Genora (Johnson) Dollinger

During the 1936-37 United Auto Workers (UAW) sit down strike in Flint, Michigan, Genora (Johnson) Dollinger battled policemen and company thugs as the head of the UAW’S Women’s Emergency Brigade.  

Workers overturned police cars to make barricades. They ran to pick up the fire bombs thrown at them and hurl them back at the police. These brave men insisted Genora get out of the line of violence.  She refused.  Instead she grabbed a loud speaker device.  She called the company goons and police cowards.  She made it clear that their violence was being directed not only at unarmed men but also at both the women and children.  These women and children were members of the “Women’s Emergency Brigade” who had taken to the streets in support of their husbands, fathers, brothers and uncles.  

As the violence was subsiding Genora made a second impassioned and brilliant plea: “I thought, the women can break this up. So I appealed to the women in the crowd, to break through the police lines and come down and stand beside their husbands, their brothers, their uncles and their sweethearts. I could barely see one woman struggling to come forward. A cop had grabbed her by the back of her coat. She just pulled out of that coat and she started walking down to the battle zone. As soon as that happened there were other women and men who followed. That was the end of the battle. When those spectators came into the center of the battle the police retreated.  There was a big roar of victory.”  

Genora (Johnson) Dollinger’s extraordinary courage revealed an Achilles heel in the brutal violence believed to be the solution to ending the strike in favor of the auto companies.  She paved the way for a union victory and in doing so saved the lives of those who fought so valiantly for a better way of life for all of us.