Word: carbarn
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Strikers set up headquarters in the city's largest carbarn (without audible protest from the company). Up on a toolbox jumped burly, bull-voiced James Henry McMenamin, 43, to take command. He shouted: "It's white against black!" He well knew that the company's 600 Negro employes had hitherto worked peacefully (in menial jobs) beside other workers. But now, he pointed out, as motormen, they could sit on the same benches as whites. Cried McMenamin: "The colored people have bedbugs...
...Army moved in. Under a Presidential order, Major General Philip Hayes took control of the city's transit system. He broadcast instructions to the strikers to return to work at the next 5:30 a.m. shift and sent two soldiers to raise an American flag over the carbarn where the strikers made their headquarters. As the flag flapped up to the top of the pole one of the strikers began to sing the Star Spangled Banner. About 2,000 shirt-sleeved, sweaty strikers joined in. Even James McMenamin seemed affected. He jumped up, shouting in a voice hoarsened...
Quickly A.F. of L. organized a maintenance men's union, raced to Mayor Edward Jeffries demanding that it be recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent for the operators and that it have exclusive use of carbarn bulletin boards. Actually, A.F. of L. was fighting for survival in Detroit, for a C.I.O. drive had already spread over the auto industry, threatening to rout A.F. of L. completely from the country's fourth largest city. Mayor Jeffries, maintaining that the city could not legally sign an exclusive bargaining contract, turned down their demands. Neither would he give...