RACE, PUBLIC TRANSIT, AND AUTOMOBILITY IN WORLD WAR II DETROIT BY SARAH K. FROHARDT‐LANE DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign, 2011 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor David R. Roediger, Co‐Chair Associate Professor Mark H. Leff, Co‐Chair Professor James R. Barrett Professor Emeritus Donald Edward Crummey Abstract This dissertation examines the decline of public transportation and rise of automobile use in the United States from the perspectives of social and environmental history. Through a case study of Detroit, the dissertation argues that World War II reinforced a culture of driving and set the stage for mass abandonment of public transportation in the post‐war era. Even as wartime resource shortages exposed the vulnerabilities of car‐centered societies, riders’ experiences on public transit and whites’ increasingly strong associations of streetcars and buses with black bodies worked against efforts to create long‐term alternatives to private car use. Understanding the significance of World War II in shaping Americans’ mobility requires exploration of wartime transformations in everyday travel, as well as how government agencies and private corporations depicted these changes. The first part of this dissertation explores the effects of wartime resource shortages on Detroit’s public transit system. As buses and streetcars became extremely overcrowded, and service unreliable, racial tensions on board mounted. Public transit vehicles became common sites of racial conflicts. The second part of the dissertation examines automobility in the war and immediate postwar era. Government propaganda and private advertisements portrayed driving as fundamental to the American way of life and upheld the white male driver as a symbol of freedom for which the United States was fighting. At the same time, federal programs to limit rubber and gasoline use promoted driving as patriotic and essential to the war effort. ii Acknowledgements It was my great fortune to have David Roediger, Mark Leff, James Barrett, and Donald Crummey serve on my dissertation committee. I am deeply indebted to my wonderful advisors, David Roediger and Mark Leff, and I wish to thank them for their engagement with my work, their skill as mentors, and their inspiration as scholars. I continue to be impressed by their abilities to find the parts worth saving in extremely rough drafts, to offer critical suggestions, to challenge me in ways that make me more excited to dig deeper, and to do so always with encouragement and never with exasperation. I owe much thanks to James Barrett for exceptionally helpful and thorough feedback on numerous drafts and for raising key questions throughout my research and writing. Since my first semester of graduate school he has been enormously helpful. Thank you to Donald Crummey for engagement with my research and teaching, and enjoyable discussions over tea. His environmental history courses inspired my own. In Detroit, archivists and librarians at the Reuther Library and Burton Historical Collection provided much assistance in locating relevant files. The Bentley Historical Library generously provided funds to conduct research on this project. The Human Dimensions of Environmental Systems program at Illinois also provided research support, and a community of environmental scholars with whom to discuss my work. I wish to thank the Department of History at the University of Illinois and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH) for providing me with fellowships to conduct my research and write this dissertation. I am grateful for the helpful suggestions, encouragement, and critiques I received in IPRH seminars from iii a range of scholars across the humanities—faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students. Staff at the superb University of Illinois Library also aided my research in many ways. The Working‐Class History Reading Group at Illinois was an aspect of graduate school that I eagerly anticipated before moving to Urbana, and I was not disappointed. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to read others’ works in progress and to share my own; I received a nearly overwhelming amount of useful feedback when I presented a chapter to the group. As impressive as their comments and questions was the friendly and engaging space that colleagues created in our monthly meetings. I thank James Barrett in particular for creating this supportive intellectual space. Thanks also to members of the Newberry Library’s Urban History Dissertation Group who offered helpful suggestions on a very early chapter draft. Friends near and far, most of whom I will not name here, have helped in numerous ways, both by asking about my work and providing perspective. Thank you to my colleagues and friends at the University of Illinois for their engagement with my work. I am especially grateful to fellow writing group members who offered much help with very rough drafts, as well as advice and support in the writing process: Anna Kurhajec, Kwame Holmes, Ian Hartman, Brandon Mills, and Janine Giordano Drake. Many of them engaged with my work in this setting and in the Working‐Class History Reading Group, and I appreciate their sustained interest and ideas. Andy Bruno has provided helpful feedback and guidance on all stages of this project. He read more drafts than I can count, usually on a moment’s notice, and always had great ideas that helped me tremendously. It is a tribute to his character iv that I cannot ever remember him being too busy to talk through my latest partially‐ formed ideas, even though he had his own pressing work. It is hard to imagine having attempted to write a dissertation without his encouragement and feedback at every step of the way. Knowing that Andy was usually working furiously not many feet away was added motivation to keep writing! Thank you to my wonderful family who have supported and encouraged me in countless ways, in addition to engaging my intellectual endeavors. No brief acknowledgement here could begin to capture how much they mean to me and how much I have benefited from such terrific people in my life. To my parents, Dan and Kit Frohardt‐Lane, I am especially grateful, including for all of the ways they made my research trips more enjoyable, from asking about my archival discoveries to providing great meals and reasons to take a break. They are such inspirations, and as longtime bus riders and supporters of public transit in metro Detroit they also directly shaped my interest in this project. Thank you to my brother, David Frohardt‐Lane, whose support, encouragement, and sense of humor have been invaluable throughout this process, and to whom I will always look up with much admiration. To Andy, I owe more than I can ever express on both a personal and an academic level. I am still spinning with awe, and I look to the future with such excitement. Thank you especially for your unfailing belief in me. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: CONTACT AND CONFLICT ON PUBLIC TRANSIT ................................................................................................................................................ 19 CHAPTER 3: PUBLIC TRANSIT AS BLACK SPACE: THE 1943 RIOT AND CALLS FOR SEGREGATION........................................................................................................................... 67 CHAPTER 4: A CULTURE OF DRIVING: RUBBER CONSERVATION, GASOLINE RATIONING, AND PROPAGANDA IN WORLD WAR II..................................................... 115 CHAPTER 5: DRIVING AS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT: THE OIL WORKERS INTERNATIONAL UNION STRIKE AND ‘ESSENTIAL’ DRIVING.................................. 151 EPILOGUE........................................................................................................................................... 185 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................................ 188 vi Chapter 1: Introduction On July 6, 1943, Mrs. B. Hyde, a 59‐year‐old white resident of Detroit, Michigan, wrote to Mayor Edward J. Jeffries, Jr. to protest conditions on the city’s public transit vehicles. Penning her letter during World War II, in the immediate aftermath of a race riot in which 34 people had died, Hyde was disturbed by recent changes that she had noticed taking place in Detroit. “One gets in a [street]car‐ a colored man or colored woman in every seat,” Hyde recounted to the Mayor. “We[‘d] rather stand then sit with them, not only we folk but plenty more. I have lived in Detroit 38 years in my home 34 and the last few years we have seen this sort of thing grown worse and worse,” she continued. “Folk that have their own car don’t have to contend with this sort of thing.”1 As Hyde’s letter implied, the experience of riding Detroit’s streetcars and buses had changed dramatically by the middle of World War II. A shortage of resources led the U.S. government to restrict driving during the war, and this in turn created a surge in public transit ridership. At the same time, Detroit and other cities became centers for war production, attracting black and white migrants from across the midwestern and southern U.S. As a result, public vehicles became more crowded and