On Finally Got The News

Joseph Crapo
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The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) was founded in 1969 in Detroit,
Michigan, in response to feelings among black auto workers that they were being exploited. In
particular, these workers found that the union and the management appeared to be one and the
same. Finally Got The News tells the story of the struggle the black laborers went through in an
attempt to unify for better working conditions, and how they empowered themselves through
Marxist-Leninist principles in the fight for black rights.
In 1967 some of the worst riots of the decade took place in Detroit. Over five days, whole
blocks had been burned down, hundreds of buildings damaged or destroyed, and 43 poor souls
died. A Presidential commission put most of these deaths at the feet of police officers and
National Guardsmen. The black community, at that time about one third of the population of
Detroit, had long suffered abuse and discrimination at the hands of a nearly all-white police
force, and many saw the riots as a justified upheaval of power, or at least an attempt as much.
This was the racial atmosphere that the LRBW was born into. While still a success, the Civil
Rights Act passed just a few years ago had not eliminated day-to-day oppression and
discrimination. Black militance had always been a factor in the Civil Rights Movement, but the
youth of the participants in the 1967 Detroit riots suggested that its influence was still spreading.
But the League was not just a militant group, and most of their principles were founded in
Marxist ideology, concepts of which were being espoused by Malcolm X and Martin Luther
King Jr. To a black population that was still the backbone of the labor force a hundred years past
slavery, these principles have obvious appeal, and simple execution. The idea that the power of
America, and particularly the power of Americas industry, was in their hands and not the hands
of the owners and managers of the companies they worked for enabled them to act. All that they

were missing was the organization and unification to act effectively, and that is how the League
was born.
The greatest evidence of Leninist theory at work in the League is in its early days of
organization, when they were still known as the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement
(DRUM). One of DRUMs first actions was to establish a newspaper, in an attempt to attract
artists and intellectuals, organize their ideas and thoughts and use them to educate and centralize
the fringe groups that would pop up and quickly peter out. This idea of unification through
education is a squarely Leninist principle, and the first full-bodied action by the founding
members of DRUM. Its necessity is best demonstrated by the words of founding member Mike
Hamlin, who said that, My first instinct, my first idea, was to load up my car with dynamite and
drive it into the University of Mississippi homecoming game and blow up every motherfucker in
there. That is what I was thinking about doing and so were a lot of people. The progression from
violence to organization is an important one, as it underwrites two central themes of black
struggle in in the 60s. The question of violence was always being asked, even if the action
wasnt carried out. The simple fact that the great non-violent movements of that time are
characterized as non-violent before anything else show this: whether to take up arms was a
question for every participant in these movements. The choice instead, or, more accurately, to
prioritize, education and organization is an important one. While black laborers, who accounted
for as much as 45% of the auto labor force around the time of the DRUMs conception, held
great power as a group, individually they were poor and powerless. Only as a large, unified entity
could they affect change. Those in power recognized this, with the Detroit mayor and police

chief personally threatening DRUM when they attempted to run their own candidate for a union
position in the UAW on the following platform:
1.
2.

The complete accountability to the Black majority of the entire membership.

All union decisions will coincide directly with the 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.

5.
6.

A refusal to be dictated to by the International staff of the UAW.

Total involvement in policy by that workers as opposed to dictatorship by the
executive board.

The DRUM candidate and his platform had two goals: end the systemic corruption and
oppression taking place in the union, and unify the black auto workers behind one candidate.
To see further evidence of the Leagues roots, look again at the words of founding
member Mike Hamlin. We were not anti-White, we were a Marxist organization. We were going
to build a Black organization based on the working class. The importance of such an
organization was not necessarily in its uniqueness, but in its specificity. General pro-black
liberation groups in the vein of the Black Panthers and Marcus Garveys Universal Negro
Improvement Association, but where these groups fell short was often in their inability to address
a specific problem causing the conditions they wanted to improve. The ambition of these groups
was often their downfall, best exhibited by the UNIAs failure to properly organize and manage a
shipping company. DRUM and the LRBW were interested in one goal: improving black auto
workers conditions, while establishing the power of the collective in doing so, enabling them to
control and regulate conditions as they changed. This simple, direct, objective was not just
appealing to workers, it was effective, with a number of wildcat strikes in the early months of the
league disrupting production in Chryslers plants.

In the year following the first July strike that represented DRUMs first tangible action,
and in the following year as DRUM grew into the LRBW, it saw great success. The repression
they were met with, particularly the unions crooked election policies, seemed only to empower
their members, who were already taking up a separatist rhetoric. The work force in Detroit was
growing increasingly black and increasingly young. The leaders possessed more than some
abstract leadership ability, they shared similar backgrounds with their members. The rise and
spread of militant and Marxist rhetoric outside of DRUM made those ideas easier to accept, and
simpler to teach. Where the League eventually fell short was in its ability to elect members to
positions of power within the union. The UAW leadership was largely entrenched, and the votes
of its mostly white retirees would never be swayed by the militant Marxist platform of the
League. If anything, the dedication to their platform which strengthened DRUM by drawing out
young workers would eventually weaken them as it was spun as anti-white by the UAW. The
inability to affect change despite its quick rise to legitimacy would ultimately spell the death
knell for the LRBW, and makes for an interesting lesson. Riding on principles grounded firmly
within black liberation ranges, there was no recourse for the League. They needed to seize
control, or at least substantial footing, within the UAW, because of the threat they posed to the
complacent middle class white man. White workers felt as though racism no longer existed, that
the Civil Rights Act should have wiped away any and all issues. The black militancy they were
met with prompted a shift in the attitude and rhetoric of the white workers (especially those with
seniority and its resulting powers and privileges) from unsympathetic to hostile. The policies and
principles that LRBW was founded in left those white workers with a binary choice: give in to
black control, or maintain white control. By resisting DRUMs initial surge, these workers
concreted their positions of power. After all, the membership of DRUM, the very specific type of

members it targeted, were young and poor working-class blacks. As internal stresses weakened
the leadership within DRUM, these members were left with little choice but to return to the
working conditions they had been fighting against. The Leagues ambition was admirable, but
was opposed with an intricate structure with many checks and balances, nearly all designed to
maintain power, and not to distribute it. Its a sad thought that Mike Hamlin may have affected
more change with a mission statement and a car full of dynamite than with the well-reasoned
support and justified support of his oppressed and powerless peers.