Photo: Todd G. Levin, @tglevin
As the country grapples with the legal and Constitutional issues surrounding the deployment of federalized California National Guard troops to Los Angeles, it might be a good time to assess the more practical question of when and if it‘s a good idea to “send in” the National Guard.
I must admit that I bring to this question a bit of personal bias. I concluded the requirements for a Master’s degree in United States History by defending my thesis: Ghetto Nation: Black Power and the Detroit Rebellion of 1967. For nearly a week at the end of July 1967, the city of Detroit, Michigan exploded in violence during one of several of the “long, hot summers” of the late 1960s.
While my argument focused upon the motivations and organization of thousands of young Black people who took to the streets, the Michigan National Guard and then members of the US Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions played a prominent role in these events.
Before sharing the details, I’d like to examine a bit of the history of the National Guard. Prior to the National Defense Act of 1916, each of the various states had an organized militia; made up of trained “citizen soldiers” who could be called forth in times of need. These state militias find their origins in Colonial America when, as early as the 1630s, colonies organized men to protect against Native Americans and, eventually, the encroachments of the British Army.
When the revolution was won, there remained an intrinsic fear of standing armies in times of peace (see the Third Amendment to the Constitution, that prohibits the government from housing troops in private homes).
While existing under state control at the demands of the governor, the US Constitution allowed that a militia could be ordered under federal control in order “to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.”
From around 1775 to 1914, much of the military strength of the United States was held within these state militias, whose soldiers were ready to serve but otherwise attended to their daily lives and occupations as other citizens do.
While many of these groups of “citizen soldiers” were called to serve during war time—The American Revolution, The War of 1812, The Mexican-American War, The Civil War, The Spanish-American War and more—they were often deployed for localized reasons; and it is this history that seems to best inform the current situation.
Following The American Revolution, the Continental Army was disbanded and the bulk of the country’s military force, as determined by the US Constitution, rested with state militias under the leadership of governors. In 1794, farmers in western Pennsylvania became upset with a tax on intoxicating spirits. As I wrote long ago, With a rekindled revolutionary spirit, an independent streak born of revolution and the West, and no desire to pay taxes to a distant and arbitrary source of power, these frontier farmers stormed courthouses, tarred-and-feathered tax collectors, and essentially engaged in armed insurrection against the new government of the United States.
The limits of federal power under the new Constitution had not yet been established so, just about everything President George Washington did served as a guide for future presidents. I added,
So, as commander-in-chief, President Washington dusted off his old uniform, saddled a trusty steed, and led an army of 13,000 militiamen—offered by the various states—into the backcountry. In the face of such a superior demonstration of force, the Whiskey Rebels scattered. To this day, President Washington is the only sitting president to personally lead men into battle. Now, that’s how you get your face on the money.*
Despite the fact that the rebelling farmers saw themselves as patriots akin to those who had opposed King George during the revolution, another American precedent had also been set. “Sometimes might makes right.”
In the pre-Civil War South (antebellum South), state militias hunted down fugitive slaves. In the 1830s the Missouri militia was deployed to force out and disarm Mormon settlers. As these Latter-Day Saints continued their trek west, they eventually organized their own militia in Utah; which later battled against US troops to secure their territory in the 1850s.
During Reconstruction following the Civil War, many of the reconstituted Southern states organized militias made up largely of former slaves. In response, white vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan organized to oppose them. Following Reconstruction, whites reclaimed control of the states and the militias which were often called out to “supervise” elections – with very predictable results. These paramilitary organizations served almost exclusively to defend white supremacy.
Militias were called out repeatedly to suppress labor strikes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Poorly trained and loosely organized, many of these attacks on striking workers resulted in bloodshed and death. One of the most horrendous events occurred in Ludlow, Colorado in 1914. Over 1000 coal miners and their families were attacked by the Colorado National Guard. About twenty people were killed, mainly women and children.
The National Defense Act of 1916 formalized the requirements and standards for establishing state National Guard units and provided the funds to back it up. This law also increased the president’s power to federalize National Guard troops.
Throughout the twentieth century, National Guard troops were called up to serve in the wars during the bloodiest century in human history, WWI and WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm and more. Just as in the long nineteenth century, National Guard troops defended their country with honor during times of war against foreign powers.
The same cannot be said of domestic deployments. While the National Guard came increasingly under the influence of the federal government during the World Wars, it was the post-War era that saw the massive deployment of troops on American soil.
In a turn of events that dramatically illustrate the dual state and federal role of the National Guard, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the Arkansas National Guard in 1957 to support segregationists by preventing nine Black students from entering —and thus desegregating—Little Rock’s Central High School. Images of soldiers blocking high school students from entering the school, as angry whites spat at and threatened them, enraged the nation. President Dwight Eisenhower not only federalized the Arkansas National Guard—by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807—to protect the Little Rock Nine, he also sent in members of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army as many of the white Arkansas guardsmen were certainly in favor of segregation. Minor clashes occurred between the Army and federalized guardsmen. Despite the military presence, the Little Rock Nine continued to be harassed and abused throughout the school year and beyond.
Similar events occurred between governors and the president. Governor George Wallace deployed the Alabama National Guard in 1963 to prevent the desegregation of the University of Alabama. President Kennedy federalized the Alabama troops and the university was desegregated. In the same year, Kennedy also federalized the Alabama National Guard following the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which resulted in the deaths of four young Black girls who were preparing to sing during that day’s ceremony.
The last time National Guard troops were federalized against the wishes of the governor before the 2025 events in Los Angeles, President Lyndon Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard after Alabama State troopers attacked civil rights protesters in Selma. These troops then protected protesters as they marched from Selma to Montgomery in a demonstration that vitalized the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
In the second half of the 1960s, the non-violent Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King evolved into hundreds of violent uprisings within hundreds of urban segregated Black communities. As the Civil Rights Movement became increasingly violent, National Guard units across the country continued to play a critical role—attempting to control the violence with force. These eruptions were nearly all triggered by the brutality of local police forces against Black civilians. And, since many National Guard troops were white middle-class males who had no familiarity with the urban Black ghetto, they found themselves fully unprepared for what they were asked to do. Unfortunately, time and again, the presence of troops in these blighted communities exacerbated the violence more often than they quelled it.
The most violent of these uprisings occurred in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1965 (over 14,000 National Guardsmen deployed, 34 dead, over 1000 injured, and $40 million in property damage) Newark, New Jersey in July 1967 (over 300 National Guardsmen, 26 dead, over 700 injured, over 1400 arrested) and Detroit, Michigan only a few weeks later at the end of July 1967.
I pause here in this brief history of the domestic deployment of the National Guard to remind the reader that when called to do what they are trained to do, National Guard troops perform admirably. This is true when deployed overseas to fight America’s wars. It is also true when deployed domestically… but ONLY if they leave their guns and armored vehicles at home.
When deployed in response to natural disasters, National Guard troops have successfully restored order, supported local law enforcement and fire-fighting efforts, engaged in search and rescue missions, provided medical care, delivered food and water, erected temporary shelters, and helped rebuild devastated communities. National Guard troops played important roles in the San Francisco Fire of 1906, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and more recently, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans of 2005, and the California Wildfires in 2020 and 2025. These are only a few of the more dramatic examples of the National Guard providing support for those in need. The men and women of the National Guard are to be celebrated for these efforts… when deployed to Detroit in July of 1967 after the city began to burn? Not so much.
From my thesis:
The deadliest of the urban uprisings of the 1960s occurred in Detroit, Michigan during the final week of July in 1967; a dramatic and explosive crescendo to a series of long, hot summers. In the early morning hours of July 23, Detroit Police raided an illegal bar known on the streets as a “blind pig.” A number of seemingly random circumstances contributed to the eruption and quick escalation of the violence; the most pertinent being the decision to arrest and transport an unusually large number of partygoers. As a result, police and the ghetto community around Twelfth Street were at odds with one another for over an hour. By the time the last prisoners were hauled away, hundreds of blacks had gathered on the street. By dawn, windows had been broken, stores had been looted, and the throng of restless citizens had swelled into the thousands.
On the following day, the front page of the New York Times reported that the Detroit Rebellion of 1967 was underway – although the Times did not characterize the disorder as “rebellion.” On the contrary, the Times used language that ascribed an altogether different meaning to the violence. “Thousands of rampaging Negroes,” as the Times saw it, “firebombed and looted huge sections of Detroit last night and early today.” In scenes that would persist over the next four days, “[g]reat clouds of smoke from flaming tenements and shattered businesses and homes lay over much of the city as dusk came, and the smell of smoke pervaded the night air.” Within twenty-four hours the violence had spread to the main thoroughfares of the city. “A four mile section of Woodward,” the Times article continued, “was plundered by looters, and a three-mile section of Grand River was hit by looting and firebombing, which raged along 18 blocks of 12th Street.” The country tuned in to see spectacular scenes emanating from Detroit as “[v]iolence spread uncontrolled over much of the city.”
By 2 P.M., Detroit Mayor Jerome P. Cavanagh requested the help of the Michigan State Police. By late afternoon, Cavanagh requested that Governor George Romney authorize the National Guard. According to Hubert Locke, in The Detroit Riot of 1967, the black assistant police commissioner reported that a little after 9 P.M. on Sunday night came the “first confirmed report of sniper fire.” By 9:35 P.M., there were “reports of sniper fire directed at firemen.” A police radio report alerted officials that “a gas station was ‘selling gas in buckets and bottles.’” Huge sections of the city were on fire.
After a lull in the afternoon of Monday, July 24, the evening began with a series of reports that guardsmen, police, and firefighters were being shot by snipers. Detroit was beginning to resemble a war zone. In the last hour of July 24 “two police precincts, two command posts, and five fire stations were under attack by snipers.” In return, Detroit Police, state police, and guardsmen were all firing away. Nineteen suspects were shot on Monday alone. News and military helicopters flew overhead. Over ten thousand armed men in uniform patrolled the streets. Fires filled the air with smoke. Bursts of machine gun fire echoed across the urban landscape. Tanks and other military equipment rolled through neighborhoods.
“The arrival of the National Guard in Detroit,” historian Sidney Fine wrote, “was followed by an escalation of the violence.”
Late on the night of July 24, President Johnson authorized the use of federal troops, federalized the Michigan National Guard, and just before midnight, went on TV to speak to the nation. In his address, the president adopted the tone set out by the McCone Commission. “Pillage, looting, murder and arson,” the president told the nation, “have nothing to do with civil rights.” In Romney’s official request for federal troops, he “said he had no evidence of any ‘organized state of insurrection,’ but he added,” as reported in the New York Times, “that there was also no evidence that it did not exist.” Detroit was exhibiting all the characteristics of an urban guerilla war, yet the officials calling in the troops were very reluctant to use war language to describe what was going on. Federal troops began arriving to Detroit in force by 2:30 A.M. on July 25.
The Tuesday, July 25 New York Times reported “Tanks in Detroit” and that “President Johnson rushed 4,700 Army paratroopers [from both the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions] into Detroit at midnight last night as Negro snipers besieged two police stations in rioting that brought near paralysis to the nation’s fifth largest city.” As the federal troops were mobilizing, “police and National Guardsmen were battling with snipers.” The Times article seemed to confirm the need for additional firepower as “Negro snipers fired into windows and doors [of police stations], and policeman fought back with machineguns, shotguns and high velocity rifles.” Mayor Cavanagh is reported as saying, “It looks like Berlin in 1945.”
While National Guardsmen were seeking the origin of sniper fire they positioned a tank in front of a building where they supposed a sniper to be. Reports indicate that someone inside the building lit a cigarette near a window. Guardsmen opened fire with rifles and the tanks .50-caliber machine gun. The lone fatality of this barrage of gunfire was four year-old Tanya Blanding who “toppled dead, a .50-caliber bullet hole in her chest.” The largely inexperienced and fatigued guardsmen were certainly on edge. A National Guard Sergeant was fatally shot in the early hours of Wednesday July 26. He “was one of two law enforcement officers and two firemen who lost their lives during the July riot.”
Within a week, 43 people would be dead, over 1100 injured, and over 7000 arrested. Thousands of stores were looted and burned. Hundreds of families were displaced. Property damage was measured in the tens of millions of dollars and over 150,000 rounds of ammunition were discharged within some of Motown’s most densely populated neighborhoods.
While my thesis addressed the motivations behind the urban violence of the 1960s, it also spoke to the fruitlessness of many domestic National Guard deployments. As to trying to understand the deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles in 2025—and certainly the many yet to come under an administration set upon testing the outer boundaries of presidential power—history has a lesson to teach us. When the National Guard has been deployed to protect those protesting, things tend to turn out well. However, when the troops are called out to put down the protesters—even as some behave violently—showing up with guns and tanks does not help.
Detroit wasn’t the final act. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King in April of 1968, over 100 American cities exploded at once. In what might have been a bloodbath, fatalities were relatively low as it had been determined that shooting looters didn’t help bring the violence under control.
In 1970, during an anti-Vietnam War protest at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen fired into a crowd killing four students and injuring nine others. ( I almost wrote “four white students…” not sure why.)
While the National Guard has subsequently begun to train its troops in de-escalation techniques and crowd control—and not shooting someone stealing a TV is a really good place to start—their primary training continues to be war-making. For the next few years, at least, we should all remain keenly aware of this.
