ABSTRACT
Anti-black racism restricted the employment opportunities of Black migrants and in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit, and legal and extra-legal practices of residential segregation worked to sequester incoming Black migrants into increasingly crowded and brutally policed “Negro districts.” The struggle against police brutality, a deeply rooted and longstanding source of anger and protest, again became acute in this context, as the democratic rhetoric of the war emphasized the outrage of apartheid at home. In both Harlem and Detroit, as we will see below, confrontations between Black people and police preceded the eruption of violence. The eruption of unrest and racist violence during World War II, as well as the state's response to Black protest, extended patterns and dynamics that were also present during the First World War. “The instant he puts on the uniform of his country, the Negro becomes a deadly plague carrier, to be quarantined, isolated at all costs from his white comrades in arms”.
