[Susan]

The Detroit Race Riots took place in June of 1943 during the WWII. It lasted for days and left dozens dead, 25 of which were African- American, 17 of which were struck down by police officers.

From Newsone.com:
The riots were sparked by the tensions of Southern Blacks and Whites who headed north to the promise of jobs and opportunity. Tension grew as the Motor City attempted the impossible feat of housing and employing the heavy influx of new citizens. World War II was also underway, making Detroit a prime location to set up several wartime factories, which was the main attraction for many.
What the newcomers didn’t bank on, however, was the lack of services such as child and healthcare, grocery stores, and even public transportation.
With housing scarce or nonexistent, it was a blow to African Americans that they were only allowed to use one of the many public housing facilities in the city in 1941. Beyond that, Blacks in the projects paid twice as much as their White counterparts but lived in relative squalor. By 1943, the Sojourner Truth projects were opened and were targeted by Whites who felt Blacks didn't deserve the homes.
Although riots at the projects produced no fatalities, it was the start of the clashes to come.
Just ahead of the riot, White defense plant workers protested the promotion of three Black workers; 25,000 Packard plant employees walked off the job, with one famously saying, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work beside a N*gger on the assembly line.”
Sick of poor treatment by Whites, police, and others, Blacks in the city began a “bumping” campaign – essentially bumping in to Whites on sidewalks and refusing to sidestep out of their way on oncoming streets. On June 20th at Belle Isle Park, the riot would begin just a couple hours before midnight.

Two young Black men, reportedly angered that they were put out of a local park days earlier, went to Belle Isle to start a fight with a group of White men. Police, aware of the issues, searched the cars of Black park visitors but not the vehicles of Whites. At 10 p.m., roughly 200 people began fighting, sparking off a series of rumors.





Leo Tipton and Charles (Little Willie) Lyons told a Black crowd at the Forest Social Club that some White people had thrown a Black woman and her baby off the Belle Isle Bridge. The news spread, and 500 Blacks stormed the streets and damaged property. Conversely, Whites were misled by rumors that Blacks raped and killed a White woman at Belle Isle and a large number of armed White men took to the streets in revenge early in the morning.
The Whites attacked any Black person they saw, with some Blacks returning from late-night work shifts unaware of the dangerous situation. Police reportedly shot Black rioters in the back, considering them nothing more than looters even though White rioters were just as destructive, if not more. Eventually, Mayor Edward Jeffries Jr. and Governor Harry Kelly asked President Theodore Roosevelt for military assistance to calm down the riot.



Soldiers in armored cars and armed jeeps moved down Woodward, the street that divided the Black and White groups. Although fighting still happened in small skirmishes here and there, the presence of the military cooled the heads of the rioters.
In total, 34 were dead, 1,800 were arrested, and many of the killings went unsolved.
Although 28 men were charged with a variety of offenses, five Black men were slapped with 80-day jail sentences for disturbing the peace. Two of those men were later acquitted. Tipton and Lyons were hit with jail sentences for inciting the riot as well.
Shockingly, Mayor Jefferies and police commissioner John Witherspoon heaped praise on the police force for their handling of the riots — even though 17 Blacks died at their hands.



From wikepedia.org:

The Detroit Race Riot broke out in Detroit, Michigan, in June,1943, and lasted for three days before Federal troops regained control. The rioting between blacks and whites began on Belle Isle on June 20, 1943, and continued until June 22, killing 34, wounding 433, and destroying property valued at $2 million.

Altercations between black and white youths started on June 20, 1943, on a warm Saturday evening on Belle Isle. A fist fight broke out when a white sailor's girlfriend was insulted by a black man. The brawl eventually grew into a confrontation between groups of blacks and whites and then spread into the city. The riot escalated with a rumor that a mob of whites had thrown an African-American mother and her baby into the Detroit River. Historian Marilynn S. Johnson argues that this rumor reflected black male outrage over white violence against black women and children. Another false rumor swept white neighborhoods that blacks had raped and murdered a white woman on the Belle Isle Bridge. Angry mobs of whites spilled onto Woodward near the Roxy Theater around 4 a.m., beating blacks as they were getting off street cars.[12] Stores were looted and buildings were burned in the riot, most of them in a black neighborhood in and around Paradise Valley, one of the oldest and poorest neighborhoods in Detroit. The clashes soon escalated to the point where black and white mobs were “assaulting one another, beating innocent motorists, pedestrians and streetcar passengers, burning cars, destroying storefronts and looting businesses." Both sides were said to have encouraged others to join in the riots with false claims that one of "their own" was attacked unjustly.


The riots lasted three days and ended once Mayor Jeffries and Governor Harry Kelly asked President Roosevelt to intervene. Federal troops finally restored peace to the streets of Detroit. Over the course of three days, 34 people were killed. Of them, 25 were African–Americans, 17 of whom were killed by the police. Thirteen murders remain unsolved. Out of the approximately 600 injured, black people accounted for more than 75 percent and of the roughly 1,800 people who were arrested over the course of the three-day riots, black people accounted for 85 percent.
After the riot, leaders on both sides had an explanation for the riots. White city leaders including the mayor blamed young black “hoodlums”. The Wayne County prosecutor believed that the leaders of the NAACP were to blame as the instigators of the riots. Detroit's black leaders pointed to other causes ranging from job discrimination, to housing discrimination, police brutality, and daily animosity received from Detroit's white population. Following the violence, Japanese propaganda officials incorporated the event into its materials encouraging black soldiers not to fight for the United States, most notably in a flyer titled "Fight Between Two Races."
Future Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, then with the NAACP, assailed the city’s handling of the riot. He charged that police unfairly targeted blacks while turning their backs on white atrocities. He said 85 percent of those arrested were black while whites overturned and burned cars in front of the Roxy Theater with impunity while police watched.
This weak-kneed policy of the police commissioner coupled with the anti-***** attitude of many members of the force helped to make a riot inevitable.

[30564U]

Idiots...looks a lot like the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles. It's amazing how stupid rumors can set off a segment of the population. Same thing happened in the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. Rumors spread and folks got all hot and agitated and one stupid move lead to another and soon the whole area was ablaze. Idiots...just idiots. Doesn't matter the reason.

[St. Geno]

Detroit y u no be good city to live in?

[Ntwadumela]

Blacks got their wish and the city of Detroit has been theirs for decades and look at it, an urban wasteland.