New Deal Detroit, Communism, and Anti-Communism

This chapter provides some context on the city of Detroit, New Deal labor, and the Communist Party. In the 1940s, Detroit was a boomtown confronted with enormous social and political change. Most Detroit residents had lived there for no more than a generation. The city's political and economic elites struggled to control these newcomers while the migrants themselves fought to assert their rights, which often conflicted with the rights of others. As a result of the growth of both its population and its labor movement, Detroit, a formerly largely white, open-shop town, became the most heavily unionized city in the nation with one of the largest African American populations outside of the South. Many of the same factors that led to Detroit's population changes also led to the expansion of the city's Communist Party.