Detroit: Black City, Black Unions?
Widick, B. J.
Detroit in the 1970s is startlingly different from the factory complex associated with the auto industry, the UAW, and Walter Reuther. Auto workers no longer rush to and from huge industrial...
...Detroit may explode again...
...In February 1970 8 Detroit News, March 20, 1971...
...For both blacks and whites, this shift in power is a painful process...
...many are quietly folding, as are the night clubs...
...22 Time, April 26, 1971...
...In many Detroit plants the blacks are either a majority or about to be, and this has vast significance for the future of black unionism...
...It would probably not have mattered if they'd had the time...
...6 The city seldom has a moment of respite from racial incidents...
...He defended the decision saying that it assured a fair election...
...The execution of seven young men and women in June 1971, part of a bloody war between two black gangs seeking to monopolize the profitable heroin trade, dramatized the city's overall drug problem...
...They are still anti...
...6 Detroit News, April 11, 1971...
...McKinnon, who is white, and Sims, who is black, were pitted in the runoff after leading four candidates in a hotly contested previous contest earlier this month...
...Department of Commerce, February 1971...
...They hate the colored man's guts but can't do anything about it...
...Max Fisher, the oil millionaire, is also spending millions in new housing in the suburbs, beyond the reach of the blacks.21 Still, it is too soon to accept former Mayor Jerome P. Cavanaugh's projection of Detroit's place in the future: "Detroit's twin cities—Nagasaki and Pompey...
...The full horror was revealed in Van Gorden Sauter's and Burleigh Hines's book, Nightmare in Detroit: The events of the next hour left a stain on the Detroit police department that will not be erased for decades...
...An indication of how black leadership keeps developing through union politics and bargaining ten years ago Gilbert was going to union classes to become a better chief steward...
...Jesse Cundiff, a local union president for three terms before becoming a staff man, says: Among skilled workers and the oldtimers, the ethnic groups, nothing has changed...
...Only recently a black caucus was formed in the Michigan Democratic party—a sign of power and independence...
...Even if some token integration were to occur, what remains of the white middle class in Detroit will have another place to run to...
...Lynn Townsend, president of Chrysler...
...The blacks have too much power to accept "tokenism" a moment longer...
...According to its own report, New Detroit's efforts were "hopelessly inadequate...
...Meanwhile, another police scandal broke: Inspector Alex Wierzbicki, 3 lieutenants, and 12 policemen were indicted in April 1971 on graft charges, 7 Van Gorden Sauter and Burleigh Hines, Nightmare in Detroit (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1968...
...20 Like it or not, in Detroit color-consciousness has come to prevail over class-consciousness, and for this a major cause has been the growth of the black-power movement...
...Each year, as the composition of the plants changes, the blacks gain more and more power on the local union levels—and now have a real base in the international union...
...Detroit in 1970 was still the fifth largest city in America, though its population of 1,492,507 showed a drop of 190,000 from the 1960 figure...
...Now superintendent of the night shift...
...A black mayor in Detroit, with all his handicaps, would have an economic base impossible to achieve in Newark, where Mayor Kenneth Gibson is at the financial mercy of the state and federal governments...
...Transferred from his job over his protest, Johnson went home, got his carbine, and returned to the plant on a rampage of killing...
...In the fall of 1970 there was a shoot-out between black militants and the police, in which a patrolman was killed...
...The Detroit News building, downtown, is surrounded by a brick wall, reminiscent of a medieval fortress...
...The other cause of our difficulties might be termed a general lowering of employees' frustration tolerance...
...Pollard, Cooper, and Temple—unarmed and outnumbered—were shotgunned to death...
...Walter Reuther...
...19 Personal interview, June 16, 1971...
...For the black community, there is the legacy of the Algiers Motel killing of three young blacks...
...Large numbers find factory life so distasteful they quit after only brief exposure to it...
...and Doxiadis Associates, with Wayne State University...
...it failed to get emergency aid for the city's schools...
...13 "Progress Report of the New Detroit Commit tee" (pamphlet), April 1968...
...A society of fear and racial clashes cannot be reformed by the tepid measures so often prescribed in the past for Detroit...
...Anxieties permeate the life of Detroit...
...confirming what most blacks think about "white police...
...The problems which demand immediate solution are primarily in the area of jobs, housing, schools, and public order...
...The other obsession has to do with race relations...
...But behind them lie such fundamental causes as high unemployment among Negroes, mistreatment by some policemen, profiteering by some stores and landlords, substandard housing and the frustration of so many of the benefits of American life...
...12 Somewhat earlier, after the 1967 riot, there had been a more prestigious effort to revitalize the city through the New Detroit Committee...
...Jordon Sims, fired by Chrysler May 1, 1970, for allegedly provoking a wildcat strike, was defeated by Frank McKinnon, chief steward on the third shift, by a vote of 1,178 to 1,142...
...These people almost habitually violate our plant rules...
...While a recession wracked the city it spent $3 million, largely in gestures aiding "black capitalism...
...It was more of a general problem...
...DETROIT: BLACK CITY, BLACK UNIONS...
...Even during the day the city seldom looks busy...
...Hard drugs have found a new marketplace, the auto shop, and a new victim, the young worker...
...Auto workers no longer rush to and from huge industrial plants on the east and west sides...
...Detroit offers notable possibilities for blacks...
...The challenge is to form a coalition of equals—an integrated coalition, otherwise the current rise of separatism may turn out to be more than the detour we hope it is on the road toward an integrated society...
...13 The Committee failed to get the state legislature to pass an open-housing bill...
...22 Nor should it be assumed that the city of Detroit is similar to Newark or Chicago...
...downtown business interests—the Power Structure...
...We have on the hourly employment rolls more "problem employees...
...Detroit in the 1970s may well be for this kind of unionism what the city was for the CIO in the 1930s: a major forerunner and an example for other black unionists, still chafing under white paternalism...
...This case attracted much attention, for the black worker was a veteran, James Johnson, Jr., and his attorneys were Kenneth Cockrel of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and Justin Ravitz...
...Public sensitivity to race tension and a much publicized "high crime rate" keep buyers away...
...2) less willing to put up with dirty and uncomfortable working conditions...
...The campaign of the Detroit News against "crime waves" keeps the city in a state of fear...
...Even more important is the change in social composition...
...Grosse Pointe has two, Harpers Woods one, Hazel Park one, Birmingham five...
...Winning a local union election usually meant getting together the right coalition with each ethnic group represented...
...There was the impact of inflation on real wages, with the UAW members no longer fully covered by an "escalator" clause...
...In March 1971, for example, a meeting of parents of Osborn Heights high school, held to quiet down two days of fighting between students, turned into a hate session...
...Many setbacks lie ahead...
...The drug scene is so frightening that it is one reason many local union officials, men still in the shops, feel a need to carry guns...
...15 How this kind of young work force affects collective bargaining was summarized in a 1970 Ford Foundation report on labor: As with the young elsewhere, their attitude toward their union and the leaders is characterized by colossal irreverence...
...there weren't that many of them...
...It's the young 17 New York Times, June 21, 1971...
...Election contests are intense...
...But essentially this resistance is a rear-guard action...
...Local 961 represents 4,000 production workers at the plant, scene of a triple slaying last summer...
...It was a security-free loan, in contrast to the Teamsters' Union loan of $25 million, secured by a mortgage on UAW property and with an 8 percent interest charge...
...Long before the GM strike, both sides recognized the inevitability of a major walkout, given the discontent over shop conditions— there were over 250,000 written grievances at GM in 1969, one for every other worker...
...Another young steward ten years ago was Quintan McCrae...
...Dearborn, with over 100,000 people, lists one black family...
...Warren, Michigan, has doubled its population to 180,000 in the past decade...
...DETROIT: BLACK CITY, BLACK UNIONS...
...For while there are more than 2.5 B. J. WIDICK million black workers in the AFL-CIO, they are somewhat less than adequately represented in most AFL-CIO unions, to say nothing of the AFL-CIO top leadership...
...The extent to which these events affect in-plant attitudes, and inner-union relationships was illustrated by the election at the Eldon plant in May 1971...
...The city continues to shrink both physically and in population...
...16 Because the UAW remains far more democratic than most unions, and its leaders far more responsive to social moods and changes, the 1970 GM strike was inevitable...
...The challenge to the New Detroit Committee was outlined by Hudson, Jr.: Negroes must be encouraged to play a larger role in determining how their problems are to be solved...
...A Detroit Free Press article described the situation: A candidate supported by black militant auto workers was narrowly defeated Friday in a runoff election for president of UAW Local 961 at the troubled Chrysler Corp...
...For many, the traditional motivations of job security, money rewards, and opportunity for personal advancement are proving insufficient...
...Men like Sam Bellomo are now the exception...
...The traditional American work ethic—the concept that hard work is a virtue and a duty—will undergo additional erosion...
...Marcellius Ivory, a Detroit regional director...
...gear and axle plant...
...Forty years of strikes have failed to make Detroit workers class-conscious...
...and 11 local presidents in the Detroit area...
...Sims also said about 250 votes were invalidated and he was unable to get from election authorities an adequate explanation for the invalidation...
...But they are there, and more are coming up all the time...
...The entire economy is sagging because the whole town has a chip on its shoulder...
...There are two basic causes for this new situation...
...Here is how a knowledgeable executive described the new young workers: Employees in the 1970s are (1) less concerned about losing a job or staying with an employer...
...Perhaps the most striking feature of the GM strike was its failure either to produce class cohesiveness in the shops or to impair the mutual accommodation between union 18 Off-the-record report by a personnel director of an auto company...
...it has all of five black families...
...Henry Ford II recently announced that he had approved the construction of a $750 million housing-commercial project in allwhite Dearborn...
...Since there is little middle- or lower-income housing in downtown Detroit, and upper-income housing is at a premium, the trend toward suburban living continues unchecked...
...On three different visits and through intensive interviewing, including a return to the plant where I spent 15 years as a plant worker and UAW official, I learned that both within the plants and in the city, the big concern was not class strife but hard drugs and race...
...But Richardson said Sims was endorsed in leaflets distributed by the Eldon Revolutionary Union Movement (ELRUM), an affiliate of the militant League of Revolutionary Black Workers...
...You do your work, keep your mouth shut and get the hell out when the whistle blows...
...at best, they are 20 Detroit Free Press, May 22, 1971...
...The armed guards were hired by the incumbent president Elroy Richardson...
...Those were the days when management didn't believe a black man could fill any supervisory position...
...For one year, while Patrick Murphy acted as police commissioner, he provided the city with a breather because of his effective control of the police, but then he returned to Manhattan...
...li Detroit News, March 22, 1971...
...Meanwhile, in the same period the population in the wider metropolitan area of Detroit grew from 3.7 million to 4.2 million...
...As one observer put it, "Whites fear that blacks have too much power and can get away with anything, while blacks fear they are second-class underdogs...
...Like the blacks, they demand to be heard, to question and challenge the leadership which, not unlike institutional leadership generally, has not been prepared for this wave of disrespect and revolt...
...While some of these problem employees have come to us through our efforts to hire the so-called hard-core unemployables, most of them are simply a reflection of the labor market on which we've been drawing for our normal hiring during recent years...
...Detroit in the 1970s is startlingly different from the factory complex associated with the auto industry, the UAW, and Walter Reuther...
...white-dominated suburban ring like a noose around the city's neck...
...Edwin O. George, president of the Detroit Edison Company, declared: "Idle chatter which downgrades Detroit hits us all in the pocketbook...
...The unions and the blacks within them are a powerful socioeconomic force...
...The lawyers argued that he suffered severe mental illness resulting from his days as a sharecropper in Mississippi, and that unsafe working conditions coupled with harsh treatment by Chrysler foremen drove Johnson to a point where he could not control his impulse to kill...
...It was basically an integrative concept...
...They have learned better...
...There are over 7,000 vacant storefronts in the city...
...The plant has also been plagued by wildcat strikes, demonstrations and other violence...
...Among the black officials are Nelson "Jack" Edwards, an international vice-president...
...Nor could this be attributed to the returning Vietnam veterans, my friends insisted...
...Eldon Ave...
...Since many of these workers have to drive out into the suburbs to the new plants and return to the city at night, they have a daily reminder of the restrictions placed on them in metropolitan Detroit...
...Now he teaches at the Wayne State labor college, besides being president of this large local...
...Elroy Richardson, the incumbent president, finished third and was eliminated from the runoff...
...and company...
...Restaurants do a minimum of business at night...
...The Department of Planning and Building Studies of the Detroit Board of Education explains: The net loss is the result of demolitions for both public and private purposes...
...DETROIT: BLACK CITY, BLACK UNIONS...
...The growing black working class of Detroit had in 1971 an annual income of $7,500 per person, providing a socioeconomic base unlike any in the nation...
...In the private sector there has been clearance for gasoline stations, parking lots, and some demolitions with no other objective than reducing value for tax assessment purposes...
...14 Detroit News, November 2, 1967...
...In the plant we were told by white workers, "They have taken over...
...9 The school system, which a recent highlevel study called "a disgrace to the community," 10 is the victim of the clash of the races...
...As for the blacks, they are aggressive and taking over wherever and whenever they can—in many cases long overdue, after all they have had to suffer...
...For every new business moving into Detroit, two move out...
...The drain from Detroit is obvious...
...16 Mitchell Sviridoff, "Ford Foundation Report on Labor," an address delivered in 1970...
...Within the city limits, there are large blots of wasteland...
...What about the most popular black steward the Local ever had, a self-educated man with a white constituency...
...3) less likely to accept the unvarying pace and functions on moving lines...
...Since the 1967 riot skirmishes between black and white students, turbulent community meetings and hate gatherings occur continually...
...The city lacks a rapid-transit system to facilitate spending from suburbanite consumers...
...2 Merle Henrickson, "Population Trends Which Have Affected School Enrollment," Studies Report, Department of Planning and Building, January 14, 1971...
...What is unmistakable, affecting all aspects of city life, is the trend toward blacks coming to have a major stake in Detroit...
...How many dozens of such young leaders have been developed in the UAW no one can say...
...All the auto companies have decentralized production, partly into the vast metropolitan area surrounding the city—an area in which almost half of Michigan's 8 million people live—and partly by developing plants in other states...
...Now the major traffic flows are of white suburbanites driving into the downtown commercial center and inching their way out before darkness...
...McKinnon and Sims became runoff candidates because neither had a majority as required by union bylaws...
...There has been a net loss in total dwelling supply each year since 1960, when 553,000 units were available...
...In spring 1971, S U.S...
...144 union-conscious, and even this loyalty is being strained by the rise of black unionism...
...the editors of Detroit's newspapers...
...A major topic of conversation in the auto plants last June was the acquittal of a black worker who killed a white foreman, a black foreman, and a white skilled worker in the Chrysler Eldon Avenue plant last year—hence, as the men feel, another reason for carrying guns in the shops...
...Symbolic of the new relationship was the election of Tom Turner, a black steelworker, to the presidency of the AFL-CIO council...
...11 Policy-making in the school system became a shambles after the liberal majority of the Board of Education was recalled in the fall of 1970, victim of the cross currents between black and white groups, Catholic and upstate school interests, the argument over centralization versus decentralization, and the financial crisis...
...This has changed drastically...
...Almost half of Detroit's unionized schoolteachers are black...
...The sitdowns in the 1930s turned out to be a demand for a voice and a share in the sys zi New York Times, April 20, 1971...
...Sims, whose opponents identified him with militants, led the four candidates in the first round of balloting...
...DETROIT: BLACK CITY, BLACK UNIONS...
...14 The statement was made in 1967...
...This concentration of blacks has made the UAW a vanguard in the rise of black unionism...
...As a result, the tax base of Detroit is lower and its income level much lower than those of the suburbs (white median income in 1969 was $8,760, black median income $5,290...
...These are signs of the changes making Detroit into a black city, surrounded by a This article is adapted from a chapter in B. J. Widick's forthcoming book, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence, copyright © 1972 by B. J. Widick, and to be published by Quadrangle Books, Inc...
...Another 345,000 whites fled to the suburbs in the 1960-70 decade, causing a 29.2 percent decrease in the white population...
...The general increase in real wage levels in our economy has afforded more alternatives for satisfying economic needs...
...Only the brave intervention of a black woman leader, Nadine Brown, who arranged for a peaceful surrender, kept the city from exploding again...
...The new buildings downtown stick out like shining thumbs amid parking lots, expressways, and vacant land—less than 30 percent of downtown Detroit is used for commercial and industrial purposes...
...This trend poses an acute challenge to white politicians and white unionists...
...The riots themselves were clearly and thoroughly wrong...
...A decade ago this plant, like many others, had a mixture of workers: about 20 percent black, the rest Polish, Italian, and Southern white...
...Between the high quit rate among young workers—over 30 percent annually despite the recession—and the new industry policy of hiring blacks, there are now over 250,000 black workers in the auto plants: at GM about 25 percent, at Ford 35 percent, and at Chrysler about 25 percent...
...Many of these men constitute a new generation of ambitious unionists who have no more in common with, say, the building trades workers than early CIO militants with the fogies of AFL craft unions...
...In 1970 there were only 530,770...
...Economically, Newark is far weaker than Detroit...
...Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census of Housing (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...Drugs are not confined to any one people...
...Symptomatic of these trends is the impact on management...
...Eleven local presidents in the Detroit area now are black...
...Certainly, the police, the firemen, the building trades, and other white-dominated and white-based organizations may be expected to continue resisting black power— I use the phrase to describe a visible reality, not an ideological slogan...
...Personally involved were: James P. Roche, president of General Motors...
...The most severe strains are likely to continue in the plants, the unions, and political and social institutions where the blacks have had the biggest impact...
...Where the blacks are a majority, they take the big spots and give a white a token job...
...2 A decline in population has offset the de 1 Detroit News, February 13, 1970...
...Both the auto industry executives and the UAW leadership were too busy with the strike to be able to participate in the New Detroit Committee...
...9 Detroit Free Press, March 29, 1971...
...Sims planned to protest the vote and appeal the election results because, he said, armed private guards patrolled the union hall corridors and intimidated voters...
...Mass arrests, recriminations, and mutual antagonism between the black community and the police dominated the city for weeks on end...
...cline in dwelling units...
...But until the New York Times reported the concern of auto management over the use of hard drugs in the auto plants, little attention was given to this problem.1 T The Times report was published about a week after I visited an auto plant, talking to plant and local union officials, and to one of the UAW staff members who functions as a "troubleshooter...
...R. Wiley Brownlee, principal of the Willow Run high school, was tarred and feathered by masked men because he was considered an integrationist...
...It appears here with the kind permission ofthe publisher...
...He had 806 votes to 739 for McKinnon...
...Temple and Pollard were apparently shot while lying or kneeling...
...Spending $176 million in strike benefits and other costs, the UAW did retain the loyalties of the younger generation, something management seems at a loss to achieve...
...Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census of Population (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...We asked what happened to a former secretary of Local 7, one of the first blacks elected to that position...
...Henry Ford II...
...In the public sector there have been 5,000 units removed for freeway construction, 9,700 units for urban renewal programs, 3,300 for school sites, and 1,000 for recreation and other public uses...
...Precisely these factors make unlikely any real revolutionary crisis, the kind loudly proclaimed by both the black and white Left...
...And a new source of difficulty had arisen, the emergence of a "new working class" in the industry...
...Many employees, particularly the younger ones, are increasingly reluctant to put up with factory conditions, despite the significant improvements we've made in the physical environment...
...Not to mention the hundreds of black local union officers, shop committeemen, and stewards...
...Unlike most other unions, the UAW has caucuses, and an influential one is the ad hoc black caucus, chaired by Robert "Buddy" Battle III, with over 100 members, all of them local union leaders, who used to meet periodically with Walter Reuther and now have a similar relationship with Leonard Woodcock...
...Community passions ran high in 1969 when a policeman was killed and another wounded near the New Bethel Baptist Church and police poured gunfire into the church where 143 men, women, and children were meeting...
...Where whites are a majority, they keep as much control as possible and have a token black officer...
...No police were convicted in that incident, although two brilliant studies and newspaper accounts exposed the truth...
...UDA Research Project Document DOX-USAA60 January 1969," the Detroit Edison Co...
...They claimed that Johnson was temporarily insane— and a jury of eight blacks and four whites agreed...
...At a pay rate of $35 a day, an assembly-line worker is far more likely to have the "loot" to buy expensive fixes than is the welfare client...
...Department of Commerce, February 1971...
...140 B. J. WIDICK The New Detroit Committee fell apart for another reason: class tensions broke through...
...It turns out that he is now an assistant labor-relations director for the company...
...Sam Bellomo, vice-president of Chrysler Local 7—he's been elected to office either in the plant or the large local for almost 30 years—described the situation this way: Boredom on the job...
...Blacks now constitute 43.7 percent of the city's population and are on the way to becoming a clear majority.s The city is also left with more than a normal share of old, very young, and poor blacks and whites...
...Sims has denied he is a member of any radical group...
...It could become a black metropolis with a strong middle class, a stronger working class, and a generation of young leaders bursting out in every institution...
...There are black foremen throughout the plant, yet it is only ten years ago that the issue of having one black foreman was raised with the corporation...
...the Central Business Association launched a "Talk Up Detroit" campaign...
...He said the guards prevented "extremists and outsiders from disrupting the election process...
...19 18 Personal interview, June 15, 1971...
...At night, only a few whites can be seen in the downtown theaters...
...That's routine...
...The expansion of black economic power suggests that new kinds of struggle, with the city as base, are more likely to occur in the near future than are the primitive battles of Detroit's past...
...At best, the black and white workers tolerate each other in the plants...
...Meanwhile, the deterioration of the city is visible everywhere...
...On the whole, the GM strike turned out to be a form of controllable social unrest, making little dent on the consciousness of the auto workers or the people of Detroit...
...mainly, both black and white...
...The school has about 600 black and 3,000 white students...
...What the workers fear most is the drug addict in the plant...
...GM loaned the UAW about $30 million during the strike so it could make Blue Cross–Blue Shield payments for the strikers...
...he's executive vice-president in a local where all other officers, including the president, William Gilbert, are black...
...In the UAW, it is only a matter of time before all four regional directors in Detroit are black...
...They worry about safety of operations, and they dread knowing that pushers operate in the plants, and their victims work there...
...In 1970 the UAW began bargaining for a new contract with the Big Three, which led to a nine-week strike at General Motors...
...At times, angry voices from the Left spur the leaders of these organizations and unions to greater effort...
...5 U.S...
...1 Thousands of small stores, with their steel fronts, look like tiny military posts under siege...
...Downtown shoppers are mostly black...
...An astonishing number of citizens have armed themselves, in fear and rage, both black and white...
...and (4) less willing to conform to rules or be amenable to higher authority than ever in the past...
...The speedup...
...Only when radicals work within the framework of viable institutions—unions, parties, community groups—can they maintain any social roots, and thereby have some impact on events...
...Because they are unfamiliar with the harsh economic facts of earlier years, they have little regard for the consequences if they take a day or two off...
...Its director was Joseph L. Hudson, Jr., brilliant executive of the J. L. Hudson department store...
...There is little likelihood that the city can pull itself up by its bootstraps, though Detroit has witnessed two such attempts in recent years...
...Perhaps in consequence, an early 1971 survey showed that people of metropolitan Detroit think that crime is their most important problems Thus, at a time when one out of eight persons in the city of Detroit was on welfare, unemployment rates were 50 percent among black youth and 25 percent among black adults, and the general city unemployment rate was 14 percent...
...To the whites, the police appear incompetent to handle major troubles...
...Battle is also executive vice-president of Ford Local 600, and president of the Trade Union Leadership Council he formed with Horace Sheffield, which led the struggle to get black men elected to top positions in the UAW...
...10 New York Times, June 25, 1968...
...It works strictly as a power relationship based primarily on race—and with little love lost...
...The national economic and political climate always affects the city deeply...
...Although some of them do so with an open attitude of defiance, in a great many cases it is just a matter of the problem employee bringing with him into the plant the mores of his own background...
...The UAW of class solidarity, as it was once supposed to exist and in part did, is no longer much in evidence...
...it remains valid in 1972...
...142 B. J. WIDICK Politics in local union elections generally follows this pattern...
...other city unions have a similar composition...
...Very probably, black radicalism in the '70s will turn out to have played a similar role...
...Violent incidents exacerbate the tensions...
...Each was shot more than once at a range of fifteen feet or less by twelve-gauge double 0 buckshot...
...They don't give a damn about anything.ls I checked this with other officials whom I have known for years...
...They confirm what Bellomo says...
...tern rather than a prelude to revolution—as antagonists feared and some proponents hoped...
...For most blacks in Detroit, the industrial and public-sector unions and the political process offer an effective vehicle for protest, power, and progress...
...He used to represent the janitors...
...Detroiters possess over 500,000 hand guns, more than 400,000 of them unregistered...
...But many obstacles remain to both black aspirations and social peace...
...Now 65 percent of the membership is black, and only the skilled trades remain a white work force...
...12 Detroit News, February 13, 1970...
...Detroit blue-collar wages make Newark pay scales seem feeble...
...Between 25 and 50 persons had already been killed, gangland style, in this dispute...
...When I talked to him in June 1971, he had just finished five local negotiations with Chrysler...
...4 A survey of the number of blacks living outside the city limits shows an allwhite pattern in major suburbs scarcely duplicated anywhere in the United States...
Vol. 19 • January 1972 • No. 1
