Existing social tensions and housing shortages were exacerbated by racist feelings about the arrival of nearly 400,000 migrants, both African-American and White Southerners, from the Southeastern United States between 1941 and 1943.

The rioting in Detroit began among youths at Belle Isle Park on June 20, 1943; the unrest spread to other areas of the city and was exacerbated by false rumors of racial attacks in both the black and white communities.

[3] In this era of continuing high immigration from southern and eastern Europe, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the 1920s established a substantial presence in Detroit during its early 20th-century revival.

Soon after the U.S. entry into World War II, the automotive industry was converted to military production; high wages were offered, attracting large numbers of workers and their families from outside of Michigan.

[1] These more recent African American arrivals were driven by de facto segregation and redlining to the already established Black community in the poor and overcrowded east side of the city.

[citation needed] Ford made sure to develop close ties with African Americans, being in contact with leading clergy at major black churches and using ministers as a screening process to obtain recommendations for the best potential workers.

At first, the president was hesitant to agree because of his political alignments but changed his mind when Randolph threatened a large march on the nation's capital.

[9] After Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 which prohibited racial discrimination within the defense industry, he was then preoccupied with providing adequate housing for the new additions to the workforce.

Properties in the city had high values for what residents were getting: single-family apartments crowded with multiple families, outstanding maintenance and, in many cases, no indoor plumbing.

[10] The influx of African-Americans to Detroit exacerbated racial tensions already present in the city and culminated at the introduction of the Sojourner Truth Housing Project.

These groups protested by meeting with city officials, sending thousands of angry letters to the government and lobbying with their congressmen against the project, among other things.

[11] In response to the uproar in the local community, the federal government changed its decision on the racial occupancy of the housing project multiple times.

In January 1941, the DHC and federal officials declared that Sojourner Truth would have white occupants, but quickly decided instead that it would be occupied by black war workers just two weeks later.

Ultimately, it was decided that the Sojourner Truth project would house black residents as originally promised, much to the frustration of the local white community.

[12] As the first African-Americans workers and their families attempted to move into their new homes in February 1942, large crowds of both black supporters and white opponents surrounded the area.

[11] In June 1943, Packard Motor Car Company finally promoted three blacks to work next to whites in the assembly lines, in keeping with the anti-segregation policy required for the defense industry.

In this period, racial riots also broke out in Los Angeles, Mobile, Alabama and Beaumont, Texas, mostly over similar job issues at defense shipyard facilities.

The brawl eventually grew into a confrontation between groups of whites and blacks on the long Belle Isle Bridge, crowded with more than 100,000 day trippers returning to the city from the park.

The riot escalated in the city after a false rumor spread that a mob of whites had thrown a black mother and her baby into the Detroit River.

Angry mobs of whites spilled onto Woodward Avenue near the Roxy Theater around 4 a.m. on June 21, in the actual area of Brush Park beating blacks as they were getting off street cars on their way to work.

The clashes escalated to the point where mobs of whites and blacks were "assaulting one another, beating innocent motorists, pedestrians and streetcar passengers, burning cars, destroying storefronts and looting businesses.

White city leaders, including the mayor, blamed young black hoodlums and persisted in framing the events as being caused by outsiders, people who were unemployed and marginal.

This view was repeated in a separate study by Elmer R. Akers and Vernon Fox, sociologist and psychologist, respectively, at the State Prison of Southern Michigan.

Racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces was ongoing, and the response to the riots hurt morale in African-American units—most significantly the 1511th Quartermaster Truck regiment, whose Black enlisted men fought against white officers and military police on June 24 while stationed in England, in the Battle of Bamber Bridge, after the officers and MPs attempted to enforce Jim Crow laws on a pub in the village where locals welcomed the Black GIs.

[24][25] Walter White, head of the NAACP, noted that there was no rioting at the Packard and Hudson plants, where leaders of the UAW and CIO had been incorporating blacks as part of the rank and file.

"This weak-kneed policy of the police commissioner coupled with the anti-Negro attitude of many members of the force helped to make a riot inevitable.

It notes that the whites who were arrested were younger, generally unemployed, and had traveled long distances from their homes to the black neighborhood to attack people there.

[1] Later in the second stage, whites continued to act in groups and were prepared for action, carrying weapons and traveling miles to attack the black ghetto along its western side at Woodward Avenue.

[1] Marshall Rosenberg stated that one of the incidents that motivated him in developing nonviolent communication were the 1943 Detroit riots, which he experienced in his early life at 9 years old.

Elaine Latzman Moon gives a brief overview about the riot in her book Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes : An Oral History of Detroit's African American Community, 1918-1967.