Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [81]
She thanked the group for inviting her, exuberantly telling them that she had just left a picket line in the ongoing teachers’ strike. She was glad when those “predisposed to make history with [their] physical bodies” were able to speak before “writers of history.” She gave an account of the 1937 sit-downs, with an emphasis on the role played by women. The Emergency Brigade, she argued, had helped to save the day for the union. She knew the truth, she said, about the taking of Chevrolet Plant Four. With her help, her husband, Kermit Johnson, had devised the strategy of using their bodies to make history, only to be left out by those who wrote about it. Subsequent history books, such as Henry Kraus’s The Many and the Few: A Chronicle of the Dynamic Auto Workers (1947) and Sidney Fine’s Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937 (1969) she believed, grievously overlooked Kermit’s role. These were examples of what Lynd and his “radical” colleagues meant by history from the top down.
Her audience listened carefully; they had never met a woman quite like this. Many of them learned for the first time that the modern women’s liberation movement in this country started, according to Genora, with the Flint sit-downs of 1937. With that initial experience, and then with World War II, there was no turning back. Genora was asked, “How did you go about educating the people of Flint and Michigan in general as to what was happening [in the sit-downs]?” Genora answered that the people of Flint “had been educated by General Motors.” But by distributing their own mimeograph sheets, holding rallies, and challenging the police, the union had finally caused many citizens of Flint to question the methods of GM. Another question elicited from Genora the rather painful way in which she became one of the original members of the women’s liberation movement in Flint. She related the story of how her father, Ray, had kept the women in his household “in their place” and had brooked no criticisms from them. She despised the way Ray had treated her mother, Lora, a distinguished woman with a musical degree. This attitude toward her father and then the events at the Flint sit-downs in the context of the Great Depression had molded Genora’s life. For a woman who had once argued that she couldn’t give a public speech, Genora was doing all right.7 She was immensely pleased to be spreading the word about the contributions women made not only in the sit-downs but also in helping to shape the UAW itself. She was piqued, however, when the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers around the country failed to give her presentation any coverage. Without publicity, she argued, “young women” could not know “about their past history.”8
She spoke to several classes, mostly those of history and sociology, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “These students were unbelievable,” Genora exclaimed.9 Initially expressing incredulity at what Genora told them, some, she exulted, were teary-eyed by the time she finished. She was not trying to convert them to any political, economic, or social ideologies; all she wanted to do was tell them the truth as she perceived it about the women’s movement and the Flint sit-downs. Her argument that women’s liberation started with the sit-downs of 1937 is, to be sure, controversial. There is, however, some justification for her beliefs here. She associated women’s liberation with getting out of the house and having a career, as did all the other women’s movements. Even at the point where the United States entered