A couple summers back I visited my friend in Michigan. She lives near Detroit and in the midst of the Big Three: Henry Ford world headquarters in Dearborn, GMC headquarters in Detroit, and Chrysler Headquarters in Auburn. Here is map to get the lay of the land. Greenfield village is known as “The Village” at the Ford Museum and Ford headquarters.
The highways and streets are filled with these cars – as thousands upon thousands of their employees get deep discounts; the companies get a very convenient advertisement of their models.
At the Ford headquarters, there is a huge barricade and behind the barricade is extensive roads to test drive the new models. It’s kind of cool.
The Big Three is linked with the high schools, community colleges, and four-year institutions tech and engineer programs.
It is a phenomenal opportunity for kids who want to work with cars, go into the auto industry, learn the skills specific and attuned for Ford, GMC, or Chrysler. In most cases, albeit a recession, can almost be assured of a good job and good working wages for their entire working life.
There is a Henry Ford College, a hospital, and the beloved Henry Ford Museum. Have you seen “Innovation Nation” on Saturday mornings? The set of Innovation Nation is The Henry Ford Museum.
If you ever get a chance to go – it is worth the trip. Click on these hyperlinks – check it out. The museum is expansive, super kid friendly.
The extensive acerage and exhibits such as “Made in America,” innovation through the years; the Henry Ford’s auto tour, “Driving America.” The Presidential cars, including JFK’s fateful car. They have trains upon trains outside and inside; Abraham Lincoln’s chair, Rose Parks Bus, Thomas Edison’s lab, the Liberty Trial, and this crazy house called the Dymaxion House.
You know sometimes when you go to a museum, the first couple hours you are captivated, you are in it. For me, my sugars start to fall by two plus-hours in from the sensory absorbtion, and I have to eat. I replenish, then I am good to explore more for another hour or two max.
The Henry Ford Museum, you say from the get go – I have to come back. You just keep saying, Wow – this really cool.
It’s the lights, shiny pretty objects – the time and upkeep is unimaginable. The resurrection of Rosa Parks’ bus – there is a whole story on that alone.
It is visually seeing objects that are apart of Americana in real form. You can’t feel the expansive and cool-factor from the web. My intention is to go back.
——————————————
There is the this story that came about in the local press, published February 4, 2019 bridgemi.com. You may have heard of this story – I had not. When I read this I said, Holy shit. I encourage you to read the whole article.
Excerpts:
“In the midst of his fame, Ford became a media mogul of sorts, forming the Dearborn Publishing Company and purchasing the sleepy Dearborn Independent weekly newspaper, which was dying of red ink. He published the paper under his name for the first time 100 years ago, in January 1919.
Under Ford, the Independent became notorious for its unprecedented attacks on Jews. But Ford’s anti-Semitism traveled far beyond the Dearborn borders.
Showing the marketing expertise that had catapulted Ford Motor into one of the world’s most famous brands, Henry Ford’s lieutenants vastly widened the reach of his attacks by packaging the paper’s anti-Semitic content into four books.
Experts say “The International Jew,” distributed across Europe and North America during the rise of fascism in the 1920s and ‘30s, influenced some of the future rulers of Nazi Germany.
In 1931, two years before he became the German chancellor, Adolf Hitler gave an interview to a Detroit News reporter in his Munich office, which featured a large portrait of Ford over the desk of the future führer. The reporter asked about the photo.
“I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” Hitler told the News.
Starting with the issue of May 22, 1920, Ford began using the Independent to attack Jews. Every week for nearly two years, the paper published articles that assailed Jews for being sneaky and treacherous and conspiring to control the global financial system, a common Jewish stereotype. Ford also accused Jews of scheming to dominate such American industries as Hollywood, farming and liquor distribution (italicized added).
Ford’s anti-Jewish campaign provoked protests and a boycott of Ford Motor automobiles in the 1920s. Ford offered an apology ‒ received by the public with great skepticism ‒ and closed the paper in 1927.
It was too late, though, as copies of “The International Jew” spread widely before and after World War II, influencing generations of anti-Semites. The glowing imprimatur of Henry Ford lent credibility to the preposterous charges against Jews the books contained.”
“The International Jew” was out of business, out of print – until the internet and the folks with their copies, reviving its disgusting words and history; it is out there again –
Turns my stomach.
“In its first couple of years, Ford sold more than 200,0000 copies of “The International Jew.” His underlings deliberately declined to copyright the content, so other anti-Semites were free to publish the books.
That is one reason Ford’s paper and books are widely available today, in printed form and online. With no copyright, it’s nearly impossible to stop their proliferation.
Henry Ford’s hate campaign took a disturbing turn in the 1920s and ‘30s, when it intersected with Adolf Hitler’s path to power. The collision produced what the 21st Century calls synergy.
Copies of “The International Jew” began re-appearing in the 1930s in the U.S., South America and Europe, especially in Germany, where the Nazi Party was poised to take power.
Books wound up on a table in the office of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party in Munich.
Numerous historians have noted that Ford is the only American mentioned in Hitler’s Mein Kampf memoir.”
“It is noted that in July 1938, before the outbreeak of war, the German consul at Cleaveland gave Ford, on this 75th birthday, the award of the Grand Cross of German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany cold bestow a foreigner.”
The highest medal –
Where does this hisory leave us?
My friend asks. “I have been taking my kids their for years.” They have a family membership. Ava her yongest, plays on the Village’s playground with ragged-fun just as much as her own.
At Christmas, the Village is decorated and sprinkled with holiday light and cheers for blocks. Christmas music in the streets, horse-drawn carriages. A snow-globe explosion.
What do we do with this?
My friend asks, “How do you reckon?”
Yesterday, January 27, marked Holocaust Rememberance Day and the liberation of Auschwitz –
I don’t believe in cancel culture in it’s entirety. Just because you cancel it, it doesn’t mean the root has been silenced or vanquished. It is still there.
I will go back to The Ford Museum. My family always had a Ford truck sitting in the driveway – as my parents believed in supporting the unions as my dad was a union man.
I believe in recognition.
Stand with the history.
Fullness.
Take it in and breathe it out.
Educate.
Speak it out loud.
Repeat this story.
Here the whole article again.
———————————————
From the Ford Family:
“On its website, the Anti-Defamation League says:
In the decades following Ford’s death in 1947, the Ford family and the Ford Motor Company have engaged in numerous projects and endeavors in the public interest, including many that have been supportive of Jewish concerns.
In 1997, for example, the Ford Motor Company sponsored the first screening of Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” commercial-free, on national television. Ford Motor is credited with extending economic credit to the young state of Israel and supporting Jewish charities at home and abroad.
Today, two generations of the Ford family are well represented on the board of one of the country’s most elaborate historical complexes, The Henry Ford, in Dearborn, formerly called Greenfield Village, which Henry Ford founded. The chairman of the board is S. Evan Weiner, of the Edward C. Levy Co. in Detroit, who is Jewish.
In November, Weiner welcomed a largely Jewish crowd of several hundred people in the museum during a one-day collaboration with the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan: “The Henry Ford…Through a Jewish Lens.” The program examined Ford’s bigotry and, through pop-up exhibits, celebrated Jews as American innovators.”
—————————————————
You remember.
You remember how the events of the past came to be, acknowledge the grave suffering – pivot, shift, and prevent further suffering.
Remember the pink triangle? For a long time I didn’t know what the signfigance of it. And then I found out.
We Never Forget as if these stories were our own. This story is apart of America’s story.
We Never Forget as if these stories were our own families. As it is for many.
To change this tune , to shake this out – remember Bob Dylan, Mumford and Sons, and Avett Brothers playing at the Grammys? Love.
Remember “Once”
The Lumineeers – quite beautiful
Much love to you and to you and to you.