RADICAL BLACK WORKERS
Just as the civil rights revolution of the early sixties played an important role in nudging organized labor toward a more affirmative stand against racial discrimination, the Black Power Movement of the late-sixties also served as a powerful catalyst. To most militants, usually young urban males, “black power” in the unions meant demanding a place in the power structure of the unions. Some of the more radical among them, however, went even further, rejecting white leadership altogether in locals where membership was primarily black. Others argued that black power could be achieved through all-black unions, and still others maintained that the goal of labor organizations should be to act as the vanguard of a black revolution that would transform the United States into a nebulously defined marxist state.
Of all the developments which symbolized the emergence of black radicalism in the unions, the most widely publicized was the black worker insurgency in Detroit. It came as a shock to white and black liberals alike to hear the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), for example, reject the United Autoworkers as racist. After all, the NAACP had acclaimed the union as the most progressive on the question of race. At least one-third of the black auto workers in Detroit were under thirty, had been influenced by the civil rights struggles, and exposed to the ideas of Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, and Karl Marx, and were admirers of the Black Panther Party. DRUM demanded, among other things, a significant increase in the number of blacks in official positions in the UAW, and in the company hierarchy. Soon other revolutionary groups were formed after the fashion of DRUM at Ford (FRUM), Jefferson Avenue (JARUM), Mack Avenue (MARUM), General Motors (GRUM), and Eldon Avenue (ELRUM).
Because wildcat strikes and demonstrations failed to achieve their demands, these groups decided to broaden their revolutionary base by expanding into other industries. This led to the formation of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, which sought to unite black workers, students, intellectuals, and the multitudes of black youth described as the “street force.” The League was convinced that attempts to gain black power in the UAW through the electoral process was futile. Therefore, the League issued a long list of demands including the firing of Reuther, election of a black UAW president, one black vice president, an international staff composed of 50 per cent blacks, and recognition of the League as official spokesman for black workers empowered to negotiate demands with the company and the union.
For once in complete agreement, company, union, and government officials believed that these were the fulminations of a “handful of fanatics” and “black fascists” bent on the destruction of American institutions. Although the radicals did not realize their goals, of course, they did put such a fright into UAW union leaders that much needed reforms were instituted which pleased the moderate black reformers, if not the radicals.
Similar developments were experienced in other industries where black workers were under-represented in the union hierarchy. As in the UAW, other union officials decided that the best way to cope with the black radicals was to open up more staff jobs to moderate blacks. To most workers the radicals’ demands perfectly illustrated Eugene V. Debs’s famous remark: “There is a difference between class consciousness and class craziness.” When confronted by the radicals, labor leaders found the moderate civil rights reformers the eminently more acceptable alternative.