Detroit Labor History Bus Tour
What an amazing day of Detroit history! Michigan Rosies Executive Director Jeannette along with ‘Rosie Friend’ Rose and the Eton Seniors, enjoyed an amazing Labor History Bus Tour, led by John, Jamie and Dave of the Michigan Labor History Society! We learned so much about the important part Detroit played in the labor movement of the 20th century. We visited the memorial to the deadly 1932 Hunger March, where 5 men died when Dearborn police opened fire on protesters who were headed to the Ford plant with a list of demands for improved working conditions at the height of the Great Depression. The site where they gathered is now an historical site made possible by a partnership of the UAW, Ford Motor Company, and the wonderful MotorCities National Heritage Area. Ford Motor Company’s willingness to partner in helping preserve this particular piece of history is commendable and impressive. Then, we visited Ford Rouge Plant’s Gate 4 overpass, where in 1937 Harry Bennett’s Ford company goons attacked Walter Reuther and other union organizers who were Ieafleting workers. Detroit News and Detroit Free Press photographers were there, and those that escaped Bennett’s goons with their cameras intact published photos the next day, photos that turned public opinion in favor of the union. (Ford Motor Company is helping to honor the labor struggles of the past by creating a public historic site at Gate 4… good on ya, Ford!) Several important and basic American freedoms were being exercised in these labor struggles, against forces hell bent on suppressing them: freedoms of speech and expression, the right to congregate and peacefully protest, and freedom of the press. Meanwhile over in Germany the new chancellor, a guy named Adolf, had set about curtailing these exact freedoms as a first step to consolidating his power and laying the groundwork for the horrors to come. It’s important to understand, as the UAW, Ford, and MotorCities National Heritage area do, that unless we preserve history, it is bound to repeat itself. Without history, there is no learning, and without an acknowledgement and understanding of the past, there can be no future. Jeannette told the group a little bit about the role the Rosie the Riveters of WWII played in unionization: President Roosevelt and Labor Secretary Frances Perkins would not grant lucrative government war contracts to companies unless their shop was open to unionization, should the workers wish it. So companies, workers, unions, and the women workers known as Rosies all got busy working together to make arms for Victory. Then the tour bus stopped in at UAW Local 600 which after learning about earlier sacrifices, felt like hallowed ground. This is perhaps the most historic and famous union hall in the nation, and perhaps the world. Did you know Local 600 was one of Nelson Mandela’s first stops after his release from prison, and he’s an honorary member? Then we visited UAW-Ford headquarters on Jefferson – next to what I will always call Cobo Hall! – and the view from the top floor is amazing: blue skies over the great city of Detroit, and its fantastically diverse, resourceful, proud, and hardworking people.
