The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in

Contents

List of Illustrations ix

List of Tables xiii

Preface to the Princeton Classics Edition xv

Preface to the 2005 Paperback Edition xxxii

Acknowledgments li

Introduction 3

PART ONE: ARSENAL 15

1. “Arsenal of Democracy” 17

2. “Detroit’s Time Bomb”: Race and Housing in the 1940s 33

3. “The Coffin of Peace”: The Containment of Public Housing 57

PART TWO: RUST 89

4. “The Meanest and the Dirtiest Jobs”: The Structures of Employment Discrimination 91

5. “The Damning Mark of False Prosperities”: The Deindustrialization of Detroit 125

6. “Forget about Your Inalienable Right to Work”: Responses to Industrial Decline and Discrimination 153

PART THREE: FIRE 179

7. Class, Status, and Residence: The Changing Geography of Black Detroit 181

8. “Homeowners’ Rights”: White Resistance and the Rise of Antiliberalism 209

9. “United Communities Are Impregnable”: Violence and the Color Line 231

Conclusion. Crisis: Detroit and the Fate of Postindustrial America 259

vi i i CONTENTS

AppendixesA. Index of Dissimilarity, Blacks and Whites in Major American Cities, 1940–1990 273

B. African American Occupational Structure in Detroit, 1940–1970 275

List of Abbreviations in the Notes 279

Notes 281

Index 365

Introduction

THE STORY I tell is one of a city transformed. In the 1940s, Detroit wasAmerica’s “arsenal of democracy,” one of the nation’s fastest growingboomtowns and home to the highest-paid blue-collar workers in the UnitedStates. Today, the city is plagued by joblessness, concentrated poverty,physical decay, and racial isolation. Since 1950, Detroit has lost nearly amillion people and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Vast areas of the city, onceteeming with life, now stand abandoned. Prairie grass and flocks of pheas-ants have reclaimed what was, only fifty years ago, the most densely popu-lated section of the city. Factories that once provided tens of thousands ofjobs now stand as hollow shells, windows broken, mute testimony to a lostindustrial past. Whole rows of small shops and stores are boarded up orburned out. Over ten thousand houses are uninhabited; over sixty thousandlots lie empty, marring almost every city neighborhood. Whole sections ofthe city are eerily apocalyptic. Over a third of the city’s residents livebeneath the poverty line, many concentrated in neighborhoods where a ma-jority of their neighbors are also poor. A visit to the city’s welfare offices,hospitals, and jails provides abundant evidence of the terrible costs of thecity’s persistent unemployment and poverty.1

Detroit’s journey from urban heyday to urban crisis has been mirrored inother cities across the nation. Scenes of devastation and poverty are disturb-ingly familiar to anyone who has traveled through the streets of America’sRust Belt, the northeastern and midwestern cities that formed the backboneof American industrial might a half-century ago. The urban crisis is jarringlyvisible in the the shattered storefronts and fire-scarred apartments of Chi-cago’s South and West Sides; the rubble-strewn lots of New York’s Browns-ville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and South Bronx; the surreal vistas of abandonedfactories along the waterfronts and railways of Cleveland, Gary, Philadel-phia, Pittsburgh, and Saint Louis; the boarded-up and graffiti-coveredhouses of Camden, Baltimore, and Newark. Rates of poverty among blackresidents of these cities all range from 25 to 40 percent. With a few excep-tions, all have witnessed a tremendous loss in manufacturing jobs and theemergence of a low-wage service sector. Almost all of these cities, asDouglas Massey and Nancy Denton have argued, “have large ghettos char-acterized by extreme segregation and spatial isolation.” The faces that ap-pear in the rundown houses, homeless shelters, and social agencies in theseurban wastelands are predictably familiar. Almost all are people of color.2

Central-city residence, race, joblessness, and poverty have become inex-tricably intertwined in postindustrial urban America. In the post–World

4 I N T R O D UC T I O N

War II period, patterns of class and racial segregation in large northerncities have persisted and hardened. Poor people have become increasinglyisolated in neighborhoods with large numbers of other poor people. A grow-ing number of urban residents, especially young African Americans, findthemselves detached from the mainstream economy, often outside the labormarket altogether. Unemployment and poverty are certainly not new fea-tures of American urban life. The bleak depictions of life in turn-of-the-century America offered by observers such as Jacob Riis and Robert Hunteroffer powerful reminders of a troubled past. But the forms and distributionof postindustrial urban poverty are novel. In previous periods of Americanhistory, poverty and unemployment were endemic, but poor people did notexperience the same degree of segregation and isolation as exists today. Andin the past, most poor people were active, if irregular, participants in thelabor market.3

Why the transformation of Detroit and other major Northern cities frommagnets of opportunity to reservations for the poor? What was it that turnedAmerica’s former industrial centers into economic backwaters, abandonedby manufacturers? What explains the high rates of joblessness among theurban poor? Why has discrimination by race persisted in both urban neigh-borhoods and workplaces? What explains the emergence of persistent, con-centrated, racialized poverty in Rust Belt cities? Explanations abound forthese questions, particularly in the large literature on the urban “under-class,” the most influential body of scholarship to emerge on urban problemsin twenty-five years. The “underclass” debate has moved in three—some-times overlapping—directions. The first, and most influential, focuses on thebehavior and values of the poor, and the role of federal social programs infostering a culture of joblessness and dependency in inner cities. A variant,going back to the work of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and E. Franklin Frazier,emphasizes the role of family structure and unwed pregnancy in perpetuat-ing inequality.4 A second offers structural explanations for inequality andurban poverty. Proponents of structural explanations tend to divide amongthose who point to the effects of economic restructuring (following WilliamJulius Wilson) and those who emphasize the continuing significance of racialdiscrimination (following Gary Orfield and Douglas Massey).5 A third expla-nation focuses on politics, emphasizing the marginalization of cities in Amer-ican social policy, particularly in the aftermath of the urban unrest and racialconflict of the 1960s. The “excesses” of Black Power and the rise of affirma-tive action fueled white suburbanization and justified a newfound whitebacklash against the urban poor. Implicit in this analysis is a contrast be-tween the booming postwar years and the troubled post-1960s years, urbanheyday versus urban crisis.6

Recent scholarship has identified important elements of the contempo-rary urban crisis. But what is largely missing from the “underclass” debate

I N T R O D UC T I O N 5

is the perspective of history. My examination of Detroit in the quarter-cen-tury after World War II suggests that the origins of the urban crisis are muchearlier than social scientists have recognized, its roots deeper, more tangled,and perhaps more intractable. No one social program or policy, no singleforce, whether housing segregation, social welfare programs, or deindustri-alization, could have driven Detroit and other cities like it from their posi-tions of economic and political dominance; there is no simple explanation forthe inequality and marginality that beset the urban poor. It is only throughthe complex and interwoven histories of race, residence, and work in thepostwar era that the state of today’s cities and their impoverished residentscan be fully understood and confronted.7

This book is a guide to the contested terrain of the postwar city, an exam-ination of the unresolved dilemmas of housing, segregation, industrialrelations, racial discrimination, and deindustrialization. I argue that thecoincidence and mutual reinforcement of race, economics, and politics in aparticular historical moment, the period from the 1940s to the 1960s, setthe stage for the fiscal, social, and economic crises that confront urban Amer-ica today. My analysis of Detroit builds on the insights of those who offerstructural explanations of urban inequality. But, both in its focus on a multi-plicity of structural forces, and in its location of the origins of the urban crisisin the 1940s and 1950s, my analysis diverges from much of the current liter-ature on the “underclass.” There are, of course, other approaches to thehistory of inequality, race, and poverty, such as the study of family structureand family strategies. The emphasis in this book on economic and spatialstructures is not meant as an alternative to these approaches, but instead asa context in which they can be best understood. Economic and racial in-equality constrain individual and family choices. They set the limits ofhuman agency. Within the bounds of the possible, individuals and familiesresist, adapt, or succumb.

Detroit’s postwar urban crisis emerged as the consequence of two of themost important, interrelated, and unresolved problems in American history:that capitalism generates economic inequality and that African Americanshave disproportionately borne the impact of that inequality. The patterns ofrace and class inequality are by no means fixed and unchanging in Americanhistory. Detroit’s racial and economic crisis emerged in a particular con-text—mid-twentieth-century America. Shifts at the national level in eco-nomics, race relations, and politics interacted with local forces to cause theurban crisis. In the aftermath of World War II, the post-Reconstruction ra-cial order was in flux. Newly resurgent racial liberals and radicals battledwith deeply entrenched racial conservatives over fundamental questions ofrights and equality. At the same time, the national economy underwent aperiod of extraordinary dynamism and growth, fueling unprecedented pros-perity, but also unleashing what economist Joseph Schumpeter called the


forces of “creative destruction.” Northern industrial cities like Detroit wereoverwhelmed by the combination of racial strife and economic restructur-ing. Their impact played out in urban streets and workplaces. The labor andhousing markets of the postwar city became arenas where inequality wasshaped and contested.8

In the following pages, I hope to complicate the conventional narrativesof post–World War II American history. The United States at midcenturywas a far more complicated and troubled place than emerges from mosthistories and popular accounts. The nation was at a peak of economic andglobal strength in the 1940s and 1950s. America’s aggregate rate of eco-nomic growth was nothing short of stunning. Observers marvelled—accu-rately—at an “affluent society” whose members could purchase a plethora ofconsumer goods, from cars to refrigerators to television sets. But the cele‘-bration of affluence masked significant regional variations and persistent in-equality. The remarkable growth of the postwar American economy wasprofoundly uneven; capitalism left behind huge sections of the UnitedStates, mainly older industrial cities in the North and East and rural areas inthe South and Midwest.

The cities of America’s industrial heartland were the bellwethers ofeconomic change. The rusting of the Rust Belt began neither with the much-touted stagflation and oil crisis of the 1970s, nor with the rise of globaleconomic competition and the influx of car or steel imports. It began, unher-alded, in the 1950s. As pundits celebrated America’s economic growth andunprecedented prosperity, America’s midwestern and northeastern citieslost hundreds of thousands of entry-level manufacturing jobs. In the indus-trial belt that extended from New England across New York, Pennsylvania,and West Virginia, through the Midwest to the banks of the Mississippi,major companies reduced work forces, speeded up production, and re-quired more overtime work. The manufacturing industries that formed thebedrock of the American economy, including textiles, electrical appliances,motor vehicles, and military hardware, automated production and relocatedplants in suburban and rural areas, and increasingly in the low-wage labormarkets of underdeveloped regions like the American South and the Carib-bean. The restructuring of the economy proceeded with the full supportand encouragement of the American government. Federal highway con-struction and military spending facilitated and fueled industrial growth innonurban areas.9

In the midst of these wrenching changes, economic inequality remainedlargely off the agenda of politicians and scholars. A few astute policymakers,like Senators Paul Douglas of Illinois and Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania,recognized the corrosion beneath the facade of postwar prosperity. In the1950s, they proposed legislation to shore up “depressed areas” of the nation.But their agenda remained on the fringes of postwar economic policy. Crit-


ics on the left, like Harvey Swados and C. L. R. James, recorded the travailsof industrial workers for the few who cared to listen. The invisibility of eco-nomic hardship in the affluent age became visible in the shock that greetedthe depictions of skid rows, black inner cities, and poverty-ridden Appala-chian hollows in Michael Harrington’s 1962 book, The Other America.Harrington and others identified a world that countless Americans alreadyknew, but whose harsh realities barely penetrated the postwar veneer ofconsensus and civility.10

Setting the boundaries of debates over the economic changes that besetDetroit and the Rust Belt were several currents in national politics. First,and most important, was antiradicalism. Anticommunists silenced some ofthe most powerful critics of the postwar economic and social order. Red-baiting discredited and weakened progressive reform efforts. By the 1950s,unions had purged their leftist members and marginalized a powerful cri-tique of postwar capitalism. McCarthyism also put constraints on liberal crit-ics of capitalism. In the enforced consensus of the postwar era, it became“un-American” to criticize business decisions or to interfere with managerialprerogative or to focus on lingering class inequalities in the United States.11

Further limiting the political vision of policymakers and reformers in thepostwar era were the conceptual tools that they used to grapple with ques-tions of political economy. Three interrelated assumptions shaped economicand labor policy after World War II. First was the orthodoxy of neoclassicaleconomics that interpreted the structural changes of the postwar era as tem-porary dislocations, and looked to national aggregate indicators of economicprosperity rather than to regional variations. Second was the emerging laborrelations “manpower” theory that explained unemployment as the result ofindividual educational or behavioral deficiencies, and deemphasized thestructural causes of joblessness. Third was a fundamental optimism aboutthe capacity of the private sector to absorb surplus labor. The reality of rust-ing cities in the Northeast and Midwest challenged these orthodoxies, butthose who bucked mainstream economic and labor market theory, or spokepessimistically about the economy, remained on the political margins. Theresult is that urban economic decline in the postwar years has remainedlargely absent from historical accounts of the 1940s and 1950s.12

The problems that beset Detroit were not solely economic. The fate ofNorthern industrial cities was fundamentally entangled with the troubledhistory of race in twentieth-century America. By 1960, a majority of Amer-ica’s African American population lived in cities, most of them north of theMason-Dixon line. The steady loss of manufacturing jobs in northeasternand midwestern cities occurred at the same time that millions of AfricanAmericans migrated to the urban North, driven from the rural South bydisruptions in the agricultural economy and lured by the promise of freedomand opportunity denied to them in Jim Crow’s last, desperate days. The


complex and pervasive racial discrimination that greeted black laborers inthe “land of hope” ensured that they would suffer disproportionately theeffects of deindustrialization and urban decline. For a large number of Afri-can Americans, the promise of steady, secure, and relatively well-paid em-ployment in the North proved illusory.13

The most visible and intractable manifestation of racial inequality inthe postwar city was residential segregation. Blacks in Detroit and othernorthern metropolises found themselves entrapped in rapidly expanding,yet persistently isolated urban ghettos. Despite the supposedly liberalmores of the North, despite successful court challenges to housing marketdiscrimination, despite open housing advocacy and legislation, northern cit-ies experienced rates of segregation that barely changed between the 1940sand the present. Segregated housing compounded the urban crisis. Thecombination of deindustrialization, white flight, and hardening ghettoizationproved devastating. Residence in the inner city became a self-perpetuatingstigma. Increasing joblessness, and the decaying infrastructure of inner-cityneighborhoods, reinforced white stereotypes of black people, families, andcommunities.14

Racial conflict and tension surfaced as a persistent refrain in the lives ofurban Americans in the postwar era. Discrimination by race was a centralfact of life in the postwar city. But the dimensions, significance, and verymeaning of race differed depending on its cultural, political, and economiccontext. Relationships across racial lines took myriad forms and had differingconsequences. Many scholars have painted the history of racial discrimina-tion with broad brush strokes. Race, in many accounts, is a transhistoricalconstant rather than a historical variable. Racism is portrayed as a patholog-ical condition, an unchanging part of white culture. But the word “racism”oversimplifies what was a complicated and multifaceted reality. Race rela-tions in the postwar city were the product of a variety of racial beliefs andpractices that changed greatly in the postwar period.15

Racial ideology, a shifting and fluid popular vernacular of race, served asthe backdrop to the relationship between blacks and whites in the postwarcity. Discriminatory attitudes and actions were constructed and justified inpart by the images of African Americans to which white city-dwellers wereexposed. In mid-twentieth-century Detroit, as in the rest of the nation, racialidentities rested on widely held assumptions about the inferior intelligenceof blacks, notions that blacks were physiologically better suited for certaintypes of work, and stereotypes about black licentiousness, sexual promiscu-ity, laziness, and dependence. But Detroiters were a part of a national cul-ture that began to project contradictory images of African Americans formass consumption. Perceptions of racial difference and inferiority wereinformed by music, radio, and movies, in countless ways from the smilingface of Aunt Jemima to the shuffling of Amos ’n Andy, to the crooning voice


of Chubby Checker, to the brawny arms of boxer Joe Louis, to the celluloidimages of Sidney Poitier and Bessie Smith. On the other side was the per-sistent association of whiteness with Americanism, hard work, sexual re-straint, and independence. These assumptions about racial difference werenourished by a newly assertive whiteness, born of the ardent desire of the“not-yet-white ethnics” (many of them Roman Catholic, second- and third-generation southern and eastern European immigrants) to move into theAmerican mainstream. To be fully American was to be white. Popular im-ages of whiteness and blackness—and the ways in which they changed—influenced the day-to-day encounters between whites and blacks at workand on city streets.16

Perceptions of racial differences were not, I argue, wholly, or even pri-marily, the consequences of popular culture. If they were, they would nothave had such extraordinary staying power. In the postwar city, blacknessand whiteness assumed a spatial definition. The physical state of AfricanAmerican neighborhoods and white neighborhoods in Detroit reinforcedperceptions of race. The completeness of racial segregation made ghettoiza-tion seem an inevitable, natural consequence of profound racial differences.The barriers that kept blacks confined to racially isolated, deteriorating,inner-city neighborhoods were largely invisible to white Detroiters. To themajority of untutored white observers, visible poverty, overcrowding, anddeteriorating houses were signs of individual moral deficiencies, not mani-festations of structural inequalities. White perceptions of black neighbor-hoods provided seemingly irrefutable confirmation of African American in-feriority and set the terms of debates over the inclusion of African Americansin the city’s housing and labor markets.17

Perhaps most important in shaping the concept of race in the postwarperiod, I argue, were local and national politics. Race was as much a politicalas a social construction. The place of race both in party politics and in gov-ernment policies was in flux in the postwar era. In the aftermath of thestruggle against fascism, racialist ideologies lost their official credibility. Be-ginning in World War II, the federal government promoted a pluralist visionof nationhood that emphasized integration rather than inherent difference.At the same time, the balance of power in national and local politics beganto shift as the black population moved northward and became an importantpart of the Democratic constituency for the first time. Wielding the growingclout of the African American vote, newly empowered civil rights groupsdemanded the attention of Democratic politicians. Black activists gainednew access to government and pursued an aggressive judicial and legislativestrategy to eliminate racial inequality. Yet government policies, includingSocial Security, welfare, and jobs programs, also reinforced and recon-structed racial stereotypes and inequalities. Most importantly, governmenthousing programs perpetuated racial divisions by placing public housing in


already poor urban areas and bankrolling white suburbanization throughdiscriminatory housing subsidies. The liberal state communicated an ambiv-alent message on matters of race that had a powerful impact on individualand group interactions at the local level.18

Overall, political activity affected a gradual, if unsteady, shift in theboundaries of what was acceptable racial practice in the postwar years. Butthe changes were hard fought and bitterly contested. For most of the periodbetween the 1930s and the mid-1960s, nominal liberals dominated the gov-erning coalition in Washington, in northern industrial states, and in majorcities. The New Deal coalition was forged in working-class cities like De-troit, and urban elected officials and voters played a crucial role in imple-menting New Deal policies. Liberal politicians won loyalty by promisingtheir constituents that the government would actively protect their eco-nomic and social security. White and black Americans took the promise ofliberalism seriously and mobilized in the 1940s and 1950s to assert theirrights as citizens.

But the New Deal state was riddled with ambiguities and contradictionsthat left room for opposing interpretations of what constituted proper gov-ernment action. Most threatening to the seeming unity of the New Dealorder were unresolved questions of racial identity and racial politics, dilem-mas that would become inseparable from the mission of liberalism it-self. Part the story of the African American challenge to liberalism is wellknown: civil rights groups in the 1950s launched a fierce attack on Jim Crowin the South. But at the same time, the combination of deindustrializationand black population growth upended the racial order of Detroit and othernorthern cities. The disruption of old patterns of work, residence, and racecoincided with a massive political challenge to the structures of racial in-equality nationwide. The history of race relations and civil rights in theNorth remains, however, largely unexamined by historians. Racial tensions,prejudices, and debates over civil rights played out on the shop floors andin the streets of the urban north, with consequences as far-reaching asthose of the southern civil rights movement. Two visions of the polity cameinto collision in Detroit, both rooted in a newfound rights consciousnessat the center of postwar liberalism. African Americans forcefully assertedtheir rights to equal opportunity in employment and housing. But they facedopposition from working- and middle-class whites who also claimed themantle of the authentic New Deal state. White Detroiters expected thestate to protect the privileges associated with property ownership and race.Debates over housing and race had profound ramifications for the fate offederal policy in the city for the next half-century. The rhetoric, the battles,and the compromises of the 1940s and 1950s, in Detroit and all over thenation, set the terms for the debate over social policy into the Great Societyyears and beyond.19


The convergence of the disparate forces of deindustrialization, racialtransformation, and political and ideological conformity laid the groundworkfor the urban crisis in Detroit and its northern counterparts. But the empha-sis in this study on structural forces shaping the city should not obscure therole of human agency and contingency in the city’s development. In manysocial-scientific studies of American cities, urban problems seem almost in-evitable. The shape of the postwar city, I contend, is the result of politicaland economic decisions, of choices made and not made by various institu-tions, groups, and individuals. Industrial location policy is not solely theresult of technological imperatives; it is the result of corporate policies tominimize union strength, to avoid taxes, and to exploit new markets. Raciallysegregated neighborhoods are not alone the foreordained consequence ofcenturies of American racial prejudice; rather, they are the result of theactions of the federal and local governments, real estate agents, individualhome buyers and sellers, and community organizations. Economic andsocial structures act as parameters that limit the range of individual andcollective decisions. The consequences of hundreds of individual acts or ofcollective activity, however, gradually strengthen, redefine, or weaken eco-nomic and social structures. The relationship between structure and agencyis dialectical and history is the synthesis.20

The ideologies and actions of myriad groups shaped the evolution of post-war Detroit. Corporate executives and managers who controlled the city’sindustry determined the range of employment opportunities through theirlabor policies and their long-term corporate planning strategies. They had adisproportionate influence on the city’s development because of their eco-nomic power: a single corporate decision could affect thousands of workers.Company hiring and upgrading policies established and reinforced discrimi-natory patterns in the workplace. The introduction of new technology anddecisions about plant size, expansion, and relocation affected the city’s labormarket and reshaped the economic geography of the Detroit region.

Though less powerful than their bosses, labor unions and their rank-and-file members also had a hand in Detroit’s development. By the 1940s, De-troit was a bastion of industrial unionism, home to the mighty United Auto-mobile Workers, one of the nation’s most powerful and influential labororganizations. Over half of Detroit’s workers belonged to unions in 1950.Union victories on such issues as work rules, wages, and seniority advancedthe economic security and employment stability of the city’s unionizedworkers. At the same time, however, unions often reinforced or quietly ac-quiesced in employers’ discriminatory hiring and upgrading policies, andonly seldom challenged management decisions on plant location and expan-sion that had significant long-term ramifications for Detroit’s workers.

In the public sector, federal, state, and local governments buttressed cor-porate policies through the allocation of resources. Decisions about spend-


ing for defense production and transportation profoundly altered the shapeof Detroit in the boom years during and after the Second World War. Stateand local taxation policies influenced corporate decisions on plant locationand movement. Most importantly, because most federal urban programswere administered locally and relied on the support of local constituencies,urban politicians, bankers, developers, real estate brokers, and citizensgroups all used federal and local housing policies to reconfigure urbangeography by class and race in the postwar era.

Individual white Detroiters challenged and reformulated local and fed-eral policies both in the workplace and in their neighborhoods, and contrib-uted to the racial and socioeconomic division of metropolitan Detroit. Work-ers who benefited from the systematic exclusion of blacks from white jobsoften promoted discriminatory policies in the workplace. White working-class and middle-class homeowners played a crucial role in the racial divi-sion of the city. Detroit’s neighborhoods became a fiercely contested terrainas the city’s black population expanded. Through collective organization toresist black mobility, white homeowners redrew the city’s racial boundariesand reinforced patterns of racial inequality.

Black Detroiters were far less powerful than employers, white workersand homeowners, and the federal government as actors shaping the socialand economic geography of Detroit. They were not, however, powerless.In the postwar years, black homeowners and black renters, the workingclass and middle class, sometimes collaborated with white organizations,sometimes unwittingly abetted racial divisions, and often challenged pat-terns of segregation and discrimination. Black organizations such as theUrban League and the NAACP confronted employers, unions, and govern-ment agencies over the issue of equal opportunity in the labor and housingmarkets, and succeeded in expanding the horizons of opportunity for blackDetroiters. But growing class divisions within the city’s black populationinhibited the efforts of black reform groups to address the plight of poorand unemployed Detroit residents. Well-to-do black homeowners, liketheir white counterparts, fled to outlying sections of the city, and contrib-uted to the residential segregation of the black poor. Black homeownersand white homeowners also joined forces to oppose publicly funded housingfor the poor.

The intricate dynamics of personal and group interaction—and their in-terplay with structural forces—are most visible only at the local level. I havechosen a case study precisely because it allows for a rich description andanalysis of the processes that are all too often left in the realm of generaliza-tions such as discrimination, deindustrialization, and racism.21 Detroit is alogical site for such a close analysis. Its mid-twentieth-century history wasshaped by the interplay of the mighty forces of racial conflict and economicchange. A magnet for black migrants from the South, Detroit became a test-


ing ground for race relations, a place wracked with racial tensions and con-flicts. In Detroit, as in every other Northern city with a sizeable black popu-lation, conflicts over race and housing moved to the center of local politicaldebates. Detroit’s whites, like their counterparts in Chicago, Cincinnati,Philadelphia, and Trenton, resisted the African American migration regard-less of the size of the influx of black newcomers. Elected officials in almostevery major northern city grappled with public policies, from housing toantidiscrimination laws, intended to address the problems generated byracial conflict.22

As a major manufacturing center, the headquarters of the automobile in-dustry, and a hub of union activism, Detroit offers a lens into the dynamicsof American industrial capitalism. The economic fate of the automobile in-dustry in Detroit was not simply a matter of local peculiarity or local interest.Automobile and related industries led the American industrial economyafter World War II, accounting for about one-sixth of the country’s employ-ment at midcentury. In the 1940s and 1950s, the American auto industrywas at its peak of profitability and power, still unchallenged by foreign im-ports and the management crises that would plague it in the 1970s and1980s. Because of its dominance in auto production, Detroit was the centerof a regional web of industries vital to the nation’s economy. What befellDetroit directly affected other major manufacturing sectors—steel in Chi-cago, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, and Gary; rubber and tires in Akron; machinetools in Cincinnati; glass and electronics in Toledo and Dayton; and moreautos in Cleveland, Milwaukee, and South Bend. When Detroit sneezed,the adage went, other cities caught pneumonia. In addition, Detroit washome to a wide range of other industries, including chemicals, steel, phar-maceuticals, construction, and brewing, in which the dynamics of economicrestructuring and race played out in ways that allow for comparisons withother cities.23

To view Detroit (or any place) as typical would be erroneous. Much aboutthe city’s economy, most notably its dependence on manufacturing employ-ment, distinguished it from other cities with more diverse economic bases.Detroit was not a global city like New York or Los Angeles, where in the1970s and 1980s, a large, internationally linked information and servicesector emerged to replace manufacturing jobs. And in some cities, most no-tably New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, the presence of other minoritygroups, particularly Hispanics and Asians, complicated racial politics inways that diverge from the experience of Detroit, which had a small Mexi-can-American population, a tiny Asian enclave, and hardly any Puerto Ri-cans, Dominicans, or Cubans. The presence of new immigrants, particularlyin the last twenty years, has undoubtedly complicated the histories of someother cities. But because the color line between black and white has re-mained America’s most salient social division, the experiences of Detroit


and other cities with sizeable African American populations share much incommon. In the end, I contend that the differences between Detroit andother Rust Belt cities are largely a matter of degree, not a matter of kind.

As with any case study, it is important to be attentive to differences andcommonalities. At appropriate points, primarily in the notes, I offer readersthe opportunity to read further and consider comparisons between Detroitand other cities. Since the history of postwar America, and its cities, remainslargely unwritten, many of the larger arguments in this book await the arrivalof future books and articles. It is only with many more detailed studies thatwe will be able to make thorough comparisons and test the arguments thatI advance here.

One finding pervades the thousands of letters, pamphlets, newspaper sto-ries, census statistics, government documents, maps, workplace studies, in-vestigative reports, survey data, organizational records, and memoirs thatprovide the basis for my chronicle of postwar Detroit. The fate of the city isthe consequence of the unequal distribution of power and resources. Ine-quality is by no means a new feature in history—but its manifestations differwidely in different places and different times. What follows is a social andpolitical history of inequality in a twentieth-century city. How those resi-dents of the city who have little access to political power survive, resist,adapt, and gain access to power is a story that I also touch upon. For theactions of the poor can be fully understood only in the context of the largerstructures that limit their choices and constrain their options. This book byno means offers a complete history of postwar Detroit; rather, it offers astarting point for an examination of the causes of the vexing problems ofurban poverty, inequality, and urban decline, and a tale of the struggles forequality and survival in the postindustrial American city.

Index

A&P stores, 113 unions’ responses to, 134–35, 158, 163–64;Adler, Rabbi Morris, 192 as weapon against labor, 130–33African Americans: businesses owned by, 47, automobile industry, 17–19, 126, 136, 163;

188–89, 195, 269; class divisions among, automation in, 130–38, 158, 163; blackworkers in, 25–27, 90–92, 95–105; decen-12, 41, 176, 180, 188–89, 198–207, 269,tralization of, 128–29, 135–38, 140, 157–336–37; discrimination against (see em-

ployment discrimination); housing 62; declining employment in, in Detroit,discrimination; disproportionate impact 125–26, 128–29, 132–38, 142, 144, 146;on, of industrial decline, 144–52, 155, 176– increased overtime in, 141–43. See77; migration of, to Detroit, 19, 23, 29–30, also American Motors; Chrysler Corpora-

tion; Ford Motor Company; General37 (see also migrants, black); neighbor-Motors Corporation; Hudson Motors;hoods of (see black enclaves; black inner-Packard Motorscity neighborhoods); proportion of, in

Avery, Burneice, 39, 66, 115Detroit population, 23, 265–66; stereotypesof, 8–9, 93, 100, 113, 120–21, 216–18, 229;

Bagley neighborhood, 204, 206types of jobs held by, 25–26, 28, 95–119,275–78; young, 146–47, 168–69, 261, 264 Baltimore, 3, 29, 127–28, 228

affirmative action, 4, 267–69 banks, 34, 36, 46–47, 196“affluent society,” 6, 143 Barthwell, Sidney, 189, 204Agnew, Spiro, 266–67 Belle Isle, 29Akron, 13, 227–28 Bentley, Harry R., 130

Berge, Frank, 79Allan, Finlay C., 85Big Bear supermarkets, 113American Civil Liberties Union, 171Birmingham, Michigan, 203, 245American Federation of Labor (AFL), 85, 117Bixby, H. G., 138–40Americanism, 7, 9, 79, 212, 220

American Motors, 136, 163 Black, Harold, 44anticommunism: impact of, on civil rights Black Bottom area, 23, 36, 49

black bourgeoisie, 188–89, 204groups, 80–82, 156, 170–73, 225–26; andstifling of dissent, 7, 156 black enclaves, 37–41, 198–99; on the West

antiradicalism. See anticommunism Side, 35, 38, 47, 198–99. See also Conantanti-Semitism, 193, 248 Gardens; Eight Mile–Wyoming areaapartment buildings, 21, 51–52, 54–55. See black inner-city neighborhoods, 36–37;

destruction of, in urban redevelopment,also public housingapprenticeship programs, 102–3, 116–17; ex- 36, 47–51, 294–95; deterioration of

housing in, 9, 35–37, 55, 183, 216–17; flightclusion of most black workers from, 102–3,of better-off blacks from, 37–38, 188–90;109, 116–17

Archdiocesan Council for Catholic Women, high rents in, 34, 37, 50, 53–54; high turn-192 over in, 54–55, 198; institutions in, 36–37,

Arden Park neighborhood, 203–4 47, 206–7, 338–39; overcrowding in, 33,38–39, 42–43, 53–54, 72, 188; public hous-Area Redevelopment Acts, 155

arson, 253 ing in, 50, 86Asian Americans, 13, 212 Bledsoe, Geraldine, 25

“blockbusting,” 46, 194–97Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, 171Austin, Richard, 266 Bloomfield Hills, 203, 245automation, 130–38, 163–64; and black work- Boggs, James, 27, 190

Borden Dairies, 175ers, 165, 167–68, 275; and job loss, 132–35;

366 I N DE X

Borolo, Louis J., 80 Chrysler Corporation, 103, 136 (See alsoBoston, 85–86, 127–28, 241, 243 Dodge Main plant; Plymouth DetroitBoston-Edison area, 22, 203–5, 221 Assembly Plant; Warren Tank plant); and

automation, 135–37, 268 black workers at,boundaries, racial. See racial boundariesboycotts, 107, 174–75, 249, 263 91–92, 96–98; and decentralization, 128,Brewery Workers’ Union, 107–8 139–40.brewing industry, 107–8 churches, 22, 25–26, 192, 213–14, 244. SeeBrewster Homes, 86 also Catholic Church; names of individual

churches and parishesBrickley, James, 197Cincinnati, 13, 164, 167, 241, 257Brick Masons and Plasterers union, 115CIO. See Congress of Industrial Organ-Briggs Auto Body, 25, 136

izationsBrightmoor area, 22Brock, Edward, 248, 250 Citizens Housing and Planning CouncilBrown, Ernest L., Jr., 168 (CHPC), 42, 61–62, 67, 80, 88Buffa, Joseph P., 220 City Plan Commission, 49–50, 52, 164–65,Buffalo, 127–28, 132, 164 222; and public housing, 60–61, 71–72, 75,Bugas, John, 133 80, 86building trades, 41, 63, 66, 85, 114–18, 269 Civic Rights Committee, 110Burton, William, 54 Civil Rights Congress, 26, 170–73

civil rights groups, 9; and anticommunism,busing, 266–6780–82, 156, 170–73, 225–26; and CoboButler, Reverend Charles W., 257–58administration, 225; and employmentButzel-Guest Property Owners Association,discrimination, 26–28, 100, 105, 107–9,227113–16, 170–76, 269; failure of, to address

Cadillac Improvement Association, 232 causes of industrial decline, 166–70, 174–76; and housing discrimination, 183, 190–Cain, Maud W., 48

capital mobility, 127–30, 160. See also de- 94. See also Detroit Urban League; Na-centralization tional Association for the Advancement

of Colored PeopleCarver Progressive Association, 66Cassey, Pete W., Jr., 189 Clark, Joseph, 6, 155casual labor, 119–21 class divisions: among blacks, 12, 41, 176,

180, 188–89, 198–207, 269, 336–37; be-Catholic Church, 250–51; importance of par-ishes in, 192, 214, 238, 241, 244. See also tween blacks and whites, 216; among

whites, 216, 244–45names of individual parishesCleage, Reverend Albert, 207, 263Catholic Interracial Council, 172, 192Cleveland, 3, 13, 133, 140, 163, 241, 243Catholics, 9, 22, 213–14, 216, 237–40; effortsCleveland, Clyde, 105of some, for racial harmony, 192; high pro-

portion of, among white Detroiters, 213; in Cobo, Albert, 48, 56, 82–87, 159, 222–23, 268;resistance to neighborhood integration, conservative housing policies of, 84–87,192, 214, 237, 241 222–25, 229; white working-class support

Cavanagh, Jerome, 226, 264 for, 83–84Ceglowski, Roman, 85 Cold War, 140–41. See also anticommunism

Coles, Joseph, 88Chafets, Ze’ev, 270Collett, Bill, 153, 158Chalmers Park, 22Commission on Community Relations (CCR),Champion Spark Plug, 109

Cheetham, E. A., 53 225, 233, 265Communists, 104, 171–73chemical industry, 106–7

Chevrolet plants, 96, 98, 100 Conant Gardens, 35, 40–41, 73, 180, 198–99,Chicago, 3, 19, 63, 85–87; manufacturing in, 203, 220, 238

Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO),13, 127–28, 133, 140; race relations in, 13,29, 241, 243, 257 71, 83–84, 163, 216, 225, 251. See also

United Automobile WorkersChristie, Ross, 222

I N DE X 367

Connor, Edward, 43, 50 Denton, Nancy, 3Connor-East Homeowners Association, Depression of 1930s, 41

214–15 Detroit Citizens Committee for Equal Em-ployment Opportunities, 172construction industry, 63, 114–118. See

also building trades Detroit City Plan Commission. See City PlanCoogan, John, S.J., 192 CommissionCorktown neighborhood, 165 Detroit Council of Churches, 171, 192Corpus Christi parish, 238 Detroit Council on Better Housing, 50

Detroit Housing Commission (DHC), 39,Cotillion Club, 17451; and housing discrimination, 57–58,courts, 45, 159–62, 181–82, 22772–75, 87; and public housing, 60–61,Courville area, 22, 237–38, 247–48, 250,70, 72–75, 77, 80–82; under Cobo ad-253–55, 265

Courville District Improvement Association, ministration, 85214, 217, 219, 224, 231, 235, 246, 251, 253 Detroit Institute of Arts, 17

craftsmen. See skilled workers Detroit Metropolitan Youth Center, 264Cranefield, Harold, 160–61 “Detroit Plan,” 49Crews, John, 115 Detroit Real Estate Board (DREB), 46, 195,crime, 205, 217 223, 226Crockett, George, 102, 171–72 Detroit Realtist Association, 181, 195

Detroit River, 18–19cross burnings, 253, 265Detroit Street Railway (DSR), 20, 111Crow, Allen B., 209Detroit Urban League (DUL), 12, 39, 51, 120,Crutcher, Maceo, 181

147, 206–7; counseling and job placement“culture of poverty,” 120by, 25, 165–70; and employment discrimi-Cummins, Manton, 133nation, 100, 107–9, 113–16, 172, 269; focusCurrent, Gloster, 36

Curtis, Austin W., Jr., 203 of, on skilled and white-collar workers,Czechowski, Mary, 196 166–67, 175–76; and housing discrimina-

Daines, Marvel, 39, 67–68tion, 46, 240

De Witt–Clinton area, 22, 237, 246–47, 254,Dalzell, John, 220 256Dancy, John, 166, 204 De Witt–Clinton Improvement Associaton,

235, 239, 246Davis, Edward, 189, 204, 225Dearborn, 76–77, 159 Diggs, Charles, 70, 188–89, 204

discrimination, racial. See employment dis-Dearborn Engine Plant, 132–33crimination; housing discriminationDearden, Archbishop John, 192

Dodge Main plant, 17, 91–92, 98, 100, 125–decentralization, 127–30; and black workers,26, 135, 231141, 151; encouragement of, by federal

policies, 127, 140–41; and loss of Detroit domestic service, 24–25, 95, 275jobs, 128–29, 139, 141, 146, 158; reasons Douglas, Paul, 6, 155for, 128–29, 138–41; resistance to, 153– Douglass Homes, 50, 8655, 157–62; as weapon against labor, 128, Dudley, Leroy, 254

Durbin, Harry J., 51, 85138–39

E and B Brewery, 107Defense Department contracts, 140–41deindustrialization. See industrial decline

Eastern Detroit Realty Association, 46Delray, 22Del Rio, James, 189, 195 East Side, 23, 126, 137, 148–49, 214; far, 126,

149. See also Lower East SideDemocrats: conservative white, 81, 83–84,210, 223, 228, 265–68; liberal, 9–10 156, Eastside Civic Council, 221–22163, 267. See also Great Society; liberals; economists, 7, 134, 155–56

Ecorse Township, 77, 159liberalism; New DealDenby, Charles, 100, 102 Edsall, Thomas and Mary, 267

Edwards, George, 43, 82–84Dent, Francis, 181

368 I N DE X

Eight Mile Road Civic Association, 66–67, Federal Housing Administration (FHA), 44,70 60–61, 64, 114, 193, 208; and housing dis-

Eight Mile–Wyoming area, 24, 35, 39–40, crimination, 62–63, 66, 73, 182, 245federal policies, 9–10, 50; on employment63–71, 120

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 155 discrimination, 27, 100, 109, 176; encour-elections, 80–84, 209–10, 222, 263–66; racial agement of white homeownership by, 10,

issues in, 80–81, 83–84, 210, 228; white 59, 62–63, 208; from the 1960s to theworking-class voters in, 81, 83–84, 210, 1980s, 263–64, 270; influence of, on indus-

trial decline, 6, 127, 140–41, 176; obstacles223, 265–66posed by, to integrated housing, 9–10, 34,Elsea, Staunton, 22043–44, 46, 62–66, 73, 182, 193, 245; and“embourgeoisement” of workers, 143, 155public housing, 9–10, 59–61, 76–77, 81, 86employment agencies: private, 94–95; public,

4, 25, 94, 100 Federal Public Housing Authority (FPHA),employment discrimination: in auto- 70, 76–77, 86

mobile industry, 90–92, 95–105; civil Federal Works Agency, 60rights groups’ efforts to end, 100, 105, 108– Federated Civic Associations of Northwest9, 170–76, 269; in construction, 114–120; Detroit, 221–22inconsistency in, 92, 95–98, 122; informal, Federated Property Owners of Detroit, 219,through personal contacts, 114, 118, 141; 221

Feild, John, 44, 225legislation concerning, 94–95, 100, 117,Felder, Mary, 53171–76; in municipal employment, 110–Fenkell-Linwood area, 237, 241–4212; in other manufacturing industries,Filban, Earl, 157105–10; persistence of, 268; reasons for, 93,fires, 37, 25398–99, 105–8, 112–13, 117–18, 122; in re-First Federal Bank, 175tail sales, 112–14 and seniority, 103–4, 122;

in skilled trades, 102–5, 114–18 in small Fisher Body plants, 96, 98firms, 93, 95, 108; and state law, 94–95, Foley, Raymond, 66–67, 70–71117; unions and, 93, 95, 98, 100–102, 106– Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth, 1569, 115–18, 170 Food Fair stores, 114

enclaves. See black enclaves Foodtown stores, 114Ford, Benson, 173Entre Nous Club, 38

ethnic identity, 22; blending of, in white Ford, Henry, 25Catholic neighborhoods, 22, 211–12, 237, Ford, Henry, II, 125, 133–34, 158

Ford Motor Company, 17, 19, 76, 102–3,239, 241141–42; and black workers, 25–26, 96–99,Evergreen Village Civic Association, 52105, 151–52; restructuring of productionEx-Cell-O, 109–10, 138

factories, 17–18, 129. See manufacturing;by, 128, 130–33, 135, 137, 140, 157–62. Seealso River Rouge plant

names of individual plants foundry work, 151–52Fadanelli, Father Henry P., 79 Franklin, Reverend C. L., 207Fairbanks, Robert, 60 Frazier, E. Franklin, 4fair employment practices legislation: fed- Friedman, Lawrence, 161

Fruehauf Trailer Company, 91, 139eral, 100, 109; Michigan, 94–95, 117, 171,Fulton, George, 173173–74

Galbraith, John Kenneth, 142Fair Employment Practices Commission

(FEPC), federal, 27, 100; state, 173–Gary, Indiana, 3, 13, 22874

Fair Housing Practices Ordinance, 226 gender: and job opportunities, 98, 104, 111–Fair Neighborhoods Practices Ordinance 12, 113, 118–19, 169, 184; in white neigh-

borhoods, 235–37, 250–53(FNPO), 197“family wage,” 251 General Motors Corporation, 17, 103, 130,

163–64, 268, 271 (see also Chevrolet plants;Federal Home Loan Bank Board, 43, 64–65

I N DE X 369

Fisher Body plants; Livonia Transmission Heavenreich, John P., 221plant); and black workers, 96–98, 100, 175; Henry Ford Trade School, 102restructuring of production by, 128, 134– Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks, 176

highway construction, 6, 47–48, 127, 24235, 138–39Gessell, Walter, 85 Hill, Herbert, 170–71ghetto, 23–24. See also black inner-city Hill, Reverend Charles, 170–71

neighborhoods Hispanic Americans, 13GI Bill of Rights, 60 Home Federal Savings and Loan Association,

189Gibbons, Edward, 203Home-Owner Civic and Improvement Asso-Gibbons, Samuel, 189

ciations, 225Gifford, Florence, 248homeownership, 78, 213; black aspirations to,Goodenow, Louis, 116

Gordon, Leonard, 193 33–34, 38, 67, 190; federal encouragementGordy, Berry, 204 of, for whites, 10, 59, 62–63, 208; immi-Gratiot-Chalmers Property Owners’ Associa- grants and, 62, 213–14; insecurity of, for

tion, 222 workers, 149, 213; obstacles to, for blacks,Gratiot Redevelopment Site, 49–50 34, 43–47, 149, 197–98 (see also federalGraves, Willis, 181–82 policies: obstacles posed by, to integratedGreater Detroit Committee for Fair Housing housing); and New Deal, 59–60, 62–63, 66,

72; rates of, in different neighborhoods, 38,Practices, 19340–41, 213, 237, 242, 244Greater Detroit Homeowners’ Association,

Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, 38, 44, 46,211, 22860–61, 114, 182, 193, 208; and housing dis-Greater Detroit Homeowners’ Council,crimination, 46, 62–63, 66, 182210

homeowners movement, 209–11. See alsoGreater Detroit Neighbors Association,219, 241, 246 neighborhood associations

Great Lakes Mutual Life Insurance “homeowners’ rights,” 218–19Company, 189 Homeowners’ Rights Ordinance, 226–28

Great Lakes Steel, 53, 105–7 Hood, William, 171–72Great Migration, 23, 37, 207. See also Hotel Gotham, 188

Hoult, Thomas, 257migrants, blackGreat Society, 59, 163, 176, 260, 264, 267 hours of work, 141–43, 159, 163–64Gribbs, Roman, 266 housing: discrimination in (see housing

discrimination); legislation concerning,Griffiths, Martha, 209226–28; public (see public housing);Grigsby, Snow, 110rental (see rental housing); segregatedGrixdale Park, 203, 205

Grixdale Park Property Owners Association, (see segregated housing); shortage of,205 29, 38–39, 41–43, 48, 51–55, 72, 86, 188;

grocery stores, 113–14 substandard, 33, 37, 40, 183. See alsoGrosse Pointe, 193, 203, 245 homeownership

Haines, Tecumseh, 150–51Housing and Home Finance Agency, 52housing discrimination, 183; encouragement

of, by federal housing policies, 9–10, 34,Hamilton, John, 22043–44, 46, 62–66, 73, 182, 193, 245; inHamtramck, 17, 22, 241970s and 1980s, 269; legislation concern-Harbulak, Michael J., 57, 79

Harder, Del S., 130 ing, 226–28; “open housing” challenges to,181–83, 190–94, 263; persistence of, 45–46,Harrington, Michael, 7

Hartigan, John, 212 141, 221–22, 245, 269; real estate agentsHastings Street area, 243–44 and, 34, 44–46, 193, 226; in suburbs, 76–

77, 141, 245, 266. See also restrictive cove-hate strikes, 28, 98, 101, 109; UAW opposi-tion to, 98, 109 nants; segregated housing

Hubbard, Orville, 76–77Hays, Mr. and Mrs. Peter, 249

370 I N DE X

Hudson Motors, 136 Kale, Phillip, 44, 46“human capital,” 156, 169 Kanthack, Joseph, 106–7Humphrey, Hubert, 155 Kelley, Robin D. G., 255

Kennedy administration, 163, 210, 263Humphrey, Norman D., 188Hungarian Americans, 22, 78 Kerwin, Mike, 23

immigrants, 9, 22, 62, 78, 213Kilgore and Hurd, 113King, Reverend Martin Luther, Jr., 228,

improvement associations. See neighborhood 263associations King Cole Stores, 113

Korean War, 140incomes, 41, 119, 199–203, 216, 337Kornegay, Francis, 109, 166industrial decline: automation as a factor in,Kornhauser, Arthur, 213, 215–16132–35; civil rights groups’ failure to ad-Kroger supermarkets, 113–14dress, 166–70, 174–76; disproportionate

effects of, on blacks, 144–52, 155, 176–77;Labor Day, 153economists’ misunderstanding of, 155–56;

federal policies influencing, 6, 127, 140–41, Laborers Union, 116176; general pattern of, in the Rust Belt, Laird, Alden C., 2223–4, 6–7, 127–28, 262; public-policy re- land contracts, 196–97sponses to, 163–65, 268; and relocation of LaRose stores, 114production (see decentralization); as result Laub, John, 225of corporate decisions, 129–30; unions’ re- LaVigne, Roy E., 224

Lawrence, Cyril, 87sponse to, 153–55, 157–62; visible signs of,Lawson, Gerald, 463, 125–26, 147–48Lawyers’ Guild, 171“industrial renewal,” 164–65Lebeaux, Charles, 206inequality, 5–6, 14. See also employment dis-Lee, Alfred McClung, 188crimination; housing discrimination

infill tracts, 199 Leggett, John, 261Inglis, James, 85, 87 Legislative Research Committee, 224

Lenox, Reverend G. Merrill, 192International Brotherhood of Electricalliberalism, 10, 84. See also Great Society;Workers, 116

Isabell, George, 85 New DealItalian Americans, 62, 78, 212, 238–39 liberals, 7, 10: ambiguous legacy of, from

Jackson, Thomas F., 264New Deal, 10, 58–60; and housing reform,50, 63, 80, 183 (see also Citizens Housing

James, C.L.R., 7 and Planning Council); and industrialdecline, 163; and racial issues, 156, 172–Jeffries, Edward, 49, 69, 80–81, 110, 26873, 183Jeffries Homes, 50, 86

Livonia, 96, 245Jenkins, Elizabeth, 38–39Jewish Community Council of Detroit, 192, Livonia Transmission Plant, 142

244 loans. See mortgages and home loansJews, 195, 212, 242–45, 248 Local 600 v. Ford Motor Company, 159–62

Los Angeles, 13, 19, 29Job Corps, 176Lockwood, Rodney, 115joblessness. See unemploymentLouks, William, 223job training, 156, 163, 268

Johnson, Charles, 57–58 Love, Henry, 239–40, 255Lower East Side, 36–37, 47, 204. See alsoJohnson, Ethel, 33

Johnson administration, 263. See also Great Black Bottom; Paradise ValleySociety Lower West Side, 47, 236–37, 240–41,

Jones, Jacqueline, 119 255–56; Property Owners’ Associationin, 220, 235, 256; white resistance toJordan, Essie Mae, 53

Jorgensen, Mary, 126 blacks in, 235, 240–41, 246, 248, 250, 253,255, 265juvenile delinquency, 205, 255

I N DE X 371

McCarthy, Joseph, 115 Milliken v. Bradley, 266McCarthyism, 7, 156, 170. See also anti- Milwaukee, 13, 228

communism Milwaukee-Junction area, 125–26Miriani, Louis, 235, 263–64McGhee, Minnie and Orsel, 181

McGriff, Floyd, 82, 223, 226 Mitcham, Reverend David, 255–56machine tool industry, 108–9, 137–38, 141, Monson, Astrid, 50

312 Moon, Henry Lee, 81, 209, 218MacNichol, Alan E., 222 Mooney, Edward Cardinal, 192

Morris, James, 248Macomb County, 267mortgages and home loans, 43–44, 46–47,McPhaul, Art, 171–72

196. See also federal policies: obstaclesMaloney, Thomas, 98posed by, to integrated housing“managerial prerogative,” 160–61

“mankilling,” 130–31 Morton, Alan, 115Manpower Development Training Act, 176 Moses, Wilson, 204“manpower” theory, 7, 156, 163 Motor Products Corporation, 137manufacturing, 17–19; decline of, in the Rust Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 4

municipal employment, 110–12belt, 3–4, 6–7, 127–28, 262; entry-level jobsin, 127, 146, 150; loss of jobs in, in Detroit, Murray Auto Body, 125, 136–37, 146125–29, 132–41, 143–52. See also automa-

National Association for the Advancement oftion; automobile industry; decentralization;Colored People (NAACP), 12, 30, 55, 263;industrial declinealliance of, with United Automobile Work-Marshall, Donald, 25ers, 26, 30, 171–73; and employment dis-Marshall, Thurgood, 182crimination, 26–27, 98, 118, 170–73, 175–Massey, Douglas, 3–476, 269; and housing discrimination, 45, 76,Master Plan for Detroit, 8187, 181–82, 194, 197Matheny, H., 99

Matusow, Allen, 267 National Association of Community Associa-tions, 219Mayer, Albert J., 257

Mayor’s Committee on Community Action for National Association of Community Councils,Detroit Youth, 264 246, 252

National Association of Real Estate Boards,Mayor’s Interracial Committee, 46, 86, 115,171–72, 214, 224, 234–35; creation of, 30; 74reorganization of, 224–25 National Brewing Company, 107; boycott

against, 107, 174Mays, Joseph, 91–92National Housing Agency, 60Meany, George, 163National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 160Metropolitan Tabernacle, 214

Meyers, Reverend F. Ricksford National Labor Relations Board, 161Michigan Chronicle, 168, 183 National Negro Congress, 26Michigan Council of Churches, 172 National Negro Labor Council (NNLC), 158,Michigan Council of Civic Associations, 170–73

Inc., 221 National stores, 114Michigan Employment Security Commis- neighborhood associations: assertion of

“homeowners’ rights” by, 218–20; blurringsion, 94, 98, 100, 148–49, 166, 264of ethnic lines in, 211–212; and city poli-Michigan Real Estate Association, 226tics, 83, 85, 222, 224–25, 229, 263–64;Michigan State Employment Service

(MSES), 25, 94 number of, 211, 339–40; opposition of,to black newcomers, 214–15, 217, 219–migrants, black, 36, 38, 53, 156, 166; avail-

ability of jobs for, 7–8, 25–26, 99, 115, 146; 25, 231–33, 246–53, 256 origins of, 212–dashed expectations of, 7–8, 34; motives 13; pressure tactics used by, 231–32,

247–50, 252; and real estate agents, 212,of, 7, 23–24, 33–34migrants, southern white, 20, 99–100, 212, 216, 220–21, 248; red-baiting by, 225–26

role of women in, 250–52; and violence240–41

372 I N DE X

neighborhood associations (cont.) Patrick, William, 197against blacks, 233, 152, 255. See also white Pfeiffer Brewing Company, 107–8neighborhoods Philadelphia, 3, 13, 29, 87, 127–28, 164, 241,

257neighborhoods. See black enclaves; blackinner-city neighborhoods; white neighbor- Pittsburgh, 3, 13, 127–28hoods; names of individual neighborhoods Plumbers and Steam Fitters Union, 116

Newark, 3, 86, 257 Plymouth Detroit assembly plant, 133, 135–Newberg, W. C., 139 36

Plymouth Manor neighborhood association,New Bethel Baptist Church, 207222New Deal, 10, 64, 81, 127, 158; ambiguous

Poindexter, Thomas, 209–10, 227–28, 265,legacy of, 10, 58–60; and homeownership,26859–60, 62–63, 66, 72; and public housing,

61, 63–64, 72 police, 29, 121, 255, 266; and neighborhoodNew Orleans, 86, 140 harassment of black residents, 240, 248,newspapers, 34–35, 217; black, 168, 183, 235 252, 255, 356; racial composition of, 112,New York City, 3, 13, 63, 86–87, 127–28, 243 174, 266Nicholas, William, 71 Poletown plant, 268, 271Nixon, Richard, 266–67 Polish Americans, 24, 62, 78, 193, 212, 214,Nolan, Fred, 111 238–39

politics. See elections; federal policiesNorth East Council of Home Owners Associ-population of Detroit, 23; decline of, startingations, 221

in 1950s, 149; growth of, in 1940s, 42;Northeast Side, 9, 75, 83, 227, 231–33, 235–black, 33, 165–6638, 265. See also Courville area; Seven

poverty: changing nature of, 3–4, 269–70;Mile–Fenelon areaefforts to blame, on individual failings, 7,Northwest Civic Association, 45, 181, 214

Northwest Civic Federation, 225 120, 156 (see also stereotypes, racial). SeeNorthwest Detroit Realty Association, 45 also black inner-city neighborhoods; indus-Northwest Side, 52, 83, 265; far, 82, 222–24; trial decline; unemployment

near, 190, 206–7, 237, 244–45 Price, William L., 51, 195“not-yet-white ethnics,” 9, 241 property taxes, 139

Protestants, 240: racial attitudes of, 192, 214,Nowak, Stella, 249

Oakwood area, 22, 77–81216. See also Detroit Council of Churches

public employment, 110–12, 276public housing, 9–10, 56, 59–62, 81–82, 86;Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union,

controversy over, 12, 41, 50, 56, 59–63, 69,10672–88; death of, 85–88; narrow base ofopen housing movement, 190–94, 197, 225–

27, 263 support for, 63; opposition to, by white andOpen Occupancy Conference, 193–94 black homeowners, 12, 41, 59, 61–71, 78–Orfield, Gary, 4 80; segregation in, 57–58, 73–74; suburbs’overcrowding, 33, 38–39, 42–43, 53–54, 72, opposition to, 76–77, 266; temporary, in

188 wartime, 69–70

race: as cultural and political construc-overtime, 141–43, 159Overton, Jennie, 255

tion, 7–10, 229; defining of Detroit’s geog-Packard Motors, 17, 125, 136, 143, 145–46 raphy by, 234 (see also racial boundaries;Palmer Woods, 22, 64 segregated housing); discrimination based

on (see employment discrimination; hous-Palmyra Home Owners’ Association, 222Paradise Valley, 24, 29, 35–38, 47, 189, 204, ing discrimination); importance of, in

216; flight of well-to-do blacks from, 38, elections, 80–81, 83–84, 210, 228; sexualconventions and, 78, 113, 217. See also189

Park Drive-Ravendale Improvement Associa- African Americans“race traitors,” 248tion, 222

I N DE X 373

racial boundaries, 24, 55, 188, 229, 231, 234, Robinson, M. M., 70247, 256–57, 266; enforcement of, 24 (see Robinson, Roger, 259also neighborhood associations; restrictive Roediger, David, 122

Rogell, William, 33covenants; white neighborhoods, violencein, against black residents); shifting, 229, Roosevelt, Franklin D., 27, 60, 66, 171. See266 also New Deal

racial covenants. See restrictive covenants Rosedale Park, 22racial violence. See riots; white neighbor- Royal, Harvey, 48

runaway shops, 158. See also decentralizationhoods, violence in, against black residentsRuritan Park area, 237, 248–49, 254–56Raskin, Jack, 171–72Ruritan Park Civic Association, 219, 235,rats, 37

239–40Reading, Richard, 110Reagan, Ronald, 267 Russ, Nash, 70Reagan administration, 270 Russell Woods area, 22, 204–6“Reagan Democrats,” 267 Rust Belt, 13–14; defined, 6; Detroit as epit-real estate agents: black, 48, 95, 189, 195, 248; ome of, 143; industrial decline in, 3–4, 6–7,

127–28, 262. See also names of individual“blockbusting” by, 194–97, 216, 240; andhousing discrimination, 34, 44–46, 193, northern cities226; and neighborhood associations, 212,

Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict Parish,216, 220–21214Real Property Survey, 40

Saint Bartholomew’s parish, 238, 247recessions, 126, 231St. Brigid parish, 192, 239Religion and Race Conference, 193St. Cecilia parish, 192relocation of production, 127–30, 262. SeeSaint Francis de Sales parish, 239also decentralizationSaint Gregory’s parish, 239rental housing, 50: high cost of, in black

neighborhoods, 34, 37, 50, 53–54; home- St. Louis, Missouri, 3, 86, 127–28, 164Saint Louis the King parish, 238owners’ opposition to, 51–52, 63, 74–76;

shortage of, 34, 48, 51–55, 86. See also Saint Luke’s parish, 239, 247public housing St. Matthew’s Protestant Episcopal Church,

26Rentschler, C. Katherine, 225Republicans, 156, 173, 210. See also Cobo, Saint Rita’s parish, 238

Albert Saint Scholastica Parish, 217Sam’s Cut Rate, 113restrictive covenants, 44–46, 78, 204, 245; in-San Bernardo Improvement Association,validation of, 45, 182, 204, 221, 243; linger-

215ing effectiveness of, 45–46, 221–22, 245retail sales jobs, 112–14 savings and loan associations, 47Reuther, Walter P., 101–2, 132, 134, 162–63 Schermer, George, 43, 58, 77, 87, 224–25Revolutionary Union Movement, 263 Schoolcraft Gardens Cooperative, 222–24Rieder, Jonathan, 267 Schumpeter, Joseph, 5–6“rights,” assertions of: conflicting, 10, 59, Schwartz, Hugo C., 50

218–19; by unionists, 158, 160; by white Seabron, William, 122Seaton, Louis, 96, 134homeowners, 10, 79, 218–19, 226Second Baptist Church, 206–7riots: Detroit 1943, 29, 55, 75–76, 110, 260;segregated housing, 8–9, 11–12, 33, 183;Detroit 1967, 259–60, 264; in other cities,

29, 257; Sojourner Truth, 29, 73–74 encouragement of, by federal policies,9–10, 34, 43–44, 46, 62–66, 73, 182, 193,Rivera, Diego, 17

River Rouge plant, 25, 265; loss of jobs in, 245; grassroots enforcement of (see126, 131–33, 146, 154; struggles over re- neighborhood associations); persistence

of, 8, 141, 221–22, 245, 269, 257. Seestructuring in, 154, 157–62, 325Robert Brooks Homes, 71 also housing discrimination; restrictive

covenantsRobinson, George, 100

374 I N DE X

seniority, 103–4; and black workers, 122, suburbs, 140, 149, 245–46, 263, 266, 269; hos-144–45; and industrial restructuring, 135, tility to blacks in, 76–77, 141, 151, 193–94,162 245, 266–67; opposition of, to public hous-

ing, 76–77; relocation of industry to, 128,Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (GIBill of Rights), 60 136, 140–41, 151

service sector, 24–25, 166, 268, 275 Sun Belt, 140. See also South, theSeven Mile–Fenelon area, 73–74, 237–38, Swados, Harvey, 7

253; Sojourner Truth Homes in, 73–77, Sweet, Ossian, 24Szluk, John, 153238, 256

Taft-Ellender-Wagner Housing Reform Act,Seven Mile–Fenelon Improvement Associa-

tion, 73, 220, 235, 238, 248, 25660, 81Sheeler, Charles, 16–17

Sheffield, Horace, 71 taxes, 139–40, 265Shelley v. Kraemer, 45, 182, 204, 221, 245 Taylor, Charles, 248Sherwood Forest, 64 teaching jobs, 111–12, 276Shrine of the Black Madonna, 207 Tel-Craft Association, 223–24“silent firing,” 135 Temple Baptist Church, 214Simmons, James, 157 Tenaglia, Orville, 85, 215Sims, Jordan, 99 Thal, Ed, 85

Thompson, Tommy, 158–59Sipes, Benjamin and Anna, 181Thornton, Thomas P., 162Sipes v. McGhee, 181–83, 221Tip Top Bread, 175skilled workers, 102–5, 235, 253, 275. See alsotool and die companies, 108–9, 137–38, 141building tradesTrade Union Leadership Council (TULC),“slave market,” 120–21

101, 174–76, 263Slobin, Nathan, 248trash collection, 37, 216Smith, Karl H., 220

Smith, Ralph, 85 Trenton, New Jersey, 13, 127–28, 164, 241Smith, Walker E., 181 Truman administration, 60Snyderman, Mrs. W. J., 243 Turner, Edward, 87

Twelfth Street area, 47, 204, 237, 242–43, 259Sojourner Truth Homes, 29, 73–77, 238,256

UAW. See United Automobile WorkersSouth, the, 262; migration from. See“underclass” debate, 4–5; 120–21migrants, black; migrants, southern white;unemployment, 4, 163; attributing of, to indi-relocation of industry to, 127, 140–41, 158;

vidual failings, 7, 156, 163; higher, amongas undesirable place for blacks, 30, 33–34,blacks, 144–46, 150–52, 204–5, 217, 261;141, 151, 158

Southwest Detroit Homeowners Association, and industrial restructuring, 128–29, 132–220 35, 139, 141, 146, 158; long-term, 144–46,

Southwest Detroit Improvement League, 204–5; low, in 1940s, 19, 30; in 1950s, 124,126–27, 150214–15

Stallings, Donald and Irma, 33 unions, 11, 19–20, 83–84, 138, 216, 225, 251,States-Lawn area, 235, 237, 239, 256 269; in building trades, 63, 66, 85, 115–18,

269; and employment discrimination, 11,steel industry, 92–93, 105–795, 98, 100–102, 106–9, 115–18, 170, 269;Stellato, Carl, 159weakening of, by industrial restructuring,stereotypes, racial, 8–9, 93, 100, 113, 120–21,

216–18, 229 11, 153–55, 157–64. See also United Auto-mobile Workers“streetcorner society,” 120–21

strikes, 103–4, 130, 142, 158, 325; against United Automobile Workers (UAW), 11, 19–hiring or promotion of black workers (hate 20, 251; and automation, 132, 134–35, 158,

163–64; in civil rights coalitions, 170–73;strikes), 8, 98, 101, 109Stroh’s brewery, 108 and decentralization, 153–55, 157–63; in

electoral campaigns, 82–84, 209, 265; andStudebaker, 125

I N DE X 375

employment discrimination, 26–27, 30, tween, in degree of determination to ex-95, 98, 100–102, 109, 170; and housing is- clude blacks, 235–46; ethnic compositionsues, 71, 80, 88, 101, 193, 222–23; Local of, 22, 78, 211–14, 237, 241; opposition of,

to “multiple housing,” 51–52, 63, 74–76;155, 109 Local 272, 109; Local 3, 232; Local49, 109; Local 600, 70–71, 76, 132, 153–55, organized opposition to blacks in (see157–62 neighborhood associations); violence in,

United States Housing Authority (USHA), 60, against black residents, 24, 231, 233–35,64, 73 238- 42, 252–55; wealthy, 22, 64, 203–4

whiteness, 9, 22, 74, 212, 234United Steelworkers of America (USWA), 106Wieterson, Isabel, 225Urban League. See Detroit Urban Leaguewildcat strikes, 103, 142, 158, 325. See alsourban renewal, 48–51, 86

hate strikesU.S. Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment, 266 Wilder, Amos, 205

U.S. Supreme Court, 182 Williams, G. Mennen, 33, 53, 153, 163, 173–

Velie, Lester, 3374, 265

Williams, Lena, 42veterans, 42, 57–58, 60; black, 42–43, 57–58 Willow Run aircraft complex, 47, 140

Wilson, Easby, 231–33, 250, 252, 254–55Veterans Administration, 114, 208

wages, 118, 138–39, 146, 150, 251Wilson, Edmund, 21Wilson, William Julius, 198Wolf, Eleanor Paperno, 206Wakeham, William, 151–52women: black, 24–25, 98, 111–12, 169, 189; inWallace, George Corley, 210, 228, 265, 267

the labor force, 24–25, 28, 98, 104, 118,Ward, Willis, 25237, 275–76, 278; white, in blue-collarWar on Poverty, 264neighborhoods, 235–37, 250–52Warren, Michigan, 96, 266

Warrendale Improvement Association, 225 World War II, 19, 140; continuing discrimi-Warren Tank Plant, 140 nation during, 28, 92, 98; housing shortageWartman, Charles, 119, 121, 183 during, 38–39, 69–70; improved status ofWaterman, James, 241 black workers during, 24–28, 92, 105, 110–Watson, John, 79 11; racial tensions during, 28–29Wayne County Better Homes, 70 Wright, A. G., 188Weiniger, E. T., 99 Wrigley stores, 114

Wrobel, Paul, 214West Grand Boulevard area, 203West Outer Drive area, 22 Wyandotte Chemical Company, 106–7

Wyoming Corridor, 235–40, 247, 265. SeeWest Side: black enclave in, 24, 35, 38, 47,also De Witt-Clinton area; Ruritan Park198–99; harassment of blacks in, 214, 241,

254. See also De Witt–Clinton area; area; States-Lawn areaFenkell-Linwood area in; Ruritan Park

Young, Bessie, 254area; States-Lawn area; Wyoming CorridorYoung, Coleman, 171–72, 269–70West Side Industrial Project, 165

Whatley, Warren, 98 Younglove, Charles, 105–6Young Men’s Christian Association, 47, 206–7Whitby, Beulah, 225

White, Horace, 39, 225 youths: black, 146–47, 168–69, 261, 264;white neighborhoods, 22–23, 251; black white, 147, 218, 254–55

zoning, 61, 69, 212, 246“pioneers” in, 181–82, 189–90, 216; “block-busting” in, 46, 194–97; Catholic parishes

Zunz, Olivier, 18in, 192, 214, 238, 241, 244; differences be-

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The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in