Summary
Who was Rev. Bradford?
"The Forgotten Man's Hour"
Father Charles Coughlin
The Ford Hunger March
The River Rouge Plant
African Americans and the Success of the CIO
Lewis Bradford
Harry Bennett
The Battle of the Overpass
Layoffs and Intimidation
Muriel Lester
Lewis is Attacked
Lewis Dies
Locating the Autopsy
A City Mourns
Who Knew?
UAW Wins at Ford
Acknowledgments
Bibliography

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Who Knew?

The Ford family physician and the family of the Ford family pastor, Bishop Charles D. Williams, knew the Bradford family well, and knew the circumstances of Bradford's murder. Did Clara Ford have awareness of Bradford's murder? If so, how did it affect her? Did Henry Ford have awareness of the murder?

More than 60 years later, maybe it's too late to ask these questions. Some answers aren't around any more. Witnesses are gone. Bennett was fired from the Ford Motor Company in 1945, soon after Henry Ford II took over from his ailing grandfather Henry. Bennett spent an afternoon burning all the files he kept on workers. He was determined to leave no paper trail. (p. 318, Maurice Sugar: Law, Labor, and the Left in Detroit, 1912-1950, by Christopher Johnson, 1988).

Lewis Bradford has been all but erased from the Ford Motor Company. Repeated attempts to get information have turned up little. There is a public file Ford Motor Company has on industrial accidents of 1937 - Bradford is missing from that file. However, Dr. Schmidt wondered, "Could there have been some investigation by Dearborn Police?" He called the Dearborn Police Department. They apologized, but they couldn't help in the search. There are no Dearborn Police Department records of any kind going back before 1946.



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