Patterson, who took over the C.R. Patterson & Sons Company from his father, concluded that the horse-and-buggy era was ending. So he decided to get into the “horseless carriage” business. In 1915, two years after Ford started his automotive assembly lines in Detroit, the first Patterson-Greenfield car rolled out of the shop, a sleek two-door coupe.
“Greenfield was a well-known stop on the underground railroad, so he would have been able to feel safe here,” said Harold Schmidt, a member of the Greenfield Historical Society. Frederick Douglass Patterson, one of C.R.’s five children, was born in 1871. When Frederick was 15, C.R. sued to allow Frederick to attend all-White Greenfield High School. Areas surrounding Greenfield were less progressive: It would take the neighboring town of Hillsboro another 70 years to desegregate its schools.Frederick later attended Ohio State University, becoming class president and the first Black football player in the storied program’s history.
“But they were late to the game,” said Christopher Nelson, 50, who grew up outside Greenfield and wrote his master’s thesis on the Pattersons before self-publishing the book “C.R. Patterson & Sons Company: Black Pioneers in the Vehicle Building Industry.”From 1915 to 1918, the Pattersons built more than 100 two-door coupes; each car took about two weeks to assemble. Meanwhile, Ford had perfected the assembly line and pumped out 300,000 cars in 1915 and a half million more in 1916.
“The fact that there was a Black family who produced buggies and moved into the 20th century to make automobiles, trucks and buses is something we are proud of,” Richard Patterson said. “And they produced transportation for almost 70 years. That is what I would like people to know, that there was a Black family that produced automobiles in this country.”
With an estimated 1,000 Patterson buses on the road at one time, it’s likelier that a bus could be found, but none of those is known to exist either. In its final years, the Patterson company — which by then had rebranded itself the Greenfield Bus Body Company —
It was probably run out of business by democrats.
Since Tesla, Ford and General Motors all have African-American shareholders, they are all Black-owned automobile manufacturers. Stop with your divisive disinformation.
How’d that work out?
In 1915 auto makers could be small business proprietorships. Today they are too big to operate that way and are corporations. Shareholders own corporations. Many shareholders are black. New headline: “In 1915 only one auto maker was black owned. Now they all are.”
clarencehilljr Paywall.
美国上海农场前线抗议精彩剪辑，不畏艰难，再接再厉，一切都已经开始‼️ 和平抗议 上海农场抗议现场
Rage stream media wants you angry and divided. Mock them.
More than a century of lost opportunities... Why?