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Oct. 14, 1966
October 14, 1966
Romney criticizes Johnson for Detroit riot response
Rioting continues into its third day in Detroit. Looting and arson have been reported in nearly every neighborhood, as far north as 8 Mile and as far west as Greenfield Road, with most incidents occurring along the Woodward, Grand River, and Gratiot corridors. Police and National Guardsmen have been deployed to counter snipers, who are terrorizing innocent civilians across the city. They will soon be joined in this effort by federal troops, who are expected to arrive tonight to restore order. And above all that, the air is filled with plumes of contaminated smoke, as fires burn buildings coated with radioactive soot. [1]
A fight of a different sort is brewing between the President of the United States and the Governor of Michigan. In his televised address to the nation yesterday, President Johnson said that his decision to send federal troops to Detroit was justified because of the inability of state and local officials to quell the rioting. “I am sure the American people will realize that I take this action with the greatest regret--and only because of the clear, unmistakable, and undisputed evidence that Governor Romney of Michigan and the local officials in Detroit have been unable to bring the situation under control,” Johnson said. [2]
Governor Romney disputed the President’s account of events, and said that he was "taking advantage of the situation politically," referring to the upcoming election [3]. Romney accused the President of giving the country "an inaccurate version" of events leading to the sending of federal troops into Detroit. Romney, speaking with restraint, said that Mr. Johnson had implied that Michigan had been vacillating about asking for federal troops. Romney said there was no hesitation and that he declined to declare a state of insurrection only because every home and business that was burned out in the rioting would have lost its insurance. [4]
Speaking with reporters this morning, Johnson declined to comment on Romney’s statement, but quipped that he had heard enough bad news for one day. [5]
[3] Or to quote Romney himself from an interview in 1988: “I felt that President Johnson was taking advantage of the situation politically. And, uh, I knew that he must have known that, uh, the local police and the state police and the National Guard, they're not trained to deal with riots of that intensity, and that he had troops here who could deal with it because they were trained to deal with it. So I was convinced that, uh, he was undertaking to, uh, shift the blame from any blame from himself to me.”