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Still Puzzling
Jews have always been part of Ford Motor Company,
despite founder's anti-Semitism.
BILL CARROLL
Special to the Jewish News
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ne hundred years after its founding, and
following a whirlwind of publicity and
hoopla surrounding its Centennial
observance, Ford Motor Company
remains a powerful worldwide industrial force, and
its famous founder remains an enigma to the
Jewish community.
The company, incorporated June 16, 1903, has
grown from its first full plant at the corner of
Piquette and Beaubien streets on Detroit's east side
to a far-flung operation with plants and offices
around the world, 340,000 employees and sales of
about 7 million cars and trucks a year. It has sur-
vived hundreds of car companies that have dropped
by the "roadside" during that time to become the
world's second largest automotive manufacturer.
Along the way, the now Dearborn-based company
has helped make the fortunes of hundreds of south-
east Michigan business people and professionals —
many of them Jewish.
Founder Henry Ford's legacy has brought the
fifth-working generation into the company; the
Fords have become the closest thing to royalty of
any family in the Detroit area.
Henry Ford was the quintessential American folk
hero and pioneering industrialist, the man whose
mass-production techniques made cars affordable
and "put the nation on wheels."
Doubling the average factory worker's pay to $5 a
day in 1914 revolutionized the industry and started
a "gold rush" to Detroit by thousands around the
country, including many Jewish immigrants from
the East as well as African Americans from the farms
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2003
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of the South. Fortune Magazine named Ford the
greatest businessman of the 20th century.
But Ford, the genius, also was dubbed "Crazy
Henry" by many of his associates for developing
wacky schemes — and he also freely espoused anti-
Jewish sentiments. He blamed the world's problems
on the "Jewish money-lenders" and tapped into his
immense financial resources to anti-Semitic pursuits.
For example, he conducted an anti-Semitic tirade
for 91 consecutive weeks from 1920 to 1927 in his
personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. He
also is mentioned positively in Hider's autobiogra-
phy, Mein Kampf, and received a medal from the
Nazi tyrant.
Ford died at 83 in 1947.
Making Amends
His descendants have worked hard to counter Henry
Ford's anti-Semitism. His grandson, the late Henry
Ford II, and his great-grandson, William Clay Ford
Jr., who now is the company's chairman and CEO,
have made "diversity" and "inclusion" watchwords. at
Ford Motor Company. In fact,
Ford is hailed in the July issue of
Diversitylnc. as the No. 1 company
in America for diversity, and the
only auto firm on the magazine's
top 50 list.
Henry Ford II was at the fore-
front of the nation's civil rights
movement and Affirmative Action
Taubman
program in the 1960s, as the corn-
pany acquired minority employees,
suppliers and dealers. Almost half
of the more than 500 African
American car dealers in the United States today sell
Bill Carroll, a free-lance writer based in West
the Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands.
Bloomfield, spent 37 years in public relations at Ford
"Henry Ford II was always very upset by his
Motor Company, with only one minor incident of anti- grandfather's approach to Judaism and all of his
Semitism involving another employee. Despite his Irish- anti-Semitic actions," said A. Alfred Taubman, who
sounding last name, everyone there knew he was Jewish. was one of Henry Ford II's best friends. "That's the
main reason he became a great friend of the Jewish
He traveled to all 50 states and some other parts of the
people and gave $100,000 every year to the old
world on company business, but never missed taking
United Jewish Appeal. I think the friendship that
time off for the Jewish holidays.
Max Fisher and I developed with him really helped
turn things around in that respect at the Ford Motor
Company. "
Taubman, 84, retired chairman of the Taubman
Realty Group in Bloomfield Hills, has returned to
his Oakland County office after spending almost a
year in a Minnesota prison following his conviction
in 2001 of price fixing in connection with his
Sotheby's Galleries in New York.
"Henry was a partner in Sotheby's and in our real
estate venture at the Irvine Ranch in California,"
Taubman said. "In turn, I was involved with him in
the development of Renaissance Center in down-
town Detroit, and we all made investments in Israel.
We've dedicated three parks to him in Israel."
Henry Ford II died at 70 in 1987, a month after
Taubman and his wife had planned to meet him and
his third wife in Europe to celebrate the birthday.
Fisher, 94, one of World Jewry's most admired lead-
ers, is recuperating from a broken hip at his Franklin
home and was unavailable for comment.
Hard To Know Why
Ford Motor Company's current
official corporate historian is
Jewish, and he tried to explain the
enigma surrounding the founder.
"It may sound strange, but I
don't think old Henry Ford was a
true anti-Semite," declared Bob
Kreipke of Detroit, a 28-year Ford
employee. "If he was, and the
Fisher
company had carried out his anti-
Semitic antagonism against every-
one, then I never would have
worked for the company. I think he had some run-
ins with a few Jewish bankers in the old days and
that touched off some anti-Semitic tendencies, or he
was influenced by some mean-spirited assistants.
"But how does anyone explain his hiring of Jewish
workers and doing business with so many Jewish
suppliers and Jewish business people in general?
Don't you think he would have issued an edict pro-
hibiting Jews from the premises, and banning any