The Nation: Close to the Brink

For a time, it looked like the beginning of the 1967 riots all over again. The trouble started outside Bob Bolton's Bar and Grill in the Livernois-Fenkell section of Detroit. The bar's white owner, Andrew Chinarian, 39, claimed that he had caught Obie Wynn, 18, and two other black youths tampering with his car in the parking lot. As the trio tried to escape, said Chinarian, he fired at Wynn with a .25-cal. pistol and hit him in the back of the head. When word spread through the black community that Wynn was dead (he did not actually die until early...

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