The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford

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Description

Within the 1920s, Henry Ford hired thousands of African American men for his open-shop system of auto manufacturing. This move was once a rejection of the notion that better jobs were for white men only. In The Making of Black Detroit Within the Age of Henry Ford, Beth Tompkins Bates explains how black Detroiters, newly arrived from the South, seized the industrial opportunities offered by Ford Within the hope of gaining greater economic security. As these workers came to appreciate that Ford’s anti-union “American Plan” didn’t allow them full get entry to to the American Dream, their loyalty eroded, and so they sought empowerment by pursuing a broad activist agenda. This, in turn, led them to play a pivotal role Within the United Auto Workers’ challenge to Ford’s interests.
To be able to fully take note this complex shift, Bates traces allegiances among Detroit’s African American community as reflected in its opposition to the Ku Klux Klan, challenges to unfair housing practices, and demands for increased and effective political participation. This groundbreaking history demonstrates how by World War II Henry Ford and his company had helped kindle the civil rights movement in Detroit without intending to take action.

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