The Algiers Motel incident

by John Hersey

Thirty years ago, three black men were killed and nine other people brutally beaten by, as John Hersey describes it , an "aggregate of Detroit police, Michigan State Troopers, National Guardsmen, and private guards who had been directed to the scene." Responding to a telephoned report of sniping, the police group invaded the Algiers Motel and interrogated ten black men and two white women, none of whom were armed, for an hour. By the time the interrogators left, three men had been shot to death and the others, including the women, beaten.