Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [89]
At the plenary session of the 1977 conference, Genora and a few dozen other women wore red berets, for obvious reasons. On several occasions, Genora tried to gain the floor but was not recognized by the chair, UAW regional director Don Ellis. Each time she stood, different reactions came from the audience. Some told her to hush and sit down, while others began cheering and chanting, “UAW needs an ERA.” Angry women from NOW, the Ann Arbor Labor History project, and the Washington, D.C., Women’s Film Cooperative “unleashed so colorful and determined a protest . . . that it . . . won Genora the right to speak.”54 Finally invited to the stage, she spoke for about fifteen minutes. She recited “Solidarity Forever” for her audience, told them about the role of women in the 1937 strike, and argued that the UAW should support the current efforts to get an ERA passed. She scolded her fellow union members because no women had officially been included in the program. “We are the foremothers of today’s young women and proud of it.”55 She heard later that she had been brought to the speakers’ platform by Leonard Woodcock himself. Woodcock called Ellis from the rostrum and ordered him to give Genora the floor. When Ellis stated he “couldn’t” because Genora was “not on the program,” Woodcock replied, “What the hell is wrong with you, Ellis? Can’t you see what is happening out there?”56 He meant, of course, that a groundswell of support and enthusiasm was developing for Genora and her feminist colleagues and the pragmatic thing to do was yield to their demands.
For the first time, in 1977 and 1978, Genora Dollinger began to look optimistically upon the possibility that women’s history might finally receive the appreciation it deserved. She had never expected to see such events in her lifetime, “just as my mother and grandmother could not see the works of Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, [and] Susan B. Anthony . . . in their time.” She could remember history classes in grade school that “reinforced my desire to be a boy or a man.”
Women, she happily asserted, were becoming more than “window dressing” in her day and time. Now that the consciousness of both men and women has “been awakened, nothing can stop our progress.” She said that humanity had been “limping” along for thousands of years on half its brain power. The process of equality, she argued, would produce better human beings, both men and women. Oral history projects at numerous institutions of higher education around the country were telling the feminist story, and women’s self-help organizations were instilling confidence in women who had previously lacked it. Women were being interviewed now (Genora’s own appointment calendar stayed full) and documentary movies made about them. All this progress, said Genora, “makes my heart sing.”57
She probably should have known better than to get her hopes up too high. When With Babies and Banners was released and shown in several large cities around the country and got an Oscar nomination, Emil Mazey, now secretary-treasurer of the UAW, told a newspaper reporter that he thought the film “overrated” the role women played in the 1937 sit-down.58 Genora, outraged at such an assertion, attributed it in large part to Emil Mazey’s close friendship with Don Ellis, who had been forced to give Genora the microphone