One night in November 1937, just six months after the notorious Battle of the Overpass at the Ford Rouge plant, Ford worker Lewis Bradford was found seriously injured in an isolated section of the plant. A few days later, he died.

Bradford’s voice was well known in Detroit. He hosted a radio show on WXYZ called “The Forgotten Man’s Hour,” where he interviewed jobless and homeless workers. It was a counterpoint, he felt, to the right-wing antisemitic priest Father Charles Coughlin, whose “Hour of Power” radio show on WJR was beamed nationwide.

Nearly 90 years later, the story of Bradford’s death and the struggle of workers to organize unions during The Great Depression will return in the jazz musical Forgotten: The Murder at the Ford Rouge Plant. A professionally produced recording of the 2025 show will be screened at Wayne State’s Bernath Auditorium (Undergraduate Library).