Fifty years ago this weekend, the most deadly urban riot began in Detroit. It started around 3:30 a.m. when police arrested 85 patrons of a blind pig — an illegal after-hours bar — in the midst of an all-black neighborhood that had been all-white 15 or 20 years before.

The statistics are horrifying. Rioting went on for six more nights, with some 2,500 stores looted and burnt. Some 400 families were displaced, and property damage was estimated at $300 million in 1967 dollars. Forty-three people, many of them innocent bystanders, were killed. More than 1,000 people were wounded.