It was an auspicious season that year in Detroit. On Saturday, July 22, the city's police raided a downtown after-hours club where a party was in progress for several black soldiers just returned from Vietnam. As the raid progressed, a crowd gathered outside the club; by 8 a.m. Sunday, there were about 3,000 people milling around. Someone broke a window. Fires spread.
"A spirit of carefree nihilism was taking hold," said a writer for the Kerner report on what came to be known as the Detroit riots. "Late Sunday afternoon it appeared to one observer that young people were 'dancing amidst the flames.'"
Three guesses which dance they were doing.
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