Blind Pig Detroit 1967

On This Day in History 1967, the Detroit Riots began following an early morning police raid on a “blind pig,” or an illegal after-hours club.  What happened first is hard to say but police and demonstrators clashed in one of the most violent and destructive riots in U.S. history. Only the New York Draft Riots of 1863 and the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 caused more destruction. After five days of fire and bloodshed, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned and some 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops had been called into service in the city. In the aftermath of the Newark and Detroit riots, President Johnson appointed a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission. Seven months after the Detroit Riots had ended, the commission released its 426-page report. Ominously, the report declared that “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal. Reaction to last summer’s disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American.” However, the authors also found cause for hope: “This deepening racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed.” Additionally, the report stated that “What the rioters appeared to be seeking was fuller participation in the social order and the material benefits enjoyed by the majority of American citizens. Rather than rejecting the American system, they were anxious to obtain a place for themselves in it.”