The Metro: The history (and end) of Devil’s Night in Detroit
Detroit Historian Jamon Jordan joined the show on Halloween eve to share more about Devil’s Night and how the community came together to put a stop to it.
For years, neighbors around Detroit have committed to watch vacant homes in their neighborhood on the day before Halloween to deter arson and other crimes.
The day before Halloween is referred to as Mischief Night in many parts of the country, but in Detroit, it used to be called Devil’s Night.
For decades, that night filled many with fear, as neighborhoods with abandoned homes or businesses prepared themselves for possible arson. City of Detroit Historian Jamon Jordan joined The Metro on Wednesday — the day before Halloween — to share more about the history of Devil’s Night in Detroit and how community members came together with the city to put an end to it.
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Throughout the U.S. there’s always been pranks connected to Halloween — draping toilet paper on trees, throwing eggs at cars, and other mischief that didn’t cause the most damage.
In the 1980s there were about 800 fires around Halloween, Jordan said. Community groups and the city took steps to wipe out Devil’s Night, oftentimes doing patrols the day before Halloween and enforcing youth curfews. In the ’90s, the community and city started doing joint patrols and renamed it Angel’s Night.
“So these things begin to work in concert with one another, and there’s thousands of people who begin to volunteer. By this point, with so many people out on the street with eyes on almost every neighborhood, especially the vacant houses in the neighborhood, it begins to make it have an effect on stopping the fires,” he said. “Within a few years, the fires really go way way down and then eventually we don’t even talk about Devil’s Night…”
Use the media player above to hear the full conversation with Jordan.
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