Today, July 12, 2025, we face the specter of ICE raids and potentially even military incursions into and against working-class communities nationwide. As these raids have ramped up, people have begun to respond, first in localized ways and now with slowly expanding protests both large and small.
This is not the first time that military force has been used in U.S. cities. In fact, the use of heavy force to suppress protest is not unusual at all in U.S. history. It’s also not the first time that masses of the population have risen up in rage to challenge the powers that be and the system they manage. In July of 1967, in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan, two industrialized cities with large Black populations, thousands rose up in rebellion, and police and National Guard violence followed. While these urban rebellions were very different than what is happening today, both teach us lessons about the role of the state in the capitalist United States, and how people respond to decades of oppression and exploitation under that system.
The Long Hot Summer of 1967
By the 1960s, decades of struggle against Jim Crow and segregation had awakened a sense of possibility for fighting against racism and oppression in the urban North just as it had in the rural South. It was increasingly clear to most Black people throughout the U.S. that the system would make promises but not deliver on them. Rampant police violence continued in the impoverished Black sections of cities nationwide. Tensions were rising. In both Newark and Detroit, “a dream deferred” – to use the famous phrase from Langston Hughes’ 1951 poem – would explode.
In just the few years prior to 1967, there had already been urban rebellions in the United States. In 1964, after the shooting of a Black teenager by a police officer in Harlem, New York, hundreds protested and threw projectiles of all sorts at the police, setting off what is considered the first of the major 1960s rebellions. For six nights, thousands protested and looted and the police reaction resulted in one dead and hundreds injured and arrested. That same summer there were also conflicts between police and Black populations in Jersey City, New Jersey, Chester, Pennsylvania, Rochester, New York, and a handful of other cities. In 1965, in the Watts section of Los Angeles, a Black man was accused of drunken driving and beaten by police. With rumors flying, hundreds of people responded, throwing things at the police, triggering six days of protests, with estimates of 30,000 participating. Thousands of National Guard and outside law enforcement personnel were called in, leading to 34 dead and thousands injured and arrested, many for simply violating curfews. And already in the spring and early summer of 1967, dozens of smaller towns and cities nationwide had seen protests and conflicts between police and Black residents.
In 1967, Newark was a city of about 400,000 people. It was a manufacturing city and a port and rail transportation hub, but since the end of World War II it had been in a deep state of decline as factories closed by the dozens and then hundreds. The Black population had increased dramatically during and after World War II, as many arrived hoping to take advantage of wartime jobs and opportunities for industrial work. As factories closed in the period after the war, the economic opportunities for Blacks shriveled, leaving tens of thousands without work. Between 1947 and 1967, Newark lost at least 25,000 factory jobs, as hundreds of factories closed. Facing rental discrimination in most neighborhoods and without good jobs, Black migrants from the South were increasingly restricted to the densely populated and dilapidated ghettoes in the central, central-south and central-west wards that already held most of the Black population. There, they were tightly contained by mostly white police forces managed by a corrupt political machine. Police brutality and police killings of Blacks were common.
Newark, July 1967
In 1967, conflicts over urban renewal projects, hiring discrimination, the lack of Black officials in public office, and high rates of poverty and unemployment among working-class Blacks created an explosive atmosphere of distrust and anger. On the evening of July 12, a Black cab driver was pulled over by cops, beaten and arrested, and brought to the Fourth Police Precinct in the heart of the central ward’s Black neighborhood. In the coming hours, hundreds gathered in front of the police station surrounded by high-rise projects, and projectiles were thrown as the police station came under siege. While the station was the initial target of enraged protesters, soon destruction and looting took place along a local shopping street. Throughout the central part of the city thousands protested, roamed the streets, and damaged property, especially that of landlords or business owners who were white or who had ripped off customers. The Newark rebellion was underway. It lasted four full days, and the New Jersey State Police and the National Guard were called in after two days. 26 people had been killed and hundreds were injured and arrested.
Detroit in 1967 was a city of approximately 1.5 million people. The working class there had grown rapidly in the 1920s to meet the needs of the auto industry, which remained the primary employer there until well into the 1980s. After World War II, the car industry boomed as the U.S. underwent a massive process of suburbanization and road building. But it was also remarkably unreliable for tens of thousands of workers as regular cycles of overproduction were followed by downturns in which production was cut and tens of thousands laid off, or long summer layoffs for factories to retool for production of new models left workers without paychecks. But the trend towards de-industrialization was already clear: between 1947 and 1963 Detroit had already lost 134,000 factory jobs.
The Black population of Detroit had also grown dramatically during and after the war as workers, both Black and white, migrated to the city in search of work. The auto companies profited enormously but did nothing to build housing for the new migrants. As a result, there was a drastic housing shortage with workers and their families living in cramped, shabby, over-priced housing. As a result, instances of racial conflict occurred not only in workplaces but also in residential neighborhoods. In both spaces, conflicts were often initiated by white workers and residents reacting defensively to the arrival of Blacks into otherwise white- dominated jobs or neighborhoods. Well-established Black communities developed in the city, with Black-owned stores and social venues, including churches, social associations, clubs, and bars. A growing Black middle class and workers with steady employment began buying small homes in previously all white areas, challenging racial segregation and sparking white racism. In the late 1950s, the construction of massive freeways that connected the suburbs to downtown Detroit literally ripped apart established Black communities. Many Blacks were pushed into segregated public housing or areas that became more densely populated and ghettoized. Police violence and even murder against Blacks continued and in many areas increased, as well as organized and semi-organized violence by white homeowners desperate to defend their investments in housing against perceived Black “invasion.”
Results of survey by the Detroit Urban League asking Black residents what caused the “riots.”
In the early morning hours of July 23, Detroit police busted an after-hours bar in the densely populated and poor Black neighborhood along 12th Street on Detroit’s near west side. Hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate the return of two men who had returned from fighting in the war on Vietnam. After the raid, 85 were placed under arrest and the police then attempted to transport them to local police stations. The detainees were not going to accept this indignity, and their protests attracted attention in the area. Hundreds of people surrounded the police, throwing bottles and other projectiles at the police who were forced to withdraw. By the next morning, thousands were on the streets and looting and destruction of property began. This is often portrayed as a “race riot,” but there was very little inter-racial violence. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon to see white and Black people going into a store together and emerging together with a couch or other large object, perhaps to return later to get another piece for the others’ households.
Despite the chaotic and destructive nature of the early day or two of each uprising, there was little violence against people. While some of the rebels were young people or unemployed, many were solidly working-class, employed but still poor and oppressed. The robberies that occurred were more often a form of collective taking, with poor people grabbing things they needed or wanted, and the interpersonal violence of the first days was no worse than any normal day in an impoverished city in a capitalist nation. The worst violence during these uprisings was clearly perpetrated by the state against the people.
In Newark, most of the deaths occurred only after New Jersey State Police and then National Guard troops – both entirely white forces – arrived in the city. Of the 26 total killed, 24 were Black and killed by so-called law enforcement. Armed troops with bayonets herded Black people off major streets, and tanks and army vehicles patrolled the streets of the central ward. Black men stealing beer were shot in the back and killed, and young children were wounded in crossfire. In the worst scenes of unnecessary violence, police and National Guard fired indiscriminately into high-rise housing projects in the central ward, killing some and wounding others while forcing thousands of innocent residents to crawl around their apartments to avoid being hit by stray bullets. Contemporary newspapers and magazines immediately reported that there were snipers in the projects, but this was never the case.
In Detroit, while a few deaths occurred in the first few days – in fires and through gunfire during lootings – the majority of the deaths were also at the hands of so-called law enforcement. The area around 12th St. was under military occupation, with troops in tanks, jeeps and armored personnel carriers patrolling and on occasion firing into apartment buildings with 50-caliber machine guns. Thousands were arrested in mass sweeps and detained on Belle Isle on the Detroit River. Of the 43 total killed, 35 were killed by law enforcement and 33 of the dead were Black. Most of the shootings (20) were committed by the Michigan National Guard, which was all white, while the two integrated U.S. military divisions that were sent to the city killed only one. Some of those divisions sent to patrol consisted of Black soldiers. These troops were a more disciplined force who were not frightened by the conditions and were not anxious and therefore eager to shoot to kill. Some Black troops likely sympathized with those participating in the uprising and were therefore less likely to make any real attempts at repression. In what was likely the most heinous incident of law enforcement violence, three young Black men who were not even involved in the rebellions were executed in the Algiers Motel by Detroit Police and National Guard troops.
Although with less violence and lower death counts, these basic patterns were replayed dozens of other times in the long summer of 1967. Throughout the United States, 158 uprisings erupted in mostly urban, mostly Black communities. The nationwide response by the state resulted in at least 83 deaths and 17,000 arrests. The same basic events were replayed again the next spring after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sparked more rage-filled uprisings in nearly 200 towns and cities.
These rebellions, the damage that resulted and the violence that was brought down upon them, of course, worsened the already deep deterioration of both Newark and Detroit as well as other cities. The deindustrialization, depopulation and skyrocketing unemployment and poverty that had already destroyed the hopes of hundreds of thousands of Black workers intensified further, leaving even more jobless and impoverished than before the rebellions.
But there were some minor changes that improved conditions for Black people. This was particularly the case in Detroit, where the rebellion had brought much industrial production to a halt, so that it actually had a similar impact to a general strike. Not wanting a repeat of this work stoppage, those in power – the auto companies, the banks, the politicians – rallied to respond by making small changes to improve conditions for Black workers. Prior to the uprising, many factories had segregated production systems with Black workers having the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. Some had few Black workers, and most not on the assembly line itself, where pay was better. Following the uprising, Chrysler set up hiring halls in the rebellion-torn area. Black workers were able to get higher paying and more desirable positions. Wayne County Community College was set up, with classes being taught in storefronts and closed schools. Newark also saw the establishment of Essex County Community College in the following years. And even if they didn’t address the roots of the problems, the political establishment could no longer ignore the realities of working-class Blacks in the cities – both Newark and Detroit saw their first Black mayors elected in the following years, and they began to at least pay lip service to the needs of the Black community.
On the national level too, the uprisings of 1967 and 1968 helped force real changes that benefited millions of working people. It is no coincidence that in the middle and late 1960s, as Black uprisings coincided with other social movements of the time, politicians like then-President Lyndon Johnson passed and signed into law some of the most significant reforms to the capitalist system since the New Deal of the 1930s. From slowly increasing wages to implementing Medicare and Medicaid to increased funding for education at all levels, the capitalists and their government were again – as in the 1930s – forced to make reforms and take actions to improve people’s lives.
But these national reforms and local improvements were just that. They were reforms, not lasting and certainly not revolutionary changes. They helped millions, but they didn’t alleviate the underlying causes of so much human suffering, particularly among Black people and the larger working class of which they are a part.
This was the case partly because the rebellions were an immediate reaction to worsening material conditions and dehumanizing treatment. They were entirely spontaneous. They were not led by any organizations or leaders accepted widely by the Black working class. They had no stated, agreed-upon objectives. They were born out of rage at both long- and short-term suffering and indignities, not out of an organized movement with the goal of fundamentally changing the system that caused the suffering. And the reforms that came out of them simply put band-aids over the harsh and constant problems driven by the capitalist system.
Lessons for Today
Since the system remains and has in fact continued to function in the decades since, we are now faced with a reaction against these improvements. Since the 1980s, both Democratic and Republican politicians have helped the capitalists limit or rip away many of the social programs and benefits that were won from the struggles of the 1930s and 1960s. Today, Trump and the other reactionary billionaires like Elon Musk are working overtime continuing to destroy the remaining protections and social programs that still exist. At the same time, law enforcement violence has continued. Eric Garner, Brionna Taylor, George Floyd, and Freddie Gray are just a few of the hundreds of Black people who have been killed by cops in recent years. Today, the attacks on immigrants are a continuation and an expansion of this law enforcement violence.
As they attack the laws and programs that we need and redistribute wealth upwards to themselves, the ruling class are keeping our eyes off what they are doing by stoking anti-immigrant racism within the U.S. and stoking conflicts overseas with Yemen, with Iran, and with China. And they are sending ICE agents into our streets and workplaces to divide and repress the working class and intimidate everyone else.
Much like the various law enforcement agencies and National Guard units that were sent into U.S. cities in 1967 and then again in 1968, ICE agents, Department of Homeland Security agents, and the various other agencies now snatching and disappearing working people of immigrant background from the streets are also repressive forces designed to crush dissent and to intimidate. They are doing their job as the “special bodies of armed men” who are paid by the dominant class to maintain order for them and their system.
But, just as studying the 1960s reminds us of how repressive the state can be in a capitalist society ruled by a few tens of thousands of people who exploit and dominate the rest of us, the uprisings of the 1960s also teach us that the power of the capitalist class is not absolute. We can challenge them and their power. And when we do, they struggle to maintain their control over us.
The uprisings also teach us what we can do in response, and how in the future we can go further to challenge the root causes of our suffering. In the 1960s, millions of Black people were part of the larger movement for Black liberation from Jim Crow, and hundreds of thousands if not millions were militantly fighting for their immediate rights and dignity. In this same period, cities like Newark, Detroit and dozens of others saw explosive reactions to the indignities of the system, with thousands quickly joining protests. These were the explosions that Langston Hughes predicted in his famous poem. Their militant protests and even small rebellions had a collective anger and willingness to use collective force to challenge the status quo. They forced reforms onto the table and forced the capitalist class and their politicians to share some of their spoils with us. But they didn’t go far enough.
We can regain that same collective energy and force again, just as millions did in the middle and late 1960s. But we can also learn from their mistakes and weaknesses. We can organize ourselves in advance, forming organizations that are rooted in the working class, the only group in capitalist society that has the power to revolutionize society from the ground up. We can recognize that reforms don’t eliminate the real problem, which is the class society and the capitalist economic system that shapes our lives. That system, which is based on exploitation, can never be made fair or more humane. We can prepare ourselves and others to be ready to go beyond reforms, instead moving towards a fundamental and democratic reworking of the way we produce the necessities of life for everyone, both here in the U.S. and around the world.
We know that conflicts will come. The capitalists who run our world for their profit are driving us and our planet towards worse and worse crises. But if we organize ourselves as a class and we prepare for these struggles in advance, and we understand what we need to do to change things for good, then we can go further and revolutionize our world for the better.
The poor Black working classes of Newark and Detroit didn’t succeed in building organizations or stake out objectives that might have allowed them and other working-class people to enter into a larger struggle for power in U.S. society. But in rising up to challenge their oppression in their respective cities, they presented us with examples of the fighting spirit that working people can have when faced with unrelenting oppression and seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Today we remember that fighting spirit of those in 1967 Newark and Detroit, and we remind ourselves that similar challenges continue today. Similar possibilities exist as well.
Endnote: There are a variety of good books and other printed and visual sources on both the Newark and Detroit rebellions of July 1967. For Newark, this website offers good narrative description and many primary sources on the city, the leadup to the uprising, and the rebellion itself. For Detroit, this website does something similar for Detroit, offering a good introduction to the causes of the uprising, the rebellion itself, and other sources for more detailed information. Both have source lists that include good books about each.
