Detroit’s historical background as it intertwines with race relations is important in the analysis of the current climate. Detroit was once regarded as a land of milk and honey, where making a decent wage was attainable for anybody. The auto industry was the true crown jewel of the city; in 1903, Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company, which became known across the country for its unbelievable five-dollar a day wage. When the company was founded, Detroit was only the thirteenth largest city in the United States; by 1950, it became the fifth largest city. Migrants, especially African-Americans from the South, came to Detroit in vast numbers with the hopes of working for Ford, who was one of the largest private employers of blacks in the country. At its height, the River Rouge Ford plant employed over 90,000 workers. By the mid-twentieth century, one out of every six working people in the United States was employed by the automobile industry in one way or another. But as the city was growing, the auto industry shifted in structure — production became decentralized and automated, where jobs that used to be done by people in the city center were now being done by machinery in the suburbs. Similarly, much of Detroit’s white population was moving to the suburbs at this point, some of which followed the jobs to the suburbs and others who wanted to escape high racial tensions in the city. The overall population decreased from over 2 million at its height to just 886,000 today. The mid-twentieth century saw a huge increase in Detroit’s African-American population, at the same time that the blue-collar jobs were disappearing. The city saw a huge decline in white residents, who today only make up about 10% of Detroiters. Today, Detroit has the greatest residential segregation of African-Americans in the United States. (Sugrue, 2014).

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Sources:

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Criss-Crossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company. (1927). Retrieved December 11, 2017, from http://www.bing.com/cr?IG=6451F3D12957468D81F3966936CBECE3&CID=0DE4BEA2F29863B01994B5F7F39E626A&rd=1&h=kuPfzrl7btekdAEnFf9tvPmLzsM7z2FXKnAgxZ28GB4&v=1&r=http%3a%2f%2fwww.metmuseum.org%2fart%2fcollection%2fsearch%2f265132&p=DevEx,5065.1

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Sugrue, T. J. (2014, September 16). Motor City: The Story of Detroit. Retrieved December 11, 2017, from http://gdelaurier.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/85732135/Motor%20City_%20The%20Story%20of...pdf

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