to production and strikes would cripple GM production throughout the country. The UAW recently separated from the much larger union, The American Federation of Labor (AFL). Organizing in Flint was a difficult and dangerous plan. GM controlled city politics in Flint and kept a close eye on outsiders. As Wyndham Mortimer, the first UAW officer put in charge of organizing the campaign in Flint, entered the town, he was noticed. The day after he entered Flint, in early June of 1936, he was being followed by people who were probably from the General Motors Company, "When he went through the front door, the other put his paper down and followed him out into the street. And thereafter, he or one of two others always managed to be with him". GM also maintained an extensive network of spies throughout its plants. Mortimer concluded after talking to Flint auto workers that the existing locals, which had only 122 members out of 45,000 auto workers in Flint, were riddled with spies. Accordingly, he decided that the only safe way to organize Flint was simply to bypass those locals. Mortimer, Eric Branoff, Roy Reuther, Henry Kraus, and Ralph Dale began meeting with Flint auto workers in their homes, keeping the names of new members a closely guarded secret from others in Flint and at UAW headquarters. As the UAW studied its target, it discovered that GM had only two factories that produced the dies from which car body components were stamped: one in Flint that produced the parts for Buicks, Pontiacs, and Oldsmobiles, and another in Cleveland that produced Chevrolet parts. The union planned to strike these plants after the New Year, when Frank Murphy would become Governor of Michigan. The strike Events forced the union to accelerate its plans when the workers at Cleveland's Fisher Body plant went on strike on December 28, 1936, due to two brothers being fired from the assembly line. The UAW immediately announced that it would not settle the Cleveland strike until it reached a national agreement with GM covering all of its plants. At the same time the union made plans to shut down Fisher #1 in Flint. Genora Johnson Dollinger was one of the main organizers and protester for the Flint sit-down. Robert Travis was the UAW organizer during the strike. On December 30, at 8:00 AM, the union learned that GM was planning to move