The Algiers Motel

On the night of July twenty-fifth, nineteen sixty-seven, the third night of the rebellion, a sniper was reported to be firing from the Algiers Motel on Virginia Park, not far from where the uprising had begun. Detroit police and Michigan State Police entered the motel annex. When they left, three young Black men were dead.

Carl Cooper was seventeen years old. Aubrey Pollard was nineteen. Fred Temple was eighteen. They had not been sniping. The investigation that followed could not establish that any of them had fired a weapon. No weapon was found in the annex that could be definitively attributed to any of the three.

Seven Black men and two white women were also in the annex that night. They were subjected to what witnesses described as a prolonged interrogation involving severe physical treatment. The surviving witnesses gave largely consistent accounts to investigators. Several officers were identified.

Three Detroit police officers and one private security guard were charged in connection with the deaths. The prosecutions failed. One officer was acquitted at trial. The others saw their cases dismissed or result in mistrials. No one was ever convicted of any crime in connection with the deaths of Carl Cooper, Aubrey Pollard, and Fred Temple.

John Hersey, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, spent months investigating the events at the Algiers Motel. His book on the subject, published in nineteen sixty-eight, is one of the most thorough pieces of documentary journalism about a single episode in American civil rights history. It named names. It presented witness testimony. It asked what accountability looked like in a city where the police held the power and three teenage boys were dead. The answer the justice system provided was: none.

The Algiers Motel was demolished in nineteen seventy-five. Nothing marks the site now.