Where were you during the 1967 Detroit Riot?

[Hermod]

I think it has a lot to do with the quality of the people the city and surrounding areas attracted in the glory days of the auto industry as well as the wartime industrial buildup. People moved to the "arsenal of democracy" due to the large number of unskilled jobs. The tendency of these jobs being filled by, for the most part, uneducated workers could explain a lot.

The workers from the South brought their prejudices with them, both black and white. The lack of education could explain a little bit of the ignorance and racism inherent in both Black and White Detroiters. This, plus the distrust and racism of the vast amount of immigrant laborers that were still present up to the 1970's added a lot to the problem.

The majority of whites in Detroit in 1950 were not uneducated migrants from the south. The majority of them were European immigrants and their descendants who had come to the US during the period 1880 to 1930 plus the postwar DPs from Europe. These people did not "bring their prejudices with them" when they came to Detroit.