Lessons from the 1967 Detroit Rebellion

This July 23-27 marked 59 years since the heroic Detroit Rebellion of 1967, when the Black community rebelled against the deplorable living conditions caused by capitalism, including the constant brutal occupation of their neighborhood by the Detroit Police Department. After illegally assaulting patrons at the Blind — a bar on the west side of Detroit’s Black community — welcoming home returning Vietnam veterans, police officers set off the rebellion. They claimed a variety of factors to justify the raid, but the outcome was the revolt itself.

The five-day uprising resulted in multiple acts of repression, from the heightened presence of not only the police but the Michigan National Guard, leading to the outright murder of over 30 Black people. This rebellion included the Algiers Motel killings, in which three Black teens — Carl Cooper, Aubrey Pollard and Fred Temple — were slain, along with other atrocities committed by Detroit officers.

And as we’ve seen this year alone, the conditions that led to that revolt are alive and well today.

We must first understand the historic period during which the Detroit Rebellion exploded into revolt. In 1967, the ruling class was at its most ambitious and brutal, carrying out a genocidal war against the people of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, overthrowing democratically elected governments like in Greece and even executing revolutionaries like Che Guevara in Bolivia.

Yet for all their aggression, the pro-war ruling class was not ready for the uprisings and growing liberation movements taking shape led by the Black Panther Party, Brown Berets, American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, among others, either being formed or already active in the fight for people’s freedom in the belly of the beast.

Many joined that fight because of the conditions capitalism placed on them and because of the contradictions baked into the system, like the myth that the U.S. economy was permanently stable for the population in general. That may have held true for those living in the suburbs and for the ruling class, of course, but certain sectors of the working class, especially people of color, were largely shut out of this so-called financial stability and were the most vulnerable to being drafted to Vietnam.

Additionally, what sparked revolts like Detroit’s was the agitation of the white supremacist power structure, especially at the local level, through policing. As Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton stated in a 1968 prison interview, “The police in our community occupy our area, our community, just as a foreign troop occupies territory.”

And this is exactly what law enforcement did then, and still does now: keep Black neighborhoods and other communities of color under a military-type siege.

Conditions today

What does this rebellion have to do with the situations and contradictions of the capitalist system today? Simply put, the ruling class strategy hasn’t changed, though for the life of them, they’ll say it has. If that’s the case, then why has the state ramped up its violence against the people?

One example is the Trump administration’s move last year to deploy the National Guard into predominantly Black cities like Memphis and Chicago. On top of that, they’ve allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to brutalize Black and other workers of color, especially immigrants.

Furthermore, the biggest red herring is the fact that we still see the naked, state- sponsored murder of Black people. Just as the reactionaries killed Cooper, Pollard, and Temple and countless others in 1967, they continue it today with the murders of Keith Porter, Nolan Wells, Trey Reed and most recently on July 22, when police in Madison, Wisconsin, fatally shot 38-year old Corey Ruiz three times in the head.

Going further, the capitalist class will go as far as murdering children, as shown in the case of four-year-old Tanya Lynn Blanding, who was killed by the Michigan National Guard during the rebellion. Also there is the case of one-year-old Kohen Wiley, recently killed by the Mississippi police.

So 59 years later, what can we do or learn from the rebellion? One of the biggest lessons is that the struggle continues, even in moments when we think the time for revolution has come, only to realize it hasn’t, because a revolution can’t be predicted or simply willed into happening. The rebellion was something carried out spontaneously by the people themselves. A people’s tribunal of demands was then organized a month after it took place. That shows how much both being out there with the people and maintaining discipline matters.

We see that same spirit today in movements for Palestinian liberation, in the fight against ICE and in every revolutionary movement taking place now on a global scale. And only through being organized, staying connected and forging class solidarity can we achieve full liberation for the people.