As industrialization advanced, the population in general became more urbanized. This means that there is less family farms and more family houses.The reading uses 1920's Detroit as an example of the struggles of getting a house, especially for minorities. Houses were in short supply, and neighborhoods were segregated. One specific example is the case of Dr. Ossian Sweet, a black physician. He began working in the downtown ghetto until he could afford a house in the white suburbs. However, the whites in the neighborhood felt threatened that blacks that they would degrade and criminalize their neighborhood. When Dr. Sweet moved in to his new house, there was a violent protest of his neighbors. The mob threw rocks at the windows and tried entering the house when Sweet shot two of the white men. His whole family was arrested for murder. During Sweet's trail, he defended "every man's home is his castle, which even the king may not enter. Every man has a right to kill to defend himself or his family, or others , either in defense of the home, or in defense of themselves." They were found innocent, and that case spawned the beginning of residential desegregation as blacks were moving out of the downtown ghetto and into houses.
1. Why do you think residential segregation continued for another 40 years after the Sweet case?
2. How accurate were the stereotypes towards suburban blacks of their ability to "drive down property values, cause neighborhood decay, and fill the[ir] streets with criminals"?
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