By the 1960s, millions of African Americans faced pervasive discrimination in housing, education, employment, and law enforcement in the wholly unprecedented environment of the American ghetto. In the urban areas where institutional racism was most oppressive and the evolution of civil rights activity was most acute, violence was inevitable. After several long, hot summers of urban unrest throughout the United States, Detroit, Michigan exploded on July 23, 1967.
The most comprehensive study of the Detroit Rebellion of 1967 is Sidney Fine's Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967. In his evaluation of the meaning of the violence, Fine's conclusions stray little from the official account as reported by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders; he acknowledged the presence of legitimate grievances held by urban blacks but rejected the idea that the violence was a political statement meant to bring about change.
This revision to Fine's interpretation is based upon an analysis of the political meanings of violence; a reconsideration of contemporaneous social science research; the increased scrutiny of riot commission politics; and a reevaluation of the intensification of civil rights activity as revealed by the burgeoning field of Black Power scholarship.
