![]() ![]() Hidden behind the masks, which they soon learned to wear with a minimum of discomfort, are, from left: Mary Turner, Helen Williams, Evelyn Buss and Joan Joliet. Looking ahead to the possibility that gas masks may some day be a necessary part of their ensemble, these University of Detroit students were trying out masks in a practice drill on the campus on June 23, 1942. The need for workers brought an influx of African-Americans to Detroit, who met stiff resistance from whites who refused to welcome them into their neighborhoods or work beside them on an assembly line. ![]() The 1940s were boom years of development, but the decade was full of upheaval and change, as factories re-tooled to build war machines, and women started taking on men’s roles in the workplace, as men shipped overseas to fight in World War II. The early part of the 20th century saw the city of Detroit, Michigan, rise to prominence on the huge growth of the auto industry and related manufacturers. Full-screen scenes show vintage vehicles, fashions, hairstyles, the Crowley-Milner department store, Cunningham’s drugs, a streetcar, Chrysler’s tank assembly workers, tense integration of the Sojourner Truth Homes federal housing project in 1942, and five images from June 1943 rioting. Thirty vivid, oversize black-and-white photos from the Library of Congress show Detroit in the 1940s. Detroit and the industrial region surrounding it, was plunged into semi-darkness as all except street lights and in war factories went out for fifteen minutes during a blackout drill on May 4, 1942. ![]()
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