In 1967, race riots in Detroit were caused after police arrested African Americans for no reason other than having a party at a new bar. After the 1967 Detroit Riots were over, integration was supported highly due to this event.
“During the Detroit Riots in 1967 forty-three people died during the Detroit Riots in 1967” (1967 Detroit Riots). “The 1967 Detroit Riots were a result of the deaths of three African American men, Aubrey Pollard, Fred Temple, and Carl Cooper who were killed at an Algiers Motel by the policemen of Detroit” (Brown).
The conflict and compromise had the biggest impact on the African Americans, as “entire blocks have been leveled by fire and pockets of destruction exist throughout the city. Losses due to fire and looting have been estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars and these estimates may well prove to be conservative”(Steckroth).
Forty-five percent of Detroit policemen working in African American neighborhoods were against African Americans and an additional thirty-four percent were bigots. Also, more than three-fourths of the police officers from Detroit had an opposing attitude toward the African Americans who they were meant to protect as historian Sidney Fine writes in the book Violence in the Model City.
National Museum of American History's historian Christopher Wilson writes:
“There were these notorious police squads, and the ‘Big Four’ squad car with four officers that would pull over black men standing on street corners and harass them, beat them sometimes. I remember an editorial about a supposed purse-snatcher running away from the police and he was shot in the back."
However discrimination towards African Americans who were police officers from Detroit led to tense and near death experiences. An African American police officer by the name of Isaiah McKinnon was on duty during the 1967 Detroit Riots. Despite being in his police uniform, Isaiah McKinnon, an African American police officer, was pulled over by two Caucasian officers from Detroit said by quote "Tonight you’re going to die, n****r.” Continually afterwards they proceeded to shoot at McKinnon as he drove off. McKinnon said “It hit me in terms of, if they shot at me, a fellow police officer, what are they going to do to other people in the street, the city?” to the Detroit History Museum's oral history project” (Boissoneault).