The Ford Hunger March, sometimes called the Ford Massacre, was a demonstration on March 7, 1932 in the United States by unemployed auto workers in Detroit, Michigan, which took place during the height of the Great Depression. The march started in Detroit and ended in Dearborn, Michigan, in a confrontation in which four workers were shot to death by the Dearborn Police Department and the security guards employed by the Ford Motor Company. More than 60 workers were injured, many by gunshot wounds. Five months later, a fifth worker died of his injuries.
In the 1920s, prosperity came to the Detroit area, because of the successes of the U.S. auto industry in that decade. Concentrated in the Detroit area, the industry produced 5,337,000 vehicles in 1929, when many individuals bought their first cars. The 1930 United States Census reported the population as 122,775,046. As a point of reference, in 2008, the U.S. auto industry produced 8,681,000 vehicles in 2008 and the U.S. population was estimated at 304,375,000. Therefore, the U.S. auto industry was producing 50% more vehicles per capita in 1929, than in the early 21st century with more competition from foreign auto makers.
On Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed, leading to the Great Depression. Vehicle production in the country plummeted. In 1930, production declined to 3,363,000 vehicles. In 1931, production fell to 1,332,000 vehicles, only 25% of the production of two years before.[1]
As a result, unemployment in Detroit skyrocketed, and the wages of those still working were slashed. In 1929, the average annual wage for auto workers was US$1,639(equivalent to about $27,900 in 2022). By 1931, it had fallen 54% to $757(equivalent to $14,600 in 2022).[2] By 1932, 400,000 were unemployed in Michigan.
Detroit had 113 suicides in 1927, increased to 568 in 1931. In that year, the welfare allowance was $0.15(equivalent to $2.89 in 2022) per person per day. At the time, neither states nor the federal government provided unemployment insurance, and Social Security did not yet exist. A wave of bank closures destroyed the life savings of many unemployed workers and retirees, as every neighborhood bank in Detroit went out of business. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had not yet been established by Congress to secure bank deposits and protect people's savings. By 1932, foreclosures, evictions, repossessions, and bankruptcies were commonplace, and the unemployed despaired.[3]
The Hunger March
The Detroit Unemployed Council and the Auto, Aircraft and Vehicle Workers of America called for a march on Monday, March 7, 1932, from Detroit to Dearborn, to end at the Ford River Rouge Complex, the company's largest factory. The principal organizers of the march were Albert Goetz, a leader of the Detroit Unemployed Council, and John Schmies, the Communist candidate for mayor of Detroit.[4] Detroit's mayor was Frank Murphy; his profile rose after the incident, eventually becoming Governor of Michigan and later appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin D. Roosevelt as an Associate Justice. The Murphy administration allowed the march to proceed, although it did not grant a permit.
On March 6, William Z. Foster, secretary of the Trade Union Unity League and a leader of the Communist Party, gave a speech in Detroit in preparation for the march. The marchers intended to present 14 demands to Henry Ford, the head of the Ford Motor Company. The demands included rehiring the unemployed, providing funds for health care, ending racial discrimination in hiring and promotions, providing winter fuel for the unemployed, abolishing the use of company spies and private police against workers, and acknowledging workers' right to organize unions.[5]
March 7 was bitterly cold. A crowd estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000 gathered near the Dearborn city limits, about one mile from the Ford plant. The Detroit Times called it "one of the coldest days of the winter, with a frigid gale whooping out of the northwest". Marchers carried banners reading "Give Us Work", "We Want Bread Not Crumbs", and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor". Albert Goetz gave a speech, asking that the marchers avoid violence. The march proceeded peacefully along the streets of Detroit until it reached the Dearborn city limits.
There, the Dearborn police attempted to stop the march by firing tear gas into the crowd and hitting marchers with clubs. One officer fired a gun in the direction of the marchers. The unarmed crowd scattered into a field covered with stones and threw them at police. The angry marchers regrouped and advanced nearly one mile toward the plant. There, two fire engines sprayed cold water onto the marchers from an overpass. The police were joined by Ford security guards and shot into the crowd. Marchers Joe York (20), Kalman Leny (26), and Joe DeBlasio (31) were killed, and at least 22 others were wounded by gunfire.[6]
The leaders canceled the march and began an orderly retreat. Harry Bennett, head of Ford security, drove up in a car, opened a window, and fired a pistol into the crowd. Immediately, the car was pelted with rocks, and Bennett was injured. He exited the car and continued firing at the retreating marchers. Dearborn police and Ford security men opened fire with machine guns on the retreating marchers. Joe Bussell (16) was killed, dozens more men were wounded, and Bennett was hospitalized.[7]
About 25 Dearborn police officers were injured by thrown rocks and other debris, but none by gunfire.[8]
Aftermath
All of the seriously wounded marchers were arrested, and the police chained many to their hospital beds after they were admitted for treatment. A nationwide search was conducted for William Z. Foster, but he was not arrested. No law enforcement or Ford security officer was arrested, although all reliable reports showed that only they had engaged in all the gunfire, resulting in deaths, injuries, and property damage. The New York Times reported that "Dearborn streets were stained with blood, streets were littered with broken glass and the wreckage of bullet-riddled automobiles, and nearly every window in the Ford plant's employment building had been broken".[9]
The following day, Detroit newspapers reported sensational and mistaken accounts of the violence, apparently based on rumors or false police reports. The Detroit Times, for example, falsely claimed that Harry Bennett and four policemen had been shot. The Detroit Press said that "six shots fired by a communist hiding behind a parked car were cited by police Monday night as the match which touched off a riot at the Ford Motor Company plant." The Detroit Free Press wrote that "These professional Communists alone are morally guilty of the assaults and killings which took place before the Ford plant."[10] The Mirror ran a headline saying "Red Leaders Facing Murder Trials".
In the following days, the local newspapers gathered more information and changed their tone, reassigning blame for the deaths and severe injuries of unemployed and unarmed workers. The Detroit Times, for example, said that "Someone, it is now admitted, blundered in the handling of the throng of Hunger Marchers that sought to present petitions at the Ford plant in River Rouge." The newspaper continued that 'The killing of obscure workmen, innocent of crime" was "a blow directed at the very heart of American institutions." The Detroit News reported that "Insofar as the demonstration itself had leaders present in the march, they appear to have warned the participants against a fight."[11]
The mainstream trade union movement spoke out against the killings. The Detroit Federation of Labor, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, issued a statement saying that "The outrageous murdering of workers at the Ford Motor Plant in Dearborn on Monday has cast a stain on this community that will remain a disgrace for many years."[12]
On March 12, an estimated 25,000 to 60,000 people participated in a funeral procession for the four dead marchers, who were buried side by side in Woodmere Cemetery in Detroit. The slogan of the funeral march was "Smash the Ford-Murphy Terror".[13]
Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy said that "the chaining of patient prisoners to beds is a brutal practice that should find no encouragement in an enlightened hospital". Murphy was criticized because some observers thought Detroit police may have been involved in the violence. But a historian writing nearly 50 years later described their role as "peripheral".[14] Murphy denounced Harry Bennett as an "inhuman brute" and called Henry Ford a "terrible man". He asked, "What is the difference between the official Dearborn police and Ford's guards?" His answer was, "A legalistic one."[13]
A fifth marcher, Curtis Williams (36), died of injuries five months later on August 7, 1932. When Williams, an African American, died of injuries, Woodmere Cemetery disallowed his burial there under its "whites only" policy of segregation. Curtis Williams's family arranged for his cremation, and his ashes were scattered near the graves of fellow marchers.
Nine years later, on April 11, 1941, after the economy had begun to recover and 40,000 Ford workers conducted a ten-day sit down strike, Henry Ford signed a collective bargaining agreement with the United Auto Workers union.
Grand Jury report
Prosecutor Harry S. Toy convened a grand jury to investigate the violence. At the end of June, they completed their investigation and issued their report. They said "After hearing many witnesses on both sides of the matter, this grand jury finds no legal grounds for indictments. However, we find that the conduct of the demonstrators was ill-considered and unlawful in their utter disregard for constituted authority. We find, further, that the conduct of the Dearborn City Police when they first met the demonstrators, though well-intended, might have been more discreet, and better considered before they applied force in the form of tear gas. However, we believe that the said police discharged what they conscientiously considered to be their sworn duty as law enforcing officials, alike when they intercepted the rioters at the city's limit, using tear gas and in the critical and violent situation which ensued employing gunfire to protect life and property, which were then manifestly in danger."[15]
One grand juror, a political ally of Frank Murphy, dissented, calling the administration of the grand jury "the most biased, prejudiced, and ignorant proceeding imaginable".[16] This grand juror, Mrs. Jerry Houghton Bacon, said that she "witnessed the most glaring discrimination on the parts of the prosecutors in the treatment of witnesses brought before the grand jury. Marked prejudice was voiced by the prosecutors which, without regard to its intent, impressed and influenced the minds of the jurors."[17]
Henry Ford was an American industrialist and business magnate. As founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the Fordism system.
Dearborn is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. An inner-ring suburb of Detroit, Dearborn borders Detroit to the south and west, roughly 7 miles (11.3 km) west of downtown Detroit. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 109,976, ranking as the seventh-largest city in Michigan. Dearborn is best known as the home of the Ford Motor Company, and the birthplace and hometown of its founder, Henry Ford.
Walter Philip Reuther was an American leader of organized labor and civil rights activist who built the United Automobile Workers (UAW) into one of the most progressive labor unions in American history. He saw labor movements not as narrow special interest groups but as instruments to advance social justice and human rights in democratic societies. He leveraged the UAW's resources and influence to advocate for workers' rights, civil rights, women's rights, universal health care, public education, affordable housing, environmental stewardship and nuclear nonproliferation around the world. He believed in Swedish-style social democracy and societal change through nonviolent civil disobedience. He cofounded the AFL-CIO in 1955 with George Meany. He survived two attempted assassinations, including one at home where he was struck by a 12-gauge shotgun blast fired through his kitchen window. He was the fourth and longest serving president of the UAW, serving from 1946 until his death in 1970.
The 1936–1937 Flint sit-down strike, also known as the General Motors sit-down strike, or the great GM sit-down strike, was a sitdown strike at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, United States. It changed the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from a collection of isolated local unions on the fringes of the industry into a major labor union, and led to the unionization of the domestic automobile industry.
The United Auto Workers (UAW), fully named International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States and southern Ontario, Canada. It was founded as part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and grew rapidly from 1936 to the 1950s. The union played a major role in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party under the leadership of Walter Reuther. It was known for gaining high wages and pensions for automotive manufacturing workers, but it was unable to unionize auto plants built by foreign-based car makers in the South after the 1970s, and it went into a steady decline in membership; reasons for this included increased automation, decreased use of labor, mismanagement, movements of manufacturing, and increased globalization.
The Battle of the Overpass was an attack by Ford Motor Company against the United Auto Workers (UAW) on May 26, 1937, at the River Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan. The UAW had recently organized workers at Ford's competitors, and planned to hand out leaflets at an overpass leading to the plant's main gate in view of many of the 90,000 employees. Before the UAW organizers could begin, they were attacked by Ford's "quasi-military" security service and the Dearborn police.
The Ford River Rouge complex is a Ford Motor Company automobile factory complex located in Dearborn, Michigan, along the River Rouge, upstream from its confluence with the Detroit River at Zug Island. Construction began in 1917, and when it was completed in 1928, it was the largest integrated factory in the world, surpassing Buick City, built in 1904.
Harry Herbert Bennett, was a boxer, naval sailor, and businessman. From the 1920s through 1945, he worked for Ford Motor Company and was best known as the head of Ford’s "service department", the company's internal security agency. While working for Henry Ford, Bennett's union-busting tactics made him an enemy of the United Auto Workers (UAW) trade union. He gained infamy for his involvement in activities such as in the Battle of the Overpass, a 1937 incident where UAW members protesting for higher wages were assaulted by Ford security guards.
Maurice Sugar was an American political activist and labor attorney. He is best remembered as the General Counsel of the United Auto Workers Union from 1937 to 1946.
James Keir Watkins was an American attorney and police commissioner. He played college football for the University of Michigan from 1905 to 1909. He later became a leading attorney in Detroit and served as commissioner of the Detroit Police Department in the early 1930s. He also organized the Detroit branch of "The Volunteers" in 1936 "to save their country from a perpetuation of the New Deal."
Wyndham Mortimer was an American trade union organizer and functionary active in the United Auto Workers union (UAW). Mortimer is best remembered as a key union organizer in the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike. Mortimer was the First Vice President of the UAW from 1936 to 1939. A member of the Communist Party USA from about 1932, Mortimer was a critic of the efforts of the conservative American Federation of Labor to control the union and was a leader of a so-called "Unity Caucus" which led the UAW to join forces with the more aggressive Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
Woodmere Cemetery is at West Fort Street and Woodmere Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, in the neighborhood of Springwells Village in what was originally the township of Springwells. Woodmere Cemetery is operated by the Midwest Memorial Group.
The tool and die strike of 1939, also known as the "strategy strike", was an ultimately successful attempt by the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) to be recognized as the sole representative for General Motors workers. In addition to representation rights, the UAW, working jointly with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), sought to resolve existing grievances of skilled workers.
The Chrysler Auto Strike began in October 1939 at the Dodge Main Plant in Detroit, Michigan, as a struggle between the Chrysler Auto manufacturer and the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW).
Events from the year 1938 in Michigan.
Events from the year 1932 in Michigan.
Roy Louis Reuther was an American labor organizer. He was one of the leaders of the historic Flint sit-down strike that gave birth to the United Auto Workers (UAW). Along with his brothers Walter and Victor, he helped build the UAW into the most powerful industrial union in the United States. Later, as political director for the UAW, he spearheaded efforts to expand voter participation, and was deeply involved in the civil rights movement.
The 1913 Studebaker strike was a labor strike involving workers for the American car manufacturer Studebaker in Detroit. The six-day June 1913 strike, organized by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), is considered the first major labor strike in the automotive industry.
Nat Ganley, or Nat Kaplan, was a socialist and later communist journalist who became a union organizer in the 1930s, particularly for the United Auto Workers of America. He was tried and convicted in 1954 for violating the Smith Act, but his conviction was later overturned.
Shelton Tappes was an American labor organizer and civil rights activist, known for his role in drafting and negotiating the anti-discrimination clause included in the first contract between Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers (UAW.)
↑ Campbell, Russell. "Film and Photo League Radical cinema in the 30s". www.ejumpcut.org. JUMP CUT. Archived from the original on January 17, 2020. Retrieved July 29, 2020. A hunger march in Detroit on March 7, 1932, filmed by members of the local League, became a massacre when police opened fire and killed four demonstrators. The film survives.
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