Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, Detroit MI

The Ford Motor Company hired its first African American employee, William Perry, in 1914 by the order of Henry Ford himself, who formed a strong lasting bond with Perry almost thirty years earlier clearing timberland near present day Dearborn, Michigan. He was joined by the likes of Joe Louis, Jesse Owens and the late mayor Coleman Young in later years. Perry remained on the company payroll until his death in 1940 at the age of eighty-eight.
 
Ford hired African Americans in great numbers in virtually all factory floor job classifications by 1918, including supervisors and foremen, at a time when practically speaking the only jobs open to skilled and semi-skilled Blacks in any industry were the dirty, back breaking, and often dangerous  ones  that Whites refused to take on.  The company became the largest employer of African Americans in Detroit and quiet possibly the nation by 1920. The company’s payroll often supported nearly 47 percent of the black population of the city in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

The Ford Museum and surrounding grounds contains a vast array of houses, machinery and exhibits of great historical significance including Thomas Edison’s laboratory, the chair from the Ford Theater in which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in, as well as Rosa Park’s bus. The main museum building itself resembles Philadelphia’s Indepedence Hall.

Related Links:

• Driving While Black: The Car and Race Relations in Modern America
• Working Side by Side, Michigan History Magazine Online
• African Americans and the UAW, African Americans on Wheels
• Mr. Ford, Blacks and the UAW, Detroit News

Guidebook Reviews:

• Fodors.com, Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village
• Frommers.com, Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village

Address: 20900 Oakwood Blvd., Dearborn, MI 48124, USA
Phone: (313) 271-1620
Official Website: www.hfmgv.org
Map & Driving Directions