Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence

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Preface to Great Lakes Books Edition

IN THE ORIGINAL edition I argued that the most acute past and present problems of modern American society were inherent in Detroit. Furthermore, I maintained that the city’s experiences had significant national repercussions. Detroit’s fate was a harbinger of America’s future. The book warned that the devastating social explosion of July 1967 shattered the conventional belief that Detroit was the model of a large industrial city working out its race and class problems.

Notwithstanding the riot’s grim aftermath, I projected an essentially optimistic future. Detroit would be different than other inner cities. I envisioned a powerful black community, having a strong economic, social, and political base. It would contain a growing black middle class and an influential black industrial union movement.

It didn’t work out that way. I did a three-year study to review what has happened in Detroit since 1967, why it has happened, and what it signifies. The results of my study are published in the epilogue in this edition. To be sure, city politics did become dominated by black political power. Mayor Coleman Young was easily reelected three times since his first triumph in 1973. But the loss of 100,000 manufacturing jobs gutted the industrial base of the city. The high-paying auto jobs disappeared as plants closed or moved to the suburbs or to other states and countries. Demographic changes resulting from population shifts to the suburbs helped shrink the city: Detroit lost 600,000 people, and the drain continues.

Meanwhile, metropolitan Detroit saw the creation of boomtowns—suburbs whose affluence is comparable to any area in the United States, a fact often overlooked. By confusing metropolitan Detroit with the city of Detroit, the vast gap between the affluent suburbs and the depressed city frequently is obscured. The ordeals that Detroit residents have endured during the structural changes—above all, unemployment and dislocations—are the source of many poignant stories and crises. Is it a wonder that Detroit has developed a poor image problem in this context? Or that frustration levels are always high? As a consequence of these turbulent changes, the city’s destiny remains in the grip of two overwhelming forces—social and economic—that victimize its shrinking population and make living a nightmare and the future bleak. I have concluded on the basis of my study that, One social force, like an incurable cancer, is the persistence of racism, manifested in black frustration and rage and white fears, which prevents healthy race relations.

My second judgment is more controversial. It suggests who is responsible for this situation. Above all, there is a reticence to analyze the second powerful force—besides the race issue—which negatively affects Detroit. It is the impact of the decisions of the power structure—the auto industry leaders, the big merchandisers, and the real estate investors—to shift the bulk of its plants, stores, investments, and activities outside the city. Surely, unless these forces are recognized as primary determinants in molding Detroit’s condition, efforts to alleviate if not cure the city’s ills seem likely to end up as exercises in shadowboxing with realities.

This analysis of the city’s distress obviously casts a heavy cloud on the rosy scenario in which conservative America has basked during the Reagan era. But much of America has problems similar to those plaguing Detroit. In many respects this book supports the masterful study by the brilliant sociologist William J. Wilson. His book, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Under-class and Public Policy, presents persuasive evidence that explodes the myths in liberal and conservative orthodoxies about blacks. A new spectre haunts us: a different, socially isolated underclass, unreachable by liberal or conservative panaceas. This is the great challenge.

Since leaving Wayne State University for Columbia University I have written and lectured extensively in the United States and abroad about the United Auto Workers Union, the auto industry, and Detroit. I have returned to Detroit many times over the years to visit friends, discuss ideas, and keep up with events. This has been an invaluable stimulant. Two personal friends, however, do deserve special thanks for their contributions. Oscar Paskal of the UAW educational department has shared his experiences and knowledge with me since we both worked at Chrysler after World War II. Paskal became an outstanding educator and is recognized as such by his peers. And I am much in debt to Merle Henrickson, the long-time director of the Detroit Board of Education Planning and Building Division, formerly a member of the city planning commission. His lifetime activities in the city and his knowledge of it are remarkable. Henrickson’s continuous analysis of the city’s trends are a gold mine of data and information.

I am deeply grateful to Phil Mason, editor of the Great Lakes Books Series, for his interest in reprinting Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence, and to Paulette Petri-moulx for her invaluable assistance in the editing of the updated portions of this book. Needless to say, only I am responsible for the results of my work.

June 1988       B. J. WIDICK

Preface

AS DETROIT goes, so goes the country. Name the acute problems, past or present, of modern American society and the auto capital of the world has confronted them, with an impact felt by the entire nation. Many of these problems emerged when the lure of high profits and high wages drew hundreds of thousands of European immigrants, Southern white workers, dispossessed blacks, and the extraneous rural population of the Midwest into the factory complex of Detroit. In conventional wisdom the city has been regarded as a melting pot. In reality Detroit has served the function of a pressure cooker, often exploding in racial and class conflict.

The industrial complex absorbed people of different races, creeds, and ethnic and class origins for its manpower requirements, but did not eliminate the divisive factors inherent in the social composition of the city. In 1971 the differences were, if anything, more visible than during any other period since World War I.

Until now, the city of Detroit has survived its racial and class conflicts, but at painful cost; the outlook for the 1970’s is hardly reassuring. At every stage of its history Detroit has been a battleground where attempts to modify the status quo—whether it be institutional arrangements, power relationships, or social attitudes—have met with vigorous resistance. This violent reaction to new ideas or ways of doing things, as campus reformers and radicals learned recently, seems endemic to the entire American scene.

In broad terms, society generally responds to new challenges with reform, repression, or sometimes a mixture of both; if these prove inadequate, it may move toward a revolutionary crisis. Each policy finds its advocates, generates its activists, and gains some measure of support in the nation. The 1970’s began in an atmosphere of national crisis, with fear of violence on the campus and in the streets heightened by a growing racial polarization—perhaps the major problem now confronting American society.

As usual, the debate over issues in critical times becomes shrill and emotion-packed. Extremism flourishes. In an earlier period of Detroit’s history, it was the powerful voice of Rev. Charles Coughlin, representing to labor and the liberal community the threat of fascism from the right which frightened many people and gained fanatic supporters. Before that, it was the campaign of the Ku Klux Klan to win a mayoralty election in 1924—a campaign which almost succeeded. The ideology of the KKK left its permanent mark on Detroit; its heritage provides the climate for the modern George Wallaces.

On the industrial front, the repressive conditions in the auto plants led to the protest of labor in the sitdown strikes of the 1930’s. When management continued to resist the idea of unionism, the workers reacted by seizing the plants, notably in the General Motors empire. It is interesting that the attempted repression in the name of law and order or management’s rights was followed not by revolution, but by reform in the establishment of the trade unions.

Detroit was a focal point of class conflict in the turbulent thirties. The citadel of anti-unionism became the scene of John L. Lewis’ first major victories for industrial unionism. As a consequence, Detroit became the power base for the world’s two largest unions, the auto workers and the teamsters, and gave Walter Reuther and James Hoffa national influence.

Each moment of crisis brought the inevitable fear of communist plots and totalitarianism of the Left. To put these fears in perspective—for there were indeed radicals on the Left active in all protest actions—one must look at Detroit’s past. Along with the hardships of the Depression, the brutal treatment of the workers and unemployed made many of them radicals, just as intolerant attitudes toward youthful protesters — lumping them all together and ignoring their complaints—serve to radicalize many college students. The internal impact of an international event like war on Detroit and the nation has also been underestimated.

War brutalizes men and society, often acting as a catalyst for violent outbursts. World War II brought thousands of blacks and whites to Detroit, creating a keg of social dynamite; the 1943 race riot was inevitable, and the occasion was a time for killing niggers by whites and police. The Korean war aroused passions which led to mob violence against suspected radicals in a Detroit inflamed by McCarthyism.

Currently, the violence of the disastrous war in Indo-China has permeated the thinking of most Americans with terrifying effect. Four students were killed at Kent State with little evidence of national remorse, except among the young. The Black Panthers are getting what they deserve; one hears that at every level of American society.

Such attitudes denote a society living in fear and frustration, once again looking for scapegoats rather than root causes. The contrast of these attitudes with the Victorian optimism in Detroit during the 1960’s is remarkable. Nowhere in the nation were there more illusions about an affluent society and significant social progress, with the national press singling out Detroit’s way as the future of America. The fabulous success of the auto industry, the rich contracts of the UAW with the industry’s leaders, the emergence of a brilliant young political figure, Mayor Jerome P. Cavanagh — these appeared to be manifestations of a new era of social peace.

The 1967 riot shattered these illusions. Its destruction was far greater in terms of human relations than in the obvious physical damage. The legacy of racial hatred, de facto segregation in the community and schools, and the revival of class tension hung over the city like storm clouds.

At each point in time the Establishment—the complex of power structures and leadership—has been unwilling or unable to understand the coming crises. In the 1920’s and 1930’s it was primarily the white working people who insisted that they be treated as human beings equal in stature to their economic peers. They achieved integration in our society mainly through the institution of unionism. One has only to see their homes in the suburbs to realize their present stake in society. Their problems today are quite different from those of the harsh past they still remember.

One minority was never given the opportunities for economic and social progress which were available to the immigrants and the uprooted whites of America. A successful black physician could not become part of the community like an Italian or Polish or Serbian doctor. Blacks learned that in 1924 from the Ossian Sweet case. They were kept on the fringes of industrial Detroit. (The Ford Motor Company was a notable exception, with its policy of hiring about 10 per cent of its local work force from the ghettos). Not until a labor market shortage and the protests of workers during World War II did Detroit Negroes enter the industrial scene in visible numbers. The extraordinary difficulties Negroes had to overcome to be accepted as human beings is a totally different story in Detroit from the history of the immigrants. Blacks always faced both race and class discrimination. Immigrants faced irritating prejudices and class bias, but they were accepted as whites and therefore superior in status to the black man.

The alienation of the black man, and to a lesser degree of some poor whites, was the underlying cause of the 1967 riot—a protest against a society which, if it did not totally exclude the black man, clearly considered him undesirable. The 1967 riot was not blacks versus whites, as in 1943, but blacks and some whites against the power structure, the landlord, the merchant, and the hated police.

Given these assumptions, the subsequent campaigns to rebuild the city of Detroit were foredoomed to failure. Once again the solution to a social crisis was viewed primarily in terms of the reestablishment of law and order, and public support listed heavily in the direction of repression. Reform has been so slight that it resembles Bandaids; they stop the bleeding but don’t cure the wound. Social solutions on a local or state scale are minuscule compared to the needs. Yet current national priorities preclude any significant redress of social ills.

The violence of public debate in this context will undoubtedly continue to provoke violent reactions among differing segments of the population.

What makes Detroit distinctly important and what is new here is the emergence of a black community possessing a powerful economic, social, and political base. In this respect it is unlike other inner cities in urban areas which seem doomed to become wastelands of human and material resources. All trends suggest that Detroit, the city, is destined to become a black metropolis—not just a slum or a ghetto, though these do exist, but a municipality with a strong black middle class and, perhaps more significantly, a powerful black unionized working class. This black community has already demonstrated its strength, viability, and leadership on both political and union fronts. It is moving toward domination of the city and challenging the white suburbs in every area of public controversy. It is too early to foretell the outcome of the racial and class conflicts. But we can see definite trends in the successes and failures of the past and the present. My aim here has been to better define certain social issues by placing them in the larger context of such trends, both urban and national. Until this is done, any true solutions are impossible.

Many individuals have contributed to this book by way of discussion and suggestions, and by making its publication possible. Emmanuel Geltman, editor at Quadrangle Books, helped shape its focus and assured its publication. Gene Brook, co-director of the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Michigan-Wayne State University (Labor Division), and director of Wayne State’s labor college, contributed a critical analysis of the manuscript. As a long-time writer and associate of Guy Nunn’s UAW Eye Opener radio and TV programs, Brook’s knowledge of the city is difficult to equal. The early chapters were edited by my friend Albert Fried, the historian, and our numerous discussions were of invaluable assistance to me.

Anthony Ripley of the New York Times, a former Detroit newspaperman and confidential assistant to Mayor Jerome P. Cavanagh, reviewed the material on the 1960’s. The former mayor was also quite candid with me in his discussion of those days. James Keeney, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University who spent three years in Detroit, was very generous in allowing me to use his material and research on Detroit’s race and housing problems. My former colleagues in the UAW and the men and women whom I know in the auto plants kept me well informed over the years on events in the plants and in the city. Wilbur Thompson, the urban economist from Wayne State University, provided the original impetus for this study in the form of a grant from the Urban Institute of that school while I was teaching there. Additional funds were made available by the faculty research committee of the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. Assignments from Carey McWilliams, editor of the Nation, and from Irving Howe, editor of Dissent, enabled me to return more frequently to Detroit than I would otherwise have been able to do.

Many thanks are also due Mrs. Bonnie De Athos of Wayne State University, Mrs. Sonya Whynman, and Mrs. Dolores Nichols of the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, for the typing of the manuscript and for the patience so indispensable to an author. And, most of all, gratitude goes to my wife Barbara and my son Marshall Jason, who make my life and work such a real pleasure.

July 1971         B. J. WIDICK

Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence

1

The Legacy of the KKK

IN 1924-1925 the Ku Klux Klan mounted a campaign to dominate Detroit—the fourth largest city in the United States and the symbol of American industrial success. Its appeal, simple and direct, was based on anti-Catholicism and white superiority.

As an organization, the KKK was destroyed on these issues. But it left a legacy of prejudice more visible than ever today. In a city of 350,000 Catholics out of a total population of nearly 1,000,000, the KKK program overreached itself. A proposal to outlaw parochial schools in Michigan was defeated by a vote of 610,699 to 353,817. However, in the September 1924 primary in Detroit, the KKK mayoralty candidate was defeated only by technical rulings which invalidated 17,000 votes.

The remarkable thing about the KKK political campaign was that its candidate was a write-in. Charles Bowles received 106,679 votes, excluding the 17,000; John W. Smith, backed by Catholic and Negro voters, had 116,807; and Joseph Martin, who was on the ballot against Smith, totaled 84,929.

John W. Smith, who was elected, denounced the Klan for seeking to establish a dictatorship in Detroit when it took to the streets and provoked violence. But in a sense the KKK also won when the mayor, elected with Negro votes, accepted the Klan’s view that black men ought to stay in their place.

… I must say that I deprecate most strongly the moving of Negroes or other persons into districts in which they know their presence may cause riot or bloodshed.

I believe that any colored person who endangers life and property, simply to gratify his personal pride, is an enemy of his race as well as an incitant to riot and murder. These men, who have permitted themselves to be tools of the Ku Klux Klan in its effort to fan the flames of racial hatred into murderous fire, have hurt the cause of their race in a degree that can not be measured.¹

The language may have been softened somewhat at times, but essentially this was, and generally still is, the attitude in Detroit toward the efforts of blacks to become equal citizens in all respects. The KKK has long been dead as a strong organization in Detroit, but most whites still hold Smith’s view.

In view of what happened in 1925 in the Motor City, Smith’s policy was tragic—one of the many instances of white racism which frustrated Negroes and aroused their anger.

The red glare of fiery crosses and men marching in white hoods were common sights in Detroit in those days. In July 1925, the frenzy of the KKK became more ominous. An audience of ten thousand cheered KKK speakers who urged the 100 per cent Americans to keep the niggers in their place. Blacks were beginning to break out of the ghetto, and the time for direct action was now.

The uprooted Southern hillbillies and red-necks responded enthusiastically. They were already deeply disturbed by what was happening to their America: too many Jews were running stores; too many politicians with funny foreign names were winning office; and the Pope’s followers were gaining influence everywhere.

Following a report that a smart nigger had bought a house in an all-white neighborhood, the Klan ended its Saturday night rally with a call to organize neighborhood improvement associations, particularly on the east side of Detroit.

One man, more than anyone else in Detroit, knew what this rally portended. He was black and he had purchased a house outside the ghetto in an all-white neighborhood on the east side.

Dr. Ossian H. Sweet, the home purchaser, had all the attributes which American society demands that a black man have to be accepted. He was middle class, educated, a man of culture; his enemies were ignorant, racist, and proletarian. His ordeal became a test for Detroit, and a preview of American society’s dilemmas and agonies for the next four decades.

The subsequent maelstrom of events almost destroyed Dr. Sweet. In the long run they led to his suicide. More immediately, he was put in jail with his wife, Gladys, a university graduate; his brother Otis, a dentist; another brother who was a student at Wilberforce College; John Latting, a former Army captain; William Davis, a federal narcotics officer; and five businessmen.

For a white man had been killed, probably by a black man, and these eleven prisoners were charged with first-degree murder. They were held without bail pending trial before an all-white jury.

This was the stark background to the Sweet case which commanded world attention in 1925. It also illuminated the soul of Detroit.

A stroke of good fortune, and the influence of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, made a lynch trial impossible, though the white community was filled with cries for Negro blood in the name of law and order.

It happened that the presiding judge, recently appointed to the state bench, was a brilliant young liberal, Frank Murphy, the man who later rose to become mayor of Detroit, governor of Michigan, Attorney General, and finally Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

The NAACP convinced Clarence Darrow, defender of unpopular causes and recent opponent of William Jennings Bryan in the Tennessee monkey trial, to take the Sweet case. W.E.B. DuBois, the Negro writer, said of Darrow: He was absolutely lacking in racial consciousness and one of the few white folks with whom I felt quite free to discuss matters of race and class.² Only a lawyer of Darrow’s stature, and with his understanding of the underlying issues, could really help the defendants, and Darrow accepted the challenge. He was assisted by Arthur Garfield Hays, the noted civil libertarian; Walter Nelson, a prominent and courageous Detroit lawyer; and a working staff of anonymous local Negro lawyers who kept in the background so as not to further inflame public opinion.

The overwhelming difficulty faced by the defense was the white community’s conviction that the Negroes had to be guilty. And numerous witnesses, the testimony of the police, the tactics of the prosecution—all reinforced that conviction.

What happened when Ossian Sweet moved into his new home depended on what version one believed, and, more important, what one wanted to believe. It would take the consummate skill of Clarence Darrow to piece together the story from the accounts of all the participants, the police, and the witnesses, to explain what motivated men like Dr. Sweet, and to expose the depths of racism in the city.

As far as the white community and the prosecution were concerned, the facts of the case were clear enough: a shooting had taken place and a white man had been killed. What more was needed except the identity of the killers, and that too was known. Arthur Garfield Hays accurately described the prosecution’s version of events: It was "a warm summer evening in a quiet, neighborly community. The Sweet house stood on a corner. Diagonally across was the high school with a spacious yard. Opposite and along the street were small frame houses owned and occupied by simple, kindly people—the men mostly mechanics, the women housewives, dutifully caring for broods of children. People were sitting on their porches enjoying the cool air after dusk, visiting and chatting. A few sauntered casually along the street. Some were on their way to a corner grocery. Here and there a car was parked. Of course, the fact that Negroes had moved into the corner house was of interest, but peace and quiet was assured by a half dozen policemen who stood guard at various places, keeping people away from the sidewalk in front and on the side of the Sweet house. Suddenly, unexpectedly and without provocation, a fusillade of shots rang out from the rear, sides and front of the house, and Leon Breiner, chatting with a group on the porch of the Dove home opposite, was killed. His pipe was still in his mouth when he was carried away. Another man in the group was wounded.

After painting this picture, the prosecutor cried ‘Cold-blooded murder!’ and the newspapers, of course, echoed his cry: ‘Another murder by Negroes. They are becoming a menace to the community!’ ³ Simple justice required that the Negroes be found guilty of first-degree murder and appropriately punished.

The defense did not dispute the bare facts. It did seem clear that Breiner had been killed by a shot from the house. It was true that ten men had gathered there with provisions, guns, and ammunition to withstand a possible siege and that the shooting had come from various windows. (Moreover, there had been extensive police presence, and the arrested blacks had made conflicting statements, almost confessions, about firing guns.) But if one related what happened on the night of September 9, 1925, when Breiner was killed, to what had been, and was then, happening in Detroit, the white man’s version of the event was badly distorted. As Clarence Darrow said at one point during the trial:

I insist that there is nothing but prejudice in this case; that if it was reversed and eleven white men had shot and killed a black while protecting their home and their lives against a mob of blacks, nobody would’ve dreamed of having them indicted. I know what I am talking about, and so do you. They would have been given medals instead. Ten colored men and one woman are in this indictment, tried by twelve jurors, gentlemen. Everyone of you are white, aren’t you? At least you all think so. We haven’t one colored man on this jury. We couldn’t get one. One was called and he was disqualified. You twelve men are trying a colored man on race prejudice.

Emphasizing his point, Darrow added, Now let me ask you whether you are not prejudiced. I want to put this square to you, gentlemen. I haven’t any doubt but that every one of you is prejudiced against colored people.⁴

Immediately preceding Dr. Sweet’s purchase of the $18,500 two-story house, Detroit had seen a wave of anti-Negro violence which received little attention in the daily