The Algiers Motel Incident - Hardcover

Thirty years ago, in the midst of the 1967 riots that rocked Detroit, the Algiers Motel was the site of a brutal confrontation. Three black men were killed and nine others were brutally beaten by, as John Hersey describes it in The Algiers Motel Incident, an "aggregate of Detroit police, Michigan state troopers, national guardsmen, and private guards". Responding to a telephoned report of sniping, the police group invaded the Algiers Motel and interrogated ten black men and two white women, none of whom were armed, for an hour. By the time the interrogators had left, the three men had been shot to death and the others, including the women, beaten. Hersey spent months interviewing those involved in the incident and sorting out the ensuing court proceedings in order to demonstrate that there had in fact been no sniping and that the three black men were murdered "for being thought to be pimps, for being considered punks, for making out with white girls ... for being, all in all, black young men and part of the black rage of the time".