Child of the Sit-Downs

Carlton Jackson

Description

ForeWord Magazine 2008 Silver Award Winner for Excellence in Biography!A biography of a prominent labor reformer and early feministStrikes affect entire communities, and in the end they need the communities' support to succeed. This was exemplified in the legendary 1937 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, when strikers occupied the GM plants. The striking workers needed food; they also needed information and advance warning on what management might be up to. The Women's Emergency Brigade, formed during the Flint strike, proved indispensable to the union effort more than once. Genora Johnson Dollinger helped create the Women's Emergency Brigade and became one of the strike's leaders. She and her followers waded into the fray against the Flint police, the Pinkertons, and local officials sympathetic to GM, helping to achieve victory for the United Auto Workers and generating the first contract ever signed between GM and the UAW.Genora Dollinger became a steward at various plants in Detroit, where she moved after being blacklisted in Flint. She and her second husband, Sol Dollinger, were brutally beaten in their home, apparently because of their union support, though nothing was ever definitively proven. From the 1960s on, Genora Dollinger worked closely with the NAACP, ACLU, and the women's movement, becoming a link between the labor movement of the late twentieth century and the feminist movement.This biography of one of the first female labor activists is an important addition to the history of twentieth-century reform movements.This book will also be available in the following formats: e-book, audio book, and large-print paperback. Visit www.caravanbooks.org for details.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612776057
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Child฀of฀the฀Sit-Downs

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Child ฀of฀the Sit-Downs

The฀Revolutionary฀Life฀of฀

Genora฀Dollinger

Carlton฀Jackson

Kent฀State฀University฀Press฀

Kent,฀Ohio

© 2008 by e Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242 All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 20080050 îŚ 978-0-87338-944-0 Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jackson, Carlton. Child of the sit-downs : the revolutionary life of Genora Dollinger / Carlton Jackson.  p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. îŚ 978-0-87338-944-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) ∞ . Dollinger, Genora Johnson. 2. Women labor union members—United States—Bi- ography. 3. Automobile industry workers—Labor unions—United States—History. 4. Automobile industry workers—United States—Biography. 5. Labor unions— United States—Biography. 6. Women’s Emergency Brigade. I. Title. 6509.6533 2008 33.88'292092—dc22 [] 20080050

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.

2  0 09 08

5 4 3 2 

Contents

 Acknowledgments vii Prefaceix Genora and Luther  An Introduction xv Oneof a Revolutionary  Genesis Twoand Friends—Standing By eir Men  Genora 5 Three40 e Lure of Trotskyism Four Genora’s Wars 55 Five Trials and Tragedies 77 SixGirl 96 California SevenMakes My Heart Sing”  “It 5 Eight “Tuxedo Unionism” 35 NineAssessment 56 An A฀ ppendixChronology of Genora Dollinger’s Life  A 64  Notes 67  Bibliography 98  Index 206

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Acknowledgments

Many people helped me to research and write this biography of Ge- nora Dollinger, and I must express my appreciation to them. First, at the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, Walter Lefevre, Patrice Merritt, Margaret Raucher, and Mary J. Wallace were helpful. Paul Gifford of the Univer- sity of Michigan, Flint; William Glenn, Stony Brook University; Julie Harrada, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and David Kessler of the University of California-Berkeley found some much-needed materi- als, for which I am grateful. ank you.  At Western Kentucky University I received considerable help from research grants and summer fellowships. I thank each member of that university’s committees for their help. My graduate assistants proved so indispensable that I can truthfully say that this manuscript could not have been completed without them. John Paul Hill, Jennifer Kretzer, Melinda Jayne Squires, Evan Lambeth, Christopher George, Mary Bokkin, Jonathan Chilcote, and Phil Shaw provided unstinting help, cooperation, and encouragement. I thank also the former and present chairs of the WKU history department, Richard Troutman and Richard Weigel, for their support of this project. Nancy Marshall of the WKU library was extremely efficient in acquiring much-needed materials, as were Debra Day and Selena Langford of WKU’s inter- library department. WKU librarians Alan Logsdon and Olivia Fruit helped in the research, and I thank them. Professor Lowell Harrison of WKU’s history department read the entire manuscript and gave useful advice. My friend and colleague Lou-Ann Crouther of the WKU Eng- lish department gave the manuscript an extremely close reading and helped immensely with grammar, punctuation, and organization. I am most grateful for her assistance.  I would be remiss if I did not mention the assistance that came to me from Sol Dollinger, Genora’s husband of fifty-one years. (Sadly, Sol died on September 2, 200.) At my invitation, Sol read the entire manuscript. Although he corrected me on some factual matters, and while we did have some differences of opinion, at no time did he ever

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tell me how to write this biography (I cannot say the same about some of Genora’s critics). When I interviewed Sol in 997, I asked him what kind of biography he would like to see of Genora Dollinger. His answer was, “An honest one.” is, to the best of my abilities, I have done.  Many other individuals besides Sol Dollinger supplied me with in- formation. eir names appear in the text and in the endnotes. I thank all those persons who knew Genora personally and willingly talked to me about her.  Finally, I take pride in thanking my lovely family for their continued support of my publishing endeavors: my daughters Beverly and Hilary; sons Daniel and Matthew; sons-in-law Steve and Arthur; daughters-in- law Ling and Elaine; Grace; my grandchildren Colleen, Megan, Katha- rine, Travis, Patrick, Austin, Liam, Rowan, Carlton, David, Finn, and Alec. And, foremost and always, Pat.

viii Acknowledgments

Preface:฀Genora฀and฀Luther

Writing about the relatively unknown nineteenth-century politician Felix Grundy, historian Joseph H. Parks says, “e stories of the lives of the so-called great men of the nation have been told and re-told, but little has been done toward giving due credit to those who made them great.” Leaders do not “spontaneously spring into national promi- nence. ey owe much to those lesser figures who, for the most part, remain behind the springs of action.”¹  While Genora Johnson Dollinger would not have liked to be re- ferred to as “remaining behind” the “springs of action”—almost always thinking of herself on the cutting edge of events—that is essentially the part she played in matters of unionism and feminism. She never became a forerunner in either movement, but she assisted enormously those at the very top. Who were they? e list includes John L. Lewis; Norman omas; Betty Friedan; George Meany; Owen Bieber; the three Reuther brothers, Walter, Roy, and Victor; and several other lu- minaries. Genora helped these people to get to the top of the list and to stay there.  If Genora helped the top to acquire and retain power and influence, her contributions also traveled in other directions. She could meet Norman omas at ten in the morning and “John Doe” at noon and be equally comfortable with both. She could relate not only to the rich and famous but to the common worker as well. Perhaps she could be called a pivotal figure between what was often intellectual unionism and real or practical unionism.  I raise these points because my father, Luther Jackson, was a coal miner in Alabama, and, like Genora Dollinger, he was aworker,not a theorist or intellectual. e two of them—and they never did meet each other—were the strongest of union people. In the house where I grew up, Jesus Christ came first, followed closely by John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers of America, not all that much separated from the United Automobile Workers, the union with which Genora was most closely associated. As Luther—and perhaps Genora, too, at least in her earlier years—made his way to and from work each day,

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