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here have cars? How long would it take for whites to take their business to a black man, leave a white business for a black man’s garage?” There was no answer from his father. “I’m going to Detroit, Daddy. That’s the center of automobile science. There’s a friend from school I can stay with till I get started.” John reached over and laid his hand on his father’s knee. “You gonna help me tell Momma?”
    Charles Cobb stood up. “I been helping you tell your Momma things for a long time, son. I guess we better go on in and tell her together.”

Chapter 4
Taste the Wind
    A FTER ARRIVING IN D ETROIT AND SETTLING IN WITH HIS FRIEND from Tuskegee, his first priority was to get a job. He didn’t anticipate what a difficult task this would be. Although there were scores of small automobile manufacturers scattered around the country (there was even an attempt to start one in Gulfport), Detroit was the center of the growing automotive industry. As a result, job-seekers, white and black, were pouring into town.
    By 1924 Detroit had a large black population. Most were migrating from the rural South and were unskilled. John discovered that blacks in the North were expected to “know their place” pretty much the same as in the South. There weren’t “colored only” and “white only” signs posted, but there were restaurants and hotels that simply turned away black customers. He had grown up around that sort of thing. He hadn’t let it bother him much at home so he determined to ignore it “up North.”
    John spent every day looking for a mechanic’s job. Many of the places where he applied had openings, just not for him, or at least not jobs where he could use his skills. Johnny was determined to get a job as a mechanic and turned down offers for work as a “sweeper” or “errand boy” or “clean-up man.” But he found himself a minority within a minority: a black man college-trained in automotive technology. Try as he might, he could not convince garage bosses that a young black man from Mississippi had arrived in Detroit already highly trained in the field of automotive mechanics. He wasn’t arrogant or uppity when he applied for a job, but the fact that he had a diploma proving that he had learned his trade in college was often resented by white men who had learned the trade in the school of “skint knuckles” or spent long hours with little pay as apprentices. The truth was that Robinson was more knowledgeable than many of the people to whom he applied for work. He knew and understood internal combustion engines backwards and forwards—engine blocks, cylinders, pistons, valves, rods, crankshafts, carburetors, magnetos, generators, oil and water pumps, clutches, gears, axles, radiators, gages, electrics, etc. He could read engineering drawings and diagrams.
    Finally, even with free room and board at his friend’s house, what little money he had ran out. He took the best offer he was given, that of mechanic’s helper.
    There were three mechanics and a manager who doubled as a tire and parts salesman. There was also another young black man that pumped gas, swept floors, emptied trash cans, and washed cars—the kind of job John had often been offered. Robinson found that of the three regular mechanics—all white—one was friendly, one ignored him, and one was openly hostile toward him. He also discovered that the new “mechanic’s helper” got to do a lot of tire changing and was mostly called upon to do work on the automobiles of occasional black customers, members of the small but growing black middle class. He spent most of his time as a “pair of extra hands” and “tool fetcher” for the other mechanics.
    After several months on the job, the mechanics in the shop began to admit two things about John Robinson. The first was that he was good at what