Ford, vehemently anti-union, was the last auto-maker to fall to the C.I.O., in part because of the racial politics employed by ‘King Henry.’ It took a dramatic shift to Black workers for the U.A.W. to win there. Just one month after this article was written, a victorious strike brought the union to Ford through the decisive support of Black leaders and enough workers to break through; one of the most important victories for the U.S. working class in its history.

‘Ford And Negroes: UAW-CIO Can Smash Ford’s Scheme To Divide Black And White’ from The Militant. Vol. 5 No. 11. March 15, 1941.

The Ford Motor Company is the greatest single enemy of trade unionism in the United States. To force it to sign a contract with the UAW-CIO would constitute the greatest victory of the labor movement in years.

Obstacles there are, and we want to speak about one of them quite plainly. We refer to Ford’s shrewd handling of the 11,000 Negro workers in the River Rouge plant and those in Ford’s other plants. Ford employs more Negroes than any other automobile corporation. In this respect Ford has been more far-sighted than other manufacturers. By his policy he has won a certain esteem in the Negro community which he has always planned to use against the trade unions, and which he is now openly attempting to use against the UAW-CIO’s Ford drive.

Unfortunately for Ford, it is the CIO that he is fighting against. And the CIO from its very beginning has had a very different attitude toward the Negro than the narrow and reactionary policy pursued by the AFL. From the first the CIO has welcomed the Negro into its ranks on the same basis as white workers. And not only into membership, but also into positions of leadership. One of the most inspiring sights in the labor movement during this past year was the CIO national convention at Atlantic City in November, where a considerable number of the delegates were Negroes, who took the floor and spoke with the ease and assurance of speaking in their own house.

Thanks to that CIO policy, the Negro workers have played a great part in building the CIO. They have shown a militancy not exceeded, if indeed equaled, by any other group of workers. The deep indignation of their oppressed race has held many a CIO picket line firm against cops and company thugs. The very latest strike victory at the Lackawanna plant of Bethlehem Steel brought reports of the especially noteworthy role of the Negro steel workers.

Even in the South, where for centuries white workers have been poisoned by white-supremacy bunk propagated by the ruling class, the CIO has brought about a new situation. How black and white can unite and fight even in the South has just been demonstrated in the CIO shipyard strike victory at Mobile, Alabama.

This national situation of the CIO can and will destroy whatever hold Ford has managed to get on a section of the Negro population in Detroit. Ford’s lies may delude this group of Negroes but not for long. Ford is, for example making a desperate attempt to get these Negroes to believe that the UAW-CIO is responsible for the fact that other auto plants don’t hire as many Negroes as does Ford. And Ford has found tools among the Negro lawyers, doctors and businessmen in Detroit who are helping him spread these lies among the Negro workers in the Ford plants.

The main responsibility for solving this problem rests with the UAW-CIO and ‘the white workers of the CIO. They must demonstrate to the complete satisfaction of the Negro workers that they mean fully to unite black and white. The union must not be satisfied merely with the fact that it is wide open to Negro members. The union must take the lead in the struggle against any form of discrimination by any of the bosses in the hiring of Negro workers.

While the union is seeking to prove this to the satisfaction of the Negro workers involved, the union must have the greatest patience and tolerance. For at the bottom of this situation are the justified grievances of the Negro workers against the AFL unions, and against the attitude of many white workers, which Ford has been able to use for his. reactionary purposes. The union can clear up this situation thanks to the splendid record of the CIO toward Negroes, but the record of the CIO must be added to now by bold union demands upon the employers in auto and elsewhere for the hiring of Negroes.

Whatever grievances the Negroes have against the way certain unions and many white workers have treated them–and these grievances are many and justified–the class- conscious Negro workers will understand the necessity of making common cause with the white workers of the CIO. They will understand Ford’s game and not fall for it. Given a correct approach by the UAW-CIO, we are confident that the Negro workers at Ford’s will do what the Negro workers have done in Bethlehem, at Mobile, in the Chicago stockyards and elsewhere. The Negro workers at Ford’s will become the most militant fighters for the union!

The Militant was a weekly newspaper begun by supporters of the International Left Opposition recently expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 and published in New York City. Led by James P Cannon, Max Schacthman, Martin Abern, and others, the new organization called itself the Communist League of America (Opposition) and saw itself as an outside faction of both the Communist Party and the Comintern. After 1933, the group dropped ‘Opposition’ and advocated a new party and International. When the CLA fused with AJ Muste’s American Workers Party in late 1934, the paper became the New Militant as the organ of the newly formed Workers Party of the United States.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1941/v5n11-mar-15-1941.pdf