Economic Stability of Detroit. Population as a Whole. Research paper. Housing of Detroit. World War II & The Repercussions. Detroit in the 1940s - The Atlantic. 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.
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 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. Detroit died because it sucks. Everyone’s joining the fun game of Autopsy: Detroit, but the coroners are doing a lousy job, in general, because they neglect the obvious task of isolating what was unique about Detroit that might have contributed to its unique condition, among American cities, of being dead.
Lots of recent examples. Former Detroit suburbanite Jonathan Chait says “Detroit’s crisis began as primarily a racial problem,” but this gets the timeline wrong and fails as comparative explanation. Virtually every major American city has been marked by grievous racial division.