Detroit By Night
A Flawed System and the Roots of Racial Segregation
Urban Decay, White Flight, and the Infamous Race Riots
It is widely but incorrectly thought that the mass exodus of Detroit whites to the suburbs was
only caused by “white flight” from the increasing black population. Actually, much of the whites’
departure was a matter of prosperity and upward mobility. The new housing developments of
the postwar years meant better places to live than the tightly-packed neighborhoods built during
the first auto boom. When demand for older neighborhoods softened, banks and real estate
firms opened them to black people. Scare tactics were sometimes used to hasten the transition
of neighborhoods from white to black.
The effect of this middle class exodus, first by whites, and in recent years also of blacks, eventually
devastated the city. Most of its affluent residents are now gone. The tax base declined with
property values, putting more stress on remaining residents to pay for expensive, big-city services.
By the 1960s the steady loss of auto-related jobs in the city of Detroit had begun, although
government institutions like the school system and the police department were still primarily
staffed by whites, who had trouble understanding the perspective of many Detroit blacks.
The climax to these building tensions erupted in the infamous Detroit Race Riots in July 1967,
characterized as the worst civil disorder experienced by an American city in the 20th century.
A police raid on an after-hours drinking establishment where a welcome home party was being
celebrated for two black Vietnam veterans escalated into ten days of rioting. President Johnson
sent in the National Guard to restore the peace, but this resulted in some guardsmen shooting at
anyone they thought could be a protester or a looter. In the end, 43 people were killed, 7,231
were arrested, and 1,400 buildings were burned down. Nearly 100,000 residents moved out
of the city in the following year alone.
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