The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford by Beth Tompkins Bates (review)

106 The Michigan Historical Review Newberry won both the primary and the general election, but in theprocess spent nearly $200,000, well over the FCPA limit of $10,000. Ford, incensed at his defeat, pressed for an investigation into Newberry’s alleged corrupt use of money in the election. While Newberry’s eventual conviction was overturned in the Supreme Court, he resigned his seat in 1922 in the face of a persistent Democratic effort to unseat him. The FCPA, gutted by the Supreme Court and revised by Congress, became little more than a tool to justify partisan seating challenges under the guise of restraining corruption. Baker’s book is an important contribution to our understanding of the development both of modern political campaigns and of campaign finance law. It is a well-researched, highly readable account of a fascinating campaign that sheds light both on the growing power of money in politics and the refusal of elected officials to take effective steps to counteract that power. The issues Baker explores here are historically valuable and retain a surprising relevance in modern public discourse. William B. Murphy State University of New York College at Oswego Beth Tompkins Bates. The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Pp. 343. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth, $45.00. As the early history of the Republican Party suggests, African Americans often have been compelled to forge alliances with powerful elites, not least because the Euro-American working class has been so enmeshed in white supremacy. “It was no secret,” says the author, “that white unions had rarely been friends of black labor” (p. 53). Beth Tompkins Bates argues that auto magnate Henry Ford capitalized on this trend when he “put out the welcome mat for African-Americans two decades before General Motors and Chrysler hired blacks for any but foundry or janitorial jobs” (p. 2). Thus, “Black workers in the twenties held positions at the FMC as electricians, bricklayers, crane operators, diamond cutters and tool-and-die makers” (p. 251). What makes this alliance even more remarkable was the congruence between the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Michigan and Ford’s well-known antiSemitism : it was rumored that Ford was a financial backer of the Klan— and a member (p. 90). Book Reviews 107 In sketching this story, Bates pays close attention to the rise of the United Auto Workers as well as the Communist Party and groups within its orbit such as the National Negro Congress. She seeks to distinguish her narrative from that outlined by August Meier and Elliott Rudwick in their 1979 book, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW, which covers similar territory. Thus, Bates observes that “within new-crowd circles in black Detroit, the burning issue was not whether an activist was a Communist. The important question was whether an activist was committed to advancing civil rights and economic opportunity for black Detroiters” (p. 205). This is a useful corrective to the misunderstanding of political dynamics in Black America among some scholars. The author argues further: “African Americans who found it easy to work with known or suspected Communists did so not because they dreamed of a socialist society, but because they dreamed of an American where all black Americans had rights that white Americans were bound to respect” (p. 231). This is a bit too categorical: certainly this was true for many, but it does a disservice to those who truly held a socialist vision of radical transformation, some of whom were not necessarily party members. This book has many virtues, one of which is the understanding of how “white unions” in the auto industry in particular were obliged to make favorable overtures to African American workers in part to foil the inroads made in this community by Henry Ford. Bates observes that many “black workers” in this industry were “left-wingers.” According to one such worker, “when we say left-wingers we mean anti-Reutherities,” a reference to the now heroically portrayed Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, and those in his coterie (p. 234). In other words, this is a perceptive, well-researched...