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Detroit Fifty Years After the Kerner Report: What Has Changed, What Has Not, and Why?” RSF: the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4(6): 206–41

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Detroit Fifty Years After the Kerner Report: What Has Changed, What Has Not, and Why?” RSF: the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4(6): 206–41 Detroit Fifty Years After the Kerner Report: What Has detroIt after the kerner report Changed, What Has Not, and Why? r eynolds farley Immediately after the Detroit violence of July 1967, President Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission and ordered it to determine what had happened, why, and what could be done to prevent urban riots. This analysis focuses on racial change in metropolitan Detroit. Progress has been made in racially integrating the suburban ring closed to African Americans at the time of the violence. Evidence indicates social integration in that interracial marriage is more common and blacks are more represented in prestigious occupations. However, on key economic measures, African Americans are now further behind whites than they were in 1967. This can be attributed to fundamental changes in employment and the failure of the educational sys- tem to provide the training needed for jobs in the new economy. Keywords: Kerner Commission, racial segregation, Detroit, racial gaps, civil rights movement No city has played a larger role in the struggle a law that was not enforced. When the public for civil rights than Detroit. As soon as Presi- schools were established in the state, they were dent Thomas Jefferson appointed the first fed- restricted to white children, but Detroit activ- eral judge for the Michigan territory in the early ists challenged this in the courts as early as nineteenth century, litigation began about 1840. Detroit is the nation’s only city where the whether slaves held in the British era could be federal military has been deployed on the kept in bondage. Shortly after Judge Augustus streets four times to prevent whites and blacks Woodward arrived in 1805, he ruled that a Mich- from killing each other, twice in both the nine- igan slave who had lived in Canada and then teenth and the twentieth centuries. returned to Detroit was a free person (Miles The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the use 2017, 177–83). When Michigan became a state, of restrictive covenants in property deeds based it enacted Black Code legislation that required on litigation initiated by the McGhee family African Americans to post $500 and demon- who sought to remain in their home on De- strate their freedom before entering the state, troit’s Seabalt Street.1 Key organizational and Reynolds Farley is research scientist at the Population Studies Center and Otis Dudley Duncan Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan. © 2018 Russell Sage Foundation. Farley, Reynolds. 2018. “Detroit Fifty Years After the Kerner Report: What Has Changed, What Has Not, and Why?” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4(6): 206–41. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2018.4.6.10. Direct correspondence to: Reynolds Farley at [email protected], University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 426 Thompson St., Ann Arbor, MI 48105. Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Li- cense. 1. Shelley et ux. v. Kraemer et ux. McGhee et ux. v. Sipes et al., 334 U.S. 1 (1948). detroIt after the kerner report 207 financial support for the August 1963 March on (hence the more familiar Kerner Commission Washington came largely from the Detroit’s and Kerner report). Johnson asked the com- United Auto Workers Union. Both Dr. Martin missioners to determine what happened, why Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X gave their most it happened, and what could be done to prevent famous orations in Detroit, King’s “I Have a it from occurring again. Moving with alacrity, Dream” speech in June 1963 and Malcolm X’s the commission released its final report on Feb- “Message to the Masses” that November. It is ruary 29, 1968—one of the most provocative, no surprise that the Kerner report came about far- reac hing, and unexpected reports ever is- in response to events in Detroit. sued by a federal commission. Commissioners devoted exceptional atten- t he beginning Of the tion to Detroit for a variety of reasons. The larg- detrOit viOlenCe est of the World War II racial riots occurred in Early on Sunday morning, July 23, 1967, Detroit Detroit in June 1943 and culminated in the police entered an illegal after-hours drinking deaths of thirty- four residents (Capeci and place know as a “blind pig” at the corner of Wilkerson 1991; Baime 2014, 245–48). By the Twelfth Street and Clairmount expecting to find 1960s, it was becoming obvious that the inva- a few patrons who could then easily be arrested sion of the “crabgrass frontier” (Jackson 1985)— for violating liquor laws, booked, and quickly that is, the development of suburban rings— released. Instead, they found eighty- two people provoked a tremendous migration of whites celebrating the return of a soldier from Viet- away from neighborhoods in older cities. This nam. The arrestees were held on Twelfth Street created increasingly African American cities until police located enough vans to take them surrounded by white suburbs. Democrats de- away. A crowd quickly gathered and taunted the pended on both urban and suburban votes to officers. Looting started shortly thereafter. By sustain their national power. They realized the late that Sunday, Michigan Governor George possibility for racial violence but hoped that Romney ordered 1,200 Michigan National federal investments might improve older cities Guardsmen—later increased to eight thou- and keep their voters in the Democrat column. sand—to the streets of Detroit. In Detroit, they found an opportunity in 1961 After the violence escalated on Monday, Pres- when the city elected Jerry Cavanaugh its ident Lyndon Johnson dispatched federal para- mayor, a seemingly talented young liberal who troopers, who arrived on the streets just after resembled Jack Kennedy. In the Kennedy and midnight Tuesday morning—the first time since Johnson years, generous federal funds flowed the Detroit riot of 1943 that federal troops had to Motown with the expectation that it would been marshaled to put down urban racial vio- become the model city for racial harmony and lence (Zelizer 2016, xv). By Wednesday, July 26, economic prosperity (Fine 1989, chap. 4; Mc- the violence had ended but forty- three Detroit Graw 2017a). residents were dead—thirty- three blacks and The Kerner Commission stressed the denial ten whites (Kerner Report 1968, 84–103; McGraw of equal treatment as the fundamental cause 2017b, 2017c; Fine 1989, chapter 7). A month ear- of urban violence. African Americans were tar- lier, similar rioting in Newark resulted in twenty- geted for abuse by the police, denied opportu- three deaths. The previous summer, National nities for education, and unable to compete Guardsmen had been called to African Ameri- fairly in the labor market because of discrimi- can neighborhoods in Chicago and Cleveland nation. Underlying these racial inequities was to curtail racial violence. A pattern of summer the denial of opportunities in the housing mar- urban riots appeared to be emerging. ket. Racial residential segregation, imposed On July 28, 1967—just two days after the De- largely by discriminatory practices and abetted troit violence ended—President Johnson issued consistently by federal and local government Executive Order 11365, establishing the Na- policies, allowed police to target African Amer- tional Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, icans, kept blacks out of areas where the new with Illinois Governor Otto Kerner as chair and jobs were emerging and ensured that black Mayor John Lindsay of New York as vice chair children went to inferior and less well-fi nanced rsf: the russell sage foundation journal of the social sciences 208 fIftIeth ann Iversary of the kerner report schools. The Kerner commissioners viewed res- values would plummet, women and daughters idential segregation as a linchpin maintaining would be at risk of violence, and school quality the racial dominance of whites. would decline. Detroit’s real estate practices This essay describes what has happened in and restrictive covenants created an American metropolitan Detroit regarding the key issues apartheid residential pattern across the city. raised by the Kerner report: The most famous civil rights trial of the 1920s concerned Dr. Ossian Sweet—an African Amer- How far have we come? ican physician who had purchased a home on What worked and what did not work? the East Side. When hostile crowds attacked it in 1925 and the police did not protect it, Sweet What are the implications for the twenty- and his brother defended the residence. A shot first century? came from the home and one person in the crowd died. Sweet and his companions were residential segregatiOn and the immediately arrested and charged with murder. integratiOn Of detrOit’s suburbs The NAACP recognized the importance of up- The most frequently cited conclusion of the holding the principal that a homeowner has Kerner Commission report was the statement the right to defend his property against may- that, if current trends continued, the nation hem. With the help of Clarence Darrow, Sweet would within two decades be riven by race, was eventually exonerated, but his victory was whites in suburbs and smaller cities and blacks Pyrrhic. African Americans were reminded that concentrated in large central cities (Kerner Re- moving into a white neighborhood was possi- port 1968, 407). The commissioners were likely ble but dangerous (Boyle 2004; Vine 2004; Boyd thinking about metropolitan Detroit when they 2017, 109–11). drafted that warning. The Detroit suburban During the 1920s, restrictive covenants were ring in 1970 was home to 2.7 million residents written into the deeds of most new housing in and included ten African American suburban the city and federal agencies, in the next de- enclaves.
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