npr | The event is often referred to as a "boiling point" of racial and
economic inequality in the city. And at its center was tension between
the police and black Detroiters.
"There was an undeniable sense
that the police were there to protect some, and to contain and
intimidate others," says Scott Kurashige, who teaches American and
ethnic studies at the University of Washington Bothell. He notes in his book The Fifty-Year Rebellion: How the U.S. Political Crisis Began in Detroit that in 1967, 95 percent of the Detroit police department was white.
While
many of the facts of that week have long been documented by historians,
one big question remains: What should the chaos of that summer be
called?
"Everybody who saw this, everybody who heard these
stories has a different take on exactly what happened," says Joel Stone,
senior curator at the Detroit Historical Society. "Drawing all these different perspectives together, we realized everybody had a different term for it, too."
Last month, the museum opened an exhibit
titled "Detroit '67: Perspectives," part of a massive community
engagement project that's gathered over 400 oral histories of people who
were there or have been living in the city since 1967.
Part of
the exhibit explores the tension around what to call the July '67
events. Before they walk in, visitors are asked: "What do you call it?"
Responses range from riot to revolution.
"If you use the word
'riot,' you're really putting the onus for whatever bad happened on the
people who were looting, the people who were lighting the fires, the
people doing the vandalism ..." Stone explains. "Whereas, if you turn to
the word 'rebellion,' there's a sense that the people who are doing
that stuff are pushing back against some force. In this case it was a
government force, a police force and that they had a good reason for
pushing back against that."
The most common term to describe what happened is "riot." On July 24, 1967, the lead headline in the Free Press declared: Mobs Burn and Loot 800 Stores; Troops Move In; Emergency Is On.
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