Detroit Race Riot of 1943

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Detroit Race Riot of 1943

By

John C Abercrombie

 

Today is day 6 of 28 – We look at the race riots of Detroit, 1943. While we have a belief that people have an opportunity in America, we see once again that that idea is restricted by the majority that opportunities only belong to Whites and that it may be necessary to preserve that at all cost, even the loss of Black lives. Is this the America that we believe in? It can be changed if we will discontinue the false history and face the reality. To heal, we must put on our big boy and big girl pants on and solve this long lingering problem of race in America.

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The Detroit Race of 1943 took place starting on June 20^th and lasting until the early morning of June 22^nd . Detroit was seeing a dramatic population and an increase in social tensioned due to the military buildup and participation in World War II.

There were increases in employment as automobile factories were turned into production for the war effort. In addition to racial tensions which have always existed, there were housing shortages. It is estimated that the population of approximately 400,000 people moving into the area with many being White Southerners and Blacks seeking better opportunities. The increases took place between 1941 and 1943. All new arrivals were competing for jobs and housing. There were also European immigrants.

The riot was fueled by a false rumor that a mob of Whites had thrown a Black mother and her baby into the Detroit River. This resulted in property being destroyed. Whites retaliated and tipped over cars belonging to Black families.

There were a series of race riots in 1943 and they included.

• Beaumont, Texas
• Harlem, New York
• Los Angeles, California
• Mobile, Alabama

The Detroit riot was suppressed after6,000 federal troops were ordered to restore peace. 34 people wee killed during the riot. 25 of them Black with most of them dying at the hands of the White police force. 433 were wounded with 75% of that number being Black. Most of the destruction was in the Black area known as paradise Valley, the poorest neighborhood in Detroit.

The following a result of a more recent analysis of the incident.

At the time, White commissions attributed the cause of the riot to black people and youths, but the NAACP claimed deeper causes: a shortage of affordable housing, discrimination in employment, lack of minority representation in the police, and White police brutality. A late 20th-century analysis of the rioters showed that the White rioters were younger and often unemployed (characteristics that the riot commissions had falsely attributed to Blacks, despite evidence in front of them). If working, the Whites often held semi-skilled or skilled positions. Whites traveled long distances across the city to join the first stage of the riot near the bridge to Belle Isle Park, and later some traveled in armed groups explicitly to attack the Black neighborhood in Paradise Valley. The Black participants were often older, established city residents, who in many cases had lived in the city for more than a decade, They also looted and destroyed White-owned property in their neighborhood.

Detroit had become the fourth-largest city in the United States by 1920. The Ku Klux Klan established a substantial presence and concentrated in midwestern cities rather than exclusively in the South. It was primarily anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish during this period and strongly supported White supremacy.

Detroit developed a reputation for racial antagonism and violent incidents going back to 1915. The KKK had a lesser-known offshoot, the Black Legion. There was activity in 1936, 1937 with some 48 members being convicted of numerous murders and charges of attempted murder. These activities contributed to the demise of the Black Legion. Detroit was unique for northern cities for its exceptionally high percentage of Southern residents, both Black and White.

Soon after the U.S. entry into World War II, the automotive industry was converted to military production; high wages were offered, attracting large numbers of workers and their families from outside of Michigan. The new workers found little available housing, and competition among ethnic groups was fierce for both jobs and housing. With Executive Order 8802, President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25, 1941, had prohibited racial discrimination in the national defense industry. Roosevelt called upon all groups to support the war effort. The Executive Order was applied irregularly, and Blacks were often excluded from numerous industrial jobs, especially more skilled and supervisory positions.

This second wave of the African American Great Migration was driven by the economic and political repression across the South exacerbated by the Great Depression and codified in Jim Crow laws. These more recent African American arrivals were driven by de facto segregation and redlining to the already established Black community in the poor and overcrowded East Side of the city. A 60-block area east of Woodward Avenue was known as Paradise Valley and had aging and substandard housing.

A large number of the White migrants brought their Southern prejudices with them. This and having to compete against Blacks for jobs and housing only increased the animosity. Black families were excluded from public housing except the Brewster Housing Projects and in other housing were exploited by White landlords, with rent 3 to 4 times higher than comparable housing for Whites. This forced Blacks int the oldest and most substandard housing available. Escalating; resistance to economic and political repression as well as the oppression and violence of the mostly white Detroit Police Department grew steadily.

Although Detroit played an important role in the underground railroad, before the war, Black workers were scarce in Detroit. In 1942 119 of Detroit manufacturers did not have any Black employees. By 1943, the labor shortage was so severe that companies began hiring Blacks.

A report in 1944 showed a 44% increase in wartime employment and a 103% rise in Black employment. Ford Motor Company employed 50% of all Blacks in the auto industry. To insure quality employees, Ford formed close ties with the Black community, relying on Black church ministers as part of the screening process. In 1910 Ford was paying its employees $5.00 (about $120 today). Detroit became a symbol of cultural rebirth and Blacks would often say “when I die, bury me in Detroit”.

In June 1943, Packard Motor Car Company finally promoted three Blacks to work next to Whites in the assembly lines, in keeping with the anti-segregation policy required for the defense industry. In response, 25,000 Whites walked off the job in a “hate” or wildcat strike at Packard, effectively slowing down the critical war production. Although Whites had long worked with Blacks in the same plant, many wanted control of certain jobs, and did not want to work right next to Backs. Harold Zeck remembers seeing a group of White women workers coming into the assembly line to convince the White men workers to walk out of work to protest Black women using the White women’s bathroom. Harold remembers one of the women saying, “They think their fannies are as good as ours.” The protest ended when the men refused to leave work. There was a physical confrontation at Edgewood Park. In this period, racial riots also broke out in Los Angeles, Mobile, Alabama and Beaumont, Texas, mostly over similar job issues at defense shipyard facilities.

The altercations started on June 20 on an island in the Detroit known as Belle Isle. Youths of both races fought off and on during the afternoon, but the real altercation was exacerbated when 100,000 day trippers returned to the city. Sailors joined the fight against Blacks and a false rumor that Whites had thrown a Black mother and her baby into the Detroit.

At the same time another false rumor was spreading in the White community of Blacks alleged to have raped and murdered a White woman. Whites began beating Blacks as they were getting off of street cars on their way to work. They entered the Black community and started attacking Blacks who were defending their homes. In retaliation Blacks attacked White owned businesses.

It got to the point where Whites and Blacks were assaulting one another beating innocent motorists, pedestrians, streetcar passengers, burning cars, destroying storefronts.

The action stopped after the Insurrection Act of 1807 was invoked and President Franklin Roosevelt ordered 6,000 troops to intercede, curfews were imposed and order restored. 85% of all arrests were of Black citizens.

The first casualty was a White civilian who was struck by a taxi. Later, four young White males shot and killed a 58-year-old Black civilian, Moses Kiska, who was sitting at the bus stop. Later, a White doctor ignored police warnings to avoid Black neighborhoods. The doctor then went to a house call in a Black neighborhood. He then was hit in the back of the head with a rock and beaten to death by Black rioters. A couple years after the riot, a monument was dedicated to this doctor at the streets of East Grand and Gratiot

After the riot, White city leaders, including the mayor, blamed young black hoodlums, and persisted in framing the events as being caused by outsiders, people who were unemployed and marginal. Mayor Jeffries said, “Negro hoodlums started it, but the conduct of the police department, by and large, was magnificent.” The Wayne County prosecutor believed that leaders of the NAACP were to blame as instigators of the riots. Governor Kelly called together a Fact Finding Commission to investigate and report on the causes of the riot. It’s mostly White members blamed Black youths, “unattached, uprooted, and unskilled misfits within an otherwise law-abiding Black community,” and regarded the events as an unfortunate incident. They made these judgments without interviewing any of the rioters, basing their conclusions on police reports, which were limited. This sounds like a one-sided investigation and is, but it is much more common that many believe.

Other officials drew similar conclusions, despite discovering and citing facts that disproved their thesis. Dr. Lowell S. Selling of the Recorder’s Court Psychiatric Clinic conducted interviews with 100 Black offenders. He found them to be “employed, well-paid, longstanding (of at least 10 years) residents of the city”, with some education and a history of being law abiding. He attributed their violence to their Southern heritage. This view was repeated in a separate study by Elmer R. Akers and Vernon Fox, sociologist and psychologist, respectively, at the State Prison of Southern Michigan. Although most of the Black men they studied had jobs and had been in Detroit an average of more than 10 years, Akers and Fox characterized them as unskilled and unsettled; they stressed the men’s Southern heritage as predisposing them to violence. Additionally, a commission was established to determine the cause of the riot, despite the unequal amount of violence toward Blacks, the commission blamed the riot on Blacks and their community leaders.

On the other hand, Detroit’s lack leaders identified numerous other substantive causes, including persistent racial discrimination in jobs and housing, frequent police brutality against Blacks and the lack of Black representation on the force, and the daily animosity directed at their people by much of Detroit’s White population.

Following the violence, Japanese propaganda officials incorporated the event into its materials that encouraged Black soldiers not to fight for the United States. They distributed a flyer titled “Fight Between Two Races”. The Axis Powers publicized the riot as a sign of Western decline. Racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces was ongoing, and the response to the riots hurt morale in Black units – most significantly the 1511th Quartermaster Truck regiment, whose Black enlisted men fought against White officers and military police on June 24 while stationed in England, in the Battle of Bamber Bridge, after the officers and MPs attempted to enforce Jim Crow laws on a pub in the village where locals welcomed the Black GIs.

Walter White, head of the NAACP, noted that there was no rioting at the Packard and Hudson plants, where leaders of the UAW and CIO had been incorporating Blacks as part of the rank and file. These changes in the defense industry were directed by Executive Order by President Roosevelt and had begun to open opportunities for Blacks.

According to The Detroit News:

Future Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, then with the NAACP, assailed the city’s handling of the riot. He charged that police unfairly targeted blacks while turning their backs on White atrocities. He said 85 percent of those arrested were Black while Whites overturned and burned cars in front of the Roxy Theater with impunity as police watched. “This weak-kneed policy of the police commissioner coupled with the anti-Negro attitude of many members of the force helped to make a riot inevitable.”

Reinterpretation in 1990

A late 20th-century analysis of the facts collected on the arrested rioters has drawn markedly different conclusions. It notes that the Whites who were arrested were younger, generally unemployed, and had traveled long distances from their homes to the Black neighborhood to attack people there. Even in the early stage of the riots near Belle Isle Bridge, White youths traveled in groups to the riot area and carried weapons.

Our mission is to provide those historical facts that have been omitted from history. Believing that America is strong because of contributions by all groups and individuals.

In addition to the lack of information, there seems to be a campaign to promote the disenfranchisement of groups by eliminating the contributions, mistreatment and inclusion. Instead promoting negative depictions which in the absence of other information paints a highly unfavorable picture.

We provide information that exists but is not included in mainstream history. Many wonder about the validity of these stories, so we include videos to enhance the experience and books to allow you to take advantage of additional materials that have existed over time.

To those ends, the books can be purchased from our partner Amazon. It is possible to not only read about the book, but to sample  them as well, read a section or listen before deciding if it is one that you like. Click on the link. Note: many of these books are available in several forms, such as hard cover or soft cover, Kindle – eBooks that can be read on your smartphone or other device free with a free download, or Audible where the books are read to you. Again, they can be delivered instantly and enjoyed on phones or other devices with a free download.

We support our work by partnering with partners who pay us a small royalty for purchases made through our links. Many of these are to products that you may find interesting, however it is not necessary to purchase that product. How do you use the links then? Many links take you to several products so feel free to look. If it is a product that you do not want, simply click on the cart and click to remove any unwanted items, then shop to your heart’s content. We both benefit from this action, since the partner pays us without cost to you and are able to provide you outstanding information. A win-win situation for both of us. We depend on your using our links and appreciate it. Make use of our links a habit anytime you shop a partner.

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Detroit 1943

1943 Riots

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Book

You can use our links to books to sample the books, Kidle and Audible before you buy, which you can do with our links and receive the book instantly if you decide to buy.

Detroit’s Sojourner Truth Housing Riot of 1942: Prelude to the Race Riot of 1943 (American Heritage)

During World War II, no American city suffered a worse housing shortage than Detroit, and no one suffered that shortage more than the city’s African American citizens. In 1941, the federal government began constructing the Sojourner Truth Housing Project in northeast Detroit to house 200 black war production workers and their families. Almost immediately, whites in the neighborhood vehemently protested. On February 28, 1942, a confrontation between black tenants and white protesters erupted in a riot that sent at least 40 to the hospital and more than 220 to jail. This confrontation was the precursor to the bloodiest race riot of the war just sixteen months later. Gerald Van Dusen, author of Detroit’s Birwood Wall, unfolds the background and events of this overlooked moment in Motor City history.

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Try Audible Plus – Free Trial

While we show you books primarily based on the subjects of our posts, all genres are available from comedy to drama and all points in between. Put joy back into your learning with this trial.

a brand new all-you-can-listen membership that offers access to thousands of titles, including a vast array of audiobooks, podcasts and originals that span genres, lengths, and formats.

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Audible Gift Memberships

Memberships are available in 1, 3, 6 and 12-month membership options. The greatest gift you can give someone is the joy of learning and here it is.

**

Try Audible Premium Plus and Get Up to Two Free Audiobooks

Audible Premium Plus. Audible, an Amazon company, offers the world’s largest selection of digital audiobooks and spoken word content. With Audible, customers can listen anytime and anywhere to professionally narrated audiobooks across a wide range of genres.

Try Audible Premium Plus and Get Up to Two Free Audiobooks

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Our mission is to provide those historical facts that have been omitted from history. Believing that America is strong because of contributions by all groups and individuals.
In addition to the lack of information, there seems to be a campaign to promote the disenfranchisement of groups by eliminating the contributions, mistreatment and inclusion. Instead promoting negative depictions which in the absence of other information paints a highly unfavorable picture.
We provide information that exists but is not included in mainstream history. Many wonder about the validity of these stories, so we include videos to enhance the experience and books to allow you to take advantage of additional materials that have existed over time.
To those ends, the books can be purchased from our partner Amazon. It is possible to not only read about the book, but to sample them as well, read a section or listen before deciding if it is one that you like. Click on the link. Note: many of these books are available in several forms, such as hard cover or soft cover, Kindle – eBooks that can be read on your smartphone or other device free with a free download, or Audible where the books are read to you. Again, they can be delivered instantly and enjoyed on phones or other devices with a free download.
We support our work by partnering with partners who pay us a small royalty for purchases made through our links. Many of these are to products that you may find interesting, however it is not necessary to purchase that product. How do you use the links then? Many links take you to several products so feel free to look. If it is a product that you do not want, simply click on the cart and click to remove any unwanted items, then shop to your heart’s content. We both benefit from this action, since the partner pays us without cost to you and are able to provide you outstanding information. A win-win situation for both of us. We depend on your using our links and appreciate it. Make use of our links a habit anytime you shop a partner.

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Detroit Race Riot 1943

This is story of the racial divide in the City of Detroit during the 1940’s. In 1967 Detroiters were involved in a Civil disturbance caused by a raid on a Blind Pig. It was NOT a race riot, but the powers to be would rather show us as “nothing but trouble” so they made a movie about it. That Film was supposed to be partly filmed on my street, I questioned the site manager about why they weren’t making one on the 1943 riot which, he confirmed that he knew about, but that the director (The Hurt Locker) wanted to shoot the 1967 civil disturbance (I saw whites and blacks in the streets looting) by the way.

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Book
Run Home If You Don’t Want to Be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943 (Documentary Arts and Culture, Published in Association with)

In the heat of June in 1943, a wave of destructive and deadly civil unrest took place in the streets of Detroit. The city was under the pressures of both wartime industrial production and the nascent civil rights movement, setting the stage for massive turmoil and racial violence. Thirty-four people were killed, most of whom were Black, and over half of these were killed by police. Two thousand people were arrested, and over seven hundred sustained injuries requiring treatment at local hospitals. Property damage was estimated to be nearly $2 million.

With Run Home If You Don’t Want to Be Killed, Rachel Marie-Crane Williams delivers a graphic retelling of the racism and tension leading up to the violence of those summer days. By incorporating firsthand accounts collected by the NAACP and telling them through a combination of hand-drawn images, historical dialogue, and narration, Williams makes the history and impact of these events immediate, and in showing us what happened, she reminds us that many issues of the time—police brutality, state-sponsored oppression, economic disparity, white supremacy—plague our country to this day

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The Detroit Riot of 1943

Miss Jenoise Allen-Woods gives her account of an event many people are unaware of…The riot of 1943 that happened right here in Detroit. –Video by Lamont Campbell Photography-

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The Black Book

A new edition of the classic New York Times bestseller edited by Toni Morrison, offering an encyclopedic look at the black experience in America from 1619 through the 1940s with the original cover restored.

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Seventeenth-century sketches of Africans as they appeared to marauding European traders. Nineteenth-century slave auction notices. Twentieth-century sheet music for work songs and freedom chants. Photographs of war heroes, regal in uniform. Antebellum reward posters for capturing runaway slaves. An 1856 article titled “A Visit to the Slave Mother Who Killed Her Child.”

In 1974, Middleton A. Harris and Toni Morrison led a team of gifted, passionate collectors in compiling these images and nearly five hundred others into one sensational narrative of the black experience in America—The Black Book. Now in a newly restored hardcover edition, The Black Book remains a breathtaking testament to the legendary wisdom, strength, and perseverance of black men and women intent on freedom. Prominent collectors Morris Levitt, Roger Furman, and Ernest Smith joined Harris and Morrison (then a Random House editor, ultimately a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning Nobel Laureate) to spend months studying, laughing at, and crying over these materials—transcripts from fugitive slaves’ trials and proclamations by Frederick Douglass and celebrated abolitionists, as well as chilling images of cross burnings and lynchings, patents registered by black inventors throughout the early twentieth century, and vibrant posters from “Black Hollywood” films of the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, it was an article she found while researching this project that provided the inspiration for Morrison’s masterpiece, Beloved.

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Detroit Race Riot: World War II

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World War II: Black American History #31

Black Americans have long fought in America’s wars, very often fighting for a country that doesn’t always fight for them. Today we’ll learn about the experience of Black Americans in World War II. We’ll look at the ways Black men and women served in the armed services during the war, and look at life on the homefront.

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Black Roots: A Beginners Guide To Tracing The African American Family Tree

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As we look at this and other riots (massacres) we see a common theme. Blacks wanting their share of the American dream and Whites with raging racial animosity taking action against them for the color of their skin. Rather than joining forces to fight for all people, we have people fighting against each other. We see landlords more than willing to take advantage of those down and trodden. We see the results of a festering problem that will not get better unless we are exposed to the truth and take on the responsibility of understanding and making an effort to improve what ails us.