I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to The Henry Ford, a 250-acre complex in Dearborn, Michigan. The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation is packed full of American history, certainly one of the best in the country. Greenfield Village is laid out like an actual town, with working farms, homes and businesses that have been moved there from other parts of the country. There are tours of a Ford plant that produces the very popular F-150 truck, the Giant Screen Experience with 3D films, and restaurants that hark back to earlier times with period menus and decor. But after my visit I found out that Henry Ford was a well-known anti-Semite. I was aghast and couldn’t wrap my head around it. I didn’t even want to write about it. How could I reconcile the educational value of The Henry Ford with the anti-Semite?
And so it took a while for me to return to The Henry Ford as an article, spurred, perhaps, by COVID-19 and the desire to write about places closer to home. I dug deeper into Ford’s antisemitism, which wasn’t hard to do. For years he wrote a weekly column that appeared on the front page of a newspaper he owned, the Dearborn Independent, which railed about the Jewish conspiracy and was prominently displayed at Ford dealerships.
To see what there is to do and see at The Henry Ford, see my article The Henry Ford: A Lesson in American History and Ingenuity, published on gettingontravel.com.
Luckily, Ford’s antisemitic views are addressed on the website of The Henry Ford, which also acknowledged that Ford’s views tarnished his reputation. In the end, I decided that it might not be fair to hold progeny accountable for crimes or despicable beliefs of their forefathers. I’m sure if I searched back far enough, I, too, would find ancestors that committed unspeakable or deplorable acts.
And so I’ve come to the conclusion that both The Henry Ford and Henry Ford the anti-Semite might be good learning opportunities. If I someday take kids–or even adults–for a tour of The Henry Ford, I’d make sure that Ford’s antisemitism was part of the discussion. Only then, perhaps, can we move forward.
For more on The Henry Ford, see my article below, which appeared in gettingontravel.com, which has since ceased publication:
Few people are one-dimensional, although important figures from times past often are portrayed with only one point of illumination. It is far better to see fuller pictures of people who have played a role in history. It is good that The Henry Ford doesn’t try to hide the dark side of its namesake.
In Tennessee, where I live, there is a multi-year controversy about why a bust of a Confederate general is in the state capitol. Defenders of the bust point out that the general was an accomplished tactician, even if it was for the wrong side. Only recently has anyone dared t speak up to make an issue of his slave trading before the Civil War, the massacre of prisoners that soldiers in his command conducted and his role in the early days of the KKK. I believe that eventually the repeated airing of his whole history will result in the bust’s removal, but nothing was said for many years.