Editor's note: The Free Press is publishing daily profiles of people from different walks of life talking about their experiences 50 years ago during the 1967 riot. The profiles were drawn from the Detroit Historical Society's Oral History Project. You can listen to and read a transcript of Mike Hamlin's oral history at http://detroit1967.detroithistorical.org/items/show/238.

When Mike Hamlin returned in 1960 to Detroit from his service in the U.S. Army in Korea, he was angry and ready to battle.

While serving on the peacekeeping mission in Korea following what he considered a senseless war, Hamlin had witnessed Korean people brutalized in ways reminiscent of racism in the South, where he was born. He knew there was injustice everywhere at home.

He got a job with the Detroit News' distribution department and met others in the black working class who were fed up. The built-up resentment among workers contributed to the hostility that sparked the riot 50 years ago Sunday.

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"That's what drove '67," Hamlin said in a 2015 interview. "The working-class black reached a point where he could not take it anymore. I told people many a time, then, and since then, that during that period I didn't care whether I lived or died, but I was going to live or die with some feeling of freedom."

Outraged by the abuse and exploitation of black Detroiters, Hamlin became a prominent figure in Detroit revolutionary labor groups in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Hamlin died in April at age 81. He shared his thoughts on the 1967 rebellion and the conditions from which it sprung in the 2015 interview and his 2012 book, "A Black Revolutionary's Life in Labor: Black Workers Power in Detroit."

The 1967 uprising escalated racial hostilities, he said in the interview. But it also served as a wake-up call to activism for many, especially among black autoworkers and others in the working class.

"At the time, almost all black families had someone working in an auto plant or a related industry," Hamlin wrote in his book. "We understood that workers had power at the point of production and they could use it."

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To reach the community directly with their radical message, Hamlin and John Watson, his friend and fellow activist, began publishing a newspaper three months after the riot.

Hamlin's relationship with Watson began at the Detroit News. Along with Ken Cockrel Sr., who also worked there loading newspapers into delivery trucks, the three constantly discussed politics, racism in society and working conditions.

"The three of them developed this concept that the black worker was where change was going to come from," Hamlin's widow, Joann Castle, said in an interview this week.

The newspaper was called Inner City Voice and it carried stories about local working conditions and included writings of revolutionaries such as Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh.

According to the book "Detroit: I Do Mind Dying," which chronicled the city's history in 1967-74, Inner City Voice aimed to promote political organization and change in the riot's aftermath. At the same time, it embraced a revolutionary viewpoint.

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An editorial in the paper read:

"In the July Rebellion we administered a beating to the behind of the white power structure, but apparently our message didn't get over ... We are still working too hard, getting paid too little, living in bad housing, sending our kids to substandard schools, paying too much for groceries, and treated like dogs by the police. We still don't own anything and don't control anything ... In other words, we are still being systematically exploited by the system and still have the responsibility to break the back of that system.

"Only a people who are strong, unified, armed, and know the enemy can carry on the struggles which lay ahead of us. Think about it brother, things ain't hardly getting better. The Revolution must continue."

They soon began distributing Inner City Voice at Dodge Main, the large assembly plant and manufacturing facility in Hamtramck operated by the division of Chrysler.

In 1968, Hamlin was a founding member of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM). The group protested the treatment of black autoworkers and demanded that the UAW better represent their interests. "UAW means You Ain't White," workers would chant at picket lines.

Hamlin got involved in other groups, helping to organize welfare workers and secretaries at Wayne State University.

Although he harbored anger inside, Hamlin was known as a level-headed leader who could communicate with different factions of activists.

By the mid-1970s, his revolutionary ambitions waned, but he remained passionate about helping people. He received a master's degree in social work at Wayne State and worked as a crisis manager and employee assistance professional for auto companies and other businesses. He also was a therapist for drug addicts.

"It was time to step away, reassess and regroup. We should at least be able to help people one at a time," Hamlin wrote of his mind-set in the mid-1970s in his book. "This worked for many of us who had been in the movement. Our idea was that everyone needed to discover some work that was useful on a daily basis."

A memorial celebration is being held for Hamlin on July 27 at Wayne State University's Community Arts Auditorium. The event is open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the program starts at 7 p.m.

Contact Joe Guillen: 313-222-6678 or jguillen@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @joeguillen.