Public Employee Press

Book Review
Standing up by sitting down: the life of Genora Dollinger, hero of 1930s auto strike

In “Child of the Sit-Downs,” author Carlton Jackson brings us the story of Genora Dollinger, a leader in the labor, women’s rights and socialist movements from the 1930s until her death in 1995.

Dollinger played a heroic role in the 1937 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, where auto workers kept strikebreakers out by occupying the factories for 44 days in the battle for union recognition. Many women helped by running soup kitchens, but Dollinger thought women should be in the front lines. She organized the Women’s Emergency Brigade, WEB, whose 400 members carried clubs to defend themselves and the picket lines from the police and company thugs.

The WEB played a strategic role in many of the battles that led to the victory of the United Auto Workers in Flint, which was the key to forcing GM to deal with the union. The victory at GM inspired sit-down strikes across the country in basic industry, retail stores such as Woolworth’s and the New York City Emergency Relief Bureau, which is now the Human Resources Administration.

Dollinger helped set up a tent city for unemployed workers who became homeless. She continued organizing during World War II, became a militant shop steward at the Briggs auto plant in Detroit and traveled nationwide, participated in and supporting other labor struggles.

When the war ended she lost her industrial job, like so many other women, but she stayed active as a leader for workers’ rights, women’s rights, and civil rights until the day she died in 1995.

Genora Dollinger and the women like her who helped build the union movement were often left out of union histories. But Carlton Jackson’s book, which is in the DC 37 library, and an earlier film named “With Babies and Banners” (which the library has in VHS only) help us understand who built the union movement and how they did it.

— Ken Nash
DC 37 Education Fund Library,
Room 211