Detroit Quotes

“The challenge is to form a coalition of equals- an integrated coalition. Otherwise the current growth of separatism may turn out to be not just a detour on the road to an integrated society, but another move in the direction of the total polarization which has proved so dangerous in Detroit and elsewhere. A society torn by hatred and racial strife cannot be reformed through the tepid measures so often prescribed in the past.”
― B.J. Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence

“[Former Detroit Police Commissioner George Edwards, then a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit], wrote in November 1965:

'Although local police forces generally regard themselves as public servants with the responsibility of maintaining law and order, they tend to minimize this attitude when they are patrolling areas that are heavily populated with Negro citizens. There, they tend to view each person on the streets as a potential criminal or enemy, and all too often this attitude is reciprocated. Indeed the hostility between Negro communities in our large cities and the police departments is the major problem in law enforcement in this decade.”
― B.J. Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence

“An old radical idea, 'Black and white, unite and fight', was about to come into its own.”
― B.J. Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence