Beyond corporate abandonment: General motors and the politics of metropolitan capitalism in Flint, Michigan

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 2014, Pages 31-47

  Highsmith, Andrew R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO   (United States)

Author keywords

corporate abandonment; deindustrialization; Flint; General Motors; globalization; industrial garden; metropolitan capitalism; Michigan; regionalism

Indexed keywords

CAPITALISM; GLOBALIZATION; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; METROPOLITAN AREA; REGIONALISM; SUBURBANIZATION; URBAN ECONOMY; URBAN HISTORY; WAR;

FLINT; MICHIGAN; UNITED STATES;

EID: 84889665259     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: 15526771     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0096144213508080     Document Type: Article

References (137)

1. Chevrolet Motor Division Scrapbook, v. 1 (LaCrosse, WI: Brookhaven Press, n.d.), Flint Public Library (FPL), Flint, Michigan;
2. Donald Mosher, ed., We Make Our Own History: The History of UAW Local 659 (Flint: UAW Local 659, 1993), 59-61;
3. Thirty-Ninth Annual Report of General Motors Corporation (Detroit: General Motors Corporation, 1948);
4. Amos H. Hawley and Basil Zimmer, "Resistance to Unification in a Metropolitan Community," in Morris Janowitz, ed., Community Political Systems (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1961), 153.
5. For examples of scholarly works that emphasize capital flight and corporate abandonment
6. see Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982);
7. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996);
8. William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books, 1997);
9. Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (New York: New Press, 1999);
10. Cowie and Joseph Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003);
11. Heathcott and Maire A. Murphy, "Corridors of Flight, Zones of Renewal: Industry, Planning, and Policy in the Making of Metropolitan St. Louis, 1940-1980," Journal of Urban History 31, no. 2 (January 2005): 151-89;
12. Steven High and David W. Lewis, Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007);
13. Colin Gordon, Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
14. I borrow the term "suburban strategy" from Matthew Lassiter, who has used it in a very different context to describe conservative politics in the American South.
15. See Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
16. On regionalism, see Jon C. Teaford, City and Suburb: The Political Fragmentation of Metropolitan America, 1850-1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979);
17. David Rusk, Cities without Suburbs (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1993);
18. Myron Orfield, American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2002);
19. Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf, and Todd Swanstrom, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004);
20. Teaford, The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
21. On spatial mismatch, see John F. Kain, "Housing Segregation, Negro Employment, and Metropolitan Decentralization," Quarterly Journal of Economics 82, no. 2 (May 1968): 175-97;
22. Kevin Boyle, "There Are No Union Sorrows That the Union Can't Heal: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the United Automobile Workers, 1940-1960," Labor History 35 (1995): 5-23;
23. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 125-52;
24. Josh Sides, L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 57-130.
25. Thomas Sugrue and Robert Self are two of the most prominent scholars who argue for the centrality of the postwar period.
26. See Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis; and Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
27. Sugrue's book is also the key text in the literature on the postwar "urban crisis." On the significance of the 1970s
28. see Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), esp. 192-223;
29. Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Free Press, 2001), esp. 121-43;
30. Cowie, "'Vigorously Left, Right, and Center': The Crosscurrents of Working-Class America in the 1970s," in Beth Bailey and David Farber, eds., America in the 70s (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 75-106;
31. Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).
32. Self, American Babylon; and Self, "California's Industrial Garden: Oakland and the East Bay in the Age of Deindustrialization," in Cowie and Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins, 159-80.
33. See, e.g., Bluestone and Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America; Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991);
34. Ann R. Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991);
35. Kim Moody, "NAFTA and the Corporate Redesign of North America," Latin American Perspectives 22, no. 1 (Winter 1995): 95-116;
36. Cowie, Capital Moves; High, Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America's Rust Belt, 1969-1984 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003);
37. Jason Hackworth, The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).
38. For Robert Self's description and interpretation of this relationship, see Self, American Babylon, 23-60.
39. For Plants of Tomorrow, Country Club Air," Detroit Free Press, n.d.
40. Richard P. Scharchburg, ed., GM Story (Flint: General Motors Institute, 1981), 14;
41. Alan K. Binder and Deebe Ferris, General Motors in the Twentieth Century (Southfield, MI: Ward's Communications, 2000), 9-10;
42. Charles Stewart Mott to Floyd A. Allen, April 2, 1942, Charles Stewart Mott Papers, box 29, 77-7.6-1.1b
43. Genesee Historical Collections Center (GHCC), University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, Michigan; Alan Clive, State of War: Michigan in World War II (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979);
44. Richard M. Langworth and Jan P. Norbye, The Complete History of General Motors, 1908-1986 (New York: Beekman House, 1986), 169;
45. Michigan: Annual Survey of Industrial Expansions, 1955 (Lansing: Michigan Economic Development Department, 1956);
46. Buick Motor Division Scrapbook, v. 1-3 (LaCrosse, WI: Brookhaven Press, n.d.), FPL; "Finally It's Official-Ternstedt Is Coming," Flint News-Advertiser, March 27, 1953;
47. Ternstedt Division Scrapbook (LaCrosse, WI: Brookhaven Press, n.d.), FPL.
48. Chevrolet Motor Division Scrapbook, v. 1-3 (LaCrosse, WI: Brookhaven Press, n.d.), FPL;
49. Thirty-Ninth Annual Report of General Motors Corporation; and "Keating Says Civic Co-Operation Has Maintained Flint as No. 1 Plant City for Chevrolet," Flint Journal, October 28, 1950.
50. Flint Journal, August 31, November 29, 1951, July 1, 1953.
51. Chevrolet Motor Division Scrapbook, v. 1.
52. For Plants of Tomorrow"; and Ronald Larson and Eric Schenker, Land and Property Values in Relation to Dort Highway Improvements (East Lansing: Michigan State University Traffic Safety Center, 1960).
53. Survey of Recent Industrial Move-Ins and Expansions in Michigan (Lansing: Michigan Department of Commerce, 1967), Library of Michigan, Lansing, Michigan.
54. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 266-71;
55. Self, American Babylon, 23-60.
56. On one occasion, UAW members in Flint threatened to unleash a "Boston Tea Party" if GM refused to provide more off-street parking.
57. See Flint Weekly Review, October 3, 1953, January 15, December 10, 1954. On industrial location policies
58. see Eva Mueller, Arnold Wilken, and Margaret Wood, Location Decisions and Industrial Mobility in Michigan, 1961
59. Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1962;
60. Michael T. Oravecz, Locational Preferences of Manufacturing Firms: Flint-Genesee County, Michigan (Flint: Economic Development Commission of Genesee County, 1974);
61. Keith Chapman and David Walker, Industrial Location: Principles and Politics (New York: Blackwell, 1987).
62. Searchlight, April 17, 1952;
63. AC Sparkler, October 29, 1953;
64. Proceedings of the Flint City Commission, July 8, 1957, FPL.
65. Commission Hints Shift in Policy," Flint News-Advertiser, March 26, 1954;
66. Memorandum, Herman D. Young to Ted Moss, August 6, 1953, City Manager Files, Office of the Flint City Clerk, Flint, Michigan.
67. Proceedings of the Flint City Commission, July 8, 1957, FPL.
68. Flint Taxpayers 'Pay the Shot,'" Searchlight, April 17, 1952.
69. Proceedings of the Flint City Commission, July 12, 1960, 1829-1851, FPL.
70. Proceedings of the Flint City Commission, February 10, 1960, 1581, FPL.
71. Flint Journal, November 22, 1954.
72. Charles W. Minshall, Genesee County Economic Conditions Conclusions Report (Columbus, OH: Battelle Memorial Institute, 1969), 3-15.
73. Flint Weekly Review, March 2, 1961;
74. AC Sparkler, April 15, 1960.
75. Proceedings of the Flint City Commission, March 4, 1963
76. FPL; and James R. Custer, ed., Applied Automation (Philadelphia: Chilton Company, 1956), passim.
77. Flint Weekly Review, January 12, 1961.
78. Zimmer, Flint Area Study Report, v. 1 (Ann Arbor: Institute for Human Adjustment, University of Michigan, 1957), ch. 4.
79. Minshall, Genesee County Economic Conditions, 3-40.
80. Flint-Genesee County, Michigan: Data Profile (Flint: Flint-Genesee Corporation for Economic Growth, n.d. [ca. 1983]), 35.
81. Civic Research Council of Flint Files, box 1, folder 2, GHCC.
82. On Flint's high rates of automobile ownership, see Richard Hebert, Highways to Nowhere: The Politics of City Transportation (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1972), 8.
83. On spatial mismatch, see Kain, "Housing Segregation," 175-97;
84. Boyle, "There Are No Union Sorrows," 5-23;
85. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 125-52;
86. Sides, L.A. City Limits, 57-130.
87. As I have argued elsewhere, racial imbalances in Flint area workplaces were primarily a function of discriminatory personnel policies rather than spatial mismatches.
88. See Andrew R. Highsmith, "Demolition Means Progress: Race, Class, and the Deconstruction of the American Dream in Flint, Michigan" (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2009), 261-66.
89. Clarence H. Young, Big-Crossing-Place: Flint ~ General Motors ~ 1958 (Flint: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, 1962), 2.
90. Lynn Reuster, Good Old Days at the Buick: Memories of the Men and Women Who Worked There (Linden, MI: McVey Marketing and Advertising, 1990), 1-10.
91. Last Layoff of 2200 Means More Than 50% of Buick Workers Idle," Flint Weekly Review, March 6, 1958.
92. Flint Classified as Depressed Area as Unemployment Rises," Flint Weekly Review, May 30, 1957.
93. Annual Report of the Social Science Research Project, 1949," Frank J. Manley Papers (FJMP), box 5, 78-8.1-124, Richard P. Scharchburg Archives (SA), Kettering University, Flint, Michigan.
94. Presentation for the New City of Flint," FJMP, box 4, 78-8.1-67, SA.
95. Zimmer, Flint Area Study Report, v. 3 (Ann Arbor: Institute for Human Adjustment, University of Michigan, 1957), ch.
96. By pointing to the efficiency of metropolitan government, Hawley and Zimmer broke sharply with influential scholars such as Charles Tiebout
97. who maintained that small, fragmented governments were more responsive than regional bodies.
98. On the Tiebout thesis, see Charles M. Tiebout, "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy 64, no. 5 (October 1956): 416-424.
99. Israel Harding Hughes, Jr., Local Government in the Fringe Area of Flint, Michigan (Ann Arbor: Institute for Human Adjustment, University of Michigan, 1947), 7.
100. Lawrence Lader, "Chaos in the Suburbs," Better Homes and Gardens 36 (October 1958), 10-17, 121, 129, 166.
101. Homer E. Dowdy, "Reasoning Behind 'New Flint' Plan Given," Flint Journal, October 27, 1957;
102. "Committee for 'New Flint' Outlines Plans, Proposals," AC Sparkler, June 12, 1958.
103. Presentation for the New City of Flint"; and "Why a New City" FJMP, box 4, 78-8.1-67, SA.
104. Three Tell New Flint Advantages," Flint Journal, July 8, 1958;
105. Presentation for the New City of Flint"; and "Why a New City" 46.
106. Dowdy, "Flint Area Study Leads the Way for Medium-Sized Communities," in What's Going on Here (Flint: Flint Journal, 1954).
107. Joseph A. Anderson Papers, n.d., Perry Archives, Buick Gallery and Research Center, Alfred P. Sloan Museum, Flint, Michigan.
108. Proceedings of the Flint City Commission, March 10, May 19, 1958
109. FPL; and Flint Journal, September 16, 1958.
110. Personnel of New Flint Committee Represents Area Cross Section," Flint Journal, n.d. [1958].
111. Dowdy, "Proposed Westhaven Much Like Livonia," in Where's Flint Going The Metropolitan Area: A Look at Problems Confronting Flint and Its Neighbors (Flint: Flint Journal, 1954);
112. Dowdy, "300 Flint Township Residents Hold Meeting in Utley School," Flint Journal, August 6, 1956;
113. Hawley and Zimmer, Resistance to Governmental Unification in a Metropolitan Community (Ann Arbor: Institute for Human Adjustment, University of Michigan, 1957), 53-59.
114. Area Opposition Develops to Proposal for Greater Flint," Flint Weekly Review, November 14, 1957.
115. Carman Educator Vows to Fight 'New Flint,'" Flint Journal, n.d. [ca. April 1958]; and Flint Journal, March 19, 1958.
116. Gordon Gapper, "Newness of 'New Flint' Stressed," Flint Journal, April 11, 1958.
117. Lou Giampetroni, "Petitions Seek to Ban New Flint Election," Flint Journal, June 10, 1958;
118. New Flint Foes Outline Opposition to Platform," Flint Journal, October 8, 1958.
119. Area Opposition Develops." 56. Flint Journal, March 13, 1958.
120. Genesee County Free Press, April 24, May 1, 8, 22, 29, June 12, 19, 26, July 3, 10, 24, August 7, 1958.
121. Bell Will Lead Battle against 'New Flint' Vote," Flint Journal, August 6, 1958;
122. Supervisors Act against Legal Counsel," Flint Journal, August 12, 1958.
123. Flint Journal, August 13, 1958.
124. Flint Journal, October 2, 1958.
125. Taliaferro v. Genesee County Supervisors, 354 Mich. 49, 92 N.W. 2d 319 (1958);
126. Plea to Force Nov. 4 Vote Is Rejected," Flint Journal, October 8, 1958.
127. William O. Winter, "Annexation as a Solution to the Fringe Problem: An Analysis of Past and Potential Annexations of Suburban Areas to the City of Flint, Michigan" (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1949);
128. Jesse I. Bourquin and Albert G. Ballert, "Expansion of Michigan Cities and Villages in the 1940 Decade," Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters 36 (1950);
129. Alvin D. Sokolow, Annexation and Incorporation in Michigan: An Evaluation of the Boundary Commission Plan (East Lansing: Institute for Community Development and Services, Michigan State University, 1965);
130. Louis C. Andrews, ed., Annexation Procedures in Michigan for Home Rule Cities and Villages (Ann Arbor: Michigan Municipal League, 1968). On urban renewal in Flint
131. see Highsmith, "Demolition Means Progress: Urban Renewal, Local Politics, and State-Sanctioned Ghetto Formation in Flint, Michigan," Journal of Urban History 35, no. 3 (March 2009): 348-68.
132. Robin Widgery, Shifts in the Flint Area Economic Structure during the 1980s (Flint: Project for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Michigan-Flint, 1991);
133. Greg Gardner, "Buick City's Demise," Ward's Auto World 33 (June 1997): 23-25.
134. For examples of this prevailing tendency, see notes 2 and 5 above.
135. The most significant of the accounts that argue for the postwar roots of the urban-industrial crisis is Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis.
136. My historiographical point here is to challenge Thomas Sugrue's claim that the "rusting of the Rust Belt" began in the 1950s and not in the 1970s.
137. See Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 6.