In the aftermath of a riot that started on June 20, 1943 due to racial tension between whites and blacks, residents of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley try to repair their lives and their businesses. Hastings Street is temporarily disabled even a month after the riots. Community members of this neighborhood look at the ruin of Paradise Valley in dismay, for their prized entertainment and business district...
In 1942, in the heat of the Second World War, the United States Department of Agriculture published a 16-page pamphlet to be distributed to homes and families across the United States. The pamphlet was intended as an informational packet to facilitate the successful implementation of Victory Gardens in American’s backyards. The pamphlet detailed the nutritional, economical, and national benefits...
Several buildings align St. Antoine Street, a well-known street in Paradise Valley. The buildings on this street all look similarly plain and hastily built, which speaks to the poverty present in the area. Cars frequent this area to experience the entertainment life, which is in part shaped by the 606 Horse Shoe Bar and Lounge. The 606 Horse Shoe Bar and Lounge, a popular spot in Paradise Valley, stands...
World War II brought a lot of good opportunities in the workforce for the city of Detroit. Because of Detroit’s powerful automobile industry, they became the epicenter for WWII production. Black men and women were given many more job opportunities. The three major effects that helped black people were economic forces, activism, and government assistance. The most powerful of the three effects were...
In Detroit, 1942, Ford Motor Co.’s experimental laboratories attempted to form a closer partnership between agriculture and industry, in an effort to produce new war (World War II) materials for bombers, jeeps, tanks and other vehicles. The three new materials included plastics for airplanes, synthetic rubber, and “wool” from soybeans. Henry Ford, founder of the automobile company, had the...
The two photographs show very conflicting images. One is a flyer distributed by local white residents requesting assistance from other white people outside their neighborhood to help keep black Detroiters from moving into the newly-completed public housing project just north of Hamtramck and on the eastern boundary of Nortown. It encourages people to “Help the White People to keep this district...
On the evening of June 20, 1943, tensions finally boiled over on Belle Isle, a popular recreation area for both blacks and whites in the city of Detroit. Twenty-three people perished, and hundreds were injured in the fighting that ensued. It was reported that the initial rioting occurred on the belief that an African American woman and her baby were thrown off of the Belle Isle bridge, which connected...
In 1943, racial tensions were high as more and more African Americans left the South in pursuit of a new life and new opportunities in the North. Many African Americans hoped to leave their agricultural and rural roots in the South for a more urban lifestyle in the nation's larger and more industrialized cities. Large urban centers such as Detroit strained to accommodate the massive influx of people,...
Fifteen months before the race riots of 1943, a Detroit report warned that "unless some socially constructive steps are taken shortly, the tension that is developing is very likely to burst into active conflict." The racial tensions in Detroit at the time came from a variety of sources, but especially resentment by white residents of the city's growing African-American population, based on discriminatory...
Lenore Lewis Lawson is an African American woman who grew up on the Near Eastside of Detroit. She lived on Hendrie Street with her parents, brothers and sisters. Her home was just four houses from Hastings (a major thoroughfare in Detroit’s Black community surrounded with small businesses). She said that “she views her years growing up in the old neighborhood as some of the best years of her life”....