for our country mobilizing for that war was this conundrum of where all the workers would live, who worked in these newly built and newly retooled production plants? in an already crowded city like detroit, for example, the government of 1941, realized that they re gonna have to quickly add hundreds of thousands of units of housing in order to bring in hundreds and thousands of new workers to staff these defense production facilities that were being retooled from civilian detroit, or in fact newly opened to make more material in that city. and that math is easy to see, right? you need to build a whole bunch of new stuff. you need a whole bunch of new or retooled or expanded facilities to build that stuff. you need a lot of people to work in those facilities, so they need a place to live. the math is simple, right? on paper, that s all very rational. that all just follows. it s very logistical. it makes sense. in practice, though, it was its own kind of war. while detroit resi
organized the attacks on black defense plant workers and their families in detroit back in the 1940s, david lane also was later charged with sedition. in addition to all his crimes, to try to create race war in america, to try to inspire americans to rise up and kill nonwhite people, in order to work, in order for white people to survive as a race, in addition to all the charges that he was convicted of along those lines. he was later charged with sedition, with being part of a seditious violent conspiracy to overthrow the u.s. government by force. and david lane had a good sense to die in federal prison, but before he did so, he managed to popularize a slogan about how white people in america wanted to kill everyone who s not white, in order to protect the future of the white rates, because somehow being a white person is such a fragile state of existence, that the mere existence of non white people, near white people, is enough to make white people melt like they re made of sugar whe
own kind of war. while detroit residents got one of their u.s. senators, a democratic senator named prentice brown, to lead an effort in washington, to declare that new housing built in detroit for defense plant workers would be whites only housing. and, that effort in washington actually seemed like it would work for a while, before it didn t, before they sort of blot it back. ultimately, it was black families in detroit who moved into some of the new housing. white residents put up this billboard across from some of that new housing, as you can see here, it says, we want white tenants in our white community. the american flags they put up there in the corners of the sign, isn t that a nice touch? that was february, 1942 because in february of 1942, february 28th, to be exact, two dozen black families, again, these are families of workers at the new defends plants, two dozen
african american families tried to move into that new housing that had been built for defense workers in detroit. white was it is organized a tight picking around that housing, and they also block the moving trucks from being allowed in to drop off any of the belongings of the new family started just arrived. the white mob s attacks the black families, and force them back by throwing rocks at them. with dozens of people were injured. that was february 1942. in april 1942, these two men were arrested for having organized the violence. they were indicted by federal grand jury. these two men were part of something called, the national workers league. that s kind of a weird name for a group organizing anti-black violent riots, right? i mean, these were defensive workers whose families these guys were attacking, this national workers league. yes, turns out it was this kind
of a national workers league. this is one of the same two men arrested for organizing the detroit defends housing race riot. this is seen in life magazine in 1944. he was in life magazine in 1944 because biden, he had been indicted again. this time, as part of an alleged seditious conspiracy to violently overthrow the entire u.s. government. he was still under indictment for organizing the violent attack on black families in detroit, when he got hit with that second indictment for trying to overthrow the u.s. government by force. it is not a dotted line. it is a through line between terrorizing, and physically attacking minorities in the united states, and wanting to get rid of democracy, and rule instead by force. these are not unrelated concepts. this is a man named theodore bilbo. he was governor of mississippi twice, in the 19 tens, and the