I was thinking, okay, how are we in Detroit so fortunate that it did not take place?
HS: Did you notice any tensions in the city leading up to the summer of ’67?
BC: Not of immediate sense, but just kind of an underlying, “That might be possible” kind of a thing, and particularly after Los Angeles. I’m thinking, thanks to God that we’re not there. And once everybody saw Los Angeles go up in flames and you realize, Detroit, how are we saved? In that sense, I was not surprised—although I was surprised about the immediate thing—and of course the blind pig story. Naturally there have been a lot of changes in the Detroit police department since and I think the police commissioner’s doing a fine job from everything I’ve heard about him. I would consider it an uprising—well sometimes it becomes a hard distinction, like South Africa, when Nelson Mandela led his uprising, or the Civil War. Well, the war’s a war, although I remember when I was a kid, some of the other youngsters down there called it the War of Southern Rebellion or the War of Northern Invasion. Never could see that. When you get a large number of people who basically take the law into their hands, they’re not elected to anything, and they basically say, “Well, we’re going to seize the power.” And then they burn up not only—well, they burned up their own neighborhood, in most cases. Very, very few white homes were burned up, as I recall and from what I read afterwards, very, very few. Businesses, yeah, there were a lot of Jewish businesses. But very, very few homes. When you think about burning up your own neighborhood, that’s certainly a problem. And then of course, a lot of it was caused by flames going from one building to another, particularly with them being so close to each other. I know there have been several books written on the subject as well as scholarly publications. I read two or three of them.
HS: There’s actually a book attached to this project, too, that’s at the publishers right now.
BC: Okay, I’ll be interested in seeing that. Who was the one that wrote the one about four or five years later? There’s been about three or four. You may know more than I on that. Anyway, I don’t know what the grade is on my interview today. Do I get at least a D-?
HS: Oh, definitely. [Laughter] I just have two more questions for you. How do you think the city has changed since the events in ’67?
BC: Well, I referred to some of that already. There has been very major white flight. There has been a much broader increase of metropolitan Detroit. Detroit no longer—when you think of Detroit, I remember as a kid, I’d ride my bicycle from Livernois and Fenkell out to what is now Northland Shopping Center. It was all empty land. Our neighbors, the [unintelligible] had their vegetable gardens out there. They’d ride the Dexter bus and then they’d get off the bus, they’d plant their garden, and then they would come back, and that was in addition to what they put in their backyard. Northland Shopping center, built in 1954, of course it’s now closed. Now, you say what’s Metro Detroit, you’re talking about going as far as Brighton, you’re going up to Clarkston, you’re going to Chesterfield Township, going south to practically Monroe. Well if you want to go official, you’ve got Wayne, Oakland, Livingston County, you know. So the population density is much less and I don’t know hardly anybody except right here in the immediate area who builds their home on a 30-foot lot. And virtually everybody’s got—if they can afford it—they have two cars. I do. We had a simple one-car garage, and we had an alley behind it. Nobody has an alley behind their house anymore. So those are some of the things that have changed. As I mentioned, the neighborhood in which I live is in Farmington Hills. Our school district is very diverse. We’ve got 80 different languages in the district, and we’ve got probably somewhere between 35, 40% African American, maybe slightly more. Dearborn—Orville Hubbard—everybody remembers anything about Orville Hubbard knows that he was number one when it came to racism. Now, there are African Americans that live in Dearborn; I happen to know one. One guy, in particular. Cass Tech got an invitation to go to Washington for Obama’s inauguration, and if I remember right, did seem like Martin Luther King High School did also. One or the other. In order to try and keep more people from leaving the city because of the schools, Renaissance High School was established, and basically that’s why it was put up, on West Outer Drive. And if we lived in Detroit, our kids were high school age, we probably would’ve sent them to Renaissance or Cass Tech, unless they objected. Again, I’m just really happy about some of the positives that are going on. And again, it’s not just here in midtown and downtown. Just down the street here, about a mile, is Ecumenical Theological Seminary in the old Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church. My wife and I were there for graduation three weeks ago. We parked on Edmond street because we had to shoot out of there to get to Grand Rapids for a high school graduation reception immediately after. Anyway, we were there and we were looking across to see the new Hockey Town arena that’s under construction. And I remember when I was a kid at Cass, all those buildings were completely occupied. Then they were abandoned. Now that’s the hottest property that you can find anywhere. There was somebody that wanted to get half a million dollars for a house that had been appraised for about $7,000 only about two or three years earlier.
HS: Oh my gosh.
BC: So that’s an example of some of the changes. And there are people who are white who are moving into the city. Not by a large number, but some. So those are some of the changes that have taken place in recent years. So it’s a mixed bag.
HS: Yeah.
BC: And I’m glad that the Detroit Historical Museum is doing well. At least I hope so.
HS: Oh, yeah. All right, is there anything else you’d like to share with us today?
BC: Well, I appreciate the opportunity of being here and reflecting on some things that I’ve not thought of for a long time.
HS: We appreciate you coming in. [47:20]
NL: Today is August 7, 2015. This is the interview of Marsha Greene by Noah Levinson. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum on Woodward in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Marsha, could you first tell me where and when were you born?
MG: I was born in Detroit, Michigan, in January of 1959.
NL: And what part of the city do you remember first living in when you were growing up?
MG: What they called the Black Bottom.
NL: And could you tell me about the neighborhood?
MG: I don’t remember a whole lot about the Black Bottom but I remember like prior to us moving – I remember the day we moved – and then the day we moved onto Vernor. And from the time we moved on Vernor up to the present that’s my memory.
NL: Okay, so tell me about the neighborhood at Vernor. Where was it and when did you move there?
MG: It was on Vernor and Montclair, and we moved there – I think I was three years old when we moved there. And it was fun, it was fun. We moved into an apartment building and the neighbors was really nice. It was like one big family unit. The kids all played together, you know. We had pets, and it was really fun. And it was a clean area. There was a little store across the street. I can’t remember the name of that store but it was a little store right on the corner across the street from where we stayed and we would go over there and get our little penny candy and our little cookies and the owner, he was a really nice gentleman, I wish I could locate him today because I would like to tell him thank you. He was really nice to the kids. He would always tell them you know, “No no no, tie your shoes, tie your shoes. You’re going to fall.” So those are memories that I remember during that period in that area. And it was nice, the apartment building sat on the corner and there was houses that sat behind us and everybody was just friendly, you know you walked down the street and everybody is like, “Hi, how you doing. Hello, how you doing.” It was really friendly.
NL: Was it an integrated neighborhood?
MG: Yes, at that point, at that time. There wasn’t a lot of white families in there when we moved. But there were on Montclaire there were still a lot of families that lived in the homes over there. It was nice because one young lady, her name was Judy. I remember playing with her. I would always try and ride my tricycle and she would always tell me, “No, you’re doing it wrong, you’re doing it wrong.” And she would always try to help me, so, you know.
NL: So people really looked out for each other.
MG: They did, they did, at that time, yes.
NL: Do you remember was your apartment building that you were in. Was that integrated?
MG: No, it wasn’t.
NL: And where were you living in July 1967?
MG: In that apartment building. 10828 E. Vernor.
NL: How do you remember hearing about or first noticing the civil disturbance of 1967?
MG: One day I walked – I came out of the dining room and I walked toward the back of the apartment where my mother’s room was and my mother was crying. I asked her why she crying and she said that someone had just killed President Kennedy, John F. Kennedy. And I was like, “Okay”; and I didn’t understand that at that point, you know, and then it was shortly after, and it seemed like it was days after, everything just went crazy you know, it just went crazy. There was people burning up buildings and businesses, and nobody was loving any more. Everything was mad, everybody was mad. And when you start off always seeing love and compassion, all of the sudden it becomes madness, it was not easy for a little kid to understand what was going on.
NL: What did you understand what was going on or what did you think you understood?
MG: That I didn’t understand it at first. I didn’t. I was like confused and I would always ask my big brother Why are they doing this? and Where are you going? you know. He said, "Everybody’s rioting, everybody’s breaking into buildings, and I’ma see what buildings are already open because I’m not breaking into no buildings because my mommy going to get me.” So, I was like, But why are they doing that? He said, “Because somebody killed Kennedy.” That’s all he would tell me. And you know I couldn’t —That was his logic, I’m not necessarily saying that was everybody’s logic, but that was his logic. But he was a pre-teen, so he was old enough to know what was going on. But I guess it confers [confirms] what he was going to tell me.
NL: Do you remember were any of the lootings and the break-ins in your neighborhood on Vernor?
MG: Yeah they broke in the store across the street. And up Vernor like if you go — I don’t know if this was west or south. There were stores. There were stores on Mack, there were stores on Gratiot. And they burned up a lot of those. They burned them up, they broke in them. You know there were banks. They was burned up and broke in. But some of it didn’t look like it would’ve been a person that broke into the building because a lot of them had big holes in as if something shot it and opened it up. Because I was like, now, why are you doing that? I was always a questionable little kid.
NL: Did the store that’s right across the street that you talked about a moment ago, did that one burn down or was it able to reopen later?
MG: He reopened it. He reopened it. A lot of people in the neighborhood kind of helped him, you know, board up windows and do stuff like that to get open, because he had been really good to everybody around there.
NL: Do you remember seeing police and National Guard?
MG: I remember seeing the National Guards. They used to early, early morning they used to march up and down the street and run or jog or whatever they call it early in the day. And it would be a lot of them. And then late at night at six o’clock you saw them all the time they was driving and walking and running up and down the street because six o’clock was the curfew. So they were always outside at that point, and we saw them then but you know, you never thought nothing of it at that point. At that point I didn’t think nothing of it. I was like, ooh. I thought it was nice, you know, I was seven years old.
NL: How long did you and your family stay in that neighborhood after the riots?
MG: I would probably say a month or so before we were able to move out of there. Our mother kept trying to find somewhere for us to go.
NL: So where did that end up being?
MG: We ended up moving on the west side on Tuxedo off of Livernois.
NL: Is that Highland Park?
MG: That’s in Detroit.
NL: That’s in Detroit. And can you tell me about that neighborhood on Tuxedo?
MG: That neighborhood was a really nice neighborhood. We stayed in a two family flat. Next door there was a pastor and his wife and we joined their church and we went to church with them. The school was like three blocks away and all the kids on the street, we played. There were – our neighborhood was – the street I stayed on we had a pastor right on next door to us on the right-hand side of us and up beneath us we had a family that had a disabled daughter and across the street from us we had a family that was – they were deaf but their son could speak, one of their children could speak, he could hear and speak. But the other child, I think the sister – he had a sister and a brother. So I think it was three children but only one of them had hearing and speech. And they stayed across the street from us. And then we had another family down the street, and further down the street there was little girl. I never saw her parents but I knew she wasn’t all black you know, and they stayed down the street, but this did – you know there was never no conflicts. Of course, the kids picked on each other but we all got out there we all played together. And it was really nice. And around the corner, because we stayed the second street off of, we was on the second block south of Elmhurst, and there was a police station that sat on the corner of Livernois and Elmhurst. And it seemed like we was always around when something tragic happened. This was during the time when Martin Luther King died. Someone, they tried to blow up the police station. So the next day after we heard the big explosion they barricaded, you know they barricaded the police station, and the police station stands right to today.
NL: You brought up Martin Luther King. That was just barely a year after the riots.
MG: Right, because we were staying in that neighborhood. And once again, like I said, I’ve only seen my mother cry a couple times and that was the second time I’ve ever seen her cry.
NL: In addition to that, do you remember other reactions of your family and friends when that happens?
MG: Frustrated, hurt, you know, “Why are they killing all the good ones?” You know, “Why is that happening?” That was what I remember hearing a lot of.
NL: What did your parents do for work?
MG: My mom was a beautician, and my dad — I don’t remember exactly what my daddy was doing at that time. But I also had a stepfather. And my stepfather worked for Fords.
NL: What kind of work did he do there?
MG: He was a — well I know he was a union leader, and I don’t know, was he working on the line at that time? Because he worked there forever it seemed like. But I think maybe he might have been on the line at some point and then after a while he was no longer working the line, he was like supervising.
NL: How long after you moved did you stay in the neighborhood at Tuxedo?
MG: We stayed there five years, yeah we stayed there five years and then we moved on Wildemere, and that’s between Fenkell and the Lodge Freeway and that’s also in Detroit. And then we stayed there until my stepfather bought my mom a home and we moved on Littlefield and stayed there 40-something years.
NL: Little, where is that?
MG: Littlefield, and that’s in Detroit. That was West Chicago, Schaeffer, Plymouth area.
NL: Can you tell me about those neighborhoods too?
MG: Wildemere was — it’s the neighborhood, you know. I went to school right across the expressway. Wildemere was just a neighborhood. I had friends over there, I had a lot of friends, and it hurt me to move because I was older so friendship meant friendship at that point. But it was a nice neighborhood. There wasn’t no conflict. But you know the damage that the riot had did had affected so many different areas. I know when Martin Luther King died they just tore up Twelfth and Fourteen. Fenkell was affected not majorly, not majorly, I mean there was a Frenchy’s hamburger place, was on the corner of Wildemere. I used to love to go up to Frenchy’s. Whenever my mom would say, “Okay, I’m giving you an allowance, you can go and spend this.” Most kids went to the candy store, I went to Frenchy’s. That was one of my most fondest memories. And then my brother had a bunch of friends and they would play baseball and football and stuff in the street, that’s when kids played in the street and played ball. And I would always want to get out there and play too and they let me play for about a few minutes and then they make me go in and my mother would call me in, you know, “You don’t need to be out there; you’ll hurt yourself.” And I’m like, I’m like aaaah but I remember that area was a joy to me because all the kids would interact. They were older, a little older, and I was still in elementary school. I hadn’t graduated yet from elementary school. But we were older and you know we got out on the streets and played and just had fun. We had the block club party, everybody just get together, block off the street and just have fun. We all get together and go out to the island and go out to the park, the whole street. We had a lot of fun on that street. But it was just a neighborhood. It was a mixed neighborhood, there was all kinds of families on there. But I don’t think we — there was no white families on Wildemere. We had a lot of them when we moved on Littlefield because the neighborhood was very mixed, when we moved on Wildemere – I mean not Wildemere I’m sorry, on Littlefield. It was very mixed, and it was beautiful. The people would come out and be like, “Hello, how you doing? Good morning.” And you heard this all day. You walked up and down the street, someone greeted you. We were always taught to always greet anyone whose path we crossed. We was always told, whether you like them or not, you say hello, and you say good morning. And so we would always do it but to get it back, you know, it was like, “Wow, they said hi!” So it was really good. I loved it on Littlefield. Littlefield was a beautiful place to grow up on, a good area to grow up on. But over the years like everything else in Detroit it started going down. But it didn’t do that until after about thirty years.
NL: Do you remember any instances of tension being in that integrated neighborhood of Littlefield, or just the friendly folks?
MG: No. It was just so friendly. And my mom had spoke on that a lot on that when we were coming up, how different Detroit was from Tennessee, because she came from Tennessee. You know, people speak to you. When she came here she was in high school, and in Tennessee, you couldn’t eye-to-eye anyone. Her teacher was white and so she automatically hold her head down. And so her teacher came to her and lift her chin up and told her, “You don’t put your head down here.” She said it made her feel so good, because they didn’t have that growing up in Tennessee. I’m sentimental, so forgive me for the tears.
NL: That’s quite all right.
MG: But we didn’t encounter it. Certain times my dad would want to take us back home with him where he grew up at in Mississippi. My mother said, "No, no, because they grew up here. They’re verbal. They speak to everyone. No, I can’t have that. They’ll say something out of line to them and they’re liable to respond." It wouldn’t be negative, but we would respond, because we were taught to always respect people. So she was like no, so she would never let us go back to Mississippi, back to Deep South. We went to Tennessee every year because my stepdad was from Tennessee and my mother was from Tennessee. So we would go back every year for the summer and spend a nice length of our summer in Tennessee.
NL: So she was worried, she thought that it might be dangerous?
MF: For us, in Mississippi, yes. In the part he was from.
NL: Not in Tennessee in parts of the South, just because of the different culture—
MG: Right. The fact that they still didn’t have – in the part of Mississippi that he was from they still wasn’t allowed to – the schools still weren’t integrated or anything. She had a problem with that. She knew that my sister was very feisty and my brother was very talkative. I was the quiet one. But she knew that if someone said something out of line to us or used the N-word to us, and we never heard that word or knew what it meant, you know we was going to be like, “Why are you calling us that, that’s not our name.” So she was scared for that reason.
NL: Did you ever have any experience in Detroit or in the northern part of the U.S. where a white person felt disrespected if you talking to them eye-to-eye this like this?
MG: One time. We were walking down the street on Wildemere. We was living on Wildemere at this time, we was walking down Fenkell. Because there were white couples and families in the area just not on our street. And we was walking down the street, it was me, my sister, and two of my cousins and this lady and her daughter were walking toward us and the little girl, I guess she had never saw black people. And she says, she starts screaming “Mommy, Mommy, an N- Word.” And it just caught everybody off guard. My sister and one of my cousins were older than us, and their instant response was, “oh my goodness. Really? I don’t think it was “really” back then, it was something else, you know the slang conversation back then. And my sister was really all done with it. And I was shocked because like I said, we wasn’t raised on the N-word. And I’m asking her, “What’s that?” You know, my sister talked to me and my mom, “Don’t you ever use that word,” and I was like “okay.” But that was the only time I ever had that encounter, the only time.
NL: Did you have any inkling as to why your family was moving every several years growing up? Was that discussed with you and your siblings?
MG: Yeah. Because my mom wanted to put us in a better area, she wanted us to be able to get better education, to move us up to a better area. When we left the east side, we left the east side because there was still lootering, and there was still a lot of things. People went from being friendly to being hateful, you know and then my mother was fearing for our lives. And then people in the building we had been staying in these years had started breaking into each other’s buildings. Then it was the drug scene. Drugs were being knowingly used. So she was like, “Oh no no no, we've got to go, I can’t do this,” you know, “I can’t be in here.” And one time someone broke into our apartment when we were in there. So that was enough for her. That was enough for my mom
NL: So as neighborhoods changed, you moved to safer areas.
MG: Yes, she took us out of there.
NL: Where did you go to high school?
MG: I went to Mackenzie.
NL: Can you tell me about that some more?
MG: Oh gosh. Mackenzie was Mackenzie.
NL: What does that mean?
MG: Mackenzie was a good school. They had some really good teachers. They had a lot of students that did want to learn. They had a lot of students that were there for other reasons: to get high, to gamble, to fight. Mackenzie was Mackenzie. It was always something going on at Mackenzie. Always. Always something going on at Mackenzie.
NL: What part of town is that in?
MG: That was on the west side. That was a mile from Littlefield because we used to walk to school. It was always something going on at Mackenzie. Always.
NL: So there was some serious issues there. Did you feel safe there though?
MG: Not at all. No, not at all.
NL: Did you ever consider changing schools or was that an option at that point?
MG: I did. I stopped going. I was on my way to school one day and a young guy that I went to middle school with, he was a mouthpiece, you know? He intervened in everybody’s stuff. If it was fighting he wanted to intervene in that, if there was fussing he was intervening in that, whatever it was. He was always into your business. And I was on my way to school and I had caught the bus this particular day, and I got off the bus and I got on, and normally – like I said, I could walk to school – but I didn’t feel like walking. So I caught the West Chicago bus to Wyoming, and I caught the Wyoming bus to Mackenzie, which is only like walking from here to Warren.
NL: Okay, just a couple of blocks.
MG: Just a couple of blocks. I got off the bus, and bunch of guys – we had a flagpole in the front of the school – a bunch of guys at the flagpole and they was fighting. And I got off the – because I could see it as I was getting off the bus. And next thing I know you heard a gunshot, boom! and everybody scattered. And there lays my ex-classmate. So they said he had intervened in — the two guys originally that was fighting – and one of them stopped fighting and turned around and shot him. So I turned around, walked right back up to West Chicago and went back home. I said, “I can’t do this.” You know it was a lot; it was drugs, certain floors of the building — that’s what they need to do a movie on: Mackenzie. There was a lot going on at Mackenzie. It was a lot. I mean a lot of people graduated from Mackenzie and went on to do wonderful things but a lot of people was caught up; if you didn’t have a certain mindset or willpower you wouldn’t have survived Mackenzie. And we had awesome talent come out of Mackenzie: football, basketball, singers. We had a lot of talent come out of Mackenzie.
NL: Did you finish high school?
MG: I didn’t finish at Mackenzie, no.
NL: Where did you finish at?
MG: I ended up going and getting a GED. I was like I can’t do Mackenzie. Actually when I stopped that day that – his name was Bones, that was his nickname, Bones – when he got killed, that day I walked back up to Chicago and I caught the Chicago bus down to Greenfield, Greenfield to Joy Road and I went and registered for the WC3. Because back then you didn’t necessarily have to have a high school diploma to start college classes.
NL: What is WC3?
MG: Wayne County Community College.
NL: Oh, I see.
MG: So that’s what I did. I said I can’t do this no more, it just — you know, and when I go by Mackenzie now, they tore down the old Mackenzie and they built the new Mackenzie. And when I go by there, you know, I look at where the flagpole – the flagpole is still there – and I look at it and just shake my head, because you know it was a lot going on at Mackenzie. But like I said a lot of people was able to take it. But like I briefly told you on the phone, death is not natural for a seven year old. So you know, any time I would come into contact with stuff like that it would just, I don’t know, it did something to me and I could not go back to it. Because I would always think all the way back to when I was seven.
NL: It was quite understandable. On a hopefully lighter note, I wanted to ask you about — you mentioned a place called Frenchy’s earlier.
MG: Yes, Frenchy’s was a hamburger place.
NL: Tell me more about that.
MG: Oh my goodness, Frenchy’s had the best hamburger and french fries. And they still had a little jukebox in there, and they was just so friendly. And a lot of guys – it was a post office on Linwood and Fenkell, a lot of guys from the post office would come there. Business people would come up there and eat. There was no confusion and there was such a warm, friendly atmosphere when you go in there. I would just go in there and sit at the counter and the waitress would say, “What can I get for you, honey?” and I was like, “Can I have a hamburger with pickles and french fries?” and she said, “Okay, are you going to get a Coke today?” I’m like, “Yes, I want a Coke today,” and I'd be all excited but it was just – it was just awesome. And then you would listen to people’s conversations, they’d be talking about what’s going on, you know, the president, the mayors, they’d be talking about things that mattered. It wasn’t no talking about what happened at home or the streets, you know these guys would be sitting in there talking business, about things that’s going to happen. You know and then they’ll see this little girl sitting at the counter, say, “What are you going to do when you graduate from college?” You know, they would emphasize college. “I’ma be a chef.” They was like, “oh, okay,” you know, they don’t have female chefs. Because female chefs wasn’t at that time. “They don’t have female chefs.” “I’m going to be the first one.” That was always my comment: I’m going to be the first one. And I would just listen to them, I would just sit there and listen to them, eat my french fries. I would just listen to everybody’s conversations. And it was just, wow that place just, it was – it was beautiful for me, you know and anybody that went up there felt the same way. They wouldn’t let a bunch of kids in, you know not a bunch of kids can come up in there at one time. And if you come up in there the owner would tell you, he says, “now you know” – that’s how he used to talk – “Now, you know.” The kids were like “Yes sir, we just want french fries!” “Okay, now you know.” It was nice. We never heard of nobody robbing him. Nobody broke in his place. And I think at some point, I think he just closed out, but we had already moved away by that time.
NL: Was it a big place or small?
MG: It was a nice size. It took up the corner. He had a front parking area and he was kind of set back, and it took up that corner. So it might have took up like from this corner to probably where that doorway is. It might have took up that little area. It was a nice sized little place.
NL: Can you tell me what it looked like there?
MG: It was a white building. I think he had reddish color seats on the inside with blue lines on them. Not stripes, but like a blue line. He had booths, the little boothy areas, across the windows and then he had the booth – I mean the counter went from one end to the other and he had little round stools on the counter, they spinned around because I used to spin around. I think he had a Coca-Cola clock up there, and they wore the little white hats. It was just nice. It was just nice, and he was a white guy. He was so nice, and he would always say, “Now you know.”
NL: Were they big hamburgers or like sliders?
MG: They were about that big. Which for a kid it was like that big. He gave you a hamburger, he gave you a plate full of french fries. He had been there, the neighbors had said that he was there when they moved there and they moved there in the Sixties. I would say mid-Sixties, they moved there, and Mr. Frenchy was there then. And it was called French. Frenchy's. They said he was there then. But nobody never broke in. You know, you would see police cars up there but they’d be up there to eat. And we would see police cars come and we’d be like, “Uh oh, they going to get somebody, they coming to get somebody.” You know, kids. But they would go in there and they would sit down and eat or drink coffee or whatever. But he was such a really nice older guy. He was older then, older as to say he might have been in his forties at that point, you know. So I don’t know if it was a family-owned business. But – bunch of kids would come in there and he would be like, “now you know.” And they’d be like “Yes sir, we just want french fries!” He’d be like “Okay, you have all your money?” They’d be like “Yes sir.” He never talked down to them or shooed them out. Now the kids, the teenagers, older guys at that point had started getting into fighting. You know you never saw nobody fighting in his parking lot. Nobody was in his restaurant fighting. They just didn’t do that time him because he had been nice. Now they did that to other places, they’d go in there and get to fighting or fight outside the building. But him, it’s like they gave him his respect. He was a nice guy. I don’t know if his name was Mr. Frenchy’s, but we called him Mr. Frenchy’s because the restaurant was named Mr. Frenchy’s.
NL: Do you remember how much it cost for a meal there?
MG: No, I don’t remember. I know my allowance at that time was fifty cents, and I know that my hamburger, french fries and a pop cost more than fifty cents. But I don’t think it was much more. Because I remember back then they had – [Right Time ?] was the cooler, it was literally a cooler called Right Time. And the party store on the corner – like Frenchy’s was on Wildemere, and then there was a store on the next corner – I think that was Parkside – there was a store, and he sold Right Time, Ripple and he sold candy. And I remember a guy came in and was buying it and he told him 45 cents, and cigarettes was like 50 cents. Gas back then was — I don’t remember how much gas was. But I can remember a lot of those little itty bitty detail things, things that excited me and made me feel good. And penny candy was just that, a penny candy. You would get Squirrels, five Squirrels for a penny. Because I could take a quarter – because we wasn’t allowed to eat sweets, and when we got one opportunity, every blue moon, my mother would say, “Okay, you can go buy you some candy,” and she would give us a quarter. And I would come back with what we use as lunch bags now? I would come back with that full. I would have cookies, I would get the big old oatmeal cookies, and I like the one candy it was called Snaps. They were white on the outside and had black licorice in them. I used to get those. I’d get me a roll of Dots. I would get Squirrels, and the Wax Lips, and a Coca-Cola and a bag of Better Made potato chips, all off of a quarter. I remember that.
NL: That’s a pretty good haul.
MG: Yeah, I would have a bagful.
NL: You can only get ten minutes at the meter now for that.
MG: If that, if that.
NL: Do you have any other memories or stories you would like to share especially about 1967?
MG: Yeah, 1967 was – you know, I made the comment about how death wasn’t natural for a seven year old, and it wasn’t. I went and spent the weekend with my – I don’t know if it was the weekend, it might have been during the week – with my cousin, and they stayed on Goethe and that was maybe five minutes away from my mother, if that. Because we could walk from my mom’s house to my aunt’s house. My aunt stayed on the corner of Goethe and Fairfield — I want to say Fairfield, but I don’t know if that’s the street. But anyway, she stayed on the corner. Right across in front of her, if you looked out her front window you would see Southeastern’s football field. If you looked out the side window, which was supposed to be the front of the building but it really wasn’t it was the side of the building, you saw-Foch was the middle school and then Southeastern was the high school. So the National Guards was already here, and they camped out-that’s where they camped out, when they came in, that was their headquarters, the football field. When I got over there – because they had been there already by the time I went to spend my time over with my aunt and cousins. And the people in the apartment building they would fix sandwiches and take coffee and feed the soldiers. And we would look out the window, me and my cousin leaning out the window watching them, feeding the soldiers, waving to them and everything. That night, me and my cousin were sitting in her living room and we was playing jacks, sitting on the floor playing jacks, the TV was on, and we kept hearing something, someone like, it sounded like somebody had a little "pop, pop, pop." But it didn’t sound like a gun. But during the time we heard that little sound we kept hearing something go “ping, ping” but we thought, okay, some big mosquitos, okay. We didn’t pay it no attention. We’re kids, kids don’t — So, first we heard the pinging sound, “ping”– that’s what it sounded like too — and then my aunt’s TV went out. And we was like, “the TV went out,” we turning the knob, not paying attention to it. She had plates on her wall, plates she had from her mother. They had little stands and she had them on her walls. And we’re still playing jacks on the floor, TV went out, we was like “TV went out,” and then the plates start breaking, and you know they broke like [beating on the table] constantly. And plates was breaking and holes was coming in the walls like the size of oranges. We screamed when we started seeing these holes, and my uncle hollered to us, "Get down, get down, crawl, crawl!” He came, he was crawling, and we got to the hallway that takes you back to the bathroom and the bedrooms, and he put us in the hallway and he said, “Get down!” And he laid his body across me, my cousin and my aunt, and he stayed that way all night, all night. We kept hearing a, "boom, boom, boom," it was no longer a pinging sound. It was like “boom.” And we could hear the – it just seemed like the building was shaking with all this gunfire. By that time I knew what it was, that it wasn’t a mosquito, you know, after I saw those big holes, I knew what it was. And when it stopped it started calming down and we heard this man outside saying, “Help me, help me, please help me. My wife been shot.” And he had a kid with him, and the child was crying. You could hear this kid crying. He said this about three times. Then you heard all this gunshots and then you heard silence. And I remember my aunt hollering, “Jesus, Jesus!” And I was like, “they didn’t—" you know, I was saying to myself, you know at that point I knew, they didn’t just shoot him, you know because you didn’t hear anymore. So the next day – we stayed in that position until daybreak. That next morning they wouldn’t let us leave the building. They was removing people. One man was shot in the shower. No, he was shot on the toilet. There was a lady that, they found her in her apartment, she was shot in the shower. There was other people they was finding throughout the building. And they wouldn’t let us leave the building, we couldn’t leave yet. So there were no phone lines, couldn’t get to nobody. We were in the window, me and my cousin, we were in the window, by this time instead of us hanging out the window like we were, we was actually literally peeking out the window behind us, and there was a car pulled up on the side of Goethe, alongside of the building and Hutzel Hospital wasn’t that far. It was like right up the street around the corner. And the guy pulled up, and he said — I heard the officer – you could hear the soldiers telling him “No, sir, you need to turn around.” “My wife is in labor. I just want to take her to the hospital. The hospital is right up the street. Please just let us go straight through.” The guy told him “No. You need to turn around.” He said, “Sir, my wife is in labor.” You know, and you could hear her and we could see her through the window because we were like this over the window sill. And they pulled this man – I don’t remember, I think one officer opened the door but the other was already pulling him through the window. They took him on to Foch, like I said Foch was right there. They took him over there to Foch and they threw the man up against the building and shot him, and me and my cousin is looking out the window like — you know. And you would hear that all day, you would hear just open fire, all day. But we saw them kill this man. I saw that, and that stuck in my head right to today. That image is just — so, you know, I don’t do the firework thing, I don’t do the gun thing. I don’t let my kids play with guns, [or] my grandkids play with guns and they all understand why because I explained to them that death for a child is not natural. I mean, death isn’t natural for anybody. But death for a child is not natural. It’s not. And then they finally let us out of the building but Foch - if the building and that door could speak, whew, it probably would tell you guys so much. Because there was a lot of death going on in that door during the time the National Guards was there. And they crossed their barriers, they did. A lot of things they did to people they didn’t have to do. They didn’t have to beat up – one guy that stayed in the apartment building with us – I don’t remember what his name was — because he was a troublemaker. But still, they beat him up, they beat him up badly. Badly. And then there was people that was coming home that didn’t get off of work by the time [of] the curfew, and they came from a distance, you know, because a lot of people worked, they didn’t all work on the east side, you know. People worked downtown and they had to get home and everybody didn’t have a car so they had to catch buses and, you know, a lot of people went to jail, you know there’s a lot of people that probably popped up missing and nobody ever knew what happened to them. But, just hearing that man, that sticks. Hearing that holler saying his wife got shot. You know, if you guys could find the radio station that broadcast, because they broadcasted that for a couple weeks, you know it’s probably in their archives. But if you can find it, and they can —cause that would be something that would definitely need to be — the National Guard, they did a lot. They did a lot. And these was young black and white guys, you know? They wasn’t old military guys, you know people like, “oh you know, but they were older” – No it wasn’t! These was young guys. The National Guard didn’t have older people. These were young guys, these guys had to be between I would say 24 - 30. They were young that was running up and down the street, that was doing these things and I’m quite sure they were following orders. But death to kids is not natural. It’s not, it’s not. And then I was talking to my son’s aunt and was telling her I was coming to do an interview. And she said, “Oh, please give them my information.” She said, “Because I remember my mother’s friend, you know, she was pregnant and her husband – they took her husband.” I was like “Oh my God.” I said, “Sherry, we saw that, we saw that!” She was like “please have them call us.” And I can give them the information. That child was born without a father. It was a lot of things that went on during that time, but those were things that was memorable for me.
NL: It sure sounds like it.
MG: When they was able to let us come out of the building, my uncle brung me home to my mother, and I ran in the house and just hugged her and cried and he told her what had happened. And I didn’t even tell them that we saw that guy get killed, you know, I didn’t. Because they would’ve got mad at us because we shouldn’t have been peeking out the window. But I didn’t even tell them. But they knew we heard everything and that it could have been our lives considering we were in the front room when they opened fire on that building. And they said, the reason – somebody asked them why they opened fire on the building and they said there was someone on the roof shooting at them. And it was like, "Okay, even if there was someone on the roof, you had to shoot up the whole building?" I think it was three floors on that building? If I’m not mistaken I think it was three floors – and that building was shot up. They patched the building back up, but even when they was patching that building up you could see the imprints of these big holes. That didn’t come from a handgun or a machine gun, you know? Whatever it was that y‘all shot at that building there were big holes in the wall. It was the size of an orange! It was the size of an orange. I was like, “Wow.” Because when I first saw the size of the hole my eyes got that big, because you only saw stuff like that on cartoons. But this was being real, you know. And I don’t remember if my aunt and them went back to that building after that. I think they did to move. But they didn’t stay, they didn’t stay after that, they didn’t live in that building after that. I remember that. Yeah, because you know what, we had moved before it was time to go back to school. We had moved. Because I went to Littlebridge Elementary School, and I was in the first, second grade? And by the time school started back, no, we wasn’t on the east side, we had moved. We had moved because I started in a new school. We had moved before school started. I remember that, that was devastating. When I heard you guys was doing this I was like, “Oh Lord, I can get this off my chest. Maybe this ghost will stop haunting me,” because it was a lot. You know and I never heard anybody talking about it. Nobody ever did anything. You know they made movies over things they didn’t need to make a movie over. Now I remember they did cover the riot on Twelfth and Fourteen, I know they covered that. But I had never heard of anybody covering the ‘67 riot. I used to always ask my brother because when we moved on Tuxedo, my brother was in high school when we stayed on Tuxedo and he went to Mackenzie. And he was in the twelfth grade when we moved in on Wildemere. I remember him coming home and him and his friend they was out in front of the house just clowning. So, I’m thinking this had to be right after Martin Luther King. Because he like, “I’m going to serve my country, and they aren’t going to keep doing this to people, the good men who want to make America right.” I remember him hollering that up and down the street, and he came in the house and my mother got on him because he was intoxicated. We moved so it had to be right after Martin Luther King died, and then we moved. And when we moved on Wildemere he went and joined the Marine Corps. That same year we moved over there, that was the same year he joined the Marine Corps.
NL: Well thank you for sharing those vivid memories with us.
MG: You are more than welcome. Thank you for letting me get it off of me. Because this is a lot.
NL: It’s our pleasure. It’s been nearly fifty years since all of that happened. It’s time for the stories to be told.
MG: Yes it is.
NL: Is there anything else you wish to share with us?
MG: No, I think that’s enough.
NL: I would say that’s quite good.
MG: Great, great
NL: Thank you for coming in today, Marsha.
MG: You’re welcome.
**NL: Today is June 30, 2015. This is the interview of Kathleen Kurta by Noah Levinson. We are at the Sparrow Hospice House of Mid-Michigan, which is on West Saginaw Street in Lansing, Michigan, and this interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Kathy, could you start by telling me where and when you were born?
KK: I was born on Valentine’s Day, 1950, in a little hospital called Brent General across from the University of Detroit.
NL: And where were you living when you were growing up?
KK: We had a little home—my dad bought a honeymoon home for my mom when they were married—and it was in northwest Detroit on Carlin Street and it was one block west of Schaefer and right in the middle between Plymouth and West Chicago.
NL: And where were you living in 1967?
KK: In 1967, that was my home. I was a junior in high school.
NL: So, you spent all your years growing up there.
KK: I did, we didn’t move once.
NL: What do you remember about that neighborhood around Schaeffer and Chicago?
KK: I remember that we had a lot of friends in that neighborhood and we got along. There were elderly people in the neighborhood; there were kids in the neighborhood. My dad always helped some of the elderly women in the neighborhood, and taught us how to do that—we shoveled snow, we raked the leaves, we took food over to them. There was an elderly lady across the street—both directions across the street—we had a corner house.
The thing I didn’t like about that was that I went to school off West Chicago and Mendota area at Epiphany School—it was a Catholic school—and we were a mile and a quarter away from our friends—our school friends. So—it didn’t stop us—we continued to ride bikes back and forth, but, our immediate friends from school were a little farther away from us. But, it was a good neighborhood. We liked it—we never moved—we stayed there, and it was a great place to grow up.
NL: Was it an integrated neighborhood very much?
KK: Initially no, it was not integrated. As I got older, we started to get more African American families that moved into the neighborhood. One of the elderly women that my dad used to help was one that was across the street. I remember her first name, Mrs. Hogue, and he used to do favors for her—like I said, rake the leaves, shovel the snow, push her car when she got stuck, and so on—but it became more integrated as the years went on, but not initially.
NL: Do you remember noticing any changes around the neighborhood as it became more integrated, or was it just that different people were living there?
KK: You know, I don’t know if it was because it was becoming more integrated, but what I noticed was that there was more crime in the neighborhood, and I have no idea what the—what the “why.” I can’t blame it on anything. I know that we had—a body was found in the alley behind our house; there were homes that were robbed; our house was robbed, on the corner. So I don’t know if it had to do with integration or if it just had to do with that was those were people and that was just what happened, and eventually my folks moved from there in the mid Seventies—also into Detroit—but my dad changed jobs and moved. But my dad was also an insurance salesman for a while and he worked with National Life Insurance, and his debit was 12th Street and some of the inner-city neighborhoods, and he used to walk from place to place. He loved it; the people watched out for him; but he, too, was robbed several times. Not hurt, thankfully—once he had a gun to his head and another time he had a knife at his neck. That was not our neighborhood, but it was also was one of the reasons why he got out of that job and we found him a different one, and that made them have to move from the neighborhood.
NL: What do you remember about Detroit in general, growing up in the fifties and early/mid-sixties as a whole city?
KK: I loved Detroit—absolutely loved Detroit—and when I meet people in my work here as a social worker and they’ll say “Detroit?” and they make a face, and you know when I grew up in Detroit, it was a wonderful place. I would as a teenage girl would take the bus anywhere in the city of Detroit. I went to Immaculata High School—we had a lot of research papers to do. By myself as a teenager, took the bus, two buses, three buses sometimes, down to the Main Library, down to the Historical Museum, shopped at Hudson’s, shopped at Kresge’s, loved to go to Baker’s shoes, all the stuff that was on Woodward Avenue. And I would do that myself, or with girlfriends, and so I loved it. I felt safe. My dad took us always—we lived in the summertime at Briggs Stadium, Tiger Stadium. Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays—Ladies’ Day—you could sit in the bleachers for fifty cents. And now I sound like my father, getting old with his, with all of his old stories.
NL: No, frankly I’m jealous. I would love to spend my Saturdays at Briggs or Comerica—
KK: You know, Briggs Stadium, and then it was Tiger [Stadium]—
But it was a great place, we weren’t afraid. We loved it. We were involved in things. You know, as a little child my mom took me on the bus, we went to Sears, we paid the bills. Went to the—we lived on the west side; my mother had friends on the east side; we would take buses to go from our northwest Detroit to the far east side, that’s just what we did.
NL: Tell my about your experiences in July 1967, please.
In July 1967 I had a summer job. I was 17, and that was the year between my junior and senior year of high school. And just to back up, one of the traditions in my family was—for years— was every Sunday morning we went on a picnic out to Island Lake. We would pack up the car the night before as much as we could, we went to 6:30 mass on Sunday morning, and by eight o’clock—it was a short mass—and by eight o’clock we were already on the road out to Island Lake, so we would have breakfast, lunch, dinner, swim, do whatever.
NL: Where is that place?
KK: Island Lake is near Kensington [Metropark].
NL: Okay.
KK: I think it’s called the Island Lake Recreation Area now. But that July—whatever Sunday that was—was a beautiful day, and my family was going on a picnic, and I could not, because I had a summer job and I had to work, and I was mad, cause I didn’t want to go to work.
My job was behind the counter at Greenfield’s Restaurant on Woodward in downtown Detroit. So we made salads, you know, just kept the—it was a cafeteria-style restaurant—and so my job was to keep things supplied, and mostly I was behind the salad counter and the desserts, running back and forth.
So that’s where I was on Sunday in that July, and I can’t remember what time in the afternoon, but somehow the managers there got word that there was a riot breaking out in Detroit, and they began to send the employees home. I had taken the bus there. My family was out on a picnic. I was not afraid to take the buses. I had taken the Grand River bus—the Plymouth bus, and I transferred on to the Grand River bus—and took that down to work.
What we saw eventually, was just masses of people running in front of the restaurant. Some had bats, some just were waving their arms, but it was just a huge mob of people.
NL: Even downtown?
KK: Downtown Detroit. Well, and Greenfield’s was not downtown—as you look at it, it was a little farther out, but was still considered downtown.
NL: Where was the restaurant, would you say Woodward and what, approximately?
KK: Oh, I knew you were going to ask me that. [laughter] I can’t remember, it was beyond—do I want to say, Kirby Park? It was, hmm, beyond where the museum, beyond the library—you know what, I can’t tell you.
NL: Like further from the river than the museums are?
KK: Maybe. I can’t recall the street names.
NL: It’s alright, we’ll do some research, why don’t you go back to telling us about, you said you saw lots of people running around in front of the restaurant.
KK: Yeah, you know, I was working there and they were saying on the radio they were sending people home—but eventually, it was just a huge mass of people, and the front of the restaurant was all picture windows.
And at the time, besides the regular restaurant manager, we also had a district manager who was visiting, who was from Ohio. And—just a little aside—if you can think of Don Knotts, and Barney Fife, and The Andy Griffith Show, that’s kind of how his personality was. So he got really excited, but as the people were going, they locked the restaurant doors, they had turned the tables over, and he was hollering in the restaurant like Barney Fife, “Hit the dirt, hit the dirt.”
And we all were afraid, so we were behind the tables, some of us were behind the counters—the food counters—some went back into the kitchen, but people were just laying low because they weren’t sure what was going to be happening. So, those who could go home, left. Very few had cars, but some were able to catch a bus and get out of the area. The bus I needed to catch to go home was the Grand River bus, and Grand River—according to the reports that they had heard—was the area that was mostly being affected and they were not running busses on Grand River.
So I was stuck—downtown—and what I learned later is, in the meantime my dad had come home, my mom and dad from the picnic, and my dad wanted to come down and pick me up. He was having a conniption at home that I was not safe. He called the police, and the police had already at that time put a curfew in effect. And they said to my dad, “If you do go down and pick her up, and we find you on the street, you’ll be arrested.”
And my dad just, he was a wreck at home, and my mom later said he just paced back and forth, cause he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t want me there—but he had no choice.
So the district manager at the restaurant—the one that was visiting from Ohio—said to me that I would have to spend the night in the YWCA. He asked me if I knew where it was, I said I had not a clue where the YWCA was, I didn’t frequent it, so I didn’t know. So eventually we got out, we went into his car, and we were going to drive around downtown Detroit looking for the “Y.” I didn’t want to go to the Y, I was scared, I wanted to go home, but he wasn’t going to drive me home. I think he didn’t know the area, so he didn’t know quite where to go with me in the car.
So as we drove around downtown it was—actually downtown was kind of dead—when we really got to the downtown area where Hudson’s and the other stores were, there was hardly a car on the street. But we were approached by a taxicab, and the taxicab was driven by an African American driver, a cabbie, and he came up, he kind of put his car next to us, when the light changed, rolled down his window, and he asked if we needed help. And what he said was, that he noticed the out of state license plate. He saw the Ohio license plates on the car, wanted to know if we were lost, could he give us directions. So the district manager told him that he had this young girl in his car, they were looking for the Y, because she couldn’t get home and she needed to stay someplace. And as I said, the last place I wanted to be was in the Y because I didn’t want to be by myself. I had no money. I had no transportation. I had no way, and I had no idea what was happening. So the taxi driver said to the manager, “I would be willing to take her home.” Well then I kind of inwardly panicked over that one, because they were all taking about this was being a race riot, and a 17-year-old white girl going in a taxicab with a black man at that point was not cool.
But I wanted to go home. So I took a chance and I got out of the car, I went in the cab with the driver. He told me to sit in the front seat rather than in the back seat, and as I did that the district manager just drove away, and there I was. So I had no chance to change my mind if I wanted to change my mind. And so he asked me where I lived. I gave him my address. I told him the cross streets and all of that, and that I had usually gone up Grand River to go home, and he thought from the reports that he had heard on the radio, that if he went up Michigan Avenue instead of Grand River, that we might be able to get to my house. So we were going to head in that direction.
The other thing he told me, you know he looked right at me in the front seat, and he said, “If I tell you to get on the floor, get on the floor.” I wasn’t sure why at that point. I later learned, again, that if a black man was seen with a young teenage white girl in the car, this would not be good for either of us. So as we drove up Michigan Avenue—actually he was a wonderful man, and he shared about his family—and what he told me was that he was not able to go home either.
He lived on West Grand Boulevard, and West Grand Boulevard was up in flames and smoke as well, and so he had no way of communicating with his wife to see if she and his family were safe, to see if his house was safe. So he asked me about my family, so we had a wonderful conversation actually on the way home, just about life, and things that were important to him, things that were important to me.
It was interesting because I learned that this gentleman was as scared as I was. Older, married, kids working already, you know, versus my 17 years—but he was just as afraid as I was and afraid for his family. So, he eventually got me home, parked the car in front of the house, came around, opened the door, let me out of the car, and literally walked me up to the front porch, where my dad was just standing by the door. He gave me to my dad, and my dad was so excited—he had tears in his eyes—he was happy, he thanked the guy, offered to pay him whatever he could pay him that he got me home safely, invited him in for something to eat, invited him in for a drink, but he didn’t take any of that. He accepted no money, he declined to drink, he declined any kind of food, but what he did ask my dad was, “Please say a prayer that my family is okay.” And so obviously my dad was a praying man anyways, and so he did, and we did pray for him.
As I look back, I wish I knew his name, I wish—he told me his name, but I don’t recall what it was—I wish even through this project, I wish there was a way that that man, if he’s still alive, would come forward with his story.
NL: I’ll let you know if we find any similar stories from a cab driver.
KK: Would you do that? Seriously, from a cab driver, you know! So he was older than me, so he might be gone already. But I learned a lot from that man: that people are people, and it didn’t make any difference what your background was, what your color was, and I think—you know, I had gone to Catholic school and we were minimally integrated in my high school, at least when I was there—but you know I was taught by the IHM [Immaculate Heart of Mary] nuns, and they taught us well, that you accept people, that you care for people, no matter what.
My dad worked in insurance, and like I said earlier, his debit was right in the heart of where the riots broke out. People watched out for him, but he was always very kind to them, and anybody—it didn’t make any difference who—but if they were on his debit, and that’s what we were taught by our parents, that you treat people as you would like to be treated.
And so, it was just—I look back, and I was thinking about this story the last few days, and I thought, What did I learn from this? And my job—I entered a religious community—and so it was the same thing you work on: you live by social justice, for everybody. I taught school, I principaled in the school, and the teachers would say, “Why did you accept that child in our school?” and I said, “Because we can help them.” It didn’t make any difference, what their disability was, what their race was, what their background was, what their religion was. It was a Catholic school, but, you know?
And now I do social work, and it’s the same thing here. I meet with people of all different cultures and backgrounds and religions.
And that man taught me well, that taxi driver taught me well.
NL: Do you remember any of the details of your conversation about your respective families and things while you were driving home that night?
KK: He talked about his wife, he talked about his children. But the biggest thing I remember and I think the thing that made the biggest impression on me, is as I said, he was afraid, too.
And everything in the restaurant, they were saying, “It’s a race riot! It’s a race riot!” Well, of course, as a young white girl, I’m afraid. But the experience in that taxi was the opposite. He was afraid, and so was I. And so that was basically—yeah, we talked about school, yes, and what I wanted to do—but, you know, we talked about his home on West Grand Boulevard, and that was obviously before cell phones, you couldn’t call your wife and say, “Hey, you doing all right?” There were no ways to do that, so—.
NL: Do you remember the sights of that cab ride as you were driving up Michigan Avenue and through different parts of the city?
KK: Michigan Avenue was Michigan Avenue. There was nothing unusual except that there was no traffic, or very little traffic out there. The sights I do remember is when the curfew was lifted some days later—and I still had the job, so I still had to go to work—I still had to take the Grand River bus down to work, which I did. And I think probably if I had a camera, my jaw was probably down to my knees! It was the burned-out buildings, and the broken glass, and the rubble on the street. It really—it looked like the pictures of cities I had seen after World War II in Europe.
The other thing I remember during the curfew, I was at a friend’s house, one of my school friends—so it must have been maybe after the curfew—but we were sitting on her front porch.
She lived on Pinehurst, not very far from Mackenzie High School. Mackenzie High School was one of the staging areas for the National Guard and the police. We were sitting on her front porch, and we could see police cars—Detroit Police cars—with machine guns out the window. And then there was a god-awful noise, and we looked, and there was a tank going down Pinehurst.
At that point we went in the house [laughter] because we were still afraid—but that’s what I remember, and that was very frightening, because we played baseball on these streets, we skated on those streets, and we did all kinds of things, and those pictures—but seriously, I try to focus on the good stuff, because he was good for me—he taught me, he taught me some things.
NL: How long after do you remember it sort of staying looking the same way before things started to look more cleaned up or more—less burned out?
KK: More normal, if you will?
Time wise, I don’t know. But I do remember it other times driving down Grand River while I still lived in Detroit, and I don’t think it ever recovered. I mean it was better than it was, obviously, the rubble was cleaned up and some businesses did reopen, but—I don’t think even when I was living there, even in the seventies—I don’t think it ever recovered in terms of the vibrancy and the vitality—that corridor, anyway. And there were the different scenes there, I think Olympia [Arena] was still open at that time, and so there were entities that would attract consumers there, but it was not—. You’d see that, and then you’d see an empty lot. And then you would see a decrepit-looking building. So it was very sad.
NL: Do you visit the city much in the forty-some-odd years since you’ve moved from the area?
KK: You know, I have to say I, once in a while—I have not done [so]often because I haven’t always lived in Michigan—and I’ve gone down—I go to the Tiger games, I do have to say that—but I don’t get a chance very often. Once in a while we’ll go down to the art museum, for an exhibit.
I have—I know—I have a friend, who actually lives in the Wayne State [University] area, and I hear wonderful things.
So I have not had a chance very often to go back to Detroit—and not because I don’t like Detroit—my life has taken me in other directions.
NL: Sure.
KK: And I have responsibilities elsewhere, but I pull for Detroit, I just—I love Detroit.
NL: What are your thoughts and memories of the last few times you’ve been in the city for games and events, and—just how the city looks and feels to you compared to the sixties when you were growing up?
KK: It looks very sad. When I go down, and if I take the freeway, and I look and I still see damaged buildings and glass out—you know, empty—and it makes me feel very sad. And when I get on the surface streets, and I see just huge patches of nothing—you know, fields—and I guess that’s better than a burned-out, abandoned house, but I see those as well.
And unfortunately, that’s the image that I hear, where I’m working now, of people—that’s their image of Detroit. They look at the bad stuff. They’ll always ask me—whenever I find anybody up here and meet families up here, in Lansing, and they say they’re from Detroit, I always [ask], “Well, where in Detroit?” cause we might have been neighbors. And they will tell me, “Well, Southfield,” or “Farmington,” or “Sterling Heights” and I say because I’m from Detroit, and they’ll say, “Well, where in Detroit?” and I’ll say “Detroit,” and they say, “Yeah, but where in Detroit?” and I’ll say “Detroit!” and then finally I just look at them and I say “Detroit, Detroit—What part of that do you not get? You know—‘City of.’”
What I would love to do is get a t-shirt that says “Made in Detroit.” I’m thinking they’re on the Internet someplace—
NL: They have those—oh yeah, there are a lot of stores around the city you can find that specialize in Detroit logos and things like that.
KK: So, you know, “Made in Detroit and Proud of It.”
But people’s impressions—you know, I lived in southern California from about 1979 to 1993, something like that—and those were the days when you had the big Devil’s Nights fires, and that was the only thing I ever saw on the national news about Detroit. I was teaching then, and it always made me very sad, because I could just tell people what I knew of Detroit, and that that’s not Detroit. That’s a piece of something that’s happening, but that was not my city. And I was always saddened because it seemed that was the only thing that ever made national news. I always tried to just counteract it and just share my experience of that.
I understand it’s coming back and I’m hoping, I’m hoping that it does.
NL: I want to shift gears a little bit, just some things you said earlier. You said that, I think your exact words were, that you used to “summer at Briggs Stadium.” So, from one big Tigers fan to another, I would love to hear about, if you have any particular memories from the summer of ’68—that was such a memorable season for the Tigers.
KK: I was at the World Series—
NL: Yeah?
KK: You betcha I was. [Laughter] And I’ll tell you how we got tickets: There was some advertising on some tuna fish can company. [Laughter] I don’t know what brand my mother bought, but if you sent so many labels in, you could get so many tickets. Don’t ask me, but we—
NL: I don’t think you can do that anymore—
KK: Well, I don’t think so, either! No. But however we got those tickets, I know there was something with the labels on the tuna fish. And my mother was able to get four tickets to one of the games. My grandpa, when he was living, lived in Pennsylvania, and he had played on a minor league team—he was the catcher on the minor [league], not the Tigers, but on a minor league team.
So we flew my grandpa out from Pennsylvania; and my grandpa, my dad, my brother, and me—
NL: Wow!
KK: —went down to one of the World Series games.
And then when they won, and they were flying back from St. Louis—I can’t believe my father did this—he pulled us all in the car and we went out to the airport, in a huge traffic jam on I-94, everybody trying to go to the airport to greet the Tigers, who ended up coming in at Willow Run [Airport] instead of Metro [Detroit Metropolitan Airport]—
[laughter]—
And we’re all on the field at Metro, and any plane that landed, we were on the tarmac—we swarmed the plane. But, yeah, it was a lot of fun, and I guess that we were down there all the time—my dad, my brother, myself, sometimes I’d bring a girlfriend. My mom would always stay at home and watch it on TV, and cheer for us on TV.
But, always we were at the ballpark.
NL: Do you have any particular memories of games from that season or plays or players from that [season], or from that World Series game? Or it all blends together?
KK: You know, I’ll tell you—I don’t know who played when, it all does blend together, but you know obviously, [Al] Kaline, and my brother’s name was Allen, so he thought he was Al Kaline. And actually my father would always get seats—I want to say it was Section 6—but it was in right field, so we could always sit behind Kaline. And then sometimes he’d get them in left field so we could sit behind Willie Horton. So, I remember that, I remember Mickey Lolich, and we just hooted and we hollered, and we would go home hoarse, and we just, we had a ball. I don’t remember plays. I think Gibson’s home run was in ’84—
NL: Yes.
KK: —so in ’84 I was elsewhere. I was in California, actually.
NL: What do you remember, if any, was the impact of the World Series—when the year after the devastation of 1967—on the city and people? Did that change things, that season, at least temporarily?
KK: Well, I think it did, temporarily, because I think everybody—everybody!—was at the stadium. It didn’t make any difference what color you were, [or] where you came from, but everybody pulled behind the Tigers. And I remember them all talking and saying, “This is what the city of Detroit needs. We need to pull together here. Bring us back together.” And they did. At least we had a common cause that everybody could rally around. And the team, as much as we could see, was an integrated team, and so we had, you know, we rooted for every player, and so did everybody else in the stands. That was fun. That was fun.
NL: I have just one last question for you. And that is, speaking of the events of July 1967, many people refer to them as “riots.” And you, in recalling your story, said that you recall people calling them “race riots” typically. From your experiences, do you think, and from everything you saw, is “riot” the most accurate term to describe that week in July, or would you use something else?
KK: I think from my standpoint, and the age I was, the memories that come to my mind is that it was a riot. I was 17—I was dumb in many ways—and so I don’t know, you know, at that age, what brought it on. It just, it was there!
The whole racial issue was not something that I was involved with or really aware of. I just wasn’t. It wasn’t an issue for me.
But the term “race riot” was what they had used in the restaurant. You know, “Hit the dirt, it’s a race riot!” Hmm, okay. And that’s what I remember, having looked at, and watching things that are going on now, maybe I would use another term for it, but in my mind as a 17-year-old, and in my memory, it was a riot cause people were rioting. They were looting. No matter what the cause, it was a riot, I think, but—
NL: Well, all right. Do you have anything else you would like to share with us about your memories of this time or other things?
KK: I just want to reiterate again, I absolutely thought Detroit was a wonderful place, and I hope for Detroit to come back, and I appreciate your doing this, because I think this is a great way to have people sharing stories, the human piece of it. And I think that’s important.
NL: That’s our goal. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your memories with us.
KK: Well you are very welcome. Thank you.
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