Flint Sit Down

Bob Stinson spent his whole life working for the Fischer Body Plants, nearly 46

years. He started off at the plant in Detroit, but got laid off in the fall of

1931. He decided to look for work at the plant in Flint, Michigan and got hired

“right off the bat.” There was no union back then, Bob described this as being

“at the mercy of your foreman.” “You might call yourself a man, but as soon and

you went through the door and punched your card, you was nothing more or less

than a robot,” Bob says during an oral interview conducted by Studs Turkel. On

Christmas Eve, 1936 Bob was in Detroit celebrating with his family. When he came

home that night, he learned that the Flint sit-down had begun. Within five

minutes, the workers of the second shift had shut down the entire Fischer Body

Plant. All of the women were asked to go home, but the supervisors and plant

police were permitted to stay as long as they did not interfere with the workers.

Bob describes the plant workers as being very careful with the plant property,

“If you slept on a finished cushion, it was no longer a new cushion.” The

workers displayed this caution, because they were warned that the Governor would

be forced to use the National Guard against them if there was any damage to the

property. Women on the outside worked in a soup kitchen and brought meals to the

boy inside. The women put the meals, mostly stews, inside containers and hoisted

them up through the windows. A couple times General Motors tried to get the