The July that Detroit Died

When the smoke cleared in July of '67, 43 people were dead, 5000 national guardsmen had been dispatched, and one of the most prosperous African American communities in the US became the precursor for the title "Murder Capital of the World." We who live in the shadows, we who are the discarded, we who are on the fringes of a new slavery, play in the rubble of our red brick promised land. The auto jobs fled. Motown fled. Whites fled to suburbia. We now allow others to laugh at our squalor, and we willing accept the notion that this our destiny.

In a single summer Detroit became terminal, and 40 years later the charred embers are still hot and something, something is brewing...