“United to Win:” Mattielee Woodson Hawkins and the Auto Industry in Detroit
Mattielee Woodson Hawkins was called “outstanding” several times in her life.[1] The Black press, the Civil Rights Congress, and the Daily Worker all acknowledged her contributions to civil rights, labor organizing, and advocacy for immigrants. Yet, one would be hard-pressed to find mention of her in any radical texts of labor or civil rights activism in Detroit. Like many Black women who participated in radical organizing mid-century, Mattielee’s contributions were overshadowed by her male counterparts. Detroit was a one industry town, and that automobile industry did not include many Black women workers. Black women, since they were not on the factory floors or working on heavy machinery, were seen as ancillary to the city’s working-class struggles. However, that marginalization was a point of empowerment, and Mattielee wielded that power to the best of her ability. As a Black woman, wife, and mother, Mattielee consistently pushed Detroit to re-envision what a working-class activist looked like. She was on the front lines of the Ford Hunger March, supported radical immigrants facing deportation, vocally criticized the U.S. Army, and, according to one agent of the stage, a “trouble-maker”. Though records of her are scant compared to the other women in this volume, Mattielee’s life is a revealing example of the very different experiences Black women had in the CPUSA. She would not publish any articles nor attend major conventions, yet her legacy lives on in important, ground-breaking ways.
Conclusion?
There is no satisfying conclusion to Mattielee Woodson Hawkins’s story. The last public records of her end with her saving her son. Despite her long involvement in the CPUSA and radical organizations, the FBI never surveilled her, at least not to the point they opened an individual file on her.[2] The historical record has dried up. There is an emptiness when a historian cannot tell the entire story of a remarkable woman, but the information we do have paints a beautiful portrait of an organizer, mother, wife, and friend. She was fearless, putting herself in harm’s way during the Ford Hunger March to assist an injured comrade. She was committed, pursuing legal action against a racist restaurant owner several times, and spending years organizing Ford Motor Company. She was strategic, knowing how to form alliances, build coalitions, and establish a united front that would outlast the 1930s. She was caring, working to protect her friend Mary Gosman Scarborough from deportation and her son from court martial. The Communist Party was a better Party because Mattielee was a member.
[1] “Browder to Talk in Detroit on Thursday,” Daily Worker, November 10, 1942; “Communists Call Win the War Meet,” March 27, 1943; Civil Rights Committee, Bulletin for Action 1, no. 5 (May 1951), 2.
[2] The National Archives responded to a 2019 Freedom of Information Act request saying they had no record of Mattielee Woodson Hawkins.
Melissa Ford, Phd 