Retired black Ford Motor Co. Workers talk about their experiences By James Prichard DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) - Since 1914, when Ford Motor Co. hired Ontario resident William Perry as its first black employee, thousands of other blacks have worked for the company. For much of the 20th century, blacks migrated to the Detroit area to work for the automaker because Henry Ford offered a good wage, a shorter workday and a chance at a better life. Today, about 18.5 percent of the company's nearly 150,000 U.S. workers are black, according to Ford‘s Web site. Some black retirees at United Auto Workers Local 600 retiree chapter in Dearborn, where Ford is headquartered, share their stories. When Albert Stevenson joined Ford in 1950, he went to work at the foundry at Ford's River Rouge complex. The foundry jobs ’were extremely dirty and hard"and ’strictly for blacks," says Stevenson. For years, he and others at the foundry would work for about three or four months, then get laid off for about five or six months before getting called back. ’Back in the '50's at Ford, nobody worked all the time," he says. ’Most of the time, you were laid off." Stevenson continued working at the foundry until he was elected in 1975 as a committeeman for United Auto Workers Local 600. At 73, he now serves as president of the local's retiree chapter. His brother, Leon, worked for Ford for 37 years. ’I've seen a lot of change. I've seen a lot of advancement," Stevenson says. ’There are blacks now in every capacity at Ford." Rush Moore needed a good job in the worst kind of way. World War II was over and Moore had just been discharged from the Army and gotten married. The resident of Aberdeen, Miss., had heard there were plenty of openings at the auto plants in southeastern Michigan and decided to try to land a job with one of them. Leaving his bride behind until he could send for her, Moore hopped on a train and headed for Detroit. ’When I got here and got off the train, there were so many people standing out there saying, —Do you want a job?‘ Jobs were so plentiful then, you could get anything you wanted," says Moore, now 78. His first job in the Detroit area was one of those ’dirty jobs" with a steel company that paid him 87 cents per hour. He lasted only a month there before accepting a position with Ford at the River Rouge stamping plant, where he earned $1.21 per hour to start. Moore says he was one of the few black men at the plant at the time he was hired. ’It was bad when I first went in there because there was a little discrimination and all this stuff, and mostly blacks couldn't get a good job," he says. ’But the union got in there and straightened all that out, after so many years." As a black man, James Horton felt he did not have much of a future working at General Motors Corp. or Chrysler Corp., where he worked before joining Ford in 1948. ’Most of those other places, all you could do was sweep, at that time," says Horton, now 79. Representatives of both GM and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group declined to comment on the company's employment practices of that era. The West Virginia native worked for two years as a coal miner before serving in the Army during World War II. After more than 27 years on the job, Horton retired from Ford in 1976. He now serves as the financial secretary for the Local 600 retiree chapter. Horton says he gets great satisfaction from helping union members and their spouses who call the union hall with questions about their benefits. ’We're doing things to keep them happy," he says. James Ghoston started at River Rouge in 1943. After working for about a year at the magnesium smelter, he got transferred to the aircraft engine plant. In the late 1940s, he went to the frame plant, where he worked until retiring from Ford in 1974. He says he recalls Henry Ford as ’a fair man who didn't care about your color. As long as you were willing to do your job, he'd stick up for you." Now 87, Ghoston says he has nothing but fond memories of his time with the company. ’At Ford, it didn't matter what color you were. If you could do the job, you got the job," he says. He cannot say the same about the seven months or so he worked at GM, where he says he was pigeonholed as a sweeper. ’When I was working at GM, I didn't enjoy going to work because I couldn't advance," Ghoston says. He also experienced some racism during his brief time at GM - something he feels that he completely avoided during his entire 31 years at Ford. ’Everywhere I worked, (at FORD) it was good," says Ghoston. ’I liked to go to work and I never had that experience of racism."

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