In 1967, following the riot in Detroit, reporter Philp Meyer convinced the Detroit Free Press leadership to collaborate with the Detroit Urban League and **U-M’s Institute for Social Research** to use social science survey techniques to ask black Detroiters who lived in the vicinity of the unrest what they thought about it. What emerged was groundbreaking information that contradicted conventional thinking (and reporting) on blacks’ perceptions of the precipitant events of the riot, the violence and looting that took place, and the possible sociopolitical ways forward. This information, largely ignored by the press, government officials, and most citizens in framing the uprising – its causes, participants, and aftermath – is being looked at anew on the 50th anniversary of this historic event.

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