Policing & The Ghetto Speaks

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. 

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