Milton Davis

Title

Milton Davis

Publisher

Detroit Historical Society

Date

01/21/2016

Rights

Detroit Historical Society, Detroit, MI

Format

email

Language

en-US

Type

text

Text

In 1967, I lived on Edison between Byron & Woodrow Wilson. I remember my dad waking me up early Sunday morning after working the midnight shift at the post office garage. He told me that there was a riot on 12th Street. I couldn't fathom in my mind "riot", because I've seen riots on TV. But in Detroit? Where we live? The Detroit riot was breathtakingly frightful. I was 17 years old and was concerned about when the riot would end soon because I was scheduled to go to the Expo 67 with a pre-college organization group called Upward Bound. The event was being held in Montreal. But the riot seemed as if it was going to keep our family crawling on the floor every night to avoid being hit by stray or direct gun fire. I remember Mr. Russell and others in our block had shotguns over their shoulders and would not allow vehicle passage unless the occupants lived on our street. I remember walking two blocks from home to 12th street & Atkinson. There on the corner and on the vacant lot were National Guardsmen with automatic rifles, tanks, armor vehicles and army helicopters flying over our city. There was buildings burning, looting, and even the store I worked at "Perry's Patent Medicine" was set ablaze. Sorry, I didn't mean to write so much.

Original Format

email

Submitter's Name

Milton Davis

Submission Date

12/01/2015

Files

!Twitter_Profile_2.jpg

Citation

“Milton Davis,” Detroit Historical Society Oral History Archive, accessed February 11, 2025, http://oralhistory.detroithistorical.org/items/show/112.

Output Formats