Martha Reeves was headlining a run of hometown shows at the Fox Theatre on Woodward Avenue on Sunday 23 July 1967, the top of a package called the Swingin' Time Revue. Before dawn that day a police raid on a 12th Street blind pig had set off what became the deadliest disorder in the city's history, and by the afternoon show police had reached the theatre with word that it was spreading. Reeves went out in front of the audience herself, told them what was happening in the city, and asked them to leave calmly and get home safely. "Imagine going out there lighthearted and ready to work," she said decades later. Her group's 1964 hit "Dancing in the Street", recorded at Hitsville, had a strange afterlife in those years, when militants reportedly played it at rallies as a call to the streets. Reeves always said it was a party song. Motown itself was close to the trouble and largely spared. Hitsville sits about a mile from 12th and Clairmount, and session logs show recording stopped on 22 July and did not resume until the end of the month. The Fox, opened in 1928, is among the largest surviving movie palaces of its era.
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