Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [67]
While Genora defended herself against what she considered to be unfounded attacks, Sol, after his release from the TB sanitarium, found that he had been transferred to the toughest jobs (speedups, for one) at the Chevrolet Assembly plant to “build a case to eventually lead to a firing.”54 He filed a grievance, but nothing ever came of it. Because of his physical condition, he finally stopped going to work, and GM removed him from its employment rolls once and for all. Sol gained employment of thirty dollars a week by selling televisions for Ralph and George Hamann, both well-known Flint Socialists.55 Sol and Genora tried to sell real estate for Coburn S. Walker Company in Flint with limited success. Sol became convinced that his chances for permanent employment were better in California than Michigan. He started out for the Golden State, but on reaching St. Louis he found that he had forgotten his packed bag (a Freudian slip, perhaps?) and returned to Flint.56 In the fall of 1957, he enrolled in Flint Junior College because he believed the “soft economy” of the future would hinder his economic capabilities unless he had some kind of higher education.57 Economic strictures prevented him from completing his education, so he tried to sell encyclopedias for the Britannica company and was a “hot shot salesman” for a while. The recession of 1958 brought his salesmanship to an end; in fact, the commissions he had previously earned were rescinded when buyers defaulted on their payments.58
Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln (greatly admired by Genora, who considered him our greatest president), when you don’t have a solution to a basic problem, do nothing, and it will solve itself. Leaving their political and economic problems behind them—at least for a time—the Dollingers traveled to Mexico. In 1959, the three of them—Genora, Sol, and Ronnie—started out with five hundred dollars in a “reliable” Lincoln and headed South, without any specific Mexican destination in mind. Sol recalled that “the FBI was in a tizzy trying to find out why we were going to a foreign country. . . . [T]hey . . . called on the CIA to track us down. They couldn’t find us. It is not surprising since we did not know where we were going nor where we would find sleeping accommodations for the night.”59 They were not the first nor the last Americans to find enchantment in Mexico. The Dollingers spent a fortnight there and then drove leisurely back home to Michigan.
As the decade drew to a close, Sol and his family got the break they had been waiting for. He was hired by the Development Corporation for Israel, better known as State of Israel Bonds (raising funds to build an Israeli infrastructure for industry and commerce), and in this employment he initially worked out of Detroit. The family prepared to leave Flint and again take up residence in the Motor City. His job ultimately took them to California; this was definitely a life change for Sol, but wherever she went, Detroit or otherwise, Genora instantly looked for the first radical cause to become involved in. She found plenty. And in doing so, she became a living contradiction to descriptions of American women of the 1950s by feminist leader Betty Friedan. In her book The Feminine Mystique Friedan argued that female magazines had created an image of the American woman as “young and frivolous, almost childlike, fluffy and feminine, passive, gaily content in a world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies, and home.”60 Friedan’s book inspired thousands of women, in what became known as the second wave of the women’s movement (1960S–1980S), to leave home and seek outside employment. Such moves, she assured them, would fulfill their lives. Genora was an unwitting