As much as music is frequently used to highlight important issues, there has always been a tension between the inspiration of the songwriter and the business interests of those who run the music world not to rock the boat (so to speak). Such was the case with Gordon Lightfoot and his 1968 song “Black Day in July” having to do with race riots in Detroit in 1967.
At that time, the predominantly African-American Detroit neighbourhood where the riot occurred was ready to explode with 60,000 low-income residents crammed into 460 acres, living mostly in small, sub-divided apartments.
The Detroit Police Department, which had only about 50 African-American officers at the time, was viewed as a white occupying army. Accusations of racial profiling and police brutality were commonplace among Detroit’s Black residents.
At the corner of 12th St. and Clairmount, William Scott operated a “blind pig” (an illegal after-hours club) on weekends out of the office of the United Community League for Civic Action, a civil rights group. The police vice squad often raided establishments like this on 12th St., and at 3:35 a.m. on Sunday morning, July 23, they moved against Scott’s club.
History
In the end, 43 people were left dead, hundreds were injured, thousands arrested, and many businesses were looted and burned.
But, with references to snipers on rooftops, Motor City madness, and dead youth in the street in Lightfoot’s lyrics, a number of American radio stations decided against playing it. You know how it is, if you don’t talk about something, it didn’t really happen. Curiously, the lyrics aren’t particularly contentious, and pretty well fact-based, which tells you something.