Parishioners, priests recall how the Church was changed by infamous civil unrest

Detroit — One thing Lou Eva Carr remembers is the smoke.

After visiting family in Ohio, Carr and her family were driving back to Detroit when they heard the news on the radio.

12th Street was on fire.

“There was tons of smoke; I remember a lot of National Guard everywhere, naturally,” Carr said. “I was going to see one of my daughters who lived on Santa Rosa when I saw the National Guard open fire on people. I was almost killed; I saw (the National Guard) kneeling down and my sister-in-law pulled me into a house. What I remember was the smoke we saw from the guns.”

The riot/rebellion of 1967 reverberates through Detroit today. Shattered windows and broken storefronts turned into shattered souls and broken hopes, as a city tore itself apart from racial and social divides that still haven’t been fully healed today.

“I was a parishioner at Church of the Madonna at the time of the rebellion,” said Carr, who today attends St. Charles Lwanga Parish on the northwest side. “At the time, the church was more focused on Catholic ritual than it is today. But I remember Fr. (Charles) O’Neill, talking about need to heal the racial divisions at the time.”

Many other priests, from Fr. Bill Cunningham to Msgr. Thomas Finnegan to Fr. Norm Thomas were and still are at the forefront of social activism.

Bullets and fear

Karen Seefelt, a parishioner of Christ the King in Detroit, remembers the work the Jesuits did in the city of Detroit trying to bring about a sense of unity.

“In 1963, there were a lot of talks about inclusion, things getting better by bringing people together,” Seefelt said. “I was a registered nurse in 1967, just graduated from St. Joseph School of Nursing and worked in the emergency room at Receiving Hospital. I’ve never been around so many poor people with so few resources.”

Seefelt recalls making trips to houses in Detroit’s North End, working with impoverished black families who had a healthy skepticism of the Church and an all-too-real fear of the police.

“There were police in the area called ‘The Big Four,’ scary police who rode in these big black cars, known for being macho, big guys, and the neighborhood would get really quiet when they rolled down the street,” Seefelt said. “I still felt a little uneasy when they rolled by. But if you were black, you were terrified.”

Seefelt remembers the day of the riot, being called into work by the city of Detroit’s director of nurses, who said all nurses needed to report for duty in the ER at Receiving Hospital.

Seefelt recalls being picked up to go to work in an old Army tank with six other nurses, rolling down Grand River Avenue for half an hour, hearing the ping of sniper fire hitting the tank.

“Everyone who came in was either shot by the police or the National Guard,” Seefelt said. “One of my patients was a pregnant woman whose husband was shot and killed by the National Guard. There was a curfew, and the guy was crossing the street trying to get a clean pair of work pants when they shot him.”

‘White flight’ and a city divided

After the chaos and violence, it was left to pastors and priests in the city to bring a sense of clarity to a population rocked by civil unrest and justified anger.

Fr. Victor Clore, today pastor of Christ the King Parish in northwest Detroit, was an associate pastor at St. Francis de Sales on Fenkell and Myers in 1967.

“The neighborhood where I was assigned was in the process of African-Americans first purchasing homes in the area,” Fr. Clore recalled. “The so-called ‘white flight’ was already happening before the riot began, and our neighborhood was in a transition phase.”

Fr. Clore and his fellow priests at St. Francis de Sales worked with clergy from the local Lutheran and Presbyterian churches to organize community meetings to discuss racial and social issues.

A point of contention was the real estate industry selling a home in a predominately white neighborhood to a black family. After the black family moved in, Fr. Clore said white parishioners at St. Francis de Sales would receive offers to sell their homes and move out to the suburbs north of Eight Mile at an incredible price in a process known as “blockbusting.”

The chance to have a bigger home in a safer neighborhood at a cheaper price proved too tempting for many, as Fr. Clore witnessed the “bulldozing” of the parish community at St. Francis de Sales.

“What happened after 1967 really accelerated ‘white flight,’” Fr. Clore said. “The population at de Sales really diminished in the five to 10 years after the uprising. There were African-American Catholics who moved into the neighborhood, became parishioners and sent their kids to the school, but white families started leaving.”

The changing demographics of the neighborhood creating a funding gap for many inner-city parishes and schools. It wasn’t long after the riots that Fr. Clore noticed church attendance at St. Francis de Sales dropping by the hundreds. In an era when Catholic schools were funded by parishioners, regardless of whether they had children in the schools, a drop in parishioners meant a drop in funding. The schools were forced to raise tuition, which in turn priced out many African-American families moving into the neighborhood.

“It came down to economic issues and an irrational fear of crime,” Fr. Clore said. “Crime was always a reality, but it was blended with a fear of people of a different race. De Sales was a lower middle-class neighborhood, brick houses for the most part of standard size. The neighborhood relied on the auto factories for employment. When the factories weren’t employing as many people, it tended to be black parishioners who lost their jobs first. This led to greater unrest in the community and more people moving out.”

Long-lasting effects

The effects of the rebellion of 1967 reverberated throughout the archdiocese in the following years. A flight of white — and black — parishioners to the suburbs left many urban parishes on shaky financial footing, resulting in the closing and merging of parishes that left many black Catholics who stayed in the city behind.

“The main thing that reverberates today is the black community in Detroit feels like they don’t have a full voice in the Catholic Church,” said Leon Dixon, director of black Catholic ministries for the Archdiocese of Detroit. “We’ve had periods where they feel they had a voice, but not particularly a full voice. Whether we agree or disagree why our churches closed, a great number of African-Americans’ churches closed since 1967, and it’s left a sour taste in the mouths of many.”

Gladys Thomas, a member of St. Charles Lwanga Parish who lived on Burlingame Street during the 1967 rebellion, remembers the impact the incident had on her parish, St. Theresa of Avila on Quincy Street off Grand River Avenue.

“Detroit has changed a number of times, so many times,” Thomas said. “I remember after 1967, people started moving away from our neighborhood, and you can’t really stop people from moving. Some of my family moved out to Farmington and Bloomfield. My husband was a commander of the police reserves, so we couldn’t move. One lesson from the riot is people need to learn to live together, need to learn to get along together. No one can live alone.”

While many left the city of Detroit, many more – predominately black Catholics – stayed.

“For the most part in the black Catholic community, your parish is your home,” Dixon said. “Some of us do leave, but for the most part, we are there until it is done. Until we’re gone, or the parish is gone.”

Dixon added the departure of white parishioners left a void for black parishioners to fill in terms of serving on parish councils and taking a leading role in parish ministry.

A Church in transition

During a time of racial tension and social upheaval, the Catholic Church was in the midst of transformation itself with the Second Vatican Council and Synod 69 in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Auxiliary Bishop Donald Hanchon was 20 years old when the 1967 riot happened, serving as a transitional deacon at St. Agnes Parish in Detroit while studying at Sacred Heart Seminary. After seeing the effects of the social unrest on the neighborhood surrounding the parish, he resolved to work in the city.

Bishop Hanchon eventually ministered at St. Bernard on Fairview and Mack on the city’s east side, working with Deacon Allen McNeely, a prominent figure in the black Catholic community.

Bishop Hanchon recalled his experience working in parishes with poorer, typically African-American parishioners, and the daily struggles in bringing a sense of harmony and tranquility to the Church in Detroit.

“Archbishop John Dearden came home from the Second Vatican Council with a clear vision to implement lay leadership and lay involvement,” Bishop Hanchon said. “But in many parishes, many white parishioners weren’t comfortable with having black leadership and parishes, and many traditionalists pastors weren’t comfortable with lay leadership in the first place.

“It took five, 10 years for the dust to settle,” Bishop Hanchon said. “And by then the demographics of many of the parishes in the city had already changed.”

Despite the setbacks, Bishop Hanchon points to many pastors who tried, and still try to implement change, with varying degrees of success.

“I often think about the pastors who never gave up,” Bishop Hanchon said. “Fr. Norm Thomas, Fr. Vic Clore, Fr. Ray Ellis, Msgr. Thomas Finnegan, those who come to mind who worked in the city all those years, never giving up. They were not perfect people, but they prepared hearts for getting people prepared to take over, for the change to come.”

A generation remembers

Fifty years removed from 1967, the effects of the riot or rebellion — whatever people choose to call it — still impact the Catholic Church in Detroit.

Many who lived through 1967 have their own stories to tell, grievances to bear and injustices they’ve witnessed as the Church looks to move forward, but never forgetting what happened then.

As Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron urges the Church in southeast Michigan to begin a new chapter to “Unleash the Gospel,” 1967 will remain a watershed moment in the local Church’s history — one that will always be a part of, but not necessarily define, the Church as it seeks to bring the Gospel to the city of Detroit.

“Detroit has always required people of hope getting their hands dirty to give others hope,” Bishop Hanchon said. “As a Detroiter, I feel I’m the inheritor of a wonderful tradition that goes beyond the Catholic Church.”

The purpose of remembering historical events isn’t to bring up old wounds, but to recall lessons from the past. To ask, as a Church, where we have been, what’s been done wrong, what can be done right and where can we go from here.

“It’s a good thing in our day to put Jesus at the center and ask, ‘What would Jesus do if he were in Detroit?’” Bishop Hanchon said. “You have to agree: he wants us together as brothers and sisters. That’s why 50 years after the riot, I can remember those images vividly. The smell in the air, the music of the day, the energy of the people. But I like to remember with hope.”