Detroit Race Riot (1943) - Riots

Riots

The altercations between black and white youth started on June 20, 1943, on a warm Saturday evening on Belle Isle. A fist fight broke out when a white sailor's girlfriend was insulted by a black man. The brawl eventually grew into a confrontation between groups of blacks and whites and then spread into the city. Rumors had started that a white man had thrown a black woman and her baby off the Belle Isle Bridge. Another rumor was that a white woman was raped and killed by a black man on that same bridge. The worst had begun. Both blacks and whites began battling each other in the streets of Detroit. Stores were looted and buildings were burned in the riot, most of which were in a black neighborhood roughly two miles in and around Paradise Valley, one of the oldest and poorest neighborhoods in Detroit. The clashes soon escalated to the point where black and white mobs were “assaulting one another, beating innocent motorists, pedestrians and streetcar passengers, burning cars, destroying storefronts and looting businesses." Both sides were said to have encouraged others to join in the riots with false claims that one of "their own" was attacked unjustly. More than 1,800 were arrested for looting and other incidents, the vast majority being black. Thirteen murders remain unsolved.