In July 1943, Detroit erupted in a race riot that lasted three days. By the time order was restored, thirty-three people had been killed, 675 people were seriously injured, and 1,893 people had been arrested. Of those killed, twenty-five were Black, seventeen by police and eight by white mobs. The remaining dead were white people killed by Black mobs. All together, the riot caused more than $2 million in property damage ($29 million in 2018) and caused the city’s industries over one million hours in production for the war. A report written at the time understood that the riot emerged from white Detroiters resistance to Black Detroiters commitment to fighting for dignity. “The basic underlying cause of the Detroit Riot is, of course, the struggle of colored Americans for full, unrestricted, and nondiscriminatory enjoyment of the rights, privileges, and immunities of American citizenship under the Constitution and for nondiscriminatory participation in the political, economic, and social life of the American community.” 

In the months before the riot, tension had been building on factory floors. Blacks, hired in large numbers in auto plants after the passage of Executive Order 4088 made discrimination in defense plants illegal, entered plants with a commitment to fight for their dignity. As autoworker and activist James Boggs told an interviewer, “Black workers began to create a new social milieu and an arena inside the plant.” Because Blacks were committed to having their dignity recognized, according to Boggs, “whites were confronted with many of the contradictions which they had been avoiding because of their privilege and isolation from Blacks. White men and women were forced to confront questions which they had never dreamed of—and which at the time seemed monumental. Would they or would they not sit on the same toilet stool as Blacks? Would they or would they not eat in the same restaurant as Blacks?” “Many times, the [assembly] line would grind to a halt because a white worker would answer these questions in the negative, believing confidently that the whole future of civilization depended on his refusing to sit on the same toilet stool as a Black man.”  

These white workers’ refusal to work with Blacks who stood their ground resulted in several strikes throughout World War II that were made up of only Blacks and only whites. In the first six months of 1943 alone, twelve of these strikes occurred in Detroit, the most serious occurring at the Packard Automotive Plant. Black workers went on strike and shut the plant down to protest management’s refusal to promote Black workers. When a Black worker was promoted, whites then went on strike and shut down the plant to protest the promotion. In response to the hostility of white workers and police harassment, the UAW and the NAACP held a demonstration demanding that police take action against mobs of racist white workers. 25,000 white workers at Packard walked out and shut the plant down for three days just days after the demonstration.

This tension also existed in housing. Throughout the migration years 500,000 new Black and white residents moved into Detroit and needed housing. Because war spending was top priority, very little new housing was built during these years and a major housing shortage emerged. Thus, when new public housing was built and Black Detroiters were given access to it–such as the Sojourner Truth Housing Project–whites rioted not just out of racism but also because they needed housing and believed the city was neglecting their needs. Only in this context of building tension can the 1943 riot be explained and understood. 

On an extraordinarily hot June 20, somewhere between 90-100,000 people gathered on Belle Isle to enjoy the weekend weather. Although the incident’s roots have never been exactly clear, there were several complaints filed to police that day about fights between Black and white men on Belle Isle as well as complaints filed by Black women about harassment from white men. Far more important to the spread of the riot were rumors about what happened, especially a rumor that white men had drowned a Black baby in the Detroit River and that whites had harassed a pregnant Black woman. These rumors were important fuel for the riot because they provided both Blacks and whites with a target on which to vent their frustrations.

As rumors of racist acts continued to spread, the riot spread down Woodward Avenue. On the east side where Blacks lived, rumors that whites threw a Black woman and her baby off a bridge drove anger and in white communities, rumors of a Black man raping a white woman fueled anger. Over the course of three days, Black Detroiters looted stores, fought the police, stoned white people, and attacked whites on streetcars in Black neighborhoods. White Detroiters came to Black Bottom in mobs and attacked individual Black Detroiters while also pulling Black people out of streetcars and automobiles, beating them, then setting their cars on fire. 

This willingness of Blacks to fight back had a transformative impact on the city and on their white co-workers in factories. With the dignity and self-respect displayed by Black workers in Detroit during the war, Black people from throughout the city were emboldened to stand up for themselves and fight for democracy at home as it was being fought for abroad. This self-respect also led some whites to a new respect for Black Detroiters and mobilized them to struggle to improve their own lives. Over the course of the War James Boggs observed a growing tendency amongst white workers to prove to their Black co-workers that they were not racist. 

Although a decline in racist sentiment is hard to prove, it is clear that Black resistance inspired whites to resist. Following the war, with workers of all backgrounds having been transformed by Black workers activism, a new unity emerged amongst workers. Consequently, the UAW was able to maintain an integrated strike at General Motors in 1946 for 115 days and several other integrated strikes were waged around the city.

References:

 Matthew Birkhold, “Doing for Our Time What Marx Did for His: The Boggsian Challenge to Marxist Praxis,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2011  

Xavier Nichols, Questions of the American Revolution: Conversations with James Boggs, Atlanta, Institute of the Black World, 1976

Richard Walter Thomas, Life for Us is What We Make it: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915-1945, Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 1992

Stephen M. Ward, In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2017