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CHAPTER 4 Detroit's War on Poverty Low incomes, unemployment, and the poverty that resulted were disproportionately the lot of blacks as compared to whites in the nation and in Detroit in the 1960s. President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty in his State of the Union address in January 1964, and Congress responded in August by passing the Economic Opportunity Act. Detroit by that time had launched its own war on poverty and was better able than other cities to seek its share of the funds federal law made available. Blacks in Detroit gained markedly in income as compared to whites and as compared to blacks elsewhere in the nation between 1960 and 1965. Whereas the median family income in Detroit in 1960 was $4,366 for blacks and $6,769 for whites, the estimated nonwhite median family income had increased sharply by 1965 to $6,405, well above the national figure of $3,886 for nonwhites, while the estimated white family income of $6,846 was only slightly above the 1960 figure. The president of the Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) observed in the summer of 1964 that blacks were "eating better" in Detroit than elsewhere in the nation.1 The improvement in black income in Detroit reflected the substantial decrease in unemployment in the city beginning in 1963. Detroit lost 165,000 jobs between 1955 and 1962, but, sparked by the auto industry, employment improved markedly beginning in 1963. Detroit's auto workers became increasingly black in the 1960s, as white workers moved to jobs in suburban auto plants. In 1961 white unemployment in Detroit was 7.1 percent of the labor force and black, 17.4 percent; but by 1965 the white unemployment rate had been reduced to a miniscule 1.6 percent and the black to 3.4 percent. Despite the decline in their unemployment rate, blacks were concerned about the character of their jobs and job discrimination. A survey of the Detroit standard metropolitan statistical area in the summer of 1966 revealed that twice as large a proportion of blacks as whites held unskilled blue-collar jobs and that the proportion of whites in professional , technical, and kindred jobs exceeded the proportion of blacks in such jobs by seven to one. In the same survey, 28 percent of black 71 72 Violence in the Model City workers, as compared to 11 percent of white workers, expressed themselves as "fairly unsatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" with their jobs.2 In a postriot survey of Detroit blacks aged eighteen and over selected primarily from a directory of addresses, 48 percent of the respondents claimed they had experienced discrimination in "obtaining, holding, or advancing in a job." In responding to a narrower definition of job discrimination in the fifteen-city postriot survey, 28 percent of the Detroit blacks claimed that they had been denied jobs because of their skin color, which compared to 30 percent for blacks in the fifteen cities as a whole.3 The black organizations in Detroit sought to deal with the issues of black unemployment and job discrimination by negotiation and direct action. The Trade Union Leadership Council (TULC) in 1963 marshaled the support of numerous black organizations "behind Operation Negro Equality (ONE), which declared war on job discrimination in the building trades and negotiated with the Big Three automobile manufacturers to provide more auto jobs for blacks. Cavanagh responded to ONE's efforts by helping to persuade the Detroit Building Trades Council in July 1963 to agree to take immediate steps to promote equal employment opportunities for construction jobs. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) boycotted Kroger, and black ministers conducted a boycott campaign against A&P in what proved to be a successful effort to persuade both grocery chains to hire additional blacks. CORE reached a similar agreement with Grinnell Brothers. The NAACP, CORE, the Group of Advanced Leadership, Freedom Now, and other organizations picketed the General Motors Building in May 1964 because of the absence of black GM dealers.4 In the 1961 mayoral campaign Cavanagh promised to do more as mayor to alleviate poverty than his predecessors had done. When the mayor testified in favor of the Economic Opportunity Bill in April 1964, he noted, "We [Detroit] have not merely been standing by awaiting the declaration of the so-called war on poverty because we have been engaged in some preliminary activity and achieved some degree of success."5 In the fall of 1962...

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