February 11, 2025 marks the 88th Anniversary of one of the most profound labor struggles in the US - the 44-day occupation of multiple GM factories by militant auto workers in Flint, Michigan. Referred to around the world as the Great Flint Sitdown Strike, it culminated in General Motors recognizing the United Auto Workers (UAW) as the sole bargaining agent at GM plants across the country, and agreeing to a first contract, which was all of one page.
The role that Black workers played in that strike is very rarely mentioned, if at all. There was Roscoe Van Zant, pictured above with some of the leaders of the successful occupation at Chevy Plant 4, the only Black worker who was actually part of the Sitdown. Martha Grevatt, retired Chrysler Tool & Die Maker and former Trustee of UAW Chrysler Local 869, told about him in The Occupy that won the union published in Workers World (Feb 13, 2012). She wrote:
“One of the heroes inside Chevy 4 was Roscoe Van Zandt, an African-American worker. He stayed inside the plant from beginning to end. This was dangerous for a Black worker…At first, he kept to himself, but Socialists like Johnson and Howard Foster educated the white workers on the need for solidarity. There was one bed in the plant, and they gave it to Van Zandt.” A Sitdowner who knew him told Martha that he was “a natural leader.”
Martha, a member of Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), mentioned other African American workers:
“GM was a Jim Crow operation then. In most plants Black workers were only employed as janitors. The exception was the Buick foundry, where conditions were the worst, and Black workers’ jobs were the worst of the worst. The Buick plant was not on strike, but was idled, and Henry Clark and Prince Combs, in whose homes the dimly-lit organizing meetings had occurred, built support for the union. J.D. Dotson was a Black Communist who carried messages from one picket line to another and in and out of the occupied plants.”
I met J.D. Dotson in 1982 during one of the many Sitdowners’ “Pioneer Reunions,'' held during the summer in Flushing Park in Flint. I would go up with other Detroit auto workers to be part of the wonderful picnics attended then by a couple of hundred Sitdowners and their families. Here’s my interview which appeared in the underground newsletter, Straight Talk published by rank and file members of UAW Local 909 at what was then the Chevrolet Motors plant in Warren, MI.
We urged fellow workers to “read his remarks on the company’s tactics for keeping workers down and divided, and how the autoworkers overcame them.” He was memorialized many years later in this artist’s graphite drawing:
J.D. Dotson, in his own words
“For years the Black man was kept out of work in the factory. The only time he worked was when the white man didn’t want to work. There was no union, so when the white man would stop work and strike, the boss would go out and bring the Black man into the shop in box cars. They had cots and we would sleep, eat, and work right there in the shop. When the whites got hungry, they would come back and we would be turned back into the street like we were sheep.
At Chevrolet the only thing a Black could get was a mop and a broom. At Buick we had some shake out job in the foundry that nobody did want.
You didn’t get water
You didn’t know from day to day whether you were going to work. When we did, we worked from six in the morning to six or seven in the evening.
You didn’t get water. They had one man who would come around with one of them old pint milk bottles, rinse it out and give you water. We could drink water with one hand, watch for the boss, and keep working with the other hand. You had to eat right on the job with dust, oil and everything in the foundry. You didn’t wash your hands because if you did, you didn’t have a job. This was not one day - this was everyday.
I remember a white man who was made superintendent and then he hired his brother. They would go around with old gloves and get them real dirty and nasty. If you said you needed a pair of gloves and your gloves were no good, he would give you a pair of the gloves he carried around with him. If you said you wanted a clean pair he would fire you. Some days you could take a toothpick and push it through the blisters on your hands - it would be so hot while you were trying to work.
We hid in basements
John L Lewis told us as long as the boss could keep white and Black separated, they were going to use both of us. He said the only way we could get anywhere is to get organized. There should be no discrimination. The Black man wouldn’t be offended by the white man because he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere without him.
In 1929 we started to organize in secret - five Blacks and two whites. We would go from place to place in open cars in zero weather to get a union started. We hid in basements. We couldn’t let nobody know what was going on, or they would go back in the shop and tell the boss.
We were called “reds, commies” and were called “goons.” The big manufacturer owners called us this. If you were weak minded they would tell you, “don’t have anything to do with that man because he’s a “goon.” Anytime you were a labor leader and fighting to get the union started they would call you a “goon” or a “rebel rouser.” They couldn’t put us any lower, even though a lot of people didn’t know what the meaning of a “goon” was.
We started under the AFL [American Federation of Labor]. Later on we got two unions in the shop, the AFof L and the CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations]. We held an election to see which one we would use for our bargainers, and we accepted the CIO.
The AFof L, you see, was all white, and for years was skilled trades. The Black man couldn’t get into the unions until we brung in the CIO. The only way we got anything was when the union came into existence. That’s when we came into power.”
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You won’t find any information on the UAW’s website or facebook page about J.D. Dotson. He was a member of the Communist Party, USA, as were many of the other leaders of the Flint Sitdown strike. Their history fell victim to the MCarthy-era witch hunts in the 1950s and a whitewashing of our UAW history by the Administration (Reuther) Caucus.* It’s time J.D. Dotson and the others - men and women - were placed in a position of honor for having risked their lives for the UAW.
See “Sore Arm Blues” Flint Sit-down Strike 1937
* Frank Hammer is Former President & Chairman at UAW Local 909, Detroit MI.
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