Detroit Welcome
by Charles Francis
I vividly recall a motorcar coming right at me, trying to run me down. Terrified, I tried to escape back up on the sidewalk but couldn’t because of a struggling mass of people fighting behind me. Suddenly, my father stepped forward, brushing me aside and flung a foot-long strap of steel through the windshield of the oncoming vehicle. It shattered the glass and struck the driver across his face. The car swerved away from us.
This was our welcome to Detroit. It was 1939 and World War II was just over the horizon. We were vaguely aware that Germany’s Nazi chancellor was about to send his armies into neighboring countries but that didn’t worry us. I was about 12 years old and my family had just moved up from Cincinnati to join the hordes of Great Depression refugees coming to Detroit to find desperately needed jobs. The economy was slowly recovering and unemployed men were beginning to find work in the busy factories of the Motor City.
With our family’s meager belongings—and ourselves—all packed into a canvas-covered stake truck, our family had left our home in Cincinnati late at night and headed north to join my dad, already working in Detroit. Riding in the back of the truck, I stuck my head out from the tarpaulin at dawn and spied a huge statue of a polar bear at the side of the road, holding a sign saying, “Welcome to the Motor City.” This cheerful greeting was provided courtesy of “Goldberg’s Finest Furs”. It did not, however, reflect the attitude of the city’s inhabitants, the majority of whom were of European ancestry and looked with naked hostility at the hordes of black and white southern poor now invading their territory.
Our family, Mom, Dad and my younger sister and brother, moved into a large, second floor flat in a working class neighborhood. Soon relatives from Kentucky began boarding with us. One day in late summer, the weather was hot and humid. I was sitting looking out an open front window when I saw a car with my uncle and some of our boarders pull up to the curb in front of our house. My uncle had to turn backwards to get out of an automobile because of a stiff knee from an old farm accident. As he was getting out, several cars screeched to a stop behind his car. A gang of young toughs piled out of their cars and rushed forward to attack my uncle and his friends. One of these hoodlums was soon sitting on my flattened uncle, punching him in the face. I screamed to my family, “They’re beating Uncle Watson!” I rushed down the stairs; my whole family immediately came tumbling after me.
When we got to the street, a young hoodlum was still sitting atop my uncle, pummeling him. Mother reached him first and screamed, “Stop it! You’re killing my brother!”
She grabbed him by the hair, yanking his head up. I came bounding up at that moment and kicked him in the face. The melee was surging all around us. A gang member jabbed me in the shoulder with a sharpened rattail comb. To my amazement, my furious mother swung at this attacker with a short, chopping right hand that dropped him. “Good punch, Mom!”
We were fighting in the intersection of two residential streets: Mom, Dad, my younger brother and sister, and our boarders. Even our dog was snapping at the enemies’ legs. The gang finally decided they had enough of us and jumped into their cars and took off just as the police arrived.
We read next day in the newspapers that in fleeing, they had run over and killed a little girl at a school crossing. My younger brother had the presence of mind to scratch the license plate numbers of the gang’s cars in the dirt with a Popsicle stick. The police soon had them in jail. Our neighbors though, were not favorably impressed with our premier performance in their midst and we, of course, didn’t care much for the welcome we had received in this industrial melting pot.
This was our welcome to Detroit. It was 1939 and World War II was just over the horizon. We were vaguely aware that Germany’s Nazi chancellor was about to send his armies into neighboring countries but that didn’t worry us. I was about 12 years old and my family had just moved up from Cincinnati to join the hordes of Great Depression refugees coming to Detroit to find desperately needed jobs. The economy was slowly recovering and unemployed men were beginning to find work in the busy factories of the Motor City.
With our family’s meager belongings—and ourselves—all packed into a canvas-covered stake truck, our family had left our home in Cincinnati late at night and headed north to join my dad, already working in Detroit. Riding in the back of the truck, I stuck my head out from the tarpaulin at dawn and spied a huge statue of a polar bear at the side of the road, holding a sign saying, “Welcome to the Motor City.” This cheerful greeting was provided courtesy of “Goldberg’s Finest Furs”. It did not, however, reflect the attitude of the city’s inhabitants, the majority of whom were of European ancestry and looked with naked hostility at the hordes of black and white southern poor now invading their territory.
Our family, Mom, Dad and my younger sister and brother, moved into a large, second floor flat in a working class neighborhood. Soon relatives from Kentucky began boarding with us. One day in late summer, the weather was hot and humid. I was sitting looking out an open front window when I saw a car with my uncle and some of our boarders pull up to the curb in front of our house. My uncle had to turn backwards to get out of an automobile because of a stiff knee from an old farm accident. As he was getting out, several cars screeched to a stop behind his car. A gang of young toughs piled out of their cars and rushed forward to attack my uncle and his friends. One of these hoodlums was soon sitting on my flattened uncle, punching him in the face. I screamed to my family, “They’re beating Uncle Watson!” I rushed down the stairs; my whole family immediately came tumbling after me.
When we got to the street, a young hoodlum was still sitting atop my uncle, pummeling him. Mother reached him first and screamed, “Stop it! You’re killing my brother!”
She grabbed him by the hair, yanking his head up. I came bounding up at that moment and kicked him in the face. The melee was surging all around us. A gang member jabbed me in the shoulder with a sharpened rattail comb. To my amazement, my furious mother swung at this attacker with a short, chopping right hand that dropped him. “Good punch, Mom!”
We were fighting in the intersection of two residential streets: Mom, Dad, my younger brother and sister, and our boarders. Even our dog was snapping at the enemies’ legs. The gang finally decided they had enough of us and jumped into their cars and took off just as the police arrived.
We read next day in the newspapers that in fleeing, they had run over and killed a little girl at a school crossing. My younger brother had the presence of mind to scratch the license plate numbers of the gang’s cars in the dirt with a Popsicle stick. The police soon had them in jail. Our neighbors though, were not favorably impressed with our premier performance in their midst and we, of course, didn’t care much for the welcome we had received in this industrial melting pot.
