 He was hired by Henry Ford to work at the Ford Motor Company as kind of a liaison between the black and white workers. Henry Ford loved Willis Ward. He absolutely loved Willis Ward. And he was trying to integrate his auto factories at the time, and he knew he needed someone to kind of be the go-between. So when Willis Ward was in his early 20s, he was probably one of the highest-ranking African-American business executives in the country working for the Ford Motor Company.