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Vinathi's List: Detroit Race Riots 1943

    • “They were all beating him. The blood was all over the pavement and everything.”
    • a black streetcar conductor pummeled and stomped by a white mob on a hot June afternoon in 1943.

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    • were more good paying jobs available in Detroit than could be filled.

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      • primary source-- FDR wrote this letter but not actually doing enough for racial relations

    • The influx of newcomers strained not only housing, but transportation, education and recreational facilities as well. Wartime residents of Detroit endured long lines everywhere, at bus stops, grocery stores, and even at newsstands where they hoped for the chance to be first answering classified ads offering rooms for rent
    • Food and housing were either rationed or unavailable

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      • "Grim, steel-helmeted federal troops backing their commands with rifles and machine guns enforced calm today in riot-torn sections of war-busy Detroit where 25 persons--22 of them negroes--were killed and 700 injured in racial fighting Monday.. orders from their officers to 'fix your bayonets, load your guns and don't take anything from anybody'" (1).

      • "Police estimated 85 per cent of those held were negroes" (1).

      • "The death toll reached 25--22 negroes and three white--with 15 victims reportedly slain by the police. Dr. Austin Z. Howard, chief surgeon at receiving hostpital, which alone treated more than 500 of the injured, described the rioting as the 'worst calamity' in Detroit's history" (11).

      • "filled hospitals and prisons with battered and bruised negro and whites. Authorities estimated that beside the 700 injured, there were almost as many jammed into the city's prisons and police stations" (11).

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