Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [74]
Her boss, Ernest Mazey, sorry to see her go, nonetheless gave his blessings and congratulations. He even wrote a strong letter of recommendation for both Dollingers to Eason Monroe, director of the Los Angeles branch of the ACLU. He was so certain that they would be of inestimable worth to Monroe that “the only fair and reasonable thing for you would be to send ACLU Michigan a check for $5,000 as a token in advance of appreciation for the value . . . they will be to you.” On a serious note, Mazey pointed out that Genora had instituted new record-keeping procedures in Michigan that easily kept track of cases; worked constantly with lawyers, college professors, and psychiatrists; and had recently been awarded a plaque for her good work from the state organization.27 In the year she left, 1966, the Michigan ACLU boasted 5,029 members.28 Some of her innovations in Detroit were copied by other branches of ACLU around the country. A few months after the Dollingers left for California, Ernest Mazey sent an “invoice” to them in the amount of $10,000 “for the disasterous [sic] decline of ACLU in Michigan income” following the “unreasonable, arbitrary, and unfaithful change of residence to California.”29 This couple was missed back east both personally and professionally.
Another official in the Michigan ACLU, Ed Galligan, wrote to Genora, “Damn it, why does [Sol] have to go barging out to L.A.? What’s the matter with good old Michigan?” Sol’s taking Genora away from them was a “profoundly dirty trick.” Perhaps, Galligan said, he could urge divorce upon Genora and keep her in the Wolverine State. Undoubtedly, she and Sol and Ronnie would be miserable in all that smog. Finally, “Gritting my teeth, muttering imprecations against Los Angeles and all the people who drag other people out there, I wish you and your husband the best.”30
Walter Bergman, a longtime civil rights activist, college professor, and close friend of the Dollingers, wrote in a general letter of recommendation that Genora would not be as much looking for a job as “for a cause in which she can have faith, pride, and devotion.” Whoever hired her, Bergman asserted, would be fortunate, for she would invest “organizational ability and social conscience” into her work. On a personal note he told her, “We hate to see you go, drat your husband, anyway.”31
The letters between Genora and Sol, while she stayed in Detroit and he looked for a house in Los Angeles, were a mixture of personal and public observances. Sol worried about Genora’s health. She had begun to experience heart problems (which ultimately led to a pacemaker). She underwent a series of tests, and Sol did not “like for a moment being out here” while Genora was back there.32 She assured him that everything was fine with her: she was sleeping well, without nightmares. Sol, good-naturedly “offended” by this last statement, asked, “What are you suggesting? Are you allergic to me?”33 In public matters—because they intensely interested both Dollingers—Sol wrote about the antiwar demonstrations or intimated the lack of them.34 The “peace movement,” in the minds of reformers like Genora and Sol, did not “catch on” until the Tet Offensive in 1968. Sol told Genora that President Johnson “is over his head” in the matter of Vietnam. Even a large portion of the capitalist class “wishes us out of the war” because rising inflation was beginning to frighten them.35 How then, Sol wanted to know, do we get out of this predicament without a complete capitulation? On domestic matters, Sol’s analyses of Los Angeles were foretelling. “There is little association” here between blacks and whites. The NAACP, with its message of reform—one of its meetings