Notes on African-American History Since 1900
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- Revolutionary Union Movements Formed in Other Factories
The Founding of DRUM On May 2, 1968, a walkout of 4,000 workers occurred at the Hamtramick Assembly Plant that stemmed from a gradual speed-up of the production line. The facts show production soared from 49 units to 58 units an hour within the short period of a week. The mobility of the worker was retarded to the extent that it was difficult to keep pace. As a result of the walkout, picket lines were set up around the gates and individual workers began to mass. This situation occurred on the afternoon shift of which General Baker worked and carried over into the first shift. During the initial picketing, the company sent out photographers who photographed some of the pickets. The pictures were used as evidence against some of the pickets and were instrumental in the discharge and disciplining of certain workers who took part in the walkout and picketing. Most of the overall administration of punishment, including discharges and disciplinary action taken against the pickets, was overwhelmingly applied to the African-American workers. They were held responsible for the walkout, which was directly caused by company indifference towards working conditions. Three African-American workers were fired; ten were given from one to five days off. Seven persons (five African-American and two white) were fired, but all except two – General Baker and Bennie Tate, both African-American and DRUM leaders – were eventually rehired.
During the wildcat strike of May 1968, upon coming to work...there were picket lines established...manned by all white workers at the time and as a result of this the black workers received the harshest disciplinary actions. A few workers and I went across the street and sat in a bar...It was here that we decided we would do something about organizing black workers to fight the racial discrimination inside the plants and the overall oppression of black workers...And this was the beginning of DRUM.738 Prior to the wildcat strike at Dodge Main, General Baker began to pull together a group of eight African-American workers. They would meet in the offices of the Inner City Voice. Black workers who were either dismissed or penalized moved to organize the workers at Dodge Main by using a weekly Newsletter (DRUM) as an organizing tool. The contents of the Newsletter dealt with very specific cases of racism and tomism on the job and stressed the necessity of united action on part of black workers to abolish the racial aspects of exploitation and degradation at the plant.739 The first issues of the DRUM newsletter dealt with the May 2nd wildcat strike. The African-American workers enthusiastically accepted the first issue of the weekly DRUM newsletter. They were somewhat astounded to see accurate reporting of conditions they were experiencing inside the plant.740 The second issue carried an “expose” on several African-Americans in the plant whom DRUM considered to be “uncle toms.” The issue also outlined the DRUM program. DRUM is an organization of oppressed and exploited black workers. It realizes that black workers are the victims of inhumane slavery at the expense of white racist plant managers. It also realizes that black workers comprise 60% and upwards of the entire work force at the Hamtramick Assembly Plant, and therefore hold exclusive power. We members of DRUM had no other alternative but to form an organization and to present a platform. The Union has consistently and systematically failed us time and time again. We have attempted to address our grievances to the U.A.W.’s procedures, but to no avail; its hands are just as bloody as the white racist management of this corporation. We black workers feel that if skilled trades can negotiate directly with the company and hold a separate contract, then black workers have more justification for moving independently of the U.A.W.741 The third issue of DRUM dealt with charges and documentation of racist conditions in the plant and also attacked the UAW for endorsing the annual Detroit Police field day. It also listed a number of deaths attributed to the police department. After the third week, African-American workers in the plant began to ask how to go about joining DRUM. Members of DRUM working in the plant proselytized and recruited African-American workers on the job. The strength and influence of DRUM grew tremendously. Around the sixth week the more militant workers wanted to go for some concrete action against Chrysler and the UAW. At this point the editors of DRUM decided to test their strength. They called for a one-week boycott of two bars outside the gate that were patronized by a large number of brothers. The bars didn’t hire blacks and practiced racism in other subtle ways. DRUM received about 95% cooperation. This was achieved without the use of pickets or picket signs. As a further test of strength DRUM called for an extension of the boycott. Again DRUM received solid support so they decided to get down.742 Seeing that the boycott was a success, DRUM decided to test its strength by showing Chrysler and the UAW it could shut down the plant. The ninth issue of the DRUM newsletter carried a list of 14 demands. The newsletter prepared the workers for the proposed strike. DRUM demands: DRUM demands 50 black foremen. DRUM demands 10 black general foremen immediately. DRUM demands 3 black superintendents. DRUM demands a black plant manager. DRUM demands that the majority of the employment office personnel be black. DRUM demands all black doctors and 50% black nurses in the medical centers at this plant. DRUM demands that the medical policy at this plant be changed entirely. DRUM demands that 50% of all plant protection guards be black, and that every time a black worker is removed from plant premises that he be led by a black brother. DRUM demands that all black workers immediately stop paying union dues. DRUM demands that the two hours pay that goes into union dues be levied to the black community to aid in self-determination for black people. DRUM demands that the double standard be eliminated and that a committee of the black rank and file be set up to investigate all grievances against the corp., to find out what type of discipline is to be taken against the corporation and also to find out what type of discipline is to be taken against Chrysler Corporation employees. DRUM demands that all black workers who have been fired on trumped up racist charges be brought back with all lost pay. DRUM demands that our fellow black brothers in South Africa working for Chrysler Corporation, and its subsidiaries be paid at an equal scale as white racist co-workers. DRUM also demands that a black brother be appointed as head of the board of directors of Chrysler Corporation. The power base for these demands will be as follows: Legal demonstration at Local 3 and Solidarity House. Legal demonstration at Highland Park (Chrysler Corp. headquarters). Legal shut down of Hamtramick Assembly.743 In the ninth week of its existence, DRUM moved. On Thursday, July 7, 1968, DRUM held a rally in the parking lot across from the factory, which attracted over 300 workers. After speeches from DRUM leaders, African-American workers, along with a number of African-American community groups and a Congo band, formed a line and marched to the UAW Local 3 headquarters two blocks away. DRUM had carefully planned the picketing to coincide with the union executive board meeting. When the workers arrived at the local, they proceeded into the building. The panic-stricken executive board immediately canceled their meeting and opened the union auditorium to listen to criticisms aimed at the company and the union. DRUM leaders described how the union worked hand-in-glove with the corporation, the union’s failure to address itself to the workers’ grievances, and DRUM’s demands. Unsatisfied with the defense of the union’s pro-capitalist line by Ed Liska, president of UAW Local 3, and Vice President Charles Brooks, DRUM stated it would close Dodge Main in defiance of the union contract. On Friday, July 8, 1968, DRUM and supporting groups arrived at the plant gates at 5 A.M. in order to be there when workers began arriving for the 6 A.M. shift. Picket lines were set up and manned entirely by students, intellectuals, and community people. Workers were excluded. White workers were allowed to enter the factory without interference but all Blacks were stopped. No force was applied but verbal persuasion was sufficient to keep an estimated 70 percent of the Black workers out of the plant.744 While the majority of white workers entered the factory, many honored the picket line and went home. Some 3,000 African-American workers stood outside the factory gates as production came almost to a halt. DRUM leaders talked to workers one hundred yards from the picketers because the Chrysler Corporation had obtained a court injunction hindering DRUM members from being in any struggle in the plant in violation of the union contract or face arrest. About noon, six DRUM members went to Local 3 and met with Liska and other union officials. DRUM presented their grievances again. About this time the police arrived, massing across the street from the workers. They began putting on tear gas masks and got into riot formation. A detective then came forward and ordered the workers to disperse. DRUM dispersed most of the strikers after organizing at least 250 workers into car pools. The car pool drove five miles to Chrysler headquarters. The Highland Park police arrived with gas warfare gear. Many of the demonstrators had gas masks. A group of DRUM representatives went into the Chrysler building and demanded to see the policy makers. They refused to meet with DRUM. The DRUM representatives returned to the demonstration and said the company had refused to meet. Satisfied with having achieved it’s immediate objectives, DRUM transported the demonstrators back to their homes. On Sunday twelve DRUM members were invited to the regular citywide meeting of African-American UAW representatives. The African-American UAW officials said they would support specific DRUM demands but DRUM felt the officials did not represent the African-American rank and file of the union, had not stepped forward before DRUM began demonstrations and the meeting ended with no real consensus.745 On Monday, the following day, DRUM again demonstrated at the plant. The Hamtramick police served John Doe injunctions on the demonstrators. The police proceeded to break up the demonstration. DRUM activists, feeling they had been successful, tore up their injunctions and either went to work or went home. The wildcat lasted for three days with Chrysler losing the production of approximately 1900 cars and no one was fired as a result of the action. The wildcat strike forced the leaders of Local 3 to act on the cases of the workers who had been fired in May. The Local 3 leaders however accepted a package deal offered by Chrysler in which five of the seven were to be rehired except General Baker and Bennie Tate who remained fired. DRUM still viewed the July wildcat walkout an overwhelming success because it was a test of what an African-American radical workers organization could do.746 In August an African-American organization made an attempt to usurp DRUM. The group was made up of African-American trade union men and a Chrysler professional employee who was pretending he had been fired from the company. The group filed incorporation papers in the name of DRUM – the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement. They called a meeting between the original DRUM – Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement – and themselves. The Detroit DRUM said they thought the original DRUM leadership was incompetent and needed direction. The meeting didn’t lead to positive results because the original DRUM criticized them for not having a base and also incorrect style of work. But DRUM learned that in order not to be co-opted or misrepresented, it had to move immediately to formalize its structure and tighten up the organization. Originally in May, DRUM consisted of eight Chrysler workers who constituted an editorial board which met formally every Sunday. In September, DRUM had developed into a fairly large organization whose form was for the most part amorphous. In the middle of September DRUM submitted its constitution and theoretical structure for acceptance at a general meeting. Both the constitution and structure were accepted unanimously.747
DRUM leadership was divided as to whether they should run a candidate. Those opposed believed that participation in union electoral politics would: (1) appear to be compromising with a “corrupt” UAW; (2) might create the potential for opportunism in some DRUM members; and (3) the election might be lost. Those in favor argued that the election could: (1) demonstrate Black solidarity; (2) demonstrate DRUM’s leadership; (3) serve as a vehicle for political education; and (4) aid DRUM’s membership drive.748 DRUM chose Ron March, a DRUM member, to run for the post of union steward, and presented a platform for the upcoming election: The complete accountability to the black majority of the entire membership. All union decisions will coincide directly with the wishes of that majority. Advocating a revolutionary change in the UAW (including a referendum vote and revive the grievance procedure). Public denouncement of the racial practices within the UAW. A refusal to be dictated to by the international staff of the UAW. Total involvement in policy by the workers as opposed to dictatorship by the executive board.749 The election campaign was organized primarily as a tool for political education while also attempting to elect Ron March. March led the balloting in the election with 563 votes to 521 for his nearest competitor. The Hamtramick police attacked some African-American workers near some bars the same night that the election returns were announced. Chuck Wooten, a member of DRUM, described forms of harassment: The Hamtramick police department began to move in a much more open way. They gave us tickets on our cars and just generally harassed us. One day about fifty of us were in the union hall, which is right across from the police station. The mayor of the city and the chief of police came in with guns in their hands. They told us to stop making trouble, and we said all we wanted was to win the election. We asked them why they weren’t harassing the others. While we were talking, a squad of police came through the door swinging axe handles and throwing Mace around.750 Between the time of the first election and the runoff, the union sent letters to retired workers appealing to them to participate in the election. While African-Americans made up 63 percent of the active work force in UAW Local 3, white (primarily Polish-Americans) made up the overwhelming majority of the retired workers. On October 3, 1968, Ron March was defeated in the runoff by a vote of 2,091 to 1,386. With negative publicity from the established and union press and repression from police forces, DRUM felt that Ron’s pulling forty percent of the vote under those conditions was a good showing. After running in two additional elections and receiving similar results, DRUM decided to terminate its direct participation in union electoral politics. Instead it supported African-American candidates who were not identified as DRUM members but who were progressive. As DRUM expanded its operations, it had to address itself to how it was going to raise funds to carry out operations. The two main sources of finances were dues from DRUM members and contributions from workers. But these weren’t enough to sustain the organization.
Marion Kramer, who worked as an organizer for the City-Wide Welfare Rights Organization typed and justified the DRUM newsletter; when in 1967 she was asked to come to a meeting to form a black people’s liberation party. At the meeting it was discussed, what direction to take. Kramer and her husband at the time (Dave Kramer) were frustrated with the rate of social change in the United States and were going to tour Europe. She said she was convinced “to get that out of your mind”, by General Baker, Mike Hamlin, John Watson, John Williams and others. They said the purpose of the session was to plan and pull together an organization to serve the interests of African-Americans. Kramer said the meeting was a turning point in her life because she decided to go deeper in her understanding of what was happening in the United States. Edna Watson and Dorothy Duberry had been invited to the meeting along with Kramer but Kramer was the only woman who showed up of the women invited to attend. One of the struggles that even started to develop then was the whole question of the relationship between the struggle taking place in the community and the struggle at the point of production.751
The example set by DRUM inspired African-American workers in other plants to establish DRUM-type organizations at other factories. Workers from other plants began calling the DRUM office at Oakland and Owens. Brothers and sisters would attend DRUM meetings to learn the techniques of organizing and to discuss the situation at the plants all across the state, from which African-American workers would come to help in launching chapters of DRUM. The strike at the Hamtramick plant called by DRUM stimulated the creation of ELRUM (Eldon Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement) and FRUM (Ford Revolutionary Union Movement). Both of these RUM’s had their own newsletters. ELRUM was organized on November 10, 1968. The development of ELRUM was especially significant because the Eldon Avenue plant was Chrysler’s only gear and axle plant. ELRUM led a demonstration in front of the UAW Local 961 in its eight-week of its existence. A meeting resulted between the UAW local representatives and members of ELRUM. It lasted so long that 300 workers missed their afternoon shift starting time at work. When they returned to work the next day, 66 of the 300 were immediately punished and more were later on. Punishments ranged from five days to a month off without pay. To protest this punishment ELRUM called for a wildcat strike on January 21, 1969. At the same time RUM’s (Revolutionary Union Movements) were growing everywhere in the city, so on the eve of the ELRUM strike we called for the formation of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW).752 In the Eldon Avenue strike, a higher proportion of African-American workers participated and production was completely halted because African-Americans comprised a larger portion of the total labor force than had been the case at Hamtramick Assembly plant. Later the ELRUM cadres analyzed that the strike had been premature, because 22 strikers were fired despite the fact that picket lines were manned by support cadres.* On May 27, 1970, the Eldon Safety Committee and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers set up picket lines to protest the death of Gary Thompson who had been buried under five tons of steel when his faulty jiney tipped over on May 26, 1970 at the Eldon Gear and Axle plant. While the second wildcat strike called by ELRUM was not as successful as the first, it did cost Chrysler 2,174 axles over a two-day period. ELRUM in its early development had to deal with the fact that most of its cadres were thrown out of the plant and had to address itself to the sustenance of the families of the brothers who were fired. Soon after the Eldon Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement (ELRUM) was established (FRUM) Ford, Jefferson Avenue (JARUM), Mack Avenue (MARUM) and General Motors (GRUM) soon followed it. Each Revolutionary Union Movement had a nucleus of from ten to fifteen workers in each plant that produced their plant weekly newsletters and would give them to other cadre who would distribute them throughout the plant. As RUM’s sprang up in factories across Detroit and in other cities, DRUM and its support cadres felt the need for a centralizing organization. According to Marion Kramer in an interview July 5, 2002: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers came together from the RUM’s movement as a result of the women rebelling and calling for a more systematic approach to organization.753
During the period of multiple RUM’s, 68-69, the Detroit RUM collective had organized the Black Student United Front, various RUM’s in the plants and hospitals; in the social workers community and the international black appeal. The collective had gone through the New Bethel incident and was the main force getting people set free. It had been a force behind the organizing drive to save Judge Crockett who had come to the defense of the New Bethel detainees. General Baker had gone underground at this time because Chrysler had made moves to arrest him. Even with Baker off the scene the RUM collective’s roots were so embedded among the Detroit African-American working class that when the UAW held its national convention in Detroit; cadre from the RUM’s and community people held massive demonstrations in front of the UAW convention. The RUM collective had mobilized thousands of people including an effort to stop the taking of attorney Ken Cockrel’s license. The RUM collective had also been involved in defending an African-American worker; James Johnson who had killed his foreman and two others at the plant and the collective had successfully defended him with Johnson winning his case. The women were “sick and tired” of doing all of the work for the sections (RUMs) and not being part of the decision making process while there was no organizational process that had any plans. The women had formed the black women’s committee and knew of ensuing internal struggles. Young sisters from the Black Students United Front now joined them. So as the black women’s committee they decided to take some stands. The women worked around the Inner City Voice as well as helping to develop various newsletters of the RUMs plus help train the workers of the RUM to edit and print their own RUM newsletters. The women got tired of being “dumped upon” and started to say, “we need an organization”.754 Through the women spearheading and leading the motion to call an organizational meeting, a group of over a hundred people involved convened on January 21, 1969 and formed the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.755 Directory: Documents -> Finder -> Black%20Liberation%20Disk -> Black%20Power! Documents -> The great global switch-off Documents -> Nonprofit grant application Documents -> The Truth about the Rwandan Genocide Documents -> Annual InStructional unit plan Documents -> Chaos equipment included Black%20Power! -> The Need (Importance) for Student Activism in the 21st Century Black%20Power! -> When and how I wrote toward black liberation part I and malcolm X and the black liberation movement Black%20Power! -> Notes on African-American History Since 1900 Download 3 Mb. Share with your friends:
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