Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Created the Middle Class by Edward McClelland

Abstract

Reviewed by: Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Created the Middle Class by Edward McClelland Daniel Bean Edward McClelland. Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Created the Middle Class. Boston: Beacon Press, 2021. Pp: 240. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Hardcover: $27.95. Michigan was once considered an industrial promised land, where workers could expect decent compensation for a hard day's work. Labor historians frequently attribute this to the recognition of the United Auto Workers (UAW) as the sole bargaining agent for General Motors (GM) workers following the Flint sit-down strikes of 1936-1937. Though often considered "the most significant American labor conflict of the twentieth century" (Fine 341), no major studies have been produced about the Flint sit-down strikes since Sidney Fine's 1969 classic, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936-1937. With his fascinating new book, Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike that Created the Middle Class, journalist Edward McClelland finally puts an end to this historiographical drought. McClelland meticulously details how autoworkers, GM management, and government officials navigated this tumultuous event. Strikers—disillusioned with a lack of job security, dangerous working conditions, [End Page 155] and the dreaded piecemeal system—took control of multiple Fisher Body plants, wielded doors shut, and produced makeshift weapons to protect themselves from being evicted. Management ranged from the staunch anti-unionism of GM CEO Alfred Sloan to the company's executive vice president, William Knudson, who McClelland describes as "no corporate philosopher… he just wants to build cars." (154) Michigan Governor Frank Murphy, obsessed with seeking a compromise that would satisfy all parties involved and promote his future political aspirations as a great negotiator, famously sent in the National Guard to protect the peace—rather than evict the strikers, as GM would have preferred—following the violent "Battle of Running Bulls." In detailing these events, McClelland uses a collection of interviews, government documents, diary entries, and secondary sources. Perhaps the greatest contribution McClelland adds to previous authorship is in his discussion of the role women played in the sit-down strikes. Intent on using a bottom-up approach, Midnight in Vehicle City tells the stories of individual women—often unnamed—who stepped up to protect the men inside the factories from hunger and violence. Genora Johnson, the leader of the Women's Auxiliary Brigade, warned "you can't get hysterical if your sister besides you drops down on a pool of blood." (96) Yet, despite this message, women of all ages eagerly signed up to fight. In fact, McClelland points out that the first woman to speak up was in her seventies who exclaimed "you can't keep me out… My sons work in that factory. My husband worked in that factory before he died, and I have grandsons there." (96) Midnight in Vehicle City describes how this strike could not have lasted if it had not been for the dedication of women in protecting and feeding the sitting autoworkers. While McClelland's work should be a welcome edition to the libraries of anyone interested in the Flint sit-down strikes, there are several problems with this work. McClelland's insistence on using a present-tense narrative often makes this book read more like a play than a serious historical investigation. This problem, mixed with a lack of superscripts to match the sources found in the end notes, often makes this book feel like a piece of historic fiction. Perhaps most concerning, McClelland never really develops his argument that the Flint sit-down strikes "created the middle class" until the epilogue. Despite these problems, Midnight in Vehicle City should be recommended to anyone interested in the sit-down strikes. [End Page 156] Daniel Bean Central Michigan University Copyright © 2021 Historical Society of Michigan