In the 1960s and 1970s, police brutality ran rampant throughout Detroit. The city's majority-white police department often targeted Black youth. Yet, Frank Ditto and ESVID stood strong against the blatant and, at times, dangerous discrimination against the Black community. Much like with the murals, by speaking out in the Ghetto Speaks, Ditto gave a voice to those otherwise suppressed.
ESVID and the Detroit police had already clashed during the Detroit segment of The Poor People's Campaign. a national movement against the brutality and hostility directed at those living under the poverty line. In 1968, The Poor People’s Campaign came to Detroit, a stop along the way to the larger demonstration in Washington, DC.
While in the Motor City, they organized a meeting at Cobo Hall and a walk to protest impoverished living conditions. The Detroit police launched two unprovoked attacks on activists in the midst of these protests, violently assaulting participants. As witnesses would later claim, the group of activists was mainly Black, young, and completely unaggressive.
Richard Morris. “STRESS Witnesses The ‘Fire Next Time’.” The Ghetto Speaks,(Detroit, Mich.) December 11, 1972. Folder 4 (1972), The Ghetto Speaks, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
More officers began moving in on the growing crowd, until, without warning, a group of police on horseback charged forward and began beating protesters with nightsticks. In total, an estimated 26 people were injured, but the official reports only later mentioned four. No officers were disciplined for the attack and no consequences were dealt out.
Ditto to support their cause even after the campaign retreated to other areas outside of Detroit to continue their work. After articles covering the campaign came out in 1968, he continued to run small ad blocks in his paper, proclaiming to all that read, “Protest The Inhumane Treatment of Poor People!” The outbreak of violence, covered by Ditto’s Ghetto Speaks, only seemed to further the resolve that something needed to change.
It didn’t start with the Kercheval Incident: truthfully there were years of build up exacerbated by the formation of the Detroit Police Department’s STRESS (“Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets”) unit, a 1970s program that sent out plain clothes officers to stop crimes in so-called "crime prone neighborhoods" and "poorer areas," both of which were oftentimes predominantly Black. The program’s "goal" was to catch criminals red-handed and to "stop crimes before they even happened." This, of course, posed a problem: the special force was mostly made of white officer who carried prejudices about the communities they were supposed to "protect." In total an estimated 22 people were killed by STRESS agents.
“ESVID SUPPORTS ABOLISHMENT OF STRESS”. The Ghetto Speaks.(Detroit, Mich.) April 5, 1972. Folder 4 (1972), The Ghetto Speaks, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
The Ghetto Speaks repeatedly reported on the vicious attacks of white officers on Black civilians. Each article verbally tore apart the mistakes of the Detroit Police Force and called for the abolition of STRESS. One such article listed each person killed throughout the year and the enactor of each murder, “KILLED: James Smith on July 1, 1971, by one of Detroit’s Finest, a public exterminator with a moniker like Paul Van Wie." The article by Morris goes on, covering the page with names, only to turn and list 4 STRESS decoy patrolmen that had been wounded in December. It is their pictures on the front page, pristinely in uniform, and not the murdered victims. The sarcastic tone the paper takes only slightly soothes the bitter truth of just where the city’s priorities lay.
One particular article captures the united front of the Black community against the police brutality: “ESVID Supports Abolishment of STRESS” screams out in bold letters. “That Public Notice is given this day, the 26th of March, that ESVID does hereby declare that all its resources, its manpower, its energy, its expertise and its Black community spirit is now engaged in the battle to abolish STRESS” . In 1974, STRESS was abolished, brought down in part by a conspiracy lawsuit and inquiry into police terror, and finished off with the election and subsequent actions of Mayor Young. Coleman Young was the first black mayor in Detroit and, as part of his campaign, he promised to rid Detroit of the STRESS program. The police brutality in Detroit would not go unchecked any longer.
Though Ditto and his newspaper didn’t stay around forever, the articles he ran pushed for a change that many needed. Their protest against discriminatory policing in Detroit served as a uniting factor for the black community. Not everything can be fixed in a night or a few short years. Centuries of racism can’t be reversed in less than a decade. As ESVID’s articles on STRESS, police brutality, and the treatment of the poor would show, the murals weren’t about a fight well won, but a fight still ongoing.
Written by Claudia Torrey
Matthew Lassiter & Policing and Social Justice History Lab, “Remembering STRESS Victims” Detroit Under Fire: Police VIolence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era, 2021, accessed August 2025. https://policing.umhistorylabs.lsa.umich.edu/s/detroitunderfire/page/rememberingstressvictims
Policing and Social Justice History Lab, “Cobo I: Poor People’s Campaign,” Detroit Under Fire, 2021, accessed August 2025. . Retrieved from https://policing.umhistorylabs.lsa.umich.edu/s/detroitunderfire/page/cobo-hall
National Museum of African American History and Culture, “1968 poor people’s campaign - challenges and successes,” (n. dD. ) accessed August 2, 2025 Retrieved from https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/1968-poor-peoples-campaign-challenges-and-successes
Richard Morris. “STRESS Witnesses The ‘Fire Next Time’,”. The Ghetto Speaks, December 11, 1972.
William. Turner, “Blacks repeatedly being killed by white cop’s”. The Ghetto Speaks, April 5, 1972.
Diana. McKnight, (1972, March 22). “Get rid of STRESS or else,”. The Ghetto Speaks, March 22, 1972.
Valerie. Lynn, “STRESS goes to trial”. The Ghetto Speaks, April 5, 1972.
William. Turner, (1972, March 8). “STRESS strikes again,”. The Ghetto Speaks, March 8, 1972.