60's Race Riots?

[goat granny]

depending on your age (cough cough, I am in my 70’s)being called negro, colored, mulatto were not taken as insults. There was a thriving black middle class in the cities, but with busing, they moved out of the cities just like the whites did. No one wanted to put their kids on a bus for an hour long ride to another school in a strange neighbor hood. That included black Americans, but it was not a hyphenated word in those days...One of the councilmen(Detroit) was a black, and he said it was an insult to him and his children to say they couldn’t learn unless they sat next to a white child....I'd be interested in knowing your experiences during that time....GG

[Windflier]

I think the sequence was:

Colored folk
Negro
Black
African-American

You, sir, are exactly right, though the first two terms were used interchangeably for 150 years. MLK made the term, 'negro', the more politically correct of the two, then the radicals who followed, abolished both terms, favoring the simple, 'black', as a racial identifier.

Later, Obama's generation of leftist academics created the abominable 'A-A' appellation. I think I first heard it in the late seventies, and considered it a pretentious mouthful.

[SamAdams76]

Later, Obama's generation of leftist academics created the abominable 'A-A' appellation. I think I first heard it in the late seventies, and considered it a pretentious mouthful.

To show the silliness of this nomenclature, whenever I hear the A-A term bandied about, I am sure to refer to myself as a "British-Irish-German-Scandinavian-American."

Friends can refer to me as a BIGSA and I won't take offense.

[Windflier]

depending on your age (cough cough, I am in my 70’s)being called negro, colored, mulatto were not taken as insults.

I remember during the Civil Rights era, the term, negro, was entirely acceptable to black folks, though in my own family we called ourselves 'colored'.

The term, mulatto, wasn't something that anyone would proudly wear on their sleeve, as far as I knew. My family was very close to that description, and it was a never-ending source of tension for us. After all, how black can you really be, if your dad can almost pass for white, and your mom looks like a Louisiana Creole?

But, I was too young to care one way or another about any of it, and was just happy being an American kid.

[Windflier]

whenever I hear the A-A term bandied about, I am sure to refer to myself as a "British-Irish-German-Scandinavian-American."

I'm sure most black folks of my generation blanched at first hearing the 'A-A' term. It used to be a widely known fact that blacks in this country are far from racially pure. Most of us are mixed with European and Native American of varying degrees.

If anything, we're a New World people, very distinct from Africans. Lord knows, we've lost all cultural memory and connection to Africa since our ancestors first came here. Nothing more than a romantic notion remains.

For myself, my paternal DNA line goes straight back to the Borders of Scotland. What am I supposed to do about that? Ignore it in favor of some untraceable branch of my lineage that originated in Africa? Why? Because I've got brown skin?

Nuts.

[goat granny]

Thanks for the info. I was not aware that mulatto was offensive to Negros at that time. One of the guys that ran with my friends and myself was mulatto, very light skinned but not passing for white. He was a sweetheart of a guy but his brother was darker skinned. Back in the 50’s it seemed like there was not the thug community like there is today...Your mentioning creole, that would be more like Joe was. In his talking, accent etc. It seemed to me the races mixed more back then than they do today...My elementary school was in the neighborhood, therefore all white, but by the time I got to high school, (had to take public bus service with student ID for price )the school was integrated. Years back I took out my senior year book and the ratio was about 20% black, some Spanish and the rest white. There were some cliques that were all white, but several that were not all white....for many in high school the mixing of the races was no big deal. The eye opener for me was when I saw on TV southern whites turning dogs loose on marchers. Being northern, I had no idea that things were like that in the south...

It shocked me to see that happen, along with the fire hose's used.....It also made me sick to see how Jesse Jackson became the spokesman for civil rights after MLK was assassinated. He seemed to me to be just an opportunist and was not like King at all. But again, I am seeing it from only a personal point of view.. GG

[Windflier]

Back in the 50’s it seemed like there was not the thug community like there is today.

That's my perception too. The thug element in the black community of my youth was very small - probably not much bigger than the percentage of thugs in the majority population. Every community has a few rotten apples.

When I was a kid, there were two forces kept that percentage to a minimum. Those were; the better moral fiber of the people in those days, and police departments that simply didn't let it get out of control.

As the gov't welfare programs of the 60s began to take hold in black communities, the first of those two forces (moral fiber) began to fray at the edges, and in time, nosedived on a crash course to complete disintegration. Now, more than 7 in 10 black children are born to unwed mothers - many of them teenagers.

Nearly all of those children have been born into such a bankruptcy of personal integrity and common sense morality, that they're easily led into the most degraded and destructive life choices imaginable. The sub-culture they know, is hardly recognizable to their grandparents and great-grandparents.

[Hot Tabasco]

Block upon block of the inner city burned and firefighters who came to put them out were killed by snipers.

I think your recollection is a bit distorted, there were only two good guys killed during the riot, one policeman and one firefighter.

The Detroit police responded with an iron fist, shooting a lot of folks who were looting.

A total of only 43 people were killed not only by police and guardmen but looters themselves. It was not the holocaustic bloodbath by LEO that you are trying to make it.

And as a side note, on the day the riots started, my father, who was a Lieutenant in the TMU and lived on Detroit's east side, had started his vacation and was in Windsor with my mom and was coming back to the US when he saw smoke rising in the city. Since they had planned to spend their vacation up at their cottage in northern Michigan, dad drove mom up to the cottage, dropped her off and returned to their house in Detroit. He then called in to his precinct and informed them that he was available if they needed him but they never called him.

Even in the northwestern suburbs where 99% of the Whites fled,

You're kidding us, right? There was very little white flight from the east side "Grosse Pointes" or the Detroit side for that matter, which were closest to the 12th street riots. People stayed in their houses (probably armed) knowing that the riots were taking place downtown but prepared in the event it spread to their neighborhoods. Which it didn't......

[goat granny]

LBJ was a nasty piece of work as president...The great society he spoke of at the time remained me communism. He did a lot of damage. I also remember him on TV telling the nation......I will not be the first president to lose a war...then he sent thousands of our boys to Vietnam and bragged that he, in the white house was telling those in the field what to bomb...trying to make it look like he was the big man of Washington.....He was so bad he refused to run for another term, that's how nasty he was...I think also that he was part of the breakdown of the American black family.....don't need no father, you have the democrats to support you. But that has also affected the white community. More babies being born out of wedlock also.. My son's first wife came from a family of 10 kids, one had a baby out of wedlock and 3 of the 10 were on welfare...The family was italian.........

[SauronOfMordor]

While we won’t have as many leftist agitators this time, the islamists will be out there.

[boop]

"IMHO, those riots were at least as important as anything in the election of Nixon in 1968. Remember his “law and order” campaign theme?"

And what's fascinating is that even in 1968 black leaders called "law and order" CODE WORDS for "racism".

Just like during the 2012 presidential campaign calling Obama a failure was a "dog whistle" that only "racists" can hear.

What's the deal with average, working, normal black people that they would OPPOSE "law and order"?

They can't possibly like living in a crime ridden neighborhood.

[MNDude]

Exactly! I saw a posting that a white Facebook “friend” posted. It was a protests against how blacks were disproportionally imprisoned and ths injustice must be righted. I commented that I’m fine keeping my white neighborhood safe by keeping any white criminals from it locked up, and I imagine that decent blacks probably prefer the same for their neighborhood.

[Netz]

OK, maybe some of my data is off mark. 2 people killed? You stated 43. As I remember firefighters were sniped at and killed.
The majority of whites left Detroit starting around 1963. When we left in 1965, most of our white friends and neighbors were already in the suburbs. That was my view as a kid growing up. If I distorted, I retract some of what I wrote...I remember it being very bad.

[Smokin' Joe]

While we won’t have as many leftist agitators this time, the islamists will be out there.

Malcolm Little (AKA Malcolm X) was one of the agitators, and Calypso Louis (Farrakhan) took over some time after that. The New Left Communists and Islamists have shared a bunk since a decade or two after the Nazis got finished off, and there are just more jailhouse Muslims with ample encouragement from elsewhere, as well as a complement of the real thing.

[Tainan]

...the 70s were bad too, pretty much the entire country was on drugs.

Funny that. I remember thinking the exact same thing back in the '70s.

[Tainan]

Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo’s commitment to law and order...

You want us to believe that you're saying this with a straight face?

[LadyDoc]

yup. Frank Rizzo was pro law and order....

The Mafia ran the place when he was in charge, but if you didn’t bother them they didn’t bother you...

[Tainan]

The Mafia ran the place when he was in charge,...

Now that is something that has been substantiated over the years.

[alphadog]

I was at Travis AFB during the race riots there.

What year was that?

[Mogger]

I was there at the tail end of them, 1972 - 1974. I hear they were much worse before then. I thought it was pretty bad as it was.