Women and the Flint sit-down strike of 1937

[Omaha Steve]

X post in Labor & GD



By Martha Grevatt March 5, 2015

The Flint, Mich., sit-down strike achieved victory 78 years ago on Feb. 11, 1937. After a 44-day occupation of General Motors plants, the company was forced to recognize the United Auto Workers.

Critical to the strike’s success was the Women’s Emergency Brigade, formed by a striker’s spouse, Genora Johnson. ­Famous footage shows the brigade breaking plant windows with clubs when the police fired tear gas inside. This daring action kept the strikers occupying the plant from being suffocated.

This Jan. 29 the last living veteran of the brigade, Geraldine Blankenship, died. Below are excerpts from a 2007 interview conducted by this writer with Sister Blankenship:

My mother was born in Columbiaville and my father out close to Pinnebag. They met at a woolen mill in Yale. [Before they met] my mother got the girls to go on strike so they could get a five-cent raise a day. And she was only 15.

FULL story at link.