The Metro: New historic marker remembers the Algiers Motel, Detroit Rebellion of 1967
Civil Rights historian Dr. Danielle McGuire joined the show to talk more about the legacy of the 1967 Algiers Motel killings.
An exterior view of the Algiers Motel and Manor (also known as the "Annex"), the location where three young Black men were killed and seven other people were badly beaten by law enforcement during a raid prompted by reports of armed gunmen near the location.
A new historic marker will be placed at the former location of the Algiers Motel, which was the site of police violence during the 1967 Detroit riot.
A ceremony on Friday will honor the 57th anniversary of the motel raid that resulted in the deaths of three Black teenagers and the beatings of at least six others.
Civil Rights historian Dr. Danielle McGuire joined The Metro on Wednesday to talk more about the historical marker and preserving the history of the 1967 rebellion.
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McGuire says remembering history, especially traumatic events, is important.
“If we forget, we don’t learn. And if we don’t learn, we keep doing the same thing over and over again,” McGuire said. “I mean one of my arguments essentially is that, you know, because there was never any kind of accountability for the kind of police brutality cases we saw at the Algiers Motel and during the 1967 uprisings and afterwards in places like Detroit, we still have a problem with police brutality today.”
The Metro host Tia Graham recounted how her father, a native Detroiter, watched tanks line his street as neighborhoods burned. He was just 9-years-old.
“It was a Sunday afternoon when it started on Grand River and the area I lived in. It was started with a few guys throwing rocks, and then they started breaking windows, and then within about half an hour it was full scale rebellion,” her father, David Graham recalled. “I was nine years old at the time so I lived right two houses off Grand River. So you could see Grand River and what was going on since it was a major street back in those days with lots of businesses. It was pretty rough that first night. There was a lot of fear.”
Use the media player above to hear the full interview with McGuire.
More headlines from The Metro on July 24, 2024:
- On Monday, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Council Member Mary Waters proposed overhauling the city’s rental laws; they want to ease the cost and bureaucratic hurdles associated with the inspection process. David Bowser, deputy director of the city of Detroit’s Housing and Revitalization Department, joined The Metro to talk more about how this new strategy is meant to improve access to quality, affordable housing.
- Decades ago, in the ’60s, Detroit made a bid for an enormous event: the Olympics. It was a time when anti-Black discrimination and segregation were creating a lot of turmoil for residents. Detroit ultimately lost the bid to host the Olympics. But the story of how the city almost won the bid, the reasons it didn’t, and the possibilities of what could have happened if it did achieve it are still relevant to this day. With the Olympics starting this week in Paris, filmmakers of a new documentary about Detroit’s 1968 Olympic bid joined The Metro. Stefan Szymanski is the director of “Detroit’s Olympic Uprising,” and Silke-Maria Weineck is the documentary’s writer.
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