Ebony salutes Ford Motor Company & Black America: a 100-year adventure - Advertorial - Brief Article

Ebony, June, 2003

THE story of the long and mutually beneficial relationship between Ford Motor Company and Black America is one of the great stories of our times. That story began with the founding of Ford in 1903 and the real emancipation of African-Americans, who received a new sense of themselves and a new sense of movement and freedom in the dawning years of the 20th century. "A major factor in this process," as Lerone Bennett Jr. said in the Black history classic, Before The Mayflower, "was a factor not generally considered a civil rights issue ... the Model T Ford, which freed both Blacks and Whites from the tyranny of the land."

The end result was a unique American adventure based on three freedoms:

* Freedom of Movement

* Freedom to Work

* Freedom to Dream

The noted federal judge Damon Keith said in an autobiographical sketch that his father, Perry Keith, married Annie Williams in Atlanta on December 12, 1906, and moved to Michigan to work at Ford's River Rouge plant foundry. The fathers of tens of thousands of future American leaders followed Perry Keith, and by 1910, freedom colonies of migrating Blacks were sprouting up all over Detroit.

To most of these African-Americans, Ford meant one of two things, sometimes both: 1) a car they could afford; and 2) a place where an African-American could earn a decent salary as a sweeper or skilled worker. In the 10 years between 1910 and 1920, the Black population of Detroit jumped from 5,741 to 40,838.

The Ford story moved into high gear with the $5-a-day miracle that made it possible for tens of thousands of Blacks, including the African-American Ford family and celebrity Blacks like Berry Gordy Jr., to free themselves and other Americans. This had a ripple effect all over Black America, and today, 100 years after the founding of Ford, it is impossible to count the homes, graduates and dreams made real by the Ford idea.