Flint built the car — and helped build the American labor movement

Flint’s nickname is “Vehicle City,” and it earned it twice over. Long before cars, Flint was one of the biggest carriage-making towns in the country — in 1886, William “Billy” Durant and J. Dallas Dort started a carriage company here that grew into the largest in America. Durant took that fortune into the new business of automobiles, and on September 16, 1908, he founded General Motors right here in Flint, building on the Buick company. A few years later he helped start Chevrolet, too. So while GM is headquartered in Detroit today, the company was born in Flint — you’ll still hear the city called the birthplace of GM.

For decades after that, Flint was a GM town through and through. At its peak, the great majority of Flint families depended on GM’s Buick, Chevrolet, Fisher Body, and AC Spark Plug factories for their living. And it’s exactly because Flint was the heart of General Motors that the city became the stage for one of the most important moments in American labor history.

In the winter of 1936–37, Flint autoworkers launched what’s now known as the Flint Sit-Down Strike. Instead of walking off the job and picketing outside — where they could simply be replaced — the workers sat down inside the Fisher Body plants and refused to leave. They wanted General Motors, then one of the biggest companies in the world, to recognize their union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), and to fix unsafe conditions and low pay. The strike lasted 44 days. Strikers lived inside the plants while their families and supporters passed food through the windows, and a group of women known as the Women’s Emergency Brigade helped protect and supply them. Michigan’s governor refused to send in troops to force the workers out, and even President Roosevelt urged GM to make a deal. On February 11, 1937, GM gave in and recognized the UAW — a turning point that transformed the UAW from a small, struggling union into a powerful one and opened the door to unionizing the entire American auto industry. Historians often call it the most important strike in American history.

If you’d like to see this history up close, the Sloan Museum of Discovery at the Flint Cultural Center tells both halves of the story: its Durant Vehicle Gallery displays rare cars built in Flint, including some of the very first Buicks, and the museum has an exhibit on the Sit-Down Strike. Also in Flint, Sitdowners Memorial Park is an outdoor monument honoring the strikers and the Women’s Emergency Brigade. The Sloan Museum of Discovery is at 1221 E. Kearsley Street, Flint, and its website is sloanlongway.org.