Construction of the federal Sojourner Truth Homes defense housing complex began in 1941 to house two hundred Black families in response to Detroit’s housing shortage and overcrowding in its segregated Black neighborhoods. The Seven Mile-Fenelon Improvement Association led protests to change the homes to White use, and with assistance from Congressman Rudolph Tenerowicz, it succeeded. The Reverend Horace White, Senator Charles Diggs Sr., and the Reverend Charles Hill then led a civil rights counter-protest, and the complex reverted to its initial designation for Blacks. When twenty-four Black families attempted to move in on February 28, 1942, seven hundred White protestors blocked their entrance, violence erupted, and the Detroit police dispersed the crowds. After the violence, Mayor Edward Jeffries Jr. postponed occupancy, and Black community leaders wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt to intervene. As World War II propaganda from America’s enemies began exploiting the conflict by highlighting racial prejudice in the United States, Roosevelt sought to end the dispute, but the Black community rejected a compromise to give up the homes they had been promised. After using a rally in Cadillac Square on April 12 to demand immediate occupancy, they won an order from the National Housing Agency on April 15 to open the homes to Black residents, and protected by the National Guard, the first Black families moved into Sojourner Truth Homes without incident on April 29.