The Algiers Motel Incident: Part 2 - Three Dead

Inside the Algiers Motel manor house annex, Carl Cooper, Michael Clark, and Lee Forsythe had been listening to music with Juli Hysell and Karen Molloy.  A sudden gunshot from outside broke a window, causing the occupants of the annex to retreat to what they thought was safety. 

What happened next is rife with conflicting statements and conjecture, as the aftermath of traumatic events inevitably are.  The ad hoc team led by the cops stormed into the annex.  The first casualty was Carl Cooper, who was shot dead in a first-floor room even though he was checked in to a third-floor room. 

Responsibility for Carl’s death was never established, though he was felled by a shotgun blast in which the shot was consistent with the type of shotgun then carried by the Detroit police.  No one in the raiding party ever admitted to being the first to enter, claiming Carl was already dead when they arrived.

The group advanced into the building, rounded up the occupants, and moved them into a downstairs corridor.  The officers lined them against the wall and struck each in turn, demanding to know who had fired the shots and where the gun was. 

Pulling Roderick Davis from his brace position along the wall, a patrolman threw a knife to the floor and ordered Roderick to pick it up.  Understandably wanting to avoid being shot by the police in “self defense,” Roderick refused.  After beating Roderick, they moved on to Michael with the same result followed by Lee. 

It got uglier pretty fast.  Patrolman Senak was enraged that Juli and Karen, two white women, were socializing with black men.  Senak forcibly stripped the two, and shouted abuse at them: “Why you got to fuck them?" he demanded.  "What’s wrong with us, you n----r lovers?”

Senak then decided to ratchet up the terror.  Roderick Davis was pulled away from the wall and hustled into a nearby room.  National Guard Warrant Officer Ted Thomas went with them.

After shutting the door Senak ordered Roderick to lie face down on the floor.  Senak fired his weapon into a wall, then winked at Thomas.  Thomas stepped out of the room.  A patrolman asked him if Senak had killed Roderick, and Thomas said yes.  Michael Clark was led into the room next and told to lie on the floor.  Depending on the account, either Thomas or Senak fired into the ceiling.  Returning to the corridor, Senak bragged, “I killed them two motherfuckers!”

At this point the girls urged their companions to tell the officers where the gun was, and told the officers that its owner, Carl, was already dead.  According to later court testimony this was about twenty minutes after the police and soldiers had entered the annex.  Challenged as to why it took her or anyone else so long to mention the pistol and its late owner, Juli Hysell responded simply that they were scared.

That’s reasonable enough.  Patrolman Senak was not appeased, however, and asked who wanted to go into the room next.  Naturally, there were no volunteers.  Patrolman Ronald August was handed a shotgun, and he then pulled Auburey Pollard from the line.  They started toward the room where Roderick and Michael had been taken, when WO Thomas, not wanting to give away the game, said to go to a different room.

Accounts differed as to whether August actually knew what had just happened was a game.  Thomas, whose trial testimony established much of what occurred in the annex, recalled that Senak said something to August as he handed him the weapon but wasn’t certain whether Senak had made the situation clear.  In any case, Thomas went with August and Auburey into the room.  Thomas saw August fire his weapon and Auburey crumple to the floor dead. 

Although Thomas testified he was frightened by the shooting, other witnesses have him leaving the room grinning.  “That n----r didn’t even kick!” he crowed.  That said, Thomas would testify he decided to take his team and leave the motel at that point, telling Senak that what the police was doing inside was their business and not his or his men’s.  Using renewed gunfire on the street as an excuse, most of the raiding party hastily left.

Except Thomas ended up staying after all.  We next find him in a room with Patrolman August, Juli, and Karen.  One of the patrolman in the annex asked Thomas and security guard Melvin Dismukes to escort the girls, who were injured and mostly unclothed, to their room in the main hotel building next door, where they were told to stay put until curfew ended at 5:30.

As for the remaining prisoners in the annex, the police, their own curfew notwithstanding, ran them off with the threat that if they stayed they too would be killed.  They were led out past Auburey Pollard’s lifeless body; up to this point, the youths had thought the execution game was simply a sick joke.  Told to run for their lives, they did.  A couple of them ran several miles away from the Algiers without shoes.

Fred Temple, however, wasn’t afforded the chance to escape.  Patrolman Robert Paille shot him dead, allegedly in a struggle over Paille’s gun. 

None of the deaths at the Algiers Motel were reported to Detroit police homicide detectives by the patrolmen, despite this being required by regulation.  Instead, it was the motel’s own private security who found Carl Cooper, Auburey Pollard, and Fred Temple and contacted the authorities.  

The coroner’s office removed the bodies in the early morning hours of July 26th, but the detectives called to the scene decided that with sporadic gunfire still going on in the street it wasn’t safe to stay.  A knife was found in the annex, but no firearms or expended cartridges.

That morning, the news media were told by the police only that the boys had been killed in an exchange of fire between snipers and themselves.  It would be several more days before hints of what had actually taken place began to surface.

Next: The Aftermath

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar 

The Algiers Motel Incident: Part 1 - The Setting

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Algiers Motel Incident.

The Algiers Motel Incident was itself one episode of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion.  Probably any randomly chosen incident of the many of its kind from that era would have sufficed to provide a parallel to current attitudes and events surrounding race in America, but the unnerving physical and psychological brutality exerted by law enforcement upon unarmed suspects in this instance makes it particularly relevant now.  Race relations, which since Ferguson have been at their ugliest point in decades, seem to have gotten even worse in the wake of last November’s election which has emboldened those bigots who might have been a bit more circumspect before.

More than at any time since the 1960s, conservative politics have become openly entwined with white identity.  Rhetoric surrounding public safety has morphed into thinly veiled calls for the armed oppression of communities of color.  Black Lives Matter in particular has become a focal point of opprobrium for those who wish to preserve white supremacy.  (Cue the anguished protests: “I’m not a racist!”  Hmmm…if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck…)  

In the present climate, it is not difficult to imagine an episode like the Algiers Motel Incident happening in 2017.  With this in mind, I've decided to examine the event with an eye toward a fuller understanding. 

The murders of July 25 - 26, 1967 at the Algiers Motel were a cause célèbre for a while.  Journalist and historian John Hersey published a book in the months afterward which remains the best single account.  The accused police officers and a private security guard were inevitably tried and were inevitably acquitted.  Eventually the matter was forgotten by the public.

There has been renewed interest of late, however.  There is a well-curated website, Algiers Memory, which gives a fairly detailed rundown on the people and events.  Most notably, though, director Kathryn Bigelow has completed a film, Detroit, which is a dramatized recounting of what happened at the Algiers Motel.  The movie opens with a special premiere in that city today and will see general release early next month.

To grasp the violence of the Algiers Motel incident, it's important to know the larger events surrounding it.  The Detroit uprising began on July 23^rd.  Like numerous other civil disturbances then and now, Detroit’s began with a confrontation between police and civilians.  Early Sunday morning, the police raided an unlicensed drinking club, or “blind pig,” on 12^th Street.  Given the late hour, the officers figured there would only be a few people present.

In fact, there were over 80 individuals celebrating the return of two local men from Vietnam.  The officers unwisely decided to arrest the lot of them.  Of course, they weren’t prepared to move a large number of prisoners downtown so they called for vehicles.  This necessitated a wait, which meant there was time for a crowd of onlookers to gather.  Predictably, these folks were not favorably disposed toward the cops. 

Tensions rose, and someone chucked a bottle at a police officer.  As with the precipitating incident of the Watts uprising two years earlier, a drunk driving stop gone awry, the raiding officers were able to disengage before things got really bad.  Their departure didn’t quell the mood of the people in the street, who then began breaking windows and looting stores.   Over the ensuing two days, the city was convulsed with such violence that Michigan governor George Romney—yes, Mitt’s daddy—called out the National Guard to restore order and requested federal troops from President Lyndon Johnson for good measure. 

When things quieted after July 27^th, 43 people were dead.  All but ten were black.  Coming right on the heels of the Newark riots, the 12^th Street uprising stood out in what would be remembered by some as the Long Hot Summer of 1967 which saw more than 150 urban disturbances across the United States.  (I say “by some,” because it really points up the myopic, narcissistic cultural memory of white Americans that they are more apt to remember this time as the Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury than for the racial oppression and urban violence which were its true hallmark.)

What made the Algiers Motel murders such a notorious episode was its calculated viciousness.  While much police brutality is probably spur of the moment and adrenaline-fueled, the officers who responded to reports of gunfire near the motel turned their encounter with the suspects into a terrifying game which left three murdered and five others badly beaten.  

The shooting deaths of two Detroit officers the day before undoubtedly put the police on edge.  It did not help that the 8,000 National Guardsmen sent to help restore order were from predominantly white suburbs and rural areas.  Few of the guardsmen had combat experience and as a group were not adequately trained to handle civil disturbances.

The Algiers Motel itself seemed at first glance to be an unlikely venue for what transpired.  Several of its occupants that night had checked in because it seemed to be a safe place to hunker down and wait for everything to blow over.  It was true that the Algiers stood in a neighborhood gone to seed along a stretch of Woodward Avenue where disreputable people were known to do disreputable things.  But it hadn’t always been that way.

The motel had been built in the heady, optimistic days after the Second World War.  Detroit was a thriving, vibrant manufacturing and cultural center then.  It was a place to visit, not avoid, and the visitors needed clean and inexpensive lodgings.  Before Holiday Inn and other family-oriented hotel chains claimed their business, mom-and-pop outfits like the Algiers needed a theme, or gimmick if you will, to bring in the paying gentry.  Hence, the Arabesque name and trappings.  A picture postcard from its respectable period shows a clean, tidy two-level structure with late model cars in the parking lot and happy families relaxing around the swimming pool with the motel’s road sign with its palm tree motif in the foreground.  

By 1967, the Algiers had its best years behind it.  At the time of the incident it had acquired a reputation as a hot-sheet motel frequented by sex workers and drug dealers.  The main building had been supplemented by an annex in the form of a neighboring three-story house, the so-called Manor House, the owners had purchased several years earlier.  It was in this annex where the victims of the Algiers Motel Incident were staying on the evening of July 25^th.

This is the first cast of characters, the people staying at the Algiers Motel: Carl Cooper, aged 17, and his friend, 19-year-old Auburey Pollard.  Also staying in the annex was 18-year-old Fred Temple.  Fred had been at a concert at the Fox Theater on the evening on the 23^rd featuring Martha Reeves which had been cut short because of the unrest; Fred was friends with several members of a lower billed act called The Dramatics.  All three youths were waiting out the violence at the motel before going home.

During the day, friends and acquaintances of the young men had joined them at the Algiers.  Michael Clark, Lee Forsythe, and James Sortor were Carl and Auburey’s friends.  Fred’s friends from The Dramatics, Roderick Davis and Cleveland Larry Reid, were there as well.  Two older men, Robert Greene and Charles Moore, were also checked in.

A bit more problematic given what would take place was the presence of two other motel guests.  Two white girls, Juli Hysell and Karen Molloy, both 18, had checked into the Algiers with their last dollar and cent.  Later accounts had it that the police thought Juli and Karen were prostitutes.  Trial testimony established that they were recent cosmetology school graduates on a celebratory road trip.  In any case, the two young women became reliant on the generosity of their new friends in the annex for their meals and incidentals.

The group spent the day at the motel pool, shooting craps, and lounging in the annex watching TV.   At some point late in the evening, Carl began to play with a starter pistol.  He brandished it, frightening Lee, before firing a blank round.  The report from the pistol sounded like real gunfire out in the street.  This attracted police attention to the vicinity of the Algiers Motel.

Now, on to the second cast of characters, the force which responded to the call of shots fired.  Patrolman David Senak, 23, became for all purposes the leader of the raiding party.  “Snake” Senak had earned a reputation as a go-getter during his brief tenure with the Detroit police.  He specialized in plainclothes vice work busting hookers and johns.  He also possessed a misogynistic streak.  When asked by John Hersey whether he thought women were less moral than men, Senak answered with a question of his own: “Who gave who (sic) the apple?”

With Senak were patrolmen Ronald August and Robert Paille, along with a contingent from the Michigan State Police.  Further support arrived in the form of a National Guard detachment led by Warrant Officer Theodore Thomas, who was a factory worker in daily life.  They gained additional backup from an armed private security guard at a grocery across the street from the Algiers.  His name was Melvin Dismukes.  The men cautiously approached the motel annex, weapons drawn.

Next: Three Deaths

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar 

Spectacle

Poking around YouTube, I stumbled upon a doc which had aired on Britain’s Channel 4 a few years ago.  An episode of a series titled How the Other Half Live, the program profiles two families, one affluent and the other poor.

In this installment, the first family is that of millionaire marketing consultant David Abington and his wife Angie.  The Abingtons live in a spacious manse in the countryside with their two young children.  The second is that of debt ridden single mom Caroline Buffery and her daughter, who live in a cramped council house.  The program’s conceit is to compare their lives whilst the Abingtons looked for ways to help the Bufferys.

How the Other Half Live points up the vicissitudes of late stage capitalism.  Mr. Abington, a truck driver’s son with a modest education, succeeded through perseverance and ability.  Ms. Buffery, who gave up an itinerant life as a “New Age traveler” after her daughter was born, earned a criminal justice degree and a master’s in law.  Unable to land a “pupillage” or apprenticeship which would qualify her as a barrister, she works in a betting parlor.  Her schooling has left her with £20,000 in debt she’s been unable to pay down, adding to her woes.

Whatever its producers intended it to be, How the Other Half Live comes out as a bizarre cross between a news documentary and a reality show. Mr. Abington said he was inspired to reach out to a financially struggling family after returning from a vacation.  Traveling in first class, Abington walked with his son George to the rear of their plane.  He said George became visibly apprehensive when they left business class and entered the economy section.

Talk about sheltered.  People living in actual poverty can’t afford air travel, and in my experience the passengers up front don’t look much different from us riffraff riding in the back.  But, never mind.  David and Angie Abington reached out to Caroline Buffery.   

David, who couldn’t place Caroline in a pupillage right away due to the enormous size of the applicant pool, hires Caroline to do legal work for him in the meantime.  Son George and daughter Rebecca become fast friends with Caroline’s daughter Iris, despite their different backgrounds.  And they all lived happily ever after. 

They all lived happily ever after, because that’s what the narrative conventions of these kind of TV shows demand.   It’s certain that this program was partly scripted as reality shows are, that any spontaneity of the subjects was calculated, and that the outcome decided before the cameras started rolling.  The question of whether the Abingtons made any lasting difference in the lives of the Bufferys is unresolved at the end of the hour.   

What is clear is that How the Other Half Live, aside from its obvious reality show tackiness, is that it is part of a long tradition of poverty porn on television.  Poor people make us feel superior, make us feel virtuous by comparison.  Being poor is shameful; in the past when I’ve let my guard down with people I’ve known a while and mentioned I grew up in poverty they would often give me a funny look as if I’d told them I had a social disease.  I’ve since learned not to mention this part of my biography.

Public discourse high and low reflects a trenchant hostility on the topic.  News and political commentary discuss the policy implications of poverty but back away from taxpayer supported anti-poverty programs notwithstanding their ideological stance.  Reading the postings of internet trolls, one can feel a nearly palpable hatred of the poor.  Very little effort is made to analyze the structural, cultural, environmental, and behavioral aspects of the problem.  It’s simpler and much more satisfying to blame the victim.

                                                                                                      

TV programming reflects our cultural attitudes, and depictions of the less well-off or just economically unfortunate cut across decades and genres.  The bathetic How the Other Half Live reminded me in its tone of still another YouTube artifact, this one hailing from television’s so-called Golden Age.  It was a game show, of all things, an installment of Queen for a Day.

Queen for a Day was a daytime show targeted at housewives which had made the leap from radio in the late 1940s and ran into the early 1960s.  It’s an appalling piece of work, perhaps even more exploitive than anything seen on contemporary American TV.   Hosted with cringeworthy smarminess by Jack Bailey, Queen for a Day would call on stage several women chosen at random.  Each would recount their financial problems and tell the host what sort of help they would like to receive from the show. 

The winner was chosen by receiving the loudest applause from the studio audience.  Seated on a throne in a crown and robe and clutching a scepter as the house orchestra played “Pomp and Circumstance,” the new Queen was presented with her prizes.  As with Caroline Buffery, we are implicitly assured that the Queen faced nothing but smooth sailing ahead of her.

This particular episode, a kinescope from 1958, is one of the very few which have survived.  True to the show's theme, the contestants each had their own awful bad luck.  One was a single mom whose husband had been killed in a hunting accident.  She wanted to return with her daughter to her family’s home in Ohio and train as a hairdresser.  Another was a military spouse who wanted to build bunk beds in her trailer for her four kids.   Still another was a mother to a bedridden polio victim in a body cast who wanted a hospital gurney so he could leave the house occasionally and a transistor radio to keep him company in his sickroom.  (And if that wasn’t enough misfortune, this lady’s husband was an invalid with a heart condition.)   

The next contestant in the misery parade was a timorous and very pregnant young woman who needed funds to buy inventory for her family's failing grocery store, which she said had a grand total of 64¢ in the till that morning.  (Upon hearing this Bailey took up an impromptu collection onstage, netting a few dollars which he presented to her with flip ostentatiousness.)  Lastly, we were introduced to a mother whose husband was unemployed and also had a bad heart and whose teenage son was crippled by rheumatic fever.  She hoped for a set of encyclopedias and a remodeled bedroom for the boy.

The recent widow was the episode’s Queen, who won a scholarship to beauty school.  The audience acclamation which chose the winner was hard to watch, particularly because I knew that these were regular people and their reactions were real.  The show used an “applause meter” to measure audience sentiment.  Each woman wore an apprehensive expression as Jack Bailey reminded the audience of their wish and awaited their share of applause.  The shopkeeper’s shoulders were visibly heaving from the deep breaths she was taking.

Queen for a Day was pure spectacle, misfortune and redemption as sadistically vicarious pleasure.  We love to see others have their dignity taken from them, as long as we don't give the objects of our contempt too much thought.  In the case of Queen, the contestants’ authenticity is plain to see and this fact adds to the discomfort of watching them share their pain with the viewing public.  The contestants came on stage in their dowdy street clothes and without stage makeup.   A couple of them were visibly wringing their hands as Bailey interviewed them, and they all either stammered nervously or spoke in such low voices that the host had to ask them to repeat themselves.

The fact that each of the women was desperate enough to pin their hopes on winning a game show, especially one with all or nothing stakes, may have overridden any humiliation they might have experienced but it doesn’t make it any more palatable to watch.  I’m actually a bit surprised contemporary TV hasn’t ventured into similar concepts, though attempts to revive Queen for a Day have been unsuccessful.  I doubt it had anything to do with the concept’s lack of subtlety; maybe it just seemed dated or needed a new gimmick to freshen it up.

Still, in a time where the social safety net is wafer thin it’s not hard to imagine equally desperate people today being willing to subject themselves to degradation in front of millions of viewers in exchange for a chance at a prize.  How the Other Half Live strikes me as a marginally more sophisticated form of this tendency.  Social media and our preoccupation with recording every trivial moment on our phones has lowered our inhibitions, though, and Millennials in particular are more willing to trade their self-respect for a little exposure, so the future evolution of these kind of programs will be interesting to follow. 

Television may have reached maturity as a medium.  But it has not lost an iota of its ability to reduce us to rubbernecking at other people’s suffering.

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar