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Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers

Los Angeles Sentinel - March 28, 1946 - Ford

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March - Archived Posts
Click on date to view post:
March 1, 1947: Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Baltimore NAACP protest segregated seating at Ford’s Theater.
March 2, 1956: Tennis champion Althea Gibson trains for French Open and Wimbledon.
March 3, 1985: Atlanta Daily World columnist Dr. Carrie George on the start of National Women’s History Week.
March 4, 1893: Winter Park Advocate on town planning. Guest post by Dr. Julian Chambliss.
March 5, 1969: Bell Plastics’ ads for plastic sofa covers in Los Angeles Sentinel.
March 6, 1915: Chicago Defender on the death of Amanda Smith, founder of the Amanda Smith Industrial School for Colored Girls.
March 7, 1964: Norfolk Journal and Guide reports on “sleeper” antibusing amendment in 1964 Civil Rights Act.
March 8, 1965: Chicago Defender on Selma voting rights movement with reporting from Betty Washington.
March 9, 1957: Pittsburgh Courier celebrates Ghana’s independence with 32-page supplement.
March 10, 1945: Phyllis Daley, Navy’s first African-American nurse, in the New York Amsterdam News.
March 11, 1944: Women’s Army Corps advertisements in Cleveland Call and Post and Chicago Defender.
March 12, 1936: Marian Anderson sets sail for European tour.
March 13, 1954: Cleveland Call and Post on the Connie Morgan, Toni Stone, and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, the three women who played Negro League baseball.
March 14, 1940: Los Angeles Sentinel on the unsolved murder of Dorothy Lee Gordon.
March 15, 1913: Baltimore Afro-American on the death of Harriet Tubman, “Queen of the Underground.”
March 16, 1991: New York Amsterdam News on International Women’s Day, featuring speaker Rosemari Mealey.
March 17, 1977: Gertrude Gipson profile of Richard Pryor in the Los Angeles Sentinel.
March 18, 1939: New York Amsterdam News on Hattie McDaniel and Gone with the Wind.
March 19, 1910: Ida B. Wells-Barnett letter to the editor of the Chicago Defender.
March 20, 1948: Rosa Lee Ingram case in Pittsburgh Courier.
March 21, 1982: Atlanta Daily World on convictions of Maggie Bozeman and Julia Wilder for voter fraud.
March 22, 1966: High school fencing champions in the Philadelphia Tribune.
March 23, 1957: “Hobo party” covered by Cleveland Call and Post society page, “Women’s Whirl.”
March 24, 1906: Classified ads for clairvoyants, astrologists, and readers in the Baltimore Afro-American.
March 25, 1939: Federal Housing Authority (FHA) discrimination in the New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and Los Angeles Sentinel and the black press. Guest post by Michael Glass, PhD student.
March 25, 1944: Amy Ashwood Garvey in the New York Amsterdam News. Guest post by Dr. Keisha N. Blain.
March 26, 1955: Claudette Colvin’s arrest reported in the Chicago Defender.
March 27, 1971: South Carolina civil rights activist Victoria DeLee runs for Congress.
March 28, 1946: Los Angeles Sentinel reports on employment breakthrough for black workers in auto production.
March 29, 1930: Tuskegee Institute women’s track team in Norfolk Journal and Guide.
March 30, 1942: Pianist Hazel Scott and Broadway’s “Priorities of 1942” in the Atlanta Daily World.
March 31, 1934: Philadelphia Tribune women’s basketball team in the Norfolk Journal and Guide.
March 28, 1946 On March 28, 1946, the Los Angeles Sentinel’s banner headline announced, “Ford Hires 20 Negroes.” “The Ford Long Beach plant this week reversed its traditional lily-white policy of hiring of employes,” the article began. “With the resumption of production, about 100 new workers were taken on. Of these, approximately 20 were Negroes...The colored workers were not placed on the usual sweeping and other menial jobs...but were assign to practically all departments.”

The Sentinel had reported on discrimination in the auto manufacturing plants for several months and, two weeks earlier, reported that “all of the large local automobile plants combined have only four Negroes workers employed on production. Two Negroes work at Ford Long Beach, two at Chrysler, none at General Motors and none at Studebaker.”

“The reversal in policy at Long Beach is a heartening and welcome sign,” the article concluded. “The Sentinel is more than confident that the performance of the Negro workers will adequately justify their continued employment” (click to view PDF).

This article is a good example of how the Sentinel and other black newspapers not only reported on, but also fought against, discrimination in employment, education, housing, and elsewhere. And the fact that twenty auto manufacturing jobs was headline news is a good indication of how rampant employment discrimination was in Los Angeles in this era.