Toward Freedom Land: The Long Struggle for Racial Equality in America

The Detroit Race Riot of 1943

43 The Detroit Race Riot of 1943 My initial scholarly publication proudly wore my heart on its sleeve. The first of what would be several essays exploring the diverse impacts of the Second World War on civil rights and race relations began with a research trip to Detroit in 1967. I arrived in the Motor City just one week after its massive race riot that summer. What I saw and heard from Detroit blacks, and the contrary views being expressed by many whites, thoroughly influenced my interpretation of the riot that had occurred a quarter of a century earlier. More than just trying to capture the horror of the event that left 25 blacks and 9 whites dead and more than 700 injured, I felt an urgency to emphasize the barriers erected by whites to block blacks’ residential and occupational mobility , and I felt the need to attribute black aggressiveness to political militancy rather than criminality—the popular explanation given by most politicians at the time. Likewise, I felt obligated to blame the riot primarily on the many whites who sought to keep “the nigger in his place”—that is, in an inferior economic and social position—and on their leaders in Detroit and Washington who were content with “politics as usual.” Along with others in the New Left in the late 1960s, I questioned whether the nation had moved at all along the path toward racial justice, and I used Detroit as a prototype of the residential segregation , unemployment and underemployment, substandard housing , and inferior education that made the United States anything but a land of equality and opportunity. To underscore my political viewpoint , I ended the article with the judgment of an old black woman: “There ain’t no North any more. Everything now is South.” The essay “The Detroit Race Riot of 1943” was originally published in Michigan History 53 (Fall 1969), 183–206, and is reprinted by permission of the Michigan Historical Commission. 44 Toward Freedom Land For the American Negro, World War II began a quarter of a century of increasing hope and frustration. After a long decade of depression, the war promised a better deal. Negroes confidently expected a crusade against Nazi racism and for the Four Freedoms, a battle requiring the loyalty and manpower of all Americans, to be the turning point for their race. This war would be “Civil War II,” a “Double V” campaign. No Negro leader urged his people to suspend grievances until victory was won, as most did during World War I. Rather, the government’s need for full cooperation from the total population, the ideological character of the war, the constant preaching to square American practices with the American Creed, and the beginning of the end of the era of white supremacy in the world, intensified Negro demands for equality now.1 Never before in American history had Negroes been so united and militant. Led by the Baltimore Afro-American, Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, and Adam Clayton Powell’s People’s Voice (“The New Paper for the New Negro”), the Negro press urged civil rights leaders to be more aggressive. It publicized protest movements, headlined atrocity stories of lynched and assaulted Negroes, and developed race solidarity. Every major civil rights organization subscribed to the “Double V” campaign, demanding an end to discrimination in industry and the armed forces. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), National Urban League, NationalNegroCongress,A.PhilipRandolph’sMarch-on-Washington Movement, and the newly organized Congress of Racial Equality joined with Negro professional and fraternal organizations, labor unions, and church leaders to insist on “Democracy in Our Time!” These groups organized rallies, formed committees, supported letter and telegram mail-ins, began picketing and boycotting, and threatened unruly demonstrations. This as well as collaboration with sympathetic whites helped exert pressure on government officials.2 The combined effects of exhortation and organization made the Negro man-in-the-street increasingly militant. After years of futility, there was now bitter hope. As he slowly gained economic and political power, won victories in the courts, heard his aspirations legitimized by respected whites, and identified his cause with the two-thirds of the world’s colored people, the Negro became more impatient with any impediment to first-class citizenship and more determined to assert The Detroit Race Riot of 1943 45 his new status. Each gain increased his expectations...