75th Anniversary of the 1943 Race Riots

While last year was the 50th anniversary of the 1967 rebellion, this year we mark the 75th anniversary of 1943 race riots. In fact, today, June 20.

It appears this riot was much more inter-race related than 1967. While 1967 was about black anger against racist policies, 1943 was nearly a race battle. Southern whites trying to put down southern and Detroit-born blacks and the fact blacks could only live in one public housing project or live in squalid conditions in the Black Bottom area.

I simply cannot imagine the brawls that happened. Blacks beat by white mobs. Brawls on Belle Isle. It makes little sense to me. Summers in Detroit don't often bode well.

Read more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Detroit_race_riot

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rs...sRiots1943.htm

Listen:
http://livedetroit.tv/audio/1943DetroitRaceRiots.html

Anyone have any personal stories about this one? The generation who lived through this one is quickly going but perhaps you heard something about it when growing up...

There aren't many folks left now to tell this tale first hand. My late father's main remembrance of the event was the surreality of it all. Taking the streetcar from Wayne U. [[as it was then) to his job at Hudson Motor Car on Jefferson. Going past all the chaos on Woodward, brawls between white and black people in the streets, flipped over burning cars, gangs of white men armed with clubs sweeping across Woodward, and cops protecting the streetcars and tracks, then transferring in an eerily quiet and empty downtown, and then passing a closed off and heavily guarded Belle Isle Bridge with Jefferson Ave. full of armed patrols, only to arrive at the Hudson plant where he worked quietly and peacefully next to black and white workers.

I had an elderly black friend and neighbor, now long gone, who remembered vividly when the white mobs and cops hit Hastings St. and, as he put it, "the real riot started". It sounded horrendous, and he always claimed that there was never any true accounting of the actual number of black people killed and injured as a result. One of the strange things he noted was that as soon as it was all over, and the curfew was lifted, the black & tan clubs in Paradise Valley reopened and filled up with racially mixed crowds as usual.

https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits...ears-ago-today

The death toll had reportedly been higher than what was recorded

Yes, 1943 was a true race riot, similar to the Tulsa riot of 1921. Lost on most white Detroiters is the difference between the 1943 event and the type of conflict/unrest that occurred in 1967. If you hear someone call 1967 a race riot, you can be immediately certain that he or she is largely misinformed about the event and that they have never taken the effort to learn the facts about the causes of the conflict. "Rebellion" isn't necessarily an entirely accurate term for the 1967 unrest, but "race riot" which denotes a violent conflict between races is completely inappropriate.

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Originally Posted by dtowncitylover

While last year was the 50th anniversary of the 1967 rebellion, this year we mark the 75th anniversary of 1943 race riots. In fact, today, June 20. I simply cannot imagine the brawls that happened. Blacks beat by white mobs. Brawls on Belle Isle. It makes little sense to me. Summers in Detroit don't often bode well.Anyone have any personal stories about this one? The generation who lived through this one is quickly going but perhaps you heard something about it when growing up...

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In the June 21 edition of the Detroit Free Press there was a small notice below the fold on the front page that 50 police had been called to Belle Isle. If you're researching through old newspapers, the major coverage is June 22.My mother, who passed away in 2012, graduated from Eastern High School, Class of 1943.I remember her telling me her graduation was ruined, and she deeply resented that. She also told me that blacks also attacked white people. Yes, she recalled, blacks endured injustices, and she was sympathetic toward that, but I often heard about the injustices suffered by European immigrants that lived in the neighborhoods surrounding Belle Isle. "But", she would say, "we didn't burn our neighborhood down. She remembers that some of the Italian and German store owners would write "colored owned" on their store windows so people wouThat accomplishes nothing but heartache for the people who have to get up every day and work for a living." She was big on non-violence and admired Dr. King for stressing that.Attachment 36001One has to only look at the 1940 Census online or get a 6-month, $30 subscription to newspapers.com and look at the Detroit Free Press to see that blacks lived in various areas of the city. My mother's 1940 yearbook from the Barbour School [[a junior high school) has a surprising number of black children's photographs among the student body.I would caution readers to consider the source when researching the riots. Be aware if the site has a political agenda; often they tend to re-write history. Wikipedia is left-leaning with a revisionist tact toward history, though its founder Jimmy Wales, self-identifies as a Libertarian.

People in general do not like to be forced into doing or accepting things/change. Booker T Washington felt change would occur over time and at peoples differing acceptance rates. Henry Ford thought blacks needed time to advance [[20-40 years). When you look throughout metro Detroit, it is really not much different than other areas of America. People tend to live, work and school in areas they feel comfortable with... i.e. along racial/ethnic lines. Forcing people to accept and tolerate others of a different cultural/belief system doesn't advance society. Booker T had the right approach.. but he was pushed aside and forgotten...

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Originally Posted by kathy2trips

In the June 21 edition of the Detroit Free Press there was a small notice below the fold on the front page that 50 police had been called to Belle Isle. If you're researching through old newspapers, the major coverage is June 22.My mother, who passed away in 2012, graduated from Eastern High School, Class of 1943.I remember her telling me her graduation was ruined, and she deeply resented that. She also told me that blacks also attacked white people. Yes, she recalled, blacks endured injustices, and she was sympathetic toward that, but I often heard about the injustices suffered by European immigrants that lived in the neighborhoods surrounding Belle Isle. "But", she would say, "we didn't burn our neighborhood down. She remembers that some of the Italian and German store owners would write "colored owned" on their store windows so people wouThat accomplishes nothing but heartache for the people who have to get up every day and work for a living." She was big on non-violence and admired Dr. King for stressing that.Attachment 36001One has to only look at the 1940 Census online or get a 6-month, $30 subscription to newspapers.com and look at the Detroit Free Press to see that blacks lived in various areas of the city. My mother's 1940 yearbook from the Barbour School [[a junior high school) has a surprising number of black children's photographs among the student body.I would caution readers to consider the source when researching the riots. Be aware if the site has a political agenda; often they tend to re-write history. Wikipedia is left-leaning with a revisionist tact toward history, though its founder Jimmy Wales, self-identifies as a Libertarian.

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I had no idea you were so conservative Kathy until another thread you posted in. I didn't say that whites weren't beat up, in fact I did read about that, but not as much as blacks were as there were fewer of them. How was it to be black and forced off of a streetcar and beaten half to death?

And within a generation those European immigrants would be assimilated while blacks were still second class citizens with substandard housing and education and job opportunities and another riot/rebellion would occur.

43 was a riot between the races, plain and simple egged on by southern prejudice.

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Originally Posted by dtowncitylover

I had no idea you were so conservative Kathy until another thread you posted in. I didn't say that whites weren't beat up, in fact I did read about that, but not as much as blacks were as there were fewer of them. How was it to be black and forced off of a streetcar and beaten half to death?

And within a generation those European immigrants would be assimilated while blacks were still second class citizens with substandard housing and education and job opportunities and another riot/rebellion would occur.

43 was a riot between the races, plain and simple egged on by southern prejudice.

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Forcing people to get along has the same effect as outright prejudice. People have their reasons to live as they want. Detroit won many legal battles, but did Detroit win the minds?

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Originally Posted by Colombian Dan

Forcing people to get along has the same effect as outright prejudice. People have their reasons to live as they want. Detroit won many legal battles, but did Detroit win the minds?

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Uh no I never said we had to force people to live together. However we now know it was wrong to not allow African Americans into neighborhoods of their choice instead of allowing them only into the Brewester Homes or Black Bottom. Is that so hard to understand? I didn't realize I had to explain that.

And no sorry, I don't believe that forcing vs. being complicent with segregation is the same thing. What happened over the past 60 years is the result of self-segregration. Urban sprawl, urban depopulation, black suburbs vs. white suburbs. I really don't care about "your" feelings. An urban city usually has a vibrant population made up of various cultures, creeds, and colors enclaves for sure and for the most part all have to live with one another and "forced" to deal with each other.

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Originally Posted by dtowncitylover

And no sorry, I don't believe that forcing vs. being complicent with segregation is the same thing. What happened over the past 60 years is the result of self-segregration. Urban sprawl, urban depopulation, black suburbs vs. white suburbs. I really don't care about "your" feelings. An urban city usually has a vibrant population made up of various cultures, creeds, and colors enclaves for sure and for the most part all have to live with one another and "forced" to deal with each other.

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What exactly is an "urban city?"

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Originally Posted by dtowncitylover

Uh no I never said we had to force people to live together. However we now know it was wrong to not allow African Americans into neighborhoods of their choice instead of allowing them only into the Brewester Homes or Black Bottom. Is that so hard to understand? I didn't realize I had to explain that.

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Detroit forced and apparently still does, forcibly "integrate" it's public schools by race. Made no sense then in the 1970s to force students by race to attend schools away from their neighborhoods. Using force to socially re-engineer cultural thinking patterns was one of the worst ideas in the last century. When Detroit government forced school integration that was the final nail for most Detroiters; also put suburban sprawl into overdrive.

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Originally Posted by Colombian Dan

Detroit forced and apparently still does, forcibly "integrate" it's public schools by race. Made no sense then in the 1970s to force students by race to attend schools away from their neighborhoods. Using force to socially re-engineer cultural thinking patterns was one of the worst ideas in the last century. When Detroit government forced school integration that was the final nail for most Detroiters; also put suburban sprawl into overdrive.

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You're right. If only those folks back in 1943 had only waited in their red-lined district 75 years until everyone was ready to get along...

Oh. Nevermind.

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Originally Posted by archfan

You're right. If only those folks back in 1943 had only waited in their red-lined district 75 years until everyone was ready to get along...

Oh. Nevermind.

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Don't argue with the trolls, particularly the racist ones. It is dishearteningly depressing though that ugliness like this would pop up on a thread that is about an event that began when mobs of white people literally forced themselves violently on black people just trying to go about their lives [[riding streetcars, going to Belle Isle on a hot day, driving down Woodward, walking down John R, etc.).

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Originally Posted by Colombian Dan

Forcing people to get along has the same effect as outright prejudice. People have their reasons to live as they want. Detroit won many legal battles, but did Detroit win the minds?

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Indeed, there's a difference between tolerance [[a.k.a. "live and let live" as they'd say in the 1940s) and government mandated social engineering.

dtowncitylover unfortunately makes his determination of the cause of the 1943 riots through the lens of modern perceptions of the situation. Let's look at an August 1943 editorial from the Free Press regarding the Dowling Report on the cause of the riots, and the authors frustration at the report's shortcomings:

Attachment 36007

Of course, there were red-lined districts; I am not defending those. But there were many who were not, and indeed, there were. However we cannot ignore the "birds of a feather [[flock together)" mentality that existed in the 1940s. Does it surprise you that blacks also wanted to live with other blacks? That they had little in common with white, often Catholic or Orthodox, frequently non-English speaking people? Just two years later, in 1945, the Detroit Free Press reported on a new subdivision [[NOT housing project) that was being built so black people could enjoy a sense of community in a residential neighborhood setting?

Attachment 36006

As far as my politics are concerned, I consider myself an independent, capable of critical thinking. I applaud both my family dinner-table discussions and my teachers and professors [[particularly Neal Shine, at WSU) for cultivating my abilities in this area.

That governor's report was a notorious whitewash, whose facts are disputed by nearly every historian who has written about the disturbance. And both Detroit papers [[all 3, if you include the Hearst-owned Times, which was probably the worst) were racist as hell then, and for many years thereafter. Most of the "agitation" they're talking about was simply people asking for the right to live where they wanted, to shop where they wanted, to eat drink and relax where they wanted, to walk and drive where they wanted unmolested, and to have equal opportunity in education and employment.

Part of the response to this "agitation" though was a "riot", which looked like this:
https://blackthen.com/wp-content/upl...04/detroit.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/65/50...0972d078f0.jpg
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/386...riot-photo.jpg

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Originally Posted by EastsideAl

That governor's report was a notorious whitewash, whose facts are disputed by nearly every historian who has written about the disturbance.

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The K2Ts of the world will never understand simple concepts like right and wrong.

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Originally Posted by Meddle

The K2Ts of the world will never understand simple concepts like right and wrong.

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Gee, Meddle, you seem to have a snarky remark for everything I post, no matter the thread. First, Albert Kahn, and now here.

In this thread, I'm just reporting on historical accounts and hear-say evidence from my own family and their neighbors who actually lived through it. What you glean from that says more about you than it does me.