Civil rights movement

=== Nationwide riots of 1967 ===
{{Main|Long Hot Summer of 1967}}
{{Further|Detroit Riot of 1967|1967 Newark riots|1967 Plainfield riots}}
[[File:Excerpt- MP886 Detroit Riots.webm|thumb|Film on the riots created by the White House Naval Photographic Unit]]

In 1967 riots broke out in black neighborhoods in more than 100 U.S. cities, including Detroit, Newark, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.thirteen.org/newark/history3.html |title=A Walk Through Newark. History. The Riots|publisher=Thirteen/WNET |access-date=July 29, 2016}}</ref> The largest of these was the [[1967 Detroit riot]].

In Detroit, a large [[black middle class]] had begun to develop among those African Americans who worked at unionized jobs in the automotive industry. These workers complained of persisting racist practices, limiting the jobs they could have and opportunities for promotion. The [[United Auto Workers]] channeled these complaints into bureaucratic and ineffective grievance procedures.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3527 |title=Review of Georgakas, Dan; Surkin, Marvin, ''Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution'' |first=Karen |last=Miller |date=October 1, 1999 }}</ref> Violent white mobs enforced the segregation of housing up through the 1960s.<ref name="pbs.org">{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/profiles/57_mi.html |title=American Experience. Eyes on the Prize. Profiles |website=[[PBS]] |access-date=July 29, 2016 |archive-date=February 18, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170218081425/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/profiles/57_mi.html}}</ref> Blacks who were not upwardly mobile were living in substandard conditions, subject to the same problems as poor African Americans in Watts and Harlem.

When white [[Detroit Police Department]] (DPD) officers shut down an illegal bar and arrested a large group of patrons during the hot summer, furious black residents rioted. Rioters looted and destroyed property while snipers engaged in firefights from rooftops and windows, undermining the DPD's ability to curtail the disorder. In response, the [[Michigan Army National Guard]] and [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] [[paratrooper]]s were deployed to reinforce the DPD and protect [[Detroit Fire Department]] (DFD) firefighters from attacks while putting out fires. Residents reported that police officers and National Guardsmen shot at black civilians and suspects indiscriminately. After five days, 43 people had been killed, hundreds injured, and thousands left homeless; $40 to $45&nbsp;million worth of damage was caused.<ref name="pbs.org" /><ref>Hubert G. Locke, ''The Detroit Riot of 1967'' (Wayne State University Press, 1969).</ref>

State and local governments responded to the riot with a dramatic increase in minority hiring.<ref>Sidney Fine, ''Expanding the Frontier of Civil Rights: Michigan, 1948–1968'' (Wayne State University Press, 2000) p. 325</ref> In the aftermath of the turmoil, the Greater Detroit Board of Commerce also launched a campaign to find jobs for ten thousand "previously unemployable" persons, a preponderant number of whom were black.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/expandingfrontie0000fine|title=Expanding the frontiers of civil rights: Michigan, 1948–1968|first=Sidney|last=Fine|date= 2000|publisher=Detroit : Wayne State University Press|isbn=978-0-8143-2875-0|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> Governor [[George Romney (politician)|George Romney]] immediately responded to the riot of 1967 with a special session of the Michigan legislature where he forwarded sweeping housing proposals that included not only [[fair housing]], but "important relocation, [[tenant rights|tenants' rights]] and code enforcement legislation." Romney had supported such proposals in 1965 but abandoned them in the face of organized opposition. The laws passed both houses of the legislature. Historian Sidney Fine wrote that:

{{blockquote|The Michigan Fair Housing Act, which took effect on November 15, 1968, was stronger than the federal fair housing law...It is probably more than a coincidence that the state that had experienced the most severe racial disorder of the 1960s also adopted one of the strongest state fair housing acts.<ref name="law.msu.edu">{{Cite web|url=https://www.law.msu.edu/clinics/rhc/MI_Housing_Disc.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130504011411/http://www.law.msu.edu//clinics/rhc/MI_Housing_Disc.pdf  |title=Sidney Fine, "Michigan and Housing Discrimination 1949–1969" Michigan Historical Review, Fall 1997|archive-date=May 4, 2013}}</ref>}}

President Johnson created the [[Kerner Commission|National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders]] in response to a nationwide wave of riots. The commission's final report called for major reforms in employment and public policy in black communities. It warned that the United States was moving toward separate white and black societies.