The "Flying Squads" in the Battle of Bulls Run

On 11 January, 1937, the women delivering the evening meal to the strikers occupying Fisher Body Plant Number Two found that the plant was surrounded by company guards, who were blocking the door normally used for this delivery. The women started passing food in through windows. The guards fired tear gas into the plant and into the group of women delivering the food. The women and the workers in the plant, suffering from the effects of the gas, continued the food delivery.

As news of this event spread, hundreds of workers raced to the scene. Some were union members from Buick and Chevrolet; some were bus drivers who had been helped by the auto workers during their recent strike; some were 'flying squads' of union members in town from Toledo and Norwood, Ohio, to help out. The outside picketers from Fisher Body Plant Number Two fought with the company guards, using homemade billy clubs. They succeeded in taking the guards' keys, regaining control of the plant perimeter.

Members of the Flint Police Department arrived to reinforce the company guards. Again, tear gas was fired into the plant and into the crowd of union sympathizers. Workers occupying the plant doused the tear gas canisters in buckets of water, which they had located near all of the windows for exactly that purpose. They retaliated with water from the high-pressure water hoses. In addition, they pelted the police with milk bottles, stones, lumps of coal and two-pound steel auto hinges, which they threw from the roof of the plant. Then the wind changed direction and the tear gas that had been fired into the crowd outside the plant blew back into the ranks of the police, who retreated.

After regrouping, the police returned in a second attempt to oust the workers holding the plant, again being met with a volley of hinges and milk bottles.

During the course of this battle, the union made use of their sound truck. From there, union organisers and members advised the men inside the plant were the next attack would be coming from, offered encouragement, and generally directed the battle.

The police finally drew their pistols and opened fire, shooting into the crowd of union supporters at almost point-blank range. At the same time, the battery in the union's sound truck began running low. Union organisers knew that they wouldn't be able to assist the workers inside the plant for much longer.

Genora Johnson, whose husband was inside the plant, took over the microphone in the sound truck:

Cowards! Cowards! Shooting unarmed and defenseless men! Women of Flint! This is your fight! Join the picket line and defend your jobs, your husband's job and your children's home.

Mary Heaton Vorse, whose husband was also in the plant, described what happened next:

Down the hill presently came a procession, preceded by an American flag [we would only have approved a flag minus the blue and the white stars and stripes and a solid field made up of the remaining color -- Flying Picket editors]. The women's bright red caps showed dramatically in the dark crowd. They were singing 'Hold the Fort'.

To all the crowd there was something moving about seeing the women return to the picket line after having been gassed in front of Plant Number Nine.

This group of about 400 women, wearing bright red berets and armed with homemade clubs, was the Emergency Women's Brigade, which had been conceived and organised by the striker's wives. They broke through the ranks of the police, who were reluctant to shoot women in the back as they made their way to the factory.

Now badly outnumbered and facing wives defending their husbands, husbands defending their wives, and an enemy fighting with newly increased morale and enthusiasm, the police again retreated, at some speed. They did not return. Casualties included 16 wounded strikers, mostly with bullet wounds, and 11 wounded police officers, who had been struck by thrown objects.

'Bull' was popular American slang for a police officer at that time. Because of the outcome, that effort to remove the sit-down strikers became known as 'The Battle of Bulls Run'.