Detroit has experienced violence and uprisings more than once throughout its history, the riots of 1943 and the famous riots of 1967. On July 23, 1967, the police raided one of the many "blind pigs" after hours at the Twelfth Street bar, a routine operation that turned sour and where all the violence came from. “At the end of five days of rioting, 43 people were dead, 1,189 injured and more than 7,000 people had been arrested” (Fine, 1989, p. 489). There have been different views on why the riots grew and became so serious and whether black people were acting maliciously or whether the "riot" was exacerbated by the authorities and their lack of control. This essay will attempt to draw out the main arguments from scholars as to why the riots developed and who should bear responsibility for them, as well as answer any remaining unanswered questions. The events in Detroit during the summer of 1967 clearly show an unnecessary escalation on the part of the authorities who did not favor the opinion of the black majority; However, it is also clear that the riots would not have physically occurred without these original black rioters. Detroit was becoming a unique situation in America, a city soon to be majority black (Upton and Rucker, 2007, p166) that did not have enough black people. representation or control within their own city. Upton and Rucker described the existence of "white flight from Detroit" at the time of the riots. Some may consider this point important because it appears there is a motive behind it; the riots occurred during a time of social unrest across America and for black people, everything was in flux. President Johnson had recently challenged the civil rights laws of the mid-sixties and blacks were beginning to come into their own. As a result, middle of paper it is an escalation, without guns the riots are simply a fight of man against man and there will be few deaths. Fine took a quote from the guards who said "I'll 'shoot anything that moves that's black'" (Fine, 2007, p199). This quote is important because it illustrates to us the ethical views of the police at the time and demonstrates how these guards could and would have escalated riots, not black hooliganism. Fine and Fox ask us questions that remain unanswered, even though they describe how bad the police force was, they don't ask if it was all the police's fault? Could the July 23 riots have been crushed if the police had been less aggressive and more sympathetic toward black people? Should the authorities be held accountable for being an unofficial dictatorship in Detroit while a white force controlled a black majority with fear and guns ??