History of Detroit

Detroit, like many places in the United States had a long history of racial conflict and discrimination. "By the 1920s the city had become a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization committed to white supremacy." Strained racial relations were evident at the 1925 trial of Dr. Ossian Sweet, an African American Detroit physician, his wife, and other family members who were acquitted of murder. A man died when shots were fired from Dr. Sweet's house into a threatening white mob who gathered to try to force him and his family out of a predominantly white neighborhood.

The 1940s saw the construction of the world's "first urban depressed freeway" ever built, the Davison, and the wartime retooling of the American automobile industry in support of the Allied powers during World War II which led to Detroit's key role as an element of the American Arsenal of Democracy. There have been six ships of the United States Navy named after the city, including USS Detroit (LCS-7).

Industry spurred growth during the first half of the 20th century as the city drew tens of thousands of new residents, particularly workers from the Southern United States, to become the United States' fourth largest.

Social tensions rose with the rapid pace of growth and racism continued to be a major problem in the United States. On January 20, 1942, with a cross burning nearby, 1,200 whites tried to prevent black families from moving into a new housing development in an all-white area of the city. Later in June 1943, Packard Motor Car Company promoted three blacks to work next to whites in their assembly lines. In response, 25,000 whites walked