Two Sides of a Street

A long queue of determined-looking women clumped up & down before a Detroit Federal housing project. Their placard read: "We want White Neighbors." Some 500 of their men gathered purposefully on the east side of Ryan Rd., the border line between white & black neighborhoods.

The housing project had been christened Sojourner Truth Homes.* Built in the white section, the project was intended for Negroes. Protests grew so violent that officials changed their minds, said the 200 units would be for whites; then they changed their minds again, told Negroes to move in. Moving day came last week.

Two trucks full of furniture stopped just short of the deadline. Negroes gathered on the west side of Ryan Rd., scowling. Tempers mounted. A Negro armed with a shotgun stamped out on his front porch and exhorted his colleagues to march through. A news photographer tried to take his picture, but another Negro smacked him down in the snow. Young Negroes cracked up concrete blocks into pieces of nice throwing size. Bricks felled a cop, hit a white woman. Negroes tried to drive one truck through the line. The white men swarmed forward. Mounted cops had to use tear gas. A score were carried to the hospital, more than 100 were hustled off to jail.

City officials in anxious conference with a Negro minister finally decided to call the whole thing off before Detroit had a full-dress race war. Said Police Commissioner Frank Eamans hopelessly: "There is no use moving these people in if you need an army to protect them."

Said one young Negro rioter: "The Army is about to take me to fight for democracy, but I would as leave fight for democracy right here. When you fight in the army for democracy you fight for something that is a long ways off kinda, but when we fight for democracy here we are fighting for our own selfs."

Said the rioters from the east side of Ryan Road: "Let them stay on their own side of the street."

*Sojourner Truth, Negro slave, gained her freedom, became a preacher, finally settled in Michigan, where she helped operate the "underground railway" smuggling slaves into Canada. She died in 1883, honored by her race, at the age of 93.

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