Mid 20th Century
Detroit’s postindustrial decline came as Cold War politics simultaneously attempted to suppress anarchism and other radicalisms while giving peoples of the world evermore reasons to embrace such ideas. While early 20th century latecomers like Laurance Labadie reached old age, a new generation of Black Panther and hippy anarchists appeared to reassert contemporary culture’s connections to past anarchism. Protests in Detroit and Ann Arbor were then provided the fodder for authoritarian narratives about how untenable youth revolt could be.
Detroit Uprising of 1967
"The Uprising of 1967 is also known as the Detroit Rebellion of 1967 and the 12th Street Riot. It began following a police raid on an unlicensed bar, known locally as a “blind pig.” Over the course of five days, the Detroit police and fire departments, the Michigan State Police, the Michigan National Guard, and the US Army were involved in quelling what became the largest civil disturbance of twentieth century America. The crisis resulted in forty-three deaths, hundreds of injuries, almost seventeen hundred fires, and over seven thousand arrests.
The insurrection was the culmination of decades of institutional racism and entrenched segregation. For much of the twentieth century, the city of Detroit was a booming manufacturing center, attracting workers—both black and white—from southern states. This diversity aggravated civil strife, and the Race Riot of 1943 highlighted the racial fault lines that crisscrossed the city. Throughout the 1950s, homeowners’ associations, aided by mayors Albert Cobo and Louis Miriani, battled against integrating neighborhoods and schools." (Detroit Historical Society)
Around 1971, Detroit became known as “the Murder City.” By 1980, Detroit’s downfall was quantified for mainstream America in census data showing the city’s new Black majority and then mythologized more than ever before in popular culture. While Black Detroiters involved in or associated with these riots largely have not identified as anarchists, state, industry, and culture have persistently labeled them so in order to demonize them and thereby further demonize anarchism. The Uprising and others like it proposing to empower people against corrupt authoritarian institutions can not just be seen as a profoundly realpolitik manifestation of “anarchism without adjectives” but as manifestation of anarchism without “anarchism,” antiauthoritarian mutual aid and free association without the label or Western philosophy. In other words, Detroit was, for a very brief moment, anarchy in the most utopian and holistic sense possible before that moment translated to more permanent change in the city or, as has happened far more popularly, was attacked culturally, legally, and institutionally as anarchy instead in the most pejorative sense. Self-identifying anarchists, especially in the USA, have hardly ever instantiated anarchy on such a scale and might do well to take the Uprising and its aftermath as models for how anarchy can become more possible.
Fifth Estate Records, 1967-2016
Based in Detroit until the start of the 21st century, the Fifth Estate is the nation’s longest running radical publication and quite explicitly anarchist.
Laurance Labadie Papers, 1882 - 1973
Son of Joseph Labadie, Laurance Labadie made a name for himself as a thinker and a polemicist of a different tenor. Laurance grew up with the Gentle Anarchist of Detroit as his father and, through him, access to a wealth of American individualist anarchist thought. In contrast to his father but still with an attention to poetics, Laurance wielded these ideas far more pessimistically, likely reflecting the impact of anarchism’s public defeats earlier in the 20th century and Detroit’s industrial downturn. Although the course of his life and tone of his writings very clearly show him rejecting an amiability like his father’s, his father did not live to see how anarchism and Detroit each fared further into the 20th century. For many who grew up in the Detroit area after Laurance’s death, such a drastic change in tone between generations is particularly familiar in how different generations discuss the city.
John and Leni Sinclair Papers, 1957-2003
Although this archive does not presently contain any items from this collection, few other names have been as visible in discussions of local mid-century radicalism. John and Leni Sinclair can act as common denominator between various radical student organizations like the Weather Underground and White Panthers, major causes such as cannabis legalization, and the origins of punk rock in southeast Michigan through the Pebbles compilation, Iggy and the Stooges, and MC5. In other words, John and Leni Sinclair stand as exemplars of how pre-’68 radicalism and counterculture transformed into their postmodern forms in large part through the Detroit area because their activism and Leni’s photography explicitly document and index these processes.
Black Anarchisms in Detroit, 1962-?
As stated in the About page, the University of Michigan may be singular in its commitment to preserving anarchist ephemera but it is also very normal in its exclusion of Black and other racially and ethnically inflected anarchisms. While that could also be due to Black Detroit anarchists’ disinterest in sharing their history and ephemera with such an institution, such an absence largely implies that those histories and ephemera did not or do not exist. We reference Black anarchism more because, from the 1980 census and still now, Detroit has had one of the largest Black majorities of any American city. White flight in the mid-20th century caused this change and very often by portraying and understanding Detroit as anarchy. In our preliminary research, we found that Black anarchism mostly began in Detroit at least as early as 1968 when the Black Panther Party, locally and nationally, started splintering. Before that splintering, CLR James’ libertarian socialist group Facing Reality elected to base itself in Detroit but with a Trotskyism that complicates identification with anarchism. A few months after the ‘67 Uprising and a few months before the White Panthers were founded, Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) became one of the first self-identifying Black anarchist organizations in Detroit. In 1969, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (the League) formed by splintering from DRUM. By the end of 1970, the Black Workers Congress (BWC) formed in Detroit by splintering from the League but the League remained more labor-oriented while the BWC ultimately represented more intellectual or managerial interests. Before, during, and after this starkly incomplete history, Black anarchists, whether self-identifying or in-effect, have surely been active in southeast Michigan. Representing their works and those of other anarchisms of color is to be our top priority in further developing this archive.