Detroit
Books:
If you need more background on the history of Detroit, you may want to start with these readable books:
Poremba, David Lee. Detroit: A Motor City History. Mt. Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2003.
Woodford, Arthur M. This Is Detroit, 1701-2001. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, c2001.
For a resource guide for studying the American motor industry go to:
Berger, Michael L. The Automobile in American History and Culture: A Reference Guide. Secondary Literature and Sources in the Field. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.
Henry Ford and the empire he founded are subjects of dozens of books. These may be most useful for the topics discussed in this essay:
Batchelor, Ray. Henry Ford, Mass Production, Modernism, and Design. New York: St. Martin's Press, c1994.
Brinkley, Douglas. Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, 1903-2003. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Hooker, Clarence. Life in the Shadows of the Crystal Palace, 1910-1927: Ford Workers in the Model T Era. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, c1997.
Lacey, Robert. Ford: The Men and the Machine. Boston: Little, Brown, c1986.
These authors discuss the crisis in the Detroit auto industry in the last third of the century:
Kannan, Narasimhan P., Kathy K. Rebibo, and Donna L. Ellis. Downsizing Detroit: The Future of the U.S. Automobile Industry. New York: Praeger, 1982.
Maynard, Micheline. The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market. New York: Currency/Doubleday, 2004.
Rubenstein, James M. Making and Selling Cars: Innovation and Change in the U.S. Automotive Industry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Not every car manufactured in Michigan, or even the Detroit area, was a Ford. Here are recent studies of other automakers:
Hyde, Charles K. Riding the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003.
Farber, David R. Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c2002.
The United Auto Workers and their first leader, Walter Reuther, have inspired almost as much industry as the automakers themselves:
Barnard, John. Walter Reuther and The Rise of the Auto Workers. Boston: Little, Brown, c1983.
Carew, Anthony. Walter Reuther. New York: St. Martin's Press, c1993.
Goode, Bill. Infighting in the UAW: The 1946 Election and the Ascendancy of Walter Reuther. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Lichtenstein, Nelson. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor. New York: Basic Books, 1995.
The African American experience in Detroit and the auto industry is chronicled ably in these books. The first is by Thomas Sugrue, the author of the article you've just read in this issue of History Now:
Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, c1996.
Thomas, Richard Walter. Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community In Detroit, 1915-1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
Detroit's troubling tradition of racial violence is discussed in:
Capeci, Dominic J., and Martha Wilkerson. Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, c1991.
Farley, Reynolds, Sheldon Danziger, and Harry J. Holzer. Detroit Divided. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, c2000.
Fine, Sidney. Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c1989.
Locke, Hubert G. The Detroit Riot of 1967. Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1970.
Sauter, Van Gordon, and Burleigh Hines. Nightmare in Detroit; A Rebellion and its Victims. Chicago: Regnery, 1968.
Websites:
For general history of Detroit, you can begin with the very good entry
for the city in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit,_Michigan
The Detroit Historical Society has a helpful website as well:
http://www.detroithistorical.org/
And the Society's education section has a downloadable lesson plan on
Detroit history:
http://www.detroithistorical.org/learningcenter/resources.asp
Once you focus more closely on the history of the auto industry and its
impact on the city, you'll find even better materials on the Web. The
Henry Ford Museum's site is a good starting place for a biography of Ford
with links to specific online exhibitions at the Museum:
http://www.thehenryford.com/exhibits/hf/default.asp
Then you'll want to branch out to the absolutely wonderful "Automobile
in American Life and Society" site of the University of Michigan at Dearborn:
http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/
Here you'll find extensive units arranged under the topics "Design" "Environment,"
"Gender", "Race," and "Labor." Each one is focused on lengthy articles
by prominent scholars, linked to other areas of the site and other Internet
projects that provide more information on key topics. Finally, there are
student and teacher resources for each area, ranging from suggestions
for exam questions to topics for classroom discussion. "Printable views"
are available for all.
Professor Sugrue contributes two essays for the "Race" component of the
"Automobile in American Life and Society" site -- "From Motor City to
Motor Metropolis: How the Automobile Industry Reshaped Urban America"
and "Driving While Black: The Car and Race Relations in Modern America":
http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Race.htm
Still another Michigan-based website, the Walter Reuther Library at Wayne
State, provides online exhibitions on the 1937 Flint sit-down strike and
"Battle of the Overpass":
http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/exhibits/sitdown.html
http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/exhibits/battle.html
You'll find useful but more scattered materials in our old friend "American
Memory" at the Library of Congress. In the site's general search field,
try "River Rouge" and "United Auto Workers" to bring up a selection photos
of the Ford plant, union leaders, and NLRB elections:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.php
In the segment called "Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the
Consumer Economy, 1921-1929" try searching for these subjects: "Ford,
Henry" and "Ford Motor Company":
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html
Public television hasn't ignored Detroit and the auto industry. I'll list
the documentaries and websites of most specific interest:
On the "They Made America" series website, look at the Henry Ford section:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/ford_hi.html
The "People's Century" series website has an excellent teacher's guide
for "On the Line" which provides excellent material on the evolution of
the assembly line, focusing on its status in 1926. It's geared to classes
who've actually watched the video, but it's still a good source for ideas:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/episodes/ontheline/
Not every good PBS documentary has a website. Sadly, an example of this
is the 2004 film Sit Down and Fight: Walter Reuther and the Rise of
the Auto Workers Union. You'll just have to find a VHS or DVD of
the hour-long program to use in conjunction with other materials.
The good news about PBS documentaries is, of course, that Eyes on
the Prize has been re-launched with public access and educational
materials on the Web. Be sure to consult their segment on the July 1967
Detroit riots, which include a four-minute film clip:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/story/13_detroit.html
