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: Can you talk about your first job as an autoworker?

DM: Briggs Auto Body was just like any other company then. It had a policy of racism – openly. They didn’t try to conceal it. Black and white workers were doing the same job, but they always found a way to pay the white guys three or four cents more than they paid the Blacks. The Black guys were making 27 cents an hour sanding bodies, getting them ready to go to the paint shop. The white guys who were working further down the line were getting more than we were. This included a guy by the name of Emil Mazey who became secretary-treasurer of the UAW later on.

I have much admiration for Mazey, even though he was in line with Walter Reuther. I’ve got to give Mazey credit for some things he did while he was on the board of directors of the UAW. Emil Mazey worked at Briggs himself. He and the white guys went through the same hell that we were going through. Emil understood that no matter what your complexion was, the company didn’t care about you – that goes for white as well as Black.

They were always trying to use the whites against the Blacks. For example, the three or four cents an hour more they were paying the whites than they were paying the Blacks for the same work.

I went to the Civilian Conservation Corps camp in 1933, and stayed there 18 months. I went to the camp right after the Hunger March in March of 1932. It was May of 1933 when I went to the CCC camp. The CCC camps were something that Roosevelt started to quiet the rebellious young Blacks and whites across the country. They took us out of the cities and put us way out in the countryside, because they figured that we were a threat – which we were. At least Roosevelt did some things. We were getting a dollar a day – it worked out to $30 a month. Twenty-five of that went back to your family, and you didn’t even see it. You only got the five dollars. I worked myself up to where I was getting $11 a month instead of five dollars. But we had plenty to eat, we had clothing, we had medical care and all of that.

PA: Can you talk about the Hunger March? How did you come to be part of it?

DM: I became part of it because of a guy by the name of Chris Alston. I was living on Leland Street, right off of Hastings. The Hunger March grew out of many trials and tribulations, and agony. After the Depression started, people were meeting and discussing ways of remedying the situation, about what should be done. Especially during the summer months, you could go up and down Hastings Street or Woodward Avenue and see people on ladders or soapboxes making speeches on how things should be corrected.

An effort came about to unify all these individuals and the groups they were speaking for. I joined the Leland Street Unemployed Council. There were many Unemployed Councils scattered across the city of Detroit. Hamtramck, Inkster, and River Rouge – all the suburbs had them. There was a guy named Bill McKie who said, 'Let’s call a meeting of all those who speak for these different councils in the various parts of the city. Let’s have a meeting here in Detroit and combine our forces.' Bill, I would say, was the father of the Unemployed Councils here in Detroit. I know damn well he was the father of the Hunger March which was soon to take place.

We then agreed that all of us from the different Unemployed Councils would meet at a place called Yemans Hall and try to decide exactly what our objectives were. We were meeting to raise hell about the conditions we had to live under. But what were we going to do about it other than to complain among ourselves about how our government was doing nothing for us? It was agreed that this meeting had to happen; so we met at Yemans Hall.

All kinds of proposals were put forth, but the one that stuck in the minds of most people was a march or demonstration by the Unemployed Councils to put the fat cats on notice so they would know what we stood for. It was agreed that we should march on one of the Big Three.

But I am getting a little ahead of myself. The Unemployed Councils did do some things prior to the march. For instance, landlords used to send people to evict people and move their furniture out onto the street, but wherever there was an Unemployed Council, we would go and move the furniture back in. I have some pictures of myself, Chris Alston, Jimmy Neoff (a Bulgarian), Nate Koffman (a Jew), Gabe Zukoff (an Eastern European), and Max Rodriguez (a Mexican), all of us together putting people back in their homes. I don’t think you have ever seen, and I hope you never will see, people being evicted in December and January in Detroit. It was snowing like hell. I remember one time it was snowing hard, and an evicted woman was actually having a baby on the sidewalk with other women around her, wondering if they had enough blankets to cover up the woman having a baby! I don’t think you ever saw something like that. That happened here in Detroit, but not only in Detroit – all across the land.

The conditions were so bad and working people had suffered so much that they had reached a point where anything could happen. This helped speed up the momentum of the Unemployed Councils. A display of unity between all the people – Black, white, religious, and political, just about everyone – was shown. Because all of us were suffering the same fate: hunger, poverty, unemployment, needing medical care etc. It still makes me mad as hell when I remember the conditions working people had to go through during the Depression before the Unemployed Councils and the Hunger March took place.

I hope you never will witness what people went through. People would go down to the old Eastern Market and pick up half-rotten white potatoes or sweet potatoes, lettuce and cabbage, whatever the farmers were throwing away. That was the source of food for many people, picking up a half-rotten banana or a half-rotten potato, any kind of half-rotten vegetables, to bring home so your mama could make a meal out of it. I came from a family of seven boys and two girls, and the older boys had to leave home. Whatever food there was, was left for the younger ones. David Moore, and a lot of other David Moore’s went very hungry at that time. But we tried to make it possible for our moms and dads and brothers and sisters to eat. We’d go out and try to salvage whatever we could from the stores and street corners, wherever different kinds of food – discarded vegetables and meat – had been thrown out because they couldn’t sell it. That’s how we got together a meal for ourselves.

But to get back to the Unemployed Councils. They grew out of this desperation: the hunger, the poverty, the suffering, the death, the untold misery that working people had to go were going through, especially Black people. The Blacks were always at the bottom of the economic ladder, but when the Depression hit we were pushed off the bottom of that ladder, and the white working people came down to where we had been. We were down on the ground. As [Black labor union leader of the National Labor Union in the 1860s and 1870s] Isaac Myers told us: The same chains that bound Black people in physical slavery bind white folks in economic slavery. That means that when economic slavery came to get the white folks as well as the Black, the working white folks dropped down to where we Blacks had always been, and the Black folks got pushed right down to the ground. Now we were all suffering the same economic plight. But out of the desperation and trials that we all had to go through – and when I say all of us, I am talking about white people as well – a rebellious attitude began to develop.

That rebellious attitude went into the Unemployed Councils. Not only did it go into the Unemployed Councils, but that rebellious attitude began to solidify into a demand for action by the Unemployed Councils. It was therefore decided by the leaders of every Unemployed Council that there should be a march on the fat cats. The question was should we march on their homes out in Grosse Point and North Detroit, on Chicago and Boston Boulevard? Or should we march on their manufacturing sites? Some said, 'Let’s march on GM, it’s the biggest one.' Others said that GM had plants scattered all over Detroit, Hamtramck and Flint. Some said Chrysler was the same situation. Then there were those who said, 'Let’s march on Ford, because Ford has one location, the Rouge – it’s the smaller plant. But the biggest majority of Ford workers and those who were suffering the most worked at the Rouge. So let’s have a march on Ford.' After much discussion and differences of opinion, it was finally decided that we would march on Ford. This resulted in what we now call the Hunger March.

On the day of the march itself, March 7, 1932, all of the Detroit Unemployed Councils gathered on Russell and Ferry Street, here on the East Side. All of the Unemployed Councils in Hamtramck gathered at Yemans Hall. We had an agreement with all the outlying Councils that Detroit would lead off from Ferry and Russell and march over to Woodward, and that Hamtramck and Highland Park could join us when we hit Woodward Avenue. When those of us on Russell and Ferry marched west to Woodward and then south on Woodward, the momentum began to swell. Highland Park showed up. Hamtramck showed up. And there were also a lot of other individuals standing on the sidewalks who began to join in. We had three guys beating drums, four saxophones, two trumpets, and some guys with guitars up in front. It was a sight never before seen in Detroit and one that has never been seen since. We went all the way down Woodward Avenue until we got to the old City Hall.

At that time, the old City Hall in Detroit was located on Michigan and Woodward Avenues. We had a mayor then by the name of Frank Murphy. He was kind of a liberal guy. Mayor Murphy came out and waved at us and said, 'I’m with you all the way,' and raised his hand like that. That sent up a big yell. He said, 'I’m going to have an escort for you guys.' He assigned two motorcycle policemen to escort us down Michigan Avenue to Vernor Highway, where the old Detroit train station is today, and from there all the way down to Dix Avenue, which led us into Dearborn.

When we got to Baby Creek Park in Dearborn, that’s where the Dearborn police stopped us. By the way, As the march got underway, a lot of people joined in to march with us. Whether they were members of the Unemployed Councils or not I don’t know. Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park alone had 4,000 people. By the time we got to the outskirts of Dearborn, the Detroit police said 'We wish you luck,' and turned and came back to Detroit. On the other side of the Rouge River, there on Miller Road and Dix, the down-river delegations, Inkster, River Rouge, and Romulus, had all gathered to join the march. When we got to Miller Road and Dix Avenue, about 30 policemen on motorcycles and horses and in cars arrived. They asked a guy by the name of Al Goetz and Bill McKie, who were leaders of the march, if they had a permit to demonstrate in Dearborn, and they said, 'Hell no!' The police said, 'You’d better go and apply for one because you can’t go any further. We advise you to go back to Detroit or whatever community you come from.'

Goetz then got up on a milk crate, along with Bill McKie and a guy named Nelson Davis (a Black guy), and a fellow by the name of Veal Clough (a Black guy). Goetz led it off by saying, 'For all of those who did not hear what the police have just told us, I’m going to speak as loud as I can.' There were thousands of people there at that time. The streets were completely blocked, and I know all of them could not hear, because they didn’t have any loudspeakers or anything. Goetz told them that we had been informed that we couldn’t go any farther, and that we had been told to go back to our own communities until we got a permit. Now we had already applied for a permit three weeks ago, and the city of Dearborn had said that we could not have one.

So here we are on Miller Road within three minutes of the Rouge plant itself. Do we go forward or do we go back? That was the question Goetz asked. There was a big outcry: 'Forward! Forward! Forward!' Goetz turned to the police and said, 'You heard the answer. I’m not going to turn my back on these people who have suffered so much to get here.' So we decided to march on.

They turned the water hose on us first. That didn’t stop us. We kept going. Then they had about eight mounted policemen come through to break our ranks. That didn’t stop us. We got within about 40 or 50 yards of the Ford employment office on Miller Road when three cars came roaring out the gate. One guy had a machine gun over his shoulder, riding on the running board of the car. I don’t know what the other guy had on the passenger side, but this guy was standing on the driver’s side. There were three or four other cars that followed them. All of a sudden gun shots were heard. People began to scream and scatter. There were five guys who got killed – four of them were white and one of them Black.

One thing that absolutely showed the true nature of the horrible scene that occurred that day was when a Black woman in the March by the name of Mattie Woodson tore off a piece of her dress and leaned down to wipe the blood off the neck of one of the white guys who had been shot. They only published that picture one time. From that day on, the Ford Motor Company would not let that picture be published.

You have to understand the power of the Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company. He owned the city of Dearborn. All of the policemen in the police department of Dearborn had sworn an oath to uphold and protect the Ford Motor Company. All the firemen they hired had sworn an oath to do all they could to protect the Ford Motor Company. All the politicians on the city council and the elected officials in Dearborn got elected by means of the money and the approval of the Ford Motor Company. You’ve got to understand the awesome power that the Ford Motor Company wielded over the city of Dearborn. The city of Dearborn at that time was completely controlled financially, politically, and by whatever means there were by the Ford Motor Company.

Five young people in the bloom of life, in their teens and early twenties, just beginning to see life, were lying dead on Miller Road. To this day, no charges have been brought against Ford Motor Company or anyone else. I ask why those five people down there on Miller Road – that's what the word is – murdered; they weren't shot; they were murdered by machine gun and pistol fire. To this day, while you and I are talking, the Ford Motor Company has never been investigated. The Ford Motor Company has never been charged. The Ford Motor Company has never had to answer why they killed those five people. Can you imagine? Nobody among the marchers had guns to kill them with. They were killed by company agents at the orders of the Ford Motor Company. And to this day, no one has ever officially accused the Ford Motor Company of any wrongdoing.

Out of that mass murder, and after all the injuries people suffered – people died later on from bullet wounds, there came a day of reckoning that nobody ever believed would happen. Instead of saddening us and making us feel that there was no hope, it only intensified the spirit in those souls who braved not only the power of the Ford Motor Company, but braved the wintry weather, and to take that long march from Detroit all the way to the city of Dearborn, to try to bring to the attention of the people of this country the conditions which the working people were suffering under, and who was to blame for it. The murders on Miller road only intensified our efforts to continue to struggle, to gain some recognition of our rights from the fat cats of the auto industry and other industries, not only here in the city of Detroit, but throughout the country.

Did we succeed? Did we pay a price? Most certainly we paid a price to the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn. And yes, all over this land people were murdered, shot, injured, deprived, denied, and crucified during the Depression of the 1930s.

Let's go back to the Hunger March, and see what happened in the city of Detroit. The determination not only of those who were in the Hunger March, but also of those who were not there but had read or heard about it was doubly intensified among the people of Detroit and in outlying towns and suburbs like Hamtramck, Highland Park, and Inkster. The momentum kept building and building. From 1932 on up until 1937, for five years in a row, the momentum, the anger, and the resentment of working people from all these areas, but especially in Detroit, began to show itself on street corners, in churches, in the fraternal lodges, in pool rooms. Wherever people gathered, you were certain to hear a conversation against the status quo and about how working people were being mistreated.

The makings of a revolution were at hand. It seemed as if a revolution was going to take place, and there was no power that could stop it. Adding to the possibility of a revolution was what was taking place down in Anaconda, Maryland where World War I veterans from all parts of the country, of all nationalities and all races, were gathered. The federal government had promised to pay them a bonus in 1918 under Woodrow Wilson. They had come up with all kind of excuses for why they would not. It wasn't that they could not, but that they would not pay.

I had an uncle who served in the 93rd Infantry Division in France during World War I. He along with others in the Detroit delegation had marched all the way to Anaconda. There you had ex-soldiers who had fought World War I, who had willingly put up their lives to defend their country and to defend those fat cats who were now saying, 'Hell no, you can go hungry for all we care. We don't give a damn whether your starve or live, you're not getting any bonus.' From all parts of the country, World War I veterans converged right outside of Washington, DC in Anaconda, Maryland to get their bonus, protesting a promise that had not been kept.

At that time, the president was Herbert Hoover. His position was that prosperity was just around the corner. Pretty soon you were going to have two cars in every garage, and there'd be a chicken in every pot. Those were the words he spoke. But there weren’t any cars, because the auto factories were all shut down, and the chickens were just as hungry as we were. You couldn't find a chicken, and you damn sure couldn't buy a car.

Let's get back to the possibility of a revolution. An order was given by Herbert Hoover to the federal troops to take action to evict the World War I veterans from the area of Washington DC. Here you had father against son and brother against brother, going into battle against veterans of World War I with orders from the President of the United States to kill if necessary those who resisted. It was a situation similar to what we had faced during the Hunger March. That was the seed that had been unknowingly planted by the fat cats and was providing fertile ground for a revolution to take place. At that time, after events like the hunger march and the bonus march had happened, you had individuals and a wide variety of organizations all preaching the same gospel: We must have, and we will have, a better government then the one we have today.

Now I know that some people aren't going to believe me when I say that a revolution was about to take place. But those who disagree with me never lived through the times that I am talking about. They don't have any idea of the suffering and the trials and tribulations that working people, Black and white, had to go through for so many years under the rule of those who owned the mines, the mills, and the factories. In other words, the fat cats had everything and the working people had nothing. The banks had closed, so those people who had a few bucks in the bank couldn't get it.

Through all of this, I must say, those of the socialist and communist movements really made an important contribution. Not only did they make their contribution but they gave their lives. Because those who gave everything they had, including life itself, sacrificing it to the Ford Motor Company on the Hunger March. Most of those who died were Young Communists. Not all of the people who participated in the March were communists, but I would certainly say that the Communist Party provided some very important leadership, and they were accepted as leaders. At that time it wasn't about what party you belonged to, what religion you had, or what your beliefs were, it was about how we could do what we needed to do to help each other out from the bondage and deprivation, caused by the elected leaders of this country and those who owned them, the bosses.

It would take me two days to give you the complete story of what happened with the Unemployed Councils and the Hunger March, as well as what happened after the Hunger March. It was those bodies and souls on the Hunger March who helped open the door for better working conditions for the working men and women, and who later brought in the trade union movement in 1937 and on through the early forties. It couldn’t have happened without the help and sacrifice of those bodies and souls who took part in the Hunger March and the Unemployed Councils. Because the trade union movement here in Detroit grew out of the Unemployed Councils and the Hunger March. The ideas and actions of all those souls on the Hunger March and in the Unemployed Councils spread not only to the leadership but also in the rank and file of during the Big Three organizing drive. Many of those who were active in the Unemployed Councils and the Hunger March were also active in organizing the unions at Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler.

I would say that without the help of these people and their ideas it would have taken much longer to organize the Big Three. I’ll give you a couple of examples: Bill McKie, Nelson Davis, Veal Clough, Roy Narochik, Nat Ganley, John Gallo, Mattie Woodson, all those men and women, Black and white. Not only were they among those who took part in the Unemployed Councils and the march on Ford, but they were instrumental in starting the trade union movement here in the city of Detroit when the push was made to organize the Big Three. All of those I've just mentioned and many more – like Dorothy Knight and Charlotte Neal, she's still living, and many others: Tom Colbert, he's gone; Coleman Young is gone; Bill McKie and Nelson Davis are gone. Ed Lock is gone. Johnny Gallo is gone. But what they did lives on.

The list goes on and on. Those few of us who are still here will never forget and never apologize. We will never get on our knees or beg for forgiveness for what we said or did. If we had to do it again, I for one – and I know the few of us who are left agree with me – we would do it again and with even more intensity. Because what we did so many years ago opened the door that made it possible for working people to demand and receive better treatment than they had prior to the Unemployed Councils, the march on Ford, and the organizing of the unions here at the Big Three in Detroit, along with all the other marches and organizing efforts throughout the country. You know, I could go on preaching this sermon for three days!