Special Focus: Sojourner Truth Housing Project
In 1941 the federal government and the Detroit Housing Commission approved construction of the 200-unit Sojourner Truth Housing Project to house Black defense workers during World War II. White residents living near the project’s location at Nevada and Fenelon Streets protested to change the occupancy to white only, and federal authorities promised to build housing for Black workers elsewhere. After failing to secure an alternative site, these Black workers fought for the right to move into Sojourner Truth, but not without incident. Continued demonstrations, violent clashes, and hundreds of arrests prompted Mayor Edward Jeffries to mobilize the Michigan National Guard to move the first Black families into the Sojourner Truth Housing Project.
Detroit Police attempt to disperse a crowd of white men, some armed with bats, from the area surrounding the Sojourner Truth Housing Project. The men wanted to keep their neighborhood segregated from the Black families moving into an adjacent war housing project.
A letter from Milton Kemnitz, Executive Secretary of the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties to Jack Raskin, Executive Secretary of the Civil Rights Federation, regarding the national significance of developments at the Sojourner Truth Housing Project. February 17, 1942.
A flyer announces a March 13, 1942 rally to support integration at the Sojourner Truth Housing Project as a way to combat Hitler and win World War II. 1942.
Why did rally organizers believe that integrated housing in Detroit would help the United States win World War II?
A flyer created by white residents asks for assistance from people outside their neighborhood at Nevada and Fenelon to keep Black residents from moving into the Sojourner Truth Housing Project in Detroit, Michigan, 1942.
Who might have made this flyer, and why was the person afraid?
A bloodied Black man is forcibly led away from home by uniformed police officers with nightsticks during a 1942 altercation at the Sojourner Truth Housing Project in Detroit, Michigan.
A police officer drags a Black man and woman away during an altercation following the attempted integration of the Sojourner Truth Housing Project in Detroit, Michigan in 1942.