Rpt361.pdf. The 12th Street riot - Jul 23, 1967. In the early morning hours of July 23, 1967, one of the worst riots in U.S. history breaks out on 12th Street in the heart of Detroit’s predominantly African-American inner city.
By the time it was quelled four days later by 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, and nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned. By the summer of 1967, the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Virginia Park was ready to explode. Some 60,000 poor people were crammed into the neighborhood’s 460 acres, living in squalor in divided and sub-divided apartments. The Detroit Police Department, which had only about 50 African Americans at the time, was viewed as a white occupying army.
At night, 12th Street was a center of Detroit inner-city nightlife, both legal and illegal. That night, the establishment was hosting a party for several veterans, including two servicemen recently returned from Vietnam, and the bar’s patrons were reluctant to leave. Marilyn Salenger: ‘White flight’ and Detroit’s decline. By Marilyn Salenger July 21, 2013 Marilyn Salenger is president of Strategic Communications Services and a former correspondent and news anchor for several CBS stations.
An almost palpable sadness has swept across the country at the news that the city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. While the possibility of this had been discussed, the reality of what was once the fourth-largest city in the United States sinking to such depths is disheartening, a moment people will remember for years to come. To understand that the decline and bankruptcy represent so much more than dollars and cents requires a step back to a time that many would prefer to forget but remains unforgettable.
In the late 1960s,racial tensions engulfed parts of our country, at the cost of lost lives and abject destruction. It was the beginning of the ending we are now seeing for a city that once stood tall with head held high. My home town of Gary, Ind. White flight took hold and left a lasting imprint. Continue reading. The two Detroits: a city both collapsing and gentrifying at the same time. James Cadariu was born and bred in a neighbourhood that’s now falling to pieces.
In the late 1980s, Cadariu’s mother and brother were held up at gunpoint in the east side of Detroit. They fled for the suburbs, part of the massive “white flight” that helped turn Detroit from a bustling city of two million into a city of under 700,000. Those who stuck it out became unwilling icons of the supposed decline of the American empire, the subject of a thousand news articles, documentaries and books. Cadariu, now 44, was sick of seeing his city like that. So he came back. “I’ve seen Detroit as a large city. And then there’s the rest of Detroit. Boomtown and icon of ruinous decline – to say these two Detroits co-exist would be too optimistic. But what makes Detroit unique is the insistence that these pockets of wealth (and whiteness) will somehow rescue the city. Detroit is a shocking example of "white flight."
CofCC.org News Team “We moved away because of the crime.”
“We moved away because of the noise.” “We moved because our kids got attacked at the schools.” These are some of the excuses you hear from millions of middle class white people who have moved, sometimes multiple times, to get away from black neighbors. They are terrified to simply say that they fled the neighborhood to get away from black people. Detroit, Michigan is a giant monument to white flight. 1) In 2000, Detroit ranked as the United States’ eleventh most populous city, with 951,270 residents. 2) The city population dropped from its peak in 1950 with a population of 1,849,568 to 871,121 in 2006. 3) Detroit is usually listed as 82% black.
Detroit has lost over half it’s population and virtually all of it’s white people since the 1950s!!!! White Flight - How Detroit Lost Its Way. Income Tax Forms. Detroit, Michigan Population 2014, 2015.