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African American Workers at Ford Motor Company Bibliography

This bibliography was compiled by staff of the Benson Ford Research Center’s Archives and Library Department based on materials in our collections. If you have questions about these resources, please use our Submit a Question feature. If you are interested in duplication, please see our Duplication Resources FAQ.

Archival

• Acc. 6 Edsel B. Ford Office Papers  
  • box 78 War Production Board folder (Correspondence regarding the number of African-Americans employed by Ford Motor Company during World War II. Statistics of African-Americans in FMC factories during World War II) 
     
• Acc. 958 George B. Heliker papers, circa 1957
  • box 1 George Heliker thesis, “History of Labor in Detroit, 1900-16"
     
• Acc. 423 Research Papers General File
  • box 1 “The History of Negro Employment
     
• Acc. 280 Sociological Department
  • box 1 Sociological Department Manual, Home Improvement Case Studies (Inkster - includes photographs) 
     
• Acc. 281 Inkster and Garden City Welfare Reports 
   
• Acc. 157 C. L. Martindale/Otto H. Husen files subsubseries 
  • box 194 Martindale Papers (Age-race report – details how many people of each age worked at the Rouge in 1937 with a column indicating race) 
     
• Acc. 572 Nevins & Hill Research Papers  
  • box 28 12.7.3: Policies - Questionnaire on Employees of Color
     
• Acc. 527 Willis Ward Papers
  • (includes: Ford history, concerning African American employment at Ford, 1941) 
     
• Small Accessions

  • Acc. 935 “A Chronology of Information Illustrating Nondiscriminatory Policies and  Practices at Ford Motor Company 1914-1960", published by FMC in 1961.

• Acc. 1660 Photographic Vertical File  
  • box 2 African Americans – Employment
  • box 84 Ford, Henry; African Americans
  • box 128 Industry; Autos; FMC; Buildings; MI; Dearborn; Rouge; Foundry  
     
• Acc. 833 General Photographs Series
  • box 163 373a Ford Athletes; Jesse Owens 
                  373b Ford Athletes; Boxers  
  • box 358 Representative Races in Ford Employ 1942
  • box 369 762a Personnel; Jesse Owens, Willis Ward and other employees
  • box 392 Rouge Foundry

Oral Histories

• 65_218 Willis Ward (Ford employee 1930s-1940s, worked under Donald Marshall in the Sociological Department.)
• 65_42 H.G. Cooper (Principal at George Washington Carver schools in Georgia) 
• Acc. 94.15.1 Oral History Interview with Claude Harvard (attended the Henry Ford Trade School; later worked at Rouge River Plant, inventing and developing machines and tools that resulted in numbers of patents for the Ford Motor Company) 

Vertical File

• African American Workers - General (3 folders)
• African American Workers - Inventions
• Carver, George Washington (and his relationship with Henry Ford)
• Ford, Henry - African Americans
• Ford Motor Company - African Americans
• Jackson, Levi (First African American executive at Ford Motor Company)

Books

• The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Thomas Sugrue
     305.8 S947 1996

• Detroit Divided. Reynolds Farley, Harry J. Holzer, & Sheldon Danziger
     306.90774 F232 2000 

• Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW. August Meier & Elliot Rudwick 
     331.881292 M514 1981

• Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes: An Oral History of Detroit’s African American Community, 1918-1967. Elaine Latzman Moon
     977.434 M818 1984 

• Ford Country. David L. Lewis 
     338.7 F699 L673 1999 REF