5 memorable visits to Detroit by presidential candidates on Labor Day
Vice President Kamala Harris is a political trailblazer as the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to win a major party's nomination for president.
But she follows a decades-old tradition of Democratic presidential candidates when she visits Detroit this Labor Day, a holiday marking the end of summer and, historically, the day presidential campaigns launch into overdrive for the fall stretch.
Big union cities such as New York, Chicago and Pittsburgh have also attracted big-name politicos on the first Monday in September but no city has been more closely associated with the American labor movement than Detroit. Combine that with Michigan's status as a battleground state and the appeal for Democrats to visit Detroit on Labor Day is clear.
Though Detroit has celebrated Labor Day since the late 1800s, it's only in about the last 75 years that Labor Day has drawn presidential candidates to the city.
Until after World War II, "labor in its contemporary form hadn't risen to the level that it has now," said Marick Masters, a professor emeritus of business at Wayne State University in Detroit. "As it grew in power, particularly in the Democratic Party, Democratic politicians wanted to pay allegiance to the labor movement" by making holiday visits to Detroit and other union strongholds, he said.
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Here are five notable Labor Day visits to Detroit by past presidential candidates.
Harry S. Truman, 1948
Harry S. Truman visited Detroit as an incumbent president but a political underdog.
He would go on to defeat Republican New York Gov. Thomas Dewey in what was seen as one of the greatest political upsets in U.S. history, and considered Detroit his "lucky city," the Detroit Free Press reported at the time.
That's because he had also campaigned in the Motor City on Labor Day in 1944, as a candidate for vice president to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who that November won an unprecedented fourth term.
The local AFL and CIO affiliates, which sometimes competed to organize the same workers, had made a joint invitation to Truman at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. That was viewed as a healthy sign for labor unity, though the entities would not merge until 1955.
"A free and strong labor movement is our best bulwark against communism," Truman, who was accompanied by his daughter Margaret, told a large crowd in Cadillac Square in Detroit.
At the time of Truman's visit, union members were still outraged by the 1946 passage — over Truman's veto — of the Taft-Hartley Act, which took effect in 1947 and banned wildcat strikes, closed shops, and mass picketing, among other restrictions on union activities.
Taft-Hartley "is only a foretaste of what you will get if Republican reaction is allowed to grow," Truman told the crowd in Detroit.
Inflation was an election issue then, as it is today. Truman in 1946 had vetoed a bill to extend price controls, introduced under Roosevelt, saying he did not believe the legislation would prevent prices from rising.
Adlai Stevenson, 1952
Not every Democrat who campaigns for president in Detroit on Labor Day goes on to win.
Adlai Stevenson, who lost to Republican Dwight Eisenhower, is a case in point.
As reported in the Detroit Free Press, the crowd of 25,000 gave "cheers of anticipation" when Michigan Gov. G. Mennen "Soapy" Williams introduced Stevenson, the governor of Illinois, as "a great friend of labor."
But those cheers "became much milder as Stevenson expounded his views on labor relations," and the crowd "began disintegrating," the newspaper reported.
"You are not my captives and I am not yours," Stevenson told the largely pro-union audience. "I intend to do exactly what I think right and best for all of us — business, labor, agriculture, alike. You, too, will do exactly what you think best at the election."
Though he called for changes to Taft-Hartley, Stevenson rejected unionists' labeling of it as a "slave labor" law, the Free Press reported.
"We cannot tolerate shutdowns which threaten our national safety," Stevenson said. "The right to bargain collectively does not include the right to stop the national economy."
Stevenson returned to Detroit on Labor Day in 1956, launching another unsuccessful campaign for the White House.
John F. Kennedy, 1960
The crowd in Cadillac Square was estimated at 60,000 when the charismatic senator from Massachusetts, on his way to a razor-thin victory over Vice President Richard Nixon, launched a withering attack on the Eisenhower administration.
John F. Kennedy said that stagnant growth under the Republican president had cost each American $7,000.
As reported in the Free Press, Kennedy said the labor movement "is people," and the enemies of labor are the enemies of "all progress."
"The two cannot be separated," Kennedy said. "The man and the party who opposes a decent increase in minimum wage is not likely to be more generous toward a badly underpaid school teacher."
Democratic State Chairman Neil Staebler called Kennedy "the best campaigner to hit Michigan since Franklin D. Roosevelt," who had visited Detroit, but never on Labor Day.
Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964
Michigan Democratic delegates generally, and union members specifically, were vocally unhappy with Kennedy's selection of Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate at the 1960 Democratic National Convention.
But both labor activists and Johnson — who didn't visit Michigan once during the 1960 campaign — were willing to put those memories behind them when Johnson came to Detroit as president, less than one year after Kennedy was assassinated.
Reporters marveled at the willingness of Johnson, accompanied by his wife, Lady Bird, to mingle with the huge crowd outside what was then the Sheraton Cadillac Hotel, shaking as many hands as possible, amid high security and understandably nervous Secret Service agents, the Free Press reported.
In a bipartisan gesture, Detroit labor leaders invited Republican Gov. George Romney to join Johnson on the speaking platform.
"Hospitality is not limited to those with whom we share all our views, as this occasion, and the visits of other presidential candidates, will bear out," Romney said.
Barack Obama, 2011
President Barack Obama's Labor Day visit to Detroit was unusual in that it did not occur during an election year.
With another year still to go in his first term, Obama visited Detroit amid persistent high unemployment to celebrate his 2009 stimulus package that included an $81 billion federal rescue of General Motors and Chrysler, which is now known as Stellantis.
He was drumming up support for a major jobs plan he was about to present to Congress, where the U.S. House was Republican-controlled.
Speaking at a GM parking lot next to the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Obama credited the auto industry with the creation of the middle class in Michigan and across the nation.
"Our economy is stronger when workers are getting paid good wages and good benefits," Obama said. "Having a voice on the job and a chance to get organized and the chance to negotiate for a fair day's pay ... is the right of every man and woman in America, not just the CEO in the corner office, but also the janitor who cleans that office."
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or [email protected]. Follow him on X, @paulegan4.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 5 memorable Detroit visits by presidential candidates on Labor Day
