Summer of 1967: at this corner of 12th Street and Clairmount, Detroit's history broke open. Before dawn on July 23, police raided an after-hours club, a blind pig, at this corner of 12th Street and Clairmount, arresting dozens of Black patrons celebrating the return of two soldiers from Vietnam. A crowd gathered, tension boiled over, and what followed was five days of uprising, fire, and gunfire across the city.
Forty-three people died, hundreds were injured, and thousands of buildings burned. President Johnson sent in federal troops, and the events accelerated white flight to the suburbs and reshaped the city for decades. The causes ran deep: housing discrimination, police mistreatment, and the destruction of Black neighborhoods like Black Bottom by highway construction.
12th Street was later renamed Rosa Parks Boulevard, after the civil rights icon who lived her later years in Detroit. Picture the rebuilt street, much of it now open green space, and consider how a single corner became the fault line of a city's history.