Surviving the Riot of 1967

“After the Riot of 1967”

(Where are all the food stores?)

By Glenn Peppers                                                    April 29, 2015

Having lived through a major riot in Detroit back in 1967, the one thing I remember was that days after the fires died down was this constant smell of smoke, and the quiet! That awfully strange quiet! I was almost 11 years old, and I was old enough at that time to know that things weren’t quite right. Yet too young to put things into full perspective! 

There was another odd thing that I noticed just after the riot stopped in 1967. A great many food stores and corner stores were now closed, and no one seemed to be driving anywhere much, as I saw almost no traffic a lot of the time! Maybe this was because two gas stations nearby were destroyed! The Clark gas station at Mack and Mt. Elliot was blown up completely, and the Standard station was out of order for some reason. 

Some time after the riot, I remember the city of Detroit cutting and trimming down greatly all those beautiful tree branches that once hung over into the middle of the street on both sides of Mt. Elliot where we lived!

I remember that little man who ran a small furrier shop up the street from us, closing it down and packing up his stuff to move away! It became a beauty shop soon afterwards. But the one thing I remember most is there were no food markets open in our area that were open just after the riot, except for maybe Food Fair! The A&P on Gratiot was closed briefly (I don’t know for how long), and it eventually moved further west of Mt. Elliot, yet still on gratiot, near the Faygo Pop and bottling plant! I don't know if the Farmer Jack chain of supermarket stores had come to Michigan as yet. But what I do remember was my dad having to drive up into Hamtramck, a few miles away to a store called Great Scott, and one called BiLo to buy food! 

The National Guard. 101 Airborne 

There were some meat markets about, but some of them wouldn't let certain people (black folks) in for fear that they would be robbed, looted or burned out, again! Our corner store on Forrest and Mt. Elliot had even closed for a bit for repairs! If you had the means to do so, you could go to the Eastern Market on Saturday’s and buy fresh fruit and vegetables! Capitol Market inside the Eastern Market was swamped with folks from all over trying to buy meat, and poultry! But most of all I remember that strange quiet in my once very active neighborhood! Just after the riot, there was this droning sound of sawing and nailing, and the sound of a jack hammer, and then later in the afternoon, the lack of traffic noises on a once busy street like Mt. Elliot! 

Along with these new changes came a new addition to our nighttime state of being! Police Helicopters constantly flying over our houses and neighborhoods with a new item. A super bright spotlight called, "Daylight!" This was the reason they trimmed the trees down so far, so they could re-con inner city areas wherever, and whenever they wanted; 24/7! Gone was my once peaceful racially mixed, working class neighborhood with the friendly cops who walked the beat that said hi to everyone (black or white), three to four times a day!

Stress officer 1967

We still had that 1950's police unit called STRESS in our area. Yet they were an anomaly to me, because I never really saw them, until just after the riot. Combine the old STRESS police unit with a newer version of those older white guys in black suits and ties that we barely ever seen with a new police unit called, The Big Four and STRESS! And man were they mean! Believe me when I tell you, they'd hurt you. and for no reason at all! After the Riot in 1967, in my neighborhood, you had to really be careful where you went if you were alone! If the Big Four caught you by yourself, they just might kill you as opposed to arrest you on bogus charges! There are stories of the BIG FOUR beating black men and boys to death with their black jacks and night sticks! Or they’d just assume blow you away with their riot shotguns! Many a day, we saw young men laying in the back parking lot of the old A&P. Some claimed to have been jumped by the Big Four! I had no clue! I didn’t stick around to find out!

Not long after the riot in 1967, our Jamaican family up the street from us moved away! Those nice elderly spinster sisters who spoiled us kids with chocolates and cool stories as we sat drawing superheroes on our front porch moved away. They lived in an upper flat, three doors down! The grouchy lady near Garfield street with all her dalmatians and other show dogs packed up and left as well before the end of 1968! Even the deaf mute German junkman with his wooden trailer, drawn by an old beat up mule stopped coming around. This man picked up everybody’s junk, and bulk metal and copper, and pop bottles, then all of a sudden, not long after the riot, he stopped coming around to pick up junk!

There were black families in and around the area who were moving away as well. They headed further north and west, toward 7 and 8 mile roads! Little did I know that we'd soon join the ranks of those who would move further away from the lower east side of Detroit as well in 1969. It broke my heart when White Tower Hamburgers closed down on Gratiot. Great burgers! That really cool appliance shop with all the windows on Gratiot and Mt. Elliot closed as well! It was quite a while before some of the food stores opened nearby, and became business as usual! My dad could once buy his sunday paper at the Rexall drug store up the street on saturday evenings. Or he’d buy his sunday newspaper from the paper-man on the corner of Mt. Elliot and Gratiot. As a child, I remember this small man had a prosthetic hand that reminded me of a giant plastic GI Joe doll hand! 

Since the riot had temporally burned out, or shut down the Rexall drug store, and the paper-man was no longer up on the Gratiot corner anymore. My dad had to now drive to downtown Detroit, to Michigan Ave. and Woodward to this rather large Paperstand on the corner and buy his sunday paper on a saturday night! Which was cool with me and my siblings because we kids got us a nice lil’ ride around the city Detroit before bedtime in dad’s big green Impala, and an ice cream cone each from Dan's Dairy Dip ice cream shop. Dan’s Dairy Dip was an Ice cream dairy-mart with some really great soft ice cream. A place that my father’s elderly friend, (Dan Frencher) our next door neighbor owned over on the west side of Detroit! Not far from The 20 Grand night club, where a lot of Motown recording stars supposedly hung out!

Such a shame though, Mr. Dan (as us kids called him) hadn’t been opened for more than 3 or 4 years when some thief killed Dan Frencher in his shop one night. Shot him right there in a back area of his beloved dairy mart, in 1968! Mr. Dan was my father’s mentor, and was true father figure to my dad! It was certain that we were sure to move, and move away quite soon after this incident! That late summer of 1969, my dad moved us away from the Mt. Elliot and Gratiot area! 

Sporting a better job after getting his degree from Wayne State, my father relocated our family north of Hamtramck, near the 7 mile area of Detroit! In this area of the city, there were meat markets (two in fact). And an A&P and even a fruit ranch! There were no burned out buildings, or the smell of smoke! One thing I was glad of, and it was this!... There also was no longer that strange quiet, and folks constantly leaving our once decent little neighborhood in droves just after the riot! 

There were food markets and a bank, just like we had use of down on Mt. Elliot, within walking distance. And there was best of all, new people to meet. It was in the Conant Gardens area where I’d live and make a rich treasure of Lifelong Friends, and develop new interest, and a life away from Mt. Elliot street. Best of all I had time to think, and time to separate bad memories from the good ones about Mt. Elliot, and the Riot of 1967. 

Summing it all up in my head. I had to come to grips with the fact that I’d experienced losing my mother while living in that big old creepy house. They say that if you were alive, you will always remember where you were when Kennedy was assassinated! Well, I was on the front porch, playing with a Tonka Truck on the steps when my father came rushing out of the house to tell me that the President had just been shot! As if me -- a mere 7 year old could comprehend the serious nature of what he had just conveyed to me! 

Yes, Mt. Elliot was where I was when Kennedy was killed! This is also where I was when Martin Luther King was murdered! This was the house in which I lived when I first saw Batman in living color at my friend Michael’s house three doors down, on their floor model Color TV! This was where I ran to the street like a mad man at the sound of the Mister Softee Ice Cream Truck. I belonged to Little league with the Greater St.Peter church two doors down from me. Mt. Elliot is where I flew fresh new kites and bought and worked new yoyo’s every spring. It is where I witnessed most every week, the many funerals for many a fallen Vietnam Vet on any given saturday! Just about every other week or so, I had to relive seeing a flag draped coffin, like Kennedy's be placed into a waiting hearse as a widow or grieving mother cries! In 1967 on, I made it my mission to be up and gone out of the house and to the movies most every saturday so that I would not have to see and hear this awful drama play itself out most every weekend!

Mt. Elliot was Church car washes with the teenagers as “Dancing in the Street” played loudly over the church PA speaker system! This was also the place where I first experienced the smell of fresh peanuts and popcorn at the S.S. Kresge store around the corner from my house, and next to the movie theater that I practically lived at every weekend. Especially if they were showing a new James Bond movie! Living on Mt. Elliot, I became accustom to smelling the aromas of, and tasting the same type of buttered popcorn and fresh candies whenever we’d visit the Sears store, further north on Gratiot and Van Dyke. 

Sure I had fun there at Mt. Elliot as a child. Yet at the same time, Mt. Elliot held some bitter sweet memories for me! But freshest in my mind during the August of 1969 was my summer of 1967 and the riot! The barricades! The 24 hour news reports with ABC channel 7‘s Bill Bonds Anchoring. The hordes of tanks, and the many troops and police all milling about outside our door and in the street; and the sound of sniper fire overhead! The faint sound of police radios, and gun play seemingly everywhere. For 8 days, I remember people screaming, fighting, and bleeding and running. I remember explosions, and the smell of gasoline and looting, cars burning, and our crouching down on the living room floor in the dark as the national guard and the police ran through our yards, and up on our porches with M-16’s and pistols, chasing and shooting at people! 

Some two years after the riot of 1968, we had moved away from Mt. Elliot and left a world of memories good and bad behind. It was and is the memories of my mother that is the salve of my mind and soul! It settles that whole thing, good and bad about Mt. Elliot! It took some getting use to, my not living on a noisy, big busy street. But after about a year or so I got use to it. Heading into the 1970‘s, for me there was peace! Whenever there is new life and hope, there is always peace!

Glenn Peppers