LIFE Magazine: How Detroit Won the War

I found an article online from LIFE that I think is going to be extremely helpful in finding direction for my community research. Because of the abundance of jobs provided by the war, Detroit became flooded with people seeking work. The conditions of workers from the Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant (and other armament plants similar to it that produced other weaponry and planes). When thousands of men were called to war, one group that came into the work force was women, this is well known thanks to the "We Can Do It" poster. Women stepped up to the plate in a big way when men went overseas to support production of tanks and other weapons that were needed by the infantry. (Propaganda such as the "We Can Do It poster helped to give the communities who were hard at work to continue to work hard and feel pride in what they were doing)

Examples of war time propaganda to encourage workers to increase production and continue sacrifice to support WWII:

Another community issue that was becoming increasingly unsettling in Detroit was that fact that intense rascism was sweeping the area as African Americans came to Detroit to find work in the plants that were producing weaponry.

Photo: William Vandivert./Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Jan 01, 1942

"A sign placed across from Detroit's Sojourner Truth housing project expresses a hard, uncomfortable truth: For thousands of African Americans who headed to Detroit during the 1940s in search of jobs, strident racism—often in the form of violent, anti-integration protests in formerly whites-only neighborhoods—was a constant, toxic presence."

--Quoted directly from LIFE magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overcrowding and lack of comfortable living quarters was another issue. Because of a massive number of people being employed in Detroit to work on tank production meant a mass influx of people to the already crowded city. Because of this population increase in the area, housing developments were created (such as the African American Sojourner Truth housing project noted above)

Photo: Arthur Siegel/Getty Images

Feb 01, 1942

So many men and women poured into Detroit and other Michigan cities during the war to fill the seemingly limitless number of jobs available that it was literally impossible to house them all. Pictured here is the interior of a patched-up shack, home to three men who worked together at an aircraft plant a half mile away. Detroit might have been a boom town during the war, but like all boom towns, it had its share of problems, large and small. 

--Quoted directly from LIFE Magazine

 

Luckily, finding these articles and photos (especially since I am a very visual learner) are helping me to really focus in on areas that I want to research. Mostly womens roles, the impact of employment on the economy in Michigan, the rascism against African American workers, and the ability of the city to house the influx of workers. These all directly impacted the community of Detroit, and the community that was formed inside of the massive DATP complex. Hopefully more digging into specific resources will make it easy to move on with this topic. I am really glad that I found this site though, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to focus on in this broad topic. The LIFE magazine article really helped me focus what I want to do more research on.



Hope you all are having good luck too!


-Stace