Memories of Unrest: Placing the Detroit 1967 Project within the Riot vs. Rebellion Debate

Memories of Unrest:  Placing the Detroit 1967 Project within the Riot vs. Rebellion Debate

Athena Zissis

In honor of the 50^th anniversary of Detroit’s 1967 Uprising, the Detroit Historical Society created a public database of eye-witness testimonials to commemorate the events and aftermath of the 1967 Uprisings.  In doing so, the database placed itself in a larger lexical debate regarding the morality of the civil unrest and whether it should be classified as a riot or a rebellion.  Within this debate are themes of injustice, civil rights, violence, morality, discrimination, and resilience to oppression.  Utilizing Erving Goffman’s method of frame analysis coupled with themes of conceptual metaphor, this study examines 70 self-written testimonials of Detroit’s 1967 Uprising for patterns of prescribed agency, responsibility, and blame while exploring how the authors’ explicitly or implicitly frame their stories within the riot vs. rebellion debate.  Because framing shapes the viewpoint of a given audience, and is thus a powerful tool that has been shown to effect social change, it is important to understand how the Detroit 67 Project database contributes to the discussion, and to whom that discussion is reaching.  With the results leaning heavily in favor of categorizing the civil unrest as a riot, the narrative of 1967 Detroit emphasizes an arguably counterproductive discussion of self-sabotaging violence.  As the Detroit ’67 Project’s intentions were to “engage, reflect, and provide opportunities to take the collective action that can help move our community forward,” it is my hope that as more people submit their testimonials more equal representation will be given to the rebellion framework.