Monthly Gathering—May 2003
Sitting Down To Take A Stand!
On the evening of December 30, 1936, Flint autoworkers precipitated the greatest strike in American labor history. The Flint Sit-Down Strike against General Motors was a classic case of David versus Goliath. In the 1930s, GM was the largest industrial corporation in the world. Nearly 80 percent of Flint’s households were in some way dependent on a GM paycheck—you worked for General Motors or you didn’t work at all. The company had the law, the money and most of Flint’s residents on its side, yet despite the tremendous odds against them, workers struck.
How important was the Flint Sit-Down Strike? Within a year after its victory in Flint, the UAW grew from 30,000 to 500,000 members. Wages and benefits increased considerably and, possibly most important, the fear of belonging to a union was gone. It was, as the BBC later noted, “the strike heard round the world.”
But why did they do it? And what was it like for the strikers who endured the danger and hardships in the plant and the threats to their families on the outside. To find out, join us on Saturday, May 17, when our guest will be Professor Michael Van Dyke, of MSU’s Department of American Thought & Language. Van Dyke has done extensive research on the subject and served as editor of “Voices from the Great Sit-Down Strike” for Matrix, an online humanities and social sciences project.
Page last updated: Monday, September 1, 2008