‘Without the women, that strike would have been lost’

“Old Joan of Arc has come back in half a hundred different bodies.”

This was the opinion of a British MP, Ellen Wilkinson, speaking in Flint, Mich., in 1937 at a rally in solidarity with the famous sit-down strike. She was describing the women of that company town.

When the strike began at GM’s two Fisher Body plants, more than 300 women sat down. Right away the male leadership—concerned about charges of immorality and probably overly protective—ordered them out of the plants. Nevertheless, women—not only those striking but the wives, daughters, mothers and sweethearts of the men in the plants—were indispensable to winning the strike.

First and foremost, the men had to be fed. It took a well-organized group of women to make a huge operation run smoothly—getting three square meals a day to the sit-downers for 44 days straight, and on top of that, feeding the thousands who walked the picket lines.

The Women’s Auxiliary, formed almost immediately after the strike began, also provided first aid and childcare for women pulling picket duty. The Auxiliary made house calls to make sure every family had enough to eat and could pay the bills. They visited wives who were threatening divorce and won them over to the union. A striker’s wife, Genora Johnson, organized a children’s picket line.

One woman who initially sat down with the men, Pat Wiseman, refused to cook. Instead she became a picket captain, never missing a day. (She later helped negotiate the first UAW contract with General Motors and also served as an organizer and shop steward.)

During a critical battle, “the Battle of Bulls’ Run,” the women showed unprecedented determination. “They had seen their men shot at, the police had tried to keep them from feeding their men, and they had fought in spite of tear gas, in spite of gunfire,” wrote labor journalist and eyewitness observer Mary Heaton Vorse, in “Labor’s New Millions.”

Johnson’s immortal words in the heat of battle gave strength to the battered strikers: “Cowards! Cowards!” Johnson shouted at the police, “shooting unarmed and defenseless men!” She then called on the women to “break through those police lines and come down here and stand beside your husbands and your brothers and your uncles and your sweethearts.” The women heeded her call. (Sol Dollinger and Genora Johnson Dollinger, “Not Automatic”)

After that Johnson organized the Women’s Emergency Brigade. Only women who felt they could respond immediately to an emergency were asked to take the Brigade’s pledge. Four hundred women signed up. The Brigade demonstrated its fortitude whenever the police appeared poised to attack. The New York Times reported that strikers had “a large supply of blackjacks ... whittled down so that they can be swung or jabbed readily.” In fact, the women had whittled the clubs down to fit their smaller hands.

The Times took note of “the new automotive strike organization,” quoting Johnson as saying, “We will form a picket line around the men, and if the police want to fire, they’ll just have to fire into us.” (Philip S Foner, “Women and the American Labor Movement”)

Because relatively few Black men worked in GM’s Jim Crow operation, few Black women were involved with the Brigade. A notable exception was Leola Combs, spouse of Buick foundry worker and early union supporter Prince Combs. It had been at the Combs family home that Black union supporters held clandestine meetings.

Black union activists had a high regard for the Women’s Brigade. After the strike, Johnson often shared the podium with Roscoe Van Zandt, a Black janitor who joined the white line workers in the sit-down. Referring to Johnson, Black Buick union leader Henry Clark remarked years later, “She was a wildcat.”

When workers took over Chevy Plants 4 and 9, the Emergency Brigade removed all doubts about the women’s critical role. When the police fired tear gas into Plant 9, it was the women who smashed the windows to allow the gas to escape. Seventy years later Brigade veteran Elizabeth Anderson Schneider remembers, “I can still in my mind just see the police officers lined up right there on Kearsley, and we had clubs, big clubs, we was breaking those window lights.”

Later “Captain” Johnson and her five “lieutenants” barricaded the doors at Plant 4 to keep the police from storming in. “Just as it was beginning to look too risky for us,” Johnson recalled, “we saw the Emergency Brigade marching towards us, singing ‘Solidarity Forever’ and ‘Hold the Fort.’ When they arrived I climbed into the sound car ... and instructed the women to lock arms and set up an oval picket line to prevent the police from entering the plant until it could be secured.” The women had barely recuperated from the gassing at Plant 9 when they forced the police to back away from Plant 4. (Footage of this was included in the Academy Award-nominated documentary, “With Babies and Banners.”)

On Feb. 3, 1937, designated by strike leaders as “Women’s Day,” some 700 women paraded through Flint’s business district as the temperature hovered around zero. After their parade they joined a mass march of ten thousand, the union’s answer to an injunction ordering the strikers out of the plants.

On Feb. 11, 1937, after a 44-day occupation, the men emerged from the plants victorious. Their gratitude to the women was immeasurable. “The women of Flint have made their fame and are known throughout the world for their heroic stand,” exclaimed strike leader Bob Travis.

“They were fighters,” recalled Brigade member Geraldine Blankenship, seven decades later. “They were a great bunch of gals and had it not been for them that strike would have been lost.”

Martha Grevatt has been a UAW Chrysler worker for 20 years. This article is part of a chapter in Grevatt’s book, “In Our Hands is Placed a Power: the Flint Sit-down Strike,” which will be published by World View Forum later this year.

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