Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [82]
By 1930, still only one in nine married women was a wage earner, and by the end of the 1930s, 15.5 percent of all married women were employed, “with public opinion lined up against them.”11 The 1937 sit-downs in Flint and the work of the WEB, led by Genora Johnson, was a turning point for women in the work force: unionism and feminist activism were synonymous, at least in Genora’s mind. Just after the “Battle of Bull’s Run,” thousands of workers—including women—lined up to join the UAW. When the strike ended (some referred to it as the “Battle of the Century), a “new type of woman had been born.”12 As Karen Johnson writes, World War II accentuated and intensified the feminist gains that came of the sit-downs: “Because it greatly accelerated the tendency of women to seek paid employment, especially including those with family responsibilities, World War II was a profoundly important event in American social history. The influx of large numbers of married women into the labor force marked an important turning point for women, involving as it did the implicit rejection of the idea that a woman’s household responsibilities could not be reconciled with employment.”13
In the 1950s and 1960s, second wave feminism became pervasive. It was based on the idea of married women entering the workforce and support for Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the National Organization of Women. Historians such as Sara Evans maintain that the second wave started with the civil rights movement of the 1960s in the American South. Important, too, in the second wave was the idea of sisterhood, with the movement focusing primarily on middle-class white women. In the second wave and then, ultimately, the third wave of feminist activity, the labor movement was fairly well abandoned. This is where Genora parted company with both waves of the feminist movement. She deemed unionism and feminism to be two sides of the same coin, and though later “libbers” did not agree with this assessment, Genora’s dating the modern women’s movement to the 1937 sit-down strike in Flint and the work of WEB is as credible as any of the other multitudinous explanations of this phenomenon.
On a trip back to Flint in February 1974, the anniversary month of GM’s capitulation to the union, Genora spoke at five different colleges and universities. “All of my life,” she told her audiences, “I have fought for equal opportunities and pay for women, so I am happy at the growth of what has been called ‘the women’s liberation movement.’ And I am happy that there are women historians coming out of the universities who are probing into all phases of history and coming up with some very interesting contributions made by women.” She singled out Patricia Yeghissian, who had written her honors thesis on the WEB. Yeghissian’s professor at the University of Michigan had discouraged her in this, saying that Yeghissian was attributing her 1974 “liberation” views to the women of 1937 and that the topic was “not legitimate material for history.”14 Yeghissian won a prize for her work, and Genora thought it captured the spirit of 1937 and showed the revolutionary beginnings of the women’s rights movement.15
Genora regretted the tall tales that crept into the Flint sit-down story. One woman claimed that two bullets penetrated the fur coat she was wearing on the fateful night of the Battle of Bull’s Run (January 11, 1937). Genora scoffed at such claims and implied that a woman wealthy enough for a fur coat would not have been there in the first place. Several “brave” men as well, Genora said, had embellished their roles in the affair. In the succeeding years some of the older workers liked to brag to younger factory men of their “daring exploits.”16
On another trip back east she addressed a luncheon meeting of the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Michigan. Chairing the meeting was professor