DETROIT — Helen Moore was a young, black mother of three boys when the fighting broke out 50 years ago in Detroit in the wee hours of a Sunday morning in July. It was the beginning of a historical uprising known today as the 1967 Detroit Rebellion.

VIDEO: Detroit art exhibitions look back at 1967 racial unrest

“It was a horrible time,” said the now 80-year-old Moore, still a Detroit resident and a prominent civil rights activist there. “We had to keep the kids inside. I couldn’t send them to school — there was burning all around us. There was no food.

“After about two weeks it started letting up, but people were still very angry, and we were still walking very softly.”

That experience of racial unrest from 50 years ago is commemorated through a dual exhibition that opened July 23: Say It Loud: Art, History, Rebellion at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and Art of Rebellion: Black Art of the Civil Rights Movement at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The collaboration offers more than 100 works from black artists who expressed themselves during the riot, as well as young black artists today whose work was inspired by and speaks to social justice and civil rights issues that still exist, said Patrina Chatman, curator of collections and exhibitions for the Wright museum.

“We found artists who had the presence of mind to actually create art during the rebellion. They selected items that were on the ground — glass, burned objects — and they created wonderful works of art that helped tell that story,” she said. “We also selected young artists and poets to participate. We know that some of the problems that occurred … unemployment, poverty, police brutality, what we are seeing now is something similar.”

During the upheaval that involved more than five days of conflict between police and civilians and the burning and looting of thousands of homes and businesses, 43 people died, more than 1,000 were injured, more than 2,000 buildings were destroyed, and more than 7,000 people were arrested. Now known as one of the biggest race riots in U.S. history, it began with a police raid of an illegal after-hours club on 12th Street in a predominantly black community in what was known as Detroit’s near west side.

Detroit abstract artist Allie McGhee was 25 when the riots broke out. Home from college for the summer, the young black man spent four or five days documenting incidents in the city with his camera. After the riots and then decades later, he would paint abstracts that chronicled his experiences as a black artist in America.

Four of his pieces are part of both exhibitions. His piece, Black Attack, 1968, uses undefined strokes and figural representations to convey his feelings about racial injustices.

“All through the ’60s, that kind of subject matter kept occurring because the only thing we could aim at it was a paintbrush, so we did the best we could with the only defense and explanation we had,” McGhee told The Blade at a preview party for the exhibits.

The show at the Wright museum has an outdoor installation of large-scale photographs that presents issues that led up to the rebellion and the aftermath, and an indoor installation of paintings, sculptures, photographs, and videos by more than 40 local and national black artists.

The DIA show features 34 pieces, most from five artist collectives founded during the civil rights movement in the 1960s and ’70s.

Works on canvas in exhibits, such as The Fire Next Time, 1968, by artist Vincent Smith, show desperation, despair and fiery destruction of the 1967 rebellion. Artist Yvonne Parks Catchings sends a message with her piece, Blacks Trapped in the City, 1973, through the use of blackened embers, rocks, and other items she collected during the riot.

Rita Dickerson’s piece installed at the DIA, 1967: Death in the Algiers Motel and Beyond, 2017, draws parallels between three black teenagers killed by law enforcement during the 1967 riot, and other black individuals killed by police in the last decade.

Mario Moore, 29, now an artist in Brooklyn and the grandson of activist Helen Moore, is one of the younger artists featured in the show. His piece, Queen Mother Helen Moore, 2015, oil on canvas, honors his grandmother in a contrasting role to the grieving black mothers most often portrayed in the media, he said during a preview of the show.

“Constantly, what you see is the mourning mother, a black mother holding images of her recently killed or murdered black sons,” he said. “What I wanted to show was what I see in my family — a portrayal of power and protection.”

Using copper as his canvas gives the viewer the ability to imagine themselves in that role, the younger Moore said.

Both exhibits are free with admission to the museum. Art of Rebellion is installed through Oct. 22. The Wright museum show ends Jan. 2.

Contact Roberta Gedert at rgedert@theblade.com or 419-724-6075 or on Twitter @RoGedert.

First Published July 26, 2017, 5:58 p.m.