Newark riots (July 12-17, 1967)
The spark: Angered at the repeated incidents of police brutality, Black residents in Newark saw a pair of white cops arrest a Black cab driver for improperly passing them and took him to their precinct building, across the street from public housing. When residents of the project saw an “incapacitated” Black man being dragged inside, rumors spread that he’d died in police custody—though he was taken to the hospital—prompting a week of riots. Death toll: 26 people, with hundreds of injuries.
Detroit Race Riots of 1943 (June 20-22, 1943)
The spark: What started a fight between Black and white teenagers at a popular and integrated amusement park known as Belle Isle devolved into a fight between 200 African Americans and white sailors. The crowds were enraged by false rumors of police throwing a Black woman and her baby over the Belle Isle bridge and that a black man had raped and murdered a white woman on the bridge. White mobs beat Black movie-goers as the patrons exited the theater, attacked streetcars filled with Black laborers on their way to work, and targeted cars with Black owners, turning them over and setting them on fire. Death toll: 25 Black residents and nine white residents—of the 25 African Americans, 17 had been killed by white policemen. The number injured, including police, approached 700.
