Troy Reimink

Special to the Detroit Free Press

Dorothy Weems could smell something burning.

In the summer of 1967, she was in her mid-30s, a mother of four young children, living on Kendall Street between Lawton and Linwood. She said the air felt different on the morning of Sunday, July 23.

“I didn’t know what it was,” she told the Free Press, recalling the hours after a police raid of a nearby blind pig at 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue triggered the violence that would become known as the Detroit riot. “That’s when we found out all hell broke loose. It was a complete surprise to me. It was a pretty nice area.”

Read more:

Get tickets for Detroit '67 riot documentary

Here's what's coming to the 2017 Freep Film Festival

Jay and Silent Bob will star at Freep Film Festival pre-party

Weems, now 84, lived until the early 1960s in Black Bottom, the predominantly African-American neighborhood that was leveled during the urban renewal movement to make way for the Chrysler Freeway. They were among the many displaced residents who moved in those years into the area around 12th Street, now Rosa Parks Boulevard.

This pivotal period in Detroit history foregrounds the documentary “12th and Clairmount,” which debuts Thursday at the Freep Film Festival and is part of a wide-ranging project reflecting on the 50th anniversary of Detroit’s tumultuous summer of ‘67.

Weems was among the Detroiters who submitted reels of found film to 1967 Detroit Home Movies, spearheaded by the Detroit Institute of Arts. The DIA since last year has collected hundreds of amateur films depicting life in Detroit before, during and after the violent events of that July. Some of the footage appears in “12th and Clairmount.”

The documentary is produced by the Free Press in collaboration with Bridge Magazine and WXYZ-TV (Channel 7). Other cultural institutions such as the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Detroit Historical Society, the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University and the Detroit Journalism Cooperative will observe and commemorate the anniversary in the months ahead with various exhibits and public engagement projects.

“12th and Clairmount” is directed by Free Press executive video editor Brian Kaufman, an Emmy-winning videographer behind documentaries such as “Packard: The Last Shift” and “Predator/Prey: The Fight for Isle Royale Wolves.”

Kaufman's collaborators on the film include Kathy Kieliszewski, photo and video director at the Free Press as a producer, and journalist Bill McGraw, as a writer-producer who assisted with research and interviews.





McGraw, a former Free Press reporter who now writes for Bridge Magazine, said some of the most compelling film used in "12th and Clairmount" is not of the riot itself, but the everyday images of ordinary people in Detroit.

Read more:

He helped start 1967 Detroit riot, now his son struggles with the legacy

William Walter Scott III: The man who started the 1967 riot in Detroit





"The footage donated by the white people is just like footage donated by the black people," he said. "Everyone's dancing in their basements, doing the same sort of dances, kids are riding their old Stingray bikes with their banana seats, playing Wiffle ball in the street or in front of their house. It shows how life was going on often the same for people even though they were living very separate lives."

In addition to the found-film content, “12th and Clairmount” features archival material and some footage shot at the time by WXYZ. It contains audio excerpts from oral histories and newly recorded interviews with witnesses. But, uncommonly for a historical documentary, “12th and Clairmount” does not rely on talking-head commentary, telling the story solely with images from the era paired with voices from unidentified interview subjects.

It contains original music by Detroit hip-hop artist Nick Speed and Italian guitarist Sergio Altamura. The soundtrack will feature two licensed songs that were written specifically about the riot — Gordon Lightfoot’s “Black Day In July” and John Lee Hooker’s “The Motor City Is Burning.”

The only visual content created for the film is artwork by Rashaun Rucker, deputy director of photo and video at the Free Press, who illustrated some key moments for which footage was not available, such as the fateful blind pig raid. Between the illustrations, the home movies and some rare archival content, about 30%-40% of the material in the film has never been seen publicly, Kaufman said.

“There was no original shooting at all. This was purely an exercise in writing and editing,” Kaufman said last week. “More than anything, it was about structuring the story out of what we have rather than thinking about what we had to gather ourselves.

“In a lot of ways it’s like the ultimate Monday-morning quarterback. Because the riot has been so heavily reported and analyzed and editorialized on, and every viewpoint has been thrown out there. That made (some of it) easy, but it made it a lot of work because there were so many viewpoints to consider.”

Shattered illusions

The opening images of the documentary look like idyllic Norman Rockwell paintings. Eight-millimeter films show babies’ first steps, dads coming home from work, kids riding bikes and playing baseball in the streets, a game of musical chairs at a birthday party. Then the illusion shatters: chaos, smoke and flames, gutted storefronts, heavily armed National Guardsmen, black residents led away in handcuffs.

The ensuing story unfolds in three acts. It begins in Black Bottom, a lively business and residential district on the eastern border of the immediate downtown. (The area now is home to Lafayette Park and Ford Field.) When Black Bottom was torn down, many of its residents moved northeast into the area around 12th and Clairmount, one of the only accessible neighborhoods in a heavily segregated city.

The early part of the film explores the city's social, political and racial climate preceding the summer of 1967. It introduces viewers to Jerome Cavanagh via his own home movies shot during his 1961 mayoral campaign and covers the 1963 Walk To Freedom and its aftermath. It delves into the political tensions of the day and the fraught relationship between police and the black community, building to the raid that sparked the riot.

Act Two chronicles the unrest that unfolded over five days and left 43 dead and nearly 1,200 injured, making it one of the deadliest riots in U.S. history. More than 7,000 arrests occurred, and more than 2,200 buildings were destroyed. The third portion deals with the fallout from the riot, the deep wounds it carved and glimmers of hope in the years that followed.

“Ending the film was a little more of a challenge, because where do you end?” Kaufman said. “The riot had such a profound effect on all of Detroit history. Starting at Black Bottom and the struggles of the black community dealing with housing and police, we figured we had to sort of sum that up, and that end point became the election of Coleman Young (in 1973) as the first black mayor.”

“12th and Clairmount” concludes on a tentatively upbeat note. Some of the closing footage depicts an integrated neighborhood in the 1970s, where black and white kids play together and neighbors enjoy each other’s company.

The film for that segment was supplied by Larry Bohner, 72, who was born and raised in Detroit and whose father, Lawrence, was a film enthusiast always armed with an 8mm camera. This footage was among the more than 40 reels of film Bohner submitted to the DIA.

In the summer of 1967, Larry was home from college. He had worked a few summers at Ford’s Rouge River plant, where his dad was a die-maker. Having witnessed racial discrimination at work and around Detroit, Larry suspected the city was headed toward a boiling point.

“You can understand that there would be a lot of anger building up, and it exploded,” recalled Bohner, who was raised by progressive parents and grew up sympathetic to the civil rights movement. “We probably weren’t as shook up as a lot of people were that figured everyone was happy. We knew that there were problems. But there’s no getting around it, it was a shock.”

Bohner and his wife, Mary, had moved in the early 1970s to the Grandmont-Rosedale neighborhood, where he captured some of the film’s closing moments at a block party. They live in Farmington Hills now, but remained in the city until the 1980s. Bohner said he has always had the excitement about Detroit that has only become fashionable in recent years.

“It’s gonna be a long slog, but I’m optimistic,” he said. “It’s just that the city is so large. There are still too many neighborhoods in Detroit that are really hurting.”

Kaufman said he resisted the temptation to connect “12th and Clairmount” too closely with contemporary Detroit. The film's ending in the 1970s leaves the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions about its urgency today.

“A lot of historical films come back to the modern day to try to make it relevant,” he said. “I don’t think you need to do that with this film, because viewers will be able to determine what’s changed and what hasn’t. We wanted to keep everything in the era, with voices from the era talking about the era and not make it about the 50 years that happened after.”

Screenings start

Following its debut at the Freep Film Festival — including Thursday, Saturday and Sunday screenings — “12th and Clairmount” will air over the summer on WXYZ to kick off a week of special programming to commemorate the events of 1967, said station general manager Mike Murri.

“It’s incredibly powerful to be able to see what an entire community saw as it was unfolding,” Murri said. “It’s got such an important educational aspect. It’d be unfortunate if we don’t learn from it.”

The DIA in January began hosting public screenings of footage from the more than 600 reels of film submitted so far to the 1967 Detroit Home Movies project. The institute has been collecting found film since last year that were shot in Detroit or adjacent communities in and around 1967. It will continue accepting submissions through July 1 and will host a marathon screening at the end of that month.

Larry Baranski, the DIA’s director of public programs, said the community has responded enthusiastically to the project. “It’s a pretty incredible experience,” he said. “We’re getting people who are coming every week now.”

Baranski said the DIA is exploring ways to archive the films permanently in a digital format because the public interest has been so strong. While some of the films capture rioting or damage, the majority of submissions simply show show everyday life in and around Detroit in the 1960s.

“It’s bringing the era alive for the people who are participating in it,” he said. “We’re trying to remember individuals and their lives and what that means to us now.”

The Detroit Historical Society has been collecting oral histories from Detroiters whose lives were affected by the riot for its contribution to the Detroit 1967 remembrance, a community engagement project called Looking Back to Move Forward. In June it will present these stories as part of a wide-ranging exhibition spanning 150 years of Detroit life — beginning in 1917 and gazing toward 2067.

Rebecca Salminen Witt, chief development and communications officer for DHS, said the collaboration among institutions in commemorating 1967 — the shared resources, the staggered openings throughout the year — is a model for how cities should reflect on history and move united into the future.

“The story of what happened and how far we’ve come here in Detroit is relevant to audiences across the country,” she said. “Detroit isn’t the only place that’s suffered under a disturbance like this, and it’s not only just happened once here. This is a story that has been current for decades.”

Dorothy Weems has watched some of the home movies at the DIA, and she said revisiting her memories on a big screen — the church picnics, trips to Belle Isle, kids playing in the backyard — has been a powerful experience.

“I had the reels but I didn’t have a projector. I hadn’t seen them myself in the last 40-something years,” she said. “I saw my daddy who’s gone, my father-in-law who’s gone. I have a brother who’s gone and a sister-in-law who’s gone, so I got to see all those.”

She added with a laugh: “It was interesting to see my own self.”

Weems and her husband of 64 years, Gilbert, still live in Detroit, where, she says, things are indeed improving, if a little slower than she’d like.

“Things have changed significantly, but maybe not a whole lot at the same time. There’s some good things, and some things that should be a little bit better,” she said. “I think things are getting better, and they will. Some people have the same old ideas in their head. Basically, I think Detroit is coming along.”

Freep Film Festival

More than 50 screenings and related events

March 30-April 2

Venues in Detroit, Royal Oak and Novi

freepfilmfestival.com

A full print guide is Sunday's edition of the Free Press

'12th and Clairmount'

Opening night: 6:30 p.m. Thu., the Fillmore Detroit. (Sold out.)

1 p.m. Sat., Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Buy tickets.

1 p.m. Sun., April 2, Emagine Royal Oak. Buy tickets. (Sold out.)

NEWLY ANNOUNCED: 6 p.m. Sun., April 2, Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Buy tickets.

After the films:

Thu.: Free Press editorial page editor Stephen Henderson leads a discussion on Detroit’s past, present and future with Sheila Cockrel, a former Detroit City Council member and founder and CEO of Crossroads Consulting; Ike McKinnon, former Detroit police chief and associate professor of education at the University of Detroit Mercy; the Rev. Alvin Herring, director of racial equity and community engagement at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation; Lauren Hood, executive director of Live6; Bill McGraw, a coproducer on the film, writer with Bridge Magazine and longtime Detroit journalist; and Brian Kaufman, director of “12th and Clairmount” and executive video editor at the Detroit Free Press.

Sat.: A screening hosted by WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) will feature 7 Action News anchors Glenda Lewis and Dave LewAllen leading a post-film discussion.

Sun.: A screening hosted by Bridge Magazine will feature Chastity Pratt Dawsey leading a post-film discussion that will include author and historian Ken Coleman, Kaufman and McGraw.

Detroit '67 Bus Tours

Following two screenings of “12th and Clairmount,” Freep Film Festival is presenting bus tours to provide more context on what led to the unrest of 1967.

The 2½-hour bus tour will be led by Jamon Jordan of the Black Scroll Network and produced by the Detroit Experience Factory. It will include visits to some of the most significant sites of the time, including stops at Gordon Park, which now occupies the corner of Rosa Parks Boulevard (12th Street) and Clairmount.

3:30 p.m. Saturday, April 1, leaving from outside of the Detroit Film Theatre, on the John R side of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The tour follows the 1 p.m. screening of “12th and Clairmount” at the DFT.

3:30 p.m., Sunday, April 2, leaving from University Street and Main, just north of Emagine Royal Oak. The tour follows the 1 p.m. screening of “12th and Clairmount” at Emagine Royal Oak.

Both tours will return to their departure points. Purchase tickets ($10) at tickets.freep.com. (Tours are currently sold out.)

'12th and Clairmount: The Art of Rashaun Rucker'

Rashaun Rucker, deputy director of photo and video at the Free Press, is also a noted visual artist whose work has been exhibited at galleries around the country. About a dozen of the pieces he drew for "12th and Clairmount" will be on display at Detroit Artists Market during Freep Film Festival. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 4719 Woodward Ave., Detroit. Admission is free.

1967 Detroit Home Movies

The Detroit Institute of Arts is still collecting home movie footage for screenings that will continue through July. Residents who are interested in sharing films can contact the DIA at Detroit67Film@dia.org. Participants will receive digital copies of the films.