General Motors Corporation and Flint Michigan were more than just friends in 1958 – they were practically married. The GM CEO at the time, Harlow Curtice, actually lived in the city of Flint, off Miller Road on the weekends (fee-based New York Times article). During the week he apparently lived in Detroit. Curtice had bet the company on new car designs in the mid 1950′s, and won big. He was later named Time Magazine Man Of The Year for that accomplishment.

So, in 1958 the City of Flint threw GM a huge 50th birthday party, and as you can see from the film below shot to commemorate the event, it is essentially impossible to tell which events were city-sponsored and which were GM events. The fact that Flint was the perfect company town should provide yet even a greater perspective on how crushed people felt when GM started to pull out of Flint under 80′s GM Chairman Roger Smith.

The New York City Connection

For New Yorkers, you’ll appreciate – if that’s the word – seeing Robert Moses himself being honored in the film at the 13:15 mark. Moses was responsible for selecting where Flint built its cultural center, comprised of several museums, a library, a community college, an auditorium and much more. For those not familiar with Robert Moses, he essentially ran all the public building projects in New York City for decades, holding power through five mayors and seven governors of New York. Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

Robert Moses was the “master builder” of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of urban planning in the United States. He changed and transformed neighborhoods forever. His decisions favored highways over public transit. His critics claim that he preferred automobiles to people, that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City, uprooted traditional neighborhoods by building expressways through them, contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island, caused the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League baseball teams, and precipitated the decline of public transport through disinvestment and neglect. Moses was said to know how to drive, but because he didn’t have a license, many sources claimed that he actually did not know how to drive. His view of the automobile was shaped by the 1920s, when the car was thought of as entertainment and not a utilitarian lifestyle. Moses’ highways in the first half of the 20th century were parkways, curving, landscaped “ribbon parks,” intended to be pleasures to drive in and “lungs for the city.”

It was until we saw Moses in this film, being honored by GM and Flint did we realize the motivation Moses possessed in paving over NYC and building bridges, tunnels, and by and large favoring automobiles over public transit. When you’re honored by General Motors and its hometown gives you free reign to design its cultural center, you know something foul must be at hand. The situation bears remarkable resemblance to when Alfred P. Sloan, as Chairman of GM, bought up streetcars and closed them down to drive up demand for automobiles.

In just 20 years from the time of the 50th anniversary of General Motors, they would begin their short but steady abandonment of Flint. All the talk in the film about “growing together” and “our bright future together” was completely discarded.

A final warning: this video can be very painful to watch for anyone who cares a lot about Flint. Because as you’ll see, in 1958, Flint was practically an urban utopia. You’d never, ever, in your wild dreams, as a child of the 70′s and 80′s realize that was the Flint you grew up in.

Partners In Progress (1958)

(23 minutes, color)