I’ll be talking to Peter Werbe about his book – Summer on Fire – a Detroit Novel. This novel details how a group of people around the alternative newspaper – Fifth Estate – reacted to the reality of an urban uprising happening around them.
Summer in Detroit was hot in 1967. And people were anxious. War was raging in Vietnam and the body count was growing – and opposition to the war was growing right along with the count.
John Kennedy has been assassinated in 1963 and Malcolm X had also been killed two years after that.
Dr. King and SNCC had been leading some very vocal civil rights actions but have only had some important but often only symbolic victories. For most people – especially for African-Americans – life went on as usual. The status quo held.
We’d like to thank you for joining us in Facing Reality 4 Social Justice as we look at a fictional account of what happened in Detroit during the summer of 1967.
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