Deep Trouble

On Detroit's lush, leafy Belle Isle, thousands of Negroes and whites nervously held their Sunday picnics under the trees. They had reason for nerves: rumors of race trouble poisoned the June air, the same rumors that have stirred the city for months. As the sweltering thousands jammed the bridge to the mainland on the way home, they were ripe for explosion.

A sudden fist fight touched it off, sent fighting, cursing whites and Negroes battling across the bridge, spilling through the city. Like wildfire, the rioting spread to "Paradise Valley," Detroit's downtown Negro section, washed over Woodward Avenue, Detroit's main street. Gangs of whites and Negroes roved the streets, smashing windows, tipping cars, looting stores, seizing guns and ammunition in pawnshops. Courageously Negro leaders toured the Valley in sound cars. But their pleas for peace were drowned by jeers.

With guns and tear gas, the vastly outnumbered police fought the mobs, roped off streets around the Valley, trying to keep Negroes in, whites out. But a few blocks from the city hall white mobs ambushed Negroes driving from war plants, beat and stripped them, tipped and burned their cars. Other mobs fired Negro homes. Long lines of beaten, slashed, wounded Detroiters jammed hospitals awaiting treatment. Thirteen elementary schools were closed. Many a decent citizen stayed at home, afraid to go outside.

State of Emergency. Frantic pleas brought Governor Harry F. Kelly flying home from the Governor's conference in Columbus, Ohio. He called out 1,000 state troops, rushed in 500 state police, asked Fort Custer for 1,000 military police, and decreed a "state of emergency" for Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, which include and surround Detroit. Under the decree, all bars and restaurants were shut, a 10 p.m. curfew established. Still the rioting continued. Finally, after a proclamation by Franklin Roosevelt ordering the rioters to disperse, Federal troops marched in, cleared the streets.

After 24 nightmarish hours, Detroit was quieted down, counted the toll of one of the worst riots in modern U.S. history: at least 23 dead, over 700 injured, over 600 jailed. Of the dead Negroes, police had shot at least eight.

By next day the city was searching for the real roots of the trouble. Detroit had been warned only two weeks ago by R. J. Thomas, U.A.W.-C.I.O. president, that the Ku Klux Klan was fomenting trouble. (Nearly a year ago LIFE had warned: "Detroit is Dynamite.")

In other parts of the nation, there was also deep trouble. The zoot-suit war between the U.S. sailors and the Mexican pachucos had apparently not been unique.

In Beaumont, Tex., 3,000 workers in the Pennsylvania Shipyard dropped their tools one night last week, marched on the city jail, seeking a Negro reportedly held there on a white woman's charge of rape. Finding the report false, the mob rioted in Beaumont's two Negro districts, finally wound up before the county courthouse.

There they were met at the door by leathery, six-foot Sheriff Bill Richardson, a bolstered .45 gun on his hip, a tommy gun cradled in his arm. To demands for "that nigger raper" Sheriff Richardson replied: "I haven't any such man. . . . Now get back to building ships where you ought to be." The crowd drifted away. Beaumont counted the riot toll: 1 dead white man; 1 dead Negro, 50 treated for injuries, 100 arrested.

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