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CHAPTER 12 "The Worst Civil Disorder" The Detroit riot was "the worst civil disorder" experienced by an American city in the twentieth century.1 The damage caused by the riot took various forms: the numerous stores that were looted or burned; the homes that were damaged or destroyed by fire; the loss of wages for workers and of sales for businesses; the additional costs incurred by city, state, and federal governments; the injuries sustained by civilians and law enforcement personnel; and, above all, the lives that were lost. The most conspicuous form of riot damage was the looted and/or burned store. According to the American Insurance Association, 2,509 stores were looted, burned, or destroyed by the riot, well above the less than 1,000 buildings suffering a similar fate in the Watts riot. The damaged or destroyed Detroit establishments, nearly all of them looted, included 611 supermarkets, food, and grocery stores; 537 cleaners and laundries; 326 clothing, department, and fur stores; 285 liquor stores, bars, and lounges; 240 drugstores; and 198 furniture stores.2 There was considerably more looting on the west side and especially in the Twelfth Street area than on the less densely populated east side. Looters and arsonists victimized almost all the liquor stores, drugstores, and pawnshops on Twelfth Street and the furniture stores on Grand River. An estimated 20 percent of the frontage in the Twelfth Street riot area was destroyed or damaged beyond repair. The destruction tended to be "spotty" rather than "total." An entire block might be destroyed on one side of a business street while the other side remained untouched. The lUXury stores, for example, on Livernois and Seven Mile-the Avenue of Fashion - were damaged in a "hit-and-miss" manner, some posh stores being victimized, others not.3 Looters tended to seize just about anything. "There was nothing that man has made ... that wasn't stolen," John Nichols recalled. "You take all you can get and get it while you can," one looter said. Looters seized food, liquor, furniture, TV sets, radios, musical instruments, even flowers. One looter grabbed a twelfth-century English broadsword, another, a section of a circular iron staircase. A Detroit Urban League official saw a woman about seventy-five years of age dragging a nine-by291 292 Violence in the Model City twelve rug down the street. Five-thousand-dollar coats were taken from a fur store just off West Grand Boulevard, and $100 dresses from Saks Fifth Avenue nearby. TV sets, too heavy to carry, "littered" the streets and sidewalks. The rioters indicated their tastes in looting Grinnell's Music Shop: they removed the electric guitars and jazz records but ignored the classical music records.4 Looters appeared to favor items that could be consumed, especially groceries and liquor. Some drank their booty in the liquor stores they looted, and reporters noted dozens of looters staggering in the streets with liquor bottles in their hands. Furniture and appliance stores were also conspicuous targets - a Free Press reporter saw looters emerging from the Famous Furniture warehouse "bent under cartons that held end tables, kitchen chairs, lamps and cocktail tables." In the early stages of the riot, some rioters removed chairs from furniture stores and sat in them to observe the proceedings. Rioters broke into five banks but apparently stole no money from them. Although they seized at least twenty safes, they were una1:>le to open most of them. Some homes were looted when fires forced the occupants to leave their dwellings. No schools were looted, one youngster stating that there was "nothing to steal" in a school. "Who wants a book or a desk?" he asked. The police were especially concerned about the 2,498 rifles and shotguns and 35 handguns that were stolen.5 A Neighborhood Conservation official saw a mother telling her children what to seize from a furniture store. When they returned with lamps that did not match, she sent them back to select lamps that did. A male looter who brought home a washing machine was berated by his wife for not knowing that it was a dryer they needed; he was arrested pushing the washing machine back to the store. When asked how he liked the TV set he had stolen, a looter replied, "Not so good. The first thing I saw on it was me stealing the damn thing."6 Although some black-owned stores with "Soul Brother" signs were conspicuously spared, there is abundant evidence from black...

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