League of Revolutionary Black Workers

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The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) formed in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. Its origins are due to an intersection of events and movements in and outside Detroit, Michigan e.g., the student New Left movement, anti-colonial revolutions throughout the Third World, independent black organizations in the United States, the political uprising in Detroit known as the Great Rebellion or the 12th Street riot, and especially the wave of spontaneous wildcat strikes which led to the creation of the various plant Revolutionary Union Movements (RUMs) explicitly made up of black workers who were disenchanted with the racist practices and sheer lack of regard by the UAW towards its black membership.

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[edit] Revolutionary Union Movement

The main RUM group that facilitated the organization of the League was the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, widely known as DRUM. Other RUMS were formed in other factories such as Ford Revolutionary Union Movement (FRUM) at the River Rouge Plant, and Chrysler’s Eldon Avenue Gear and Axle plant called ELRUM. While the RUMs political outlook were largely nationalist, there was also a Marxist and Socialist orientation among several of the more notable members of the various RUMs.

[edit] The League

The concept of the League was the working of activists General Baker, John Watson, John Williams, and Luke Tripp. They began by putting out a theoretical journal called the Black Vanguard in 1964. This journal called for a League of Revolutionary Black Workers. It was not until late 1968 that meetings were held to discuss the possibility of a league. These meetings consisted of a coalition of activists who had worked together on previous groups. The League was officially launched in June 1969.

The national Black Economic Development Conference (BED-C) met in April of 1969. At the conference, James Forman, a former member of the Black Panther Party, drafted a Black Manifesto. It was poorly received and subsequently laid the groundwork for his expulsion from the League.

[edit] The Executive Board of LRBW

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers were made up of a seven-member executive board consisting of General Baker, John Watson, John Williams, Luke Tripp, Ken Cockrell, Mike Hamlin, and Chuck Wooten. At the beginning of the 70s, and as the League leadership questioned their future, there eventually emerged three defined tendencies about how the League should base its operations.

The first tendency, dubbed by League historian Dan Georgakas as the in-plant tendency, was made up of General Baker and Chuck Wooten. They stressed the League's in-plant organizing because of their limited foundation and because of Baker and Wooten's general pragmatic approach.

The second tendency, made up of Ken Cockrell, John Watson, and Mike Hamlin, dubbed the out-of-plant tendency, put more emphasis on cultural and educational work via the production of films such as Finally Got The News about DRUM, the creation of the Inner City Voice, and John Watson's assumption as editor of the Wayne State University press, The South End.

The third tendency consisted of John Williams and Luke Tripp which mediated between Baker's pragatism towards in-plant organizing and Cockrell's vision of a larger cultural, community, and ideological base which could sustain revolutionary activity at times of low involvement in the plants.

[edit] Black Workers Congress

The beginning of a party split began in 1970 with the creation of the Black Workers Congress, which, while making a strong presence at their initial conference, existed basically as a paper organization and eventually burned out. Many of the Black Workers Congress resigned over ideological differences concerning conceptual frameworks, location of priorities, and social relations. Other problems arose between in-plant organizing, community activism, and the role of intellectuals.

[edit] The Communist League

According to the book "Detroit, I Do Mind Dying" by Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, the split within the Detroit based League of Revolutionary Workers became public on June 12, 1971. "By the first of the year, those who remained in the League were making plans to affiliate what was left of the organization with a group called the Communist League. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers had become history." (page 164).

With the merging of the Communist League and a section of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the Communist League acquired a large grouping of black industrial workers familiar with the writings of Marx, Lenin and Mao. Elbaum speculates that the Communist League may have had more blacks, Chicanos and women in its leadership than perhaps any communist group in American history. (page 103)

In Detroit the Communist League formed a working relations with the Motor City Labor League (MCLL), which had also experienced a political split similar to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, with one section combining with the Communist League in launching itself nationally as the Communist Labor Party in 1974. Interestingly, one section of the MCLL merged with the Communist League and another sector merged with the grouping spilt from the old League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW). The former was expressed as activists like the anti-war veteran Frank Joyce and the later by Shelia Murphy who would later win numerous elections as Councilperson in Detroit and marry Kenneth Cockrel, a leader of the faction within the LRBW than did not join the Communist League.

The Communist League and then the Communist Labor Party viewed its distinguishing political and theoretical feature as its presentation of what it called "The Negro National Colonial Question," by Nelson Peery, first edition published by the Communist League, 1972. In 1976 and again in 1978 the Communist Labor Party conducted "Vote Communist" campaigns running General Baker Jr. for State Representative in the Michigan House. They continued to work with the CPUSA, while opposing much of their ideology, until 1993 when they disbanded and refounded their group as the League of Revolutionaries for a New America.

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