Word: motels
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SHORTLY after midnight on July 25, 1967, at the height of the Detroit riots, police and National Guard troops seized the annex of the Algiers Motel. They were searching for snipers. Two hours later, having found no snipers, the law enforcement officials left the Algiers Motel. Only the bodies of three black youths remained in the annex...
...Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S. (1964) upheld the public-accommodations section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, guaranteeing Negroes access to hotels, motels and restaurants...
Overwrought Message. The Algiers Motel shooting occurred at the height of the rioting of July on Detroit's central thoroughfare. Police had been subjected to sniper firing, and one cop had already been killed. Consequently, nerves were strained when an overwrought National Guardsman sent word of shots being fired from the area of the motel with its largely Negro clientele. The police dispatcher relayed the message: "Army under heavy fire." Actually, only a few shots had been heard, and Negro witnesses later claimed that these had come from a blank-cartridge pistol; no gun of any kind was ever...
Nevertheless, some 16 state and local police and National Guardsmen converged on the motel. A Negro youth, Carl Cooper, was shot to death just inside the door. Police then dragged seven or more occupants from their rooms and lined them up against a wall. After that, accounts diverge. The Negroes, whose stories shifted rather erratically, reported they were all beaten. A policeman, said one Negro, "pointed to the body and asked me what did I see, and I told him I seen a dead man. And he hit me with a pistol and told me I didn...
Charge of Harassment. What particularly seemed to enrage the police at the Algiers Motel, according to the Negroes Hersey interviewed, was the presence of two young white prostitutes. Senak, said a witness, ripped the clothes off one with the barrel of his shotgun and ordered the other to undress before the officers. He demanded to know why they preferred Negroes as clients. "What's wrong with us, you nigger lovers?" Another cop then chimed in: "We're going to fill up the Detroit River with all you pimps and whores...