The labor movement is once again in daily battles to organize, to defend gains won, and help advance the well-being of our people. Here is a drama from labor's past. A vivid account, told mainly through the experiences of Bill McKie, Ford worker and rank and file leader. Bonosky makes the reader an "insider" of the long, tough work to unify and organize Ford workers, who faced Ford guns, thugs, blacklists, spies and speed-up on the job. If you have ever been for the underdog, you will be inspired by Brother Bill McKie and the fight to win the union at Ford. The author was not long out of the shop himself when he first wrote this book, and he pours into it the drama and emotion of a fine novel, while providing many insights for today's struggles.

In the 1920s, Henry Ford hired thousands of African American men for his open-shop system of auto manufacturing. This move was a rejection of the notion that better jobs were for white men only. In The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford, Beth Tompkins Bates explains how black Detroiters, newly arrived from the South, seized the economic opportunities offered by Ford in the hope of gaining greater economic security. As these workers came to realize that Ford's anti-union "American Plan" did not allow them full access to the American Dream, their loyalty eroded, and they sought empowerment by pursuing a broad activist agenda. This, in turn, led them to play a pivotal role in the United Auto Workers' challenge to Ford's interests. In order to fully understand 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 do so.

A vibrant chronicle of the life and work of a prolific painter and bohemian eccentric.

Members of the United Auto Workers Ford Local 600 tell about their activism as they experienced it.

This book explores how aging men struggled to sustain identities as workers, breadwinners, and patriarchs--the core ideals of twentieth-century masculinity--in the midst of increasing employer demands for the speed and stamina of youth in workplaces and the expansion of mandatory retirement policies in the age of Social Security.

Recovering the lost history of a crucial era in African American literature The Indignant Generation is the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. The years between these two indispensable epochs saw the communal rise of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and many other influential black writers. While these individuals have been duly celebrated, little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works. With this commanding study, Lawrence Jackson recalls the lost history of a crucial era. Looking at the tumultuous decades surrounding World War II, Jackson restores the "indignant" quality to a generation of African American writers shaped by Jim Crow segregation, the Great Depression, the growth of American communism, and an international wave of decolonization. He also reveals how artistic collectives in New York, Chicago, and Washington fostered a sense of destiny and belonging among diverse and disenchanted peoples. As Jackson shows through contemporary documents, the years that brought us Their Eyes Were Watching God, Native Son, and Invisible Man also saw the rise of African American literary criticism—by both black and white critics. Fully exploring the cadre of key African American writers who triumphed in spite of segregation, The Indignant Generation paints a vivid portrait of American intellectual and artistic life in the mid-twentieth century.