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Phil Power, a force in Michigan journalism for more than five decades, has memories of the 1967 riot that "are as fresh as if it had happened yesterday."
In a column linked to the 50th anniversary, he describes a get-out-the-papers mission in Detroit on the disturbance's second day, before federal troops arrived.
Power's reflections are at Bridge, the online magazine published by the Center for Michigan, an Ann Arbor nonprofit he created in 2006. Earlier, the 1960 University of Michigan graduate bought six Observer newspapers in Detroit suburbs, later added six Eccentrics in Oakland County and eventually ran the Hometown Communications Network -- 62 community papers in Michigan and Ohio.
Phil Power: "I could see disaster in the making." (Center for Michigan photo)
His vivid riot narrative -- a compelling saga that runs nearly 1,600 words -- opens with a memory of being awakened in his Livonia apartment by a call "in the wee hours of the morning" on Sunday, July 23, 1967:
Somebody ‒ I forget who ‒ said: "Get out on your balcony and look toward Detroit!"
There were little spots of red in the distance and some smoke rising, and suddenly I realized those were fires. . . .
All I knew early on was that something very grim was going on in Detroit. At that time, all my newspapers were typeset and printed at the Polish Daily News plant on Canfield Avenue in Detroit, not far from where the violence seemed to be. . . . I could see disaster in the making.
At that time, my newspapers were all weeklies, distributed on Wednesdays. An entire edition of my newspapers was trapped in the rickety old wooden Polish Daily News plant located right in the middle of what was turning into a serious conflict.
To lose an entire edition would be horrible, a week's worth of advertising lost. We were pretty much a start-up company back then, and losing that much revenue would have raised real questions about the company's survival.
This week's column at Bridge magazine.
Power recounts movie-like scenes that Monday as he and about 20 volunteers "set off for Detroit in a caravan . . . to get to our printing plant to put out our next edition."
Details include:
- A briefcase with a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum and a box of shells.
- "Police on every corner, plus a few squads of guardsmen going by, fully locked and loaded."
- A burning house near the printing plant's loading dock.
- An offer to sell a looted TV.
We won't give away the final scenes, which you can read here with other gripping descriptions of a tiring, tense day that left the publisher trembling.
"It was touch and go," he remembers of that indelible Monday.
