This entry appeared today in Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac.”
It was on this night in 1967 that an uprising began in Detroit. An all-white squadron of police officers decided to raid a bar in a black neighborhood where there was a party to welcome home two recent veterans of the Vietnam War. The police stormed the bar, rounded up and arrested 85 black men and began loading them into vans.
The riot that broke out raged for five days. Thousands of soldiers from the Michigan National Guard were called in, along with tanks. The National Guardsmen fired off more than 150,000 bullets over the course of the riot. Citizens were terrorized, beaten, and murdered, as depicted in the movie Detroit (2017), based on the recollections of witnesses to the Algiers Motel Incident.
Forty-three people were killed and whole blocks of the city went up in flames. After the riots, many of the white residents of the city moved to the suburbs in “white flight.” Detroit became one of the poorest cities in America.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A couple of summers ago I worked on a project in Detroit and drove up and down virtually every neighborhood over the course of 8 days spread out over 3 trips. I developed great affection for the city and people I met. Been reading as much history of the city as I can fit it since. Charle LeDuff’s book American Autopsy is the most searing. I came to the conclusion that all Americans, like the Germans who lived in the vicinity of concentration camps after the war, should be required to walk through these neighborhoods, should not be allowed to look away. They should smell the smells of trash piles in the hot summer sun. That might be the only way we’ll actually do something about abject poverty and despair in this country. Google “Detroit decay” and check out the countless websites devoted to documenting its tragedy. Or go to Google Earth, as I did when mapping out my routes, and check out the emptiness of many parts of the city. Or take 6 minutes to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GIsqxYYVo0 Send it to anyone who believes in the myth of American exceptionalism.
Given your previous post about Portland this has special significance it seems to me.
Those who don’t learn history — Donald Trump — are doomed to repeat it.
History isn’t the only subject Donald Trump is illiterate in. This malignant narcissist and psychopath cannot learn anything.
There were many “race riots” in 1967, with Detroit among the worst. In almost every case, police were implicated as provocateurs, primarily from their strategies in arresting black men. Here is a retrospective look at some of these riots. One, in Cincinnati, led to multiple arsons and other methods of destroying neighborhoods including some communities known as integrated but by the middle class blacks who were owners of homes. In otherwords advantages expressed in social class status were also implicated in the riots.
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-07-12/50-years-later-causes-of-1967-summer-riots-remain-largely-the-same
The exodus of white people out of Detroit started right after WWII, with the building of expressways and suburbs (which prohibited black people), and continued unabated through 1967 and beyond. The seminal work on this racist migration is Tom Sugrue’s “The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.” And check out Pam Sporn’s documentary film “Detroit 48202: Conversations Along a Postal Route” for an in-depth look at the history of Detroit through the eyes of a postal worker and the customers on his route.
“ALEC Backs Trump on Confederate Monuments” (PRWatch 7-16-2020)
ALEC linked to Charles Koch and Republicans.
ALEC linked to scum of the earth. Not the useful kind.
Today it’s the white right inciting riots to move people out of cities targeted for wealth consolidation and high end development. Not for this generation – long term investments. The public schools in these locations are “personalizing” education so the community doesn’t notice the children have gone missing. Those left will fall into two categories – private school kids and the kids divining their own gig economy educations.