Editor’s Note: Dave Moore became a leader in the union organizing at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan in the 1930s and was elected to leadership positions in UAW Local 600 in the late 1940s. He was summarily dismissed from his elected position by the international in 1951 for political reasons, but was reinstated in 1963, when he was assigned as a representative to the International. He served as a legislative assistant to the late Rep. George Crockett (D-MI) thereafter. He remains politically active and currently resides in Detroit. March 7th marks the 75th anniversary of the Ford Hunger March.

PA: When was the first time you started working on organizing the auto unions?

DM: I got hired at Ford in 1935 making 60 cents an hour in the foundry. That’s where they put all the Blacks. We had a few Italians. We had a few Polish and what not. They had 12,000 Blacks at the foundry at Ford and another 4,000 or 5,000 scattered around the plant. The foundry was the hellhole of the Rouge Plant. Silicosis, tuberculosis. You could burn up in the furnace. You had no protection whatsoever. Health hazards were the order of the day. When a white man who worked in the foundry came out after his eight hours, he looked just as black as a Black man did. Everybody looked the same.

They had a special trolley car run from Detroit for the foundry workers to ride home. They wouldn’t let Blacks ride on the Michigan Avenue car. That was for white folks who worked in the offices at the Ford Motor Company. The Baker car not only carried the foundry workers but it also smelled like the foundry.

I got a job in January 1935 at Ford. Sometime later on in 1936, I was approached by a guy by the name of Bill McKie. Myself and another couple guys were getting ready to get on the trolley car coming back to Detroit after our shift. He walked up to me, and he whispered, 'Do you work in the foundry?' Yeah. He said, 'Take this and read it when you get home.' He gave me a leaflet. I got on the car, opened it up, and I started to read it. It was about how the union was necessary: let us all join together when the time comes, we’re trying to organize General Motors, join us at Yemans Hall in Hamtramck to hear speakers talk about the union organizing at General Motors and Chrysler.

I didn’t know shit from shinola about a union. I’d heard about them. Unions had always frowned upon Black folks. The unions at that time were mostly craft unions. There were no industrial unions at the time. They didn’t care much for people who worked in plants, the packinghouses, the auto industry, the coal miners, the steel mills. They didn’t give a damn about those people. They were all craft unions at that time. And the crafts didn’t want Blacks, and they wouldn’t have them.

I read these leaflets, and the next time I saw a guy by the name of Percy Llewellyn, a white guy, and there was a guy with him, Nelson Davis, a Black guy. They had met me down here at Cadillac Square in Detroit when I was getting ready to go to work. They were handing out leaflets to all Ford workers. At that time, all Ford workers had to wear a badge to get into the plant. Every time they saw a Ford worker with a badge on, they’d give him a leaflet. I said, 'You’re the ones who gave me a leaflet before.' They said, 'Yeah. We’re going to have a meeting. Why don’t you come? Don’t let your foreman at Ford see you with this. You’ll get fired.'

It was Bill McKie and Nelson Davis who started me off by attending unions meetings.

PA: Why were they asking Ford workers to come to a meeting for General Motors?

DM: At that time, they had made a move to organize GM and Chrysler. They had not made any move whatsoever to organize Ford. The arrow was on GM mainly, because we had a group of guys up in Flint. You have to understand this was in 1935 and 1936. The drive at GM took about a year and a half before it succeeded. We didn’t organize GM until 1937.

I told you before about the power Ford had over the city of Dearborn. He owned the city. I guess Mike Widman and Phil Murray and those guys decided to stick on GM and Chrysler first, and they did. They organized GM and Chrysler in 1937. I wasn’t too involved in the GM drive, because I didn’t work in GM. But I did know some of the guys who worked there. Shelton Tappes, Percy Llewellyn, Bill McKie, Johnny Gallo, Ed Lock, and myself used to go up to the plant on the weekends. Percy had a Model T Ford. Gas was 8 cents a gallon at that time. The problem was, where’re you going to get the 8 cents? We would all throw in a few pennies to get enough gas to get to Flint to help the guys out. I never did play a big role in that, but I did begin to get more knowledge about the labor movement.

In 1937, they organized GM and Chrysler. But I’m going to tell you that I was pissed off at the time. They did not give much attention to the Black workers in their drive to organize GM and Chrysler. The completely ignored us. You can’t see in all of the leaflets they put out during the organizing drive at GM and Chrysler, they did not make a wholehearted effort to reach the Black workers at all. At that time at GM and Chrysler, the Black workers were either in the foundry or they were outside loading boxcars in the wintertime. They had different departments where Blacks couldn’t work at GM and Chrysler. They had all white departments and all Black departments. But the UAW at that time made no effort whatsoever to reach out and embrace the Black workers to join the union.

But they had to do it at Ford. Do you understand the word I’m using: HAD. Ain’t no way in hell they could organize Ford without Black workers. I said it then, and I’ll say it now. They come to realize that. Despite the efforts of guys like old man John Conyers, the father of the congressman, who worked at Chrysler at the time, and Oscar Noble who worked at GM. Oscar was a guy who went all out to help the union, but they gave Oscar some token recognition. They did not embrace him and did not accept him fully like they did the white brothers at the time.

After 1937 they decided to tackle the Ford Motor Company. This was after they organized Chrysler and GM. They used the same tactic in trying to organize Ford that they had succeeded in organizing GM and Chrysler, the same approach. They didn’t care about the Blacks in the foundry and scattered around the plant. When they took the vote in 1939, the UAW-CIO got the shit beat of them. Ford said, 'This proves that the Ford workers do not want a union.' You know why they lost? They did not make the effort to reach us in the foundry or those of us scattered around the plant. The vote was overwhelming against the UAW.

PA: Do you remember the ratio of Black workers at Ford to whites?

DM: I don’t know how many white workers. They said at that time that they had 75,000 workers. There must have been near 20,000 Blacks at Ford. The trade union movement prior to the CIO coming along didn’t give a damn about Black folks. That carried over to some extent into the drive on GM and Chrysler.

PA: What kind of issues did they have had to address in order to convince Black workers that they were all on the same side?

DM: I was just getting to that, but I am glad you asked that question. After they got the hell beat out of them in the 1939 election, they sent a guy by the name of Mike Widman here. There was a Black guy by the name of Charlie Diggs; he was a state senator at the time and was a progressive. Mike Widman wanted to meet with him, because at that time he was the only Black member of the state legislature in Michigan. He came from a predominantly Black neighborhood called Black Bottom down there south of Gratiot Avenue where Coleman Young came from. A progressive white state senator by the name of Stanley Nowak had aligned with Charlie Diggs in the legislature to support the union drive.

Charlie Diggs and Stanley Nowak had told Mike Widman, 'The only way to win at the Ford Motor Company, you can’t use the same tactics you used at GM and Chrysler. Whether you want to or not, you have to recognize the thousands of Negroes – the word was Negroes back then instead of African American – in the foundry and the others scattered around the plant. You’ve got to reach them, and if you fail to do so, you’re not going to win.' The Black workers will vote against the union every time, and a lot of the whites, because Ford has complete control over the plant. They had just as many whites who were anti-union, except the foreign-born element. Many native-born whites who came from the southern states came with their prior Civil War attitudes, and they let it be known. You even had a group that was anti-Black and anti-foreign-born, and anti-Jewish.

Mike Widman agreed that he would take this advice back to Phil Murray and John L. Lewis of the CIO. If you remember, John L. Lewis was the outspoken individual who had advocated industrial organization of the workers. Prior to the CIO coming along, the labor movement was mostly white skilled, or semi-skilled workers: painters, carpenters, and things like that. They didn’t give a damn even about the whites who worked in the plants. Widman agreed to bring John L. Lewis and Phil Murray to Detroit. We had a preacher at that time by the name of Rev. Charles Hill, pastor of Hartford Avenue Baptist Church, who was pro-union. Mike Widman agreed that he would try to bring Phil Murray and John L. Lewis here to meet with Rev. Hill and old man Charlie Diggs and some of the Black leadership of Detroit who were pro-union.

To make a long story, short one month later, at Hartford Baptist Church on Hartford Avenue in Detroit, in the basement, John L. Lewis, Phil Murray, and Mike Widman showed up. Stanley Nowak and Charlie Diggs of the legislature showed up. Rev. Solomon Ross of Shiloh Baptist Church and a guy named Reverend Miles from a little church over here on Mack Avenue showed up. The question of race came up, and whether 'Negroes' could be part of the trade union movement. Charlie Diggs told Phil Murray and John L. Lewis, 'I had a meeting with your friend Mike Widman here some weeks ago, and I told him why you lost the vote at Ford. I’m sure he told you, but if you want me to be repetitious, I’ll do it.' He said, 'you ignored the Negroes in the plant. You ignored us completely. You made no effort to reach the Negroes in the foundry and throughout the plant. You used the same tactics that you used during GM Chrysler.' He didn’t mince any words. He was joined by Rev. Hill and the rest of us. He said, 'If this is the method you’re going to continue to use, you’re not going to organize Ford.' I was sitting there with Coleman Young, Chris Alston, and George Crockett. We didn’t take part in the meeting; we were just listening to it.

Phil Murray, the head of the steelworkers union and John L. Lewis apologized. They admitted that they had used the wrong tactics.

Charlie Diggs and Stanley Nowak also suggested the possibility of bringing a Negro celebrity to support the union drive. Charlie Diggs suggested bringing Marian Anderson, because she had appeared here once before at the Masonic Temple. When Marian came it was a sell-out, standing room only. Then Rev. Hill spoke up and said, 'Charlie, I disagree with you on the person. Marian Anderson is a well-known individual. But I have in mind an individual I think will draw a crowd. By the way Marian Anderson is in Europe on a concert tour.'

Can you guess who Rev. Hill suggested?

PA: Paul Robeson?

DM: How’d you guess? There’s only one person known in the Negro community here in Detroit more than Marian Anderson, and that was Paul Robeson. Rev. Hill said, 'If you bring him here, I’m pretty sure that the UAW-CIO would win.' Mike Widman looked up and said to Phil Murray, 'You know, Rev. Hill is right. From now on we have to come out openly, don’t sugar-coat it. We’ve got to be openly in all of our pronouncements of what our intent toward the Negro and white workers is.'

And from that day on there was a different attitude. They brought Paul Robeson for the first time out at the Olympia on Grand River – standing room only. The second time they brought him to the state fair grounds. Woodward Avenue was clogged like a bunch of maggots with cars and human beings all the way from Davison Avenue to Eight Mile Road. The third time they brought him was to Cadillac Square. They thought there was over 120,000 people there. That was just before the election at Ford.

But let me go back to the first meeting we had at Olympia when they brought Paul here. The first time I’ve ever heard a white man, except during the Unemployed Councils and the march on Ford, openly say, any white person here who does not want to accept a Negro as part of the trade union, you can leave now. That guy must be crazy. Who ever heard a white man speak like that before. Phil Murray, John L. Lewis, Mike Widman: 'From now on, the UAW-CIO is going to be all for one and one for all. We don’t care who you are, what your politics are, what your religion is, what you think, where you’re from, what your color is. We’re all under one umbrella together.' Most of us had never heard a white man or white woman come forth with those kinds of words, speaking to a predominantly white audience.

From those days on, the momentum of the drive on Ford began to take a different shape. You had Black guys like Shelton Tappes, Nelson Davis, Veal Clough in the foundry, Douglas Lee and Art McPhaul in the stamping plant, David Moore and Vince Mitchell in the gear and axle plant. You had them all over. We began to hold meetings. We had what you called the Ford Organizing Committee, Black and white. We had preachers in their churches on Sunday say, 'We have a few workers here who work at Ford who want to say a few words before the service start, and by the way I agree with what they are saying.' So we would talk. We had people in the different fraternal lodges, the Elks, the Masons talk to people.

At that rally down at Cadillac Square with Paul Robeson again those words were repeated by John L. Lewis, Phil Murray, and Mike Widman. Phil Murray was the first to speak and he said, 'I want all of you who are here today to know that we’re all under one umbrella. And this umbrella has under it people of different religions, people of different colors, people from different countries. But we’re all under this umbrella. Any people who are under this umbrella, before the rain begins to fall, who do not want to remain under this umbrella with others, can walk out now. I’m especially talking about the white people.' Phil Murray said it. John L. Lewis said it. Mike Widman said it. Black people had never heard words like that before spoken by a white since the days of John Brown back in the 1850s when he was speaking out against slavery.

That was the turning point. It was the Black workers at Ford who made it possible for the union. Let me give you one example. When we had the walk out at Ford prior to the vote, there were some Blacks and whites who stayed in the plant. They would not come out when we struck the plant. Rev. Hill preached a sermon out on Miller Road during the strike and convinced many Blacks to come out and join the union.

We had not been given the order to walk out, but the conditions had gotten so bad. There were servicemen watching over you wherever you went. You couldn’t bring a newspaper, and any time you sat down to read, they’d come up to you and look at you. You could only read stuff put out by the company.

So there was a guy named Andy Doyle, a Scotsman down in the rolling mill who started the strike. He and a supervisor had some exchange of words, and the supervisor, I was told, had accused Andy of not getting his hourly production. Andy said, 'If I’m not getting it, why don’t you stand here and get it? The day will come when I don’t have to take this shit from you.' An altercation started between him and the supervisor. The department where he was working started shouting and some started to walk off. The strike started in the rolling mill of the Rouge plant. It began to spread.

The third place it hit was a place called the gear and axle plant where I was working. There was a guy named Bill Collins (Black guy), a guy named Lester Daniels (a Black guy), a guy named Jimmy Doherty (a white guy), Andy Agnasiac, Joe Berba (a Serbian), Joe Bersicki (a Polish guy), Ned Smith (a Black guy). Bill McKie said it was the work of these individuals in the gear and axle plant that closed the fortress of the Ford Motor Company.

We had no authority to close the plant, but it was something spontaneous on the part of the workers themselves, not on the part of the leadership. It was the workers themselves that closed the Ford plant. It was rank and file that shut down the Ford plant that caused the Ford Motor Company to give us a contract. We struck before it was authorized, and the international leadership tried to get us to go back into the plant. That’s when Bill McKie said, 'These people are out and they’re going to stay out until Ford recognizes the UAW.'

When the vote was taken the second time, there were 60,000 in favor of the union and 12,000 against. It was the Black workers who put the vote over.

Let’s go back and let me tell you that a different thing had to be used in Ford than at General Motors and Chrysler to get the Black workers at Ford to join the union. If it hadn’t been for them, we’d have lost a second time. I’m not saying it because I am a Black worker, but because it’s actual and factual history. The true historians who write about the organizing at Ford cannot omit the fact that it was the Black Ford workers who helped made it possible for the union to be a reality at the Rouge plant. Anyone who wants to dispute me, bring them forward. I’m 94 going on 95, I don’t have too many days left, but the days I do have left I’m going to try to make it know about the true history of the organizing of the Ford plant and the role of some of the white brothers and Black brothers and sisters played.

PA: After the contract was won, what were some of the changes that the union implemented for Black workers specifically?

DM: I’m glad you asked that. After Local 600 was organized changes took place to show and to back up the promises that John L. Lewis, Phil Murray, and Mike Widman had made. This was done through the influence of guys like Bill McKie, Percy Llewellyn, and many other whites and Blacks. Tommy Thompson was elected the second president of Local 600, but from the outset we had a Black guy who held a major office. The first time Local 600 got a charter, we had a Black officer. His name was Shelton Tappes, recording secretary. There was the president, the vice president, and the recording secretary, and the financial secretary. From the beginning of Local 600, we had members of the executive board of Local 600. We had Black members on the baseball team. We had Black members on the tennis team. Every aspect of participation of Local 600 there was always a mixture. We had Black men and women on the Local 600 ensemble. All of the conventions of the UAW that were ever held, you had a mixture of Black and white delegates. Let me give you one example. The founding convention alone had the largest delegation of Blacks from Local 600 simply because they had the most members. The delegates were elected based on the membership in each one of these locations the Rouge plant. With 17,000 Blacks in the foundry, that gave them an advantage of having delegates for the national convention, the state convention, and the county convention. No where in the UAW would you find at that time a local so integrated and so represented by Black and white workers. To a certain extent that tradition carries on today.

I don’t regret what I did and what I said, or what we did and what we said. I am pretty sure that those guys who have gone on before me, if they was alive they would tell you the same thing. We don’t regret what we did, and I won’t make any apologies to anyone. I don’t give a damn who they are. I’d do it again. If the situation occurs, but I would do it with more vigor and more intensity. If there is anyone who wants to challenge me, bring ‘em on. All in all I just hope that our efforts were not in vain, and that the younger generation of workers both Black and white, Brown, blue, yellow whatever their color might be, as long as they’re workers, I hope that they will recognize the fact that the fat cats of this country and any other country don’t give a damn about them and they will pick up the torch that was carried by the body and souls and the few of us that are still left. Carry it real high and with proudness and vigor to better the conditions of the working people no matter what the odds may be or no matter what are the groups or individuals may be that oppose them. Through action and through struggle, as Frederick Douglass said, if there’s no struggle there’s no progress. The struggle must continue and it must be continued by the younger generation of people coming along after us.