Flint Sit-Down Strike Poster (2009)

A very important piece of art was the Flint Sit-down Strike poster that read in big font ‘Solidarity Forever!’. This poster was created by Dylan Miner to pay respects to Roscoe Van Zandt and the hundreds of other Sit-Downers between 1936-1937. Dylan Miner was recently named senior associate dean at the U of M STAMPS. He is known for many art works and his site , shows all his works that helped his 16-year career at University Of Michigan. This poster represented a huge labor movement that is still ongoing.

When Dylan created this poster he had a goal of sharing the message of something that was important to him, Dylan also wanted to pay respects to Roscoe Van Zandt. This was important to Dylan because Roscoe was the only African American known to be inside during the strike, When you look at the poster you can see a map of sort showing the different plants. This is significant because during this strike their goal was to interfere with the bosses and not allow them to move equipment between plants. The goal of this strike was to hurt the boss, forcing them to finally agree with live able wages that they were wanting.

More to this poster is you can see three little paragraphs written with brown writing.  These paragraphs written explain this strike and the events that took place during this time. That’s what makes this piece so interesting, that attempt to educate while paying respects to the workers involved in the strike and Roscoe. When you look at this piece as well its evident that there was never any ill will in this poster and that it screams to me that this piece of history is important, that this strike is what has moved the labor laws while also bringing so much art and artifacts to Flint that brought up moral and the beauty of Flint. 

(This post was updated with contributing information by user Kiara Morris)