The Ford Hunger March

Approximately 3,000 unemployed workers and labor activists mobilized in Oakwood on March 7, 1932, for the first Ford Hunger March, crossing the old Fort Street drawbridge and heading up Miller Road to deliver demands to Henry Ford for jobs, food, fuel for heat, and help with rent and mortgages, while also carrying banners calling for greater public relief, freedom for the Scottsboro Boys, and other urgent causes. The march remained peaceful until it crossed into Dearborn, where police fired tear-gas into the crowd, and near Gate Three fire hoses were turned on the marchers, who responded by throwing clods of frozen dirt, rocks, and brickbats before gunfire came from the police line. Four marchers died from gunshot wounds that day and a fifth died a few weeks later, and several others were injured. Though organized primarily by communists, the participants were politically, ethnically, and racially diverse. The tragedy became a pivotal moment in the formation of the United Auto Workers union, formally chartered in May 1935. Several thousand people joined a procession carrying Joseph York, Joseph DeBlasio, Joseph Bussell, and Kalman Leny to Woodmere Cemetery, where they were buried in an unmarked grave in view of the Rouge colossus. Curtis Williams, an unemployed African-American and the fifth fatality, died on Aug. 7, 1932, was denied a grave at Woodmere, and his cremains were reportedly scattered over the Rouge plant from a rented airplane. Headstones for Leny, York, Bussell, and DeBlasio were laid in 1979, and Williams's stone was installed on March 14, 1992, during a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the march.

Melvindale, Michigan · United States