Next month, Academy Award-winning film director Kathryn Bigelow will release Detroit, a recounting of the city’s devastating 1967 race riot, the most destructive period of civil unrest in American history. The riot marks its 50th anniversary this week. Lasting for a total of five days (July 23 through July 27), the riot literally tore the once gleaming Midwest metropolis, apart at the seams resulting in 43 deaths, over 7,000 arrests, the burning, looting and destruction of more than 2,000 buildings and pieces of property with a damage bill ranging in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Detroit opens on August 4. Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker) directs a cast highlighted by John Boyega (Star Wars franchise), Will Poulter (The Revenant, We’re The Millers), Anthony Mackie (8 Mile, The Hurt Locker, Captain America franchise) and John Krasinski (TV’s The Office). The film focuses on the notoriously-tragic July 26, 1967 Algiers Motel Murders.
Using The Detroit Free Press newspaper Twitter feed and its brilliantly-crafted #Detroit67 thread as a guide, below is a timeline of the first day of the infamous uprising in the Motor City.
Detroit 1967 Race Riot Timeline – Day 3: July 25, 1967
12:00 a.m. – President Lyndon B. Johnson goes on national television to address the country regarding the riot in the Motor City, announces dispatching of U.S. Army to the area to aid in putting down the unrest and that “Law and order has broken down in Detroit, Michigan”
12:00 a.m. – U.S. Army brigades begin arriving inside the Detroit city limits as the President addresses the masses on TV
12:01 a.m. – Fleeing looter Manny Cosbey is shot and killed by police after robbing a grocery store on E. Nevada Street
12:20 a.m. – The Detroit Police Department’s 5th Precinct takes heavy sniper fire
12:25 a.m. – Sniper fire reported on Jefferson and St. Jean
12:50 a.m. – Detroit firefighters take sniper fire at Mack and St. Jean
1:15 a.m. – Security guard Julius Dorsey is accidentally shot and killed by police in a shootout with looters
1:17 a.m. – President Johnson authorizes a direct phone line installed between Detroit’s City Hall and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.
2:40 a.m. – Detroit firefighters take sniper fire at Oakland and Alger
2:45 a.m. – A building is set ablaze, accompanied by sniper fire at the corner of Linwood and Montgomery
3:00 a.m. – Detroit Police Officer Jerry Olshove is killed in friendly fire incident as Olshove and other officers scuffled with looters
4:00 a.m. – U.S. Army brigades assume command post on the city’s lower eastside
4:01 a.m. – U.S. Army General John Throckmorton orders military personnel under his command to unload weapons until further notice
8:00 a.m. – President Johnson, Governor George Romney, Mayor of Detroit Jerry Cavanaugh issue joint statement urging store owners in the city not effected by the rioting to remain open for business
8:05 a.m. – Looter Frank Tanner, shot by police the night before fleeing a robbery, dies in a neighborhood yard
10.00 a.m. – Mayor Cavanaugh lifts the ban on gas sales in the city
1:00 p.m. — General Throckmorton orders his troops to load their weapons again and prepare to canvas the city in military vehicles
1:30 p.m. — Flanked by some 8,000 Michigan National Guardsmen sent to the area since the morning, U.S. Army tanks and rifle-toting soldiers make their way through the city
3:00 p.m. – Looter Arthur Johnson is shot and killed by police on Holbrook
9:10 p.m. – Detroit Police officers come under sniper fire at Hazelwood and Lawton
9:45 p.m. – Sniper Jack Sydnor is killed by police
10:25 p.m. – Reported machine-gun sniper fire heard at Commonwealth and Merrick
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