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.