It exploded into one of the deadliest and most destructive social insurgences in American history, lasting five days and surpassing the scale of Detroit's 1943 race riot 24 years earlier.

Detroit had acquired millions in federal funds through President Johnson's Great Society programs and invested them almost exclusively in the inner city, where poverty and social problems were concentrated.

"[50] There were still signs of black disaffection, however; In 1964, Rosa Parks, who had moved to Detroit in the late fifties, told an interviewer: "I don't feel a great deal of difference here [from Alabama]...Housing segregation is just as bad, and it seems more noticeable in the larger cities.

Factors were a combination of changes in technology, increased automation, consolidation of the auto industry, taxation policies, the need for different kinds of manufacturing space, and the construction of the highway system that eased transportation.

The Home Owners' Loan Corporation was in charge of assigning ratings of "A" (green) through "D" (red) to all of the neighborhoods in major U.S. cities based on the conditions of the buildings, the infrastructure and most importantly, the racial composition of the area.

[24][page needed] Black Bottom and Paradise Valley (located on Detroit's lower east side, south of Gratiot) were examples of African-American neighborhoods that formed as a result of these government restrictions.

"[25] Bolstered by successive federal legislation, including the 1941, 1949, 1950, 1954 versions of the Housing Act and its amendments through the 1960s, the city acquired funds to develop the Detroit Medical Center complex, Lafayette Park, Central Business District Project One, and the Chrysler Freeway, by appropriating land and "clearing slums".

Arthur L. Johnson, the former head of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, was hired in 1966 to advance community involvement in schools, and improve "intergroup relations and affirmative action.

[41] Later, in a memoir, William Walter Scott III, a doorman whose father was running the raided blind pig, took responsibility for starting the riot by inciting the crowd and throwing a bottle at a police officer.

[citation needed] The local news media initially avoided reporting on the disturbance so as not to inspire copy-cat violence, but the rioting started to expand to other parts of the city, including looting of retail and grocery stores elsewhere.

By Sunday afternoon, news had spread, and people attending events such as a Fox Theater Motown revue and Detroit Tigers baseball game were warned to avoid certain areas of the city.

After the game, Tigers left fielder Willie Horton, a Detroit resident who had grown up not far from 12th Street, drove to the riot area and stood on a car in the middle of the crowd while still in his baseball uniform.

"[49] At 7:45 p.m. that first (Sunday) night, Cavanagh enacted a citywide 9:00 p.m. – 5:30 a.m. curfew,[50] prohibited sales of alcohol[51] and firearms, and informally curtailed business activity in recognition of the serious civil unrest engulfing sections of the city.

Cavanagh, a young Irish Catholic Democrat who had cultivated harmonious relations with black leaders, both inside and outside the city,[56] was initially reluctant to ask Romney, a Republican, for assistance.

[citation needed] On Monday, U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan), who was against federal troop deployment, attempted to ease tensions by driving along 12th Street with a loudspeaker asking people to return to their homes.

"[citation needed] As Louis Cassells reported on the ground for UPI: "At a moment when race relations might seem to have sunk to the lowest possible level, whites and Negroes were working together, through their churches, to minister to the hungry and homeless.

Unions, led by the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters, joined with industrial firms in setting up a truck pool to transport relief supplies into the riot area.

Sidney Fine's chapter, "The Polarized Community," cites many of the academic and Detroit Free Press-financed public opinion surveys conducted in the wake of the riot.

Hudson, and Max Fisher while the embers were still cooling, was that it gave credibility to radical black organizations in a misguided attempt to listen to the concerns of the "inner-city Negro" and "the rioters."

Compared to the rosy newspaper stories before July 1967, the London Free Press reported in 1968 that Detroit was a "sick city where fear, rumor, race prejudice and gun-buying have stretched black and white nerves to the verge of snapping.

[95] In the aftermath of the turmoil, the Greater Detroit Board of Commerce launched a campaign to find jobs for ten thousand "previously unemployable" persons, a preponderant number of whom were black.

It is probably more than a coincidence that the state that had experienced the most severe racial disorder of the 1960s also adopted one of the strongest state fair housing acts.Two years after the end of the 1967 riot, Wayne County Sheriff Roman Gribbs, who was seen by many white Detroiters as their last "white hope" in a city with a growing black population, created the Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets (STRESS) campaign, a secret and elite police unit that enabled police brutality.

The unit was accused of conducting 500 raids without the use of search warrants and killing 20 people within 30 months, and this fostered an unhealthy fear and hatred between the black community and the police force.

[citation needed] In the wake of the riots, a group of several hundred African American activists met in Detroit, where they declared the Republic of New Africa and a provisional government for it.

Wayne State University partnered with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to create the Developmental Career Guidance Project, which studied improving the potential for poor students.

[99] In 1972 the Detroit Common Council elected its first African American president, Erma Henderson, who fought insurance redlining and discrimination in the judicial system and public spaces.

The poll took place from July 14–19, a time period the Detroit Free Press noted was "during the ongoing national furor over police shooting of African-American civilians, and retaliatory attacks on officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

An episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", used footage of burning buildings from the 1967 Detroit Riot to dramatize a planetary war between two alien races.

[citation needed] Judy Blume's 1970 novel Iggie's House, which dealt with issues of racial hatred arising from a black family's moving into a predominantly white neighborhood, also referenced the riot.

The work includes "broad strokes of color that appear spontaneous, give form to the artists memories of strength and resolve of black people facing intense opposition to change.