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Isaac Weiss
Dr. Martin
HON 1000
11 October 2016
Detached from my Roots
My names George Wilkins. Im a black man lately from Georgia. Never married. Im
thirty years old, or thereaboutscouldnt tell you when my birthday is. My mama died when I
was born, and my dad had to go out of state to find work when I was small, so nobody ever told
me. I grew up an orphan, dirt poor, and I thank Jesus every day for the miracles that let me
survive. Taught myself to read and write, too, and I thank Jesus Im a lettered man. Otherwise Id
never have got here.
For the past fifteen years, Ive been a farmhand, mostly cotton-picking, going where the
work was, when it was there. Never owned any land myself. Down South they dont treat colored
people so good, anywaynever mind being shut out of places and having no rights before the
law, a poor white fellow doing the same work I do right alongside me would get paid more. I
remember I was lodging in Atlanta a while back when the mob came down, beating and looting. 1
They didnt like us being in the city, the white folk didnt. Havent lived in a city since. Until
now.
I wasnt far outside Atlanta last year when I found this Helpful Hints and Advice to
Employees in the road. Someone traveling must have dropped it. Knocked off the horse crap,
then sat on a rock and read it through. Id heard of Ford before; there was a big campaign to get
Southern blacks to go up North to work. 2 Never tempted me before, but reading this! It was too

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good to be true. I mean, not only was this Ford hiring and paying good wages, he was giving the
workers extra money just to help them live better? How does a man do that? But it was up North,
in Detroit. That meant two things: better chances of being treated like a human being; and Id be
absolutely leaving behind everything I knew. Might as well start over in a foreign country.
What finally got me going was that I was sick and tired of my life so far. The segregation,
the violence and hate; the not getting hired when there was a white man or a machine to do the
same work, and getting paid less for just as good work when I was hired. My life had honestly
been just hell, in too many ways to describe. I had lost hope of bettering my condition where I
was.3 It couldnt get worse at Fords company.
Took the bus as much as I could; otherwise I walked on my own two feet. I made it. I got
my job at the Ford Motor Company, working in the foundry. Hot, stinking, bone-aching work
that is, but I get paid real goodI made 34 cents an hour the day I started.4 Thats the good part.
Heres whats bad.
Firstand I should have been ready for thisthings arent all that free and equal in the
North. Still have to use a colored drinking fountain. And its funny the way the workers in the
foundry are mostly black folkand the higher-ups tell us Ford doesnt have any other job
openings. But then there are openings for the white people.5 And this is only Fordpeople I
work with whove been in Detroit longer tell me no one else in the city comes close to offering
black people jobs or pay even as good as Ford does. 6 So much for that Northern ideal of equality
for people like me.
Next: housing! Youd think from that Fords manual that if there was one thing you could
count on, it was that he was going to make damn sure his workers could get decent places to live.
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Not a bit of it. I lay my head down on a mat in a garage I share with three other guys. It is
crowded, and it is dirty, and it is way better than the alternative, which was boarding inside the
main house sharing a single room with the whole family. Thats where Fords manual says the
really bad danger and disease is.7 Not like theres a bathroom in the house, anyway. Less than
half the houses around here have one.8
And oh, yes, that disease thing is real. Tuberculosis and pneumoniataking people out
left and right.9 Ive kept my health so far, but in this place you cant count on it. I pray that those
killers wont come find me.
(Should mention, Im not alone when it comes to praying. I belong to the Second Baptist
Church. Good people there. Praying, thanking Christ, and doing good works on His behalf. Faith
is what keeps me going, against all odds.)
Yeah, Im bitter. So would you be. I believed the promises, left the life I knew and got
swindled. Screw Ford. Screw Detroit. This city is crazy. Its so crowded and noisy, sometimes I
feel like I cant breathe. Everythings got to be new and different. I do miss the old days, the old
ways, in the open South . . . at least a little.
On the other hand
You know, Im still young yet. Why should I be attached to the past? Thats the thing
about this crazy city. Theres no history, no tradition. But that levels the playing field in a way. 10
Here, it seems like anybody can detach from their roots, leave history behind, and forge a new
destiny for themselves.
I may sound foolish, but I dont think that was possible anywhere before. And I feel in
my bones that it is possible here.
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I dont know what my future may bring. But maybe thats a good thing. Before I came to
the city, I did know my future, and there was nothing good in it. Here, in Detroit, the world is
sparkling with new inventions, new ways of doing things. The buildings lining the streets that I
walk down every day; the factory that I earn money in; the product that Ford produces with my
labor in itnone of this could have existed in any previous time.
And for myself, theres always the chance I will move up the job ladder at Fordothers
have done it. Then, maybe start a family.
Im detached from my roots, and Im glad. I feel like I pulled myself right out of history
and into the future. Yes, Im glad I came to this city, and I dont care what may have been left
behind. Here, anything is possible.

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Works Cited
Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South. Ed. Alferdteen Harrison. Jackson,
MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2012.
Fisher, Philip. Democratic Social Space. Still the New World: American Literature in a Culture
of Creative Destruction. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1999.
Helpful Hints and Advice to Employees. Detroit, MI: Ford Motor Company, 1915.
Maloney, Thomas N., and Warren C. Whatley. Making the Effort: The Contours of Racial
Discrimination in Detroit's Labor Markets, 1920-1940. The Journal of Economic
History 55.3 (1995): 465-93.
Martelle, Scott. Detroit: A Biography. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2012.
Peterson, Joyce Shaw. Black Automobile Workers in Detroit, 1910-1930. The Journal of
Negro History 64.3 (1979): 177-90.
Trotter, Joe W. African Americans in Cities. Encyclopedia of American Urban History. Ed.
David Goldfield. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference, 2007. 9-13. Gale Virtual
Reference Library.