White flight from urban centers began post-WWII motivated in part by the "American dream" of home ownership on a green parcel of land and a car in the driveway. The migration of mostly white middle-class taxpayers was also motivated by racial intolerance. Vociferous opposition to school children being bused to mixed schools was a measure of that bigotry. Detroit was no exception to racial tensions, loosing more than half its population from the peak in 1950. The summer riot of 1967 played an influential role in white flight from the urban core. The riot began on 12th Street in the early morning hours of July 23, 1967 after police raided an unlicensed, after-hours bar commonly known as a "blind pig". The resulting civil disturbance lasted five days requiring both the Michigan National Guard and the Army's 82nd Airborne to quell it. Forty-three died in the violence and fires consumed 2000 buildings, surpassing the destruction of the Detroit race riot of 1943* and making it one of the most destructive in America's history:
A 2009 view from our northern neighbor. The Canadian presenter tries to put a positive ending spin on the depiction of an urban disaster of unprecedented scope in North America. The beaver's return to Detroit was a media hit because it signifies the perpetual rebirth of the natural world, despite man or his dubious works:
*Detroit suffered a severe riot in the middle of WWII. War production brought hundreds of thousands of blacks and whites to the city for jobs. Consequently there was a shortage of housing which was segregated. During a white worker strike against black promotions at the Packard plant, a southern voice announced over the plant loudspeakers, "I'd rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a n*g**r". The Japanese used the riot to make progaganda.