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Events leading up to the riot

Blacks began to revolt against unfair conditions by doing what is called the “bumping campaign.” This act was done by bumping into white people on the sidewalk and shoving them into the road. They also were nudging white people while in the elevator.

Assembly line tension

Harold Zeck remembers seeing a group of white women workers coming into the assembly line to convince the white men workers to walk out of work to protest black women using the white woman’s bathroom. Harold remembers one of the women saying "They think their fannies are as good as ours." The protest ended when the men refused to leave work.

Housing challenges

Many Black families lived in houses without plumbing but yet they still had to pay three times as much as the white families paid.

Sojourner Truth Housing Project

The first black family tried to move into the Sojourner Truth housing project at a.m. but left because of their fear of the crowd of angry white people.

The clash between the whites and the blacks that day when two black males tried to run through the picket line. The fighting stopped in the afternoon when sixteen police officers tried to break up the fight. The police used tear gas and shotguns to stop the brawl.

The Great Black Migration

The south changed very little after the civil war. Even with the efforts of the republicans the south still would not change, while slavery became illegal the mentality to have slaves in the south did not change. Blacks were technically free but that was mostly an illusion, since blacks owned no land and had no income they started working for the same people that enslaved them. Southerner blacks migrated to the north in the 1900s to hopefully leave the southern culture. Southern blacks had considered Detroit to be the place of paradise for a long time and thought of  Henry Ford as a great man who would help them. All the way back to the civil war Detroit was a big place for the underground railroad to lead. Blacks loved Henry Ford because around 1910 Ford gave a salary of $5 a day to his workers which translates to over $120 today. Detroit became a symbol of cultural rebirth. This is why the statement “when I die, bury me in Detroit” was popular amongst the black community.

Riot

Whites overran Woodward to Veron where they proceeded to tip over 20 cars that belonged to black families. The whites also started to loot stores while rioting.

The first casualty was when a white pedestrian was struck by a taxi. Later after that four young white males shot and killed a 58 year black male, Moses Kiska, who was sitting at the bus stop at Mack and Chene. Some Detroit police officers that were patrolling Paradise Valley told patrons to run and not look back, those police officers then proceeded to shoot some of those bystanders in the back. Later on a white doctor ignored police warnings to avoid black neighborhoods. The doctor then went to a house call in a black neighborhood. He then was hit in the back of the head with a rock and beaten to death by black rioters. A couple years after this riot there was a monument dedicated to this doctor at the streets of East Grand and Gratiot. A black man was later coming off of a bus where he was then grabbed and beaten by a group of white protesters. This happened in front of four police officers that stood and watched, no one was arrested or cited.

Work Cited

“The 1943 Detroit Race Riots.” Rearview Mirror: The 1943 Detroit Race Riots, 17 Apr. 2000, www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/clio/detroit_riot/DetroitNewsRiots1943.htm.

“1943- A Race Riot There Would Be.” Detroit Race Riot 1943, www.detroits-great-rebellion.com/Detroit---1943.html.