Detroit By Night
Surge of the Middle Class
A Flawed System and the Roots of Racial Segregation
Nearly all of the Detroiters moving into these new suburbs were white. Restrictive real estate
practices kept blacks in the city. Metro Detroit’s suburbs were not only some of the biggest and
newest in the U.S., they were also some of the most segregated, and remain so today.
African Americans in Detroit numbered only 5700 in 1910. During World War I, labor shortages
encouraged auto makers to recruit southerners, many of them black. World War II again created
a labor shortage, and by 1950 the African American population had risen to a quarter million.
These blacks had the misfortune of moving to Detroit after the city’s auto boom had peaked.
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