y
In commenting n this statement, John Chamberlain, economic and
political peciali t, de I, red that: "Only a evere case of emotional
shell-shock could have pushed Attorney G. .. neral Biddle into suggesting
tha Negroes be chained to their place of abode, for all the world as if
they were serfs on medieval manors, or slaves on the Roman latilundia.
In Booker r. Washington' day the Negro might have taken Biddle'
sugge tion lying down. But no longer. Every Negro leader of any
importance stre e the n cessity ot being polite but firm in insisting
on the full protection of the Bill fRight. This lime the Negro is
not going to be macked down without making a fight of it."
• New York: Dryden P ,1943.
rl. Brown, Why Race Riot.' U ons Lrom Detroit (New York, 1944), Publi
Affair Pamphlet No.7, pp. 1-3, 6-11, 14-15, 1 24. Sec also Loui E. Marlin
"Behind 0 troit' Terror," in New Masses, July 6, 1943 (XLVIIi. No. I. pp. 4-6):
May 12-August 2, 1 43:
A series of serious race riots occurred across the nation'
approximately forty people were killed. United State�
troops were called out in Mobile and Detroit (wher'e the
clashes threatened defense production). Other incidents
were in Beaumont, Texas, and in Harlem, New York.
Sonny Wilson's was a popular gathering spot of the time .
•
on the evening of June 20, 1943.
Belle Isle lies in the Detroit River, connected with the city and
Grand Boulevard by a bridge. There were probably a hundred thousand
per on in the park that hot, humid Sunday, and the greater number
eem to have b en Negroes. The atmo phere was anything but peaceful.
Ten ion had increa ed to the breaking point. An argument between a
Negro and a white man became a fist fight and the fighting spread.
A hurry call was made for the police, but by the time they arrived
the brawl, involving some two hundred white sailors by this time, was
eddying across the bridge into the riverside park on the mainland near
the Naval Armory. The news that fighting had broken out traveled like
the wind. A young man in a colored night club on Hastings Street is
uppo ed to have grabbed the microphone about 11: 39 and urged the
five hundred customer pre nt to "com on and ta e care of a bunch
of whites who have killed a colored woman and h r baby at Belle Isle
Park." This rumor was, of cour e, Ial e. It wa matched by another
tory, which spread through the white district , that Negroes had raped
and killed a white woman on the park bridge. By midnight fighting and
10 ting had spread into a dozen different di tricts and Paradi e Valley
was going crazy. By two o'clock that morning a cr wd of egroes
stopped an East Side stre t car and stoned white factory worker who
were pass ngers, White men coming from work at the Chevrolet Gear
and Axle plant, three miles away from the center of Paradi Valley,
were attacked by a Negro mob.
Alfr d McClung Lee,' chairrn n of the Sociology Department of
Wayne Univer ity, and Norman Humphrey, A istant Professor of S0-
ciology at th same institution, have pieced together a remar able time-
M jor Charity Ad, r 'VI -w h r \VA tro p� dur in • \\ (.rlo \. ,II II.