Dateline May 3, 1948 – The Supreme Court ruled that restrictive covenants in real estate deeds — which specifically barred sales to Blacks, Jews, and other minorities — was illegal. Prior to that date the courts had ruled these discriminatory practices were simply matters between private contractors, and the courts had been there to enforce these restrictive covenants in deeds for decades.
Contractually enforced discrimination has long, proud history in ‘Merka, going back to the original Founding Fathers and their cruel compromise, counting Black folk as 3/5ths a person and leaving the “peculiar institution” of slavery intact. Hell, a whole war was fought over it.
When the country was built on such a crass foundation, is it any wonder that whole generations of people came to feel privileged? So privileged, in fact, that people thought nothing of putting down that privilege in their real estate deals. The idea really started to take off in the 1920s, when planned communities like Coral Gables became the suburban norm as people started moving out of congested cities. What we now call White Flight can traced to these earliest migrations; it wasn’t just congestion that some people wanted to escape. Blacks and Jews were other ills of cities that people wanted to move away from. The best way to assure yourself that you won’t have to live among THEM is to put restrictive covenants in property deeds, which specifically spelled out to whom you could sell your own property. Therefore, you would be assured that you would only be living among your own kindby moving into planned communities with exclusionary covenants. According to the WikiWackyWoo:
Example of a restrictive Florida deed:
6. At no time shall the land included in said tract or any part theorof, or any building located thereon, be occupied by any negro or person, of negro extraction. This prohibition, however, is not intended to include the occupancy of a negro domestic servant or other person while employed in or about the premises by the owner or occupant of any land in said tract.
In the 1920s and 1930s, covenants that restricted the sale or occupation of real property on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or social class were common in the United States, where the primary intent was to keep “white” neighbourhoods “white”. Such covenants were employed by many real estate developers to “protect” entire subdivisions. The purpose of an exclusionary covenant was to prohibit a buyer of property from reselling, leasing or transferring the property to members of a given race, ethnic origin and/or religion as specified in the title deed. Some covenants, such as those tied to properties in Forest Hills Gardens, New York, also sought to exclude working class people however this type of social segregation was more commonly achieved through the use of high property prices, minimum cost requirements and application reference checks. In practice, exclusionary covenants were most typically concerned with keeping out African-Americans, however restrictions against Asian-Americans, Jews and Catholics were not uncommon. For example, the Lake Shore Club District in Pennsylvania, sought to exclude various minorities including Negro, Mongolian, Hungarian, Mexican, Greek and various European immigrants.[18] Cities known for their widespread use of racial covenants include Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and Los Angeles.
History
Racial covenants emerged during the mid-nineteenth century and started to gain prominence from the 1890s onwards. However it was not until the 1920s that they adopted widespread national significance, a situation that continued until the 1940s. Some commentators have attributed the popularity of exclusionary covenants at this time as a response to the urbanisation of black Americans following World War I, and the fear of “black invasion” into white neighbourhoods, which they felt would result in depressed property prices, increased nuisance (crime) and social instability.
The Shelley House,
4600 Labadie,
St. Louis, Missouri
In 1945 Louis Kraemer sued to prevent the Shelley family from occupying the house they purchased in St. Louis. The Shelleys were Black and there had been a restrictive covenant on the land since 1911, which the family had been unaware of when they made their purchase. Kraemer knew, however, and sued. He was counting on the courts to uphold the contract and keep the Black Shelley family out of the neighbourhood.
The Missouri Supreme Court obliged, ruling as courts had been doing for
decades, that the deed was a private agreement, attached to the land.
Because it was estate law, as opposed to personal, the contract could be
enforced by a third party such as Louis Kraemer, who wanted to keep his
lily White neighbourhood lily White. Shelley appealed the Missouri
decision.
The Orsel and Minnie McGhee House
By 1948 The Supreme Court was ready to decide Shelley v. Kraemer, which came with a companion case along the same lines. McGhee v. Sipes was a case that had bubbled up from Detroit, where the McGhees had purchased property that came with restrictive covenant. By then Detroit had already gone through several racial spasms, such as the Ossian Sweet trial in the 1920s and the 1943 Riot.
Then Orsel and Minnie McGhee purchased the house at 4626 Seebaldt in Detroit, in which they had been living as tenants for a decade. A neighbourhood group decided to sue to uphold the restrictive covenant in the deed and Sipes became the plaintiff in that case. It too was decided in favour of the discriminatory covenant. It was also appealed. When it came up to the Supreme Court it was rolled in with Shelley v. Kelley. Lawyers for the defendants, including Thurgood Marshall for the McGhees, argued their positions under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The Supreme Court didn’t QUITE rule the restrictive covenant was illegal under the 14th Amendment. The court ruled that contracts between private parties can still have restrictive covenants, which the parties can choose to abide by, or not, depending. However, the Supreme Court ALSO ruled that parties in dispute over restrictive covenants could no longer expect judicial review of these contracts because for a court to uphold the contract it would necessarily violate the Equal Protection Act of the Constitution.
And, let’s be clear: The Supreme Court’s decision in Shelley v. Kraemer didn’t end discrimination in housing. It just took new and different forms. Redlining was one way of restricting a neighbourhood. Condo and Homeowners Association Boards have their own ways of restricting who gets in.
As an aside: The Condo Association my parents moved into, and which I now reside to help take care of him, is predominantly White, while the surrounding associations (all a part of a much larger condo complex with several association boards) are far more mixed in the number of Blacks and Latino residents. That doesn’t happen by accident.
Just as Coral Gables being 98% White is no accident.
This is something that happened within my lifetime. It’s not all that long ago: a mere 57 years.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott didn’t end racism, of course. It’s just not institutionalized and is far less overt. Hell, President Obama’s reelection hasn’t ended racism. It’s just done through dog whistles these days.
Some years later my father had a store on 12th Street in Detroit, the city to which Parks had moved in 1957. Twelfth Street was at the epicenter of the 1967 riot and was eventually renamed Rosa Parks Boulevard.
However, as I have explained to my faithful readers, this series has always been nothing more than an excuse to find clever ways to beg my readers to click on an advert or two (in the right-hand column) while they are here. When someone clicks on an advert, I get a few pennies . . . and I do mean “a few.” Finding clever ways to get my readers to click on the adverts has become more crucial than ever. Yesterday I learned two things simultaneously:
Blogger has a limit for FREE data storage;
I had JUST reached that upper limit.
I felt as if someone had just said to me, “Psst! Hey kid! The first one’s free! Now it’ll cost you.”
Faced with this dilemma there was only one practical thing to do: So that I can continue to bring to my vast reading audience all its favourite series, I’ll start to pay the monthly fee for the data storage.
Think of this series like a PBS Pledge Break: If you want to see your favourite EmTV series to continue, call the number at the bottom of your . . . Wait!!! What??? There’s no number? Then click on several ads while you’re here and keep this blog in data storage.
Pretty please with sugar on top?
You can also connect with me at facebook and Twitter. The more the merrier.
Dateline October 24, 1926 – It was on this day that illusionist and
escape artist Harry Houdini gave his last performance in 1926 at
Detroit’s Garrick Theater. He was to die of peritonitis from a ruptured
appendix room 401 of Grace Hospital on Halloween at the age of 52.
Harry Houdini was a sensation in the early part of the last century.
Born Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary, on March 24, 1874, he emigrated
with his family to America in 1878, at first settling in Appleton,
Wisconsin where his father was a Rabbi. In 1887 the family moved to New
York where the young Ehrich Weiss (both names having been Americanized)
performed at the age of 9 as a trapeze artist. In 1891 began his career
as a magician, calling himself Houdini in honor of famous French
Magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin.
At first he wasn’t very successful and had to double as “The Wild
Man” at the circus. While he concentrated on card tricks at first,
Houdini eventually began to add escape acts to his repertoire. He was
also a master of publicity, challenging police in every city he
performed in to see if they could lock him up in a way he could not
escape. No one ever could. It took years before Houdini found success,
but once he hit, he hit it big. For a while he was the highest paid
performer in Vaudeville and the toast of society on every continent,
feted by both royalty and high society.
One of Houdini’s claims led to his downfall. He was known as being
able to withstand any blow to his stomach. While performing in Montreal,
he was asked by a McGill University student if this was true. Houdini
said it was, but before he had time to contract his muscles, J. Gordon
Whitehead hit him with a series of body blows. Apparently Houdini had
been suffering from appendicitis for several days, but had not sought
medical attention. While doctors say his appendix would have burst
without the punches, certainly the punches didn’t help matters. While in
severe pain, Houdini still didn’t seek medical attention and traveled
to his next date in Detroit. Despite rinning a fever of 104 °F and a a
diagnosis of acute appendicitis, ‘the show must go on,’ as the slogan
goes. He performed, with one report saying he passed out and was revived
at one point during the show. After the show, he allowed himself to be
taken to Detroit’s Grace Hospital, where he died of peritonitis 7 days
later.
This article first appeared on Stones Detroit, where I place some of my posts about Detroit, my home town.
As the Right Wing relentlessly attacks Unionism, Labour Day is a the very best day to remember just exactly what we owe to Unionism. It is no stretch to say that if you like living in a free country, thank Unionism. Who do you think built all those war machines who won World War II?
As I writer I never thought I needed a union, until I found myself in a newsroom where everyone was treated egregiously. It was one of the most horrible kinds of working environments where, as the common expression in the newsroom went, the shit ran downhill. We could see it running downhill, too.
We’d learn that the head of the newsroom had been called “upstairs” and we would all cringe, not knowing who would be the target when he came back. However, we all knew there would be targets and, worse, we were all on the downhill slope. When he’d return, he’d have his tail between his legs. That’s when we knew it had really begun.
Ford Motor turned over to produce
Liberators during WWII
He would then call his Number One into his office and we’d hear loud voices as the Number One was chewed out. The Number One would come out with his tail between his legs. Then Number One would start calling individuals into his office one by one. More loud voices as they were chewed out. They would come out one by one with their tail between their legs.
Some of those people were supervisors of a small crew. They would suddenly call staff meetings and more loud voices would be heard as they were chewed out. The only way you would know whether you would be shit upon that day was whether your own supervisor had been called into the Number One’s office. If not, you knew you had avoided the River of Shit, until the next time.
However, that’s not the worst of it. People would be screamed at across the newsroom about poor performance at times, everyone else trying to appear as small as they could so they didn’t become the next target. The newsroom couldn’t seem to function without having a scapegoat and it amused me that one person would be used as the scapegoat for a while, until a new scapegoat was found. It stopped being amusing when, after returning from sick leave, I became the goat and no matter how hard I worked, I was unable to get the stench of goat off me. That’s when I saw the REAL effects of “shit runs downhill.”
Once I became the goat, everyone else in the newsroom, including people who were nominally below me in the pecking order, started treating me like crap, knowing there was nothing I could do or say about it. And those above me? They were far worse. One shoved me out of the way one day, as I was holding the door open for him. When I complained, I was told I had imagined it. Most everyone in the newsroom saw who was the goat and treated me as if I was something they needed to clean off their shoe.
In the end I had to leave and I am glad my union had been there to help me negotiate a (relatively) fair exit and to hold an umbrella over my head when, at times, the River of Shit threatened to engulf me completely. [I would write more about this, but my exit agreement prevents me from saying too much.]
There was a time in this country when Unions were prized and people understood that Unionism saved the country from the Nazis and the Huns as Unionists turned Detroit, and other cities, into the Arsenals of Democracies.
1. Minimum Wage: Without federally mandated minimum wage, we’d still be working for pennies.
2. Child Labor Laws: Without these laws, children would be hired as cheap labor.
3. Paid Vacations: Did you go on a cruise this year? Perhaps to the Grand Canyon or another country? Thank a union.
4. Employer Health Care, Dental, and Vision Insurance: If you have a medical, dental, or vision care plan through your employer, your a lucky person. All because of organized labor.
5. Pensions: If you were able to retire at 65 and get pension checks in the mail, congratulations, you’re living proof that unions work.
6. Safety Conditions: Do you work at a potentially hazardous job but have safety regulations in place to protect you? If so, unions are responsible for your continued safety.
7. Collective Bargaining: Just having the right to negotiate with your employer is a benefit guaranteed by a union.
8. Weekends: If you have weekends off to spend with your families, a labor union is responsible for giving you that time off.
9. Sick Leave: Did you get to use a work provided sick day to get well? Unions fought for that too.
10. Overtime: Are you able to work overtime and get paid even more for it? Thank a union.
11. 8 Hour Work Day: Without unions, we’d all be working non-stop 24/7. Because of unions you’re able to go home and spend some time at home with family and friends before you catch 6-8 hours of sleep.
12. 40 Hour Work Week: Just like number 11, without unions, we’d never have a day off and work would encompass our entire life.
13. Unemployment Benefits: Are you unemployed but receive unemployment benefits to care for your family until you find another job? One word. Unions.
14. Wrongful Termination Laws: Because of unions, you can’t be fired for stupid reasons, like the color of your skin or because you make too much money.
15. Pay Raises: Unions are responsible for your ability to ask for and receive pay raises.
16. Holiday Pay: Do you at least get some holidays off? If so, thank a union.
17. Pregnancy and Parental Leave: In some countries, women give birth on the job and have to go back to work the next day. Corporations would make women do the same thing here if not for the determination of a union.
18. The Right To Strike: We have the right to organize and protest against the government. A union fought for your right to organize and strike against your employer.
19. Equal Pay For Women: Women finally get equal pay for equal work. Thank a union.
20. Laws Ending Sweatshops: Because of unions, sweatshops, which employ cheap labor with harsh conditions, are illegal.
State governments should not be attacking Unionism. Itstead Unionists should be thanked for saving this country so that people could have their freedom to be douchey.
Late last month I wrote about Detroit’s three major riots, one of them being the 1943 Riot. I am currently reading an amazing book that adds a bit more context to that riot. “The Warmth of Other Suns; The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” by Isabel Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize in History, as well as many other prizes and awards. They are all well-deserved. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to understand the pressures Black folks felt in the south and how moving north didn’t necessarily make them first class citizens.
Wilkerson tells this sweeping story by following the lives of 3 people: Ida Mae Brandon Gladney from Chickasaw County, Mississippi; Robert Joseph Persing Foster, from Monroe, Louisiana; and George Swanson Starling, late of Wildwood, Florida.
George Starling, married too early out of spite, found himself picking citrus fruit (and many other odd jobs) in order to save up enough money to send his wife to hair dressing school and finish his education at a university in Tallahassee. He dropped out due to finances, but always planned to return. However, during World War Two he heard they were hiring in Detroit. Against his wife’s wishes he moved north by himself to help assemble B-29 bombers in what was being called The Arsenal of Democracy; when the entire car industry was turned over to defeating Hitler and Japan. Wilkerson picks up his story:
Then on the humid night of Sunday, June 20, 1943, a fight broke out between several hundred white and colored * men on Belle Isle, a park extending into the Detroit River on the east side of town. The fighting spread north, south, and west as rumors circulated among blacks that white men had killed a colored woman and thrown her baby into the Detroit River and, among whites, that colored men had raped and killed a white woman in the park.
Neither rumor turned out to be true, but it was all that was needed to set off one of the worst riots ever seen in the United States, an outbreak that would mark a turning point in American race relations. Until the 1943 uprising in Detroit, most riots in the United States, from the 1863 Draft Riots in New York to the riots in Tulsa in 1921, to Atlanta in 1906 to Washington, D.C., to Chicago, Springfield, and East St. Louis, Illinois, and Wilmington, North Carolina, among others, had been white attacks on colored people, often resulting in the burning of entire colored sections or towns.
This was the first major riot in which blacks fought back as earnestly as the whites and in which black residents, having become established in the city but still relegated to run down ghettos, began attacking and looting perceived symbols of exploitation, the stores and laundries run by whites and other outsiders that blacks felt were cheating them. It was only after Detroit that riots became known as urban phenomena, ultimately centered on inner-city blacks venting their frustrations on the ghetto that confined them.
The Detroit Riots went on for close to a week, ending in thirty-four deaths and more than one thousand wounded. The Sunday night the riot began, as many as many as five thousand people joined in the stoning, stabbing, and shooting, so many people injured that the municipal hospital was admitting riot victims at a rate of one a minute.
George was living at 208 Josephine near Hastings and Woodward and heard the mayhem in the streets and on the radio all through the night. He was living in the middle of the crowded colored quarter mockingly called Paradise Valley, where blacks were stoning the cars of passing whites, whites were beating up blacks as they emerged from the all-night theaters on Woodward, and an inspector on the scene reported to the police commissioner that the situation was out of control.
The rioting continued into the next morning. It was now Monday, the start of the work week. A Co-worker of George’s called him up.
“Hey Starling, what you gonna do?”
“Do ’bout what?”
” ‘Bout going to work.”
“I’m going.”
“Man, you must be crazy.”
“What you talking about?”
“Don’t you know? Where you been? You didn’t know it was a riot going on?”
“Yeah, but I ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. I ain’t in no gang.”
“This ain’t no gang fight. This is a riot.”
“Well, they ain’t gonna bother me. I ain’t done nothing to nobody. I’m going to work.”
“You gonna get yourself killed.”
Streetcar violence on Woodward
George had to take two trolleys to get to Hamtramck. He boarded the first in a colored neighborhood, and instantly something was wrong. The colored people were sitting up straight; the white people were crouched in their seats so they couldn’t be seen out the window.
Wonder why these people down on the floor like they are, he asked himself.
The trolley made its way to a white neighborhood, and now the colored people crouched down and the white people sat up.
What in the devil is going on? he said to himself.
The trolley pulled into the intersection. A mob two blocks long stood cursing outside the trolley.
What’s wrong with all them people? he thought.
The mob became a single organism descending on the trolley. The trolley operator moved fast. “He went back the other way,” George said. “That’s the only thing that saved us. And that’s when I began to realize the seriousness of this thing.”
He managed to make it to work that day. But the trouble wasn’t over. The rioting continued all day Monday and into a second night. When he got back home to Hastings Street that evening, a mob was approaching from Woodward, howling and turning over cars.
“I ran so fast my heels were hitting my back,” he said.
As he rounded the corner onto Josephine, he could see a colored mob forming. “They were turning over white cars,” he said, “dumping the people out like you dump ashes out an ashtray and setting the cars on fire.”
Some colored men in his block stood on the sidewalk, trying to figure out what to do. They gathered the empty bottles in their flats to throw at people if it came to that. “We were wondering how it was going to end up.”
A white undertaker in the block joined the colored men contemplating the situation. He did not leave when the other white people fled. He fixed his feet on the ground with the neighbors who happened to be colored and let it be known where he stood. He might need their protection if it came to that.
“You know them white folks raising hell over there on Woodward Avenue,” the white undertaker started to say.
“Yeah, they sure are,” George said.
The white undertaker drew closer and into their circle. “But us colored folks is giving ’em hell over on Hastings,” he said.
The colored men welcomed a new brother, and they all laughed at the meaning of that. **
This book should be read by everyone interested in race relations in ‘Merka. It covers such a wide pallet, from the south to cities all across the nation, from Jim Crow laws to relative freedom. Don’t be put off by its 538 pages (not including index, end notes and notes on methodology). It’s a very well-written book and the pages breeze by, except for all the lynchings and ugliness, which cannot be ignored.
READ IT!!!
* Wilkerson explains that she is using the language of the times
** Hoping “Fair Use” covers this long excerpt; any mistakes or typos are mine
12th Street, Detroit. Michigan, one week before the 1967 Riot.
That’s Pops’ store way down the block on the left: Astor Furniture.
When people hear I am from Detroit, inevitably they ask about the Detroit Riot. “Which one?” I always reply. There was more than one, yet most people are only aware of the 1967 Black Day In July Riot. However, when you look at the history of Detroit, it’s apparent that rioting is in her DNA—both figuratively and literally—but I’ll get to that later. First I will tell you of my personal experiences during the ’67 Riot because that’s what people really want to know when they ask about the Detroit Riot. I want to get it out of the way quickly [or as quickly as my story-telling tangents allow] because there are much better riots to talk about. However, you will need some important context.
Astor Furniture, on Detroit’s 12th Street, was where my father had a new and used furniture store in 1967. The street is now known as Rosa Parks Boulevard and Pops’ store was at the corner of Blaine. My house on the edge of Detroit, near 8 Mile, was less than 10 miles from Pops’ store on 12th Street. However, it might have been a million miles away, as different as the two places were. My neighbourhood had no Black people; where Pops had his store, there were no White people. Detroit has long been considered one of the most segregated cities in ‘Merka and this gulf between where we lived and where my father earned his living was the personification of that for me as I grew up.
Gordon Lightfoot tells you all about it:
I used to go down to 12th Street with Pops on the weekends and, as I got older, would often go out on deliveries with the all-Black crew to deliver furniture all around the neighbourhood. Over the years I got to see the inside of many houses and apartments along 12th Street. One of the things that always struck me was how many living rooms had little shrines to both Jesus and President Kennedy. However, that’s not why you’re here. It’s the riot you want to know about.
Astor Furniture after the worst of the 1967 Detroit Riot.
Police have made the streets safe for firefighting.
The Detroit Riot of 1967 began on the corner of 12th Street and Clairmont, exactly four blocks from Pops’ store. I was out of town. That’s my alibi and I’m sticking to it.
Every summer I went to camp in the wilds of Ortonville, Michigan. At some point every year they’d pack us onto a bus and smuggle us into another country. We would head off to Stratford, Ontario, Canada to see a Shakespearean play written by Shakespeare. I guess so they could tell my parents, “We tried to civilize him” at the end of the camp session. After the play we would grab a late meal in Stratford like the young sophisticates we were pretending to be. It was the only place we could spend any of the money we took with us to camp. The Tuck Shop had crap for sale. Every year the counselors made us promise that no matter what we wouldn’t phone home, or otherwise embarrass them in the Sin City of Stratford, Ontario, while they ditched us.
In 1967, when the play ended, we spread out to various restaurants around town. It was on a newsstand at the restaurant I saw the 1st DETROIT RIOTS headline. On the front of the newspaper was a picture of Pops’ store with the riot in progress right in front of it!!! I started running around Stratford looking for a counselor who could give me permission to phone home. Later we learned that the counselors already knew about the riot, but had withheld that information from us so as to not worry us. Word spread quickly among the campers and eventually there were lineups at all the payphones in Stratford.
So, that’s my Detroit riot story; I missed it entirely. I bet my father wishes he could say the same. He lost every stick of furniture in the store, as well as his front windows. However, he was better off than other business owners who were burned out. After Marshall Law was lifted, and civilians were allowed back in the area, he was able to start all over again in the same location. However, it was a total loss for him. Insurance was so prohibitively expensive that he did without it. After the riot he was left to pick up the pieces by himself.
I never worked on 12th Street again.
This is the building on the corner of Clairmont and 12th Street,
where police raided a blind pig, triggering the 1967 Riot.
The 1967 Detroit Riot began over a single flash point, following many years of bad mojo between the all-White Detroit Police Department and the all-Black neighbourhoods they patrolled. The trigger was a raid on a “blind pig,” essentially an after-hours, illegal drinking establishment. Police decided they were going to arrest the people in the “blind pig.” That’s the official story and is correct as far as it goes.
Coincidentally, or maybe not, the blind pig was also a celebration for some returning Vietnam Vets. When police came to bust the joint it got loud. The veterans said, in essence, “Enough is enough. We just got back from Vietnam defending this country and we won’t be treated like 2nd class citizens any longer.” However, they didn’t start the riot. They were the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Due to the sheer numbers in the blind pig (reportedly 82) police were forced to call in several paddy wagons. As the arrests proceeded a crowd started to grow. It was a hot night and culturally this neighbourhood kept very different hours than the lily-White block where I lived, with everyone tucked safely into bed by 11 PM. It was always true that Black people were far more visible in their neighbourhood than Whites were in their own. Unemployment was one factor, culture was a bigger factor. During the ’50s and ’60s when White Home Life™ turned to suburbia, car culture, and backyard barbecues, Black Home Life™ was more street oriented; front porches, street corners, back alleys (which my neighbourhood didn’t even have) were all gathering places for friends and family, especially in the days before air conditioning was ubiquitous.
All this to explain why a large crowd gathered almost immediately while
police waited for the paddy wagons. However, that doesn’t explain the anger that
exploded into the ’67 Riot. Years of injustice does. The neighbourhood came to view the Detroit Police Department as an
Occupying Force and, despite the Civil Rights Act and promises of The Great Society,
Blacks were still getting the short end of the stick, and getting it in their own neighbourhoods. The amazing thing to me about the ’67 Detroit Riot was how instantaneous it was. It went from zero to Riot in under an hour and took five days to quell.
One of thousands of pictures of the ’67 Detroit Riot I have viewed. I have only found Pops’ store in two of them.
Just as fires cannot erupt in a vacuum, neither do riots. Among the
several factors underlying the 1967 Detroit Riot three loomed
large: White Flight, Police Brutality and a severe housing shortage. The housing
shortage stemmed, in part, from a growing economy. The Big Three were
hiring in those days. According to a web site at Rutgers:
Like Newark, Detroit was swept by a wave of white flight. During the
1950s the white population of Detroit declined by 23%. Correspondingly,
the percentage of non-whites rose from 16.1% to 29.1%. In sheer numbers
the black population of Detroit increased from 303,000 to 487,000 during
that decade. (Fine 1989:4) By 1967, the black population of Detroit
stood at an estimated 40% of the total population. (National Advisory
Committee on Civil Disorders 1968:89-90). As in Newark, some
neighborhoods were more affected by white flight than others. This was
particularly true for the Twelfth Street neighborhood, where rioting
broke out in the summer of 1967. “Whereas virtually no blacks lived
there in 1940 (the area was 98.7% white), the area was over one-third
(37.2%) non-white in 1950. By 1960, the proportion of blacks to whites
had nearly reversed: only 3.8 percent of the areas residents were white.
Given that the first blacks did not move to the area until 1947 and
1948, the area underwent a complete racial transition in little more
than a decade.” Sugrue 1996:244)
This rapid turnover in population in the neighborhood brought with it
the attendant ills of social disorganization, crime and further
discrimination. It’s impact in the 12th street area was devastating.
According to Sidney Fine, “The transition from white to black on
Detroit’s near northwest side occurred at a remarkably rapid rate…In a
familiar pattern of neighborhood succession, as blacks moved in after
World War II, the Jews moved out. The first black migrants to the area
were middle class persons seeking to escape the confines of Paradise
Valley. They enjoyed about “five good years” in their new homes until
underworld and seedier elements from Hastings Street and Paradise
Valley, the poor and indigent from the inner city, and winos and
derelicts from skid row flowed into the area. Some of the commercial
establishments on Twelfth Street gave way to pool halls, liquor stores,
sleazy bars, pawn shops, and second hand businesses. Already suffering
from a housing shortage and lack of open space, Twelfth Street became
more “densely packed” as apartments were subdivided and six to eight
families began to live where two had resided before. The 21,376 persons
per square mile in the area in 1960 were almost double the city’s
average” (Fine 1989:4) This neighborhood would serve as the epicenter of
the 1967 riot.
When it’s all gone just the marker remains.
Is this the ultimate fate of the E.W.F. Stirrup House?
It didn’t help that, under the guise of Urban Renewal, it was decided to ram I-75 through the city. Paradise Valley and Black Bottom, the traditional Black areas of Detroit, were razed and paved over. While it’s true these were some of the worst slums in Detroit, it was also home to the thriving Black Culture of the city, with many self-sustaining businesses along with Jazz and Blues clubs up and down Hastings. When these neighbourhoods were torn down, the people had to go somewhere. Because of redlining, Blacks couldn’t move much farther than 12th Street. Had 12th Street not undergone such a dramatic demographic shift in such a short period of time, who knows how Detroit might have developed. However, that’s all water under the Ambassador Bridge now.
Rutgers also outlined the issue of Police Brutality, another factor leading up to the riot:
In Detroit, during the 1960s the “Big Four” or “Tac Squad” roamed the streets, searching for bars to raid and prostitutes to arrest. These elite 4 man units frequently stopped youths who were driving or walking through the 12th street neighborhood. They verbally degraded these youths, calling them “boy” and “nigger*”, asking them who they were and where they were going. (Fine 1989:98). Most of the time, black residents were asked to produce identification, and having suffered their requisite share of humiliation, were allowed to proceed on their way. But if one could not produce “proper” identification, this could lead to arrest or worse. In a few notable cases, police stops led to the injury or death of those who were detained. Such excessive use of force was manifested in the 1962 police shooting of a black prostitute named Shirley Scott who, like Lester Long of Newark, was shot in the back while fleeing from the back of a patrol car. Other high profile cases of police brutality in Detroit included the severe beating of another prostitute, Barbara Jackson, in 1964, and the beating of Howard King, a black teenager, for “allegedly disturbing the peace”. (Fine 1989:117) But the main issue in the minds of Detroit’s black residents was police harassment and police brutality, which they identified in a Detroit Free Press Survey as the number one problem they faced in the period leading up to the riot. (Detroit Free Press 1968, Fine 1989, Thomas 1967). According to a Detroit Free Press Survey, residents reported police brutality as the number as the number one problem they faced in the period leading up to the riot. (Detroit Free Press 1968, Fine 1989, Thomas 1967).
[…]
Despite the election of a liberal Democratic mayor who appointed African Americans to prominent positions in his administration, and despite Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh’s good working relationship with mainstream civil rights groups, a significant segment of the black community in Detroit felt disenfranchised, frustrated by what they perceived to be the relatively slow pace of racial change and persistent racial inequality. Local militant leaders like the Reverend Albert Cleague spoke of self-determination and separatism for black people, arguing that whites were incapable and or unwilling to share power. The civil rights movement was deemed a failure by these young leaders in the black community. At a black power rally in Detroit in early July 1967, H. Rap Brown foreshadowed the course of future events, stating that if “Motown” didn’t come around, “we are going to burn you down”.
Detroit was ripe for riot by 1967, especially following the mini-Kercheval riot of the previous year.
Over the period of five days, forty-three people died, of whom 33 were black and ten white. The other damages were calculated as follows:
467 injured: 182 civilians, 167 Detroit police officers, 83 Detroit firefighters, 17 National Guard troops, 16 State Police officers, 3 U.S. Army soldiers.
7,231 arrested: 6,528 adults, 703 juveniles; the youngest, 4, the oldest, 82. Half of those arrested had no criminal record.
2,509 stores looted or burned, 388 families rendered homeless or displaced and 412 buildings burned or damaged enough to be demolished. Dollar losses from arson and looting ranged from $40 million to $80 million.[19]
That, ladies and gentleman, is your Detroit Riot of 1967. After John Lee Hooker reports to us via The Blues, we can get to the good stuff.
* I refuse to soften the ugliest word in the English language by using that awful construct “The N Word.” Don’t like it? Me neither.
Part Two – The 1943 Detroit Riot
When I start telling people about the 1943 Detroit Riot, they blink. Huh? What? Yet, the ’43 riot seems almost as predictable as the ’67 Riot. Just as fires cannot erupt in a vacuum, neither do riots. There were several pressures that led to the ’43 riot. Again jobs and housing were two of the main flashpoints, but systemic racism was at the bottom of it all.
Dr. Ossian Sweet, movin’ on up?
Not if the neighbours can help it.
One of the festering resentments in Detroit’s ugly housing legacy goes back to the ’20s, when Dr. Ossian Sweet found himself on trial for murder merely because he wanted to move to a better neighbourhood. Sweet purchased a house on Garland Avenue, on what would become my birthday, June 7, 1925. According to published reports, Sweet paid $6,000 over market-value to a White homeowner who knew how desperate Blacks were to find good housing. The trouble started when Sweet and his family tried to occupy the house in September. When a White mob formed for the second day in a row, it trapped Sweet, his wife Gladys, and nine other men recruited to help Sweet protect his Civil Rights. The mob threw rocks and shots were fired from an upstairs window; one of the mob was killed, another wounded. All 11 in the house were put on trial for murder, with Clarence Darrow defending. After a mistrial, there was an acquittal against Sweet and the prosecutors decided to dismiss all charges against the remaining defendants.
A sign near the Sojourner
Truth housing project.
Less than 20 years later Detroit housing would become another flashpoint, with Whites once again the instigators. When the Feds announced a housing projects for Detroit, on the edge of a traditional White neighbourhood, the local community assumed it was for their own kind. When it was named the Sojourner Truth housing project, Whites protested. The government reversed its decision and decided this would be for Whites and it would find another location for a Black housing project, even tho’ it would retain the Truth name. Then Detroit Mayor Edward Jeffries, Jr. got involved and the Feds reversed their decision again: This housing would be for the Black people of Detroit who desperately needed housing. On moving day Whites protested, turning away the first families. It was months before people would eventually move in.
Less than a year later, according to the WikiWackyWoo:
In early June 1943, three weeks before the riot, Packard Motor Car Company promoted three blacks to work next to whites in the assembly lines. This promotion caused 25,000 whites to walk off the job, effectively slowing down the critical war production. It was clear that whites didn’t mind that blacks worked in the same plant but refused to work side-by-side with them. During the protest, a voice with a Southern accent shouted in the loudspeaker, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger”*.[7]
The kindling was already there. Tempers were obviously at a boiling point and the muggy heat of a late June evening didn’t help. According to PBS:
Belle Isle
Detroit riot began at a popular and integrated amusement park known as Belle Isle. On the muggy summer evening of June 20, 1943, the playground was ablaze with activity. Several incidents occurred that night including multiple fights between teenagers of both races. White teenagers were often aided by sailors who were stationed at the Naval Armory nearby. As people began leaving the island for home, major traffic jams and congestion at the ferry docks spurred more violence. On the bridge which led back to the mainland, a fight erupted between a total of 200 African Americans and white sailors. Soon, a crowd of 5,000 white residents gathered at the mainland entrance to the bridge ready to attack black vacationers wishing to cross. By midnight, a ragged and understaffed police force attempted to retain the situation, but the rioting had already spread too far into the city.
Man being dragged off a
Woodward Avenue streetcar
by an angry White mob.
Car burns on Woodward.
Two rumors circulated which exacerbated the conflict. At the Forest Club, a nightclub in Paradise Valley which catered to the black population, a man who identified himself as a police sergeant alerted the patrons that “whites” had thrown a black woman and her baby over the Belle Isle bridge. The enraged patrons fled the club to retaliate. They looted and destroyed white-owned stores and indiscriminately attacked anyone with white skin. Similarly, white mobs had been stirred up by a rumor that a black man had raped and murdered a white woman on the bridge. The white mob centered around the downtown Roxy Theater which harbored a number of black movie-goers. As the patrons exited the theater, they found themselves surrounded by gangs who attacked and beat them. As rumors about the incidents in Paradise Valley and the downtown area spread through the night, so did the nature and the extent of the violence. White mobs targeted streetcars transporting black laborers to work, forced the cars to come to a halt, and attacked the passengers inside. They also targeted any cars with black owners, turning them over and setting them on fire.
White mob overturns car in front of White Tower
By mid morning, black leaders in the community had asked Mayor Edward J. Jeffries to call in federal troops to quell the fighting. But it was not until late that evening, when white mobs invaded Paradise Valley, that Jeffries took the necessary steps to get outside help. Around midnight, a disturbing silence reigned over the city as a truce between the city’s warring factions was kept by U.S. Army troops. More than 6,000 federal troops had been strategically stationed throughout the city. Detroit, under armed occupation, virtually shut down. The streets were deserted, the schools had been closed, and Governor Harry Francis Kelly had closed all places of public amusement. Most of the Paradise Valley community feared to leave their homes. Yet spurts of violence still flared up. As late as Wednesday, white mobs threatened black students leaving their graduation ceremony at Northeastern High School. The graduates had to be escorted home by truckloads of soldiers bearing bayonets.
An arrest by police
A victim
If you read between the lines, it seems pretty clear this is a White riot. While there may have been some skirmishes between isolated groups on Belle Isle, it wasn’t until the [White] Navy got involved that things spun out of control. They were reacting to the rumour that a Black man did something-something to a White something-something. Does it really matter what details were? That’s the same excuse Whites always used when they went crazy and attacked Blacks. It was a “Get out of jail free” card for Whites for as long as anyone can remember. It was probably used as a knee-jerk excuse without any grounding in reality. The naval cadets attacked any Black leaving the small island over the only bridge and the riot escalated from there.
The chronology above is slightly off. The rumour that swept through the Black community came only AFTER the Whites were already rioting. It very well could have been true, based on what people were already seeing with their own eyes. Whites targeted any and all Blacks they could find, including innocent people who were just minding their own business. This was a White riot, with Black community defending itself and then retaliating. There’s no other way to view the events in retrospect.
As
the violence escalated, both blacks and whites engaged in violence.
Blacks dragged whites out of cars and looted white-owned stores in
Paradise Valley while whites overturned and burned black-owned vehicles
and attacked African Americans on streetcars along Woodward Avenue and
other major streets. The Detroit police did little in the rioting,
often siding with the white rioters in the violence.
The
violence ended only after President Franklin Roosevelt, at the request
of Detroit Mayor Edward Jeffries, Jr., ordered 6,000 federal troops into
the city. Twenty-five blacks and nine whites were killed in the
violence. Of the 25 African Americans who died, 17 were killed by the
police. The police claimed that these shootings were justified since
the victims were engaged in looting stores on Hastings Street. Of the
nine whites who died, none were killed by the police. The city suffered
an estimated $2 million in property damages.
34 people were killed, 25 of whom were African Americans in which 17 of them were killed by the police.
Out of the approximately 600 injured, black people accounted for more than 75 percent and of the roughly 1,800 people who were arrested over the course of the 3 day riots, black people accounted for 85 percent.
Remember: It was War Time. Cartoonists feared the Japanese and the Nazis would use this incident to their propaganda advantage, with Jim Crow discrimination to blame. The mayor blamed Black hoodlums; Wayne County prosecutors blamed the NAACP for instigating. However, Detroit’s Black community knew the truth and passed it along orally for the next 24 years until the next riot.
Ironically, the 1943 Riot was also one of the catalysts for the city’s later decision to tear down Black Bottom and Paradise Valley for its so-called Urban Renewal. This was one of the direct pressures on the 12th Street area described in the section on the 1967 Riot above.
* as above, I refuse to soften the ugliest word in the English language.
Part Three – The 1863 Detroit Riot
Just as fires cannot erupt in a vacuum, neither do riots. The 1863 Detroit Riot — dubbed at the time “the bloodiest day that ever dawned upon Detroit” — has to be seen in context. It was during the Civil War, when Detroit was not yet a great city. Motown was little more than a small town, huddled along the river, which was also the international border to Canada. This is why Detroit was a terminus for so many escaped slaves traveling north on the famed Underground Railroad. This had created certain tensions within the separate Black and White communities of Detroit. Escaped slaves could be arrested and returned by bounty hunters. Some Free Blacks were arrested and sent south. Some Whites were sympathetic to the cause of abolition and others were not. Race was a big factor in the 1863 riot, as was the military draft. Many Whites didn’t see this as their war and resented being forced to fight for a cause diametrically opposed to what they believed.
Was it all President Lincoln’s fault?
In September of the previous year, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on January 1st. The Proclamation had no practical effect on anyone –North or South. It merely freed the slaves in the southern states, already in rebellion. Those ten states had already refused to kowtow to Washington, having declared a Civil War in the first place, so it seemed unlikely they would do what Washington demanded. The Proclamation did not outlaw slavery, nor did it confer citizenship on ‘Merkin Blacks. It did, however, stir up intense feelings on the part of racist Whites. So did the Detroit Free Press, which published incendiary articles about Blacks in the months prior to the March riot. According to Matthew Kundinger in his thoroughly researched Racial Rhetoric: The Detroit Free Press and Its Part in the Detroit Race Riot of 1863 [PDF]:
Once the articles are examined, it becomes clear that the Detroit Free Press was a racist paper, and it printed racist stories in the months preceding the riot. The paper was pushing a racial ideology, one that taught that blacks were inferior and a threat. I will show this by pointing to four types of stories the paper printed in the months before the war: stories that connected blacks to labor problems, blacks to citizenship issues, blacks to the war, and blacks to crime and a general degradation of the moral order. Within all of these categories the paper portrayed blacks as a threat. The readers of the Free Press were mostly lower class white laborers, a class with little power. Even absent the racial rhetoric, issues of labor, of voting, of war, and of crime—especially sexual transgressions such as rape—are at their core about power. By showing how African-Americans were a threat to whites when it came to these issues, the paper was suggesting that the already limited power of the white working class was at risk. Further, each of these categories represent a function that was vital to a man’s main role in life, being the head of his household. In essence, the articles of the Free Press were portraying a threat to its male readers’ power to fulfill their primary functions. The paper was showing a threat to their masculinity.
Copy of “A Thrilling Narrative…”
Oh, shit! Can’t allow that to happen. Nothing is more fragile than the precious masculinity of the ‘Merkin White Male, especially if threatened by Blacks. In that respect, the situation was not a lot different than it is today.
However, the Free Press didn’t start the riot, no matter how incendiary were its articles. The riot started because somebody said a Black man did something-something to a White something-something. According to the contemporaneous document called A Thrilling Narrative From the Lips of the Sufferers of the Late Detroit Riot, March 6, 1863, with the Hair Breadth Escapes of Men, Women and Children, and Destruction of Colored Men’s Property, Not Less Than $15,000 [Electronic Edition], one of the few eye-witness accounts remaining:
The Detroit Riot in 1863.
On the 6th of March an organized mob made their way from the jail down Beaubien street. They were yelling like demons, and crying “kill all the d–d niggers.”* In the cooper shop, just below Lafayette street, were five men working, namely: ROBERT BENNETTE, JOSHUA BOYD, SOLOMON HOUSTON, LEWIS HOUSTON, MARCUS DALE. These men were busy at work in the shop until the mob made an attack upon the shop. The windows were soon broken and the doors forced open. The men in the cooper shop were determined to resist any that might attempt to come in. The mob discovered this, and did not attempt to come in, but stood off and threw stones and bricks into the windows, a perfect shower. There happened to be one old shot gun in the shop, a couple of discharges from which drove the mob back from the shop. The dwelling house was attached to the shop, in which were three women and four children, namely: Mrs. REYNOLDS, Mrs. BONN and one child, Mrs. DALE and three children.
Some ten minutes after the mob had fallen back from the shop, they made a rush upon the house in which were the women and children. The men in the shop seeing this, rushed out of the shop into the house to protect the women and children. The windows of the houses were soon all broken in; stones and bricks came into the house like hail. The women and children were dodging from one room to another to escape the stones. The men frequently stood before the women and children to shield them from the stones. Very soon after the men went from the shop into the house, the shop was set on fire by the mob. There were plenty of shavings in the shop, which facilitated the burning. The flames soon reached the house in which were the women and children. The mob by this time had completely surrounded the building. Mrs. Reynold attempted to go out at the back door but could not get out, for hundreds of stones were flying at that part of the building. Mr. Dale, in shielding his wife, got a blow in the face with a stone, which his wife might have gotten had he not stood before her. Some person outside was heard to say “the women will be protected–no protection for the men.” Hearing this, Mr. Dale told the women to go out at the front door. Mrs. Dale seeing the blood running.
Anti-slavery newspaper of the time.
And it goes on for pages and pages of hard-to-read, heart-rending descriptions of Whites attacking any and all Blacks who are unable to flee. This includes women and children alike, and didn’t spare the 80-year old pastor of the local A.M.E. Church. Essentially this riot, just like the 1943 Detroit Riot — or the Tulsa riot I wrote about earlier — was a White Riot. Whites went crazy and Blacks paid for it. A full reading of the two documents quoted above gives a much fuller story than can be given here, but you should take the time.
However, what was the legacy of the 1863 Detroit Riot? Wikipedia foolishly tried to sum it up with one prosaic sentence:
Detail from anti-slavery newspaper.
The riot resulted in the creation of a full-time police force for Detroit.
As I said above, Detroit was still not much more than a town and, in 1863, did not have police force. The riot itself had to be quelled by soldiers from Fort Wayne and some of the Michigan’s 27th Infantry out of Ypsilanti. However, 35 burned buildings, 2 people dead and a “multitude of others, mostly African-American, mercilessly beaten” has a way of focusing the citizens on Law and Order. As a result of the 1863 Riot a full time police force was constituted. Written into the originating documents incorporating Detroit’s 1st police force were the fateful words that guided Detroit ever since. Detroit’s first officers were tasked with keeping the Blacks in line, because the 1863 came to be blamed on them. Some things never change.
Is it any wonder why I say riots are in Detroit’s DNA, from 1863 to 1943 to 1967?
* as above, again, I refuse to soften the ugliest word in the English language.
While I blather on and on here about Detroit, I do so more as an anthropological study than as a tribute to a once great ‘Merkin city. However, the place I truly consider my home town, no matter where I may be, is Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
I have had the honour of working in some of the most iconic buildings in Toronto, each known as much for its architecture as its history.
Queen’s Park:
When I was Queen’s Park Correspondent for Yorkview Magazine I had a cubby in the Ontario Legislative Building. My Press Card gave me access to many places the General Public could not go. Among my favourites was The Press Gallery, way up on the upper reaches, where journalists would whisper snark back and forth, no matter who was talking, no matter which party. It would have been bad form to create a commotion, so a lot of very loud laughter was stifled. The next day–the very next day!!!–Hansard was delivered to my house by regular mail of the session I just watched, minus the snark. That was less interesting. Witness to history: I was there the day the Mike Harris Conservative government fell to a vote of non-confidence. And, good riddance!
The CHUM/City Building:
I worked in this beautiful building for more than 10 years. I started as a
Security Guard, after driving cab. It was something I could do while continuing to write freelance
articles for several Toronto publications. However, when a News Writer job opened
up in CityPulse, I was eventually hired and spent 10 years on the news desk. I called myself ventriloquist
because I put the words in the mouths of the meat puppets. However,
working behind the scenes in the newsroom (which meant I was on camera
every day, because the newsroom was also the set) was good experience
for later writing aboutFox “News” for NewsHounds. Witness to history:
January 8, 1992 – I was on the International Desk the day President George H. W. Bush puked in the Japanese Prime Minister’s lap. That sent
me scrambling. Worst Moment: Learning in real time from the
police Sargent that the accident victim in the single car crash on
Coxwell I was writing about was a dear friend’s father. Best script ever: I once got KevinFrankish to read “A pair of purple plovers picked a patch of parking lot to procreate.”
A&A RECORDS:
A&A Records was a mainstay of Yonge Street (which can never be mentioned without also pointing out that it’s the longest street in the world). It tried to be as large as its competitor Sam the Record Man 2 doors south and they could match each other discount for discount. However, Sam’s just had more obscure records than did A&A’s.
A&A was not the first time I worked in a record store (nor would it be the last; another story for another day). I had, several years previously, worked at Round Records on Bloor Street just east of Yonge (see above) where the Holt Refrew Center now is. (Izzit still there?) Round Records was the first of its kind in Toronto: A new & used record store, with seating for relaxing, run by a knowledgeable staff. It was owned by Larry Ellison, who signaled his Hippie status in 2 ways: his long pony-tail and beard were never cut and he was decked top to bottom (including shoes) in denim. It wasn’t unusual to find a Rock and Roll musician popping in. It’s where I met and befriended Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, aka Flo & Eddie, after FrankZappa no longer had any use for them. But again, that’s another story for another day.
Larry had himself a goldmine and the record store was making money too. However it had happened Larry had signed a 99-year lease at 46 Bloor Street West, just a stone’s throw from the busiest intersection in the city, the crossroads of Toronto. Larry had been holding up construction of the Holt Renfrew Centre for several years. They kept offering him more and more money to break the lease and he kept holding out until he was the last property on the entire block that had not taken a buy-out. The construction company had put up hoarding around the entire block, except for the small opening that led to the second-floor location to Round Records. Finally they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. It was a sad day when Round Records closed and it was never replaced in the hearts and minds of Toronto record buyers.
Working on Yonge Street (see above) was a dream come true. When I first moved to Toronto from Detroit I marveled at Yonge Street. There was nothing like it in Detroit, a thoroughfare where you would see street action. In Detroit the word “pedestrian” had been stricken from the dictionary. On Yonge Street one couldn’t walk without bumping into one, literally. I came to Toronto in ’71 and, in my opinion, saw the last great years of Yonge Street, through the pedestrian mall days, before Eaton Centre changed the entire complexion of the street.
I lost my job at A&A because I came back from a lunch break reeking of ganja smoke. I don’t know how the hell that happened.
Yonge Street Post Office:
This building still on the corner of Charles Street and Yonge Street. When I worked there it was Mr. Gameway’s Ark, one of the craziest places I ever worked. Partially it was what was sold: Games and toys naturally lead to all kinds of buffoonery. However, it was also the staff: Each one an eccentric character on their own led by owners Peter and Maggie, who were like camp counselors to an unruly bunch of kids. I ate my lunch in the captain’s chair of a full-size replica of the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise that had been constructed on the third floor. Witness to history and biggest regret: Some guy wandered in one day and asked us to invest in a game. We all played the game. It was a lot of fun, but only one of us had the $1,000 to invest. That game was Trivial Pursuit and our co-worker made a lot of money.
Old City Hall
This is stretching the point because I didn’t work at Old City Hall. I
couldn’t receive phone calls or mail there like I could Queen’s Park. I
didn’t even have a cubby. When I was a Law Clerk my work would take me
to Old City Hall 2 or 3 days a week. I would wait in line like
hundreds of other people to get documents filed, stamped, served,
notarized, collected and distributed. If I had time to kill between
dropping documents off and picking documents up I would pop into one of
the courtrooms, a habit I will still do to this day if I am killing time
near a courthouse.
A big h/t to the facebookery fun of Vintage Toronto, that got me thinking about these places and supplied the pictures. Thank you. Go there. There are thousands of pictures grouped by year and several Then and Now albums.
It wasn’t all that long ago that I celebrated the birth of Dennis Cowan, a founding member of The Bonzo Dog Dada Band. Today let’s all press our trousers for Roger Ruskin Spear, another founding Bonzo. Music/Not Music called Spear “The Forgotten Bonzo” just 12 days ago. Not for me. While Spear never achieved the later fame of Neil Innes, for me Roger Ruskin Spear was the one who put the Dada in The Bonzo Dog Dada Band, those off-the-wall tangents into clothing and other fashion accoutrements that’s clearly a Spear obsession. Ironically, while he played many instruments — tenor saxophone, trumpet, xylophone, bells, clarinet, guitar, oboe, accordion, glockenspiel, as well as sang — he is still best know for playing The Theremin Leg, most notably on the recording “Noises For The Leg.”
Here Roger Ruskin Spear plays the dress form to piano accompaniment on Strauss’ Blue Danube:
I was fortunate to see The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band live once at, of all things, The First Annual Detroit Rock and Roll Revival, in May of 1969, my last summer in ‘Merka. That’s where I first heard Bonzo Dog Band and was amazed at the performance they put on. Check out that line-up: Among the other band that performed that weekend
were MC5, Chuck Berry, Sun Ra, Dr. John, Johnny Winter, Stooges, Amboy
Dukes, SRC, The Frost, The Rationals, Teegarden & Van Winkle, Lyman
Woodard, Up, Wilson Mower Pursuit, Grand Funk Railroad, Third Power, New
York Rock & Roll Ensemble, David Peel & The Lower East Side,
Red White & Blues Band, Sky, The Train, Savage Grace, James Gang,
Caste, Gold Brothers, Dutch Elm, Plain Brown Wrapper, Brownsville
Station.
When I moved to Canada, I took with me my love of the Bonzos with me. However, I found that most of the people I tried to turn on to The Bonzos already knew who they were, from the British/Monty Python influence.
Bonzo Dog Band performing at the First Annual Detroit Roch and Roll Revival. Photo by Alan Gotkin.
Because people always get the various Bonzos confused, here’s a handy introduction:
The BBC produced a nice little documentary on the music of Detroit, Michigan. Includes contributions from Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, George Clinton, Martha Reeves, John Sinclair and the MC5, among others. This is the music of my youth.
Sadly Part Four of this documentary cannot be embedded. However, it wraps up here.
