Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights, and the Reaction Against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964 Author(S): Thomas J

Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964 Author(s): Thomas J. Sugrue Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Sep., 1995), pp. 551-578 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2082186 . Accessed: 27/09/2012 13:32

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http://www.jstor.org Crabgrass-RootsPolitcs: Race, Rights, and the Reactionagainst Liberalism in the UrbanNorth, 1940-1964

ThomasJ. Sugrue

The dominantnarratives of twentieth-centuryUnited States history depict the rise of a triumphantliberal state, shaped by the hopefulmarriage of governmentand expertiseand validated by a "liberalconsensus" of workers, corporations, southerners and northerners,whites and Blacks,Catholics and Jews. Conservative critics of the statehave remained on thefringes of historiography,as Alan Brinkleyhas recently argued,a "largelyneglected part of the storyof twentieth-centuryAmerica." One of the unexaminedironies of recentAmerican history is thatthe mostinfluential criticsof theliberal state came neitherfrom the ranks of theRepublicans nor from suchradical rightist organizations as theLiberty League, the Black Legion, and the JohnBirch Society, nor fromthe ranksof Communistsand socialists.The most vocal- and ultimatelythe farthest-reachingchallenge to liberalism- came from withinthe New Deal coalitionitself. Southern whites, whether die-hard Democrats ordisaffected Dixiecrats, constrained New Deal liberalismfrom its inception. Corpo- rateleaders and businessunionists limited the possibilitiesfor social democratic reformin the workplace.Their stories are well known.But crucialto the fateof liberalismand antiliberalismin themid-twentieth-century United States were northern,urban whites. They were the backbone of the New Deal coalition;their political viewsand theirvotes limited the possibilities of liberal reform in themid-twentieth centuryand constrainedthe leading liberal social movement, the extension of civil rightsand libertiesto AfricanAmericans. 1

ThomasJ. Sugrueis assistantprofessor ofhistory at theUniversity ofPennsylvania. Earlier versions of this paper werepresented to theAmerican Political Science Association annual meeting (1992); the "Toward a Historyof the1960s" conference, Madison, Wisconsin (1993); the American Historical Association annual meeting (1994); asthe Charles Colver Lecture in Urban Studies at Brown University (1994); and to the German Historical Institute, Washington,D.C. (1994).For comments, criticism, support, and collegial debate, thanks to Dana Barron,Jo AnnArgersinger, Kevin Boyle, Alan Brinkley, Paul Buhle, Lizabeth Cohen, Gerald Gamm, Daniel Gitterman, JamesGrossman, Arnold R. Hirsch,Alison Isenberg, Michael Katz, Michael Kazin, Philip Klinkner, Nelson Lichtenstein,James Morone, Bruce Nelson, Alice O'Connor, Adolph Reed, Fred Siegel, and Marshall Stevenson. Fundsfor research were provided by the Social Science Research Council Committee for Research on theUrban Underclass,through support from the Rockefeller Foundation; the Bordin-Gilette Research Travel Grant, Bentley Library,University ofMichigan; the University ofPennsylvania Research Foundation; and the Kaiser Family Founda- tionResearch Grant from the Walter P. ReutherLibrary.

' Alan Brinkley,"The Problemof American Conservatism," American HistoricalReview, 99 (April1994), 410. See alsothe important review essay, Michael Kazin, "The Grass-RootsRight: New Historiesof U. S. Conservatismin theTwentieth Century," ibid., 97 (Feb. 1992), 136-55. On southernwhites and the roleof southernDemocrats

The Journalof AmericanHistory September1995 551 552 TheJournal of American History September1995

The New Deal may have been, as LizabethCohen and othershave argued,a unifyingmoment in Americanpolitical history, at leastin theurban North. Indus- trialworkers discovered common political goals in theDemocratic party, built class solidaritythrough the Congressof IndustrialOrganizations (cio), and expressed theirgrievances through an inclusivelanguage of Americanism.Yet beneaththe seemingunity of the New Deal orderwere unresolved questions of racialidentity and racialpolitics. Eating away at the "liberalconsensus," just as it reachedits postwarapotheosis, was a newlyassertive working-class whiteness.2 As earlyas the 1940s,white politicians in theurban North began to identifythe hot-button issues thatmotivated urban working-class and middle-classwhite voters. In the crucible ofpostwar northern cities undergoing profound racial and economictransformation, theyfashioned a newpolitics that combined racial antipathy with a growingskepti- cismabout liberalism.The whiterebellion against the New Deal had its origins in theurban politics of the 1940sand 1950s.The localpolitics of raceand housing in theaftermath of World War II fostereda grass-rootsrebellion against liberalism and seriouslylimited the social democratic and egalitarianpossibilities of theNew Deal order.

PostwarDetroit

The historyof politicsin the post-NewDeal era has been told primarilyat the nationallevel. The values,ideals, and socialmovements that formed the political worldof themid-twentieth century can be seenmost clearly, however, at thelocal level,where political and social history intersected in theday-to-day lives of ordinary Americans.An examinationof post-World War II Detroit,Michigan, offers insights into the travailsof liberalismat the grass-rootslevel. Dominatedby a blue-collar workforce, heavily unionized, and predominantlyCatholic, Detroit was a strong- hold of theDemocratic party, a bastionof supportfor New Deal liberalism.Detroit workers- both white and Black - benefitedtremendously from New Deal programs. By providingtemporary work during the GreatDepression, the WorksProgress

in limitingNew Deal socialprograms, see James C. Cobb and MichaelNamorato, eds., TheNew Deal and the South (Jackson,1984). On the post-WorldWar II South,see Numan V. Bartley,From Thurmond to Wallace: PoliticalTendencies in Georgia,1948-1968 (Baltimore,1970); Jill Quadagno, "FromOld Age Assistanceto SupplementalSecurity Income: The PoliticalEconomy of Reliefin the South, 1935-1972,"in The Politicsof Social Policyin the UnitedStates, ed. MargaretWeir, Ann Shola Orloff,and Theda Skocpol(Princeton, 1988), 235-64; and BruceJ. Schulman,From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt:Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformationofthe South,1938-1980 (New York,1991). On thelimits on reformin theworkplace, see Nelson Lichtenstein,"From Corporatism to CollectiveBargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipseof Social Democracy in the PostwarEra," in TheRise and Fall of the New Deal Order,1930-1980, ed. SteveFraser and GaryGerstle (Princeton,1989), 122-52; and ElizabethA. Fones-Wolf,Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism,1945-60 (Urbana, 1994). 2 LizabethCohen, Makinga New Deal: IndustrialWorkers in Chicago,1919-1939 (New York,1990); Gary Gerstle,Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Laborin a TextileCity, 1920-1960 (New York,1989); Gary Gerstle,"Working-Class Racism: Broaden the Focus,"International Labor and Working-ClassHistory, 44 (Fall 1993), 33-40; BruceNelson, "Class, Race, and Democracyin the CIm: The 'New' LaborHistory Meets the 'Wages of Whiteness,"'International Review of Social History(forthcoming); David Roediger,Towards the Abolition of Whiteness:Essays on Race, Politics,and WorkingClass History (London, 1994). Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 553

Administrationcemented the loyaltyof the unemployedof all racesto the New Deal. The NationalLabor RelationsAct of 1935 facilitatedunionization, which broughttangible gains to Detroit'sblue-collar population. By the 1940sDetroit's heavilyunionized work force commanded high wages and generousbenefits. In addition,federal housing subsidies, under the aegis of the Home Owners'Loan Corporation,the Federal Housing Administration, and the Veterans Administration, protectedhomeowners from foreclosure and made home ownershippossible for muchof the city'sworking class. Detroit'svoters turned out in drovesfor Democratic presidential candidates in everyelection after 1932, most prominentlysupporting Franklin D. Roosevelt, whoseportrait graced working-class clubs, bars,and homesthroughout the city. Detroitersprovided the crucialmargin of votesin gubernatorialelections for the New Dealer FrankMurphy (later appointed to the UnitedStates Supreme Court by FDR) and forliberals such as G. Mennen"Soapy" Williams.Only once after 1932did Detroitersfail to rallybehind the Democratic candidate for governor. But justas supportfor the New Deal reachedits zenith at thestate and nationallevels, social and demographicchanges began to erode supportfor the liberalagenda in Detroit.3 The SecondGreat Migration of southern Blacks to the city set into motion political tremors.Detroit was a magnetfor African American migrants during and after WorldWar II. The city'sBlack population increased by over five hundred thousand between1940 and 1970,growing from 9 percentof the city'spopulation in 1940 to 45 percentin 1970. AspiringBlack workers, many of whomfound stable and relativelyhigh-paying employment in thecity's defense and automobileindustries, beganto lookfor housing outside Detroit's small and crowdedinner-city area, which had held mostof the city'sAfrican American population in 1940. In the postwar decades,the city's racial geography changed dramatically. Upwardly mobile Blacks soughtbetter housing in predominantlywhite sections of the city.Poorer Blacks alsoput pressure on thereal estate market. Between 1940 and 1960,the first African Americansmoved into 110 previouslywhite census tracts.4 In the wake of thisinflux of Blacks,racial tensions mounted. World War II broughta waveof hate strikesagainst Black defense workers, a riotat the siteof theSojourner Truth Homes, a publichousing project for Blacks, and the 1943race riot,the bloodiestcivil disorder in the UnitedStates since the draftuprisings of the CivilWar. Although Detroit did not experienceanother major race riot until

I Fora distillationof electionreturns, see MelvinG. Holli, ed., Detroit(New York,1976), 274. 4U.S. Departmentof Commerce,Bureau of the Census, U.S. Censusof Populationand Housing, 1940, CensusTract Statistics for Detroit, Michigan and AdjacentArea (Washington,1942), table 1; U.S. Department ofCommerce, Bureau of the Census, U. S. Censusof Population,1950, CensusTract Statistics, Detroit, Michigan and AdjacentArea (Washington,1952), table 1; U.S. Departmentof Commerce,Bureau of the Census, U.S. Censusesof Populationand Housing,1960, CensusTracts, Detroit, Michigan Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, FinalReport PHC(1)-40 (Washington,1962), tableP-i. 554 TheJournal of American History September1995

1967, race relationsin the periodafter World War II werenot tranquil.One city racerelations official called the postwarperiod "the darkages of Detroit."5 PostwarDetroit was not unique in itshistory of racialtension. The post-World WarII decadeswitnessed a profound transformation inthe politics, urban geography, and economiesof dozensof northernindustrial cities. Urban whites responded to the influxof millionsof Black migrantsto theircities in the 1940s, 1950s,and 1960sby redefiningurban geography and urbanpolitics in starklyracial terms. In Chicagoand Cicero,Illinois, working-class whites rioted in the 1940sand 1950sto oppose the constructionof publichousing in theirneighborhoods. White Chica- goansfashioned a brandof Democratic party politics, especially under mayors Martin H. Kennellyand RichardJ. Daley, thathad a sharpracial edge. In Newark,New Jersey,in the1950s, blue-collar Italian and Polish Americans harassed African Amer- icannewcomers to theirneighborhoods. And in thepostwar period, white Philadel- phiansand Cincinnatiansattacked Blacks who moved into previously all-white en- clavesand resisted efforts to integrate the housing market. Countless whites retreated to suburbsor neighborhoodson theperiphery of citieswhere they excluded Blacks byfederally sanctioned redlining, real estate steering, and restrictivezoning laws.6 Whilethe racial demography of Detroit was changing, the economy of the Motor Cityand otherolder industrial centers began to decline.On the surface,Detroit seemedan embodimentof the postwar affluent society. Detroit's workers, especially inthe automobile and auto parts industries, were among the best paid inthe country. Theyused theirrelatively high wages,along withfederal mortgage subsidies, to purchaseor buildmodest single-family houses on Detroit'ssprawling northeast and northwestsides. The proportionof homesin the citythat were occupied by their ownersrose from 39.2 percentin 1940to 54.1percent in 1960.Yet the working-class

I DominicJ. CapeciJr., Race Relationsin WartimeDetroit: The SojournerTruth Housing Controversyof 1942 (Philadelphia,1984); AugustMeier and ElliottRudwick, Black Detroit and theRise of theUAW (New York, 1979), 192-97; Nelson Lichtenstein,Labor's War at Home: The ao in WorldWar II (New York,1982); Martin Glaberman,Wartime Strikes: The Struggle against the Nonstrike Pledge in theUAW duringWorld War II (Detroit, 1980); HarvardSitkoff, "The DetroitRace Riotof 1943,"Michigan History, 53 (Fall 1969), 183-206; Alan Clive, Stateof War:Michigan in WorldWar II (Ann Arbor,1979), 15 7-62; AlfredMcClung Lee and NormanDaymond Humphrey,Race Riot (New York, 1943); RobertShogan and Tom Craig, The DetroitRace Riot: A Studyin Violence(Philadelphia, 1964); B. J. Widick,Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence(Chicago, 1972), 99-112; DominicJ.Capeci Jr. and MarthaWilkerson, Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943 (Jackson,1991). For the official'sstatement, see Joseph Coles interviewby Jim Keeney and RobertaMcBride, July 8, 1970,transcript, p. 17, Blacksin the LaborMovement Collection (Archives of Labor and UrbanAffairs, Walter P. ReutherLibrary, WayneState University, Detroit, Mich.). 6 Thereis a voluminousliterature on the GreatMigration of AfricanAmericans to theNorth between 1914 and 1929, but no comparablehistoriography for the post-WorldWar II period. ArnoldR. Hirsch,Making the Second Ghetto:Race and Housingin Chicago,1940-1960 (New York,1983), 40-99; ArnoldR. Hirsch,"Massive Resistancein the UrbanNorth: Trumbull Park, Chicago, 195 3-1966," Journal of AmericanHistory, 82 (Sept. 1995), 522-50;John T. Cumbler,A SocialHistory of Economic Decline: Business,Politics, and Workin Trenton (New Brunswick,1989), 153;John F. Bauman,Public Housing, Race, andRenewal: UrbanPlanning in Philadel- phia, 1920-1974(Philadelphia, 1987), 160-64; KennethS. Baer,"Whitman: A Studyof Race, Class, and Postwar PublicHousing Opposition" (senior honors thesis, University of Pennsylvania,1994); CharlesF. Casey-Leininger, "Makingthe SecondGhetto in Cincinnati:Avondale, 1925-1970," in Race and the City:Work, Community, and Protestin Cincinnati,1820-1970, ed. HenryLouis TaylorJr. (Urbana, 1993), 239-40, 247-48; KennethT.Jackson, CrabgrassFrontier: The Suburbanizationof the UnitedStates (New York,1985), esp. 190-218; PatriciaBurgess Stach, "Deed Restrictionsand SubdivisionDevelopment in Columbus,Ohio, 1900-1970,"Journal of Urban History,15 (Nov. 1988), 42-68. Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 555

holdon affluencewas tenuous. The postwarboom was punctuated by periodic layoffs and fourrecessions, which painfully evoked memories of the GreatDepression. Beginningin the early1950s, the industrial bases of almostevery major city in the Northbegan to atrophy,and Detroitwas no exception.Large and smallcompanies relocatedoutside cities to suburbanand ruralareas, reduced the number of workers in newlyautomated plants, and closeddozens of centralcity factories altogether. Between1954 and 1960, Detroitlost morethan eightythousand manufacturing jobs.The vagariesof the economy jeopardized workers' most significant asset, usually theironly substantial investment -their homes.7 The simultaneousBlack migration and economicdislocation in postwarDetroit createda senseof crisis among the city's white homeowners. As theyendured layoffs, plantclosings, and downsizing,some working-class homeowners feared that they would lose theirhomes to foreclosure.Auto workerBill Collett,reacting to news of layoffsat theFord Motor Company's River Rouge plant in 1951,worried about theeffect of unemployment on hishomeowning fellow workers: "What will happen to the thousandswho will be let out? What is goingto happen to the thousands who are buyinghomes?" Even thosewho held steadyemployment found that mortgageor land contract payments stretched family budgets to thebreaking point. In a comprehensivesurvey of Detroit residents conducted in 1951,the Wayne Univer- sitysociologist Arthur Kornhauser found that white Detroiters ranked housing needsas themost pressing problem in thecity. Home ownershiprequired a signifi- cantfinancial sacrifice for Detroit residents: the mostfrequent complaint (voiced by 32 percentof respondents)was thatthe costof housingwas too high.8 The issuesof race and housingwere inseparable in the mindsof manywhite Detroiters.Homeowners feared, above all, thatan influxof Blackswould imperil theirprecarious economic security. A self-described"average American housewife" wrote:"What about us, who cannotafford to move to a betterlocation and are surroundedby colored? . . . Most of us invested our life'ssavings in propertyand now we are in constantfear that the neighborwill sell its propertyto people of differentrace." Kornhauserfound that race relationsfollowed a close secondin Detroiters'ranking of thecity's most pressing problems. Only 18 percentof white respondentsfrom all overthe cityexpressed "favorable" views toward the "full acceptanceof Negroes,"and 54 percentexpressed "unfavorable" attitudes toward

I U.S. Departmentof Commerce,Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Populationand Housing, 1940, Populationand HousingStatistics for CensusTracts: Detroit, Michigan and AdjacentArea (Washington,1942), table4; Bureauof the Census, U.S. CensusesofPopulation andHousing, 1960, CensusTracts, Detroit, Michigan StandardMetropolitan Statistical Area, table H-i. On the economyof postwarDetroit, see ThomasJ. Sugrue, "The Structuresof Urban Poverty: The Reorganizationof Space and Workin ThreePeriods of AmericanHistory," in The "Underclass"Debate: Viewsfrom History, ed. MichaelB. Katz (Princeton,1993), 100-117.Detroit's loss of manufacturingjobs in the postwarperiod was not atypicalof oldernortheastern and midwesterncities. See JohnKasarda, "Urban Change and MinorityOpportunities," in The New UrbanReality, ed. Paul E. Peterson (Washington,1985), 43-47, esp. tables 1 and 2. 8 "Open Letterto HenryFord II," FordFacts, Sept. 15, 1951; ArthurKornhauser, Detroit as thePeople See It: A Surveyof Attitudes in an IndustrialCity (Detroit, 1952), 68-69, 75, 77-82. Kornhauser'steam interviewed 593 adult men and womenrandomly selected from all sectionsof the city.On the survey'smethodology, see ibid., 189-96. 556 TheJournal of American History September1995

integration.When askedto discussways in whichrace relations "were not as good as theyshould be," 27 percentof whiterespondents mentioned "Negroes moving intowhite neighborhoods." Among white respondents 22 percentanswered that the"Negro has too many rights and privileges; too much power; too much intermin- gling."Another 14 percentmentioned "Negroes' undesirable characteristics." Only 14 percentmentioned discrimination as a problemin racerelations.9 Whitesin Kornhauser'ssample regularly spoke of the "coloredproblem" or the "Negroproblem." In theirresponses to open-endedquestions, Kornhauser's infor- mantsmade clearwhat they meant by the "coloredproblem." "Eighty percent of [Blacks]are animals,"stated one whiterespondent. "If theykeep themall in the rightplace therewouldn't be anytrouble," responded another. "Colored treat the whitesin an insolentway," added a thirdwhite. "They think they own the city." A majorityof whiteslooked to increasedsegregation as the solutionto Detroit's "coloredproblem." When asked "What do youfeel ought to be doneabout relations betweenNegroes and whitesin Detroit?"a remarkable68 percentof white respon- dentscalled forsome formof racialsegregation -56 percentof whitessurveyed advocatedresidential segregation. Many cited the Jim Crow South as a model for successfulrace relations.10 Class,union membership, and religionall affectedwhites' attitudes toward Blacks. Working-classand poor whitesexpressed negative views toward Blacks more fre- quentlythan other respondents to Kornhauser'ssurvey. Among poor and working- classwhites, 85 percentsupported racial segregation, in contrastto 56 percentamong middle-incomeand 42 percentamong upper-income whites. Union members were slightly"less favorable than others towards accepting Negroes." CIO members were evenmore likely than other white Detroiters to expressnegative views of African Americans-65 percent- althoughmore CIO memberswere also likelyto support fullracial equality (18 percent)than ordinary white Detroiters. And finally Catholics weresignificantly more likely than Protestants to expressunfavorable feelings to- wardBlacks.11

9 "IntegrationStatement," anonymous letter, [c. mid-1950s],box 9, partI, MetropolitanDetroit Council of ChurchesCollection (Archives of Laborand UrbanAffairs); Kornhauser, Detroit as the People See It, 95. 1OThe term"colored problem" was used mostfrequently by whitesto describeBlack movement into their neighborhoods.See, forexample, Property Owners Association, flyer, 1945, box 66, Civil RightsCongress of MichiganCollection (Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs); and the newsletter of the Courville District Improvement Association,Action!, Feb. 15, 1948, attachedto Mayor'sInterracial Committee, Minutes, April 5, 1948,box 10, partI, DetroitCommission on CommunityRelations Collection, ibid. Kornhauser,Detroit as the People See It, 85, 185, 100. Therewas virtuallycomplete residential segregation in Detroitwhen Kornhauserconducted his survey.In 1950,the indexof dissimilaritybetween Blacks and whites(a measureof segregationcalculated on the percentageof whiteswho would have to move to achievecomplete racial integration) was 88.8; the indexof dissimilarityin 1940 had been 89.9. Respondentsto the surveysupported even stricterracial segregation than alreadyexisted. For the figures, see KarlE. Taeuberand Alma F. Taeuber,Negroes in Cities:Residential Segregation and NeighborhoodChange (Chicago, 1965), 39. 11Kornhauser, Detroit as the People See It, 87, 90, 91. On the importanceof Catholicparish boundaries in preservingthe racialhomogeneity of neighborhoodsand in shapingCatholic attitudes toward Blacks, see John T. McGreevy,"American Catholics and African-American Migration, 1919-1970" (Ph.D. diss.,Stanford University, 1992); and GeraldGamm, "Neighborhood Roots: Institutions and NeighborhoodChange in Boston,1870-1994" (Ph.D. diss.,Harvard University, 1994). Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 557

In reactionto the postwartransformation of the city,Detroit's whites began fashioninga politicsof defensivelocalism that focused on threatsto propertyand neighborhood.They directedtheir political energy toward the two groupsthey believedwere the agentsof change:Blacks and theirliberal allies. Actingon their perceptionof the threat of the Black newcomers to theirstability, economic status, and politicalpower, many of Detroit'sworking- and middle-classwhites banded togetherin exclusiveneighborhood organizations, in whatbecame one ofthe largest grass-rootsmovements in the city'shistory. By movingthe politicsof race,home ownership,and neighborhoodto centerstage, they reshaped urban politics in the 1940sand 1950sand set in motionthe forcesthat would eventuallyreconfigure nationalpolitics.12 Between1943 and 1965,whites throughout Detroit founded at least 192 neighborhoodorganizations, variously called "civic associations," "protective associations," "improvementassociations," and "homeowners'associations." Their titles reveal theirplace in the ideologyof whiteDetroiters. As civicassociations, they saw their purposeas upholdingthe valuesof self-governmentand participatorydemocracy. Theyoffered members a unifiedvoice in citypolitics. As protectiveassociations, theyfiercely guarded the investmentstheir members had made in theirhomes. They also paternalisticallydefended neighborhood, home, family,women, and childrenagainst the forces of socialdisorder that they saw arrayedagainst them in the city.As improvementassociations, they emphasized the ideologyof self-help and individualachievement that lay at the veryheart of the Americannotion of homeownership. Above all, as home-and property-owners' associations, these groups representedthe interestsof thosewho perceivedthemselves as independentand rootedrather than dependent and transient. The survivingrecords of homeowners' associations do not,unfortunately, permit a closeanalysis of theirmembership. From the hundreds of letters that groups sent to cityofficials and civilrights groups, from neighborhood newsletters, and from improvementassociation letterheads, it is clearthat no singleethnic group domi- natedmost neighborhood associations. Names as diverseas Fadanelli,Csanyi, Berge, andWatson appeared on thesame petitions. Groups met in public school buildings, Catholicand Protestantchurches, union halls, Veterans of Foreign Wars clubhouses, and parks.Letters, even fromresidents with discernibly "ethnic" names, seldom referredto nationalheritage or religiousbackground. Organizational newsletters and neighborhoodnewspapers never used ethnicmodifiers or monikersto describe neighborhoodassociation members - theyreserved ethnic nomenclature for "the colored"and Asians(and occasionallyJews). The diversityof ethnicmembership in neighborhoodgroups is not surprising,since by the 1940s, Detroithad few ethnicallyhomogeneous neighborhoods. But theheterogeneity of Detroit'sneigh- borhoodsonly partially explains the absence of ethnicaffiliation in remainingrec-

12 I borrowthe term defensive localism from Margaret Weir, "Urban Poverty and Defensive Localism," Dissent, 41 (Summer1994), 337-42. She uses it in a contextof city-suburbanrelations. 558 TheJournal of American History September1995

ords.Members of homeowners'and neighborhoodgroups shared a commonbond of whitenessand Americanness-a bond that theyasserted forcefully at public meetingsand in correspondencewith public officials.'3 Neighborhoodassociations had a longhistory in citiessuch as Detroit.Real estate developershad originallycreated them to enforcerestrictive covenants and, later, zoninglaws. Frequently, they sponsored community social activities and advocated betterpublic services, such as streetlighting, stop signs, and trafficlights. During and afterWorld War II, theseorganizations grew rapidly in numberand influence. Increasingly,they existed solely to wage battlesagainst proposed public housing sitesand againstBlacks moving into their neighborhoods. Beginningin the 1940s,the threat of a Blackinflux became the raisond'.&re of communitygroups. One new group,the NorthwestCivic Association, called its foundingmeeting "So YOU willhave first hand information on thecolored situation in thisarea," and it invited"ALL interestedin maintainingProperty Values in the NORTHWESTsection of Detroit." The CourvilleDistrict Improvement Association gatheredresidents of a northeastDetroit neighborhood to combatthe "influxof coloredpeople" intothe area and ralliedsupporters with its provocatively entitled newsletter,Action! The foundersof the Connor-EastHomeowners' Association promisedto "protectthe Area fromundesirable elements." Members of the San BenardoImprovement Association pledged to keep theirneighborhood free of "undesirables"- or "Niggers"- as severalwho eschewed euphemism shouted at the group'sfirst meeting. Existing organizations took on a newemphasis with the threat of Black mobility.In 1950 OrvilleTenaglia, president of the SouthwestDetroit ImprovementLeague, recountedhis group'shistory: "Originally we organizedin

13 On theethnic heterogeneity of Detroitneighborhoods, see OlivierZunz, The ChangingFace ofInequality: Urbanization,Industrial Development, and Immigrantsin Detroit,1880-1920 (Chicago, 1982), 340-5 1. In arrest recordsof whites involved in anti-publichousing riots in Chicago,Arnold Hirsch found great diversity in ethnic affiliations.See Hirsch,Making the Second Ghetto,81-84. Forexamples of ethnicdiversity in Detroit,see letters to MayorEdwardJeffries, regarding the Algonquin Street and Oakwood defense housing projects, Housing Commis- sionFolder, box 3, DetroitArchives -Mayor's Papers,1945 (Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, Detroit,Mich.). See alsoExhibit A, Oct. 22, 1948,pp. 1-2, attachedto CharlesH. Houstonto CharlesS. Johnson et al., memorandum,Michigan: Swanson v. Hayden Folder,box B133, groupII, NationalAssociation for the Advancementof ColoredPeople Papers (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.); newsletter of the GreaterDetroit Neighbors Association-Unit No. 2, NeighborhoodInformer (Dec. 1949), 2, folder4-19, box4, UnitedAutomobile Workers, Community Action Program Collection (Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs). For a derogatoryreferences to Jews, see "DemonstrationsProtesting Negro Occupancy of Homes, September1, 1945-September1, 1946: MemorandumJ,"p. 31, box 3, part I, DetroitCommission on CommunityRelations Collection.For a referenceto "niggers,chinamen, and russians,"see WilliamK. Andersonto HerbertSchultz, Oct. 17, 1958,South Lakewood Area Association Papers, 1955-1960 (Burton Historical Collection). For incidents involvingan Indianfamily, a Chinesefamily, and a Filipinofamily who movedinto white neighborhoods, see ChronologicalIndex of Cases, 1951 (51-31) and (51-58), box 13, DetroitCommission on CommunityRelations Collection;Detroit Police DepartmentSpecial InvestigationBureau, Summaryof Racial Activities,April 30, 1956-May17, 1956,folder A2-26, box 38, DetroitUrban League Papers (Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Library,University of Michigan,Ann Arbor).Detroit was a magnetfor southern white migrants, but I havefound littleevidence of an extensivesouthern white presence in neighborhoodorganizations. Although southern whites werefrequently blamed forracial tension in the city,their role was greatlyexaggerated. In the postwaryears, manysouthern whites continued to livein raciallymixed neighborhoods and did notactively resist Black residential mobility.See Capeci and Wilkerson,Layered Violence; and JohnM. HartiganJr., "Cultural Constructions of Whiteness:Racial and Class Formationsin Detroit"(Ph.D. diss., Universityof California,Santa Cruz, 1995). Race, Rights,and the Reactionagainst Liberalism 559

te quindr* and n Vstc*

Flyerannouncing neighborhood association meeting to preventAfrican Americans from moving intoa predominantlywhite neighborhood on Detroit'seast side, March1950. Folder25-107, box 25, part III, DetroitCommission on Community RelationsCollection, Archives of Laborand UrbanAffairs. CourtesyArchives of Labor and UrbanAffairs, Walter P. ReutherLibrary, WayneState University, Detroit, Michigan.

1941 to promotebetter civic affairs, but now we arebanded together just to protect our homes."The league was engagedin a "warof nerves"over the movementof Blacksinto the community.1

14 "OPEN MEETING ... forOwners and Tenants,"poster, [c. 19451,Property Owners Association Folder, box 66, Civil RightsCongress of MichiganCollection; Action!, Feb. 15, 1948, p. 2; GuytonHome Owners' Associationand Connor-EastHome Owners'Association, leaflets, 1957-1960 Folder, South Lakewood Area Asso- ciationPapers; RichardJ. Peck, Community Services Department, Detroit Urban League, "Summaryof Known ImprovementAssociation Activity in Past Two Years,1955-1957," box 2, Pre-1960,Community Organization 1950sVertical File (Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs); SouthwestDetroiter, May 11, 1950,Housing Commission Folder,box 5, DetroitArchives-Mayors' Papers, 1950. 560 TheJournal of American History September1995

As theracial demography of Detroit changed, neighborhood groups demarcated racialboundaries with great precision and, abettedby federal agencies and private real estateagents, divided cities into strictlyenforced racial territories. From the 1940sthrough the 1960s,white urban dwellers fiercely defended their turf. They referredto the Blackmigration in militaryterms: they spoke of "invasions"and "penetration"and plottedstrategies of "resistance."White neighborhoods became "battlegrounds"where residents struggled to preservesegregated housing. Home- owners'associations helped whitesto "defend"their homes and "protect"their property.15 Theirmilitancy was more than rhetorical.As a formerDetroit race relations officialremarked of the postwarperiod, the city"did a lot of firefightingin those days."White Detroitersinstigated over two hundredincidents against Blacks at- temptingto moveinto formerly all-white neighborhoods, including mass demonstrations,picketing, effigy burning, window breaking, arson, vandalism, and phys- ical attacks.Most incidents followed improvement association meetings. A potent mixtureof fear and angeranimated whites who violently defended their neighborhoods. All but the mostliberal whites who lived along the city'sracial frontier believedthat they had onlytwo choices. They could flee,as vastnumbers of white urbanitesdid, or theycould hold theirground and fight.16 Neighborhoodgroups responded to the threatof "invasion"with such urgency becauseof the extraordinary speed of racial change. Most blocks in changingneigh- borhoodswent from all-white to predominantlyBlack in threeor fouryears. The movementof a singleBlack family to a whiteblock fueled panic. Real estatebrokers canvasseddoor to door in areas borderingBlack neighborhoodswarning fearful whitehomeowners that if they did notsell quickly,the value oftheir houses would plummet.Realtors created a climateof fearby ostentatiouslyshowing houses to Blackfamilies, waiting a dayor twofor rumors to spreadthroughout the neighborhood, and theninundating residents with leaflets and phonecalls urging them to sell. One brokerpaid a Blackwoman to walkher babydown an all-whiteblock, to sparkfears that "Negroes[were] 'taking over' this block or area" and thatthe residents"had bestsell now while there was still a chanceof obtaining a goodprice." Such sales tactics,while oftendespised by whitehomeowners, were remarkably effective.Whites living just beyond "racially transitional" neighborhoods witnessed

15 NeighborhoodInformer (Dec. 1949), 1, 3, folder4-19, box 4, UnitedAutomobile Workers, Community ActionProgram Collection; "Emergency Meeting, March 11, 1950," handbill,folder 25-107, box 25, part III, DetroitCommission on CommunityRelations Collection; Ruritan Park Civic Association, "Dear Neighbor,"folder 25-101,ibid. 6 JohnG. Feildinterview by Katherine Shannon, Dec. 28, 1967,transcript, p. 11,Civil Rights Documentation Project(Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University Library, Washington, D.C.). The findingguide and interviewtranscript mistakenly spell Feild as Fields.I calculatedthe numberof racialincidents by surveying recordsin theDetroit Commission on CommunityRelations Collection; the Detroit Branch, National Association forthe Advancementof Colored People Collection(Archives of Labor and UrbanAffairs); the DetroitUrban LeaguePapers; and Detroit'sthree Black newspapers: Michigan Chronicle, Detroit Tribune, and PittsburghCourier (Detroitedition). On racialviolence in postwarDetroit, see ThomasJ.Sugrue, "The Originsof theUrban Crisis: Race, IndustrialDecline, and Housingin Detroit,1940-1960" (Ph.D. diss.,Harvard University, 1992), 208-78. Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 561

rapidBlack movement into nearby areas. They feared that without concerted action, theirneighborhoods would turnover just as quickly.'7 WhiteDetroiters also lookedbeyond transitional neighborhoods to the "slum," a place thatconfirmed their greatest fears. Whites saw in the neighborhoodsto whichBlacks had been confinedin the centercity area a grimprophecy of their neighborhoods'futures. They focused on placeslike Paradise Valley, Detroit's first majorghetto, which housed two-thirds of the city's Black population during World WarII. Housingin ParadiseValley consisted mainly of run-down rental units, most builtin the 1860sand 1870s,owned by absentee white landlords. White Detroiters also noticedthe striking class difference between Blacks and whites.Through 1960 the median familyincome of Blacksin Detroitwas, at best, two-thirdsthat of whitesthere. Although the poorest Blacks were seldom the first to move into formerly whiteneighborhoods (in fact,Black "pioneers"were often better off than their whiteneighbors), whites feared the incursion of a "lower-classelement" into their neighborhoods.18 To whiteDetroiters, the wretched conditions in ParadiseValley and otherpoor AfricanAmerican neighborhoods were the faultof irresponsibleBlacks, not of greedylandlords or neglectful city officials. Wherever Blacks lived, whites believed, neighborhoodsinevitably deteriorated. "Let us keep out the slums,"admonished one east-sidehomeowners' group. If Blacks moved into white neighborhoods, they would bringwith them "noisy roomers, loud parties,auto horns,and in general riotousliving," thus depreciating real estatevalues and destroyingthe moralfiber of the community.A northwest-sideneighborhood association poster played on whiteresidents' fears of the crimethat, theybelieved, would accompanyracial change:"Home OwnersCan You Affordto . . . Have yourchildren exposed to gangsteroperated skid row saloons? Phornographic pictures and literature?Gam- blersand prostitution?You Face These IssuesNow! "19 The mostcommonly expressed fear was not of "riotousliving" or crime,but of racialintermingling. Black "penetration" of whiteneighborhoods posed a funda- mentalchallenge to whiteracial identity. Again and again, neighborhoodgroups and letterwriters referred to theperils of rapacious Black sexuality and racemixing. The politicsof family, home, and neighborhoodwere inseparable from the contain- mentof uncontrolledsexuality and the imminentdanger of interracialliaisons.

1 Mel Ravitz,"Preparing Neighborhoods for Change," July 13, 1956, folderA8-1, box 44, DetroitUrban League Papers;William Price, "Scare Sellingin a Bi-RacialHousing Market,"June 11, 1957, ibid.; "Incident Report,"July 6, 1950, folder50-23, box 6, DetroitCommission on CommunityRelations Collection; Mary Czechowskito MayorAlbert Cobo, Oct. 8, 1950, folder50-57, box 7, ibid. 18 DetroitHousing Commission and WorkProjects Administration, Real PropertySurvey ofDetroit, Michigan (Detroit,1939), II, III, maps and data forArea K. See Sugrue,"Origins of the UrbanCrisis," 316-17. Gloster Current,"Paradise Valley: A Famousand ColorfulPart of Detroit as Seen throughthe Eyes of an Insider,"Detroit Uune 1946), 32, 34. 19 Outer-VanDyke Home Owners'Association, "Dear Neighbor,"[1948], folder25-94, box 25, part III, DetroitCommission on CommunityRelations Collection; interview with Six Mile Road-Riopellearea neighbors in IncidentReport, Aug. 30, 1954,folder A7-13, box 43, DetroitUrban League Papers; Longview Home Owners Association,poster, n.d., Housing-HomeownersOrdinance-Friendly Folder, box 10, partI, MetropolitanDe- troitCouncil of ChurchesCollection. Ellipsis in original. 562 TheJournal of American History September1995

Proximityto Blacksrisked intimacy. As one opponentof a proposedNegro housing projectstated: "We firmlybelieve in the God-givenequality of man. He did not giveus theright to chooseour brothers. .. but he did giveus theright to choose the people we sleep with."Newspaper accounts ominously warned of the threat of miscegenation.One northwest-sidenewspaper praised a citycouncil candidate in a bannerheadline: "Kronk Bucks Mixing Races." Neighborhood defense became morethan a strugglefor turf. It wasa battlefor the preservation of whitewoman- hood. Men had a duty,as theCourville District Improvement Association admonished,to "pitchfor your civic rights and the protectionof yourwomen."20 The preventionof interracial residential and sexualcontact was not just a mascu- lineresponsibility. Women also policedthe boundaries of race and sex. The overlap- ping concernsof neighborhoodintegrity, racial purity, and domestictranquility gave particularurgency to demonstrationsled by womenagainst Edward Brock. Brock,the white owner of twohouses on Detroit'slower west side, had sold them to Blackfamilies in 1948. Groupsof ten to twenty-fivewomen, many pushing baby strollers,gathered at Brock'sworkplace every day for a week,carrying hand-painted signsthat read: "Myhome is mycastle, I willdie defendingit"; "TheLord separated the races,why should Constable Brock mix them";"We don'twant to mix"; and "Ed Brocksold to coloredin whiteneighborhood." Passersby were taken aback by a picketline of whitemothers and babies, an uncommonsight at a timewhen mostdemonstrations in Detroitwere labor-oriented and male-led.Replete with thesymbols of motherhood and family,these protests touched a deep, sympathetic nerveamong onlookers, many of whom saw Black movement into a neighborhoodas a threatto virtuous womanhood, innocent childhood, and the sanctity of the home.

"Rights,"Housing, and Politics

Neighborhoodassociations resorted to pickets, harassment, and violence in thedays and weeksof desperationthat followed Black "invasions" of theirneighborhoods.

20 AlexCsanyi and family toJeffries, Feb. 20, 1945,Housing Commission 1945 Folder, box 3, DetroitArchives- Mayors'Papers 1945. Ellipsisin original.Home Gazette,Oct. 25, 1945, CharlesHill Papers(Archives of Labor and UrbanAffairs); Gloster Current, "The DetroitElections: A Problemin Reconversion,"Crisis, 52 (Nov. 1945), 319-21; Action!,Feb. 15, 1948,p. 2. On the politicsof sexualcontainment, see Elaine TylerMay, "Cold War, WarmHearth: Politics and theFamily in PostwarAmerica," in Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order,ed. Fraser and Gerstle,153-81. 21 Attachmentto letter,Miss James, Detroit Branch NAACP, to George Schermer,Aug. 23, 1948, folder 48-125A,box 5, partI, DetroitCommission on CommunityRelations Collection. See photographsand description in "ConstableSells Home to Negro-Picketed,"Michigan Chronicle, Aug. 21, 1948; "ThreeFamilies Move into Homes on HarrisonAs Police Stand By to PreventViolence," ibid., Aug. 28, 1948; and "MayorGuarantees Protectionfor Negro Home-Owner," Detroit Tribune, Aug. 28, 1948. Forother female-led protests, see "Memo- randumJ," p. 31, attachedto "Demonstrations,1945-1946," folder 47-54, box 4, part I, DetroitCommission on CommunityRelations Collection; "Case Report:Case No. 54," ibid.; GeorgeSchermer, "Report of Incident, Subject:Neighborhood Protest to Sale of House on 13933Maine Street,"June23, 1947,ibid.; SchermertoJohn F. Ballenger,commissioner, Department of Police,June 23, 1947,ibid.; JohnFeild to Director,"Neighborhood Protestto Sale ofHouse on 13933Maine Street," memo, June 1947, ibid.; "PoliceAction Averts Riot," Pittsburgh Courier(Detroit edition),June 28, 1947;and "WhiteNeighbors Threaten Negroes Moving into Home," Michigan Chronicle,June 28, 1947.For a case offemale-initiated vandalism, see PittsburghCourier (Detroit edition), June 18, 1955. On the role of womenin neighborhoodprotests and local politicsin the postwarperiod, see Sylvie Murray,"Suburban Citizens: Domesticity and CommunityPolitics in Queens, New York,1945-1960" (Ph.D. Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 563

Morecommonly, however, they relied on traditionalpolitical means-the ballot box, constituentletters, and testimonyat cityhearings-to stem racialchange. Neighborhoodassociations became the most powerfulforce in postwarDetroit politics.They backed conservativepoliticians who opposed public housing,tax increases,and racialintegration. Their members turned out in huge numberson electionday. In momentsof crisis,they sent an extraordinaryvolume of mail to cityofficials and packed cityplan commissionand commoncouncil hearings on public housingand zoning. Issuesof race and home ownershipdominated local politicsin postwarDetroit. White homeownersforged an extraordinarilywell- organizedgrass-roots conservative coalition in localpolitics, constrained public housing policy,and thwartedattempts to integratethe privatehousing market. Perhapsthe issue that most visiblygalvanized neighborhood groups was the threatof "socializedhousing," especially government-sponsored developments for low-incomeBlacks. Public housing became the first significant wedge between white votersand New Deal liberalismin Detroit.Federal officials made public housing a centerpieceof New Deal socialpolicy, beginning with the Federal Public Housing Act in 1937 and culminatingin the Taft-Ellender-WagnerHousing Act of 1949. NewDeal andFair Deal legislationallocated over a billiondollars in federalresources toprovide shelter for the poorest Americans.22 Black migrants, entrapped in crowded center-cityneighborhoods, suffered the brunt of the postwar urban housing shortage. As Detroit'srelatively small center-city ghetto grew overcrowded and as Blackinner- cityresidents were displaced by highway and urban renewal construction, the proportionof Blacks seeking public housing increased dramatically. To alleviatethe shortage, cityofficials, social welfare advocates, and civilrights organizations proposed the constructionof public housingprojects on open land throughoutthe city.White Detroiters,however, vehemently opposed publichousing during and afterWorld WarII, largelyon racialgrounds. Between 1942 and 1950neighborhood associations resistedpublic housing proposed for outlying white sections of the city,and they succeededin preventingthe buildingof almostall the projects. In 1942 whitesin northeastDetroit tried unsuccessfully to preventBlack occu- pancyof the Sojourner Truth defense housing project, and whites and Blacks battled on thestreets when the firstBlack families arrived at thesite. In 1944whites living nearthe site of a proposedtemporary wartime project for Blacks, on Algonquin Street,flooded city officials with angry petitions. In 1944 and 1945, residentsof suburbanDearborn and Ecorse,cooperating with the FordMotor Company, had preventedthe constructionof public housingin theircommunities, and white Detroitersin the Oakwooddistrict in southwestDetroit blocked the construction of a public housingproject for Blacks in theirneighborhood. In 1948 and 1949, neighborhoodgroup members packed city plan commissionand commoncouncil

diss.,Yale University,1994). On whitefears of Black sexuality in Chicago,see Hirsch,Making the SecondGhetto, 195-96. 22 RobertMoore Fisher, Twenty Years of Public Housing: EconomicAspects of the FederalProgram (New York,1959); Richard0. Davies, HousingReform during the TrumanAdministration (Columbia, Mo., 1966). 564 TheJournal of American History September1995

hearingson proposalsto locatetwelve public housing projects on siteson Detroit's periphery.They won a mayoralveto of all outlyingpublic housing projects in 1950. Throughintensive lobbying efforts, they succeeded in restrictingDetroit's public housingto neighborhoodswith sizable AfricanAmerican populations.23 In thebattles over public housing in the 1940s,neighborhood groups fashioned a potentpolitical language of rights,a languagethat theyrefined and extended in the 1950sand 1960s. As one observernoted, "the whitepopulation has come to believethat it has a vested,exclusive, and permanent'right' to certaindistricts." Civicassociations cast their demands for racially segregated neighborhoods in terms of entitlementand victimization.Homeowners' groups were by no meansalone in couchingtheir political demands in thelanguage of rights. They were part of a New Deal-inspiredrights revolution that empowered other groups, including African Americans,trade union members, and military veterans, to use rightstalk to express theirpolitical discontent and theirpolitical vision.24 The notionof the white entitlement to a homein a raciallyhomogeneous neigh- borhoodwas firmlyrooted in New Deal housingpolicy. Supporters of the Home Owners'Loan Corporation(HOLC) and the FederalHousing Administration (FHA) arguedthat national security and self-preservationrequired the stabilityof private home ownership.President Franklin Delano Rooseveltfrequently alluded to the ideal of a nationof freehomeowners in his speeches,and he includedthe right to a decenthome in his 1944 "Second Bill of Rights."This New Deal rhetoric toucheda deep nerveamong white Detroiters who had struggled,usually without the benefitof loans or mortgages,to build meagerhomes of theirown in thecity. Withgovernment-backed mortgages and loans,they were able to attainthe dream of propertyownership with relative ease. Theywelcomed government assistance; in fact,by WorldWar II, theybegan to viewhome ownershipas a perquisiteof citizenship.The FHA and HOLC's insistencethat mortgages and loans be restricted toracially homogeneous neighborhoods also resonated strongly with Detroit's homeowners.They came to expecta vigilantgovernment to protecttheir segregated neighborhoods.25

23 On Dearbornand Ecorse,see DearbornPress, Nov. 22, 1944; DetroitTimes, May 24, 1945; DetroitNews, May 15, 1945; and David L. Good, Orvie: TheDictator of Dearborn: TheRise andReign of OrvilleL. Hubbard (Detroit,1989), 142. On Oakwood,see DetroitNews, Feb. 16, 28, March20, 1945. 24 On theexpansion of rights language in theNew Deal, see SidneyM. Milkis,The President and theParties: The Transformationof the AmericanParty System since the New Deal (New York, 1993), esp. 41-43, 48-50; and Alan Brinkley,The End of Reform:New Deal Liberalismin Recessionand War(New York, 1995), 10-11, 164-70. More generally,see RogersM. Smith,"Rights," in A Companionto AmericanThought, ed. Richard WightmanFox andJames Kloppenberg (Oxford, Eng., 1995); and MaryAnn Glendon,Rights Talk: The Impover- ishmentof PoliticalDiscourse (New York,1991). 25 FranklinDelano Roosevelt,"Message to Congresson the Stateof theUnion," Jan. 11, 1944,in ThePublic Papersand Addressesof FranklinD. Roosevelt,vol. XIII: Victoryand the Thresholdof Peace, 1944-45 (New York,1950), 41; HenryLee Moon, "Dangerin Detroit,"Crisis, 53 (Jan. 1946),28; SevenMile-Fenelon Improvement Association,"WE DEMAND OUR RIGHTS," poster,Property Owners Association Folder, box 66, Civil Rights Congressof MichiganCollection. On the New Deal and home ownership,see RonaldTobey, Charles Wetherell, andJayBrigham, "Moving Out and SettlingIn: ResidentialMobility, Home Owning,and the PublicEnframing of Citizenship,1921-1950," American HistoricalReview, 95 (Dec. 1990), 1395-1422,esp. 1415-20; and Cohen, Makinga New Deal, 272-77. On immigrantsand home ownershipin Detroit,see Zunz, ChangingFace of Inequality,129-76. On the discriminatorynature of federalhousing programs, see KennethT. Jackson,"Race, Race,Rights, and theReaction against Liberalism 565

The rhetoriclinking home ownership and citizenshipechoed in thenewsletters and petitionsof neighborhoodassociations. The FederatedProperty Owners of Detroit,for example, was foundedin 1948 to "promote,uphold and defendthe rightsof home and propertyownership and small businessas the cornerstoneof Americanopportunity and prosperity."The promiseof government-sanctioned racial homogeneityalso resoundedin neighborhoodassociation rhetoric. In 1949, theGreater Detroit Neighbors Association, Unit No. 2, ralliedits members around ''the rightto live in the typeof neighborhoodthat you choose." Homeowners' rightswere precarious and needed to be defendedvigorously from grasping Blacks and acquiescentfederal officials who threatenedto usurpthem. The slogan"Help StampOut Oppression-Fight forOur Rights"inspired organizers of a "Vigilantes OrganizationalMeeting" in 1945; theyappealed to "theoppressed Homeowners" of Detroit.26 The experienceof WorldWar II solidifiedwhite Detroiters' belief in theirright toracially homogeneous neighborhoods. Flyers produced by neighborhood improvementassociations couched the grievances of whites struggling against public housing in the languageof Americanismand wartimepatriotism. In the immediateafter- math of WorldWar II, petitionershighlighted the theme of wartimesacrifice, appealingto the sentimentsthat undergirdedfederal entitlements for returning veterans.In 1945 MichaelJ. Harbulak,who opposed the constructionof a public housingproject in his neighborhood,Oakwood, wrote: "Our boysare fightingin Europe,Asia, and Africato keep thosepeople offour soil. If when theseboys returnthey should become refugees who have to giveup theirhomes because their ownneighborhood with the help of our city fathers had beeninvade[d] and occupied by the Africans,it would be a shamewhich our cityfathers could not outlive." Testifyingagainst public housing, Louis J. Borolo,president of theOakwood Blue JacketsAthletic Club, appealed to the citycouncil using the patrioticlanguage thatmany of his neighborshad used in theirpetition letters. "There are 1,500 blue starsin the windowsof homesof thatneighborhood," he testified."Those starsrepresent soldiers waiting to come backto the sameneighborhood they left." Acknowledgingthe "moraland legal right"of Blacksto adequate housing,he nonethelesscontended that "we have establisheda priorright to a neighborhood whichwe havebuilt up throughthe years - a neighborhoodwhich is entirelywhite and whichwe wantkept white."27

Ethnicity,and Real EstateAppraisal: The Home OwnersLoan Corporationand theFederal Housing Administra- tion,"Journal of UrbanHistory, 6 (Aug. 1980), 419-52. 26 MichiganChronicle, Dec. 4, 1948; NeighborhoodInformer (Dec. 1949), 1; "Jointhe Fight,"flyer, Nov. 1945,folder 20-37, box 20, part III, DetroitCommission on CommunityRelations Collection. 27 MichaelJ.Harbulak toJeffries, Feb. 21, 1945,Housing Commission 1945 Folder, box 3, DetroitArchives- Mayors'Papers 1945; "NegroHomes Vote Delayed," Detroit News, March 9, 1945; Current,"Detroit Elections," 325. See alsoAction!, March 15, 1948. On popularpatriotism and Americanism,see, especially,Gerstle, Working- Class Americanism;Gary Gerstle, "The WorkingClass Goes to War,"Mid-America, 75 (Oct. 1993), 303-22; MichaelKazin and StevenJ. Ross, "America'sLabor Day: The Dilemma of a Workers'Celebration," Journal of AmericanHistory, 78 (March1992), 1294-1323;and James R. Barrett,"Americanization from the BottomUp: Immigrationand the Remakingof the WorkingClass in the UnitedStates, 1880-1930," ibid., 79 (Dec. 1992), 996-1020. 566 The Journalof AmericanHistory September1995

Signprotesting plans to openthe Sojourner Truth Homes, a publichousing project on Detroit'snortheast side, to AfricanAmericans, February 1942. Photographby Arthur Siegel, Office of WarInformation. Courtesy Library of Congress.

"Homeowners'rights" was a malleableconcept that derived its powerfrom its imprecision.Some whites described their rights in humble"bootstraps" terms. They had acquiredproperty and earnedtheir rights through hard work and responsible citizenship.Homeowners' rights were, in thisview, a rewardfor sacrifice and duty. Othersdrew from an idiosyncraticreading of the Declaration of Independenceand Bill ofRights to justifytheir neighborhood defensiveness. Public housing for Blacks in a whiteneighborhood was a violationof white "rights" to "peaceand happyness." Some definedhomeowners' rights as an extensionof theirconstitutional right of freedomof assembly.They had a rightto choosetheir associates. That rightwould be infringedif theirneighborhoods were racially mixed.28 In an era of growingcivil rightsconsciousness, many white letter writers and petitionersmade grudgingacknowledgements of racialequality. Many petitions in oppositionto the Oakwoodhousing project included the formula "I have nothing againstthe colored"or "I believein the God-givenequality of man." The writers

28 Harbulakto Jeffries,Feb. 21, 1945, HousingCommission 1945 Folder,box 3, DetroitArchives-Mayors' Papers 1945. Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 567

qualifiedthese shibboleths with such statements as "But I wouldn'twant them for a neighbornor growing up withmy children." Rights for Blacks were acceptable in the abstract,as long as Blacksremained in theirown neighborhoodsand kept to themselves.But manywhites believed that civil rights for Blacks were won only at the expenseof whiterights. One opponentof a public housingproject slated forBlack occupancy stated succinctly, "It looksas if,we thewhite people are being discriminatedagainst. Let the coloredpeople make theirown district,as we had to."29 In the crucibleof Detroit'sracial and economictransformation, not all rights wereequal. Neighborhoodgroups criticized public housingas a handoutto the undeservingpoor, who demanded rights without bearing the burden of responsibili- ties. Politicianson the right(Democrat and Republicanalike) werequick to pick up thattheme. Mayor Edward Jeffries staunchly opposed public housingon the groundsthat "good government is thekind of government that takes unusual steps to givepeople opportunities,not to givethem hand-outs. " Jeffries's rhetoric found a sympathetichearing in whiteDetroit neighborhoods. An opponentof public housingnoted in 1949that "taxpayers and home-owninggroups are rising in wrath againstsubsidizing homes." Why should government compel hardworking whites to pay forhousing for the poor? And whyshould it "force"white neighborhoods to accepthousing for poor Blacks?30 In thewake of public housing disputes, white Detroiters grew increasingly critical ofwhat they perceived as thegrowing disjuncture between federal social policy and theirown interests, and theapparent acquiescence of an activistgovernment in the demandsof thosewho soughtracial and economicleveling. Detroit's whites began to viewpublic housingas "Negrohousing," and theygrew increasingly skeptical of the federalagenda thatcalled forthe provisionof shelterfor America's poor. Erosionof supportfor public housing on groundsof racealso erodedsupport for New Deal programsmore generally. One astuteobserver noted in 1946: In thefield of housing,there has tendedto developa tie-upin ourthinking betweenNegroes and government. Public housing and housing for Negroes is synonymousor nearly so in theminds of many people. This is bad forpublic housingand bad forNegroes. Many people are concerned about government interferenceofall kinds. This tends to create a separationintheir minds between themselvesand "thegovernment.""31

29 Mr. and Mrs. FredPressato to Jeffries,March 6, 1945, ibid.; WilliamLeuffen to Jeffries,March 6, 1945, Housing/ Bi-Racial Letters Folder, ibid.; JohnWatson to Jeffries, March 6, 1945, ibid. 30 The remarksappear in an editorial,BrightmoorJourna/, Oct. 27, 1949. (I wishto expressmy gratitude to the staffof BentleyHistorical Library, University of Michigan,who allowedme to consulttheir yet uncataloged and unprocessedcollection of northwest-sideneighborhood newspapers, including the BrightmoorJourna/.) See also Action!,March 15, 1948, p. 2. 31 "FourthMeeting of the Speaker'sStudy Group of InterculturalAffairs," Feb. 4, 1946, p. 2, Interracial Resolutions/Intercultural Council Folder, box 74, CitizensHousing and PlanningCouncil Papers (Burton Histor- ical Collection). 568 TheJournal of American History September1995

AlienatedDetroit whites increasingly directed their animus against local public officials,whom they saw as activeagents in the transformationof their neighborhoods. "We muststop the wastingof the taxpayersmoney on publichousing, or anyother wasteful planning, " warneda west-sidechapter of the National Association of CommunityCouncils in 1945. In the same year,a "Groupof Taxpayers"com- plainedto thecity of the "insurmountabletax, housing, hospitalization and social problemsfacing taxpayers" because of the influxof "colored"moving to the city to collectwelfare benefits denied themin the South. Equally blameworthywere the Blackpoor who dependedon governmentassistance and the bureaucratswho fosteredthat dependence through social welfare programs. In an ambiguouslyworded letter(its pejorativereferences could refereither to Blackwelfare recipients or to welfareadministrators), the "Group of Taxpayers" argued that in citywelfare offices "stinkhas reachedto highheaven for years" and railedagainst the "polysyllabic patter"that they heard there. Speaking for the neighborhood associations that he advocated,Karl H. Smith,a local realtor,praised groups who fought"unjust tax leviesfor the benefitof shiftlessdrifters who have not the gutsto wantto own a home of theirown."32 As domesticanticommunism rose to politicalprominence, neighborhood groups beganto articulatetheir concerns in McCarthyiteterms. A growingnumber of white Detroitersbelieved in a conspiracyof government bureaucrats, many influenced by communismor socialism(terms used interchangeably),who misusedtax dollars to fundexperiments in social engineeringfor the benefitof pressuregroups. In so doing,the governmentrepudiated property rights and democraticprinciples. Be- hindthe sceneswas a cabal of publichousing officials, city planning committees, civilrights groups, labor activists,and socialistagitators who workedto defraud honesttaxpayers and destroythe city. Homeowners'groups and sympathetic politicians used McCarthyite rhetoric against liberalpoliticians and advocatesof public housing and open housing.Red-baiting was a crasssmear tactic, but in the perfervidatmosphere of the anticommunist crusade,many whites believed that a sinisterconspiracy was afoot. In theirminds, the issuesof race,left-wing politics, and governmentaction became inextricably linked.Public housing projects were part of theconspiratorial effort of well-placed Communistsand Communist sympathizers in thegovernment to destroytraditional Americanvalues through a carefullycalculated policy of racialand classstruggle. FloydMcGriff, the editorof a chainof northwest-sideneighborhood newspapers, warnedthat multiple-family homes would "threatenlocal areaswith additional blight."He blamed the "fringedisruptionists, the politicalcrack-pots, and the socialistdouble-domes" who "injectedracial issues" into housing debates. Reds in thecity government planned to "movethe slum-area residents into city-built housing

32 "Jointhe Fight,"flyer, Nov. 1945, folder20-37, box 20, part III, DetroitCommission on Community RelationsCollection; "A Groupof Taxpayers"to thecouncilmen of the City of Detroit, April 12, 1945,Common CouncilFolder, box 23, CitizensHousing and PlanningCouncil Papers; "Survey of Racialand ReligiousConflict Forcesin Detroit,"Sept. 30, 1943, box 71, Civil RightsCongress of MichiganCollection. Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 569

projectsin NorthwestDetroit" and "to forcepioneering families to move out." Open housingwas the product of a "leftistpolitical brigade" that had as itsmission "politicalactivity to providecolored persons with homes they cannot afford to live in." Smallneighborhood struggles against the "Blackinvasion" and againstpublic housingwere really skirmishes in a largerbattle against communism itself."3 Thepro-homeowner and anti-integrationist sentiments unleashed by public housing debateshad a profoundimpact on local mayoralelections. The politicalcareer of Detroitmayor Edward Jeffries (1941-1947) revealedthe powerof crabgrass-roots politicsand thefragility of liberalismin Detroit.Jeffries was first elected mayor in 1941as a New Dealer, prolaborand raciallyliberal. He garneredthe endorsements oflabor unions and civil rights groups and swept both Black and white working-class precincts.After the wartime riots and hatestrikes and theemergence of a powerful homeowners'movement, Jeffries refashioned his racialpolitics. He combinedred- baitingand race-baitingin his successfulreelection bid in 1945 againstthe liberal candidatebacked by the United Automobile Workers (UAW), Richard Frankensteen. In the wake of the AlgonquinStreet and Oakwood debates,Jeffries turned his opponent'ssupport of federalpublic housing policy into a politicalliability. In a campaignladen with racial innuendo, he floodedneighborhoods on thenorthwest and northeastsides with literature highlighting Frankensteen's ties to Blackorgani- zations.Handbills reading "Increase Negro Housing" and "NegroesCan LiveAny- whereWith FrankensteenMayor. Negroes-Do Your Duty Nov. 6" werewidely distributedin whiteneighborhoods during the election. Jeffries supporters sounded theominous warning that Frankensteen was a "red"who, if elected, would encourage "racialinvasions" of whiteneighborhoods.34 The electoralchoice was stark. Jeffries would uphold white community interests. An editorialin theHome Gazette,a newspaperin thevirtually all-white, predomi- nantlyhomeowning northwest side, stated,"There is no questionwhere Edward J.Jeffries' administration stands on mixedhousing." It praisedthe Detroit Housing Commission'spolicy of segregation in publichousing for "declaring that a majority of thepeople of thecity of Detroitdo notwant the racial character of theirneigh- borhoodschanged" and for reiterating"its previousstand againstattempts of Communist-inspiredNegroes to penetratewhite residential sections." Black ob- serversof the electionand union supportersof Frankensteenwere appalled bythe blatantracial claims of theJeffries campaign, and theyattempted to use economic populistand anti-Nazirhetoric to deflateJeffries's charges. The Black journalist HenryLee Moon, writingin the National Associationfor the Advancementof

33 BrightmoorJournal,Feb. 3, May12,Jan. 12, 1950,April 21, 1966.See alsoAction!, March 15, 1948.On Floyd McGriffand his anticommunistactivity in the 1940s,see FloydMcGriff Papers (Michigan Historical Collections). 34 On EdwardJeffries, see Capeci, Race Relationsin WartimeDetroit, 17-27. Handbills,folder 3-8, box 3, Donald MarshPapers (University Archives, Wayne State University, Detroit, Mich.). See also "The 1945Mayoral Campaign-NationalLawyers Guild," Jan. 10, 1946,attached to GlosterCurrent to ThurgoodMarshall, memo, RacialTension Detroit, Mich., 1944-46 Folder,box A505, groupII, NationalAssociation for the Advancement of ColoredPeople Papers; "MayorJeffries is Against Mixed Housing," flyer, Politics, Michigan, 1945-1953 Folder, box A475, ibid. 570 TheJournal of American History September1995

ColoredPeople (NAACP) monthly Crisis, accused Jeffries of appealing "to ourmore refinedfascists, the big moneyinterests and theprecarious middle class whose sole inalienablepossession is a whiteskin." Racial appeals bolstered the flaggingJeffries campaignand gavehim a comfortablemargin in Novemberagainst a UAW-backed candidatein a solidlyunion city.On the local level, the link betweenBlack and red was a cleverstrategy for attracting white Democrats, suspicious of liberalism and its capacityfor equalitarian political and social rhetoric." The politicaltensions over race and housingcame to a head in the mayoral electionof 1949. The liberalcommon council member George Edwards faced the conservativecity treasurer, Albert Cobo. Edwards,a one-timeUAW activist, former publichousing administrator, and New Deal Democrat,was the political antithesis of Cobo, a corporateexecutive, real estate investor, and Republican.Cobo focused hiscampaign on theissues of race and public housing. Armed with the endorsement of mostwhite neighborhood improvement associations, Cobo sweptthe largely whiteprecincts on thenortheast and northwestsides, where voters were especially concernedabout the threatof publichousing. The distinctionbetween Cobo and Edwardswas crystal clear. Cobo adamantlyopposed "Negroinvasions" and public housing,whereas Councilman Edwards had consistentlychampioned the rightof Blacksto decenthousing anywhere in thecity and had regularlyvoted for proposals to locatepublic housing in outlyingareas.36 Liberalleaders were baffled that the conservativeCobo had beatenthe prolabor Edwardsin a heavilyDemocratic city and thatCobo did particularlywell among union voters.The Edwardscampaign was coordinatedby the UAW and othercio unions,which provided him with nearly $30,000 in funding,printed and distributed over1.3 millionpro-Edwards pamphlets, and sentunion members canvassing door to doorthroughout the city. Pamphlets in English, Polish, and Hungarian lambasted Cobo forhis connectionswith bankers and slumlordswho "livein GrossePointe, Birmingham,and Bloomfield Hills." Radio spotsfeatured a "snottywoman's voice" urgingvoters to "voteRepublican in theDetroit election for mayor," and UAW sound trucksblasted pro-Edwards messages at local unemploymentoffices. Yet despite the massiveand well-organizedunion effort,Edwards lost to Cobo even in heavily blue-collarprecincts.37

3 "WhiteNeighborhoods Again in Peril:Frankensteen Policy Up On HousingNegroes Here," Home Gazette, Oct. 11, 1945, clipping,Clippings File, Hill Papers;Moon, "Danger in Detroit,"12. 36 On AlbertCobo, see MelvinG. Holli and Peterd'A. Jones,Biographical Dictionary of AmericanMayors, 1820-1980: Big CityMayors (Westport, 1981), 69-70. On George Edwards,see DetroitNews, Oct. 31, 1947, clipping,folder 10-4, box 10, UnitedAutomobile Workers, Research Department Collection (Archives of Labor and UrbanAffairs). See also "BiographicalData, GeorgeEdwards," Vertical File-Biography, ibid. Brightmoor Journal,Sept. 22, 1949; newsletterof the Outer-VanDyke Home OwnersAssociation, "Hi" Neighbor,1 (Nov. 1949),copy, folder 5-5, box 5, UnitedAutomobile Workers, Community Action Program Department Collection; DetroitNews, Nov. 8, 1949; Coles interview,17. 37 Labor'sMunicipal Campaign Committee, "Schedule 1: Liabilities,"folder 62-10, box 62, UnitedAutomobile Workers,Political Action Committee - RoyReuther Collection (Archives of Labor and UrbanAffairs). Labor spent $28,455.51 on GeorgeEdwards's campaign; see Al Barbourto RoyReuther, Nov. 17, 1949, folder62-19, ibid. "EastSide Meeting,Thursday November 17, 9:00 a.m.," notes,folder 62-13, ibid.; "Materialfor Sound Trucks and Leafletsat MUCCOffices," folder 62-7, ibid.; "SuggestedSlot Announcements," folder 62-16, ibid.; "Housewives- Don't StayHome Nov. 8th,"poster, folder 62-10, ibid.; "750,000Detroiters Did Not Votein thePrimary Election," flyer,ibid. Accordingto analysisof returnsfrom selected precincts by the UnitedAutomobile Workers, Edwards Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 571

Stunnedby the overwhelming defeat of Edwards,UAW politicalactivists met to discussthe election. On theeast side, one organizerreported, many union members refusedto place Edwardsplacards in theirwindows. In one heavilyDemocratic wardon thewest side, blue-collarvoters told a UAW canvasserthat they supported Edwards,yet on electionday, they turned out forCobo two to one. A west-side coordinatorexplained the seemingparadox of union supportfor Cobo: "I think in thesemunicipal elections we are dealingwith people who have a middleclass mentality.Even in our own UAW, the memberis eitherbuying a home, ownsa home, or is goingto buy one. I don't knowwhether we can evermake up this difficulty."The problemwas that "George was beatenby the housingprogram. "38 The 1949 electionrevealed the conflictbetween the politicsof home and the politicsof workplace,a conflictexacerbated by racialtensions in rapidlychanging neighborhoods.Blue-collar workers, one activistlamented, failed to "see therela- tionshipbetween their life in theplant and theirlife in thecommunity." Racial fears and neighborhooddefensiveness made thepolitical unity of home and workplace impossible.East-side UAW shop stewards,many of whomwere open Cobo supporters,told one UAW PoliticalAction Committee organizer that "the Union is okayin the shop but whenthey buy a home theyforget about it. You can tell themanything they want to but as longas theythink their property is goingdown, it is different."The Edwardsdefeat marked the beginningof a UAW retreatfrom laborpolitics in the city;the disillusionedUAW PoliticalAction Committee con- tinuedto endorseliberal candidates, but it offeredonly half-hearted support to Cobo'sopponents in Detroit'sbiennial mayoral races in the1950s. The combination ofracial resentment and homeowners' politics that defeated Edwards dimmed future hopes forthe triumphof laborliberalism on the local level in Detroit. The new Cobo administrationwas sympatheticto neighborhoodassociations. Cobo offeredprominent housing and cityplan commissionappointments to movement leaders.He establishedan advisorycouncil of civicgroups and regularly addressedneighborhood improvement association meetings. In his firstweeks of did betterin blue-collarareas than in "middleclass" white districts, although he lostin both.Edwards won only amongBlack voters (82%) and whitepublic housingproject residents (59%). The onlyother group that came closeto majoritysupport (49%) forEdwards was "hillbillies,"presumably recent southern white migrants to the city.Untitled tables, folder 63-2, box 63, ibid. 38 "WestSide CoordinatorsMeeting, Wednesday, November 16, 1949," notes,folder 62-11, box 62, United AutomobileWorkers, Political Action Committee-Roy Reuther Collection. 39 "EastSide Meeting,Thursday November 17, 9:00 a.m.," notes,p. 6, folder62-13, box 62, ibid. On Detroit politicsin the 1950s,seeJ. David Greenstone,"A Reporton thePolitics of Detroit," unpublished paper, Harvard University,1961 (Purdy-KresgeLibrary, Wayne State University). On the 1949 electionand itslegacy, see Kevin G. Boyle,"Politics and Principle:The UnitedAutomobile Workers and AmericanLabor-Liberalism, 1948-1968" (Ph.D. diss.,University of Michigan,Ann Arbor,1991), 94-100. On the separationof home and workas an importantconstraint on Americanradical politics, see Ira Katznelson,City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterningof Classin the UnitedStates (New York,1981). It is importantnot to overstatethe contrastbetween neighborhoodand union politics;research on Congressof IndustrialOrganizations (cio) unionsin the North showsthat shop floor conflicts over racial issues such as upgradingand senioritylists continued well into the 1950s. See, especially,Kevin G. Boyle,"'There Are No Union SorrowsThat the Union Can't Heal': The Strugglefor RacialEquality in the UnitedAutomobile Workers, 1940-1960," Labor History, 36 (Winter1995), 5-23; Bruce Nelson,"Race Relations in theMill: Steelworkersand CivilRights, 1950-1965," paper delivered at theconference "Towarda Historyof the 1960s,"Madison, Wisconsin, April 1993 (in ThomasJ. Sugrue'spossession). 572 TheJournal of American History September1995

office,he vetoedeight proposed public housingsites in outlying,predominantly whitesections of the city.By puttingbrakes on all public housingdevelopment outsideheavily Black inner-city neighborhoods, Cobo single-handedlykilled public housingas a controversialpolitical issue. OrvilleTenaglia, the southwestDetroit communityleader who had foughtpublic housingthroughout the 1940s,wrote Cobo that"we who have come to look upon thiscommunity as 'ourhome,' living withpeople of our 'ownkind,' do mosthumbly . .. thankyou for the courageous standyou have taken"on the housingissue. With the supportof gratefulhome- owners'groups, Republican Cobo won reelectioneasily in 1951, 1953, and 1955. By advocatingand defending"homeowners' rights," he broughtthe majorityof Detroit'swhites into a powerful,bipartisan antiliberal coalition.40

CivilRights and "CivilWrongs"

The neighborhoodmovement's monopoly on Detroitpolitics was short-lived. Huge numbersof whiteDetroiters fled the cityfor the boomingsuburbs in the 1950s. Detroit'swhite population fell by more than 23 percentin the 1950s,while its AfricanAmerican population rose by morethan 180,000,to nearlyone-third of the city'spopulation. By the mid-1950s,Blacks had becomean increasinglylarge bloc of votersin Detroit,electing Black candidatesto citywideoffices for the first timeand providinga crucialswing vote in manylocal elections.As Blackelectoral powergrew, homeowners' associations lost their stranglehold on thecity government and struggledfor power against an emergingalliance uniting Blacks and a small but vocal populationof liberalwhite activists. Cobo's successor,Louis Miriani- sympatheticto thehomeowners' movement when elected in 1957-recognized the changingbalance of powerin the cityand tried,unsuccessfully, to accommodate both whiteneighborhood groups and Blacks.His successor,Jerome Cavanagh, a little-knowninsurgent, won an upsetvictory in 1961over Miriani with the support of a unlikelyalliance of AfricanAmericans and whiteneighborhood groups, both alienated(for different reasons) by Miriani's equivocal, middle-of-the-road position on race,civil rights, and housing.41

40 On AlbertCobo's appointments,see box 2, DetroitArchives- Mayors' Papers 1951. DetroitHousing Com- mission,"Monthly Report," Dec. 1949, 1-2, DetroitHousing CommissionFolder, box 2, DetroitArchives- Mayors'Papers 1950; DetroitCity Plan Commission, Minutes, vol. 16 (1950-1951),44, DetroitCity Plan Commis- sion Collection(Burton Historical Collection); Detroit Free Press,March 14, 1950; OrvilleTenaglia to Cobo, March28, 1950, CivicAssociations Folder, box 2, DetroitArchives-Mayors' Papers 1950; "Degree of Votingin DetroitPrimary," Sept. 11, 1951,folder62-25, box 62, UnitedAutomobile Workers, Political Action Committee- RoyReuther Collection. 41 On the changingbalance of powerin Detroitpolitics, see Greenstone,"Report on thePolitics of Detroit," 68; Dudley W. Buffa,Union Power and AmericanDemocracy: The UAW and the DemocraticParty, 1935-1972 (Ann Arbor,1984), 140-41;James Q. Wilson,Negro Politics: The Searchfor Leadership (New York,1960), 28- 30; and SidneyFine, Violencein the Model City:The CavanaghAdministration, Race Relations,and theDetroit Riot of 1967 (Ann Arbor,1988), 3, 6, 16. LouisMiriani had enjoyedneighborhood association support as a city councilmember. See, forexample, Small PropertyOwner (Nov. 1949), folder5-2, box 5, UnitedAutomobile Workers,Community Action Program Collection. Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 573

As theracial balance of powerin Detroitbegan to change,civil rights organiza- tionsfound a newvoice and beganto challenge the conservative politics of neighborhood associations.Initially stunned by the Cobo victoryand weakened by organiza- tionalinfighting, advocates of racialequality slowly began to regroupin the early andmid- 1950s. A coalitionof labor activists, religious groups, and African American organizationsdirected their energies toward racial integration and open housing. Theyfound a powerfulally in the DetroitMayor's Interracial Committee (MIC), whichhad been foundedafter the race riotof 1943 to monitorracial tension in thecity and to advocatecivil rights reform. Dominated by liberal whites and Blacks closeto civilrights organizations, the MIC consistently opposed segregation in public housingand other facilities, worked to abolish restrictive covenants, and investigated incidentsof racialconflict in the city.The MIC,despite its name, was a largely independentcity agency whose members were protected by civil service laws. Under Jeffriesand Cobo it becamea refugefor a small,dedicated band ofintegrationists, who maintainedclose tieswith civil rights groups throughout the country.When theMIC became an increasinglyvocal supporter of open housingin theearly 1950s, the neighborhoodmovement counterattacked, railing against what its members saw as an unholyalliance between government and Blacks.Homeowners' groups beganan attackon "pressuregroups, be theylabor, government, or other impractical idealists,"who supportedthe civilrights agenda.42 Empoweredby the conservativeclimate of the Cobo administration,neighborhood improvementassociations targeted the city'srace relations agency. In 1951,a neighborhoodassociation-backed group, which called itself the Legislative Research Committee,issued a reportcalling for the abolitionof the MIC. It attemptedto taintMIC director George Schermer with charges of leftism by noting his membership in the liberalAmericans for Democratic Action. The reportargued that under his leadership,the racerelations agency fostered racial animosity in the city:"instead oflessening and assuaginginterracial tensions, Schermer's outfit, by devious means has accentuatedthem, stirring up racialstrife." Joining the cryagainst the MIC, RalphSmith, president of the Michigan Council of Civic Associations, warned Cobo of the dangerof "minoritypressure groups."43 Theanti-MIC campaign combined an anti-civilrights stance with antibureaucratic and antitaxsentiments. Neighborhood group representatives charged that the MIC wrongfullyused public funds to assistcivil rights organizations. C. KatherineRentsch- ler, a memberof the WarrendaleImprovement Association and chairof Home- OwnerCivic and ImprovementAssociations, accused the "watch-dogcommission" of"using our TAX MONEY to createagitation." According to Rentschler,"a review of thework of the Mayor'sInterracial Committee indicates that it has continually

42 On the weaknessof the civilrights movement in Detroitin the late 1940s and early1950s, see Robert Korstadand Nelson Lichtenstein,"Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor,Radicals, and the EarlyCivil Rights Movement,"Journal ofAmerican History, 75 (Dec. 1988), 786-811. BrightmoorJournal,April 20, 1950. 43 BrightmoorJournal,April 5, 1951; Ralph Smithto Cobo, March23, 1950, CivicAssociations Folder, box 2, DetroitArchives-Mayors' Papers 1950. 574 TheJournal of American History September1995

functionedsolely for the Negrorace." As an alternativeto theMIC, she calledfor a "Home OwnerParticipation Ordinance" that would give neighborhood associations"a voicein planningand regulatingthe activities" of cityagencies. The cam- paignagainst the Mayor'sInterracial Committee met with success: in 1953,Mayor Cobo restructuredthe MIC,purged its mostliberal members, and appointedtwo prominentwhite neighborhood association members to the board.The neighborhood associationsdid notwin a "homeowners'participation ordinance," but they openeda newchapter in thestruggle for homeowners' rights that would culminate in the earlyand mid-1960s.44 Even withthe temporarydefeat of theirally in citygovernment, civil rights groupscontinued to battlefor open housingin Detroitthroughout the 1950s. Inspiredby the United States Supreme Court's 1948 ruling in Shelley v. Kraemerthat raciallyrestrictive covenants were legally unenforceable, they launched a campaignto integrateDetroit's neighborhoods. At firsttheir attempts were primarily educa- tional.Civil rights groups, including the UrbanLeague, the MetropolitanDetroit Council of Churches,and the CatholicInterracial Committee, led seminarson open housingin churchesthroughout the city,wrote articles and lettersfor local newspaperson thebenefits of racial integration, and published materials attempting to assuagehomeowners' fears that property depreciation and crimewould follow Blackmovement. By thelate 1950s,open housinggroups moved beyond advocacy to politicalaction. In themid- 195 Os, they lobbied the Federal Housing Administra- tionand Home Owners'Loan Corporationto allowBlacks to purchaseforeclosed housesin whiteneighborhoods. In 1959,they persuaded the Michigan Department of Stateto revokethe licensesof real estatebrokers who refusedto supportopen housing.4 As civilrights groups began to agitatefor open housing,neighborhood groups began a counterattack.The FederatedProperty Owners of Detroit,an umbrella organizationof neighborhoodprotective associations, lambasted those who breached thenow unenforceable racial covenants. "Property owners violating these principles have larcenyin theirhearts. They are worsethan outlaw hoodlums who hold you up and stealyour money. They have blood on theirhands for having cut deep into

4 Home-OwnerCivic and ImprovementAssociations, "Memorandum to Home-OwnerPresidents," March 13, 1953,Civic Associations Folder, box 1, DetroitArchives-Mayors' Papers 1953; C. KatherineRentschler, "Request to Abolishthe Present Mayor's Interracial Committee and to Reftainftom Authorizing the Proposed Commission on CommunityRelations," April 7, 1953,ibid.; C. KatherineRentschler to DetroitCommon Council, Aug. 17, 1953, ibid.; DetroitFocus (March-April1954), folder8-1, box 8, DetroitUrban League Papers;"Statement of theDetroit Branch NAACP Boardof Directors Regarding the City of Detroit Commission on CommunityRelations," Feb. 22, 1954,ibid.; DetroitUrban League, Board of Directors, Minutes of Special Meeting, Jan. 27, 1954,folder 11-18,box 11, ibid.; Cobo to FatherJohnE. Coogan,Jan. 18, 1954, FreedomAgenda Folder, box 71, Citizens Housingand PlanningCouncil Papers. 45 Shelleyv. Kraemer,334 U.S. 1 (1948); WilliamH. Boone, "MajorUnmet Goals thatSuggest Continuing Attention,"March 9, 1956, folderA2-16, box 38, DetroitUrban League Papers;United Automobile Workers LegalDepartment to ThomasKavanagh, Michigan Attorney General, Draft of letter,July 18, 1956,folder A2- 17, ibid. On MichiganHouse and Senatebills to preventreal estate discrimination, see HousingFolder, box 10, part I, MetropolitanDetroit Council of ChurchesCollection. On open housingefforts in the 1950sand early1960s, see Rose KleinmanPapers (Michigan Historical Collections); and Rose KleinmanPapers (Archives of Laborand UrbanAffairs). Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 575

theirhearts and homelife."The East Side CivicCouncil, like manywhites in the city,blamed the SupremeCourt decisionon a conspiracyled by the NAACP and notedwith disdain "theorganization and cooperationof the Coloredgroups" on the covenantissue. Throughoutthe 1950s,neighborhood groups pressured "block- busting"real estate agents who sold homes to Blacksin predominantlywhite neighborhoods,petitioned the city government to preserveracially segregated areas, and harassedBlack newcomers to formerlyall-white blocks.46 In the early1960s, the strugglebetween civil rights and homeowners'rights culminatedat the ballotbox. At the urgingof civilrights groups, the city council draftedand passed a mild Fair Housing PracticesOrdinance that restrictedthe displayof For Sale signsto deterblockbusting real estateagents and prohibited referencesto race in real estateads. Open housinggroups, however, drafted a strongerordinance that would outlaw all discriminationin realestate transactions.47 In response,neighborhood groups proposed a "Homeowners'Rights Ordinance" thatwould preservetheir "rights" to segregatedneighborhoods. The competing ordinancespitted Blacks, white racial liberals, and civil rightsgroups against a solidlywhite, bipartisan, antiliberal coalition. Leadingthe anti-open housing movement was Thomas Poindexter, a founderof theGreater Detroit Homeowners' Council. Poindexter, an unsuccessfullabor-liberal candidatefor the city council in the 195Os, abandoned liberalism in theearly 1960s and adopted crabgrass-rootspolitics with all the fervorof a convert.In August 1963,he testifiedon behalfof "99 percentof Detroit white residents" to theUnited StatesSenate Committee on Commerce(invited by Dixiecrat senator Strom Thur- mond)against Kennedy administration civil rights legislation. Poindexter warned that "whenintegration strikes a previouslyall-white neighborhood . . . therewill be an immediaterise in crimeand violence. .. of vice,of prostitution, of gamblingand dope." Witha "generallowering of the moral standards," racially mixed neighborhoods "willsuccumb to blightand decay,and the residentswill sufferthe loss of theirhomes and savings."48 Advocatesof the Homeowners'Rights Ordinance linked class resentments with an indictmentof civil rights groups and government. Organizers of the Butzel-Guest PropertyOwners' Association railed against "the 'Civil Wrongs' that are being forced on us moreand moreevery day" and pledged to "put out of officethose who are workingjust for the minority and put in someonewho will work for all thepeople."

4' MichiganChronicle, Dec. 4, 1948;Eastside Civic Council, Meeting announcement, May 24, 1948,Restrictive CovenantsFolder, box 66, CivilRights Congress of MichiganPapers. On activitiesof neighborhoodgroups, see, forexample, "Report on RuritanPark Civic Association Meetings, September 20, 1956and November29, 1956," folderA7-13, box 43, DetroitUrban League Papers;Detroit Commission on CommunityRelations, Minutes, March17, 1958,pp. 4-6, Minutes-Jan.-March1958 Folder, box 2, partIV, DetroitCommission on Community RelationsCollection; "Racial Appeals in PrimaryElection," Aug. 18, 1958,folder 13-28, box 13, partIII, ibid. 4 DetroitNews, July 14, 1963; MayorJerome P. Cavanagh,Statement, Sept. 26, 1963,folder A18-11, box 54, DetroitUrban League Papers;Detroit Commission on CommunityRelations, Annual Report, 1963, box 2, KleinmanPapers (Archives of Labor and UrbanAffairs). 48 FordFacts,July 10, 1954;Detroit Free Press, Nov. 3, 1963,Nov. 27, 1964;U.S. Congress,Senate, Committee on Commerce,Civil Rights-Public Accommodations Hearings, 88 Cong., 1 sess., Aug. 1, 1963, part 2, esp. pp. 1085, 1088. 576 TheJournal of American History September1995

Manywhites directed a populistrage againstboth civilrights organizations and theirallegedly well-off white supporters. "The hypocriteswho screamabout the homeowners'refusal to be dictatedto bypressure groups and who advocateopen housing,"wrote one angrywoman, "are the veryones who live in ultraexclusive neighborhoods."Another chastised the hypocrisy of "Bishops, ministers, and union leaders[who] lecture about brotherhood. .. confidentthat their means of income willnever force them to liveamong their black brothers." The open housingmove- ment,in theirview, elevated minority rights over the rights of themajority. "You can't ram people down people's throats,"argued another angry white Detroiter who opposed open housing.49 Drawingfrom the rightsrhetoric of the neighborhoodmovement, the Home- owners'Rights Ordinance pledged to protectthe individual's"right to privacy," the "rightto choosehis own friendsand associates,""the rightto freedomfrom interferencewith his property by public authorities attempting to givespecial privileges to any group,"the "rightto maintainwhat in his opinion are congenial surroundingsfor himself, his family,and his tenants,"and the "right"to choose a realestate broker and tenantsand home buyers"for his ownreasons." More was at stakethan the preservation of rights,for, Poindexter contended, the ordinance wouldstop "the spread of crime, disease, and neighborhood blight" and the takeover of the cityby "personsliving on public assistance."50 Supportersof the Homeowners'Rights Ordinance quickly collected over forty- fourthousand signatures to put it on the 1964 primaryballot, more than twice thenumber required for ballot initiatives. On Detroit'snortheast side, more than two thousandvolunteers assisted the campaign.The campaignwas remarkably successful.Voter turnout, over 50 percent,was especiallyhigh for a local primary election.The ordinancepassed by a 55-to-45margin. In the city'stwo largest, predominantlywhite wards, the ordinancepassed by a 2-to-1margin; it lost by nearly4-to-1 in predominantlyAfrican American wards in theinner city.51 Poindex- tercapped his efforts by winning a seaton theCommon Council, the top vote getter in a thirty-six-candidatefield. Although he called himselfa "moderateliberal,"

49 Annual Meetingof the Butzel-GuestProperty Owners' Association, Housing-Michigan, Detroit, 1956- 1964Folder, box A160, groupIII, NationalAssociation for the Advancementof ColoredPeople Papers;Glenna Stalcupto DetroitNews, Jan. 11, 1965. On class resentmentin othercities, see Ronald P. Formisano,Boston againstBusing: Race, Class,and Ethnicityin the 1960sand 1970s (Chapel Hill, 1991); and JamesR. RalphJr., NorthernProtest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago,and the CivilRights Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 114-30. Anonymousletter, n.d., Civil RightsActivity Folder, box 9, part I, MetropolitanDetroit Council of ChurchesCollection; Albert Nahat to DetroitNews, May 28, 1964. 50 "Exhibitof Petition, Ordinance, and BallotProposed By Greater Detroit Homeowner's Council," Housing- Homeowners'Ordinance -Friendly StatementsFolder, box 10, MetropolitanDetroit Council of Churches Collec- tion;Detroit News, July 1, July 14, 1963;"Home OwnersOrdinance," transcript of WBTM discussionwith Thomas Poindexterand LeonardGordon, [c. summer1964], NAACP v. Detroit-BackgroundMaterial Folder, box 59, groupIII (Legal DepartmentCases), NationalAssociation for the Advancementof ColoredPeople Papers. 51 MichiganChronicle, Sept. 12, 1964;East Side Shopper,Sept. 12, 1964; DetroitDaily Press, Sept. 3, 1964. "PrimaryElection Results, City of Detroit,"Sept. 1, 1964,NAACP P. Detroit- BackgroundMaterial Folder, box 59, groupIII (Legal DepartmentCases), NationalAssociation for the Advancementof ColoredPeople Papers. Similarordinances passed in otherparts of the country. Race,Rights, and the Reaction against Liberalism 577

Poindexterbuilt a baseof support among working-class Democrats and middle-class Republicansalike.52 The Homeowners'Rights Ordinance was declared unconstitutional by the Wayne CountyDistrict Court in 1965and neverimplemented. But the language of homeowners'rights remained potent long after the campaign. In themid-1960s, stalwart northernDemocratic voters turned out in cheeringcrowds of thousandsat rallies forGov. GeorgeC. Wallaceof Alabama,who deridedcivil rights, open housing, welfarespending, urban crime, and big government. A UAWlocal in Flint, Michigan, endorsedWallace, and Fordworkers at the company'sflagship River Rouge plant supportedWallace in a strawpoll. The politicianwhose most famous declaration was"Segregation now, segregation forever" found a receptiveaudience among sup- posedlyliberal northern urban voters. He wonthe 1972Michigan Democratic primary,sweeping every predominantly white ward in Detroit.Wallace found some of hismost fervent support on Detroit'snorthwest and northeastsides, the remaining bastionsof homeowners'association activity in a citythat was 45 percentAfrican American.Following the lead of Wallace,Richard M. Nixon and Spiro Agnew repudiatedtheir party's moderate position on civilrights and wooed disaffected urbanand southernwhite Democrats. They swept predominantly white precincts in Detroitin 1968 and 1972.53 The timingof the New Rightinsurgency gives credence to the thesisof many recentcommentators that the Democraticparty made a grievouspolitical error in the 1960sby ignoring the needs of white working-class and middle-classvoters, in favorof the demands of the civil rights movement, Black militants, the countercul- ture,and the"undeserving" poor. "The closeidentification of theDemocratic party withthe cause of racialjustice," argues Allen J. Matusow,"did it specialinjury." JonathanRieder contends that the 1960srebellion of the "silentmajority" was in parta responseto "certainstructural limitations of liberal reform," especially "black demands"that "ran up againstthe limitsof liberalism."Wallace's meteoric rise seemsto sustainthe argumentof ThomasByrne Edsall and MaryD. Edsall that the Alabama independent"captured the centralpolitical dilemma of racialliber- alismand the Democraticparty: the inabilityof Democratsto providea political homefor those whites who feltthey were paying - unwillingly- the largest'costs' in the struggleto achievean integratedsociety."54

52 DetroitDaily Press,Sept. 3, 1964. Some of ThomasPoindexter's votes undoubtedly went to an unknown candidate,Charley Poindexter, who did not campaignand pickedup 8,082 votesin the primaryelection. See also ibid., Nov. 11, 1964. 13 New YorkTimes, Oct. 6, 1968,p. 75; ibid., May18, 1972,p. 36; ElectionReturns, Wayne County, Michigan, PrimaryElection 1972, microfilm (Office of the WayneCounty Clerk, City-County Building, Detroit, Mich.). 14 AllenJ. Matusow,The Unravelingof America:A Historyof Liberalismin the 1960s (New York,1984), 438; JonathanRieder, "The Rise of the 'SilentMajority,"' in Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order,ed. Fraser and Gerstle,254; ThomasByrne Edsall and MaryD. Edsall, Chain Reaction:The Impactof Race, Rights,and Taxeson AmericanPolitics (New York,1991), 77. Similarviews pervade the scholarlyand popularliterature on the 1960s.See also FrederickF. Siegel, The TroubledJourney:From Pearl Harbor to RonaldReagan (New York, 1983),esp. 152-215;Jim Sleeper, The Closestof Strangers:Liberalism and thePolitics of Race in New YorkCity (New York,1990); Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italiansof Brooklyn against Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1985); and EdwardG. Carminesand James A. Stimson,Issue Evolution:Race and the Transformationof AmericanPolitics (Princeton, 1989). Importantcritical reviews of this literatureinclude James R. Grossman, 578 TheJournal of American History September1995

The Edsalls,Rieder, and Matusow,although they correctly emphasize the importanceof white discontent as a nationalpolitical force, err in theiroveremphasis on the role of the Great Societyand the sixtiesrebellions in the riseof the "silent majority." To viewthe defection of whites from Democratic ranks simply as a reaction to the War on Povertyand the civilrights and Black Powermovements ignores racialcleavages that shaped the local politicsof the Northwell beforethe tumult of the 1960s.Urban antiliberalism had deep rootsin a simmeringpolitics of race and neighborhooddefensiveness that divided northern cities well beforeWallace beganhis first speaking tours in thesnowbelt, well before Lyndon B. Johnsonsigned theCivil Rights Act of 1964,well before the long, hot summers of Watts, Harlem, Chicago,Newark, and Detroit,and well before affirmative action and busingbegan to dominatethe civilrights agenda. The viewof postwarurban politics from Detroit (and fromother cities) shows theimportance of the politics of race and neighborhoodin constrainingliberal social reform.From the 1940sthrough the 1960s,Detroit whites fashioned a language of discontentdirected toward public officials,Blacks, and liberalreformers who supportedpublic housing and openhousing. The rhetoricof George Wallace, Richard M. Nixon,Spiro Agnew, and RonaldReagan was familiar to the whiteswho sup- portedcandidates such as EdwardJeffries, Albert Cobo, and ThomasPoindexter." The "silentmajority" did not emergede novofrom the alleged failures of liberalism in the 1960s; it was not the unique productof the whiterejection of the GreatSociety. Instead it was the culmination of more than two decades of simmering whitediscontent and extensiveantiliberal political organization. The problemof whitebacklash in the urbanNorth is longer-livedand farmore intractable than recentanalyses would suggest. Until we havea greaterunderstanding of the deeply entrenchedpolitics of race in the urbanNorth, our understandingof politicsin thecontemporary United States will be truncated,and our solutions to theproblems of the nation'sdivided metropolises inadequate.

"TraditionalPolitics or the Politics of Tradition?," Reviews in AmericanHistory, 21 (Sept. 1993), 533-38; Adolph Reed andJulian Bond, "Equality:Why We Can't Wait,"Nation, Dec. 9, 1991,pp. 723-37; and AdolphReed, "Review:Race and theDisruption of theNew Deal Coalition,"Urban Affairs Quarterly, 27 (Dec. 1991),326-33. "5 See ArnoldR. Hirsch,"Chicago: The Cook CountyDemocratic Organization and the Dilemma of Race, 1931-1987,"in SnowbeltCities: Metropolitan Politics in theNortheast and Midwestsince World War II, ed. RichardM. Bernard(Bloomington, 1988), 63-90; RichardM. Bernard,"Milwaukee: The Death and Lifeof a MidwesternMetropolis," ibid., esp. 173-75.Especially perceptive on therhetoric of GeorgeWallace, Richard M. Nixon,Spiro Agnew, and RonaldReagan is MichaelKazin, ThePopulist Persuasion: An AmericanHistory (New York,1995), 221-66.