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those taping the gathering for Sol and Ron included subjects other than Allende. On the tape, “Gladstone,” a professor at Highland Park College, strongly recommended that Genora write a book. There was a need for such a project, Gladstone asserted, “because of the role that the women’s liberation movement is playing, and the need for . . . clarity on the history of the labor movement in relation” to feminist reforms. Genora must surely have balked at Gladstone’s suggestion that the proposed book was “not only a job for your [Sol’s] wife, but [one] that would call for a great deal of collaboration and possible direction from you.”57 Genora had long scoffed at male historians who had not done right—at least in her opinion—by the labor and feminist movements and the relationship between the two.

All things considered, the Detroit party was a tiring but wonderfully uplifting event for Genora. She relished listening to one taped correspondent after another tell Sol that “we are here having a good time organizing the revolution.” It was well after 3 A.M. when the party ended. Even then Genora had some strength left. She taped a message to “her boys,” describing the happy but “emotionally draining” experiences of the day. She and her old friends had had tears in their eyes as they met again for the first time in nearly five years. Even friends who were not there knew of her presence. She received telephone greetings from Florida (where many past labor leaders had retired). And then there were more tears when it was time to depart, because Genora added to the tape, “I think they knew and I knew that it might be a long time again before we met again.”58

Her trip to Detroit was challenging (she had been scheduled to sit in on a sculpture class at a local college but at the last moment was invited to speak to pupils at an elementary school—she thought this more important than sculpturing), tiring—after all, she was now fifty-seven years old and not at all accustomed to parties that broke up only in the wee hours—and rejuvenating; she experienced no health problems on this trip, around all her old friends. But, like all parties, when this one ended she had to come back to reality. Many things back in California demanded her attention: the continuing school crisis in Los Angeles, for one thing, and some plans for trips abroad. So she made her way back to the West.

Seven “It Makes My Heart Sing”

The status of education in America worried Genora and other reform-minded people throughout the country. Some Los Angeles schools were graduating students who could not read and write in any language or even do elementary arithmetic. Here was a ready-made crusade, and in only a short time the lady from Michigan was fully involved in it, adding education to her lengthy list of causes. She feared the situation in Los Angles might reflect—in a sort of microcosm—the rest of the state and country. She spearheaded the founding of the Los Angeles High School Community Advisory Committee (becoming its vice president) that ultimately represented 362 schools and had such notables as Ralph Nader and Paul Erlich on its board of directors. She and her colleagues wanted to involve the entire community in educating children. Parents should visit schools on a regular basis. There should be improved counseling services, a special school for incorrigibles (except Genora wanted to know how to define “incorrigible”— perhaps because she herself had been called incorrigible in her early life?), and opportunity classes where students could learn productive skills and become future tax-paying citizens. Parents and teachers should enlarge social contacts by inviting each other to functions at their homes. Efforts should be made to retain black faculty in the Los Angeles schools, and student-teacher committees should strive for good teaching and learning conditions.1 As the old adage tells us, easier said than done.

This council had its work cut out for it. Some of the schools were so bad, Genora claimed, that they should be closed outright. “They are unsafe,