There are lingering questions about how far detroit has come in a half century in addressing the issues that led to the rioting. We are here at the Detroit Free Press where it won a Pulitzer Prize for its 1967 riot coverage. Were joined by Heather Ann Thompson and Detroit Free Press page editor steve henderson. Well be live for the next two hours taking your calls, tweets and facebook posts. Can we start with the definitions in the sense that the events that took place 50 years ago described as a riot. I would say its absolutely not a riot. Because that term connotes chaos and it suggests that everyone just showed up and destroyed the city for no reason. It also suggested how we should understand what happened and what the impact of it was. We prefer to think about it like a rebellion. Because all of the energy and anger and activism that went into that moment had long been predicted. People had been begging for some remedy, for the housing discrimination. The Police Brutality. The economic discrimination. That frustration cannot be understood as just chaotic and incoharant. It was a rebellion. Stephen henderson. The word ive come to over time is uprising. Which i think captures all of the things that were going on that week. If you think about what heathers talking about, the things that had been going on for decades here in detroit to marginalize and oppress africanamerican people, destroy africanamerican communities even. That was the buildup to what happened in 1967. The flash point was a pushback specifically against police aggression, Police Brutality. But you also had lots of other kinds of pushback. The people who were in the streets Looting Stores were pushing back against the economic oppression that was taking place. So i think an uprising really captures all of that in a way that doesnt dismiss it. One of the things i think is true is language has real power in our culture. And the word riot was used to dismiss all of those things after what happened happened. It was used to say ignore this. Dont worry about the things that are behind this. Weve taken care of it with Police Response and well just move on. So as well, also set this event in the national context. What else was going on in 1967 across the country, particularly as other areas of the nation were suffering the same kind of riots or uprising or however you want to describe it . I think there are common themes in all of the cities that see this. Newark was just i think 11 days before detroit. Los angeles was i think a few years later, or weeks later. You had this sort of moment partially fueled i think by the questions asked by the civil rights movement. I mean, this was a time when africanamericans were no longer just sitting back and saying well wait for equality, well wait for justice, we want it and we want it now. At the same time, realizing how far they were from that realization and that there was this real effort to deny them that. Still systemically. And so you see this sort of outbreak happen in cities across the country. All i think in that same that same context. Beginning in 1964, philadelphia erupts, rochester, new york, erupts. Harlem erupts. And it was all for the same reason. It was that sustained critique of Police Activity in the black Community Overwhelmingly and the sustained critique of weve passed all the civil rights legislation. Weve made it right legally. Why is there still such disparity in income and lifestyle in general . This is in some respects, detroits the culmination of of what had been a decade of saying, you know, were not going to ask anymore, were going to demand. If you want to call on the phone lines its 2027488900. 2087488901 for the pacific and Mountain Time zones. If you lived during what happened in 1967, we invite you to call as well. 2027488902. Tweet us or post on our Facebook Page at facebook. Com cspanhistory. Lets go specifically back to 50 years ago today. Put in context specifically what happened on that day. Well, specifically, it was a night like many other nights. It was a night where folks in the black community, in this case, at an afterhours drinking establishment at 12th and claremont were having a party, having a gettogether, and it was raided by theroutinely. People were routinely pulled over. Thrown up against cars. Stopped. Frisked. In this particular instance, it just touched a nerve. This particular community i think had experienced a lot of that aggressive policing more than even others. And so it was just like a match to kindling. And so at blind pig as it was known. Why was it known by that way . Blind pig is a term we used to use in detroit to talk about afterhours bars because the pigs were the pigs, the cop, were often blind to them. In other words, they went on, everyone knew that they were there but they often avoided the gaze of Police Officers. And the celebration was about a couple of folks back from vietnam. They were celebrating. Early morning hours. Police come. Police are being taken out. What specifically happened then . I mean, i think theres a conflict between the people inside the bar and police. I think history shows that this was planned by the police. I mean, they were there to show some force and to be particularly aggressive. It spills out into the street as they are trying to get people in the paddy wagons. Theyre arresting a large number of people out of this establishment. There are other people out in the streets who see this and start to react, start to ask questions, start to say, you know, this is not right, were tired of this. Their concerned whats going to happen to these guys who are arrested. Thats right. Because the long history of arrest was not simply someone got arrested, locked up, tried and, you know, charged or issued a ticket. People ended up beaten up on the way to the police station. Thats right. People ended up harmed. Yes. There was a history of people being severely injured. So peoples concern about so many arrests was not just frustration, it was a genuine concern for what they people knew to be true. Yes, and then police just lose control. I mean, there are more people then there are officers at some point and they just cannot control whats going on. If you go to the Detroit Free Press this morning, by the way, on its headline of its coverage, youll see on its front page, we got trouble. That statement from the police chief at the time talking to the mayor. Talk about the mayors role. When he put the police in action, how he came about to do that. So the mayor at that point is Jerome Cavanaugh who is in our history both this very hopeful figure, hopeful political figure, elected with great promise in the early 1960s, around the same time as john kennedy, who there are often comparisons drawn between the two of them in their early careers. But also as a pretty dark figure in our history for the things he ignored that were brewing as he was mayor in the runup to 1967 and of course the way he handles this. It catches him by surprise in a way that it should not have. Exactly. He was warned many times about the things that were going on inside the Police Department with regard to the community and in the community with regard to the kinds of segregation and discrimination that was going on in the city. He kept saying i think were going to avoid the things were seeing other places. It was really naive of him at best. But his response is to let this Police Department loose, really, on the community, and that i think is not only what leads to this massive confrontation over the next few days but it leads to the end of his political career. I mean it really ends Jerome Cavanaugh. We hear about the starting at 12th and claremont but how far does it spread acreage in detroit, and why do you think that happened . Well, i mean, it just spreads and spreads. But again, the only explanation is to understand that that prehistory. You know, even cavenaugh, you know, stevens right, he should have known. Because his own police commissioner, someone he had appointed to basically remedy this problem of Police Brutality, george edwards, quits. Because he says, this Police Department, whatever, 90 is so bigoted its irreformable. So every neighborhood that kind of hears the story, and of course the rumors spread. And of course, Law Enforcement is shooting out lights and so people are fearful and its chaotic. So that kind of spreading was also inevitable. Because of the way the policing actually operated after that initial confrontation. Imagine a city where theres no lights. Fires are burning. People are armed. And then theres this rumor of sniping. Even though theres no evidence in retrospect that this is what was going on, sniping becomes the excuse to continue shooting at people. You know, fatally wounding them, but also giving them lifelong physical damage. But its also just a license for the really bad actors inside the department to go do the things that they had been doing, you know, so far as sort of under the cover of darkness, theyre doing it in broad daylight now. And theyre doing it just wantonly. There are people wandering the streets shooting into houses because they say, well, someones inside and i need to take care of that. Ike mckinnon, who is later a police chief here in the city, was a patrolman at that time. One of the few black patrolmen in detroit. He is accosted by two other officers who say they want to kill him. I mean, it really escalates to a point where there just is no rationale for the behavior that the police are undertaking. And that makes everything worse. I mean, that fuels what goes on for the next few days. Ike mckinnon will join in about an hour to give us his context and his experience. Our two guests here again for your questions. 2027488901 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. In detroit 2027488902. We will start our calls today with david who lives in detroit, michigan. Thank you for calling. Youre on with our guests. Go ahead. Caller its good to see you this morning. And i have a question first, then i have a comment. My question to dr. Heather is, dr. Heather, theyre going to be releasing a new movie called detroit. Can you speak to the accuracy or if theres going to be much in the way of accuracy historically with this movie . And then secondly, id like to just kind of reflect for a moment with regard to the 67 riot, because we live on vinewood and grand river. And i was 7 years old. And i just remember how it rolled out. I remember hearing the sirens and everybody was startled. And then you saw the billowing black smoke that came up. And i imagine that must have been from cunninghams that was on the corner. And subsequently, real quick again, im 7 years old so this would have been probably maybe a day after or a couple of days. But i ventured up there. And i caught myself going into one of the gutted stores and grabbing a pair of shoes, that didnt fit me as i recall. But i just wanted to reflect that, because it seems as though it was just yesterday. And its just surreal. So yeah, thats my comment. But dr. Heather, if you could answer that in terms of the historical accuracy of this new movie thats coming out. Thank you. David, thank you so much. First i want to say, thank you so much for telling that story, because one of the things that it really shows is that even the socalled looting, i mean, people were getting very practical things that they needed, often, right . Shoes or clothes or food. And thats often missed when we talk about this just as a riot. Back to our reference to terminology. As for the film, i mean i think everyones going to have everyone who experienced it is going to have to decide whether they feel that it captured the Algiers Motel murders accurately. I know that theres an incredible historian, danielle mcguire, shes doing a whole book on this and i look forward to get the real nitty gritty of what happened. But for now what ive heard is that the film really does capture the most important thing i think about algiers, which was the extraordinary level of violence that was directed against young people, particularly young black kids. And the way in which nobody was held accountable for that kind of violence. And so i think if nothing else, if the film captures that, then it does a service to what that experience was. Some context to the algiers incident, if you dont mind . Yeah, this is something that happens during the uprising, a group of africanamerican teens are in the Algiers Motel in the city with some white teens. And theres i dont remember exactly what the reason was that the police show up, but over several hours it escalates to the point where they kill some of these black kids. And theres never a good reason for that killing. Theres never an explanation. And as heather points out, theyre never held to account for it. No ones ever brought to justice for it. Yeah, and to be clear, i mean, these are kids who basically were in this hotel because theres so much chaos in the streets, their parents say hide is. Three of these kids were musicians, they had just come from performing a gig, the parents say, dont come home, its too crazy, stop in this hotel so youll be safe. The police show up under this rumor of a sniper and for hours these kids are beaten and tortured and the officers play russian roulette with them. Three of these teenagers end up dead. So at least i think the movie captures that. And thats critically important because thats a microcosm of the reason why the city erupted in the first place. Lets hear from philip in las vegas, go ahead. Philip in las vegas, are you there . I think we lost him. Steven henderson caller hello . He talked a little philip, are you there . Go ahead. Caller yes, can you hear me . Yes, go right ahead, youre on. Caller can you hear me . Go ahead, youre on. Caller im a christian want and i want to say im born and raised here in america and i love america. I dont love the way some of the people have ran it. I want to also emphasize on everything that you all are on. It starts with, remember, we the only people brought over here at gun point. You know, the marco polo stick is the reason why slavery is brought about. Second of all, you have to remember that we worked for free and didnt get a dime. When lincoln supposedly set us free, that was because of the middle class and most nonblacks at that time didnt have any work. And they became employed after slavery. And then we had no work at all. Now from that point, we did not receive what we were supposed to get. We were denied, like the indians to get a treaty, to have a conversation, there were senators and congressmen who stood up and fought and said africanamericans were too ignorant to be able to discuss a treaty or whatever. And so we have whatever philip, thank you. We got your point and steven henderson, to the economic question that he brought up, going back further in history. But for the average black person in detroit, what was it like economically . Well, i mean, there were a couple of things going on. One that is you did have this emerging black middle class in detroit. And my family, my mothers family, is in fact part of that black middle class living in Russell Woods just off of dexter avenue which is one of the flash points of the uprising. One of the places, commercial strips, thats really hit hard. You had an emerging black Political Class in the city. People being elected to city council and congress. And but at the same time youve got this underclass that is being pushed further and further behind. And further and further marginalized. The area around 12th and clairmont had become an africanamerican sort of neighborhood because one of the other sort of prime africanamerican neighborhoods in the city had been destroyed. They had nowhere else to go. And the opportunity that they could see not only White Detroiters enjoying but they started to see other africanamerican detroiters enjoying was a real source of tension. And i mean, i think there was no question that people understood that if you were africanamerican, your chances of moving ahead were just very, very slim. And the deck was stacked against you. Heather townsend . Yeah, completely agree. Incidentally, i think thats why its so important were commemorating this at 50 years. Because you know, detroit is now the comeback city. Detroit is now doing lots of gentrification again, much like the slum clearance of yesteryear that eradicated the black bottom area of the city that pushed people out of their homes, made people homeless. We have this opportunity to consider or at least consider, how did things go so wrong the first time . People dont realize that detroit was the model city in 1967. It was the apple of washingtons eye. Johnson, shriver, they all said detroit, this is the best, this is it. This is the best that weve accomplished. And then it goes up in flames and everyones surprised. Well, i think thats a real lesson for us today, right . Detroits coming back but is it going to come back for everybody . Or just for the middle class and just for rich white folks that can move in the city . A bit about our guest, Heather Ann Thompson is a professor at the university of michigan ann arbor where she teaches afro american and african studies. Steven henderson with the Detroit Free Press, their editorial page editor, won a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Heather ann thompson winning a Pulitzer Prize for her book. The author of whose detroit. Lets go to janet in east lansing, michigan, hi. Caller hi, this is janet. I wanted to draw a verbal picture of what it was like to be in the city when everything blew up. I was on the Northwest Side of the city, four blocks west of green field. People who know the city will know thats a major northsouth artery of the city on the Northwest Side. And i was visiting my parents who still lived in the house i grew up in. And got a phone call from a friend who lived much closer to where everything was burning already. And she said, you better get home. We lived u