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Detroit Research Paper During the twenty to twenty-five years after World War II the auto industry and other industries in Detroit had changed to supply the demands for an ever changing world. Henry Ford had mass production techniques. Thousands of jobs were created to build the Ford Model T’s. Part by part each vehicle was made, becoming Ford’s first most popular mass produced car. Not only the auto companies grew with demand, but the steel companies also produced supplies for engines, chassis, and other metal fixtures for each vehicle. Tool makers also benefited by making machinery and tools for the auto manufacturers. The interior components of the vehicles such as, the seats and the roof, were manufactured by upholstery makers. All these subsidiaries were created to meet the needs of the auto industry as it grew year after year.
When World War II began the auto industry changed production to military vehicles. A highly maneuverable, overland vehicle called “jeep”, built by the Willy’s company was made in large numbers for military use. Chrysler changed their manufacturing to make tanks for the war. Ford, among other things, made bomber planes.
After the war ended, demands for new cars gave the auto industry a boost in sales and in profit. In the early nineteen fifties, a national network of the interstate highway was built. The highway was built under the Eisenhower Administration. When the highway was completed, a driver can travel cross country on not one but four lanes of road, from New York to Los Angeles without having to stop on a red signal light.
As Americans became mobile, many moved to the developing and evolving suburbs. Many returning Veterans were encouraged and able to purchase homes in the suburbs by generous terms of government insured homes offered to people who had served in the military. In addition to the new homes there where essentials you would need in the house such as, furnishings and appliances that were delivered by truck drivers. Many trucking companies enjoyed a sustained period of growth because of the interstate highway era. More and more goods were delivered via trucks. A so called “piggy-back” system was used in which trucks were transported on trains to specific locations. Those trains were then unloaded and the trucks were then sent to their destination via the road ways.
Many industries with thousands of workers often had a union, which took care of the demands of workers in general. After the World War II, as the production needs decreased, overtime hours dried up and brought new challenging issues to American labor. “Real wages”, as it was called, declined by twelve percent. Many companies did not lower wages. Instead, they just cut overtime which ended up affecting about fifty percent of their wages. Renewed strikes, in many industries including automobile, steel, electric appliances, and railroads provoked an anti-union reaction from the public.
In the election of a republican majority, in both house of congress the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 was passed after President Harry Truman’s veto. The Act outlawed the closed shop. It made unions responsible for breach of contract. Keeping unions from making contributions to politics and making union dues expensive. They also made elected union officials take an oath stating they are not communist.
In the nineteen-fifties, for the average American, life was good. Middle American value saw a decline of unionism in the country. The American laborer worked less than forty hours a week and had two weeks of vacation annually. Many had twice the income to spend as in the nation’s previous economic boom time in the nineteen-twenties. In the nineteen-sixties labor unions were hurt by many problems. Migrations of many industries into southern states hurt the unions because of their anti-union laws. The internal corruption of larger unions and the rapid expansion of middle class were among the many problems they had.
Between nineteen fifty-five and nineteen sixty-eight, non-agricultural unionized jobs declined from thirty-three percent to twenty-eight percent. Membership slightly increased when large corporations exercised influence in the stock market, military, and increased prices on goods. In nineteen sixty-five large corporations invested four billion to one hundred billion in pension funds in the stock market catering to needs of their workers and expansions of their own wealth and power. After nineteen sixty-five, well organized unions tended to hinder the congress efforts to fix the nations racial, ethnic, and urban divisions. Despite many changes in the city’s history, from manufacturing industries closing like the Packard Plant in nineteen fifty-eight, and many companies exported overseas. Detroit has thrived through it all.
In nineteen sixty-seven, in the early morning hours of July twenty-third, a riot broke out on Twelfth Street in Detroit. Detroit is a predominantly Africa-American inner city. By the time it was all over, four days later, forty-three people were dead, three hundred and forty-two people were injured, and nearly one thousand four hundred buildings had been burnt. While at the time, the auto industry were booming and union dues were down and race was still an issue in the city of Detroit. More African Americans were unemployed than whites at the time. Many jobs left to the suburbs in the early to late nineteen sixties.
Detroit lost many residents and as a result its retail and businesses were affected. Many African Americans were ghettoized by many employers and were given jobs that were dangerous and unhealthy. Tensions were high because of these and other issues happening in the inner city. By nineteen sixty-seven the predominantly African American neighborhood of Virginia Park was ready to explode. Some six thousand poor people were crammed into the four hundred and sixty acres of an unpleasant and poverty stricken neighborhood of divided and subdivided apartments.
The Detroit police department, which its majority of officers were white, were viewed as a white occupying army. The very few whites seen in the neighborhood came from the suburbs to run their stores on Twelfth Street. William Scott operated an illegal after hour club on the weekends in the office of the United Community League for Civil Action. The police vice squad often raided establishment like Williams Scott’s club on Twelfth Street as it was a center for Detroit’s inner city nightlife both legal and illegal activity at night. On July twenty-third, nineteen sixty-seven at three thirty-five a.m. Sunday morning the vice squad moved in on Scott’s club. At the time the establishment was hosting a party for several veterans including two servicemen returning from Vietnam.
A crowd outside the bar began to gather as police waited for a paddy wagon to take the eighty-five people at the party they were reluctant to leave. Tensions were high between local African Americans and police for recent rumors of a black prostitute who was killed by the police and beating of another woman being arrested. About two hundred lookers lined the streets an hour after the last person from the bar was taken into custody. A bottle was thrown on the street but ignored by police. As the police drove off, another bottle was thrown, this time going through the police car window and a riot erupted, as African Americans and whites arrived and joined in looting on Twelfth Street businesses.
Around six thirty that morning, the first fire broke out. By mid-morning every police and firefighter in Detroit was out on duty and much of Twelfth Street was set ablaze. Many firemen were attacked as they tried to battle the flames and police officers fought to control the mob of people. By Monday sixteen were killed, most by guardsmen and police. Many people looted local gun shops and stole sniper rifles and began shooting at the firemen. Many of the hoses were cut, keeping the firemen from fighting the fires.
Governor George Romney asked President Lyndon B. Johnson to send in U.S. Troops. By Tuesday two thousand troops arrived and patrolled in tanks and armored carriers. Between Tuesday and Wednesday twenty more people had been killed due to the looting and fires. On Thursday July twenty-seventh order was finally restored. After all was done, some seventeen hundred stores were looted, forty-three people were killed, and fourteen hundred buildings were burnt causing fifty million in property damage. About five thousand people were left displaced and homeless. The Twelfth Street riot was the worst U.S. riot in one hundred years. State and local governments responded after the riots with a dramatic increase in minority hiring.
On August eighteenth in nineteen sixty-seven state police department swore in the first black trooper in fifty years. Mayor Cavanaugh of Detroit appointed a special hiring task force in May of nineteen sixty-eight. Thirty five percent of the Detroit policemen hired in nineteen sixty-eight were African American. By July nineteen seventy-two, fourteen percent of the Detroit police department were African American. The Detroit Board of Commerce launched a campaign in an effort to help ten thousand people find jobs that were previously unemployed.
By the end of nineteen sixty-seven, the Detroit firms reported hiring about five thousand African Americans since the campaign was started. The Detroit free press had a survey in which thirty-nine percent of residents in riot areas in the summer of nineteen sixty-eight responded by saying that employers had become “more fair” since the riot compared to fourteen percent saying they had become “less fair”. One of the biggest changes after the riots was automakers and retailers lowered the entry-level job requirements making it easier to get a job in higher paying companies. Prior to the riots, Governor Romney had supported housing proposals that included fair housing, important relocation, tenant rights, and code enforcements, but abandoned then in face of organized opposition.
After the riot the proposal again came and was opposed by white conservatives and the governors own Republican Party. This time however Romney did not back down and proposed the housing law at the regular nineteen sixty-eight sessions of legislature. The governor publically warned “meaningful fair housing legislation as the most important step of legislature can take to avert disorder in our cities”. It passed both houses of legislature. The Michigan Fair Housing Act took effect on November fifteenth, nineteen sixty-eight. It was stronger than the Federal Housing Law. The state that experienced the most severe racial disorder of the nineteen sixties also adopted one of the strongest state fair housing acts. In good times and bad, Detroit has shown it can adapt to the times and fight to come out of whatever it may have been put in from those who in their power made bad decisions. Detroit will always be a city that no matter how bad the road is it will keep its foot on the throttle and drive forward to a better tomorrow.
WORK CITED PAGE http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/12/auto-industry.asp http://www.historynet.com/henry-ford-helped-lead-american-world-war-ii-production-efforts.htm http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1678.html Labor after World War II http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-12th-street-riot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot