Race Riots in 1942 Detroit, Michigan: A Photo Essay

In 1942 the United States Government hoped to solve some of the residential shortages by erecting housing projects. Construction workers built these Sojourner Truth Projects in Detroit, Michigan. Image: Photo by Arthur S. Siegel, “Detroit, Michigan. Sojourner Truth homes, a new U.S. federal housing project,” 1942. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF35-1326].

Black families like this one took advantage of the opportunity to live in the Sojourner Truth homes. They sought to avoid the dilapidated, cramped conditions in older residences. Image: Photo by Arthur S. Siegel, “Detroit, Michigan. Typical Negro family at the Sojourner Truth homes,” 1942. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF35-1326].

White occupants of the Sojourner Truth Projects resisted and picketed against living side by side with blacks. This conflict eventually erupted into a riot. Image: Photo by Arthur S. Siegel, “Detroit, Michigan. Rioting at the Sojourner Truth housing project,” 1942. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF35-1326].

Police arrested many participants in the riot. The white real estate operator who incited the turmoil found himself in police custody. Many blacks, like the one pictured above, also ended up escorted to jail. Image: Photo by Arthur S. Siegel, “Detroit, Michigan. Riot at the Sojourner Truth homes, a new U.S. federal housing project, caused by white neighbors' attempt to prevent Negro tenants from moving in. Police arresting a Negro,” 1942. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF35-1326].

Overall, the white’s efforts were organized and deliberate. They stated their demands very clearly. White protesters erected this sign directly facing the Sojourner Truth Projects. The American flags implicitly express that protesters thought they had the right as American citizens to benefit from segregation. Image: Photo by Arthur S. Siegel, “Detroit, Michigan. Riot at the Sojourner Truth homes, a new U.Sn federal housing project, caused by white neighbors' attempt to prevent Negro tenants from moving in. Sign with American flag ‘We want white tenants in our white community,’ directly opposite the housing project,” 1942. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF35-1326].

Commentary

Finding these photos was relatively easy. I knew that I wanted to complete a photo essay on a race riot so I found the Library of Congress website and typed in my search terms: race and riot. I utilized the American Memory: America from the Great Depression to World War II website. For this reason, I thought that my inability to find more desirable photos depicting the race riots of 1919 or response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. would be to my detriment. Fortunately, however, I found a wealth of digitized photos. After I decided on the race riots at the Sojourner Truth Projects I also used the search words: Sojourner and Truth. I was pleased that the search engine separated the results that contained all of my terms from the results that contained only some of my terms.

Next, I read the legal notice web page within the Library of Congress website. I learned that researchers do not have to pay fees to utilize or reproduce any of the library’s archives. Surprisingly, however, the web page also expressed that researchers are still responsible for making sure that they are not violating any copyright laws when they reproduce the library’s resources. I thought this page would relieve me from any further responsibility. For this reason, I read the rights and reproduction web page for every photo that I chose to include in my photo essay. As it turns out, since Arthur Siegel worked for the United States government as a photographer none of his pictures of the Sojourner Truth Riot can be bound by copyright laws. Unfortunately, this page also includes a disclaimer cautioning all researchers to make sure that copyright laws do not bar the photos from unauthorized reproduction. It seems that through some complicated legal process that I do not understand there is a slim chance that even Siegel's work may be protected under some copyright laws.

After I decided to take my chances and assume that researchers could reproduce Siegel's photos without seeking permission, I moved on. I started by physically writing an outline and typing my text into a Word document before I began to think about my photos. At first, I thought that I could use the “new post” function of my blog to construct my photo essay. I was saddened to find that the “add image” function does not work the way I thought it would. Photos do not appear at the insertion point like they would in a Word document. Instead they are formatted according to the layout I chose which does not place pictures correctly. Also, each new photo appears at the top of the post as opposed to the bottom of the post. I tried to compensate for this by adding each photo in reverse order and enlarging the photo as much as possible. I also found it easier to cut and paste my text from a Word document.

In the end I became wary of the blurriness in each picture, and wondered why some of the pictures were cut off after I published them. I uploaded all of my pictures again and used a laborious click, drag, and space (with the delete, backspace, and enter keys) process to make sure the post looked good. The post always looked different than the “view post” window so I had to publish it several times. Ultimately, I found that limited spacing and layout formatting works the best. I wonder if there is an easier way to do this.

Black Archives of Mid-America Website Review

The Black Archives of Mid-America (BAMA) serves as a repository for documents concerning the history of African Americans in the middle states. Archivists of BAMA erected a website that contains a lot of digitized archives and ways to navigate their collections online. Overall, however, the BAMA website viewed on March 6, 2007 suffers from the mistakes made by many academics and scholars.

BAMA, a nonprofit organization founded in 1974, has a mission to conserve and collect information about the history of African Americans in the Midwest. Archivists also claim a responsibility to make their collections available to the community. They represent this mission by offering a variety of sources, or descriptions of sources, online. The website, therefore, contains documentation ranging in categories from the arts, medicine and education. BAMA simply organizes an archive and the archivists do not offer any arguments about the materials they house. They do, however, sufficiently express their mission and support their purpose with the contents of their website.

The BAMA website brings scholars and African American history enthusiasts far away from a time when they had to pick documents out of dusty draws or search for sources using card catalogues. The website makes available a simple and advanced search engine. Researches can utilize categories such as Alvin Ailey, religion, military, and slavery for online searches. The advanced search option allows users to indicate preferences for types of sources, dates and subject areas, for example. Document types range from pictures, letters and correspondence. Search results list each kind of document type. Additionally, the BAMA website includes digitized sources. One might find an actual copy of correspondence from Marcus Garvey of the Universal Negro Improvement Association within the BAMA digitized archives. Like the digitized archives, the online gallery is one of the most exciting aspects of the BAMA website. Researches can uses headings like baseball and portraits to guide them through numerous photograph copies that they can enlarge for closer inspection.

Despite the many advantages to the BAMA online resources archivists overlooked some very important issues with their website. On initial inspection the first issue with the site is the color scheme. The majority of the website is a light brown while the links are tan. This oversight prevents users from effortlessly distinguishing links. After users click on links they can not easily tell what section of the website they have located. Archivists should invest in updating their website so that a visual tab system locates users in relation to other areas of the site. Unfortunately, lack of homepage links on every page of the site further complicates the user’s experience. The logo representing BAMA could also stand some revision. A silhouette of a man’s facial profile with a brain lodged in the middle somehow does not seem related to BAMA’s overall mission or purpose. Perhaps the logo relates better on paper and needs to be properly converted to have the same impact online.

The photo gallery, one of the best features of the site, is also hard to navigate. After users click to enlarge photos they have to press the back button on their browser in order to return back to the gallery. This part of the site could use links that allows researchers to easily browse from image to image like they would in a gallery, or at least a link that connects them back to the main gallery. In addition, the images need to be properly and consistently labeled. One might click to enlarge an image and find no attempt to label the subjects or source of the image. Researchers could benefit from definitively knowing that archivists do not include any said image in a particular collection or could not identify subject(s).

Many scholars still believe that any website with too many flying graphics and complicated digital tricks may be unreliable. After all, credible academics specialize in analyzing information, not using space aged technology to present findings. For this reason, many researchers may appreciate the efforts by BAMA archivists to simplify their efforts making BAMA resources available online. Many scholars believe that some accessibility online beats traveling to the Midwest and sitting alone in some vault-like archive. Regardless, the BAMA website could use some adjustments. These efforts would contribute a minor part to making the researching process and exchange of analyses faster than scholars of centuries past could ever imagine.

Commentary

In order to find the following information about Valentine’s Day I utilized the Google Search engine. I typed in the phrase “History of Valentines Day.” I explored the first seven websites that Google listed. Not surprisingly, most of the websites I visited had much of the same information. As a matter of fact, the www.kidsdomain.com website seemed to have cut and paste information from the www.history.com website. The repetition of the same information made me feel like it was unnecessary to search beyond the first page of websites listed by Google.

Overall, however, this assignment has helped me gain more appreciation for information put out in cyberspace by supposed non-authorities. I was surprised by the depth of the chronologies I read. Many of the detailed nuanced stories did not even com from www.wikipedia.org or the www.history.com websites!! I wonder about the reasoning behind putting so much information about such a miscellaneous subject on the web. While scholars supposedly participate in scholarly exercises because of pure love for knowledge I have assumed (due in part to my training in the academy) that others are fueled by impure money hungry agendas. This exercise has prompted me to possibly reconsider. Much of the information that I came across while completing this assignment seemed to have the genuine mission of simply informing the general public.

Many Contributions to Valentine's Day

Every February 14th lovers and friends flood the United States Postal Service with Valentine's Day greetings trimmed in red and pink. In addition, jewelry companies use advertisements to convince consumers that purchasing diamonds conveys the Valentine's Day spirit of devotion to loved ones. As people rush to demonstrate their feelings for others through purchases many do not contemplate the history of Valentine's Day. The legend of Valentine's Day dates back hundreds of years to many varieties of the same story. The multiple versions of the same events and long chronology of Valentine's Day history make it almost impossible to factually pinpoint how Valentine's day became popular.

Among the many Valentine's Day cards and love notes one might find the popular image of cupid. Therefore, the origins of Cupid is intrinsic to Valentine's Day history. Cupid is the son of Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Not surprisingly, Cupid's name roughly translates to desire in Latin. According to the legend of Cupid, he has the likeness of a boy that uses arrows to force love on both mankind and the gods.

While Cupid's image marks all kinds of Valentine's Day paraphernalia one would be hard pressed to locate an image of St. Valentine, the man whose life sparked the lover's holiday. According to legend, Valentine was a Catholic man of the church in third century Rome. At the same time the Emperor of Rome, Claudius II, felt concerned about protecting his borders from the Huns, Gauls, Mongolians, and Slavs. The Emperor wanted to ensure the strength of his army and valued the drive of unmarried soldiers. For this reason he prohibited marriage in his land. In response to this law, Valentine enlisted the help of his friend Saint Marius and began to marry young couples in secret. Claudius II grew livid as a result of Valentines defiance and ordered for Valentine to be beaten with clubs and eventually decapitated. Claudius' disgust for the future martyr swelled as Valentine tried to convince the emperor of the virtues in Catholicism as opposed to Roman paganism. This is one chain of events that many believe made Valentine's Day a great holiday.

In prison, Valentine felt inspired by a jailer named Asterius' daughter. The form of inspiration differs depending upon the version of the legend. Some say that Valentine fell in love with the jailers' daughter. Others say that Asterius asked the prisoner to pray over his daughter and relieve her of blindness, a request that Valentine fulfilled. Regardless of the relationship between Valentine, Asterius, and Asterius' daughter the important event took place right before Valentine died. Before executioners dragged Valentine away to his doom he signed a letter to Asterius' daughter "from your Valentine," a phrase that many still use today. Claudius finally had Valentine executed in February of 269 or 270.

According to legend, around 496 a pope named Gelasisus popularized the story of Valentine and Valentine's day in order to sway people away from participation in the Lupercalia festival. During the pagan Lupercalia festival participants placed women's names in a lottery. Men then blindly selected a name, and consequently, a companion for a year. After a years time the process would begin all over again. Church officials did not agree with this practice, and used the history of Valentine to promote habits that aligned with church principles. This version and/or extension of the legend credits church officials more so than cupid or Valentine with the popularity of Valentine's Day.

More recent events not only continue the narrative in Valentine's Day history, but offer other entities and occurrences to credit for the great lover's holiday. Valentine's Day gained widespread fame in seventeenth century Britain. Many British citizens participated in the exchange of personal notes every February. A note sent in 1415 by Charles Duke of Orleans to his wife represents one of the oldest examples of these kinds of activities. New technologies like the printing press prompted accessibility to the tools necessary to participate in the holiday.

In America, years after the printing press sparked a ripple of change throughout the world, Americans learned to appreciate Valentine's Day. Esther Howland became the first person to mass produce valentines trimmed with ribbon and lace in the mid nineteenth century United States. Howland got inspired in her father's stationary and book store. Many credit Howland for sparking the appeal of Valentine's Day. Contemporarily, Valentine's Day falls shortly behind Christmas as the holiday when people send mass amounts of greeting cards to loved ones. Women almost single handedly support the greeting card companies in February since they send the majority of Valentines Day Cards.

People attribute the popularity of Valentine's Day to many legends and events. It is more than likely, however, that Valentine's Day exists as it does today because of a combination of people that include Valentine, Cupid, Claudius, Gelasisus, and Howland.

Four Websites, Four Agendas, One American History

Website designers convey all kinds of purposes with their creations. A browser has to ask them self why one website may have so many advertisements or if simple graphics indicates inexperience. The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, Do History, National Museum of American History, and History Channel websites all display information about American history, but simultaneously express subtle agendas.

The Valley of the Shadow website presents a mini Civil War archive to browsers. The main page looks like a map of a library with ‘rooms’ titled newspapers, maps, or soldiers’ records, for example. A click on diaries and letters leads to the personal entries of historical witnesses like John B. Baldwin or the Long family. Unfortunately, most of these entries do not include a digitized version of the original record. Most pages of the website include a link at the bottom of the page that leads back to the “full valley archive.” The website does not include interpretations of the archives. Instead it seems that someone recognized the value of gathering archives concerning one historical event for other historians to navigate and interpret.

Like Valley of the Shadow, Do History has more to do with the historian’s craft. Unlike Valley of the Shadow, Do History does not assume that the browser already knows methodology. Do History trains browsers on the process of piecing together events based on the contents of historical documents. The website uses Martha Ballard, an 18th century midwife, as a case study. Browsers can find Ballard’s entire diary digitized online, and learn how to read the diary with the help of various tools. A click on multiple icons can lead the browser to a small description of Ballard’s spelling and abbreviation style, a magic lens, or a transcribing exercise. The magic lens replaces words in Ballard’s diary with Times New Roman characters that make for easy reading. In addition, the transcribing drills prompt fledgling historians to decipher fragments of Ballard’s entries. The culmination of all of this training includes a “who dun it” task during which young historians utilize Ballad’s journals to decide if a judge raped Rebecca Foster. High school or college students could use this website to learn about the type of work historians do.

Unlike Valley of the Shadow and the Do History websites, The National Museum of American History Website offers a more commercialized version of American history. Website creators packaged all the history the museum has to offer for mass consumption by site visitors. The links to collection and exhibitions descriptions, for example, indicates the site designer’s desire to provide visitors with the ability to navigate the website easily and quickly. The website advertises events like “Cure for the Broken Hearted: Artificial hearts in America,” and collections like The Family Photo Album. Of course, at the bottom of the home page is the link for people who want to donate to the museum. Most of the descriptions only give readers enough information to wet their interest, and prompt them to eventually visit the museum.
On a more positive note, the museum’s website does have links to pages indicating outreach to the community. The history explorer time line is interactive, but unfortunately only lists and promotes previous museum exhibitions. The kids and educators link connects to mediocre lesson plans, and ideas of how to amuse kids with historical lessons.

Beyond any portion of The National Museum of American History Website, the History Channel Website is the most commercialized of the four. It is a big commercial with sub commercials manifested in advertisements for A&E programming, and insurance companies. The site also displays snippets of programming like The History of Valentines Day that has a full version on the channel. The store section of the website presents DVDs like Victory at Sea, and Combat Diary for sale. In addition, the site lists the descriptions and timetables for all of the History Channel shows. Even the classroom link connects to more descriptions of shows and programming.

The only portion of the History Channel Website that does not seem to be an advertisement is the “this day in history” link. According to the site, on February 7th 1939 Germany prepared to invade Poland, and in 1964 the Beetles arrived in New York. Perhaps the web creators decided to include the “this day in history” trivia in order to sway browsers away from the feeling that they are looking at a giant advertisement.

People surf the net for all kinds of reasons. Some look to gain information, others use it for entertainment. Most certainly do not use the Internet so that someone will have the opportunity to sell them something. As historians learn how to utilize the web they will also have to decipher what websites can help them and what websites are ultimately commercialized wastes of time.

Greater U Street Historic District

It is advantageous to go to archival repositories armed with names, dates, and places to use as keywords in searches. This government sponsored website on the Greater U Street Historic District quickly provides readers with all kinds of tidbits useful for further research. Since U Street is so close to Howard University it is not surprising that the area became a black self contained city by the end of the 19th century (when Howard University was founded). U Street was one of the places for black elite to congregate and commence in various leisure activities throughout the 20th century. This website lists the names and locations of many relevant places like the Lincoln theatre, benevolent societies, and jazz clubs.

The Washington Post

Most people do not know that Georgetown actually used to be a black enclave. A group of historians published a book called Black Georgetown. It is interesting, however, that the truth about Georgetown just received recognition in a mainstream publication, The Washington Post. While understanding the past can help us understand the present, the present can also help us to understand our past. This article may help uncover new questions about the cultural continuum in Washington D.C. How did displacement of black populations out of Georgetown affect them culturally? Does the silencing of African American historical ties to Georgetown also play a part in the history of their cultural life?