The “Summer of Love” in the United States took place alongside rising racial tensions in many of the country’s cities. Nearly 160 riots occurred across the United States in the summer of 1967. While young white Americans traveled to California and other locations to push against one set of cultural boundaries (such as drug use, sexuality, authority, etc.), black Americans were pushing against much more fundamental ones in their own communities. Although the country had made great strides toward racial equality in the courts, black Americans still lived in a country where racism, segregation, and discrimination remained overt and mainstream.
In what became known as the “long, hot summer” of 1967, injustice stemming from the frustrations of poverty and unemployment, the systematic denial of employment opportunities by white-owned businesses and city services by white-led municipal governments, and mistreatment by white or mostly white police forces led to explosive confrontations between black residents and the forces that oppressed them. The deadliest and most destructive riots took place in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan. However, even smaller cities, such as Cambridge, Maryland, experienced unrest. What follows are brief sketches of the violent episodes that gripped each of these cities during the summer of 1967.
On the evening of July 12, the largest of the year’s riots began in Newark. A black taxi driver, John Smith, was pulled over by police after he passed a double-parked police car. Officers beat him in front of incensed onlookers from a nearby housing project and took him to the local police station. According to their report, Smith was arrested on several charges, including tailgating, wrong-way driving, and assault. The city’s police force was well known for their harsh treatment of the city’s black population, and after a false rumor spread over taxi radios and through the crowd that the driver had been killed while in police custody, neighborhood residents gathered around the police station. Despite appeals for calm by community activists, some of whom attempted to organize a peaceful protest, some in the crowd began to hurl bricks and Molotov cocktails (bottles of inflammable liquid) at the police station, and others began to loot storefronts. In the five-day period of looting, arson, and rioting—the most destructive such episode in New Jersey’s history—the U.S. National Guard was called to assist police officers. Some 26 people were killed, more than 700 were injured, and more than 1,000 residents were arrested.
On July 24 the working-class town of Cambridge, where blacks and whites seldom mixed with one another, also became the setting for arson. Having been invited to the city to speak by Gloria Richardson, a local Cambridge activist who advocated for equal rights in the town during the early 1960s, Black Power activist H. Rap Brown spoke to a group of 500 black residents. He quipped, “If Cambridge doesn't come around, Cambridge got to be burned down.” Shortly after the end of the speech, during what police say was a march along the street that divided black and white neighborhoods, police and black residents traded gunfire. Later that evening a fire that started in an elementary school in central Cambridge spread, destroying 15 nearby buildings. Although no one died, Brown was hit in the face with buckshot. He left town soon after being treated.
By far the most well-known riot of the summer began a day earlier in Detroit, when police raided a party at an illegal drinking club called the Blind Pig, located near the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount, in the wee hours of the morning. Police arrested all 82 people in attendance, who were celebrating the return of two black servicemen from the Vietnam War, and witnesses in the neighborhood protested the arrests. Some of the protestors vandalized and looted local businesses and set fire to nearby vehicles and buildings. To limit the damage, police set up a blockade around the neighborhood. However, the riot quickly spread to other parts of the city. Police and fire services soon became overwhelmed as rioters pelted them with bricks and stones, and by 5:30 PM the next day, the city’s mayor, Jerome Cavanaugh, requested that the National Guard be brought in to help contain and stop the violence. Throughout the five-day riot, some 9,000 members of the National Guard were deployed, assisted by 800 Michigan state police and nearly 5,000 paratroopers from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, who were sent by Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson. When the violence subsided, some 7,200 people had been arrested, and 1,200 people were injured. The riot claimed 43 lives; 33 of those killed were black residents of the city.