3: Driving Desperation on the Auto Shop Floor

I realize that the UAW is not a perfect organization, however, in the field of civil rights we have come a long way together and it has always been in the forefront for equal justice for all. It is now more than ever very much needed for us to close ranks and fight together for equal rights for all.1

After moving back to Detroit on March 7, 1965, James Johnson Jr. got a job at Michigan Drum, a small company owned by a man named Harold Hoffman. Johnson made $80 a week working in pit burn drums with rubber cement that he scooped up with a shovel. This job was physically grueling because the pit was extremely hot, and the shoveling required in it was very strenuous. All but two of the workers at this low-paying and dirty facility were black, and the supervisor was white. This supervisor did not get along with the black workers at all, and he made Johnson in particular feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, Johnson tried not to cause trouble on the job. Even though Michigan Drum was a Teamster shop, Johnson never took the issue of his inhumane working conditions to the union. Instead, he began politely asking his supervisor to take him out of the pit because of the terribly hot temperature. But Johnson never got a transfer. When he finally decided that the supervisor was determined to keep him in the pit, Johnson quit this job and began looking for a new one.

In January 1966, Johnson finally landed another job that was less physically demanding and seemed to offer more security, although it did not pay nearly as much as he had hoped. Working as a janitor for the City of Detroit in both the Bureau of Weights and Measures and the Bureau of Markets, Johnson made about $2.90 an hour. It bothered him that he was earning far less than he might have in the auto industry. But as the scores of black workers who did get hired in that industry soon realized, life on the assembly line, while more lucrative, was far from the ideal that Johnson imagined it to be. In 1967, the optimism that had inspired liberal city leaders to action in 1961 had gone up in smoke. A similar fate befell the early-19 60s hopefulness of Detroit’s labor liberals. In fact, the liberal leaders of Detroit’s UAW had a great deal in common with their civic counterparts. This contingent not only came to work closely with the Cavanagh administration to implement various civil rights and Great Society initiatives in Detroit, but it had also promised its constituency a similarly daunting array of reforms during the 1960s. Specifically, UAW leaders had promised workers that they would make inroads in eliminating the racial discrimination that had flourished on shop floors ever since the Second Great Migration. They also committed themselves to reining in the foremen abuses that their workers routinely endured.

But just as civic liberals had largely failed to end discrimination or eradicate police brutality in the city, so did labor leaders fail in their efforts to bring similar reforms to the shop floor. In time, liberal labor leaders were also faced with a deeply disenchanted constituency. Some workers channeled their frustration into filing more workplace grievances. Some joined groups that urged the union to become more aggressive with the company. Others simply stayed home from work. And mirroring the situation simultaneously unfolding in the city, the plants’ most disillusioned workers chose to lash out. By 1967, Detroit’s shop floors became the site of many violent confrontations between frustrated laborers and their foremen, and thus, by that year, the social and political crisis that had befallen the city had come to encompass its workplaces as well.

* * * *

As we have seen, Detroit’s African American residents had greeted the 1960s with much optimism. And as workers in Detroit’s auto plants, African Americans felt similarly positive about the future. In 1957, Detroit’s black autoworkers also began to mobilize against the racial discrimination that persisted in their own union by forming the Trade Union Leadership Council (TULC). With the TULC, they hoped “to demand Black entrance into the skilled trades and into the leadership of the UAW.”2

The TULC was a formidable group, and workers greatly respected its top officers. Many had been UAW activists for years, both aiding the union in its early battles for recognition and helping it in many dangerous confrontations with management.3 TULC activists Robert Battle III, Horrace Sheffield, Shelton Tappes, and Marc Stepp were particularly known for their work on behalf of the early UAW, but other TULC members also enjoyed a positive reputation on the shop floor. It greatly heartened black workers that the TULC was willing to express to both the union and management what they had long felt about their position in the plants. As Sheffield said publicly, “there is no denying the plain fact that most Negroes in and out of labor are not satisfied with the movement towards eliminating racial discrimination that still exists.”4 To eradicate such discrimination, the TULC leaders first conducted “accurate surveys of each union ... to find where the problem exists,”5 and then they began to push for the placement of a black man on the International Executive Board (IEB) of the UAW.

Simultaneous to engaging in these union reform efforts, the TULC also was actively involving itself in efforts to bring about racial equality in the city of Detroit. To TULC activists, the labor and civic arenas were inexorably linked. In fact, the TULC put as much effort into civic activism as it did into the labor activism for which it is known. Seeking to fill the void that “the organization believes to exist between labor and the general public,”6 the TULC’s community activism centered on the A. Philip Randolph Freedom House, which it established in a renovated hardware store.7 In the Freedom House, the TULC held educational events and debates as well as sponsored classes in art and music; typing and shorthand courses; leadership development classes; reading efficiency classes; sewing, modeling, and fashion designing classes. It also provided job-training services.8

Like their fellow activists in the NAACP, the TULC believed that one of the best ways to improve the city was to work with progressive whites to oust conservatives wherever they held power. According to TULC leaders, they had “developed a genuine rapport with all facets of the Negro Community and a spirit of fellowship and cooperation with the white liberal community.”9 In that spirit, on August 24, 1960, Battle issued a press release on behalf of the TULC endorsing the “national Democratic Party ticket of Senators John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in the November election.” Battle stated that the TULC “earnestly believes that the chances of the Negro people for greater progress in achieving first-class citizenship everywhere in this country will be greater if we stick to our historic allies, [and] support the political party that is more responsive to the people’s needs which is now represented by the Kennedy-Johnson ticket.”10

The TULC’s commitment to Detroit’s white racial progressives was as firm as its loyalty to the Kennedy liberals in Washington. The TULC shared the belief of local white progressives that the ballot box was the key to social change,11 and it came to support the efforts of any racial reformer seeking power in Detroit. As Sheffield saw it, “the coalition between the labor movement, the Negro community, the Democratic party, liberal white forces, and other ethnic groups has really made for some progressive changes.”12

When the opportunity to elect a civil rights–supporting mayor finally arose in 1961, not surprisingly TULC leaders were optimistic that their work with Detroit’s progressive whites and their growing presence within the liberally led UAW would spell the end for the oppressive racial conditions that flourished under Mayor Louis Miriani. As the 1961 election neared, however, TULC leaders had a rude awakening. The UAW chose to endorse Miriani, not Cavanagh, for the mayoralty. Officially, the UAW did not make independent endorsements for mayor, but, rather, it accepted the candidate chosen by the Wayne County AFL-CIO. This, however, did not make TULC leaders feel any better. The UAW’s support of Miriani not only disappointed TULC officials; it also surprised them.

It was not as if the TULC believed that its desires and those of the UAW hierarchy were necessarily one and the same. In fact, when black reformers created the TULC, the UAW leadership made it clear that it viewed this new organization with much suspicion. The TULC’s vocal position that it was not going to “wait any longer” to end discrimination in the labor movement, combined with the fact that some TULC leaders hailed from the historically combative and left-wing Local 600, had made the UAW’s top brass very uneasy. The reality was that TULC leaders had always attempted to persuade the UAW that their group’s primary target was not the UAW. In fact, the TULC reserved most of its venom for labor groups other than the UAW (particularly the national AFL-CIO), and its leadership had made the conscious decision to work with the UAW toward a better future for black workers. As Sheffield put it, “we are going to fight with everything in our power, in a constructive way, along with other liberals within the UAW—and there are a lot of them—who feel this question [discrimination] must be met.”13

But while UAW officials promoted themselves as racial progressives, given the many racially conservative whites in the union, they nevertheless sought to distance themselves from the TULC whenever it advocated a more accelerated pace of integrating the labor movement.14 Sensing this UAW wariness, TULC leaders consistently tried to assuage union fears by pointing to the cooperative future that they envisioned. TULC leaders began circulating the TULC Constitution among top UAW leaders, but when even this did not alleviate UAW concern, they did tend to go on the offensive.15 In a letter to UAW leader Bill Beckham, for example, the TULC’s Executive Committee countered his assertion that the TULC “is harmful because its presence tends to interfere with the evolutionary process that is doing so much to bring the Negro to full equality” by reiterating the necessity of their program for more accelerated change and then chiding him for painting the TULC as a group of troublemakers.16 As TULC leaders wrote, “it has come to our attention that you have continued your misrepresentations of the TULC notwithstanding the fact that you have been amply informed, on several occasions, of precisely what the activities and objective of the TULC were.”17 They then went on to say that “it is most apparent that either you do not read too well or else you are incapable of understanding what you read.”18

Such caustic responses did not sit well with UAW leaders. Many felt strongly that the white hostility to blacks that erupted routinely in the city might also erupt in the plants if provoked by such racially charged TULC rhetoric. Notably, however, these leaders did not simply ignore TULC desires. Indeed, top union officials privately assured the TULC that greater black representation soon would become a reality. Because UAW leaders at least theoretically supported TULC goals, and because they did not exhibit overt hostility when the TULC repeatedly took the issue of greater black representation up at the union’s annual conventions, the two organizations had seemed to settle into a fairly good working relationship by 1961. Of course, this was yet another reason why the TULC had assumed that the UAW would be at the forefront of electoral efforts to roll back racial conservatism in city politics.

From the UAW’s perspective, however, the question of whom to support in the mayoral election of 1961 was not at an easy one. Not only did the UAW believe that its overwhelming white constituency would insist on an endorsement of Miriani, but Miriani was also a friend, not a foe, to the UAW leadership. While many black workers and citizens recoiled from the idea that Miriani might win the mayoralty again, UAW leaders believed that the mayor had done the best job of leading the city that anyone could have, given how tense civic relations had become since World War II. As Alex Roche, the Committee on Political Education (COPE) director at UAW Local 223, put it, “while conditions in the city of Detroit have not exactly been rosy over the past few years ... in view of all these demands upon our city government, it is evident that Mayor Miriani has done an excellent job of running our affairs despite the fact that many of us are frequently unhappy about one thing or another. We had better stick with those whose leadership we can depend on.”19

The UAW’s certainty that its constituents would want it to back Miriani is supported by the fact that the union endorsed him even before every candidate had declared his attention to run. And even before the AFL-CIO officially announced its endorsement on June 20, 1961, the UAW already had invited the mayor to speak at two rallies against unemployment and also to be a featured guest at its most recent annual convention. These moves greatly alarmed the TULC, which saw the convention invitation in particular as a most ominous sign for the upcoming election. The TULC also found it ironic that the UAW had placed civil rights luminary Martin Luther King Jr. on the same featured speaker’s roster.20 The UAW, however, saw no inconsistency in its lineup of honored guests. Indeed, union leaders believed not only that their own commitment to civil rights was beyond reproach, but also that Detroit’s labor movement was fully of one mind about who should be elected in 1961. As Al Barbour of the Wayne County AFL-CIO wrote to UAW leader Roy Reuther, Walter Reuther’s brother, “we really appreciate the excellent letter you sent out to the affiliated UAW local unions for the upcoming election of Tuesday, November 7^th... [because] the trade union movement is going in one direction; I am real optimistic for the endorsed candidates.”21

Had UAW and AFL-CIO leaders paid closer attention to the TULC and its black constituents, however, they would have quickly realized that the trade union movement was not going in the same direction at all. When asked his thoughts on Miriani, TULC Vice President Horace Sheffield forcefully maintained that “the Mayor had been an obstinate person—you go down to try and see him on any problem pertaining to the Negro community, or pertaining to labor ... [and he] was never around.”22 In the Michigan Chronicle, Sheffield lashed out specifically at Miriam’s reelection bid when he noted that “in Detroit, where 39 percent of the Negro labor force is unemployed as of March 1961—and that’s over 12,000 Negroes—in this context, talk of the past, or promises for the future just don’t catch on, for all of us live in the present, we have to feed out children and pay our bills daily.”23

Horace Sheffield of the Trade Union Leadership Council, January 7, 1972. Walter P. Reuther, Wayne State University.

But while TULC leaders were greatly taken aback by the UAW’s support of Miriani, and while they still greatly valued their relationship with top union leaders, these civil rights activists did not waver in their determination to beat back racial conservatism in the city as the election of 1961 approached. Despite the UAW’s endorsement of Miriani, and with the Wayne County AFL-CIO and UAW staffers across the city mobilizing on a massive scale for his reelection, the TULC did everything it could to elect Cavanagh. As a result of the TULC’s combined efforts with the city’s civil rights forces, black and white Detroiters together, to the UAW’s amazement, had thwarted the electoral desires of its racially conservative white constituents.24

Sheffield’s role in securing this dramatic political upset did not sit well with the Detroit labor movement’s leadership. By 1961, Sheffield was a spokesman for and leader of the TULC, as well as the coordinator of the Fifteenth Congressional District of the Wayne County AFL-CIO’s COPE program, which had handed down the directive that union members should support Miriani. One of the key jobs of COPE coordinators was to get the vote out, and, as the campaign of 1961 unfolded, labor leaders had warned Sheffield not to forget his loyalties. On October 23, 1961, Al Barbour of the AFL-CIO wrote directly to Sheffield to remind him that “all of us are expected to abide by and support those decisions [to support Miriani]. This is particularly true of trade union leadership.”25 Barbour had sent copies of this letter to UAW leaders Walter Reuther, Emil Mazey, Leonard Woodcock, Douglas Fraser, Joseph McCusker, George Merrelli, Ken Morris, and Roy Reuther, indicating that these men were equally concerned about Sheffield’s vocal criticism of Miriani. In response to Barbour, Sheffield defended his anti-Miriani views but eventually went on to assure him that he was “well aware of the responsibility I have to the political program of the Wayne County AFL-CIO.”26 Yet, while Sheffield did dutifully spread the word that the AFL-CIO and UAW each were asking workers to support Miriani in his capacity as COPE coordinator, at various other public functions he still used his personal time to campaign vigorously for Cavanagh.

Not surprisingly, it took some time for relations between labor’s top brass and Sheffield to warm. Even though leaders of the UAW and TULC improved their relationship after 1961, in part because Cavanagh’s many civic initiatives required that they work together, mutual suspicion abounded. In 1966, when Walter Reuther attempted to send Sheffield to a post in Washington, D.C., for example, black trade unionists were fully persuaded that the UAW still harbored ill feelings toward the TULC and was retaliating against Sheffield for his renegade campaigning during the 1961 election. At a public event in 1966, the TULC’s Battle accused Emil Mazey, Al Barbour, and even black UAW leader Nelson “Jack” Edwards of engaging in a “conspiracy” to remove Sheffield from Detroit for his earlier support of Cavanagh against UAW protocol.27 As the Detroit News reported, at this “raucous biracial gathering,” not just Battle but more than “250 persons shouted and hissed their protests Saturday night against the reassignment to Washington of Horace Sheffield.”28 Clearly, many civic liberals, both black and white, took exception to the suspected political overtones behind Reuther’s directive to Sheffield. Jack Casper of the Jewish Labor Committee, for example, wrote to colleague Irwin Small of his relief that, at least, Sheffield was not backing down by capitulating to Reuther’s desires.29 As Casper put it, “as of the moment he [Sheffield] refused to go and, in response to an ultimatum to go or get out delivered at a meeting with Walter, Roy and Bluestone, [Sheffield] is planning to return to the shops.”30

The fact that vocal liberal activists like Casper supported Sheffield (indeed he wrote, “every feeling of loyalty I have is with Horace”)31 and the fact that Mayor Cavanagh himself was one of those attending the “raucous” gathering in support of Sheffield, certainly reflected tensions between city liberals and the UAW’s leadership long after the 1961 election.32 But between 1961 and 1964, the UAW actually had come to enjoy a most cooperative working relationship with the Cavanagh administration and, in turn, mended its fences with TULC leaders. Indicating an easing of UAW/TULC tensions on May 8, 1962, 2,400 delegates at the UAW’s Constitutional Convention voted unanimously to elect African American UAW member Nelson “Jack” Edwards to the union’s twenty-seven-man IEB.33 And, in 1964, when Cavanagh began trying to sell fellow Detroit liberals on the merits of bringing LBJ’s Great Society initiatives to the city, the leadership of the UAW, along with the leadership of the TULC, stood firmly behind him.

The UAW-Cavanagh détente was facilitated to a large extent by the fact that the UAW’s top leadership had an independent and close relationship with the Johnson administration. When UAW leaders heard Washington Democrats speak of the imperative to push for the Great Society, they went on record that their union is “is vitally interested in the War on Poverty” and began actively to discuss concrete ways in which it could help the program along.34 As the UAW’s Bluestone wrote to Brendan Sexton, acting director of program support in the Office of Economic Opportunity, “within the next couple of weeks, the UAW officers will be discussing ways and means to involve staff and local union leadership in the anti-poverty program.... I would appreciate any ideas you may have on this subject which may form the basis of an activity program for the UAW to undertake.”35 In regard to national liberal efforts to train field workers in community development, Walter Reuther himself wrote to Sexton that “I share your view that this is a worthwhile project and we ought to move ahead without further delay.”36

In seeking out its own role to play in the War on Poverty and Great Society programs emanating from Washington, and hoping to shape these initiatives as well, the UAW’s leadership necessarily found itself working with Cavanagh and, thus, endorsing his administration.37 In 1966, Walter Reuther wrote Mayor Cavanagh a passionate letter expressing his belief that “Detroit can become an exciting and shining model of a 20^th century city in the Great Society.” He pledged “on behalf of the officers and members of the UAW, our fullest cooperation, including moral commitment and financial support” for, in this case, their joint plan to create a civic organization called the Detroit Citizens Development Authority.38

At the height of the Cavanagh administration’s efforts to bring the Great Society to Detroit, virtually every top UAW leader worked closely with civic liberals and TULC leaders alike to wage a real War on Poverty. Top UAW officials such as Doug Fraser and TULC leaders such as Marc Stepp each were pivotal figures on Detroit’s Total Action against Poverty Policy-Advisory Committee. Additionally, when City Councilman Mel Ravitz initiated a series of meetings on the city’s poverty program that would in turn forward suggestions to the mayor, UAW leaders Ken Bannon, Irving Bluestone, Anthony Canole, Marcellius Ivory, Olga Magdar, and William H. Oliver, along with TULC leader Battle, actively participated.39 That the UAW eventually came to support not just Cavanagh’s Great Society initiatives but also Cavanagh “the man” became clear in 1967, when Councilwoman Mary Beck attempted to unseat the mayor with her recall campaign. Despite the fact that the Detroit News had suggested in 1953 that “members of organized labor and their friends never had a more true friend ... than Mary Beck,”40 UAW officials including Bluestone and Millie Jefferies drafted public statements indicating that the UAW’s support of Cavanagh was unwavering.41 And, in response to such UAW support, Cavanagh personally wrote to Walter Reuther, “I greatly appreciate the expression of your opinions in this matter.... I think that your statement will be extremely influential in stabilizing attitudes within our community.”42

The UAW leadership’s support of the Cavanagh administration only grew as the Johnson administration came to endorse greater racial equality initiatives for America. Cavanagh had always been vocal about his support of civil rights, but after Congress passed federal civil rights measures and LBJ began to speak out on their behalf, the UAW and Cavanagh really came to share a public commitment to making civil rights a cornerstone of the city’s political agenda. True, the UAW had been a vital presence in the 1963 March on Washington, but it was not until the OEO in Washington came to address the economics of racial discrimination more explicitly that the UAW followed suit. By 1966, UAW leaders such as Bluestone were sharing thoughts with officials in the Equal Opportunity Commission about “the dismal figures concerning the unemployment of minority groups in a period when national unemployment is at its lowest point in many, many years,” and about “the great moral problem of equal opportunity for all.”43 And just as Washington politicians came to involve themselves more actively in the civil rights dramas being played out in the South, so did the UAW. Walter Reuther, for example, personally wrote to Myrlie Evers after her husband’s brutal murder: “in your hour of grief and profound sorrow, we tender you our sincere condolences. While we can never replace your immeasurable loss, those of us who remain solemnly pledge that your husband, Medger Evers, soldier in the fight for freedom and dignity, shall not have died in vain.”44 In concert with various Washington liberals, by 1966 the UAW was helping to better the lives of both Mexican farm workers in the West and African American sharecroppers in the South.

Simultaneously, UAW leaders came to speak out more aggressively against the racial discrimination that obviously still plagued Detroit and its auto plants. On June 23, 1963, Walter Reuther, Joseph McCusker, and George Merrelli walked with Cavanagh and Martin Luther King Jr. in a massive march for civil rights down Detroit’s Woodward Avenue. The presence of these union leaders at this civil rights event, like their activism in TAP, not only placed the UAW firmly within the Cavanagh fold, but also served further to mend fences between the UAW and the TULC. UAW participation in that march, for example, prompted the president of Local 835, Eugene Martin, to write to the TULC asking its leaders to recognize the real strides that the UAW had been making in furthering the cause of black equality.45 Although initially dubious, the TULC came to agree with Martin’s assessment: On October 23, 1965, it awarded Reuther the TULC’s A. Philip Randolph Lreedom Award at the organization’s annual Lreedom Ball. By 1965, Reuther had also received the National Urban League’s Equal Opportunity Day Award,46 as well as a civil rights award from the U.S. Department of Labor for his efforts to tackle discrimination in the workplace. When Hugh Murphy from the U.S. Department of Labor presented Reuther with this honor for opening the skilled trades to more African Americans, he claimed that “few Americans have distinguished themselves in the field of civil rights as the President of the United Autoworkers, Walter P. Reuther.”47

Clearly it helped the UAW’s top leadership to warm to the Cavanagh administration when the Johnson administration came to see him as its poster boy for the Great Society. Likewise, the UAW’s support of Cavanagh persuaded many initially suspicious white workers that the mayor’s liberal initiatives might have some merit. Indeed the UAW’s strong support for Cavanagh clearly facilitated his landslide second term election victory. But just as the city’s most conservative white residents and workers remained unnerved by the mayor’s civil rights sympathies, so did they remain leery of the UAW’s involvement in anti-discrimination measures. While many of these workers supported other Great Society efforts (such as those to secure full employment and more humane workplaces), a fair number of them actively discouraged the UAW from putting too much effort into addressing the needs of African Americans. As one woman, Ethel Schlacht, wrote to Walter Reuther, “how can you be so blind, as to suggest and justify Negro riots, and bloodshed?”48 Worker Wallace H. Brown wrote to Reuther, “since you have an affinity for joining off-color organizations, you should resign your position and take up full time job marching for civil rights.”49

Composite image of the march down Woodward Avenue, June 1963, showing Walter P. Reuther, Benjamin McFall, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Reverend C. L. Franklin. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.

But while the UAW’s more deliberate support of civil rights made its conservative white workers uneasy, its new public commitment to fighting for the oppressed thrilled other whites and blacks in the plants. Indeed, the UAW’s new identity as both War on Poverty warrior and civil rights champion inspired many laborers—particularly African Americans—to see the future of labor relations more optimistically than they had been able to for decades.

By the mid-1960s, blacks had come to comprise 65 percent to 70 percent of UAW units such as UAW Local 7, 60 percent of UAW Local 3, and 65 percent of plants such as Eldon Avenue gear and axle. That the now-numerous black autoworkers seemed hopeful about the future certainly gladdened union officials.50 But though their heart was in the right place, these leaders never really grasped how desperately their black constituents needed change on the shop floor. And for the blacks who labored in Detroit’s auto plants and in the facilities of the Chrysler Corporation, this need was particularly acute.

Although the Ford Motor Company had hired more African American autoworkers than any other Detroit firm before World War II, thereafter it was Chrysler that took the lead in black hiring. By the 1960s, Chrysler’s four huge plants in Detroit made it not only a “major inner-city employer” but also the major employer of the city’s African Americans.51 But Chrysler most often hired blacks without giving them either sufficient job security or upward mobility, and it also tended to relegate them to the most hazardous jobs. In addition, African Americans worked in the most labor-intensive, most extraordinarily dirty, and most unsafe operations within Chrysler’s decrepit foundry, stamping, and paint facilities.52 They particularly suffered from the fact Chrysler had invested very little in its inner-city plants and automotive machinery during the 1960s, while running its old equipment at and above full productive capacity.

And while blacks worked in Chrysler’s most decayed plants and dangerous jobs, the company they worked for was turning out more and more cars to meet growing consumer demand. In fact, by the 1960s, Chrysler was routinely putting all of its Detroit workers on six- to seven-day schedules and was working them twelve-hour shifts. The effect of this speed-up and forced overtime was that Chrysler’s workers, particularly its black workers in the worst jobs, were strained both physically and emotionally. The faster the line ran, the more tired the workers became. The older and more decrepit the machinery, the more auto jobs became a health and safety hazard. In combination, Chrysler’s inadequate internal investment and managerial aggressiveness, along with its inhumane overtime demands, contributed to the hazardous conditions that increasingly made the life of black workers in particular, but all workers to a great extent, hard to bear.

In the early 1960s, right when UAW and TULC leaders were wrangling over who should rule Detroit, Chrysler’s black and white line workers were really feeling squeezed. Daily they were enduring the effects of management’s attempt to wring as much production out of them as it could with as little attention to shop-floor conditions as possible. In 1960, for example, managers penalized Jefferson Avenue assembly worker Charles Stein for slacking off even though they had assigned him to two different jobs simultaneously. Outraged, Stein maintained that “he could not perform [these tasks] because of the speed of the line,” and even his union steward, J. Jesse, felt compelled to note that “the employees who have always worked in this department are doing their work under duress and strain beyond the ordinary capacity of an average able-bodied man and are constantly complaining [of] backaches, muscle-strain, tension and fatigue.”53 Likewise, when Chrysler management gave worker W. Eichrecht a time-off penalty “because he could not uphold his new workload,” Eichrecht’s union steward argued that there had been “speed up on this operation. Therefore the penalty given ... is unjust.”54

In addition to the speed-up, workers also endured numerous safety hazards and injuries as a result. In 1962, workers were furious that Department 9174 was still a “health hazard [even though] this condition [had] been brought to the attention of management on numerous occasions [but] no corrective measures have been taken.”55 Likewise, “for many months,” the employees of Department 9171 at Jefferson assembly had been “suffering from the exhaust fumes that are caused by the worn out jitneys that are being used to supply the production line with material. These jitneys are so bad at times that the operators on the line have to walk away from their operations while the jitney driver is dropping or picking up a load because the fumes are so bad they can’t breathe.”56 Workers in this department were alarmed that “all that management has given is a lot of lip service and no action.”57 With such management disregard for health and safety, many workers were also eventually injured. H. Thompson at Chrysler’s Eight Mile Road stamping plant was hurt “while transporting material on Hi-Lo #20858 ... [after] the lift chain broke, which was temporarily welded when broken previously.”58 And another worker at that plant “was hit on the head by a 1 X 6 Hex bolt which became loose from the top of the press that she was working on and as a result was injured causing her to lose time from work.”59

While it was certainly bad enough that workers had to work faster than they were physically able in order to keep their jobs, and also that they had to risk life and limb as they labored, what made line life particularly intolerable was the fact that line supervisors and foremen wielded their power most capriciously. On June 13, 1962, for example, workers in Department 9890 of Chrysler’s Eight Mile stamping plant facility complained to their chief steward, T. Brooks, about “Supervisor H. Goscinski’s attitude [because] he has constantly used abusive language ... [and] he also uses threats.”60 At Jefferson Avenue assembly, workers noted “management’s procedure of interviewing employees at home, when they are absent from work,”61 and workers in Department 9150 of that plant charged that Foreman E. Grant and General Foreman H. Gallo had made “threats against these employees ... [who] had reason to believe they were working above normal [speed].”62 Likewise, workers C. England, B. Susylo, O. Pearson, and R. Webster in Department 9150 accused Foreman C. Hunt and General Foreman H. Gallo of “making threats against these employers.”63 Indeed, just as many Detroiters were coming to see police brutality as their biggest city concern as the 1960s progressed, in the plants, the issue of foreman abuse came to take center stage.

Like city policemen, auto plant foremen were overwhelmingly white and came largely from the ranks of the older, premigration workforce. In the early days of the auto industry, foremen typically were drafted right off of the shop floor after many years of reliable service to the company. Although these early foremen most often came from the skilled trades, as opposed to the assembly line,64 for a time their cultural roots were firmly within the working class. When a worker became a foreman, he usually stayed in his original department, oversaw the output of men whom he had known for years, and was usually still paid an hourly wage.65 Because foremen often managed employees in the same trades as their own, they would assist in the production setups, laboring side by side with the workers.66 Certainly, the move into management often placed foremen at serious odds with workers, but in many respects reciprocal relations between foremen and workers had been preserved.67 This reciprocal relationship was rooted in the fact that, as scholar Steve Jefferys points out, “often the supervisor had the personal authority to recruit family or friends or workers from a similar ethnic background”68 into the always-sought-after auto jobs. Even in the plants where foremen had little to do with hiring, they almost always had an important degree of discretion when it came to firing.

As the work process altered dramatically during the 1920s and 1930s, foremen began to earn a reputation as seasoned disciplinarians. But several events during the late 1930s and early 1940s indicate that foremen were still culturally and ideologically identified with the working class, despite their more extensive managerial responsibilities. This became particularly evident after the passage of the Wagner Act. For years after the law went into effect, debates raged over whether a foreman was an “employer” or an “employee.”69 For the foremen who felt squeezed by top management during the productivity pushes of the war years and who then felt the intense job insecurity of the immediate postwar years firsthand, it was never that obvious that they were now a part of the managerial, not the working, class.

In 1938, foremen at Detroit’s Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company were so concerned about the familiar labor issues of better wages, working conditions, working hours, and job security that they tried to affiliate with the UAW. And even when the UAW rejected an outright affiliation, the men organized the United Foremen and Supervisors, Local Industrial Union 918, and became a CIO affiliate.70 In 1941, when foremen at the Ford Motor Company found their wage and job security situation to be little better than that of the UAW members whom they supervised, many of them tried to affiliate with the UAW Local 600. When this was unsuccessful, they organized the Foremen’s Association of America (FAA). By 1945, the FAA union had 33,000 members and 152 chapters.71 As historian Nelson Lichtenstein noted, “foremen began to explore and expand the definition of what constituted a self-conscious working-class identity at mid-century.”72

Any institutional, cultural, or ideological ties that had bound the auto foremen to the autoworkers, however, were completely severed by the early 1960s. As early as 1939, the National Labor Relations Board pressured the CIO to disband all of the UFS 918 locals. In 1947, a decisive labor dispute at Ford (in combination with the rigorous enforcement of the new Taft-Hartley Act) dealt the death blow to the FAA. Then, throughout the 1950s, top auto management called on foremen to tighten the reins of shop-floor control and to repudiate unionism in any form. In the early 1960s, Chrysler sought to achieve greater shop-floor control by “increas[ing] the number of foremen from a ratio of one to every seventy-five to eighty workers in the 1950s to one for every twenty or twenty-five workers.”73 Ironically, by bolstering the numerical strength of foremen, Chrysler had actually weakened an individual foreman’s power to make decisions and to solve problems on the shop floor.

During this same period, Chrysler had also strengthened its corporate labor relations staff in order to centralize all personnel decision-making power to bring the company in line with the other auto companies. This had two significant consequences. First, Chrysler had seriously tampered with the foremen’s traditional relationship with the workers when it removed any discretionary bargaining from the front line. Without the foremen’s ability to work things out with employees, workers saw less and less that was worthy about these bosses. Whether a worker got along with his particular foreman was much less important when ethnic and friendship connections were no longer avenues for future jobs or insurance against job loss. As Jefferys points out, the control that labor-relations personnel had over the situation on the shop floor “reduced the status of both steward and the foreman and undermined any mutual respect.”74 Equally significant, however, was that Chrysler’s elimination of foremen’s shop-floor bargaining and negotiating prerogatives had left them with only one role—that of rigid disciplinarians. With little power to resolve problems or incentive to cajole workers into a mutually beneficial resolution of a dispute remaining, foremen increasingly resorted to harassment and intimidation.

Foremen’s willingness to police the workforce was also inexorably linked to the rapidly changing racial profile of the workers whom they were supervising. As older white foremen found themselves in charge of younger black workers, the cultural and ideological ties that previously were an incentive for problem-solving had virtually disappeared. Any respect foremen had felt for their workers based on shared friendships, neighborhoods, religion, ethnic traditions, or family backgrounds gave way to distrust, dislike, and disrespect of the newer black workers. Foremen not only were hostile to black workers whom they considered foreign, but they also reviled the youth culture’s newly adopted styles of dress, language, and music shared by black and white workers alike. They perceived younger workers to be lacking any respect for authority.

Regardless of their age, however, Detroit’s black workers endured foreman aggression the most consistently. For Chrysler’s black workers, management’s insensitivity to employee grievances was exacerbated by its racially discriminatory practices. Take the case of black worker H. Lewis at Chrysler’s Jefferson assembly plant. His foreman, G. Narrod, singled him out for “loafing” on the job. Apparently, Lewis was not the only black worker targeted for penalties by this foreman, because the union noted that “the inhuman impositions that are being experienced [there] must come to an end ... [and] if top management knowingly permits the metal shop regime to commit wrongful acts such as the ones imposed on employee H. Lewis 910–6658, then perhaps someone should contact the Fair Employment Practices Commission or the NAACP.”75 Interestingly, plenty of black workers did begin to contact the NAACP regarding the abuses they endured on the line in this period. This organization had received hundreds of complaints from black workers similar to that of James Lee Cowans, whose foreman at Chrysler continually harassed and tried to fire him, and Robert Washington, who was demoted to a dangerous, heavy, and unskilled job at a General Motors plant where he was seriously injured.76

Not only did line management disrespect black workers on their jobs, but it also ignored black seniority when offering promotions. Black workers with seniority ranging from 1935 to 1945 at Chrysler’s Jefferson plant, for example, had not been canvassed when skilled trades jobs opened up in the machine repair–welding gun repair department; and because management had been handpicking white workers from the same department for these positions, the local union had “no alternative but to charge racial discrimination.”77 According to the black workers at Jefferson, “in view of the fact that we pay as much as any other race or group for the company built cars that we buy, we feel that discrimination has no place within the walls of our livelihood.”78

Increasingly, however, virtually every worker, not just black workers, complained bitterly about foremen mistreatment. At Jefferson Avenue assembly, for instance, several workers noted “the arrogant attitude and deliberate action of Foreman Narrod,”79 while others pointed out that Foreman William Rinke “on numerous occasions” has “threatened both probationary and seniority workers.”80 Workers not only called attention to the ever-present belligerent attitudes and aggressive demeanor of their line foremen, but they also said that management sensitivity to worker needs was reaching an all-time low. Consider the case of worker Ed Krupkinski at Chrysler’s Flamtramck facility; he “complained about a severe pain in back of his neck, he could feel bumps all over his neck.”81 Management would “not send him home because he did not have a fever [and when] Ed told the people in medical that he could not stand the pain ... they still refused him a pass to go home.”82 Likewise, when worker H. Dore had been injured at the Jefferson Avenue assembly plant and “was on this table suffering from immeasurable agony,” Dore claimed that the foreman, E. Piwonski, was “more concerned about getting the line moving than getting Dore to medical.”83 Similarly, when worker T. Browner told his foreman, L. Lacroix, that “he had a headache and a pain in his chest,” this supervisor delayed his “pass to first aid” and then the general foreman, Mike Melasic, allegedly said, “this is not an emergency; I’ll send him as soon as I can get squared off.”84

Between 1960 and 1964, because so many workers had become disillusioned with shop-floor relations and their union’s inability to improve them, dissident groups began to spring up in Detroit’s auto plants. While many black workers gravitated to the TULC during this period, some disaffected white workers also began to dissent in an organization called the National Committee for Democratic Action in UAW (NCFDA). The NCFDA, which in the early 1960s claimed a presence in UAW Locals 3, 15, 22, 140, 155, 163, 212, 306, 599, 600, and 659, stated publicly that “there is an urgent need in the UAW for a return to the militant and united action which was the strength of the rank and file in the 1930s.”85 Workers in the NCFDA “felt that they had enough abuses from the management over speed up and intimidation,” and complained that “speed up still resembles sweatshop conditions of old.” They wanted, therefore, “to promote growth and progress of the UAW on a democratic basis.”86

Historically, the UAW did not take kindly to dissidents within its ranks, and the dissent that erupted on its shop floors during the early 1960s was no exception. In addition to viewing the TULC with suspicion for years, some in the UAW actually kept the NCFDA under surveillance. When the NCFDA organized a picnic on Detroit’s Belle Isle, for example, to discuss “many problems of seniority, classification and working conditions when the 1961 models get under way,”87 anonymous individuals surreptitiously attended this event and then reported back to the UAW. According to the author of the report, “arrived about 10:00 a.m.—practically nobody there, so I drove around and for a little while ... parked on opposite road ... we sat on a bench about 40 feet from where women were congregating ... there was nobody there at that time that I recognized.”88 The report went on to recount various speeches given that day and then noted with regret that, “due to traffic and other noises, there was considerable other parts of the speech that I missed.”89 After the UAW received this report, someone typed a document with the initials “A.H.” at the bottom, which called attention to the criticisms of the UAW voiced by individual speakers at the Belle Isle event. Particularly noted were the criticisms heard from an outspoken NCFDA member named Andy Kranson, who “spoke for 40 minutes.”90 The author of this document then went on to mention that “Ted Morgan, Recording Secretary, UAW Local 7, called and said the Local cannot tolerate statement of Kranson,” and that “UAW Local 7 is scheduling a special meeting of Board next Wednesday and would like direction.”91

UAW leaders saw the NCFDA’s actions as an assault largely because they had been trying hard to improve conditions for their constituents on the shop floor during these years. Between 1960 and 1964, the union had not sat idly by as auto companies sped up the line, ignored health and safety hazards, and allowed foremen to abuse line workers. While top UAW officials were preoccupied with civic election efforts and establishing a good working relationship with the Cavanagh administration, local union officials were filing numerous grievances on behalf of workers in many Chrysler plants and were demanding that the company alter its inhumane course.

Union leaders at the Jefferson Avenue assembly plant, for example, more than willingly brought management’s attention, once again, to the fact that “there is a health hazard at bays S-22 to S-25 at the front of the glass lines in Department 9172 [in which workers] are inhaling the [paint and thinner] fumes and it is making them sick,”92 while numerous presidents of UAW locals also put Chrysler on strike notice for issues such as “health and safety” as well as “harassment and coercion” many times between 1960 and 1964.93 Local union officers were also extremely aggressive in filing grievances against abusive line supervisors and foremen during this period. When Chrysler’s safety engineer had approached the workers of Department 3505 at the Eight Mile Road plant with “his Hitleristic demands for immediate obedience” in 1962, for instance, the UAW in turn demanded “an apology” and it told the plant manager to give this man “special instructions on how to conduct himself while being in a supervisory capacity.”94 Likewise, the union demanded that the management at this plant also “immediately penalize Supervisor Marrizio for his retaliatory tactics,” that it instruct Supervisor E. Wasser “in regards to the grievance procedure and how it functions,” and that E. Wassser give worker E. Chiciuk “an immediate apology for the derogatory remarks.”95

Regardless of how many grievances were filed, how many union demands were levied, and how many dissident organizations were in existence, Chrysler continued its inhumane treatment of line workers. Indeed, by 1964, tensions between workers and management in Detroit’s plants were at an all-time high. But as a result of the UAW, along with the TULC, plunging headlong into various local initiatives of the Great Society that year, workers soon came to believe that their work lives might actually improve. Indeed, after 1964, despite the UAW’s previously spotty record of successfully checking management’s abuses, its new activist agenda offered workers hope that the established labor-relations mechanisms for dispute resolution might now be more effective. The union had recommitted itself to fighting for the underdog.

True to its word, between 1964 and 1967, the UAW did step up its fight for workers. While UAW officials at the local level filed grievance after grievance on behalf of workers, the UAW International tried to gain more for workers in negotiations with management at the national level.96 During the 1964 contract negotiations with Chrysler, for example, Walter Reuther signaled his intention to make serious demands on the company when he said, “in 1961 we made substantial concessions to Chrysler [because of the 1958–59 recession]. We helped them survive. We volunteered these concessions. They are now obligated to respond in kind.”97 And as a result of the UAW’s determination to stand firm with the company, Chrysler itself reported on September 9, 1964, that it had finally reached “a new three year labor agreement which will give Chrysler employees an unprecedented pension benefits of $4.25 per month per year of service, two additional fully paid holidays, new and improved early retirement benefits, increased protection for widows and families and deceased employees and retirees, Group, Life and Sickness and Accident insurance fully paid by the company, and substantial wage increases over three years of the contract.”98 It soon would prove significant, however, that in its list of shiny new contract provisions, Chrysler did not mention any new language addressing its tendency to speed up the line, run its plants unsafely, or abuse its workers. Nor was there any mention of any new provision to address racial discrimination in the workplace.

Despite the UAW’s post-1964 commitment to tackling problems in the auto industry, it was largely up to the TULC to bring the racial equality components of the Great Society to the shop floor. A year before the 1964 contract expired, for example, the TULC’s eighty-four-member Executive Board wrote a four-page letter to Reuther indicating its opinion of what the UAW’s key bargaining issues should be when it came to the table with the auto companies. Specifically, the board urged Reuther “to shelve his profitmaking program and concentrate on a ‘work sharing’ plan to open Negro employment opportunities.”99 As TULC President Battle went on to say in this letter, “what you have done to date will not do.... [O]nly action will bring action.... [T]alk alone, good intentions, sterile resolutions and blustering timidity will bring only stagnation.”100

Between 1964 and 1967, the TULC was also noticeably vocal about the necessity of monitoring foremen’s abuse of workers, particularly those offenses with distinctly racial overtones. After 1964, the TULC paid close attention to the actions of foremen like Whitney, whom workers claimed was “a slave driver and has no respect for them as human beings.”101 And, inspired by the TULC’s vigilance, black workers became determined not to back down in the face of such affronts either. As black worker Harold Echols reported about his encounter with Chrysler General Foreman Don Volkner, “[he] came on my job site. He told me to get off my ass and go to work.... Don said you god dam people, think your so dam smart. I asked him what did he mean.... I also asked him if he was race baiting.”102 When he got no answer from Volkner, Echols went to Cal Sarmaras, the supervisor of his department, and angrily informed him that “there were laws that superseded the contract. The Civil Rights Law, The Federal Law, Equal Opportunity of Employment.”103

That union officials themselves were sometimes discriminatory was a dicey issue for TULC leaders. Take the case of UAW Chief Steward Ed “Frenchy” Manceau, whom black worker William Porter at UAW Local 212 claimed was “placing Negroes in his Department (with seniority) on the worst jobs (not the open jobs).”104 But while the TULC would have agreed with workers like Porter “that discrimination should not be practiced, especially by union representatives,”105 it most often decided to stand with the UAW rather than against it. Indeed, as several of its leaders, including Horace Sheffield and Marc Stepp, came to fill leadership positions within the UAW, the TULC increasingly encouraged black workers to have faith in the labor relations system and in their union representative’s commitment to bettering conditions on the shop floor. TULC leaders still believed in the International UAW’s new public commitment to furthering civil rights. They were encouraged as well that, at the local level, there were union officials such as District Committeeman Robert Giles from the Detroit Diesel plant, Local 163, who were aggressively tackling racism on the shop floor. Giles, for example, had approached the NAACP directly to request “a formal investigation for personal discrimination towards a Negro [for] his race only. I demand immediate action.”106

Between 1964 and 1967, however, black workers themselves began to doubt that UAW officials were in fact representing them as dutifully as they should. As a result, after 1964, workers began taking their grievances to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission (MCRC), which was fully outside of the industry’s labor relations system. Worker William E. Mims, for example, claimed before the MCRC that “the International Union failed to represent him because of his race.”107 Likewise, UAW Local 3 worker Matthew Brown also took his complaint “that because of his race he was denied adequate representation” to the MCRC.108 But the MCRC many times ruled against black workers who brought cases before it, as it did with both Mims and Brown, and it did not even attempt to address the fact that blacks were still disproportionately barricaded into the least safe and lowest-paying jobs in the plants. Clearly, neither Cavanagh’s election nor the TULC’s ability to get a black man on the IEB nor the UAW’s public commitment to civil rights had meant as much as black workers had hoped when 1964 began. Even though workers like William Echols had felt empowered by liberal federal legislation, and had told his supervisor, Cal Samaras, that he was willing to call on civil rights laws to have his needs addressed, this had gotten him nowhere. According to Echols, Samaras reportedly told him to “take those laws an stick them up my ass.”109

Between 1964 and 1967, like the period that preceded it, it was not just black workers who were growing disillusioned with their union leadership. Many white workers had also become convinced that labor liberals’ new initiatives had amounted to very little. By 1967, the line speed still was inhumane, safety conditions still were abominable, and workers saw little evidence that the union’s post-1964 efforts to take management on more aggressively had paid off. Take, for example, the situation still facing production workers in the welders’ area at the Jefferson Avenue plant. As union officials noted, this area was so unsafe that “there have been a couple of men hurt in this area already because of the condition that exists,” despite the fact that the union had repeatedly notified management about the problem.110 Even the union had to concede in this particular case that “the way it looks now is that somebody has to get seriously hurt or maybe killed before this problem is solved.”111

As we have seen, when workers grew discontented with shop-floor conditions between 1960 and 1964, some of them gravitated toward dissident groups within the UAW. But this is not the path that workers tended to take thereafter. It is true that, in 1966, some skilled workers did try to create an in-plant presence of the International Society of Skilled Trades in order to push the UAW to take a more militant posture in fighting for their needs.112 In addition, a biracial group called Concerned Members for Better Unionism tried to organize workers to reform the union in more radical directions that year.113 But neither of these groups amounted to much, and even the earlier dissident group that did have a noticeable shop-floor presence, the NCFDA, faded from view after 1964. In fact, most workers initially dealt with the problems still raging on their shop floors after 1964 by simply not coming into work. Between 1964 and 1967, Detroit’s auto plants were plagued by such serious worker absenteeism that the minutes of virtually every meeting between labor and management at the local level include some mention of it.114 At one such “special meeting” called by management at the Jefferson assembly plant, company officials noted “that absenteeism has become a very serious problem at this plant,” and they pointed out that such “absenteeism can cause a poor showing [for the foremen] ... and make it necessary to shut down for relief.”115

If workers chose to register their growing discontent with plant life only by not showing up, then Detroit’s auto plants might have been spared any explosion of violent unrest such as that which came to polarize the Motor City in 1967. But just as police aggression made a civic crisis virtually inevitable, unmitigated foreman aggression sent line workers in equally violent and explosive directions that year as well. Despite the fact that UAW officials had been filing grievances about managerial abuse since 1964, foremen, like their law enforcement counterparts, continued to act with virtual impunity. Union officials at Chrysler’s Hamtramck complex, for example, still were complaining on March 28, 1967, that “the foreman in Department 9170, Group #9, is harassing and threatening employees.”116 And at Chrysler’s Huber Avenue foundry, where a large percentage of the workforce was African American, the union again had to request in 1967 “that something be done about the foreman on the third shift, Mr. Lazorshak in Department 3330. This man is a ‘WILD MAN.’ ... [T]his man is constantly harassing all the employees.... [T]his foreman told [one] employee that he ‘didn’t give a damn about his family’” when that worker needed to attend to a family emergency.117

By 1967, workers had become so completely fed up with the union’s promises that offensive line foremen would be penalized that some began refusing to obey any foreman’s directive. For example, in 1967, Chrysler worker S. Minus was discharged because of “his failure to follow a direct order from his supervisor.”118 Minus’s discharge followed that of employee E. Webb, who reportedly was “insubordinate” and also had failed “to follow supervisor’s instructions.”119 According to Chrysler management, not only male workers like C. Hickman “refused to follow the instructions of his foreman, even against the advice of his Chief Steward,”120 but so did female employees such as S. Kiertaniz, whom the company also discharged for being “insubordinate to her superintendent.”121 Such overt disobedience not only alarmed Chrysler, but it also greatly worried the UAW and TULC leadership because it clearly indicated that their best-laid plans for responding more effectively to worker needs after 1964 had not been effective.

But what really served to dash UAW and TULC dreams of more equitable, and thus more peaceful, labor relations was the fact that numerous workers had gone beyond simply disobeying their line foremen, and they now were fighting them physically as well. Physical violence on the shop floors was not unknown at Detroit’s auto plants, but, by 1967, these factories had become synonymous with such violence. Take the case of worker D. Britton, who needed to go home to deal with a family emergency. Apparently, when he requested a pass to leave, his foreman “screamed back about having more important things to do.”122 According to the union at UAW Local 7, at this point worker Britton felt “like a prisoner in a jail and being treated like one came close to [General Foreman] W. Lemay, with the intention of making his point clear that he had to go home. When he done this W. Lemay backed up into a coat rack lost balance and fell backward on the floor with D. Britton falling on top of him with hands accidentally landing on W. Lemay’s face, W. Lemay then got up claiming that D. Britton deliberately struck him.”123 Worker G. Wolfe at UAW Local 212 also “became involved in an altercation with Foreman Baumgardner which culminated in violence” when he asked for a medical pass and did not get one.124 When the foreman accused Wolfe of being drunk, Wolfe “punched him in the cheek,” and then he “again hit the foreman.”125

Such acts of violence only escalated between 1964 and 1967. In 1966, workers like UAW Local 3’s Johnny Hatcher got so angry with his foreman that he “deliberately struck the supervisor with a car door and then proceeded to profane the supervisor.”126 And on February 16, 1966, another worker, John Jackson, also threatened his supervisor and “used extremely profane and abusive language.”127 In 1967, workers such as L. Jenkins and R. Philson actually lost their jobs because of their verbal and physical responses to shop-floor tensions. According to reports, Jenkins “used abusive, profane and obscene language toward his supervisor and threatened his supervisor with bodily harm,” and in a separate incident, Philson had engaged in an ugly fight.128 Notably, tensions were so high in Detroit’s auto plants by 1967 that violence between workers had also escalated. In that year, it was not at all unusual to hear of employees such as William H. Reed, who had become “involved in an assault on another employee within the plant.”129

Back in 1963, UAW leaders had warned Chrysler that conditions “have reached a peak where immediate action must be taken to correct them or drastic measures will have to be taken.”130 By 1964, galvanized by their Great Society mission and greatly angered that shop-floor abuses, particularly those perpetuated by company foreman, had continued unabated, union officials again approached Chrysler. This time they more forcefully told the company that “mental and physical suffering can’t be measured as easily as time and money, and that is why this local union cannot tolerate totalitarianism, which will, without a doubt, end in rebellion.”131 When union leaders spoke these omniscient words, however, they never predicted that worker anger was also escalating toward the UAW itself. Indeed, between 1964 and 1967, liberals in the auto plants, like their civic counterparts, were so confident about their efforts to improve life for the oppressed that they did not appreciate just how disenchanted their constituents had become. And because the TULC’s early efforts to push liberal white union leaders in more militant directions had largely failed, as had the NAACP’s efforts to push civil liberals, when workers rebelled on the shop floor their ire was directed as much against black leaders as white. By 1967, many workers considered the strategic agendas of both black and white labor liberals equally ineffective.

Although auto plants were as riddled with conflict as was the Motor City in 1967, the plants saw no specific outburst like the civic rebellion against the police on July 23. Rather, the violence associated with worker resistance to foreman aggression punctuated shop-floor life throughout that year. Just as city residents had come to question the efficacy of liberal strategies for bettering civic relations between 1964 and 1967, so had workers come to question the viability of liberal plans to improve conditions on the shop floor during that period. But as had been the case before in this complex and ever-changing metropolis, the crisis that now gripped both the city and its plants would soon generate completely new political possibilities for Detroit.