August 28, 1964: The North Philadelphia Riot

August 28, 1964: A race riot breaks out in North Philadelphia, lasting 3 days, and revealing to the nation a latent racism that had infected "The City of Brotherly Love," and the birthplace of the nation and its Constitution.

At the time, the population of Philadelphia was a shade over 2 million, making it the 4th-largest city in the country behind New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The city was about 65 percent white, 33 percent black, and almost no Hispanics or Asians lived there. About 2/3rds of the city's black population lived in North Philadelphia, with most of the rest in West Philadelphia.

But being "the Birthplace of Liberty" didn't help much. When Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball in 1947, it was the city's baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies, that offered the loudest and most noxious resistance. In 1950, the Phillies, with a young team known as the "Whiz Kids," became the last all-white team to win the National League Pennant. They didn't integrate until 1957, the last NL team to do so.

By 1964, the Philadelphia Police Department had made a conscious effort to hire black cops, and sending integrated patrol car units in black neighborhoods: One white uniformed officer, one black uniformed officer. And a civilian review board had been established to handle cases of police brutality. And with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 having just been passed, hopes were high.

But New York's Harlem had broken out in a race riot a few days before, following a case of police brutality. And it would be one of those that would spark the riot in North Philadelphia -- and another in Watts in Los Angeles the next year, and another on the East Side of Cleveland and another on the West Side of Chicago the year after that, and others in Newark and Detroit and other cities the year after that.

Still, this had been a good Summer for Philadelphia. There hadn't been much rain, the Jersey and Delaware beaches were clean in those days, and the Phillies were in first place. But things had already begun to go wrong on many fronts, and this riot was a convenient historical landmark.

On August 28, 1964, Odessa Bradford was driving her husband Rush Bradford, both of them black, and they started arguing. She pulled over at the corner of 22nd Street and Columbia Avenue. A police car pulled up to Ms. Bradford's car. Inside were black officer Robert Wells and white officer John Hoff. Ms. Bradford, still angry, began taking her anger out on the officers. They tried to remove her from her car. A man came to her aid by attacking the officers, and he and Ms. Bradford were both arrested.

As would later happen with Watts in 1965 and Newark in 1967, a rumor spread that a black person taken into custody by the police had been killed by them. In this case, the rumor was that it was a pregnant black woman, beaten to death. As with those two later cases, the rumor wasn't true, but by the time anyone found out, it was too late. Ms. Bradford was neither pregnant nor beaten, but she did say, "If that policeman had only treated me like a human being, none of this (rioting) would have happened."

Indeed, once she was released, Cecil B. Moore, President of the city's chapter of the NAACP, drove her around the neighborhood on a truck with a loudspeaker, allowing her to say, "I'm alive! I'm alive!" But it did no good.

I have looked for a reference as to whether Ms. Bradford is still alive, but I haven't found it. I have found 50th Anniversary articles on the riot from 2014, and none had an interview with her, so I suspect she was already dead by that point. Moore was elected to the City Council in 1976, and died in office in 1979. In 1987, Columbia Avenue was renamed Cecil B. Moore Avenue in his memory.

Cecil B. Moore

Moore's efforts were in vain. As with Harlem, many of the businesses in the mostly-black neighborhood were mostly-white-owned. (This led black business owners in later riots to paint "SOUL BROTHER" on their windows, in the hopes of their stores being spared.)

Depending on whose story you believe, nobody died in the rioting, or one person did. (If there was one, it was not Odessa Bradford.) There were 341 injuries, 774 arrests, and 225 stores damaged.

The epicenter, 22nd and Columbia, was about a mile south of Connie Mack Stadium, home of the Phillies since 1938, and home of the now-departed Philadelphia Athletics from 1909 to 1954. It had been named Shibe Park until 1953. The epicenter was also 7 blocks east of the site of the 1st home of the A's, Columbia Park, where they played from 1901 to 1908.

The Phillies were in Pittsburgh at the time of the riot, so it didn't result in any games being postponed. But it scared white fans, who may already have been wary of getting mugged coming down Lehigh Avenue out of the subway, or of their cars getting vandalized if they drove in.

The Phils had 15 home games left, not counting 2 rainout makeups, and the average attendance was 21,265. They really didn't have a home-field advantage the rest of the way, and this may have contributed to the 10-game losing streak that took them from being 6 1/2 games in 1st place with 12 games to go, to finishing 1 game out.

Philadelphia has had racial tension since. In 1971, Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo was elected Mayor on an openly racist platform. In 1975, despite having been caught in corruption, he ran for re-election on white backlash, and won again. He knew he couldn't run for a 3rd term, partly due to his 1977 overreaction to the black nationalist group MOVE. But the city's 1st black Mayor, Wilson Goode, had an even worse overreaction to them in 1985.

Today, the population of Philadelphia is about 1.6 million, ranking 6th behind New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston and Phoenix. It's about 40 percent black (mostly living west of Broad Street in North, West, and Southwest Philly), 37 percent white, 15 percent Hispanic, and 8 percent Asian. It is more diverse than ever before. But that underlying tension remains.

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August 28, 1964 was a Friday. Golfer Lee Janzen was born. This was also the day that Bob Dylan met The Beatles. I have a separate entry for that event.

It was the off-season for the NFL, the AFL, the NBA and the NHL, but games were played in Major League Baseball:

* As mentioned, the Philadelphia Phillies were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates, at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The Pirates won, 4-2. The Phillies took a 2-0 lead in the top of the 8th, but blew it in the bottom of the 9th, thanks to Smoky Burgess' home run.

* The New York Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox, 5-3 at Yankee Stadium. Felix Mantilla, the former Milwaukee Brave and original Met, and Dick Stuart, the powerful slugger but awful-fielding 1st baseman known as "Dr. Strangeglove," both hit home runs off Al Downing. Joe Pepitone hit one for the Yankees, but Mickey Mantle went 0-for-4.

* The New York Mets beat the Chicago Cubs, 12-10 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* A doubleheader was split at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The Chicago White Sox won the 1st game, 2-1. The Baltimore Orioles won the 2nd game, 8-3.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Milwaukee Braves, 3-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Willie Mays went 1-for-2 with a 2-run home run, and Hank Aaron went 1-for-2 with 2 walks. Joe Torre hit a home run for the Braves.

* The Washington Senators beat the Minnesota Twins, 3-1 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 5-3 at the original Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park).

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Kansas City Athletics, 4-1 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* The Detroit Tigers swept a doubleheader from the Los Angeles Angels at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, where the Angels played from 1962 to 1965 while waiting for their stadium in Anaheim to be built. The Tigers won the opener, 12-1; and the nightcap, 8-7.

* The Cincinnati Reds were supposed to host the Houston Colt .45s at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, but the game was rained out. They played a doubleheader the next day, and the Reds swept it. They won the 1st game, 2-1, on a walkoff single by Steve Boros in the 11th inning. They won the 2nd game, 8-7. The Colt .45s changed their name to the Astros the next season.

August 11, 1965: The Watts Riot

August 11, 1965: A race riot breaks out in Watts, in South Central Los Angeles.

Like the connected Brooklyn neighborhoods of Flatbush, Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick and East New York, Watts had been a white and Jewish neighborhood before World War II. But when the returning veterans took advantage of housing opportunities to move to nicer places, poor black people moved in, and found it harder to move up. 

There had already been a black community in Los Angeles, having arrived there as a result of what's known as the Great Migration. In the 1910s and '20s, thousands of black people left the South, and headed for the industrial cities of the Northeast and the Midwest, and some went to Los Angeles, looking for jobs without segregation, with limited success.

Then came another migration, this time of white people out of the South. The Great Depression, its bank foreclosures on farms, and farms rendered useless by the Dust Bowl forced a lot of people out of the Southern States of Oklahoma and Arkansas.

These people, derisively nicknamed Okies and Arkies, headed west on U.S. Route 66, and looked for farm jobs in the interior of California. Some of them kept going and reached Los Angeles.

Ray Manzarek, keyboard player for the Los Angeles-based rock band The Doors, made the point that some of these migrants joined the Los Angeles Police Department, bringing their Southern attitude with them. This manifested itself in the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, when LAPD officers joined with white soldiers and sailors from the South, stationed in LA, to attack Mexican American teenagers wearing the fancy suits of the period.

As is so often the case, once a family enters law enforcement, it stays there, and the rednecks-turned-cops of 1940s L.A. had sons who became urban racist cops in the 1960s. And the already-present conservative oil and film industry executives of the city were all too happy to accept this.

By 1965, Southern California was more Southern than white liberal America realized, or perhaps was willing to admit. Indeed, to this day, many people, including LAPD officers, call Southern California "The Southland."

As with the race riots in Harlem and North Philadelphia the year before, and the Newark and Detroit in 1967, the event that sparked the Watts Riot was an act of white police brutality on a black person. 

On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, 21, was pulled over for perceived drunken driving. After he failed a field sobriety test, officers attempted to arrest him. He resisted arrest, and was hit in the face with a baton. 

A crowd of onlookers had gathered. As with the Newark Riot two years later, an erroneous belief that the situation was even worse then it was led to the start of civil unrest, which in this case lasted six days.

The riots were finally suppressed by the California National Guard, and led to 34 deaths, 3,438 arrests, and $40 million in property damage -- about $345 million in 2022 money.

Marquette Frye found it difficult to get a job after the riots, even using his mother's maiden name for a time, before he finally found a living as a motivational speaker, on the subject of civil rights. But his health was not good, and in 1986, only 42 years old, he died of pneumonia. He did not live to see the beating of Rodney King in 1991, the travesty of a verdict a year later, and the even worse race riots that followed that.

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August 11, 1965 was a Wednesday. Actress Viola Davis was born.

It was the offseason for the NFL, the AFL, the NBA and the NHL. These Major League Baseball games were played on that day:

* The New York Yankees the Minnesota Twins 5-4 at the old Yankee Stadium. Mel Stottlemyre outpitched Jim "Mudcat" Grant. This was unusual, because this was the year the Yankee Dynasty collapsed, and the Twins went on to win their 1st Pennant since 1933, as the Washington Senators. The Twins went 12-5 against the Yankees that year.

* The New York Mets lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 1-0 at Dodger Stadium. Don Drysdale pitched a 5-hit shutout, and Jim Gilliam singled home the winning run in the 7th inning.

Dodger Stadium is 11 miles north of the epicenter of the riot, which was weighing heavily on the mind of Dodger catcher John Roseboro 11 days later, when he had his confrontation with Giants pitcher Juan Marichal. He had a similar situation on his mind, the civil unrest in his native Dominican Republic. Their tempers boiled over, resulting Roseboro hitting Marichal's ear with a throw back to pitcher Sandy Koufax, and Marichal retaliating by Roseboro on the head with his bat.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 8-3 at Fenway Park in Boston.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the California Angels, 6-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Luis Tiant pitched a 3-hit shutout.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 7-2 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.

* The Detroit Tigers swept a doubleheader from the Kansas City Athletics at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The Tigers won the 1st game 6-2, and the 2nd game 5-4, on a Don Wert RBI single in the 10th inning. 

* A doubleheader was split at Comiskey Park in Chicago. In the 1st game, The Washington Senators beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-2. The Pale Hose won the 2nd game 7-0, as Juan Pizarro pitched a 1-hit shutout.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 5-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Houston Astros, 5-1 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* And a game was rained out Candlestick Park in San Francisco. It was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1st game, 4-3. The San Francisco Giants won the 2nd game, 5-2. 

July 23, 1967: The Detroit Riot

July 23, 1967: Riots break out in Detroit, over racial injustice. There were 43 deaths, and over 700 injuries. In terms of property damage, and long-term effects, it was the most devastating race riot in American history.

There had, of course, been racial disturbances in the years leading up to this. Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, except that wasn't the civil rights demonstrators doing the rioting, it was the police with their response. In 1964, New York's Harlem, and North Philadelphia. In 1965, the Watts section of Los Angeles. In 1966, the East Side of Cleveland and the West Side of Chicago.

Detroit had previously been stricken by race riots in 1919 and 1943. And it wasn't the only city stricken by race riots in July 1967. The one in Newark, 2 weeks later, had 26 deaths.

And those weren't the only cities stricken that Summer. In June, there were riots in Boston's Roxbury, Tampa's Central Park, Cincinnati's Avondale, Atlanta's Dixie Hills, and Buffalo's East Side. In July, in between Newark and Detroit, North Minneapolis broke out. At the same time as Detroit, possibly "inspired" by it, 60 miles to the south, Toledo, Ohio. After these, the West Side of Milwaukee.

It may have been a "Summer of Love" in San Francisco, but, in so many other places, it was "The Long Hot Summer" and "The Year of Living Dangerously." And it was all because of the lingering effects of what America's white aristocracy had done to black people.

In 1968, the Kerner Commission released a report saying that it had resulted in an America that was "two societies, one white, one black, separate and unequal." The Commission's survey found that, prior to the riot, 30 percent of people living within city limits were black, but 93 percent of Detroit policemen were white, 45 percent of those working in black neighborhoods were "extremely anti-Negro," and another 34 percent were "prejudiced." So that's 79 percent, 4 out of every 5.

Detroit was a proud city. It was the home of the American auto industry, and the home of the United Auto Workers, making it the de facto capital of the American labor movement. It was proud of its sports achievements: The Tigers of Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg, and now Al Kaline; the Lions of Dutch Clark and Bobby Layne and Doak Walker; the Red Wings of Larry Aurie and Gordie Howe; and boxers like Stanley Ketchel, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson and Buster Mathis.

Its music scene was powerful: Even before Berry Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records in 1959, it was a flashpoint, with white singers like Margaret Whiting and Johnnie Ray, and black singers like Billie Holiday, Big Joe Turner, Dinah Washington, Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Della Reese and B.B. King.

On a Yankee roadtrip to Detroit, Mickey Mantle, who lived in Dallas during the offseason, met with Dallas native Layne, in the process of quarterbacking the Lions to 3 NFL Championships in the 1950s, and he introduced Mantle to the place that had made Ray, Reese and other singers famous, the Flame Show Bar.

The Flame didn't last long, only running from 1949 to 1963. Outside Michigan, it's best known from a mention in former Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton's book Ball Four. Bouton wrote of how Mantle told him and some other younger Yankees to "meet me at the Flame Lounge," and when they got there, in this already-decaying, now-black neighborhood, and got in, the black maître d' -- paid off by Mantle, so he was in on the joke -- said, "Mickey Mantle? He don't come in here!" and laughed. 

Within 8 years, by the time of the riot, Gordy had made so many of his performers legends, including The Supremes (with Diana Ross), The Temptations, The Miracles (with Smokey Robinson), Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye, Martha & The Vandellas, The Four Tops, and a teenager going by the name of Stevie Wonder.

And the city's club scene, and that of the nearby University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, made it good for non-Motown rock acts: Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels had already debuted, while such acts as Bob Seger, Iggy Pop and The MC5 (Motor City Five) soon would.

But all was not well. The city always had a crime problem. During Prohibition (1920-33), its status as a border city (a bend in the Detroit River, between Lake Huron and Lake Erie, makes it the only place where you can cross from north to south and go from America to Canada, with islands where one could rest and hide from the law for a few hours) made it a place for bootleggers, to try to get liquor from Canada (including highly-regarded Canadian whiskey) into America. Due to the passage of time, most people only know the Purple Gang from a line in Elvis Presley's song "Jailhouse Rock," but it was real, a Jewish gang that ran bootlegging in Michigan.

The big thing in Detroit crime in early 1967, if you asked the Detroit Police Department, was prostitution in black neighborhoods. They especially didn't like that many black hookers had white customers. If there's one thing a racist hates more than a black person achieving anything, it's that achievement being sex with a white person, especially if it results in a child: "Race-mixing."

On July 1, a prostitute was killed, and rumors spread that the police had shot her. The police said that she was murdered by local pimps. Both stories were believable. Whatever the truth was, the DPD didn't seem to mind that the locals thought they were the guilty ones. The DPD used "Big 4 Squads," a.k.a. "Tac Squads" (short for "Tactical"), each made up of four police officers, to patrol Detroit neighborhoods, and such squads were used to combat solicitation.

Black residents felt police raids of after-hours drinking clubs were racially biased actions. Since the 1920s, such clubs had become important parts of the city's social life for black citizens. Although they started with Prohibition, they continued because of discrimination against black people in service at many Detroit bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues. As with white ethnic bars, and also gay bars, people felt safer when their own people were running their places.

On the overnight of Saturday into Sunday, July 22 to 23, at 3:45 AM, the police raided an unlicensed weekend drinking club at the United Community League for Civic Action, at 9125 12th Street. They found 82 people celebrating the return of a pair of local Vietnam War veterans. Apparently, these black men having served their country wasn't good enough for these white cops, and they arrested all 82 people.

This led the doorman, William Walter Scott Jr. -- according to the memoir of his son, William III -- to throw a bottle at an officer. This apparently inspired people around the club to start looting an adjacent clothing score. Since it was a Sunday morning, the DPD's request for help from the Wayne County Sheriff's Department, the Michigan State Police and the Michigan Army National Guard took a while to be heard.

The first major fire broke out the following mid-afternoon, in a grocery store at 12th and Atkinson. Soon, word reached downtown. Martha and The Vandellas were performing at a Motown Revue at the Fox Theater. Lead singer Martha Reeves was informed, and she asked people to leave the theater quietly.

A crowd of 34,623 was at Tiger Stadium, watching the Tigers play a doubleheader against the Yankees. Willie Horton, the Tigers' African-American left fielder, born in Appalachian Virginia but raised in Detroit, a graduate of the city's Northwestern High School, left after the 2nd game, kept his uniform on in order to be more easily recognizable, drove to the riot area, and got up on top of his car. But he couldn't get people to stop destroying property and looting stores. He tried to be a hero, but his own people wouldn't let him.

Mayor Jerome Cavanagh called a citywide curfew from 9:00 PM to 5:30 AM, prohibiting sales of alcohol and firearms. (Good luck with that.) On Monday the 24th, Cavanaugh, until now a fairly popular Irish Catholic who was planning on running for Governor against the incumbent Republican, George Romney, in 1970, was reluctant to ask Romney for State assistance. Now, he had no choice.

The partisan nonsense went further up. Romney, who was already planning to run against President Lyndon Johnson the next year (in the end, neither was still in the race in April 1968), called LBJ and asked for federal troops. LBJ told him that, legally, he couldn't do that unless Romney first declared a "state of insurrection." He did, and LBJ sent the troops.

As usually happens in situations like this, the rioters ended up wrecking their own neighborhoods, hurting their own people more than they stuck it to "Whitey" or "The Man." One black merchant said, "You were going to get looted no matter what color you were." John Conyers, then a young black Congressman whose District included the hardest-hit area, got a bullhorn, and said, "We're with you! But, please! This is not the way to do things! Please go back to your homes!" But the crowd responded by throwing rocks and bottles at his car.

The tide didn't turn until Wednesday the 26th, and the rioting didn't stop until Thursday the 27th. Federal troops were finally able to leave on Friday the 28th. It's been said that 10,000 people participated in the riots, 7,200 were arrested (most with no previous criminal record), 1,189 were injured (including 134 firemen who were shot at while trying to put fires out), and 43 were dead: 33 black, 10 white.

Property losses ranged from $40 to 45 million (about $325 to $366 million in 2022 money), 2,509 businesses reported damage, 412 buildings were damaged enough that they couldn't be saved and had to be demolished, and 388 families were left homeless. 

Cavanaugh was just 39, and had easily been elected in 1961 (only 33) and re-elected in 1965. He had actively worked with civil rights leaders, both local and national. Unlike his fellow Irish Catholic, the imperious Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, who saw Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a public-relations threat, Jerry Cavanaugh had welcomed him to his city. Comparisons were already being made to another young urban Irish Catholic, the late President John F. Kennedy.

Jerome Cavanaugh

Instead, everything fell apart for Cavanaugh. He said, "Today, we stand amidst the ashes of our hopes. We hoped against hope that what we had been doing was enough to prevent a riot. It was not enough." Shortly afterward, in events probably unconnected to the riot, his wife Mary Helen left him, and they were divorced the next year.

Cavanaugh did not run for a 3rd term in 1969. He ran for Governor in 1974, but lost the Primary, and never ran for office again. He died of a heart attack in 1979, only 51 years old. Two of his sons were elected Wayne County Commissioners, another to the State House of Representatives, and another served on the State Court of Appeals.

Councilman Mel Ravitz said the riot "deepened the fears of many whites, and raised the militancy of many blacks." The desire of white people for "law and order" led to the election of Roman Gribbs, Sheriff of Wayne County, as Mayor in 1969.

He created a secret and elite police unite: "Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets," or STRESS. It actively ignored white criminals, and focused on entrapment in black communities. In their 1st 30 months, this one police department unit killed 20 people, more than any other entire police department in the entire country. Furious, in 1973, blacks and their white allies shamed Gribbs into not running for re-election, and elected State Senator Coleman Young to be the city's 1st black Mayor.

Young did his best -- as with Newark's 1st black Mayor, Ken Gibson, not always within the law -- and served as Mayor for 20 years, as "white flight" turned some Detroit neighborhoods into "ghost towns" as much as the riot did in the black neighborhood where it happened.

Things went from bad to worse. In 1999, having parents who grew up in Newark, and still living near that city, I visited Detroit for the 1st time. It never looked to me like Newark had come back much from their riot, 2 weeks before Detroit's. But seeing Detroit showed me how much Newark had come back, because I could see that Detroit hadn't. On a Saturday afternoon, hot but with no rain, downtown Detroit was practically a ghost town. In his memoir, Mayor Young wrote:

Detroit's losses went a hell of a lot deeper than the immediate toll of lives and buildings. The rebellion put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earnings taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money.

The money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the white people who fled as fast as they could. The white exodus from Detroit had been prodigiously steady prior to the riot, totaling twenty-two thousand in 1966, but afterwards it was frantic. In 1967, with less than half the year remaining after the summer explosion, the outward population migration reached sixty-seven thousand. In 1968 the figure hit eighty-thousand, followed by forty-six thousand in 1969.

In the 1950 Census, Detroit's population had peaked at 1,849,568. By 1967, it was about 1.6 million. By 1980, it was 1.2 million. By 1990, a shade over 1 million. In 2000, 950,000. In 2010, 713,000. Today, July 23, 2022, with the results of the 2020 Census not yet in (delayed due to COVID), it is estimated at 670,000 -- just 36 percent of what it was at its peak, and 56 percent of what it was at the time of the riot. In 2013, Detroit became the 1st major American city, although it worked its way out of it the next year.

The Tigers just missed winning the American League Pennant in 1967, and rebounded from that to win the World Series in 1968. It was a tremendous lift for the city, but it was fleeting. Although the various teams had their moments, there wouldn't be another title until 1984, when the Tigers won it again. The Pistons won NBA titles in 1989 and '90, and the Red Wings recovered from a 42-year drought to reach 6 Stanley Cup Finals, winning 4, from 1995 to 2009.

But despite 2 more Pennants since 1984, the Tigers haven't won the World Series since. And the Lions haven't won, or even been in, an NFL Championship Game, under any name, since 1957. The Tigers built Comerica Park at the northern edge of downtown, across from the Fox Theater, in 2000. The Lions built Ford Field next-door to that in 2002. And in 2017, 50 years after the riot, the Red Wings and Pistons moved into Little Caesars Arena, a 5-minute walk away from the Tigers and the Lions.

But such facilities only seem to be built for white people coming into the city from the suburbs. The Detroit metropolitan area's population has remained steady: It's the suburbs who take on people (white) while the city loses them. The city still suffers, and makes the fictional Gotham City, home of Batman in DC Comics -- in both desolation and crime, blue- and white-collar -- look like Superman's Metropolis by comparison.

UPDATE: The Gordie Howe International Bridge, connecting Detroit and Windsor, opened on July 24, 2026, 59 years after the riot. By that point, the population of Detroit was estimated at about 650,000, having bottomed out in 2022, at 631,000, but now having risen for 3 years in a row.

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July 23, 1967 was a Sunday. Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was born.

It was the off-season for the NFL, the NBA and the NHL. In Major League Baseball, all 20 teams were in action, including some playing Sunday doubleheaders, including in the city in question:

* The New York Yankees played a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers at Tiger Stadium. The Yankees won the opener, 4-2. Joe Pepitone hit a home run off Mickey Lolich, in support of Mel Stottlemyre.

The Tigers won the nightcap, 7-3. Bill Robinson hit a home run for the Yankees, but Willie Horton proved more successful that day inside the ballpark than out, hitting a home run off Fritz Peterson, as did Jim Landis. Mickey Mantle went 1-for-3 in the 1st game, and 0-for-3 in the 2nd.

People were worried that the riot might damage Tiger Stadium. It didn't, and it helped that the Tigers then went on a roadtrip.

* The New York Mets beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4-1 at Shea Stadium.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-1 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Washington Senators, 7-3 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in 1969.) The O's scored 4 runs in the top of the 11th inning.

* A doubleheader was split at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The Houston Astros won the 1st game 8-5, and the Pittsburgh Pirates won the 2nd game, 15-2.

* The Boston Red Sox split a doubleheader with the Cleveland Indians at Clevelane Municipal Stadium. On their way to their "Impossible Dream" Pennant, the BoSox won the 1st game 8-5, and the 2nd game 5-1.

* A doubleheader was split at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The San Francisco Giants won the 1st game 5-2, and the Chicago Cubs won the 2nd game, 6-3.

* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the Kansas City Athletics at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. The ChiSox won the opener 8-4, and the nightcap 1-0. Hoyt Wilhelm got the last 4 outs for Gary Peters on a 6-hit shutout.

* The St. Louis Cardinals swept a doubleheader from the Atlanta Braves at Busch Memorial Stadium. The Redbirds won the 1st game 3-1, and the 2nd game 8-3.

* The California Angels beat the Minnesota Twins, 2-1 at Anaheim Stadium. (It's now named Angel Stadium of Anaheim. 

July 18, 1964: The Harlem Race Riot

July 18, 1964: A race riot begins in Harlem in Upper Manhattan, lasting 6 days. It begins "a chain reaction of riots" that would include, among others, North Philadelphia the next month, Watts in Los Angeles in 1965, Chicago and Cleveland in 1966, Newark and Detroit in 1967, and many American cities in 1968.

The riot began when a policeman, Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan, shot and killed 15-year-old James Powell. Gilligan said that Powell had a knife. Powell was hardly a threat to Gilligan. He turned out to be the only death in the riots, but 118 people were injured, and 465 were arrested.

There had previously been riots in Harlem, America's best-known mostly-black neighborhood, in 1900, 1935 and 1943. This time, however, there were television cameras, and people saw things they had previously only read about in the newspaper. And, depending on their political views, they "saw what they wanted to see."

The event helped to mark 1964 as a turning point in New York. It included what turned out to be the last Pennant of the old Yankee Dynasty, and the opening of Shea Stadium, the new home of the Mets and the Jets. A World's Fair opened in Flushing Meadow-Corona Park in Queens, across Roosevelt Avenue from Shea.

It was the year that The Beatles excited the country, especially New York, as they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in Midtown Manhattan. And it was one of the last great years of the Broadway stage, as Fiddler On the Roof, Funny Girl, Golden Boy, What Makes Sammy Run? and Hello, Dolly! premiered.

But it was also the year of the most notable, if not the most damaging, of the Harlem riots, and also of the murder of Kitty Genovese in the Kew Gardens section of Queens. Two weeks after her murder, The New York Times published an article claiming that 38 witnesses either saw her stabbing or heard her screams, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid.

The murder and the race riot raised the idea that New York was in a crime wave that was getting out of control, and that idea lasted 30 years, until the 1994 Crime Bill.

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July 18, 1964 was a Saturday. Talk-show host Wendy Williams was born. And this was the day that "Rag Doll" by The Four Seasons became the Number 1 song in America. I have a separate entry for that event.

The NFL, the NBA and the NHL were in their off-seasons. But there were Major League Baseball games played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Cleveland Indians, 6-4 at Yankee Stadium. Bob Chance won the game with a triple in the top of the 15th inning. Tony Kubek hit a home run, and Mickey Mantle went 1-for-5 with a walk and an RBI.

* The New York Mets lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 15-7 at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. The Mets led 6-4 going to the bottom of the 8th inning, but the Cards scored 11 runs. Future Met Ken Boyer, and future New York broadcasters Bill White (Yankees) and Tim McCarver (Mets, then Yankees) homered for the Cards. Charley Smith hit one for the Mets.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 12-6 at Fenway Park in Boston. Earl Wilson was the starting and winning pitcher, and helped his own cause with a home run. Bob Tillman hit 2 home runs for the BoSox, while Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-5.

* A doubleheader was split at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The Baltimore Orioles won the 1st game, 6-1. The Detroit Tigers won the 2nd game, 3-0. Mickey Lolich pitched a 5-hit shutout. Brooks Robinson had 3 of those hits. Gates Brown also went 3-for-4, but for the Tigers, and had 3 RBIs. He had 3 hits in the 1st game, too. Over the 2 games, Al Kaline went 1-for-8.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 14-4 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Frank Robinson went 2-for-3 with 2 RBIs. Pete Rose went 4-for-4 with a home run and 6 RBIs.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Milwaukee Braves, 8-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Bob Veale went the distance for the win, while Warren Spahn was knocked out of the box in the 4th inning. Roberto Clemente went 3-for-5 with 2 RBIs. Hank Aaron went 2-for-4. Joe Torre went 1-for-3 with a walk. Eddie Mathews went 0-for-2, and was replaced with a pinch-hitter.

* The Los Angeles Angels beat the Minnesota Twins, 3-2 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Jim Fregosi won it with a home run in the top of the 13th inning.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Sandy Koufax outpitched Larry Jackson. Ernie Banks went 0-for-4.

* The Houston Colt .45s (they became the Astros the next season) beat the San Francisco Giants, 2-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Ken Johnson outpitched Billy O'Dell. Willie Mays went 1-for-4.

* And the Chicago White Sox and the Kansas City Athletics were rained out at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on October 2. The ChiSox swept, 3-2 and 5-4, winning the nightcap in the bottom of the 9th, on a single by former Yankee 1st baseman Bill "Moose" Skowron.

June 15, 2011: The Boston Bruins Win the Stanley Cup, Vancouver Fans Riot

June 15, 2011: Look, I didn't want the Boston Bruins to win the Stanley Cup, either. But when they did, I just moped a bit, and talked about how they had to have cheated.

I've seen my teams have their shares of winning, and their shares of losing. But when they lost, I didn't do anything like this.

Just a little over a year earlier, Vancouver had hosted the Winter Olympics, and it was a phenomenal success. Now, the Vancouver Canucks were in the Stanley Cup Finals for the 3rd time, having lost to the New York Islanders in 1982 and the New York Rangers in 1994. After losing to the Rangers, Canucks fans launched a minor riot in Vancouver.

The Canucks won Game 1, 1-0 at Rogers Arena, when Raffi Torres scored with 19 seconds left in regulation. They won Game 2, 3-2, when Alex Burrows scores 11 seconds into overtime. The Canucks were sitting pretty going to Boston.

But Game 3 at the TD Garden was a slaughter, as the Bruins win, 8-1. The Bruins also took Game 4, 4-0. Game 5 in Vancouver was similar to the 1st 2 there, with Maxim Lapierre scoring early in the 3rd period, and the Canucks won, 1-0.

The Bruins hadn't won the Cup since 1972, losing the Finals in 1974, 1977, 1978, 1988 and 1990. But they had won it before. The Canucks had played since 1970, but hadn't won the Cup. Not since the 1925 Victoria Cougars had a team from British Columbia won it. And not since the 1915 Millionaires had a Vancouver team done so. All the Canucks had to do was win Game 6 in Boston; failing that, Game 7 at home.

But Game 6 was a disaster. Canuck forward Mason Raymond suffered a fractured vertebra only 20 seconds into the game, on an awkward hit into the boards by Bruin defenseman Johnny Boychuk -- not to be confused with the Bruins' 1970 and '72 Cup-winning Captain, Johnny Bucyk -- and had to be taken to the hospital.

What's more, the ice at the TD Garden was soft, almost slushy, apparently designed to slow the Canucks down. The Bruins scored four goals in a span of 4:14 in the 1st period, breaking the record for the quickest 4 goals tallied by one team in the Cup Finals. The Bruins went on to win, 5–2. More cheating in a big moment by a New England sports team.

It was the 18th time the Bruins were in the Stanley Cup Finals. Oddly, it was the 1st time they went to a Game 7 in the round. Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand each scored 2 goals, and the Bruins went on to win, 4-0. The Bruins had their 1st Cup win in 39 years. In mid-game, I wrote on Facebook:

(George Carlin word), another championship handed to Boston. Thanks a lot for not enforcing the rules or keeping the TD Garden ice suitable, NHL refs & Commissioner Gary Bettman! Maybe the Canucks can come back from 3-0 down with 12 to go and force one of those epic Boston chokes... and maybe I can flap my arms and fly to the Moon.

Bruins Captain Zdeno Chara with the Cup

Vancouver fans, who had come out into downtown before the game, expecting the biggest party in the city's history, were, naturally, even angrier than I was. They began smashing windows, overturning cars, looting stores, setting things on fire.

The riot was bigger than the one they had when they lost in 1994. No deaths were reported, but 3 out of 140 injuries were reported to be critical. The damage toll was put at $4 million Canadian.

It was the 1st major sports-related riot of the social media era, and many people recorded themselves committing acts of vandalism. This was used by the police to make it backfire on them, and many people were arrested, and some lost their jobs and the college scholarships, as a result.

The Canucks have never been back to the Finals. The Bruins made it in 2013 and 2019, but lost.

UPDATE: The Canucks have retired 6 uniform numbers: 10, for 1990s right wing Pavel Bure; 12, for 1980s right wing Stan Smyl; 16, for 1990s and 2000s center Trevor Linden; 19, for 2000s left wing Markus Näslund, 22 for 2000s and 2010s left wing Daniel Sedin, and 33 for his twin brother, 2000s and 2010s center Henrik Sedin.

In addition to their retired numbers, they have a Ring of Honour. The inductees are: 1970s center Orlando Kurtenbach, 1970s defenseman Harold Senpsts, 1980s center Thomas Gradin, 1990s head coach and general manager Pat Quinn, 1990s goaltender Kirk McLean, 2000s defenseman Mattias Öhlund, 2010s right wing Alex Burrows, and 2010s goaltender Roberto Luongo.

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June 15, 2011 was a Wednesday. Football was out of season. The NBA season had ended 3 days earlier, with the San Antonio Spurs beating the Miami Heat in 6 games. And these Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New Yankees beat the Texas Rangers, 12-4 at the new Yankee Stadium. Iván Nova was the winning pitcher. Mark Teixeira hit 2 home runs. Homers were also hit by Eduardo Núñez (playing shortstop in place of Derek Jeter), Ramiro Peña and Robinson Canó. Alex Rodriguez went 0-for-3 with 2 walks.

* The New York Mets beat the Atlanta Braves, 4-0 at Turner Field (now Center Parc Stadium) in Atlanta. It took 4 pitchers -- Dillon Gee for 4 innings, D.J. Carrasco for 2, Bobby Parnell (the winning pitcher) for 2, and Francisco Rodríguez for 1 -- to finish a 2-hit shutout.

* The Philadelphia Phillies swept a doubleheader from the Florida Marlins, 8-1 and 5-4 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. The Phils trailed the nightcap 4-2 going into the bottom of the 9th, but tied it up. Ryan Howard led off the bottom of the 10th by being hit with a pitch from Mike Dunn. Domonic Brown drew a walk, and then Carlos Ruiz singled Howard home to win it.

* The Washington Nationals beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-0 at Nationals Park in Washington. Liván Hernández pitched a 3-hit shutout, backed by 2 home runs from Mike Morse, and 1 each by Danny Espinosa and Jayson Werth.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 3-0 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. Josh Beckett allowed just 1 hit: A single by Reid Brignac in the 3rd inning. He didn't walk anybody, either. Good night for Boston teams.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Houston Astros, 7-3 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles, 4-1 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Detroit Tigers, 6-4 at Comerica Park in Detroit.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 9-5 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-1 at Target Field in Minneapolis.

* The Colorado Rockies beat the San Diego Padres, 6-3 at Coors Field in Denver.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 5-2 at Chase Field in Phoenix.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 7-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the Kansas City Royals, 2-1 at the Oakland Coliseum (then named the O.co Coliseum).

* And the Seattle Mariners beat the Los Angeles Angels, 3-1 at Safeco Field (now T-Mobile Park) in Seattle.