Pomona, Riverside, Santa Barbara, Laguna Seca, Sebring, Le Mans, Indianapolis…race fans know that these are the tracks where legends were made.

Gurney, Shelby , Foyt, Hall, Clark…driving legends who defined modern automobile racing. If it had an engine and rolled, they raced it.

Cobra, Lotus, Lola, Porsche, Corvette, Ferrari…cars that defied the laws of physics and the test of time.

Between 1960 and 1990, tracks, drivers and cars combined to create a memorable era in automobile racing, and one of the best-known photograph collections documenting this era is now accessible. Selected images from the Dave Friedman collection are now available for viewing at The Henry Ford’s Flickr page. More than 10,000 images have been uploaded since the beginning of 2012, with many more to come!

1960 Pomona Road Races. http://www.flickr.com/photos/thehenryford/6732275289/

During the 1950s and 1960s, American auto racing underwent a radical transformation, evolving from a sport of weekend racers in their home-built hot rods and dragsters to professional teams driving powerful race cars in competitions all over the world. Photographer Dave Friedman had a front row seat for the action during this important transition, capturing the excitement, the grit and the glamour – and creating some of the most iconic images of American motor sports of that era.

12 Hours of Sebring, 1964. http://www.flickr.com/photos/thehenryford/6659919781/

In 1962 Friedman was hired as staff photographer for Shelby-American Inc., the racing design and construction shop owned by a former driver, the late Carroll Shelby. While with Shelby-American Inc., Friedman had the unique opportunity to document the development of one of racing’s iconic stable of cars, the Shelby Cobras. In 1965, Friedman continued to capture the dynamic innovations of Shelby and Ford Motor Company as he documented the development of the record-setting Ford Mark IV race car that was the first American-designed and built car to win the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans race in 1967 . Friedman continued to pursue his passion for motor sports into the 1990s, when he refocused his lens on a new art form – classical ballet.

12 Hours of Sebring, 1970. http://www.flickr.com/photos/thehenryford/6761503307/

In 2009, The Henry Ford acquired the unique collection of this internationally renowned photographer, author and motion picture still photographer. The Dave Friedman collection consists of over 200,000 unique images, including photographs, negatives, color slides and transparencies. The collection also includes programs, race results and notes from across the United States and around the world. Dating between 1949 and 2003, the images and programs illustrate the transition of auto racing from dirt tracks and abandoned airfields to super speedways.

The Dave Friedman collection is a unique resource that documents in subtle shades the art, power and passion of automobile racing in the second half of the 20^th century.

What’s your favorite moment in automotive racing history? Tell us in the comments below, or check out Racing In America for more details on these iconic races and more.

Peter Kalinski is an archivist at the Benson Ford Research Center, part of The Henry Ford.

Did you know that over the past six weeks alone, The Henry Ford has digitized more than 1000 artifacts from its collections, bringing the total number of objects available via our collections website (as well as the Driving America kiosks and our mobile collections site) to about 6700 artifacts?  If you haven’t checked in recently, you’re missing out!  Here are some objects added within the last month and a half that you might not yet have seen….

We have been digitizing the artifacts on display within the “With Liberty and Justice for All” exhibit in the Museum.  This exhibit features such American icons as the Rosa Parks bus, a rare surviving copy of the Declaration of Independence, and the chair in which Abraham Lincoln was sitting at Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination.  But the exhibit features over 300 other artifacts as well, including these shoes, made of bark and rope, which would have been made and worn by a plantation field hand:

The Henry Ford has many spectacular personal documents in its collections.  For example, take a look at this letter from Alexander Hamilton to Aaron Burr.  Its very prosaic nature (scheduling details for a case both lawyers were involved in) is an interesting contrast to the later hostility between the two men that would eventually lead to Burr killing Hamilton in a duel:

Letter from Alexander Hamilton to Aaron Burr, 1786

If you’re less into political history and more into the great American humorists, you might enjoy this 1910 letter written by Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, in which he informs the recipient that he is writing to “put you on your guard against sending anything to Bermuda or elsewhere by any express company, because the persons connected with those companies have been dead 30 years.  This often causes delay.”

Letter from Mark Twain to a general, 1910

Cartes-de-visite are small photographs mounted on card stock, which were popular in the mid-19^th century.  They commonly were portraits, often of wealthy and/or well-known people, like this example featuring Sojourner Truth:

Portrait of Sojourner Truth, “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance," 1864

Others took a less straightforward approach to their subject.  We can only surmise that someone involved in this carte-de-visite was not a fan of the “Eleven of All England” cricket team:

Poking fun at the famous English cricket team, "The Eleven of All England," circa 1865

And occasionally, it seems like the subjects were selected based on the photographer’s or client’s own unique interests, as in this example.  (Topics of discussion that came up as we were digitizing this one: Did the photographer really bring a live squirrel into the studio?  And if so, how did they get him to behave—other than the obvious bribery with food?)

It probably comes as no surprise that one of The Henry Ford’s strongest collecting areas has been transportation in all its many forms, including the field of automotive design.  We’ve recently added design drawings and other related materials from two major forces in this field: Bill Mitchell, who spent 40+ years at General Motors, and Virgil Exner, who worked for a number of companies over his career, including Studebaker and Chrysler.

For example, we’ve just digitized this amazing 1940s Exner pastel drawing for Studebaker:

And here is Bill Mitchell’s sleek and streamlined 1930s Cadillac design for a “low grill”:

1939 Cadillac "low grill" proposal, 1938

In 2013, The Henry Ford will be hosting the traveling exhibition, Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s, which was organized by the National Building Museum, Washington, D.C.  In anticipation, we’ve been reviewing and digitizing selections from our vast World’s Fair collections.  As you might expect, we have many souvenirs of all types, such as this tray from the 1939New York World’s Fair:

We are also finding it fascinating to see the stories of Henry Ford, the man, and The Henry Ford, the institution, come together in the lavish displays sponsored by Ford Motor Company at these fairs.  For instance, check out this photo from the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition.  Anything look familiar?  (And note theGreenfieldVillage reference on the wall in the background!)  Hopefully you find the first car built by Henry Ford more interesting than the little one in the foreground apparently does….

Sleeping child in the Ford Building, California Pacific International Exposition, San Diego, 1935

Check out these and other exciting new digital artifacts online and let us know your thoughts!  What would you like to see us digitize next?

Ellice Engdahl, Digital Collections Initiative Manager at The Henry Ford, is comfortable with the contradictory belief that each of our 6700 digital artifacts is her very favorite.

When the typewriter is a player piano.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, modern office culture was taking off and work was speeding up. To stay competitive, businesses needed to pick up the pace.

Office equipment manufacturers developed machines to allow clerical work to go faster. Automatic typewriters, just like player pianos, used punched rolls of paper — in this case, to speed up clerical work by producing multiple form letters at once.

Henry Ford and Edsel Ford at a player piano during a camping trip, July 1921. (From the collections of The Henry Ford)

Automatic typewriters generally worked as follows:  A letter was written on one typewriter, the perforator, which encoded the letter onto a punched paper roll. The punch roll was fed into a reader typewriter, which reproduced the original. An operator would be standing by to fill in specific information (such as name and date) and to remove finished letters.

This Auto-Typist pneumatic automatic typewriter was manufactured by a Chicago player piano company in the1930s and used a player piano pneumatic mechanism to make offices more efficient.

Each key of the specially-prepared Underwood typewriter is hooked up to a small bellows. The encoded paper roll is fed into the Auto-Typist, and each punch on the paper roll directs specific bellows to move. The Auto-Typist allowed small business owners, like the Chicago doctor who probably used this machine, to quickly produce personalized form letters.

Auto-Typists continued to be manufactured even after World War II and into the era of business computing. In the 1960s, an insurance company automated their policy-writing department with Auto-Typists hooked up to IBM electrics.

Suzanne Fischer is the Associate Curator of Technology at The Henry Ford.

Mother’s Day, a holiday devoted to honoring mothers, has its American origins in the years following the Civil War. To aid national healing in the wake of unprecedented personal loss, many women’s groups wanted to create a day focusing on peace and motherhood.

In 1914, a national campaign culminated in a federal proclamation officially designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. To mark this now-official holiday, many people began writing letters to their mothers. Soon, giving gifts of flowers and sending greeting cards became popular.

These examples of Mother’s Day greeting cards from The Henry Ford’s collection provide a charming glimpse into these celebrations over the past century.

Making handmade cards is a perennial favorite activity of children, and a Mother’s Day card made by a son or daughter remains a special gift. A child whose parents were first generation Polish-Americans created this card in 1942. A first grader at a Polish Catholic school in South Bend, Indiana, he decorated his card with a crayon drawing and the inscription “Droga Mamo.” He also used stickers and trimmed the edges in a scalloped pattern with a red ribbon holding the pages together. The inside pages contain a printed poem in Polish.

This 1960 card in many ways represents the typical sentiments we associate with Mother’s Day – gratitude for our mother’s loving care that we’ve received. The card’s image of a silver basket with flowers recognizes that flowers are a traditional gift for this holiday.

Husbands used cards like this one to honor their wives on Mother’s Day. They could also use it when their children were too young to give their mother a special card. The delicate visual image of the mother and the card shaped like a fan are evocative of the early to mid-1920s popular style in America.

This card for “My Other Mother” was sent in 1921 to Susana C. Cole, a 71-year-old widow who was living in Akron, Ohio, with her only daughter and son-in-law. Who was the Salt Lake City, Utah, sender of this card, then? Perhaps it was her son-in-law on a business trip or another relative – or even a former student, since Susana was a retired schoolteacher.

Other mysterious elements from this same correspondence are the singed edges of both the card and envelope – evidence that this early airmail letter encountered a dramatic fate on the way to its recipient: The U.S. Post Office message stamped on the envelope states that the letter was recovered from an airplane crash in Rock Springs, Wyoming.

This Mother’s Day card from about 1980 is anything but traditional – it’s printed on a brown paper bag! Informal and humorous, its modern theme may reflect its likely “Gen-X” givers – or their mother’s up-to-date attitude. The bright pink color of the text reflects the vivid colors popular in the late 20th century.

Have you ever given or received a memorable Mother’s Day card? Tell us about it in the comments below or on our Facebook page.

Cynthia R. Miller is curator of photographs and prints at The Henry Ford.

Many people don’t realize that Henry Ford had a special fondness for musical instruments, especially violins.

Henry Ford playing a violin, circa 1920. (From the collections of The Henry Ford)

Although he never learned to play it as well as he would have liked, Ford acquired a number of beautiful instruments over the years, including a 1709 Stradivari (or “Strad,” as it is often affectionately called) and this fantastic Strad, “The Siberian” - so named because it was once owned by a Russian amateur violinist who lived in Ekaterinberg, Siberia during the late 19th century. (You can learn more about Henry Ford’s musical interest and influence here, along with information about another Stradivarius violin from our collection, “The Rougemont,” built in 1703.)

Antonio Stradivari violin, "The Siberian," built in 1709.

Our violin collection

Now, you’ll have the opportunity to learn more about this incredible instrument during two special events – including a very special performance of the 300-year-old violin by a true violin virtuoso.

On Thursday, April 26, our curator of domestic life, Jeanine Head Miller, and our senior conservator Mary Fahey will speak at the Ypsilanti  District Library at 7 p.m. about Henry Ford’s love of the violin – and the fiddling craze he sparked during the 1920s – plus some recent mysteries we uncovered during a scan of the violin late last year.

And on Sunday, April 29 at 3:30 p.m., Sphinx Organization Laureate Gareth Johnson will perform on this magnificent instrument with the Ypsilanti Symphony Orchestra at Eastern Michigan University’s Pease Auditorium; tickets are limited but still available. (You can also read a great article here about Mr. Johnson and this performance.)

We hope you can join us for either, or both, of these exciting events!

A planned two-week checkup inspection of the iconic house of the future – Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House – turned into a two-month long “surgery” to repair extensive fatigue cracking of the thin aluminum beams that form the deck of the house. The cracks were visible from the underside, which is only accessible by sliding on your back on the museum’s teak floor in about 18 inches of workspace.

Axionometric view of the Dymaxion House

Thorough inspection indicated that the damage was happening only in areas where the public walks. There were no cracks in the living room, which has never been accessible to visitors.

The cracks were developing due to the flexing of metal at the sharp edge of L-shaped brackets supporting the beams. Remember, there was no precedent for the use of aluminum in this architectural application, so we guess that Bucky was never aware he had allowed this fundamental design flaw. The house was a prototype in process – so it’s understandable.

Tim Brewer and Clara Deck open the floor to expose the beams for repair.

Our first look at the problem set off a flurry of activity to plan for repair. Fortunately, we had most of the expertise and labor required right on staff. Tim Brewer was there every step of the way when we put the house together the first time in Oct 2001; he knows every bolt and cable of the complicated dwelling machine.

Jill Maki carefully removes the floorboards.

Our dedicated volunteer Richard Jeryan, a retired engineer from Ford Motor Company, knew the best local firm to jump in and manufacture repair patches for us. Metro Technologies, located in Troy, Mich., made and helped install the necessary patches using high-tech adhesive and large rivets.

Most of the conservation department had a role as well. Some of our part-time staff – notably Fran McCans and Jill Maki – put in many extra hours to see this fascinating project through in good time.

A technician from Metro Tech applying adhesive

Just getting at the problem required the removal of hundreds of fasteners – the stainless steel bolts, wood screws and aluminum rivets that hold the whole house together. Removing all those rivets while working in such tight spaces was challenging.

Clara Deck, Richard Jeryan and Tim Brewer move a pod to get to the repair work.

We lifted and moved the closet “pods” to open up more of the floor.  We shored the structure with lumber and removed the offending brackets. We pounded-out the floor-boards to access the bolts that retained the brackets.

Tim Brewer drills a crack with magnification. The workspaces were very tight.

Then we drill-out the ends of the cracks to arrest their progress in preparation for the addition of thicker aluminum patches custom-fit to the tapered U-shaped profile of the beams.

This photo was taken during initial installation of the house in the museum. You can see some of the floor beams in place.

MetroTech workers installing a patch for more stability.

Two Metro Tech guys came in to apply the patches. Then we closed the first half and repeated the whole process for the second half of the deck.

Meanwhile, we worked with staff carpenters to make a new “over-floor” of plywood to install under the carpet.  This serves to spread the load of visitors’ foot-falls, reducing that flexing stress that causes fatigue in metals.

Exterior view of the Dymaxion House.

After reassembly and the carpet is relaid, the change will go unnoticed by most visitors.

Those of us familiar with the house can feel a distinct difference: it feels much more solid. Bucky meant for the house to hang from the mast.  He described the deck as “pneumatic” in some publications…but he had no idea that his prototype would become one of Henry Ford Museum’s most loved exhibits one day, with hundreds of thousands of visitors walking through it every year.

We think our work has preserved this house for another couple generations at least.  Only time will tell.

Clara Deck is a Senior Conservator at The Henry Ford.

When guests see the Rosa Parks bus on display inside Henry Ford Museum, they are often in awe. Speechless. Moved, even.

And you don’t have to merely look at this magnificent milestone in American history. When you visit Henry Ford Museum, you can actually climb aboard, walk the narrow aisle of the bus – and even sit in the very seat that Rosa Parks occupied on December 1, 1955. (Ask the presenter near the bus to show you which seat it was.)

Inside the Rosa Parks Bus at Henry Ford Museum. (Photo by Michelle Andonian, Michelle Andonian Photography)

But during that visit, two questions are typically asked: “Is it THE bus?” and “How did The Henry Ford get it?”

The answer to the first question: Yes, it is. And there’s a great story to this, too.

The "smoking gun" - the page of Charles Cummings' scrapbook page with the notation "Blake/#2857," indicating the driver and number of the bus.

How the bus was acquired is a more modern story. In September 2001, an article in the Wall Street Journal announced that the Rosa Parks bus would be available in an Internet auction in October. Once we had confirmed the answer to the question posed above, we entered the online auction and came out the highest bidder.

The unrestored bus, arriving at Henry Ford Museum.

Cleaning the bus to prepare it for restoration.

After nearly five months of restoration, with support from the Save America’s Treasures grant program, the Rosa Parks bus made its return to the floor of Henry Ford Museum on February 1, 2002. (With Liberty And Justice For All, the exhibition where the bus currently is displayed, had not yet been constructed.)

Paint chips from the unrestored bus, consultation with other experts, vintage postcards and eyewitness accounts from a museum employee who lived in Montgomery during the bus boycott allowed the museum to recreate the paint colors exactly.

Photo by Michelle Andonian, Michelle Andonian Photography

Restoration efforts were performed on the bus down to the tiniest detail. For example: On the day Mrs. Parks boarded it, the bus was already seven years old and ran daily on the streets of Montgomery. Therefore, for authenticity, conservation experts applied recreated Alabama red dirt in the wheel wells, and tire treads and period advertising was recreated for the interior and exterior of the bus.

The back end of the bus, pre-restoration...

...and after. (Photo by Michelle Andonian, Michelle Andonian Photography)

With all of these elements together and pondering what happened on December 1, 1955, exploring this historic artifact creates a powerful connection for many.

Have you seen the Rosa Parks bus at Henry Ford Museum? What was your experience?

If you’ve seen the Driving America exhibition in Henry Ford Museum, you may have gotten to help Henry Ford innovate the Model T, sing along with songs about automobiles and auto culture, or compared different power sources for car engines, past and present. But did you know that these were all developed from real artifacts from our collection?

In the 10 years I’ve worked at The Henry Ford, I’ve been part of various projects, from surveying film negatives and 19^th- and 20^th-century periodicals to digitizing late 20^th-century slides of auto racing. But last year I was given an interesting opportunity to use my eclectic skills on a different type of project: assisting with the development of the interactive experience activities of the new automotive exhibit.

Twelve activities were being developed, and almost one year to the day I joined the project, Driving America opened to the public – cars, cases and kiosks!

Here’s a look at some of the artifacts in The Henry Ford’s collection that were used to create these activities; while none of these artifacts appear as themselves in the activities, they were the “inspiration” for the exhibition team. (And if you like these, be sure to add them to your online collections sets!)

Have you received your Driving Certificate when you dodged cows and potholes in “Test Drive the Model T”?  We used a 1914 Model T Owner’s Manual to help create and develop this very unique driving experience.

Have you picked out your engine, interior, accessories and more in “Plan the Car of Your Dreams”?  An amazing find in our collection, this 1947 brochure was sent to potential Ford buyers.

How would you get from your farm to town, your house to work, or your home to your vacation spot in 1910?  In “Getting There in 1910,” we dug into The Detroit Publishing Company Collection, our extensive collection of photographs from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, to bring you images of the various forms of transportation one might have chosen to use instead of an automobile.

Main Street of New Ulm, Minnesota, circa 1905.

Bicycling and strolling on Australian Pines Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida, circa 1905.

Believe it or not, this is downtown Los Angeles, circa 1900!

Finally, the activity nearest and dearest to my map-loving heart, “Rivers Rails Roads,” drew upon various items in our collection, from a print of a 1697 map of New England and a 1910 booklet of the Grand Canyon to a strip map of the Lincoln Highway and a 1971 Rand McNally Road Atlas & Travel Guide.

A map of New England and New York in 1697 (!).

The best part is that this is only the beginning. With 26 million artifacts to digitize, just think all the fun we might be able to have in the future!

Aimee Woodruff Burpee is a Collections Documentation Specialist who reads anything she can get her hands (and eyes) on, from atlases to articles about grizzly bears to books about the Civil War.

When my parents handed me the keys to my 2001 Ford Escort ZX2 at the ripe old age of 16, I felt an instant sense of freedom.  Being able to go anywhere without asking for a ride from my mom or older brother gave me my first taste of adulthood.  I know the feeling of independence of owning your own destiny impacts almost all drivers because I recognize this passion in the researchers and car restorers who visit our reading room. (Editor’s note: It’s also quite a common theme in the My First Car story submissions we receive!)

Ideals of self-determination and freedom would have resonated with early car consumers too, especially women.  After gaining the right to vote with the passage of the 19^th amendment in 1919, many women felt for the first time that they had a political voice and were therefore empowered to fight for equality in other areas.  Of course, many women, especially women of color, saw emancipation fleeting, as they were either barred from voting or secluded in the private sphere.  Still, for many women, the feelings of accomplishment were overwhelming, and advertisers in the United States’ emerging modern consumer economy took the chance to capitalize on the freedom motif.

The newest, most revolutionary, most popular item on the market was the automobile, and auto companies sought to reach out to female consumers using shiny new cars as the greatest symbol for female enfranchisement.  These ads reflect the duality of the discourse on women in the country:  both free yet still bound to feminine stereotyping.

This 1925 Ford advertisement features a charming image of women driving their Model T to meet friends for a golf outing. Many advertisements connected their product to the leisure of a middle-class lifestyle, leaving women of color and working women out of the picture. The message Ford Motor Company wished to embody: owning a car will allow you to achieve middle-class status.

“It enables them now to do things and to go places that had hitherto seemed out of the question.”

This statement expresses the general sentiment of the time that many women were moving into new and exciting territories.  As the 1920s progressed, highlighting the ability of the Model T to allow women to pursue independence became a popular theme in Ford advertisements. Notice that Ford tells women that they can “drive this easily-handled car themselves” and not need a man to escort or help them.  Although this advertisement obviously relies on stereotypes of feminine weakness, the overall message is that feminine weakness does not prohibit the modern woman from achieving equality.

Another Ford advertisement from 1925 that features a woman using her Model T to explore the outdoors. In this image the fabulously dressed woman could be anywhere, stepping out of her car with confidence and joy. Again, her white gloves and fur coat signify all the trappings of Jazz Age extravagance.

“By owning a Ford car a woman can with ease widen her sphere of interests without extra time or effort.” 

In this advertisement Ford once more points out the ways that a Model T can help women move beyond home.  Unlike the previous ad that associated the car with female autonomy, this ad links a woman and her domestic duties.  With this ad Ford targets older women who use their car not to golf or enjoy leisure activities but to conduct daily errands.  The suggestion is that with a Model T, a woman with a family can quickly and efficiently complete the tasks within her sphere while still remaining independent from her husband.

A 1926 Ford Advertisement celebrating the “torque tube drive” found on the Model T. This black and white advertisement emphasizes the technical advantages to driving a Ford.

Not every Ford advertisement featuring women played on traditional stereotypes.  This ad, though not as flashy or colorful as others, shows off the Ford’s mechanical assets rather than its association to style or sophistication.  Although it might seem strange that a technical ad would feature women drivers and passengers, there are many advertisements like this that do not simply link female car ownership to accepted domestic behavior.  One reason might be audience, as this ad ran in publications like the Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s and had to resonate with men as well as women.  At the same time, there were many women who were interested in the mechanical aspects of automobiles and Ford reached out to these consumers with ads like this.

Notice the difference between this ad (which features the newly unveiled Model A) and the ads for the Model T. The imagery in this 1928 Ford advertisement feels modern with its art deco lines and tall, slender woman wearing the latest flapper-esque fashions. The red brick house in the background looks like one found in the Indian Village neighborhood in Detroit. The atmosphere, still one of elegance, reflects the Model A’s message: This isn’t your mother’s Ford.

When interest and enthusiasm for the Model T waned in the mid-1920s, Ford Motor Company stopped production on the world’s most popular car and in December 1927 debuted the 1928 Model A.  The new Ford was a beautiful car, modern and stylish, and the advertisements followed suit.  This ad relies heavily on a distinct gender binary by focusing on the different features of the Model A that would appeal to men and women.  “Men will admire the colors of the new Ford, but only a woman, from her fuller knowledge of clothes and style, will realize that they are colors that will not tire.”  This statement perfectly exemplifies the attitude in auto advertising that still continues to this day, namely relying on the assumption that men buy cars based on speed and horse-power, while women focus on aesthetics and comfort.

This artful image of two women speeding along a mountain highway in their 1928 Model A embodies a sense of freedom. These daring women are shown driving their car on their way to some unknown destination, and the dynamic composition creates an air of movement and possibility.

While the last advertisement reflects gendered biases towards consumers, this advertisement demonstrates a very different message.  Here the main focus is not the women in the picture or specifications given in the text; no, the feeling I get when I look at this advertisement hearkens to that first experience of autonomy, driving my own car at age 16 with nothing but the road in front of me and endless possibilities of people, places and experiences surrounding me.  In 1928 this feeling of freedom and independence would have resonated with all drivers regardless of gender, class, race or creed, as it still does today.

All of the advertisements in this post can be found at the Benson Ford Research Center in the Ford Motor Company Advertisement Collection.

Jillian Reese, Reading Room Assistant at the Benson Ford Research Center, is an avid women’s history fan and photocopier extraordinaire. 

By now most of us are familiar with the iconic image of a working-class woman during World War II known as “Rosie the Riveter.” As you may know, “Rosie” is a character based on images of real working women at the time. What you may not know is that the Benson Ford Research Center has a wealth of these Rosie-the-Riveter-type images within its collection of photographs donated from Ford Motor Company.

Women riveting the side of an airplane panel at Ford Motor Company's Willow Run bomber assembly plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, August 23, 1944. (From the collections of The Henry Ford - THF103582)

What I find delightful about these images is that they tell a story about American women set in a specific place and time — not to mention documenting the budding social change that would flower in later decades.

(By the way: The woman shown below, Norma Denton, was photographed February 10, 1943, as part of Ford Motor Company’s P.R. photo essay entitled “Around the Clock Activities,” which documents a day in the life of several working women in a war production factory. You can learn more about Norma and the “Around the Clock Activities” photographs on our Flickr site, as well as on our Collections page.)

Norma Denton on top of an airplane assembly at the Willow Run plant. (From the collections of The Henry Ford, #P.833.77449.4)

Another photo from the "Around the Clock Activities" series, showing two women (one of them a Mrs. Anderson) catching the bus to go to work at the Willow Run bomber plant. (From the collections of The Henry Ford, #P.833.77448.5)

From 1942 to 1945, when many American men were overseas fighting the war, women were hired to fill in for the lack of male employees in factories. These women were expected to do everything that men had to do to build tanks, jeeps and bombers for the U.S. “Arsenal of Democracy.” All of the automotive companies in the Detroit area, as well as those in the rest of the country, ceased making automobiles and converted their assembly lines to wartime production. Ford Motor Company’s Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and the Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan, were two of the largest such facilities.

Workers on the assembly line at Ford Motor Company's Rouge assembly plant, March 17, 1943. (From the collections of The Henry Ford, #P.833.77606)

Employees walking down a hallway in the Willow Run plant, October 16, 1942. (From the collections of The Henry Ford, #P.833.77111.O)

During peak production at the Willow Run plant, up to one third of the workforce consisted of women. This does not seem like a particularly sizable number to us today; however, it was significant at the time because prior to World War II, very few manufacturing facilities employed that many women. Once the war was over, women were expected to return to being housewives and mothers so that the returning GI’s could go back to work. It would take years, if not decades, before women re-entered the work force in significant numbers.

I particularly like the following two photographs that show women employees with the B-24 “Liberator” bombers they helped to build. I think the enthusiasm of the women in photo #P.833.80544.6 and the confident stride of the woman in photo #P.833.80180.1 are indicative of the pride and economic independence women felt as productive members of the workforce. The image of these women posing with their “Liberators” is also a fitting metaphor for the future women’s movement whose seeds were arguably sown here.

The underside of a bomber airplane wing, with a woman walking with a clipboard, June 19, 1944, at the Willow Run airport. (From the collections of The Henry Ford, #P.833.80180.1)

Six women posing in front of Ford's 6,000th B-24 Bomber at Willow Run airport, September 9, 1944. (From the collections of The Henry Ford, #P.833.80544.6)

Linda Skolarus is Manager of Reference Services at the Benson Ford Research Center, where you can research ‘Rosie’ and much more.