February 2, 1951 – CBS Radio – Hear It Now – Edward R. Murrow – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
The week of February 2, 1951 where a lot happened in the world and a day where the focus was on Detroit, one of the great manufacturing centers of the country and the automobile capitol of the world.
The news ran the gamut – from the ongoing, seemingly endless war in Korea, to an address on Capitol Hill by former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Eisenhower, and speculation that 1952 and a Presidential race was only around the corner.
And there was news of the Cold War – as well as news of a Cold snap that gripped the country from New York to the Rockies freezing roads, snarling traffic and closing schools. But still, the focus of attention was on the Cold War and politics as usual. Same as it ever was.
Towards the end of this one-hour “Document For Ear” as Hear It Now was called, a sound portrait of Detroit and how, even with an influx of workers and the overcrowded conditions the city was facing during World War 2, the racial tensions that had gripped the city then and were in danger of gripping the city again in 1951. Detroit became a symbol for the melting pot that America had long been considered. It epitomized that melting pot, with refugees settling from war-torn Europe, workers coming up from the South, where agriculture didn’t pay nearly as well as the hourly wages offered by Ford, Chrysler and Chevrolet. How Detroit was considered something of a City of The Future in the eyes of the rest of the country.
That was the week in a nutshell as broadcast by CBS Radio on February 2, 1951.
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