FLINT, MI – Woody Etherly was one of six people who gathered on the front lawn of Flint City Hall in a protest 46 years ago that would catapult the city to the forefront of the civil rights movement.
He remembers police officers wielding automatic weapons on the roof of the building.
“They didn’t know what was going to happen,” said Etherly, adding that city officials turned on the sprinklers in hopes of running them off. “You had to laugh to keep from crying.”
The next night the crowd had grown to 1,000, Etherly said, for what eventually became a 10-day sit-in to push for fair housing and equal opportunity.
While that sit-in is cemented in Flint history, those who took part say it was the work of the city's Civil Rights Commission office that helped turn the tide over time in favor of those pushing for change.
As part of February’s Black History Month, state officials plan to honor the 50th anniversary of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission and its Flint office during a to-be-scheduled February visit at the University of Michigan-Flint.
The protest for Etherly and others came weeks after the race riots in wrecked Detroit and Flint’s demonstration culminated with a rally that drew more than 5,000, including then state Gov. George Romney and then state Attorney General Frank Kelley.
But after the splash of headlines and protest dissipated, those who lived through it say the work of the city’s Civil Rights Commission helped institute the changes that followed in the event's wake.
The Michigan Civil Rights Commission was created in 1964 through the state constitution. The state became the first in the country to have such a commission.
Formerly the Fair Employment Practices Commission, the Flint office of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission opened in March 1964, with George F. Taylor as its director.
It would be a few more years, however, until the state legislature's 1976 approval of Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act that the commission would get teeth.
“For the first decade of our existence, we weren’t really an enforcement agency yet,” said Leslee Fritz, deputy director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights.
Enter the late Olive R. Beasley, who ran the Flint Civil Rights office for 16 years.
“The (Flint office of the Michigan) Civil Rights Commission – they had some power to bring factions together to sit and talk – to mediate. She was quiet, but she went about her business of bringing people together. She was one of the great ones,” Etherly said of Beasley. “Picketing would not allow us to get to the person, but the (commission) could get to the person who called the shots.”
There were people like the late Mayor Floyd J. McCree, who had recently become the first black mayor of a major American city, were out front in the public eye by proposing a fair housing ordinance and threatening resignation when city council voted it down.
“I am not going to sit up here and live an equal opportunity lie,” McCree said at the time, according to The Journal’s archives.
Following the demonstration at city hall, people from all walks of life – including the Flint’s Civil Rights Commission— joined the fight to get the measure approved, Etherly said.
Less than six months later Flint became the first major city in America with a fair housing ordinance – a measure that passed by just 38 votes.
“It wasn’t a black thing, it was a community thing,” Etherly said. “The real heroes are those who came together and decided that this was a good thing and supported it.”
Members of the community, with the help of the civil rights commission, made in-roads though.
Retired school principal Willa Hawkins said she didn’t work specifically with the commission because she was afraid of losing her career. Instead, other organizations would go to the commission with concerns and Beasley and others would address it.
She recalls picketing with signs outside Flint banks that read “What color is your money?”
Today, Hawkins said the commission still has a vital role as Flint works to recover from the economic collapse that occurred when General Motors shuttered factories and moved thousands of jobs out of state.
Hawkins, 78, said the Flint office of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission still has to be “sure that whatever redevelopment takes place – that there should be a reflection of the black community in that plan,” said the former Genesee County Commissioner. “I have seen representation of the black community that was foreign to me back in those days.”
Bob Leonard worked in the Genesee County Prosecutor’s Office from 1963-82 and said his office got involved most often surrounding complaints about housing discrimination and police brutality.
At a time when Flint had a population of over 200,000 and a police force of 400-plus, there was just one black officer.
His office hired a black detective to help better reflect the makeup of the community.
“I think a lot of those problems in housing and police brutality are much changed today,” Leonard said. “We don’t have the real estate situation today because that’s pretty well corrected itself. The police department has all kinds of black officers and black detectives. Today you wouldn’t be hearing complaints made to that extent.”
There are local civil rights offices also located in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing and Marquette.
Today, the Flint office has a staff of seven and is managed by Bobbie Curtis. The office deals mainly with enforcement and investigations surrounding employment, housing and other discrimination complaints.
“One of the things we’re going to attempt to do is be a little more proactive and essentially make more citizens aware of who we are and what we do,” said Matt Wesaw, executive director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights.
In the 1960s, Dorothy Waller was asked to go door-to-door to see how people felt about having black neighbors.
“The responses when I went door-to-door were excellent,” she said, adding that she surveyed in the area of Court Street near current home on Brookside Drive. “I never thought I’d be living here.”
Today, a majority of her neighbors look like her.
“I feel like they don’t know what we had to go through,” she said. “I think we were the first (black) ones on this side of the block.”