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They may also prove cruelly damaging to the hopes of many Negroes. Says Urbanologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "At a time when there is more evidence than ever about the need for integration, rioters are undermining the grounds for integration and letting all the whites say, 'Those monkeys, those savages, all Negroes are rioters. To hell with them.' This does nothing for the guy who works at the post office and is slowly getting ready to move out. He gets destroyed while the pimps and whores go on." Georgia's Governor Lester Maddox promptly made Moynihan sound prophetic. Said Maddox of the Newark and Detroit riots: "You can't say 'please' to a bunch of savages, rapists and murderers."
Back to Normal. In Detroit, despite continuing sniper fire, the rampage began subsiding about the time that the depleted stores ran out of items to loot. On the fifth day, Commissioner Girardin's patrol car was picking its way through downtown traffic, which finally began returning to its normal state—impossible. Suddenly the police dispatcher's voice crackled over the radio and Girardin instinctively tensed. "Watch out for stolen car," the dispatcher advised. Girardin's well-wrinkled face was wreathed in a smile. "We are just about back to normal," he said. "All we need now is a report of a domestic quarrel."
But Detroit will be some time recovering. Downtown, in the City-County Building, more than 500 members of Detroit's white and black establishment, including Henry Ford II and United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther, responded to an invitation by Romney and Cavanagh to a latter-day reconstruction meeting. True to its motto, Resurget Cineribus, Detroit was determined to rise from the ashes as swiftly as possible. As Reuther emphasized, there would have to be some social rebuilding along with the physical. Said he: "Most Americans are increasingly affluent, but we have left some Americans behind. Those Americans do not feel a part of society, and therefore don't behave like responsible people. Only when they get their fair share of America will they respond in terms of responsibility."
Reuther said that up to 600,000 members of the U.A.W. would be available in their spare time to help repair the ravages. General Motors offered its "skills, facilities and resources" to help rebuild the city. To be sure, some would just as soon see it remain in ruins. "We'll burn this place down again," said one rioter. "We'll burn down this whole stinking town." With money and muscle, Detroit is now staking its future on the proposition that most of its people—black as well as white—would much rather build than burn.
*Honky, or honkie, is a black-power word for any white man, derived from the derogatory "Hunkie"—Hungarian.