More than a thousand black supporters and white opponents crowded streets culminating in violent displays later characterized as the Sojourner Truth riot.

In 1941, during World War II, the DHC and USHA announced the Sojourner Truth project located in northeast Detroit at the heart of Seven Mile-Fenelon neighborhood.

The Seven Mile-Fenelon Improvement Association, formed by white residents between June 1941 and February 1942, viciously opposed the project's fruition.

[1] The continual pressure from opposing sides influenced the federal government to switch positions on the racial profile of those occupying the project three times.

However, this resulted in opposing picketing and protesting by white residents of Seven Mile-Fenelon who demanded "Rights to Protect, Restrict and Improve [their] Neighborhood."

White segregationists utilized this violent eruption as an established precedent to detrimentally affect Detroit's public housing for decades.

Influenced by the riot, DHC established a viciously oppressive mandate for racial segregation in all public housing projects.

Utilizing the language of the National Associate of Real Estate Boards, city officials vowed that their projects would "not change the racial pattern of a neighborhood".

[9] White community groups maliciously utilized threats of a repetition of Sojourner Truth riots as ammunition to shoot down political support of public housing.