In 1941 the United States went to war with a segregated army and a white navy and air corps. Many Negroes seized upon wartime conditions and wartime ideology to launch their own campaign against discrimination: the black press and black organizations promoted a “Double V” campaign, victory abroad and at home. Numerous protests against discrimination climaxed in the threat of a Negro March on Washington, which was called off only when one of the primary objectives was attained in Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802, which banned discrimination in defense industries. In Detroit, where blacks had long been barred from the automobile unions, the UAW-CIO saw the need for changing this policy, particularly if the Ford plants were to be unionized. In April, 1941, many Negroes supported a strike against Ford, the only remaining open shop, and when the strike succeeded they were taken into the UAW by thousands.
These black advances produced a powerful reaction among whites. Housing, jobs, job seniority, and police conduct had long been serious issues in Detroit. They were now exacerbated by the activities of right wing agitators like Gerald L. K. Smith and Father Charles Coughlin and the quasi-fascist Black Legion, which engaged in a violent campaign of terrorism. On Sunday evening, June 20, 1943, a fight between a black and a white in an amusement park was followed by a series of rumors of atrocities against both white and black women. Then Detroit erupted. Blacks smashed, looted, and burned white stores, and were shot down by the police. Whites attacked blacks with iron pipes, clubs, rocks, and knives. When the riot was over, 34 people were dead, 25 of them blacks.
The account is from Thurgood Marshall: “The Gestapo in Detroit,” The Crisis, L (August 1943), 232–3. See Alfred Mc-Clung Lee and Norman D. Humphrey: Race Riot (1943); Robert Shogan and Tom Craig: The Detroit Race Riot: A Study in Violence (1964); Harvard Sitkoff: “The Detroit Race Riot of 1943,” Michigan History, LIII (Fall 1969); and Bernard Sternsher, ed.: The Negro Depression and War (1969).
Belle Isle is a municipal recreation park where thousands of white and Negro war workers and their families go on Sundays for their outings. There had been isolated instances of racial friction in the past. On Sunday night, June 20, there was trouble between a group of white and Negro people. The disturbance was under control by midnight. During the time of the disturbance and after it was under control, the police searched the automobiles of all Negroes and searched the Negroes as well. They did not search the white people. One Negro who was to be inducted into the army the following week was arrested because another person in the car had a small pen knife. This youth was later sentenced to 90 days in jail before his family could locate him. Many Negroes were arrested during this period and rushed to local police stations. At the very beginning the police demonstrated that they would continue to handle racial disorders by searching, beating and arresting Negroes while using mere persuasion on white people.
A short time after midnight disorder broke out in a white neighborhood near the Roxy theatre on Woodward Avenue. The Roxy is an all night theatre attended by white and Negro patrons. Several Negroes were beaten and others were forced to remain in the theatre for lack of police protection. The rumor spread among the white people that a Negro had raped a white woman on Belle Island and that the Negroes were rioting.
At about the same time a rumor spread around Hastings and Adams Streets in the Negro area that white sailors had thrown a Negro woman and her baby into the lake at Belle Isle and that the police were beating Negroes. This rumor was also repeated by an unidentified Negro at one of the night spots. Some Negroes began to attack white persons in the area. The police immediately began to use their sticks and revolvers against them. The Negroes began to break out the windows of stores of white merchants on Hastings Street.
The interesting thing is that when the windows in the stores on Hastings Street were first broken, there was no looting. An officer of the Merchants’ Association walked the length of Hastings Street, starting 7 o’clock Monday morning and noticed that none of the stores with broken windows had been looted. It is thus clear that the original breaking of windows was not for the purpose of looting.
Throughout Monday the police, instead of placing men in front of the stores to protect them from looting, contented themselves with driving up and down Hastings Street from time to time, stopping in front of the stores. The usual procedure was to jump out of the squad cars with drawn revolvers and riot guns to shoot whoever might be in the store. The policemen would then tell the Negro bystanders to “run and not look back.” On several occasions, persons running were shot in the back. In other instances, bystanders were clubbed by police. To the police, all Negroes on Hastings Street were “looters.” This included war workers returning from work. There is no question that many Negroes were guilty of looting, just as there is always looting during earthquakes or as there was when English towns were bombed by the Germans.
Cars Detoured into Mobs
Woodward Avenue is one of the main thoroughfares of the city of Detroit. Small groups of white people began to rove up and down Woodward beating Negroes, stoning cars containing Negroes, stopping street cars and yanking Negroes from them, and stabbing and shooting Negroes. In no case did the police do more than try to “reason” with these mobs, many of which were, at this stage, quite small. The police did not draw their revolvers or riot guns, and never used any force to disperse these mobs. As a result of this, the mobs got larger and bolder and even attacked Negroes on the pavement of the City Hall in demonstration not only of their contempt for Negroes, but of their contempt for law and order as represented by the municipal government.…
While investigating the riot, we obtained many affidavits from Negroes concerning police brutality during the riot. It is impossible to include the facts of all of these affidavits. However, typical instances may be cited. A Negro soldier in uniform who had recently been released from the army with a medical discharge, was on his way down Brush Street Monday morning, toward a theatre on Woodward Avenue. This soldier was not aware of the fact that the riot was still going on. While in the Negro neighborhood on Brush Street, he reached a corner where a squad car drove up and discharged several policemen with drawn revolvers who announced to a small group on the corner to run and not look back. Several of the Negroes who did not move quite fast enough for the police were struck with night sticks and revolvers. The soldier was yanked from behind by one policeman and struck in the head with a blunt instrument and knocked to the ground, where he remained in a stupor. The police then returned to their squad car and drove off. A Negro woman in the block noticed the entire incident from her window, and she rushed out with a cold, damp towel to bind the soldier’s head. She then hailed two Negro postal employees who carried the soldier to a hospital where his life was saved.
There are many additional affidavits of similar occurrences involving obviously innocent civilians throughout many Negro sections in Detroit where there had been no rioting at all. It was characteristic of these cases that the policemen would drive up to a corner, jump out with drawn revolvers, striking at Negroes indiscriminately, oft times shooting at them, and in all cases forcing them to run. At the same time on Woodward Avenue, white civilians were seizing Negroes and telling them to “run, nigger, run.” At least two Negroes, “shot while looting,” were innocent persons who happened to be in the area at that time.
One Negro who had been an employee of a bank in Detroit for the past eighteen years was on his way to work on a Woodward Avenue street car when he was seized by one of the white mobs. In the presence of at least four policemen, he was beaten and stabbed in the side. He also heard several shots fired from the back of the mob. He managed to run to two of the policemen who proceeded to “protect” him from the mob. The two policemen, followed by two mounted policemen, proceeded down Woodward Avenue. While he was being escorted by these policemen, the man was struck in the face by at least eight of the mob, and at no time was any effort made to prevent him from being struck. After a short distance this man noticed a squad car parked on the other side of the street. In sheer desperation, he broke away from the two policemen who claimed to be protecting him and ran to the squad car, begging for protection. The officer in the squad car put him in the back seat and drove off, thereby saving his life.
During all this time, the fact that the man was either shot or stabbed was evident because of the fact that blood was spurting from his side. Despite this obvious felony, committed in the presence of at least four policemen, no effort was made at that time either to protect the victim or to arrest the persons guilty of the felony.
In addition to the many cases of one-sided enforcement of the law by the police, there are two glaring examples of criminal aggression against innocent Negro citizens and workers by members of the Michigan state police and Detroit police.
Shooting in YMCA
On the night of June 22 at about 10 o’clock, some of the residents of the St. Antoine Branch of the Y.M.C.A. were returning to the dormitory. Several were on their way home from the Y.W.C.A. across the street. State police were searching some other Negroes on the pavement of the Y.M.C.A. when two of the Y.M.C.A. residents were stopped and searched for weapons. After none was found they were allowed to proceed to the building. Just as the last of the Y.M.C.A. men was about to enter the building, he heard someone behind him yell what sounded to him like, “Hi, Ridley” (Ridley is also a resident of the Y). Another resident said he heard someone yell what sounded to him like “Heil, Hitler.”
A state policeman, Ted Anders, jumped from his car with his revolver drawn, ran to the steps of the Y.M.C.A., put one foot on the bottom step and fired through the outside door. Immediately after firing the shot he entered the building. Other officers followed. Julian Witherspoon, who had just entered the building, was lying on the floor, shot in the side by the bullet that was fired through the outside door. There had been no show of violence or weapons of any kind by anyone in or around the Y.M.C.A.
The officers with drawn revolvers ordered all those residents of the Y.M.C.A. who were in the lobby of their building to raise their hands in the air and line up against the wall like criminals. During all this time these men were called “black b—–and monkeys,” and other vile names by the officers. At least one man was struck, another was forced to throw his lunch on the floor. All the men in the lobby were searched.
The desk clerk was also forced to line up. The officers then went behind the desk and into the private offices and searched everything. The officers also made the clerk open all locked drawers, threatening to shoot him if he did not do so.
Witherspoon was later removed to the hospital and has subsequently been released.