Rawthentic
28th June 2007, 04:12
This coming July 23 marks the 40th anniversary of one of the largest popular upheavals in the U.S. since 1877: the Detroit Rebellion.
For close to a week, Black and white workers fought the police and military in a desperate struggle against exploitation and oppression. At the end, 43 were dead, hundreds were injured and thousands were imprisoned.
The Rebellion has shaped the course of events in the Detroit area since 1967.
Even today, the “black days in July” are seen as a critical turning point in the history of the region, and the spark that led to not only mass struggles later in the 1960s among African American workers but also to the economic fights of the 1970s and 1980s that attempted to break the back of the unionized working class.
The seeds of the Rebellion, however, had been planted decades before the first brick was thrown or person was shot in 1967. They stretch back to the time of the organizing of the auto unions in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The efforts of the CIO union federation to organize workers in Detroit’s auto plants in the late 1930s had brought, for the first time, Black and poor white workers together in a common struggle.
But while many of the white workers were willing to belong to the same union as African Americans, social tensions between Black and white continued to simmer beneath the surface.
With the onset of the Second World War, this tension spilled over into occasional racial conflict over jobs and housing, due to both African American and poor white workers from the South moving north to work in one of the wartime-organized plants.
In February 1942, federal officials working with the Detroit Housing Commission opened up a new housing project to both Black and white workers employed in the growing war industry.
Whites picketed the moving in of African Americans into the projects, ironically named for Sojourner Truth, a lifetime advocate for civil rights and equality. It was not long before Black and white workers began to skirmish and fight in the streets of the project.
It took both police action and federal intervention, supported by the unions, local newspapers, politicians and community leaders to ease tensions. But this relative peace was short-lived.
By the following year, tensions had reached its flashpoint. But by June 1943, the stage was set for a massive race riot between Black and white residents.
The Woodward Race Riots of 1943 lasted only 36 hours, but resulted in the death of 34 people, most of them African Americans caught in the middle of racist white mobs.
At the time, the local media and politicians blamed the riots on the Black community, and even went so far as to criticize the police showing “restraint” ... and not joining in the actions of the racist mobs.
After the war, racial tensions eased, mainly due to a surplus of jobs and the expanding economy. But by the early 1960s, they had flared up again, due to the shifting of jobs outside of the city and the literal destruction of the African-American community in Detroit, known as “Black Bottom,” to make way for Interstate 75.
“White flight” to the suburbs aggravated the situation, and escalating taxes forces many Black workers into small and crowded enclaves or into federal housing projects that had been poorly maintained since the war.
Unemployment among African Americans was double that of whites, which made overcrowded neighborhoods even larger, as workers who lost their homes moved in with family members.
One of the most densely populated neighborhoods of this type was centered at 12th and Clairmount.
For close to a week, Black and white workers fought the police and military in a desperate struggle against exploitation and oppression. At the end, 43 were dead, hundreds were injured and thousands were imprisoned.
The Rebellion has shaped the course of events in the Detroit area since 1967.
Even today, the “black days in July” are seen as a critical turning point in the history of the region, and the spark that led to not only mass struggles later in the 1960s among African American workers but also to the economic fights of the 1970s and 1980s that attempted to break the back of the unionized working class.
The seeds of the Rebellion, however, had been planted decades before the first brick was thrown or person was shot in 1967. They stretch back to the time of the organizing of the auto unions in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The efforts of the CIO union federation to organize workers in Detroit’s auto plants in the late 1930s had brought, for the first time, Black and poor white workers together in a common struggle.
But while many of the white workers were willing to belong to the same union as African Americans, social tensions between Black and white continued to simmer beneath the surface.
With the onset of the Second World War, this tension spilled over into occasional racial conflict over jobs and housing, due to both African American and poor white workers from the South moving north to work in one of the wartime-organized plants.
In February 1942, federal officials working with the Detroit Housing Commission opened up a new housing project to both Black and white workers employed in the growing war industry.
Whites picketed the moving in of African Americans into the projects, ironically named for Sojourner Truth, a lifetime advocate for civil rights and equality. It was not long before Black and white workers began to skirmish and fight in the streets of the project.
It took both police action and federal intervention, supported by the unions, local newspapers, politicians and community leaders to ease tensions. But this relative peace was short-lived.
By the following year, tensions had reached its flashpoint. But by June 1943, the stage was set for a massive race riot between Black and white residents.
The Woodward Race Riots of 1943 lasted only 36 hours, but resulted in the death of 34 people, most of them African Americans caught in the middle of racist white mobs.
At the time, the local media and politicians blamed the riots on the Black community, and even went so far as to criticize the police showing “restraint” ... and not joining in the actions of the racist mobs.
After the war, racial tensions eased, mainly due to a surplus of jobs and the expanding economy. But by the early 1960s, they had flared up again, due to the shifting of jobs outside of the city and the literal destruction of the African-American community in Detroit, known as “Black Bottom,” to make way for Interstate 75.
“White flight” to the suburbs aggravated the situation, and escalating taxes forces many Black workers into small and crowded enclaves or into federal housing projects that had been poorly maintained since the war.
Unemployment among African Americans was double that of whites, which made overcrowded neighborhoods even larger, as workers who lost their homes moved in with family members.
One of the most densely populated neighborhoods of this type was centered at 12th and Clairmount.