DETROIT (WXYZ) — The families of Carl Cooper, Fred Temple, and Aubrey Pollard say they still feel empty after their loved ones were killed in the 1967 riots.
Today a historical marker was placed in the location where the three teenage boys took their final breaths.
“He died right there,” said Lee Forsythe, a survivor of the 1967 riots. “He took his last breaths right there.”
Forsythe is talking about the day he saw his best friend Carl Cooper die. Today marks the 57th anniversary of the day he was killed along with the two other teenage boys by police brutality.
“The part that I feel bad about… I wasn’t able to do anything when I looked down on him and watched him take his last breath” said Forsythe. “That’s why I was saying I never seen a man cry until I seen a man die… and that’s when I learned how to cry.”
Today, Forsythe attended a dedication ceremony to honor the life of his friend Cooper, Temple and Pollard with a historical marker placed in the location where the three teenage boys took their final breaths.
The marker, according to Mayor Mike Duggan, will forever remind those of what happened five decades ago at the Algiers Motel.
The three white officers responsible for the boy’s death were charged with murder but never convicted.
Forsythe stood in the spot today where his friend lost his life and it brought back some hard memories, he said.
“I can hear that last breath,” said Forsythe. “It was just something I never heard. I never seen nobody die."
It was a sound that changed the lives of Forsythe and the families of Pollard and Temple forever.
The family of Temple wore t-shirts honoring his memory and Pollard’s youngest sister spoke at the ceremony, reflecting about the beaten her brother took by police during the riot prior to that deadly incident.
“When Aubrey came home beat up like that, my mom said, don’t go back to that hotel,” said Thelma Pollard-Gardner. “She said they will come back tonight and kill you.”
Sadly Pollard didn’t listen to his mother and he never made it back home again.
At the ceremony, the family wore red because of the blood that Pollard shed when he died.
Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist says the spot the three teenage boys were killed at is soiled soil.
“The truth is that our strongest seeds being born in blood-soaked soil,” said Gilchrist. “Our strongest seeds come from blood-soaked soil.”
Forsythe says the Lt. Governor is right because no matter how difficult it has been to go on without his best friend, he says he has prevailed and will continue to do so.
“When it first happened, it was fear,” he said. “And I didn’t understand it. Now I understand it and I’m not afraid anymore.”
