Celebarating Black Automotive History | McKinley Thompson Jr.
By Ian Cooper-Smith
From its inception, the Ford Motor Company reflected an America fraught with nativism and xenophobia. In order to qualify for the famous $5 an hour pay, company investigators from the Ford Sociological Department often conducted unannounced home visits as a means of “americanizing” European immigrants. Although the sociological department was dissolved in 1926, Ford plants continued to perpetuate internal hierarchies rooted in White Supremacist ideology for most of the 20th century. By the turn of the century Henry Ford began hiring more Black workers as millions of Black Americans embarked on the Great Migration North seeking economic opportunity and safety from the repression of the Jim Crow South. While the Ford Motor Company paid its Black and White workers similar wages relative to their role, Black and White workers were disproportionately hired for different positions. Most of Ford's Black employees, with some exception, were hired as janitors and cleaners as it was believed that Black people were inherently inferior and could only advance so far in the workplace. The other position open to Black workers was in the foundry and forge, the most dangerous places to work. To make matters worse, Black workers were barred from executive positions. Despite creating a racial caste system within his workplace, because many other companies either refused to hire Black workers or wouldn’t pay them the same wages as white workers, Henry Ford received credit at the time for being an outstanding progressive.
Ford’s legacy of discrimination makes McKinley Thompson, Jr.’s story particularly remarkable. Mckinley “Mac” Thompson Jr. was born in 1922 in Queens, New York City. From an early age McKinley recalled being inspired by a 1934 Chrysler DeSoto Airflow:
“It just so happened that the clouds opened up for the sunshine to come through…I was never so impressed with anything in all my life. I knew that that’s what I wanted to do in life—I want[ed] to be an automobile designer.”
During the Second World War, McKinley served as an engineering layout coordinator and draftsman in the Army Signal Corps. After the war, McKinley entered a “From Dream to Drawing Board” design contest hosted by Motor Trend magazine. McKinley won the contest and was awarded a scholarship at the Art Center College of Design In Pasadena, California. In 1956, he became the first Black American to graduate from the school’s Transportation Design Department with a degree in Industrial Design. That same year, McKinley’s dream of becoming an automobile designer came true and In 1956 Mckinley “Mac” Thompson Jr. broke the color barrier by becoming the first African American car designer in the United States working for Ford’s Advanced Design Studio. His hiring by Ford occurred just as the Civil Rights movement gained considerable momentum: two years earlier Brown v. Board of Education had been adjudicated, Emmett Till, was brutally lynched in Mississippi the year before, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott was in full swing. Due to both his hostile experiences in the workplace and his trailblazing presence in the field he was later dubbed the “Jackie Robinson of car design.”
One of Thompson’s first assignments was contributing sketches for the legendary GT40. Thompson later conceptualized the futuristic space-age Ford Gyron, a two-wheeled concept car that displayed at the Ford Rotunda in 1961. In 1963 he and other Ford designers also conceptualized the Ford Bronco. Ford Bronco interior designer Christopher Young later said of Thompson:
“He not only broke through the color barrier in the world of automotive design, he helped create some of the most iconic consumer products ever – from the Ford Mustang, Thunderbird and Bronco – designs that are not only timeless but have been studied by generations of designers.”
Mckinley retired from Ford in 1984 and moved to Arizona with his wife. He passed away on March 5, 2006.
“Login.” McKinley Thompson Jr., Ford’s
First African American Designer
Followed His Dreams, Made History
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