From the Collections of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village [P.833.57953]. Copy and reuse restrictions apply.

The automobile factories in Detroit started to hire black men in 1916. By 1926, eleven thousand African Americans were employed at the assembly lines. The Ford plant at River Rouge provided work for six thousand of them, or 11 percent of its fifty-five thousand employees. About four thousand other black workers were employed by the Ford Highland Park plant. Only two were skilled.