Square Dancing

	Swing Your Partner

Henry Ford helped revive square dancing in the 1930s

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Chicken Reel, 1940.

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Credits

Square Dancing
Although popular for years, square dancing seemed to be going out of style and fading away until the early 1930s, when Henry Ford helped revive interest in it. Ford, the automobile manufacturer, used to vacation at the Wayside Inn in Massachusetts, where he enjoyed the dance program run by a man named Benjamin Lovett. Ford asked Lovett to come to Detroit and teach dances, but Lovett said he couldn't because he had a contract with the inn. Ford solved that problem by buying the inn and Lovett's contract. He took Lovett back to Detroit, where together they established a program for teaching squares and rounds. Square dancing was updated and groups began forming all over the country. Have you ever been to a square dance?

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CREDIT: "Henry Ford, full-length portrait, standing, facing slightly left, leaving the White House after calling on the president." National Photo Company, 1927. Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929, Library of Congress.
AUDIO CREDIT: Harmon, Lloyd "Red", guitar, and Brewer, Willard, fiddle. "Chicken Reel." 1940/08/04. Voices, Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941, Library of Congress.