Why were there race riots in the US in 1943?
Detroit Race Riots 1943 As the nation’s most important production center during the Second World War, the city of Detroit was popularly known as the “arsenal of democracy.” The city’s overwhelmingly industrial landscape had been rapidly expanding since the manufacturing boom of the post-Civil War era. Yet its industrial prosperity masked underlying and deeply-rooted racial animosities. As the city’s many production plants mobilized for the war effort, employers turned to a ready pool of African American labor from the South. Yet Detroit was in no way equipped to accommodate these new laborers. The shift in the city’s demographics caused volatile racial tensions which would erupt into one of the bloodiest riots in the nation’s history. By the 1940s Detroit already had a long history of racial conflict. Race riots had occurred in 1863 and as recently as 1941. By the 1920s the city had become a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization committed to white supremacy. The industrial pl
