But Bill McGraw, editor of a local quarterly journal published by the city’s historical commission, felt that residents could stand to learn more about the unflattering side of the man who founded Ford Motor Co. and pioneered assembly line production in his factories. During the 1920s, Ford spread virulent anti-Semitism in his weekly newspaper The Dearborn Independent.
“In general, metro Detroit and its institutions tend to treat Mr. Ford gently when it comes to his dark sides,” he wrote. “But his anti-Semitism is much more than a personal failing.”
And so when the latest issue of McGraw’s quarterly, The Dearborn Historian, arrived off the presses, it contained a special report on the extraordinary efforts by Ford to spread hate.
That’s when Dearborn Mayor John O’Reilly decided to bar the city-financed journal from distribution. McGraw’s contract to edit the magazine was terminated.
O’Reilly said that given Dearborn’s ethnic diversity now — it is about one-third Arab-American — it was irresponsible to present Ford’s offensive opinions.
“It was thought that by presenting information from 100 years ago that included hateful messages — without a compelling reason directly linked to events in Dearborn today — this edition of The Historian could become a distraction from our continuing messages of inclusion and respect,” the mayor said in a statement released Friday afternoon.
Copies of the magazine were delivered to the Dearborn Historical Museum, which distributes them, but they have since been returned to the printers.
In protest of the mayor’s decision, the city’s historical commission unanimously passed Thursday night a nonbinding resolution — with one abstention — that asks for the magazines to be mailed to the journal’s 230 subscribers, all of whom are members of the museum.
McGraw, 67, who has lived in Dearborn for 31 years, was a longtime reporter and editor for The Detroit Free Press. He said that most educated people in southeast Michigan know that Ford was anti-Semitic. But the journal paints a clearer picture of the millions he spent on packaging his hateful message.
Readers learn of the large portrait of Ford hanging in Hitler’s office in 1931, and Hitler’s statement to a Detroit News reporter: “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.”
But McGraw also included in his report an article on how Ford’s descendants have consistently supported Jewish charities and cultural organizations; a recommended reading list of more than a dozen books and articles; and a one-page essay titled, “Why Write About Henry Ford’s Hateful Side?”.
In the essay, he described the growing diversity of the Detroit region and the nation, and the backlash to it, which includes a well-documented rise in anti-Semitism.
“Ford’s attacks on Jews were distributed around the world before and after World War II and, alarmingly, they influence budding neo-Nazis today. It’s a subject worth talking about in Dearborn. Let the discussion begin.”
While the mayor may have been trying to limit the reach of the journal, his decision has only spread word of its contents. Tens of thousands of users have read the bulk of it on Deadline Detroit, a web publication.
“It is just really important to emphasize that history is looking at the whole picture,” said Jonathon Stanton, chairman of the historical commission. “If we’re only talking about the parts that make us proud, then what we’re doing isn’t really history.”
Now, instead of Dearborn confronting its past, Stanton said, people are talking about how the city is reluctant to discuss history.
“We really agree with the mayor’s views about the present and the efforts on inclusivity,” he said. “Everyone on the commission is an admirer of the mayor, which adds to the confusion of why he made this decision. He’s gone to the mat for our Arab-American and Muslim neighbors when there is racism. We definitely think of him as a man of consciousness and integrity.”
At lunch at the Al Ameer Restaurant in a part of Dearborn renowned for its Middle Eastern eateries, Kareem Ali, 22, said young people in Dearborn rarely associated the city with Ford as much as they did with its fast-growing Arab-American and Muslim populations. He said that until this week, he had not been aware of Ford’s anti-Semitic history, so he was glad the mayor’s “wrongheaded” decision had led to so much media attention and publicity.
“It does nobody any good to censor this kind of thing,” said Ali, who attends a local community college. “I’m against hate towards anyone, and it’s important to remember history because it reminds us that just because you’re rich and famous doesn’t mean you’re a perfect person. Everyone has flaws.”
Felicia Calvo, a 45-year-old Dearborn native, said her father, who worked for the Ford Motor Co. for 34 years, told her that as venerated as the company founder was, he “definitely had an impact on the trials that the Jewish community went through.” She finds the mayor’s actions odd, given that Ford’s history of anti-Semitism is a piece of his biography that Dearborners grew up learning.
“This is not something that Ford Motor Co. or the Ford family have ever denied,” said Calvo, who works in information technology. “I was also aware that Ford Motor Co. took great steps to address the damage that Henry Ford had done. To me, there was nothing in this article that hasn’t been shared before, that isn’t publicly available. I’m sure the mayor is kicking himself, because the article never would have gotten this attention had he not banned it.”
Daniel Markey, a 76-year-old retired high school chemistry teacher from Howell, Michigan, who was taking his 4-year-old grandson to the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, said he understood the mayor’s instinct to protect Ford’s legacy. But sugarcoating history, he added, is a bad idea.
“What does it accomplish to pretend that this isn’t a part of Henry Ford’s story?” Markey asked. “He should be respected for what he did and condemned for his shortcomings. Many geniuses were also terrible human beings. That’s kind of a good lesson about people, isn’t it?”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.