On 3 June 1943, about 25,000 white workers walked out of the Packard Motor Car plant on East Grand Boulevard because the company had promoted three Black men to the aircraft assembly line. Packard was then building Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engines and marine engines for PT boats, and the walkout halted war production. Until then Black workers at Packard had been kept largely in the foundry and in sanitation jobs. Months earlier white women in one department had struck over the promotion of three Black women to drill presses, and the company had given in. This time the pressure came from outside. The United Auto Workers and the federal government both opposed the walkout, about thirty leaders were suspended on 6 June, and the strike ended the next day. The city was already at breaking point, with Black and white migrants crowding into the war plants and into too little housing. Less than three weeks later, on 20 June, fighting on Belle Isle set off the Detroit race riot, in which 34 people died. Albert Kahn's plant, once the most modern in the industry, stopped building cars in 1956 and spent the following decades as one of the best-known ruins in America. Demolition began in October 2022, and by the start of 2025 almost nothing was left of it.
Getting there
42.3778, -83.0273
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