:: rawblogXport ::

:: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 ::

Heart of Motor City: Public tours of the Rouge plant show what made Detroit great BY FRANK PROVENZANO, FREE PRESS
But along with manufacturing milestones comes the history of violent confrontations between management and union organizers, discrimination against African Americans and dumping of pollutants into the air, ground and Rouge River.

Don't expect in-depth exploration of these issues. The tour is a touchstone, offering only chapter headings of 20th-Century history.

There's only passing reference to how the union dealt with a private security force the company hired to intimidate workers. And there's only brief mention of how the city was transformed by the Great Migration of African Americans from the South. Many ended up in the lowest-paid and most dangerous jobs in the auto plants.

'There were times when they didn't want blacks around here, not in Dearborn,' says Leyzette Gilmore, 62, who started work as a key puncher at Ford in 1960.

'Some people forget about the struggles that occurred here,' she says. 'But that's part of the history, too. An important part that can't be forgotten.'

The tour aims to please the leisurely tourist, not the analytical-minded looking to understand how the emergence of Ford and difficult working conditions at factories shaped the inevitable confrontation and compromise between management and organized labor.

posted 6:47 AM :: reference link :: 0 comments ::

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