Moving Out
and Up
The First African-American Auto Executives
Bv Jacqueline Mitchell and Mary Chapman
It took quite a while before African
Americans began filling the managerial
ranks of the automotive industry.
In the early 1900s Detroit was lit­
tered with small automotive firms, all of
them producing one or two models in
small quantities. For African Americans,
it was rugged, very labor-intensive
work. Black men were hired almost
exclusively to perform menial tasks like
ll'/tv Can't We all Just Buckle Up?
moving boxes and heavy machinery,
and they filled low-skilled jobs on
developing assembly lines.
But amid all of this, African
Americans were making inroads in the
auto industry. Indeed, many moved
beyond the corp of rank and file work­
ers. Finding them isn't easy because
records were not too well maintained.
But if one digs long enough and deep
enough, one will uncover snapshots of
their evolution. Still, it is nearly impos­
sible to name the auto industry's first
African-American employee. Finding
face-to-name photographs is even
harder. Robert Tate, who oversees the
memorabilia shop at the Walter P.
Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills,
Mich., is one of a handful of African
Americans dedicated to documenting
blacks in the auto industry. He recalls
what the business was like before things
began to change.
"We were given the worst jobs in the
February/March 2001