1941 Ford Strike African American Organizing Committee:
L to R: Joseph Billups, International Representative Walter Hardin, Publicity Director Christopher Alston (standing), Organizer Veal Clough, Organizer Clarence Bowman (standing), Organizer Leon Bates, Organizer John Conyers, Sr .
Hartford Memorial Church is recognized as one of the leading African American congregations in the city. While most people are familiar with its James Cousens Freeway location, it originated on Hartford Street near McGraw and grew to prominence under the leadership of civil rights icon Reverend Charles A. Hill.
Click here to access this WTVS /DPTV “Labor History Minute,” in which former Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young introduces his mentor Reverend Hill.
Produced for the MotorCities National Heritage Area’s “Making Tracks” initiative, this video Rev. Charles Hill and the Labor Movement. Click to view Part 1 and Part 2.
Insofar as Rev. Hill figured prominently in the UAW’s campaign to organize Ford, consider reviewing this account of the 1941 Ford organizing campaign excerpted from Steve Babson’s book Working Detroit, Ford, The Last Mile.
The Guide team hopes to develop a much more in-depth discussion of the intersection of Detroit’s labor and African American civil rights movements. That story both predates and extends well beyond the outreach effort to win the African American support for the union’s campaign to organize Ford. That account begins with references to the history of discrimination in employment and residential housing. The story then chronicles the imprint of UAW Local 600 activists on the struggle for social justice, culminating in Nelson Mandela’s 1990 visit to the Rouge plant and the Tiger Stadium rally organized on his behalf.
Click here to read about John James, Sr. in the Guide’s discussion of his efforts to crack the barrier that prevented African American-owned firms from engaging in interstate trucking (prior to launching Renaissance Global Logistics, a supply chain management and logistics firm).
Click here to access Dr. William Pickard’s tribute video that the Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council produced when he was inducted in 2022 into the Michigan Minority Business Hall of Fame. In 1989, he formed Global Automotive Alliance by merging six minority business enterprises into one entity rather than forming a joint venture with a major non-minority auto supplier.
The Guide team welcomes help with research on the “March on Washington” Movement’s Detroit planning conference where A. Phillip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union and the movement’s leader, presented the 8-point “Cadillac Charter.” Endorsed at the April 1943 march organized by the NAACP and the UAW’s Interracial Committee, the Charter demanded an end to segregation of the nation’s World War II war industries. Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to learn more about this and other volunteer opportunities.
Photo Credit: Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University
