Battle of the Overpass - Ford Motor Company Thugs Brutally Attack UAW Organizers in Planned Assault at River Rouge

On May 26, 1937, at approximately 2:00 p.m., Ford Motor Company orchestrates a brutal assault on United Auto Workers organizers conducting a permitted leaflet distribution campaign at the Miller Road pedestrian overpass above Gate 4 of the massive River Rouge Plant complex in Dearborn, Michigan. UAW Local 174 president Walter Reuther arrives with organizational director Richard Frankensteen, clergy members, representatives from the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties, and dozens of women wearing green berets and carrying leaflets reading “Unionism, Not Fordism” for the shift change when 90,000 workers would be present. As photographer “Scotty” Kilpatrick positions Reuther and Frankensteen for photographs on the public overpass (Reuther held a city permit), Ford Service Department chief Harry Bennett appears with 40 thugs who immediately charge the union organizers in a premeditated attack.

Bennett’s men—part of Ford’s 3,000-member “quasi-military organization” described by The New York Times as “the largest private quasi-military organization in existence”—kick, stomp, and repeatedly lift Reuther into the air before throwing him down two flights of stairs. Frankensteen, a 30-year-old former football player, receives worse treatment because he attempts to fight back; attackers swarm him, pull his jacket over his head, and beat him senseless. In all, 16 UAW organizers suffer injuries including seven women, with one victim’s back broken in the assault. Ford controls Dearborn’s city government and police department, using both alongside the Service Department to violently intimidate Ford workers and union organizers through routine surveillance inside and outside plants. Bennett, a former boxer and personal associate of Henry Ford, directs this systematic reign of terror that keeps River Rouge non-union even as General Motors and Chrysler recognize the UAW following successful 1936-1937 strikes.

Ford attempts to control the narrative by destroying news photographs onsite, but surviving images captured by Kilpatrick are published nationally as devastating evidence of corporate brutality, generating massive public sympathy for the UAW and turning perception decisively against Ford. The photographs’ power eventually vaults Walter Reuther to national prominence as a labor leader and prompts Pulitzer Prize administrators to institute an award for photography. The National Labor Relations Board pursues a case against Ford documenting numerous violations of the National Labor Relations Act, bringing to light the company’s systematic lawbreaking in suppressing federally-protected organizing rights. The Battle of the Overpass leads to escalating UAW actions against Ford culminating in a major 1941 strike at River Rouge that forces Henry Ford—the last Big Three holdout—to sign a union contract, finally achieving complete UAW representation across the automobile industry. The incident exemplifies how corporations deploy private security forces as violent union-busting tools, presaging later corporate violence from coal companies (Harlan County 1970s) to Amazon’s surveillance and intimidation infrastructure (2010s-present).