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Back in Cleveland she overslept, missing the morning train to Philadelphia; on the later train she sat up all night reading Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil. In Philadelphia she addressed the fruit packers union in the afternoon of May 11 and early that night gave a rousing speech to 1,000 members of the United Distillery Workers of America;12 afterward, she was guest of honor at a “swell” reception. Interspersed with these social and Socialist activities, Genora also found time for a bit of politics and culture. She went to Harrisburg, the state capital, to hear lawmakers’ discussions on various labor bills; she saw the movies Café Metropole and A Star Is Born and went on a daylong excursion to Atlantic City.13

At Camden, New Jersey, Genora spoke to shipyard workers, receiving an honorary membership in the Camden Women’s Auxiliary, which hosted a banquet in her honor. In Jersey City she spoke to the International Union of Machinists and addressed a special meeting of the women’s committee. These gatherings continued: Temple University students in Philadelphia, as well as that city’s Painter’s Union; National Convention of Office and Professional Workers Union; and others. She bolstered so many failing labor movements, the saying “Flint is Coming” came to mean that Genora Johnson was on the way.14

After six weeks of as arduous a trip as Genora ever took, she returned to Flint and collapsed, suffering a relapse of TB brought on by the strenuous activities of the last month and a half. Bob and Max Delson raised funds from sympathetic unions in various industrial cities for her to spend six months at the Trudeau Sanitarium in the Adirondacks in upper New York state. During this stay at the hospital, she learned that she no longer had the use of her right lung, yet she continued to smoke cigarettes for many years to come.15 While on her speaking tour, Genora’s friend and colleague, Teckler Roy, was left in charge of the Women’s Brigade in Flint. When Genora found that she would have a further absence of at least six months in the TB sanitarium, the EB began to fall apart. It had become full of factions in her absence, reflecting the general state of the UAW itself. All sorts of political ideologues vied for power. At the first meeting upon her return, Genora’s “nerves were shot,” and she realized that the EB was just about to pass into history. Anyway, she consoled herself, there was no “further need for an emergency military organization like that.”16

Returning from Trudeau as the momentous year of 1937 came to a close, Genora squeezed in the UAW convention in Milwaukee. Although Kermit was a delegate, Genora was not, but she represented numerous women’s organizations and was authorized to sit in on all the caucus meetings.17 Milwaukee Socialist mayor Dan Hoan held a banquet for Socialist members of the UAW in attendance and presented Genora with the keys to the city.18 Though the EB no longer existed, Genora had no intention of remaining idle throughout the new year. In February 1938 she faced one of her most sensitive and compelling campaigns yet. It revolved around a large group of poor workers’ families, many of whom had just arrived from the South. Before it ended, she attracted the attention of state officials in Lansing as well as FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Washington, D.C.

The WPA was a New Deal agency designed to help down-and-out-ers and contribute to ending the Depression. Apparently, however, WPA locals could and did get caught up in governmental bureaucracy and red tape. Such was the case in 1938, in Flint, Michigan—so much so that Kermit and Genora Johnson organized the Unemployed Workers Union, Number Twelve.19 Unemployed workers were evicted from their homes and sent to “shelters” after banks foreclosed on them. One shelter housed males and the other, women and children, though separating families ran counter to official New Deal policies.20 As the WPA functionaries placed families’ furniture out on the street,