Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [75]
Genora and Ronnie got to California in midsummer 1966 and moved into the house on South Hudson that Sol had acquired. It was of Spanish decor and, at Sol and Genora’s insistence, in a fully integrated African American–Latino community. Not long after they moved in, a fire destroyed much of their house. Their old friend, Larry Jones, wrote to say he wished there was something he could do to lessen Genora and Sol’s hardships. If he and his Local 659 could aid them financially, “we would be very pleased to provide an interest free loan.”37 Touched by the offer, the two turned down any loans.
Genora did not get the ACLU job she had expected. Easton Monroe informed her that the position was filled. It did not take long, however, for her to become an active volunteer in the Los Angeles branch, later being appointed to its board of directors. Not finding immediate employment turned out to be to Genora’s advantage, for she had time to read and study reform movements within the context of Trotskyism. For a time, she became a secretary for the law firm of Wirin, Rissman, and Posner, which handled ACLU matters in Los Angeles. Then she worked as Sol’s unpaid assistant at Technion Society of America, where Sol was employed after a short stint with Israel Bonds. This enabled the two to travel together—which they had rarely done in the past—to various fund-raising events, sometime mixing business with pleasure. They especially liked Mexico, where Sol opened numerous drives for funds from wealthy businessmen. Genora began to refer to that country as her beloved Mexico.
She was saddened, along with thousands of other people, to learn shortly after arriving in the West that her first husband, Kermit Johnson, had died on May 7, 1967, in Humboldt, South Dakota, at the age of fifty-five; it was widely claimed that the cause was cirrhosis of the liver. Many editors of journals dedicated to spreading the word about labor unions in the 1960s had never even heard of Kermit Johnson. This lack of knowledge caused some reactions. Even the editors of Searchlight, the journal founded by some 1937 sit-downers, seemed reluctant to give any publicity to Kermit’s demise. Larry Jones, a former editor of Searchlight, wrote a eulogy for Kermit but informed Genora that he was shocked at the “crude, miasmatic, and revolting actions of this local [659] in the matter of publication of the eulogy to Kermit.” He had learned of Kermit’s death in early May and presented his eulogy on the twenty-first. Nothing happened, despite Jones’s pushing through a resolution at Local 659 to print a commemorative issue of Searchlight for Kermit. After all, Kermit had engineered much of the sit-down and had gone on to become a paragon in the labor movement. Surely his memory deserved such an issue. Jones contacted Searchlight editors for an explanation “but met only evasive and idiotic double talk.” Jones told Genora that he thought of her often. He respected her for her “keen sense of social justice and fair play.”38 In another letter to Genora a fortnight later, Jones asked Genora if perhaps they were living too much in the past. “I know that I find myself out of step with our younger workers—could it be that I am simply dogmatic and they the avant-garde?”39
Jones’s melancholy question only intensified Genora’s sadness at Kermit’s passing. After all, he was the father of her two deceased sons, and his departure closed once and for all an important phase of her life. Though she was happy now with Sol