Detroit Free Press - www.freep.com - DESIREE COOPER: Riot affected us all, say its witnesses
Riot affected us all, say its witnesses
July 19, 2007
BY DESIREE COOPER
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Riot.
According to the dictionary, that can mean anything from debauchery to a person 
who is wildly amusing. But for Detroiters, it means one thing only: the violence 
that erupted on July 23, 1967.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the riot that took the lives of 43, 
injured 467 others and caused an estimated $80 million in damage, a group of 
Detroit writers have compiled their firsthand accounts in a new book, "Eyes on 
Fire: Witnesses to the Detroit Riot of 1967" (Aquarius Press). In reading the 13 
essays, one thing is clear: Witnessing the riot was hard, but transcending has 
proven to be harder.
Seared in their memories
Annmarie Thomas was 13 and attending the Motown Revue at the Fox Theatre when 
her mother barged in, announcing that the city was on fire. To this day, her 
once-vibrant, childhood neighborhood is pocked with vacant lots -- a direct 
legacy of the riot.
Sylvia McClain was running home from the playground when she was stopped by a 
National Guardsman, who pressed the muzzle of a gun to her head. "From that 
point on, I never saw things with rose-colored glasses anymore," she wrote. "I 
was an unwitting victim of the riot in Detroit in 1967 and would never be the 
same 14-year-old girl again."
Sharon Stanford's father wouldn't let the family turn on the lights at night in 
the aftermath of the riot, for fear of someone "chucking a rock through the 
window," she wrote. But one night, she turned on the television anyway and 
watched "Grapes of Wrath," the saga of the Joad family during the Depression. In 
the middle of racial strife in her own backyard, Stanford had an epiphany: "I 
didn't know that white people could be poor and struggling," she wrote.
'Madness in the air'
Wanda Keys was honest enough to write about something she learned about herself. 
She had been coming home in the wee hours of that Sunday morning, just as the 
riot broke out. There was smoke, sirens ... and looters.
" 'Mob mentality' is very real," she noted, as she recounted going into a 
drugstore and stealing, of all things, deodorant.
"Things were out of hand and there was madness in the air," she wrote.
Rayne Showers remembered her grandmother making sandwiches and handing them out 
to the soldiers, who were afraid, too. Suburbanite Mono D'Angelo tells how the 
riots affected him and his only black coworker, who was suddenly the target of 
racial animosity.
Together, the stories recapture a moment in history that changed who we all are 
as Detroiters, whether we were witnesses or not. As editor Heather Buchanan 
wrote in the preface: "It is right and just to pause and remember the five days 
that changed not only a city, but the souls of its residents forever."
Contact DESIREE COOPER at 313-222-6625 or dcooper@freepress.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.