Sugrue: Racial Crisis in Detroit
Using “The Continuing Racial Crisis” by Thomas Sugrue, explain the limits of civil rights reform in Detroit.
Citizens of Detroit, both black and white, faced growing discontent and resentment making successful civil reform in the city slow and difficult to achieve. Thomas Sugrue uses examples of police brutality, a changing job market lacking of employment opportunity, demographic changes, as well as political frustration to detail the struggles for civil rights reform in Detroit.
Sugrue begins with an account of the July 23,1967 race riot resulting in the arrest of eighty-five patrons of an illegal after hours saloon. While waiting for reinforcements, several hundred people gathered to witness the incident. The gathering escalated into a five-day riot, which resulted in the arrest of 7,231 participants, millions of dollars in damages, and forty-three people dead. This riot was the second of which Sugrue refers to as “cataclysmic violence” in a period of less than twenty-five years. Sugrue continues the discussion by contrasting the events. The first, in the summer of 1943, had roughly equal proportions of black and white participants. The 1967 riots were black with predominantly white officials trying to put down the riot. According to Sugrue, the 1967 riots were the participants’ response to flagrant discrimination and recent deindustrialization with the deindustrialization bringing about massive unemployment. Limited results and disappointment in rising expectations of Great Society programs increased turmoil and violence from the black community fueling frustrations of Detroit’s poor.
The declining transformation in the local labor market fed the discontentedness of Detroit’s African-American working and non-working population. According to Sugrue, limited opportunities, ongoing poverty, and discrimination, led to racial animosity and as a result criminal activity increased in the black community. Sugrue explains the aforementioned conditions resulted in the acceptance of deviant and previously unacceptable occupations as suddenly legitimate by the youth within the community. Advancements in technology and the migration of many industries to areas with more cost efficient labor encouraged many in the local labor force to lose hope of obtaining legitimate employment. Due to the racial boundaries, residential segregation, within the city the mobility of black citizens was limited. Sugrue also points out that many had little desire or the finances to relocate to other areas where jobs were perhaps more readily available and instead chose to maintain residency in Detroit thus leading more toward the increased anger against the city.
Due to this sweeping change, white neighborhood associations saw themselves losing control over their once held grasp on the political machine and as unemployment and poverty grew more government welfare assistance programs became more prominent in Detroit. Sugrue references Thomas F. Jackson who stated that the “War on Poverty” initiatives that brought government money and social programs to Detroit did little to address or remedy the deindustrialization and flagrant discrimination, thereby offering little if any real opportunity to African-Americans of Detroit. Ultimately, the limits to reform in Detroit rested with the discontent of inner-city blacks and whites. The lack of opportunity due to discrimination and industrial change frustrated the African American community. The lack of desire as well as the lack of ability on the part of blacks to follow the job market or adapt to the technological changes further limited reform. Expectation for the government to improve economic opportunity and reduce discrimination practices also played into the African-Americans’ senses of frustration and limitation of reform. The rioting and extreme discontent did motivate the African-American community into becoming more politically active and ultimately led to slow changes, but, the protracted pace of reform further increased frustration and created a vicious circle which served only to fuel more dissent and violence.
Already prejudiced, the white populations grew increasingly bitter toward Detroit’s city leaders for allowing the escalation of both reform attempts and the violent response by blacks. Detroit’s affluent white population’s expectation was for the City to contain black communities and to forbid blacks from encroaching into traditionally white areas. The poor and disadvantaged whites were also resistant to reform since any changes that benefited blacks would magnify competition in the already strained job market. Thus, as anger and violence increased among the black population, prejudice and opposition increased within the white. According to Sugrue, there was a dilemma in politics with regard to the inability of Democrats to appease the white community, who resented bearing the brunt of accommodation necessary for an integrated society. Detroit’s whites were reluctant to carry the burden of change after realizing that successful integration requires the dominant group to make heavy concessions. This lack of desire for change lead to even further resistance by the white populations.
Based on the Sugrue article, it seems that the limitations of reform in Detroit rested not only with resisting whites, but within the black community as well. The militancy of black reformers drove the white community to fight harder against reform. It was not until their own political participation did African-Americans begin to see change. However, as this change began the white community increased efforts to resist residential integration and other civil rights reform. Political officials received attention, sometimes violent, from both the black and white communities. Any attempts to appease both communities resulted in neither becoming content. The City of Detroit was little different from other areas of the country in enacting and maintaining civil rights reform. Populations in other areas of our country similarly resisted reform attempts; often with violent consequences. Eventually, though, through persistence and dedication to civil right’s reform beginning in the late 1960’s, the City of Detroit as well as other American cities ultimately made strides in civil rights reform.
December 01 2005 09:49 pm | History and Ramblings
December 3rd, 2005 at 1:26 pm
The great Canadian Folk Artist, Gordon Lightfoot, wrote and recorded a song entitled, “Black Day In July”, about this incident. Very good tune…