Riot or rebellion? The debate on what to call Detroit '67

Riot   (noun)

1. a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd.

Rebellion  (noun)

1:  opposition to one in authority or dominance

2 a :  open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government

- Merriam-Webster

Almost since the first bottle flew at 12th and Clairmount 50 years ago, people have disagreed about what to call the ensuing five days of violent civil unrest that erupted that summer in Detroit. Was it a riot or rebellion?

For the past half-century, the violence that summer in Detroit has most commonly been referred to as a riot, as were most of the civil disturbances that broke out in cities across the U.S. in the 1960s. 

But critics of that label say it is too superficial. Riot describes the violence but sells short the built-up anger and long-simmering resentment over police brutality, racial discrimination and social injustice that blacks had endured for years in Detroit. That's the fuse, they say, that ignited the widespread looting, arson and sniping that began July 23, 1967, and ended with 43 people dead (most of them African Americans) and 1,189 injured.

That sentiment — once held only among certain circles in Detroit — is gaining much wider, mainstream acceptance as the 50th anniversary of the 1967 civil disturbance nears. The word riot in connection with 1967 is disappearing from the discourse of a significant number of people and groups in the city, and some in the suburbs.

Related:

'Detroit' movie's world premiere set for Motor City

New museum exhibit on Detroit's painful summer of 1967 is illuminating, immersive

'Detroit' star talks about emotional impact of recreating 1967 riot

Gallagher: Business leaders fear, welcome Detroit 1967 riot exhibits

That change is vividly illustrated by the official texts and publicity about the 50th anniversary issued by many Detroit-based political, government, cultural, media, educational and nonprofit organizations: “Riot” is virtually nonexistent. Many of the people who staff those groups never use that word, even in private conversations.

The word of choice has become “rebellion,” reflecting the long-held belief among a number of people that black Detroiters in 1967 were fighting back against systemic racism. 

Other frequent terms used to describe that summer include: “uprising,” “unrest,” “civil disturbance,” “violence” and “insurrection.”

Even “riot” has an alternative: People often say “the Detroit riots,” even though there was only one, though it lasted for five days.

A similar debate has taken place in Newark, N.J., which also experienced a devastating disturbance in July 1967. A Newark government official, who said he was not speaking on behalf of the city, said recently:

“Newark uses the term ‘rebellion.’ ‘Riot’ suggests that people were beating each other up in some giant street fight, when it was the residents fighting against the government.”

The semantic divide in Detroit surfaced often in the more than 450 oral and written personal histories of 1967 that the Detroit Historical Museum has collected from people across the region and beyond.

William Winkel, a curatorial assistant at the museum who deals with the oral histories, heard “riot” a lot, but that support was often squishy.

“In general, ‘riot’ is the colloquial term,” Winkel said. “Many used this throughout their interviews. But when I asked, 'Do you see '67 as a riot?' many changed their answers to ‘rebellion’ or ‘uprising.’”

In general, Winkel said, suburban whites and those who are politically conservative often chose “riot.”

“Rebellion” was cited most often by black Detroiters and liberal whites, he said.

When Mayor Mike Duggan referred to July 1967 in his keynote speech at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s recent Mackinac Policy Conference, he avoided the use of “riot," characterizing what happened as “violence.”

At WDET-FM, based in Midtown, there is no official policy, but staffers say they generally avoid “riot.”

In 1992, on the 25th anniversary of July ’67, “rebellion” was used much more sparingly. Many leaders in the black community then used “riot,” but activists, academics and others continued to argue for “rebellion.”

The Free Press, in its special coverage of the 25th anniversary of 1967, used the title “RIOT: Unending Effects.” As the 50 anniversary approaches, the Free Press continues to use "riot" — along with other words such as "uprising" or "unrest" — to describe the events, although Executive Editor Robert Huschka says there is a continuing dialogue in the newsroom and with the community on how to refer to that summer. Reporters and editors, he said, are careful to include context on the oppressive conditions of the time that led to the violence.

The Detroit News continues to use the word "riot" as well in its coverage of the anniversary. 

Despite the growth of “rebellion,” “riot” is far from dead. As an all-purpose term for the 1967 disorder, it still occurs frequently in everyday conversations in Detroit, and it is widely used across the suburbs, where many people are not even aware a word-choice debate about 1967 has been under way for nearly 50 years.

“It is called different things by different people. It depends on who you talk to and where they were and what their perspective is,” said Joel Stone, senior curator at the Detroit Historical Museum, which on June 24 kicked off a $1-million exhibit on 1967 that will remain open for three years.

“One thing I have noticed is that people who were living in the areas in ’67 where there was violence often use the word ‘riot,’” Stone said.

One indication of how the debate has reached a tipping point is that the question of riot vs. rebellion will be a major focus of 1967 exhibits at the historical museum and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

An exhibit at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University has already opened, and one panel tells visitors that they may have noticed that the words used to describe July 1967 “change based on who is speaking.” The exhibit notes few historians or museums use the word “riot.”

Visitors entering the historical museum’s exhibit will see a video on the subject of riot vs. rebellion, as well as a list of the different terms people use and the dictionary definitions. Visitors will be asked for their opinion, and they will be asked again when they leave the exhibit, to see if the story of what happened that week and its causes have changed their minds.

“We’re taking a deep dive into that question,” said museum chief Bob Bury.

The Wright Museum is not mincing words. Its exhibit will declare what happened in 1967 was a “rebellion,” pure and simple, and will tell visitors why.

“We kept hearing and seeing this term — ‘riot’ — and it became clear to us that that was an issue we needed to clarify as a historical museum,” said Charles Ferrell, the museum’s vice president of public programming.

Ferrell said the Wright sees what happened in Detroit 50 summers ago as part of a continuum of black resistance to oppression that goes back to an 1811 slave revolt in New Orleans and continues through the protests in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 and 2015, and in Los Angeles, in 1965 and 1992.

“The word ‘riot’ denotes that people are criminals,” Ferrell said. “And it takes away the political responsibility of addressing certain underlying conditions that cause people to respond.”

The Wright Museum polled a number of scholars about the correct word to use in characterizing 1967. In supporting “rebellion,” the experts emphasized that Detroiters were striking back against the Detroit police and lack of equality in housing, employment and education.

Melvin T. Peters, a professor at Eastern Michigan University, pointed to the government’s own detailed study on urban unrest in the late 1960s — the Kerner Commission Report — that emphasized the role that white Americans played in the causes.

“White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II,” the Kerner Report concluded.

Racial confrontations in the 1960s were nothing like the so-called “race riots” of previous decades across the country — including Detroit in 1863 — in which armed white mobs stormed African-American communities, wrote Danielle McGuire, a Detroit-based historian, who is writing a book about the Algiers Motel murders in July 1967.

“African Americans did not form mobs and attack white communities,” McGuire wrote. Black hopes for reform in the 1960s “were dashed by slow progress and continued white intransigence and discrimination,” she added.

In researching the word question for its 1967 exhibit, the Wright's staff discovered the choice of terms does not break down neatly along racial lines.

Erin Falker, an assistant curator, said in focus groups the museum conducted, “there was a lot of pushback against the word ‘rebellion,’” from some people in every racial and age demographic, who insisted what happened was a “riot.” A number of older people who lived in areas that were caught up in the chaos 50 years ago insisted on “riot.”

“I realized for many people, you can kind of hold both those terms at the same time," Falker said. "If you were there, it felt like a riot. But maybe with a 50-year gap, you can look back and say, within the larger context, maybe it can also be a rebellion. And maybe we can help people hold both those ideas in their minds and really wrestle with it. We don’t want people to walk in and feel like we are forcing an opinion on them.”

In choosing one’s words about July 1967, people in some ways are forced to make a political decision, using “rebellion” if you believe black Detroiters were battling oppression.

John Colling, who was born in Detroit in 1934 and worked for the city as a publicist in July 1967, was blunt in his oral history interview with the historical museum.

“I call it a riot,” Colling said.

He added: “A lot of people take question with that. They have other questions, but it’s a free country, you can call it whatever you want. People were breaking into stores, stealing, burning places down…That, to me, comes from more than just a civil disturbance.”

Jamon Jordan, who lectures on Detroit history and conducts tours for the historical museum, has raised the riot vs. rebellion question in talks from West Bloomfield to Imlay City, often in front of white audiences.

“I let them know I understand ‘riot’ and I don’t have a problem with people who use the word “riot,” and I give them the reasons why I use the term ‘rebellion,’” Jordan said. “For the most part, they are very understanding of why that makes sense for many people.’’

The one term Jordan says he rejects is “race riot,” and he is supported by countless experts who have studied July 1967 and note there were almost no interracial attacks, unlike the two-day disturbance in 1943 in Detroit in which blacks and whites engaged in savage hand-to-hand combat, leaving 34 people dead.

Shirley Stancato, president and CEO of New Detroit, the civil rights organization that was formed at the end of the 1967 civil disturbance, said people need to be aware of one another's perspective to gain an understanding of the meaning of 1967.

“For the most part, there is a line drawn, based upon your race,” she said. “People focus on the fires, but not the frustrations. If I say it’s a rebellion you need to understand that I was fighting against something, that I don’t have a job, that I can’t live where I want to live — that’s what I was rebelling against.

“And so, people on the other side see it as ‘people are just tearing up where they live, they don’t know anything.’ It’s the insensitivity to my perspective, particularly for the rebellion or the uprising. You need to understand I rose up against you because you were doing something to me and my people.”

In 1967, the Detroit news media almost always used “riot” to describe the turmoil, but local history expert Ken Coleman discovered that “rebellion” was on the mind of one young black man, who talked to a Free Press reporter on the first day of the violence. That man called the chaos “a form of rebellion.”

He told the Free Press: “The black folks are down so long that we feel we have to do something.”

The complexities of the semantic debate and metro Detroit’s racial politics are demanding for longtime residents. Imagine if you are a newcomer.

 The Detroit Institute of Arts is preparing to open an exhibit titled “Art of Rebellion: Black Art of the Civil Rights Movement.” In its publicity material, the DIA says the exhibit is part of the “commemoration of the 1967 Detroit rebellion.”

DIA Director Salvador Salort-Pons, a native of Madrid, Spain, who came to Detroit in 2008, said he is still absorbing the discussion about what happened in 1967.

“I am not an expert on this,” he said in an interview. “It’s eye-opening.”