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Making the Effort: The Contours of Racial Discrimination in Detroit’s Labor Markets, 1920–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Thomas N. Maloney  and
Warren C. Whatley
Thomas N. Maloney
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112.
Warren C. Whatley
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics and African and AfroAmerican Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.
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Abstract

In 1940 the Ford Motor Company employed half of the black men in Detroit but only 14 percent of the whites. We find that black Detroiters were concentrated at Ford because they were excluded from working elsewhere. Those most affected were young married black men. A Ford job was virtually the only opportunity they had to earn a family wage; but to keep it, they had to put out the extra effort that Ford required. White married men in Detroit had better employment opportunities elsewhere, so they tended to avoid Ford or leave very quickly.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 465 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1995

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