UNAPOLOGETICALLY BLACK: TRANSNATIONAL DIASPORIC CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES AND SOUTH AFRICA By David Mathew Walton A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of African American and African Studies – Doctor of Philosophy History – Doctor of Philosophy 2017 ABSTRACT UNAPOLOGETICALLY BLACK: TRANSNATIONAL DIASPORIC CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES AND SOUTH AFRICA By David Mathew Walton Since the 1990s, “Black Power Studies” has expanded dramatically. Similarly, in the last two decades, a significant body of historical scholarship on the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa has been published. Still, the historiography of both fields is lacking an exploration of the development of a transnational diasporic consciousness and activism. Contributing to these two distinct, yet overlapping, bodies of scholarly intrigue, this study seeks to explore the contributions of important, yet under-acknowledged and under-researched, black liberation organizations in the United States and South Africa that were active during the turbulent decades between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s. Unapologetically Black sheds light on the black South African and black American cross fertilization and evolution of “black power” and “blackness” as a modern diasporic concept and identity. This study unearths how they defined and interpreted issues and agenda setting. Using four case studies, this work critically examines how they sought to address the plight and ameliorate the status of African descendants. With a focus on student activists and labor organizers, Unapologetically Black expands the tassel work of other scholars concerning the development of a shared global ‘Black’ identity and movement. The thrust of this study is the scrutinizing of documents produced by the four organizations in the case studies to distill commonly shared themes, strategies, and philosophers. This method, although comparative in nature, is a transnational approach to tracing shared ideas and the common identity construction project of Black Power and Black Consciousness by using these four specific case studies. In this sense, Unapologetically Black is transnational in orientation and a project in black global history. Unapologetically Black identifies and unpacks the perspective of ‘Blackness’ in these movements, analyzes the notion of ‘Black’ identity (or identities), and reveals how BP and BC adherents translated these identities into action. Pressing questions that are addressed in Unapologetically Black include: How do we explain the emergence and development of “black power” and “black consciousness” in these transnational locales? What are the deeper meanings and implications of “black power” and “black consciousness?” How did the members of the organizations conceptualize “black” and “blackness?” How did these organizations formulate and construct their political identities as well as use these identities in the broader global black freedom struggle? My argument is that based upon prior contact, a shared philosophical canon, and facing similar racialized oppression; Black Power and Black Conciousness adherents endeavored to create a new identity and culture to assert a personhood to seize selfdetermination. ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ were conceptualized as a militant revolutionary personhood and culture rooted in self-reliance and self-defense. To those ends, Black Power and Black Conciousness adherents created organizations and independent institutions to replace the state and/or fill the human and civil service needs the state was unwilling or incapable of filling. Unapologetically Black, in short, is about the evolution of ‘Black’ as an identity, political consciousness, cultural framework, and organizing tool. Copyright by DAVID MATHEW WALTON 2017 This dissertation is dedicated to my family. Without the unwavering support and confidence of my parents I would not have pursued or finished a doctorate. The sacrifices of my children cannot be overstated. Thank you all for always believing in me. This dissertation is also dedicated to the legacy, courage, and commitment of the black student activists and labor organizers its pages engages. Ubuntu. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must first thank the Heavenly Creator and my ancestors for their protection and blessing as I endeavored on this project. I would like to thank the many people who have helped me or contributed to this project and my intellectual development in various ways. My brevity (or accidental omission) should not be taken as a reflection of the depth of my gratitude, but my own inadequacies in expressing it. As the black colloquialism goes, “charge it to my brain and not my heart.” I would like to thank my African American & African Studies, African American history, African history, and AGEP families at Michigan State University. Special thanks go to my committee members: Pero Dagbovie, Rita Edozie, Walter Hawthorne, Peter Alegi, and Curtis Stokes. I am greatly indebted to my advisor, Pero Dagbovie, for his meticulousness, time, careful attention, tough love, and guidance that pushed me to improve my research, writing, thinking, presentation, and networking. He has been a continuous example of a scrupulous, creative, energetic, engaged, and relevant scholar. Most importantly, he has been a shining model of what a black scholar and historian must be to advance the causes of Black History. Dagbovie has become much more than an advisor to me, he has become family. Rita Edozie who took a chance on me when no one else would by admitting me into the African American & African Studies doctoral program. That opportunity allowed me to prove my mettle and earn admittance into the history doctoral program at MSU as well. Edozie has been an invaluable cheerleader, angry nun, and auntie figure. Her commitment to my success cannot be measured. Edozie understood, supported, and facilitated my vision to become a ‘Black Studies Historian.’ vi Peter Alegi, who entertained my radical indulgences and frank talk, amiably shared his knowledge of South African history in class or conversation. Alegi provided me important introductions to South African activists and directed me to valuable sources. The lessons learned as his teaching assistant improved my teaching pedagogy. Curtis Stokes made sure we had oneon-one cerebral conversations about black radical thought during our instructive meetings. His knowledge of content and sources is astounding. Walter Hawthorne and Nwando Achebe validated my cultural-centered approach to historical research. Hawthorne sacrificed much time aiding in my professional development and has a true commitment to diversity. Achebe challenged me to engage LGTBQI scholarship and analyses, greatly expanded my understanding of gender roles and relations. They were trusted mentors and friends at Michigan State. Peter Limb eagerly imparted his knowledge of South African history and aided me in finding primary source caches as this project was being conceived. I must also thank my isiZulu instructor Galen Sibanda, perhaps the kindest man I have ever met. My classmates across campus, in the African American & African Studies program, and in the history department supported me, kept me sane, and expanded my knowledge of the African diaspora. I am particularly grateful for my initial cohort: Sharrae Hayes, Ashley Newby, Cona Marshall, Kim Ross, Ken Harris, and El-Ra Radney in AAAS; and Rick Mares and David Bennett in the history department. To my AAAS cohort, Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison” will remain a special song in my heart. A Ruth Simms Hamilton Fellowship, King Chavez Parks Fellowship, a Doctoral Study Abroad Fellowship, along with a MSUFCU study abroad scholarship allowed me to go to South Africa where many people supported me in my research. Many people in academic and archival institutions facilitated my research and gave me a home in South Africa, but I would especially vii like to thank D. Sepke Matjilla, manager of the Centre for Pan African Languages and Cultural Development at the University of South Africa, the staff at the South African History Archives in Johannesburg, Sifiso Ndlovu, the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, and the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library. I am indebted to Tando Songwevu for graciously sharing valuable networks in South Africa but the survival tips for a stranger traveling and living in South Africa can never be repaid. Many people also facilitated my research in Michigan, but a distinctive thank you to Luke Tripp, Melvin T. Peters, and David Goldberg. I thank the National Council for Black Studies and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History for providing me a loving and welcoming space to test out ideas and theories amongst renowned scholars of the black experience. I thank the personal and professional development provided by LaShawn Harris and Glenn A. Chambers. You both gave me confidence in my unorthodox research interests. You are family. I would be remiss if I did not thank my Eastern Michigan University family who without them I would have never made it to doctoral studies at MSU: Joseph Engwenyu, Melvin T. Peters, Ronald C. Woods, Robert Perry, Victor O. Okafor, Clovis Semmes, Ronald Delph, and Phillip Schmitz. In closing, I thank my wife Yasmeen, my brother Michael, and my sister Gabrielle. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS …………………………………………………………………. x LIST OF FIGURES …………………….…………………………………………… xi …………………...…………………………………. xii LIST OF TABLES KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS INTRODUCTION ……….…………..……………………………………………... CHAPTER ONE: COMMON CANON, COMMON BLACKNESS: MUTUAL BLACK POWER/CONSCIOUSNESS PHILOSOPHERS …………………..……………… PRE-EXISTING ROOTS OF BLACK AMERICAN AND SOUTH AFRICAN CONTACT ………………………………………………………………….. PERSPECTIVES FROM THE COMMON CANON ………………………. CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………….. APPENDIX ……...……….………………………………………………….. 1 18 20 35 61 62 CHAPTER TWO: END OF THE MORAL CRUSADE: THE BIRTH OF THE DETROIT BLACK POWER AND THE JOHANNESBURG BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENTS …..………………………………………………………………. 64 THE END OF THE MORAL CRUSADE IN THE USA AND DETROIT.…… 66 DESEGREGATION …………………………………………………... 66 THE WATTS REBELLION AND THE MARCH AGAINST FEAR … 68 BLACK POWER BECOMES PRAXIS …………………………... 71 THE PRE-EXISTING LEGACY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN RADICALISM AND MILITANCY IN DETROIT …………………… 73 THE 1967 DETROIT REBELLION AND ITS REVERBERATIONS … 77 THE TURN FROM NON-VIOLENCE TOWARDS THE RHETORIC OF ARMED SELF-DEFENSE …………………………………………… 81 EXPORTING BLACK POWER: FROM ALABAMA TO DETROIT … 82 THE END OF THE MORAL CRUSADE IN SA AND JOHANNESBURG….... 84 SEPARATE DEVELOPMENT ………………………………………… 84 BANTUSTANS AND URBAN TOWNSHIPS ………………………… 86 THE EMERGENCE OF ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES: THE SHARPEVILLE MASSACRE AND ITS AFTERMATH ………………. 89 THE TURN FROM NON-VIOLENCE TOWARDS ARMED STRUGGLE ……………………………………..……………………… 92 BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS BECOMES PRAXIS …………………….. 98 CONCLUSION: THE TWO NARRATIVES IN CONVERSATION …………… 99 CHAPTER THREE: THE BURDEN AND GLORY OF THE HEROIC BLACK STUDENT: THE TRANSMISSION OF BLACK IDENTITY IN BSUF AND SASO PUBLICATIONS …………………………………………………………………..... 103 ix PAN-AFRICANISM AND INTERNATIONALISM ………………………….. 106 ANTI-IMPERIALISM …………………………………………………………... 111 PROPER (LIBERATORY) EDUCATION ROOTED IN PAN-AFRICANISM AND DIASPORITY …………………………………………………………………... 118 COMMUNITY CONTROL AND INSTITUTION BUILDING ……………….. 121 COALITIONS AND COALITION POLITICS …………………………………. 128 THE SOWETO UPRISINGS ……………………………………………………. 134 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………... 136 CHAPTER FOUR: GLOBALIZED LOCAL WORKERS’ MOVEMENT: THE TRANSMISSION OF BLACK WORKERS’ CONSCIOUSNESS IN RESPONSE TO CAPITAL AND THE WHITE LABOR ARISTOCRACY ………………….………….. 140 ORIGINS OF THE BLACK ALLIED WORKERS’ UNION AND THE LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS ……………………………………... 142 PAN-AFRICANISM AND INTERNATIONALISM ………………………….. 162 ANTI-IMPERIALISM …………………………………………………………... 171 PROPER (LIBERATORY) EDUCATION ROOTED IN PAN-AFRICANSIM AND DIASPORITY, COMMUNITY CONTROL AND INSTITUTION BUILDING ... 173 COALITIONS AND COALITION POLITICS …………………………………. 176 WHITE UNIONS – THEIR PATRONIZING, PATERNALISM AND RACISM …………………………………………………………... 176 BLACK ALLIED WORKERS’ UNION ………………………... 176 LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS ……... 178 REGISTER, MERGE OR NOT …………………………………………. 181 BLACK ALLIED WORKERS’ UNION ………………………... 181 LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS ……... 189 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………...…... 194 CHAPTER FIVE: WE ARE MEN: A GENDERED ANALYSIS OF MANHOOD AND ADULTHOOD AS PERSONHOOD IN THE NEW IDENTITY ………………………. 195 VIOLENCE AS REVOLUTIONARY ACTS …………………………………… 195 UNITED STATES: DETROIT ………………………………………….. 196 SOUTH AFRICA ………………………………………………………... 202 MANHOOD ………………………...…………………………………………… 203 WOMANHOOD ………………………………………………………………… 205 LGBTQI …………………………………………………………………………. 212 CONCLUSION: CONTRADICTIONS AND ADULTHOOD AS PERSONHOOD …………………………………………………………………. 217 CONCLUSION …………………………………………...……………………. 223 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………. 229 x LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Strike Data 1971-1978 ………………………………………………........ xi 184 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: James Meredith at the University of Mississippi ………………………. 69 Figure 2: Stokely Carmichael at Michigan State University in 1967 ………………. 73 Figure 3: Wanted Dead or Dying ………………………………………………. 81 Figure 4: Nelson Mandela and Muziwake Anton Lembede at Walter and Albertina Sisulu’s wedding. (Evelyn Mase is to the left of the bride and Lembede is to the right of the bride. Mandela is far left. Rosabella Sisulu looks out over the couple) ………………….. 85 Figure 5: Steve Biko addressing a SASO meeting Figure 6: ‘Shhh” ………………………………. 105 ………………………………………………………………. 107 Figure 7: Black Studies ………………………………………………………. 118 Figure 8: Student protestors during the Soweto uprisings ………………………. 135 Figure 9: Cover of SASO Newsletter 2, no. 4 (Sept./Oct. 1972) ………….…… 148 Figure 10: The DRUM Slate for the March 18-19, 1970, UAW Local 3 elections. Ron March (far left in glasses), Gerald Wooten (bottom far right in glasses), Raymond Johnson (middle center of second row behind Griffith), Betty Griffith (bottom right to the immediate left of Wooten), Charles Roberts (top left between March and Gaitor), Grover Douglas (far right second from top), Carlos Williams (bottom between Jackson and Griffith), Don Gaitor (top center with beret), Don Jackson (bottom left), Lafayette Philyaw (second row far right above Wooten) ……………………………………. 160 Figure 11: A young Luke Tripp (second from the left in the front row) and General Gordon Baker (immediately to Tripp’s right) ………………………………………………. 161 Figure 12: Africa’s Awakening ………………………………………………. 170 Figure 13: The Johnson Method ………………………………………………. 199 Figure 14: Unidentified black woman addresses a SASO meeting ………………. 206 Figure 15: Simon T. Nkoli ……………………………………………………….. 216 Figure 16: Women of the Azania Students Organization (AZASO), founded in 1979 to take up SASO’s mantle after its banning…………………………………………………….. 222 xii KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS BP Black Power BC Black Consciousness LRBW League of Revolutionary Black Workers BSUF Black Student United Front SASO South African Student Organization BAWU Black Allied Workers’ Union BCP Black People’s Convention DRUM Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement RUM Revolutionary Union Movement ELRUM Eldon Revolutionary Union Movement FRUM Ford Revolutionary Union Movement JARUM Jefferson Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement MARUM Mack Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement CADRUM Cadillac Revolutionary Union Movement DRUM II Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement II MERUM Mound Engine Revolutionary Union Movement MK Umkhonto we Sizwe SAWU Sales and Allied Workers Union UNIA Universal Negro Improvement Association AME African Methodist Episcopalian ANC African National Congress ANC-YL African National Congress-Youth League xiii NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ICU Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union NUSAS National Union of South African Students NOI Nation of Islam ASNLH Association for the Study of Negro Life and History SNCC Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee LCFO Lowndes County Freedom Organization LCFP Lowndes County Freedom Party PASCC Parents and Students for Community Control PAC Pan-African Congress PNP Purified National Party UAW United Auto Workers WCO West Central Organization NIC Natal Indian Congress UN United Nations FRELIMO Mozambique Liberation Front PAIGC African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde SACTU South African Congress of Trade Unions’ TUCSA Trade Union Council of South Africa CUSA Council of Unions of South Africa FOSATU Federation of South African Trade Unions UTB Urban Training Project PEBCO Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organization xiv NAAWU National Automobile and Allied Workers’ Union MACWUSA Motor Assemblers and Component Workers’ Union of South Africa MAWU Metal and Allied Workers’ Union NUM National Union of Mineworkers SAAWU South African Allied Workers’ Union STRESS Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets UCM University Christian Movement COSAS Congress of South African Students GASA Gay Association of South Africa MNC Multinational Corporations xv INTRODUCTION Since the 1990s, “Black Power Studies” has expanded dramatically. Similarly, in the last two decades, a significant body of historical scholarship on the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa has been published. Yet, the historiography of both fields is lacking an exploration of the “development of a transnational diaspora consciousness and activism.”1 Contributing to these two distinct, yet overlapping, bodies of scholarly intrigue, Unapologetically Black seeks to explore the contributions of important, yet under-acknowledged and under-researched, black liberation organizations in the United States and South Africa that were active during the turbulent decades between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, coinciding with the Black Power era in the United States and the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. Unapologetically Black sheds more light on the impact of black South Africans on the development of “black power,” or more precisely the development of “blackness” as a modern diasporic concept and identity in the Black Power era in the United States. Unapologetically Black also simultaneously, illuminates the same impact of African Americans on the black consciousness movement in South Africa. In doing so, the development of a modern transnational diasporic black identity and consciousness has become more evident. By exploring “the major knowledge transmitted to the various publics and masses” in the United States and South Africa, Unapologetically Black continues Ruth Simms Hamilton’s foci of comparative race relations and transnational diasporas.2 By viewing what sociologist Simms Hamilton characterized as “cultural workers,” with four case studies Unapologetically Black unearths how they defined and interpreted issues and Ruth Simms Hamilton, “Transnational Politics: A Note on Black Americans and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919,” in Routes of Passage: Rethinking the African Diaspora Volume 1, Part 2, ed. Ruth Simms Hamilton (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2007), 230. 2 Simms Hamilton, “Transnational Politics,” 219. 1 1 agenda setting.3 For Simms Hamilton, “cultural workers may include artists, educators, intellectuals, journalists, political activists, religious workers, scientists, or others who define reality and establish canons of taste and beauty.”4 Using four case studies, Unapologetically Black critically examines the historical evolution and application of Black Power (BP) from 1966 to 1982 in the U.S. and Black Consciousness (BC) in South Africa from 1966 to 1980. Employing Simms Hamilton’s articulation of “cultural workers,” this work critically examines how the following organizations sought to address the plight and ameliorate the status of African descendants: the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), the Black Student United Front (BSUF), the South African Student Organization (SASO), and the Black Allied Workers’ Union (BAWU). In general studies of Detroit, scholars have broached the LRBW while fundamentally ignoring the BSUF, and when the BSUF is mentioned it is as an auxiliary of the LRBW, resulting in the minimizing of the experiences and contributions of the BSUF. In broad studies of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, scholars have reduced SASO to a stop gap to fill the temporary void created by the banning and suppression of the African National Congress and have essentially ignored BAWU. With a focus on student activists and labor organizers, Unapologetically Black expands the tassel work of other scholars concerning the LRBW, BSUF, SASO, and BAWU by analyzing them in conversation with one another to trace the development of a shared global ‘Black’ identity and movement. The thrust of this study is the scrutinizing of documents produced by the four organizations to distill commonly shared themes, strategies, and philosophers; in doing so, Unapologetically Black moves the LRBW, BSUF, SASO, and BAWU from the periphery of civil rights and anti-apartheid studies, to the center of Black Power studies. This method, although comparative in nature, is a transnational approach to 3 4 Simms Hamilton, “Transnational Politics,” 220. Simms Hamilton, “Transnational Politics,” 220. 2 tracing shared ideas and the common identity construction project of Black Power and Black Consciousness by using these four specific case studies. In this sense, Unapologetically Black is transnational in orientation or, as transnationalist historian Gerald Horne frames it, a project in black global history.5 Seen from this perspective, Unapologetically Black takes up Simms Hamilton’s call to investigate the relationship between “global and local events” and the “sense of common destiny” of black people in the United States and South Africa.6 The Black Power case studies are the LRBW and BSUF. LRBW, which was founded 1969 in Detroit, Michigan, united several radical unions in Detroit’s auto industry and other industrial sectors. LRBW’s aims were to establish a unified and organized political apparatus to realize political power and articulate the specific concerns of black workers. Although active for only a brief time, LRBW was a noteworthy organization in an era of ever-increasing African American workers’ radicalism, militancy and political action. After the 1967 Detroit rebellion, a radical “cadre” of students emerged at Northern High School with its first advisor being Glanton Dowdell followed by Mike Hamlin. They established a city-wide newsletter with localized editions, the Black Student Voice, which called for student control of the schools. In 1969, Black student revolts spread throughout Detroit high schools resulting in the establishment of a citywide Black Student United Front (BSUF) with localized branches. BSUF soon developed branches in twenty-two high schools.7 The two Black Consciousness in South Africa case studies that Unapologetically Black focuses on are SASO and the BAWU. In 1969, a black student, Stephen Bantu Biko, led an Gerald Horne, “Toward a Transnational Research Agenda for African American History in the 21st Century,” The Journal of African American History 91, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 288-303. 6 Simms Hamilton, “Transnational Politics,” 223. 7 A. Muhammad Ahmad, “The League of Revolutionary Black Workers: A Historical Study,” History As A Weapon, http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/rbwstudy.html; Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution (Cambridge: South End Press, 1998), 76; Michael C. Dawson, Black Visions: Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 206. 5 3 exodus out of the majority white National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) and formed the exclusively black SASO. In 1970, Biko began to propagate a notion of Black Consciousness that stimulated a Black Consciousness Movement. Within that philosophy laid a strong commitment to black self-defense ‘by any means necessary.’ Biko worked for unity against the divide and rule system of ‘tribal’ schools. In mid-1972, SASO, the flagship Black Consciousness organization, started a black workers’ project. SASO aspired to create a national trade union and revitalized the movement.8 Black Consciousness unions demanded a black, and not white, union leadership of the labor movement. These unions combined labor and Black Consciousness objectives. One of these unions was BAWU, a general union, in 1973. BAWU was initially led by BC activists and adherents with close ties to SASO and the Black People’s Convention (BPC). In fact, BC leader Saths Cooper was instrumental in establishing BAWU’s Durban offices and its bank account. Consistent with BC thought, BAWU followed a Blacksonly policy and averred that its primary concern was the plight, struggle, and condition of African workers. Unapologetically Black defines Black Power as an ideology, identifies the political economies that created Black Power, explores ways that Black Power was expressed, defines Black Consciousness, and discerns if it is Black Power or not. For BC and BP adherents, identity shaped political views, political action, and community engagement. Unapologetically Black examines the history of the BP Movement in the United States, from 1966 through the 1970s and the BC Movement in South Africa, from 1966 through the 1970s. Unapologetically Black identifies and unpacks the perspective of blackness in these movements, analyzes the notion of 8 Thomas G. Karis and Gail M. Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990; Volume 5: Nadir to Resurgence, 1964-1979 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 198. 4 black identity (or identities), and reveals how BP and BC adherents translated these identities into action. Pressing questions that are addressed in Unapologetically Black include: How do we explain the emergence and development of “black power” and “black consciousness” in these transnational locales? What are the deeper meanings and implications of “black power” and “black consciousness?” How did the members of the organizations conceptualize “black” and “blackness?” How did these organizations formulate and construct their political identities as well as use these identities in the broader global black freedom struggle? My argument is that based upon prior contact, a shared philosophical canon, and facing similar racialized oppression; Black Power and Black Conciousness adherents endeavored to create a new identity and culture to assert a personhood to seize self-determination. ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ were conceptualized as a militant revolutionary personhood and culture rooted in self-reliance and self-defense. To those ends, Black Power and Black Conciousness adherents created organizations and independent institutions to replace the state and/or fill the human and civil service needs the state was unwilling or incapable of filling. Unapologetically Black and its inquiries are derived from Simms Hamilton’s revelation that because “quantitative measures of transnational consciousness are lacking, attention [should be] directed toward the nature of activism, the agency of diaspora cultural workers, and the cultural apparatus used to reach various publics.”9 Unapologetically Black, in short, is about the evolution of ‘Black’ as an identity, political consciousness, cultural framework, and organizing tool. ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ during the Black Power and Black Consciousness eras symbolized more than sloganeering. They were notions that inherently represent a psychological, 9 Simms Hamilton, “Transnational Politics,” 220. 5 cultural, and political transformation of African Americans and indigenous South Africans. Racial oppression creates a racialized response to that oppression. According to Steve Biko, chief architect of Black Consciousness (BC) thought, “by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.”10 Black Consciousness, according to BC adherent Kaborane Gilbert Sedibe, “was not just a resistance ideology” but was also a vehicle to re-establish the “dignity” and “essential wholeness” of those who “knew” themselves as “Black.”11 Historian Daniel R. Magaziner observed that Black Consciousness endeavored to open “intellectual space” for black South Africans to “explore the possibility that superficially simple statements – “I am Black,” “I am a Man,” “I have dignity,” “I am the image of God” – might be profoundly potent.”12 Correspondingly, historian William L. Van Deburg described Black Power (BP) as a “revolution of the mind” and a radical cultural concept.13 In Van Deburg’s words, “the movement was concerned with gaining entry into the national storehouse of influence, respect, and power. Its advocates sought the power needed to influence the affairs that most immediately affected their lives […] they hoped to become powerful by building outward and upward from a core of group values.”14 Van Deburg also asserts that ‘Black Power’ was the transition of African Americans from ‘Negro’ to ‘Black.’15 Illuminating this point further; historian Scot Brown, in Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga, the US Organization, and Black Cultural Nationalism, also highlights this aspect of Maluana 10 Steve B. Biko, I Write What I Like (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1978), 48. Daniel R. Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968-1977 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 2-3. 12 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 3. 13 William L. Van Deburg, New Day In Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 26 and 27. 14 Van Deburg, New Day In Babylon, 28. 15 Van Deburg, New Day In Babylon, 62. 11 6 Karenga’s, and his organization US, development of the Kawaida religion and ideology designed to transform African Americans from ‘Negroes to Blacks.’16 The significance of the attempt to create an en masse revolution of the mind or a mass transformation of ‘Negroes to Blacks’ is heightened by historian Jeffrey Ogbar’s observation that the civil rights movement did not address or even express any “profound concern over the psychological consequences of being black (or white) in a virulently antiblack society.”17 Black Power and its adherents filled an important void by addressing these concerns head on. Concretely, the Black Power Movement wanted to accomplish several things. Van Deburg also articulates a view of ‘Black Power’ that is like historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries’ later notion of ‘freedom rights;’ or the “assortment of civil and human rights that emancipated African Americans identified as the crux of freedom… [This] acknowledges the centrality of slavery and emancipation to conceptualizations of freedom.”18 Ogbar states that ‘Black Power’ “sought far more than the re-affirmation of legal equality and the government’s admission that it had a duty to protect constitutional rights for its citizens. Its supporters demanded access to the basic operative force of American society: power - both actual and psychological.”19 ‘Black Power’ identifies the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) advocacy of black self-reliance, selfdetermination, self-identification and cosmology as key attributes that help to inform the Black Power era. Moreover, the NOI’s articulation of ‘Black’ being inclusive of all non-whites throughout the world is vital to the Black Power era’s transnationalism, world-view and politics. According to Brown, Karenga’s approach to culture included politics and economics. Karenga 16 Scot Brown, Fighting for US: Maluana Karenga, the US Organization, and Black Cultural Nationalism (New York: New York University Press, 2003). 17 Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 2. 18 Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 4. 19 Van Deburg, New Day In Babylon, 24. 7 articulated that there are four areas of political power: “(1) political office, (2) community organization, (3) coalitions and alliances, (4) disruption.”20 Karenga articulated a clear definition of ‘Black Power’ as solidification of “a consensus on critical issues of the time: community control in schools, the right to Black self-defense, adequate Black representation in urban politics, and opposition to the Vietnam War.”21 Historian Donna Jean Murch demonstrates how southern African American migrants to the North became the “vanguard of a radical urban social movement that critiqued state violence, agitated for “relevant” education, and demanded the immediate redistribution of wealth.”22 Culture and cultural expression were very essential for the BP and BC Movements. The BP and BC Movements had as much to do with ways of life (culture) as with politics. The BP and BC Movements were highly practical and pragmatic and the creation of parallel institutions was a vital undertaking by adherents and activists. Many African American student activists of the late 1960s and 1970s were members of nationalist and revolutionary community organizations, such as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and merged campus and community issues into one common struggle. These students did not struggle for integration. In fact, they were that integration; they wanted further black control, input and autonomy. They wanted self-determination and self-actualization; they wanted ‘Black Power.’ Analyzed in this light, the black campus movement is a manifestation of the BP Movement, as opposed to the Civil Rights Movement. As revealed by Murch, “urban campuses became incubators of radical ideas.”23 During the 1970s and early 1980s, BC became the most dominant anti-apartheid 20 Brown, Fighting for US, 103. Brown, Fighting for US, 105. 22 Donna Jean Murch, Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 11. 23 Murch, Living for the City, 7. 21 8 political force inside South Africa. Given the widespread government repression of black opposition to apartheid, black schools, colleges, and universities were important places that were hospitable to black expression and anti-apartheid protest. The entire decade of the 1970s became an era of intense black student protest in South Africa giving rise to the BC Movement. By answering the previously mentioned questions, Unapologetically Black addresses key fissures in the scholarship regarding the Black Power and Black Consciousness Movements, transnational black identity, and black identity politics in racialized societies. Unapologetically Black explores the common canon of political, cultural and economic philosophies and ideals these two movements drew from, and rectifies the current deficiency of transnational black identity studies. Unapologetically Black is among the first studies that simultaneously and comparatively analyzes the use of black identity by both a post-civil rights movement (BP) and a pre-civil rights movement (BC) in racialized societies (United States and South Africa) that were at different stages of democratic development, with differing demographics, and differing global and regional standing. It is also the first study that simultaneously analyzes the use of black identity in societies where black identity was employed by an indigenous group (South Africa) and forced immigrants (United States), as well as willing migrants (United States) and forced migrants (South Africa). Unapologetically Black presents a more comprehensive understanding of the development and use of ‘Black’ as an identity, political consciousness, cultural vehicle, and organizing tool in a transnational framework. Employing a comparative macro and micro framework, this historical study argues that since 1966 in the United States when Stokley Carmichael first used the term “Black Power” as a social and political ideal and in 1966 in South Africa when Archbishop Robert Selby Taylor convened the meeting that led to the creation of the BC Movement, African Americans and 9 South Africans possessed political, economic and social agency and affected psychological, cultural and political change in their respective communities. Via political education, political mobilization, the creation of parallel institutions, the transforming of education and the reforming of their culture(s), these activists and adherents realized a powerful ‘Black’ identity and consciousness. In preparing for Unapologetically Black, I employed a qualitative research approach founded on an African-centered paradigm, a notion of ‘translation,’ and Critical Race Theory. In data collection, I employed an African-centered perspective. My application of this paradigm values the oral tradition and qualitative analysis, paired with archival research.24 My use of qualitative research garnered an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior, more explicitly the ‘why and how’ of decision making, not just the ‘what, where, and when.’ In the United States, I consulted archives housed at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Those archives also include collections of local periodicals, and national and provincial police and court records. I was also given an astronomical amount of primary source documents by those who were directly connected to my case studies. In South Africa, I consulted archives housed at the University of Witwatersrand, the University of South Africa, and the South African History Archives. These archives too include collections of local periodicals, and national and provincial police and court records. As a responsible scholar, I am aware of the potential biases intrinsic to my approach. Biases inherent to privileging the ‘African American and African voice’ of concern are the reliance on a slanted or one-sided account and the challenges of omission and silences in the oral histories. Knowing that biases may exist, I accounted for them by expanding my primary 24 C. Tsehloane Keto, Vision and Time: The Historical Perspective of an Africa-centered Paradigm (Maryland: University Press of America, 2001). 10 sources. Regarding all the archives I visited, I was specifically looking for organizational meeting minutes and notes, propaganda, membership registers, study/lesson plans, and budgets, as well as arrest records, and trial and court transcripts and documents. I have consulted the words of both organizational leaders and rank-and-file members of the identified organizations, where possible. Governmental documents also present an oppositional view to the BP and BC organizations that Unapologetically Black focuses on for case studies. The data collected was analyzed to answer the previously stated questions utilizing the ‘collective identities’ thesis common to new social movement theorists.25 I approached this study as a Black Studies scholar. Black Studies, as a discipline, employs an African-centered methodology that requires pluralism, field research, emphasizing the voice and agency of the subject, interdisciplinary understanding, valuing the oral tradition and folklore, and is Pan-Africanist in scope, vision and struggle. I used an African-centered paradigm as an analytical lens for a historical method. The use of the African-centered paradigm places African Americans’ and Africans’ voices and agency at the center of the discussion. Further, my application of the paradigm values the oral tradition and makes the use of a bottomup approach appropriate and meaningful. Using primary sources, Unapologetically Black highlights the agency and voices of its subjects by reproducing their words and constructs. This continues the tradition of an ‘African American and African voice’ presenting an important counter narrative against mainstream depictions of the BP and BC Movements; this approach reveals the true qualities of the BP and BC Movements. The focus on an ‘African American and African voice’ facilitates a deeper understanding of the ‘translation’ of ideas from one context to the next. Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper, “Collective Identity and Social Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology, 27 (2001): 283-305. 25 11 The notion of ‘translation’ developed by Daniel R. Magaziner in his study The Law and the Prophets is an important theoretical framework for Unapologetically Black. Magaziner interrogates the ‘borrowing’ of foreign ideas through a lens of ‘translation,’ arguing that South African BC adherents did not simply copy Garveyite ideas from African Americans, but that they translated them into the South African context. This translation involved adapting relevant aspects and discarding irrelevant or inapplicable aspects of these paradigms. I have done the same concerning the ‘translation’ of ‘Black Power’ ideas into the South African context manifesting into Black Consciousness. This notion of ‘translation’ is extremely valuable in the face of the reality that the BP and BC Movements pulled from the same religious, intellectual and philosophical canon. According to Magaziner, activists “copied, but they also translated; they read words from one context and wrote them into their own.”26 They “manipulated the ideas to their own ends – not the other way around.”27 Magaziner’s notion of ‘translation’ is vital to Unapologetically Black’s understanding of the interconnectedness of the BP and BC Movements. Critical Race Theory (CRT) also proved to be a valuable paradigm and facilitated a more accurate and comprehensive interrogation of the American, global and South African political economies in Unapologetically Black. According to scholars legal scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, CRT is a “perspective that includes economics, history, context, group- and selfinterest, and even feelings and the unconscious.”28 The revisionist quality of Unapologetically Black’s approach to historical narrative is also a result of the utilization of CRT.29 Examination 26 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 48. Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 49. 28 Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 3. 29 Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory, 20-21. 27 12 of the American, global and South African political economies, through the lens of CRT, best revealed the story of the BP and BC Movements and their unique histories. It elucidated how the BP and BC Movements’ motivations, aims and mentalities were constructed in ways that led to their militancy. Another aspect of CRT that is valuable to the analysis of the BP and BC Movements, more specifically the American, global and South African political economies, in Unapologetically Black is “interest convergence,” sometimes called “material determinism.”30 Interest Convergence Theory as constructed by attorney and legal scholar Derrick Bell, asserts that measurable improvements in the “status of some blacks… and predictions of further progress have not substantially altered the maxim: white self-interest will prevail over black rights.”31 Interest convergence also states that whites will unite and establish solidarity when it is also in their best interest, despite any pre-existing divisions. CRT facilitates an ethnographic methodological study and informs a historical method. The use of a qualitative research approach founded on an African-centered paradigm, a notion of ‘translation’, and CRT broadened the types of data collected, enhanced the analysis of that data, and provided for nuanced and comprehensive conclusions. Heeding historian Peniel Joseph’s advice, Unapologetically Black stresses “the importance of local history to understanding the complexity of the black freedom struggle.”32 Unapologetically Black also argues that the end was not all at once nor monolithic. Instead, it suggests that the movements stalled in different locales at different times because of the material conditions and political economies of those individual cities and regions. It is more fruitful to 30 Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory, 7. Derrick A. Bell, Jr., “Racial Remediation: An Historical Perspective on Current Conditions,” Notre Dame Law 52, no. 5 (1976): 5-29. 32 Peniel E. Joseph, “Introduction” in The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era, Peniel E. Joseph, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006), 24. 31 13 state that the movement in a city or region ended at a time, while the movement in other places continued or stalled earlier. Theoretically, Unapologetically Black does not subscribe to the notion of a ‘Long Movement’ and instead articulates a ‘Long Tradition’ with the BP and BC Movements as movements that fall within that tradition. The BP and BC Movements are continuances of Black Nationalist radicalism that is driven by a long and sustained history of structural racism. Unapologetically Black concurs with Sundiata Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang when they assert that they “question the adequacy of the Long Movement thesis because it collapses periodization schemas, erases conceptual differences between waves of the [Black Liberation Movement], and blurs regional distinctions in the African American [and African] experience.”33 Unapologetically Black also illustrates “that there is much historical information and insight to be gained from substantive examination of black organizations that stretch the borders of standard periodization.”34 Unapologetically Black is divided into five chapters and a conclusion. Chapter one, “Common Cannon, Common Blackness: Mutual Black Power/Consciousness Philosophers,” outlines how black South Africans and black Americans have a long history of political and intellectual intercourse, contributing to one another’s trajectories of black radical thought. Aided by their shared experience of British imperialism and a tradition of radical thought born in the West Indies, they theorized a modern transnational black identity in fundamentally racialized societies. ‘Black’ is defined as a transnational revolutionary identity of the globally racially oppressed and economically exploited. ‘Blackness’ in turn is an action dictated by the ‘Black’ world-view, or in other words, the social, cultural, political, and economic expression and Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang, “The “Long Movement” as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies,” The Journal of African American History 92, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 265. 34 Joseph, “Introduction,” The Black Power Movement, 8. 33 14 exercising of ‘Black.’ In both the United States and South Africa, Black Power and Black Consciousness adherents drew extensively and particularly from the words, thoughts, and actions of W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Carter G. Woodson, Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X. The key tenants of Black Power and Black Consciousness that are traced throughout this study are identified in this chapter as (1) Pan-Africanism and internationalism, (2) anti-imperialism, (3) a desire for a proper liberatory education rooted in Pan-Africanism and Diaspority, (4) community control and institution building, approaches towards (5) coalitions and coalition politics, (6) violence as revolutionary acts, and (7) manhood/womanhood as personhood. Chapter two, “The End of a Moral Crusade: The Birth of the Detroit Black Power and the Johannesburg Black Consciousness Movements,” argues that the Detroit Black Power and the Johannesburg Black Consciousness movements were similarly borne of organic spontaneous rebellion under the shadow of fierce state-sponsored repression, as represented by the 1967 Detroit Rebellion and the 1976 Soweto rebellion. The nature of the repression and subsequent rebellions were integral factors in the birth, development and temperament of the movements. This chapter describes the rebellions, the causes of the rebellions as articulated by the Kerner Commission Report and the Cille Commission Report, as well as how they fostered the genesis of those movements. Chapter three, “The Burden and Glory of the Heroic Black Student: The Transmission of Black Identity in BSUF and SASO Publications,” chronicles the activism of Black American and South African students during the Black Power and Black Consciousness era of both republics who in using constructs of “Black” and “Blackness” endeavored to create a new transnational African diasporic identity. Influenced by Simms Hamilton’s characterization of “cultural workers,” the chapter reveals how these students defined and interpreted issues and agenda 15 setting by critically examining how they sought to address the plight and ameliorate the status of African descendants. Drawing from Black Student United Front (BSUF) and South African Student Organisation (SASO) newsletters’ content around five topics – Pan-Africanism and internationalism, anti-imperialism, anti-police brutality and security apparatuses, proper (liberatory) education rooted in Pan-Africanism and Diaspority, and community control and institution building; this chapter is a transnational Black Studies historical study of the diasporic identity or identities that the students sought to create in the context of racialized anti-imperialist struggles in racialized societies. This study ultimately argues that both movements were localized manifestations of the same global movement. Chapter four, “Globalized Local Workers’ Movement: The Transmission of Black Workers’ Consciousness in Response to Capital and the White Labor Aristocracy,” examines workers and labor activists as they used the new ‘Black’ identity to challenge white capital and the white labor aristocracy. It is revealed that despite the variations in each republics’ political economy and racial projects, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) and Black Allied Workers’ Union (BAWU) both faced pre-existing white structures and domination, racism in and from the white led labor unions, and racism on the shop floor. A key difference was black workers in the United States had official mainstream union membership, while black workers in South Africa were legally barred from such privileges. A group consciousness rooted in a Black identity gained tremendous momentum among many black workers. This momentum resulted in a fevered opposition to the use of the labor process as a tool to further white domination. Between 1968 and 1973, two radical Black labor movements began articulating a congruent philosophy although continents apart. 16 Chapter five, “We Are Men: A Gendered Analysis of Manhood and Adulthood as Personhood in the New Black Identity,” is an exploration of how Black Power/Consciousness adherents used the concepts of violence, manhood and womanhood to exert a notion of personhood, ‘Black Personhood.’ These concepts also had gendered implications that challenged traditional western sensibilities and presumably some traditional African sensibilities as well. Violence was a natural, and at times, revolutionary act against a pernicious system of racialized oppression and economic exploitation. Manhood was used as a metaphor for adulthood and womanhood was defined in terms related to women’s role in the development of the family and community. Women did face male-chauvinism, but they also worked together as equals to black men. LGTBQI black people were initially in a precarious position, but could claim right to the new ‘Black’ identity and to ‘Blackness’ as result of the notion of personhood. This process was aided using ‘adulthood’ to communicate the fundamental concept of ‘personhood.’ The role of ‘personhood’ in Black Consciousness/Power thought facilitated that understanding. 17 CHAPTER ONE COMMON CANON, COMMON BLACKNESS: MUTUAL BLACK POWER/CONSCIOUSNESS PHILOSOPHERS Black South Africans and black Americans have a long history of political and intellectual intercourse, contributing to one another’s trajectories of black radical thought. Aided by their shared experience of British imperialism and a tradition of radical thought born in the West Indies, they theorized a modern transnational black identity in fundamentally racialized societies. Since the dawn of the twentieth century, African American radicals have always kept a keen eye on South Africa and articulated a global freedom movement between African Americans and indigenous South Africans; as indigenous South African radicals did the same regarding African America. “Common Canon, Common Blackness” defines ‘Black,’ ‘Blackness,’ Black Power and Black Consciousness, and establishes (1) Pan-Africanism and internationalism, (2) anti-imperialism, (3) a desire for a proper liberatory education rooted in Pan-Africanism and Diaspority, (4) community control and institution building, approaches towards (5) coalitions and coalition politics, (6) violence as revolutionary acts, and (7) manhood/womanhood as personhood as key tenants of Black Power and Black Consciousness for this study. As demonstrated in case studies presented in chapters three and four, and the discussion of personhood in chapter five; after analysis of documents published by the subjects of all four case studies the identified key seven tenants emerged as common themes of both Black Power and Black Consciousness adherents. Those essential tenants of Black Power and Black Consciousness are traced throughout this study. In both the United States and South Africa, Black Power and Black Consciousness adherents drew extensively and particularly from the words, thoughts, and actions of W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Carter G. Woodson, Frantz 18 Fanon, and Malcolm X. Black students and workers in both republics used this common canon to strategize and theorize a desirable future in the face of racialized oppression in racialized societies. The words and analyses of the common canon appear in pages of both Black Power and Consciousness documents. The discussions in chapters two through five reveal that although the concepts were translated into two different political economies; not only did they respond the same way, in instances of variance of response, those variations were the prescribed approach drawn from the common canon. This is not to say that there were no other commonly shared philosophers, nor that other personages were not mutually admired, respected, and referenced. It does corroborate that these five philosophers had a particularly vital role in my subjects’ development and articulation of their new ‘Black’ identity and notion of ‘Blackness.’ Du Bois’, Garvey’s, Woodson’s, Fanon’s, and Malcolm X’s Pan-Africanist lenses positioned the struggle and status of African descendent people in an international scope. They envisioned and engaged in an international struggle for the amelioration in status of all oppressed, colonized, and racialized peoples. Despite Du Bois’ contradictions; he, Garvey, Fanon, and Malcolm X maintained an anti-imperialist stance. Du Bois and Woodson paid meticulous attention to proper liberatory education; with Garvey, Fanon, and Malcolm X articulating a centeredness for the liberatory potential of education. The actions of Du Bois, Garvey, Woodson, Fanon, and Malcolm X; coupled with their activities in community controlled independent institutions presented a model for praxis. Their analyses of international, national, regional, and local political economies provide an important framework to understanding Black Power and Black Consciousness adherents’ approaches towards coalitions and coalition politics. Fanon and Malcolm X, the most contemporary contributors to the common canon of this study’s temporal parameters, directly advocated for armed struggle, and articulated and interpreted 19 certain manifestations of violence by oppressed, colonized, and racialized peoples as revolutionary acts. Du Bois’, Garvey’s, Woodson’s, Fanon’s, and Malcolm X’s end game was the articulation and facilitation of oppressed, colonized, and racialized peoples’ international personhood. Informed by the ideas and assertions of Du Bois, Garvey, Woodson, Fanon, and Malcolm X; my subjects defined ‘Black’ as a transnational revolutionary identity of the globally racially oppressed and economically exploited. The new ‘Black’ identity signified the transformation from a state of non-being to a state of being, or simply, a declaration of personhood capable and worthy of self-determination. ‘Blackness’ in turn is an action dictated by the ‘Black’ world-view, or in other words, the social, cultural, political, and economic expression and exercising of ‘Black.’ Following a brief discussion of pre-existing roots of black American and South African contact, this chapter presents the identified tenants as articulated by Du Bois, Garvey, Woodson, Fanon, and Malcolm X. This approach offers a framework to understand the reasoning and logic of my subjects’ actions and rhetoric, as the tenants are traced throughout this study. By tracing the influences of the identified philosophers, we begin to identify local manifestations of a parallel and global Black Power/Black Consciousness movement. PRE-EXISTING ROOTS OF BLACK AMERICAN AND SOUTH AFRICAN CONTACT West Indian migration throughout the British Empire and former British Empire transmitted ideas and culture throughout the Anglophone African Diaspora. In that West Indian physical and intellectual migration lie the roots of modern black radical thought. At the dawn of the twentieth century radical thoughts emanating from the Americas made their way to Africa. One such West Indian was Marcus Mosiah Garvey from Jamaica. Before his 1917 arrival in the United States, Garvey had lived and worked amongst African descended communities in Central 20 America, South America, the Caribbean, Great Britain and Europe. These experiences granted Garvey a deeper insight into African Diasporan culture(s). In the words of Garvey biographer Tony Martin, Garvey had “lived in Black communities, worked amongst the people, shared their joys and sorrows […] agitated on their behalf and noted their weaknesses […] listened, learnt and reflected on what he learned.”35 Garvey was a huge fan and supporter of the conservative black nationalist Booker T. Washington. Inspired after reading Washington’s autobiography and treatise, Up From Slavery, he endeavored to establish “the Black man’s government,” “King and kingdom,” “president,” “country,” “ambassador,” “army,” “navy,” and “men of big affairs.”36 After extensive travel, research, and study, Garvey formulated his Garveyism philosophy of race first, self-reliance and nationhood. To transform his philosophy into a global social movement, he founded the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities (Imperial) League which was later shortened to the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA); in 1914 in Jamaica and 1918 in Harlem.37 The UNIA was intended to be the vehicle to ameliorate the status of “Africans all over the world, be they in the West Indies, Afro-America, Africa itself or anywhere else.” Martin observes that Garvey used the word “Negro” as a “convenient means of denoting all persons of African descent.”38 The UNIA founded the Negro Factories Corporation, The Negro World periodical, and the Black Star Line shipping company. As a capitalist black nationalist, Garvey founded the Negro Factories Corporation and the Black Star Line to foster trade between African America, the Caribbean and Africa. Garvey also took up Cyril Briggs’ mantle of “Africa for the 35 Tony Martin, Marcus Garvey, Hero: A First Biography (Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 1983), 25. Marcus Garvey, “The Negro’s Greatest Enemy,” Current History Magazine (September 1923), reprinted in Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey, ed. Bob Blaisdell (New York: Dover Publications, 2004), 3. 37 Garvey, “The Negro’s Greatest Enemy,” 3. 38 Martin, Marcus Garvey, Hero: A First Biography, 28. 36 21 Africans” and advocated for racial separatism.39 Viewed from this light, Garvey was, in part, an international capitalistic racialized Pan-Africanist. His internationalist racialized Pan-Africanism led to the calling for the 1920 First International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World. Garvey contended that “the real doctrine of the Universal Negro Improvement Association [was] the doctrine of universal emancipation for Negroes, the doctrine of a free and redeemed Africa!”40 Garvey was not hostile towards Christianity, instead he advocated a Black-centered version that has been dubbed ‘Ethiopianism,’ articulating the notion that God is Black, or that there is a Black God. He informed his followers that “we shall worship [God] through the spectacles of Ethiopia.”41 Garvey’s UNIA also took on religious undertones; such as a racial catechism and the notion that Garvey was a prophet and martyr. Christian Garveyites, primarily in the African Methodist Episcopalian (AME) church, developed a theological idea of African Americans’ preordained mission to liberate Africa from white rule and white supremacy. This perspective does reflect Garvey’s elitist and imperialist view of Africa and Africans crystallized by the UNIA’s objective to “assist in civilizing the backward tribes of Africa” that ringed of the white Christian missionary outlook.42 In fact, in South Africa we find that “Africans affiliated with white American missions and with Booker T. Washington deepened the connections between” African Americans and Africans, “setting the stage” for Garveyism, “transnationalism and transnational identity,” as 39 Marcus Garvey, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey or Africa for the Africans Volume 2, compiled by Amy Jacques Garvey (Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 1986), 1. First published in 1923; Garvey, “The Negro’s Greatest Enemy,” 8. 40 Marcus Garvey, “The Handwriting Is on the Wall,” The Negro World (September 10, 1921), reprinted in Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey, ed. Bob Blaisdell (New York: Dover Publications, 2004), 53. 41 Marcus Garvey, “The Image of God,” The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey or Africa for the Africans Volume 1, compiled by Amy Jacques Garvey (Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 1986), 44. First published in 1923. 42 Martin, Marcus Garvey, Hero: A First Biography, 32. 22 well as a “global black consciousness.”43 For “many South African blacks, Garvey became a Christ-like martyr figure, and Garveyist dreams of liberation swept across South Africa in prophetic and startling new dimensions,” uniting “national struggles for racial equality in a global struggle for civil rights, human rights, and the end of apartheid.”44 Consistent with Garvey’s pro-Black views, the UNIA championed a positive Black selfimage and held Black beauty contests. The Negro World did not publish advertisements for products and services that could be interpreted as being rooted in a negative black self-image. It is through Garvey, we find the most staunch and pervasive articulation of the ‘Black is Beautiful’ notion. In the vein of a positive Black self-image and racial pride, Garvey promoted a notion of racial purity that was explicitly anti-miscegenation.45 Garvey fervently believed that blacks needed to be a strong, independent and self-reliant global force as opposed to being simply an appendage to another struggle. Garvey contended that in racist nations, white workers were too deeply infected with racism. Therefore, any substantial and meaningful unity based merely on class-consciousness between white and black workers would be a long time off. Garvey perceived that the: fiery communists are fighting against one class interest for the enthronement of theirs – a group of lazy men and women who desire to level all initiative and intelligence and set a premium on stagnation…I am against the brand of communism that is taught in America, because it is even more vicious than all other ism’s put together. In America it constitutes a group of liars, plotters and artful deceivers.46 43 Robert Trent Vinson, The Americans Are Coming!: Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012), 33 and 3. 44 Vinson, The Americans Are Coming!, 81 and 10. 45 Marcus Garvey, “Race Purity a Desideratum,” The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey or Africa for the Africans Volume 2, compiled by Amy Jacques Garvey (Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 1986), 62. First published in 1923. 46 Marcus Garvey, “Statement of Conviction,” The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey or Africa for the Africans Volume 2, compiled by Amy Jacques Garvey (Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 1986), 333. First published in 1923. 23 There were concurrent and congruent influences of Garveyism from the Americas on South Africa as well, such as the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Cutting-edge U.S./S.A. comparative studies scholar James T. Campbell’s 1995 study, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa, eloquently reveals important roots to, and development of, the relationship between black Americans and black South Africans. By tracing the development of the AME church in the U.S. and the development of the AME church in South Africa, Campbell identifies an early period of U.S. black interactions with black South Africans and vice versa, and provides a deeper understanding of the AME church as an institution which is key to black history in both countries. Campbell positions the AME church’s development firmly within the political economies of both the U.S. and South Africa. The convergence of those black radical traditions compelled Mangena Mokone, a Methodist preacher, to affiliate his movement to the AME church in the 1800s triggering the process of creating a transnational world view. A steady stream of aspirant black South African leaders, such as Charlotte Maxeke and John Dube’s brother Charles, were educated at the AME’s Wilberforce College in Ohio under such professors as the young W. E. B. Du Bois.47 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois has had a great impact on the trajectory of black radical thought and exhibited a great commitment to understanding the plight of African Americans and Africans with the intent of developing stratagem to alleviate that plight as his paramount goal. Du Bois did not just simply study African Americans/Africans and their lives, he applied his research in attempts to develop ways to improve their statuses in America and the world, and counteract the effects of slavery, colonialism, and Jim Crow upon them. Du Bois 47 James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 24 assertion that “the problem of the 20th Century would be the color line” was prophetic. Du Bois often gets majority of credit for initiating the tradition of “transcontinental,” or Pan-African, scholarship which “explores Africa in relation to its diasporatic communities.”48 As a historian, sociologist, philosopher, and political militant, Du Bois was a very accomplished scholar. Du Bois earned a B.A. cum laude in philosophy from Harvard in 1890. He went on to earn his M.A. in History from Harvard in 1891, and in 1895 he became the first person of African descent to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. Beginning in 1895, Du Bois “taught an early group of black South African students” at Wilberforce. His training also led him to a multi-disciplinary approach. By 1903, Du Bois became the most widely published black author in the U.S., and his first two widely published works, The Philadelphia Negro, and The Souls of Black Folks became the most important sociological works concerning African Americans of his time.49 In preparation for the writing of The Philadelphia Negro, Du Bois personally interviewed “over 5,000” African Americans living in Philadelphia, as well as lived in the community and observed them.50 Du Bois loved fieldwork, and placed importance upon it. If anything can be said regarding Du Bois’ approach it is that he “was certainly no armchair scholar.”51 According to Du Bois, the paramount goals of his research were to provide the “historical development” of the “Negro Problems” and provide accurate and truthful information to “agencies” in which the work (his conclusions and suggestions) would be carried out.52 He felt that “statesmen and 48 The Selected Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, ed. Walter Wilson (New York: Signet Classics, 1970), forethought; Mwenda Ntarangwi, David Mills, and Mustafa Babikar, “Introduction,” in African Anthropologies: History, Critique and Practice, eds. Mwenda Ntarangwi et al. (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2006), 9-10. 49 The Selected Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, vii-xxxi; Heather Hughes, First President: A Life of John L. Dube, Founding President of the ANC (Auckland Park, SA: Jacana Media, 2012), 119. 50 Werner J. Lange, “W.E.B. Du Bois and the First Scientific Study of Afro-America,” Phylon 44, no. 2 (1983): 140141. 51 Lange, “W.E.B. Du Bois and the First Scientific Study of Afro-America,” 146. 52 W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Study of the Negro Problems,” Annals of the American Academy of Political Science 11 (Jan. 1898), 2. 25 philanthropists” must be privy to “a reliable body of truth which may guide their efforts to the best and largest success”; simply that it must be applied to real world situations to affect change.53 Du Bois asserted that a “plan once begun must be carried out.”54 This element to Du Bois’ approach is more clearly illuminated by the analysis of Du Bois’ works by Werner J. Lange. Lange, quoting Du Bois himself, points out that Du Bois’ goal was the “ultimate application of its principles to the social and economic advancement of the Negro people.”55 Translating his scholarship into praxis, Du Bois co-convened the Niagara Conference, which created a Niagara Movement leading to the founding of several organizations including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) which he co-founded. Du Bois also co-convened and co-chaired five Pan-African Congress conferences: London (1900), Paris (1919), London (1921), London (1923), and New York (1927).56 Although focusing on elite ideology, pioneering U.S./S.A. comparative studies scholar George Fredrickson’s Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa reveals that black activists were choosing from a gamut of methods and tactics, depending on their different translations of oppression, dominant ideologies, notions of solidarity, and theories of self-help facilitated by key instances of cross-fertilization between the black U.S. and South African freedom struggles. Despite being global in notion, this crossfertilization remained organic with primary streams of thought relatively autonomous and driven by its unique historical circumstances. With the discussion about the elite response to the formalization of segregation in the U.S. and South Africa, Fredrickson provides a rich exploration and solid establishment of the parallel origins of the premier black rights Du Bois, “The Study of the Negro Problems,” 17. Du Bois, “The Study of the Negro Problems,” 12. 55 Lange, “W.E.B. Du Bois and the First Scientific Study of Afro-America,” 139. 56 Hughes, First President, 209. 53 54 26 organizations: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the African National Congress (ANC). It is reified that professionals figured prominently in the creation of both the NAACP and the ANC, and both were initially reformist organizations. In fact, although some ANC leaders had been directly influenced by Booker T. Washington, they obviously also knew of and engaged the work of W. E. B. Du Bois. For example, ANC co-founder Sol Plaatje read and quoted from The Crisis and, at the invitation of Du Bois, addressed the 1921 NAACP convention on conditions in South Africa.57 Plaatje had “made an effort” to attend the 1919 Pan-African Congress but was “touring” the United States and thus, “unavailable,” but Du Bois did read a paper authored by Plaatje at the conference.58 Plaatje also owned a film, Life at Tuskegee Institute, that he frequently screened and lent to others to screen.59 Even the first president and co-founder of the ANC, John L. Dube, as historian Heather Hughes reveals, owed an intellectual debt to “Booker Washington” although his “entry into politics was most un-Washingtonian and points to other intellectual debts” rooted in his experiences in America. It was those experiences in America, more than any other, that shaped Dube’s intellectual world-view and political consciousness.60 Internationally, Du Bois was “closely identified with the Pan-African movement,” a movement which Dube would “later show some interest,” although Du Bois’ would be “more closely associated with [Plaatje,] Dube’s South African contemporary.”61 Dube visited Tuskegee Institute and met Booker T. Washington, and at Hampton Institute, Dube expressed the “need for African Americans to return to Africa to assist in the work of uplifting that continent.”62 Du Bois featured Dube’s A 57 George Fredrickson, Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 125. 58 Hughes, First President, 209. 59 Hughes, First President, 229. 60 Hughes, First President, 257. 61 Hughes, First President, 120. 62 Hughes, First President, 69-71. 27 Talk Upon My Native Land in the ‘Exhibit of American Negroes’ for the 1900 World’s Fair held in Paris, France.63 Dube favorably reviewed The Souls of Black Folk in his newspaper, Ilanga.64 Dube received an invitation to attended the Pan-African Congress held in London in August 1921.65 And in the “1940s, ANC Youth League president Anton Lembede quoted frequently from The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey to develop his nationalist Africanism ideas of racial pride and self-reliance.”66 In The Americans Are Coming!: Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa, historian Robert T. Vinson argues that African Americans were “viewed by black South Africans as role models and potential liberators in their own battles against South African segregation.”67 He “explores the ways in which Africans embraced and manipulated the idea that American Negroes, as role models and liberators, were essential to their goal of African independence” between 1890 and 1940.68 Importantly, The Americans Are Coming also traces the rise and fall of Marcus Garvey and Garveyism in South Africa, and establishes his enduring legacy and Garveyism’s persistence in South Africa after his and the movement’s demise in the Americas and also reveals how black South Africans transformed Garveyism to suit their needs, aims and circumstances. Vinson shows that for “many South African blacks, Garvey became a Christ-like martyr figure, and Garveyist dreams of liberation swept across South Africa in prophetic and startling new dimensions,” and that would unite “national struggles for racial equality in a global struggle for civil rights, human rights, and the end of apartheid.”69 The connection of African Americans’ status in South Africa, of this time, 63 Hughes, First President, 53. Hughes, First President, 120. 65 Hughes, First President, 208-209. 66 Vinson, The Americans Are Coming!, 144. 67 Vinson, The Americans Are Coming!, 2. 68 Vinson, The Americans Are Coming!, 2. 69 Vinson, The Americans Are Coming!, 81 and 10. 64 28 being inextricably linked to their status at home in the U.S. tells us much about the status of African Americans at home. That connection heightens Vinson’s assertion that black South African’s view of African Americans was shaped by their goal to overcome transnational white supremacy. The UNIA and AME’s influence would reach the labor movement as well. Clements Kadalie, who had ties to both the UNIA and AME emerged as an influential figure applying early transnational black thought, particularly between the two identified republics. Initially a union for dockworkers, the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) was the first national trade union of black workers in South Africa. Led by a Malawian migrant worker and teacher, Clements Kadalie, the ICU was founded in 1919. The ICU focused on workers’ rights, pass laws, the evictions of farm workers, and the creation, support and expansion of black business.70 The ICU’s broad foci reflected a holistic approach to unionism above and beyond rigid class or shop based approaches. In late 1919, the ICU organized a dockworkers’ strike in Cape Town that prevented the export of all goods through the Cape Town harbor. The fourteen-day strike involved two thousand dockworkers. The strike helped the ICU emerge as an influential union and Kadalie as a respected leader within South Africa.71 Kadalie was a great and charismatic orator with training.72 Barbara Harmel, “From the ICU to the Wiehahn Commission,” in Black Labor Unions in South Africa: Report of a Symposium, eds. Anthony G. Freeman and Diane B. Bendahmane (Washington D.C.: Foreign Service Institute U.S. Department of State, 1987), 8; Helen Bradford, “Mass Movements and the Petty Bourgeoisie: The Social Origins of ICU Leadership, 1924-1929,” The Journal of African History 25, no. 3 (1984): 304-305; Helen Bradford, “Lynch Laws and Labourers: The ICU in Umvoti, 1927-1928,” The Journal of Southern African Studies 11, no. 1 (October, 1984): 135 and 142; A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 90; Peter Mahlangu, “The Current Political and Legal Status of Unions in South Africa,” Journal of Law and Religion 5, no. 2 (1987): 501; V.L. Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers Volume 1: The Techniques of Resistance, 1871-1948 (UK: Merlin Press, 1992), 291; Paul B. Rich, State Power and Black Politics in South Africa, 1912-51 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 43-44. 71 Peter L. Wickins, “One Big Labor Movement Among Black Workers in South Africa,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 7, no. 3 (1974): 394. 72 Clements Kadalie, My Life and the ICU (London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1970), 44-45. 70 29 At the outset, the ICU restricted its activities exclusively to workers and union issues, in part to circumvent any quarrels with the South African Native National Congress (later known as the African National Congress or ANC) and the national liberation movement.73 The South African Native National Congress (SANNC), founded in 1912 as a non-violent group buoyed by black churches in South Africa, would be the constant and most broad-based anti-apartheid resistance organization. Moreover, the SANNC/ANC was initially a moderate reformist organization of the black elite.74 The ICU commenced to fill a political void created by the ANC’s then inability to mobilize the masses.75 During the 1920s, the ICU was very successful in conveying a nationalism that was eloquently infused with class-consciousness; a success that eclipsed the ANC.76 The ICU also had local branches in the industrial hub of the Witwatersrand and in the port city of Durban. Over time, the ICU evolved from a “Cape-based union” into a “mass movement for national liberation.”77 Kadalie and the ICU faced trouble from the triumvirate of state, capital, and white labor. White unions’ approach reflected the racial attitudes of the general South African white establishment. They consistently played an obstructionist role regarding the development of black trade unionism. The 1922 white union strike on the Rand was the impetus for the legislation of the culturally customary job ‘color bar.’78 The immediate years leading up to 1922 Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 44-48; Harmel, “From the ICU to the Wiehahn Commission,” 8. Davidson Nicol, “U.S. Foreign Policy in Southern Africa: Third-World Perspectives,” The Journal of Modern Africa Studies 21, no. 4 (December 1983): 598. 75 Harmel, “From the ICU to the Wiehahn Commission,” 8. 76 Bradford, “Mass Movements,” 295; A. Adu Boahen, 71. 77 Bradford, “Mass Movements,” 295; Wickins, “One Big Labor Movement,” 398; Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 66-87. The Durban ICU office was headed by A.W.G. Champion. In his career, he would attract many amaZulu to his efforts, in part due to his amaZulu royalty. 78 Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa Volume 1, 303-310; R.M. Godsell, “The Regulation of Labour,” in Robert Schirire, ed., South Africa: Public Policy Perspectives (Cape Town: Juta & Co., Ltd, 1982), 208209. 73 74 30 saw numerous “incidents of industrial unrest” due to capitalists’ attempts to “introduce black [labor] into jobs reserved for whites.”79 However, the “most serious incident” was the 1922-Rand white miners’ strike. The violent clash between white miners and the army resulted in over 200 deaths.80 The ‘Rand Rebellion’ caused the government to formalize the color bar with the passing of the 1924 Industrial Conciliation Act.81 The Act “banned blacks from membership of registered trade unions,” and outlawed all “strike actions involving blacks.”82 In 1926, the ICU moved its headquarters to Johannesburg and encountered an abundance of interest and support from farm laborers in Natal and the Orange Free State.83 Because its articulation of liberation blended with the “traditions and demands of ordinary blacks” and amaZulu nationalism, the ICU rapidly gained popularity in the countryside where 85 percent of the black population lived.84 Black farm laborers were attracted to the ICU because of the ICU’s “militant demands and its legal services.”85 At the time of the ICU’s founding, black business farmers were being “squeezed” into cash rent ‘tenant-ships’ and were becoming increasingly proletariatized.86 Conditions on the farms for blacks were deplorable. Near starvation, forced labor (including child labor), and frequent brutality characterized blacks’ experiences on the farms under white domination.87 Robert A Jones, “The Emergence of Shop-Floor Trade Union power in South Africa,” Managerial and Decision Economics 6, no.3 (Sep. 1985): 160. 80 Jones, “The Emergence of Shop-Floor Trade Union power in South Africa,” 160. 81 Jones, “The Emergence of Shop-Floor Trade Union power in South Africa,” 160; Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers Volume 1, 317-319; Godsell, “The Regulation of Labour,” 209-210. 82 Jones, “The Emergence of Shop-Floor Trade Union power in South Africa,” 160; Godsell, “The Regulation of Labour,” 209-210. 83 Clements Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 81. This caused a minor rift within the ICU with the agitators being from Cape Town. The tiff resulted in legal proceedings. 84 Bradford, “Mass Movements,” 295; Wickins, “One Big Labor Movement,” 397; Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers Volume I, 298; Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 89-101; Bradford, “Mass Movements,” 295; Bradford, “The ICU in Umvoti,” 136. 85 Bradford, “The ICU in Umvoti,” 135. 86 Bradford, “The ICU in Umvoti,” 129-130. 87 Bradford, “The ICU in Umvoti,” 140. 79 31 In response to the rise in farm labor tenant-ships, the ICU organized a major workstoppage campaign in Umvoti in May and June of 1927. The ICU called for an eight-hour workday and eight shillings a day wages for black farm workers. The ICU also called for blacks to join separatist churches that excluded whites to raise nationalism and create more “Zulu-like” blacks. The collectivity and community nature of the farm areas allowed for groupconsciousness to evolve, and those farms in which ethnic and familial affiliations were the greatest, ICU- related protests and activities were “especially pronounced.”88 Foreshadowing an issue that would later evolve into a significant incident, Kadalie attempted to overcome the job color line and white workers in the mines. Throughout the dialogue between the European Mine Workers’ Union and the Chamber of Mines evolving from the formation of the Mining Regulations Commission near the end of 1925, white workers expressed their determination to cooperate with the government and employers to suppress black equality in the mines. This enraged and mobilized the ICU, resulting in a mass meeting in Cape Town.89 Kadalie sent a telegram to the European Mine Workers’ Union stating that: My union strongly protests against your demands for the removal of all Coloured and Native drill sharpeners on mines and their replacement by Europeans, also as to locomotives, winches and pumps. Your action in the opinion of my union is widening racial strife between white and black workers. For traditional trade unionism my union requests you to withdraw this obnoxious and selfish demand.90 In the beginning of the ICU’s life, Kadalie and the union embraced Communists, but due to consistent criticism by Communists within the ICU they were expelled by 1927.91 According Bradford, “The ICU in Umvoti,” 136-138. This was also, in part, due to Kadalie’s ties to Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and the American black African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. 89 Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 86-87. 90 Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 87. 91 Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 54-55; Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers Volume I, 315; “South African Communist Party Manifesto,” The South African Worker (December 24, 1926); Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 99100; Peter L. Wickins, The ICU of Africa (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1978), 97-109; Rich, State Power and Black Politics in South Africa, 44. 88 32 to Kadalie, the “Communists were certain among themselves that they would eventually capture the ICU. Of course, I was the stumbling-block to their machinations.”92 Also in 1927, Kadalie traveled to Europe to obtain recognition and support for the ICU as the representative of South Africa’s black workers. The ICU did not receive official recognition by the International Labor Organization (ILO) but Kadalie did communicate the details of black workers’ oppression in South Africa to the world.93 Under Kadalie, the ICU maintained links with the white labor movement in Cape Town, and abroad. Those were very contentious links for some under the ICU banner. An example was the Industrial Workers of Africa (IWA). The IWA was founded in Johannesburg in 1917. It had links to Socialism/Communism, and was the precursor to the Communist Party of South Africa. Although based on European concepts, the IWA was “hostile towards Europeans” and was politically extremely “revolutionary.” The IWA’s stand would make its relationship with the ICU very uneasy and would provide the ICU with some of its harshest internal critics.94 As a broad “umbrella group,” the ICU peaked to a membership of 100,000, of mostly illiterate blacks, in 1927. Under Kadalie’s leadership, the ICU organized rural blacks to a level which no South African movement had realized. However, the ICU’s membership began to decline, in part, because of the 1924 Industrial Conciliation Act. The Act stipulated that the recognition of non-white or racially mixed labor unions was illegal and that only all-white unions could participate in the collective bargaining process. Coupled with the financial burdens of the ‘Great Depression’ and Kadalie’s alleged fiscal mismanagement and authoritarian inclinations, 92 Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 85. Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers Volume I, 313; Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 105-119 and 137; Wickins, The ICU of Africa, 129-142; Rich, State Power and Black Politics in South Africa, 45. 94 Wickins, “The One Big Union Movement,” 393-394; Rich, State Power and Black Politics in South Africa, 23-24. The International Socialist League (ISL) helped to form the IWA. 93 33 the Act greatly injured the ICU. Leftist, liberal, and neo-Marxist scholars and critics of the ICU suggested that the collapse of the ICU was due to its middle-class leadership, that leadership’s reformist nature, its focus upon the countryside as opposed to the urban working-class, and the view that the union’s leaders were not members of the working-class.95 However, the ICU’s leadership was clearly working-class and not middle-class, although it is true that much of the ICU’s leadership was educated in missionary schools.96 The shrinking opportunities for mission-trained artisans and small-scale black producers who became ICU organizers compelled them to enter the “wage earning classes” or the informal sector, or more simply, it ‘proletariatized’ them. Numerous educated leaders of the ICU entered it as unemployed workers, skilled workers or wage laborers whose “intellectual functions had been totally degraded.” Many key administrative positions in the ICU were controlled by those who had backgrounds as “ordinary laborers.”97 The ICU’s demise was, in part, a result of attacks against local branches by local whites and government suppression. For example, on March 1, 1928, whites attempted to lynch the local ICU branch leader in Greytown, the radical nationalist Zabuloni Gwaza. Shortly after this display of hatred by white farmers towards the ICU, local Umvoti whites destroyed the ICU Kranskap branch office and the Weenen office. The government clearly did not appreciate the ICU and blamed the ICU for the decrease in black payment of taxes, the increase in black criminal offenses, and black assaults against whites in Umvoti. The fate of the ICU was Harmel, “From the ICU to the Wiehahn Commission,” 8; Bradford, “Mass Movements,” 295; Wickins, “One Big Labor Movement,” 402. Some have attributed the split between the ICU and the ICWU to Kadalie’s personality traits. 96 Bradford, “Mass Movements,” 296. 97 Bradford, “Mass Movements,” 296, 299-301, and 303. 95 34 burdened by mismanagement, authoritarianism, male chauvinism, and incessant white and state repression, and the union began to feel the toll.98 In 1928, important branch members in Natal and the Orange Free State left the ICU, and the question of the appropriate role of whites within the ICU persisted to create animosity. By late 1928, the national ICU had dissolved and various local branches issued a vote of no confidence for Kadalie and the national leadership. Kadalie resigned as ICU national secretary in 1929, then returned soon after, but he could not curb the collapse of the national ICU. Kadalie reasserted his leadership as the leader of a remnant independent ICU. Kadalie reestablished a base of operations in East London and organized a local general strike in 1930. His role in that strike resulted in a two-month jail term. Although Kadalie attempted to return the ICU to its previous level in the 1930s and 1940s, the ICU’s time had passed. The ICU failed to obtain recognition in the factories and was deficient in “shop-floor structures.” Regional and ethnic differences between the local branches also helped to foster discontent within the ICU and by the mid-1930s the white power structure had crushed the ICU.99 PERSPECTIVES FROM THE COMMON CANON African unity takes off the mask, and crumbles into regionalism inside the hollow shell of nationality itself.100 The above quote is from Martinican philosopher and psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon who argued that true African unity and a true African culture could only exist concurrently with true Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 159; Bradford, “The ICU in Umvoti,” 128, 146, 139, 141 and 148. Bradford, “The ICU in Umvoti,” 148; Kadalie, My Life and the ICU, 160-165 and 177-181; Jones, “The Emergence of Shop-Floor Trade Union power in South Africa,” 162; Wickins, “One Big Labor Movement,” 404413; Bradford, “The ICU in Umvoti,” 142-145; Rich, State Power and Black Politics in South Africa, 48-50. Led by A.W.G. Champion, who Kadalie had previously tried to expel from the ICU. 100 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963) (originally published in French as Les damnés de la terre in 1961), 159. 98 99 35 Pan-Africanism. True Pan-Africanism is the “bonds of close collaboration that must exist between the new independent states of Africa.” Fanon argued that a true African culture has not been developed due to the reality that the concept of African unity dissolved into regionalism and had been curbed by religious rivalries (i.e. Christianity vs. Islam, and both vs. “traditional” spiritual systems). The division of Africa into North and Sub-Saharan, black and white, and even black and Arab, have been obstacles to the creation of true African unity. Tribalism and racialism as tribalism have both been additional barriers to the development of true African unity, thus true African culture. In Fanon’s words, “Tribal feuds only serve to perpetuate old grudges buried deep in the memory.” Tribal feuds are indicative of pre-colonial cultural antagonisms that helped to make slavery, European conquest, and colonialism possible in the first place. They are examples of a static culture. Fanon identified the advent of phenomena such as tribal dictatorships as encouragers of regionalism and separatism. Fanon contended that a true African unity can only be manifested from the masses.101 Fanon declared that it is around the people’s struggles for liberation and existence that culture gains substance, and that every culture is “first and foremost” a national identity. 102 According to Fanon: A national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify, and praise action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence.103 Speaking of, and focusing on the development of an African culture and not national cultures is a misstep leading a nation/society up a “blind alley.” According to Fanon, speaking of and focusing on an African culture divorces culture from contemporary events. Fanon argued that 101 Frantz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution (New York: Grove Press, 1964) (originally published in French as Pour la révolution Africaine in 1964), 187 and 141; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 159-162, 54, 183, and 164. 102 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 235 and 216. 103 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 233. 36 there would never be a monolithic and homogenous “black culture” unless there are black politicians who feel that they have an obligation to bring “black republics” into reality. Meaning, until there are truly independent black nations committed to the liberation of all black nations whom have developed national cultures, there will never be any African culture. Anticolonialism, anti-neo-colonialism and a unified front for the true liberation of the African Diaspora is the only way an African culture can emerge (i.e. true Pan-Africanism). To emphasize his stance, Fanon illuminates a few examples concerning false PanAfricanism and its hindrance to true African unity. Using the French colonial empire as an example, Fanon mentions the then new French Constitution introduced by Charles de Gaulle which granted the colonies minor concessions and local rule, but not independence or decolonization; they became member states of the French Community. There was a vote, or plebiscite, put out to the French colonies regarding if they would accept this new constitution and “new” status. This effort was done to weaken the anti-colonial movements within the colonies. Leopold Senghor, one of the leaders of the négritude movement and president of Senegal, voted yes to this measure. The French colonies of the Lesser Antilles also voted yes due to the urging of mister négritude himself, Aimé Césaire. Fanon interpreted these yes votes as “counterrevolutionary” and as an obstacle to true Pan-Africanism. Fanon also identified other African nationalist leaders of their respected colonies as “counter-revolutionaries” and obstacles to true Pan-Africanism such as President Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast).104 In Fanon’s opinion, these collaborative leaders were contradictory to the existence of truly independent black nations committed to the liberation of all black nations and thus antithetical to 104 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 214, 217, 234, and 247-248; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 137-140, and 183. 37 true Pan-Africanism and the development of an African culture. If leaders such as them exist, there cannot be an African culture because as Malcolm X instructed, We have a common enemy. We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have a common enemy, then we unite – on the basis of what we have in common. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy – the white man. He’s an enemy to all of us.105 Fanon did identify the potential for true Pan-Africanism, giving examples of when it hoisted its head. Take for example, the 1955 Bandung Pact adopted at the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria that was the precursor to what later became the Movement of Non-aligned Nations. Fanon viewed the pact as an “historic commitment of the oppressed to help one another and to impose a definitive setback upon the forces of exploitation.”106 Malcolm X too lauded the April 1955 Bandung conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, and the resulting pact for its PanAfrican potential. Malcolm cast the conference as the “first unity meeting in centuries of black people” and a “model for the same procedure” to be replicated throughout the diaspora. Malcolm was particularly impressed that “all” of “the dark nations from Africa and Asia” came together at the conference despite “religious differences” and “economic and political differences,” unified around the reality that they were “black, brown, red or yellow” and “excluded the white man.”107 The next example was the All-African People’s Conference which met in Accra, Ghana in December of 1958. At that conference in which the Conference passed the Resolution on Imperialism and Colonialism, the Conference delegates: unreservedly condemned the Africans who, to maintain themselves, have not feared to mobilize the police for purposes of rigging elections in the last referendum (the vote to become member states of the French Community) and to commit their territories to an association with France which excludes the way of independence for many years. The Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,” in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1965), 5. 106 Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 146. 107 Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,” 5. 105 38 few delegates who came to represent these puppet governments of French Africa found themselves more or less expelled from the commissions.108 For Malcolm X, both conferences proved his assertion that once nonwhite coalitions “excluded the white man, […] they could get together.” He continued that “these people who came together didn’t have nuclear weapons, they didn’t have jet planes, they didn’t have all of the heavy armaments that the white man has. But they had unity.”109 It should be noted that Fanon asserted that the inhibition of culture is tantamount to poverty and oppression. And if we recall Fanon’s assertion that the white man created the Negro we can completely understand when he shouts that “there is an African people, there is a West Indian people but there is no ‘Negro people.’”110 There is no Negro culture; and until there are strong, functioning and liberated national cultures, there will not be an African culture. PanAfricanism also meant a return to Africa. Yet that return was translated differently in both republics. Malcolm X’s ‘Back to Africa’ construct best suited the aims, goals, and purposes for looking toward Africa in the first place; which was to create an organic, yet global revolutionary identity. Malcolm asserted that if African Americans “migrated back to Africa culturally, philosophically and psychologically,” while remaining in the Americas “physically, the spiritual bond” that would develop between them and Africa through this “cultural, philosophical and psychological migration,” so-called migration would “enhance” their “position” in the Americas, because African Americans would have their “contacts with them acting as roots or foundations behind [them].”111 Malcolm was quite clear when he said: And this is what I mean by a migration or going back to Africa -going back in the sense that we reach out to them and they reach out to us. Our mutual understanding and our 108 Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 155. Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,” 5. 110 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 238; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 18. 111 Malcolm X, “On Going Back to Africa,” in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1965), 210 – 211. 109 39 mutual effort toward a mutual objective will bring mutual benefit to the African as well as to the Afro-American.112 This conceptualization was idyllic for students and workers who wanted to create a new identity that would ameliorate their condition domestically while also promoting liberation and solidarity abroad. As Malcolm argued, “separation back to Africa is still a long-range program, and while it is yet to materialize, 22 million of our people who are still here in America need better food, clothing, housing, education and jobs right now.”113 Black Power/Consciousness, presented as one notion from the distilled commonalities between the two localized movements, adherents’ worldview defined Africa as an internal individual and communal abstraction, as well as a contemporary global community and experience. Their worldview was centered on the fight for liberation. They viewed the world through a prism of a Pan-African revolution, engaging the world with questions of coalition and group identity. Black Power/Consciousness adherents theorized that their movements were localized versions of both global and national revolutions. The antagonists to the revolution (colonialism, imperialism and capitalism) were too identified as local enemies. In response, they articulated an identity of African diasporic people in foreign internal colonies engaged in a liberation struggle. The icon of the heroic young African warrior and freedom fighter was a sexy and enticing persona for Black Power/Consciousness adherents. Black Power/Consciousness adherents positioned their place in the diaspora through the combined and intersecting lenses of Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Black Power. As articulated by E.U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism is distinctively different from the “Negro Nationalism” of the 19th century U.S. Essien-Udom states: Malcolm X, “On Going Back to Africa,” 211-212. Malcolm X, “A Declaration of Independence,” in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. George Breitman (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1965), 20. 112 113 40 Negro nationalism is distinguished from black nationalism in that its concern has been with the specific problem of the American Negroes, whereas the latter’s concern has been with the universal redemption of the black race. Apparently, the problem of the Negro’s identity, which is central in black nationalism, was not an issue prior to the [20th] century.114 Black Nationalism in the Americas has always been rooted in autonomy, community control, and self-determination based upon the oscillating thrusts of black cooperation, separation, land based nationalism, and global black solidarity. Yet, identity is “central” to Black Nationalism, as it is to Black Power/Consciousness. Confronted with colonialism, the slave trade, and slavery in the Americas, Black Nationalism was birthed in the diaspora. For black nationalists, the diaspora represented a collection of internal African colonies in racialized American societies. At the dawn of African colonialism at turn of the twentieth century, in the U.S. the ‘Black Belt’ thesis advanced the notion of a colonial model; meaning that African Americans in the Deep South represented a colonized black nation-state. The thesis led many to view the Black American equality movement as a liberation movement.115 This understanding of Black Nationalism resulted in advocating for the establishment of a black state or nation in the U.S. and independent indigenous rule in all oppressed sates (particularly Africa and the heavily African descended populated Americas). For Black Nationalists, this represented true black self-determination. Central to Pan-Africanist thought are the notions of anti-colonialism, African liberation, and diasporic solidarity. Pan-Africanism contended that Africans needed economic power to break free of colonial rule, and that diasporic solidarity creates economic opportunities. In doing so, linking metropolitan and diasporic agitation to the nationalist movements on the African 114 E. U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962), 19, footnote 4. Emphasis is mine. 115 Hubert Harrison, A Hubert Harrison Reader, ed. Jeffrey B. Perry (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001); Claudia Jones, Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment, ed. Carole Boyce Davies (Oxford: Ayebia Clark Publishing, 2011). 41 continent.116 In particular, Pan-Africanism theorized that social activism is necessary to achieve self-determination and collective advancement, which serves as a call to action for African descendants in the diaspora to reflect on their heritage and engage in the critical struggles facing African peoples in the diaspora and continent. Black Power/Consciousness is equivalent to a Black Nationalism, and when the concept’s Africa discourses are engaged, Black Power/Consciousness should be examined as both a PanAfricanist and diasporic phenomenon anchored in Africa. The concept’s diasporic elements are especially revealed when we unearth the historical and culturally distinctive structuring of the material realities and identities of diasporic life through legacies of slavery and suppressed African heritage. Black Power/Consciousness engages with the theories and practices of PanAfricanism. Malcolm X’s “Back to Africa” discourses, and how Black Power/Consciousness adherents translated it, are understood within this milieu. Franz Fanon’s discussion of négritude as warnings against an imaginary static African past are important to Black Power/Consciousness adherents’ brand of Pan-Africanism as well. Fanon recognized that the white man created the Negro, and consequentially, the Negro created négritude. According to Fanon, négritude was predicated upon white supremacy, reactionary; and to a certain degree a “black superiority complex” and overcompensation. Fanon argued that négritude bred Afro-romanticism, exalted a static past which only would hurt the future of the culture. Meaning, négritude was a hollow replicate of “formerly fertile institutions” under colonial supervision that falsely tried to “universalize” the Negro. Fanon felt that négritude was a “great black mirage” centered upon a mythical past with its promotion of black “purity, naïveté 116 Kevin Kelly Gaines, American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 34; V. P. Franklin, “ST. CLAIR DRAKE: THE MAKING OF A SCHOLAR-ACTIVIST—INTRODUCTION,” The Journal of African American History 98, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 418–21. 42 [and] innocence” indicative of its fantastical attributes. Fantastical attributes placed négritude in direct conflict with intellectual development, technological advances and logic. Viewed in this light négritude was regressive, falling back upon a mummified past. In Fanon’s view, négritude was a weakness and created the sort of “nigger that the white man wants.” Fanon concluded that négritude encouraged the black man to “go native as much as you can,” leading to irresponsibility.117 Black Power/Consciousness adherents’ perspectives on neo-colonialism also informed their understandings of Pan-Africanism, internationalism, and coalition politics. For Fanon, under neo-colonialism: The Negro is a slave who has been allowed to assume the attitude of a master. The white man is a master who has allowed his slaves to eat at his table.118 It is important to begin with Fanon’s assertion that decolonization did not mean independence. With decolonization, the former colonial powers no longer relied upon military might to maintain control. Control was maintained through the reliance upon the “compromised and devaluated local assemblies” (i.e. neo-colonialism). With neo-colonialism, the exploitation, underdevelopment and starvation of the masses did not falter. Neo-colonialism essentially changes nothing. Neo-colonialism was a tactic used by the former colonial powers to maintain their dominance over their former colonies. Fanon felt that neo-colonialism appealed to the nationalist bourgeoisie of the new decolonized governments. The greed and desire for luxury of the new ruling class, the nationalist bourgeoisie, engendered them to neo-colonialism. These nationalistic bourgeoisie governments established systems of black on black exploitation for Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove Press, 1965) (originally published in French as L’An Cinq, de la Révolution Algérienne in 1959), 47; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967) (originally published in French as Peau Noire, Masques Blancs in 1952), 133; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 217-218; Fanon, Black Skin, 213 and 215; Fanon, Black Skin, 226 and 229; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 34; Fanon, Black Skin, 133; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 27, 39, and 42; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 58; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 220-221; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 213. 118 Fanon, Black Skin, 219. 117 43 their own personal gains, in collaboration with the former colonial powers. This resulted in the monopolizing and hording of the national wealth into a few hands. These nationalist bourgeoisie gained their power from the deals and agreements that they made with the colonizers during the colonial and nationalist phases. These deals and concessions coalesced into covert racism, and the rise of neo-colonialism was contemporaneous with the rise of covert racism.119 Consider, Fanon speaking specifically of Algeria: The Algerian people need not restate their position with respect to these men who have considered Algeria and the Algerians as a private reserve (the colonizers). The people have excluded them from the Algerian nation and they must not hope to be ‘taken back.’120 The short-sightedness of the nationalistic bourgeoisie during the colonial era has served as an invaluable aid to the development of neo-colonialism. They accepted the notion that their pending decolonized nations would not be able to survive without the former colonizing European nation. This fostered the notion of economic dependence; i.e. the continued exportation of unrefined and unfinished goods. The former colonizing nations demanded the maintenance of “special links” after decolonization; however in reality it was to assure the endurance of exploitation. The former colonizers recognized the value of the former colonies as capitalistic markets, thus they became more valuable than just reserves of natural resources. As a result, the extermination of the natives was not a practical solution to all their aims, and it was not conducive to neo-colonialism.121 Despite the greed of the nationalistic bourgeoisie, other factors were needed to create an environment conducive to neo-colonialism. 119 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 48, 67, 142-143, 152, 155, 164-167, 171, 175, 180, and 176; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 37, 101, 122, 132, and 186. 120 Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 152. 121 Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 88 and 120; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 65, 98, 100, 152, and 179. 44 The underdevelopment of the colonies during the colonial era was an integral factor in the creation of neo-colonialism; coupled with the flight of capital out of the colonies during decolonization. The weakness of these new decolonized governments was a significant factor as well. These new governments, due to their leadership and its politics during the colonial and decolonization phases, were incapable of persuading the rural peasant populations to take up the “structural reforms” that they suggested. Their previous politics, and the distrust amongst the rural masses it created, helped to create a scenario in which the society often collapsed into tribalism. These new nations were passed over for race, thus the tribe was preferred to the state. As a result, old tribal rivalries and hatred erupted and in some of these newly decolonized nations feudalism, with all its regressive and static qualities, prevailed; forcing the nations back into and freezing them in artisan economies. Fanon argued that federalism in these nations is an upshot of tribalism and regionalism, and this federalism results in the dividing of the nation in a way that makes certain providences extremely wealthy while others remain in starvation. Moreover, due to their underdeveloped middle-classes, these newly decolonized nations do not have any real economic power. This forces these nations to turn to the West, and their former colonizers, for help and aid. Loans, economic aid and assistance become tools of neocolonialism. This ‘we give to conquer’ approach has allowed the United States to become a neocolonial power through its ‘dollar diplomacy;’ and the trick of exporting black American cultural manifestations. The U.S.’s Cold War views and posturing motivated them to utilize neocolonialism as a measure to combat the advances of communism and to secure valuable natural resources. Other Western capitalist nations also used anti-communist attitudes to foster 45 justification for their neo-colonial endeavors, placing new decolonized governments in the “spheres of influence” of European nations.122 Within the decolonized nations, often the former colonial secret services still operated and endeavored to undermine the government. Just as the colonizers did, new governments frequently used police repression to maintain power and these constant military and police actions in new but weak governments gave rise to frequent military coup d'états. This constant threat of demise and pending chaos often motivated the nationalistic bourgeoisie to demand a dictatorship to establish stability. Dictators were a sound mean to secure a neo-colony. Within this context however one realizes that dictators were presented in neo-colonies as national ‘chiefs’ or “overlords,” representing an example of a static or mummified culture. One also will observe the advent of single party systems that are camouflaged forms of dictatorships for the nationalistic bourgeoisie and tribal dictatorships.123 In a prophetic tone, Fanon predicted that the fall of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or one-time Zaïre, to neo-colonialism would affect the region. He prophesized that a neo-colonial Congo would increase and strengthen neo-colonialism in southern Africa; and that if Patrice Lumumba had succeeded in his truly Pan-African approach, neo-colonialism would not have set root. Obviously one cannot speculate if Lumumba would have fell victim to neocolonialism or not, but the fall of the Congo to Joseph D. Mobutu led to neo-colonialism in the entire southern African region. It bolstered South Africa and the neo-colonialist forces in Angola, as well as created favorable ties between many African nations and Israel. In the eyes of Fanon, those African leaders who accepted neo-colonialism were traitors.124 122 Toward, 59-61, 88, 108, 121, 133, 178, and 186; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 101, 103, 113-114, 117, 148149, 151, 158-159, and 166-167. 123 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 117, 123, 145, 165, 173-174, 181, and 183. 124 Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 128 and 192-193. 46 To prevent falling into the trap of neo-colonialism, Fanon prescribed economic diversification of production and exports, as well as increased internal economic development and investment in capital. Fanon keenly observed that colonialism “owed its tranquility to the unqualifiable treason of certain African elites” and that the “middle class…limits its claims to the taking over of business offices and commercial houses formerly occupied by the settlers.”125 Yet, rooted in the Fanonian model and Cold war realities, the non-aligned movement too had serious implications for Black Power/Consciousness adherents’ understandings of Pan-Africanism, internationalism, and coalition politics. [The] true interests of underdeveloped countries do not lie in the protraction nor in the accentuation of this cold war.126 Interestingly, clearly and poignantly, Fanon identified how the non-aligned movement also inadvertently invited neo-colonialism and its justification. During decolonization leftleaning non-communist politicians and activists in the colonial and colonial home governments who claimed to be sympathetic to the anti-colonial struggle demanded that the liberation struggles, and thus the new governments, never become communist or non-aligned.127 Every decolonization movement was perceived by the West as a weakening of the West and a strengthening of the communist bloc. From the colonial African perspective, communist nations were the only nations that had “on all occasions” came to the defense of the new decolonized governments when their existence was in jeopardy. Despite that, the colonized peoples were not “particularly communistic,” they were however categorically anti-colonialist, meaning that they would accept aid from anyone and anything if it would help them to throw off the yokes of 125 Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 152; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 100 and 149-150; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 128; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 152. 126 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 82. 127 Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 85-86. 47 domination. The U.S., due to its Cold War positioning, became interested in colonial and former colonial territories out of fear of communist leanings by the leadership of the liberation fighters and new governments.128 Consider Fanon’s observation that: [the] West simultaneously faces a double problem: the communist danger and the coming into being of a third neutral coalition, represented essentially by the underdeveloped countries.129 The establishing of a non-aligned movement with the signing of the Bandung pact alarmed the West. The non-aligned movement threatened to become a “third bloc” and a second threat to the West along with the communist bloc. The ‘Third World,’ and Africa became a ‘chessboard’ in which the West and the communist bloc fought their Cold War battles. These battles consisted of the backing of one group vs. the other, the backing of ‘rebel’ groups against governments, governments against ‘rebel’ groups and one nation against another. Further, the use of loans, economic aid and assistance; which we are tools of neo-colonialism, as weapons of the Cold War became the norm. As Fanon illuminated, neutrality or non-alignment allowed a nation to receive aid from both poles (the Western bloc and the communist bloc), but it prevented either pole from helping to develop the new nation to the extent “that is necessary” for success and independence, keeping the non-aligned nation in perpetual peonage and dependence.130 In Fanon’s words, The colonized peoples are very aware of these imperatives which rule international political life; for this reason, even those who thunder denunciations of violence take their decisions and act in terms of this universal violence. Today, peaceful co-existence between the two blocs provokes and feeds violence in the colonial countries.131 128 Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 85-86, 94, 109, 124, and 172. Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 126. 130 Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 124-126; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 80 and 82. 131 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 80. 129 48 Simply, the milieu that created the setting for the push for decolonization also created the environment for neo-colonialism, World War II and the Cold War that followed. And in that milieu, according to Fanon, the colonized was “forever in combat with his own image.”132 Fanon identified what W. E. B. Du Bois phrased as “double-consciousness” and the “veil.” According to Du Bois, double-consciousness is the phenomena of blacks viewing themselves through the eyes of others, behind a veil that masked their true-identity and worth. He also said that blacks live a contradiction and that they possessed two “warring souls,” one of their own view (African), and the other of the view of others about them (American/European), which threatened to destroy them and their psyche.133 This sociological and psychological assessment helped allow others to critique American and African American life. His writings have helped generations to articulate what the “slave mentality” is/was, and to begin the process of counteracting mental slavery. For Du Bois, the slave mentality is a by-product of ‘Negro’ as a political, social, and economic status to racialize and oppress nonwhite people as created by the white global elite. Du Bois articulated foundational notions of what Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop called ‘the Negro Myth,’ or the ‘Myth of Negro inferiority,’ when he asserted that the advent of white supremacy, and its lies, was developed by whites to convince themselves of a justification for slavery and colonialism. Even further, due to the slave trade, a decision to portray blacks as perpetual slaves and inferior beings was made and persisted. Du Bois emphasized that propaganda, history, and education reiterated the notion that “nothing civilized is Negroid and every evidence of high culture in Africa must be white [… presenting] all 132 Fanon, Black Skin, 194. Fanon, Black Skin, 17, 21, 60, 64, 73-74, 100, 114-116, 132, 152, 154, 192, 194, 211, 217, and 228; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 17, 26, and 38; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 218; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam Classics, 1989; originally published in 1903), 3. 133 49 civilization [as] the development of white people.”134 Malcolm X argued that the education afforded nonwhites was designed to, and successful at, making them docile by limiting black history to slavery.135 Diop would add that slave based socialization greatly impacted the African identity, creating an adverse “double-consciousness” amongst African thought. The bottom line was that this internalized African inferiority created an African descendent people who had been socialized and mis-educated into rejecting the fact that Africans created civilization.136 Du Bois’ analysis was an introduction, if you would, and Fanon’s was a more layered explanation. Fanon’s analysis took it further. Speaking as a victim of double-consciousness, Fanon asserted that without a “Negro past, without a Negro future, it was impossible for me to live my Negrohood. Not yet white, no longer wholly black, I was damned.137 This description describes that status of cultural and metaphysical limbo a colonized person is internally trapped for eternity. He is trapped in the battle of two “warring souls,” and the result is a retarded homeless step-child; the wretched. This double-consciousness is a neurotic consciousness, a consciousness of “comparison.” According to Fanon, we see the advent within the colonial world of notions that articulate that I am “Nigerian and English” or that I “speak as a Senegalese and as a Frenchman,” but not truly either. This double-consciousness led the colonized to look for approval or validation from the colonizer. Fanon asserted that it “is on that other being, on recognition by that other being, that his own human worth and reality depend. It is that other being in whom the meaning of his life is condensed.”138 This neurosis logically led to the 134 W. E. B. Du Bois, The World and Africa: An inquiry into the part which Africa has played in world history New Enlarged Edition (New York: International Publishers, 1955), 34 and 37. 135 Malcolm X, “OAAU Founding Rally,” in Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary, ed. George Breitman (New York: Pathfinder, 1970), 43-46. 136 Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1989), 25 and 27; Keto, Vision and Time, 37-38. 137 Fanon, Black Skin, 138. 138 Fanon, Black Skin, 213; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 218; Fanon, Black Skin, 51, 73-74, 76, 98, 154, 193, 211, and 217; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 20; Fanon, Black Skin, 217. 50 identification with the colonizer and the colonial home, the European mother country. With this identification with the colonizer, the colonized then began to look down, with disfavor upon his people and culture. The colonized said, “I am a white man. For unconsciously I distrust what is black in me, that is, the whole of my being.” Fanon believed that having been the “slave of the white man, [the former slave] enslaves himself […] in every sense of the word a victim of white civilization.”139 In addition, like South African scholar C. Tsehloane Keto, Fanon acknowledged the use of language as an aid in this process. In his 2001 text Vision and Time, Keto expressed concerns about the study of African languages and literature based upon the Euro-centered paradigm, as well as the study of Africa in those other foreign Euro-centered languages. Keto also expressed concern that the creation of African cultural expression, like literature and drama, in European languages limits the ‘Africaness’ in cultural expression and has been an accomplice of double-consciousness. Fanon would agree with Keto’s observations and assertions. According to Fanon, language “means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.” Thus, to “speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.” Further, the “colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards.” According to Fanon, these things coalesce into a colonized psyche that forces the mind, body and soul of the colonized to stay in his place, as an “invisible man.”140 In agreement with Du Bois, and foundational to Fanon’s assertions; Carter G. Woodson believed that socialization, specifically education, produced the ‘Negro’ identity. 139 Fanon, Black Skin, 23, 147, 148, and 194; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 20; Fanon, Black Skin, 24, 149, and 194; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 19-20; Fanon, Black Skin, 191-192. 140 Keto, Vision and Time, 36; Fanon, Black Skin, 17, 18, 25, 34, 38, 146, 17-18, 38, 18, and 115; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 35. 51 Carter Godwin Woodson has also had a great impact on the trajectory of black radical thought and demonstrated a great devotion to researching and documenting the history, cultures, achievements, experiences, socialization, and oppression of African descended peoples. Woodson intended his work to facilitate the development of strategies to ameliorate their conditions as his paramount goal. Woodson did not just simply study African Americans/Africans and their lives, he created independent black institutions to promote, publish, and teach black history and cultures. Woodson believed that his work would facilitate the improvement of African descended peoples’ statuses and counteract the effects of slavery, colonialism, and Jim Crow. As a historian, Afrocentrist, philosopher, and radical, Woodson was a very accomplished scholar. Woodson earned a B.A. from Berea College in 1903. He went on to earn his M.A. in History from the University of Chicago in 1908, and in 1912 he earned a Ph.D. from Harvard. Woodson would also earn a Doctor of Laws from West Virginia State College in 1941. In 1919-1920, Woodson introduced the “study of black history and graduate studies in history” to Howard University as dean of the School of Liberal Arts; and in 1920 Woodson served as dean of West Virginia Collegiate Institute. By 1933, Woodson was one of the most widely read black authors in the U.S., and two of his published works, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 (1915) and The Mis-education of the Negro (1933) became canonical works concerning African Americans education. Translating his scholarship into praxis, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) in 1915 and its journal, the Journal of Negro History, in 1916. Woodson also founded the Associated Publishers, Inc. (1921), Negro History Week (1926), and the Negro History Bulletin (1937).141 141 Pero G. Dagbovie, Carter G. Woodson in Washington, D.C.: The Father of Black History (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014), 131-137 and 147-151. 52 Woodson often gets much of the credit for institutionalizing black history and is commonly recognized as the ‘father of black history.’ Woodson’s The Mis-Education of the Negro was a very important and relevant work for Black Power/Consciousness adherents’ development and articulation of a new ‘Black’ identity and notion of ‘Blackness.’ Mis-Education is dually concerned with defining education and the purpose of education. His study’s subjects are equally: the educated, the educators, the students, the masses and ultimately education itself. Woodson proved that African Americans/Africans must interrogate their education and behavior, because as his thesis bears out, behavior is greatly shaped by education. Although Mis-Education was written in a different generation and a study conducted under a different context and political economy, it provided an analytical framework to analyze and develop solutions to the problems Black Power/Consciousness adherents were faced with. Four themes in Mis-Education are particularly relevant to the new identity Black Power/Consciousness adherents were creating; (1) the purpose of education, (2) curriculum development, (3) education’s impact on identity and citizenship, and (4) education’s role in innovation. According to Woodson, the “mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself.” Woodson contended that the purpose of education is to equip the educated to “face the ordeal” of racism and poverty. Simply, for African Americans/Africans, education should prepare the educated to adequately identify and solve the problems of the broader community and that education must be connected “very closely with life as it” is, as opposed to “life as they [hope] to make it.”142 Pursuing education should not be simply to find a job, but to ameliorate the condition of African 142 Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro. With an introduction by Jawanza Kunjufu. (Chicago: African American Images, 2000; originally published by The Associated Publishers, 1933), xvi, xvii, and 11. 53 American/African communities as a collective. Curriculum development in turn becomes central to the perpetuation of Woodson’s prescribed educational purpose. The curriculum must not be infected with racist Eurocentrism instead; it must counteract inferiority complexes and reinforce a positive image of African American/African history, culture and identity. The curriculum must be practical, tailored to the demographic and innovative. In concert with Woodson, Malcolm X felt that black people needed to be “given a complete understanding” of a proper liberatory educational curriculum and how to make “quality education exist” in their communities.143 According to Woodson, education plays an important role in identity formation. Woodson contended that: If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself with what he will do. If you make a man feel inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.144 Essentially, the way African Americans/Africans were educated created an underdeveloped community, national and world citizen. Woodson found that even where black teachers were found, they too were teaching their youth the Eurocentrism that they were taught by the bias mind of the white slave master. The children then internalized these views and often responded with negative attitudes towards learning. In his 1988 book, To Be Popular or Smart: The Black Peer Group, Jawanza Kunjufu asserted that negative peer pressure and its impact and effect upon academic achievement reached disastrous levels. The concept that being smart is “acting white” implies that being dumb is “acting black.” This is due to a “slave mentality” that Malcolm X, “Harlem and the Political Machines,” in Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary, ed. George Breitman (New York: Pathfinder, 1970), 70-71. 144 Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro, 82. 143 54 has been perpetuated since black enslavement.145 This slave mentality has resulted, amongst other things, in low self-esteem and lower teacher and communal expectations. As has been briefly demonstrated, Woodson’s 1933 classic study and manifesto was extremely relevant to Black Power/Consciousness adherents’ understandings of proper liberatory education, ‘adulthood/personhood,’ and child-rearing. As we progress toward a closer look at the family, consider Fanon’s assertion that it was “apparent …that the sickness [caused by the colonial model] lies in the family environment.”146 Beyond education, Fanon identified the effects of colonialism upon the family of the colonized. Fanon argued that the family is a “miniature of the nation,” meaning that the family of the colonized perpetuated the colonial model. Fanon asserted that a “normal child that has grown up in a normal family will be a normal man.” The traumatism of colonialism first affects childhood, and even a “normal Negro child, having grown up within a normal family, will become abnormal on the slightest contact with the white world.” This trauma was not always a result of a “single event,” “it arose out of multiple traumas, frequently analogous and repeated.”147 Fanon noted the effect of the colonial model within the inter-personal psyche of the parents also transmitted this trauma. Consider his statement that “very often the Negro who becomes abnormal has never had any relations with whites,” or in other words, the actual colonized culture itself fostered this neurosis. This neurosis was exacerbated by the reality that eventually the neurotic colonized man, due to his double-consciousness, was faced with the 145 Jawanza Kunjufu, To Be Popular or Smart: The Black Peer Group (Chicago: African American Images, 1988), vii, 33, and 31. 146 Fanon, Black Skin, 143. 147 Fanon, Black Skin, 144. 55 decision of choosing between his family and European society.148 If the colonized man wanted to move up in the colonial society, he had to reject his family. Naturally this also effected the colonized and their interactions with their spouse. For example, Fanon diagnosed a phenomenon, using his experiences and observations in the Antilles; identifying a neurosis that resulted in the colonized husband “prostituting” his wife to the colonizer. What he detailed was the parading of his wife at functions and events in front of the colonizer. This exhibition was the result of the colonizer demanding to see the colonized man’s wife, while simultaneously it would be inappropriate for the colonized to inquire about, and especially to demand to meet the colonizer’s wife. This “prostituting” fulfilled the sexual fantasy of the colonizer, although sexual intercourse did not occur.149 Using the Algerian revolution as his case study, Fanon argued that the struggle for national liberation could change the colonized family for the better.150 He observed that during armed struggle a family’s old mummified attachment to the father “melts away” as the youth radicalize the parents’ generation. The father became particularly transformed, moving away from his prior stance of being resolved with colonialism and attempting to get his son to leave the liberation struggle.151 This transformation also affected the father’s relationship with his daughter. The pre-revolution ‘oppression’ of the women was “knocked over” by the revolution and “Free Algeria and Free Women” became synonymous.152 Fanon also noted that within the family women in Algeria gained freedoms that were more personal. Fanon also argued that the revolution also empowered wives and reshaped the traditional roles of married couples as the 148 Fanon, Black Skin, 141-143, 148-149, 142-145, and 149. Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 40. 150 Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 101. 151 Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 102-104. 152 Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 107. 149 56 “people came to realize that if they wished to bring a new world to birth they would have to create a new Algerian society from top to bottom.”153 Keeping in mind Fanon’s assertion that the family is a microscopic replica of the nation, or society; his above statement also implied creating a new familial model. Yet for Fanon, the creation of a new familial model, a new identity, a change in gender relations, and the push towards ‘personhood’ were linked to processes resulting from the turn towards armed struggle and armed struggle itself. I resolved…to assert myself as a BLACK MAN. Since the other hesitated to recognize me, there remained only one solution: to make myself known.154 Regarding moving toward armed struggle, Fanon placed a particular, although not exclusive, responsibility upon the ‘native intellectual.’ He codified their development and move towards armed struggle into three distinct phases. In phase one, as we have seen, the colonized intellectual had “assimilated the culture” of the colonizer. In phase two, the colonized becomes “disturbed” and “decides to remember what he is;” négritude. In phase three, the colonized, after immersing himself into the ‘black abyss;’ négritude, will begin to “shake” the masses of colonized people awake.155 Let’s continue to the second phase; négritude. Before Césaire, [colonized] literature was a literature of Europeans. [The colonized] identified himself with the white man, adopted a white man’s attitude, ‘was a white man.’156 The coming of the Senegalese poet Aimé Césaire and the advent of the négritude movement is paramount to this discussion. The négritude movement was manifested in the 1930’s in Senegal by black poets inspired by Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, and their work’s focus of racism and ‘blackness.’ Césaire’s work made it “fine and good to be a Negro.” 153 Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 101-104, 107-109, 111, 115, and 101. Fanon, Black Skin, 115. 155 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 222; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 19. 156 Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 26. 154 57 The experience and conclusion of World War II accelerated the acceptance of négritude by intellectuals of the African Diaspora. Négritude increased notions that the African Diaspora should look to one another with unity and camaraderie and transformed the colonized intellectuals from “white men” into Negroes. More explicitly, négritude forced the colonized intellectuals to confront racism and notions of white supremacy. The reason why négritude is important to a discussion concerning the move towards armed struggle is that, according to Fanon, it was essential for the colonized poet to turn against the colonizer’s language and culture. In theory, the colonized intellectual internalized the concept that it is not he who is evil, but instead it is the colonizer who is evil. This internalization is done to combat the notion that it is the colonized that are evil, and was predicated upon the process termed négritude. Fanon asserted that during the move towards armed struggle individualism disappears, begins at the very moment that the colonized realize their humanity, and is coupled with the colonized directly challenging white supremacy. Thus, négritude resulted in the realization that all avenues must be explored to end colonialism, just as all methods are used to establish and preserve it. Thus, the colonized person had an epiphany; the idea that action and work were necessary and that action was the work of the colonizer’s death. That leap constituted what Fanon described as the third phase, the fighting phase.157 It is Fanon’s third stage where actual and metaphoric revolution occurs, as Malcolm X asserted, revolutions are “based on land […] the basis of independence [and] the only way they could get it was bloodshed.” Malcolm cautioned those who used the word “revolution” loosely, or as a metaphor, that the “historic nature” of revolutions is 157 Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 21, 23, 26, 25, 170-173 and 26; Fanon, Black Skin, 27; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 93, 47, and 43; Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 155; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 61, 85 and 222. 58 “bloodshed” and that they did not truly “know” what a revolution was because they were “afraid to bleed.”158 Fanon would agree with Malcolm, while adding that: The logical end of this will to struggle is the total liberation of the national territory. In order to achieve this liberation, the inferiorized man brings all his resources into play, all his acquisitions, the old and the new, his own and those of the occupant. The struggle is at once total, absolute.159 Clearly and adamantly, Fanon and Malcolm X asserted that intellect and philosophy were not enough to end colonialism. In their view, only by risking life and limb is freedom attained and eventually the colonized would reach a point of no return towards armed struggle. For Fanon, the existence of armed struggle suggests that the colonized people do not any longer “trust any other means” towards liberty. Yet, there were cultural implications for Black Power/Consciousness adherents’ endeavor to transform their cultures into cultures of ‘Blackness,’ as revealed by Fanon’s instruction that human reality and culture, “in-itself-for-itself can be achieved only through conflict and through the risk that conflict implies.”160 Fanon argued that it is through struggle, armed struggle in particular, that life/culture is given meaning and that human reality (culture) is only achieved through conflict and the risk that it implies. From this view, armed struggle is a cultural manifestation, and the future of the national culture is an amplification of the values which have “ordained” the armed struggle. Armed struggle has the capacity to transform a static mummified culture into a forward-looking creature. We have already discussed Fanon’s view that armed struggle can transform the family structure; he also argued that it can transform gender roles and relations. Using Algeria as his case study, Fanon observed the radicalizing of the women, and their entrance into the armed struggle. The nature of the struggle forced the men to allow women to participate in the Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,” 7. Fanon, Toward the African Revolution, 43. 160 Fanon, Black Skin, 29 and 218; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 89 and 84; Fanon, Black Skin, 218. 158 159 59 revolution, which was a revolutionary cultural leap for the Islamic paradigm. This resulted in a change in culture and in new cultural roles and freedoms for women. In addition, Fanon argued that through armed struggle the urban criminal element, the lumen-proletariat, would be integrated into the overall national society and culture, and become the urban spearhead of the revolution, and consequently, culture.161 Fanon also asserted that armed struggle could close the divide between the urban and rural peoples and politically educate the rural masses. Armed struggle as a purveyor of social truths enables it to end tribalism and regionalism. Fanon observed how the armed liberation struggle could change the colonized static culture’s view of technology, making technology something that can be absorbed and used to further their cause and culture; thus, transforming their culture. Fanon seen this process as a vehicle to modernize African American and African cultures as revealed by his assertion that “people who take their destiny into their own hands assimilate the most modern forms of technology at an extraordinary rate.” This trend also extends to medicine. Fanon also observed how the need for medical attention during the armed liberation struggle transforms the colonized static culture’s view of medicine.162 Their view of modern medicine as an alien manifestation is altered into a view of absorption and compliance to modern medical practices and techniques. Consider Fanon’s assertion that “old superstitions began to crumble. Witchcraft, maraboutism (religious medicine practiced by the priest), belief in the djinn, all these things that seemed to be part of the very being of the Algerian, were swept away by the action and practice initiated by the Revolution [… and that the] Revolution and medicine manifested their presence simultaneously.”163 161 Fanon, Black Skin, 218; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 245-246; Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 35-67, and 59; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 129, 130, and 129. 162 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 135, 147, 132, and 133; Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 69-97 and 121-145. 163 Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 142-143. 60 CONCLUSION As Malcolm X asserted, what African descended and nonwhite peoples had “foremost in common” was an enemy, “the white man. He’s an enemy to all of us.”164 That common enemy produced a common oppression that could only be undone by a common struggle rooted in a common philosophy. According to W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Carter G. Woodson, Frantz Fanon, and Malcolm X; colonialism and slavery had greater effects on the colonized and racially oppressed than just political rule. They underdeveloped the psyche and relationships of the colonized, underdeveloped and mummified the culture of the colonized, and underdeveloped the political economy of the former colonies and the internally racially oppressed. Du Bois, Garvey, Woodson, Fanon, and Malcolm X argued that Pan-Africanism and internationalism, anti-imperialism, a proper liberatory education rooted in Pan-Africanism and Diaspority, community control and institution building, and disciplined approaches towards coalitions and coalition politics would lead to a new ‘Black’ identity and notion of ‘Blackness’ that would facilitate liberation and ‘personhood.’ Fanon and Malcolm X presented violence as revolutionary acts under the premise that through armed conflict the effects of colonialism and slavery could be reversed. Du Bois’, Garvey’s, Woodson’s, Fanon’s, and Malcolm X’s analyses provided a compelling discernment for the evaluation of the racially oppressed in the United States and South Africa; particularly Black Power/Consciousness adherents who in turn drew heavily from the thoughts of those philosophers and their influences are traced throughout this study’s case studies. 164 Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,” 5. 61 APPENDIX 62 KEY DEFINITIONS Pan-Africanism: an ideological principle that emphasizes the common shared history, heritage, and oppression between all people of African descent to foster bonds of solidarity for a universal salvation. Internationalism: an ideological principle of cooperation amongst the globally racially oppressed nonwhite people, the capitalistically exploited people of the world, and of the developing world against colonialism, colonial and neo-colonial empires, hegemony, imperialism, and the capitalist exploitation of the lower classes. Anti-imperialism: an ideological principle opposed to colonialism, colonial and neo colonial empires, hegemony, imperialism, and the capitalist exploitation of the lower classes. Proper liberatory education: an educational curriculum and focus with a Pan-Africanist, internationalist, and anti-imperialist lens designed to equip oppressed nonwhite people with the skills needed to improve their local, regional, national, and global status. Coalition: an alliance for combined action among separate parties or entities. Coalition politics: why and how coalitions are formed and the machinations of said coalitions. Community control: local communities having control of issues and institutions that directly affect or service their communities. Implicit in this definition is the clear statement that African descended people must determine and control the pace, shape, and manner of the provision of services, change, and decision-making at levels. Institution building: the act of creating independent institutions controlled by the local community to provide the services that local, regional, and state are incapable or unwilling to adequately deliver. 63 CHAPTER TWO END OF THE MORAL CRUSADE: THE BIRTH OF THE DETROIT BLACK POWER AND JOHANNESBURG BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENTS In the United States and South Africa during the pivotal 1950s and 1960s, three common and exact conditions existed in these racialized societies that inspired the emergence of a new sense of “Black” identity. The conditions included state propagation of faux reforms towards equality, rebellion of the oppressed, and extreme state repression. To better understand the role that these dynamic elements played in the emergence of Black Power and Black Consciousness in the Detroit and Johannesburg metropolises, specifically; a precise contextualization of the birth of each movement is essential. Putting the narratives in conversation with one another, comparing and contrasting them, unearths deeper meanings of the origins of ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ as political identities in Black Power and Black Consciousness. This chapter argues that both movements were affected by adjacent needs and desires that were uniquely different from those of prior generations. Black Power and Consciousness adherents’ desires were shaped by the need to end police brutality and harassment, obtain basic human and civic services, and produce new leadership to obtain true freedom through equality. Their application of ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ emanated from a desire to chart a new course in the global Black Liberation struggle, create unity amongst those who were negatively racialized, and for survival and dignity, manifested by self-determination. Black Power and Black Consciousness were local variations sensitive to local material conditions of the same identity, philosophy, and praxis. In the cities of Detroit and Johannesburg, the racially oppressed were living in police states under campaigns of law and order. Living in the ghettoes of Detroit, the townships of Johannesburg, and at a growing rate the Bantustans, translated to overcrowding and inadequate or no housing, with little if any infrastructure for basic human needs. These frustrations were 64 compounded by transient/migrant workers. They were victims of forced removal and/or relocation, as well as pacts forged between so-called leaders and the elites and white power structures. It is the result of the faux reforms, regardless of their specifics, that gave birth to ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ as a political identity. Those results coalesced into the cooptation of the elite classes, the de-legitimization of the statutory reform approach, and the decrease or stagnation in the standard of living of Africans and African Americans in the republics. The political economic contrast between South Africa and the United States discloses the how and why “Black” and “Blackness” developed in response to global racialized power relations. It is important to note that although contextualization and the acknowledgement of prior movements and ideas are vital to understanding Black Power and Black Consciousness; theoretically, this study does not subscribe to the notion of a ‘Long Movement’ and instead articulates a ‘Long Tradition’ with Black Power and Black Consciousness as movements that fall within that tradition. Black Power and Black Consciousness represent continuances of Black Nationalist radicalism that is driven by a long and sustained history of structural racism. My approach concurs with historians Sundiata Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang when they assert that they “question the adequacy of the Long Movement thesis because it collapses periodization schemas, erases conceptual differences between waves of the [Black Liberation Movement], and blurs regional distinctions in the African American [and African] experience.”165 This chapter also illustrates “that there is much historical information and insight to be gained from substantive examination of black organizations that stretch the borders of standard periodization.”166 Both the Black Power and Black Consciousness Movements developed in various stages: the Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Lange, “The “Long Movement” as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies,” The Journal of African American History 92, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 265. 166 Peniel E. Joseph, “Introduction” in The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era, ed. Peniel E. Joseph (New York: Taylor and Francis Co., 2006), 8. 165 65 disaffected stage, the developmental stage, and the implementation into praxis stage. Both Black Power and Black Consciousness were implemented in different locales, regions, and political economies differently; based upon those differences. THE END OF THE MORAL CRUSADE IN THE USA AND DETROIT DESEGREGATION In the United States, the civil rights movement yielded three key statutory (or legislative) gains in the push to end Jim Crow in America. The May 17, 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas et. al. stated that the American doctrine of ‘Separate but Equal’ really resulted in a ‘Separate but Unequal’ system and was thus unconstitutional. The efforts at desegregating schools, student sit and dine-ins, and community bus boycotts that followed reflect African Americans trying to compel the enforcement of Brown v. Board. However, the ruling did not, and could not, dictate the dismantling of the two-tier system. The Civil Rights Act (1964) outlawed discrimination and the ratification of the Voting Rights Act (1965) outlawed the prevention of voting of a citizen, based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. They were intended to statutorily codify the illegality of Jim Crow laws. Unfortunately, the powers and resources given to enforce these acts were initially weak. The CRA and the VRA would both need several amendments, revisions, and re-ratifications to expand and define their powers and enforcement.167 The statutory end to Jim Crow and the enforcement of punishments for civil rights infractions were the main concerns of the civil rights movement for over a half a century. Reformist moderate organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student Non- 167 Donald G. Nieman, Promises to Keep: African-Americans and the Constitutional Order, 1776 to the Present, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 170-171, 176-179, 202, and 217-218. 66 violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) dominated the various national and local directions of the conventional civil rights movement. The holy grail of statutory reform had been accomplished and the civil rights movement’s tactics, ideologies, and coalitions were becoming increasingly delegitimized, outdated, and irrelevant.168 Their very identity and purpose of being reformist moderate centrists focused on statutory reform left the organizations grappling with identity crises and re-evaluating their futures and their roles in the desegregation era. The literal and metaphorical sacrifice of the radical Back Left and its traditions by the reformist moderate centrists for those three very important statutory concessions estranged them from the emerging next generation of African American activists, radicals, and reformers. Despite these challenges, integration was being accomplished for some while desegregation was very slow for others. While the African American elite was gaining further entre in to high governmental posts and elite American and international political, economic, and social circles, the remaining black masses were not fairing as well.169 The staunch resistance primarily by states in the American south to enforce these statutory reforms also led the civil rights movement into a crisis. Many Black Power adherents soon articulated the realities of integration as not integration at all, but desegregation resulting in the integration of the elite and “visibility” as opposed to real political and economic power. Black leaders became viewed as “emissaries sent by the white society.”170 As highlighted by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton in their classic book Black Power: There has developed in this country an entire class of “captive leaders” in the black communities. These are black people with certain technical and administrative skills who 168 Gerald Horne, Black Revolutionary: William Patterson & the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle (Urbana-Champaign, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 2013). 169 Brenda Gayle Plummer, In Search of Power: African Americans in the Era of Decolonization, 1956-1974 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Gerald Horne, Black Revolutionary. 170 Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 12. 67 could provide useful leadership roles in the black communities but do not because they have become beholden to the white power structure.171 Interrogation of the overlap of the civil rights and Black Power eras, as well as nationalistic ideologies, serve as an important space to contend that the civil rights movement did not address questions of psychology and identity. This contention is vital to understanding the rise of Black Power and the decline of the civil rights movement. In this light, Black Power is not seen as the killer of the civil rights movement, but its progeny and reaction to it. This takes blame off the shoulders of Black Power for the demise of the Civil rights movement and places it squarely on the back of the Civil rights movement itself. Identifying the birth of the Black Power Movement is essential. Regarding the genesis of the Black Power movement, Jeffery O.G. Ogbar identifies the Watts rebellion and James Meredith’s “March Against Fear” as the starting point.172 By examining those events I, however, suggest an alternative launching date for the Detroit Black Power Movement and the movement in general. THE WATTS REBELLION AND THE MARCH AGAINST FEAR The Watts rebellion was a direct result of unemployment and police repression. Ignited by the drunk driving arrest of an African American man, on August 11, 1965, African Americans in the Los Angeles community of Watts exploded with outrage. After six days, the California National Guard restored order, but the rebellion resulted in 34 deaths, the destruction of nearly one thousand buildings, and over $40 million in property damage. Importantly, “the Watts rebellions signaled a turning point, inaugurating a new militant and anti-integrationist strain of black politics.”173 Following the rebellion, a myriad of citizen patrols dedicated to policing the 171 Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power, 13. Ogbar, Black Power, 38 and 61. 173 Donna Jean Murch, Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 72. 172 68 police emerged in Los Angeles.174 In the wake of the Watts rebellions, historian Donna Murch observed that the inability of community programs to alleviate “chronic unemployment and police brutality” led a new cadre of African American activists to pursue “direct action in the streets.” Rapidly, “nonviolent passive resistance” appealed less and less to this new cadre of youth, loosing relevancy. Simultaneously, the “radicalization of the southern civil rights movement” provided new rhetoric and approaches for the African American freedom struggle across the United States.175 Figure 1: James Meredith at the University of Mississippi176 174 Murch, Living for the City, 132. Murch, Living for the City, 119. 176 United States Library of Congress, digital ID ppmsca.o4292, loc.gov. 175 69 To highlight continuing racism and oppression in the American South, as well as to promote African American voter registration after passage of the VRA, in 1966, the man who desegregated the University of Mississippi, James Meredith, endeavored on a one man “March Against Fear” from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi; a 220-mile trek. Emblematic of what Charles Eagles described as his “militant” conservatism, Meredith did not want the participation of major civil rights organizations.177 Meredith was suspicious of the NAACP because of its “cozy relationship” with President Lyndon B. Johnson and his administration.178 On the second day of the march, a white gunman shot Meredith, inflicting several wounds, with FBI agents watching silently.179 Leaders of the previously excluded major civil rights organizations continued the march in Meredith’s stead and were later joined by tens of thousands of other marchers. Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) chairman Stokely Carmichael, who was organizing in Alabama, and Martin L. King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) were amongst those who joined the march, only to be arrested in Greenwood, Mississippi. Meredith would eventually rejoin the march.180 Carmichael was familiar with Mississippi from similar work in the early 1960s. Although the march resulted in thousands of African American registered voters, Carmichael was unimpressed. In a speech given soon after his release from the Mississippi jail, Carmichael proclaimed to the world his evolving notion of Black Power, stating: When we form coalitions we must say on what grounds we are going to form them, not white people telling us how to form them. We must build strength and pride amongst ourselves. We must think politically and get power because we are the only people in this country that are powerless. We are the only people who have to protect ourselves from our protectors. We are the only people who want a man called Willis 177 Charles W. Eagles, The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 202-220. 178 Peniel E. Joseph, Stokely: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas, 2014), 114. 179 Joseph, Stokely: A Life, 117. 180 Joseph, Stokely: A Life, 120. 70 removed who is a racist, that have to lie down in the street and beg a racist named Daley to remove the racist named Willis. We have to build a movement so we can see Daley and say, “Tell Willis to get hat,” and by the time we turn around he is gone. That's Black Power. Everybody in this country is for “Freedom Now” but not everybody is for Black Power because we have got to get rid of some of the people who have white power. We have got to get us some Black Power. We don't control anything but what white people say we can control. We have to be able to smash any political machine in the country that's oppressing us and bring it to its knees. We have to be aware that if we keep growing and multiplying the way we do in ten years all the major cities are going to be ours. We have to know that in Newark, New Jersey, where we are sixty percent of the population, we went along with their stories about integrating and we got absorbed. All we have to show for it is three councilmen who are speaking for them and not for us. We have to organize ourselves to speak for each other. That's Black Power. We have to move to control the economics and politics of our community…181 Taken in its entirety, the speech represented a break with, castigation of, and disillusionment with non-violent civil disobedience and its greatest champion, Martin Luther King, Jr. himself. Carmichael then returned to Lowndes County, Alabama, where he and SNCC were engaged in a project to not just register African American voters, but to create an independent African American political party: the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) and the Lowndes County Freedom Party (LCFP). SNCC’s experiences in Lowndes would also have other farreaching consequences. BLACK POWER BECOMES PRAXIS By elucidating the Lowndes County “movement’s key organizing elements,” historian Hasan Kwame Jefferies reformats standard periodization, chronology, and scope, highlighting the role of SNCC as outside agitators and radicalizers of the indigenous community, the role of the Lowndes Diaspora, and guerrilla organizing.182 Jeffries’ approach grants further insight into the “actual origin and meaning of SNCC’s call for Black Power” and political power.183 In the ““Black Power" Speech (28 July 1966, by Stokely Carmichael).” Dictionary of American History. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 25 Jan. 2016 . Emphasis is by the author. 182 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 4. 183 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 5. 181 71 words of Carmichael, the “goal of integration is irrelevant. Political and economic power is what black people have to have.”184 Unlike the civil rights movement, the Lowndes County movement was not a “moral crusade” aimed at changing the “hearts and minds” of white people.185 This distinction serves as a theoretical and ideological break from the civil rights movement, providing a way to distinguish Black Power from the prior movement. As Jeffries demonstrates, the founding and activities of the Lowndes County Freedom Party and Lowndes County Freedom Organization represented what he terms “freedom politics,” and that it “transformed local black political behavior.”186 Like Jeffries, I identify the Lowndes County movement as the actual start of the Black Power Movement, as opposed to the Watts rebellion or Meredith’s march. Although it was in the Mississippi experience that Black Power, as articulated by Carmichael, was conceived, it was in Lowndes County that it was put into action. Mississippi provided the incubator for Black Power theorization, with it becoming praxis in Lowndes County. The Watts rebellion, Carmichael’s June 1966 elevation to chairman of SNCC, the Lowndes County experience, and the events of Meredith’s march, all converged into a fervor that “demonstrated the growing appeal” of Black Power.187 184 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 86. Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 104. 186 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 5. 187 Murch, Living for the City, 119. 185 72 Figure 2: Stokely Carmichael at Michigan State University in 1967.188 THE PRE-EXISTING LEGACY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN RADICALISM AND MILITANCY IN DETROIT In Detroit, there pre-existed an African American radical undercurrent dating back to the early nineteenth century. The ‘Blackburn Affair’ is a demonstrative example. Thornton Blackburn was a fugitive slave from Kentucky who lived in Detroit with his wife since 1831. In 1838, slave catchers from Kentucky arrived to capture him. The slave catchers bribed the Sheriff to arrest and hold Mr. Blackburn. The next day a mob of armed African Americans and whites “Stokely Carmichael expounds ‘black power’ theory,” Wolverine: Michigan State University Yearbook (1967), 49. 188 73 killed the Sheriff and wounded several deputies. The mob freed Mr. Blackburn and took him to Canada.189 Examples such as this are plentiful, another is the famous Ossian Sweet case. As the African American population increased, by the turn of the twentieth century, African Americans in Detroit were legally segregated into the Black Bottom and Paradise Valley communities on the city’s eastside.190 Ossian Sweet was an African American medical doctor with a successful eastside practice. Dr. Sweet decided to purchase a family home in a white neighborhood on Detroit’s west side. Dr. Sweet purchased a home from a mulatto who appeared to be white. The white neighbors soon discovered that the home was sold to an African American. To deter and prevent Dr. Sweet from moving in, the whites organized the Tireman Neighborhood Association. Dr. Sweet informed the police of his intent and moved into the house, addressed 2905 Garland, on September 8, 1925. Anticipating trouble, he asked his two brothers and several friends to stay the first night in his new home with him and his family. The group took precautions bringing along guns and ammunition. On the evening of September 9, a mob of whites attacked the Sweet home and were greeted with gunfire killing one white man and injuring another. The Sweet party were arrested and held without bail. Dr. Sweet and his codefendants were eventually acquitted after two trials, with the defense of the infamous Clarence Darrow; and the steady and just hand of the very progressive Judge Frank Murphy.191 The early decades of the twentieth century Detroit also had a strong presence of Black Nationalist organizations such as Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science Temple and Marcus Garvey’s 189 Bruce Rubenstein and Lawrence E. Ziewacz, Michigan: A History of the Great Lakes State. 4th edition, (Wheeling: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2008), 87; David M. Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 8-13; Branko J. Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972), 24-25. 190 Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 23-4. 191 Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York: Henry Holt, 2004). Boyle’s text is a great account of the Sweet saga. 74 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). In fact, Detroit was the 1930 (circa) birthplace of the Nation of Islam (NOI), the group that would later introduce Malcolm X to the world.192 Self-defense was not just regulated to individual action or to protect individuals, it was also needed in response to roving mob violence. An example is the 1943 Detroit ‘anti-black riot.’ During the ‘riot’ whites attacked African Americans, beating them and destroying their property. Fights between African Americans and whites ensued. The riot began by the dissemination of two rumors. One rumor charged white men with throwing a black baby over the Belle Isle Bridge, and the other charged black men with the rape and murder of a white woman. Both rumors were false, but the violence and destruction that followed was real. In the end thirty-four people were killed and approximately seven hundred were injured, twenty-five of the dead were African American. Many African Americans were jailed and imprisoned, but no whites. The police killed several African American men by shooting them in the back. Eventually federal troops were brought in to end the violence, two days later. That did not stop African American migration to the Detroit area, which was stimulated by the prospect of industrial jobs, in particularly in the auto industry and Ford Motor Company. These were jobs that were unavailable to African Americans in the south.193 African Americans still poured into the Detroit area, and their population doubled during the 1940s.194 African Americans were still trapped in the worst housing in Detroit, and were significantly over charged for use of it.195 192 Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2011), 81-88; Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism, 4-6. 193 Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 26. 194 Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 33. 195 Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 33-4. 75 Due to the high concentration of autoworkers and the influence of Malcolm X, Black Radicalism in Detroit was festering. This was expressed in adoration for militant radicals such as Robert F. Williams.196 The Detroit metropolis also had local radicals such as Paul Robeson associate Thomas Coleman, a full-time African American labor organizer in Detroit. He was also a president of a labor union.197 Coleman was a charter member of the Garbage workers’ union, SCMWA-CIO local 285.198 Because of his involvement in the labor movement, Coleman was investigated by the McCarthy era Un-American Activities Committee and the Red Squad of Detroit for alleged Communist allegiance. He was acquitted of all charges.199 Coleman was also one of the co-founders of the American Progressive Association (APA), and served as its first president until 1993, the organization was founded in Romulus, Michigan in 1941.200 The U.S. government had also identified leaders, activists, and organizers like Luke Tripp and Max Stanford as “advocates for guerilla warfare” in Detroit.201 In the late 1960s and early 1970s, organizations such as the Republic of New Afrika and the Shrine of the Black Madonna Pan League of Black Workers, “Who Shot Malcolm,” Black Vanguard vol. 1 no 3 March 20, 1965, 8-13; League of Black Workers, “Negroes With Guns Chapter One,” Black Vanguard vol. 1 no 5 August, 1965, 41-55; U.S. Congress, House Committee On Un-American Activities, Guerrilla Warfare Advocates in the United States: Report by the Committee On Un-American Activities, 90th Cong., 2nd sess., 1968, Committee Print, 16. 197 The Al Burton papers: Romulus Historical Society; Jean Calmen, “Union Organizer fought for the rights of minorities,” Detroit Free Press, July 20, 1994, obituaries; Mike Best, “Union organizer dies at 96,” The Detroit News, July 20, 1994, pg. 2B obituaries; Charles H. Wright, Robeson: Labor’s Forgotten Champion (Detroit: Balamp Publishing, 1975), 70-82. 198 “Citizen’s Rally to Coleman Defense,” Oakland County, 1950: The Al Burton papers: Romulus Historical Society; The Al Burton papers: Romulus Historical Society; Calmen, “Union Organizer fought for the rights of minorities;” Best, “Union organizer dies at 96;” Wright, Robeson, 70-82. 199 The Al Burton papers: Romulus Historical Society; Calmen, “Union Organizer fought for the rights of minorities;” Best, “Union organizer dies at 96;” Wright, Robeson, 70-82; “Citizen’s Rally to Coleman Defense.” 200 The Al Burton papers: Romulus Historical Society; Calmen, “Union Organizer fought for the rights of minorities;” Best, “Union organizer dies at 96;” American Progressive Association Announcement, American Progressive Association Objective: The Al Burton papers: Romulus Historical Society. 201 U.S. Congress, House Committee On Un-American Activities, Guerrilla Warfare Advocates in the United States: Report by the Committee On Un-American Activities, 90th Cong., 2nd sess., 1968, Committee Print, 16-17. 196 76 African Orthodox Christian Church and Community Center were developing institutions and forcibly promoting Pan-Africanism and Black Nationalism in Detroit.202 THE 1967 DETROIT REBELLION AND ITS REVERBERATIONS For the Detroit Black Power Movement, the July 1967 Detroit rebellion is an important inciting event. Racialized conflicts with law enforcement and notions of ‘law and order’ that helped to cause the uprisings are central to the development of Black Power in Detroit. During a two-week period, beginning early Sunday morning on July 23rd, Detroit, Michigan’s largest city “experienced the bloodiest urban disorder and the costliest property damage in U.S. history.”203 At least “forty-three people had been killed – thirty-three blacks and ten whites – over one thousand injured, and 3,800 arrested.”204 Scholars Joe T. Darden and Richard W. Thomas argue that the rebellion would sway “racial thinking and the collective memories” of African American Detroiters of the era.205 As they observed, the “spark that set off” the rebellion in Detroit stem from the following incident and actions by the “predominately white police toward members of the black community.”206 The Detroit police force raided a local informal unlicensed club addressed as 9125 12th Street, at the corner of 12th Street and Clairmont. The police interrupted a coming home party for African American servicemen returning from Vietnam. As the police held sixty Sheila H. Gillams, “Shrine of the Black Madonna Pan African Orthodox Christian Church,” in The Sage encyclopedia of African cultural heritage in North America, eds. Mwalimu J. Shujaa & Kenya J. Shujaa (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 2015); Albert B. Cleage Jr., The Black Messiah (Kansas City, KS: Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, 1968); Albert B. Cleage Jr., Black Christian nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church (New York, NY: William Morrow, 1972); Nkechi Taifa, “Republic of New Afrika,” in The Sage encyclopedia of African cultural heritage in North America, eds. Mwalimu J. Shujaa and Kenya J. Shujaa (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 2015). 203 Joe T. Darden and Richard W. Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013), xv. 204 Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), 299. Stats come from Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City, the quote is Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 1. 205 Darden and Thomas, Detroit, xv. 206 Darden and Thomas, Detroit, xv. 202 77 people for arrest, young men passer-byers began verbally accosting the police. After the police left, the crowd continued to grow and rock and bottle throwing intensified, escalating into a fullblown rebellion. The Detroit rebellion revealed a lot of realities about Detroit, specifically the inequalities identified by Malcolm X as “food, clothing, housing, education and jobs.”207 “The black narrative,” as Darden and Thomas present it, “placed the blame squarely on institutionalized racism that crippled the lives of so many blacks during the years leading up to the riot.”208 The federally commissioned Kerner Commission Report acknowledged white culpability by stating: “What white Americans have never fully understood – but what the Negro can never forget – is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”209 In fact, scholar Elaine Latzman Moon revealed that then Michigan Governor George Romney, agreed with The Kerner Commission Report, quoting him saying, “What triggered the riot in my opinion, to a considerable extent, that between urban renewal and expressways, poor black people were bulldozed out of their homes. They had no place to go in the suburbs because of suburban restriction. They settled along 12th Street. The concentration of people on 12th Street was too great. When that incident occurred, it was a spark that ignited the whole area.”210 Despite Romney’s decision-based oversimplified politician’s gaze, the reality was systemic and eloquently summarized by Darden and Thomas, “In short, white institutional racism in the form of urban renewal, expressways, and white suburban resistance were the major causes of the civil disorder, or rebellion, of 1967.”211 Malcolm X, “A Declaration of Independence,” 20. Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 2. 209 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968: 2), quoted in Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 2. 210 Elaine Latzman Moon, Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes: An Oral History of Detroit’s African-American Community, 1918 – 1967 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 396. 211 Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 3. 207 208 78 Experiences within the rebellion itself also help to capture and contextualize the local political economy. Accounts of residents viewing the Michigan National Guard as a hostile “occupying army” were frequent.212 The Algiers Motel incident, where amidst the rioting several white police officers knowingly gunned down and killed three unarmed black men, highlights police terror and attitudes from before the riot. Two of the men were even “shot while lying kneeling.”213 A narrative from a young African American male Detroit police officer concerning his experiences during the rebellion is equally enlightening. During the rebellion, Officer Isaiah McKinnon was pulled over by an unmarked police car. McKinnon was driving home after working over a day and a half trying to stop “arsonists and looters from torching businesses and carrying off sofas, radios, even groceries.”214 Although McKinnon was still in uniform, the officers stopped him for “violating a riot curfew” and ignored his status as a fellow police officer. As McKinnon recalls the encounter, “The older guy, he had his gun out and he made a racially derogatory comment to me…I could see that he was pulling the trigger. I dove back into my car as he fired, and I just floored it.”215 Not even African Americans in police uniforms were safe, despite of, or perhaps, because of, their scarcity. The immediate aftermath of the rebellion situation also presented heightened challenges from old problems as well as new opportunities. Just consider that according to Branko J. Widick, “Close to 5,000 people were left homeless, most of them black. More than 1,000 buildings had been burned to the ground. When the total damage was tallied, it soared to $50 million.”216 The magnitude of the rebellion placed it and the rebels in direct opposition to power 212 Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 2. Widick, Detroit. Stats come from Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City, the quote is in Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 1. 214 Robyn Meredith, “5 Days in 1967 Still Shake Detroit” The New York Times July 23, 1997. (Accessed June 18, 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/23/us/5-days-in-1967-still-shake-detroit.html). 215 Meredith, “5 Days in 1967 Still Shake Detroit.” 216 Widick, Detroit; John Hersey, The Algiers Motel Incident (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998). 213 79 and capital, leading some scholars to assert that the rebellion was a “conflict between blacks and state power… In 1967, blacks were on the offensive and their major target was property.”217 But now, 1967 forward, Detroit became a hotbed for militant and nationalistic activism, interest, and study. Consider that “near the height of his influence as [a] revolutionary orator,” the then new chairman of the re-branded SNCC (Student National Coordinating Committee), H. Rap Brown delivered a speech to a crowd of 5,000 just “a mile or so” from the corner of 12th Street and Clairmont, ground zero of the rebellion. Brown, who touched the pulse of the youth and the rebellion, arriving less than a month after the withdraw of the Michigan National Guard was later quoted as saying, “There are people who can relate the struggle of black people better than I can. People in Detroit, for instance.”218 This new notoriety also brought with it repression and cries for ‘law and order.’ In The Black Campus Movement, scholar Ibram H. Rogers asserts that the civil rights movement “directly and chiefly spawned the [activism] of the 1960s and 1970s and all of its movements” more specifically, “desegregation had to preface” this particular “striving” for a new identity and consciousness.219 If they indeed strove to organically create an identity and consciousness, their actual post-integration realities were to be central. The conditions described by The Kerner Commission, Romney and Malcolm X: systematic obstacles such as urban renewal, expressways and infrastructure construction, and middle class flight; magnified the failures of integration in Detroit. Those failures began coalescing with white suburban resistance into what sociologist William Julius Wilson called the Truly Disadvantaged.220 The spaces 217 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 155. Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 13. 219 Ibram H. Rogers, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 87. 220 William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1987). 218 80 created by desegregation also served as important and vital arenas for identity and consciousness creation, despite how daunting and challenging the condition. The rise of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the formation of the Black Student United Front, and the turn towards community parallel institution building are direct reverberations of the 1967 Detroit rebellion; as discussed in chapters four, three and five, respectively. THE TURN FROM NON-VIOLENCE TOWARDS THE RHETORIC OF ARMED SELF-DEFENSE Figure 3: Wanted Dead or Dying221 For Black Power adherents in Detroit, self-defense was an important issue and notion. As demonstrated by a ‘wanted dead or dying’ posting, African American middle and high-school students proclaimed that they were “for violence in reaction to violence.”222 Another posting ran with an actual photograph of a white police office, presumably Abe: “WANTED DEAD or DYING –Honest Abe- Honest Abe for the beating of a BLACK STUDENT... March 11, 1970 on 221 222 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (April 20, 1970). Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970). 81 Cooley’s Plantation.”223 The students advocated for armed self-defense, believing that “He who had nothing to defend himself is not fit to live.”224 The Osborn High Black Student Voice ran a drawing of a black arm with a broken chain holding up an assault rifle accompanied with the caption: “Black Self Defense Now!!”225 Self-defense was a central pillar to Black Power, elucidating that point, in January of 1966, speaking of Lowndes County, Alabama residents, Stokely Carmichael stated he had “simply stopped telling people they should remain nonviolent…This would be tantamount to suicide in the Black Belt counties where whites are shooting at Negroes and it would cost [Carmichael] the respect of the people.”226 From the perspectives of many African Americans in Detroit, that applied to the Michigan metropolis as well. EXPORTING BLACK POWER: FROM ALABAMA TO DETROIT A historical process that also greatly impacted the activism of Black Power adherents in Detroit, as well as contributed to the causes and aftermath of the rebellion, was northern migration of African Americans from the south. Lowndes County migrants who left Alabama often relocated to Detroit because the automobile industry began hiring African Americans in the late 1910s and early 1920s. The experiences of the relocated Alabamians in Detroit were similar to those of migrants who moved to large urban areas in Alabama, such as Mobile and Birmingham.227 Historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries elucidates that the freedom struggle in Lowndes County provided “African Americans with a framework for a new kind of political engagement.”228 In fact, he attributes it, in part, to the radicalization of Black Power era 223 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (April 20, 1970). Hutchins Jr. High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2. 225 Osborn High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2. 226 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 104. 227 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 30. 228 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 2. 224 82 organizations whose impetus is rooted in Lowndes County’s freedom struggle’s example. Through a myriad of social networks, the movement spread regionally and ultimately nationally. For example, “The vitality of the Detroit community made it the center of the Lowndes Diaspora, and after the Lowndes movement emerged, Detroit became its most important source of material and financial support” comprised of foodstuffs and ammunition, among other things.229 The freedom struggle in Lowndes County shaped the course of the Black Power era struggle in Detroit. “By the 1950s, Lowndes County natives had established a vibrant community in Detroit, which they sustained through social networks.” And former Lowndes County residents “gravitated to a select few churches where they became active members, participating in Alabama clubs and creating Lowndes County clubs.”230 Viewing the Lowndes County Diaspora in Detroit in organizational terms, they organized around a southern African American mid-twentieth century identity based upon kinship ties. The same kinship ties that drew Alabama migrants such as Rosa Parks to Detroit also fed and contributed to the black freedom struggle that emerged there. African American migrants from Alabama helped inaugurate and frame the push for freedom in Detroit, building on organizing and struggle strategies that emerged out of the Lowndes County movement. It is not by happenstance that the Black Power movement in Detroit would have its roots in Lowndes County, Alabama, because it was in the Lowndes County experience that Stokely Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer, and SNCC first put Black Power into praxis. During the same temporal period, indigenous South Africans would too experience similar experiences, leading to the development and turn towards ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ as 229 230 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 31. Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 31. 83 political identities. The evolution of Black Conciousness would also move from a philosophical concept to praxis as a result of those experiences. THE END OF THE MORAL CRUSADE IN SA AND JOHANNESBURG SEPARATE DEVELOPMENT In the immediate post-WWII era, the South African government was creating policies to control and dominate the African majority, while eschewing responsibility for delivering them basic human and civic necessities. The political economic contrast between South Africa and the United States further unearths the how and why “Black” and “Blackness” developed in response to global racialized power relations that a transnational comparative approach uniquely exploits. Contemporaneous and as the United States, the adjacent three conditions of state propagation of faux reforms towards equality, rebellion of the oppressed, and extreme state repression incubated the birth of a new “Black” identity in South Africa. The two republics’ contrasting paths could not be more evident than those who had achieved the holy grail of statutory reform, but in South Africa it was who gained control of the power to dictate statutory policy and reform. During World War II, numerous young African South Africans, “mainly teachers and students,” became disillusioned with the moderate path the African National Congress (ANC) was undertaking. In response to the militant youth, in December of 1942, the ANC authorized the creation of a Youth League. At the time of the unofficial founding of the African National Congress-Youth League (ANC-YL) in 1943, the ANC was very weak with only two hundred fifty-three members. In order to raise the ANC’s popularity and utility, the ANC-YL’s aim was to “remould the ANC.” Thus, the official formation of the ANC-YL was April 1944.231 The founding members included Muziwake 231 Francis Meli, A History of the ANC: South Africa belongs to us (Harere: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1988), 108. 84 Lembede (president), Nelson Mandela (secretary), Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and Robert Sobukwe.232 The ANC-YL, at its inception, was “militantly nationalistic” and articulated an ideology dubbed “Africanism.” Africanism, as presented by the ANC-YL, was a “radical departure” from the “liberal and traditionalist thinking” of the ANC. Also, the ANC-YL rejected the “wholesale importation of foreign ideologies” (i.e. Marxism, in Africa. The ANC-YL articulated a conception of Pan-Africanism as a key pillar of their approach to nationalism).233 Figure 4: Nelson Mandela and Muziwake Anton Lembede at Walter and Albertina Sisulu’s wedding. (Evelyn Mase is to the left of the bride and Lembede is to the right of the bride. Mandela is far left. Rosabella Sisulu looks out over the couple).234 232 Meli, A History of the ANC, 109. Meli, A History of the ANC, 108, 88, 108-109, 108, 109, and 112. 234 Public use via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sisulu_wedding_with_mandela_and_lembede.JPG. 233 85 In the 1948 elections, the Purified National Party (PNP) achieved a narrow victory by appealing to the fears of the white South Africans, Afrikaners in particular, and the rising white South African standard of living. In 1948, the non-whites of South Africa outnumbered the whites 4:1, creating a sense of white economic, social and political insecurity. The PNP victory resulted in the election of Daniel Francois Malan to the Premiership. Under Malan, Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd founded and engineered the ‘reformation’ program, called apartheid or the “Separate Development” policy. Verwoerd was a psychologist, journalist, the first Minister of Native Affairs, a senator, and would eventually serve as the South African Prime Minister from 1958 until his murder on September 6, 1966.235 BANTUSTANS AND URBAN TOWNSHIPS As part of the functioning of apartheid, the South African government implemented a set of so-called reforms. Under that guise, the government introduced policy such as the Group Areas Act (1950), Bantu Authorities Act (1951), Bantu Education Act (1953), and Bantu SelfGovernment Act (1959) establishing “homelands,” or Bantustans, for South Africa’s indigenous African ethnic groups, and “temporary” townships designated by ethnicity (or nationality from the apartheid perspective) for migrant and urban workers. These Bantustans comprised 13% of the country's land, which was its most non-arid lands, with the remainder being reserved for whites. “Cooperative” African ethnic leaders ran the Bantustans and uncooperative chiefs were forcibly ousted. Over time, a ruling African elite emerged with a personal and financial interest in the preservation of the Bantustan system. While this aided the Bantustans’ political stability to 235 Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 189; Pauline H. Baker, The United States and South Africa: the Reagan Years (New York: Ford Foundation: Foreign Policy Association, 1989), 92; African National Congress, “Report to the Annual General Meeting,” October 11, 1972, box AL3284, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa; “Bantustans,” Sechaba vol. 5, no 10 Oct. 1971, box AL3284, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa, 9. 86 an extent, their station and existence was still entirely dependent on South African support.236 In many ways, they too were “captive leaders” and were “beholden to the white power structure” just as their African American counterparts.237 For his part, Prime Minister Verwoerd argued that the Bantustans were the original homes of the indigenous African peoples of South Africa. The role of the Bantustans was expanded in 1959 with the passage of the Bantu SelfGovernment Act (1959), which codified “Separate Development” in a way that enabled the Bantustans to establish themselves as self-governing, quasi-independent states. This plan was stepped up under Prime Minister Balthazar Johannes “John” Vorster, Verwoerd’s successor, as part of his “enlightened” approach to apartheid. The true intention of this policy was to fulfill Verwoerd’s original plan to make South Africa’s indigenous population nationalized citizens of the Bantustans rather than of South Africa—thus removing the few rights they still had as South African citizens. The Bantustans were encouraged to opt for independence, as this would greatly reduce the number of African citizens of South Africa. The process was completed by the Black Homelands Citizenship Act (1970), which formally designated all indigenous South Africans as citizens of the Bantustans, even if they lived in ‘white South Africa’ and annulled their South African citizenship. Simultaneous with the creation of the Bantustans, South Africa’s indigenous population was subjected to a massive program of forced relocation. It has been estimated that 3.5 million people were forced from their homes from the 1960s through the 1980s, many being resettled in the Bantustans. A process and experience similar to the African American Detroit residents who were relocated and crowded into a small geographic space due to the destruction 236 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 189; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 92; African National Congress, “Report to the Annual General Meeting,” October 11, 1972, box AL3284, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa; “Bantustans,” 9. 237 Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power, 13. 87 of their communities for the building and expansion of an expressway system, and displacement in the aftermath of the destruction caused by the 1967 rebellion. As African urbanization exponentially increased in South Africa, they created unplanned urban spaces known as townships.238 Directed by the Land Act (1913) and the Group Areas Act (1950), townships were segregated so the Africans, “Coloureds” (mixed-race), and “Indians” lived separately. African townships had another layer of stratification, with ethnic groups often segregated into separate areas for amaZulu, amaXhosa, amaSotho, and others. They were educated along ethnic lines in accordance with the Bantu Education Act (1953). Townships were too lacking in public services. In the largest South African metropolis of Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, infamous townships are Soweto (South Western Townships) and Alexandra. Beyond them, the most commonly known include the Coloured townships of Bosmont and El Dorado Park, the Indian township of Lenasia, and the African townships of Daveyton, Diepsloot, Duduza, Etwatwa, Evaton, Ivory Park, Kagiso, Katlehong, KwaThema, Orange Farm, Tembisa, Thokoza, Tsakane, Vosloorus, and Wattville. These townships, at the time, represented half of the entire population of the province. The driving force was capital’s desire to control labor and labor wages, thus workers comprised the large majority of township residents, feeding capital’s need for inexpensive migratory labor.239 In fact, many African townships were brutally policed ‘company townships.’240 For half a century, the South African equality movement’s main concerns were statutory recognized self-rule, citizenship, and the enforcement of punishments for civil rights violations. Harmel, “From the ICU to the Wiehahn Commission,” 9. Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 216-217. 240 Stanley B. Greenberg, “The Wiehahn Commission,” in Black Labor Unions in South Africa: Report of a Symposium, eds. Anthony G. Freeman and Diane B. Bendahmane (Washington D.C.: Foreign Service Institute U.S. Department of State, 1987), 20; C.R.D. Halisi, “The Political Role of the Trade Union Movement,” in Black Labor Unions in South Africa: Report of a Symposium, eds. Anthony G. Freeman and Diane B. Bendahmane (Washington D.C.: Foreign Service Institute U.S. Department of State, 1987), 38. 238 239 88 Reformist moderate organizations such as the ANC, South African Indian Congress (SAIC), and the South African Colored People’s Organization (SACPO) dominated the various national and local directions of the movement. The younger cadre were not duped, and in response to the implementation of apartheid, on June 26, 1955, the ANC, SAIC, SACPO, the small mostly white Congress of Democrats (CD), and the multiracial South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) convened a “Congress of the People,” sometimes called the “Congress Alliance.”241 THE EMERGENCE OF ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES: THE SHARPEVILLE MASSACRE AND ITS AFTERMATH This Congress Alliance signified that the ANC was no longer working alone and was now part of an anti-apartheid coalition. They met in an open space at Kliptown, near Johannesburg, and adopted a Freedom Charter. The Freedom Charter became the basic policy statement of the ANC.242 There were some Africans who felt that the ANC was too moderate and inclusive of whites, and thus abandoned the organization. Amidst the previously identified faux apartheid reforms, in April of 1959, Robert Sobukwe, the grandfather of the Black Consciousness Movement, led an exodus out of the ANC ranks and founded the Pan-African Congress (PAC). The split revolved around the Freedom Charter and what it represented. For example, Sobukwe and his followers viewed the ambition for a non-racial South Africa as “utopian” and sickening. They also believed that the notion of sharing wealth was foolhardy. The land was black land, and that the socialist notion of “sharing wealth” was a foreign import, and it should have been developed from an African framework.243 Independence movements in the rest of Africa also inspired Sobukwe. He concluded that South Africa must win its independence and that white inclusion into South Africa’s liberation movement would dilute and jeopardize 241 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 208. Thompson, A History of South Africa, 208. 243 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom Volume 1, 1918 – 1962 (London: Abacus, 1994), 419-448. 242 89 independence, and began articulating notions that would become key pillars to Black Consciousness. Like Carmichael, Sobukwe had reservations concerning the nature of coalition politics between the racially oppressed and whites in racialized societies.244 This suggests that tactics, ideologies, and coalitions of the old guard were becoming increasingly delegitimized, outdated, and irrelevant as well. Their very identity and purpose of being reformist moderate centrists focused on statutory reform. The ANC and PAC agreed to disagree; but also to coordinate and cooperate with one another for the success of their common goals.245 During the 1960s, as the South African economy boomed, the Bantustans remained the social and economic “backwaters” of South Africa and repressive legislation couched as self-rule or independence began to swell in the mid-1950s. This marginalization drove many Africans to leave the Bantustans to be migrant workers, or to permanently relocate illegally in townships in industrial centers.246 As the 1950s ended and the 1960s began, the ANC and PAC continued to target the Pass System (an identification system indicating race, ethnicity, and employment; designed to regulate the movements of non-whites in South Africa). On March 21, 1960, the PAC held its “Day of Protest,” and on March 31, 1960, the ANC planned to convene one as well. The PAC held their protest in Sharpeville, which turned into a massacre. The government used brutal force. The government’s response resulted in sixty-nine dead and 186 wounded Africans, many shot in the back trying to flee. In anticipation of the ANC’s “Day of Protest,” which was leaked to the government, widespread arrests and detentions ensued. In response to the post- ““Black Power" Speech (28 July 1966, by Stokely Carmichael).” Dictionary of American History. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 25 Jan. 2016 . 245 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 210; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 9. 246 Robert Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis: Political Transformation in South Africa 1975 – 1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 29; Thompson, A History of South Africa, 191-193. 244 90 Sharpeville repression, a twenty-three-year-old African student, Philip Kgosana, led a protest march in Cape Town on March 30, 1960. There were 30,000 participants in this protest; two people were shot and killed. As the turbulence continued, the government struck back fiercely. On April 6, 1960, the government announced a state of emergency, activated the army reserves, and arrested ninety-eight whites, ninety Indians, thirty-six Coloureds, and 11,279 Africans. The police jailed another 6,800 people, including ANC and PAC national, regional, and local leaders, and beat and brutalized hundreds of African workers, effectively forcing them to end their strike in support of the ANC and PAC and return to work.247 The repressive legislation intensified and mounted: the Riotous Assemblies Act (1960), the Unlawful Organizations Act (1960), the Sabotage Act (1962), the Bantu Laws Amendment Act (1964) (which empowered the government to expel any African from any white town or farming area at any time), the General Law Amendment Act (1966), the Terrorism Act (1967), and the Internal Security Act (1976). This accumulation of legislation gave the South African police infinite powers to arrest people without trial. As well as the authority to hold them indefinitely in solitary confinement without disclosing their identities and to deny the arrested access to anyone except government officials.248 The increase in state repression accelerated the collapse of rural Bantustan economies. The 1960s saw an increase in foreign investment into South Africa, the rapid growth of the manufacturing sector, the rapid growth of industrial townships, and the moving of more Africans into semi-skilled jobs. 247 Basil Davidson, Modern Africa: A Social and Political History (Harlow: Longman Group UK Unlimited, 1994), 167; Thompson, A History of South Africa, 210; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 91. 248 Rich, State Power and Black Politics in South Africa, 168. 91 THE TURN FROM NON-VIOLENCE TOWARDS ARMED STRUGGLE The South African government then banned the ANC and the liberation movement began to up the ante.249 The declaration of the ANC’s ban not only drove the group underground, but it also drove it into a militant “armed” struggle. The change to an “armed” struggle is significant because prior to 1960 nearly every ANC leader had been deeply committed to non-violence.250 The youth in the 1940s were growing displeased with the reformist, or moderate, line of the ANC. The ANC-Youth League had emerged and radicalized the adult component of the ANC, steering it into a new direction of militant nationalism. As the ANC moved forward with their struggle for black inclusion into South African society, they were confronted with a decision: should they use the approach of Mahatma K. Gandhi; Satyagraha, “non-violence that seeks to conquer through conversion?”251 Some, including Gandhi’s son Manilal, who was a “prominent leader” of the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), argued for this approach on “purely ethical grounds.”252 Others, such as the more militant youth, felt that the approach should be determined not by principles, but tactical considerations. The approach should be determined by conditions. If Gandhi’s approach facilitated victory over the enemy, then it should be employed. As Mandela stated in his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom: In this case, the state was far more powerful than we, and any attempts at violence by us would be devastatingly crushed. This made non-violence a practical necessity rather than an option…I saw non-violence on the Gandhian model not as an inviolable principle but a tactic to be used as the situation demanded.253 Davidson, Modern Africa, 170; Nicol, “U.S. Foreign Policy in Southern Africa: Third-World Perspectives,” 598; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 91. 250 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 211; Nicol, “U.S. Foreign Policy in Southern Africa: Third-World Perspectives,” 598; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 91. 251 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 182. 252 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 182. 253 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 182-183. 249 92 Mandela’s nuanced distinction is vital to his philosophical agreement with the nonviolent approach. It reveals that Mandela was not a reformist/moderate, in fact he was a radical, albeit pragmatic, nationalist at this time. In fact, Mandela asserted that the non-violent “principle was not so important that the strategy should be used even when it was self-defeating, as Gandhi believed. I called for non-violent protest for as long as it was effective.”254 Mandela’s conditional acceptance of non-violence clarifies his later decision to move towards armed struggle. Mandela admitted in his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, that he had “first discussed the armed struggle as far back as 1952 with Walter Sisulu.”255 Mandela first publicly expressed a desire to move toward armed struggle on May 29, 1961, in an interview with the Rand Daily Mail, in which he “suggested that the days of nonviolent struggle were over.”256 The next day, Mandela stated that if “the government reaction is to crush by naked force our non-violent struggle, we will have to reconsider our tactics. In my mind we are closing a chapter on this question of a non-violent policy.”257 Mandela was repudiated by the ANC leadership, however, the debate concerning armed struggle had begun.258 The ANC moderate reformists presented a counter-argument to Mandela’s assertion, claiming he was naive and hot-headed.259 Moses Kotane argued that there “is still room…for the old methods if we are imaginative and determined enough. If we embark on the course Mandela is suggesting, we will be exposing innocent people to massacres by the enemy.”260 254 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 183. Emphasis mine. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 391. 256 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 391. 257 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 391. 258 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 391. 259 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 392. 260 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 392. 255 93 Mandela countered, the “attacks of the wild beast cannot be averted with only bare hands.”261 Mandela felt that the ANC critics of armed struggle were stuck in the “old mould of the ANC’s being a legal organization.”262 He also revealed that people were already establishing “military units on their own.”263 In Mandela’s opinion, the people were leaving the ANC behind, which was stuck in the static moderate reformist approach. Mandela also faced opposition from Albert Luthuli who had a “moral commitment to non-violence,” which was in stark contrast to Mandela’s notion that “non-violence was a tactic that should be abandoned when it no longer worked.”264 Mandela argued that the government gave the people “no alternative to violence” and that non-violence “had done nothing to stem the violence of the state or change the heart of our oppressors.”265 Mandela did succeed in convincing the old-guard of moderate reformists to embark on armed struggle. There were conditions, one being that the “military movement should be a separate and independent organ.”266 The official “policy of the ANC would still be that of non-violence.”267 By June of 1961 the ANC formed a “military wing” called Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), “Spear of the Nation” in English, which was led by Nelson Mandela. MK embarked on a campaign that Mandela described as disciplined acts of sabotage that would never harm a civilian. The ANC bombed and sabotaged electric power stations, government buildings, and nuclear instillations.268 The formation of MK exported many youths out of the country for military training in preparation for armed struggle and revolution. In 1962, the PAC followed 261 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 392. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 393. 263 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 393. 264 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 393. 265 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 394-395. 266 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 394. 267 Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 396. 268 Davidson, Modern Africa, 170; Nicol, “U.S. Foreign Policy in Southern Africa: Third-World Perspectives,” 598; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 91. 262 94 suit forming Poqo, “Pure” or “Alone” in English, and embarked on an often-undisciplined sabotage campaign, in comparison to MK, that sometimes killed civilians in the commission of those acts. In the early 1960s, MK, Poqo, and the African Resistance Movement (ARM), a multiracial organization consisting mainly of young white professionals and students, made over 200 bomb attacks on South African post offices, government buildings, railroad stations, and electrical instillations near the main industrial centers.269 Because of this sabotage operation, from December of 1961 to 1963 the South African government responded with a massive repression campaign. The government infiltrated, destroyed, and forced Poqo out of the country. The Poqo high command took refuge in Lesotho, but with the help of British intelligence, South Africa raided its hide out, killing or arresting them. In 1962, Mandela left South Africa in order to receive military training in Algeria. The Algerians utilized a “cell system” that emphasized individual cells over a central leadership (the strategy that allowed Poqo to be crushed). The Algerian model utilized guerilla tactics of warfare, which combined armed conflict with political education and mass action. With the aid of the American Central Intelligence Agency, unfortunately, for the ANC and MK, in August of 1962, the government arrested Mandela while re-entering South Africa. The government charged and convicted Mandela for inciting disturbances and leaving the country without a valid passport. He received two years imprisonment for those infractions.270 In June of 1963, the government captured and arrested the entire MK command. The government tried them for treason in Rivonia, a suburb of Johannesburg, bringing Mandela from his prison cell. The trial lasted from December of 1963 to July of 1964. The government sentenced Mandela and his compatriots to life imprisonment. During the trial, Mandela uttered 269 270 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 211; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 91. The Battle for Algiers, produced by Saadi Yacef, 121 minutes, Igor Film, 1966, DVD; Davidson, Modern Africa. 95 the famous quote, “I am prepared to die! Power to the people.”271 In response to growing internal upheaval, the government passed the General Law Amendment Act (1963), which allowed the arrest and 90-day detention of political dissidents without trial. The government then revised the Act in 1966 to allow 180 days of detention. This successfully and fundamentally crushed the domestic anti-apartheid opposition, and the PNP and its supporters rejoiced. In their jubilee, the South African government re-introduced and doubled down on its new pseudoreform policy of Separate Development, which merely sugarcoated oppression. The government presented the Separate Development policy as analogous to decolonization, when in reality it was internal colonization.272 African clergy voiced their consternation in 1966 when the Church of the Province of South Africa (CPSA) under the incumbent Archbishop Robert Selby Taylor convened a meeting which later led to the founding of the University Christian Movement (UCM), an early vehicle for Black Consciousness.273 Prime Minister Vorster enthusiastically kept up the policy. In fact, Vorster stated emphatically that, he wanted to “walk the road of Verwoerd.”274 The objectives of the Separate Development policy were to separately “develop” the ethnically divided Bantustans, to further isolate the Bantustans economically from mainland South Africa, to give the Bantustans limited political freedom while promoting ethnic disunity, and to appoint black “collaborators” of various ethnic groups as the “rulers” of the Bantustans. A few black leaders accepted this policy, not realizing or ignoring the fact that the international community did not recognize the “independent” Bantustans or that the residents of the Bantustans lost their South African 271 Mandela, the Man and His Country, ABC News, 1990; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 91-92. Thompson, A History of South Africa, 215; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 92; Leonard Thompson, The Transfer of Power in Africa: Decolonization 1940-1960, eds. Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 439-440. 273 George Sombe Mukaka, “The Impact of Black Consciousness on the Black Catholic Clergy and Their Training 1965-1981,” M.A. Thesis, School of Theology at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, November 1996, 9. 274 Apartheid, Frontline Film Series (1991). 272 96 citizenship. This policy allowed the South African government to wash its hands of the “Bantu problems.” This debacle can be expressed in the words of an unidentified Pondoland (a Transkei homeland) black leader, “[the Bantustans] brought hunger to the people and [collaborative black] chiefs sold out and became government agents.” As the Black Peoples’ Convention framed it, the era witnessed the “greatest selling-out by persons chosen by the white system to be our “leader”.”275 The Black Consciousness Movement would confront the Bantustan System headon.276 The Sharpeville massacre helped to politicize a particular segment of the Coloured community and made it more sympathetic to the Congress Alliance.277 This would later lead to many Coloureds being influenced by Black Consciousness, and underscoring the broad concept of ‘Black’ in Black Consciousness ideology as discussed in chapter one. The state repression in response to the Sharpeville protest resulted in the destruction of the aboveground and mainstream anti-apartheid liberation struggle in South Africa; leaving students and youth in a precarious position. Because of the Bantu Education Act, African students attending school drastically increased, in part due to the demand for semi-skilled, literate African workers. Ironically, the goal of the Act was to produce Africans that would accept subordination and inferior education as the natural order of things; in that regard, the Act failed. The racist, nonscience based inferior education for Africans, which furthered an African skilled-labor shortage Black Peoples’ Convention, “BPC Black Peoples’ Convention: Towards Freedom Now!,” July 8-10, 1972, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, box AL2457 H14, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 276 Albert Dlomo to Thabo Mbeki, Debriefing on Black Consciousness in “Notes: 1970-74 SASO/Botswana,” 1972, box AL3284, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 277 Ken Luckhardt and Brenda Wall, Organize or Starve! The History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (New York: International Publishers, 1980), 126. 275 97 in South Africa, was in direct conflict with the needs of the manufacturing sector of the economy.278 BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS BECOMES PRAXIS In 1970, a medical student and journalist named Stephen B. Biko began to propagate a philosophy dubbed ‘Black Consciousness’ that stimulated a Black Consciousness Movement. Within that philosophy lay a strong commitment to African self-defense against state repression “by any means necessary.” Biko worked for unity against the “divide and rule” system of “tribal” schools.279 Biko described Black Consciousness as an attitude of the mind and a way of life, [and] the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression-the blackness of their skin-and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.280 Biko also designed his philosophy to overcome tribalism and manufactured ethnic distinctions. In responding to a racialized society, they were offered an identity of inferiority, instead, they created their own identity in response to state and ethnic conscriptions. In Biko’s own words: Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.281 The Black Consciousness Movement gained tremendous momentum among African students of all levels. This momentum resulted in a fevered opposition to the use of the Bantu educational process as a tool to further white domination in South Africa.282 In particular, in 278 Harold Wolpe, South Africa in Question, ed. John Lonsdale (London: University of Cambridge African Studies Centre, 1988), 202. 279 Albert Dlomo to Thabo Mbeki, Debriefing on Black Consciousness in “Notes: 1970-74 SASO/Botswana,” 1972, box AL3284, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa; Davidson, Modern Africa, 168; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 92. 280 Biko, I Write What I Like, 91-92. 281 Biko, I Write What I Like, 48. 282 Wolpe, South Africa in Question, 203-204. 98 Soweto with its one million poor African residents, Black Consciousness inspired many schoolchildren and students, as discussed in detail in chapter three.283 The faux reform policies of Bantustan independence and temporary domains for urban and migrant workers had to preface this particular striving to create a new identity; it created the need for such an identity. As they strove to organically create a new identity and consciousness, the students did so in an environment of repression that eliminated any aboveground reformist possibilities and was enveloped in manufactured ethnic tensions created by the Bantustan and township policies. Beyond students, the Black Consciousness movement, in adults, did spawn a brand of raceconscious unionism and inspired community institution building at the grassroots level. CONCLUSION: TWO NARRATIVES IN CONVERSATION In regards to the naissance of the Black Power and Black Consciousness Movements, three common particular conditions existed in these racialized societies that made it necessary for the birth of a new “Black” identity: state propagation of faux reforms towards equality, rebellion of the oppressed, and extreme state repression. In order to better understand the role these dynamic elements played in the emergence of the Black Power and Black Consciousness Movements, a particular contextualization of the genesis of the movements discussed was essential. Putting the narratives in conversation with one another, comparing and contrasting them, unearths deeper meanings of the genesis of ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ as political identities in Black Power and Black Consciousness. Contrasting the racial statutory directions each republic was heading in at the birth of the Black Power and Black Consciousness Movements, dispels the myth that Black Power only manifested because of integration in the U.S and intensified segregation in S.A. It was instead “Soweto Rebels against White Government in South Africa, June 16, 1976,” DISCovering World History. Gale Research, 1997. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group: 1. 283 99 the false promise of statutory reforms that created not only the space for Black Power and Consciousness, but also comprised the characteristics that ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ was distinguishing itself from (i.e. statutory reformers). As revealed in South Africa, this application of ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ emanated from a desire to chart a new course in the global Black Liberation struggle, create unity amongst those who were negatively racialized, and for survival and dignity, manifested by self-determination. In the U.S. and South Africa, the granting of symbolic statutory concessions came with dreadful stipulations. In return for the concessions in the U.S. the Radical Black Left was surrendered, culminating in the cooptation of the African American elite classes, leaving the masses in peril. In South Africa however, the government was creating policies to control and dominate the African majority, while eschewing responsibility for delivering them basic human necessities while coopting the African elite classes. Black Power and Consciousness adherents’ desires were shaped by the need to end police brutality and harassment, obtain basic human and civic services, and produce new leadership to obtain true freedom through equality. Black Power and Black Consciousness were local variations sensitive to local material conditions of the same identity, philosophy, and praxis. As stated by the Black Peoples’ Convention in South Africa, Since the early sixties when the white parliament banned those organisations working for our freedom there has been a gap in our lives. This gap has been widened by the jailing, banning or banishment of many of our true leaders.284 This gap would be filled with a new identity; ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness.’ In the Detroit and Johannesburg metropolises, the racially oppressed were living in police states under campaigns of law and order. State and police repression, abuse, and murder were such pressing pre-existing conditions that they were also identified by dead, imprisoned, or Black Peoples’ Convention, “BPC Black Peoples’ Convention: Towards Freedom Now!,” July 8-10, 1972, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, box AL2457 H14, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 284 100 silenced radicals before the Black Power and Conciousness era.285 Living in the ghettoes of Detroit, the townships of Johannesburg, and at a growing rate the Bantustans, meant overcrowding and inadequate or no housing, with little if any infrastructure for basic human needs. These frustrations were compounded by transient/migrant workers.286 They were victims of forced removal and/or relocation, as well as pacts forged between so-called leaders and the elites and white power structures. The leaders’ and elites’ very identity and purpose of being reformist moderate centrists focused on statutory reform, leaving establishment African American and African equality organizations grappling with identity crises and re-evaluating their futures and their roles in the post-Watts and post-Sharpeville eras. It is the results of the faux reforms, regardless of their specifics, that gave birth to ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ as a political identity. Those results being the cooptation of the elite classes, the de-legitimization of the statutory reform approach, and the decrease or stagnation in the standard of living of Africans and African Americans in the republics. The political economic contrast between South Africa and the United States unearths the how and why “Black” and “Blackness” developed in response to global racialized power relations. It is also revealed that Black Power did not create Black Consciousness, nor vice versa, they are actually the same, thus spawning simultaneously. In fact, in a 1971 speech in East Germany, anti-apartheid leader Thabo Mbeki, too presented Black Consciousness as Black Power.287 285 Central High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2; Mumford High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (February 6, 1970); “Police Torture Detainees,” Sechaba vol. 5, no 10 Oct. 1971, box AL3284, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1. 286 Colin Murray, South Africa in Question, ed. John Lonsdale (London: University of Cambridge African Studies Centre, 1988), 131-132. 287 Thabo Mbeki, “Comments by the participants at the GDR ANC Youth and Students seminar on the speech given on behalf of the NEC, August 1971,” October 14, 1971, box AL3284, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa; Thabo Mbeki, “Problems of the development of the armed struggle in S.A.,” August 114, 1971, German Democratic Republic, box AL3284, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 101 Black Power and Black Consciousness adherents understood their movements to be localized manifestations of the same global movement, particularly because they identified their oppressors to not only be in league with one another, but dependent on one another. This was crystalized by the reality that on October 10, 1963, as African American de-segregationists and pro-Voting Rights advocates and activists lost their trial and received convictions in Selma, Alabama; in New York at the United Nations headquarters, the UN-General Assembly passed a resolution urging South Africa to call off the Rivonia Treason Trial with the U.S. abstaining from the vote.288 The message was glaringly clear and solidarity between African Americans and racially oppressed South Africans were further reinforced by gestures like Robert Sobukwe’s two children being sent to live with and be cared for by civil rights leader Andrew Young in the U.S. Viewed from this perspective, it is no surprise that a “number of influential American groups” had looked to the Black Consciousness Movement as allies and comrades.289 As the ANC narrowly summed it up, Black Consciousness and its “concept of Black awareness” was “yet another indication of the search for solutions and the formulation of the problems which face the people,” including “the leadership and guidance of a revolutionary organization;” as was Black Power.290 As proven in both republics, “You can’t come here talking that nonviolence shit…You’ll get yourself killed and other people too.”291 288 Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 152. “South Africa: The black exiles,” Africa Confidential, February 28, 1979, box AL3284, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 290 African National Congress, “Report to the Annual General Meeting,” October 11, 1972, box AL3284, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa, 5. 291 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 104. 289 102 CHAPTER THREE THE BURDEN AND GLORY OF THE HEROIC BLACK STUDENT: THE TRANSMISSION OF BLACK IDENTITY IN BSUF AND SASO PUBLICATIONS Black identity gained tremendous momentum among black students in both republics of all levels. This momentum resulted in a fevered opposition to the use of the educational process as a tool to further white domination. The year 1969 would give birth to two Black student organizations articulating a congruent philosophy although continents apart. After the 1967 Detroit rebellion, a radical “cadre” of students emerged at Northern High School with its first advisor being Glanton Dowdell followed by Mike Hamlin. They established a city-wide newsletter with localized editions, the Black Student Voice, which called for student control of the schools. In 1969, Black student revolts spread throughout Detroit high schools resulting in the establishment of a city-wide Black Student United Front (BSUF) with localized branches.292 BSUF soon developed branches in twenty-two high schools.293 In the winter of 1969-1970, BSUF were engaged in a bitter battle with the local school board, school administrators, school security, and police departments. A winter with a brutal cold and record snowfall, Detroit had an electrifying atmosphere of labor strikes, student boycotting, community organizing, and independent publishing. As described by the Cooley High Black Student Voice, African American students were “victims of institutional racism, and individualized RACISM” under a “WHITE REIGN OF TERROR” in the wake of the 1967 Detroit rebellion that sent shockwaves throughout the city, region, and state.294 While parents fought for community control of schools, teen-agers faced a Ahmad, “The League of Revolutionary Black Workers: A Historical Study.” Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 76; Michael C. Dawson, Black Visions: Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 206. 294 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (April 20, 1970). Capitalization in original publication, the same pattern continues throughout the chapter; Darden and Thomas, Detroit; Fine, Violence in the Model City. 292 293 103 dramatic shift in school demographics, decreased housing, police brutality, joblessness, and increased crime.295 In this atmosphere, the students endeavored to create a new African diasporic identity that would be called the identity of the “Heroic Black Student.”296 In fact, the Northern High Black Student Voice proclaimed: “1970: The Year of Heroic Black Student.”297 Across the Atlantic Ocean in South Africa, Black college, not high-school, students were also embarking on an epic campaign for self-determination against their local educational and law enforcement apparatuses. Because of the Bantu Education Act, black students attending school drastically increased, in part due to the demand for semi-skilled, literate black workers. The goal of the Bantu Education Act was to produce blacks who would accept subordination and inferior segregated education as the natural order of things. The racist, non-science based inferior education for blacks, which furthered a black skilled-labor shortage in South Africa, was in direct conflict with the needs of many companies in the manufacturing sector of the economy.298 Given widespread severe government repression of black opposition to apartheid, black schools, colleges, and universities were the only places that were hospitable to black expression and anti-apartheid protest.299 The 1970s became an era of intense black student protest in South Africa. In 1969, Steve Biko’s year-long campaign led to an exodus out of the majority white National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) and formed the exclusively black South African Student Organization (SASO). The black students left NUSAS because they felt that the multiethnic character of NUSAS diluted African interests; Biko’s critique was reminiscent of his mentor Robert Sobukwe’s criticisms of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Freedom 295 Widick, Detroit; Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged; Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 69-72; Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 210; Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 76-77; Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (January 5, 1970); Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2. 296 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5. 297 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5. 298 Wolpe, South Africa in Question, 202. 299 Wolpe, South Africa in Question, 203. 104 Charter.300 By 1970, Biko emerged as a very popular propagator of Black Consciousness in the burgeoning movement striving for unity against the “divide and rule” system of “tribal” schools.301 Figure 5: Steve Biko addressing a SASO meeting. 302 300 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 212; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 92, Gail M. Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 260263; M. Saleem Badat, Black Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid: From SASO to SANSCO, 19681990 (Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, 1999), 85-87. 301 Davidson, Modern Africa, 168; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 92. 302 “Photograph of Steve B. Biko addressing a SASO meeting,” box AL2547-16.2.03, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 105 This chapter focuses on the ways that students transmitted ‘Black’ identity in a Cold War transnational context by engaging local Black Student Voice and SASO Newsletter editions exploring the uses of “Black Power” and “Black Consciousness” or more precisely the articulation and demonstration of “Blackness,” as a modern diasporic identity for students. The quizzes, bio sketches, informative essays, comparative essays, poems, drawings, photos, headlines, and advertisement for rallies that fill the pages of the newsletters are particularly scrutinized. The students’ actions were shaped by the need to end police brutality and harassment, obtain basic human and civic services, a proper and relevant education, and produce new leadership to obtain true freedom through equality. Their application of ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ emanated from a desire to chart a new course in the global Black Liberation struggle as they translated it, create unity amongst those who were negatively racialized, and for survival and dignity. They expressed their notions of ‘Black” and ‘Blackness’ by placing high emphasis upon Pan-Africanism and internationalism, anti-imperialism, a desire for a proper (liberatory) education rooted in Pan-Africanism and Diaspority, community control and institution building, and approaches towards Coalitions and Coalition Politics. PAN-AFRICANISM AND INTERNATIONALISM For SASO and BSUF, Pan-Africanism and Black Internationalism formed a key core of their identity and identity transmission. From this diasporic and Pan-Africanist understanding, local Black Student Voice editions ran items such as: a photo of a black arm holding up an assault rifle, a picture of an African warrior’s spear, a drawing of a bare-footed black person holding an assault rifle and a book while marching, a graphic of a black arm holding an African warrior’s spear, an African warrior with a spear and shield in attack posture like a Zulu warrior, a graphic of a black man giving a speech while holding an assault rifle, and a drawing of H. Rap Brown 106 holding up a match.303 In doing so, students were creatively formulating an African diasporic identity forged in a global liberation struggle. Africa in anti-colonial and anti-racist struggle, in the present, or at least their perceptions of it, is the Africa that mattered for them. Because, after all, as said in the Osborn High Black Student Voice: Can Black youth go along with the suppression and killing of courageous freedom fighting peoples throughout the world (i.e. the non-white Vietnamese and Laotians, struggling in Asia, the Black Revolutionary forces of Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Rhodesia in Africa, the Liberation minded people of Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, and Paraguay in Latin America) under the logic of stopping the so-called threat of “communism”. Communism may be good or bad we really can not say for we have never lived in a communist country. However, Black people in the U.S. do know what living is like under “democracy” which is nothing but hypocrisy, “law and order” that is really gestapo police state tactics and fascism, and racist of all “freedom and liberty in the U.S.A,” which is nothing but 20th century slavery.304 Figure 6: ‘Shhh”305 303 Central High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1; Osborn High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1; Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3 (January 26, 1970); Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5; Hutchinson Jr. High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5. 304 Osborn High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1. 305 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 3, no 1 (September 15, 1970), 4. 107 The BSUF were keen and deliberate to connect their struggle to the global anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-militarism message. For example, Northern High Black Student Voice published a drawing of a man resembling American President Richard M. Nixon, with his right hand pressed to his lips making the universal ‘shhhh’ or ‘it’s a secret be quiet’ gesture while pulling up his dress shirt with the other, revealing a tattoo of Africa with “Southern Africa” written in its region above a dollar sign and swastika in separate but inter connected circles labeled “The Guy Who Controls Your Future Asst. Principal George Wallace Russell.” The accompanied caption read “Does Your Principal Look Like This Honky.”306 In the next edition they ran the same drawing, this time with the caption “Racists Gone Wild!”307 They attempted to create an identity that was analogous with southern African anti-colonial freedom fighters. Local Black Student Voice editions preferred the language of “Liberation” as opposed to ‘equality’ to articulate the nature of their struggles, as well as published pictures with black people carrying assault weapons next to the phrase: “Black Students Unite.”308 Local Black Student Voice editions also connected massacres of oppressed peoples of color in anti-colonial liberation movements to racialized massacres in America. For example, they published essays connecting the ‘My Lai massacre’ to their struggle and also published the infamous photo of the 1935 burning of an African American man by white racists in St. Louis, Missouri.309 They truly viewed themselves as African diasporic peoples engaged in a global anti-colonial revolution. In the midst of a revolutionary struggle, the guerilla army solidifies its nationalistic identity with an ensign, or flag, the BSUF was no different. They chose an ensign that reflected the African diasporic nature of their constructed identity. Highland Park High students demanded 306 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 3 (September 15, 1970). Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 3 no. 2 (October 7, 1970). 308 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3 (January 26, 1970). 309 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5. 307 108 “the Nationalists Flag of Unity (Black, Red, Green) be raised under the American Flag each morning.”310 Their logic was: States in the south fly the confederate flag tinder the American flag, the Nationalist Flag should be flown to show growing unity among Black people. The Nationalist Flag symbolize Black people. When you think of the American flag you think of white, white people. What’s wrong with a “BLACK” flag?311 For them, the flag of countless prior Pan-Africanist movements, the “Black, Red, Green,” was the ensign for their identity. The flag codified Malcolm X’s assertion, as quoted by the students under a column titled “Role of the Black Student,” that: We have a common enemy, we have a common aggressor, a common exploiter and a common discriminator. Once we all realize that we have a common enemy, then we unite--on the basis of what we have in common.312 The campaign achieved moderate success, with Hutchins Jr. High becoming the “first Jr. high to have a Black Nationalist Flag on display, on every floor of the school where black students can walk the halls and be proud.”313 For their part, in 1971 South African college students too called for Pan-Africanist solidarity. The Lesotho University Student’s Association called for the creation of a “Southern Pan-African Student’s Organisation.” It was an outgrowth of the African Student’s Union’s delegation to the All-African Student Movement caucus at the 1971 Association of Commonwealth Students convention in Ghana. The Southern Pan-African Student’s Organisation was designed to bring together students in South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe as a “first step in the formation of a continental Pan-African Student’s Organisation.”314 310 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 312 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 3 no. 2 (October 7, 1970). 313 Hutchins Jr. High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3. 314 “News in Brief: LUSA Calls for a Pan-African Student Organisation,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 2 June 1971, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 311 109 Expressing to freshmen students why a Pan-Africanist approach was critical to a successful development of a new Black identity, Onkgopotse Ramethibi Tiro emphasized that South Africans belonged to “regions which are diverse in culture, climate, wealth and technology but we are all opposed to us being treated as objects and being denied the human dignity we deserve as a nation.”315 While the then President of SASO, Temba ‘Joe’ Sono urged students to “remember that group solidarity is the sine qua non of physiological and physical liberation of the oppressed.”316 Like the BSUF in Detroit, SASO instructed students that Black Consciousness is linked “with the struggle of the third world” and that what “goes on in the world cannot be ignored by any Black who wishes to break from an oppressed mentality.”317 In the words of Aubrey Mokoena, who said to Durban-Westville and Zululand students, “Black solidarity is a reality that knows no geographical separation, no superficial cultural differences, and no differing approaches to liberation.”318 Like the BSUF in Detroit, SASO grounded their Pan-Africanism and Blackness in the theorizations of figures like Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. For example, SASO Newsletter quoted Marcus Garvey as saying, “We do not desire what has belonged to others, though others have always sought to deprive us of that which belonged to us. If Europe is for the EUROPEANS, then AFRICA shall be for the black peoples of the world. We say it; we mean it….The other races have countries of their own and it is time for the 400,000,000 Africans to claim Africa for themselves.”319 They also extensively quoted the American-born co-founder of Onkgopotse Ramethibi Tiro, “Turfloop SRC President Addresses the Freshers,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 1 May 1971, 8, accessed via aluka.org. 316 Temba ‘Joe’ Sono, “From the President’s desk,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 317 M. Pascal Gwala, “the black thing…is honest…is human,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 15, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 318 “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 3 May/June 1972, accessed via aluka.org. 319 Temba ‘Joe’ Sono, “From the President’s desk,” 9. 315 110 Pan-Africanism, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois.320 SASO articulated sentiments that were in the vein of Malcolm X’s frequent assertions that global Black “oppression exists not […] on the basis of our sectional affiliation, nor on the basis of our tribal affiliation; or our religious affiliation; or the basis of our monetary standing – it exists on the basis of not being white – our non-whiteness.”321 Edifying their views of solidarity between Black Americans and Black South Africans in particular, SASO reminded the readers of the SASO Newsletter that Black Americans and South Africans “live in similar ghettoes,” adding that “We cannot choose where to live, and which school to go to;” We have similar inferior styled educations;” and similar “harrassments” by the “forces of whiteness.”322 ANTI-IMPERIALISM Anti-American and anti-South African imperialism and anti-imperialism in general, was too an important tenant of the students’ new ‘Black’ identity. In the pages of their newsletters world events were interpreted through the goggles of a global anti-colonial revolution, promoting an African diasporic anti-imperialistic stance. For example, the BSUF viewed support of Robert F. Williams as being a stance against American imperialism.323 They made intellectual and rhetorical connections to liberation movements in Africa as bases for critiques of the use of African American tax dollars to sponsor U.S. imperialism.324 They ran aggressive pictures and headlines, such as a young Vietnamese male shot in the head, innards exposed, with the caption “law and order.” The sub-line read “VICTIM OF U.S. IMPERIALIST INTERVENTION “In memory of Black Heroes 21st March, 1972,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 2 March/April 1972, accessed via aluka.org. 321 Strini Moodley, “black consciousness, the black artist and the emerging black culture,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 3 May/June 1972, 19, accessed via aluka.org. 322 Moodley, “black consciousness, the black artist and the emerging black culture,” 19. 323 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (January 5, 1970); Mumford High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (February 6, 1970). 324 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970). 320 111 ‘OVER-KILL’ U.S. TACTICS IN VIETNAM.” The image and rhetoric is followed with an appeal to African American soldiers to have solidarity with the Vietnamese freedom fighters in the global liberation struggle.325 They instructed their readers that: The North Vietnamese are being butchered by Nixon and his flunkies, Black and White. This is pertaining to those who volunteer for military service in the honky army. Arab guerillas are being shot by Jews, who have cheated Black people for decades, and of course Black people in America and Africa are tortured and killed every day. Black people must remember that it is not just white against black, but it is white forever against black, red, yellow, in fact white against the entire third world (all non-white people).326 For them, the reality that “NO VIETNAMESE EVER CALLED YOU NIGGER,” demonstrated that the military conflict in Vietnam was a fight for “White Power” and training in “killing off oppressed people.”327 From the internal colony or ‘Black Belt’ thesis perspective, colonial military or security apparatuses were equated with local police and school security forces. For example, this headline ran in the Cooley High Black Student Voice: STUDENTS HAVE THE RIGHT TO END HIGH SCHOOL COMPLICITY WITH THE WAR MACHINE. 1) The student body has the right to be free from the presence of any influence of federal agencies not directly involved in the educational process. 2) There shall be an end to all military programs like R.O.T.C. in the schools and to all military recruiting in the high schools. 3) There shall be an end to the use of police to settle disputes within the schools.328 Anti- Junior Reserved Officers’ Training Corps (J.R.O.T.C.) rhetoric was frequent in other schools’ Black Student Voice editions as well.329 The students made a direct link between 325 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 8 (March 30, 1970); Osborn High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2; Western High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2 (March 30, 1970). 326 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 3 no. 2 (October 7, 1970). 327 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 3 no. 2 (October 7, 1970); Osborn High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2; Western High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2 (March 30, 1970); Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 328 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 2 no. 4 (March 26, 1971). 329 Osborn High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1; Osborn High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2; Western High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2 (March 30, 1970). 112 colonial militarism and the recruitment/drafting of young African Americans into the military in the schools, juxtaposed over the tensions between the students and police/school security apparatuses. They presented their day-to-day community and school struggles as anti-colonial in broader diasporic and third world struggles. They synthesized those interests into identifying as contemporary African diasporic freedom fighters. Students also analyzed narcotics, an issue they faced at home and in school, in African diasporic anti-imperial terms. Local Black Student Voice editions published items such as “Northern High, Dopeville USA,” “HIGHLAND PARK, Dopeville, USA,” and “Black Community: Dopeville U.S.A.”330 They also equated narcotics use to enslavement with the slogan “Dope is Slavery” as well as a “Dope is Slavery” drawing with George Washington and another colonial posing in front of a line of chained up enslaved Africans.331 Their view of narcotics cannot be any clearer than this tagline published in the Highland Park Black Student Voice: “ARE YOU A SLAVE? DO YOU USE DOPE? DOPE IS CHEMICAL SLAVERY. SLAVE, FOOL, TRICK!! RUNNING “JONES” CAN BE [HAZARDOUS] TO YOUR HEALTH.”332 The BSUF presented narcotics as causality for other sectors of the underground economy and criminality, and presented the trade as state-sanctioned. The Highland Park Black Student Voice asserted that: It is not an accident that more and more Black youths are snortin’ blow, dunning johns, and selling their bodies to mostly suburban whites who come into the Black community after the sun, goes, down. It is no lie that Blacks are robbing, stealing and murdering each other while the white man sits back and laughs at us destroy each other.333 The BSUF understood narcotics proliferation in their communities and schools as part of 330 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 8 (March 30, 1970); Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5; Western High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2 (March 30, 1970). 331 Western High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2 (March 30, 1970); Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970). 332 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3 (January 26, 1970). 333 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970). 113 a global capitalistic white supremacist structure designed to destroy their minds, communities and struggle. They viewed “dope” and the narcotics trade as a micro state-sponsored program that was also part of a macro international system. Narcotics proliferation, the students believed, was an imperialist system tied to slavery, colonialism, and economic inequalities facilitated through militarism.334 The students’ position cannot be clearer than what was expressed in a Highland Park Black Student Voice article titled “DOPE IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY.”335 By asserting in the article that few “too many people realize that every development of a thing (in this, case, dope) has an internal cause. In other words, things don’t just happen or pop up over night there is an internal force that puts the conditions into motion,” the students implied that the American government, local law enforcement, and local school teachers and administrators were either complicit, culpable or participatory in the narcotics proliferation. From their view, the introduction of methadone clinics resulted from the “drug problem getting out of hand” and sweeping “the white community” with affluent whites overdosing and/or being arrested for narcotics possession. The article poignantly queried, “why can’t the government find the pushers of dope … [when] a six year old can point out at least ten dope houses in his community.” For them the answer was clear, “dope in the Black community serves as a control device … [it] gives a man the tendency to think everything is ‘cool’ and lovey-dovey … [making] one forget about, or accept the oppression heaped upon him.” They continued, dope “makes one conform to the norms of this society … [not talking] about POWER or taking CONTROL of the institutions in the community.” They were keen to identify that the narcotics trade was “profitable to the white power structure and that’s what the sick system (capitalism) in 334 335 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 8 (March 30, 1970). Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 114 this country is based on, the exploitation of people in order to make a profit.”336 Simply stated, for the students, the condition of “dope in Black communities” was caused by “racism” and “capitalism,” and “the economic system, the only possible solution […] is to organize and demolish the system that resorts to such a device.”337 To express the seriousness of the narcotics proliferation, they provided a narrative about a female eighth-grade “student at Barben Middle School being carried down the halls foaming at the mouth [… not] even being able to talk [… because she was] so high, that these things happened to her.” The students pleaded, “DON’T LET THESE THINGS HAPPEN TO OUR YOUTH!!!” calling for their readers to “FIGHT GENOCIDE!!!” “FIGHT DOPE!!” and “FIGHT TO WIN!”338 To develop solutions to the ‘dope problem’ the citywide BSUF organized a town hall meeting.339 In regards to identity, they presented narcotics use and trade as antithetical to Blackness. For them, narcotics were counter-revolutionary, mental enslavement, and furthered the cause of imperialism. They consciously connected narcotics proliferation, the underground and legitimate economic sectors it fueled, and the identities it created to imperialism. The BSUF depicted a competing identity, the ‘cool nigger,’ as a counter-revolutionary, anti-black, and anti-African construct. As they saw it, So-called cool niggers are those unable or unwilling to help themselves, living in a make believe world of ignorance and unawareness. Unaware that they are being deprived of their human rights, exploited and oppressed as a result of this white racist-capitalist country. They accept the whiteman's false doctrine of individualism (going by yourself for yourself) when the need for unity is most important today just for the mere survival of Black people in this racist savage land.340 336 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 338 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 339 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 3 no. 2 (October 7, 1970). 340 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970). 337 115 The Mumford High Black Student Voice published a cartoon stating that the cool clothes, called “MOD” clothes, that black males were buying helped enrich whites that used the profits to buy arms to protect themselves from the “outlandishly stylish niggers.”341 This also implies that Western capitalistic styles and clothes were contrary to their African diasporic identity. After all, as asserted in the Northern High Black Student Voice, “Black Power is Black Pride. Black Power is Self-Determination For All Oppressed People, Black Power is Death To The Imperialist Capitalistic System, Black Power is Black Unity.”342 Although the narcotics trade was not discussed in their documents, SASO too had immediate reasons to promote anti-imperialism as essential to their new identity as well. As discussed in chapter two, the apartheid regime’s approach to imperialism was that of the lone remaining white supremacist former settler colony fighting for survival and legitimacy in a region marred by cold war era political instability. SASO translated the African diasporic common canon to provide analytical lenses to interpret the policies and actions of southern African black heads of state and their interaction with apartheid regime. SASO’s anti-South African imperialist sentiments are best understood through their views of leaders of independent Black African nation-states’ interactions and official visits to South Africa. For SASO, it was clear that: South Africa’s aims in seeking dialogue with black Africa are very dangerous. South Africa sees herself as the lion of Africa and seeks to extend her tentacles by way of investments and trade agreements to the rest of Africa. In dividing Africa and in sapping the strength of the O.A.U., South Africa stands the change of calling the tune to most of the African states. South Africa’s interest in schemes like the Carbora Bassa Dam must be seen for what it is a deliberate move to maintain a White foot hold in this black continent of Africa. Using her position of economic and military advantage.343 341 Mumford High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (February 6, 1970). Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3. 343 “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 2 June 1971, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 342 116 SASO also expressed extreme disdain for Malawian President Hastings “Kamuzu” Banda’s 1971 official state visit to South Africa, viewing it as an aid to South African imperialism. SASO viewed South Africa’s push for détente with Black African nations “north of the Zambezi” River as a “great conspiracy […] involving the South African status quo which includes all the opposition parties […] and the investors in South Africa.” Adding that the leaders of those African nations were “the willing pawns” of South Africa, in a “huge game of international politics and economics at the expense of 15 million suffering Blacks” in South Africa.344 The reality that the United States and U.S. corporations were the key investors in South Africa; anti-American and anti-South African imperialist inclinations put the BSUF’s and SASO’s anti-imperialist stances in concert with one another. BSUF railed against the use of African American tax dollars to support apartheid South Africa, with the Northern High Black Student Voice publishing a drawing of a man resembling American President Richard M. Nixon, with a tattoo of Africa with “Southern Africa” written in its region above a dollar sign and swastika.345 SASO, for their part, noted that President Nixon “rejected the recommendation by the African Sub-committee that his administration embark on a tougher policy towards apartheid.”346 This sentiment was simmering in the U.S. as early as the early 1960s. In 1960, the United Nations (U.N.) voted for sanctions against South Africa. The U.S. and Britain tabled the vote, and then vetoed it in the U.N. Security Council.347 American de-segregationists and proVoting Rights advocates and activists lost their October 10, 1963, trial and received convictions in Selma, Alabama while on the same day in New York at the U.N. headquarters, the U.N.- “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 4 September 1971, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 345 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 3 (September 15, 1970). 346 Mosibudi A. Mangena (Ngoya), “Letters to the Editor: Foreign Investment in Apartheid?,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 2 June 1971, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 347 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 188. 344 117 General Assembly passed a resolution urging South Africa to call off the Rivonia Treason Trial. The U.S. abstained from the vote.348 The intertwined nature of American and South African imperialism and White Supremacy became starkly evident, particularly in a Cold War context. Just as the BSUF, SASO connected their day-to-day community and school struggles to broader diasporic anti-colonial and third world struggles; as well as interpreted the republic’s domestic and foreign policies in terms of that connection. In a SASO Newsletter editorial, Malawian President Banda’s official state visit served as an example of the apartheid regime’s effort to “entrench White South Africa in the African continent economically and politically,” to “create military buffer states” designed to prevent infiltration by anti-colonial forces from the rest of Africa and the diaspora, and to “split” the Organization for African Unity. 349 PROPER (LIBERATORY) EDUCATION ROOTED IN PAN-AFRICANISM AND DIASPORITY Figure 7: Black Studies350 In developing their new ‘Black’ identity, the black American and South African students made the connection that Pan-Africanist W. E. B. Du Bois and the radical Carter G. Woodson 348 Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 152. “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 4 September 1971, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 350 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5. 349 118 made before them, that education is central to identity.351 They began to envision a relevant education for their new identity. They envisioned a liberatory education that would “prepare people for leadership in their society.”352 For example, the SASO Newsletter ran an article asserting that the education of the oppressed needed to be designed to liberate them from “White psychology and racist effort.”353 The Northern High Black Student Voice published a picture of a bare-footed black man with an assault rifle in one hand and a book, with the title “Black Studies,” in another.”354 Highland Park students asserted: “We are for education that is relevant to our needs, that is, education that is going to help us liberate ourselves from oppression.”355 They demanded a Black Studies curriculum “in order to discontinue the educational crisis” that they felt existed at Highland Park High School that was indicative of a “high drop out rate, low academic achievement and reading levels, [and a] general unconcern for education of Black Students.”356 SASO too understood the broader implications of low reading competency by asserting that the “reduction and elimination of illiteracy in the Black community can influence development both economic, social, political and cultural in a variety of ways. It can improve the productivity of Blacks in their community and assist the political, economic and social awareness and consciousness by permitting wider communication and conscientization.”357 In Michigan, Highland Park students observed: We would like a Black Studies curriculum to be instituted because there is not one 351 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk; Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro. “Commission on Black education,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 3 Aug. 1971, 13, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 353 Gwala, “the black thing…. is honest…. is human”; Dr. Dilly Naidoo, “The Role of Black Organisations in the Life of the Community,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 19, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 354 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 8 (March 30, 1970); Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 3 (September 15, 1970). 355 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970). 356 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 357 SASO, “SASO on the Attack: An Introduction to the South African Organisation 1973,” 1973, 15-16, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 352 119 curriculum in the school that relates to the Black student and gives him the reasons behind the Black struggle in America. Furthermore, no curriculum tells why most Black youth want to pimp, [hustle], “con”, etc. No curriculum makes the student realize his responsibility to the Black community.358 The SASO Newsletter underscored the “humiliations caused by White interpretation of history, art or literature” that reinforce the “myth of Black inferiority.”359 The Highland Park Black Student Voice highlighted that “some” of their graduates cannot “read at a 12th grade level.”360 Among other things, students demanded real, true and accurate African diasporic history. And despite course offerings of “negro history” and “Afro-Seminar,” students did not feel that these courses represented a “relevant” education because those courses dealt with the “past” and would not “liberate us in the future.” They argued that there should also be “Political Science” and other related subjects as well as “Guest speakers from the community … that realize the need for liberation.” They viewed their identity as a new diasporic identity, grounded in an African present. The Highland Park students also called for the hanging of pictures of “Black heroes” be hung in their school and “constitute 80 - 90% of all pictures in or around the school,” because that would have given “the Black students something to relate to” because they could not “relate to racist whites.”361 Taking it a step further, the students proclaimed that under the present conditions and curriculum, we really don't have a valid reason for coming to school. We still have history classes teaching us that George Washington was the father of this country and Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves … Most of the teachers don't give a damn if you learn, or not. They still get paid to sit up and brainwash you with the theory of this government being run by the few. They give us irrelevant education and Tom teachers.362 358 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. Naidoo, “The Role of Black Organisations in the Life of the Community.” 360 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970). 361 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5; Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970); Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6; Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 362 Central High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2. 359 120 They viewed Eurocentric and White-centered education as a system to make Blacks “Flunkies” by teaching them “how to be inferior without hate.”363 The Cooley High Black Student Voice even printed a poem about being taught not to be black via the school system.364 The students wanted an education for the “oppressed” that would “liberate” them from White Supremacy.365 SASO called for Blacks to take “a closer look at how our education is structured and controlled. Also to scrutinize the facilities and prospects available to the Black population in terms of education.”366 COMMUNITY CONTROL AND INSTITUTION BUILDING Community control of institutions was central to the ‘Black” student identity. As articulated by SASO, the oppressed “is forced upon his own resources and facilities. He must become increasingly reliant upon himself and therefore increasingly confident of his own ability.”367 The fight for community control of schools in Detroit began simultaneously with the genesis of the BSUF. Institutionally and administratively, Detroit Public Schools were undergoing a transformation. In 1969 and 1970 the white liberal and United Auto Workers (UAW) controlled Detroit Board of Education announced a plan to decentralize control of the schools.368 From the perspective of the students at Thomas M. Cooley High School, in “view of the Educational woes and the thrust for community control throughout the community [Michigan] Gov. Milliken and the state legislators moved to bring about Bill 244 (Decentralization of Public schools) having the public to [believe] that Decentralization is community control.”369 A coalition of 363 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2.; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (January 5, 1970). 365 Naidoo, “The Role of Black Organisations in the Life of the Community.” 366 “Commission on Black education,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 3 Aug. 1971, 12, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 367 Naidoo, “The Role of Black Organisations in the Life of the Community.” 368 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 76. 369 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (January 5, 1970). 364 121 neighborhood groups called the West Central Organization (WCO) questioned if the move towards decentralization would be analogous or contrary to the amelioration of the status of African American education in Detroit. To assess the situation and develop a position on the matter John Watson, the director of WCO, organized a conference attended by 300 representatives from 70 community organizations in Detroit.370 The organizations represented were an assortment of African American groups and a minority of white or integrated groups willing to work under African American leadership.371 The conference was held December 27 – 31, 1970. The key issues the conference focused on were: 1) Teacher accountability, 2) Theory the School system, 3) Geographical boundaries, 4) Physical Facilities, 5) Curriculum Inadequacies, 6) Administrative Accountability, 7) Student Problems, and 8) Community Control.372 Moreover, at the conference the citywide Black Student demands were adopted fully by the general body in a set of resolutions. The following is an overview of the demands: 1) Removal of all Police and security guards from the schools, 2) Total Amnesty for Black students suspended or expelled for political beliefs, 3) Correction of physical conditions of the schools, 4) Restocking the libraries with literature pertaining to Black studies and Political Theory, 5) Black studies be instituted in predominately Black populated schools, 6) The Flag of Black Dignity be flown at Predominately Black schools, 7) Construction of inner city be given to Black Companies, 8) Black communities must be given power to control their political destiny, and 9) That Black pictures and artifacts represent the population of Black Students in the schools.373 With community control of schools as its banner issue, the organization Parents and Students 370 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 76; Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (January 5, 1970). 371 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 76. 372 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (January 5, 1970). 373 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (January 5, 1970). 122 for Community Control (PASCC) resulted from the conference. PASCC organized or participated in hundreds of rallies and meetings while PASCC representatives regularly appeared on radio and television, as well as in the schools. PASCC soon found itself in “strong opposition to the Detroit Police Officers Association, Donald Lobsinger’s Breakthrough, the homeowners’ associations, and citizens’ councils,” as well as the Detroit Board of Education.374 The Detroit Board of Education’s opposition to community control over schools forced the PASCC to run their own candidates for school board elections. Despite garnering approximately 70,000 votes for their slates, PASCC was unsuccessful. Among the myriad of structural campaign deficiencies were “chronic problems of insufficient cadre, insufficient funds, and insufficient experience,” as well as fierce “opposition of UAW and Democratic Party officials who understood that if PASCC succeeded it would create a political machine comparable to their own.”375 It is important to note that although PASCC’s endeavors permeated throughout African American communities and schools in Detroit, BSUF “had a role independent of PASCC, but, at the same time, it was an integral part of the plan to gain control of the public school system” with many BSUF students participating in PASCC summer programs in “black history, photography, printing, and journalism.”376 Yet, BSUF had its own plans, perspectives, and worldview. BSUF and SASO also offered their own alternative curriculums, and in them are clues to the Black identity that they were endeavoring to create. Local Black Student Voice editions published a reading list under the banner: “REVOLUTION BEGINS IN THE MIND!”377 THE LIBERATION of GUINE by BASIL DAVIDSON LISTEN BROTHER by ROBERT WILLIAMS 374 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 76. Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 77. 376 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 76-77; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2. 377 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5. 375 123 PEOPLE WITH STRENGHT by ROBERT WILLIAMS NEGROES WITH GUNS by ROBERT WILLIAMS BLACK MOTHER by BASIL DAVIDSON A DYING COLONILIASM by FRANCE FANON AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOM X THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH by FRANCE FANON PICKING UP THE GUN (BIOGRAPHY OF THE PANTHERS) by JAMES EARL DIE NIGGER DIE BY H. RAP BROWN BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER by LERONE BENNETT BLACK STUDENT VOICE by THE COALITION Of BLACK-STUDENTS The SASO Newsletter carried a column titled “Africa Series” in which they developed an African History and African Studies alternative curriculum. For example, they had informative academic essays on Ivory Coast and Ghana, and policy statements concerning FRELIMO, just to mention a few.378 Local Black Student Voice editions also published a Malcolm X reading list, biographies of Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams, and an excerpt: “Neglecting Non-Violence” by Dick Gregory (from his book Write Me In). The students were also informed by the writings and speeches of Stokley Carmichael and Huey P. Newton.379 The SASO Newsletter extensively quoted the American-born co-founder of Pan-Africanism, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, articulated sentiments that were in the vein of Malcolm X’s frequent assertions that global Black “oppression exists not […] on the basis of our sectional affiliation, nor on the basis of our tribal affiliation; or our religious affiliation; or the basis of our monetary standing – it exists on the basis of not being white – our non-whiteness;” articulated Franz Fanon’s notions, and “Africa Series: Ivory Coast,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 2 June 1971, 13, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa; “Africa Series: Ghana,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 11, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa; SASO, “Minutes of the Proceedings of the General students’ Council of the South African Students’ Organisation,” July 6-15, 1975, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 379 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 11, 1970); Hutchins Jr. High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2; Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (January 5, 1970); Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3. 378 124 extensively quoted Steve Biko.380 Local Black Student Voice editions also published quizzes, such as the following: a. WHERE IS GUINEA--BISSAU? b. WHY IS THE UNITED STATES GIVING PORTUGAL NAPALM BOMBS WITH WHICH TO BOMBARD BLACK AFRICANS? c. ARE THE TAX DOLLARS OF BLACK AMERICANS BEING USED TO MAIM, KILL AND DESTROY BLACK AFRICANS? d. WHO IS AMILCAR CARBAL AND WHAT IS THE AFRICAN PARTY FOR THE INDEPENDENCE OF GUINEA AND THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS? e. WHAT METHODS ARE AMILCAR CABRAL AND THE PAIGC USING TO DEFEAT PORTUGAL’S WHITE DOMINATION? f. WHAT LSSONS DOES GUINEA BISSAU OFFER THE BLACK LIBERATION STRUGGLE?381 Students and community leaders established a “Black Freedom school” in Detroit, “Literacy Programmes” and a “Home Education Scheme” in South Africa.382 SASO successfully created an independent community-based school at Dududu, providing “private tuition” to corresponding students, as well as “vacation schools for those corresponding scholars who are preparing for final examinations.” SASO received requests to start similar schools in other areas and also planned for “Library and Resource facilities, which are intended for use by the members of SASO and the corresponding scholars of the Home Education Scheme.”383 The citywide “In memory of Black Heroes 21st March, 1972,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 2 March/April 1972, accessed via aluka.org; Moodley, “black consciousness, the black artist and the emerging black culture”; Gwala, “the black thing…. is honest…. is human,”; Frank Talk, “I Write What I Like,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 2 June 1971, 10-12, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa; Frank Talk, “I Write What I Like,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 4 Sept. 1971, 10-12, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa; Frank Talk, “I Write What I Like,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 9-10, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. Frank Talk was Steve B. Biko’s alias. 381 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970). 382 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2; SASO, “SASO on the Attack: An Introduction to the South African Organisation 1973.” 383 SASO, “SASO on the Attack: An Introduction to the South African Organisation 1973.” 380 125 BSUF created a holiday, Malcolm X Day.384 The keynote speaker for the Detroit student organized Malcolm X assembly on February 19, 1970 was self-defense advocate Robert F. Williams.385 They transmitted a Black identity rooted in revolutionary struggle and transnationalism. By considering their ‘alternative curriculum,’ it becomes more evident that they were looking toward Africa and its diaspora to create an organic, yet global, revolutionary identity. The students used their Black identity as an impetus for action, and 1969 was a watershed year. Students stepped up their activity, action, and agitation. In addition to the struggle that was waged at Northern High around the “ten (10) Black Students Demands;” “across the city” from King High to Cooley High, From Mumford to Murray Wright, “Black Students took a stand against a racist and insensitive school system.”386 Cooley High students formulated four “nonnegotiable” demands.387 Northern High students called for a strike and school stay-away on Wednesday, November 26, 1969, in support of Robert F. Williams, and continued the struggle of the “10 demands” into 1970.388 On January 7th, 19th, and 29th of 1970, the citywide BSUF also held rallies and protests in support for Robert F. Williams after his return from exile.389 Highland Park students demanded the resignation of the school board for doing “detrimental harm to the minds” of black students by miseducating them, via racism and assaults on the 384 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (January 5, 1970); Hutchins Jr. High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2; Hutchins Jr. High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3; Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3 (January 26, 1970); Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970); Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6; Mumford High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (February 6, 1970). 385 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 11, 1970). 386 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3 (January 26, 1970); Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2. 387 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (April 20, 1970). 388 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3. 389 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1 (January 5, 1970); Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 126 students’ Black identity.390 The students viewed the school board as a board of “Miseducation.”391 The students understood and articulated their struggle as a “turning point of the Black Student Struggle, thus the community struggle for . . . FREEDOM, JUTSTICE and EQUALITY.”392 They asked for “the total Black student body and the Black Community” to support their boycotts, physically and/or otherwise.393 The students felt that only “Black students and the community can work to make [their schools] more relevant to [their] needs.”394 The students endeavored to “bridge the gap between parents and students” with the ultimate goal to place the schools into the “HANDS OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY!”395 The students advocated for and joined the struggle for community control of schools. Via local Black Student Voice editions, they also educated their readers with descriptions and histories of the communitybased movements.396 The citywide BSUF’s struggle was for real ‘Black Power,’ or more directly, for state power, which they framed as “controlling a governing apparatus in a country.”397 In this context, as students, that meant community control and governing of the schools. For SASO, the immediate struggle for a real ‘Black Consciousness’ meant community self-reliance and self-development. Viewing self-reliance as essential to Black Consciousness and their identity, SASO “irrevocably committed herself to developing this concept among the Black peoples,” creating “summer vacation projects” where students “work together with the 390 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3. 392 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (April 20, 1970). 393 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (April 20, 1970). 394 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (February 13, 1970). 395 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1.; Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 396 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4. 397 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 3 no. 2 (October 7, 1970). 391 127 community to solve problems that face the particular community,” varying from dam-building, repairing schools, building community centers, and anything in between.398 SASO also endeavored to educate and interact with their broader communities with detailed programs involving lectures, films, get-togethers with the community.399 SASO emphasized and created institutionalized programs “to bring about positive and creative development of black youth.” Through “leadership courses and seminars,” reaching out to clubs and societies, and collaborating with social workers who served youth, SASO endeavored to “nurture the leadership potential” in Black youth.400 COALITIONS AND COALITION POLITICS The formation of coalitions and coalition politics were too shaped by the black American and South African students’ construction of ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness.’ Coalitions with liberal whites, moderate Africans and African Americans, and moderate non-whites were reconsidered and traditional coalitions were broken; however, “the advocates of Black Power do not eschew coalitions.”401 For SASO, there was not a basis for a “viable coalition” between the “affluent and the destitute;” between the “politically secure and the politically insecure.” For them people who are “economically dispossessed and politically disenfranchised” could not engage in a “meaningful coalition with those who are suffocating in the corridors of power.”402 SASO believed that Africans who viewed Black Consciousness and Black solidarity to be a form of “racism in reverse” were “brain-washed by the White liberals” who articulated SASO, “SASO on the Attack: An Introduction to the South African Organisation 1973.” SASO, “SASO on the Attack: An Introduction to the South African Organisation 1973.” 400 SASO, “SASO on the Attack: An Introduction to the South African Organisation 1973.” 401 Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power, 60. 402 SASO, “Wretched of this Country,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 7, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 398 399 128 sentiments that “things are much better under Whites” or “look at Kenya and Uganda!”403 BSUF and many Black Detroiters viewed white liberals and their African American allies’ articulations as paternalistic. Simon Owens, who was a Lowndes County transplant to Detroit, offers insights into the paternalistic views of Detroit’s political establishment with his valuation of the “CIO, especially the national leadership of the United Auto Workers (UAW), as unresponsive to calls for action to stop racial discrimination and as hostile to African-Americans organizing amongst themselves.”404 Owens “found problematic the politics of Detroit’s civil rights groups, particularly the NAACP. In his opinion, the local branch of the nation’s largest civil rights organization was “completely guided by the UAW bureaucrats,” which caused the association’s leaders to avoid independent, radical action.”405 This was a reality that prompted the Northern High Black Student Voice to run an item titled: “Confront U.A.W. racism.”406 As stated by Stokely Carmichael, white liberals no less than others, “are subjected and subject to the overriding sense of superiority that pervades white America;” the white liberal must “view the racial scene through a drastically different lens from the black man’s…no matter how “liberal” a white person might be, he cannot ultimately escape the overpowering influence – on himself and on black people – of his whiteness in a racist society.”407 Dr. Dilly Naidoo said of the South African context in the SASO Newsletter that if the sincere white “gets tired of being sincere he can go back to his White privileges;” if he has “annoyed the government, he at least receives better prison treatment;” and the attempt to “direct the Black people towards an increasing self-reliance and to counter the racist myth is negated somewhat.” Naidoo felt that the SASO, “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 1, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 404 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 30-31. 405 Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes, 31. 406 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1. 407 Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power, 61. 403 129 white liberals “tend to curb and misdirect Black initiative.” He concluded that if white liberals “do not shake themselves off the yoke of White privileges we will have no choice but to exclude them from our deductions.”408 Black, Indian, and Coloured liberals too were identified as a demographic undesirable for coalitions. The SASO Newsletter characterized them as “colonized by White thinking” and sincerely believe the “White man” to be their “protector” and at worst, non-white liberals aspire to a niche in the “first class White society” having “thrown in their lot with the Whiteman.” They were viewed as “oppressors of the second-class ilk” who sold themselves to the “White racists” and upheld the “ugly game of exploitation.”409 The Northern High Black Student Voice printed a cartoon depicting the African American Student Council president as a ‘coon’ caricature with the moniker David “Shoeshine” Johnson, a blunt example of a Black identity vs. an enslaved identity dichotomy.410 Another example is the headline “THE “NEGRO” CLUB” ran by the Highland Park Black Student Voice with the write up: It was once said, brothers and sisters that revolutionaries must let the people know their enemies. That is what the Coalition is trying to do. We feel that it is time to “blow” on the Afro Club… Yes, the Afro Club is the enemy of the people; you people. [Its] sole purpose is to pacify us students and make us think that they are a good organization.411 They make the clear distinction that “Afro” should denote revolutionary as “Negro” denotes counter-revolutionary; in this light, they are connecting Africa, or the notion of Africa, to a revolutionary Black identity. Making the point clearer, the same Black Student Voice local ran this blurb concerning the “Great [White] Liberal Lacke”: Mr. Lacke, a 9th grade English teacher, is the bad whitey that is constantly saying that he is all for "NEGROES" as he calls us. Even though we don't consider ourselves so called Naidoo, “The Role of Black Organisations in the Life of the Community.” SASO, “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 1, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 410 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 411 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3 (January 26, 1970). 408 409 130 “NEGROES”. We are Black people and he can’t seem to understand this!412 They did not reserve depictions like “nappy-headed whites” and “bootlickers” for students, they also applied them to Board Education members and school administrators like McGivens and Leach.413 A great example is the caption, “Bye Tom!” followed by a life-like drawing of “Computer’ McGivens,” celebrating his resignation.414 They created a nigger vs. brother, or nigger vs. Black dichotomy.415 The Northern High School Student Voice also published an “Uncle Tom & Aunt Jemima Chart” of Northern High School’s African American faculty and staff.416 African and African American participation in apartheid and institutionalized structures were also identified as disqualification from coalitions. In an “Open Letter to Black Traitors” the Northern High School BSUF asserted to African American students and organizations who participated in the school’s institutionalized student leadership structures that, “You can’t be a friend to the enemies of all the students in Northern, the administration, and in the same breath profess to be the friends of the student body, it’s impossible.”417 SASO asserted that the Transkei, the Coloured Representative Council, Zululand, and all these other “apartheid institutions” were “modern-type laagers behind which the whites in this country are going to hide themselves for a long time to come.”418 SASO also highlighted that nothing influenced people more to “accept” the “working within the system” theory than the decision by Chief Gatsha Buthelezi to join in and lead the Zulu Territorial Authority. Chief Buthelezi had for a long time 412 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3 (January 26, 1970). Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5. 414 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 415 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4 (April 20, 1970). 416 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1. 417 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1. 418 Frank Talk, “I Write What I Like: Fragmentation of the Black Resistance,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 2, June 1971, 11, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 413 131 been aligned with Black Consciousness and regarded as “the bastion of resistance to the institution of a territorial authority in Zululand.”419 As articulated, South African Indians who adopted the proper identity and perspective were ‘Black’ from the Black Consciousness perspective, and those Indians who did not were considered moderate liberals and disqualified from coalition. SASO made very clear that the “non-Whites” of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) and the Labour Party, were “set on the policy of getting the best of both worlds and very little else.” They were viewed as “Fence sitters and people governed by White liberal thinking” who could “never have any constructive attitude to any meaningful change of the status quo.” Due to their “involvement with the evil of the status quo, neither can they have any positive contribution to offer in our struggle.”420 For SASO, the sole aim of the NIC was the “discrediting Black Consciousness” and were “exclusivists and racists.” SASO identified NIC’s passing of a resolution “condemning Black Consciousness.”421 Part of their resolution read: This meeting confirms that any dogma or group which propagates racialism of any kind is unacceptable in Congress, and re-iterates that Black exclusiveness is not an answer to the problem facing the Black people of South Africa. Congress there re-affirms its basic principle and belief in non-racialism.422 SASO identified the “ironies” in the resolution as evidence of “the inadequacies and falseness of the NIC.” The facts that the NIC was itself a “racially exclusive” organization catering to the “Natal Indian only;” and that in the resolution the NIC referred to “the problems facing the Black people of South Africa” despite being an organization representing a “minority group” decided Frank Talk, “I Write What I Like: Fragmentation of the Black Resistance,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 2, June 1971, 11, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 420 SASO, “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 1, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 421 SASO, “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 1, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 422 SASO, “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 1, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 419 132 to “speak on behalf of the entire Black population” without representing the Black people, saw themselves as “leaders of the Black people.” SASO viewed the resolution as hypocritical because as it professed a belief in “non-racialism” calling upon its members to “refrain from associating with the dogma of racial exclusiveness” its existence itself was founded on racialism and racial exclusivity, thus exposing some of the contradictions of the apartheid system.423 For their part, BSUF too identified national and regional African American personalities as disqualified from coalitions for their participation in mainstream structures. For example, the Western High School Student Voice identified “Toms” such as Roy Wilkins and Andrew Young.424 The Cooley High Black Student Voice published anti-Roy Wilkins and NAACP rhetoric.425 The Mumford High Black Student Voice published a picture of Roy Wilkins with a caption underneath: “When you are all marched into the camps…I will be holding the doors open.”426 SASO too identified the very same moderate African American personages, such as Roy Wilkins, as disqualified from coalitions. For example, the SASO Newsletter published a piece in which they recalled that in a “short, hurriedly arranged meeting with the Students here, congressman, Charles Diggs, was considered much of an “Uncle Tom” when he replied cautiously to students’ questions on topical affairs.”427 For SASO, none of the “liberals,” white, black, Indian, or Coloured, could accept the idea of being “excluded from any political involvement with the Blackman.” Evoking an entreaty of “multi-racialism,” the “liberal” posited and advanced all kinds of “theories, explanations and ideologies” to convince himself and the Black youth of his liberal validity in the ‘Black’ SASO, “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 1 Jan./Feb. 1972, 1, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 424 Western High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2 (March 30, 1970). 425 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2 (Jan. 12, 1970). 426 Mumford High Black Student Voice, vol. 1, no. 1 (Feb. 6, 1970). 427 SASO, “Campus News,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 4, Sept. 1971, 2, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 423 133 “struggle.” White liberals took things a step further and had the audacity to attempt to define Black Consciousness for the Black population. For example, a prominent “Doctor of Philosophy and lecturer at the University of Natal” prepared a paper on “Black Power in South Africa.” For SASO this was a “typical example” of how the paternalistic “liberal” was intent on infiltrating the ranks of the self-determined Black population. The Black youth was “fed up” with liberal “over bearing paternalism,” “sick condescension,” and “selfish” concern “to find himself through contact with the Black man.” As well as attempts to “turn the race struggle into a class struggle.”428 SASO instead theorized an “oppressed groups’ consciousness” centered on ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ despite rejecting “the sweet-perfumed gowns” of the “spurious Black bourgeoisie as the epitome of a human ideal.”429 THE SOWETO UPRISINGS Beyond the college and university environ, Black Consciousness leaning teachers and BC’s role in popular culture, inspired many black schoolchildren in the South West Township (Soweto). Soweto is located near Johannesburg, and in 1976, one million poor blacks resided there.430 Between April and May of 1976, the students of Soweto declared a boycott of their schools to protest discriminatory education. The police responded by shooting them in the streets, but the school strikes still rapidly spread to other towns.431 SASO, “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 1 no. 3, Aug. 1971, 2, box AL2457, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 429 Naidoo, “The Role of Black Organisations in the Life of the Community”; SASO, “Wretched of this Country”. 430 “Soweto Rebels against White Government in South Africa, June 16, 1976,” DISCovering World History. Gale Research, 1997. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group: 1. 431 Davidson, Modern Africa,170. 428 134 Figure 8: Student protestors during the Soweto uprisings. 432 Despite the governmental actions, the schoolchildren were disillusioned with Bantu education. When the announcement came that the new language of instruction in their schools would no longer be English, but Afrikaans, the language of their oppressors, the students erupted and black student protest became more frequent and militant. On June 16, 1976, on the eve of Prime Minister Vorster’s meeting with U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger, 15,000 black schoolchildren protested the new policy. The protest was an outgrowth of frustration over the more than three hundred laws passed by whites to oppress blacks. Beginning non-violently, a confrontation with police ensued after the police shot a 13-year-old black child. The police force’s brutal response was unprecedented in its scope and endurance. The police used tear gas and gunfire while the students were ‘armed’ with rocks and stones. The students then attacked, overturned, and burned police cars, trains, and buses, and set fires to government property and “Soweto schoolchildren protest against Afrikaans in 1976,” Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive, Bodleian Library, Oxford UK. 432 135 buildings. Violence then began to spread to other townships and black and white colleges and universities alike. In total the students destroyed 184 government beer halls and bottle shops, 124 administrative buildings, 222 vehicles, and 430 schools. They also killed two whites. The government killed more than six hundred blacks and arrested thousands more in the Soweto area alone.433 To show a sign of solidarity, trade unions and workers held strikes and stay away boycott campaigns. The South African security apparatuses reacted brutally, and by February of 1977, killed at least 575 people, including 494 blacks, 75 Coloreds, 5 whites, and 1 Indian. Of the dead, 134 were under 18 years of age. The apartheid regime also banned SASO and other Black Consciousness organizations in 1977, effectively leading to its demise.434 The main conditions that contributed to the Soweto uprisings were a housing crisis, rent increases, inflation, recession, regional transformation, generational changes, Bantu educational changes, and student organization. The conditions and pressures of apartheid created black rage.435 The conclusions of the Cille Commission, which was an investigation into apartheid, confirmed this. The Commission indicated that influx control, anger with administrative boards, discrimination, and economic hardship were the main ingredients of the black student “explosion.”436 The causes were indistinguishable from those of the 1967 Detroit uprising as identified by the federally commissioned Kerner Commission Report.437 CONCLUSION In conclusion, although the experiences and contributions of high school student activists is very important to understanding the development and application of Black Power in the U.S., Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 46-48; “Soweto Rebels,” 1-2; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 92-93. 434 Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 62; Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 46-48; Thompson, A History of South Africa, 212. 435 Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 48-58. 436 Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 60. 437 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968: 2), quoted in Darden and Thomas, Detroit, 2. 433 136 they have been greatly neglected in the historiography. Although there is a larger body of scholarship concerning student activism in South Africa, the exploration of Black as an identity and how it was transmitted has been overlooked. This chapter is a forward step in filling that void in the historiography. I argue that Black Power and Black Consciousness leaning students represented a critical intersection of interests shaped by a coalescing of global, national, regional, community, student, and cultural considerations that dictated their day-to-day realities. I presented the central values the students’ ‘Black’ identity directly transmitted. This chapter explained how these students’ conceptualization of the African present shaped the emergence and development of their new ‘Black’ identity, identified how these students conceptualized ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness,’ while elucidating their deeper meanings, and explored how these students used their identity to engage the broader Black freedom struggle. It was in an electrifying atmosphere of labor strikes, student boycotting, community organizing, and independent publishing, that these students developed and forged their ‘Black’ identity. I also argue that by linking their identity to a global revolutionary anti-colonial struggle, these students determined their place in that struggle as the most important quality of the burden and the glory of the “Heroic Black Student.” As SASO transmitted it, Black identity “is a link with the struggle of the third world.”438 The citywide Black Student Voice and the SASO Newsletter were vehicles and instruments used to transmit that Black identity as they were the “voice” of the students. 439 The citywide Black Student Voice emphasized African artistic cultural expression by publishing graphics of an African person drumming on an African drum, and articulated an African diasporic beauty aesthetic by printing graphics such as one with an African woman with 438 439 Gwala, “the black thing…is honest…is human”. “Editorial,” SASO Newsletter vol. 2 no. 3 May/June 1972, accessed via aluka.org. 137 the caption: “Black Is Beautiful.”440 The citywide Black Student Voice also published articles, cartoons, headlines, and biographies that celebrated and evoked the imagery of armed selfdefense, sobriety, anti-imperialism, anti-militarism, and pro-struggle. Those items were published along-side entries that conceptualized, promoted and agitated for a liberatory education; something shared with the SASO Newsletter. The students also founded parallel institutions, such as local Black Student Voice editions and the SASO Newsletter, local Black Student United Fronts and SASO branches, Literacy programs, building projects, and Freedom schools. They developed a new identity as Black diasporic peoples engaged in a global third world revolution. Building upon legacies of resistance, radicalism, and revolt, they used their identity to struggle against narcotics proliferation, improper education, abuse from law enforcement, state manufactured ethnic distinctions, white liberal dominance, detrimental coalitions, and for community control of schools, amongst other issues. The embracement of Black and Blackness as articulated by BSUF and SASO called for the “redefinition” of “cultural, economic, social and theological concepts as seen by the Black and seeing them through his own Black self.”441 As they read mantras such as “BLACK MAN, AMERICA IS YOUR BATTLEGROUND” or “Blackman, You’re on Your Own” their readers probably imagined a sober Black liberation struggle warrior sitting at night, preparing for the battle to come, reading a Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon or Julius Nyrere book while scribbling notes.442 They invented an identity analogous and in solidarity with that image; that is what they sought and that is what 440 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3. Gwala, “the black thing…is honest…is human”. 442 Hutchins Jr. High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 4; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 8 (March 30, 1970); Osborn High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1; Osborn High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2; SASO, “SASO on the Attack: An Introduction to the South African Organisation 1973.” 441 138 they created. They created the ‘Black Student,’ or the Black identity for students, because after all, “OUR HEROES ARE YOU… THE MASSES OF BLACK STUDENTS INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE”443 443 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 139 CHAPTER FOUR GLOBALIZED LOCAL WORKERS’ MOVEMENT: THE TRANSMISSION OF BLACK WORKERS’ CONSCIOUSNESS IN RESPONSE TO CAPITAL AND THE WHITE LABOR ARISTOCRACY Despite the variations in each republics’ political economy and racial projects, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) and Black Allied Workers’ Union (BAWU) both faced pre-existing white structures and domination, racism in and from the white-led labor unions, and racism on the shop floor. A key difference was black workers in the United States had official mainstream union membership, while African workers in South Africa were legally barred from such privileges. A group consciousness rooted in a Black identity gained tremendous momentum among many black workers in the U.S.A. and S.A. This momentum resulted in a fevered opposition to the use of the labor process as a tool to further white domination. Between 1968 and 1973 two radical Black labor movements in both republics began articulating a congruent philosophy. After the 1967 Detroit rebellion, a radical “core” of workers emerged at the Dodge Main Plant. They established an independent Revolutionary Union Movement (RUM) through a newsletter which called for majority representation in the UAW local that spread to other automotive industrial plantations. In 1968-1969, Black worker wildcat strikes and revolts spread throughout Detroit-area automotive industrial plantations resulting in the establishment of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) with RUM locals. The LRBW soon developed seven RUM locals and six affiliates in the Detroit-area.444 Throughout its short life, the LRBW was engaged in a bitter battle with the UAW, capital, city governments, as well as state and city police departments. Detroit had an electrifying atmosphere of labor strikes, student boycotting, 444 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 70-71. 140 community organizing, and independent publishing. As described by the Inner City Voice, African American automotive workers were victims of “sellout Trade Unions” that colluded with the state and capital to suppress and oppress them in the wake of the 1967 Detroit rebellion that sent shockwaves throughout the city, region, and state.445 In this atmosphere, the LRBW endeavored to create a new African diasporic identity that would be called the identity of the ‘Revolutionary Black Worker.’ Across the Atlantic Ocean in South Africa, Black workers were too embarking on an epic campaign for self-determination against local labor confederations, white capital, and law enforcement apparatuses. Because of a series of draconian laws, black workers suffered extreme economic exploitation.446 The 1970s became an era of intense black worker wildcat strikes and a revival of black unionism in South Africa.447 By 1969, the Black Consciousness movement emerged as a leading political force in South Africa during the 1970s. In 1972, the South African Student Organization (SASO), the flagship Black Consciousness organization, moved to conceive a national trade union of black workers and rejuvenate the movement. Inspired by Steve Biko’s articulations, SASO envisioned an exclusively black labor federation and leadership. Out of that desire, in 1973, the Black Allied Workers’ Union (BAWU) emerged. Regardless of its brief existence, BAWU was the “centre” of Black Consciousness unionism.448 This chapter focuses on the ways the workers transmitted Black identity in a Cold War transnational context by engaging local media such as DRUM, Inner City Voice, and SASO “Salute to a Black Patriot,” Rank and File vol. 2, no. 4, March 24, 1971, 1. Godsell, “The Regulation of Labour,” 210-211; Rich, State Power and Black Politics in South Africa, 168. 447 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 197; Davidson, Modern Africa, 168-9; Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 46; Thompson, A History of South Africa, 212; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 92; Robin Cohen, Peter C.W. Gutkind, and Phyllis Brazier, eds., Peasants and Proletarians: The Struggles of Third World Workers (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1979), 401-409. 448 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 198; C.R.D. Halisi, “The Political Role of the Trade Union Movement,” 42; Baruch Hirson, Year of Fire, Year of Ash. The Soweto revolt: roots of a revolution? (London: Zed Books, Ltd, 1979), 128. 445 446 141 Newsletter as well as other documents exploring the uses of “Black Power” and “Black Consciousness” or more precisely the articulation and demonstration of “Blackness,” as a modern diasporic identity for black American and South African workers from the late 1960s through the late 1970s. The content of the newsletters and documents are particularly scrutinized. The workers’ actions were shaped by the need to end police brutality and harassment, obtain basic human and civic services, a proper and relevant education, and produce new leadership to obtain true freedom through equality. Their application of ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ emanated from a desire to chart a new course in the global Black Liberation struggle as they translated it, create unity amongst those who were negatively racialized, and for survival and dignity. They expressed their notions of ‘Black” and ‘Blackness’ by placing high emphasis upon PanAfricanism and internationalism, anti-imperialism, a desire for a proper (liberatory) education rooted in Pan-Africanism and Diaspority, community control and institution building, and approaches towards coalitions and coalition politics. This chapter is subdivided by those themes following a description of the origins of the BAWU and the LRBW. ORIGINS OF THE BLACK ALLIED WORKERS’ UNION AND THE LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS Given the growing strength of the independent trade union movement in South Africa, one of the three African National Congress “factions” argued to abandon armed struggle and to devote its resources entirely to strengthening the labor movement.449 The contribution of the Soweto uprisings to the labor movement was also the creation of a “new spirit of militancy and a younger generation of factory floor leaders.” Unions were “able to capitalise on [a new] mood of defiance which was spreading through the main urban centres” and revived the “consumer 449 Harmel, “From the ICU to the Wiehahn Commission,” 12. 142 boycott.”450 Much of the new thrust of defiance was Black Consciousness affiliated or influenced. The most important base of independent trade unions in the 1970s was in the manufacturing, commerce, finance, construction, transport, and communications sectors. These were the highest paid sectors of the economy, yet between them employed only 23% of the African labor force. Impoverished agricultural workers remained unorganized, and capital heavily monitored and regimented mining workers under the compound system.451 In 1971, the real wages for black mineworkers were less than they were in 1911 and labor organization seemed a doomed proposition.452 By the late 1960s, the prior generation’s independent labor movement, the South African Congress of Trade Unions’ (SACTU) leaders were in exile or in prison. A few of the remaining leaders tried to organize workers clandestinely and/or resurfaced in new, radical black organizations. It is at this point, the late 1960s and early 1970s, that new labor organizations created a new leadership corps. That new leadership included Black Consciousness proponents.453 By 1970, the independent trade union movement was far weaker than in the 1960s.454 In the 1970s, the erratic nature of black labor strikes and independent worker organization coalesced into a “vital and vibrant” black labor movement.455 In 1972, the apartheid opposition “hiatus” ended with the re-emergence of the labor movement.456 The re-emergence of labor militancy during the 1970s was in part a result of the changing position of black workers in the labor structure. 457 The need for skilled black labor Phil Bonner, “Overview: Strikes and the Independent Trade Unions,” in The Independent Trade Unions, 19741984: Ten Years of the South African Labour Bulletin, ed. Johann Maree (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), 58. 451 Freedom from Below: The Struggle for Trade Unions in South Africa (Durban: Skotaville Publishers, 1989), 194196; V.L. Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa Volume II: Dissent and Repression in the Mine Compounds, 1948-1982 (UK: Merlin Press, 1992), 274-276 and 307-308. 452 Apartheid; Thompson, A History of South Africa, 195; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 92-94. 453 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 197-198. 454 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 197. 455 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 197. 456 Harmel, “From the ICU to the Wiehahn Commission,” 11. 457 Harmel, “From the ICU to the Wiehahn Commission,” 12. 450 143 once again increased, although wages did not. This structural change amplified black labor power.458 Low wages, inflation, unsatisfactory working conditions, and the lack of an outlet for expressing grievances fueled the strikes of the 1970s.459 Unions first re-organized in Durban.460 Durban and Cape Town, South Africa’s largest port cities, both had a major dockworker strike in 1971.461 1973 witnessed a major escalation of work stoppages with demands for higher wages, improved working conditions, and for the ultimate demise of apartheid. 462 Starting with the January 9, 1973, 2000-person wage strike at Coronation Brick and Tile in Durban by amaZulu migrant workers, between January and February of 1973, over 100,000 black workers embarked on a series of spontaneous wildcat strikes in the Durban area and Pinetown.463 Some of the key features of the 1973 Durban strikes were first, the sheer magnitude of strike action. Between January 9 and the end of March that year, 146 companies in the Durban area experienced strikes involving over sixty thousand workers. Second, the lack of visible leadership was astonishing. This absence of obvious leadership prevented capital from identifying strike leaders. To prevent repression the strikes were organized on the shop floor, and the workers refused to elect ‘visible representatives.’ This approach perplexed managers. Third, some whites and the English-speaking press were sympathetic to the strikes and strikers. Lastly, Harmel, “From the ICU to the Wiehahn Commission,” 12. Pearl-Alice Marsh, “A Redistribution of Power in Industrial Relations,” in Black Labor Unions in South Africa: Report of a Symposium, eds. Anthony G. Freeman and Diane B. Bendahmane (Washington D.C.: Foreign Service Institute U.S. Department of State, 1987), 25. 460 Marsh, “A Redistribution of Power in Industrial Relations,” 27. 461 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 201. 462 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 212-213. 463 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 202; Cohen, Peasants and Proletarians, 401; Ben Temkin, Buthelezi: A Biography (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 144; Eddie Webster and Glenn Adler, “Introduction: Consolidating Democracy in a Liberalizing World,” in Trade Unions and Democratization in South Africa, 1985-97, eds. Glenn Adler and Eddie Webster (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 1; John Saul and Stephen Gelb, The Crisis in South Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), 159-161; Cohen, Peasants and Proletarians, 401409. 458 459 144 the police were remarkably restrained.464 The 1973 Durban strikes were not a “bolt from the blue,” but were an extension of a longer more dynamic process that began in the 1940s, and more directly in the 1960s.465 During these strikes black unions re-emerged and played a central role in “forging” negotiations with management.466 These strikes were the pivotal events around which black worker organization was constituted. These disruptions were effective and common and grew larger. For example, there were 374 strikes by 57,656 black workers and demonstrated black worker power and South Africa’s vulnerability to it.467 The Durban strikes significantly increased the amount of militant African workers in “working-class” organizations.468 Due to the crippling effect of labor strikes, the government decided to recognize and allow black labor unions in South Africa. This was because of the effectiveness of spontaneous wildcat strikes, which appeared leaderless. During these strikes, the government could not identify anyone to negotiate with, nor to target for governmental repression and punishment.469 The strikes in the textile industry were extremely, if not the most, militant, with women playing a key role. The Durban area strikes continued into 1974 at an unprecedented rate.470 By 1974, capital began calling for recognition of black trade unions because wildcat strikes terrified management.471 Harry Oppenhiemer and his Anglo-American Corporation was one such entity that called for the recognition of independent trade unions, and Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 202-203; Godsell, “The Regulation of Labour,” 212-213. Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 190. 466 Marsh, “A Redistribution of Power in Industrial Relations,” 27. 467 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 190; Davidson, Modern Africa, 168-9; Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 46; Thompson, A History of South Africa, 212; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 92; Cohen, Peasants and Proletarians, 401-409. 468 Johann Maree, “Overview: Emergence of the Independent Trade Union Movement,” in The Independent Trade Unions, 1974-1984: Ten Years of the South African Labour Bulletin, ed. Johann Maree (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), 2. 469 Marsh, “A Redistribution of Power in Industrial Relations,” 27-28; Cohen, Peasants and Proletarians, 401-409. 470 Cohen, Peasants and Proletarians, 408-410. 471 Marsh, “A Redistribution of Power in Industrial Relations,” 27-28; Cohen, Peasants and Proletarians, 401-409. 464 465 145 in fact the company had raised the monthly wages of black miners by seventy percent. 472 The Durban strikes resulted in wage increases, even in firms that did not experience strikes. The most significant result was the renewed sense of solidarity and the realization of their power by black workers throughout South Africa.473 Because of the fear of state repression, the first working-class organizations to emerge in the 1970s were “bodies that seemed less challenging to the state and capital.”474 Examples of these seemingly less threatening bodies are the General Factory Workers’ Benefit Fund (GFWBF), the Urban Training Project (UTP), the Industrial Aid Society (IAS), and the Western Province Workers’ Advice Bureau (WPWAB). GFWBF, WPWAB and the IAS were founded by students who belonged to NUSAS established wages commissions and a few TUCSA dissidents and former SACTU organizers. The founding of the UTP was in part, by ex-TUCSA representatives, and the UTP had exclusively African leadership.475 The UTP was the forerunner and later educational arm of the Consultative Committee of Black Trade Unions, the precursor to Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA). Although the UTP opposed white leadership, it did have TUCSA tendencies such as a traditional and apolitical approach to trade unionism.476 It is important to note that spontaneous workers’ organization and actions, such as strikes, jump-started the formation of unions, not vice versa.477 For example, in 1972, black bus drivers organized a large strike in Johannesburg, South Africa’s industrial “heartland.” The Transport and Allied Workers Union, a ‘UTP union,’ grew out of this strike.478 The wildfire of spontaneous worker strikes and general labor militancy, as always, also attracted traditional outsiders and 472 Freedom from Below, 167; Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa Volume I1, 326-327. Cohen, Peasants and Proletarians, 417. 474 Maree, “Overview: Emergence of the Independent Trade Union Movement,” 2. 475 Maree, “Overview: Emergence of the Independent Trade Union Movement,” 2-3. 476 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 200. 477 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 201-202. 478 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 201. 473 146 newcomers to black labor organization. As stated, the Black Consciousness movement was the leading political force in South Africa during the 1970s. In mid-1972, the South African Student Organization (SASO), the flagship Black Consciousness organization, started a black workers’ project. SASO aspired to create a national trade union and revitalized the movement.479 Black Consciousness unions demanded a black, and not white, union leadership of the labor movement. These unions combined labor and Black Consciousness objectives. One of these unions was the Black Allied Workers’ Union, officially founded in 1973. In 1971, there were “very few” members of the Black Peoples’ Convention (BPC) who had any formal or significant connection or experience with “trade unionism.” BPC member Drake Koka, on the other hand, had been previously “employed as an organizer” by the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) led Union Training Project (UTP) and “described himself as a trade unionist.” BPC was very interested in organizing workers under the banner of Black Consciousness and in June of the same year, Koka and members of the BPC announced the formation of the Sales and Allied Workers Union (SAWU), which aimed at organizing “salesmen and hawkers.” The historical record is unclear about what “services they offered their members, but they did not seem to make much progress.” The existence of SAWU excited many within the Black Consciousness Movement and formation of a Black Consciousness adhering national trade union was initiated at the third Annual Conference of the South African Student Organization (SASO) in July of 1972. Koka, convened a meeting under the auspices of SAWU and launched a national “general” workers’ union in August of the same year. This body, known as the Black Allied Workers’ Union (BAWU) was “henceforth to be the centre of BPC trade union activity until Koka was banned some seven months later.” BAWU promptly opened 479 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 198. 147 offices in Johannesburg and Durban.480 BAWU was initially led by Black Consciousness activists and adherents with close ties to SASO and the BPC. Black Consciousness leader Saths Cooper was instrumental in establishing BAWU’s Durban offices and its bank account. Espousing a take on labor consistent with Black Consciousness thought, BAWU followed a Blacks-only policy and averred that its primary concern was the plight, struggle, and condition of African workers. Black Consciousness unions, like BAWU, demanded a black, and not white, union leadership of the labor movement. BAWU faced tremendous obstacles and resistance from the traditional trade union movement because BAWU was very confrontational to other groups such as: The Trade Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA) and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). TUCSA was deemed disqualified for coalition because their decision to expel black workers from its ranks in 1969 and its white liberal-led paternalism; and SACTU because it adhered to non-racialism. BAWU also birthed the South African Allied Workers’ Union (SAAWU) and the General and Allied Workers’ Union (GAWU) as well.481 Figure 9: Cover of SASO Newsletter 2, no. 4 (Sept./Oct. 1972) C.R.D. Halisi, “The Political Role of the Trade Union Movement,” 42; Hirson, Year of Fire, Year of Ash, 128. Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 198; Maree, “Overview: Emergence of the Independent Trade Union Movement,” 3; Johann Maree, “SAAWU in the East London area: 1979-1981,” in The Independent Trade Unions, 1974-1984: Ten Years of the South African Labour Bulletin, ed. Johann Maree (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), 32; Freedom from Below, 175. 480 481 148 In Detroit, the Black Power adhering independent trade-union, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), emerged specifically out of the “failure of the white labor movement to address itself to the racist work conditions and to the general inhumane conditions of black people.”482 LRBW, which was founded 1969 in Detroit, Michigan, united several radical unions in Detroit’s auto industry and other industrial sectors, but drawing primarily from the Revolutionary Union Movement (RUM). The genesis of RUM is the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM). According to General G. Baker, DRUM grew out of the 1967 Detroit rebellion. Under Marshall Law, the curfews established during the rebellion by the U.S. Army, the Michigan National Guard, Michigan State Police, and Detroit Police prevented Detroit residents from leaving their home for any reason unless they were credentialed autoworkers heading to the industrial plantations for their shifts. That reality made many Black autoworkers; such as General G. Baker a co-founder of DRUM and LRBW, recognize the invaluable, yet precarious position of the black worker; leading to an uncertain and unique Black workers’ consciousness. The repression and excessive violence of the U.S. Army, the Michigan National Guard, Michigan State Police, and Detroit Police during the rebellion led to a deepseated hatred of the police by Black Detroiters, compounded by a pre-existing history of brutality and excessive violence by the Detroit Police Department prior to the rebellion.483 “Working conditions,” “long hours,” and “constant harassment by white racist management” led to a “near uprising” by Black workers in the auto industry of Detroit. In the “couple of years” leading up, Black workers were “resorting to acts of individual violence to “League of Revolutionary Black Workers,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 8, October 1970, 10. 483 “General Baker Speaks! Rebellion! Detroit 1967,” published by Matthew Siegried, published June 2, 2015; “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg. 482 149 vent off their dire plight.”484 Although Black workers were the overwhelming majority (70%) at Dodge Main; formally named the Hamtramck Assembly Plant, a division of the Chrysler Corporation, located in Hamtramck, Michigan a neighboring suburb of Detroit; “all” of the “superintendents,” 90% of the “rest of management,” and 90% of “skilled tradesmen and apprentices” were white. This was a generational and familial issue as well since there were cases of three generations of Black families (“grandfather, father and son”) working on the assembly lines together. Black workers were confined to the assembly lines, as illuminated by the reality that even if advancement was possible, it was into the positions of “reliefmen and repairmen jobs,” which were “still tied directly to the assembly lines.” Black workers were enthralled, “day in and day out 8 to 12 hours a day to a massive unending assembly line” that “one never sees the end of [or] the beginning of but merely fits into a slot and stays there, sweating and bleeding, running and stumbling, trying to maintain a steadily increasing pace.” Coupled with “the severity of the working conditions” were the “white racist and bigoted” foremen’s panache for “harassing, insulting, driving and snapping the whip over the backs of the thousands” of Black workers who, due to limited opportunities, had to work in these industrial plantations to “eke out an existence.”485 Those conditions, exacerbated by the “doublefaced, backstabbing” of the UAW, drove Black workers to a “near uprising state.” The UAW with its “bogus bureaucracy” was “unable” and/or “unwilling to press forward the demands and aspirations” of Black workers.486 “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1. “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1; “Interview with General Baker: 08 Baker DRUM Begins,” published by Elizabeth Formin, posted June 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWB_6vyAwDk; Luke Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement States History, Purpose and Aims,” The South End vol. 27, no. 62, Thursday, January 23, 1969, 2. 486 “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1. 484 485 150 A four-day long wild cat strike beginning May 2, 1968, at the Dodge Main Plant led to an organized Black worker rebellion. This wildcat strike at the plant was the first since 1954.487 The primary and universal cause of the May 2nd wild cat strike was a “speed up of production lines” increasing the Dodge Dart and Dodge Valiant assembly lines’ production from “49 to 56 units per hour in the short period of a week.” Under these conditions, all workers were working the same number of hours at 56 units per hour as at 49, in other terms, producing 15% more units without any increase in pay. Dodge Main was producing nearly 60 cars per hour, already a blistering pace, yet on May 2 management and the supervisory class sped the assembly line up; as a result, the workers “just got angry and walked out.”488 How the Dodge Main assembly lines were engineered and operated, every worker had their own slot to complete their assignments. When someone got behind they would move back infringing on their neighboring workers’ slot. When someone was behind and infringing on their neighbor’s slot, it was called being in the “hole” by the workers. During this speed-up, everyone was in the “hole,” Black and white.489 About 50-100 (half Black and half white) afternoon shift workers walked out at lunch that Thursday night, which is pay night for afternoon shift; eventually enough people stayed out that it halted production. The afternoon strikers stayed outside and kept the day shift out; the wild cat strike lasted four days. Many Black workers “locked arms,” blocking the gate and refusing to grant entry to other workers. At the “sound of the whistle,” a signal to return to their assignments, 30-50 workers (half Black half white) began “marching around the gate.” The wild “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1; Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 20. 488 “Interview with General Baker: 07 Baker Wildcat Strikes,” published by Elizabeth Formin, posted June 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaUMCHSgnUY&t=3s; “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg; “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1. 489 “DRUM & Black Revolution: My Life with General Baker 2012,” published by The CMI at OU, posted June 9, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yda7suptjF4. 487 151 cat strike halted production. In a wild cat strike, workers show up at their usual start time, but did “not know if they are going in, so they kinda hang out.” Due to the size of Dodge Main (7 stories high, stretching from Joseph Campau Street to Mt. Elliott Ave.) and severity of the work, workers on one side of the facility did not know what happened on the other side. As pointed out by Baker, the workers on the other side “didn’t know why we walked out on our side…the plant was huge.” But because of the nature of wild cat strikes, the opportunity for workers from different departments that normally did not have physical interaction or any fundamental communication between them, were able to meet and talk with one another. It is out of that interaction that a core group emerged out of the strike as a de facto Black worker leadership. The Chrysler Corporation released the rest of the workers temporarily dispersing the pickets, however, the strikers reassembled at 5 a.m. the following morning to “assure that the day shift also would not work.” The picket lines swelled after day shift workers joined the strike, effectively extending the strike to Saturday also.490 During the strike, Walter Reuther, UAW officials, and the UAW leadership were in Atlantic City, attending a union convention where Reuther is quoted as asserting at a caucus meeting that he would not “give” Black workers “command posts in the Union just because they were Black.” The union clearly communicated that it did not understand, or care to understand, that it was black workers’ ‘blackness’ that was “precisely” the “reason,” that they worked the “hardest, dirtiest jobs” and received the “brunt of harassment and discipline by the white racist plant managers.” Nor did the UAW consider allowing Black workers to elect their leaders to “Interview with General Baker: 07 Baker Wildcat Strikes,” published by Elizabeth Formin, posted June 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaUMCHSgnUY&t=3s; “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg; “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1; “Interview with General Baker: 06 Baker Origins of DRUM,” published by Elizabeth Formin, posted June 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCRrsiN68Vw. 490 152 those posts. Without logistical or practical support from the UAW, the strikers returned to work Monday, May 6, 1968. Upon returning to work, a group of workers were summoned to the superintendent’s office and informed that via photographs, they had been “tentatively identified as participants” in the strike, which constituted a “violation of the agreement between Chrysler Corp. and the U.A.W.,” and now “subject to discipline up to and including discharge, pending further investigation.”491 General Baker had been officially fired on May 5, 1968, by the Chrysler Corporation because of his perceived leadership in the initial wild cat strike, his community organizing and agitation work, and his prior criminal record. His firing was used as an impetus to form DRUM. Black workers were not part of a union caucus inside the “shop,” in fact a significant amount of the Black workers DRUM organized had never been to an UAW meeting before. Those workers did not consider themselves an “independent caucus within” the UAW because of their critical analysis of the UAW’s “constitution and legality” nor were they the “bounds” that DRUM “operated out of;” simply, DRUM viewed itself as a separate entity engaging the UAW from without.492 From Baker and his comrades’ perspective, his firing nullified the possibility of the issues that caused the wild cat strike from of ever being truly understood, discussed and addressed by the UAW or capital.493 “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1. “Interview with General Baker: 08 Baker Origins of DRUM,” published by Elizabeth Formin, posted June 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCRrsiN68Vw; General Baker, “Open Letter to Chrysler Corp,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 2; “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg. 493 “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg; General Baker, “Open Letter to Chrysler Corp,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 2. 491 492 153 On Saturday, May 11 the Chrysler Corporation once again summoned the identified strikers, however this time they presented disciplinary actions taken against them: 5 were fired, 10 were suspended 30 days, and “many others,” (about 20) received five days, three days, one day and warnings.” The entire next week disciplining continued, with the number fired reaching 8 (including General Baker, Bennie Tate and 5 white women), for example. The UAW Local 3 remained “silent,” with Local 3 President Edward Dornanski and Vice-President Charlie Brooks finally emerging on May 16th, still doing “nothing.” Even the disciplining of the identified strikers was racialized; with 3 of the 5 workers ultimately fired, 9 of the 10 given 30 day suspensions, and etc.; being black.494 The 5 workers who returned back to work were all white women.495 During the duration of the wildcat strikes, black workers did not “address themselves to the U.A.W.’s Grievance Procedure,” instead, they theorized that their “only method of pressing for their demands” was to “strike and to negotiate at the gates of industry” themselves.496 The “constant repressive conditions” gave birth to a “new revolutionary organization” of Black workers at Dodge Main, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), which was received with “overwhelming support” from the rest of the Black workers at that industrial plantation. Many Black workers at the Dodge Main Plant agreed with DRUM and its assertions that “the UAW bureaucracy [was] just as guilty, its hands [were] just as bloody as the white racists management” of Chrysler Corporation, and that “if skilled trades [could] negotiate “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1; “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg. 495 “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg. 496 “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1. 494 154 directly and hold a separate contract, then black workers [had] more justification for moving independent of the UAW” and establishing the independent union of DRUM. Simply put, DRUM’s position was that Black workers had “been put into a position to have white racist bureaucratic controlled organizations address the grievances” of black workers, thus DRUM averred that there should not have been, nor should be, any “middlemen” (i.e. the UAW), in the black workers’ “struggle against white racist corporation owners and operations.”497 Despite ending without any direct material or policy gains, the Dodge Main May 1968 wild cat strike was a “Black strike” at a majority “Black plant,” leaving the Chrysler Corporation in a conundrum unsure of what to do; as Baker stated, they didn’t “know how to play it.”498 DRUM was a shop-floor based factory organization. It was initially a “core of 9” black workers, out of a total of 10,000 workers (which 70% were black) at Dodge Main, who met every Sunday. At these meetings, they would determine the content of their 8 ½ x 14 inch folded in-half paper weekly leaflet. Luckily some of the core of 9’s connections with Wayne State University’s Inner City Voice newspaper granted access to printing equipment, a mimeograph machine, typesetting equipment, paper and ink. Due to the distortion of information and limited communication throughout the industrial plantation, DRUM used the weekly leaflet as its organizing organ. They printed and took the leaflet to the plant every Tuesday and agitated weekly. Management would send security guards out to photograph the distributors of the leaflets. As General Baker and Bennie Tate had already been dismissed for the initial wild cat “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 22. “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg. 497 498 155 strike, the pair took up the task of distributing the leaflets. Soon after, a group of high school students, the BSUF, approached the DRUM and volunteered to distribute the leaflets.499 Black workers started demanding less talk and more action from DRUM. DRUM “figured [it] had to do something.” In July of 1968 DRUM used their then 9 printed and distributed leaflets to critically analyze the issues raised and developed a list demands. DRUM took about 300 Black workers to the UAW Local 3 Executive Board meeting and read off the list of demands. The Executive Board rebuked them and arguments ensued. One of the DRUM members yelled out, “well we gone strike the plant in the morning!” Everybody stormed out and DRUM was “stuck now,” meaning they were forced to strike. DRUM then went back to a coffee shop owned and frequented by African Americans on Grand River called the Ghetto Coffee Shop where Congo drum and chess players frequently played their drums and chess matches into the late night. The next morning, DRUM gathered all the people out of the coffee shop and took them out to the picket lines with striking Black workers, including Congo drum players playing their drums. They positioned the Congo drummers and pickets up at the gates of the industrial plantation and commenced playing the drums and agitating. Within a half-hour, they had “three to four thousand Black workers out on the street.” In response, the Chrysler Corporation placed Michigan State Trooper snipers with high powered rifles on the roof of the plant, Hamtramck Police converged from the North while Detroit Police converged from the south, effectively putting the strikers in a “pincher move.”500 “Interview with General Baker: 08 Baker DRUM Begins,” published by Elizabeth Formin, posted June 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWB_6vyAwDk; “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1; Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 2; “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg. 500 “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg; “Interview with General Baker: 08 Baker DRUM Begins,” 499 156 The Police had “double edged axe handles” and the Black workers drinking in the alley had “broken beer bottles.” Sensing an unwinnable physical fight, DRUM packed strikers in cars and set up picket lines at the Chrysler Corporation World Headquarters and the Solidarity House (UAW International Headquarters) as a strategy to deescalate a violent confrontation at Dodge Main proper. Once law enforcement was overextended, they went back to Dodge Main and reestablished picket lines there for four days. The Chrysler Corporation then obtained a legal injunction against DRUM, forcing a return to work, to which DRUM complied to a week after the strike began. After the strike, the Chrysler Corporation unprecedentedly declared the strike to be “extra-legal” and not “illegal.”501 It is important to note that life was so hard at Dodge Main that many Black workers would congregate in an alley behind the strip mall across the street from Dodge Main for an additional 8-hours drinking beer and alcohol to unwind, then return to their boarding house or home to sleep just to repeat the cycle again. According to several of my uncles and my father, this practice was often called by the community an unofficial “double shift” and the alley dwellers were often referred to as “alley Niggas.” DRUM would use these core of Black workers as a base for outside agitation, “they were always there to listen” they always ready at a drop of a hat to take some kinda action because they were feeling the brunt of this activity more than anyone else, they were expressing through liquor.”502 published by Elizabeth Formin, posted June 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWB_6vyAwDk; “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 1; Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 2. 501 “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg. 502 “Interview with General Baker: 06 Baker Origins of DRUM,” published by Elizabeth Formin, posted June 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCRrsiN68Vw. 157 By September 1968, DRUM had developed into a “fairly large organization whose form was for the most part amorphous.” A couple weeks later, in mid-September, DRUM’s membership unanimously adopted a “constitution and theoretical structure.”503 This formalization proved significant as commitment from Black workers and DRUM membership immediately “increased noticeably” while DRUM’s publication spread and was widely accepted by Black workers at other industrial plantations.504 Because of the wild cat strikes and the founding and endeavors of DRUM, Black workers from other auto manufacturing facilities in the Detroit metropolis wanted a RUM local.505 DRUM’s position was, “we can’t handle your stuff at your plant. But here’s what we got. We got ink, a mimeograph machine, we can print leaflets, we got paper, a group of high school kids that will help pass your stuff out. But [DRUM] is not going inside your plant. You write it, you type it, we’ll help you run it and we’ll get it out.” For Baker et al, it was important to establish that each local had to be organically shop-based and led, they “could not accept the editorial policy for someone else’s plant” while they were still “catching hell” as Black workers at Dodge Main.506 Black workers caught the message and embraced the challenge. DRUM affiliated locals began to spring up in other industrial plantations very quickly. The locals were: Eldon Revolutionary Union Movement (ELRUM) at Chrysler’s Eldon Ave. Gear and Axle, Ford Revolutionary Union Movement (FRUM) at the Ford River Rouge Plant, Jefferson Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement (JARUM) at Chrysler’s Jefferson Ave. Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 2. Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 2; “Black Workers Uprising,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 22. 505 “Interview with General Baker: 08 Baker DRUM Begins,” published by Elizabeth Formin, posted June 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWB_6vyAwDk. 506 “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg. 503 504 158 Assembly Plant, Mack Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement (MARUM) at Chrysler’s Mack Ave. Stamping Plant, Cadillac Revolutionary Union Movement (CADRUM) at Cadillac’s Fleetwood/Fisher Body Plant, Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement II (DRUM II) at Chrysler’s Dodge Truck/Warren Truck Assembly Plant, and Mound Engine Revolutionary Union Movement (MERUM) at Chrysler’s Mound Road Engine Plant. There were also smaller RUM auxiliaries at Chevrolet’s Livonia Factory, Ford’s Wixom Plant, Chrysler’s Huber foundry, Chrysler’s Winfield foundry, Chrysler’s Forge Plant, and Chrysler’s Plymouth Assembly Plant.507 The first was ELRUM, who after about 9 weeks of passing out leaflets, called for a oneday strike in November of 1968; as opposed to an open-ended uncontrollable strike as were the nature of DRUM’s 1968 wild cat strikes. In response, the Chrysler Corporation fired 25 Black workers.508 ELRUM was officially founded on November 10, 1968, and quickly had a “larger membership than DRUM.”509 The ELRUM strike had an unintended consequence. In an attempt at state-aided repression, the Chrysler Corporation used its injunction against Baker’s activities to use his probation from a prior arrest for carrying concealed weapons in an automobile in the 1966 mini uprising at Kercheval Street and Pennsylvania Street with co-defendant Glanton Dowdell, against him and have his probation violated forcing him to serve 5 years in prison. DRUM member and its legal counsel, Attorney Ken Cockerel, called Baker at the DRUM office after the afternoon shift and informed Baker that “Chrysler got the judge out of bed, and they’re having court at midnight and they want you.” Cockerel advised Baker to “not be all that 507 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 70-71. “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg; League of Revolutionary Black Workers, “Calling Black Workers,” Spear: The Voice of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 1, no. 2. 509 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 70. 508 159 available.” Baker decided to go underground living in hiding for a year in Cleveland.510 Dowdell would eventually go into exile in Sweden.511 Figure 10: The DRUM Slate for the March 18-19, 1970, UAW Local 3 elections. Ron March (far left in glasses), Gerald Wooten (bottom far right in glasses), Raymond Johnson (middle center of second row behind Griffith), Betty Griffith (bottom right to the immediate left of Wooten), Charles Roberts (top left between March and Gaitor), Grover Douglas (far right second from top), Carlos Williams (bottom between Jackson and Griffith), Don Gaitor (top center with beret), Don Jackson (bottom left), Lafayette Philyaw (second row far right above Wooten). 512 After Baker’s return in 1969, and considering how to manage, aid, and direct the various RUM affiliates; General Baker, Kenneth Cockrel, Mike Hamlin, Luke Tripp, John Watson, John Williams, and Chuck Wooten met and founded the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) in Detroit, Michigan.513 LRBW “emerged specifically, out of the failure of the white “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg. 511 “A profile of Glanton Dowdell (at Home and Abroad),” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 6. 512 “Election Special,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 3, March 16-April 1, 1970, 1. 513 Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit I Do Mind Dying, 70. 510 160 labor movement to address itself to the racist work conditions and to the general inhumane conditions of black people.”514 As a regional confederation of RUMs, LRBW united several radical unions in Detroit’s auto industry and other industrial sectors. LRBW’s aims were to establish a unified and organized political apparatus to realize political power and articulate the specific concerns of Black workers. Although active for only a brief time, LRBW was a noteworthy organization in an era of ever-increasing African American workers’ radicalism, militancy and political action. Figure 11: A young Luke Tripp (second from the left in the front row) and General Gordon Baker (immediately to Tripp’s right).515 “League of Revolutionary Black Workers,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 8, October 1970, 10. 515 Provided courtesy of Dr. Luke Tripp. 514 161 PAN-AFRICANISM AND INTERNATIONALISM Both the LRBW and BAWU both acted from the understanding that “the infinite frustrations in which all Black and Colonized workers are daily drowned as they attempt to earn the meager substances,” was the basis of a global reality that united them in “one common distortion, a variation common to all Third World and poor workers,” that Black and colonized workers were “powerless to deal directly with the authors, the initial sources of industrial atrocities – the industrialists.” Moreover, “standing between them and justice” were “the sellout Trade Unions” that colluded with the state and capital to suppress and oppress them.516 As articulated by the LRBW, “colonized people around the world” needed to immediately “UNITE… to destroy racism, capitalism and imperialism or PERISH.”517 Due to the pernicious nature of apartheid, including all its draconian laws, Black labor could not make overtly political or revolutionary stances in South Africa. The BAWU did not overtly express any inclinations towards Pan-Africanism, internationalism, or anti-imperialism; leaving the previously discussed views of the South African Students’ Organization (SASO) as the gauge of BAWU’s views on these matters. The LRBW did not have such constraints and Black workers in both republics established and held direct links between their presumably separate struggles. With the temporary crushing of the independent trade union movement, white South Africa seemed optimistic about its future. Despite minor international grumblings, like the U.N. vote for the condemnation of apartheid, business swiftly picked up where it had left off. Powerful interests in the U.S. and Western Europe were reluctant to agitate the South African status quo. With the U.S. and Western Europe’s Cold War angle, they were prone to exaggerate “Salute to a Black Patriot,” Rank and File vol. 2, no. 4, March 24, 1971, 1. “Guinea Under Attack!,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 15. 516 517 162 the communist threat, and with their business outlook, they tended to imagine that economic growth was certain to grind down apartheid. The U.S. military brass at the Pentagon deemed it essential to have access to South Africa’s strategic minerals. As a producer of uranium, South Africa became a member of the International Atomic Energy Board and joined the U.S. in nuclear research. In fact, an American company built South Africa’s first nuclear reactor. In December of 1960, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) entered into an agreement with South Africa to set up three tracking systems in the country.518 The Inner City Voice was keen to assert that “Racist honky Barry Goldwater,” the 1964 anti-civil rights Republican presidential candidate, had recently visited “white dominated Southern Rhodesia,” and “showed his outright fascism by endorsing the neo-Nazi regime of Ian Smith;” South Africa’s northern border neighbor, vital ally, and fellow white supremacist settler colony.519 The investments of the American corporation “based” in South Africa, the Anglo-American Company, totaled millions of dollars at this time. The price of gold sky-rocketed, giving South Africa more revenues to finance its apartheid state. The Anglo-American Corporation was the premier financial force in southern Africa.520 Strong, sustained and normal trade relations with its second largest trading partner, the U.S., signaled the strength of the South African economy.521 A great is example is U.S. Steel, who still supplies steel to the automotive industry, purchasing 15% interest in the South African firm, African Triangle-Mining, after extending the company a $7.5 million loan.522 518 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 218-9; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 122-124. “Goldwater Endorse Rhodesia,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 19. 520 Larry Bowman, “South Africa’s Southern Strategy and Its Implications for the U.S,” International Affairs 47, no.1 (January 1971): 25. 521 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 219; Baker, The United States and South Africa, xi. 522 “Africa: U.S. Steel Invests in South Africa,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 2, no. 3, March/April 1970, 15; https://www.ussteel.com. 519 163 Foreign investments into the South African economy shifted from direct to indirect. Regarding the U.S. specifically in 1971, American investment in South Africa was nearly one billion dollars with a twenty percent annual return that was double the rate of return on U.S. investments throughout the rest of the world. This U.S. investment was eleven percent of South Africa’s total foreign investment; in addition, forty percent of all U.S. exports to Africa went to South Africa.523 The political climate under President Richard Nixon relaxed restrictions on trade with South Africa. The U.S. invested in critical areas in South Africa, such as computer technology, heavy capital goods, oil exploration, and the chemical industries. These investments provided South African access to technological aptitudes and advanced industrial methods that were not available anywhere else in the world.524 The reduction in U.S. and British aid to other countries in the region made southern African countries more dependent upon South Africa.525 Besides South Africa’s domestic production, the government imported military hardware and technology from Europe, the U.S., Israel, and Taiwan.526 The Ford Revolutionary Union Movement (FRUM), a LRBW local at the Ford River Rouge Plant in Detroit, identified directly with indigenous Africans in South Africa by asserting that white workers had their “freedom in industry to a degree, but we as blacks are like our brothers in South Africa.”527 American automobile corporations operated in South Africa, complicit in apartheid oppression. For example, as highlighted in the Inner City Voice, the Chrysler Corporation began opening industrial plantations in South Africa in 1965, “where black workers [made] 16 times less than the white workers on the line next to them.”528 The Inner City Bowman, “South Africa’s Southern Strategy and Its Implications for the U.S,” 27. Bowman, “South Africa’s Southern Strategy and Its Implications for the U.S,” 28, Baker, The United States and South Africa, xii. 525 Bowman, “South Africa’s Southern Strategy and Its Implications for the U.S,” 28. 526 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 200. 527 Ford Revolutionary Union Movement, “Other Groups,” Frum vol. 1, no. 4. 528 “Chrysler is Hell,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 8. 523 524 164 Voice, which according to its own subtitle had become the official “Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers,” was also keen to inform its readers that the US government was systematically and progressively increasing its military aid to South Africa, including “trucks manufactured by the big US automakers.”529 A South African example of the intertwined nature of black automotive global solidarity is when on October 23, 1979, the leader of a community organization, the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organization (PEBCO), Thozamile Botha, lost his non-union job at the Ford Motor Company factory. PEBCO subsequently appealed to the Ford workers’ black union for support in reinstating Thozamile Botha, but to no avail. The National Automobile and Allied Workers’ Union (NAAWU) dismissed the firing as a “non-union middle-class concern.” Some workers still boycotted in support of PEBCO and were angered by the union’s refusal to get involved in presumably “community affairs.” These disgruntled NAAWU members then left and formed the Motor Assemblers and Component Workers’ Union of South Africa (MACWUSA). The new union understood what it perceived to be the rightful role of unions in township politics.530 In Detroit, the Inner City Voice also reported on other unions opposed to their employers’ operations in South Africa such as the Polaroid Workers Revolutionary Movement (PWRM), a Black workers’ union inspired by DRUM and LRBW. The PWRM called for Polaroid to divest and cease operations in apartheid South Africa, as well as an international boycott of Polaroid products until the company pulled out of apartheid South Africa.531 Situations like the United “S. African Defense,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 2, no. 3, March/April 1970, 14. 530 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 216; FOSATU, FOSATU Worker News no. 3 (Durban: FOSATU, Feb. 1980), 1; Elizabeth Schmidt, The Sullivan Principles: Decoding Corporate Camouflage: A Report to the United Nations (United Nations Centre Against Apartheid, March 1980), 46-48; Saul and Gelb, 165; House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, “Labor Situation in South Africa: Testimony of Tomazile Botha,” 96th Congress, 2nd sess., 1980. 531 “Polaroid Apartheid,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 3, no. 2, April 1971, 13. 529 165 Mineworkers Union of America’s August 1974 refusal to off-load South African coal in Mobile, Alabama, were significant, signaling the rise in international black worker support for the South African black union movement.532 Despite propaganda and rhetoric emanating from the West, including the US, in South Africa multinational corporations (MNCs) adhered to apartheid in the work place. The Soweto fiasco also brought pressure to end that complacency. The increased pressure from the American anti-apartheid lobby forced cosmetic policy changes by American MNCs operating in South Africa. A great example is the introduction of the Sullivan Code, which demanded an end to that adherence. Dr. Leon Sullivan, an African American minister and board member of General Motors, developed the Sullivan Code to silence criticism from those who objected to American economic activity in apartheid South Africa and to direct those American corporations’ resources into measures that were designed to promote social and economic improvements for non-white South African workers. The code included a pledge not to practice apartheid policies in the work-place. In March of 1977, twelve U.S. MNCs signed the code, and by September of that same year, fifty-four U.S. MNCs had signed the document. Further, other nations drafted similar codes that their MNCs also signed.533 This move, despite its limited impact on the daily life of black South Africans, symbolized a great threat to South Africa and greatly concerned its government.534 The independent trade union movement and the anti-apartheid movement as a whole recognized that “the Sullivan principles were a compromise solution.”535 The reality was that by May of 1979 the Sullivan Code had lost momentum and support, even from African 532 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 206. Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 69; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 35-36. 534 Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 70. 535 Elizabeth Schmidt, The Sullivan Principles: Decoding Corporate Camouflage. A Report to the United Nations (United Nations, March 1980), 12. 533 166 American leaders, because it offered no real change.536 Black African labor continued to create “super profits” for corporations and individuals that invested in apartheid South Africa, while “American profiteers” reaped benefits from, not only the “cheap labour, but also the great consumer market” that black Africans represented in the South African economy.537 Pan-Africanism was critical to the LRBW’s endeavors to create a Black consciousness amongst black workers in Detroit. DRUM’s and the LBRW’s publications offered an important medium to establish and shape that consciousness. The Inner City Voice, a newspaper published by Wayne State University students with DRUM/LRBW founders John Watson, Mike Hamlin and Luke Tripp serving on its editorial board; published an essay by West Indian scholar C.L.R. James examining the ideologies of Pan-Africanist pioneers W. E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore, and Pan-Africanist theoretician Frantz Fanon.538 The Inner City Voice and DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, the publication of DRUM, used African iconography such as spears, drums, statutes, and art in their pages to make cultural connections between their readers and Africa.539 DRUM/LRBW theorized that the connections went beyond cultural, also extending to contemporary liberation struggles, with the implication being that their struggles as black 536 Schmidt, The Sullivan Principles: Decoding Corporate Camouflage, 14. “Africa: U.S. Steel Invests in South Africa,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 2, no. 3, March/April 1970, 15. 538 C.L.R. James, “Du Bois, Padmore & Fanon,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 13. 539 DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 1 no. 24, 4; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 1 no. 25, 2-3; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 1 no. 2, 1; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 5, 2-3; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 6, 4; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 9, 1; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 9, 4; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 10, 1; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 11, 1; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 14, 2-3; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 16, 5-6; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 17, 3; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 20, 2; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 25, 4; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 27, 2; Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 20; Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 9. 537 167 workers in Detroit were linked to a global struggle for liberation of all African descended peoples. To demonstrate this, the Inner City Voice published a map of independent African nations, independent states that were what they deemed the “vanguard of the African Revolution,” and those engaged in engaged in liberation struggles.540 The Inner City Voice also ran stories and articles that expressed support, solidarity, and admiration for the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), liberation fighters in Zimbabwe, Angolan leftist/revolutionary struggles, the “People’s War in Chad,” President Sekou Toure and the government of Guinea against attacks and aggression from Portugal, the revolutionary movement in Guinea-Bissau known as the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), and the Trinidadian leftist/revolutionary struggle.541 DRUM/LRBW also exalted diasporic PanAfricanism with their support of, and reporting on, Cuban-Congolese solidarity, support of Puerto Rican independence; and support, solidarity, and admiration of the Cuban Revolution, particularly of Che Guevara.542 Bringing their vision of Pan-Africanism full circle by intertwining the past and the present, they used drawings of traditional Zulu warriors with a “Africa’s Awakening,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 23. “FRELIMO Fights for Human Rights,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 19-20; “Guerrillas Growing Stronger in Zimbabwe,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 20; “Africa: The Angolan People’s War,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 2, no. 3, March/April 1970, 15; “Defoliant in Angola,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 3, no. 2, April 1971, 15; “People’s War in Chad,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 2, no. 8, October 1970, 18; “Guinea Under Attack!,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 15; “A Profile of P.A.I.G.C.,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 1618; “Revolt in Trinidad,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 6, June 1970, 4. 542 “Cuban Congolese Solidarity,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 27; “Armed Struggle in Puerto Rico,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 18; “Episodes from the Revolutionary War,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 25; “Episodes from the Revolutionary War,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 14; “Stage II – Building the Organizational Structure,” The South End: One Class-Conscious Worker is Worth 100 Students vol. 27, no. 62, Thursday, January 23, 1969, 9; “Stage II – Building the Organizational Structure,” The South End: One Class-Conscious Worker is Worth 100 Students vol. 27, no. 62, Thursday, January 23, 1969, 10. 540 541 168 spears and shields in attack postures and photographs of actual, contemporary African liberation fighters in uniforms and with guns.543 Linking their Pan-Africanism to non-African diasporic revolutionary struggles rooted in anti-colonialism was also essential to the development of a ‘Black’ consciousness amongst black workers in Detroit. The Inner City Voice published articles that informed their readers about, and supported, the Vietnamese anti-colonial struggle and Latin American leftist/revolutionary struggles; as well as articles that expressed support, solidarity, and admiration of the Chinese Revolution, Thai revolutionaries, and the Palestinian liberation movement.544 DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 23, 2; “Our Revolution is a Drop of Blood A Drop of Sweat and A Drop of Ink,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 3, no. 2, April 1971, 9. 544 “Vietnamese Patriot Interviewed,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 15; “Guatemala Gets Hot,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 15; “Unity Among Guatemalan Guerrillas,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 10; “Chairman Mao’s 2nd Historic Statement,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 15; “Thailand Revolutionaries Support Black Struggle,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 16; “More from Thailand,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 16; “Arab People – Governments = Struggle,” Inner City Voice: Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Worker vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 19. 543 169 Figure 12: Africa’s Awakening.545 The identifying of black workers in Detroit with American born Black radicals that embraced Pan-Africanism while operating on the international stage, or were embrace by international revolutionaries, was also integral to the development of a Black consciousness among those Black workers in Detroit. Due to his influence in Detroit and amongst Black Power adherents, DRUM/LRBW were keen to honor Malcolm X and promote February 21st as a 545 “Africa’s Awakening,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 23. 170 holiday dubbed ‘Malcolm X Day.’546 Moreover, DRUM/LRBW exhibited support for Robert F. Williams and published some of his writings.547 They also supported Angela Davis, George Jackson, the Soledad Brothers, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby James Hutton, and the entire Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (while also printing their 10-Point Program.548 ANTI-IMPERIALISM The LRBW positioned its struggle in the context of an anti-imperialist movement, in many ways speaking for Black and colonized workers around the world who could not have their grievances heard by American multi-national corporations and intelligence apparatuses operating in their locales, as well as international labor confederations attempting to exert their will over the indigenous labor movements engulfed in bitter battles against government and capital. To those ends, the Inner City Voice asserted that the “white labor aristocracy [collaborated] with the U.S. imperialist government in its aggressive wars, its CIA subversion and [supported] its political line.” They furthered, that the “white labor aristocracy also [colluded] with monopoly 546 DRUM, DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2, no. 2, 4; DRUM, DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2, no. 3, 3; DRUM, DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2, no. 3, 8; DRUM, DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2, no. 6, 2-3; DRUM, DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2, no. 25, 4; “In Memory of Malcolm,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 6, June 1970, 14. 547 “The Crusader,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 18; “The Crusader,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 15; Reggie Williams, “Battle with Courts,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 3, March/April 1970, 6; DRUM, DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2, no. 27, 3. 548 “Free Angela,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 14; “Free Angela Davis Now!,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 2, April 1971, 8; “Free the Soledad Brothers,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 2, April 1971, 8; “SNCC-Panthers Unite on Huey’s Birthday,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 17; “Black Leaders Rap at Huey Newton Rally,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 17; “Demonstrate Against the Frameups of Rap Brown, Glanton Dowdell, Max Stanford, Bill Epton, Huey Newton,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 26; “Stage II – Building the Organizational Structure,” The South End: One Class-Conscious Worker is Worth 100 Students vol. 27, no. 62, Thursday, January 23, 1969, 9; “Victims of the Other War,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 11; “What We Want Now! What We Believe,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 21; DRUM, DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 1, no. 10, 2; DRUM, DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 1, no. 25, 2-4; DRUM, DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2, no. 2, 3; DRUM, DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2, no. 3, 3. 171 corporations at home to allow speed-up and unsafe working conditions, inflation that [outstripped] any wage gains,” leaving “most workers unorganized,” while supporting the “brutal subordination” of Black workers. For the LRBW, American capitalism was based upon the “extraction of surplus value” from Black workers in the U.S. and the “extraction of natural resources and lucrative markets and excessive surplus value internationally through the mechanism of international imperialism.”549The immediate representatives of the white labor aristocracy for the LRBW was the UAW, and the LRBW demanded that the UAW ended its “collusion with the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and all other white racist spy [organizations].”550 They also demanded that the UAW immediately use its “political and strike powers to call a general strike” to force: a) An end to the Vietnam war and withdrawal, of all American troops. b) An immediate end to all taxes imposed upon workers. c) Increases in profit and industrial property taxes to make up the difference. d) Reallocation of all Federal monies spent on defense to meet the pressing needs of the Black and poor populations of America.”551 Consistent with the LRBW’s anti-imperialist stance and belief that the UAW was in league with the CIA, the Inner City Voice published a report on CIA involvement in Chile, condemned U.S. military action in Cambodia and the use of foreign food aid to advance its imperialist goals.552 The LRBW’s Pan-Africanist, internationalist, and anti-imperialist leanings logically led them to have a strong opposition to the US military draft during the Vietnam “League of Revolutionary Black Workers,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 8, October 1970, 10. 550 “Pragmatic Demands,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 8, October 1970, 13-14. 551 “Pragmatic Demands,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 8, October 1970, 13-14. 552 “CIA in Chile,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 20; “American Treachery in Cambodia,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 6, June 1970, 3; “Food for Peace or Another Small Step for U.S. Imperialism,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 9. 549 172 conflict. In its publications, DRUM asserted that the “Black Man Fights in Vietnam for the White Man’s Right to Lynch Him” while framing the conflict as “GENOCIDE Against Vietnamese by Fascist War” by a system that simultaneously committed “GENOCIDE Against Afro Americans by Racist Law!”553 The LRBW viewed the Draft Board as producing “Cannon Fodder,” honored a “Black Soldier [who] Won’t Go,” provided instructions on “How to Stay Out of the Army,” highlighted a “Rigid Class System in the U.S. Army,” while proclaiming support for heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali’s abstention from the draft as a conscientious objector.554 PROPER (LIBERATORY) EDUCATION ROOTED IN PAN-AFRICANISM AND DIASPORITY, COMMUNITY CONTROL AND INSTITUTION BUILDING The LRBW advocated for a formal and informal Proper (Liberatory) Education rooted in Pan-Africanism and Diaspority, Community Control and Institution Building. To those ends, the LRBW invested an inordinate amount of time to type of education for its members.555 The LRBW advocated for an “Education for Liberation” on all levels.556 The LRBW experienced increased membership and growth in interestees, and the content discussed in the PanAfricanism and Internationalism sections of this chapter elucidate key aspects of their curriculum that were designed to foster a particular global ‘Black’ identity; as well as proscribed texts their “GENOCIDE Against Vietnamese by Fascist War – GENOCIDE Against Afro Americans by Racist Law!,” DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2, no. 27, 3. 554 “Draft Board for Cannon Fodder,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 3; “Black Soldier Won’t Go,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 4; “How to Stay Out of the Army,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 14; “Rigid Class System in the U.S. Army,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 7; “Support for Ali,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 6, March 1968, 24. 555 “Roundtable Discussion: Dagenham, Drum and the League of Black Revolutionary Workers,” published by PermanentCultureNow, conducted December 10, 2011, posted November 29, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRjcvtuwaWA. 556 “Black Students in ‘71,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 5. 553 173 readers were instructed to read, such as book review for George Breitman’s The Last Year of Malcolm X text.557 The LRBW hoped that 1971 would “find workers in the schools, uniting with their children to obtain a quality education in their own schools, and students at the plants, helping to educate and organize the workers, and lending support to their struggle for the elimination of racism, capitalism and imperialism.”558 In demonstration of their views concerning education, the LRBW opposed the February 10, 1970, unanimous decision by the Highland Park Board of Education to block February 21st becoming a “legal school holiday” commemorated as “Malcolm X Day in Highland Park.” The LRBW asserted that, Black children needed and wanted a hero. Since “Malcolm did so much in educating Black people,” and if the school board was “in tune with the needs of their students,” it would have complied and “given the students that day off . . . in honor of Malcolm. The state requires that the students have a given number of days however, it does not say what days.”559 This matter, and general racism, led the LRBW to support a recall of the Highland Park Board of Education.560 The issues in Highland Park extended beyond K-12 education; as exemplified by DRUM/LRBW support for a Highland Park College student protest and “community rebellion” in response to the “dismissal of Mr. E.C. Cooper, a black instructor.”561 The LRBW also identified what the perceived to be the failure of integration in Detroit Public Schools. They asserted that the “year of 1970 is gone, leaving in its “Book Review,” Inner City Voice: Detroit’s Community Newspaper vol. 1, no. 8, June 1968, 22; George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary (New York: Pathfinder, 1967). 558 “Black Students in ‘71,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 5. 559 “H.P. Strikes!!,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 6, June 1970, 10. 560 “Highland Park Recall,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 8, October 1970, 2. 561 “H.P. Rebels!,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 6, June 1970, 16. 557 174 wake the evidence of extensive struggle within the schools of Detroit and its suburbs.” They instructed Detroit Black students to “look back at 1970 and see the struggles that took place in the quest for quality education.” They pointed to the reality that Black students at Henry Ford were being attacked by “racists on the wild.”562 The LRBW described: White savage racist parents that were reacting to their white sons and daughters having to go to school with “Niggers,” by the boundaries laid down in the first integrationist plan.563 Because of the integration plan, white “parents, along with the Ku Klux Klan moved rapidly and recalled four members of the Detroit Board of Education.”564 The response of white racists to integration also led the LRBW to support a Black student strike at River Rouge High School.565 Consistent with their opposition for school integration, the LRBW supported the Parents and Students for Community Control (PASCC) and community control of schools.566 In order to undermine the push for community control of schools, the Detroit School Board presented a “Decentralization” program that the LRBW viewed as a “fraud.”567 For the LRBW the Detroit School Board’s “decentralization” plan was a trick to give the appearance of community control but really “gerrymandered regions by including at least one very strong white voter area with one not-quite-so-strong Black one in such a way that the white voters outnumber the Black ones.”568 “Black Students in ‘71,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 5. 563 “Black Students in ‘71,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 5. 564 “Black Students in ‘71,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 5. 565 “Black Students Strike River Rouge High,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 3, March/April 1970, 3. 566 “Integration Not Realistic,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 6, June 1970, 12-13. 567 “Decentralization,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 2 and 6. 568 “The Struggle Over School Decentralization,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 2, no. 3, March/April 1970, 3. 562 175 LRBW asserted that the Black Student United Front (BSUF), along with the “masses of Black students” would prove without “a doubt” that 1971 would be the “year of the heroic Black Student.” The LRBW also asserted that the BSUF would prove “beyond a doubt that the struggle of the Black student” is “the same as the Black worker’s struggle;” a struggle that was “revolutionary in essence.”569 The LRBW concluded with a statement of support, proclamation and directive by stating that: “Our Heroes are YOU…The masses of Black Students involved in the struggle…B.S.U.F.”570 COALITIONS AND COALITION POLITICS WHITE UNIONS – THEIR PATRONIZING, PATERNALISM AND RACISM BLACK ALLIED WORKERS’ UNION Considering the history of the labor movement in South Africa, domination and the fear of domination by whites was a very serious concern for BAWU. Although BAWU welcomed “co-operation with any good-willed and well-intentioned organizations or individuals” it “forcefully” rejected domination from whites. They opined that because of the historic exclusion by governmental and union policies, of indigenous South Africans from trade unionism, whites’ “historical experience,” “skill and know-how” combined “with their material resources” would “automatically” lead to their domination of BAWU if their independent black union merged with whites. A merger would be an “entrenching” of patronization “unpalatable to Black Workers.” Although BAWU welcomed unconditional “material assistance” they organized around total control of not just the union’s day-to-day shop-floor activities, but of its philosophy, direction, actions, leadership, and membership; or as BAWU framed it: complete “self-determination.” “Black Students in ‘71,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 1, February 1971, 5. 570 “Crisis in The Schools,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 2, April 1971, 2. 569 176 BAWU also posited that Black workers should “take the initiative” and “draw their own agenda, structure, and formula” for liberation. Black workers must organize themselves and “not be incited” by whites into action of any kind be it merging with “multiracial or parallel” unions or forming unions “of their own pattern.”571 Consistent with its “strong black consciousness line,” BAWU “criticized the paternalism of the white-led Trade Union Council of South Africa” (TUCSA) and consistently advocated for Black South Africans to “reject white leadership.”572 The not only white-led, but presumably liberal and “English-speaking” TUCSA was endeavoring to “attract black unions into affiliation on a separate and subordinate basis,” an approach supported by the British TUC and the American AFL-CIO.573 BAWU asserted that it was “not for TUCSA or American or British or Chinese trade Union leaders” to tell BAWU “what to do in order to meet a situation that is so peculiar” to black South Africans.574 The prior approved and official South African trade union confederations, all of which excluded indigenous South Africans, proved unworthy for coalition in consideration of BAWU’s Black Consciousness ideology. “TUCSA’s twisting and turning around the question of admitting African workers” led to a “very disparaging” BAWU view of TUCSA’s “record.” In addition, BAWU’s Black Consciousness “leanings” distanced it from the South African Council of Trade Unions (SACTU) “tradition, which welcomed white “Briefings,” Review of African Political Economy vol. 3 no. 7, Special Issue on South Africa (Sep. - Dec. 1976), 115. 572 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 133; BAWU, “Call to Organise and Form Black Trade Unions in South Africa,” Statement by the Black Allied Workers’ Union, Johannesburg circa 1973 in Thomas G. Karis and Gail M. Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: a documentary history of African politics in South Africa, 1882-1990; volume 5: Nadir to Resurgence, 1964-1979 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 607-610. 573 Sam C. Nolutshungu, Changing South Africa: Political Considerations (Manchester [England]: Manchester University Press, 1982), 188. 574 “Briefings,” Review of African Political Economy vol. 3 no. 7, Special Issue on South Africa (Sep. - Dec., 1976), 115. 571 177 involvement and even white leadership” in black majority unions.”575 For BAWU, whites should use their “skill and material power” to enable “Black initiative to achieve its final goal” by offering “skilled or qualified personnel to assist in the training of Black Workers” at the invitation of Black workers and unions themselves, as well as to provide “financial assistance with no dictates on how and on what these monies should be spent.” BAWU emphasized that whites needed to focus their energies to “evangelise their lot into accepting a Black worker as a human being deserving all respect due to him.”576 Beyond sheer domination, SASO and BAWU feared that coalitions with the exclusionary trade union confederations and their liberal reformist leanings could lead to “economic concessions and some organisational and legal reforms” fall “far short of extending equal rights to Blacks,” which had the potential to “divide and depoliticise” Black workers, or “at least render some of the urban working class resistant to radical unionisation.”577 LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS For black workers, the sameness in the way the company and the union responded to the crisis edified the presumed oppressive collusion between the two to institutions dominating black workers’ lives. An example being that, “several weeks” after DRUM’s May 1968 wild cat strike that shut down Dodge Main, the UAW and the Chrysler Corporation were both still “reacting” to DRUM’s “action.” From the perspective of DRUM, both “the racist institutions” employed the same tactic of “confusing the public” by pointing the finger at one another. The UAW told the public that DRUM was only angry with the Chrysler Corporation and not the UAW, and the Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 198; BAWU, “Call to Organise and Form Black Trade Unions in South Africa,” Statement by the Black Allied Workers’ Union, Johannesburg circa 1973 in Thomas G. Karis and Gail M. Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: a documentary history of African politics in South Africa, 1882-1990; volume 5: Nadir to Resurgence, 1964-1979 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 607-610. 576 “Briefings,” 115. 577 Nolutshungu, Changing South Africa: Political Considerations, 188. 575 178 Chrysler Corporation depicted the source of the anger as manipulation by radicals attempting to divide black and white workers.578 The UAW’s duplicitous response engendered a perception of partnership between the two based upon white supremacy and any fissure between them centered around the ability, or lack thereof, to control black workers. DRUM believed that the fundamental problem facing black workers was racism – not just economic exploitation from both capital and organized labor. Therefore, the purpose of DRUM was to unite Black workers to combat racism. They observed that white workers enjoyed the “benefit” from racism beginning “in the employment office.” Black workers were completely aware of the practice that white workers were assigned to what was “considered the easy areas” but if a white worker was “unfortunate enough to get sent to the body shop,” for example, the foreman would assign that white worker “the easiest job” he could find; even if it meant “moving a black worker.” This racism was practiced by the company in the employment office and the UAW on the shop-floor. Black workers accepted that “disciplinary action” was racialized and administered uneven, with white workers “given all the breaks.” It was common practice in advancement and promotion for white workers to also be “given all the breaks” while Black workers were “given all kinds of reasons” to explain why they were not “qualified for the job, while a white worker, qualified or not,” would “get it.” DRUM concluded that either the UAW was “too weak to fight racism, or it condone[d] racism, for it [was] a fact that racism [ran] rampant throughout the auto industry.” DRUM assessed the situation as: The pitting of black against white starts with the power structure, for it is the power structure that controls the jobs, and the job you get is based on the color of your skin, not your background. If you are white you are in. If you are black and you want to get in, then you must first sell your manhood because they don’t want black men. They only want black boys. So who is pitting black against white?579 578 579 Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 1. Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 1. 179 To highlight UAW complacency, DRUM noted that the May 1968 wild cat strikes were the “first time black workers held a non-playing real protest demonstration” yet they found “no Reuther and no [UAW] dues to support our cause.” Instead, Walter Reuther, “the great white father…denounced DRUM.” To add insult to injury, Reuther’s UAW “cronies, George Merrilli and a host of their bureaucratic flunkies” made the “outlandish” and from DRUM’s perspective, resoundingly false “claim that racism didn’t exist at Hamtramck Assembly or Local #3.”580 FRUM, a local of the LBRW at Ford Motor Company’s Rouge Plant, asserted that under the conditions of the time, any white person operating within “the framework of the racist UAW” still had to “work according to their by-laws,” yet “black people [established their] own structure and laws” under the independent FRUM because “white people…could not possibly know of” Black workers’ immediate “wants and needs.” FRUM continued, that Black workers did not “need…white people to move” on their behalf but instead preferred if white workers acted because they were “oppressed too.” From FRUM’s perspective, they did not “see that type of action” from white workers or the UAW and sarcastically instructed white liberal and reformist workers and activists to “keep up the nibbling and we’ll do the chopping” of revolution as white workers had the luxury for reformism and gradualism because they had “their freedom in industry to a degree” but Black workers did not. In fact, that white UAW members who served as foremen were racists and the simple replacement of one white foreman with another, replacing one white UAW Local 600 official with another, or replacing the UAW with another white union would not suffice. FRUM proclaimed that they would “NOT ALLOW ANOTHER RACIST” to “fill other racists’ shoes” because the reality was at the time that as “one step out, and one step in.” FRUM concluded that the UAW Local 600’s “D.E.P. Solidarity Group and the United 580 Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 2. 180 Action Caucus” were “not for black people” and did not “address themselves to black people’s needs,” therefore FRUM would “contest all other groups [working under the] guise of freedom and justice to suit their own needs and purposes.”581 REGISTER, MERGE OR NOT Registration can be viewed literally and as a metaphor, regarding the BAWU and LRBW respectively. Registration, in relation to this study, represents integration into union, corporate and governmental labor structures (i.e. coalitions and coalition politics). It meant Black worker submission to non-black leadership and rule, thus, the complete ignoring of racialized and racial problems in the labor system and the broader societies of both republics. The implications for BAWU was registering with the white supremacist government and operating within the white supremacist established government and capital sanctioned parameters designed to control, suppress, and oppress African workers. The LRBW, on the other hand, would be faced with integrating into the UAW and reforming it, as opposed to operating as an independent African American union of most autoworkers in industrial plantations. They too would operate within white supremacist established government, capital, and UAW sanctioned parameters designed to control, suppress, and oppress African American workers. The BAWU and the LBRW would both develop responses through the lens of Black Consciousness to establish, assert, and preserve Black Power. BLACK ALLIED WORKERS’ UNION In 1977, the Republic of South Africa’s government appointed the Wiehahn Commission of Inquiry. The goal of the Commission was to suggest labor reforms in the wake of the failed attempts to address the consequences of 1973 strikes.582 Between the 1973 strikes and the 1977 581 582 Ford Revolutionary Union Movement, “Other Groups,” Frum vol. 1, no. 4. Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 211; Greenberg, “The Wiehahn Commission,” 15. 181 Wiehahn Commission, some employers began collective bargaining with independent unregistered black unions. The first instance was the July 1974 agreement between Smith and Nephew (a British multinational corporation) and the National Union of Textile Workers (NUTW). The NUTW was a rival of the TUCSA affiliated Textile Workers Industrial Union (TWIU).583 In 1977, the Minister of Labour, Fanie Botha, set up a fourteen-man commission of inquiry headed by Professor Nic Wiehahn, to examine labor legislation, and is commonly called the Wiehahn Commission.584 It published its report in 1979, with a host of recommendations for the government. In 1977, the government had also appointed a commission to investigate manpower utilization. Dr. Piet Riekert headed the one-man commission, commonly called the Riekert Commission.585 The government concessions after the Soweto uprisings were not geared towards the grievances of black communities (education and student issues) but towards the workers, more specifically the unions. The government endeavored to isolate the economy from political conflict. The reform strategy had two significant dimensions. One, the reforms were aimed at identifying and extending privileges to particular classes and social echelons among the black populace, including facets of the so-called working-class. Two, the government’s reforms were an attempt to “depoliticize” organized workers by integrating them into a “relatively privileged relationship with employers” via the unions. The Wiehahn Commission report served as the blueprint for the reform campaign.586 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 211; Dudley Horner, “The Western Province Workers’ Advice Bureau,” in The Independent Trade Unions, 1974-1984: Ten Years of the South African Labour Bulletin, ed. Johann Maree (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), 23; Freedom from Below, 177; Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa Volume I1, 412 - 414. 584 Godsell, “The Regulation of Labour,” 213-214. 585 Godsell, “The Regulation of Labour,” 214. 586 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 210-211. 583 182 Black South Africans reject both the specifics of the [Wiehahn] Commission’s findings and the new legislation and the entire reformist approach to apartheid they are supposed to embody.587 The Wiehahn Commission Report proposed that African workers be included in the definition of “employee” and be allowed to join and form registered unions. It also recommended the prohibition of these black registered unions from political activity. The aim of the proposal was to control the growth of the union movement, insulating unions from the “political world” of the townships, as well as shielding the government from labor issues and worker activism.588 Prime Minister Pieter Willem Botha insisted that these “rights” be extended only to non-migrant workers and residents of the Bantustans. He also insisted upon racially segregated unions.589 In the face of growing militancy, the government accepted the Wiehahn Commission’s recommendations and legally recognized black labor unions. This was an attempt to tame and co-opt the black unions; thus, recognition came with many restrictions.590 On May 5, 1979, the South African government published an official ‘White Paper’ on the Commission’s recommendations, and shortly after that, the South African Parliament passed the Industrial Conciliation Amendment Act.591 Although the government heeded the Wiehahn Commission’s recommendation to overturn the 1924 Industrial Conciliation Act, it rejected the “notion that migrant workers” could be a part of the unions. The new system, in the eyes of the government, was to be reserved to a 587 D. Michael Shafer, Wiehahn report and the Industrial Conciliation Act: A New attack on the Trade Union Movement in South Africa (United Nations’ American Committee on Africa, 1979), 2. 588 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 212; Elizabeth Schmidt, The Sullivan Principles: Decoding Corporate Camouflage: A Report to the United Nations (United Nations Centre Against Apartheid, March 1980), 63. 589 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 212-213. 590 Barbara Harmel, “From the ICU to the Wiehahn Commission,” in Black Labor Unions in South Africa: Report of a Symposium, eds. Anthony G. Freeman and Diane B. Bendahmane (Washington D.C.: Foreign Service Institute U.S. Department of State, 1987), 12. 591 Shafer, Wiehahn report and the Industrial Conciliation Act, 1. 183 privileged minority of African workers, the settled urban workers.592 The exclusion of migrant workers was to create an environment in which “weak parallel unions [would] be incorporated into the official system and others [would] face difficulties.”593 The apartheid state lacked the capacity to tightly enforce the exclusion of migrant workers and blacks heavily ignored the exclusion order. The government also naively thought that the white-controlled unions and federations would dominate representation and not the independent black unions and aligned with TUCSA.594 Despite this initial stance, because of the public outcry by black unions and workers of all persuasions, the government immediately repealed the exclusion of migrant workers.595 It is very important to remember that the 1973-1974 Durban strikes, as well as the Soweto uprisings of 1976, forced the government to recognize black unions. Between 1971 and 1978, the number of strikes increased to record highs that are graphically shown below.596 YEAR 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 # of Strikes 22 16 246 189 119 105 38 51 # of Workers 2,456 3,374 67,338 37,724 11,874 15,735 7,866 8,478 Table 1: Strike Data 1971-1978 Greenberg, “The Wiehahn Commission,” 19; The Wiehahn Commission Report, 1979, para. 3.58.1-3. Op-ed, 143. 594 Greenberg, “The Wiehahn Commission,” 20. 595 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 212-213. 596 Greenberg, “The Wiehahn Commission,” 20; Shafer, Wiehahn report and the Industrial Conciliation Act, 4. SEE TABLE 1. 592 593 184 Scholar Pearl-Alice Marsh commented that the 1979 repeal of the black union ban was evidence of the “redistribution of power in labor relations” in South Africa, indicating that blacks were effectively exercising their labor and political strength.597 A major theme of the Wiehahn Commission Report was that labor law and labor practice were “drifting apart.”598 The Wiehahn Commission was “concerned at the increase in size and importance of unregistered (African) unions.”599 The Commission and the government felt that they “could undermine the statutory collective bargaining system” and that independent unregistered unions needed to be under the control/protection of the law.600 To an important and substantial degree, “the purpose of the commission, in broad outline, [was] the extension of control over unregistered unions, in a unitary system which [could] be sold abroad.”601 According to the Commission’s report, the government was to become the “architect, designer, guide and initiator” of intervention in the “tripartite” (the state, workers’ organizations and employers’ organizations) labor system.602 The Commission also stated that the government’s role should be the “preservation and promotion of industrial peace.”603 The aim of the follow-up National Manpower Commission, or Riekert Commission, was to preserve that ‘industrial peace.’604 The Riekert Commission was to “advise the government on all labour matters, including labour policy and administration,” based upon the language of the Wiehahn Marsh, “A Redistribution of Power in Industrial Relations,” 21. Op-ed, 138. 599 Op-ed, 138. 600 Op-ed, 139. 601 Op-ed, 139. It should also be noted that the Wiehahn Commission report condemned the Sullivan Code as outside interference. 602 The Wiehahn Commission Report, 1979, para. 2.32. 603 The Wiehahn Commission Report, 1979, para. 2.22. 604 Op-ed, 139-140. 597 598 185 Commission Report, the attached government White Paper, and the Industrial Conciliation Amendment Act.605 The Wiehahn Commission Report keenly observed that “non-labour organizations [regarded] these [unregistered] unions as vehicles for change, using them also in matters other than those of a purely labour character.”606 The commission never intended for a “large numbers of black workers should join registered unions, [or] that all unregistered unions should achieve registration.”607 Despite the rhetoric, the Wiehahn Commission Report’s recommendations inhibited “freedom of association” as outlined by the International Labor Organization’s 87th Convention resolution in 1948.608 Although the Wiehahn Commission was also concerned with addressing the skilled labor shortage in South Africa, it did very little to alleviate it.609 The United Nations Special Committee and all major international trade union confederations condemned and rejected the conclusions of the Wiehahn Commission Report and the Industrial Conciliation Amendment Act as measures to divide and suppress the black trade union movement in South Africa. The South African government presented the Industrial Conciliation Amendment Act as an example of its intention to reform apartheid labor policies. The reality was, in the words of United Nations official D. Michael Shafer, that the ‘reforms’ “[marked] the start of a new and sophisticated effort to control and, if possible, to break the black trade union movement” and that they were “cosmetic de-racialization and concessions to a tiny majority of blacks combined with substantial tightening of restrictions on most Africans.”610 The reality was, under those reforms, “effective reservation of skilled jobs for whites [would] 605 Op-ed, 140; The Wiehahn Commission Report, 1979, para. 2.45.7; South African government White Paper, 1979, para. 5.2.3; Industrial Conciliation Amendment Act, clause 2; Elizabeth Schmidt, 64. 606 The Wiehahn Commission Report, 1979, para. 1.10. 607 Op-ed, 142. 608 Op-ed, 144-148. 609 Op-ed, 149-150. 610 Shafer, Wiehahn report and the Industrial Conciliation Act, cover page. 186 continue to exist, although…no longer [by] overtly racist means” and “unions [would] be stripped of their important political function in the black community.”611 This was especially true of the mines.612 The independent trade union movement overwhelmingly concluded that it would not accept these reforms at the “expense of the black community and the black labour force as a whole” because they were “offered as a means of maintaining the fundamental elements of the apartheid system.”613 As it was eloquently stated in The Guardian, an English news periodical, “[we] who are black do not want more improvements, a mere shifting of the same furniture about the room. We want fundamental change.”614 A month after the publishing of the Wiehahn Commission Report and the White Paper, as well as the passing of the Industrial Conciliation Amendment Act, the delegates at a major trade union conference focused on campaigning for sanctions against South Africa.615 The Riekert Commission recommended the maintenance of influx control, and recommended the abolition of pass laws, although the government did not heed that counsel.616 Overall, however, the Riekert Commission endeavored to further divide settled workers and migrants who lived in hostels.617 Despite the efforts of the state after the Wiehahn Commission published its report, African unions rapidly expanded. Many new unions emerged and some became very prominent.618 As noted before, in 1982, two major federations of unions emerged, 611 Shafer, Wiehahn report and the Industrial Conciliation Act, 2; Elizabeth Schmidt, 63. Godsell, “The Regulation of Labour,” 214. 613 Shafer, Wiehahn report and the Industrial Conciliation Act, 2. 614 The Guardian, May 16, 1979. 615 Anti-Apartheid Movement, Anti-Apartheid Movement Annual Report on Activities and Developments, October 1978 – September 1979 (1979), 16. 616 Godsell, “The Regulation of Labour,” 225-229. 617 John Saul and Stephen Gelb, The Crisis in South Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), 169. 618 Maree, “Overview: Emergence of the Independent Trade Union Movement,” 7. 612 187 Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) and CUSA.619 FOSATU, founded in 1979, was the strongest federation, had very strong locals and local organization, and emphasized non-racialism.620 FOSATU represented unions that organized along industrial lines, emphasizing shop stewards and the “position of the union in the workplace.”621 At its founding FOSATU had forty-five thousand members and its strongholds were in Natal’s textile industry, the Eastern Cape’s auto industry; and with the largest, strongest, and most militant affiliated union in the Transvaal, the Metal and Allied Workers’ Union (MAWU).622 FOSATU’s strength in Natal was due to an important history, the Natal region was a particularly strong site of laborrelated student activism as well as a region with a strong SACTU tradition.623 FOSATU built upon the previous era of SACTU and student activism and unrest. CUSA, founded in 1980, was a federation of regional unions with a paid-up membership of thirty thousand members. CUSA’s strength was also in the Transvaal and its principal affiliates were unions that operated in the transport sector.624 A rift between FOSATU and CUSA arouse from CUSA’s Black Consciousness influenced emphasis on black union leadership and FOSATU’s contrary emphasis on non-racial leadership, as well as geographical differences.625 The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is also an important union whose genesis was during this era of expansion. CUSA started NUM in 1982, and by 1984 NUM had over Wilmont James, “Recent changes in the Black labor Movement,” in Black Labor Unions in South Africa: Report of a Symposium, eds. Anthony G. Freeman and Diane B. Bendahmane (Washington D.C.: Foreign Service Institute U.S. Department of State, 1987), 49. 620 Jeremy Baskin, “Growth of a New Worker Organ – the Germiston Shop Stewards’ Council,” in The Independent Trade Unions, 1974-1984: Ten Years of the South African Labour Bulletin, ed. Johann Maree (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), 47; Isisebenzi, no. 1 (July 1979); Saul and Gelb, The Crisis in South Africa, 191-192; Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 217. 621 James, “Recent changes in the Black labor Movement,” 49. 622 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 217. 623 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 200. 624 James, “Recent changes in the Black Labor Movement,” 49; Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 200 and 217-218. 625 Karis and Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 217-218. 619 188 110,000 members with twenty-nine recognized agreements with capital firms.626 During this period, the South African Allied Workers’ Union (SAAWU), a progeny of BAWU, moved to East London and utilized the region’s long tradition of black political resistance. The region was very strongly anti-Bantustan ‘independence,’ which pushed that perspective upon SAAWU.627 Further, SAAWU too was involved in several strikes in 1981 and made significant gains by establishing agreements with a few firms.628 Consistent with its Black Consciousness roots, SAAWU rejected registration, supported community organizations and politics and was the more overtly political of all the independent trade unions.629 LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS DRUM, the LRBW’s first and most famous local, encountered a very important “strategy question” concerning whether they should “participate in UAW politics” or not. This challenge was completely unexpected and arose because of the “sudden death” of a UAW Local 3 trustee, creating a “vacant post which compelled the [UAW] to call a special election” leaving DRUM “in a quandary” with two opposing stances: for participation and against participation. The case against participation in the UAW elections was that DRUM “resolutely opposed” the UAW, participation would clearly be “compromising” while opening the door to “opportunism” in a “campaign which they felt they couldn’t win.” The counter position was that a candidate in the election “would serve to popularize the real leadership of DRUM” thus, winning the election was not the goal but instead a “demonstration of DRUM power and black solidarity.” Pragmatic out comes, some argued, was that the DRUM campaign would elevate the “consciousness” of Black workers while “strengthening” the Revolutionary Union Movement’s expansion efforts. Maree, “Overview: Emergence of the Independent Trade Union Movement,” 7; Freedom from Below, 194-196. Maree, “Overview: Emergence of the Independent Trade Union Movement,” 7. 628 Maree, “SAAWU in the East London area: 1979 – 1981,” 33. 629 “SAAWU in the East London area: 1979 – 1981,” 35-39. 626 627 189 Although “participation” was the path chosen and a campaign was launched, it was a choice of which revolutionary path would DRUM take; as demonstrated by their election platform: 1. The complete accountability to the black majority of the entire membership. 2. All union decisions will coincide directly with he wishes of that majority. 3. Advocating a revolutionary change in the UAW (including a referendum vote and revive the grievance procedure.) 4. Public denouncement of the racial practices within the UAW, Hamtramck Assembly and the entire community. 5. A refusal to be dictated to by the international staff of the UAW. 6. Total involvement in policy by the workers as opposed to dictatorship by the executive board.630 DRUM “advocated” for a “complete political change” in the position of Black workers at Dodge Main. DRUM believed the election to “be the beginning of the complete political takeover” of UAW Local 3. DRUM didn’t want to place its faith in any candidate who was not a member of DRUM; so, Ron March one of the co-founders of DRUM, was chosen to run for trustee in the September 26, 1968 special election.631 Ron March’s campaign revealed “corruption” in UAW Local 3 and exposed the “highway-robbery going on continuously” in the UAW in general and Local 3 specifically while revealing the “nature of the relationship between the UAW, the city of Hamtramck and Chrysler.”632 The UAW was taking Local 3 membership dues and underwriting the Hamtramck police and fire department budgets.633 DRUM understood and articulated that “before any money leaves” Local 3, the Trustee “must sign for it.” DRUM asserted that “money has been taken out for causes” that were not approved, scrutinized, nor accountable to most of the Local 3 membership; and that with “three Trustees and the entire Local officers” had a “voice and a vote Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 2-3. Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 2-3. 632 Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 3. 633 “Talking with General Baker: Revolutionary Detroit Auto Worker,” conducted Feb. 15, 2014 at the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, published by Mike Siviwe Elliott, posted April 23, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxsgktn_Igg. 630 631 190 on the Executive Board they can overrule the executive members (7 total) and take the money legally.”634 The prospect of the conflict of interest of the unethical loans frightened the Chrysler Corporation, the UAW and the Hamtramck Police Department leadership leading to severe repression of March’s campaign. DRUM asserted that “never before had there even been an election in which the Hamtramck Police Department has moved to openly harass, hamper and completely frustrate the efforts” of Black workers as in the special election. At 5:00 A. M. the morning of the special election, when trucks and cars with Ron March campaign posters on them arrived at Dodge Main to ferry workers to and from the union hall to cast their ballots, the cops immediately began to stop them and give out tickets. DRUM interpreted this action as a “delaying tactic used by the cops attempting to frustrate [DRUM’s campaign] efforts.”635 Over the course of the election, Black workers were constantly harassed by the Hamtramck Police without any other cars and trucks supporting other candidates being touched. Starting at the beginning of the week “Chrysler Corporation stooges were seen tearing own leaflets and posters supporting Ron March and leaving all of the rest of the campaign literature up.” The Hamtramck Police were also put on a “special detail to rip down DRUM posters up and down Joseph Campau and even in the alleys behind the bars.” Black workers then “stormed” the Union Hall to confront the UAW Local 3 officers, even in the face of black workers’ anger the union officials did not provide any explanation for the actions of the Hamtramck police or representatives of the Chrysler Corporation. Despite the “harassment from the Chrysler Corporation, the UAW and the police,” Ron March and DRUM emerged victorious. According to the “honkies who controlled the election committee,” March received 563 votes more than any 634 635 Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 3. Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 3. 191 of the rest of the candidates. Notwithstanding such a large and resounding victory, March was forced to have a run-off election against Joe Elliot, who finished second with a total of 521 votes. For DRUM, it was “obvious” that since the Chrysler Corporation, the UAW and the Hamtramck Police Department were all “conspiring” to defeat DRUM, then there was “definitely cheating” going on at the polls.636 At about 6:15 P. M. the “fascist Polish pigs” at the Hamtramck Police Department received the word that even with their “outright racist tactics” that Ron March had won. The Hamtramck Police Department responded by returning to the bars on Jos Campau and Clay and “wantonly beat” Black workers with “double edged ax handles and spraying them with the deadly mace.” The police then “stormed through George’s Bar beating and dragging” Black workers out of the bar arresting them “on trumped up charges.” At this point, a group of about “50 black workers” headed to the Hamtramck Police Department headquarters to “demand an explanation” for the brutal attack and to “clamor for the release” of the arrested Black workers. The Hamtramck Police “forced” the group of Black workers away from Hamtramck Police Department headquarters.637 The Black workers then “retreated” to the Union Hall to “further discuss the matter” amongst themselves. Once in the Union Hall however, the Mayor of Hamtramck and the Police Commissioner of Hamtramck; who DRUM described as “TWO of the most notorious Polish pigs that have ever stalked the face of the Earth,” entered the Union Hall under the pretext of offering an explanation. Their entrance was a “set up” as the notion that the Mayor and Police Commissioner were “supposedly in the Union Hall unprotected […] with 50 enraged and angered” Black workers would justify a fierce police raid. A UAW “official” and “notorious 636 637 Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 3. Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 3. 192 racist,” dubbed “Cannon Ball” in DRUM literature, “ran outside and led a police charge into the Union Hall” in which the “Polish Pigs entered the Union Hall” once again “spraying mace and swinging axe handles.” According to LRBW co-founder Luke Tripp, the police “smiled as they sprayed mace in our black brothers’ faces” during the “unwarranted and inhumane” attack. Although the Union Hall was supposed to be a meeting place for “all Local 3 members” and not a “training ground for fascist pigs of the Police Department;” the UAW “allowed” the raid and attack to happen.638 As stated, a run-off election was mandated by the UAW. The run-off election between March and Elliott occurred on October 3, 1968 at Dodge Main for trustee of UAW Local 3; although, “overt brutality was less prevalent,” one African American South End reporter was accosted and another, who was a white man, had his film confiscated by Local 3’s “security force known as the Flying Squadron.” Due to “questionable procedures by the union bureaucrats,” and the UAW Local 3’s leaderships’ “mobilization of retired workers” who didn’t have to pay union dues but had the right to vote in “any union election.” Those retired workers, most of whom were “white racists,” inevitably voted the way the “Reuther machine” told them to vote. Regardless of March’s loss, the election was still a “significant victory” for Black workers who contended that the UAW locals were “inherently undemocratic,” and in the face of “overwhelming support of the workers,” the UAW bureaucracy could not be “broken through peaceful, democratic methods.” The election granted thousands of Black workers “practical experience in a reform movement,” leading them to assert that reform was “impossible,” and therefore “rapidly” joined the “revolutionary caucuses being set up by DRUM,” which in 1969 were organized across corporations and industrial plantations under the LRBW banner.639 638 639 Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 3. Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 3-4. 193 CONCLUSION This chapter examined how black workers in the United States in South Africa used the new ‘Black’ identity to challenge white capital and the white labor aristocracy. Despite key differences, such as black workers in the United States having official mainstream union membership, while black workers in South Africa were legally barred from such privileges, a group consciousness rooted in a ‘Black’ identity and ‘Blackness’ gained tremendous momentum among many black workers. This momentum occasioned a fevered opposition to the use of the labor process as a tool to further white domination resulting in a radical Black labor movement in both republics articulating a congruent philosophy. Despite the variations in each republics’ political economy and racial projects, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) and Black Allied Workers’ Union (BAWU) both faced pre-existing white structures and domination, racism in and from the white led labor unions, and racism on the shop floor. The LRBW and BAWU expressed their notions of ‘Black” and ‘Blackness’ by placing high emphasis upon PanAfricanism and internationalism, anti-imperialism, a desire for a proper (liberatory) education rooted in Pan-Africanism and Diaspority, community control and institution building, and approaches towards coalitions and coalition politics. 194 CHAPTER FIVE WE ARE MEN: A GENDERED ANALYSIS OF MANHOOD AND ADULTHOOD AS PERSONHOOD IN THE NEW BLACK IDENTITY This chapter is an exploration of how Black Power/Consciousness adherents used the concepts of violence, manhood, and womanhood to exert a notion of personhood, ‘Black Personhood.’ These concepts also had gendered implications that challenged traditional western sensibilities and presumably some traditional African sensibilities as well. Central questions asked in this chapter are: what role did the notion of violence play in the construction of this new ‘Black’ identity? How was manhood and womanhood framed in this new ‘Black identity’? Was there a space for LGBTQI sub-identities in this new ‘Black’ identity? The path to the answers is laid by the Black Power/Consciousness adherents’ words and actions, as well as how they presented them to those in which they were attempting to develop the new ‘Black’ identity in. Violence was seen as a natural, and at times, revolutionary act against a pernicious system of racialized oppression and economic exploitation. Manhood was used as a metaphor for adulthood and womanhood was defined in terms related to women’s role in the development of the family and community. Women did face male-chauvinism, but they also worked together as equals to black men. However, LGTBQI black people were initially in a precarious position, but could claim right to the new ‘Black’ identity and to ‘Blackness’ as result of the notion of personhood. This process was aided using ‘adulthood’ to communicate the fundamental concept of ‘personhood.’ The role of ‘personhood’ in Black Consciousness/Power thought facilitated that understanding. VIOLENCE AS REVOLUTIONARY ACTS In response to physical abuse and extreme repression, self-defense was a foundational virtue of the new ‘Black’ identity and ‘Blackness’ as a concept. The extreme repression at the 195 dawn of the 1970s created atmospheres ripe with extreme black underground activity including sabotage, hijackings, and seemingly random acts of violence in which Black Consciousness/Power adherents were forced to exist. For Black Consciousness/Power adherents, acts of violence were revolutionary actions against systems of oppression, suppression, and negative racialization. This understanding of violence, beyond-direct self-defense, was understood to be abstract actions of self-defense resulting from constant psychological and physical abuses. This section of the chapter, subdivided between the two republics, explores such acts in how they helped to inform favorable characteristics of the new ‘Black’ identity and ‘Blackness’ as a concept as articulated by their adherents. UNITED STATES: DETROIT In early 1969, management and the supervisory class at the Dodge Main industrial plantation “decided to move on a DRUM Brother, Rushie Forge;” by using their number one “Oreo Cookie,” black Labor Relations Representative William Young to agitate and fluster Forge by causing a confrontation. One day, when Forge arrived for his scheduled shift, he was told to report to the 8th floor office. In the office, Forge was informed that he was being suspended for “possible misconduct.” Forge asked Young, who DRUM referred to as the “whiteman’s nigger,” what did this “so-called misconduct mean.” Young informed Forge that management had instructed him to get Forge “out of here” and that was all he could tell him. Forge then asked for permission to collect his lunch and spare-clothes from his work area. Young then informed Forge that “all he could do was get out.” Forge’s union steward then told Young that Forge had already collected his belongings, which he had not. This led to a confrontation between Forge and Young, and it was then that Forge decided that “enough was enough,” and slapped Young into a “skid box full of stock.” Then, as DRUM framed it, Forge “took the stand 196 that only an exploited Black worker could take (when honkies and uncle tom niggers want to get you), and that is, if they are going to get you anyway take one with you!” Pushed to his breaking point, Forge then stabbed Young. Approximately five minutes later, the “punk Dick (the prick) Prallie,” a white General Foreman in Dept. 9110, approached DRUM/LRBW co-founder, Chuck Wooten, asking him “what happened to Forge?” Wooten then told Prallie that Forge got “tired of being fucked by you honkies.” Prallie responded by barking “goddamit get back on your job” to Wooten. Wooten too reached his “breaking point” and beat Prallie up which led to Wooten “stomping” Prallie.640 Forge, a Black Muslim, subsequently lost his job.641 In August of 1969, Sid Lewis was likewise “driven to that point and lashed out at his foreman, Howard Lewis, in Dept. 9130 at Dodge Main.”642 These were not the only ‘revolutionary’ acts of violence in automobile industrial plantations by disillusioned African American workers. The case of James Johnson, Jr. is another illustrative example. Before being charged “with the shooting deaths of three men,” James Johnson, Jr. had never committed an act of “violence in his life” and was known “for his extreme kindness.” As a two-year employee at the Eldon Avenue Gear and Axle Plant, he and other black workers experienced “daily harassments by racist foremen, the lack of proper safety conditions, [as well as] backbreaking and dangerous work.” Johnson was “singled out for special harassment because […] he rarely laughed or smiled while on the job.” To create justification for his termination, Johnson would be assigned to difficult jobs without any instruction or training with the foremen standing around “watching him” and “hoping that he would make a mistake so that they could fire him.” Johnson “rarely, if ever, made mistakes on the job.” Realizing that Johnson was “not “DRUM Under Attack,” DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 6, 1. Mrs. Forge, “Thank You,” DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 2 no. 9, 2. 642 “Hail James Johnson,” DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 3 no. 1, 1-4. 640 641 197 dumb,” management and the supervisory class deduced that Johnson was a “potential troublemaker” and subjected him to “constant surveillance.” In May of 1970 Johnson was in a terrible automobile accident destroying his automobile, and suffering serious “back, neck, and head injuries” that required him to undergo intense rehabilitation and treatment twice a week. Johnson’s doctor instructed him to not return to work until his rehabilitation was complete, but when Johnson went to get his “insurance papers” and to inform the Chrysler Corporation of the details, severity, and nature of his injuries, he was sent to an overcrowded “Industrial Clinic” where he was “hardly even examined.” In what ELRUM identified as a pattern; citing the case of “Sister Mamie Williams” where the Chrysler Corporation ordered her off her hospital bed to return to work sending “her to her death;” the Chrysler Corporation sent Johnson a telegram ordering him back to work “immediately.” Adding insult to injury, the Chrysler Corporation denied Johnson disability payments for the five days he was off the job before their demand to return to work and sent him a registered letter stating that his insurance had been cancelled, effectively forcing Johnson to work without any medical insurance “whatsoever.” Although Johnson returned to work, he was scheduled for vacation beginning June 1, 1970, a date that was “posted on the bulletin board.” On the Friday before his vacation was scheduled to begin, as per company policy, Johnson had his foreman sign his time card and left on vacation after work. When Johnson returned to for his scheduled shift, his time card had “been pulled from the rack.” Every time Johnson asked his foreman why his timecard was missing the foreman would “just shrug his shoulders and walk away.” Johnson was forced to work for “approximately” one month without a time card. When one “racist foreman […] continually” asked Johnson why he continued to work since he didn’t have a time card, however, 198 Johnson continued to work because he “knew that if he went home, they would surely fire him,” thus, he continued to work. Johnson’s time card finally “reappeared.” Figure 13: The Johnson Method.643 On the evening of Wednesday, July 15,1970, Johnson was pushed to the point of “temporary insanity” and became “violent.” Johnson “refused to work the oven […because] he was not provided with proper safety gloves” and was subsequently fired for “insubordination.” Johnson responded to the “months of harassment and years of oppression” by shooting and killing two foremen (44-year-old African American Hugh M. Jones and 32-year-old white man Gary L. Hinz) and one job setter (Joseph Kowalski, who was white) at the Eldon Ave. Gear and Axle Plant.644 Beyond incidents at industrial plantations, there were also ‘revolutionary’ airplane 643 Inner-City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Works vol. 2 no 8 (October 190). “Hail Brother James Johnson,” Inner City Voice: Official Organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers vol. 3, no. 2, April 1971, 10-12; DRUM: Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement vol. 3 no. 1, 1-4. 644 199 hijackings in response to racialized oppression and suppression, the Louis Moore Hijacking case is an informative example of one such occurrence. In 1970, the Detroit Police Department created a “controversial squad of plainclothes officers called STRESS (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets),” purported to “fight rampant street crime.” STRESS’ endeavors proved to be extremely racialized and “deadly” as evidenced by the fact that in STRESS’ first 14 months of existence its officers “shot and killed 15 people,” with all but one being African American.645 Louis Moore stated that he had been beaten by Detroit Police officers on more than one occasion, and as an anti-police brutality activist, he appeared on local radio and television and participated in rallies to “bring attention to injustice.” According to Moore, he was called to testify as an “activist” at a grand jury investigation of STRESS after the unit was “involved in a deadly shoot-out with off-duty Wayne County Sheriff’s deputies.”646 In November 1971 Louis Moore sued the city of Detroit in a claim of police brutality. Moore alleged that when he returned home from his October 1972 grand jury testimony, “there was a card in his mailbox from police ordering him downtown.” Once there, Louis Moore and Henry Jackson, Moore’s close friend, were arrested by the Detroit Police Department for sexual assault; which they adamantly “alleged had been trumped up in retaliation for the lawsuit” and for standing up “against police brutality.” Louis Moore also alleged that the Detroit Police threatened to harm his wife and kids. Moore recalled that as he and Jackson were leaving their attorney’s office, two police officers delayed them while calling them “a bunch of hard-headed niggers” and then showed him photographs of his wife and Robert Allen, “Ex-Detroiter behind infamous 1972 skyjacking tells his story,” Detroit Free Press, June 6, 2016. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/06/06/detroit-skyjacker-airplaneexplanation/85314438/. 646 Robert Allen, “Ex-Detroiter behind infamous 1972 skyjacking tells his story,” Detroit Free Press, June 6, 2016. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/06/06/detroit-skyjacker-airplaneexplanation/85314438/. 645 200 children while commenting on “how attractive” his wife was and added that it would be a “shame” if Moore had to “roll over in the morning and look at her face” the rest of his life and know that he “was responsible for the disfiguration of her face.”647 After posting bail, and in a fit of desperation, Moore and Jackson subsequently fled Detroit, and were joined by Louis Moore’s half-brother, Melvin Cale; a “burglar who had escaped from a Tennessee halfway house.” The three men then “made a pact to teach Detroit’s authorities an unforgettable lesson” and to expose the “brutal and racist Detroit Police Department.”648 On Friday, Nov. 10, 1972, the three men hijacked Southern Airways Flight 49 as it was travelling from Birmingham to Montgomery in Alabama and demanded it change course and head to Detroit. The hijackers demanded “10 parachutes, 10 bulletproof vests, and $10 million in cash, along with a White House letter certifying the money as an irrevocable “government grant”.” The hijackers eventually “forced nine landings, spanning Canada to Cuba.”649 While the plane circled Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the Detroit City Council “convened and approved $500,000 to be brought to the airport” to give to the hijackers. Brendan I. Koerner, ““We’re going to bomb Oak Ridge”: The hijacking that gave us airport security,” Slate, June 19, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/features/2013/skyjacker_of_the_day/louis_moore_hijacked_a_plane_to_te ach_the_city_of_detroit_a_lesson.html; Robert Allen, “Ex-Detroiter behind infamous 1972 skyjacking tells his story,” Detroit Free Press, June 6, 2016. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/06/06/detroit-skyjacker-airplaneexplanation/85314438/. 648 Robert Allen, “Ex-Detroiter behind infamous 1972 skyjacking tells his story,” Detroit Free Press, June 6, 2016. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/06/06/detroit-skyjacker-airplaneexplanation/85314438/; Brendan I. Koerner, ““We’re going to bomb Oak Ridge”: The hijacking that gave us airport security,” Slate, June 19, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/features/2013/skyjacker_of_the_day/louis_moore_hijacked_a_plane_to_te ach_the_city_of_detroit_a_lesson.html. 649 Brendan I. Koerner, ““We’re going to bomb Oak Ridge”: The hijacking that gave us airport security,” Slate, June 19, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/features/2013/skyjacker_of_the_day/louis_moore_hijacked_a_plane_to_te ach_the_city_of_detroit_a_lesson.html; Robert Allen, “Ex-Detroiter behind infamous 1972 skyjacking tells his story,” Detroit Free Press, June 6, 2016. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/06/06/detroit-skyjacker-airplaneexplanation/85314438/. 647 201 However, the hijackers became “frustrated and indecisive while waiting,” and “refused” the $500,000. The hijackers then forced the pilots to direct the plane toward Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and its nuclear plant with the intention to crash the plane into the nuclear plant unless they could speak with President Richard M. Nixon. According to Louis Moore, as the plane came closer to the nuclear plant, President Nixon’s aide, John Ehrlichman, spoke with the hijackers and told them that their demands for the money would be “met.” The plane then landed in Chattanooga, Tenn. where the hijackers received an “estimated $2 million in cash, 10 parachutes, seven bulletproof vests, seven crash helmets, medical supplies, 50 dinners and several large canvas bags.” The hijackers then directed the pilots to fly the plane to Cuba.650 After the 30-hour ordeal, Cuban soldiers arrested the hijackers and confiscated the ransom to return it to Southern Airways. Cuban President Fidel Castro was “furious” and promised one of pilots that the three men would spend the rest of their lives in tiny boxes. President Castro greeted the pilots and crew as “heroes and threw the hijackers in prison for eight years. The trio returned in 1980 to Birmingham, where they were sentenced to 20- to 25-year terms.”651 SOUTH AFRICA In the early 1960s, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), Poqo, and the African Resistance Movement (ARM), a multiracial organization consisting mainly of young white professionals and students, made over 200 bomb attacks on South African post offices, government buildings, Robert Allen, “Ex-Detroiter behind infamous 1972 skyjacking tells his story,” Detroit Free Press, June 6, 2016. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/06/06/detroit-skyjacker-airplaneexplanation/85314438/. 651 Brendan I. Koerner, ““We’re going to bomb Oak Ridge”: The hijacking that gave us airport security,” Slate, June 19, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/features/2013/skyjacker_of_the_day/louis_moore_hijacked_a_plane_to_te ach_the_city_of_detroit_a_lesson.html; Duncan Mansfield, “Tennessee Narrowly Dodged Bullet in Tense '72 Hijack Episode,” Los Angeles Times, September 23, 2001. http://articles.latimes.com/2001/sep/23/news/mn-48746. 650 202 railroad stations, and electrical instillations near the main industrial centers.652 The 1976 Soweto uprisings for many, inaugurated the start of revolution in South Africa.653 By the end of 1976, thousands of young blacks fled South Africa to its neighboring countries (including Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland) to train in preparation for all out revolution and armed conflict against the apartheid state.654 At the opening of 1978, MK was training over four thousand refugees for armed struggle in out-of-country “camps.”655 They wanted to attack police stations, plant and detonate bombs in public places, deposit caches of arms, and ultimately, launch a guerrilla campaign against the South African state.656 From November 1977 to March 1978, a MK attack occurred once a week, with 119 attacks between 1977 and 1981 and nearly fifty per year between 1981 and 1984.657 As in the past, they sabotaged South African post offices, government buildings, railroad stations and electrical instillations near the main industrial centers.658 The government continued to violently and brutally repress the student protests that dominated 1977, as well as the ‘political’ funerals the students held for those killed in those protests. MANHOOD As observed by scholar Daniel R. Magaziner, in Black Consciousness “possession of a male sexual member was political shorthand” for freedom and self-determination, the very strivings they created their identity to obtain. Actively fighting against oppression represented not only masculinity, but more importantly, manhood. As Magaziner stated: 652 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 211; Baker, The United States and South Africa, 91. Steve Biko, ed. by Millard Arnold, Black Consciousness in South Africa (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), xxvi. 654 Basil Davidson, Modern Africa, 170; Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 61. 655 Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 61. 656 Thompson, A History of South Africa, 213. 657 Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 61. 658 Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis, 61-62; Thompson, A History of South Africa, 213. 653 203 If you were oppressed and did nothing, you never had it; if you were banned, you had lost it; if you collaborated, presumably you did not deserve it in the first place.659 For SASO, “manhood” was mandatory for establishing their new ‘Black’ identity. As the creation and perpetuation of ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ was in response to racialized oppression, SASO had to create a “space [for Africans] to be men” and masculinized language was a vehicle in which to accomplish that.660 For Black Consciousness adherents, apartheid stripped black people of ‘manhood,’ making them an “empty shell.”661 This was also true of the LRBW/DRUM and BSUF in Detroit who used gendered images and language to communicate their struggle. For example, LRBW/DRUM co-founder Luke Tripp wrote that in the automotive industrial plantations, management and the supervisory class didn’t “want black men” and only wanted “black boys” as workers so black workers had to “sell” their “manhood.”662 For their part, the Cooley High Black Student Voice printed a drawing of a police officer calling a black man “boy.”663 From this understanding, for many Black Consciousness/Power adherents, men were the most “appropriate representatives” for the racially oppressed black community in a struggle against patriarchal and white supremacist societies to re-establish ‘Black manhood.’664 The valuing and exaltation of black women and ‘Black womanhood’ was presented as a vital virtue of ‘Black manhood’ as demonstrated by the BSUF’s admonishing of black male students’ adoration of a white female cheerleader in comparison to black male students’ abuse and disrespect of black female students.665 659 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 33. Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 32. 661 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 32; Biko, I Write What I Like, 29. 662 Tripp, “D.R.U.M. – Vanguard of the Black Revolution,” 1. 663 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 2 no. 4, March 28, 1971, 3. 664 Daniel R. Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 19681977,” Journal of Southern African Studies 37, no. 1 (March 2011): 53. 665 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3 (January 26, 1970). 660 204 WOMANHOOD In South Africa, women like Thoko Mpumlwana, Mamphela Aletta Ramphele, Maphiri Masekela, and Oshadi Mangena were vital to the Black Consciousness movement from the outset and were “among the earliest members of SASO” and the Black Consciousness Movement, participating in the discussions that led to the split from NUSAS in 1968. Women “studied, collaborated, and debated with similarly minded men” with a conviction that “intellectual activity would overcome the morass of apartheid politics.”666 SASO member and BC adherent Maphiri Masekela told her fellow African women that they must remember that they were “Black first and then woman” and that they “must play a meaningful role in the struggle of the Black community” by “moulding and building up […] a society in which Black People would be able to translate their ideals, ambitions and dreams into reality.” She emphasized that the function of Black women needed to be “relevant to the role and meaning of Black people as a whole” as “seen within the context of Black Consciousness” because the struggle required the “involvement of the entire Black Community.” Black women needed to realize, in her opinion, that the oppression black South Africans faced was not of the “individual” but of the “whole Black Community” and black women needed to work together with their “menfolk to overcome this oppression.”667 666 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 34. Maphiri Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the role of the black woman,” (South Africa: Digital Imaging South Africa, 1971-2), accessed via aluka.org. 667 205 Figure 14: Unidentified black woman addresses a SASO meeting.668 As an important component of the working-class, women were part of the Mass Democratic Movement, and their organizations had traditions just as radical as the independent unions. Black women were positioned in a very precarious position in both republic’s societies. Racialized oppression affected women as workers, citizens, members of organizations, community leaders, wives, and most importantly, mothers. In South Africa, women were very active in the broader anti-apartheid struggle as well, and focused on a wide range of issues, some gender-role related and some not: the pass system, violent military and police action, poverty, health, education, high rent, forced removal to the Bantustans, and sexual harassment. Women organized themselves formally and informally and their approaches included the utilization of organized campaigns focused on issues and themes, networks of neighborhood grassroots support, and the formulation of organizations. They mostly focused on local issues which had “Unidentified black woman addresses a SASO meeting,” box AL2547-17.3.10, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 668 206 implications of national liberation. These women wielded enormous valor in confrontations with the vicious, armed muscle of the republic.669 Black Consciousness adherents called for Black women to shed “their feeling of inadequacies,” “built-in feeling of inferiority, [and] the false assumption that only men” were “capable of having and withstanding the difficulties” that existed in racialized societies. Black Consciousness adherents admonished cultural practices that too often led black women “to shirk their responsibilities” because they were “convinced” that the revolutionary struggle belonged to the “preserves” of black men thus clinging to an archaic “poisonous belief that they belong to a sex that must not be exposed to the hostile realities of life.” They asserted that black women were not decorative “flower-pots” must “participate in the decision-making process.”670 Inspired by Black Consciousness thought, black women, like Thandi Modise, Thuli Khubeka, Nomkhosi Mini, Gertrude Shope, Florence Maleka, and Nosiviwe Mapisa were very active in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), an underground anti-apartheid military army. At the first MK training camp in Angola in 1976 their “detachment included a sizable number of women [most of which] were in their late teens or early twenties, and relatively inexperienced. MK veteran James Ngculu recalled that the “ratio between men and women in the camps was about ten men to four women… [and that the] June 16 Detachment had a platoon of women.” Gender equality was prevalent in the camps with “[t]raining and physical exercise routines [being] the same for both sexes [… and women serving as] platoon commanders and commissars as well as instructors.” Thus, according to Ngculu, it “was in Angola, in the crucible of struggle and endurance, that it was proven that gender inequalities and prejudices are not based on scientific postulates.” This Elaine Unterhalter, “Class, Race and Gender,” South Africa in Question, ed. John Lonsdale (London: University of Cambridge African Studies Centre, 1988), 155 and 164-166. 670 Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the role of the black woman.” 669 207 egalitarian quality was aided by the infusion of “a new breed of women” who joined the ranks of MK “helping to […] put the issue of gender on the agenda [… with some being] members of the Black Conciousness Movement […and] were accustomed to being vocal and assertive.”671 In Detroit, being militantly engaged and committed to the liberation of the racially oppressed was essential to the BSUF’s articulation of the new ‘Black’ identity for women as well. For example, on the cover of the first edition of the Central High Black Student Voice, the editorial staff printed a photograph of an Afro-wearing black woman student with her fist raised under the caption: “Black Youth Speak.”672 They also appealed to their fellow students’ sense of familial obligations and ties by publishing a picture of a black mother being accosted and arrested by the police under the caption: “Black Youth Speak!!!;” and above the caption: “Does Your Mother Suffer from Law and Order??”673 In South Africa, black women were very influential members of unions and had their agenda pushed to the center stage of the union platform, which was prevalent across the board.674 Women activists, in the traditional sense, were predominately urban working-class women. This was due in part to the great increase in women wage earners in South Africa between 1960 and the late 1980s. Rural black women were often unorganized and frequently voiced their concerns in seemingly spontaneous protests and actions. The actions of the unorganized women were very important and their contributions cannot be overstated.675 African women faced a “double-shift,” which included work outside the home and housework/childrearing inside the home. That “double shift” was compounded with their condition of triple oppression; racial, class and 671 James Ngculu, The Honour to Serve: Recollections of an Umkhonto Soldier (Cape Town: David Philip, 2010), 148-149. 672 Central High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1, 1. 673 Central High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 2, 1. 674 Unterhalter, “Class, Race and Gender,” 156, 164, and 166-168. 675 Unterhalter, “Class, Race and Gender,” 157, 160 and 163. 208 gender.676 Very active in the independent trade union movement, women’s activism, regarding the work place, centered on maternity rights and anti-sexual harassment.677 Their importance became more acute during the 1970s. Although prior to the 1970s most African women worked in agriculture and domestic service, their work in manufacturing began to sky-rocket. For example, in 1970, twenty percent of manufacturing workers were women. In manufacturing, African women’s work conditions were worse than the conditions for African men. It was in the industries in which women were the majority, such as the textile industry, that militant trade unionism lived on.678 This reality is heightened by the 1973 Durban strike. By the 1980s women represented nearly thirty-seven percent of total employees in the formal economy, although the percentages varied by industry. However, “in general, women in all sectors [performed the] lowest-paying jobs.”679 South African women were often in the forefront of those who joined unions, more so than anywhere else in the world and tended to be the most militant and dedicated union members during “industrial action.”680 The strikes in the textile industry were extremely, if not the most, militant, with women playing a key role.681 For Black Consciousness adherents, the “building up of Black economic self-reliance” was particularly important for black women “living under the most oppressive economic pressures.” In a plea to African women to adopt the new ‘Black’ identity, early Black Consciousness adherent Maphiri Masekela urged them to “join in the struggle” to guarantee that 676 Jeremy Baskin, Striking Back: A History of COSATU (London: Verso, 1991), 370-371. Denis MacShane, Martin Plaut, and David Ward, Power!: Black workers, their unions and the struggle for freedom in South Africa (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1984), 83-90. 678 Shirene Fradet Carim, “The Role of Women in the South African Trade Union Movement,” A Report to the United Nations, New York: April 1980, 1. 679 Baskin, Striking Back, 370. 680 Baskin, Striking Back, 371; Kally Forrest, ASIJIKI: A History of the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU) (Johannesburg: STE Publishers, 2005), 81. 681 Cohen, Peasants and Proletarians, 408-410. 677 209 they “have a share in the economic wealth of the country.”682 Women comprised the majority of members in the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU), the Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (SACCAWU), the South African Domestic Workers Union (SADWU), and the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU), and also held “national, regional and local” leadership positions.683 Some examples of women independent trade union leaders were: Lydia ‘Mama’ Kompe, who was the Transvaal leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), Refilo Nzuta of the Paper, Wood and Allied Workers Union (PWAWU), Maggie Magubane of the Sweet, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (SFAWU), and Emma Mashinini of the Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (SACCAWU).684 Just as their counterparts in South Africa, women were also essential contributors to DRUM/LRBW in Detroit as well. DRUM/LRBW had crucial support from three important community organizations: Unicom, the West Central Organization (WCO), and the North Woodward Interfaith Project (NIFP); which were all led by women. As stated by General Baker, “without the women [DRUM/LRBW] wouldn’t have had a lot of resources. Although, due to the demographics of the autoworkers at the point of production, DRUM/LRBW were male-dominated, women like General Baker’s wife, Marianne Cramer, Cassandra Bell and Betty Griffin were rare but active DRUM/LRBW activists.685 Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the role of the black woman.” Baskin, Striking Back, 371; Forrest, ASIJIKI, 81. 684 MacShane, Power, 86-87. A great history of SAACAWU is Kally Forrest’s ASIJIKI: A History of the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU) (Johannesburg: STE Publishers, 2005) and a great autobiography of Emma Mashinini is her Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life: A South African Autobiography (New York: Routledge, 1991). 685 “Roundtable Discussion: Dagenham, Drum and the League of Black Revolutionary Workers,” published by PermanentCultureNow, conducted December 10, 2011, posted November 29, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRjcvtuwaWA. 682 683 210 Motherhood was essential to women’s development of the new ‘Black’ identity. For example, South African women, “protested most frequently as mothers – assertive, militant mothers, but mothers nonetheless.” Aspects of South African women’s activism were described as “motherism” and “motherist” because they were fighting “for their custodial rights as mothers.”686 For BC adherent Maphiri Masekela, “the drama of politics Black Women have an important role to play in the political education […] of the Black Children at a very early age in the family.” Black women were charged with facilitating the process in which “children learn and imbibe, the values, ethics and morality that [would] sustain and keep the [new ‘Black’] society intact [and] given the Black Community its indestructability and durability in the face of the politics and cultural racism.”687 Black students in the BSUF in Detroit also positioned black women’s role within their struggle and a key tenant of the new ‘Black’ identity for women involved their role as mothers; as demonstrated by Highland Park Black Student Voice’s publishing of a picture of a black mother with a child.688 The BSUF also benefitted greatly from the involvement of women as mothers via PASCC and the WCO.689 This ‘motherist’ approach coalesced with Black Power/Consciousness thought via the logic that the “Health” of the struggle and the creation of a new ‘Black’ identity could only be “sustained if and when there are healthy homes and families.” Following that reasoning, it was the “duty” of black women to “create a healthy family atmosphere” in which “clear minded” Black people can make “healthy decisions.”690 However, could a LBGTQI person be ‘Black’ and “healthy”? Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)man,” 49. Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the role of the black woman.” 688 Highland Park Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 3 (January 26, 1970); Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 5; Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. 689 Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 1, Jan. 5, 1970, 1. 690 Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the role of the black woman.” 686 687 211 LGTBQI Although sources concerning the LGBTQI experience in Detroit’s Black Power circles are elusive, evidence of homophobic leanings exist. For example, the BSUF used white gay teachers’ sexuality to discredit them, with very strong homophobic anti-gay rhetoric and slurs.691 The BSUF also referred to men they did not view favorably as women as a sign of disrespect as in the case when they called Cooley High School principal Mr. Lennie Minkwic, “Lady Lennie Minkwic” and the “Head woman.”692 To unearth the LGTBQI experience and its relation to the development of ‘Black’ as an identity and ‘Blackness’ as a concept, a brief political biography of the ‘father’ of South Africa’s Black LGTBQI movement and Black Consciousness adherent, Simon T. Nkoli, is valuable. Nkoli faced and identified considerable racism against black South Africans in the general South African LGBTQI rights movement and considerable homophobia within the anti-apartheid movement. Simon Tseko Nkoli was born to Basotho parents in the Southwest Township (Soweto) of Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, South Africa on November 26, 1957. He was later sent to live, spending his early youth, on a farm in the Orange Free State to shield him from the cruelties of apartheid. In 1971, he joined his parents in the Gauteng Province where he spent his late teens and early adult years. Nkoli was a brilliant student and would emerge as a student leader. Nkoli entered the Black Consciousness fold, joining the Students Christian Movement (SCM) in 1974. SCM was an of shoot of the University Christian Movement (UCM) which openly discussed “new trends in global thought on gender,” which included issues related to black LGTBQI people. Nkoli was amongst a group of students who founded the Lebohang Student Action Committee to address harsh treatment at the school in 691 692 Northern High Black Student Voice, vol. 1 no. 6. ““God” Has Spoken,” Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 2 no. 4, March 28, 1971, 1. 212 1974.693 Also in 1975, at the age of 18, Nkoli came out to his mother revealing to her that he was gay. As a result, his mother dispatched him to consult a priest, traditional healers, psychologists, and doctors to be ‘cured’ of his homosexuality. After these efforts proved unsuccessful, Nkoli’s mother relented, allowing Nkoli to move in with his male lover.694 Nkoli participated in the 1976 Soweto uprisings that spread throughout the region. Nkoli would be jailed for 105 days for his participation. His parents sent him to a non-racial Catholic boarding school in 1977, where he was one of 15 blacks out of a student population of 800. A year later, Simon left the boarding school and attended Santa Maria High School. At Santa Maria, he joined the Young Christian Students (YCS). As a member of YCS he participated in the political funeral of Johannes Matsobane, in which he worked with the Soweto Students League (SSL) and the Vaal Youth Crusade.695 While attending a secretarial college in Soweto in 1980, Nkoli help found the Vaal branch of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and became its first General-Secretary.696 When some members of COSAS “started getting suspicious of his sexual orientation” Nkoli confirmed he was gay, prompting them to launch an unsuccessful campaign to have him removed from his position of General-Secretary. United Democratic Front, “Biography of Tseko Simon Nkoli,” Aluka Database. Accessed on November 1, 2013. http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.BIO00000000.043.027.003; Simon Nkoli, “Letter to Roy Shepherd November 11, 1986,” in Till the time of Trial: The prison letters of Simon Nkoli eds. Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin (Witwatersrand: Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action, 2007), 39; Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 35. 694 LGBTQ Nation, “LGBT History Month profile: South African activist Simon Nkoli,” October 22, 2013. lgbtqnation.com. Accessed November 1, 2013. http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2013/10/lgbt-history-month-profilesouth-african-activist-simon-nkoli/#.UqZ6VPRDuSo; Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin, “Simon Nkoli’s prison letters to Roy Shepherd,” in Till the time of Trial: The prison letters of Simon Nkoli eds. Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin (Witwatersrand: Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action, 2007), 8. 695 United Democratic Front, “Biography of Tseko Simon Nkoli,” Aluka Database. Accessed on November 1, 2013. http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.BIO00000000.043.027.003. 696 United Democratic Front, “Biography of Tseko Simon Nkoli,” Aluka Database. Accessed on November 1, 2013. http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.BIO00000000.043.027.003. 693 213 Importantly, their argument that “homosexuality was not African” would be an issue Nkoli would face again within the anti-apartheid movement.697 COSAS organized Student Representative Councils (SRC) in Vaal, and due to the banning of anti-apartheid organizations got involved in community issues such as rent-boycotts. COSAS held rent-boycott mass meetings and as Secretary-General, Nkoli always addressed the crowds. Nkoli continued his community engagement and advocacy participating in the 1980 protests against the re-planning of the Evaton community by the Evaton Ratepayers Association. COSAS and Nkoli participated in national student boycotts while organizing protests and sit-ins. Nkoli was detained again, this time for 14 days. He would be detained again, without charge in 1981, for seven more months in which he was repeatedly tortured. In October of 1981, three months after release, he was detained again for six days.698 After moving to Johannesburg proper in 1982, Nkoli secured a part-time job at the South African Institute for Race Relations (SAIRR) in their Operation Hunger Project. He also was involved in the Detainee Support Committee (Descom) helping visiting families of detainees, organizing food parcels, and helping assure that detainees had legal assistance.699 Perturbed by the reality that most gay venues in Johannesburg were in districts reserved for whites, Nkoli joined the Gay Association of South Africa (GASA), a predominantly white gay organization founded in Johannesburg in 1982; a year after its founding. According to Shelia Croucher, GASA “functioned primarily as a social meeting ground for white, middle-class gay men.”700 Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin, “Simon Nkoli’s prison letters to Roy Shepherd,” in Till the time of Trial: The prison letters of Simon Nkoli eds. Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin (Witwatersrand: Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action, 2007), 8. 698 United Democratic Front, “Biography of Tseko Simon Nkoli,” Aluka Database. Accessed on November 1, 2013. http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.BIO00000000.043.027.003. 699 United Democratic Front, “Biography of Tseko Simon Nkoli,” Aluka Database. Accessed on November 1, 2013. http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.BIO00000000.043.027.003. 700 Shelia Croucher, “South Africa’s Democratisation and the Politics of Gay Liberation,” Journal of Southern African Studies 28 no. 2 (June 2002), 318. 697 214 GASA’s apoliticism too troubled Nkoli. After realizing that GASA would not relocate their social activities outside of whites-only facilities, Nkoli founded the Saturday Group, South Africa’s first regional black gay organization. Still employed by SAIRR and Descom, Nkoli was detained again in September of 1984 while attending a friend’s funeral who was one of twenty killed by police in Sebokeng Township unrest.701 Due to his anti-apartheid activities, Nkoli faced the death penalty for treason with twenty-one other political leaders in the Delmas Treason Trial, collectively known as the Delmas 22.702 By the 1990s there was an “emerging gay scene in the townships that is said to have roots in the generalised youth rebellion of 1976 and the mid-1980s.”703 There was a burgeoning black, poor and working-class gay scene in South Africa, particularly in the Townships. Nkoli, aware of the shortcomings of the white South African gay rights movement on anti-apartheid issues and of the anti-apartheid movement on LGTBQI issues, made his stance clear when he gave a statement asserting that: In South Africa I am oppressed because I am a black man, and I am oppressed because I am gay. So when I fight for my freedom I must fight against both oppressions.704 United Democratic Front, “Biography of Tseko Simon Nkoli,” Aluka Database. Accessed on November 1, 2013. http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.BIO00000000.043.027.003; Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin, “Simon Nkoli’s prison letters to Roy Shepherd,” in Till the time of Trial: The prison letters of Simon Nkoli eds. Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin (Witwatersrand: Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action, 2007), 4-6; for a discussion for Nkoli’s continued activities and connections with Descom while detained and awaiting trial also see: Simon Nkoli, “Letter to Roy Shepherd June 05, 1985,” in Till the time of Trial: The prison letters of Simon Nkoli eds. Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin (Witwatersrand: Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action, 2007), 14. 702 Zethu Matebeni, “Deconstructing violence towards black lesbians in South Africa,” Queer African Reader, ed. Sokari Ekine and Hakima Abbas (Dakar: Pambuza Press, 2013), 348 and 352; Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin, “Simon Nkoli’s prison letters to Roy Shepherd,” in Till the time of Trial: The prison letters of Simon Nkoli eds. Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin (Witwatersrand: Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action, 2007), 4-6. 703 Mark Gevisser and Edwin Cameron eds., Defiant Desire (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1994); Shelia Croucher, “South Africa’s Democratisation and the Politics of Gay Liberation,” Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 28 no. 2 (June 2002), 318. 704 Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin, “Simon Nkoli’s prison letters to Roy Shepherd,” in Till the time of Trial: The prison letters of Simon Nkoli eds. Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin (Witwatersrand: Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action, 2007), 3. 701 215 Nkoli also expressed concerns about some of his co-defendant’s views concerning his masculinity and what he perceived to be their unfair gendered perceptions of him. Writing to his lover, Roy, Nkoli quips: “They complain about me, for having no fights. They say I never get angry. I’m so polite, why should I fight – or scream? In fact they are all a bunch of liars – twice I kicked Jacob. Cant they see that I am aggressive – that’s why I kicked Jake!”705 It is obvious that Nkoli believed that some of his co-defendants deemed that his homosexuality made him less “aggressive” and more docile, thus less masculine. It is unclear if Nkoli equated aggressiveness with masculinity, or in other words, if he was attempting to assert or proclaim his masculinity by assaulting Jake. Nkoli was troubled and insulted by their perceptions of him and his masculinity. As previously demonstrated, it is apparent, for at least some Black Consciousness adherents, that in an environment of extreme violence the use of violence partly defined ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness.’ The experiences of LGBTQI identifying Black Consciousness/Power adherents reveal a challenge and expansion Figure 15: Simon T. Nkoli.706 Simon Nkoli, “Letter to Roy Shepherd October 24, 1985,” in Till the time of Trial: The prison letters of Simon Nkoli eds. Shaun de Waal and Karen Martin (Witwatersrand: Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action, 2007), 23. 706 Provided courtesy of African Success: People Changing the Face of Africa, http://www.africansuccess.org/visuFiche.php?id=425&lang=en. 705 216 CONCLUSION: CONTRADICTIONS AND ADULTHOOD AS PERSONHOOD Gender and gendered language were a central exploration in this chapter. Concepts of man, manhood and adulthood were dealt with as actual conscriptions as well as metaphors. Symptoms of the misogynistic cancer of male-chauvinism did appear early in the Black Conciousness/Power subjects examined in this study. For example, in the first edition of the SASO Newsletter, they displayed male-chauvinistic tendencies in an article “The Chemical Analysis of a Woman,” implying that they were inferior and perhaps child-like. (Insert quotes and citation from that Newsletter).707 And the Cooley High Black Student Voice ran an article with language that implied women were inferior to men.708 ‘Black’ thought leaders, such as Steve Biko himself could be sexist, in fact Biko had a “reputation as a womanizer, and it was no doubt well earned.”709 As many college students across the world often do, Biko and his colleagues frequented “parties with women and drinking,” yet, his wife and “a number of friends” later “confronted him about his womanizing.” Scholar Leslie Hadfield observed that “Biko seems to have been unwilling or unable to resolve the controversies and pain he caused through this behavior before his death.”710 Black women working in the industrial automotive plantations of Detroit spoke of sexual harassment and unwanted sexual advances from black male co-workers and their struggle to demand “respect.”711 While many male Black Consciousness/Power adherents, like Biko, 707 SASO Newsletter, August 1970, 7, accessed via aluka.org; Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 33. The SASO Newsletter did not start volumes until May 1971 with vol. 1 no. 1. Prior to that the editorial board just used dates. 708 ““God” Has Spoken,” Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 2 no. 4, March 28, 1971, 1. 709 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)man,” 46; Donald Woods, Biko (New York: H. Holt, 1987). 710 Leslie Hadfield, “Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement,” The Oxford Research Encyclopedia, African History (africanhistory.oxfordre.com), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 11; Lindy Wilson, “Bantu Stephen Biko: A Life,” in Bounds of Possibility: The Legacy of Steve Biko and Black Consciousness, eds. Barney Pityana, Mamphela Ramphele, Malusi Mpumlwana, and Lindy Wilson (Cape Town: David Philip, 1991), 37-41; Xolela Mangcu, Biko: A Biography (Cape Town: Tafelburg, 2012), 204–212. 711 Cassandra Bell, “Second Annual Tribute to General Gordon Baker, Jr. - Snippet (5/10) - Cassandra Bell,” published by MacSpeaking on Febuary 9, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo-kQ_I3C0Y. 217 “worked well with many women as colleagues and fellow activists,” they “at times struggled to concede that traditional gender roles could change.”712 The memoir of a black woman Black Consciousness/Power adherent, Mamphela Ramphele, “Black Consciousness was a maledominated environment [… and women] had no choice but to rely on “aggression” and “intimidation” to offer [their opinions].” She continued that as a “woman, an African woman at that, one had to be outrageous to be heard, let alone taken seriously.”713 Black Consciousness/Power adherent and LRBW/DRUM activist, Cassandra Bell also noted how they had to fight to be “heard” and have their “ideas considered.”714 This highlights the reality that often women had to become more masculine, or less feminine, to gain equal treatment. This concept adds another element to the reality that SASO considered “women as capable as men” and “opened a political and intellectual space in which women could participate; they too could be “black men,” on their own, responsible, and nature.715 It also begs for a closer analysis of manhood. Daniel Magaziner’s exploration of the notion of adulthood in Black Consciousness thought proves very intuitive. The previously explored idea that racialized oppression reduced adult blacks to the status of children is insightful. Black Consciousness, and Black Power for its part, was an attempt to ameliorate the black mind to the status of responsible adults in their own eyes, as well as in societies’ eyes. As stated, “far from being perpetual adolescents, blacks were…independent agents.”716 SASO’s use of masculinity as a metaphor for adulthood forces Leslie Hadfield, “Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement,” The Oxford Research Encyclopedia, African History (africanhistory.oxfordre.com), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 11; Wilson, “Bantu Stephen Biko: A Life,” 31-41, and 60; Mangcu, Biko: A Biography, 204–212. 713 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 34; Mamphela Ramphele, Across Boundaries (New York: Feminist Press at the CUNY, 1996), 66 & 71. 714 Cassandra Bell, “Second Annual Tribute to General Gordon Baker, Jr. - Snippet (5/10) - Cassandra Bell,” published by MacSpeaking on Febuary 9, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo-kQ_I3C0Y. 715 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 38-39. 716 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 37. 712 218 one, depending on context, to understand ‘manhood’ as ‘adulthood.’ ‘Adulthood’ in the Black Consciousness/Power perspective implied individual and collective “self-reliance” and the assumption of “full responsibility,” on all levels, for self-determination.717 Otherwise, ‘Black adulthood’ would not be achieved and black men (i.e. black communities), would remain at the status of ‘boys.’718 Although I concurrently revealed male-chauvinism and female agency, feminism is not the only paradigm, and perhaps not the appropriate paradigm, to interrogate gender issues in Black Power/Consciousness. The dismissal of black women who defended the presumed malecentered language in Black Power/Consciousness rhetoric as apologists without considering other analytical paradigms the cited women articulated is a grave mistake. There are more useful theories available to engage black women’s experiences beyond feminism, such as womanism. While “womanism and feminism are theories about and advocates for gender equality, a key distinction between them is womanism’s affirmation of gender complementarity. A practical implication of the philosophy of gender complementarity is a burden of responsible conduct which it places on each side of the gender equation.”719 Black womanism challenges the approaches to studying the consciousness of oppressed groups, offering a “different view of themselves and their world than offered by the established social order.”720 Black womanist scholars assert that “as a result of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, apartheid, and other systems of racial domination, blacks share a common experience of oppression [while pointing out] that women share a history of patriarchal oppression.”721 As 717 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 37; Biko, I Write What I Like, 21 & 92. Cooley High Black Student Voice, vol. 2 no. 4, March 28, 1971, 3. 719 Victor O. Okafor, Towards an Understanding of Africology 4th edition (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt, 2013), 94. 720 Patricia Hill Collins, “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought” (1989) in The African American Studies Reader 2nd edition (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2007), Nathaniel Norment, Jr ed., 209 and 211. 721 Hill Collins, “The Social Construction,” 213. 718 219 scholar feminist Patricia Hill Collins points out, feminists have argued that a shared history of “patriarchal oppression” transcends divisions created by “race, social class, religion, sexual orientation, and ethnicity,” thus women’s bonds should trump racial solidarity, while other African and diasporic “feminist thinkers” poignantly suggest analyses that “look beyond demographic evidence of women’s participation in politics to ask what that meant to them as women, gendered beings engaged in their own pursuit of liberation.”722 Black Consciousness/Power adhering women, like womanist discourse, rejected universality, but did so with a warning. In articulating that warning, and as revealed in this chapter, Hill Collins bares that a monolithic black woman archetype is mythological and untrue.723 Black womanist discourse reflects an “effort to find a collective, self-defined voice and express a fully articulated womanist standpoint.”724 Black South African women skeptically observed feminism with concerned as “it might detract from the overall goal of racial liberation.”725 In MK, feminism “tended to be scorned as foreign.”726 The following sentiments from Maphiri Masekela is a sound precis of the Black Consciousness/Power perspective in the form as instruction to black women that the: liberation of Black Women must however not be confused with the current “Women’s Liberation” movement that is taking place in the white world. We can no longer afford to enter into political collusion with whites. White women who will come to us parading in costume of Womens’ liberation. These are tactics designed by the enemy to divide Black Community and we must refuse to be part of a conspiracy against ourselves. We must refuse to be misled by our enemy. We know what we want- total liberation of the Black Community from the gripping claws of White Racism.727 Hill Collins, “The Social Construction,” 213-214; Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)man,” 47. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Rutledge, 2000), 32. 724 Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 110. 725 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)man,” 48. 726 Ngculu, The Honour to Serve, 149. 727 Masekela, “Black Consciousness and the role of the black woman.” 722 723 220 Black women veterans of the BC movement like Oshadi Mangena maintained, and still maintain, a womanist leaning perspective asserting what Magaziner summarized as meaning that the “political problem of liberation – from racism, from liberalism – came first.”728 We were all part of “Man is Man.”729 This process of adopting the new ‘Black’ identity and ‘Blackness’ as an ideal, classifications of intersection, such as “mother, feminist, man – were constructed, contested, transformed, shed and embraced in real time.” Although Black Consciousness/Power adherents’ various intersections “were thus disaggregated and ranked according to their relative importance,” the LGTBQI experience challenged and expanded ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ for many.730 In important ways ‘adulthood’ represented ‘personhood’ for Black Consciousness/Power adherents. The new ‘Black’ identity was not simply an assertion of ‘adulthood’ but a declaration of active ‘personhood;’ the result of an elevation from ‘non-person’ to ‘person.’ As stated by an audience member and Black Consciousness/Power adherent at a 2009/10 presentation by Daniel Magaziner at the University of Witwatersrand proclaimed, “Man is just man,” or a person is just a person, to resounding audience approval.731 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 34; Amrita Basu, ed., The Challenge of Local Feminism: Women’s Movements in Global Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 142. 729 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, “Endnote #57,” 202. 730 Magaziner, “Pieces of a (Wo)man,” 49 and 51. 731 Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, “Endnote #57,” 202. 728 221 Figure 16: Women of the Azania Students Organization (AZASO), founded in 1979 to take up SASO’s mantle after its banning.732 “Photograph of women of the Azania Students Organization,” box AL2547-17.3.4, South African History Archives, Johannesburg, South Africa. 732 222 CONCLUSION Printed media for public consumption is very important to any identity construction program. Particularly, rhetoric and its use are essential to the creation and conveyance of a prescribed identity. Printed media was an important vehicle to communicate, educate, and indoctrinate potential and converted Black Power/Consciousness adherents. Printed media articulates the values and ethics of an identity. For this study, printed media were the newsletters from all four identified case studies. In their newsletters, Black Power/Consciousness adherents theorized that identity shaped world-view, which thusly was expressed through culture and lived in action. If culture is expressed through action, then to dictate and promote certain actions an identity needed to be created that facilitated and promoted a liberatory world-view. If they hoped to achieve their goals, this identity carried local, regional, national, and international implications and needed to equip its adoptees with formulations that grounded them in the identity at all levels. Locally, ‘Blackness’ meant communities controlling the pace, shape, and manner of the provision of services, change, and decision-making in their communities. ‘Blackness’ conceived independent institutions to provide the services that local, regional, and state municipalities were incapable or unwilling to adequately deliver. Emphasizing a common shared history, heritage, and oppression between all people of African descent, ‘Blackness’ endeavored to foster bonds of solidarity and cooperation in the African diaspora and nonwhite world against colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial and neo-colonial empires, hegemony, imperialism, and the capitalist exploitation of the lower classes. To be effective, ‘Blackness’ required an education that trained adherents in Pan-Africanist, internationalist, and anti-imperialist perspectives; while equipping them with the skills needed to ameliorate their local, regional, national, and global status. 223 Black South Africans and black Americans have a long history of political and intellectual intercourse, contributing to one another’s trajectories of Black Radical Thought and theorized a modern transnational ‘Black’ identity in the racialized republics. Since the dawn of the twentieth century, black radicals in both republics have always kept a keen eye on one another while articulating a global freedom movement between them. As a product of that history, black radicals in both republics shared a common philosophical and intellectual canon. That common canon became the well from which they all drew water to spring their articulation of a new ‘Black’ identity and notion of ‘Blackness.’ The Black Power and Black Consciousness Movement was borne of organic spontaneous rebellion under the shadow of fierce statesponsored repression. The nature of the repression and subsequent rebellions were integral factors in the birth, development and temperament of the Black Power/Consciousness Movement. The common key tenants of the Black Power/Consciousness Movement were the foundation for the ‘Black’ identity that students and workers sought to create while engaging in racialized anti-imperialist struggles in racialized societies. Their identity construction projects culminated into localized manifestations of the same global movement. Despite the variations in each republics’ political economy and racial projects, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) and Black Allied Workers’ Union (BAWU) both faced pre-existing white structures and domination, racism in and from the white-led labor unions, and racism on the shop floor. The South African Student Organization (SASO) and the Black Student United Front (BSUF) equally faced inadequate and white supremacist education designed to create and maintain a labor surplus and subordinated class. A group consciousness rooted in a ‘Black’ identity gained tremendous momentum among many black students and workers. This 224 momentum resulted in a fevered opposition to the use of the labor and educational processes as tools to further white domination. Radical black labor and student movements in both republics began articulating a congruent philosophy although continents apart. A new ‘Black’ wave emerged from the “new racial formation [that] developed from the processes of confrontation (Du Bois) and accommodation ([Booker T.] Washington), of conflict (revolution) and reform (Civil Rights Movement) […] swept across much of the world.”733 ‘Reform,’ as it was used in this study, indicates the desire and approach to improve the status of blacks by amending and modifying the existing white supremacist power structure and state apparatuses. In both republics, voting rights and equal protection under the law were key reforms that reformists fought for. In South Africa, decolonization and self-rule were notions exploited by the state as alternatives to voting rights and equal protection, as their policies reduced Bantustan independence to a Trojan horse of further exploitation masquerading as reform. In many ways, the reformists’ approach was limited to trying to change the opinions of whites. In the LRBW, BAWU, BSUF, and SASO case studies, their processes of distilling those tenants into an identity revealed how they expressed them in thought and praxis. Black Power/Consciousness adherents used the concepts of violence, manhood and womanhood to exert ‘Black Personhood.’ The gendered implications of those concepts challenged traditional western and African sensibilities as well. Violence was a natural, and at times, revolutionary act against a pernicious system of racialized oppression and economic exploitation. Manhood was used as a metaphor for adulthood and womanhood was defined in terms related to women’s role in the development of the family and community. Women did face male chauvinism, but they Howard Winant, “Teaching Race and Racism in the Twenty-First Century: Thematic Considerations,” in The New Black Renaissance: The Souls Anthology of Critical African American Studies, ed., Manning Marable (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), 15. Emphasis and italics by the original author. 733 225 also worked together as equals to black men. However, LGTBQI black people were initially in a precarious position, but could claim right to the new ‘Black’ identity and to ‘Blackness’ as result of the notion of personhood. This process was aided using ‘adulthood’ to communicate the fundamental concept of ‘personhood.’ The role of ‘personhood’ in Black Consciousness/Power thought facilitated that understanding. Although primary source driven, this study also synthesized secondary sources while conducting four case studies to critically examine the historical evolution and application of Black Power (BP) and Black Consciousness (BC) as an identity, political consciousness, cultural framework, and organizing tool. To that end, I judiciously scrutinized primary sources to evaluate how the LRBW, BSUF, SASO, and BAWU sought to address the plight and ameliorate the status of African descendants. I argued that based upon prior contact, a shared philosophical canon, and facing similar racialized oppression; Black Power/Conciousness adherents endeavored to create a new identity and culture to assert a ‘personhood’ to seize selfdetermination. Black Power/Conciousness adherents conceptualized ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ as a militant revolutionary personhood and culture rooted in self-reliance and self-defense. They created organizations and independent institutions to replace the state and/or fill the human and civil service needs the state was unwilling or incapable of filling. Seen from this purview, ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ symbolized more than sloganeering. They were notions that represented a psychological, cultural, and political transformation of black Americans and black South Africans, as well as a racialized response to racialized oppression. Culture and cultural expression were very essential for the Black Power/Consciousness Movement. The BP/C Movement had as much to do with culture as with politics. Nonetheless, the BP/C Movement was highly practical and pragmatic with the creation of parallel institutions being a vital 226 undertaking by adherents and activists. The creation of organizations, unions, periodicals, education and community projects, were sober but necessary steps. As Unapologetically Black scrutinized documents produced by the four organizations in the case studies to distill commonly shared themes, tenants, and philosophers in the development of a new ‘Black’ identity it was not designed to directly address the inter-workings and operations of the identified organizations. However, an expanded version of this project will consult and exploit oral sources to detail and unpack those inter-workings and operations in preparation for a book proposal. Moreover, this current project did not directly address the inter-workings of the identified organizations’ community programs, future versions of this project will, including an interrogation of historian Leslie Hadfield’s work on South Africa. Although on the surface, official racial terminology and stratification in the U.S.A. and S.A. were extremely different, Black Power/Consciousness adherents in both republics constructed new terminologies and stratifications through the lens of Black Power/Consciousness thought. While in the U.S. the ‘one drop’ rule essentially established a stark white and Negro binary, despite the fluidity of whiteness concerning non-African descendants, in South Africa racial stratification was much more complex with African (or Native), Coloured (indicating mixed-race), Indian (or Asian), and white as racial categories. Thus, although the broad racialized notion of ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ as constructed by Black Power/Consciousness adherents was primarily an international concern in the U.S., in South Africa it was both an international and domestic matter. Importantly, workers and students were important demographics of these communities representing vital intersections of their societies. Workers and students experienced their oppression at points of production and instruction. They understood an interconnectedness of 227 their exploitation and struggle as workers, students, parents, children, family, and neighbors. The ‘Black’ identity defied the compartmentalization of intersections by emphasizing ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ as the common thread linking their racialized experiences in intersections, their oppressions, and their futures. ‘Black’ was designed to be revolutionary and ‘Blackness’ the vehicle of a global revolution. The pressures from their common oppressors, metaphoric and literal, bonded them and conjoined their movements. A product of its time, ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ have had an enduring legacy. In the ghettoes of Detroit and settlements (and/or townships) of Johannesburg, ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ still carry notions of comraderie, solidarity, militancy, and shared oppression. Unapologetically Black focused on Detroit but looked at many cites in South Africa. Therefore, this study was not a traditional one to one comparative analysis. 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