Read and learn about history. Pick out a good one for us!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_23
1903 – The Ford Motor Company sells its first car.
The MOTOR CITY-Detroit
1995 – Comet Hale–Bopp is discovered; it becomes visible to the naked eye on Earth nearly a year later.
metmike: The riots were just over 4 miles northeast from our home, though we lived in a pretty good neighborhood and were never threatened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot
The 1967 Detroit Riot, also known as the 12th Street Riot, was the bloodiest incident in the "Long, hot summer of 1967".[2] Composed mainly of confrontations between black residents and the Detroit Police Department, it began in the early morning hours of Sunday July 23, 1967, in Detroit, Michigan.
The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, on the city's Near West Side. It exploded into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in American history, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit's 1943 race riot 24 years earlier.
Governor George W. Romney ordered the Michigan Army National Guard into Detroit to help end the disturbance. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the United States Army's 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. The result was 43 dead, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed.[citation needed]
The scale of the riot was the worst in the United States since the 1863 New York City draft riots during the American Civil War,[3] and was not surpassed until the 1992 Los Angeles riots 25 years later. "
mm,
Very interesting about those 1863 NYC draft riots.
I had never hears about them.
Some things ,as in human nature,never change-meaning there are no new stories out there-just variations of the same themes.
Im wondering what part the "Media" played,HA!
John
.
Funny John!
One of my brothers send me this link earlier today. Willie Horton was our favorite Detroit Tiger back in those days, as avid Tiger fans.
Talk about social activism. Horton didn’t even shower or change into his street clothes before leaving Tiger Stadium. In full uniform, he stood on top of his Ford Galaxy and implored protesters to calm down, to stop the looting and burning. He knew the underlying issues that boiled over with the riots – heinous brutality by an overwhelmingly white police force in African-American neighborhoods, economic distress and other social issues.
“To this day, I still don’t know why I had to be there,” Horton, 77, told USA TODAY Sports recently. ”It was the good Lord. I think God was controlling me, using me to bring peace.”
Horton remembers the instant feedback he got from people who were rioting.
“They were telling me, ‘Willie, go home for your safety,’ “ he recalled.
Instead, Horton, the most prominent of the four African-American players on the 1967 Tigers, stayed for hours on the night of July 23. He returned at least two more times, he recalls, over the following days. This was his city — 12th and Clairmount was in the zone where he had delivered The Michigan Chronicle on his paper route — and he was not about to abandon it in its hour of need. The destruction was unnerving.
“If I had to do it all over again, I’d get scared,” Horton told me, “but I’d do it.”
This was the response to my brother....yeah, my emails are epistles too(-:
Thought you mind find it interesting.
Thanks much Gary!
You are right about me appreciating it.
I've read that story about Horton several times before and enjoy it each time.
You were only 5 when the riots happened and I was only 11, so we never TRULY appreciated what was going on back then.
The fact that we grew up just over 4 miles or so southwest of the riots, makes us as adults, see things differently about
the riots then people NOT from Detroit.
Because we are from Detroit, we connect to all things Detroit in a special way. I had an experience with the kids that lived in the neighborhood of the riots during that time frame.
When we were kids, times sure were different as Patti mentioned earlier in the week. I used to drive my bike on very long distance rides by myself just to explore and see
what was out there.
In 5th grade, as a 10 year old for instance, 1 year after we moved to the new neighborhood on Bingham, I rode my bike to the old neighborhood some 10 miles away.
I just used remembering a few trips in the car between the 2 places and a good sense of direction to ride side streets in that direction, until after what seemed like half the day, I was rewarded by seeing familiar things from the old neighborhood.
I never told anyone because I would have gotten in big trouble for doing that.
I took other long bike trips too. The one that I remember the most, relates to the riots because it was to that exact neighborhood. I was either 11 or 12 years old.
The reason for that trip was the massive smoke in the northeast sky from some sort of huge fire in the distance. In retrospect, there's a good chance that it was from the riots. It was during that time frame.
There were 2 other kids from the neighborhood who were not even friends but were also intrigued by the smoke plume and we all decided to drive to it, thinking that it was probably a mile away, when it was actually around 4 miles away.
We passed St. Lukes parish(where Colleen went to school) at just over a mile and the smoke wasn't getting that much closer so it was obvious then that it was going to be much farther than expected. I had been in that neighborhood several times before on solo bike trips to see the school that Colleen had gone to.
However, we were determined to see the big fire and kept riding towards it, not thinking about anything else.
After a couple more miles(the smoke was diminishing but still visible) my companions started gaining some common sense(and fear) maybe because the neighborhoods we were riding thru were all dilapidated but mainly because the boys playing outside that were close to our age verbally attacked us 3 white boys. Calling us names like honkies and trying to pick fights.
So my buddies, using good judgment, turned around and went home. Actually, they were chased home by a gang of around 6 black kids on bikes that were threatening to beat them up.
As a kid that didn't use much common sense, I was not scared and instead pressed forward towards the dying smoke plume and was sort of oblivious to
the surroundings and threats.
By the time that I got to where the smoke was, the fire must have died down but there were at least 100 people outside on a busy street, many of them kids in the area that must have featured the fire earlier.
I was very fascinated by the environment so different from our neighborhood.
My bike at the time, was the one with the purple banana seat that every kid wanted to have one like in those days.......including some of these kids in that neighborhood.
I had stopped to observe around me......and quickly got completely surrounded by a couple dozen kids that wanted that bike. A couple of them offered to give me a ride on it as if they were doing me a favor..........them pedaling from the seat position while I sat on the handlebars. I knew exactly what they would do once they sat down..............good bye bike. Others made threats to take the bike, while others just called me names. I was the complete center of attention, surrounded by dozens of mostly hostile kids, many that wanted my bike.
I did not feel that scared incredibly (as you know from growing up with me that I liked risk taking ventures) The biggest surprise was how relentless so many were in their verbal attacks on me because I was the only white person there.
I had never experienced it on a huge mob mentality scale like that before.
I decided to get out of there and started back home. Nobody touched me or got physical, it was 100% verbal.
After several blocks heading home, a new group of slightly older kids on bigger bikes started chasing me and making serious physical threats.
I realized quickly that they were way faster than me and I was 4 miles from home, so there was no escape. Instead of pedaling fast and them getting their kicks out of taunting me(I was actually thinking that they might try to knock me off my bike because it was clear that they wanted it) I decided to just stop in the middle of the side street.
I figured that if I made friends with them, they would no longer want to kick my arse and steal my bike.
So with me stopped and completely surrounded by these hostile, bigger kids, I introduced myself and started talking to them like they were my friends. I never displayed any fear, just a desire to be friends with them, acting totally oblivious to the numerous threats they had been making.
Suddenly, they completely changed their tune.
.Only friendly words, no more threatening words came from them. ZERO threats or name calling after I introduced myself. We actually had a pleasant conversation for a few minutes, with me telling them how far I came on my bike and where I lived. Then, I said something like "I need to get back home and it was nice to meet you!" and waved bye. After a few seconds, they started back in the opposite direction.
I had several other encounters with groups of blacks that singled me out for an arse kicking because I was white. At the Herman Gardens, all black boxing club, in 1975. At a high school basketball game against DePorres, an all black school.
I used the same strategy.
At the basketball game, Dad was actually my ride back home and was 100 feet away and he could see what was about to happen. We had just beat them in overtime and they wanted revenge on me. I was completely surrounded. A couple of them were shoving me hard and repeating "who won the game?, who won the game?" Dad yelled over to me: "Mike get over here now!!!" I figured that if I started to run over there, I might have been punched out....... but maybe not.
Instead, I yelled back to Dad these exact words "Don't worry Dad these guys are cool!" They were totally disarmed by those 7 words. They were actually friendly after that.
That doesn't work all the time but it just shows that, very often, if somebody(s) are attacking you and your response is to be nice and try to make friends with them..........most decent human beings are inclined to act nice back to you. Regardless of skin color.
But that doesn't always work.
.
There are times, to stand up for yourself. Dad instructed me to punch big white bully Dave Smith in the face as hard as I could in kindergarten when I was whining to Dad at the dinner table about getting picked on by Dave. Wow, Dave went running home crying after I punched him out and he left me alone after that. Dad was a genius!
Running away out of fear................will always reward bullies.
So the moral and trick is, knowing who to make friends with(gangs of blacks)............and who to punch in the face(individual white bully's )