Description
Reverend Willie Ford is an Associate Minister at the North Richmond Missionary Baptist Church which is the oldest African American church in Richmond. Born in Louisiana, Reverend Ford came from a farming and railroad family. He traveled to Detroit and New York and then, after World War II, joined his mother and father and siblings in Richmond, where they had migrated for wartime work. He worked as a street car operator and airplane technician and dry cleaner. He also was a musician and avid social dancer who danced at the Savoy in Harlem and all over Detroit and California. In his interview, he discusses his life and times, the racial discrimination his family faced in the South and that he faced on the job in Detroit, a changing Richmond, and his role at the North Richmond Missionary Baptist Church.