Inspired by recent OHMA Workshops that explored personal experiences of how our “homes” change over time - Sara Sinclair and Suzanne Methot’s How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America, and Sarita Daftary’s on the East New York Oral History Project and the Rikers Public Memory Project – Michael Giannetti decided to conduct a listening activity with his family about their memories of Detroit, the 1967 uprising, and their contemporary ideas of the city.

My uncle and my aunt are both in their early 60s and were 8 and 9 years old in 1967 when the uprisings occurred. At the time, they lived on different sides of Detroit, my aunt (and mother, who was one-month old) in the North West part of the city, and my uncle in Harper Woods, an entirely white community on the border of the West side. My uncle and aunt were the only ones in our group who could actually say they lived in Detroit. My mother was less than a year old when she and my aunt moved with their parents Celise and Frank to Farmington Hills, a suburb north of Detroit. My sister and I were both born in different states but shared many years of our childhood thirty-minutes north of Detroit in the suburbs.

Over Zoom we listened to two clips from the Detroit 67 Oral History Project, which I selected before we all met. The first clip we listened to was of Joseph Claxton, an African American man describing his life growing up in Detroit. Claxton recalled a terrifying encounter with the National Guard, as they pointed their rifles at him on his own porch in the summer of 1967. His tone regarding the incident was surprisingly calm and reserved, but it nonetheless left all of us disturbed and discomfited. The second clip was a curated video from the Detroit 67 Project, featuring five African American narrators describing the realities of Detroit before and after the 1967 uprisings. Each narrator described the segregation, racism, and police brutality that was, and still is, a reality in Detroit. These are just some of the many reasons why the uprisings began in the first place.

After listening, my sister and I spoke about how we never learned anything – literally anything – about Detroit in school, despite growing up just thirty-minutes away from the city. We did not learn about why Detroit was a struggling city, just that “it always has been”. The only things we ever heard about Detroit were the racist stereotypes from our peers, family, and consistent media coverage about “crime in Detroit.” Growing up, we only went to Detroit for concerts and sports games and we always locked our doors downtown.

The only environment my family and I grew up in was not only wealthy, but also extremely white, our town being a product of white flight from Detroit starting in the 1920s. My uncle was old enough to remember his family’s migration to the suburbs and talked about how he has realized that he grew up in a sheltered, entirely white community. He told us that there was no doubt in his mind that the reason his family moved out of Detroit was because of “race.” He also reflected on the second clip, where several narrators discussed the “Big Four”, a group of white Detroit police officers who would drive around the city harassing and physically abusing African Americans who were on street corners. He spoke about how back then, there was nothing else for any kids to do except be outside, to play - or hangout on corners. He and his friends would do that consistently, but no police ever harassed them or hit them with clubs. We all agreed that what we learned and experienced through our lives regarding Detroit was a skewed, incomplete, and white-washed picture. These discussions we were having now about income inequality, racism, and systemic white supremacy never played a role in our lives until recently. That was what I found sad and eye opening, the generational breadth of this missing history.

I have many feelings after this activity with my family – many of them positive but others that caused me great frustration. This listening activity raised a lot of questions for us as a family and for me. What does this erasure of history say about the places we call home? Listening to the stories of African Americans from Detroit, their childhoods, terrifying encounters with police and the National Guard, brought us all into an uncomfortable space – but a necessary one, nonetheless. Nyssa Chow’s ideas about “unknowing” or “unlearning” came to mind after this exercise was finished. It will be essential to revisit with my family over time about these topics and use this tool as a way to “unlearn” what was taught to us over time about Detroit and African Americans. There was so much to unpack during and after this activity, it is almost overwhelming. But that is why conversations and activities like these are so important today.

Photo credit:

Detroit Historical Society, Robert Felt, 1967, Detroit Views Collection, 8.5” x 11” [1]

Detroit Urban League, “The People Beyond 12th Street: A Survey of Attitudes of Detroit Negroes after the Riot of 1967,” 1967, Box 1, Joseph L. Hudson Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan [2]

Michael Giannetti is passionate about the roles museums and oral history play together in creating more inclusive and diverse dialogue around important historical themes. Graduating in the Summer of 2021, his OHMA thesis focuses on storytelling and how oral history can be used to bring generations of people together through discussion. Soon, Michael will develop a live “radio-show” that brings generations of activists, educators, and students together to talk about democracy, injustice in the world, and how we can all work to build a true beloved community.