Today in Labor History May 19, 1989: Trinidadian Marxist historian and journalist C.L.R. James died. James was the author of The Black Jacobins (1938), Breaking a Boundary (1963), numerous articles and essays on class and race antagonism, West Indian self-determination, cricket, Marxism, & aesthetics. In 1933, he published the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government. He was a champion of Pan-Africanism and a member of the Friends of Ethiopia, an organization opposed to fascism and the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. He also wrote a play about the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History. Paul Robeson starred in the 1936 British production.
Today in Labor History April 27, 1882: Jessie Redmon Fauset was born. She was an African-American editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator. Her emphasis on portraying an accurate image of African-American life and history inspired literature of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. In her fiction, she created black characters who were working professionals. This was inconceivable to white Americans at the time. Her stories dealt with themes like racial discrimination, "passing", and feminism. From 1919 to 1926, she was literary editor of The Crisis, a NAACP magazine.
Today in Labor History April 16, 1994: Ralph Ellison died on this day. Ellison was a member of the Harlem Renaissance, best known for his book, The Invisible Man. He was friends with Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. He became active in the Communist Party, as did many of his peers. But he became disillusioned with them during World War II when he felt they became reformist. He wrote The Invisible Man during this era (published in 1952), in part, as a response their betrayal. But the book also looks at the relationship between black identity and Marxism, the reformism of Booker T. Washington, and issues of individuality and personal identity.
Today in Labor History April 14, 1917: IWW sailors went on strike in Philadelphia and won a ten dollar per month raise. Ben Fletcher, an African-American IWW organizer, was instrumental in organizing the Philadelphia waterfront. Fletcher was born in Philly in 1890. He joined the Wobblies (IWW) in 1912, became secretary of the IWW District Council in 1913. He also co-founded the interracial Local 8 in 1913.
In 1913, Fletcher led 10,000 IWW Philly dockworkers on a strike. Within two weeks, they won 10-hr day, overtime pay, & created one of the most successful antiracist, anticapitalist union locals in the U.S. At the time, roughly one-third of the dockers on the Philadelphia waterfront were black. Another 33% were Irish. And about 33% were Polish and Lithuanian. Prior to the IWW organizing drive, the employers routinely pitted black workers against white, and Polish against Irish. The IWW was one of the only unions of the era that organized workers into the same locals, regardless of race or ethnicity. And its main leader in Philadelphia was an African American, Ben Fletcher.
By 1916, thanks in large part to Fletcher’s organizing skill, all but two of Philadelphia’s docks were controlled by the IWW. And the union maintained control of the Philly waterfront for about a decade. At that time, roughly 10% of the IWW’s 1 million members were African American. Most had been rejected from other unions because of their skin color.
Fletcher also traveled up and down the east coast organizing dockers. However, he was nearly lynched in Norfolk, Virginia in 1917. And in 1918, the state arrested him, sentencing him to ten years for the crime of organizing workers during wartime. He served three years.
Today in Labor History December 2, 1859: The authorities hanged abolitionist John Brown in Charleston, Virginia for his leadership of a plot to incite a slave rebellion. Victor Hugo, who was living in exile on Guernsey, tried to obtain a pardon for him. His open letter was published by the press on both sides of the Atlantic. His plea failed, of course. On the day of his execution, John Brown rode in a furniture wagon, on top of his own coffin, through a crowd of 2,000 soldiers, to the gallows. The soldiers included future Confederate general Stonewall Jackson and John Wilkes Booth. Walt Whitman described the execution in his poem “Year of Meteors.”
Today in Labor History November 26, 1911: Paul Lafargue, Cuban-French revolutionary and son-in-law of Karl Marx, died. Lafargue wrote “The Right to Be Lazy” in 1893 while in prison. Lafargue had Jewish, French, Indian, Creole and African ancestry. When IWW cofounder Daniel De Leon asked him about his origins, he replied that he was proudest of his “negro” ancestry. In his youth, Lefargue participated in the International Students Congress in 1865. Consequently, the government banned him from all French universities. So, he moved to London, where he became a frequent visitor to Marx’s house, ultimately marrying his daughter, Laura. Lafargue was a member of the General Council of the First International. He also participated in the Paris Commune.
Today in Labor History November 10, 1995: The Nigerian government executed playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with eight other members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop). Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent movement protesting the despoiling of Ogoniland by Royal Dutch Shell. Beverly Naidoo’s 2000 novel, “The Other Side of Truth,” is based on Saro-Wiwa’s execution, as is Richard North Patterson’s 2009 novel, “Eclipse.”
Today in Labor History October 26, 1892: Ida B. Wells published “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” which led to threats against her life, and the burning down of her newspaper’s headquarters in Memphis. Wells, who was born into slavery, was a journalist, educator, feminist, and early Civil Rights leader who helped found the NAACP.
Today in Labor History October 21, 1981: Kuwasi Balagoon was finally captured following a Brinks robbery. Balagoon had been a member of the Black Panther Party. While in prison, he became disillusioned with the Panthers, became an anarchist and joined the more militant Black Liberation Army. He escaped from prison twice. In 1979, while on the lam from his second prison escape, he helped to free political prisoner Assata Shakur, who fled to Cuba and lives there to this day. In 1986, he died in prison from AIDS. In 2019, PM Press released a collection of writings by and about Balagoon called, “Kuwasi Balagoon: A Soldier's Story.” And the prison abolitionist group, Black and Pink, which supports LGBTQ and HIV-positive prisoners, has, since 2020, run a "Kuwasi Balagoon award" for those living with HIV/AIDS.
Today in Labor History October 15, 1966: The Black Panther Party was created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, in Oakland, California. One of their early core practices was open-carry armed citizen’s patrols monitoring abusive police behavior. They also implemented free breakfast programs and community health clinics, and advocated for revolutionary class struggle. The FBI sabotaged the Panthers through its COINTELPRO and participated in the assassination of Panthers, like Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. In 1969, the Panthers officially declared sexism to be counterrevolutionary and ordered its male members to treat women as equals. In 1970, Huey Newton expressed support for the Women’s Liberation Movement, and the LGBTQ Liberation Movement which, he correctly noted, were subject to much of the same police brutality as were African Americans.
Today in Labor History September 3, 1838: Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland to freedom in the north, where he became a leader of the abolitionist movement. During his lifetime, he wrote 3 autobiographies and became a best-selling author. He also fought for women’s suffrage and was the first black man nominated to run for vice president. Douglass opposed colonialism and segregated schools. He was the most photographed American of the 19th century, never smiling once for the camera so as to not play into the racist myth of the happy slave.
Today in Labor History August 30, 1948: Fred Hampton revolutionary activist and chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party was born. He founded the antiracist, anti-class Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that included Black Panthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Hispanics), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. In December 1969, the Chicago police & FBI drugged Hampton, shot him and killed him in his bed during a predawn raid. They sprayed more than 90 gunshots throughout his apartment. They also killed Black Panther Mark Clark and wounded several others. In January 1970, a jury concluded that Hampton's and Clark's deaths were justifiable homicides.
Stephen King refers to Hampton in his novel “11/22/63” (2012). In that book, a character suggests that if you could travel back in time to prevent John F. Kennedy's assassination, it could have a ripple effect that also prevented Hampton's assassination.
Today in Labor History August 23, 1917: The Camp Logan Mutiny. After months of harassment by Houston cops, including ongoing arrests and beatings, 156 Black soldiers mutinied. They opened fire in Houston, killing 5 cops and 11 white civilians. 4 mutineers also died in the gun battle. The military tried 64 of the soldiers for murder and mutiny. They executed 19 and sentenced 41 to life imprisonment. Latino author and lawyer Jaime Salazar wrote an account of the mutiny and courts martial in his book “Mutiny of Rage.”
Today in Labor History August 22, 1791: Encouraged by the French and American revolutions, Toussaint Louverture led over 100,000 Haitian slaves in a revolt against the French. They were ultimately successful, making Haiti the first black republic in the world. The US refused recognition of Haiti until 1865, as a result of pressure from Southern slaveholders. The French demanded $21 billion In today’s dollars) in reparations for the losses to the former slaveholders, in exchange for peace and recognition of Haiti as an independent nation. The debt was financed through French banks and the U.S. bank, Citibank. The Haitians finally paid it off in 1947. However, the huge interest payments for their independence debt, and the debt incurred through the corruption of the Duvalier dynasty, have made Haiti one of the poorest nations in the western hemisphere. Prior to independence, Haiti was the richest and most productive of all of Europe’s colonies.
The best book I’ve read on the Haitian Revolution is “The Black Jacobins,” by Trinidadian socialist C.L.R. James. Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier explores the revolution in his novel, “The Kingdom of This World” (1949). You can read more about Toussaint Louverture and the slave uprising in Madison Smartt Bell’s trilogy called “All Souls' Rising” (1995) and Isabel Allende’s 2010 novel, “Island Beneath the Sea.”
Today in Labor History August 21, 1831: Nat Turner launched a 2-day slave revolt in Virginia. They killed over 50 whites. In response, scores of African-Americans were lynched, including many who did not participate in the revolt. Turner survived in hiding for more than two months. Mobs & militias killed around 120 enslaved and free African Americans. In the aftermath, state legislatures passed new laws prohibiting education of free and enslaved black people and restricted the civil liberties for free blacks.
The rebellion is referenced in “Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown.” Thomas R. Gray wrote an 1831 pamphlet, “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” based on his jailhouse interview with Turner. Harriet Beecher Stowe referenced Turner's Confessions in her 1855 novel “Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp.” Harriet Jacobs, an escaped slave, refers to the pogrom against blacks following Turner's rebellion in her 1861 classic, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” In the 1990s, Tupac Shakur honored Turner with a cross tattoo on his back "EXODUS 1831."
Today in Labor History August 15, 1906: W.E.B. DuBois demanded equal citizenship rights for African-Americans during the second meeting of the Niagara Movement, saying, "We will not be satisfied to take one jot or little less than our full manhood." Founders of the movement named it for the “mighty current” of change they hoped to achieve. DuBois made his famous statement at Harper’s Ferry, sight of the failed insurrection led by John Brown, in 1859. For a wonderful speculative fiction story based on the premise that John Brown had succeeded in his raid, with the help of Harriet Tubman, read Terry Bisson’s “Fire on the Mountain” (1988).
In addition to cofounding the Niagara Movement, DuBois also cofounded the NAACP. He devoted his life to fighting racism, segregation, Jim Crow and lynchings. DuBois opposed capitalism and blamed it for much of the racism in America. He was also a prolific writer, an anti-nuclear and peace activist, and a proponent of Pan-Africanism.
Today in Labor History August 14, 1791: Dutty Boukman led a Vodou ceremony with enslaved people from Saint Domingue plantations that led to the start of the Haitian Revolution, the largest slave uprising since the Spartacist revolt against the Romam empire. Boukman was born in Senegambia. His name, Boukman, came from the English “Book Man,” because he not only knew how to read, but taught other enslaved people how to read. He, and priestess Cécile Fatiman, had led a series of meetings with enslaved people prior to August 14 to organized and plan for the uprising. Boukman was killed by French troops a few months into the revolution. Trinidadian Marxist writer C. L. R. James wrote the best book on the Haitian Revolution: “The Black Jacobins,” (1938). Also, be sure to check out the wonderful music of the contemporary Haitian pop group, Boukman Eksperyans, named for the Haitian revolutionary, Dutty Boukman. A fictionalized version of Boukman plays the title character in Guy Endore's novel “Babouk,” an anti-capitalist parable about the Haitian Revolution.
The more I study history the more I realize that black history is American history.
My ansesters were stolen from Africa to build this bitch!
My grampa was raised in mississippi he told me how the white folks treated black people and he seen black people lynched. I ain't lying he seen it happen fr.
So when these people say BLM is just some Marxist organization yall got to look deeper and understand why we want justice #Blacklivesmatter#BlackMastadon 👊🏾