By John Ruch
Sometimes we discover how historic a building is only after we save it. And that additional history invariably tells us more about the entire community that nearly lost it.
The latest example is the former Lakewood Elementary, which escaped an Atlanta Public Schools (APS) demolition plan last year after City planning staff blasted it as “shameful.” New research has found that the school also played a role in labor union organizing that triggered perhaps the most important strike in U.S. history.
The school building at 335 Sawtell Ave. in Southeast Atlanta’s Lakewood Heights hosted organizing meetings for a pioneering 1936 sit-down strike at a nearby General Motors plant. The Atlanta strike triggered similar GM worker actions around the country, culminating in a legendary 1936-1937 showdown in Flint, Michigan that propelled the United Auto Workers (UAW) into powerhouse status and inspired the unionization of many other industries.
While not exactly secret, this significant Lakewood Elementary past had to be sifted out of heaps of oral histories and other documents by Benjamin Schmidt, a Georgia State University (GSU) student working with the nonprofit Atlanta Preservation Center (APC).
APC and student researchers affiliated with it and the sister organization Easements Atlanta have a track record of similar discoveries. After another public shaming campaign saved a historic Auburn Avenue office building last year, a student researcher discovered it had housed Georgia’s first state-chartered, Black-owned bank and might be older than previously known.
Property owners who want to demolish a historic structure naturally have little motivation to dig up even more history. But the case of Lakewood Elementary and its neighborhood also tells us about what types of history we choose to remember. In a town and state dominated by big business, local labor union history is rarely highlighted or lauded – even when it is nationally significant.
“We have fixated in some ways on the role of Civil Rights in the Atlanta narrative [so] that sometimes we don’t do equal justice to [other] things Atlanta has done,” said APC Executive Director David Yoakley Mitchell. The UAW “is not one that shoots across my brain” when Atlanta history comes up, he said.
Yet the UAW history is particularly relevant – which is to say, potentially embarrassing and threatening – today as the state of Georgia bends over backward to lure a new generation of electric car manufacturers with tax breaks and the unspoken attraction of non-union labor.
The UAW itself is in the midst of an aggressive relaunch attempt after corruption scandals and waning political influence.
Schmidt discovered the school’s role in the strike in an oral history of the late labor lawyer Joe Jacobs recorded in 1991 and now saved in GSU archives. Jacobs was interviewed by the late, great Clifford Kuhn, a GSU history professor whose work included a book on another pioneering strike at Cabbagetown’s Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills.
In the oral history, Jacobs recalled his role in the strike at GM’s Fisher Body division plant at Sawtell and McDonough Boulevard.
“We had a number of meetings that we held at the Lakewood School… And I remember [it was] in one of the meetings that we had at the schoolhouse while we were organizing that I made what I call my famous ‘General Motors doesn’t care’ talks,” Jacobs said, according to a transcript of the oral history.
His rhetorical tactic was to compare the conditions of plant workers with those of inmates at the federal prison across the street, which still operates today.
“At that time, there were reports that the men who were working on the assembly line could not get a break in the eight hours,” Jacobs recounted. “And I’ve had grown men who were there who actually …passed water in their britches on the assembly line, and the rest of it in their britches. Why? Because they couldn’t get any relief to go.”
“And my story was that across the street, on the other side of the fence, were people that Uncle Sam worried about whether they had a place to sleep and a roof over their head and food to eat and clothes to wear; and they didn’t have to worry about their day’s work, and the only real thing they didn’t have was that they couldn’t walk out of the gate.”
Such conditions, along with pay and union-busting complaints, stirred local labor organizers like Fred C. Pieper. In October 1936, according to a 2016 history article in the UAW magazine, Pieper staged a brief sit-down strike at the plant. Locals around the country then began pledging support and supplies for a longer strike.
On Nov. 17, the Atlanta workers “sat down,” meaning they halted work and occupied the plant. The immediate trigger was the firing of a worker for wearing a union button, but the union had its longer list of demands. As the strike dragged into December, workers in other GM plants began their own sit-down strikes, first in Missouri, then in Ohio.
Then, on Dec. 30, the UAW called for a massive sit-down at the Flint plants – the heart of the GM empire. That began an epic showdown that included the National Guard, a violent police raid fended off by strikers, and pressure from President Franklin Roosevelt for GM to recognize the union. Meanwhile, strikes boomed in other GM plants – 135,000 workers in 35 cities and 14 states, according to the UAW magazine.
After 44 days, GM caved and recognized the UAW with an initial, nationwide agreement. That included concessions to workers in Atlanta, who had held out the longest – nearly three months.
“Though the Flint Sit-Down Strike in Michigan was a month away, it has always garnered more attention,” said the UAW magazine. “But it was in Atlanta where GM workers first used the sit-down strategy and built the momentum for the first major dispute in U.S. auto history.”
The strike also contributed to a major moment in local history, according to Schmidt’s research, as it became a factor in a mayoral race eventually won by William Hartsfield – who would go on to champion the Atlanta airport, expand the city through annexation, and promote the legendary slogan of “the City Too Busy to Hate.” According to Schmidt’s research, Hartsfield’s campaign promises included firing Police Chief T.O. Sturdivant, who subsequently received negative press attention for “storming out of the Lakewood assembly plant roaring drunk and screaming obscenities at the striking workers.”
Mitchell notes one lesson of this history: “Atlanta has been an impactful, purposeful and meaningful component of this nation.” Another lesson is the dynamic between local landmarks and their communities – for example, the way a school, an industrial plant and a prison played off each other in this political triumph. Mitchell also notes another nearby institution, South-View Cemetery, the final resting place of many legendary African-American community leaders. The dynamic “makes you realize the caliber of people who lived in that area,” he said.
If and how this history is memorialized at the long-shuttered Lakewood Elementary is another question in a city with a poor track record on union history. The Fulton mill is finally getting a state historical marker next month, while an opportunity was recently lost for another strike to be highlighted at the now-demolished Nabisco factory in Southwest Atlanta.
APS – which did not respond to questions – is working on a plan for its historic and shuttered properties as part of an overall strategic document expected later this year. A local developer has promoted a commercial remake, while some neighbors have agitated for reuse as a school. The newly uncovered strike history may add flavor to such discussions. Perhaps the building could have continued importance as a community gathering and organizing spot. Perhaps commercial use should involve union-friendly companies. The old Fisher Body plant itself recently became the subject of a mixed-use mega-redevelopment concept, where similar questions could be asked.
For sure is that, like many freshly rescued historic buildings, more history is yet to be discovered and what we’ve learned is just the start of deeper research. The school’s exact age remains something of a mystery, let alone what else might be gleaned about union organizing or other community uses.
“To have a school teach us is pretty neat,” Mitchell said.
And we certainly have more to learn from Lakewood Elementary – in more ways than one.
You’ve gotta be kidding! You really believe that is a reason to keep this building? How ’bout putting up some public housing instead? Another ridiculous article Ruch.