The Algiers Motel Incident

In the summer of 1967, Detroit was already burning when a far quieter tragedy unfolded behind the doors of the Algiers Motel. As the city reeled from six days of unrest, three young Black men—Carl Cooper, Auburey Pollard, and Fred Temple—were detained, terrorized, and killed during a police raid that would later become one of the most disturbing chapters of the Detroit Uprising.

In this milestone 100th episode of Curator135, we explore what led Detroit to the brink, how the uprising began, and what happened inside the Algiers Motel that night. We examine survivor testimony, the failed prosecutions that followed, and how the justice system ultimately left families without answers.

But this episode is also about what came after. About a city shaped by fire, injustice, and loss—and one that refused to disappear. From population collapse and decades of disinvestment to the resilience, revival, and renewed energy seen today, Detroit’s story is more than its worst moment.

This is a story about memory, accountability, and survival.
And about why some histories demand to be remembered.

Transcript

It’s late.

The city is already burning.

Sirens echo somewhere beyond the walls, stretched thin and distant, like they’re exhausted too.

The power flickers.

Inside the Algiers Motel, the air smells like sweat, smoke, and fear.

Someone laughs nervously.

Someone else tells them to shut up.

These are kids. Teenagers, really.

They came here to hide.

To wait it out.

To let the night pass.

Then there’s a sound.

A pop.

It’s quick. Sharp. Almost playful.

But outside, someone hears it and thinks it’s gunfire.

Moments later, the pounding begins.

Boots on stairs.

Doors kicked in.

Shouting.

Uniformed men flood the hallway—Detroit police, state troopers, National Guardsmen. Guns raised. Fingers tight on triggers.

Everyone is forced to the floor.

Face down.

Hands behind heads.

Eyes closed.

They are told to be quiet.

They are told not to move.

One by one, young men are pulled into separate rooms.

The doors close.

Inside those rooms, there are questions.

And beatings.

And threats.

A gunshot rings out.

Then another.

Someone screams.

Down the hallway, the others listen.

They listen as their friends are dragged away.

They listen as officers tell them, “This is what happens.”

By morning, three young Black men will be dead.

No weapons will be found.

No warnings will be given.

No one will be held responsible.

Outside, Detroit will wake up to headlines about riots and looting and chaos.

But inside the Algiers Motel, something else happened.

Something quieter.

Something deliberate.

Something that would be buried beneath the noise of a city on fire.

Tonight, for Episode 100 of Curator135,

we go back to Detroit in the summer of 1967.

We go back to the fire.

And we go back to the motel room

where justice never walked out.

Welcome to year six of the Curator 135 Podcast, my name is Nathan Olli and this is Episode 100 - The Algiers Motel Incident

Before the fire,

before the tanks,

before the headlines—

Detroit was a city built on promises.

Factories hummed day and night.

Cars rolled off assembly lines by the thousands.

For a time, Detroit was the future.

But that future was not shared equally.

By the 1950s and 60s, Detroit was one of the most segregated cities in America.

White families moved outward.

Suburbs expanded.

Highways cut straight through Black neighborhoods.

Entire communities were erased.

Two of the most vibrant Black areas in the city were Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. Black Bottom was a vibrant, predominantly Black neighborhood on Detroit's east side, east of downtown, roughly bordered by Gratiot Ave, Brush St, and the Detroit River, known for its rich culture before being demolished for urban renewal. Paradise Valley was a thriving, self-contained business and entertainment district for African Americans in Detroit from the 1920s through the 1950s. Located in the Black Bottom neighborhood, it served as a cultural hub for Black entrepreneurs and jazz musicians, featuring over 300 Black-owned businesses, including theaters, nightclubs, restaurants, and professional offices.

What replaced them was not opportunity.

It was concrete.

Freeways.

Displacement.

Black Detroiters were pushed into overcrowded housing.

Jobs became harder to reach.

Mortgages were denied through redlining.

Loans disappeared.

Hope narrowed.

And policing made it worse.

Detroit’s police force in the 1960s was overwhelmingly white.

Complaints of brutality were common.

So were aggressive stop-and-search tactics.

For many Black residents, police weren’t protectors.

They were an occupying force.

Tension didn’t explode overnight.

It simmered.

Every traffic stop.

Every unanswered complaint.

Every beating that went unpunished.

By the summer of 1967, the city was dry tinder.

It only needed a spark.

That spark came in the early morning hours of July 23, 1967. Officers from the vice squad targeted a building on 12th Street near Clairmount, in a predominantly Black neighborhood on Detroit’s West Side.

Inside was a blind pig.

Blind pigs were unlicensed, after-hours drinking spots.

They weren’t new.

They had existed in Detroit since the early 1900s.

During Prohibition, they were how Black Detroiters drank at all—often quietly, often with police turning a blind eye in exchange for payoffs. And even after Prohibition ended, blind pigs remained.

Not because people wanted trouble.

But because Detroit was segregated.

White-owned bars often weren’t welcoming.

Licensed bars closed at two in the morning.

And blind pigs became places to gather. To talk. To celebrate. To feel safe.

Sometimes they were messy.

Sometimes illegal things happened there.

But to many in the neighborhood, they were part of everyday life.

And police knew that.

In fact, federal civil rights investigators warned Detroit earlier in 1967 that constant blind pig raids were inflaming racial tension. Their report called blind pigs “an important part of life” in Black neighborhoods—and described the raids as heavy-handed, even moralistic.

An attempt by a white, middle-class authority to impose its rules on people already living under pressure.

The building at 9125 12th Street had been raided before.

At least nine times in less than two years.

Sometimes police found gambling.

Sometimes they made arrests.

Once, they walked in on a children’s Halloween party.

This place wasn’t just a bar.

It also housed a local civic organization.

A community hub.

A political meeting space.

And on that night—early Sunday morning—it was hosting a party.

Three young Black servicemen had just returned home from Vietnam.

They were being welcomed back.

At around 3:45 a.m., an undercover vice officer entered the building and bought a beer. Minutes later, the door was broken down.

Police rushed in.

But this time, something was different.

There were far more people inside than expected.

More than eighty.

Instead of making a few arrests and moving on, the supervising officer made a decision.

Everyone was to be arrested.

One by one, partygoers were marched outside and loaded into paddy wagons in front of the two story Economy Printing building.

It took nearly an hour.

And during that hour, people gathered.

Neighbors.

Friends.

Onlookers.

They watched police haul away dozens of people for what many saw as nothing more than a late-night celebration.

Anger bubbled.

Someone in the crowd shouted questions that had been asked for years.

Why here?

Why us?

Why not the wealthy white neighborhoods?

Why did police always come down here?

As the wagons started to pull away, the crowd stayed behind. The 19-year-old son of the man who ran the blind pig, who’d been working as a bouncer that evening, threw a bottle at one of the arresting officers.

By sunrise, the crowd had grown into the thousands.

Police lost control of 12th and Clairmount.

And the city crossed a line it could not step back from.

Officials later insisted this raid was routine. That nothing unusual happened. That the violence began because of one thrown bottle.

But Detroiters knew better. This wasn’t about a bottle. It was about years of pressure.

And once the fire started, it spread fast.

Windows broke. Stores were looted.

What began as frustration turned into something larger.

By morning time, Detroit was burning.

Police lost control of entire neighborhoods. Michigan State Police were called in.

Then the National Guard. Eventually, the U.S. Army rolled through the streets.

Tanks moved past burning buildings. Soldiers with rifles stood at intersections. Local high schools were used for impromptu police and army headquarters. 

Curfews were enforced.

Gunfire echoed through the night.

Officially, it was called a riot.

But for many who lived there, it felt like a release, like an uprising. Years of pressure finally tearing through the surface.

And in the chaos,

as the city’s attention turned to smoke and flame,

something else happened.

Something far from 12th Street.

Something behind closed doors.

Something that would leave three young men dead.

To understand what happened next, we need to go to a motel just off Woodward Avenue.

A place meant for travelers. A place that became a crime scene.

In the early hours of July 25th, 1967, while much of Detroit burned, a group of young people sought shelter near Woodward Avenue at a place called the Algiers Motel.

The Algiers sat just far enough from the worst of the fires to feel like refuge.

It would not be.

The motel had two sections—the main building and an annex behind it. Most of what happened that night unfolded in the annex.

Inside were Black teenagers and young men, along with two white teenage girls.

They were not rioting.

They were not armed.

They were waiting for the night to pass. They’d been warned not to go by their parents, they ignored that warning. 

Among them were three young men who would not survive:

Carl Cooper, 17

Auburey Pollard, 19

Fred Temple, 18

Also present were Julie Hysell and Karen Malloy, both 18 years old.

Several others survived the night, including members of the Detroit vocal group The Dramatics, who were early in their careers.

What happened next would become one of the most disturbing episodes of the uprising.

By July 25th, fear ruled the city.

Rumors of snipers—real or imagined—were everywhere. Law enforcement and National Guard units were on edge, responding aggressively to reports of gunfire.

Sometime after midnight, a noise came from inside the Algiers annex.

A sharp pop.

It later emerged that the sound likely came from a starter pistol—a blank-firing gun that looks real but cannot fire a projectile.

But in a city already primed for violence, context didn’t matter.

A guardsman outside the motel reported they were being fired upon.

That single claim changed everything.

Once the word sniper entered the air, the situation escalated beyond control.

Shots were fired into the Building

Law enforcement converged on the Algiers.

Detroit Police officers.

National Guardsmen.

No clear chain of command.

Gunfire erupted.

Bullets shattered windows of the annex.

Then officers stormed inside.

What’s important—and supported by later investigation—is this:

No evidence was ever found that anyone inside the motel fired at police or the Guard.

The “sniper” narrative collapsed under scrutiny.

But by then, the damage was already done.

Survivors later described a terrifyingly consistent pattern.

People were dragged from their rooms and forced into a hallway.

They were lined up against the wall.

Made to lie face-down.

Kicked.

Beaten.

Screamed at.

Officers demanded answers.

Who has the gun?

Who was shooting?

One by one, young men were pulled from the line and taken into private rooms.

The doors closed.

Gunshots followed.

Not aimed at anyone—but into walls and ceilings.

Mock executions.

The purpose was terror.

To make those still waiting believe their friends were being killed.

It worked.

Some screamed.

Some cried.

Some prayed.

And in the middle of it all, the presence of two white teenage girls with Black young men became another trigger.

Witnesses later testified that racial and sexual humiliation intensified the violence.

This was no longer an investigation, it was punishment.

Carl Cooper, 17, was the first to die.

Accounts differ on the exact moment, but what is consistent is this: Cooper was unarmed, and his death was later folded into the false “sniper” explanation.

Auburey Pollard, 19, was taken into a room and shot.

An officer later admitted firing the fatal shot, claiming self-defense.

Fred Temple, 18—who worked as a valet for The Dramatics—was also taken aside and killed.

Again, an officer admitted to the shooting.

Again, self-defense was claimed.

But survivors told a different story.

A story of control.

Of staged fear.

Of men killed while detained.

Initially, the deaths were reported as casualties of the uprising.

Snipers.

Crossfire.

Chaos.

But witnesses were alive.

And they talked.

As journalists from the Detroit Free Press and investigators dug deeper, the official story began to unravel.

Three Detroit police officers—David Senak, Ronald August, and Robert Paille—were charged.

Also charged was Melvin Dismukes, a Black private security guard who had attempted to help maintain order.

Trials followed.

In the months after the Algiers Motel killings, pressure mounted.

Witnesses spoke.

Journalists dug.

And the story the public had first been told—snipers, crossfire, chaos—began to collapse.

Eventually, charges were filed.

But the trials would not take place in Detroit.

Defense attorneys argued that the officers could not receive a fair trial in Wayne County because of widespread publicity and public anger following the uprising. Judges agreed.

The cases were moved out of the city.

Out of Detroit.

Out of Wayne County.

And into Mason, a small, predominantly white town in Ingham County, near Lansing.

For many Detroit residents, this decision alone felt like a verdict.

The community most affected by the killings would not sit in judgment.

In 1969, Patrolman Ronald August went on trial for the murder of Auburey Pollard.

Jury selection took place in Ingham County.

The final panel consisted entirely of white jurors.

Not a single Black juror was seated.

The defense centered its case on fear, confusion, and self-defense—arguing that officers were responding to sniper fire in a city spiraling out of control.

Survivor testimony was challenged.

Credibility was questioned.

The chaos of the uprising was used as context—and as cover.

After deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.

August walked free.

After the state trial failed to secure a conviction, federal prosecutors stepped in.

In 1970, a civil rights conspiracy case was brought against August, Paille, and Senak—along with Melvin Dismukes, a Black security guard who had been present at the motel and who many believed had tried to de-escalate the situation.

The charge: conspiracy to violate the civil rights of the Algiers Motel occupants.

Once again, the case was heard outside Detroit.

Once again, the jury was all white.

Witnesses testified to beatings.

To mock executions.

To young men taken away and never returning.

The defense repeated familiar themes.

Confusion.

Fear.

Split-second decisions in a city under siege.

After deliberation, the jury acquitted all four defendants.

No one was convicted.

For the families of Carl Cooper, Auburey Pollard, and Fred Temple, the trials brought no justice.

For many in Detroit’s Black community, the outcome confirmed what they already believed—that the system was not built to protect them, or to hold police accountable when harm was done.

Years later, at least two of the officers involved would return to law enforcement.

The legal system had spoken.

And what it said was clear.

Three young men were dead.

Witnesses were alive.

The facts were contested.

But in the end, no one would be punished.

Some details of that night remain disputed. But the core facts do not.

An interracial group was detained.

They were terrorized.

Three unarmed Black teenagers were killed.

And the justice system failed them.

While Detroit had burned in public view, what happened inside the Algiers Motel was quieter.

Contained.

Controlled.

And just as destructive.

And when the smoke finally cleared in the summer of 1967 Detroit was changed forever.

The numbers alone tell part of the story.

Forty-three people were dead.

More than a thousand were injured.

Over 7,000 arrests were made.

Entire blocks were destroyed by fire.

Insurance companies refused to rebuild.

Businesses left.

Jobs vanished.

And then came the exodus.

In 1950, Detroit’s population had been nearly 1.85 million people.

By 1980, it had dropped below 1.2 million.

By 2010, it fell under 715,000.

White flight accelerated.

Tax revenue collapsed.

Schools struggled.

Public services thinned.

The city that once symbolized American industrial might became shorthand for decline.

A National punchline.

A Political cautionary tale.

A place outsiders talked about, but rarely visited.

And yet—Detroit endured.

Through deindustrialization.

Through bankruptcy.

Through decades of disinvestment.

People stayed.

They rebuilt block by block.

Neighborhood by neighborhood.

Often without help.

In the last couple of decades, something shifted.

Downtown and Midtown began to grow again.

Vacant buildings were renovated.

New businesses moved in.

Old neighborhoods found new life.

Today, Detroit is not pretending its past didn’t happen.

It’s integrating it.

The city is now home to sports venues for the Tigers, Lions, Pistons, and Redwings, clustered downtown—bringing people back into the urban core.

Nightlife returned.

Restaurants followed.

Music never left.

Casinos opened.

Public spaces filled again.

Foot traffic replaced fear.

Institutions like Wayne State University anchor the city’s future—bringing students, research, and energy into neighborhoods once written off. Ask my son, he loves being down there everyday.

For a new generation, Detroit isn’t a warning.

It’s a home.

A place to live.

A place to learn.

A place to stay.

Detroit is still complicated.

It still carries scars from 1967.

From the Algiers Motel.

From policies and decisions that left deep wounds.

But it is also tough.

Resilient.

Creative.

It is a city that survived being abandoned.

And chose to come back anyway.

The people who live there today—students, families, artists, workers—are rewriting the narrative that once defined the city solely by its worst moments.

Detroit isn’t frozen in the past.

It’s moving.

Changing.

And demanding to be seen clearly.

To tell the story of Detroit honestly, you have to tell all of it.

The fire.

The violence.

The injustice.

But also the endurance.

The rebuilding.

The pride.

Because the same city that lived through 1967 is the city standing today. 

Detroit’s revival does not erase what happened at the Algiers Motel—it exists because we remember it. The lives of Carl Cooper, Auburey Pollard, and Fred Temple were cut short in a moment when fear, power, and injustice collided, and for decades their names were nearly lost beneath the noise of history. But cities, like people, are defined not only by their worst nights, but by what they choose to carry forward. Today’s Detroit—alive with students, music, families, and futures—stands as quiet defiance against the idea that violence gets the final word. Remembering the Algiers Motel is not about reopening wounds; it’s about refusing to let those lives be forgotten, and about recognizing that every step the city takes forward is built on a promise to do better than it once did.

Before I go, I want to say thank you.

One hundred episodes ago, Curator135 began with a story called “A Trunk, a King, and Some Tiny Christmas Elves.” It wasn’t about true crime or headlines or shock. It was about curiosity. About where we come from. About myth, memory, and the strange little objects and stories that stick with us long after we forget where they came from. A trunk carried across an ocean. A bloodline tied to legend. Tiny elves my dad collected that I never even knew the name of. That first episode was about how stories shape the way we think, how folklore and myth give us meaning, and how important it is to keep those stories alive—or maybe even start new ones.

Since then, this podcast has wandered through dark chapters of history, forgotten crimes, lost voices, and uncomfortable truths. We’ve talked about injustice, mystery, tragedy, and the people history tried to overlook. But at its core, Curator135 has always been about the same thing it was in Episode One: preserving stories before they disappear, and asking why some are remembered while others are buried.

If you’ve been here since the beginning, thank you for taking that journey with me. And if you found the show somewhere along the way, thank you for listening, for caring, and for being curious. There are still so many stories left to tell. So many myths worth revisiting. So many truths waiting in the shadows. I’m proud of these first 100 episodes—and I can’t wait to see where the next 100 take us.

I’ll have photos and news article clippings from this episode on the website soon, Curator135.com. 

If you enjoy this podcast and want to be a bigger part of it, consider becoming a patron. Head to patreon.com/curator135 and join Dave, David, Jim, Marie, Laura, Vicki, Chris, and our newest Patron, Lori. There are three tiers of support or you can name your own donation. Thank you patrons, I couldn’t do this without you. 

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