Troops halt Detroit riots; war plants slowed, 25 die
Negro absenteeism tops 35% – blame laid to fifth column
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
Motorized Army troops restored law and order to Detroit today after violent race riots, but production slumped in war plants because of an excessive rate of absenteeism among Negro workers.
Federal Army detachments in battle uniforms bivouacked along a two-mile stretch of Woodward Ave., the city’s main thoroughfare, and mobile units – light tanks, jeeps and armored cars – rolled through narrower streets of the Negro section with guns loaded and orders to “use them, if necessary.”
The troops moved into the city shortly before midnight under direct orders from President Roosevelt to halt rioting Negro and white mobsters whose 24-hour reign of terror left 25 persons dead, nearly 700 injured and thousands of dollars of property damage. Tension seemed to vanish with arrival of the soldiers.
Violence has ended
Governor Harry F. Kelly said reports from state and city police and federal authorities were “very good” this morning. Last violence, he said, was reported at 4:30 a.m., when Negro was killed while looting a store.
Production in Detroit’s busy war plants, curtailed yesterday by disrupted transportation services, was still hampered today by absenteeism of Negro workers. The Ford Motor Company reported that “several thousand” Negroes – approximately 35% of its foundry personnel – remained away. Unless more of the employees turned by noon, it may be necessary to close the foundries, a Ford spokesman said.
General Motors reported its production undiminished despite the fact that “more than 50%” of its Negro employees failed to report today. Its spokesman said other workers picked up the slack and kept production at normal levels.
High absenteeism
Chrysler Corporation reported that absenteeism at its Dodge plant, which employs many Negro workers, amounted to nearly 35%. Briggs Manufacturing Company likewise reported abnormally high absenteeism among Negroes.
Negro and white leaders alike blamed fifth-column activities for yesterday’s widespread race riots – the nation’s worst, civil disturbance since World War I – and urged immediate steps to prevent recurrence of the bloody street fighting.
A statement by white leaders read:
This is not an isolated incident arising from a chance fistfight. It is part of an organized national fifth-column conspiracy to break our unity and disrupt the home production front.
Branded conspiracy
They charged that the Ku Klux Klan and “other fifth-column elements” inspired the riots and asked an “immediate roundup and arrest of all known Klan and other fifth-column leaders” in this area. The Negro statement said it wished to “tell the white citizens of Detroit that the Negro people are their friends.”
Governor Kelly also announced that the ban on “assemblages” invoked yesterday would force cancellation of today’s scheduled Detroit-Cleveland baseball game and a race meet at the Detroit Fair Grounds track.
Brig. Gen. William E. Gunther, in charge of federal troops here, said three battalions of Regular Army infantry – approximately 2,100 men – are en route from Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, to relieve military police, many of whom will have been on duty 24 hours.
With fixed bayonets, the soldiers marched slowly behind armored cars, whose machine guns were trained upon second-story windows from which there had been sniping earlier in the evening. Within a few minutes, streets were cleared and peace was restored. However, the streets still bore evidence of the rioting – overturned and demolished cars and trucks, looted shops, broken glass and bloody remnants of clothing scattered almost everywhere.
Brig. Gen. Gunther said 1,200 additional soldiers were being held in reserve at Fort Wayne and Selfridge Field, Michigan. Detroit’s 3,500 weary city police were also to be joined today by 1,500 state troopers from as far north as the upper peninsula of Michigan and by Michigan Guardsmen mobilized by the Governor.
The death toll reached 25 – 22 Negroes and three whites – early today, with at least 15 of the victims reportedly slain by police. Dr. Austin Z. Howard, chief surgeon at Receiving Hospital, which alone treated more than 500 of the injured, described the rioting as the “worst calamity” in Detroit’s history.
Started with fistfight
The fighting began Sunday night on the bridge to Belle Isle Park – an island off the east side of the city – with a fistfight between a Negro and a white man. The rioting continued until it reached full battle proportions yesterday.
Kelly’s state of emergency proclamation ordered everyone, except those going to and from work in Detroit’s busy war plants, to observe a 10 p.m. curfew. Barrooms and places of amusement, including theaters, were closed until “further notice.”
There were pitched battles everywhere despite police efforts to disperse rioters with tear gas and gunfire.
Police battle 200 Negroes
Biggest fight of the riot saw 200 state and local police dislodge Negroes who had been sniping at them with shotguns and revolvers from upper windows of a downtown apartment building. Police returned the gunfire and tossed dozens of tear-gas bombs through the windows. The battle raged for two and a half hours before the Negroes surrendered. When the smoke and tear-gas fumes had cleared, two Negroes were found dead and one policeman was injured seriously.
The riots, the worst since a reign of tenor brought death to 33 persons in East St. Louis, Illinois, on July 2, 1917, filled hospitals and prisons with battered and bruised Negroes and whites.
The outbreak, although it came so quickly that it overwhelmed civil authorities, was not entirely unexpected. Conditions in Detroit have been pointing steadily toward an outbreak since the heavy influx of Negroes from the rural areas in the South and Midwest seeking the high wages paid in the world’s greatest production center.
In the last census, of the total population of 1,623,452, Negroes accounted for 149,119. But the figures have grown proportionately with the boom of war prosperity and the population of the metropolitan area is now estimated at 2,500,000.
Sailors save Negro
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
A gang of white youths began to close in on a Negro front of the City Hall. Three sailors, none of them more than 20, stepped in and broke it up.
One of the sailors said:
He isn’t doing you guys any harm. Let him alone!
One of the mobsters snapped:
What’s it to you?
The sailor barked:
Plenty! There was a colored guy in our outfit and he saved a couple of lives. Besides, you guys are stirring up something that we’re trying to stop.