Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village is a paradox between progress and nostalgia for a
simpler past. In “History is Bunk”: Assembling the Past at Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village,
Jessie Swigger articulates that Greenfield Village was a celebration of “ordinary people who
created extraordinary advances” and at the same time it was “a temporary escape from the
intensity of modern life.” Henry Ford himself personifies progress in many ways. He provided a
means for transportation that was itself a technological miracle but also provided advances in
a multitude of other areas. Jessie Swigger’s interpretation of Ford has distinct parallels with other
figures of the anti-modernist movement like Wallace Nutting and William Sumner Appleton Jr.
Henry Ford strove to
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There was also an element of racism where
Ford classified by ethnic origin; Jewish, Negro, Syrian etc. If these workers adhered to his
moralistic views, they could graduate from the “Ford English School.” The graduation ceremony
was overtly racist. Immigrants were presented in their native dress, diving into the “melting pot”
and immerging garbed in red, white and blue, fully Americanized.
Jessie Swigger offers an effective dialogue regarding Ford’s distain for urban life. Ford
stated, “every social ailment from which we suffer today originates and centers in great
cities.” This was extremely paradoxical since he had spent so much time as an engineer in
Detroit and admired men of progress such as Thomas Edison. Even as a young man, working for
him. Further, he himself contributed so much to Detroit as it eventually became the car capitol of
the United States. Still, in his mind, urbanization was seen as negative. Swigger expresses, “the
small town far exceeded the urban landscape in allowing capitalism and culture to flourish, as
well as his concern that the federal government was impeding progress through its inference