The Sit-Down Strike at General Motors

In the United States of America, most people's god is the motor car. Some even worship the corporations that make the cars. Chrysler, Ford, General Motors. And the greatest of these is General Motors, the heart of whose empire is the city of Flint in Michigan. Flint is a company town and has been for more than half a century. Behold Flint, where the workers are well paid, well organized. Now, that is. But what a fight it took. Back in the middle 1930s, life in Flint was bleak indeed. As it was in the car industry throughout America. America, like everywhere, was just emerging from the Great Depression. In those days... If you got a job, you stuck to it. You didn't complain that the management exploited your vulnerability, that you were a faceless clock card number slaving like a robot on a speeded up production line. A working condition. were atrocious. They were demanding more and more work from us. At one time they were running the line. You didn't even have time. The speed of the line was so fast, you didn't have time to go to the restroom. I used to come home and I would clean up and go to bed. I couldn't even eat. I was that tired. These men had work, but they had no sick benefits, no overtime pay, no pension scheme, no holiday pay, no unemployment pay. If the production line stopped, you waited without pay until it was mended. And you didn't protest. Now if you complain, then they take you to the window. Up the street was the employment office. So you see all them fellows looking for your job? Keep your mouth shut or you're going to join them. And they've done that many times, grab you by the ear and take you and show you. So what was to be done then? It was no use appealing to the management through the infamous manipulated company unions. True, Roosevelt's New Deal gave legal protection to labor organizations now, but how did you organize a real trade union when General Motors were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Pinkerton Detective Agency to watch the shop floor for any sort of union activity? We had a hundred or so of those guys right in the Chevrolet plant down there that was spying on us. The companies hired them, brought them in, put them on a machine next to you. As a new man, like that, we didn't know whether they were from this detective force spying upon labor. That was their business, to spy upon us, see? But still, under the very noses of these paid spies, organizers from the UAW... the newly formed union of automobile workers, had come to Flint to enlist enough members to take on the vast General Motors corporation and demand recognition. The organizational drive, in secret of course, developed greater and greater momentum to the point where it was thought that maybe the strength was great enough to conduct a sit-down strike. The first objective was the huge Fisher Body Works known as Fisher One. It was the biggest car body factory in the world making 1400 Buick car bodies a day. Fisher One had 7,000 workers. And here, in the last weeks of 1936, the young UAW had signed on several hundred members. It was as recently as that, ten years after Britain's general strike. That's how it was in America. On December the 30th, the union told its members to pull the switches, stop the production lines, and sit down. You've got to be, sit down, sit down. When the speed up comes, just twiddle your thumbs. Sit down, sit down. When you want them to know. Oh, they better go slow. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down, just take a seat. Sit down and rest your feet. Sit down, you've got a beat. Sit down, sit down. The actual pretext for calling that strike is hardly remembered now, nor is it especially relevant. The hundreds of men who sat down that day did so in general protest at their atrocious working conditions. Every man of them knew that if they lost that strike they would almost certainly never work in a General Motors plant again. This didn't intimidate young car workers like Stephen Ryszfalski. Well, the first week was kind of exciting. It was an experience and it was an adventure for, especially I was young. I was only 19 years old at the time. And it seemed like a lot of fun the first week. I happened to be working in final assembly and the cushion room was right next door and there were plenty of cushions. So we slept in comfort. We played cards and slept and chewed the rag. I was no problem. The motivation for the strike was simply for union recognition. The method and style of the strike sitting down on the job was just becoming known in the United States. Mundo Blankenship found the actual process rather tedious. There was an awful lot of checker games, card games, concerts. There were some people who had some musical skills who'd like to perform, but mostly it was boring. You just sat around waiting to see what was going to come next. Their discipline was very rudimentary. It was just very crude. But they did have a certain organization where they tried to maintain patrols, picket duty, and have men available on call for any emergencies. And there was some making of weapons. They made blackjacks. There were some guys in there who were actually spoiling for a fight. And in Fisher 1, the strike leaders expected a fight, and a long one. The strikers'morale was sustained and encouraged by sound cars, loudspeaker vans, brought in by young organizers from Detroit like Victor Ruther, one of the three Ruther brothers so memorable in American Union history. Obviously our fear and concern from the very day the strike began Was that the sit-down strikers would be physically evicted? The corporation had gone to the courts which they controlled and had secured an injunction to evict the strikers, but we remained inside the plants. They stayed inside basically because they weren't going to leave until they'd got union recognition, but also because the judge who had ordered their eviction, Judge Edward D. Black, was found to own more than $200,000 worth of General Motors shares. The men began to dig in for a long struggle. They could rely on their organization outside to provision them. We had a platform built up to the first floor windows where we passed food in through, and many times some of the leaders... of the union would present herself there at the window and encourage us to not become depressed. And they said they were working on an agreement and a settlement and that we would get the union accepted as a negotiation, a negotiating agent for the workers. Some of the union leaders went inside to bring news from the score or so of General Motors plants around the state, themselves too striking for recognition. Outside the Fisher Body Plant, the supporters kept watch round the clock. One of them, often in the picket lines, was the wife of a Flint worker and a leading union man. She was infuriated at the new tactics now being used by General Motors. against the strikers. General Motors let it be known by radio and by newspaper articles and everything else that these men who were sitting down were radicals and communists and they meant to disrupt the whole economy of the city. Genora Johnson was 23 then. She was in this psychological warfare up to her eyes. There were all kinds of rumors going around that were perpetrated by agents going out into neighborhoods saying, oh, those men setting in at Fisher Body, they've got cushions in there, they've got beds made of car seats, all the upholstery material, and they're bringing in burlesque women, they're bringing in all kinds of... music and booze and all kinds of forms of diversion for those men. You women are having it rough. You're the ones who are doing all the sacrificing, and your husbands will wind up being fired for good, and who's doing the sacrificing in this whole development? It's you and not those men who are having a good time. Dinora Johnson and her friends formed themselves into a militant group. ...group, quite unprecedented in America at that time, which they called the Women's Auxiliary. Such a thing hadn't happened before, and they knew very well what they were up against. So we sent women out to talk to the wives. these men who were having problems at home. And many of them came down and worked with us after the women went out and explained what it would mean to their family budget to the health of the family. Now that the wives got the hang of what the strike meant and its importance to everybody's future, they would come down to the plant, often with the children. They collected food and cash to help the campaign. This women's auxiliary with its slogans and its picket lines was a huge boost to the men inside, many of whom still hadn't quite realized what a seriously long drawn-out business this might well be. We thought the sit-down thing would only last a week. We thought surely management wouldn't allow this to go on because cars were in demand the 37 model is what we were working on we'd only been into it a month or two and we and there was a demand for the 37 things were looking up in america at that time and uh in the united states and jesus we were coming out of the depression and we thought golly surely they'll settle and recognize us and bargain with us but we once we got in through the second week and got into the third week some of the fellows start saying well gee Maybe maybe we're not going to make it me. Maybe we're all going to get fired after this is all over so some of them leave and and But our organizers and our leaders Recognize what was happening and they said well look fellas. There's nothing says you can't leave but come back but Some of the guys were getting depressed and they said hell let's let's call this thing off. Let's let's get out of here. Let's Let's go back to work. Some were getting delinquent on their house payments. They had just started buying houses and some were losing their cars and some were losing their furniture. And of course the union was getting involved in that hassle because they were trying to put the pressure on the finance companies and the banks. Say, hey, look, you're going to want our business when this is all over. We'll remember you. And so they set it out in Fisher One, and the Buick plants elsewhere in this General Motors town were gradually starved of car bodies. Now, two miles away in the centre of Flint is the huge Chevrolet manufacturing complex. In the 1930s more than 10,000 men worked here in appalling conditions. Here also there had been two weeks of sit-down, but Fisher won smaller counterpart, Fisher II, which normally turned out more than 400 Chevrolet cars. bodies a day. Here the hundred or so strikers held the upper floor only. The ground floor was held by the Plant Protection Police. The Union had been obliged to deliver the strikers food by ladder, which made supplies very vulnerable. One of the Chevrolet workers in 1937 was Larry Jones. On January the 11th, the authorities decided to stop the delivery of food to the men who were... occupying Fisher No. 2, and this met with the violent disapproval not only of those who were occupying the plant, but those who were outside the plant. This was an emergency. It was a terribly cold night, but in no... time extra pickets and supporters turned up in Chevrolet Avenue. Strike headquarters had been tipped off. The management was going to turn off the heating in Fisher too. Victor Ruther hurried round in his sound car. When I arrived there the sit-down strikers were in a rather ugly mood because they were cold and they were hungry and they too had been tipped off because General Motors had concentrated some of its plant protection men from other buildings. And this was a tip-off that something was going to happen. And I came to give them a sort of strike bulletin of what was happening elsewhere and played a little music to pep them up. And they said, can the music, Ruther? We're hungry. and we want food. Their food was down there, outside the front door. Victor Ruther gave instructions from the sound car and a group of 30 hungry men inside the plant went down to the floor below. One of them, Roscoe Rich, led them to the chief of the Plant Protection Police who was inside the locked front doors. He said, now look, you're asking for a confrontation, let's have it. Now either give us the key to these doors, we're going to lock it and get our food out there, or we're going to tear the doors down. He said, Roscoe, I don't have the keys. He said, I haven't got them keys. I said, all right, I stepped back and I let these fellows hit the doors. Of course, they went down. And once they got out, they opened the other doors. They opened, bolted from the backside. We proceeded then to get our canvases, our cream cans and soup and our boxes of groceries and stuff from the outside then into the plant. The cries came up from our pickets on the outside that the police were coming. And through the corner of my eye, I could see a wave of police cars gradually coming down the hill and then crossing over the small bridge, the stream, at the factory entrance. And the police were wearing tear gas masks and carrying tear gas guns and shotguns. And as soon as they got near the bridge, they began lobbing the tear gas and firing shells. Near the sound car. with some of this new women's auxiliary. Before one could really comprehend the nature of what was happening, we knew that we were fighting buckshot and rifle fire, tear gas and firebombs. That evening all hell was let loose on Chevrolet Avenue, a battle no one had expected. Or had they? Some say the city police were waiting just round the corner, expecting trouble. Just how quickly they arrived on the scene, or who gave the order for them to intervene, is a matter of some confusion. It seems that the plant police had phoned the city police to say that they were being threatened by the strikers, and then locked themselves in a ladies'larry tree and fished out. to, and no one knew they were there till the morning. The fight now was between city police and workers who were convinced that this was an attempt by General Motors to evict them. The sit-down strikers had dragged the fire protection hoses... from inside the plant to the roof of the building and also had placed in strategic locations large quantities of automobile hinges now they were big heavy cast hinges then you see i mean box of them and those guys were heaving those things man that street was out there it looked like a hailstorm of the doggone hinges but the men downstairs were throwing them too you see we had men upstairs and downstairs both i don't think that's what the police figured on i finally said now look let's not waste any more water let's call her quits and just stand ready because we figured they're going to come back again and when the police did attack again in single file along the shadow at the side of the of the plant, some of the strikers were up on the roof of Fisher 2, looking down, waiting for them. They come down here, you know, just sneaking along here, so each of us, we take a coping tile off the top of this thing here and we hold it. But there wasn't enough coping tile to go around, so one guy used a fire extinguisher. So we watched them all lie up there nice and even, you know what I mean, and finally somebody says, now, everybody let go of coping tile. The guy with the fire extinguisher hit one of them across the shoulder and knocked him down flat on his back. And it was a comical part of it. It's not comical in a way, but it was funny to me because the policeman had him with one hand, one leg, the other had him with this leg over here. And they're running down the street with the guy, dragging him on his back. He had the cover around here, the water didn't break his noggin. They hauled him out across the pavement back up there to the bridge. I'll never forget that one. Numerous vehicles from the authorities, from the Sheriff's Department, and the city police were here, including Sheriff Tom Walcott. Now, Sheriff Tom Walcott was not necessarily in opposition to labor, but he was supposed to be upholding his obligation. He was very rudely shocked, however, when he got down here. His car was almost immediately overturned. In a later discussion with a group of people, I overheard him say, well, it was bad enough that you overturned the car, but he said, why in the hell did you do it while I was inside of it? And Sheriff Wolcott was also hit on the head by one of those car hinges. Over the sound of battle, Victor Luther could now be heard instructing how other cars could be used to keep the police at bay. I'll never forget. that when I gave the order to the pickets outside the building to move their own parked old automobiles to form a barricade there wasn't the slightest hesitancy although this represented an enormous investment in the lives of these people. Retreated behind these barricades, they'd fired at the workers and wounded 14 of them, some seriously. Genora Johnson was still down near the sound car. Somewhere in the darkness at both ends of Chevrolet Avenue, hundreds of... union supporters, men and women, were undecided what to do. All night long we had been using the sound car to try to mobilize the sentiment, you know, on both sides of the barricade. At one point, Victor Ruther came to a group of us and said privately, the batteries on the sound car are now running down, and we may have lost this battle, but we're not losing the war. But we had fought so long and so hard, and we had had so many of our ranks wounded that it was hard for us to even accept the idea. So I asked him, Victor, please may I speak? And... he said, well, we've got nothing to lose. So I took the microphone, and I was intensely furious with the police for firing into unarmed men, so I called them cowards, cowards, shooting into defenseless and unarmed men. And then I said, do you know that there are also women down here, and you're firing into the mothers of children? But the police, if they're cowards enough to shoot into unarmed men, defenseless men, man. then they're cowards enough to shoot into us also. Then I made my appeal to the women, and I said to the women, this is your fight. You have everything to gain by coming down here and standing with your brothers and your husbands and your sweethearts. Don't be afraid of the cops. Break through those lines. Come down here and stand with us. And a great miracle happened. There was a big roar that went up on both sides of the lines. and the women started to break through the lines of the police, and once they broke through and started moving down to the center of the activity, the men also followed them. And the police couldn't shoot women in the backs as they were marching down toward the center on both sides. And once that happened, the men streamed down, and we had the police then outnumbered. That was the end of the Battle of Bouled Front. The Bulls, they called the police the Bulls, had been put to flight. That's why it quickly became known in labor circles as the Battle of Bulls Run. News of this victory over the police quickly spread around the states and boosted the morale of striking General Motors workers everywhere. After the night of rioting, the governor of Michigan took action at once. Governor of Michigan. Governor Frank Murphy was known by the sit-downers as a fair and a humane man. Yet he brought in the troops, the National Guard. His idea was that they would act as a buffer between the strikers on the one side and the corporation and various anti-strikers on the other. strike groups on the other. With the National Guard there, Governor Murphy asked General Murtagh not to cut off heat, water, light, and food to the strikers, and he asked the strikers to refrain from what he called inflammatory acts and utterances. Most people on both sides welcomed the troops, as some of the men in Fisher II weren't too sure. But they did see that the vigilante committee, which was organized here in town, or anybody else didn't get in. They did see that we got our food delivered. They wouldn't let people in and out of the plant like we were going. But I think they'd done what they were supposed to do. So by now, after two weeks of strike, Flint was an armed camp with 2,000 militia, keeping both sides apart. The press and the cameras were obviously there too, and Governor Murphy went on the newsreels. We are not going to settle this. strike by force and violence. There isn't going to be mob rule here. We will work our way out of this strike peacefully and without injustice to anyone. And I am confident that after it's all over with... There will be a better understanding between employer and employee. And better still, I hope that conditions will be improved under which men and women labor and live. The governor spoke with optimism, but there was a long way to go yet. The anti-strike movement was gaining ground, particularly a General Motors-backed organization called the Flint Alliance. ...which sought to attract the many workers and townsfolk who saw the strikers just as dreads and agitators. The company union got full publicity around town and in the cinemas. Through the Flint Alliance, many citizens... and workers who want to get back on the job have registered their protest against the strike. The organization has received thousands of pledges in its campaign to secure a peaceful and speedy settlement of the industrial crisis. Those who feel the shutdown is injuring not only only capital but labor have taken this means of uniting the opposition to the strike many of the people who joined the Flint Alliance did so out of fear by their foreman saying well you know it would be healthier for you to go down and attend those meetings and so they built up very large meetings we never knew what plans were in store for us from the Workers Alliance the Pinkerton agents the corporation agents and company police and city police and just plain ordinary groups, marauding groups of troublemakers that were hired by the corporation. So with her experience of how the women had responded at the Battle of Bull's Run, 23-year-old Janora brought some of her women's auxiliary together to form a paramilitary emergency brigade to fight shoulder to shoulder with the men. She asked for tough volunteers. I told them we didn't want anyone who was prone to hysteria because if we were linking arms and one of our sisters went down in a pool of blood, we didn't have time to bother with somebody going into hysterics. And so we asked them please to think it over 10, 20 times before they signed their name to become a part of the brigade. And at that time we proposed wearing red berets and to make little arms. armbands that were red with white letters on. And so some of the women in the brigade got together and sewed these. These are just hand sewn and we wore them on the arms of our coats so that we could identify each other without too much hesitation. Because you remember the women's auxiliary would also be in picket lines and if she didn't have a beret on that meant that she was not available to be called for any emergency action. And of course many of the newspapers dramatized it and they said the mothers are going out fighting with their mops and brooms and rolling pins and some of them said the Joan of Arc of Labor is going to lead the women you know the mothers with their rolling pins we didn't actually carry mops and rolling pins and brooms but we did have to carry clubs and good-sized ones this emergency brigade was now a very meaningful force a relation of de Norris who was a high executive General Motors tried to buy her off. He sent word down through the family that if I would only come to my senses, he could give me a very good salary, starting salary, which would be a very big figure today in today's market. But I couldn't accept such a bribe, such an offer. Pressure was then brought on Genoa's father to turn his daughter, her husband Kermit Johnson, and their two children out of the apartment. he led to them. She made sure that that didn't happen. The county authorities now tried to cut off her medical treatment. She had active tuberculosis. But a friendly doctor continued to treat her and she was able to carry on her work even bringing children onto the picket lines. Above all running the emergency brigade. Our immediate aim was to have relief for our husbands and our sons and for the working women in those places. plants too. And we were well aware that we were fighting the world's most powerful corporation. If we could ever bring this mighty giant, this mighty billion dollar corporation to its knees to the bargaining table to talk with its workers, that it would set a marvelous example for the steel workers and all of the rest of the industrial workers of America. And so while the emergency brigade stood ready for action, the men of the The men stayed on in the plants. The strike had been on for a month already, but the corporation was still determined that it wouldn't even consider negotiations while the men continued their sit-down. Something drastic had to happen. The Union needed to hit General Motors where it hurt. They held Fisher II securely, but this was the only plant they occupied in the Chevrolet complex. Work elsewhere there was disrupted, but not crucially. They needed to close... down an essential plant. Now, plant four made the engines for all Chevrolet cars in the states. With that out of action, all motors really would be in a mess. Secret battle plans were made. And when the decision was made to pull plant four... The original plan was drawn up by my former husband, Kermit Johnson. In fact, there was a whole group in the leadership, the local leadership, who was against the taking of Plant 4, feeling that it was too big an objection. too difficult to capture, that it was impossible was the word that they used, and that if we failed there in Flint, we would lose the strike all over the whole nation. They had to win, but it really was a huge gamble. Plant 4 is right on Chevrolet Avenue. Nearly 2,000 men worked there each shift, and it was so important that it was well protected by corporation police. The planning committee arranged that a few completely trusted... unionists working there would organize a sit-down, a change of shift, on February the 1st. However, the day before, a carefully picked group of other unionists, known to contain at least one informer, were given specific instructions that there would be a sit-down at that same change of shift, but a quarter mile down the road at Plant 9. The strategy worked. The informer informed. The corporation made its plans accordingly. On February the 1st, the day shift went to work as usual. Unionists had instructions to fight to close Plant 9 at the change of shift that afternoon. Now at the end of Plant 9 at that time, was the personnel building. Now into the basement of the personnel building the company all day long slowly put their plant guards and plant protection the Pinkerton detectives and other strike breakers into the basement knowing they thought that plant 9 at the afternoon shift was to be a sit-down strike and they were to be prepared for it. They had their gas, they had their gas masks. The company people had their clubs and the other necessary implements to perform violence on these people in Plant 9. And they were so sure of their success that they took plant protection people from other plants. And when the men inside of Plant 9 started to sit down, all of the city police, all of the company police, all of the hired and paid agents, all converged upon this plant. which was quite some distance from our main target, the great big Plant 4. In Plant 4 was a handful of really trusted Union members. Leo Robinson had exact instructions for his part in timing shutdown. So we waited just about five, six minutes before we started to pull. And I had three bosses running behind me, brother, hollering, you're fired, and I was still grabbing switches. We shut our machines down, the ones that were union men. You know, we already belonged, but the rest of them wouldn't shut them down. The brothers, Ed and Henry Lean, had been secret union members for a long time. We picked up club or anything handy, you know, for us persuaders. I was real lucky in the apartment where I was because when I hollered, they all shut them down. on, shut the lights off and all works. And it was that. Gus Morley helped shut down another part of Plant 4. Then we go to the superintendent's office. We ask him to leave. He wouldn't leave. So we picked him up, Sharon Hall. We carried him out to the gate and hoisted him over the gate. He was mad about that. We started for the stairway. And our guy below was a. hooping and they was shutting her down and here we met a bunch of bosses they had connecting rods they had some camshafts and everything you take a carry and there was about 50 coming through the dining room and up the steps and they got us 15 or 16 took us to the front gate shoved us out there was no use to try to fight because man they would have about 50 of them that's about 15 of us and they shoved us out out that gate and slammed the gates to and locked them. And me and three or four other guys clumbed the gate and went. The taking of plant four was no picnic. But it would have got nowhere if the decoy fight, now taking place inside and outside plant nine, hadn't gone into action exactly according to plan. Many union men from other plants had gone in there to help with what they believed was a genuine sit-down attempt at this bearings plant. One was Kenny Malone. When I got in there, it was small parts and small parts. parts were flying all over the place and the company thugs had riot guns and had tear gas guns and the men inside there were were throwing the small parts at them like uh well i can't even recall exactly what it was but there were small parts something could hold in your hands and you know tell them Soon after the fighting started at Plant 9, Genora Johnson led the emergency brigade into action. She knew that this was only a mock battle to keep the police busy for as long as possible. We broke out the windows when one of the men put his face out and said, we're suffocating in here, let air into us. We broke out all of the windows at that point. And the Union men also participated. in this struggle over here, so we actually made it look like this was the part of the strategy that we wanted to have the success at. And they beat the winders out because they were tear gassing us inside there. These thugs, company thugs were using tear gas and they drove us into and against this wall and were shooting tear gas. And they had some guys right in the face with us. tear gas shell, you know. The men who'd gone into Plant 9 to help with the decoy sit-down had fought for real and hard, but they lost. We were thrown out, run out, or beaten out, whatever you want to call it. We were whipped. I went to Plant 4, and by that time, Plant 4 had already been taken by the strikers. And they were fortifying the plant. And the gates had been taken. I went in on Chevrolet Avenue, and the gate was locked. And it was a big high fence, a cyclone fence. And they put a ladder over the fence, and I climbed over the fence. At plant nine, the union men in the sound car were still keeping things stirred up. But the police began to feel now that they'd got things under control. At one point they threatened or looked like they were going to draw their guns on the union men in the sound car. And the women were there with their huge long clubs. And as the motions of the cops looked like they were going to attack the men... We raised our clubs at the backs of the police. And one of the newsreels caught that, and it was a beautiful picture, with the women in their raised clubs at the back of the police who were turned to threaten the men across from us. was over now for posing for photos and other delaying tactics. Leaving the brigade behind, Genora took her five lieutenants quietly around the corner to Chevrolet Avenue. When we got down to plant four, we saw a terrible mess of confusion. People being thrown over the gates, fistfights, all kinds of yelling and shouting just through the main gate doorway. We saw this going on. One of the men came to the forefront and yelled, we're having a hell of a Hell of a time in here. Suddenly, the women saw what seemed like half the Flint police force heading for Plant 4. If those police had gone in there at that point, pulled their guns and started shooting, that would have been a failure. The attempt to take that great big Plant 4, which was the final victory in bringing General Motors to the bargaining table, if they'd gone in at that point, I think they could have crushed the whole thing. So therefore, we knew we had... had to string ourselves across the gate and do what we could to stop them. We had sent the one woman to call the brigade back down again, and the remaining four lieutenants and I strung ourselves across the gate. And believe me, we were pinching into each other's hands, just grabbing tight. And the police came down and said, out of the way, we're going through there. But we stopped them long enough by pleading first, saying, if you work to That hellhole, and that was the name that the workers had given to that plant, Chevrolet, the hellhole. And if your life was shortened, as the lives of those men in there are shortened, wouldn't you expect your wife to be out here? fighting for your interests, fighting for your life, and fighting for a better way of life for your family. And we stopped them. We tried reasoning with them. We got a few responses. We held them just long enough. until they suddenly realized, well, they were sent down there to do a job, and they started pushing, saying, come on, we've got a job, we're going in there. And all of this time, we strung across that gate, locking ourselves in position so that they would have to club us unconscious in order to get past our five line of defense, our five women. And just at this point, at one of the most wonderful sights that any of us ever saw, we looked up at the top. of Chevrolet Avenue and we saw this wonderful brigade coming down with the American flags flying at its head the red berets bobbing up and down singing the song solidarity forever those women came down the police were quite disconcerted they set up an oval picket line and then from the other direction came to Union men and their sound truck and I climbed into the sound truck and started giving directions to the women. And the police again were faced with this terrible dilemma of having to have a pitched battle and with the greater number at that particular moment with women. And so we felt very good when we knew that finally that plant was secure, that it was barricaded, that the men were able to hold it and to sit down. The governor called for reinforcements and the militia cordoned off the whole area around Chevrolet Plant 4 and Fisher 2. All the pickets and union officials were removed from the area. Only genuine sit-downers were permitted to remain. The place really began to look as though it were under martial law. The National Guard had their machine gun post 100 feet away. feet apart all up and down Chevrolet Avenue here. It was thoroughly patrolled here. No one could get in. No one could get out without their permission. It was a virtual prisoner's camp insofar as the men in Plant 4 were concerned. They were sealed in for better or for worse. What worried the men in the plants and the Union officials was that the troops would be sent in to evict them. By now General Motors had a new and legal injunction against the sit-down. He gave the men 24 hours to get out or they'd be fined $15 million. It was the hapless Sheriff Alcott who had to go into Fisher One to deliver this preposterous Buster's ultimatum. Mr. Wolcott was really scared. The crowd as I remember it, as the best I could sense, was not very hostile towards him. They figured he was just a guy doing his job. They weren't out to hurt him, but I don't think he knew that. He was very afraid. He was very uneasy. Anyhow, he was allowed to read his injunction and went out. They booed him when it was all over. And that was all there was to it. Nobody had any intention of going out. This merely strengthened the man's determination to stick it out. They'd been... Within inside some 35 days now, pickets from all over the state of Michigan came in their thousands to make it impossible for the troops to occupy Fisher One. Meanwhile behind the scenes negotiations had really begun, but General Motors continued to insist that it would not consider re-employing strikers who had committed any acts of violence or sabotage. Even while the negotiations continued, the sit-downers in Flint were still under attack. Particularly the latest sit-downers in the vital Plant 4, cold and uncomfortable and isolated and already feeling the strain. The company put out propaganda that their wives were leaving us, you know, and the kids were sick, and well, they used to have a kind of a... scheme there was. And we know some people who actually were advised of their relatives or parents dying and when they got out they found out it was a ruse to get them out of the plants. They sent out telegrams to a lot of fellas. Say they had serious sickness at home, and they sent one to me that my father was dying. My father was in the sanatorium at the time, that my father was blind, and he was dying. After five days, they got me out of there, and I couldn't get back in. They did that. They did that to me. The company town of Flint was very bitter now. The question now was, would the governor of Michigan yield to pressure to uphold the court order to send in the troops to evacuate the plants? It was the last thing he wanted, but President Roosevelt was putting pressure on everybody, including Governor Murphy, to get the strike settled and quickly. General Motors must have lost millions of dollars by now. Their worried top executives continued to come daily to the bargaining table, still hoping to win. So did the heads of the UAW. There were bitter days of negotiation ahead. Back at the front line, the strain was beginning to tell. By then, I think the fifth or sixth week, we were saying, gee, I wonder if we're going to lose our fight. Not that we thought we were fighting for a bad cause, because we were still thinking we were right and they were wrong. But at last, Governor Murphy's perseverance paid off. General Moses agreed to recognize the UAW and not in any way to discriminate against the strikers. On its side, the Union agreed to terminate the strike and evacuate all the plants. Well, the strike has ended, thanks to these good men who are about me here. The peace will be a lasting one because it was brought about without force and violence. I trust it will mean a new mutual atmosphere of goodwill and good faith between employer and employee. Union recognition, here it was in Wright. the mightiest industrial corporation of the world had been whipped to its knees. The workers had finally won, and a big series of battles were to follow. But the big one, the climatic thing, had already transpired. General Motors had knuckled under. In the early morning of February 11, 1937, news came to the sit-downs that after 44 days, it was all over. Oh, well, we were all happy and jubilant, and it was the best thing we thought that could have happened to us. When we finally realized that it was the truth, especially when we seen the reporters outside taking pictures, and then we found out that it was okay to let them in the plant, They started taking pictures in a plant. I kept a clean-shaven face, and the fellas that decided to leave their beards grow, the news photographers thought they would make good copies. So all the old-timers that had beards, they got into the pictures. Yeah, they were cheering. So then we knew that we had made it. In years to come, men would write that the winning of the strike was the most important event in American labor history. The little union, the UAW, that had fought for recognition was to grow in less than a generation into the most powerful union in the world. Oh, that day was just unbelievable. The evacuation first occurred at Fisher One in the south end of Flint. They marched through the south end to the center of the city, over to Chevrolet, and down... came the men out of plant four and joined in this great marvelous procession and then they marched and they sang and they danced all night long in the streets of the city of flint buick workers and ac workers these plants were even on strike, came down and they celebrated with us. There was plenty to celebrate. Not one life had been lost thanks to Governor Murphy's skillful handling of the situation. Everyone on both sides of the barricades had a lot of reason for thanks, and some much reason for pride. After the strike, my job was rated at a dollar ten cents a night. an hour, which is an increase of approximately 40 cents an hour. Whether the line broke down for half an hour was of no significance because that still make a dollar ten cents an hour and then if they decided there was a breakdown they had to catch up on production and they had to run an hour over they had to pay us a time and a half before that we didn't get paid it was a gratuitous thing we just did it for free today i'm sitting here With over $600 a month pension, it all came through organized labor. At my old age, I'm able to sit around and do what I want to. They got 40 years of me down there, the best of my life. And now I'm able to enjoy a little bit of it, I'm getting. And if we hadn't have made good, we wouldn't have had nothing. We had to do it. We had to do it. Sit down and rest your feet. Sit down, you've got to be. Sit down, sit down. When the speed-up comes, just twiddle your thumbs. Sit down. Sit down. When you want them to know, they better go slow. Sit down, just take a seat. Sit down and rest your feet. Sit down, you've got to be. Sit down, sit down. When the boss don't talk, don't take a walk. Sit down, sit down. When the boss sees that, he'll want to chat. Sit down, sit down. Sit down, just take a seat. Sit down and rest your feet. Sit down, you've got to be. Sit down, sit down. Sit down, just take a seat. Sit down and rest your feet. Sit down, you've got to be. Sit down.

Flint is a company town and has been for more than half a century. Behold Flint, where the workers are well paid, well organized. Now, that is. But what a fight it took.

Back in the middle 1930s, life in Flint was bleak indeed. As it was in the car industry throughout America. America, like everywhere, was just emerging from the Great Depression.

In those days... If you got a job, you stuck to it. You didn't complain that the management exploited your vulnerability, that you were a faceless clock card number slaving like a robot on a speeded up production line. A working condition. were atrocious.

They were demanding more and more work from us. At one time they were running the line. You didn't even have time. The speed of the line was so fast, you didn't have time to go to the restroom. I used to come home and I would clean up and go to bed.

I couldn't even eat. I was that tired. These men had work, but they had no sick benefits, no overtime pay, no pension scheme, no holiday pay, no unemployment pay. If the production line stopped, you waited without pay until it was mended. And you didn't protest.

Now if you complain, then they take you to the window. Up the street was the employment office. So you see all them fellows looking for your job?

Keep your mouth shut or you're going to join them. And they've done that many times, grab you by the ear and take you and show you. So what was to be done then?

It was no use appealing to the management through the infamous manipulated company unions. True, Roosevelt's New Deal gave legal protection to labor organizations now, but how did you organize a real trade union when General Motors were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Pinkerton Detective Agency to watch the shop floor for any sort of union activity? We had a hundred or so of those guys right in the Chevrolet plant down there that was spying on us. The companies hired them, brought them in, put them on a machine next to you. As a new man, like that, we didn't know whether they were from this detective force spying upon labor.

That was their business, to spy upon us, see? But still, under the very noses of these paid spies, organizers from the UAW... the newly formed union of automobile workers, had come to Flint to enlist enough members to take on the vast General Motors corporation and demand recognition.

The organizational drive, in secret of course, developed greater and greater momentum to the point where it was thought that maybe the strength was great enough to conduct a sit-down strike. The first objective was the huge Fisher Body Works known as Fisher One. It was the biggest car body factory in the world making 1400 Buick car bodies a day.

Fisher One had 7,000 workers. And here, in the last weeks of 1936, the young UAW had signed on several hundred members. It was as recently as that, ten years after Britain's general strike.

That's how it was in America. On December the 30th, the union told its members to pull the switches, stop the production lines, and sit down. You've got to be, sit down, sit down.

When the speed up comes, just twiddle your thumbs. Sit down, sit down. When you want them to know. Oh, they better go slow.

Sit down. Sit down. Sit down, just take a seat. Sit down and rest your feet. Sit down, you've got a beat.

Sit down, sit down. The actual pretext for calling that strike is hardly remembered now, nor is it especially relevant. The hundreds of men who sat down that day did so in general protest at their atrocious working conditions.

Every man of them knew that if they lost that strike they would almost certainly never work in a General Motors plant again. This didn't intimidate young car workers like Stephen Ryszfalski. Well, the first week was kind of exciting. It was an experience and it was an adventure for, especially I was young. I was only 19 years old at the time.

And it seemed like a lot of fun the first week. I happened to be working in final assembly and the cushion room was right next door and there were plenty of cushions. So we slept in comfort. We played cards and slept and chewed the rag.

I was no problem. The motivation for the strike was simply for union recognition. The method and style of the strike sitting down on the job was just becoming known in the United States.

Mundo Blankenship found the actual process rather tedious. There was an awful lot of checker games, card games, concerts. There were some people who had some musical skills who'd like to perform, but mostly it was boring. You just sat around waiting to see what was going to come next. Their discipline was very rudimentary.

It was just very crude. But they did have a certain organization where they tried to maintain patrols, picket duty, and have men available on call for any emergencies. And there was some making of weapons. They made blackjacks. There were some guys in there who were actually spoiling for a fight.

And in Fisher 1, the strike leaders expected a fight, and a long one. The strikers'morale was sustained and encouraged by sound cars, loudspeaker vans, brought in by young organizers from Detroit like Victor Ruther, one of the three Ruther brothers so memorable in American Union history. Obviously our fear and concern from the very day the strike began Was that the sit-down strikers would be physically evicted? The corporation had gone to the courts which they controlled and had secured an injunction to evict the strikers, but we remained inside the plants. They stayed inside basically because they weren't going to leave until they'd got union recognition, but also because the judge who had ordered their eviction, Judge Edward D. Black, was found to own more than $200,000 worth of General Motors shares.

The men began to dig in for a long struggle. They could rely on their organization outside to provision them. We had a platform built up to the first floor windows where we passed food in through, and many times some of the leaders... of the union would present herself there at the window and encourage us to not become depressed. And they said they were working on an agreement and a settlement and that we would get the union accepted as a negotiation, a negotiating agent for the workers.

Some of the union leaders went inside to bring news from the score or so of General Motors plants around the state, themselves too striking for recognition. Outside the Fisher Body Plant, the supporters kept watch round the clock. One of them, often in the picket lines, was the wife of a Flint worker and a leading union man.

She was infuriated at the new tactics now being used by General Motors. against the strikers. General Motors let it be known by radio and by newspaper articles and everything else that these men who were sitting down were radicals and communists and they meant to disrupt the whole economy of the city. Genora Johnson was 23 then.

She was in this psychological warfare up to her eyes. There were all kinds of rumors going around that were perpetrated by agents going out into neighborhoods saying, oh, those men setting in at Fisher Body, they've got cushions in there, they've got beds made of car seats, all the upholstery material, and they're bringing in burlesque women, they're bringing in all kinds of... music and booze and all kinds of forms of diversion for those men. You women are having it rough. You're the ones who are doing all the sacrificing, and your husbands will wind up being fired for good, and who's doing the sacrificing in this whole development?

It's you and not those men who are having a good time. Dinora Johnson and her friends formed themselves into a militant group. ...group, quite unprecedented in America at that time, which they called the Women's Auxiliary.

Such a thing hadn't happened before, and they knew very well what they were up against. So we sent women out to talk to the wives. these men who were having problems at home.

And many of them came down and worked with us after the women went out and explained what it would mean to their family budget to the health of the family. Now that the wives got the hang of what the strike meant and its importance to everybody's future, they would come down to the plant, often with the children. They collected food and cash to help the campaign. This women's auxiliary with its slogans and its picket lines was a huge boost to the men inside, many of whom still hadn't quite realized what a seriously long drawn-out business this might well be. We thought the sit-down thing would only last a week.

We thought surely management wouldn't allow this to go on because cars were in demand the 37 model is what we were working on we'd only been into it a month or two and we and there was a demand for the 37 things were looking up in america at that time and uh in the united states and jesus we were coming out of the depression and we thought golly surely they'll settle and recognize us and bargain with us but we once we got in through the second week and got into the third week some of the fellows start saying well gee Maybe maybe we're not going to make it me. Maybe we're all going to get fired after this is all over so some of them leave and and But our organizers and our leaders Recognize what was happening and they said well look fellas. There's nothing says you can't leave but come back but Some of the guys were getting depressed and they said hell let's let's call this thing off. Let's let's get out of here.

Let's Let's go back to work. Some were getting delinquent on their house payments. They had just started buying houses and some were losing their cars and some were losing their furniture.

And of course the union was getting involved in that hassle because they were trying to put the pressure on the finance companies and the banks. Say, hey, look, you're going to want our business when this is all over. We'll remember you.

And so they set it out in Fisher One, and the Buick plants elsewhere in this General Motors town were gradually starved of car bodies. Now, two miles away in the centre of Flint is the huge Chevrolet manufacturing complex. In the 1930s more than 10,000 men worked here in appalling conditions.

Here also there had been two weeks of sit-down, but Fisher won smaller counterpart, Fisher II, which normally turned out more than 400 Chevrolet cars. bodies a day. Here the hundred or so strikers held the upper floor only.

The ground floor was held by the Plant Protection Police. The Union had been obliged to deliver the strikers food by ladder, which made supplies very vulnerable. One of the Chevrolet workers in 1937 was Larry Jones. On January the 11th, the authorities decided to stop the delivery of food to the men who were... occupying Fisher No. 2, and this met with the violent disapproval not only of those who were occupying the plant, but those who were outside the plant.

This was an emergency. It was a terribly cold night, but in no... time extra pickets and supporters turned up in Chevrolet Avenue.

Strike headquarters had been tipped off. The management was going to turn off the heating in Fisher too. Victor Ruther hurried round in his sound car. When I arrived there the sit-down strikers were in a rather ugly mood because they were cold and they were hungry and they too had been tipped off because General Motors had concentrated some of its plant protection men from other buildings.

And this was a tip-off that something was going to happen. And I came to give them a sort of strike bulletin of what was happening elsewhere and played a little music to pep them up. And they said, can the music, Ruther? We're hungry.

and we want food. Their food was down there, outside the front door. Victor Ruther gave instructions from the sound car and a group of 30 hungry men inside the plant went down to the floor below.

One of them, Roscoe Rich, led them to the chief of the Plant Protection Police who was inside the locked front doors. He said, now look, you're asking for a confrontation, let's have it. Now either give us the key to these doors, we're going to lock it and get our food out there, or we're going to tear the doors down. He said, Roscoe, I don't have the keys.

He said, I haven't got them keys. I said, all right, I stepped back and I let these fellows hit the doors. Of course, they went down.

And once they got out, they opened the other doors. They opened, bolted from the backside. We proceeded then to get our canvases, our cream cans and soup and our boxes of groceries and stuff from the outside then into the plant.

The cries came up from our pickets on the outside that the police were coming. And through the corner of my eye, I could see a wave of police cars gradually coming down the hill and then crossing over the small bridge, the stream, at the factory entrance. And the police were wearing tear gas masks and carrying tear gas guns and shotguns. And as soon as they got near the bridge, they began lobbing the tear gas and firing shells. Near the sound car.

with some of this new women's auxiliary. Before one could really comprehend the nature of what was happening, we knew that we were fighting buckshot and rifle fire, tear gas and firebombs. That evening all hell was let loose on Chevrolet Avenue, a battle no one had expected.

Or had they? Some say the city police were waiting just round the corner, expecting trouble. Just how quickly they arrived on the scene, or who gave the order for them to intervene, is a matter of some confusion.

It seems that the plant police had phoned the city police to say that they were being threatened by the strikers, and then locked themselves in a ladies'larry tree and fished out. to, and no one knew they were there till the morning. The fight now was between city police and workers who were convinced that this was an attempt by General Motors to evict them.

The sit-down strikers had dragged the fire protection hoses... from inside the plant to the roof of the building and also had placed in strategic locations large quantities of automobile hinges now they were big heavy cast hinges then you see i mean box of them and those guys were heaving those things man that street was out there it looked like a hailstorm of the doggone hinges but the men downstairs were throwing them too you see we had men upstairs and downstairs both i don't think that's what the police figured on i finally said now look let's not waste any more water let's call her quits and just stand ready because we figured they're going to come back again and when the police did attack again in single file along the shadow at the side of the of the plant, some of the strikers were up on the roof of Fisher 2, looking down, waiting for them. They come down here, you know, just sneaking along here, so each of us, we take a coping tile off the top of this thing here and we hold it. But there wasn't enough coping tile to go around, so one guy used a fire extinguisher. So we watched them all lie up there nice and even, you know what I mean, and finally somebody says, now, everybody let go of coping tile.

The guy with the fire extinguisher hit one of them across the shoulder and knocked him down flat on his back. And it was a comical part of it. It's not comical in a way, but it was funny to me because the policeman had him with one hand, one leg, the other had him with this leg over here. And they're running down the street with the guy, dragging him on his back. He had the cover around here, the water didn't break his noggin.

They hauled him out across the pavement back up there to the bridge. I'll never forget that one. Numerous vehicles from the authorities, from the Sheriff's Department, and the city police were here, including Sheriff Tom Walcott.

Now, Sheriff Tom Walcott was not necessarily in opposition to labor, but he was supposed to be upholding his obligation. He was very rudely shocked, however, when he got down here. His car was almost immediately overturned. In a later discussion with a group of people, I overheard him say, well, it was bad enough that you overturned the car, but he said, why in the hell did you do it while I was inside of it?

And Sheriff Wolcott was also hit on the head by one of those car hinges. Over the sound of battle, Victor Luther could now be heard instructing how other cars could be used to keep the police at bay. I'll never forget. that when I gave the order to the pickets outside the building to move their own parked old automobiles to form a barricade there wasn't the slightest hesitancy although this represented an enormous investment in the lives of these people.

Retreated behind these barricades, they'd fired at the workers and wounded 14 of them, some seriously. Genora Johnson was still down near the sound car. Somewhere in the darkness at both ends of Chevrolet Avenue, hundreds of...

union supporters, men and women, were undecided what to do. All night long we had been using the sound car to try to mobilize the sentiment, you know, on both sides of the barricade. At one point, Victor Ruther came to a group of us and said privately, the batteries on the sound car are now running down, and we may have lost this battle, but we're not losing the war. But we had fought so long and so hard, and we had had so many of our ranks wounded that it was hard for us to even accept the idea.

So I asked him, Victor, please may I speak? And... he said, well, we've got nothing to lose. So I took the microphone, and I was intensely furious with the police for firing into unarmed men, so I called them cowards, cowards, shooting into defenseless and unarmed men. And then I said, do you know that there are also women down here, and you're firing into the mothers of children?

But the police, if they're cowards enough to shoot into unarmed men, defenseless men, man. then they're cowards enough to shoot into us also. Then I made my appeal to the women, and I said to the women, this is your fight. You have everything to gain by coming down here and standing with your brothers and your husbands and your sweethearts. Don't be afraid of the cops. Break through those lines.

Come down here and stand with us. And a great miracle happened. There was a big roar that went up on both sides of the lines. and the women started to break through the lines of the police, and once they broke through and started moving down to the center of the activity, the men also followed them.

And the police couldn't shoot women in the backs as they were marching down toward the center on both sides. And once that happened, the men streamed down, and we had the police then outnumbered. That was the end of the Battle of Bouled Front.

The Bulls, they called the police the Bulls, had been put to flight. That's why it quickly became known in labor circles as the Battle of Bulls Run. News of this victory over the police quickly spread around the states and boosted the morale of striking General Motors workers everywhere. After the night of rioting, the governor of Michigan took action at once.

Governor of Michigan. Governor Frank Murphy was known by the sit-downers as a fair and a humane man. Yet he brought in the troops, the National Guard.

His idea was that they would act as a buffer between the strikers on the one side and the corporation and various anti-strikers on the other. strike groups on the other. With the National Guard there, Governor Murphy asked General Murtagh not to cut off heat, water, light, and food to the strikers, and he asked the strikers to refrain from what he called inflammatory acts and utterances. Most people on both sides welcomed the troops, as some of the men in Fisher II weren't too sure. But they did see that the vigilante committee, which was organized here in town, or anybody else didn't get in.

They did see that we got our food delivered. They wouldn't let people in and out of the plant like we were going. But I think they'd done what they were supposed to do. So by now, after two weeks of strike, Flint was an armed camp with 2,000 militia, keeping both sides apart.

The press and the cameras were obviously there too, and Governor Murphy went on the newsreels. We are not going to settle this. strike by force and violence.

There isn't going to be mob rule here. We will work our way out of this strike peacefully and without injustice to anyone. And I am confident that after it's all over with...

There will be a better understanding between employer and employee. And better still, I hope that conditions will be improved under which men and women labor and live. The governor spoke with optimism, but there was a long way to go yet. The anti-strike movement was gaining ground, particularly a General Motors-backed organization called the Flint Alliance.

...which sought to attract the many workers and townsfolk who saw the strikers just as dreads and agitators. The company union got full publicity around town and in the cinemas. Through the Flint Alliance, many citizens...

and workers who want to get back on the job have registered their protest against the strike. The organization has received thousands of pledges in its campaign to secure a peaceful and speedy settlement of the industrial crisis. Those who feel the shutdown is injuring not only only capital but labor have taken this means of uniting the opposition to the strike many of the people who joined the Flint Alliance did so out of fear by their foreman saying well you know it would be healthier for you to go down and attend those meetings and so they built up very large meetings we never knew what plans were in store for us from the Workers Alliance the Pinkerton agents the corporation agents and company police and city police and just plain ordinary groups, marauding groups of troublemakers that were hired by the corporation. So with her experience of how the women had responded at the Battle of Bull's Run, 23-year-old Janora brought some of her women's auxiliary together to form a paramilitary emergency brigade to fight shoulder to shoulder with the men. She asked for tough volunteers.

I told them we didn't want anyone who was prone to hysteria because if we were linking arms and one of our sisters went down in a pool of blood, we didn't have time to bother with somebody going into hysterics. And so we asked them please to think it over 10, 20 times before they signed their name to become a part of the brigade. And at that time we proposed wearing red berets and to make little arms.

armbands that were red with white letters on. And so some of the women in the brigade got together and sewed these. These are just hand sewn and we wore them on the arms of our coats so that we could identify each other without too much hesitation.

Because you remember the women's auxiliary would also be in picket lines and if she didn't have a beret on that meant that she was not available to be called for any emergency action. And of course many of the newspapers dramatized it and they said the mothers are going out fighting with their mops and brooms and rolling pins and some of them said the Joan of Arc of Labor is going to lead the women you know the mothers with their rolling pins we didn't actually carry mops and rolling pins and brooms but we did have to carry clubs and good-sized ones this emergency brigade was now a very meaningful force a relation of de Norris who was a high executive General Motors tried to buy her off. He sent word down through the family that if I would only come to my senses, he could give me a very good salary, starting salary, which would be a very big figure today in today's market. But I couldn't accept such a bribe, such an offer.

Pressure was then brought on Genoa's father to turn his daughter, her husband Kermit Johnson, and their two children out of the apartment. he led to them. She made sure that that didn't happen.

The county authorities now tried to cut off her medical treatment. She had active tuberculosis. But a friendly doctor continued to treat her and she was able to carry on her work even bringing children onto the picket lines. Above all running the emergency brigade. Our immediate aim was to have relief for our husbands and our sons and for the working women in those places.

plants too. And we were well aware that we were fighting the world's most powerful corporation. If we could ever bring this mighty giant, this mighty billion dollar corporation to its knees to the bargaining table to talk with its workers, that it would set a marvelous example for the steel workers and all of the rest of the industrial workers of America.

And so while the emergency brigade stood ready for action, the men of the The men stayed on in the plants. The strike had been on for a month already, but the corporation was still determined that it wouldn't even consider negotiations while the men continued their sit-down. Something drastic had to happen.

The Union needed to hit General Motors where it hurt. They held Fisher II securely, but this was the only plant they occupied in the Chevrolet complex. Work elsewhere there was disrupted, but not crucially. They needed to close...

down an essential plant. Now, plant four made the engines for all Chevrolet cars in the states. With that out of action, all motors really would be in a mess.

Secret battle plans were made. And when the decision was made to pull plant four... The original plan was drawn up by my former husband, Kermit Johnson.

In fact, there was a whole group in the leadership, the local leadership, who was against the taking of Plant 4, feeling that it was too big an objection. too difficult to capture, that it was impossible was the word that they used, and that if we failed there in Flint, we would lose the strike all over the whole nation. They had to win, but it really was a huge gamble.

Plant 4 is right on Chevrolet Avenue. Nearly 2,000 men worked there each shift, and it was so important that it was well protected by corporation police. The planning committee arranged that a few completely trusted... unionists working there would organize a sit-down, a change of shift, on February the 1st.

However, the day before, a carefully picked group of other unionists, known to contain at least one informer, were given specific instructions that there would be a sit-down at that same change of shift, but a quarter mile down the road at Plant 9. The strategy worked. The informer informed. The corporation made its plans accordingly. On February the 1st, the day shift went to work as usual.

Unionists had instructions to fight to close Plant 9 at the change of shift that afternoon. Now at the end of Plant 9 at that time, was the personnel building. Now into the basement of the personnel building the company all day long slowly put their plant guards and plant protection the Pinkerton detectives and other strike breakers into the basement knowing they thought that plant 9 at the afternoon shift was to be a sit-down strike and they were to be prepared for it. They had their gas, they had their gas masks. The company people had their clubs and the other necessary implements to perform violence on these people in Plant 9. And they were so sure of their success that they took plant protection people from other plants.

And when the men inside of Plant 9 started to sit down, all of the city police, all of the company police, all of the hired and paid agents, all converged upon this plant. which was quite some distance from our main target, the great big Plant 4. In Plant 4 was a handful of really trusted Union members. Leo Robinson had exact instructions for his part in timing shutdown. So we waited just about five, six minutes before we started to pull. And I had three bosses running behind me, brother, hollering, you're fired, and I was still grabbing switches.

We shut our machines down, the ones that were union men. You know, we already belonged, but the rest of them wouldn't shut them down. The brothers, Ed and Henry Lean, had been secret union members for a long time. We picked up club or anything handy, you know, for us persuaders.

I was real lucky in the apartment where I was because when I hollered, they all shut them down. on, shut the lights off and all works. And it was that.

Gus Morley helped shut down another part of Plant 4. Then we go to the superintendent's office. We ask him to leave. He wouldn't leave.

So we picked him up, Sharon Hall. We carried him out to the gate and hoisted him over the gate. He was mad about that. We started for the stairway.

And our guy below was a. hooping and they was shutting her down and here we met a bunch of bosses they had connecting rods they had some camshafts and everything you take a carry and there was about 50 coming through the dining room and up the steps and they got us 15 or 16 took us to the front gate shoved us out there was no use to try to fight because man they would have about 50 of them that's about 15 of us and they shoved us out out that gate and slammed the gates to and locked them. And me and three or four other guys clumbed the gate and went.

The taking of plant four was no picnic. But it would have got nowhere if the decoy fight, now taking place inside and outside plant nine, hadn't gone into action exactly according to plan. Many union men from other plants had gone in there to help with what they believed was a genuine sit-down attempt at this bearings plant.

One was Kenny Malone. When I got in there, it was small parts and small parts. parts were flying all over the place and the company thugs had riot guns and had tear gas guns and the men inside there were were throwing the small parts at them like uh well i can't even recall exactly what it was but there were small parts something could hold in your hands and you know tell them Soon after the fighting started at Plant 9, Genora Johnson led the emergency brigade into action. She knew that this was only a mock battle to keep the police busy for as long as possible. We broke out the windows when one of the men put his face out and said, we're suffocating in here, let air into us.

We broke out all of the windows at that point. And the Union men also participated. in this struggle over here, so we actually made it look like this was the part of the strategy that we wanted to have the success at.

And they beat the winders out because they were tear gassing us inside there. These thugs, company thugs were using tear gas and they drove us into and against this wall and were shooting tear gas. And they had some guys right in the face with us. tear gas shell, you know.

The men who'd gone into Plant 9 to help with the decoy sit-down had fought for real and hard, but they lost. We were thrown out, run out, or beaten out, whatever you want to call it. We were whipped. I went to Plant 4, and by that time, Plant 4 had already been taken by the strikers. And they were fortifying the plant.

And the gates had been taken. I went in on Chevrolet Avenue, and the gate was locked. And it was a big high fence, a cyclone fence.

And they put a ladder over the fence, and I climbed over the fence. At plant nine, the union men in the sound car were still keeping things stirred up. But the police began to feel now that they'd got things under control. At one point they threatened or looked like they were going to draw their guns on the union men in the sound car. And the women were there with their huge long clubs.

And as the motions of the cops looked like they were going to attack the men... We raised our clubs at the backs of the police. And one of the newsreels caught that, and it was a beautiful picture, with the women in their raised clubs at the back of the police who were turned to threaten the men across from us.

was over now for posing for photos and other delaying tactics. Leaving the brigade behind, Genora took her five lieutenants quietly around the corner to Chevrolet Avenue. When we got down to plant four, we saw a terrible mess of confusion. People being thrown over the gates, fistfights, all kinds of yelling and shouting just through the main gate doorway.

We saw this going on. One of the men came to the forefront and yelled, we're having a hell of a Hell of a time in here. Suddenly, the women saw what seemed like half the Flint police force heading for Plant 4. If those police had gone in there at that point, pulled their guns and started shooting, that would have been a failure. The attempt to take that great big Plant 4, which was the final victory in bringing General Motors to the bargaining table, if they'd gone in at that point, I think they could have crushed the whole thing.

So therefore, we knew we had... had to string ourselves across the gate and do what we could to stop them. We had sent the one woman to call the brigade back down again, and the remaining four lieutenants and I strung ourselves across the gate. And believe me, we were pinching into each other's hands, just grabbing tight.

And the police came down and said, out of the way, we're going through there. But we stopped them long enough by pleading first, saying, if you work to That hellhole, and that was the name that the workers had given to that plant, Chevrolet, the hellhole. And if your life was shortened, as the lives of those men in there are shortened, wouldn't you expect your wife to be out here?

fighting for your interests, fighting for your life, and fighting for a better way of life for your family. And we stopped them. We tried reasoning with them. We got a few responses.

We held them just long enough. until they suddenly realized, well, they were sent down there to do a job, and they started pushing, saying, come on, we've got a job, we're going in there. And all of this time, we strung across that gate, locking ourselves in position so that they would have to club us unconscious in order to get past our five line of defense, our five women. And just at this point, at one of the most wonderful sights that any of us ever saw, we looked up at the top.

of Chevrolet Avenue and we saw this wonderful brigade coming down with the American flags flying at its head the red berets bobbing up and down singing the song solidarity forever those women came down the police were quite disconcerted they set up an oval picket line and then from the other direction came to Union men and their sound truck and I climbed into the sound truck and started giving directions to the women. And the police again were faced with this terrible dilemma of having to have a pitched battle and with the greater number at that particular moment with women. And so we felt very good when we knew that finally that plant was secure, that it was barricaded, that the men were able to hold it and to sit down. The governor called for reinforcements and the militia cordoned off the whole area around Chevrolet Plant 4 and Fisher 2. All the pickets and union officials were removed from the area. Only genuine sit-downers were permitted to remain.

The place really began to look as though it were under martial law. The National Guard had their machine gun post 100 feet away. feet apart all up and down Chevrolet Avenue here. It was thoroughly patrolled here. No one could get in.

No one could get out without their permission. It was a virtual prisoner's camp insofar as the men in Plant 4 were concerned. They were sealed in for better or for worse. What worried the men in the plants and the Union officials was that the troops would be sent in to evict them.

By now General Motors had a new and legal injunction against the sit-down. He gave the men 24 hours to get out or they'd be fined $15 million. It was the hapless Sheriff Alcott who had to go into Fisher One to deliver this preposterous Buster's ultimatum.

Mr. Wolcott was really scared. The crowd as I remember it, as the best I could sense, was not very hostile towards him. They figured he was just a guy doing his job.

They weren't out to hurt him, but I don't think he knew that. He was very afraid. He was very uneasy.

Anyhow, he was allowed to read his injunction and went out. They booed him when it was all over. And that was all there was to it. Nobody had any intention of going out. This merely strengthened the man's determination to stick it out.

They'd been... Within inside some 35 days now, pickets from all over the state of Michigan came in their thousands to make it impossible for the troops to occupy Fisher One. Meanwhile behind the scenes negotiations had really begun, but General Motors continued to insist that it would not consider re-employing strikers who had committed any acts of violence or sabotage.

Even while the negotiations continued, the sit-downers in Flint were still under attack. Particularly the latest sit-downers in the vital Plant 4, cold and uncomfortable and isolated and already feeling the strain. The company put out propaganda that their wives were leaving us, you know, and the kids were sick, and well, they used to have a kind of a...

scheme there was. And we know some people who actually were advised of their relatives or parents dying and when they got out they found out it was a ruse to get them out of the plants. They sent out telegrams to a lot of fellas.

Say they had serious sickness at home, and they sent one to me that my father was dying. My father was in the sanatorium at the time, that my father was blind, and he was dying. After five days, they got me out of there, and I couldn't get back in. They did that.

They did that to me. The company town of Flint was very bitter now. The question now was, would the governor of Michigan yield to pressure to uphold the court order to send in the troops to evacuate the plants? It was the last thing he wanted, but President Roosevelt was putting pressure on everybody, including Governor Murphy, to get the strike settled and quickly.

General Motors must have lost millions of dollars by now. Their worried top executives continued to come daily to the bargaining table, still hoping to win. So did the heads of the UAW. There were bitter days of negotiation ahead. Back at the front line, the strain was beginning to tell.

By then, I think the fifth or sixth week, we were saying, gee, I wonder if we're going to lose our fight. Not that we thought we were fighting for a bad cause, because we were still thinking we were right and they were wrong. But at last, Governor Murphy's perseverance paid off. General Moses agreed to recognize the UAW and not in any way to discriminate against the strikers. On its side, the Union agreed to terminate the strike and evacuate all the plants.

Well, the strike has ended, thanks to these good men who are about me here. The peace will be a lasting one because it was brought about without force and violence. I trust it will mean a new mutual atmosphere of goodwill and good faith between employer and employee.

Union recognition, here it was in Wright. the mightiest industrial corporation of the world had been whipped to its knees. The workers had finally won, and a big series of battles were to follow.

But the big one, the climatic thing, had already transpired. General Motors had knuckled under. In the early morning of February 11, 1937, news came to the sit-downs that after 44 days, it was all over.

Oh, well, we were all happy and jubilant, and it was the best thing we thought that could have happened to us. When we finally realized that it was the truth, especially when we seen the reporters outside taking pictures, and then we found out that it was okay to let them in the plant, They started taking pictures in a plant. I kept a clean-shaven face, and the fellas that decided to leave their beards grow, the news photographers thought they would make good copies. So all the old-timers that had beards, they got into the pictures.

Yeah, they were cheering. So then we knew that we had made it. In years to come, men would write that the winning of the strike was the most important event in American labor history.

The little union, the UAW, that had fought for recognition was to grow in less than a generation into the most powerful union in the world. Oh, that day was just unbelievable. The evacuation first occurred at Fisher One in the south end of Flint.

They marched through the south end to the center of the city, over to Chevrolet, and down... came the men out of plant four and joined in this great marvelous procession and then they marched and they sang and they danced all night long in the streets of the city of flint buick workers and ac workers these plants were even on strike, came down and they celebrated with us. There was plenty to celebrate. Not one life had been lost thanks to Governor Murphy's skillful handling of the situation. Everyone on both sides of the barricades had a lot of reason for thanks, and some much reason for pride.

After the strike, my job was rated at a dollar ten cents a night. an hour, which is an increase of approximately 40 cents an hour. Whether the line broke down for half an hour was of no significance because that still make a dollar ten cents an hour and then if they decided there was a breakdown they had to catch up on production and they had to run an hour over they had to pay us a time and a half before that we didn't get paid it was a gratuitous thing we just did it for free today i'm sitting here With over $600 a month pension, it all came through organized labor.

At my old age, I'm able to sit around and do what I want to. They got 40 years of me down there, the best of my life. And now I'm able to enjoy a little bit of it, I'm getting.

And if we hadn't have made good, we wouldn't have had nothing. We had to do it. We had to do it. Sit down and rest your feet. Sit down, you've got to be.

Sit down, sit down. When the speed-up comes, just twiddle your thumbs. Sit down. Sit down. When you want them to know, they better go slow.

Sit down, just take a seat. Sit down and rest your feet. Sit down, you've got to be. Sit down, sit down. When the boss don't talk, don't take a walk.

Sit down, sit down. When the boss sees that, he'll want to chat. Sit down, sit down.

Sit down, just take a seat. Sit down and rest your feet. Sit down, you've got to be.

Sit down, sit down. Sit down, just take a seat. Sit down and rest your feet.

Sit down, you've got to be. Sit down.

Transcript for:The Sit-Down Strike at General Motors

Transcript for:
The Sit-Down Strike at General Motors