 Section 12 of the Kerner Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Phyllis Vincelli. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Kerner Commission Report. Section 12. Chapter 1. Profiles of Disorder. Plainfield and New Brunswick. 6. Plainfield. New Jersey's worst violence outside of Newark was experienced by Plainfield, a pleasant, tree-shaded city of 45,000. A bedroom community, more than a third of whose residents work outside the city, Plainfield had had relatively few Negroes until 1950. By 1967, the Negro population had risen to an estimated 30% of the total. As in Englewood, there was a division between the Negro middle class, which lived in the east side Gilded Ghetto, and the unskilled unemployed and underemployed poor on the west side. Geared to the needs of a suburban middle class, the part-time and fragmented city government had failed to realize the change in character which the city had undergone, and was unprepared to cope with the problems of a growing disadvantaged population. There was no full-time administrator or city manager. Boards, with independent jurisdiction over such areas as education, welfare, and health, were appointed by the part-time mayor whose own position was largely honorary. Accustomed to viewing politics as a gentleman's pastime, city officials were startled and upset by the intensity with which demands issued from the ghetto. Usually such demands were met obliquely rather than head-on. In the summer of 1966, trouble was narrowly averted over the issue of a swimming pool for Negro youngsters. In the summer of 1967, instead of having built the pool, the city began bussing the children to the county pool a half-hour's ride distant. The fare was twenty-five cents per person, and the children had to provide their own lunch a considerable strain on a frequent basis for a poor family with several children. The bus operated only on three days in mid-week. On weekends the county pool was too crowded to accommodate children from the Plainfield ghetto. Pressure increased upon the school system to adapt itself to the changing social and ethnic backgrounds of its pupils. There were strikes and boycotts. The track system created de facto segregation within a supposedly integrated school system. Most of the youngsters from white middle-class districts were in the higher track, most from the Negro poverty areas in the lower. Relations were strained between some white teachers and Negro pupils. Two-thirds of school dropouts were estimated to be Negro. In February 1967, the NAACP, out of a growing sense of frustration with the municipal government, tacked a list of nineteen demands and complaints to the door of the city hall. Most dealt with discrimination in housing, employment, and in the public schools. By summer the city's common council had not responded. Although two of the eleven council members were Negro, both represented the East Side Ghetto. The poverty area was represented by two white women, one of whom had been appointed by the council after the elected representative, a Negro, had moved away. Relations between the police and the Negro community, tenuous at best, had been further troubled the week prior to the Newark outbreak. After being handcuffed during a routine arrest in a housing project, a woman had fallen down a flight of stairs. The officer said she had slipped. Negro residents claimed he had pushed her. When a delegation went to city hall to file a complaint, they were told by the city clerk that he was not empowered to accept it. Believing that they were being given the run-around, the delegation, angry and frustrated, departed. On Friday evening, July 14th, the same police officer was moonlighting as a private guard at a diner frequented by Negro youths. He was, reportedly, number two on the Negro community's ten most wanted list of unpopular police officers. The list was colorblind. Although out of eighty-two officers on the force only five were Negro, two of the ten on the most wanted list were Negro. The two officers most respected in the Negro community were white. Although most of the youths at the diner were of high school age, one in his mid-twenties had a reputation as a bully. Sometime before ten p.m., as a result of an argument, he hit a sixteen-year-old boy and split open his face. As the boy lay bleeding on the asphalt, his friends rushed to the police officer and demanded that he call an ambulance and arrest the offender. Instead, the officer walked over to the boy, looked at him, and reportedly said, Why don't you just go home and wash up? He refused to make an arrest. The youngsters were incensed. They believed that, had the two participants in the incident been white, the older youth would have been arrested, the younger taken to the hospital immediately. On the way to the housing project where most of them lived, the youths traversed four blocks of the city's business district. As they walked, they smashed three or four windows. An observer interpreted their behavior as a reaction to the incident at the diner, in effect challenging the police officer. If you won't do anything about that, then let's see you do something about this. On one of the quiet city streets, two young Negroes, D.H. and L.C., had been neighbors. D.H. had graduated from high school, attended Fairleigh Dickinson University, and, after receiving a degree in psychology, had obtained a job as a reporter on the Plainfield Courier News. L.C. had dropped out of high school, become a worker in a chemical plant, and, although still in his twenties, had married and fathered seven children. A man with a strong sense of family, he liked sports and played in the local baseball league. Active in civil rights, he had, like the civil rights organizations over the years, become more militant. For a period of time, he had been a Muslim. The outbreak of vandalism aroused concern among the police. Shortly after midnight, in an attempt to decrease tensions, D.H. and the two Negro councilmen met with the youths in the housing project. The focal point of the youth's bitterness was the attitude of the police. Until 1966, police had used the word nigger over the police radio, and one officer had worn a Confederate belt buckle, and had flown a Confederate pennant on his car. Their complaints, however, ranged over local and national issues. There was an overriding cynicism and disbelief that government would, of its own accord, make meaningful changes to improve the lot of the lower class Negro. There was an overriding belief that there were two sets of policies by the people in power, whether law enforcement to officers, newspaper editors, or government officials, one for white and one for black. There was little confidence that the two councilmen could exercise any influence. One youth said, You came down here last year. We were throwing stones at some passing cars, and you said to us that this was not the way to do it. You got us to talk with the ma'am. We talked to him. We talked with him, and we talked all year long. We ain't got nothing yet. However, on the promise that meetings would be arranged with the editor of the newspaper, and with the mayor later that same day, the youths agreed to disperse. At the first of these meetings, the youths were, apparently, satisfied by the explanation that the newspaper's coverage was not deliberately discriminatory. The meeting with the mayor, however, proceeded badly. Negro's present felt that the mayor was complacent and apathetic, and that they were simply being given the usual lip service from which nothing would develop. The mayor, on the other hand, told commission investigators that he recognized that citizens are frustrated by the political organization of the city, because he himself has no real power, and each of the councilmen says that he is just one of the eleven and therefore can't do anything. After approximately two hours, a dozen of the youths walked out, indicating an impasse and signaling the break-up of the meeting. Shortly thereafter, window smashing began. A Molotov cocktail was set afire in a tree. One fire engine, in which a white and negro fireman were sitting side by side, had a Molotov cocktail thrown at it. The white fireman was burned. As window smashing continued, liquor stores and taverns were especially hard hit. Some of the youths believed that there was an excess concentration of bars in the negro section, and that these were an unhealthy influence in the community. Because the police department had mobilized its full force, the situation, although serious, never appeared to get out of hand. Officers made many arrests. The chief of the fire department told commission investigators that it was his conclusion that individuals making fire bombs did not know what they were doing, or they could have burned the city. At three o'clock Sunday morning a heavy rain began, scattering whatever groups remained on the streets. In the morning police made no effort to cordon off the area. As white sightseers and churchgoers drove by the housing project, there was sporadic rock-throwing. During the early afternoon such incidents increased. At the housing project a meeting was convened by LC to draw up a formal petition of grievances. As the youths gathered it became apparent that some of them had been drinking. A few kept drifting away from the parking lot where the meeting was being held to throw rocks at passing cars. It was decided to move the meeting to a county park several blocks away. Between a hundred and fifty and two hundred persons, including almost all of the rock-throwers, piled into a caravan of cars and headed for the park. At approximately three-thirty p.m. the chief of the Union County Park Police arrived to find the group being addressed by David Sullivan, executive director of the Human Relations Commission. He informed Mr. Sullivan he was in violation of our park ordinance and to disperse the group. Sullivan and LC attempted to explain that they were in the process of drawing up a list of grievances, but the chief remained adamant. They could not meet in the park without a permit and they did not have a permit. After permitting the group ten to fifteen minutes' grace, the chief decided to disperse them. Their mood was very excitable, he reported, and in my estimation no one could appease them, so we moved them out without too much trouble. They left in a caravan of about forty cars, horns blowing and yelling and headed south on West End Avenue to Plainfield. Within the hour looting became widespread. Cars were overturned, a white man was snatched off a motorcycle, and the fire department stopped responding to alarms because the police were unable to provide protection. After having been on alert until midday, the Plainfield Police Department was caught unprepared. At six p.m. only eighteen men were on the streets. Checkpoints were established at crucial intersections in an effort to isolate the area. Officer John Gleason, together with two reserve officers, had been posted at one of the intersections, three blocks from the housing project. Gleason was a veteran officer, the son of a former lieutenant on the police department. Shortly after eight p.m., two white youths, chased by a twenty-two-year-old Negro, Bobby Williams, came running from the direction of the ghetto toward Gleason's post. As he came in sight of the police officers, Williams stopped. Accounts vary of what happened next, or why Officer Gleason took the action he did. What is known is that when D.H., the newspaper reporter, caught sight of him a minute or two later, Officer Gleason was two blocks from his post. Striding after Williams, directly into the ghetto area, Gleason already had passed one housing project. Small groups were milling about. In D.H.'s words, there was a kind of shock and amazement to see the officer walking by himself so deep in the ghetto. Suddenly there was a confrontation between Williams and Gleason. Some witnesses report Williams had a hammer in his hand. Others say he did not. When D.H., whose attention momentarily had been distracted, next saw Gleason. He had drawn his gun and was firing at Williams. As Williams, critically injured, fell to the ground. Gleason turned and ran back toward his post. Negro youths chased him. Gleason stumbled, regained his balance, then had his feet knocked out from under him. A score of youths began to beat him and kick him. Some residents of the apartment house attempted to intervene, but they were brushed aside. D.H. believes that, under the circumstances and in the atmosphere that prevailed at that moment, any police officer, black or white, would have been killed. After they had beaten Gleason to death, the youths took D.H.'s camera from him and smashed it. Fear swept over the ghetto. Many residents, both lawless and law-abiding, were convinced, on the basis of what had occurred in Newark, that law enforcement officers bent on vengeance would come into the ghetto shooting. Police began actively to prepare to defend themselves. There was no lack of weapons. Forty-six carbines were stolen from a nearby arms manufacturing plant and passed out in the street by a young Negro, a former newspaper boy. Most of the weapons fell into the hands of youths who began firing them wildly. A fire station was peppered with shots. Law enforcement officers continued their cordon about the area, but made no attempt to enter it except occasionally to rescue someone. National guardsmen arrived shortly after midnight. Their armored personnel carriers were used to carry troops to the fire station, which had been besieged for five hours. During this period only one fire had been reported in the city. Reports of sniper firing, wild shooting, and general chaos continued until the early morning hours. By daylight Monday New Jersey state officials had begun to arrive. At a meeting in the early afternoon it was agreed that to inject police into the ghetto would be to risk bloodshed. That instead law enforcement personnel should continue to retain their cordon. All during the day various meetings took place between government officials and Negro representatives. Police were anxious to recover the carbines that had been stolen from the arms plant. Negroes wanted assurances against retaliation. In the afternoon LC and official of the Human Relations Commission and others drove through the area urging people to be calm and to refrain from violence. At 8 p.m. the New Jersey Attorney General, Commissioner of Community Affairs, and Commander of the State Police, accompanied by the Mayor, went to the housing project and spoke to several hundred Negroes. Some members of the crowd were hostile. Others were anxious to establish a dialogue. There were demands that officials give concrete evidence that they were prepared to deal with Negro grievances. Again the meeting was inconclusive. The officials returned to City Hall. At 9 p.m. LC rushed in claiming that as a result of the failure to resolve any of the outstanding problems and reports that people who had been arrested by the police were being beaten, violence was about to explode anew. The key demand of the militant faction was that those who had been arrested during the riot should be released. State officials decided to arrange for the release on bail of twelve arrestees charged with minor violations. LC, in turn, agreed to try to induce return of the stolen carbines by Wednesday afternoon. As state officials were scanning the list of arrestees to determine which of them should be released, a message was brought to Colonel Kelly of the State Police that general firing had broken out around the perimeter. The report testified to the tension. An investigation disclosed that one shot of unexplained origin had been heard. In response, security forces had shot out streetlights, thus initiating the general firing. At 4 o'clock Tuesday morning a dozen prisoners were released from jail. Plainfield police officers considered this a sellout. When, by noon on Wednesday, the stolen carbines had not been returned, the Governor decided to authorize a mass search. At 2 p.m. a convoy of State Police and National Guard troops prepared to enter the area. In order to direct the search as to likely locations, a handful of Plainfield police officers were spotted throughout the twenty-eight vehicles of the convoy. As the convoy prepared to depart, the State Community Affairs Commissioner, believing himself to be carrying out the decision of the Governor not to permit Plainfield officers to participate in the search, ordered their removal from the vehicles. The basis for his order was that their participation might ignite a clash between them and the Negro citizens. As the search for carbines in the community progressed, tension increased rapidly. According to witnesses and newspaper reports, some men in the search force left departments in shambles. The search was called off an hour and a half after it was begun. No stolen weapons were discovered. For the Plainfield police, the removal of the officers from the convoy had been a humiliating experience. A half hour after the conclusion of the search, in a meeting charged with emotion, the entire department threatened to resign unless the State Community Affairs Commissioner left the city. He acceded to the demand. On Friday, seven days after the first outbreak, the city began returning to normal. Although New Brunswick has about the same population as Plainfield, New Brunswick is a county seat and center of commerce with an influx of people during the day. No clearly defined Negro ghetto exists. Substantial proportions of the population are Puerto Rican, foreign-born, and Negro. All during the weekend, while violence sputtered, flared, subsided, then flared again in Plainfield, less than ten miles away, there were rumors that New Brunswick was really going to blow. Disatisfaction in the Negro community revolved around several issues. The closing of a local teenage coffee-house by the police department, the lack of a swimming-pool and other recreation facilities, and the release of a white couple on a very low bond after they had been arrested for allegedly shooting at three Negro teenagers. As elsewhere, there was a feeling that the law was not being applied equally to whites and Negroes. By Monday, according to Mayor Patricia Sheehan, the town was haunted by what had happened in Newark and Plainfield. James E. Amos, the associate director of the anti-poverty program in Middlesex County, said that there was a tenseness in the air that got thicker and thicker. Staff members of the anti-poverty agency met with the mayor and city commissioners to discuss what steps might be taken to reduce the tension. The mayor, who had been elected on a reform platform two months previously, appointed a Negro police officer, Lieutenant John Brokaw, as community liaison officer. He was authorized to report directly to the mayor. Negro officers in the department went into the streets in plain clothes to fight rumors and act as counter rioters. Uniformed police officers were counseled to act with restraint to avoid the possibility of a police action setting off violence. The radio station decided on its own initiative to play down rumors and news of any disturbance. The anti-poverty agency set up a task force of workers to go into all of the communities—white, Puerto Rican, and Negro—to report information and to try to cool the situation. The chief of police met with the chiefs of surrounding communities to discuss cooperation in case a disorder broke out. The streets remained quiet until past 9 p.m. Then scattered reports of windows being broken began to be received by police. At 10.30 p.m. Amos noticed one hundred youngsters marching in a column of twos down the street. A tall Negro minister stepped from the office of the anti-poverty agency and placed himself in the street in order to head them off. Brothers, stop! Let me talk to you, he called out. The marchers brushed past him. A small boy, about thirteen years old, looked up at the minister. Black power, baby, he said. The New Brunswick police were reinforced by one hundred officers from surrounding communities. Roadblocks were set up on all principal thoroughfares into the city. Wild rumors swept the city. Reports of armed Negro and white gangs, shootings, fires, beatings, and deaths. In fact, what occurred was more in the nature of random vandalism. According to Mayor Sheehan, it was like Halloween, a giant night of mischief. Tuesday morning the mayor imposed a curfew and recorded a tape played periodically over the city's radio station, appealing for order. Most of the persons who had been picked up the previous night were released on their own recognizance or on Lobel. The anti-poverty agency, whose summer program had not been funded until a few days previously, began hiring youngsters as recreational aides. So many teenagers applied that it was decided to cut each stipend in half and hire twice as many as planned. When the youngsters indicated a desire to see the mayor, Sheehan and the city commissioners agreed to meet with them. Although initially hostile, the thirty-five teenagers who made up the group poured out their souls to the mayor. The mayor and the city commissioners agreed to the drawing up of a statement by the Negro youths attacking discrimination, inferior educational and employment opportunities, police harassment, and poor housing. Four of the young people began broadcasting over the radio station, urging their soul brothers and sisters to cool it, because you will only get hurt and the mayor has talked with us and is going to do something for us. Other youths circulated through the streets with the same message. Despite these measures, a confrontation between the police and a crowd that gathered near a public housing project occurred that evening. The crowd was angry at the mass of show of force by police in riot dress. If you don't get the cops out of here, one man warned, we are all going to get our guns. Asked to return to their homes, people replied, we will go home when you get the police out of the area. Requested by several city commissioners to pull back the uniformed police, the chief at first refused. He was then told it was a direct order from the mayor. The police were withdrawn. A short time later, elements of the crowd, an older and rougher one than the night before, appeared in front of the police station. The participants wanted to see the mayor. Mayor Sheehan went out onto the steps of the station. Using a bullhorn, she talked to the people and asked that she be given an opportunity to correct conditions. The crowd was boisterous. Some persons challenged the mayor. But finally, the opinion, she's new, give her a chance, prevailed. A demand was issued by people in the crowd that all persons arrested the previous night be released. Told that this already had been done, the people were suspicious. They asked to be allowed to inspect the jail cells. It was agreed to permit representatives of the people to look in the cells to satisfy themselves that everyone had been released. The crowd dispersed. The new Brunswick riot had failed to materialize. End of Section 12. Section 13 of the Kerner Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Phyllis Vinceli. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Kerner Commission Report. Section 13. Chapter 1. Profiles of Disorder. Detroit. Part 1. On Saturday evening, July 22nd, the Detroit Police Department raided five blind pigs. The blind pigs had had their origin in prohibition days and survived as private social clubs. Often, they were after hours drinking and gambling spots. The fifth blind pig on the raid list, the United Community and Civic League at the corner of 12th Street and Claremont, had been raided twice before. Once, ten persons had been picked up another time, twenty-eight. A Detroit Vice Squad Officer had tried but failed to get in shortly after ten o'clock Saturday night. He succeeded on his second attempt at three forty-five Sunday morning. The Tactical Mobile Unit, the Police Department's crowd control squad, had been dismissed at three a.m. Since Sunday morning traditionally is the least troublesome time for police in Detroit and all over the country, only one hundred and ninety-three officers were patrolling the streets. Of these, forty-four were in the tenth precinct where the blind pig was located. Police expected to find two dozen patrons in the blind pig. That night, however, it was the scene of a party for several servicemen, two of whom were back from Vietnam. Instead of two dozen patrons, police found eighty-two. Some voiced resentment at the police intrusion. An hour went by before all eighty-two could be transported from the scene. The weather was humid and warm. The temperature that day was to rise to eighty-six. And despite the late hour, many people were still on the street. In short order, a crowd of about two hundred gathered. In November of nineteen-sixty-five, George Edwards, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Commissioner of the Detroit Police Department from nineteen-sixty-one to nineteen-sixty-three had written in the Michigan Law Review. Quote, it is clear that in nineteen-sixty-five no one will make excuses for any city's inability to foresee the possibility of racial trouble. Although local police forces generally regard themselves as public servants with the responsibility of maintaining law and order, they tend to minimize this attitude when they are patrolling areas that are heavily populated with Negro citizens. There, they tend to view each person on the streets as a potential criminal or enemy, and all too often that attitude is reciprocated. Indeed, hostility between the Negro communities in our large cities and the police departments is the major problem in law enforcement in this decade. It has been a major cause of all recent race riots, end quote. At the time of Detroit's nineteen-sixty-three race riot, Judge Edwards told commission investigators there was open warfare between the Detroit Negroes and the Detroit Police Department. As late as nineteen-sixty-one, he had thought that Detroit was the leading candidate in the United States for a race riot. There was a long history of conflict between the police department and citizens. During the labor battles of the nineteen-thirties, union members had come to view the Detroit Police Department as a strike-breaking force. The nineteen-forty-three riot, in which thirty-four persons died, was the bloodiest in the United States in a span of two decades. Judge Edwards and his successor, Commissioner Ray Gerardin, attempted to restructure the image of the department. A citizens' complaint bureau was set up to facilitate the filing of complaints by citizens against officers. In practice, however, this bureau appeared to work little better and less enlightened and more cumbersome procedures in other cities. On Twelfth Street, with its high incidence of vice and crime, the issue of police brutality was a recurrent theme. A month earlier, the killing of a prostitute had been determined by police investigators to be the work of a pimp. According to rumors in the community, the crime had been committed by a vice squad officer. At about the same time, the killing of Danny Thomas, a twenty-seven-year-old Negro Army veteran, by a gang of white youths had inflamed the community. The city's major newspapers played down the story and hoped that the murder would not become a cause for increased tensions. The intent backfired. A banner story in the Michigan Chronicle, the city's Negro newspaper began. As James Meredith marched again Sunday to prove a Negro could walk in Mississippi without fear, a young woman who saw her husband killed by a white gang shouting, shouting, Relatives were upset that the full story of the murder was not being told, apparently in an effort to prevent the incident from sparking a riot. Some Negroes believed that the daily newspaper's treatment of the story was further evidence of a double standard. Playing up crimes by Negroes, playing down crimes committed against Negroes. Although police arrested one suspect for murder, Negroes questioned why the entire gang was not held. What, they asked, would have been the result if a white man had been killed by a gang of Negroes. What if Negroes had made the kind of advances toward a white woman that the white men were rumored to have made toward Mrs. Thomas? The Thomas family lived only four or five blocks from the raided blind pig. Few minutes after 5 a.m., just after the last of those arrested had been hauled away, an empty bottle smashed into the rear window of a police car. A litter basket was thrown through the window of a store. Rumors circulated of excess force used by the police during the raid. A youth whom police nicknamed Mr. Greensleeves because of the color of his shirt was shouting, We're going to have a riot and exhorting the crowd to vandalism. At 5.20 a.m., Commissioner Gerardin was notified. He immediately called Mayor Jerome Kavanaugh. Seventeen officers from other areas were ordered into the tenth precinct. By 6 a.m., police strength had grown to 369 men. Of these, however, only 43 were committed to the immediate riot area. By that time, the number of persons on 12th Street was growing into the thousands, and widespread window smashing and looting had begun. On either side of 12th Street were neat, middle-class districts. Along 12th Street itself, however, crowded apartment houses created a density of more than 21,000 persons per square mile, almost double the city average. The movement of people when the slums of Black Bottom had been cleared for urban renewal had changed 12th Street from an integrated community into an almost totally black one, in which only a number of merchants remained white. Only 18% of the residents were homeowners. 25% of the housing was considered so substandard as to require clearance. Another 19% had major deficiencies. The crime rate was almost double that of the city as a whole. A Detroit police officer told Commission investigators that prostitution was so widespread that officers made arrests only when soliciting became blatant. The proportion of broken families was more than twice that in the rest of the city. By 7.50 a.m., when a 17-man police commando unit attempted to make the first sweep, an estimated 3,000 persons were on 12th Street. They offered no resistance. As the sweep moved down the street, they gave way to one side and then flowed back behind it. A shoe store manager said he waited vainly for police for two hours as the store was being looted. At 8.25 a.m., someone in the crowd yelled, the cops are coming. The first flames of the riot billowed from the store. Firemen who responded were not harassed. The flames were extinguished. By mid-morning, 1,122 men, approximately a fourth of the police department, had reported for duty. Of these, 540 were in or near the six-block riot area. 108 officers were attempting to establish a cordon. There was, however, no interference with looters and police were refraining from the use of force. Commissioner Gerardin said, If we had started shooting in there, not one of our policemen would have come out alive. I am convinced it would have turned into a race riot in the conventional sense. According to witnesses, police at some road blocks made little effort to stop people from going in and out of the area. Bantering took place between police officers and the populace, some still in pajamas. To some observers, there seemed at this point to be an atmosphere of apathy. On the one hand, the police failed to interfere with the looting. On the other, a number of older, more stable residents who had seen the street deteriorate from a prosperous commercial thoroughfare to one ridden by a vice remained aloof. Because officials feared that the 12th street disturbance might be a diversion, many officers were sent to guard key installations in other sections of the city. Bell Isle, the recreation area in the Detroit River that had been the scene of the 1943 riot, was sealed off. In an effort to avoid attracting people to the scene, some broadcasters cooperated by not reporting the riot, and an effort was made to downplay the extent of the disorder. The facade of business as usual necessitated the detailing of numerous police officers to protect the 50,000 spectators that were expected at that afternoon's New York Yankees Detroit Tigers baseball game. Early in the morning, a task force of community workers went into the area to dispel rumors and act as counter rioters. Such a task force had been singularly successful at the time of the incident in the Kerchewel district in the summer of 1966 when scores of people had gathered at the site of an arrest. Kerchewel, however, has a more stable population, fewer stores, less population density, and the city's most effective police-community relations program. The 12th Street area, on the other hand, had been determined in a 1966 survey conducted by Dr. Ernest Harburg of the Psychology Department of the University of Michigan to be a community of high stress and tension. An overwhelming majority of the residents indicated dissatisfaction with their environment. Of the interviewed, 93% said they wanted to move out of the neighborhood. 73% felt that the streets were not safe. 91% believed that a person was likely to be robbed or beaten at night. 58% knew of a fight within the last 12 months in which a weapon had been employed. 32% stated that they themselves owned a weapon. 67% were worried about fires. A significant proportion believed municipal services to be inferior. 36% were dissatisfied with the schools. 43% with the city's contribution to the neighborhood. 77% with the recreational facilities. 78% believed police did not respond promptly when they were summoned for help. Representative John Conyers Jr., a Negro, was notified about the disturbance at his home a few blocks from 12th Street at 8.30 am. Together with other community leaders including Hubert G. Locke, a Negro and assistant to the Commissioner of Police, he began to drive around the area. In the side streets he asked people to stay in their homes. On 12th Street he asked them to disperse. It was, by his own account, a futile task. Numerous eyewitnesses interviewed by Commission investigators tell of the carefree mood with which people ran in and out of stores, looting and laughing and joking with the police officers. Stores with Soul Brother signs appeared no more immune than others. Reuters paid no attention to residents who shouted at them and called their actions senseless. An epidemic of excitement had swept over the persons on the street. Congressman Conyers noticed a woman with a baby in her arms. She was raging, cursing whitey for no apparent reason. Shortly before noon Congressman Conyers climbed atop a car in the middle of 12th Street to address the people. As he began to speak he was confronted by a man in his fifties whom he had once as a lawyer represented in court. The man had been active in civil rights. He believed himself to have been persecuted as a result, and it was Conyers' opinion that he may have been wrongfully jailed. Extremely bitter the man was inciting the crowd and challenging Conyers. Why are you defending the cops and the establishment? You're just as bad as they are. A police officer in the riot area told commission investigators that neither he nor his fellow officers were instructed as to what they were supposed to be doing. Witnesses tell of officers standing behind saw-horses as an area was being looted and still standing there much later when the mob had moved elsewhere. A squad from the commando unit wearing helmets with face-covering visors and carrying bayonet-tipped carbines blockaded a street several blocks from the scene of the riot. Their appearance drew residents into the street. Some began to harangue them and to question why they were in an area where there was no trouble. Representative Conyers convinced the police department to remove the commandos. By that time a rumor was threading through the crowd that a man had been bayonetted by the police. Influenced by such stories the crowd became belligerent. At approximately 1 p.m. stonings accelerated. Numerous officers reported injuries from rocks, bottles, and other objects thrown at them. Smoke billowed upward from four fires, the first since the one at the shoe store early in the morning. When firemen answered the alarms they became the target for rocks and bottles. At 2 p.m. Mayor Kavanaugh met with community and political leaders at police headquarters. Until then there had been hope that as the people blew off steam the riot would dissipate. Now the opinion was nearly unanimous that additional forces would be needed. A request was made for state police aid. By 3 p.m. 360 officers were assembling at the armory. At that moment looting was spreading from the 12th Street area to other main thoroughfares. There was no lack of the disaffected to help spread it. Although not yet as hard-pressed as Newark, Detroit was, like Newark, losing population. Its prosperous middle-class whites were moving to the suburbs and being replaced by unskilled Negro migrants. Between 1960 and 1967 the Negro population rose from just under 30% to an estimated 40% of the total. In a decade the school system had gained 50,000 to 60,000 children. 51% of the elementary school classes were overcrowded. Simply to achieve the statewide average. The system needed 1,650 more teachers and 1,000 additional classrooms. The combined cost would be $63 million. Of 300,000 school children, 171,000 or 57% were Negro. According to the Detroit Superintendent of Schools, 25 different school districts surrounding the city spent up to $500 more per pupil per year than Detroit. In the inner-city schools more than half the pupils who entered high school became dropouts. The strong union structure had created excellent conditions for most working men, but had left others, such as civil service and government workers, comparatively disadvantaged and dissatisfied. In June the blue flu had struck the city as police officers forbidden to strike had staged a sick-out. In September the teachers were to go on strike. The starting wages for a plumber's helper were almost equal to the salary of a police officer or teacher. Some unions traditionally closed to Negroes zealously guarded training opportunities. In January of 1967 the school system notified six apprenticeship trades it would not open any new apprenticeship classes unless a large number of Negroes were included. By fall some of the programs were still closed. High school diplomas from inner-city schools were regarded by personnel directors as less than valid. In July unemployment was at a five-year peak. In the 12th Street area it was estimated to be between 12 and 15 percent for Negro men and 30 percent or higher for those under 25. The more education a Negro had the greater the disparity between his income and that of a white with the same level of education. The income of whites and Negroes with a seventh grade education was about equal. The median income of whites with a high school diploma was $1,600 more per year than that of Negroes. White college graduates made $2,600 more. In fact so far as income was concerned it made very little difference to a Negro man whether he had attended school for eight years or for twelve. In the fall of 1967 a study conducted at one inner-city high school northwestern showed that although 50 percent of the dropouts had found work 90 percent of the 1967 graduating class was unemployed. Mayor Kavanaugh had appointed many Negroes to key positions in his administration but in elective offices the Negro population was still underrepresented. Of nine councilmen one was a Negro. Of seven school board members two were Negroes. Although federal programs had brought nearly $360 million to the city between 1962 and 1967 the money appeared to have little impact at the grassroots. Urban renewal for which $38 million had been allocated was opposed by many residents of the poverty area. Because of its financial straits the city was unable to produce on promises to correct such conditions as poor garbage collection and bad street lighting which brought constant complaints from Negro residents. On Twelfth Street Carl Perry the Negro proprietor of a drugstore and photography studio was dispensing ice cream sodas and candy to the youngsters streaming in and out of his store. For safekeeping he had brought the photography equipment from his studio in the next block to the drugstore. The youths milling about repeatedly assured him that although the market next door had been ransacked his place of business was in no danger. In mid-afternoon the market was set afire. Soon after the drugstore went up in flames. End of section 13 Section 14 of the Kerner Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Phyllis Vinceli. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Kerner Commission Report. Section 14, Chapter 1 Profiles of Disorder, Detroit, Part 2 State Representative James Del Rio, a negro, was camping out in front of a building he owned when two small boys, neither more than ten years old, approached. One prepared to throw a brick through a window. Del Rio stopped him. That building belongs to me, he said. I'm glad you told me, baby, because I was just about to bust you in, the youngster replied. Some evidence that criminal elements were organizing spontaneously to take advantage of the riot began to manifest itself. A number of cars were noted to be returning again and again, their occupants methodically looting stores. Months later goods stolen during the riot were still being peddled. A spirit of carefree nihilism was taking hold. To riot and to destroy appeared more and more to become ends in themselves. Late Sunday afternoon it appeared to one observer that the young people were dancing amidst the flames. A negro plainclothes officer was standing at an intersection when a man threw a Molotov cocktail into a business establishment at the corner. In the heat of the afternoon, fanned by the twenty to twenty-five mile-per-hour winds of both Sunday and Monday, the fire reached the home next door within minutes. As residents uselessly sprayed the flames with garden hoses, the fire jumped from roof to roof of adjacent two and three-story buildings. Within the hour the entire block was in flames. The ninth house in the burning row belonged to the arsonist who had thrown the Molotov cocktail. In some areas residents organized rifle squads to protect firefighters. Elsewhere, especially as the wind-whipped flames began to overwhelm the Detroit fire department, and more and more residences burned, the firemen were subjected to curses and rock-throwing. Because of a lack of funds, on a per capita basis, the department is one of the smallest in the nation. In comparison to Newark, where approximately one thousand firemen patrolled an area of sixteen square miles with a population of four hundred thousand, Detroit's one thousand seven hundred firemen must cover a city of one hundred and forty square miles with a population of one point six million. Because the department had no mutual aid agreement with surrounding communities, it could not quickly call in reinforcements from outlying areas, and it was almost nine p.m. before the first arrived. At one point, out of a total of ninety-two pieces of Detroit firefighting equipment, and fifty-six brought in from surrounding communities, only four engine companies were available to guard areas of the city outside of the riot perimeter. As the afternoon progressed, the fire department's radio carried repeated messages of apprehension and orders of caution. There is no police protection here at all. There isn't a policeman in the area. If you have trouble at all, pull out. We're being stoned at the scene. It's going good. We need help. Protect yourselves. Proceed away from the scene. Engine forty-two over at Linwood and Gladstone. They are throwing bottles at us, so we are getting out of the area. All companies without police protection, orders are to withdraw. Do not try to put out the fires. I repeat, all companies without police protection orders are to withdraw. Do not try to put out the fires. It was four-thirty p.m. when the firemen, some of them exhausted by the heat, abandoned an area of approximately one hundred square blocks on either side of Twelfth Street to await protection from police and national guardsmen. During the course of the riot, firemen were to withdraw two hundred and eighty-three times. Fire Chief Charles J. Quinlan estimated that at least two-thirds of the buildings were destroyed by spreading fires rather than fires set at the scene. Of the six hundred and eighty-three structures involved, approximately one-third were residential, and in few, if any, of these was the fire set originally. Governor George Romney flew over the area between eight-thirty and nine p.m. It looked like the city had been bombed on the west side and there was an area two-and-a-half miles by three-and-a-half miles with major fires with entire blocks and flames, he told the Commission. In the midst of chaos there were some unexpected individual responses. Twenty-four-year-old E.G., a Negro born in Savannah, Georgia, had come to Detroit in 1965 to attend Wayne State University. Rebellion had been building in him for a long time because, quote, you just had to bow down to the white man. When the insurance man would come by, he would always call out to my mother by her first name, and we were expected to smile and greet him happily. And I know he would never have thought of me or my father going to his home and calling his wife by her first name. And I once saw a white man slapping a young pregnant Negro woman on the street with such force that she just spun around and fell. I'll never forget that, end quote. When a friend called to tell him about the riot on Twelfth Street, E.G. went there expecting a true revolt, but was disappointed as soon as he saw the looting begin. I wanted to see the people really rise up in revolt. When I saw the first person coming out of the store with things in his arms, I got really sick to my stomach and wanted to go home. Rebellion against the white suppressors is one thing, but one measly pair of shoes or some food completely ruins the whole concept. E.G. was standing in a crowd, watching firemen work when Fire Chief Alvin Wall called out for help from the spectators. E.G. responded, The reasoning was, no matter what color someone is, whether they are green or pink or blue, I'd help them if they were in trouble. That's all there is to it. He worked with the firemen for four days, the only Negro and an all-white crew. Elsewhere, at scattered locations, a half-dozen other Negro youths pitched in to help the firemen. At 4.20 p.m., Mayor Kavanaugh requested that the National Guard be brought into Detroit. Although a major portion of the Guard was in its summer encampment two hundred miles away, several hundred troops were conducting their regular week-end drill in the city. That circumstance obviated many problems. The first troops were on the streets by 7 p.m. At 7.45 p.m., the Mayor issued a proclamation instituting a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew. At 9.07 p.m., the first sniper fire was reported. Following his aerial survey of the city, Governor Romney, at or shortly before midnight, proclaimed that a state of public emergency exists in the cities of Detroit, Highland Park, and Hamtrak. At 4.45 p.m., a 68-year-old white shoe repairman, George Mezzerlean, had seen looters carrying clothes from a cleaning establishment next to his shop. Armed with a saber, he had rushed into the street, flailing away at the looters. One Negro youth was nicked on the shoulder, another, who had not been on the scene, inquired as to what had happened. After he had been told, he allegedly replied, I'll get the old man for you. Going up to Mezzerlean, who had fallen or been knocked to the ground, the youth began to beat him with a club. Two other Negro youths dragged the attacker away from the old man. It was too late. Mezzerlean died four days later in the hospital. At 9.15 p.m., a 16-year-old Negro boy, superficially wounded while looting, became the first reported gunshot victim. At midnight, Sharon George, a 23-year-old white woman, together with her two brothers, was a passenger in a car being driven by her husband. After having dropped off two Negro friends, they were returning home on one of Detroit's main avenues, when they were slowed by a milling throng in the street. A shot fired from close range struck the car. The bullet splintered in Mrs. George's body. She died less than two hours later. An hour before midnight, a 45-year-old white man, Walter Grzanca, together with three white companions, went into the street. Shortly thereafter, a market was broken in two. Inside the show window, a Negro man began filling bags with groceries and handing them to Confederates outside the store. Grzanca twice went over to the store, accepted bags, and placed them down beside his companions across the street. On the third occasion, he entered the market. When he emerged, the market owner, driving by in his car, shot and killed him. In Grzanca's pockets, police found seven cigars, four packages of pipe tobacco, and nine pairs of shoelaces. Before dawn, four other looters were shot, one of them accidentally, while struggling with a police officer. A Negro youth and a national guardsman were injured by gunshots of undetermined origin. A private guard shot himself while pulling his revolver from his pocket. In the basement of the 13th Precinct police station, a cue ball, thrown by an unknown assailant, cracked against the head of a sergeant. At about midnight, three white youths, armed with a shotgun, had gone to the roof of their apartment building, located in an all-white block in order, they said, to protect the building from fire. At 2.45 a.m., a patrol car, carrying police officers and national guardsmen, received a report of snipers on the roof. As the patrol car arrived, the manager of the building went to the roof to tell the youths they had better come down. The law enforcement personnel surrounded the building, some going to the front, others to the rear. As the manager, together with the three youths, descended the fire escape in the rear, a national guardsman, believing he heard shots from the front fired. His shot killed 23-year-old Clifton Pryor. Early in the morning, a young white fireman and a 49-year-old Negro homeowner were killed by fallen power lines. By 2.00 a.m. Monday, Detroit police had been augmented by 800 state police officers and 1,200 national guardsmen. An additional 8,000 guardsmen were on the way. Nevertheless, Governor Romney and Mayor Kavanaugh decided to ask for federal assistance. At 2.15 a.m., the mayor called Vice President Hubert Humphrey and was referred to Attorney General Ramsey Clark. A short time thereafter, telephone contact was established between Governor Romney and the Attorney General. A little over two hours earlier, at 11.55 p.m., Mayor Kavanaugh had informed the U.S. Attorney General that a dangerous situation existed in the city. Details are set forth in the final report of Cyrus R. Vance, covering the Detroit riot released on September 12, 1967. There is some difference of opinion about what occurred next. According to the Attorney General's office, the governor was advised of the seriousness of the request, and told that the applicable federal statute required that, before federal troops could be brought into the city, he would have to state that the situation had deteriorated to the point that local and state forces could no longer maintain law and order. According to the governor, he was under the impression that he was being asked to declare that a state of insurrection existed in the city. The governor was unwilling to make such a declaration, contending that, if he did, insurance policies would not cover the loss incurred as a result of the riot. He and the mayor decided to reevaluate the need for federal troops. Contact between Detroit and Washington was maintained throughout the early morning hours. At 9 a.m., as the disorder still showed no sign of abating, the governor and the mayor decided to make a renewed request for federal troops. Shortly before noon, the President of the United States authorized the sending of a task force of paratroops to Selfridge Air Force Base near the city. A few minutes past 3 p.m., Lieutenant General John L. Throckmorton, commander of Task Force Detroit, met Cyrus Vance, former deputy secretary of defense at the air base. Approximately an hour later, the first federal troops arrived at the air base. After meeting with state and municipal officials, Mr. Vance, General Throckmorton, Governor Romney, and Mayor Kavanaugh made a tour of the city which lasted until 7.15 p.m. During this tour, Mr. Vance and General Throckmorton independently came to the conclusion that, since they had seen no looting or sniping, since the fires appeared to be coming under control, and since a substantial number of national guardsmen had not yet been committed, injection of federal troops would be premature. As the riot alternately waxed and waned, one area of the ghetto remained insulated. On the northeast side, the residents of some 150 square blocks inhabited by 21,000 persons had in 1966 banded together in the Positive Neighborhood Action Committee, PNAC. With professional help from the Institute of Urban Dynamics, they had organized block clubs and made plans for the improvement of the neighborhood. In order to meet the need for recreational facilities, which the city was not providing, they had raised $3,000 to purchase empty lots for playgrounds. Although opposed to urban renewal, they had agreed to co-sponsor with the Archdiocese of Detroit a housing project to be controlled jointly by the Archdiocese and PNAC. When the riot broke out, the residents, through the block clubs, were able to organize quickly. Youngsters agreeing to stay in the neighborhood participated in detouring traffic. While many persons reportedly sympathized with the idea of a rebellion against the system, only two small fires were set, one in an empty building. During the daylight hours Monday, nine more persons were killed by gunshots elsewhere in the city, and many others were seriously or critically injured. Twenty-three-year-old Nathaniel Edmonds, a Negro, was sitting in his backyard when a young white man stopped his car, got out, and began an argument with him. A few minutes later, declaring he was going to paint his picture on him with a shotgun, the white man allegedly shotgunned Edmonds to death. Mrs. Nanny Pack and Mrs. Maddie Thomas were sitting on the porch of Mrs. Pack's house when police began chasing looters from a nearby market. During the chase, officers fired three shots from their shotguns. The discharge from one of these accidentally struck the two women. Included among those critically injured when they were accidentally trapped in the line of fire were an eight-year-old Negro girl and a fourteen-year-old white boy. As darkness settled Monday, the number of incidents reported to police began to rise again. Although many turned out to be false, several involved injuries to police officers, national guardsmen, and civilians by gunshots of undetermined origin. Watching the upward trend of reported incidents, Mr. Vance and General Throckmorton became convinced federal troops should be used, and President Johnson was so advised. At eleven-twenty p.m. the President signed a proclamation federalizing the Michigan National Guard and authorizing the use of the paratroopers. At this time there were nearly five thousand guardsmen in the city, but fatigue, lack of training, and the haste with which they had to be deployed reduced their effectiveness. Some of the guardsmen traveled two hundred miles and then were on duty for thirty hours straight. Some had never received riot training and were given on-the-spot instructions on mob control, only to discover that there were no mobs, and that the situation they faced on the darkened street was one for which they were unprepared. Commanders committed men as they became available, often in small groups. In the resulting confusion some units were lost in the city. Two guardsmen assigned to an intersection on Monday were discovered still there on Friday. Lessons learned by the California National Guard two years earlier in Watts regarding the danger of overreaction and the necessity of great restraint in using weapons had not, apparently, been passed on to the Michigan National Guard. The young troopers could not be expected to know what a danger they were creating by the lack of fire discipline, not only to the civilian population, but to themselves. A Detroit newspaper reporter who spent a night riding in a command jeep told a commission investigator of machine guns being fired accidentally, streetlights being shot out by rifle fire, and buildings being placed under siege on the sketchiest reports of sniping. Troopers would fire and immediately from the distance there would be answering fire, sometimes consisting of tracer bullets. In one instance the newsmen related a report was received on the jeep radio that an army bus was pinned down by sniper fire at an intersection. National guardsmen and police, arriving from various directions, jumped out and began asking each other, where's the sniper fire coming from? As one guardsman pointed to a building everyone rushed about taking cover. A soldier, a lighting from a jeep, accidentally pulled the trigger on his rifle. As the shot reverberated through the darkness an officer yelled, what's going on? I don't know came the answer, sniper I guess. Without any clear authorization or direction someone opened fire upon the suspected building. A tank rolled up and sprayed the building with 50 caliber tracer bullets. Law enforcement officers rushed into the surrounded building and discovered it empty. They must be firing one shot and running was the verdict. The reporter interviewed the men who had gotten off the bus and were crouched around it. When he asked them about the sniping incident he was told that someone had heard a shot. He asked, did the bullet hit the bus? The answer was, well, we don't know. Bracketing the hour of midnight Monday, heavy firing injuring many persons and killing several occurred in the southeastern sector which was to be taken over by the paratroopers at 4 a.m. Tuesday and which was, at this time, considered to be the most active riot area in the city. Employed as a private guard, 55-year-old Julius L. Dorsey, a Negro, was standing in front of a market when accosted by two Negro men and a woman. They demanded he permit them to loot the market. He ignored their demands. They began to berate him. He asked a neighbor to call the police. As the argument grew more heated, Dorsey fired three shots from his pistol into the air. The police radio reported, looters, they have rifles. A patrol car driven by a police officer and carrying three national guardsmen arrived. As the looters fled, the law enforcement personnel opened fire. When the firing ceased, one person lay dead. He was Julius L. Dorsey. End of Section 14. Section 15 of the Kerner Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Phyllis Vincelli. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Kerner Commission Report. Section 15, Chapter 1. Profiles of Disorder, Detroit, Part 3. In two areas, one consisting of a triangle formed by Mack, Gratiot, and East Grand Boulevard, the other surrounding Southeastern High School, firing began shortly after 10 p.m. and continued for several hours. In the first of the areas, a 22-year-old Negro complained that he had been shot at by snipers. Later, a half-dozen civilians and one national guardsmen were wounded by shots of undetermined origin. Henry Denson, a passenger in a car, was shot and killed when the vehicle's driver, either by accident or intent, failed to heed a warning to halt at a National Guard roadblock. Similar incidents occurred in the vicinity of Southeastern High School, one of the National Guard staging areas. As early as 10.20 p.m., the area was reported to be under sniper fire. Around midnight there were two incidents, the sequence of which remains in doubt. Shortly before midnight, Ronald Powell, who lived three blocks east of the High School and whose wife was, momentarily, expecting a baby, asked the four friends with whom he had been spending the evening to take him home. He, together with Edward Blackshear, Charles Glover, and John Leroy, climbed into Charles Denson's station wagon for the short drive. Some of the five may have been drinking, but none was intoxicated. To the north of the High School they were halted at a National Guard roadblock and told they would have to detour around the school and a fire station at Mack and St. Jean Streets because of the firing that had been occurring. Following orders they took a circuitous route and approached Powell's home from the south. Unlike Cass Street, between Charlevoix and Goethe, they saw a jeep sitting at a curb. Believing it to be another roadblock, they slowed down. Simultaneously, a shot rang out. A National Guardsman fell, hit in the ankle. Other National Guardsmen at the scene thought the shot had come from the station wagon. Shot after shot was directed against the vehicle, at least seventeen of them finding their mark. All five occupants were injured. John Leroy fatally. At approximately the same time, firemen, police, and National Guardsmen at the corner of Mack and St. Jean Streets two-and-a-half blocks away again came under fire from what they believed were rooftop snipers to the southeast, the direction of Charlevoix and Leicast. The police and Guardsmen responded with a hail of fire. When the shooting ceased, Carl Smith, a young firefighter, lay dead. An autopsy determined that the shot had been fired at street level and, according to police, probably had come from the southeast. At four a.m., when paratroopers, under the command of Colonel A. R. Boling, arrived at the high school, the area was so dark and still that the Colonel thought, at first, that he had come to the wrong place. Investigating, he discovered National Guard troops, claiming they were pinned down by sniper fire, crouched behind the walls of the darkened building. The Colonel immediately ordered all of the lights in the building turned on and his troops to show themselves as conspicuously as possible. In the apartment house across the street nearly every window had been shot out and the walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. The Colonel went into the building and began talking to the residents, many of whom had spent the night huddled on the floor. He reassured them no more shots would be fired. According to Lieutenant General Throckmorton and Colonel Boling, the city, at this time, was saturated with fear. The National Guardsmen were afraid, the residents were afraid, and the police were afraid. Numerous persons, the majority of them Negroes, were being injured by gunshots of undetermined origin. The General and his staff felt that the major task of the troops was to reduce the fear and restore an air of normalcy. In order to accomplish this, every effort was made to establish contact and rapport between the troops and the residents. Troopers, 20% of whom were Negro, began helping to clean up the streets, collect garbage, and trace persons who had disappeared in the confusion. Residents in the neighborhoods responded with soup and sandwiches for the troops. In areas where the National Guard tried to establish rapport with the citizens there was a similar response. Within hours after the arrival of the paratroops, the area occupied by them was the quietest in the city, bearing out General Throckmorton's view that the key to quelling a disorder is to saturate an area with calm, determined, and hardened professional soldiers. Loaded weapons, he believes, are unnecessary. Troopers had strict orders not to fire unless they could see the specific person at whom they were aiming. Mass fire was forbidden. During five days in the city, 2,700 army troops expended only 201 rounds of ammunition, almost all during the first few hours, after which even stricter fire discipline was enforced. In contrast, New Jersey National Guardsmen and State Police expended 13,326 rounds of ammunition in three days into work. Hundreds of reports of sniper fire, most of them false, continued to pour into police headquarters. The army logged only 10. No paratrooper was injured by a gunshot. Only one person was hit by a shot fired by a trooper. He was a young Negro who was killed when he ran into the line of fire as a trooper aiding police in a raid on an apartment aimed at a person believed to be a sniper. General Throckmorton ordered the weapons of all military personnel unloaded, but either the order failed to reach many national guardsmen or else it was disobeyed. Even as the general was requesting the city to relight the streets, guardsmen continued shooting out the lights, and there were reports of dozens of shots being fired to dispatch one light. At one such location, as guardsmen were shooting out the street lights, a radio newscaster reported himself to be pinned down by sniper fire. On the same day that the general was attempting to restore normalcy by ordering street barricades taken down, guardsmen on one street were not only in broad daylight ordering people off the street, but off their porches and away from the windows. Two persons who failed to respond to the order quickly enough were shot, one of them fatally. The general himself reported an incident of a guardsman firing across the bow of an automobile that was approaching a roadblock. As in Los Angeles two years earlier, roadblocks that were ill-lighted and ill-defined, often consisting of no more than a trash barrel or similar object with guardsmen standing nearby, proved a continuous hazard to motorists. At one such roadblock, National Guard Sergeant Larry Post, standing in the street, was caught in a sudden crossfire as his fellow guardsmen opened up on a vehicle. He was the only soldier killed in the riot. With persons of every description arming themselves and guns being fired accidentally or on the vaguest pretext all over the city, it became more and more impossible to tell who was shooting at whom. Some firemen began carrying guns, one accidentally shot and wounded a fellow fireman, another injured himself. The chaos of a riot and the difficulties faced by police officers are demonstrated by an incident that occurred at 2 a.m. Tuesday. A unit of twelve officers received a call to guard firemen from snipers. When they arrived at the corner of Vicksburg and Linwood in the 12th Street area, the intersection was well-lighted by the flames completely enveloping one building. Sniper fire was directed at the officers from an alley to the north, and gun flashes were observed in two buildings. As the officers advanced on the two buildings, patrolmen Johnny Hamilton fired several rounds from his machine gun. Thereupon the officers were suddenly subjected to fire from a new direction, the east. Hamilton, struck by four bullets, fell, critically injured, in the intersection. As two officers ran to his aid, they too were hit. By this time other units of the Detroit Police Department, State Police, and National Guard had arrived on the scene and the area was covered with a hail of gunfire. In the confusion the snipers who had initiated the shooting escaped. At 9.15 p.m. Tuesday, July 25th, thirty-eight-year-old Jack Sidnor, a negro, came home drunk. Taking out his pistol he fired one shot into an alley. A few minutes later the police arrived. As his common law wife took refuge in a closet, Sidnor waited, gun in hand, while the police forced open the door. Patrolman Roger Poyk, the first to enter, was shot by Sidnor. Although critically injured, the officer managed to get off six shots in return. Police within the building and on the street then poured a hail of fire into the apartment. When the shooting ceased, Sidnor's body, riddled by the gunfire, was found lying on the ground outside a window. Nearby a state police officer and a negro youth were struck and seriously injured by stray bullets. As in other cases where the origin of the shots was not immediately determinable, police reported them as shot by sniper. Reports of heavy sniper fire poured into police headquarters from the two blocks surrounding the apartment house where the battle with Jack Sidnor had taken place. National Guard troops with two tanks were dispatched to help flush out the snipers. Shots continued to be heard throughout the neighborhood. At approximately midnight there were discrepancies as to the precise time. A machine gunner on a tank startled by several shots asked the assistant gunner where the shots were coming from. The assistant gunner pointed toward a flash in the window of an apartment house from which there had been earlier reports of sniping. The machine gunner opened fire. As the slugs ripped through the window and walls of the apartment, they nearly severed the arm of 21-year-old Valerie Hood. Her four-year-old niece Tanya Blanding toppled dead, a .50 caliber bullet hole in her chest. A few seconds earlier, 19-year-old Bill Hood standing in the window had lighted a cigarette. Down the street a bystander was critically injured by a stray bullet. Simultaneously the John C. Lodge Freeway, two blocks away, was reported to be under sniper fire. Tanks and National Guard troops were sent to investigate. At the Harlan House Motel, ten blocks from where Tanya Blanding had died a short time earlier, Mrs. Helen Hall, a 51-year-old white businesswoman, opened the drapes of the fourth floor hall window. Calling out to other guests, she exclaimed, Look at the tanks! She died, seconds later, as bullets began to slam into the building. As the firing ceased, a 19-year-old Marine carrying a Springfield rifle burst into the building. When, accidentally, he pushed the rifle barrel through a window, firing commenced anew. A police investigation showed that the Marine, who had just decided to help out the law enforcement personnel, was not involved in the death of Mrs. Hall. R. R., a white 27-year-old coin dealer, was the owner of an expensive three-story house on L. Street, an integrated middle-class neighborhood. In May of 1966, he and his wife and child had moved to New York and had rented the house to two young men. After several months, he had begun to have problems with his tenants. On one occasion he reported to his attorney that he had been threatened by them. In March of 1967 R. R. instituted eviction proceedings. These were still pending when the riot broke out. Concerned about the house, R. R. decided to fly out to Detroit. When he arrived at the house on Wednesday, July 26th, he discovered the tenants were not at home. He then called his attorney, who advised him to take physical possession of the house, and for legal purposes, to take witnesses along. Together with his 17-year-old brother and another white youth, R. R. went to the house, entered, and began changing the locks on the doors. For protection they brought a .22 caliber rifle, which R. R.'s brother took into the cellar and fired into a pillow in order to test it. Shortly after 8 p.m., R. R. called his attorney to advise him that the tenants had returned, and he had refused to admit them. Thereupon, R. R. alleged, the tenants had threatened to obtain the help of the National Guard. The attorney relates that he was not particularly concerned. He told R. R. that if the National Guard did appear, he should have the officer in charge call him the attorney. At approximately the same time, the National Guard claims it received information to the effect that several men had evicted the legal occupants of the house and intended to start sniping after dark. A National Guard column was dispatched to the scene. Shortly after 9 p.m., in the half-light of dusk, the column of approximately 30 men surrounded the house. A tank took position on a lawn across the street. The captain commanding the column placed in front of the house an explosive device similar to a firecracker. After setting this off, in order to draw the attention of the occupants to the presence of the column, he called for them to come out of the house. No attempt was made to verify the truth or falsehood of the allegation regarding snipers. When the captain received no reply from the house, he began counting to ten. As he was counting, he said he heard a shot, the origin of which he could not determine. A few seconds later, he heard another shot and saw a fire streak coming from an upstairs window. He thereupon gave the order to fire. According to the three young men, they were on the second floor of the house and completely bewildered by the barrage of fire that was unleashed against it. As hundreds of bullets crashed through the first and second-story windows and ricocheted off the walls, they dashed to the third floor. Protected by a large chimney, they huddled in a closet until, during a lull in the firing, they were able to wave an item of clothing out of the window as a sign of surrender. They were arrested as snipers. The firing from rifles and machine-guns had been so intense that in a period of a few minutes it inflicted an estimated $10,000 worth of damage. One of a pair of stone columns was nearly shot in half. Section 16 of the Kerner Commission Report This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Phyllis Vincelli. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Kerner Commission Report. Section 16 Chapter 1 Profiles of Disorder. Detroit Part 4 Methodology Jailed at the 10th Precinct Station some time Wednesday night, R.R. and his two companions were taken from their cell to an alley court, police slaying for an unlawful attempt to make prisoners confess. A police officer, who has resigned from the force, allegedly administered such a severe beating to R.R. that the bruises were still visible two weeks later. R.R.'s 17-year-old brother had his skull cracked open and was thrown back into the cell. He was taken to a hospital only when other arrestees complained that he was bleeding to death. At the preliminary hearing twelve days later, the prosecution presented only one witness, the National Guard Captain, who had given the order to fire. The police officer, who had signed the original complaint, was not asked to take the stand. The charges against all three of the young men were dismissed. Nevertheless, the morning after the original incident, a major metropolitan newspaper in another section of the country composed the following banner story from wire service reports. Detroit, July 27th, Thursday. Two national guard tanks ripped a sniper's haven with machine guns Wednesday night and flushed out three shaggy-haired white youths. Snipers attacked a guard command post and Detroit's racial riot set a modern record for bloodshed. The death toll soared to 36, topping the Watts bloodbath of 1966, in which 35 died, and making Detroit's insurrection the most deadly racial riot in modern U.S. history. In the attack on the sniper's nest, the guardsmen poured hundreds of rounds of 50-caliber machine gun fire into the home, which authorities said housed arms and ammunition used by Westside sniper squads. Guardsmen recovered guns and ammunition. A reporter with the troopers said the house, a neat brick home in a neighborhood of 20,000 to 50,000-dollar homes, was torn apart by the machine gun and rifle fire. Sniper fire crackled from the home as the guard unit approached. It was one of the first verified reports of sniping by whites. A pile of loot taken from riot-ruined stores was recovered from the sniper's haven, located 10 blocks from the heart of the 200-square-block riot zone. Guardsmen said the house had been identified as a storehouse of arms and ammunition for snipers. Its arsenal was regarded as an indication that the sniping, or at least some of it, was organized. As hundreds of arrestees were brought into the 10th precinct station, officers took it upon themselves to carry on investigations and to attempt to extract confessions. Dozens of charges of police brutality emanated from the station as prisoners were brought in uninjured, but later had to be taken to the hospital. In the absence of the precinct commander, who had transferred his headquarters to the riot command post at a nearby hospital, discipline vanished. Prisoners who requested that they be permitted to notify someone of their arrest were almost invariably told that the telephones are out of order. Congressman Conyers and State Representative Del Rio, who went to the station hoping to coordinate with the police the establishing of a community patrol, were so upset by what they saw that they changed their minds and gave up on the project. A young woman brought into the station was told to strip. After she had done so, and while an officer took pictures with a Polaroid camera, another officer came up to her and began fondling her. The negative of one of the pictures fished out of a wastebasket, subsequently was turned over to the mayor's office. Citing the sniper danger, officers throughout the department had taken off their bright metal badges. They also had taped over the license plates and the numbers of the police cars. Identification of individual officers became virtually impossible. On a number of occasions, officers fired at fleeting looters then made little attempt to determine whether their shots had hit anyone. Later, some of the persons were discovered dead or injured in the street. In one such case, police and National Guardsmen were interrogating a youth suspected of arson when, according to officers, he attempted to escape. As he vaulted over the hood of an automobile, the officer fired a shotgun. The youth disappeared on the other side of the car. Without making an investigation, the officers and guardsmen returned to their car and drove off. When nearby residents called police, another squad car arrived to pick up the body. Despite the fact that an autopsy disclosed the youth had been killed by five shotgun pellets, only a cursory investigation was made and the death was attributed to sniper fire. No police officer at the scene during the shooting filed a report. Not until a Detroit newspaper editor presented to the police the statements of several witnesses claiming that the youth had been shot by police after he had been told to run did the department launch an investigation. Not until three weeks after the shooting did an officer come forward to identify himself as the one who had fired the fatal shot. Citing conflicts in the testimony of the score of witnesses, the Detroit prosecutor's office declined to press charges. Prosecution is proceeding in the case of three youths and whose shotgun deaths law enforcement personnel were implicated following a report that snipers were firing from the Algiers motel. In fact, there is little evidence that anyone fired from inside the building. Two witnesses say that they had seen a man standing outside of the motel fire two shots from a rifle. The interrogation of other persons revealed that law enforcement personnel then shot out one or more streetlights. Police patrols responded to the shots and attack was launched on the motel. The picture is further complicated by the fact that this incident occurred at roughly the same time that the National Guard was directing fire at the apartment house in which Tanya Blanding was killed. The apartment house was only six blocks distant from and indirect line with the motel. The killings occurred when officers began on-the-spot questioning of the occupants of the motel in an effort to discover weapons used in the sniping. Several of those questioned reportedly were beaten. One was a Negro ex-paratrooper who had only recently been honorably discharged and had gone to Detroit to look for a job. Although by late Tuesday looting and firebombing had virtually ceased between 7 and 11 p.m. that night there were 444 reports of incidents. Most were reports of sniper fire. During the daylight hours of July 26th there were 534 such reports. Between 8.30 and 11 p.m. there were 255. As they proliferated the pressure on law enforcement officers to uncover the snipers became intense. Homes were broken into. Searches were made on the flimsiest of tips. A Detroit newspaper headline aptly proclaimed Everyone's Suspect in No Man's Land. Before the arrest of a young woman IBM operator in the city assessor's office brought attention to the situation on Friday, July 28th any person with a gun in his home was liable to be picked up as a suspect. Of the 27 persons charged with sniping 22 had charges against them dismissed at preliminary hearings and the charges against two others were dismissed later. One pleaded guilty to possession of an unregistered gun and was given a suspended sentence. Trials of two are pending. In all, more than 7,200 persons were arrested. Almost 3,000 of these were picked up on the second day of the riot and by midnight Monday 4,000 were incarcerated in makeshift jails. Some were kept as long as 30 hours on buses. Others spent days in an underground garage without toilet facilities. An uncounted number were people who had merely been unfortunate enough to be on the wrong street at the wrong time. Included were members of the press whose attempts to show their credentials had been ignored. Released later they were chided for not having exhibited their identification at the time of their arrests. The booking system proved incapable of adequately handling the large number of arrestees. People became lost for days in the maze of different detention facilities. Until the later stages, bail was set deliberately high, often at $10,000 or more. When it became apparent that this policy was unrealistic and unworkable, the prosecutor's office began releasing on low bail or on their own recognizance hundreds of those who had been picked up. Nevertheless this fact was not publicized for fear of antagonizing those who had demanded a high bail policy. Of the forty-three persons who were killed during the riot thirty-three were Negro and ten were white. Seventeen were looters, of whom two were white. Fifteen citizens, of whom four were white. One white national guardsman, one white fireman, and one Negro private guard died as the result of gunshot wounds. Most of these deaths appear to have been accidental, but criminal homicide is suspected in some. Two persons, including one fireman, died as a result of fallen power lines. Two were burned to death. One was a drunken gunman, one an arson suspect. One white man was killed by a rioter. One police officer was felled by a shotgun blast when a gun, in the hands of another officer, accidentally discharged during a scuffle with a looter. Action by police officers accounted for twenty and very likely twenty-one of the deaths. Action by the national guard for seven and very likely nine. Action by the army for one. Two deaths were the result of action by store owners. Four persons died accidentally. Rioters were responsible for two and perhaps three of the deaths. A private guard for one. A white man is suspected of murdering a Negro youth. The perpetrator of one of the killings and the Al Jir's motel remains unknown. Damage estimates originally set as high as $500 million were quickly scaled down. The city assessor's office placed the loss, excluding business stock, private furnishings, and the buildings of churches and charitable institutions at approximately $22 million. Insurance payments, according to the State Insurance Bureau, will come to about $32 million, representing an estimated 65-75% of the total loss. By Thursday, July 27th, most riot activity had ended. The paratroopers were removed from the city on Saturday. On Tuesday, August 1st, the curfew was lifted and the national guard moved out. Methodology, Profiles of Disorder Construction of the Profiles of Disorder began with surveys by field teams in 23 cities. From an analysis of the documents compiled and field interviews, 10 of the 23, a fair cross-section of the cities were chosen for intensive further investigation. A special investigating group was dispatched to each city under study to conduct in-depth interviews of persons previously questioned and others that had come to our attention as a result of the analysis. Additional documents were obtained. In the process of acquisition, analysis, and distillation of information, the special investigating group made several trips to each city. In the meantime, the regular field teams continued to conduct their surveys and report additional information. The approximately 1,200 persons interviewed represent a cross-section of officials, observers, and participants involved in the riot process, from mayors, police chiefs, and army officers to black power advocates and rioters. Experts in diverse fields, such as taxation, firefighting, and psychology, were consulted. Testimony presented to the commission in closed hearings was incorporated. Many official documents were used in compiling chronologies and corroborating statements made by witnesses. These included, but were not limited to, police department and other law enforcement agencies after action reports, logs, incident reports, injury reports, and reports of homicide investigations. After action reports of U.S. Army and National Guard Units, FBI reports, fire department logs and reports, and reports from prosecutors, offices, and other investigating agencies. About 1,500 pages of depositions were taken from 90 witnesses to substantiate each of the principal items in the profiles. Since some information was supplied to the commission on a confidential basis, a fully annotated, foot-noted copy of the profiles cannot be made public at this time, but will be deposited in the archives of the United States. End of section 16.