maternal death, typhoid fever and diphtheria. It was hardly a workers’ paradise.
In this atmosphere, union organizing culminated with the Flint Sit-Down Strike during the bitterly cold winter of 1936–37. It was still a legendary event when I was growing up, and I knew of it despite having scant knowledge of Flint’s history. For many it was the city’s greatest achievement, and it was spoken of with pride, if not reverence. For forty-four days, workers aligned with the recently created United Auto Workers occupied the massive Fisher Body No. 1 plant on the South Side, the smaller Fisher Body No. 2, and the Chevrolet No. 4, located at the sprawling Chevrolet manufacturing complex along the Flint River, which came to be known as Chevy in the Hole. (The charitable might attribute the nickname to geography—the factory was situated in a valley—but it’s more likely that it stemmed from the less than ideal working conditions inside.)
Typical of a populace apparently incapable of half measures, this was no ordinary labor action with picketers chanting defiant slogans on the sidewalk and management complaining in the press. This was war. In what the strikers dubbed the Battle of the Running Bulls, local police attempted to reclaim Fisher Body No. 2 on the night of January 11, 1937. The strikers were in no mood to leave. “The tide of battle ebbed and flowed outside the plant,” wrote Sidney Fine in Sitdown: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937. “Hurling cans, frozen snow, milk bottles, door hinges, pieces of pavement, and assorted other weapons of this type, the pickets pressed at the heels of the retreating police. Undoubtedly enraged at the humiliation of defeat at the hands of so motley and amateur an army, the police drew pistols and riot guns and fired into the ranks of their pursuers.”
Gunshots and tear gas weren’t enough to deter the workers or their family members, who often supplied the strikers with food passed through the factory windows. The strike ended when GM agreed to recognize the UAW and engage in a limited form of collective bargaining, leading to better wages and working conditions in Flint and, ultimately, the rest of the country as the union launched a national organizing effort. It also set the pattern of contentious negotiations between labor and management that were as much a part of life in Flint as drinking Stroh’s beer and rooting for the Detroit Tigers.
A few years after the strike ended, production at the auto factories shifted to M-18 Hellcat tank destroyers and other armaments during World War II, but it was just like the good old days in Flint when the fighting ended and a postwar economic expansion swept the nation. In 1955, Flint held its centennial parade and two hundred thousand boisterous spectators showed up to take in the marching bands, admire the colorful floats, and perhaps catch a glimpse of GM spokesmodel Dinah Shore or Vice President Richard Nixon. (It’s hard to imagine a whiter, more unhip couple than Dinah and Tricky Dick.) There was good reason to be festive. “An industrial marvel,” wrote one historian, “Flint was home to more GM workers than any other city in the world.” There were close to thirty thousand at Buick; Chevy in the Hole and AC Spark Plug employed nearly twenty thousand each; and another eight thousand punched the clock at Fisher Body. A report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago succinctly captured the essence of the place when Ike Eisenhower was in the White House: “The Flint economy, probably to a greater extent than that of any other city of comparable size, can be described in a single word. That word is automobiles.”
Flint’s population was near its peak of nearly 200,000, and confident local leaders envisioned 350,000 prosperous citizens residing in what was being called “Fabulous Flint” and the “Happiest Town in Michigan.” Flint’s per capita income was one of the highest in the world, and it had perhaps the broadest middle class on the planet. The American dream was alive and well in Flint. You could even argue that it was born there.
And what would a thriving industrial city be without a strong-willed, wealthy industrialist to animate it? More than any other citizen, Charles Stewart Mott shaped the character and feel of Flint as it became an American success story. Known as Mr. Flint, or, more informally, Charlie Sugar for the gifts he bestowed on the Vehicle City, Mott had moved a family wheel and axle business to Flint from Utica, New York, in 1906 after being courted by Billy Durant, who needed a local parts supplier. Mott sold his company to GM in 1913 in exchange for stock, making him the company’s largest individual shareholder. Talk about getting in on the ground floor of a company with growth potential. Mott went on to serve on GM’s board of directors for sixty years. Showing a personal knack for economic diversification, which never caught on in Flint, he created the United States Sugar Corporation in 1931.
Mott became one of the richest men in America, and he certainly looked the part. Balding with a thick white mustache and bushy eyebrows, the three-time mayor was a familiar figure in Flint with his dark suits and ramrod-straight posture. He had a reputation for thrift, sleeping on a cot-like bed with no headboard and tooling around town in a modest Chevy Corvair. Despite a kindly smile, he could be a distant, imposing figure. He signed notes to one of his sons “Very truly yours, C.S. Mott” and employed a coach to teach the kid how to ride a bike.
Mott was an enthusiastic Republican “who believed deeply in the virtues of self help, privatized charity, and laissez faire approaches to social welfare.” This often put him at odds with many of Flint’s left-leaning citizens. Reflecting on the Sit-Down Strike, he told journalist Studs Terkel that the workers deserved to be shot for illegally occupying the auto factories.
He created the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in 1926 to help ameliorate the problems that accompanied Flint’s rapid growth. It was also an excellent tax write-off that might help blunt the appeal of unions and government programs, but it’s obvious that Mott sought to improve Flint through his philanthropy. The foundation funded free medical and dental clinics for children. It launched a community education program in the Flint schools that became a national model, providing students with an array of after-hours recreational activities and offering adults low-cost enrichment courses in everything from gift wrapping to sheet metal drawing to creative writing.
Mott was also a driving force behind the Flint College and Cultural Center built in the 1950s and 1960s, kicking in millions of dollars via the foundation and donating thirty-six acres of land from his sprawling estate, known as Applewood. Along with a community college, the collection of public institutions included the Flint Institute of Arts, Sloan Museum, Bower Theater, Dort Music Center, and the Robert T. Longway Planetarium.
The best example of what it meant to grow up in a place with GM money coursing through its civic veins and wealthy elites driven by a sense of noblesse oblige along with a desire to keep the masses happy came from a guy named Mark, who emailed me after reading the Flint Expatriates blog. Now a professional harpist living in the Chicago area, he had learned to play in Flint in the late sixties and early seventies. There were five “public harps” available to residents who had an interest, along with complimentary lessons. He played in the Flint Youth Symphony Orchestra, sharing the stage with a fellow musician who went on to become the principal percussionist for the New York Philharmonic. “Somehow I thought it was normal for a town the size of Flint to have a dozen harp students,” Mark told me.
That’s right. The Vehicle City once provided free harp lessons to its residents. I felt like I needed to apologize to my much-maligned hometown. I’d been way too hard on it. I began to realize that the multitude of cultural and recreational activities available to me as a kid had been a little unusual, especially in a town now considered one of the worst places to live in the nation. I took tennis lessons at public courts in the summer, ran track at city-sponsored meets, participated in a local sports extravaganza modestly called the Flint Olympian Games, and learned to swim at a neighborhood community center. I joined baseball, soccer, and floor hockey teams. I took driver’s ed before I was ten at a place called Safetyville, a miniature town in Kearsley Park with tiny cars and classroom sessions on how to make a left turn and parallel park. I still have my license and a few tickets for moving violations. My friends performed in children’s theater productions and took painting classes at the art museum. All of it was free or close to it.
I had lived in the city during a transitional
