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Monday, July 24, 2017

What I learned from seeing Detroit go up in flames 50 years ago this week

Fifty years ago this weekend, a deadly urban riot began in Detroit. It started around 3:30 a.m., when police arrested 85 patrons of a “blind pig” — an illegal after-hours bar — in the midst of an all-black neighborhood that had been all-white 15 or 20 years before.

Rioting went on for six nights, with some 2,500 stores looted and burned, some 400 families displaced and property damage estimated at around $300 million in 2017 dollars. Forty-three people, many of them innocent bystanders, were killed. More than 1,000 people were wounded.

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1 comment:

  1. And what came out of it and all the other riots in the late 1960's? Nothing much except the emergence of a new class of race-baiting, self-serving leadership.

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