Like much of the history and memory of the Detroit riots of 1967, the truth surrounding the Algiers Motel Incident was left to the wind after the acquittal of Senak, August, Dismukes, and Paille. The harassment endured by many of the witnesses during the trial kept them quiet in the years following the trials, for fear that their vocal disapproval of the verdicts would lead to retaliation by the officers. The community was left feeling defeated as a case they found so clearly to be an incident of abuse of force was dismissed by the authorities. In the mid-1970s, after the acquittal of all those involved in the incident, the Detroit authorities made sure the incident would never be investigated further by tearing down the hotel.
After tearing the Algiers Motel down, the truth of that night was left only to memory. Aside from John Hersey’s book on the incident, few history books ever make mention of the events of July 25, 1967. To further ensure that the memories of the Algiers would fade with time, city officials literally buried the remains of the hotel under a park.
As years passed and the city recovered from the five-day mayhem of riots and unrest, the details of the riot as well as the Algiers Motel Incident would be misconstrued and contorted. Authorities began renaming the uprising, denigrating it to a protest and breaking it down to a riot, suggesting that those involved were at fault for the destruction of the city. The Algiers Motel Incident’s memory is in many ways a microcosm of the Detroit Uprising as a whole: Misunderstood, edited to the needs of city officials, and driven by the racism of northern whites.
Initially lauded for reforming the Detroit Police Department, Mayor Jerome Cavanagh made little comment on the Algiers Incident and in many cases, dodged questions on the racial underpinnings of the riots in the first place.
In the years after the riots concluded, the city as well as the nation seemed to look forward, according to officials. Despite open scars and wounds from the racial atrocities of the riots and the Algiers Motel Incident, media outlooks suggested that citizens maintain a level of optimism and hope for Detroit, as Coleman Young took the reigns of the city.
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