History
Byron Allen witnessed Detroit military occupation at seven after MLK assassination riots
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Byron Allen | Club Random with Bill Maher
"I was looking down the barrel of a tank. And the military had immediately taken over the neighborhood and the troops were walking down the street with the bayonets and the dogs and my mother and grandmother screaming, 'Get in a house before they shoot you.' And you get in the house and you just watch the place on fire."
Allen provides vivid firsthand account of Detroit's 1968 riots following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination when he was seven years old. He describes military occupation of his neighborhood with tanks and armed troops, his mother and grandmother's terror, and the perspective that Black residents felt threatened by both rioters and military forces. Allen says over 50 people were shot and killed by police and troops, prompting his family's permanent move to Los Angeles.
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