In honor of Black History Month, we’re also revisiting the career of another pioneer at Ford, Elliott Hall, who became Ford’s first Black vice president in 1987 – decades after his father moved from the South to work at Ford.
An accomplished attorney, Hall reportedly impressed company leaders with his work in a case involving Ford in the mid-1980s. Upon getting the Ford job, Hall immediately visited the grave of his father, who had worked at the Rouge plant for nearly 40 years, according to a 2019 profile from Wayne State University, Hall’s alma mater. Hall’s father was one of many workers who relocated from the South in the 1910s at the prospect of Ford Motor Company’s $5 workday.
During a period known as the “Great Migration,” nearly a million rural Southern Black workers left the agrarian South and relocated to cities in the North and Midwest in search of auto assembly jobs. Ford helped transport sharecroppers and day laborers to Michigan for work on the assembly line or skilled trades work at the Highland Park plant in Detroit, home of the Model T, or the Rouge complex in Dearborn.
The company hired its first Black employee in 1914 and employed 50 Black workers by 1916. But that number increased dramatically by 1923, when Ford had 5,000 Black employees. In addition to offering to pay much more than migrant workers could expect in the Southern agrarian economy, Ford also had a reputation for merit-based hiring and pay that paid Black employees at rates comparable to their white coworkers.
“Over the years, Ford has remained true to many of the ideals that attracted my dad to the company in 1918, like family values, inclusion and fair treatment,” Hall said in a 2001 press release. “We are proud that Ford’s history has intertwined with the aspirations of Black families and businesses.”
Hall added that few realize the contributions that Ford made in “advancing comparable pay, the five-day work week and training opportunities for Black employees at a time when such ideas were unpopular.”
In 1987, Hall was elected vice president of Washington affairs, where he managed a governmental affairs staff covering a broad agenda of automotive regulatory and legislative issues. He later became vice president of civic and external affairs, where he was responsible for the development, leadership and coordination of the company’s presence in communities throughout the U.S., focusing on Detroit and Washington, D.C.
Appointed vice president of dealer development in 1998, Hall was responsible for enhancing the focus on minority dealer operations, strengthening relationships within Ford’s minority dealership network, and supporting the dealer development program. At the time, Ford had more minority dealers than any automotive manufacturer, 368, which included more Black dealers than the other North American-based automakers combined.
Hall had a distinguished legal career before joining Ford. He was a partner at a Detroit-based law firm and served as the chief assistant prosecutor for Michigan’s Wayne County and law director for the City of Detroit. He received both his bachelor’s degree in political science and his law degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Outside of Ford, Hall was active in several prominent community and business organizations during his career, serving on the boards of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the Congressional Black Caucus, Clark Atlanta University, Georgetown University, Constituency for Africa and Kids Vote USA. He was also active in the arts, serving as chairman of the board of Detroit’s Music Hall Center for Performing Arts.
In 2001, Hall was named Executive of the Year by African Americans on Wheels. At the time, he was the only vice president of dealer development in the auto industry. He retired from Ford in 2002.
