Flint, Michigan: A Century of Environmental Injustice

“Strikers at Flint March as Victors,” announced the headline in the New York Times in early February 1937.1 Workers were leaving “Plants, ‘Heads High,’ Singing ‘Solidarity’ and Greeting Families.”1 Down Chevrolet Avenue they marched, ending one of the most vicious strikes in American history. During the course of the previous month in the midst of the Depression, members of the nascent United Auto Workers had conducted a sit-down strike in the factories of General Motors (GM), occupying the Fischer body shop, and the mammoth Chevrolet and Buick plants. For 44 days, hundreds of workers had occupied engine production, chassis construction, and foundry works, threatened by thousands of National Guard troops and hired thugs who sought to stop the sit in by any means necessary. Workers were beaten and shot at; supplies to workers inside the plant were cut off by Guardsmen who shut down roads into an 80-acre industrial area. Scabs were hired to sneak through windows, tunnels and passageways to disrupt those sitting in