The incident started when Army National Guardsman Ted Thomas reported hearing gunshots at the Algiers Motel Annex. Police outside Algiers Manor Annex, July 26, 1967. Detroit police later would claim that they found Cooper already dead in a first-floor room when they entered the building.
Carefully holding a 50-year old, black-and-white photo taken during the tribunal showing Cooper’s mother seated in the front row, Aldridge said it drew thousands inside and outside the church, and ultimately found the three police officers guilty. When authorities thought they were under sniper attack, they returned fire. Those statements were eventually thrown out as inadmissible, because the homicide detectives had failed to read him his rights.
Norman Lippitt, who was a lawyer in private practice at the time, was living in Detroit near Eight Mile and Lahser in 1967. Aubrey Pollard, Carl Cooper, and Fred Temple were shot to death at the Algiers Motel on July 26, three days after the disturbance began at 12th and Clairmount. Despite the three deceased bodies in the Motel Annex, the Detroit police officers on the scene, Paille, August, and David Senak, did not report any of the deaths to the Detroit Police Homicide Bureau as required. But why? The state supreme court appointed Oakland County Circuit Court Judge William Beer to the case. The incident started when Army National Guardsman Ted Thomas reported hearing gunshots at the Algiers Motel Annex. Forsythe says he was taken out of the room and led down the stairs where he saw the body of 17-year-old Carl Cooper. But this is of little comfort to Thelma Pollard, who sees her brother’s life as a tragic tale of what could have been. The congressman’s field representative, Arthur Featherstone, answered the phone. Detroit Police, State Police, and National Guard members rush into the motel annex to locate the sniper. Do you find this information helpful?
“The owner was a white man, and he didn’t feel that having African-Americans on the property would be good for business.”, Thibodeau, who is white, added: “It was pure racism, no ifs, ands or buts.”. Privacy. Senak’s lawyer argued Temple was shot by another officer while Senak was preparing to handcuff the teen, explaining Temple grabbed Senak’s revolver. Prosecutors claimed the officers had lined up the teens against a wall then took them one by one into separate rooms. “I could see him kicking the door open and firing shots” Forsythe says. Election season is underway. And I guess they kind of infuriated the police, because they indicated there were some shots were fired from the motel. It galvanized the black community and spearheaded a political activism that would result in the election of Coleman Young as Detroit’s first black mayor in 1973. Collecting African American Art: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Obama Era, African American History: Research Guides & Websites, Global African History: Research Guides & Websites, African Americans and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The Alma Stephenson Dever Page on Afro-britons, With Pride: Uplifting LGBTQ History On Blackpast, Preserving Martin Luther King County’s African American History, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Envoys, Diplomatic Ministers, & Ambassadors, African American Newspapers, Magazines, and Journals, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/08/04/detroit-and-the-police-brutality-that-left-three-black-teens-dead-at-the-algiers-motel/, https://heavy.com/entertainment/2017/08/detroit-movie-true-story-algiers-motel-incident-bigelow/. No one was ever charged with the death of Carl Cooper, the youngest victim, who was 17. “They had been outside to get the supplies they needed for the night - the beer and the cookies and whatever else, potato chips, and they were seen going in the motel, these couples. I thought the police department acted poorly and none of the guys were found guilty,” he said.
Beer filed a motion to try the case in Mason, Michigan, a town with a mostly white population. The next day Charles Hendrix, who provided security for the motel, found the bodies and reported the deaths to the Wayne County Morgue which in turn called the Detroit Police Homicide Bureau. August later admitted to the killing but claimed it was in self-defense. Detroit's NPR Station. Research, vote early, tell your friends. “Without tooting my own horn, I apparently earned and obtained a reputation for being a successful and effective jury trial lawyer,” he said. Racial Attitudes Forsythe was sent out of the room. A gunshot would be heard and an officer would come out alone, threatening the others to talk.
August, Paille and Senak were accused of brutally beating other black men with rifle butts and stripping and beating Hysell and Malloy inside the motel in a concerted effort to find the alleged snipers. “And Mr. [McUrant] Pye, who was the owner of the Algiers Motel, had indicated to us that his motel had been fired on, had been stormed, and some young people were killed.”. Lippitt said his job was never to determine guilt or innocence.
It was held at the Shrine of the Black Madonna church to provide the community with its own semblance of deferred justice before the end of the official trials.
Trials for the lawmen would take years and be followed by appeals by prosecutors. Support for this project comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Renaissance Journalism’s Michigan Reporting Initiative and the Ford Foundation. This post is a part of Detroit Journalism Cooperative. Bulldozers flattened the remains of the motel in 1979 after it changed its name to the Desert Inn. August later admitted to the killing but claimed it was in self-defense. The Algiers Motel was renamed the Desert Inn soon after the incident and eventually demolished in 1979. Editor’s note: Heidi Ausgood filed this story for WDET in 2007. The third person to die, Temple, was shot by Detroit Police Officer Robert Paille who also claimed he killed him in self-defense. Forsythe and a friend ran to Carl Cooper’s house to tell his family what happened. It was never determined who killed them. Paille allegedly carried a rifle but Temple was shot with a shotgun, according to reports. “We received a telephone call the early morning hours of this incident,” Featherstone says. Instead they left the annex after demanding that the survivors keep quiet about the incident. Dismukes went to trial first and was acquitted by an all-white jury. All Rights Reserved. The Algiers Motel Incident occurred in Detroit, Michigan on July 25, 1967, two days after the Detroit Race Riot began.
“And he say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ But…then we heard a boom. Three white police officers later accused in their killings would be exonerated following what initially appeared to be a mystery at the Algiers Motel and Manor on Woodward at Virginia Park. The next youth to be killed, Pollard, was shot and killed by officer Ronald August after he took him into Annex Room A-3.
However, the Detroit Free Press interviewed the witnesses of the events, who all claimed to have been unarmed and that the dead men were not snipers. Clark, Forsythe, Hysell and Molloy, and other guests including 19-year-old Aubrey Pollard, a 26-year-old Vietnam veteran Robert Greene, 18-year-old Larry Reed, lead singer for the Rhythm and Blues group the Dramatics, and band road manager, 18-year-old Fred Temple, were rounded up by Detroit police officers and faced against a downstairs hall wall. What happened next, he says, was terrifying. Dozens of Detroiters died in the civil unrest of July 1967, but 3 death, in particular, gained national attention. “We used it as a community education tool, not because we had any notion that the three police officers would be convicted of killing three black teenagers,” he said. Detroit Police along with the Michigan State Police, and other National Guardsmen arrived at the Algiers Motel Annex under the suspicion they were arriving where a sniper was located. The jury found Ronald August not guilty.
“It’s the foundation of our system of justice.”. The first thing he saw when he entered the motel was a dead body. And his mother warned him not to go back to that motel. Detroit Police, Michigan State Police, and other National Guardsmen came to the scene to find what they thought was a sniper. The FBI and local authorities would be tasked to find out by whom. Thelma Pollard says says Aubrey had been beaten up pretty badly. Of those, three deaths gained national attention. Aldridge found out about the Algiers Motel incident when the mother and stepfather of slain Carl Cooper called his wife, Dorothy Dewberry-Aldridge, to tell her. August would be charged in Pollard’s death, but he would later be acquitted after testifying the teen also had tried to grab his gun. “Some people just lose their heads,” Paille would later admit. Three young black men, Carl Cooper, Michael Clark, and Lee Forsythe, were in a room in the motel, listening to music with two white women from Ohio, Juli Hysell and Karen Molloy, when Cooper fired a starter pistol shooting blanks out the window. According to later testimony, Detroit police officers most likely shot and killed Cooper who ran downstairs with his pistol when they entered the building. “From my perspective, my initial gut reaction was to win the case and obtain a complete exoneration for my clients,” he said. And first-degree murder charges were filed against Detroit Police officers Ronald August and Robert Paille. Some theorized his death was the result of surprising raiding officers as they entered the building. “It is frightening to think of police with that kind of power, who can take life and nothing happens,” he said.
Law enforcement officers, many working grueling 20-hour shifts, were summoned by radio about reports of sniper attacks at a well-known flophouse at 8301 Woodward with a call going out: “Army under heavy fire.” Detroit police, national guardsmen and state police dispatched. Other people were lined up against a wall and shots were being fired.
More inquiries were made. That answer and the events surrounding the Algiers Motel would be retold over five decades as urban legend and in books, dissertations and speeches, as well as portrayed in plays. The third person to die, Temple, was shot by Detroit Police Officer Robert Paille who also claimed he killed him in self-defense.
Aubrey Pollard , Carl Cooper , and Fred Temple were shot to death at the Algiers Motel on July 26, three days after the disturbance began at 12th and Clairmount . View the partners work at detroitjournalism.org. No plaques. August, who was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Pollard, was acquitted by an all-white jury in Mason, Michigan despite his confession. But an investigation was launched. Thibodeau said the motel became black-owned about two years before 1967’s uprising.
Clark, Forsythe, Hysell and Molloy, and other guests including 19-year-old Aubrey Pollard, a 26-year-old Vietnam veteran Robert Greene, 18-year-old Larry Reed, lead singer for the Rhythm and Blues group the Dramatics, and band road manager, 18-year-old Fred Temple, were rounded up by Detroit police officers and faced against a downstairs hall wall. Instead, a serene manicured park with antique light poles and towering trees exists at the end of a cul-de-sac near the historic Boston-Edison District. His sister, Thelma, says he might not have died that day if only he had listened to their mother.