by John Hersey
“So at that point we began yelling, and then all the doors closed, and the police officers began being real circumspect. And this lieutenant came out, and he explained to us how tired the police were, how their buddies had been shot in the riot, and the touchiness of the situation, and all that bullshit.
“So we refused to go out the way we had said we were going to.
“The next day ABC called and said, ‘We understand your office has burned down, and we’d like to come and do a filming right on the spot of the office,’ and we agreed to that, and we met out there at the office, and they were doing all this filming and interviewing. While it was going on, an armored car backed up to the bank that was next door to take the money from the vault; backed right up on the sidewalk and blocked the view from the next part. There were all these soldiers around guarding it. After the filming we had to go past the armored car and around to get back to our cars, and the Congressman went over to the officer in charge and asked for an escort back to our cars so we wouldn’t be molested. And he very willingly said he would give us that, and I came around in front of everybody, around the armored car, and on the other side there were these two policemen talking with another cop, and a cop with a gun ran at me and hit me on the forehead with the gun that he was holding up to bar my way. So I shoved him back at the wall, and he stumbled over some bricks and fell over. He took his safety off his gun, and he was going to blast at me, and just then all these cameras came around the corner of the armored car. That saved my life. We asked him his name, but he refused to give it to us. The police weren’t wearing badges during the riot, so we couldn’t report him.
“So then we went straight down to Vance, Secretary Vance”—Cyrus L. Vance, President Johnson’s personal emissary to Detroit during the riots—“and we demanded that the Justice Department be brought in on this thing.
“So the next day Murphy”—Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Robert A. Murphy—“came over to Congressman Conyers’s house. While he was standing there ringing the doorbell, I was on the phone getting a report about this woman who’d been raped in the Tenth Precinct. Murphy went to the house of the woman, and it turned out that what had happened was that the cops had been propositioning the women in the police station. One of them did submit, and they just shoved her back in the enclosure with the rest of them. What they were doing, they were stripping these women and feeling them up and taking pictures of them with a Polaroid in indecent positions with them.”
(In a summary of seventy-three complaints of police brutality issued by Conyers’s office, there is no mention of the alleged rape, but this item—the name, address, and telephone number of the woman are given—appears: “. . . dragged into station and searched ripping off upper clothing, photographed while officer held breasts, given sweater and that taken away so still naked. Told to pull off lower clothing, officers pulled them down. Subject has pajama top that was torn to shreds.”)
“One of the officers,” Atchison said to me, “they did kick one of the officers off the force, that’s one thing they did do something about. The next day the complainants were found on that and all these other things. They began to find out where the Congressman had moved his new office to; that was the Retail Store Employees Union Hall, at 2550 West Grand Boulevard. They have these sort of modern offices there, and they came streaming through there, among them Omar Gill and Eddie Temple and some of the witnesses to the things that had happened at the Algiers.
“Then at the end of the day, they couldn’t afford to keep the Union Hall open, so we went down to Nathan Conyers’s office”—Nathan Conyers is an attorney, brother of the Congressman—“and that evening it was down there that these witnesses of the Algiers incident gave their testimony to Murphy. They took all our notes on it, and they won’t give them back to us.”
2. A State of Shock
“So I talked with Mr. Gill again,” Eddie Temple told me, “it would have been Thursday. I came back down to the morgue to see the wounds. They showed me a picture of the wounds, and I went down there and asked the doctor at the morgue her opinion of what had happened, this was all part of trying to find out what had happened. She thought that they had been shot as snipers. I told her then that it was impossible, I’d been to the motel. The wounds that he had went down, which would have been impossible if they’d been shot from the outdoors in, they would have had to shoot up to that level. Later on her testimony was completely different; in court she did state that they were indoors, as to how the wounds had been inflicted. I saw Mr. Gill there, too; we talked a little bit then, and I told him I would be trying to get something started to find out what really happened, and get the policemen who had done this.
“I called him later, and he took me around to some of the boys, Lee Forsythe, Sortor, and Michael Clark, took me to their homes, and they told me what had happened. They were very afraid. If he hadn’t been with me, they wouldn’t have said anything. They were in a state of shock, which can easily be understood. They showed me their busted heads, they were all bruised. After hearing what they had to say, it was obvious that this whole thing had evolved just the way it was being told: how these people had come in and lined up and beat them up and shot some of them.
“So I called Detective Schlachter again. He still insisted that they were snipers, and that the police shot and killed them through the windows, and that was when I told him definitely that he didn’t know what he was talking about, and that he should investigate the thing, that this was his job. I did at that time give him the names and phone numbers and the addresses, but he said he hadn’t been able to talk to anyone on it because he didn’t even know who was there. After I gave him their names and numbers, he did go out and talk to them.”
3. Riot Victim
“I, Clara Raven, M.D., certify that I performed the autopsy on Auburey Pollard, aka [also known as] Unknown Man #104, deceased, and that the attached description is correct and accurate. In my opinion the cause of death is: Shotgun wound of chest.
“Gross Diagnoses:
“1. 1½″ gaping wound of right anterior axillary line, 6″ beneath the axilla, with fracture of the 6th rib with maceration and penetration of right and left ventricles, laceration of the aorta, multiple penetrating wounds of both lungs and liver and fractures of 11th thoracic vertebra and pellet punctures of the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th interspaces left chest posterior axillary line.
“2. Multiple shotgun pellet wounds of interior right chest wall.
“3. Bilateral hemothorax.
“4. Large 2″ × 1¾″ grazing laceration of medial surface of right arm, 6″ beneath the axilla.
“5. Abrasions of posterior portion of right forearm and right forehead.
“Status: Riot Victim.”
Other significant information:
“There is marked tearing of the muscle [of the right upper arm] with abrasion and burning around the wound. . . .”
——
Carl Cooper, “aka Unknown Man #105,” had suffered “multiple shotgun wounds of chest and abdomen with penetrating wounds of lungs, heart, liver, stomach, and aorta” and “multiple compound comminuted fractures of left upper arm.” There had been massive bleeding of chest and abdomen. Ten buckshot pellets had been recovered from the chest wall. There was a shotgun wound on his left thigh.
——
Fred Temple, “aka Unknown Man #106,” had received two shotgun wounds, one in his right breast at the nipple, the other in the lower chest wall on the left side, penetrating his right lung, pancreas, liver, stomach, and transverse colon. The buckshot had gone right through his body, and there was a “mutilating wound” of the back of his left elbow. “Shotgun slugs and 2 pieces of wadding recovered in right chest cavity.”
——
Tests for drugs and alcohol in all three cadavers were negative.
4. He Did Go Out
Detective Schlachter testified in court:
“On July 27, 1967, I talked to Eddie Temple, brother of Fred Templ
e. . . .
“On July 27, at 3:50 p.m., I talked with Witness Cleveland Reed. On the same date and at the same time I talked with Naomi Reed, the mother of Cleveland Reed. Took his statement in her presence. . . .
“On July 27, at 4:53 p.m., I talked to Roderick Davis in the presence of his mother, Rosa Davis. . . .”
5. A Building Full of People
“I called Conyers’s office,” Eddie Temple told me, “and I talked to Leon Atchison, and I told him what had happened, and I told him how frustrated I was about not getting any support, and that I knew that this thing was bound to be whitewashed by the Police Department if possible. He said they had a building full of people who were making complaints. This is what got us in contact.”
6. I Was Making Inquiries
On Friday, July 28, Detective Schlachter had a rather frustrating afternoon, according to his testimony. “At 2:35 p.m. Detective Smith and myself went to 8733 Arcadia, talked to Lilly Calloway regarding the whereabouts of a witness. I believe that was Forsythe, Lee Forsythe. . . . On July 28, I went to the home of James Sortor, and I talked with his sister, Judy Sortor. That was on July 28, 1967, at 3:05 p.m. I was making inquiries as to where James was.” He did see Clara Gilmore that afternoon at 5:15 p.m.
7. The Conference Was Put Off
“I did take Roderick Davis to this press conference that was supposed to be with John Conyers down at the Sheraton-Cadillac, and Sortor, Mr. Gill brought Sortor down there, so we had two people give the story to the Free Press and the News. One of the reporters said it was too hot for them to handle. John Conyers was not there but people were expecting him, so the conference was put off until that Saturday morning. None of the papers ran the story the next morning. Kurt Luedtke from the Free Press, he had called, he was trying to get some additional information, he said he was going to run a story. And he asked for authorization, based on the information we had given him, to have the Free Press have a pathologist check the bodies.”
The Pollards and Gills also gave permission for the Free Press autopsies.
8. Walking in My Door
“They got word to Chaney,” Mrs. Pollard told me. “They put him in a boxcar, on a shipping plane, where they ship anything, carloads—as long as they got him back from Vietnam. Auburey died that Wednesday morning, and Friday evening they had Chaney back here, he was walking in my door.”
9. Just That Afraid
“The next news conference”—on Saturday, July 29—“I did take Roderick Davis,” Eddie Temple told me. “This one, Conyers was there, and there were several concerned groups about being brutalized.” An ad hoc committee had been formed to handle alleged violations of citizens’ civil rights during the disturbance; it included Conyers, Congressman Charles Diggs, State Senator Coleman Young, the NAACP, the Wolverine Bar Association, the ACLU, and the Michigan Civil Rights Commission. “This was primarily to find out the basis for all these complaints. There were volunteers taking statements—not in shorthand, but longhand—and there were several people there with their heads all busted up and their bodies busted up. It took a tremendous lot of effort to get these boys to go to these news conferences. I had said I was going to get in touch with the police, and it scared them to death. They were afraid to death of policemen. When these policemen let the ones go that they did let go, they told them that they’d better not tell or they was going to kill them. And they believed it. I mean when you see somebody shoot somebody down, you believe that they’ll shoot you down, too. They sincerely believed that the police were going to shoot them down. This took a lot of begging and pleading. I had to use the deaths and justice to try to get them there. They were just that afraid.”
10. To Frighten Him
NAME: Roderick Davis
INTERVIEWER: Lois Lewis
“Police beat Mr. Davis about the head 7 or eight times.
“Police ask him questions and when he attempted to answer them he was told to shut up and was beaten.
“Was robbed by Police of 15 or 20 dollars. Took wallet and haven’t returned it. (Was not given a receipt for his articles.) Shoes.
“Smashed his fingers with a gun.
“Forced to lie down on floor spread eagle and fired shots into floor in an attempt to frighten him.
“When finally permitted to go home was subjected in abusive language to march away with his hands in the air barefooted. Told not to look back.”
11. At Close Range
Dr. Robert J. Sillery examined the bodies on Saturday morning for the Free Press at the three funeral homes to which they had been removed. In the case of Fred Temple, whose body was at White House Funeral Directors, the funeral was to be held that day, and “the body,” Dr. Sillery’s report said, “was completely clothed and laid out in a casket. It was not possible to remove the body from the casket. The clothing covering the chest and abdomen was folded back, and only those portions of the body so exposed were examined.” Dr. Sillery’s reports served to confirm in every respect the autopsy reports of Dr. Raven, who must surely be the most appropriately named morgue lady in the United States. Together the autopsies proved beyond doubt that the boys were shot indoors, at close range.
12. Sure, It’s the Police
At eleven ten a.m. on Saturday, Detective Schlachter interviewed Michael Clark.
At one p.m. he talked, according to his testimony, “to a News reporter, two of them, Kurt Luedtke, Barbara Stanton, and Dr. Sillery at the scene of the Algiers Motel.” What Luedtke and Miss Stanton, who were from the Free Press, not the News, had to say, with the backing of Dr. Sillery, apparently did not please Detective Schlachter. In an article later Miss Stanton reported that he was “yelling that everybody is playing cops-and-robbers and tracking all over his investigation.”
“Sure,” she quoted him as saying, “it’s the police who were the villains. You just watch and see, when this is all over it’ll be the fault of the police, all over the country. Police start riots, police start trouble, police do the killing. Yeah, it’s all the policeman’s fault, always the police.”
13. Find the Truth
In the Fish Room of the White House, in Washington, D.C., at almost this very same time, President Johnson was greeting the members of his Commission on Civil Disorders, who had convened for their first meeting. In his remarks to them he said, in part:
“One thing should be absolutely clear: This matter is far, far too important for politics. It goes to the health and safety of all American citizens—Republicans and Democrats. It goes to the proper responsibilities of officials in both of our parties. It goes to the heart of our society in a time of swift change and of great stress. . . .
“So, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Vice Chairman, let your search be free. Let it be untrammeled by what has been called the ‘conventional wisdom.’ As best you can, find the truth, the whole truth, and express it in your report. . . .”
14. The Odor of a Case
S. Allen Early, Jr., a very tall, powerfully built Negro attorney with a somehow somber and world-weary expression, whose mind worked at electric speeds, who wore stylish tweeds, and whose big hands flopped as he talked with great clarity on any subject that presented itself, seemed to me, when I met him, to have a strangely ambiguous style. A graduate of the Yale Law School (1944) who had lived for some years in New York, then Europe, then Washington, he could carry off an easy Eastern sophistication; yet he seemed to be burning, at the center of his life, with banked fires. He had served for four years, from 1959 to 1963, as Assistant Prosecutor for Wayne County, and perhaps that had been a harrowing post. I had heard that he had been through a domestic tragedy.
On Friday, July 28, Allen Early told me, a client called him and said he knew somebody who knew something about the Algiers killings. “He turned up with the two girls. I listened to their story, and having been a prosecutor I thought I recognized the odor of a case. We didn’t know then what was going to happen. The police were trying to find the boys, and we thought the girls might possibly be in some dang
er. I had the bright idea of hiding them on a boat—a friend’s boat; I used to have one, but this belonged to a lawyer friend of mine, a forty-three-foot ’67 Chris-Craft. I had keys to it. It was at the City Marina. I took the girls over and stashed them aboard; they seemed to like the set-up. This was more or less at my back door—I live just a block from the marina—and I went to do some grocery shopping, left the girls under guard of my partner, Elliott Hall. They suggested that they’d like to take a little walk around Belle Isle, and they took off—borrowed a quarter apiece. That was the last Elliott saw of them. I tell you, I felt a bit of consternation, when I got back, to find out that we’d been duped by those little girls. They hitchhiked back uptown, and we eventually found them trying to get back to the boy who’d been harboring them. Bubba Carter persuaded them to go with us. . . .”
15. We Just Thought We Would Move
In the conspiracy hearing, Julia Ann Hysell was cross-examined as follows by Attorney for the Defense Norman Lippitt:
Q. What is your name, please, witness?
A. Juli Hysell.
Q. How old are you?
A. Eighteen.
Q. Where were you born?
A. Columbus, Ohio.
Q. When did you move to Detroit?
A. The end of June.
Q. Of what year, please?
A. ’67. . . .
Q. All right. Were you employed when you were in Columbus, Ohio?
