The summer of 1967 - some remember it as the Summer of Love. For others, the thoughts of a carefree, idealistic summer are pushed aside by thoughts of a more somber nature.
Those thoughts center around burning buildings, police brutality and violence based primarily on race.
This week marks the anniversary of the civil disturbance in Detroit.
The flash point of the riot occurred when police shut down an after hours club, or a "blind pig." But the reasons for the riots run much deeper than that.
Racial discrimination, segregation, poor housing and disenfranchisement all played important parts in the city's explosion that July.
For years before the riot, Detroit was undergoing a drastic change. The up-and-coming auto industry was attracting many Southern black farmers, with hopes of grandeur for them and their families.
When they arrived, however, they were met with a much harsher reality.
City officials had strictly segregated housing in the area, including restrictive covenant laws that allowed real estate agents to prohibit black citizens from renting properties. The large number of people coming to the city were forced into cramped enclaves and housing projects in the city.
Meanwhile, white flight was taking place. The middle- and upper-class white citizens were moving to the suburbs and taking with them funding for the city and incentives for policymakers to make further improvements.
On top of that, the top automakers - Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler and General Motors Corp. - turned out to be less promising than expected. Many black workers had to work the hardest, most dangerous jobs in the factories for barely enough pay to get by.
Then, beginning in the 1950s, deindustrialization set in. Jobs were being outsourced or cut, and the largely uneducated work force had nothing to fall back on.
It is hardly a surprise that a city under this much tension was likely to burst at any moment - and it did.
The riot lasted for five days, resulting in 43 deaths, 1,189 injuries and more than 7,000 arrests. Of the deaths, 79 percent were black citizens accused of acts such as looting or curfew violation who were shot by police or National Guardsmen.
Clearly, this is a tragedy and should be recognized as such. But it should not be dismissed as simply a faceless event of the past.
Like so many events in U.S. history, if students are taught about the riot at all, they are not required to put it into context. It is another event associated with the vague lesson of "civil rights," an antiquated concept irrelevant to today's students.
Under current state curriculum, coverage of the civil rights movement is not required, let alone coverage of the Detroit riot of 1967.
For an event that changed the face of the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan and the nation at large, the riot should be required learning for every student in the state. It is cliché to say history will repeat itself, but it's true and should not be dismissed simply because of overuse.
We need to continue to be aware of the issues we are faced with today - 40 years later.
Many of the areas in Detroit remain damaged from the riot, and the city remains highly racially segregated.
Manufacturing jobs still are not available to many workers, yet the state provides few alternatives for them. Cutting education funding is harboring an uneducated work force with no labor positions available - just like in 1967.
There is no easy solution to offer. The region has spent four decades attempting to put a bandage around the memory of the disturbances in Detroit, and it is still not healed.
Moving forward, we need to focus on tolerance, equality and educating the entire community. Hopefully, after another 40 years, the issues causing the disturbance and facing Detroit today will have been laid to rest.
Matt Flint is The State News opinion editor. Reach him at flintmat@msu.edu.
