The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit

Chapter 4 addresses racial discrimination in Detroit’s labor market. Although Black workers fared relatively well during the war, white workers consistently received preferential treatment on the job. Discriminatory hiring and promotion practices shaped the structure of the labor market. White workers performed skilled and semiskilled work, while Black workers toiled in subordinate unskilled jobs. Employers excluded entire groups of workers they deemed unsuitable for certain types of work, generally basing their decisions on racial stereotypes relating to reliability and productivity. Concern about the impact of racial integration also excluded Black workers from upper-level positions. Uncooperative managers and union leaders often stymied antidiscrimination government efforts. Although workplace discrimination was not universal or identical across industries, Black workers generally faced discrimination in the workplace, trapping them in the most insecure, lowest-paid jobs.

Screening by Race: Employment Agencies and Ads

Before Michigan passed the 1955 Fair Employment Practices Act, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, and creed, employers typically included racial preferences in their job listings. Some employers even recruited white people from outside the state instead of hiring local Black workers. Employment agencies also screened job applicants by race. Agencies open to Black workers largely catered to people seeking domestic or service help.

The Automobile Industry

Automakers were Detroit’s biggest employers in the mid-20th century, accounting for a quarter of the city’s jobs (95). Jobs in the auto industry were stable, paid relatively well, and had attractive benefits, largely because of the UAW. Black people made up just 4% of auto workers at the outset of the war. This figure rose to 15% by 1945, but only to 16% by 1960 (95). Plant-level employment statistics underscore the unevenness of job opportunities for Black auto workers. Sugrue provides tables demonstrating that some companies hired many Black workers while others hired very few. Individual managers had the greatest impact on hiring practices, not plant location or education level. The biases of a single manager could bar all Black people from a company. Some plant managers worried about the disruptiveness of hiring Black people. Others complained that Black workers lacked loyalty, pointing to high turnover rates during the war. Companies that hired Black people tended to place them in unskilled or semiskilled positions, often in the most dangerous and dirtiest sections of the plant. Employers took advantage of Black workers, knowing they would accept jobs white people were likely to reject. At the Ford Wayne plant, for instance, Black workers were confined to difficult jobs on the assembly line and in the body shop, while white workers got “nice, easy, soft jobs” (100) in the cushion and trim departments. Black people were overrepresented in unstable positions that made them more susceptible to layoffs than white people, even when they had seniority. Moreover, despite the auto industry's strong tradition of apprenticeship programs, Black workers were almost entirely excluded from skilled trades, such as tool and die making.

Hiring Practices in Other Detroit Industries

Statistics reveal that the steel industry presented the best job opportunities for Black Detroiters outside the auto industry. In 1940, only 4.2% of Michigan’s steel workers were Black. By 1950, the figure rose to 17.9% (105). However, the percentage stagnated during the following decade. Like the auto industry, steel plants confined Black employees to low-paying, unskilled work. Statistics show that virtually no Black people found work as skilled craftspeople, the best-paying jobs in steel plants (104). Black employees were a small part of the workforce and were largely confined to dangerous furnace work or unskilled maintenance jobs. Like the UAW, the United Steelworkers of America (USW) supported civil-rights legislation, but the union was uneven in supporting racial equality in Detroit’s steel plants. Only two plants had a substantial Black workforce—Great Lakes Steel and Detroit Steel. However, Black employees tended not to be salaried, working for less secure hourly wages.

Hiring practices, combined with racism, shut Black people out of secondary sector industries and nonautomotive local industries, such as brewing. Many small, family-owned companies either discriminated openly against Black people or relied on referrals from current (i.e., white) employees, which promoted segregation. Black workers also faced obstacles in large companies, some of which had long histories of racial discrimination.

Municipal Employment

Detroit’s public sector was a promising employment arena for Black people after the war. In 1935, only 202 of the city’s 23,684 municipal employees were Black. By 1946, Black people comprised 36% of the workforce (110). Sugrue attributes this growth to the efforts of civil-rights activists, namely the Civil Rights Committee, which pressured the civic government to hire Black people. Mayor Edward Jeffries (elected in 1939) actively diversified the municipal workforce during the first three years of his tenure, in part to cement the loyalty of the city’s rapidly expanding Black population. His administration offered many opportunities for Black people beyond unskilled, part-time work. For example, Black people worked as train conductors, motormen, and clerks in the offices of Public Health, Housing, and Welfare. Moreover, by the late 1960s, almost half of the city’s public school teachers were Black. Policing, by contrast, remained predominantly white.

Retail Sales

High-visibility sales jobs offered few opportunities for Black workers in postwar Detroit. Statistics reveal that Black people were grossly underrepresented in sales jobs compared to white people. This is important because the retail sector accounted for one-seventh of the city’s male workers and over one-fifth of all female workers between 1950 and 1960 (112). Companies feared that hiring Black retail workers would alienate white customers. Store owners were also reluctant to break gender conventions by hiring Black men to work in stores that catered to white women. Fear of being robbed by Black employees also influenced hiring practices. Most Black people in retail worked behind the scenes in storerooms or in positions traditionally reserved for people of color (e.g., shoe shining). Grocery stores followed similar patterns.

Building Trades

Racial discrimination was most entrenched in Detroit’s building sector. The demand for construction workers skyrocketed in postwar Detroit, yet Black people were largely shut out of the industry, especially the skilled crafts, such as carpentry, roofing, and plumbing. Aside from the Laborers Union, Black people were also excluded from construction unions. Those who found work in construction did unskilled, ununionized work, making them vulnerable to layoffs. The barriers to union jobs began at basic levels; mere apprenticeship required a high-school diploma and thus excluded most Black migrants. Apprenticeship became more flexible after the war, but the rigorous application, interview, and testing process deterred many Black workers. Ten years after the state passed the Fair Employment Practices Act in 1955, Black people remained shut out of high-paying, skilled union jobs in construction (117).

Sugrue cites discrimination and the culture of construction to explain the exclusion of Black workers from the sector. Brotherhood and masculine identity were important facets of construction work. Unions nurtured this fraternal atmosphere. Moreover, contractors relied more heavily on personal references than other occupations, eschewing job ads and employment agencies in favor of referrals. Word of mouth fostered nepotism and ensured that the workforce remained predominantly white.

The Casual Labor Market

The casual labor market reinforced broader patterns of employment discrimination and trapped Black workers in a cycle of poverty. High unemployment among Black men forced them into exploitative, short-term jobs. For example, Black men worked as subcontractors for a fraction of the wages full-time white contractors received. Black subcontractors did not threaten the monopoly white men had over high wages. Further, they placed white contractors in supervisory roles, allowing them to be “temporary bosses.” Detroit’s Black day laborers gathered at an informal labor market on the outskirts of the city colloquially known as the “slave market,” where they waited for white contractors to hire them. These workers lacked job security and did the most arduous work on construction sites.

Casual Labor and the Construction of an “Underclass’

Detroit’s highly visible “slave market” reinforced racial discrimination and contributed to the construction of a racialized “underclass.” The market helped codify the image of the Black man loitering on a street corner, a potent symbol of poverty. Black men became associated with “self-defeat, personal failure, and hopelessness” (121). Street-corner culture was also associated with gangs and urban crime. These stereotypes about undependability and criminality then became rationalizations for discriminatory hiring practices. They also fueled beliefs about Black indolence, casting non-disabled but unemployed Black men as undeserving of public assistance and a threat to law and order.

Although this is outside the scope of Sugrue’s book, the artificial construction of a racialized underclass is a major theme in scholarship on mass incarceration and the War on Drugs. Although the discriminatory hiring and housing practices that led to Detroit’s decline are now illegal, many scholars argue that the War on Drugs has retrenched this racialized underclass under the guise of facially race-neutral laws impacting the formerly incarcerated. In her book The New Jim Crow, law professor Michelle Alexander writes, “Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination […]—are suddenly legal.” (Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Era of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press. 2010).

The Continuing Significance of Discrimination

Black Detroiters faced employment discrimination in most industries throughout the mid-20th century. Although union activity and fair employment laws undermined workplace discrimination, Black people remained stuck in “the meanest and dirtiest jobs” (122). Discrimination in Detroit’s labor market had many causes, including personal bias. Internal labor-market decisions, fear of alienating white customers, and the competitive advantage of white workers also hindered Black advancement. Patterns of discrimination changed depending on the supply of and demand for labor, in relation to pressures from unions, and in response to contract provisions. Ultimately, Black workers did not have unlimited access to Detroit’s labor market. Opportunities for Black workers expanded in certain sectors over time, but these gains became scarcer in the postwar decades.