Detroit - CAS Theme 2021-2022

Over the past twenty-five years, union participation has declined among the nation as whole. Coupled with increasing racial tensions, cutbacks in public programs at the federal, state, and local levels, and a shift in the distribution of wealth, these changes have undermined the standard of living for American workers' families, especially African American families, as they created greater wealth for the American elite. African Americans, Labor, and Society examines these changes, in particular their effects on the entire African American community, and suggests a move toward a more egalitarian future.
This collection of essays, written by legal scholars, professional organizers, and economists, suggests integrating civil rights and labor laws to strengthen both anti-discrimination and union-organizing efforts.

The immediate impact of deindustrialization--the suffering inflicted upon workers, their families, and their communities--has been widely reported by scholars and journalists. In this important volume, the authors seek to move discussion of America's industrial decline beyond the immediate ramifications of plant shutdowns by placing it into a broader social, political, and economic context. Emphasizing a historical approach, the authors explore the multiple meanings of one of the major transformations of the twentieth century. The concept of deindustrialization entered the popular and scholarly lexicon in 1982 with the publication of The Deindustrialization of America, by Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison. Beyond the Ruins both builds upon and departs from the insights presented in that benchmark study. In this volume, the authors rethink the chronology, memory, geography, culture, and politics of industrial change in America. Taken together, these original essays argue that deindustrialization is not a story of a single emblematic place, such as Flint or Youngstown, or a specific time period, such as the 1980s. Nor is it limited to the abandoned factory buildings associated with heavy industry. Rather, deindustrialization is a complex process that is uneven in its causes, timing, and consequences. The essays in this volume examine this process through a wide range of topics, from worker narratives and media imagery, to suburban politics, environmental activism, and commemoration.

"For almost two decades, August Meier and Elliott Rudwick have roamed the frontier of Afro-American history, blazing trails that others have followed. This book forges a solid link between race and class conflict in the twentieth century." ---Ira Berlin, The Nation "This fact-filled study is essential to students of the labor and civil rights movements." ---David Kusnet, The New Republic "A fascinating slice of history illustrating important race and class issues that are still with us." ---Library Journal "By ignoring the conventional lines between labor and black history, Meier and Rudwick have found an unexplored middle ground---the net of relations between the black community and white economic institutions---that shaped the working life of blacks in Detroit's auto plants. This is a major achievement." ---David Brody, Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, Davis ". . . an important work . . . one of the first to apply the nitty-gritty of social and institutional history to 20th century African American and labor history." ---Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois at Chicago Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW is essential reading for historians of labor and race in America, as well those interested in Detroit's importance as a crucible for American urban history.

From automobiles to tanks, planes, and ammunition, author Michael W.R. Davis captures a visual history of Detroit's industrial conversion guaranteeing victory at home and abroad. Gentlemen, we must out-build Hitler, proclaimed General Motors President William Knudson. Through the course of the World War II years, Detroit did exactly that. But how did the Motor City so successfully shift its focus from automobiles to become the leading producer of America's Arsenal of Democracy? Just as Detroit symbolizes the U.S. automobile industry, during World War II it also came to stand for all American industry's conversion from civilian goods to war material. The label Arsenal of Democracy was coined by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in a fireside chat radio broadcast on December 29, 1940, nearly a year before the United States formally entered the war. Detroit's Wartime Industry is the pictorial history of one Detroiter's unique leadership in the miraculous speed Detroit's mass-production capacity was shifted to output of tanks, trucks, guns, and airplanes to support America's victory and of the struggles of civilians on the home front. Detroit's Wartime Industry is the perfect book for enthusiasts of World War II, automobiles, and Detroit's unbreakable spirit. Author, historian, and journalist Michael W.R. Davis is former Executive Director of Detroit Historical Society and has previously published books on Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors.

It is a bedrock American belief: the 1950s were a golden age of prosperity for autoworkers. Flush with high wages and enjoying the benefits of generous union contracts, these workers became the backbone of a thriving blue-collar middle class. It is also a myth. Daniel J. Clark began by interviewing dozens of former autoworkers in the Detroit area and found a different story--one of economic insecurity caused by frequent layoffs, unrealized contract provisions, and indispensable second jobs. Disruption in Detroit is a vivid portrait of workers and an industry that experienced anything but stable prosperity. As Clark reveals, the myths--whether of rising incomes or hard-nosed union bargaining success--came later. In the 1950s, ordinary autoworkers, union leaders, and auto company executives recognized that although jobs in their industry paid high wages, they were far from steady and often impossible to find.

This book shows how Ford's first large automotive plant--the Crystal Palace--transformed the sleepy village of Highland Park, Michigan, into an industrial boomtown that later became an urban ghetto, and the first American city whose life and well-being depended entirely upon the employment and production policies of the automotive industry.

Among more than two hundred auto companies that tried their luck in the Motor City, just three remain: Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. But many of those lost to history have colorful stories worth telling. J.J. Cole forgot to put brakes in his new auto, so he had to drive it in circles until it ran out of gas. Brothers John and Horace Dodge often trashed saloons during wild evenings but used their wealth to pay for the damage the next day. David D. Buick went from being the founder of his own leading auto company to working the information desk at the Detroit Board of Trade. Author Alan Naldrett explores these and more tales of automakers who ultimately failed but shaped the industry and designs today.

Between the end of World War I and the Great Depression, over 58,000 Mexicans journeyed to the Midwest in search of employment. Many found work in agriculture, but thousands more joined the growing ranks of the industrial proletariat. Throughout the northern Midwest, and especially in Detroit, Mexican workers entered steel mills, packing houses, and auto plants, becoming part of the modern American working class. Zaragosa Vargas's work focuses on this little-known feature in the history of Chicanos and American labor. In relating the experiences of Mexicans in workplace and neighborhood, and in showing the roles of Mexican women, the Catholic Church, and labor unions, Vargas enriches our knowledge of immigrant urban life. His is an important work that will be welcomed by historians of Chicano Studies and American labor.

An elegy--angry, funny, and powerfully detailed--about the slow death of a Detroit auto plant and an American way of life. How does a country dismantle a century's worth of its industrial heritage? To answer that question, Paul Clemens investigates the 2006 closing of one of America's most potent symbols: a Detroit auto plant. Prior to its closing, the Budd Company stamping plant on Detroit's East Side, built in 1919, was one of the oldest active auto plants in America's foremost industrial city--one whose history includes the nation's proudest moments and those of its working class. Its closing also reflects the character of the country in a new era--the sad, brutal process of picking it apart and sending it, piece by piece, to the countries that now have use for its machines. Punching Out is an up-close report, at once tender and angry, from the meanest, sharpest edge of America's deindustrializa­tion, and a lament for a working-class culture that once defined a prosperous America--and that is now on the verge of eco­nomic extinction.

Race against Liberalism examines how black worker activism in Detroit shaped the racial politics of the labor movement and the white working class. David M. Lewis-Colman traces the substantive, long-standing disagreements between liberals and the black workers who embraced autonomous race-based action. As he shows, black autoworkers placed themselves at the center of Detroit's working-class politics and sought to forge a kind of working class unity that accommodated their interests as African Americans. The book covers the independent caucuses in the 1940s and the Trade Union Leadership Council in the 1950s; the black power movement and Revolutionary Union Movements of the mid-1960s; and the independent race-based activism of the 1970s that resulted in Coleman Young's 1973 election as the city's first black mayor.

An award-winning journalist's insights into the auto industry, the decline of once-great companies, and the failures of management The collapse of General Motors captured headlines in early 2009, but as Alex Taylor III writes in this in-depth dissection of the automaker's undoing, GM's was a meltdown forty years in the making. Drawing on more than thirty years of experience and insight as an automotive industry reporter, as well as personal relationships with many of the leading players, Taylor reveals the many missteps of GM and its competitors: a refusal to follow market cues and consumer trends; a lack of follow-through on major initiatives; and a history of hesitance, inaction, and failure to learn from mistakes. In the process, he provides lasting lessons for every executive who confronts the challenges of a changing marketplace and global competition. Yet Taylor resists condemning GM's leadership from the privileged view of hindsight. Instead, his account enables the reader to see GM's decline through the eyes of an insider, with the understanding that corporate decision-making at a company as large as General Motors isn't as simple as it may seem. Taylor's book serves as a marvelous case study of one of the United States' premier companies, of which every American quite literally now holds a share.