Ford Motor Term Analysis

A large and historically important American car manufacturer. During World War II, the federal government took control of Ford factories and used them for war-related manufacturing purposes. Although Ford did not hire “Mexican or Black Workers” before this, the shortage of labor during World War II led it to change its policies, meaning that minority workers like Frank Stevenson could find stable, middle-class jobs at Ford factories in places like Richmond, CA. However, in an ironic twist of fate, after World War II, the very affordability and availability of cars like Ford’s made it comparatively more lucrative for Ford Motor to build larger factories in more remote areas, as opposed to in more cramped cities like Richmond. In California, Ford opened a new factory in Milpitas, where black people were not able to find housing. Although the United Auto Workers union defended African American Ford workers and allowed them to keep their jobs after the war, the factory’s relocation to Milpitas meant these workers had to commute from faraway Richmond to continue working. This series of events shows both how mid-20th-century manufacturing jobs gave many African Americans a middle-class wage for the first time, but also how discriminatory policies like government-sponsored, de jure residential segregation made it much harder for them to actually convert that wage into a middle-class life.