At the time Henry Ford was the self proclaimed potentate of his manufacturing kingdom demanding tribute in the form of labor and loyalty from his machine age minions. He ruled with a "let them eat cake" mentality that left him oblivious to the gathering storm clouds of labor that were forming among the workers of the monolithic Ford Rouge Plant in May of 1937. Ford had thousands of toiling workers at the Ford Rouge complex, which at the time was the techno-Taj Majal of all factories. Modern and monstrous, it was imposing and intimidating at the castle of the Black Knight. When you drive by it today, it still overwhelms the senses by it's sheer size and bulk.
It was referred to in hushed tones by Ford workers as the "butcher house" but soon this bastion of Fords reign of terror over the workers was about to be confronted by the United Auto Workers of America, (UAW) as they set the wheels in motion to break Fords blockade of unionism. Events which would lead to a confrontation that would result in a PR nightmare of public outrage over the violent tactics Henry Ford would authorize to put down the revolt. The labor storm that broke loose at the Rouge Plant resulted in a torrential flood of blood and vicious violence when his lordship Henry Ford decided to unleash the Ford private security forces on union leaders including Walter Reuther, who at the end of the day was beaten bloody by the goon squad gang that could have given lessons in brutality to Hitler's Gestapo.
To understand the Battle of the Overpass as it became known, we have to look at the blue collar Diego Rivera landscape of Detroit of 1937. It was as blue-collar as it gets. Emerging socialism and assemblyline unionism were starting to work together for the common good of the working class of the city's auto plants and making inroads. Two of the Big Three, GM and Chrysler were already under the union banner, but there was still a long way to go at the Ford Motor Company. The monotony of the assemblylines were numbing, while the high decibel noise of the factories was deafening and the wages were low. The unions conducted a surreal industrial strength symphony creating as it progressed into a blue collar-ballet performing to a audience of dedicated workers..
The Rustbelt's Yellow Brick Road led to Detroit, the Emerald City of the Working Class, but, instead of finding delightful Munchkins and a colorful Wizard, it was a land blanketed with a thick veneer of pollution along with a heavy haze of Detroit dust and rust that not only gave the Motor City sunsets a burnt orange hue, but these same factories held the workers in an industrial headlock in a thick forest of red hot steel and iron; the air was thick with pollution from the belching smokestacks while the factory workers worked at a furious pace to win the auto race for space in the automobile showrooms of America.
The horsepowered highway machines rolled off the assembly lines, while the blue collars of the workers, proud of the red, white and blue product they were producing were getting restless. Day in and day out, they emptied their black lunch boxes of five-hour-old sandwiches, hard cheese, tomatoes and proscuitto, washing it all down with a quick drink from a silver thermos. They were an autoworker audience waiting for the blue collar burlesque to begin. The Dance of the Vehicular Veil performed by the wench of the wrench. She would take to the stage, her face a monochomatic gray industrial-age blank. She would put forward her factory face of conformity and anonymity wearing heavy metal lipstick and racks and stacks of Henry Ford's Rouge Plant rouge. The hardhats of Detroit lived and worked in a town without blue collar pity, while the industrialists of the Big Three fueled by greed drove them relentlessly. Fordism was creating discontent, discord and dissent among the ranks. The workers had reached a breaking point and it was just a matter of time before the two sides of the labor battle would meet in mortal combat and split the industrial atom that would unleash an explosion of violence.
While the unions tried early in the century to penetrate Ford's fortress of solitude, the forces of solidarity were hard at work. He was anti-union and did all in his power to keep his factory union free. In an effort to diffuse any further attempts he went so far as to set up a fake union called the Knights of Dearborn, which was not a union at all. It was Ford's smoke and mirrors magic act. It also turns out the Knights newspaper and newsletter were locked and loaded with anti-Jewish messages.to spread Henry Fords gospel of anti-Semitism. This was on the heels of his instituting the $5 day for his workers to keep the union out.
The initial attempt to unionize Ford workers occurred in the golden year of the Tin Lizzie of 1913 when Fords profit margin was rocketing as the company cranked out Model T's by the thousands. Unfortunately, this amazing success was not putting larger paychecks in the workers pockets or food on the workers table. Profit sharing, bonuses, and increased wages were not in Henry Fords vocabulary. By 1915 Ford was so rich he was having a huge mansion built in Dearborn, Michigan called Fairlane, which still stands today. It was a nature center of massive proportions absorbing property like an angry sponge. It included a waterfall built on the Rouge River and the area was designed by Jens Jensen with costs that ran to $370,000 for landscaping alone! He also made sure he had 500 birdhouses installed as homes for birds, a massive greenhouse for his wife's horticultural hobby, and had a miniature house built for his kids to play in. Meanwhile, the Ford workers were underpaid and overworked so Ford could funnel funds and profits into his various personal projects while the assemblylines ran non-stop and life and poverty droned on for the worker on the floor trying to feed and house their families, while Ford ate steak with the likes of Harvey Firestone at the mansion. The king had raised the drawbridge to protect his capitalist castle, but outside forces were now at work and by the 1930's the union was prepared to cross the moat and storm the castle.
As we have seen, earlier attempts to unionize Ford workers had met with a counter attack. .Henry twarted early union attempts by instituting the $5 day in an effort to keep the union out. It worked...at least for a few years.The UAW campaign of 1937 involved a "Unionism not Fordism" approach with a full attack with their weapons of mass industrial destruction..leaflets! Pieces of paper to be passed out to workers coming and going from the belly of the Ford Rouge beast at the pedestrian overpass on Miller Road in Dearborn at Gate 4 of the Rouge plant. Remember Ford's $5 day? Years later Ford workers were getting paid $6 bucks for an eight hour day. The UAW leaflets said the union would fight for an $8 dollar, six hour day, but they had to unionize and fight as one. Unity and safety in numbers. Even Abraham Lincoln said that in not so many words when he said...United we stand...divided we fall! The campaign to emancipate the wage slaves of Ford was about to begin. Just as Gettysburg was the turning point in the Civil War...the Battle of the Overpass would end in ultimate victory for the UAW and the soon to be Rank and File on the factory floor.
By the beginning of 1937, The Reuther brothers, Walter, Victor and Roy of the UAW had a plan, but, first they had to get all their industrial ducks in row before the assault on Ford could begin in earnest. The UAW targeted the other auto manufactures first, modeling their strikes after their European counterparts who engaged in sit-down strikes and refused to work..or budge. First the UAW struck one of the major auto suppliers in town, Kelsey-Hayes, and scored a victory on that front. The next target was set for the GM Fisher plant in Flint, Michigan that resulted in a battle that lasted over three hours where gas and buckshot were fired at the strikers. With workers now shot and wounded in a pitched battle, the workers counter attacked with factory hoses and monster sized slingshots that could launch up to two pounds of heavy metal at the police and strike breakers. Blood was now flowing on both sides.
Then in February, the UAW targeted the Flint Chevy plants, which resulted in GM capitulating and signing a contract with the victorious UAW. The Reuther brothers were on a roll. As the Ides of March approached, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 workers staged a huge sit-in protest that also brought out the white flag of surrender by Chrysler, Studebaker and Cadillac. The little union that could, like the little engine that could, was not just victorious, but had grown in power and numbers. Walter Reuthers local which at first numbered a mere 78 card carrying union members could now boast of a membership of over 30,000. Overall, at the union version of Appomatox and Lee's surrender to Grant, the UAW had won a set hourly minium wage, set up grievance committees, established seniority policies, abolished piecework pay and now had a unified voice that would no longer be silent.
The UAW was riding the crest of the wave of success and just before the attack on Ford was to begin, Walter Reuther decided to hold a rally in downtown Detroit to speak to all unions and all union members no matter what field the came from. Meat packing plants, launderies, hotels, and other businesses in the Motor City were all represented, and all turned out for the rally. Reuther spoke to the throngs at Cadillac Square in downtown Detroit to a crowd of over 150,000. He was calling for Labor party candidates to run for city offices and a cry to rid the city of corrupt police and city officials. The speeches were fiery and had an impact. Best of all, the UAW was now firmly established and in a position to launch an assault on Henry Ford. The preparations for the assault had all the clandestine secrecy of military preparations for the Normandy Invasion of Europe that was still years in the future.
The workers in the Rouge plant held secret meetings to discuss joining the UAW and to plan for the upcoming protest at Gate 4 of the Miller Road Overpass. Reuther meanwhile obtained his license from the city hall in Dearborn, as corrupt a city government if ever there was one, and opened two union halls and made a couple of forays to the Overpass to scout out and plan the logistics. Knowing that the union organizers might be sitting ducks for Fords Gestapo, he extended a welcome for others to join the UAW in the march which included clergymen, reporters and journalists along with members of the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties. One hundred women, members of the Womens Auxillary of the local were to help distribute the leaflets. (Later during the batlle, the women arriving by trolley cars were shoved and beaten by Ford Security Forces. The Dearborn police stood by doing nothing to prevent the carnage. However, one cop did yell out as Security Forces were beating one women, calling for them to stop as they would kill her if they kept it up. Other cops told him as related in a later interview to "Stay out of it...Ford was only protecting his property!") Two hours before the battle began, two dozen carloads of Ford goons wearing sunglasses arrived and warned the union to move on and also started to shove the photographers around. Then it calmed down...but then...2 p.m. arrived all hell was about to break loose.
It all began with a simple click of the camera that was not exactly the ideal Kodak moment for Ford, but, the images captured became the shot heard 'round the labor world! At 2 p.m. on the afternoon of May 26 of 1937, Walter Reuther and other UAW organizers were passing out lealets on the overpass when a photojournalist from the Detroit News asked them to pose for a front page photo on the overpass itself with the FORD signage on the Rouge Plant for a backdrop. This is a photo that would have a clear labor message, however, what happened next made the message even clearer and for Ford, resulted in a PR disasaster for the automaker worldwide. The workers power of the people combined with the power of the press were a deadly combination that day that delivered a political black-eye to the industrial demagogue of Detroit, along with very real black eyes and injuries to Reuther and other labor leaders who suffered severe beatings from attacks by Fords internal security forces. They attacked as a pack of mad dogs, rabid for revenge from behind and went on a rampage and beating frenzy. According to newspaper accounts these few men of the UAW, alone and defenseless, where attacked by as many as three dozen Ford thugs with fists, punches, kicks and clubs. It was the beginning of the end of Fordism, and rise of the Union in the Ford factories.
In an interview in the Detroit News after the beatings, Reuther explained what happened."Seven times they raised me off the concrete and slammed me down on it. They pinned my arms . . . and I was punched and kicked and dragged by my feet to the stairway, thrown down the first flight of steps, picked up, slammed down on the platform and kicked down the second flight. On the ground they beat and kicked me some more." Many of the other organizers were also beaten severely, and one got a broken back out of the ordeal.
The press was attacked as well including the Detroit News photojournalist. The security forces tried to destroy all photographic plates of all the photographers on hand, but the Detroit News photographer hid his plates under the backseat...when security forces cornered him at this car after a chase he reached in the front seat and handed over blank plates which they began to smash on the ground. The photographer and the "real" plates made it in time to stop the presses at the Detroit News plant in downtown Detroit. The story of the Battle of the Overpass and the photos he had taken made front page in newspapers across the country! Fords reputation was irreparably damaged for years, the door blocking the union from Fords factories was blown off it's hinges. The National Labor Relations board also took Ford and his security officer, Harry Bennett to task and publically chastised them. Within three years...Ford capitulated and signed a contract with the UAW.
One final bit of irony. Henry Ford invested hundreds of thousands into building his Shangri-la mansion, Fairlane. It had it's own generating plant operating to provide his own electricity from the waters of the Rouge River that powered his system. Ten years after the Battle of the Overpass, on a stormy night in 1947, the storm knocked out the electricity to the Ford Mansion. Henry in his slippers and robe with candle in hand went to go downstairs and while on the mahogany stairway, tripped and fell to this death. It was said that "he was born by candlelight in the 1800's and he died by candlelight in the 1900's"
The man who put the world on wheels had lost the union battle a decade before, now he lost the battle of life at the hands of his own mansion built on the blood and sweat of his workers. In the end, Unionism did win over Fordism and ushered in a new era of workers rights. The UAW contract at Ford Motor Company was born in 1937. Henry Ford was dead in 1947.