Devourers of the Afro-American Light: Histories of “Place” via the Imposition of White Rage and Police Brutality in Detroit

This historical analysis contends that the shaping of Detroit and its enduring racial character have been informed and influenced by two pivotal currents: its history of violent racial struggle (White rage) and police brutality and their imposition of subordinating place for Afro-Americans within Detroit’s metropolitan color line. The current survey looks at three significant intervals: The Ossian Sweet Case and Race Riot of 1925, the 1943 Race Riot, and the 1967 “Rebellion.” These decades provide a vivid story-catching that follows the racial foundations “set in stone” by the Blackburn Riot of 1833, by which we can begin to understand the patterns of White status threat and the counter-response of Black resistance with its attendant quest for universal freedom and egalitarian aspirations (Barton, (2010). Setting the record straight: American history in Black & White. WallBuilder Press; Walton et al., (2017). American politics and the African-American quest for universal freedom. Routledge.). In contrast to the narrative of “the arsenal of democracy,” racial antagonism by many Whites lurked at the heart of social upheavals within Detroit’s battleground of race and class from the 1920s to the 1960s.