With time, memories of the Algiers Incident began to fade. The riots as a whole remained a sore and emotional subject for native Detroiters, but for the majority of Americans, the assumption was the time would heal the wounds from the tumultuous ’60s. As the 1970s commenced, the media portrayed Detroit as an optimistic, rebuilding city that had overcome the pains of the 67 “disturbance.” As newspapers and elected officials began to downplay the significance of the riots to little more than a disturbance, the population moved on from what was the most significant instance of civil unrest in the 20th century. Ten years after the Algiers occurred, there was little mention of the incident in local papers besides vague references of “racially motivated attacks” during the riots. Senak still walked the streets but according to Young and other city officials, there was reason to be optimistic.
In the 1980s, the memory begins to fade from the national spotlight to citizens of Detroit and Michigan at large. However, it is interesting to note that with the 20th anniversary of the riots and the Algiers Incident, the Detroit Free Press, Michigan Chronicle, and Detroit News begin publishing stories lauding the heroic efforts of blacks who helped quell the madness of the ’67 riots.
Slowly, the media continues to downplay the significance of a series of riots that prompted military tanks and martial law of the city to little more than a disturbance. But with stories of blacks who did their best to “keep the black community calm,” news coverage begins a rhetorical re-positioning of the racial foundations of the riots to a case of unruly citizens. Still, little, it anything is mentioned of heinous incidents like the Algiers.
Twenty years after this, we begin to see yet another shift in the narrative both of the Algiers and of the Detroit Uprising as a whole.
Moving on. The young will lead the way. Education is the key to healing the city. These are the narratives that make their way through the media cycles on the 40th anniversary of the infamous Detroit Uprising. While the narrative of “the young will lead the way” is something heard quite often in the United States, it is important to look at the frame in which local papers construct the young in regards to the riots and by extension, the Algiers case: they have never heard of it or experienced such atrocities. As the Detroit News and the Michigan Chronicle (along with many other papers covering the 40th anniversary), the best course of action is not to reflect on such pain, but to move on and ultimately: forget.
An equally present frame of the 40th anniversary of the incident and the riots as a whole is the recommended courses of action, which for many outlets is education. While the case for education is always important in educating the nation’s youth, what is missing from all these cases is the discourse of the prominent police brutality like that of the Algiers. No where in these articles do the authors mention the propensity for white officers to beat black citizens senseless, and in no way do the media coverages of the 40th anniversary mention the surrounding context that fueled the riots to begin with.
Yet, while these 40th anniversary papers discuss the importance of moving on from the hate, frustration, and injustice of the 67 riots, a page later we find stories like the one above, where police misconduct still occurs. While the news coverage of the Algiers and the detroit uprising as a whole are misleading, if not bent for an alternative ideological purpose, the following years of national police brutality would be eerily reminiscent of the tragedies in the Algiers.
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