The trial lasted nearly six weeks. August originally lied about what happened, but would later claim he killed Aubrey Pollard in self-defense. This post is a part of Detroit '67: A Reflection. The next day Charles Hendrix, who provided security for the motel, found the bodies and reported the deaths to the Wayne County Morgue which in turn called the Detroit Police Homicide Bureau. Clark, Forsythe, Hysell and Molloy, and other guests including 19-year-old Aubrey Pollard, a 26-year-old Vietnam veteran Robert Greene, 18-year-old Larry Reed, lead singer for the Rhythm and Blues group the Dramatics, and band road manager, 18-year-old Fred Temple, were rounded up by Detroit police officers and faced against a downstairs hall wall.

“And my mom noticed that he had been in some sort of confrontation. None of the officers returned to the police department. At first, the three teens were listed as suspected snipers who had been gunned down at the annex by police or guardsmen, but the men who killed them didn’t wait around to identify themselves, according to Detroit News archives that would foreshadow the deaths as “one of the haunting tragedies of Michigan’s long history.”. Their bodies weren’t reported during the initial raid. “The executives would come in, and when they would bring prostitutes, I was instructed to call the police,” he said. A Detroit News story published in May 1968 described the killings: “A deputy medical examiner testified early in the trial that all three youths were killed by shotgun pellets or slugs fired at close range.”. “Any criminal defense attorney will tell you that his or her job is to establish that the people or the government is unable to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. “I was devastated when I heard about what happened at the motel,” the Rev. Norman Lippitt, who was a lawyer in private practice at the time, was living in Detroit near Eight Mile and Lahser in 1967. All rights reserved. The first thing he saw when he entered the motel was a dead body. “It is frightening to think of police with that kind of power, who can take life and nothing happens,” he said. It was the last time anyone would see him alive. Those deaths proved to be one of the high-profile moments during five days of violence sparked that week by a raid of a blind pig at nearby 12th Street and Clairmount. I thought the police department acted poorly and none of the guys were found guilty,” he said. He says an officer took him inside a room and told him to scream like he was being beaten badly. Senak was also found not guilty at that trial.

“Algiers Motel Incident,” Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/08/04/detroit-and-the-police-brutality-that-left-three-black-teens-dead-at-the-algiers-motel/; “Algiers Motel Incident,” Heavy, https://heavy.com/entertainment/2017/08/detroit-movie-true-story-algiers-motel-incident-bigelow/; John Hersey, The Algiers Motel Incident (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968). “We used it as a community education tool, not because we had any notion that the three police officers would be convicted of killing three black teenagers,” he said. In 1969, Dismukes along with Paille, August, and Senak were charged with murders. “That’s all I can say.”. The DJC is a partnership of six media outlets focused on telling critical stories of Detroit and creating engagement opportunities on-air, online and in the community.

“It’s the foundation of our system of justice.”. The Algiers Motel was renamed the Desert Inn soon after the incident and eventually demolished in 1979. Could have,” Pollard says. “The owner was a white man, and he didn’t feel that having African-Americans on the property would be good for business.”, Thibodeau, who is white, added: “It was pure racism, no ifs, ands or buts.”. Featherstone says he never believed the story that there were snipers at the Algiers. Just a few months before the Detroit uprising, he was hired by the Detroit Police Officers Association to succeed Robert Colombo as its attorney for about $50 an hour. Carefully holding a 50-year old, black-and-white photo taken during the tribunal showing Cooper’s mother seated in the front row, Aldridge said it drew thousands inside and outside the church, and ultimately found the three police officers guilty. But this is of little comfort to Thelma Pollard, who sees her brother’s life as a tragic tale of what could have been.

Forsythe was sent out of the room. “We received a telephone call the early morning hours of this incident,” Featherstone says. Of those, three deaths gained national attention.

None of the victims’ families would ever hear from the police. The state supreme court appointed Oakland County Circuit Court Judge William Beer to the case. Hysell and Molloy were pulled out of the lineup and stripped naked. Your connection to news, music, conversation. Featherstone says what they saw literally made them sick to the stomach. It was believed by some a starter’s pistol was used at the motel, prompting fears of sniper fire. “Some people just lose their heads,” Paille would later admit. The Algiers Motel was renamed the Desert Inn soon after the incident and eventually demolished in 1979. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_Motel_incident, http://www.blackpast.org/aah/algiers-motel-incident-1967, COPYRIGHT (C) 2017 - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - BLACK THEN Support for this project comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Renaissance Journalism’s Michigan Reporting Initiative and the Ford Foundation.
The deaths were reported to Congressman John Conyers and the NAACP and motel witnesses appeared in a press conference held by Conyers on the conduct of the military and police. And it would be days before a police report was even filed on their deaths.

“The motel owner did not rent rooms to African-Americans in 1960, and it was deliberate,” he said. No historical markers. Lee Forsythe was staying at the motel when the police stormed the building. Law enforcement officers, many working grueling 20-hour shifts, were summoned by radio about reports of sniper attacks at a well-known flophouse at 8301 Woodward with a call going out: “Army under heavy fire.” Detroit police, national guardsmen and state police dispatched. Paille, Senak and Dismukes also would have state conspiracy charges dismissed over insufficient evidence. Hysell and Molloy were pulled out of the lineup and stripped naked. Instead, a serene manicured park with antique light poles and towering trees exists at the end of a cul-de-sac near the historic Boston-Edison District. Thibodeau said the motel became black-owned about two years before 1967’s uprising. “The story that was told to me and Congressman Conyers was that there was some young African-American men in the rooms with some young, white ladies from Ohio,” Featherstone says.

This post is a part of Detroit Journalism Cooperative. He was…it didn’t have a shell.”. The incident started when Army National Guardsman Ted Thomas reported hearing gunshots at the Algiers Motel Annex. Police knew the motel well for its drug dealers, prostitutes and criminal activity. And I guess they kind of infuriated the police, because they indicated there were some shots were fired from the motel.

Detroit Police along with the Michigan State Police, and other National Guardsmen arrived at the Algiers Motel Annex under the suspicion they were arriving …