Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Working Class Unity

 Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

This is a very powerful and accurate account, brief as it is, of how the European/White capitalist class built its base in the continent they were colonizing. Martin Luther King speaks in class terms here talking of the white European peasants and the need to build an "economic floor"  under them in some ways similar to the floor they built under the Protestants they imported in to Ireland as a base from which to dispossess the native population of its land and rights.

I saw this on the internet posted by someone on Facebook, a religious group I believe. The person that posted it added the headline "The Real Reason the Government Took Him Out." I believe the author of the headline sees economic empowerment and black capitalism as the way to liberation and an end to racism. I do not agree with this view nor did Malcolm X.

So that headline is not completely accurate I don’t believe. The ruling class in the US did not like that he told the truth about the history of this country. What he says here is true and it is dangerous in that it undermines the accepted narrative intended to portray whites as superior in every way to blacks leaving out the favorable treatment one gets over the other. But what is the motive for this white ruling class history? It is to maintain it's position as a ruling class and to do that it must divide the exploited. Every ruling class does this. 

Along with his ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people from all different backgrounds Martin Luther King was so dangerous because he was saying dangerous things and expressing ideas that if taken up by masses of people threaten the position of the ruling class and their exploitative brutal system. 

Where MLK was a real threat to this white racist ruling class was his bringing together all oppressed peoples and toward the end of his life talking about the need to change the system. and talking of socialism. Martin Luther King led a mass movement against exploitation and injustice. His approach united the working class against oppression. This is what made him so dangerous, the concept of working class unity. 

In a letter to Coretta Scott in July 1952 King wrote:
“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic… [Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive… but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.”

In a speech to his staff in 1966 he said:
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.”

“[W]e are saying that something is wrong … with capitalism…. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

And in a speech to the Southern Christian leadership Conference  in Atlanta Georgia on August 16, 1967 he said:
“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…”  

 He said to New York Times  reporter José Iglesias in 1968:
 “In a sense, you could say we’re involved in the class struggle.”

Same with Malcom X who was increasingly moving toward the socialist alternative to capital. And both men were also moving closer to organized labor as well speaking at rallies strikes and labor events. They spoke in class terms.

Malcolm X said that "You can't have capitalism without racism".  What is that but a condemnation of a social system. It is far more dangerous than going around saying all white people are devils. Malcolm X was not  killed by the state when he was saying that, he was useful to the white racist ruling class who are not afraid of nationalism or separatists that make no class distinctions at all between groups.

Toward the end of his life he was questioning the concept of black nationalism and what it meant. He said:  “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...” It is inconceivable that this statement from Malcolm X, who, along with Martin Luther King is one of the great US revolutionaries of the 20th century, did not terrify the white racist ruling class in this country. It is a statement which opens a path to him and his ideas for millions upon millions of oppressed and exploited people,

In a January 19, 1965, Toronto television interview, Pierre Berton asked Malcolm X whether he still advocated a Black state in North America he said he didn't and that, “I believe in a society in which people can live like human beings on the basis of equality.”

In the same interview he told of meeting the Algerian ambassador when he was visiting Ghana in 1964, a man who he respected, the issue of black nationalism came up.  Malcolm X said, the ambassador asked him, “Well, where did that leave him? Because he was white. He was an African, but he was Algerian, and to all appearances, he was a white man. And he said if I define my objective as the victory of Black nationalism, where does that leave him? Where does that leave revolutionaries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania? So he showed me where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries dedicated to overturning the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any means necessary.” Malcolm X The Final Speeches. Pathfinder Press

The struggle for working class unity does not negate the struggle for black liberation or the liberation of any specially oppressed section of society----it strengthens it.

Black History Month: Afscme and Martin Luther King

Richard Mellor

This is a Black History Month piece from the Afscme Activist. I hope you can enlarge it and read it. The Afscme Activist was an opposition newsletter that I started in Afscme in the 1990’s.

 

I was a member at the time of a left group and we published a US paper called Labor Militant. I had attended a few of the Afscme National Conventions and at one of them, I think it was in San Diego, I distributed a one-page statement titled, Let’s Be Realistic I think it was. I was just going through old copies cleaning out the garage so I haven’t gathered all the info for this with the intention of writing a historical piece. 

 

We had discussed this in our Oakland Branch and thought it was worth testing the waters.  The reception was very positive and we decided to publish a regular newsletter with the with the intention of building a rank and file caucus if things went well.

 

My union, Afscme Local 444 helped with a donation and after time ended up with subscriptions form unions in 10 states and around 250 subscribers. I think I sent each union 50 copies each. At the Chicago Convention in 1996 we had a public meeting with some 100 people attending. We were hoping to run candidates by the next convention from Afscme Members For a Stronger Union as we formed an editorial board in Chicago. 

 

Unfortunately the newsletter was sabotaged by the left group I was a member of that decided the publication was a Labor Militant organ not the publication of a broad left or rank and file caucus; they wanted to control it for factional reasons. At my hotel room where we voted to form an editorial board which meant including many of the people that helped the paper grow and sent articles for it, many of them women, two of my comrades voted against the proposal. The other rank and file members were somewhat shocked. But I was not going to lie to them and I told them what was going on and refused to hand over the subscribers list to the organization when they demanded I do so.

 

I was expelled for violating Democratic Centralism. It was worth it.

You can read about the Afscme Activist and my experience here.

Black History Month

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

 

Black History Month in my workplace (I'm since retired) was a very festive affair, celebrating African dance and African American artists, inventors and academics. Successful business people were also applauded. But the role of the the black worker in US history was absent. After all, workers aren't successful are we? And the history of the black worker in the US is a particularly rich and militant one. So to counter the bosses' sanitized, festive and apolitical stuff, I handed out my own version and distributed it as far and wide in the company as I could. I wrote this in 2001.  One white worker after reading it asked me which month was white history month. So I wrote a second part answering his question and distributed that. I'll post it toward the end of February.

Black History Month

February is Black History month and union members and workers in general should consider the tremendous role that African Americans have played in the struggle for civil and democratic rights. Inventors and the accomplishments of individuals are important but what is more important than the individual is the movement that lies behind them and their social impact. The way Black History is presented ignores the collective struggle of black working people focusing instead on the contributions of individuals (only made possible by the collective struggle) and the success of black capitalism. It is a sanitized version of history.

Of course, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X stand out as two of the giants of American history in general and African American history in particular. These two individuals arose during a period of social upheaval in this country, a time when the very foundation of an inherently savage and racist state was threatened by a mass movement of a huge segment of the population. Both these individuals were, in their different ways, voices of this movement. Both very political people, hounded by the FBI and the state and eventually, as many believe including this writer, murdered by it; in Malcom X's case with the apparent cooperation of now Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan. Malcolm X and Dr. King, due to their popularity among the black population, as well as the white, have been reluctantly accepted and given holidays etc. to commemorate their names. Their political development, what they actually stood for, particularly in the case of Malcolm X, has been sanitized.

It is impossible in such a short space to give an historical account of the role of African Americans in the Labor and working class movement. But two recent figures, one unknown to many and one well known, must also stand out. E.D. Nixon and Rosa Parks. E.D. Nixon was in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters AFL-CIO and through his Union activism had learned many organizational skills which he used as president of the Montgomery, Alabama NAACP. Rosa Parks, was secretary of this chapter and eventually ended up working as Nixon's secretary. It was Brother Nixon who made bond for Rosa Parks when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. It was E.D. Nixon, trade unionist and member of the Sleeping Car Porters Union that decided that Rosa Parks' case was the perfect case for a boycott of the Montgomery buses. This was the spark that in many ways is seen as the beginning of the civil rights movement that changed U.S. society and the world forever.

Despite views to the contrary, Rosa Parks was not this meek lady who just happened to be too tired to get up out of her seat one day. Her life in the South had prepared her many times for moments like these and as she said, "I had almost a life history of being rebellious about being mistreated because of my color." E. D. Nixon made another historic decision that was to influence history and the life of one individual in particular. While listening to a guest speaker for the NAACP at the state teachers college he commented to his friend after the speech that, "...you know, that guy made a heck of a speech." That "guy " was Martin Luther King, and it was Nixon who recommended King for the presidency of the Montgomery Improvement Association responsible for running the boycott.

The history of African American workers in the struggle for equality for all people is impressive. Many were often forced at gun-point to cross picket lines by agents of the employers or the police who were representing the employers. This was done by the employers to increase racial tension and division among the white and black workers, as they do today but much more subtly. Black workers often found themselves with nowhere to go as they were abused by the employers and excluded from the Unions on the basis of their color. From the Colored National labor Union of the 1870's to the present day, African American workers organizations have fought for equality for all workers. The struggle against segregated unions was something all workers should thank them for as we have all benefited from it.

It is no accident that perhaps the greatest American leader of the modern era, Malcolm X was assassinated at a period in his life when he spoke for unity across color lines as opposed to a period when he supported segregation and made viscous attacks on white people in general with no class distinctions but solely along racial lines. Though hated by the establishment in his early years, the role he was playing of dividing workers along color lines was much more acceptable than his calls for unity toward the end of his life as his thinking changed and he took a more class approach to politics.

When both he and Martin Luther King moved closer to the Trade Union movement (King was killed while supporting an AFSCME Picket line and Malcolm X was speaking more often at Union functions) they became a bigger threat. After all, these were the organizations of predominantly white workers. Support from liberal middle class whites was one thing, but white workers looking to black leaders, particularly ones who attacked the system itself, was unacceptable. The failure of the Labor leadership to combat racism correctly is exemplified by their failure to win Malcolm X. I believe he was at one time in the UAW, and had the Unions fought racism in an aggressive and militant way he would undoubtedly have been attracted to them. Instead, the Nation of Islam despite its sectarian and non-class approach, but vocal attacks on racism, offered him what appeared to be a legitimate explanation of the horror and history that was his life and the life of many of his people here in the U.S.

Malcolm X clearly had a global view before his death. He formed the Organization for Afro American Unity and said in Feb. 1967:

"Any kind of movement for freedom of Black people based solely within the confines of America is absolutely doomed to fail. So one of the first steps by those of us in the Organization of Afro American Unity was to come up with a program that would make our grievances international and make the world see that our problem was no longer a Negro problem or an American problem but a human problem. A problem for humanity. And a problem which should be attacked by all elements of humanity."

And on many of the mainstream Black leaders of the time who, like many today have found comfortable niches for themselves in the system, cozying up to rich whites with power or like those that kiss up to the white employers while attacking white workers, he said:

"And these hand-picked Negroes were given big positions and then they were used to open up their mouths and tell the world, "Look at how much progress we're making." He should say, look at how much progress he is making. For while these hand-picked Negroes were eating high on the hog, rubbing elbows with white folk, sitting in Washington, D.C., the masses of black people in this country continued to live in the slum and in the ghetto. The masses of Black people in this country remain unemployed and the masses of Black people in this country continue to go to the worst schools and get the worst education."

Malcolm X was assassinated as he was developing his thinking more and more along lines that included all workers in the struggle for justice. Had he not been cut down so early in life, it is quite possible that so many of us would have come to love and respect him as the great individual that he was and it is entirely possible he could have influenced greatly, the direction of the Labor movement for the better.

Of course, US capitalism has thrived on racism and oppression. It's in the nature of the system. And part of this is to seek to repress every aspect of culture that is not under big business’ control, including that culture that comes from the experience of black Americans. This also means trying to belittle the role that black people in general and as individuals have played in this country. It's important to counter this subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) racist propaganda. However, we should never lose sight of the fact that the other side of the equation is that all oppressed people -- that is, all working class people -- have more in common than any workers do with any capitalists. And just as white capitalists try to bind white workers to them, try to convince them they are on the same side because they are white skinned, so do the black capitalists with regard to black workers-- the better to exploit us all.


For more reading on the History of African Americans and the labor movement
see, Philip Foner, "Organized Labor and the Black Worker"
Indignant heart by Charles Denby
Negroes with Guns by Robert F Williams
And on the civil rights movement, the excellent, "My Soul is Rested" Interviews with many of the participants by Howell Raines.

Richard Mellor
South Area Service Center
2001

Martin Luther King on Capitalism, racism and socialism

Happy Birthday Martin Luther King

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

This is such a powerful and moving historical speech by Martin Luther King. It is important for all workers to listen carefully and learn from this speech and I implore workers of all backgrounds no matter what color race or religion you are; isten to this and think long and hard about it. Compare this historical analysis to the guilt ridden writings of the liberal lefty white middle classes today that make lots of money writing books and giving speeches about how bad white people are, how they are born racist and there are "white minds" and "black minds".

Compare it to the bleating of some sections of the black petit-bourgeois prominent on social media particularly those in academia whose advances they owe to the heroic struggles of the black youth and workers of the Civil Rights movement and their allies that forced the white racist ruling class that King talks of here to open some doors. King points with no apologies at the culprits and their system. It's brilliant.

Martin Luther King explains history here from a materialist perspective, the truth in other words. Answer the question: which is more historically correct, this or the argument that white minds are inherently racist and there's no hope. If you are a  Christian, which Christian more accurately expresses the teachings of Jesus (I am an atheist) Martin Luther King or the endless charlatans and con men (Trump included) that get rich exploiting those who seek a better place than this.

 

The US white racist ruling class have been forced to recognize black leaders like King and Malcolm X by the militancy of the black revolts just as they were forced to accept unions. And in the same way that they coopt workers organizations, render them harmless the same ruling class make carnivals after these two radical leaders, they ignore their ideas like these expressed above. They name some schools and a street or two after them and basically carnivalize their legacy. They certainly ensure that we see them as only fighters for "black" America when the complete opposite is the case. They included all workers in their quest for a sane and just society. We can't change the course of history if we don't understand how we got here and who our collective enemies are. 

"You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry… Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong…with capitalism… There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism."  

Martin Luther king 1966

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X:American Socialists

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

This video above is ection of a longer speech but it so clearly, without complication, personal attacks or verbiage, explains what history is and why it matters. Any discussion about the situation Black working class communities face should start with this. Imagine the advantage this gave to some and disadvantage to others. It was not a decision based on the white racist ruling class love for the white poor of Europe that were brought here, it was a solid political decision, a decision that was good for business.; a classic divide and rule decision.  It was this taking land from one group and giving to another, while also barring another from participating in the benefits of it. In truth, the entire working class has been harmed by it and the damage cannot be rectified within the framework of capitalist and the so-called free market. Both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X drew this conclusion toward the end of their lives as the quotes below show.

Along with his ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people from all different backgrounds Martin Luther King was so dangerous because he was saying dangerous things and expressing ideas that if taken up by masses of people threaten the position of the ruling class and their exploitative brutal system. 

Where MLK was a real threat to this white racist ruling class was his bringing together all oppressed peoples and toward the end of his life talking about the need to change the system. and talking of socialism. Martin Luther King led a mass movement against exploitation and injustice. His approach united the working class against oppression. This is what made him so dangerous, the concept of working class unity. 

In a letter to Coretta Scott in July 1952 King wrote:
“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic… [Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive… but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.”

In a speech to his staff in 1966 he said:
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.”

“[W]e are saying that something is wrong … with capitalism…. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

And in a speech to the Southern Christian leadership Conference  in Atlanta Georgia on August 16, 1967 he said:
“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…”  

 He said to New York Times  reporter José Iglesias in 1968:
 “In a sense, you could say we’re involved in the class struggle.” 

Malcolm X
Same with Malcolm X who was increasingly moving toward the socialist alternative to capital. And both men were also moving closer to organized labor as well speaking at rallies strikes and labor events. They spoke in class terms.

Malcolm X said that "You can't have capitalism without racism".  What is that but a condemnation of a social system. It is far more dangerous than going around saying all white people are devils. Malcolm X was not  killed by the state when he was saying that, he was useful to the white racist ruling class who are not afraid of nationalism or separatists that make no class distinctions at all between groups.

Toward the end of his life he was questioning the concept of black nationalism and what it meant. He said:  “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...” It is inconceivable that this statement from Malcolm X, who, along with Martin Luther King is one of the great US revolutionaries of the 20th century, did not terrify the white racist ruling class in this country. It is a statement which opens a path to him and his ideas for millions upon millions of oppressed and exploited people,

In a January 19, 1965, Toronto television interview, Pierre Berton asked Malcolm X whether he still advocated a Black state in North America he said he didn't and that, “I believe in a society in which people can live like human beings on the basis of equality.”

In the same interview he told of meeting the Algerian ambassador when he was visiting Ghana in 1964, a man who he respected, the issue of black nationalism came up.  Malcolm X said, the ambassador asked him, “Well, where did that leave him? Because he was white. He was an African, but he was Algerian, and to all appearances, he was a white man. And he said if I define my objective as the victory of Black nationalism, where does that leave him? Where does that leave revolutionaries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania? So he showed me where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries dedicated to overturning the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any means necessary.” Malcolm X The Final Speeches. Pathfinder Press

The struggle for working class unity does not negate the struggle for black liberation or the liberation of any specially oppressed section of society----it strengthens it.

Happy Birthday Martin Luther King

Steps of State Capital Montgomery Ala March 25 1965

 "You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry… Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong…with capitalism… There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism." Martin Luther King 

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Exerpt of speech below

The ruling class in the Unites States is forced by the movements from below to recognize individual fighters for working class, racial and sexual freedom. Just the same way they pay lip service to unions, but they were forced to accept them. Unions were built through heroic sacrifice of working class people in the US. We were shot, deported, savaged, beaten but we won them. Everything we have the ruling class resists with violence.

Martin Luther king was murdered by the US state or government as some call it because of his politics, and I see both the King and Kennedy families are calling for further investigation in to their deaths. I am not equating Kennedy with King because Kennedy was a capitalist politician and firmly rooted in that class. King was not and he led a mass movement. Kennedy pressured King to break from some of those people that supported and helped him, white liberals and Radicals but he had nasty enemies among his own class, this does not justify his murder by the US government either.

I was about to attend a Martin Luther King celebration one time but I saw it was totally non-political yet King was in essence a political man, a radical. He was a threat because he explained what racism was and why it arose the way it did in the US and he did it publicly.  We are taught in one way or another it is inherent in people, it is a part of white people’s genes for example. It’s human nature we are told or greed, and for the religious, Satan perhaps.  King tore that nonsense down. Malcom X also was abandoning the nationalist view and arguing along similar lines. King opposed the Vietnam War and the ranks of the US military were beginning to crack. To hide this, they build a carnival like atmosphere around working class heroes to avoid any discussion of their ideas and what they actually stood for. Their media portrays the unions we built as being built by the Mafia and gangsters. Capitalist history is in essence white capitalist history. We must own our heroes and our own history.

Below, is part of a speech he gave on the steps of the Montgomery State Capital March 25^th 1965. Read, show, sing it to young people if you like. The mass media no matter which source, is in essence “fake” news in the sense that it has a class bias. Here is a great, brief and true history lesson. He attacks a ruling class not the white workers, the white poor. It’s politics at its best. You can also listen to a rare speech on this same issue here. If it doesn't work try here. It's good stuff.

********

Montgomery Alabama March 25 1965

On our part we must pay our profound respects to the white Americans who cherish their democratic traditions over the ugly customs and privileges of generations and come forth boldly to join hands with us. (Yes, sir) From Montgomery to Birmingham, (Yes, sir) from Birmingham to Selma, (Yes, sir) from Selma back to Montgomery, (Yes) a trail wound in a circle long and often bloody, yet it has become a highway up from darkness. (Yes, sir) Alabama has tried to nurture and defend evil, but evil is choking to death in the dusty roads and streets of this state. (Yes, sir. Speak, sir) So I stand before you this afternoon (Speak, sir. Well) with the conviction that segregation is on its deathbed in Alabama, and the only thing uncertain about it is how costly the segregationists and Wallace will make the funeral. (Go ahead. Yes, sir) [Applause]

Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to vote. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.

Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. (Listen to him) That is what was known as the Populist Movement. (Speak, sir) The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses (Yes, sir) and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses (Yeah) into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.

To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. (Right) I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, (Yes) thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. (Yes, sir) And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.

If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. (Yes, sir) He gave him Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, (Yes, sir) he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. (Right sir) And he ate Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. (Yes, sir) And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (Speak) their last outpost of psychological oblivion. (Yes, sir)

Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike (Uh huh) resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; (Yes, sir) they segregated southern churches from Christianity (Yes, sir); they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; (Yes, sir) and they segregated the Negro from everything. (Yes, sir) That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality. (Yes, sir)

Source, Stanford University

Reconstruction's Defeat: From Hattie McDaniel to Breonna Taylor

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

08-10-2020

Roger Martinez contributed to this commentary.

 

My first reaction to watching this video was mixed. The whole Nazi like parade in Georgia around this film and the absence of the Black cast was nauseating. Then the Confederate veterans being paraded, the survivors of a supposedly defeated racist regime being honored. The cowardice of Clark Gable, Vivien Lee and all the European/white American actors in participating in it. It is so disgusting. When it shifted to the Oscars I got even angrier and thought about what this woman had to endure indeed. I didn’t expect her to be invited on the stage and when she was I hoped she would tell them to stick the Oscar up their collective asses and screw their pathetic attempt to appear like normal human beings.

 

But she accepted it with grace and thanked them. I can’t fault her for that as a representative of a group of people totally marginalized, excluded from all the basic normality’s of a supposedly democratic society. Maybe her success would change something. But is this treatment any different than the way Jews were treated by the Nazi regime. Exterminating Black Americans was not viable though as they were the backbone of the Southern economy.

 

Though it was getting late and I was a bit knackered from a hike earlier in the day I grabbed my copy of Eric Foner’s splendid book on the Reconstruction era as well as a couple of other texts and called my friend to discuss it a bit. 

Reconstruction is an interesting era in US history and for Black folks, many who had fought in the Civil War on the Union side, it was supposed to be the beginning of a new day. And in many ways it was, for a brief period.  

 

Oliver Otis Howard was the Union general in the Civil War who was in charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the US government agency that was to integrate the poor, the refugees and the freed slaves and their families in to the new society after the war and the defeat of one of the most brutal regimes in human history. White public opinion could not "conceive of the negro having any rights at all", Howard wrote in his autobiography….. “Men, who are honorable in their dealings with their white neighbors, will cheat a negro without feeling a twinge of their honor; to kill a negro they do not deem murder; to debauch a negro woman they do not think fornication; to take property away from a negro they do not deem robbery….They still have the ingrained feeling that the black people at large belong to the whites at large.”  Foner Reconstruction p 150

 

During Reconstruction there were committed men involved in the Freedmen’s Bureau, men like Howard who wanted to ensure that freed African Americans were given land that they could farm themselves and made efforts to do accomplish this. They wanted to develop a small farmer or Yeoman class and also there were skilled Black artisans who as “free labor” would play an important role in the Southern economy as the consolidation of the nation state based on free market and free labor policies gained momentum. After all, this was what the US Civil War was about; the struggle between the Northern Industrialists and the Southern Slaveocracy. Capitalism needs free labor and this conflict was the second half of the American Revolution.

 

There was General Fisk who was responsible for Louisiana who “began locating blacks on the 65000 acres under his control”, writes Eric Foner. Thomas Conway, “…invited applications from freedmen who wished to, ‘procure land for their own use’”.  “Orlando Brown…” Foner tells us, called on Oliver Howard to, “take possession of all the abandoned and confiscated land we require, and permit negroes to work it on their own behalf.”

 

General Rufus Saxton, a long time abolitionist who was in charge of Freedmen’s Bureau land stated that he would, provide the freedmen that he was responsible for “forty-acre” homesteads. “where by faithful industry they could readily achieve independence. “Put in all the cotton and rice you can…” Saxton told black farmers, “…for these are the crops which will pay the best….”.

 

Howard had issued the directive, Circular 13 that directed the agents under his command to “set aside” forty acre tracts for freed slaves. But Andrew Johnson, who became president after Lincoln was assassinated and served from 1865 to 1869 countered Howards orders and changed the nature of the Freedmen’s Bureau sealing the fate of the freed Blacks. He issued pardons to many of the confederate landowners which allowed them to take back their property and cemented this policy with his Circular 15. “Had Howard’s policy stood, as many as 900,000 acres of plantation lands previously belonging to slave owners might have been redistributed”. Rick Beard, A Promise Betrayed

 

The aforementioned Saxton refused to comply, “Thousands of them are already located on tracts of forty acres each,” he wrote Howard. “Their love of the soil and desire to own farms amounts to a passion—it appears to be the dearest hope of their lives.” Furthermore, Saxton argued in a second letter, “the faith of the Government is solemnly pledged to these people who have been faithful to it and we have no right now to dispossess them of their lands.” https://www.historynet.com/a-promise-betrayed.htm

 

Johnson eventually had Saxon removed under pressure from the confederate planters.  Along with this betrayal of some 4 million Black Americans new laws were instituted called “Black Codes”  that were designed to force now landless freed slaves to negotiate with their former slaveowners for labor contracts. Vagrancy laws that didn’t apply to whites for example.   In 1877 another betrayal and somewhat of a protection from white racist violence was removed when the Great Compromise between Democrats and Republicans was made that led to the removal of Union troops from the South entirely. So when we hear some black folks ask “where’s my forty acres and a mule” or Martin Luther King saying in that speech on the Homestead Act that we’ve “come for our check”, it has a real historical significance.

 

Southern Democrats were instrumental in undermining the Freedmen’s Bureau and ensuring control remained in the hands of the white racist power structure and the gains made during construction were lost and the era of Jim Crow began.

 

The ideology of the Confederate ruling class was always based on racism and white supremacy and this constructed notion of the White Race. Alexander Stevens the Vice President of the Confederacy in 1861 made that clear in 1861 when he announced:

“The new Constitution has put to rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution-----African slavery as it exists among us-----the proper status of the Negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as “The rock upon which the Old Union would split.”……The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically…. These ideas however, were fundamentally wrong.   They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error….

 

"Our new government is founded on exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon, the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that Slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. (Applause.) This, our new Government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical philosophical and moral truth.” The Emancipation Proclamation, George Novack, America’s Revolutionary Heritage, p. 264.

 

It is impossible to understand the collective horror and shock the Black population must have had after fighting alongside Union troops to defeat the Confederacy and then to be stabbed in the back in that way.  Howard tried to calm them and encourage them to “negotiate” with their former slaveowners. Imagine that scenario.  Land being farmed by Blacks in Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina and elsewhere was returned to the “enemy” against who the war was fought. Blacks were evicted from their land. And people say we should never forget 911 and we shouldn’t, but it is a minor episode in US history by comparison and Black people are accused of being unable to let it go. They have to listen to some whites who say that they are looters, terrorists and so on. Those who choose to obsess over the latest football scores and get angry at Colin Kaepernick for his mild protest at the conditions that Black Americans still face should be ashamed of themselves.

 

With the onset of the Jim Crow era Black people in the Southern United States lived in a state of perpetual fear. The war was fought for nought. There was those Blacks that claimed they were better off with their former owners than under the so-called free regime of Jim Crow. As the Blacks were dispossessed of their land, whites were given free land as US capitalism expanded westward. Here’s a short clip of a speech by Martin Luther King detailing this.

 

This history, from the beginning of “white” as a racial definition in the aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, detailed in the two volumes written by Theodore Allen titled, The Invention of the White Race, was a conscious development as a means of undermining labor solidarity between European and African American workers and it has served the US ruling class well. It has meant a violent and tragic history for Black Americans, but all workers have been harmed by it.

The conditions of workers in the South were always worse than the North and unions either non-existent or weaker due to racism. But this condition was not easy to create, as Lerone Bennett Jr. wrote in the Shaping of Black America:

“Curiously unconcerned about their color, these people worked together and relaxed together.  They had essentially the same interests, the same aspirations and the same grievances. They conspired together, and waged a common struggle against their common enemy-------the big planter apparatus and a social system that legalized terror against black and white bondsmen………….the available evidence, slight though it is, suggests that there were widening bonds of solidarity between the first generation of blacks and whites.  And the same evidence indicates that it proved very difficult indeed to teach white people to worship their skin.” 

 

The support the Black Lives Matter movement has received form young white workers is a refreshing development and while plain solidarity and anti-racism is a factor, the lack of opportunity and a future for European Americans is not bright; the declining life expectancy of European Americans is also a contributor. Hopefully this movement will expand its reach and also its demands.  Neither the police nor racism can be abolished within the framework of capitalism, they are integral to its survival. There is no doubt that solidarity is involved in this but also the continued deterioration of the living standards of the white population.

 

I hope folks watch that video and are also encouraged by this rather off the cuff and perhaps a somewhat rambling contribution, to look at history with an open mind and from the perspective not of the rich and powerful at the top, but history from below. Perhaps those white workers who think that Black people complain too much might ask themselves this question: What was it that caused a huge section of the US population to lose their legal right to vote after the war they fought in that was supposed to guarantee it for them.

 

If we do that one can’t help recognize that the conditions that prevail in the Black working class communities are not of their own creation but they are a product of centuries of violence and exclusion and that their efforts to overcome them are just.

 

The Dogs and Fire Hoses Have Been Replaced with Guns and Body Cameras

From Heather in NYC

Last night I attended a vigil for the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who has become symbolic in the struggle for human rights and especially black liberation in a country living in paradox: That we laud the Constitution of the United States as a world-class example of freedom so pure that its conveyances are inexorable, but ignore the hollow point sized holes where the equal application of those freedoms should be. In addition to honoring Dr. King we gathered to remember Stephon Clark and all victims of gun violence as organized by Justice League NYC and Citizen Action of New York.

We were encouraged to bring a photo of a loved one who has been lost to gun violence, and immediately I recalled a story I've been following closely. Dominic Jerome "DJ" Broadus II was murdered execution style on a rural property just outside of Jacksonville, Florida on February 3rd of this year. It's common knowledge in the area that Baker County's racist underpinnings are epitomized by a mural at the entrance of the local courthouse, not unlike other halls of "justice" in the deep South, which proudly displays and describes the Ku Klux Klan riding horseback. It follows as no surprise that the owner of the property on which Broadus was found unarmed with several gunshots to the head was that of recently retired Deputy Sheriff Ryan T Fraser of the Baker County Sheriff's Office, previously fired from Jacksonville Sheriff's Department for shooting an unarmed black teenager.

The heavily redacted police report revealed that Fraser's son Gardner Kent Fraser, grandson of Jim Crow era Florida state senator Edwin Fraser, was escorted from the property after police arrived on the scene. Yesterday marked 60 days in which the family has had little to no questions answered, no autopsy performed, and no charges filed as Fraser walks free and securely protected by the state. After communicating with Broadus's mother I decided to represent DJ's stolen dreams at the vigil in solidarity.

The gathering overall was innocuous compared with last week's gathering in immediate response to the shooting of Stephon Clark organized by Black Lives Matter and the People's Power Assembly. There was little marked increase in the ordinary police presence at Union Square where yesterday's event took place, drawing a much smaller and more placid crowd as an indigenous cleansing of the space was performed and various eulogies and statements were read in honor of Dr. King.

Present were various faith leaders, community leaders and youth violence intervention programs including G.M.A.C.C. (Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Changes) who spoke to the real change brought about by community mediation resulting in reduced police and state involvement in low-income areas. There was also a significant gathering of BRADO (Brazilian Resistance Against Democracy Overthrow) NYC that preceded and graciously joined the vigil, present to raise awareness of the assassination of Marielle Franco and to stand against fascism in Brazil.

As Stanley Fritz of Citizen Action of New York said  "Unlike many of us, (Dr. King) understood that the systems of capitalism- the super rich people, the millionaire, the billionaires, the corporations- use racism, sexism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, and every other tool of hate to make us fight each other while they stack dollars. And while they get richer we also become poorer. We have less food. We can't afford to live in our homes. We can't afford to even go to our own jobs, and Dr. King saw that. So in his last days as he was using non-violence to fight for justice he was putting together a poor peoples campaign, a campaign of people like you and me. And if we aim to win at anything, we have to realize that we are the people we have been waiting for."

While often it seems that little has changed since the time of Dr. King's activism, it should serve as inspiration that after decades of attempts to appease the working class with so many consumable comforts that would render us unconscious of our oppressions or dead, the advent of the internet has illuminated our interconnectedness in a kindling of one word in so many different languages: Resist.

Revolutionary fighters or "Harmless Icons"

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

If you read Lenin's quotes in this image of the great revolutionary Mexican artist Frida Khalo, they apply to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as well. Under pressure from the black working class and the influence these two revolutionary figures were having on the working class as a whole, the US capitalist class was forced to publicly recognize them, naming schools buildings, and boulevards after them, after the very same US ruling class had them murdered. Putin could learn a thing or two from the US state security forces.

Both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, like most genuine fighters were evolving, changing their views, developing an understanding of the world as they moved through it. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis when he went to support striking janitors who were members of my former union AFSCME. When alive they were constantly demonized. 

The FBI constantly harassed MLK sending him threatening letters, sending prostitutes to entrap him, bugging his rooms. They sent him an anonymous letter purportedly from a black person pressuring him to suicide:
"King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation."

Malcolm X was also moving closer to the organized working class as well. He spoke at Local 1199 rallies supporting that health care local in its battles for decent pay and conditions for its members.  Members of the Memphis Afscme Local and Local 1199 were lower paid and predominantly workers of color. Local 1199 and its left wing leadership faced ongoing harassment and investigation from the US government. Martin Luther King said 1199 was his "favorite union."

Moving toward the organized working class and our organizations was a significant threat to US capitalism as this would tend to bring workers of different backgrounds closer together, lead them on strike together and open the door to undermining the bosses' racist divide and rule strategy. It was bad enough the Civil Rights movement was embarrassing the US throughout the world as it portrayed itself as the cradle of democracy. This was being revealed as the propaganda it was as the most powerful military machine in the world dropped thousands of tons of bombs and chemicals on the Vietnamese people who had, like Iraq, made no threatening moves toward the US at all.

Watching vicious dogs being set upon black people, women, children, the aged, in the US when all they were demanding was basic civil rights expected in a bourgeois democracy did not look good at all either and that's what we were seeing on TV. They learned from bringing the masses live TV coverage of wars and conflicts.

Revolutionary figures like Malcom X and Martin Luther King have almost become carnival characters as their lives are celebrated after death. They are portrayed only as "black" leaders and sometimes you can find them on posters with other famous black leaders like Louis Farrakhan.  Their ideas are never stressed or how they saw the world or what they thought about society and how much they differed from one another. Malcolm X was clearly moving to a socialist position after he traveled to Africa and met revolutionaries there. Martin Luther King led a mass movement and organized the "poor people's" march, hardly a nationalist position and he too was talking about socialism before he was assassinated by the US state. Malcolm X was talking about the revolution being about the oppressed against the oppressor and not being based on skin tone and met the same fate. Louis Farrakhan who took over from Malcolm X at the Harlem mosque had a very different world view. Apart from the inherent sexism in the Nation of Islam philosophy Farrakhan is a proponent of black capitalism with him playing a prominent role.  These three people had very different views of the world, Farrakhan a right winger with the other two clearly on the left.

While Farrakhan is also demonized by the white capitalist ruling class as a means of sowing some terror in to the minds of white workers, it was Martin Luther King and Malcolm X they feared, especially as Malcolm X moved closer to MLK and his approach to building a mass movement and Martin Luther King was openly opposing the war in Vietnam. Farrakhan and his philosophy are no threat to them at all as his worldview is divisive, isolates workers from each other and weakens any offensive against capitalism which is the ideology he embraces.

For the US ruling class, lumping them all together simply as "black" leaders serves their interests well. These three people were as different as chalk and cheese. Of course they all have one thing in common, growing up as black people in a racist society with a violent history, they are all victims of that and they all have to deal with institutionalized racism, but King and Malcolm X had a vision for the future of humanity that could be understood by all workers no matter what their background. Ideas when they become accepted in the mass consciousness are dangerous things.

That's why there is such a powerful effort on the part of the US capitalist class to, as Lenin puts it, "Convert them to harmless icons."

Why US big business prefers the term White Privilege to Racial Discrimation

 Because it helps them to divide and rule.

“The whole system of separation and subordination rested on official state terror. The exigencies of the situation required men to kill some white people to keep them white and to kill many blacks to keep them black.  In the North and South, men and women were maimed, tortured, and murdered in a comprehensive campaign of mass conditioning. The severed heads of black and white rebels were impaled on poles along the road as warnings to black people and white people, and opponents of the status quo were starved to death in chains and roasted slowly over open fires.  Some rebels were branded others were castrated. The exemplary cruelty, which was carried out as a deliberate process of mass education, was an inherent part of the new system.”  Lerone Bennett The Shaping of Black America Chapter 3 p 74 Johnson Publishing Company Chicago, 1975

Blocking the Bay Bridge. What's Next?

b y Richard Mellor
Local 444, retired

I commented on Monday’s blockade of the Oakland San Francisco Bay Bridge that made the rounds of the mainstream local news stations, those media outlets that are owned, controlled, and represent the interests of the US ruling class.  Any person or activist group that has a basic understanding of what we are up against in our struggle against capitalism and the rule of the 1% is aware that when you talk to these news agencies you are talking to the enemy and should be on your guard.

My local Fox News station interviewed one of the organizers/leaders of the protest and within 5 seconds it was clear why she was chosen, the US ruling class is not stupid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth. The snippet, or teaser before the ad, you know, the “we’ll be right back” clip, was a classic introductory sentence, the racist US ruling class couldn’t have scripted it better, “I get that being stuck on the bridge for an hour is an inconvenience but what’s really an inconvenience is hundreds of years of white supremacy.”

Oh well, that said it all. I decided it was time to go to bed rather than subject myself to this. It was not going to get any better, for Rupert Murdoch and the white racist bosses, yes, for workers’ and the struggle against racism and capitalism, no. It could have been an isolated statement taken out of context for propaganda purposes as the mouthpieces of the 1% are good at that, it’s their job after all.  I’ll check it out in the morning and share my thoughts later.

Well, here I am. I had a look at the rest of the interview the next morning and I was right. There was nothing in what this woman said that was aimed at the thousands of working class people whose daily lives were disrupted by their actions.  Not an inkling of any orientation to workers at all.  As for the term white supremacy, which is the philosophy of the US ruling class, it has become so fashionable among white liberals and privileged leftists that even the Ford Foundation, a bastion of white supremacy, is organizing conferences on it. See here.

It’s no wonder the newscaster praised the woman for her comments and explaining her reasons for the disruption. It was too good to be true.  There is no doubt that the philosophy of the supremacy of the “white race” is the ideology of the dominant European white skinned ruling class and it has been adopted by many working class whites to their own detriment, but the basis for that has been severely weakened and to use this term devoid of class content, without pointing to the ideological origins of it, does not serve the interests of either black or white workers. I am European and have white skin but until I came to the US I never identified it as my race, whatever that means.

While I believe very few honest white workers would deny that being white has its advantages in society it is not likely some white worker sitting in the traffic Jam having to get to their $12 an hour job considers the term really applicable to him or her, or even better paid workers who are hanging on by a thread. In Ireland, religion played this role and it was the Catholics that got this treatment as a colonized people as they are the same color as the colonizers. West Virginia is a basket case, in a state of extreme depression where unemployment, drug addiction and poverty are rife. Approaching these victims of capitalism with accusations of white supremacy, as if there are no class divisions within this group will simply not get an echo. If one accepts as some do, that the white working class is lost as an ally I suppose that it doesn’t matter---I think that is a mistaken viewpoint. though I certainly can’t fault some black folks for coming to that conclusion.

There were probably many people angry at the disruption, not simply white workers.  The disruption didn’t affect the people who really profit from the white supremacy philosophy and who are in fact its incubator. They don’t go back and forth across the Bay Bridge every day except by helicopter. If were going take an action like this, there has to be appeals made to those workers whose lives are inconvenienced, no matter what their background. The struggle against racism must be linked to all forms of discrimination and exploitation. This does not mean that we lessen or ignore the brutality of US history as far as people of African descent are concerned.

But the truth is that the woman/group that addressed the white supremacists’ news media had no intention at all of appealing to those whose lives were disrupted by the closure. Uniting the working class is not part of her agenda.  She is always “planning for black liberation” she told Murdoch’s news agency and what she means by that is the black petty bourgeois, the black capitalist class.  She is not interested in ridding ourselves of the system that perpetuates racism and white supremacy; in fact she never mentioned it, unless it was censored. Most likely she wants more opportunity for black capitalism within it.  A major force in society that could offer a working class alternative is absent as the trade union officialdom says and does next to nothing in the face of the continuing effects of institutionalized racism.  Many black folks have also drawn the conclusion that the white working class is lost as an ally. I don’t accept that.

Malcolm X made it very clear when he said, “You can’t have capitalism without racism.” and I believe he was right. Eliminating capitalism is the only path to ending racism and class unity is a prerequisite for that. There is no doubt that white workers have a special responsibility here too, but activists and socialists in particular can play an important role.

I am not saying in any way that whites have not bought in to the white privilege view to varying degrees. But in the 40 years I have been in this country, the white worker has been savaged.  The white racist ruling class has not been able to offer the same perks they could in the past. The workplaces are far more integrated and class consciousness is stronger there among white and black workers. The only black worker that I ever heard use the term “white supremacy” in my workplace is now a boss.  His protestations had a different purpose, to advance his interests as an individual, not the interests of the black working class as a whole.

The US ruling class was not threatened at all by this action that blocked the bridge which is why their news media gave the organizers of it so much air time and why they praised their explanation for it. One can argue over the effectiveness of a particular action or disagree with the politics and goals of the organizers while respecting their courage and the righteousness of their cause.

We can see how the origins of the white supremacist ideology was created by the ruling class in this country as a means of undermining working class unity and of maintaining its control and exploitation of both groups.  The concept of “white” as a race definition was not used until the 1690’s, after Bacon’s Rebellion, in order to overcome the class unity that existed and that naturally develops between those whose lot it is to do the dirty work. Prof.  Jeffrey B Perry has some useful information on these developments here.

White Supremacy is a ruling class ideology.

Almost two centuries after Bacon’s rebellion, Andrew Johnson, a man from humble beginnings who

came to represent the interests of the rising US bourgeois as President after the American Civil War, what in reality was the second half of the bourgeois revolution in the US, made it very clear what sort of society was being built and on what foundations. In his 1867 annual message to the Congress he stated, that blacks possessed less “capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, where ever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse in to barbarism.”

Johnson told California Senator John Connes two years earlier that “White men alone must manage the South. *

We should also not forget that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation didn’t include half a million or so slaves in the North and he supported the hanging of John Brown.

There were many genuine northerners and military people who supported equal rights and universal suffrage for freed slaves after the war. Colonel Samuel Thomas who was the director of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Mississippi described the problems he faced and his understanding of the influence of the white supremacist ideology in the South:

White public opinion could not “Conceive of the negro having any rights at all…. …..Men, who are honorable in their dealings with their white neighbors, will cheat a negro without feeling a twinge of their honor; to kill a negro they do not deem murder; to debauch a negro woman they do not think fornication; to take property away from a negro they do not deem robbery….They still have the ingrained feeling that the black people at large belong to the whites at large.” **

When Charlie Daniels whines about Southern Heritage is this what he is referring to when he defends the flag of the Confederacy? And white workers need to be conscious that most black people understand this history simply through experience, just like Irish Americans have a view of the British brought to them from parents and grandparents who emigrated here to escape famine. Personal relations and marriage between black and white Americans is much more common now but up until recently, the existence of many light skinned persons of African descent was the product of legalized rape. Black folks don’t need to learn that at school, I'm sure it exists deep in their mass consciousness.

The white ruling class in the US will always use racism to divide the workers' movement. They will always play the “race” card. But the privileges are not so easily come by as society has changed somewhat. The white racist capitalists that own the mass media got some help the other night.  It’s a good lesson for all of us to remember that when we’re talking to these people via their media, we’re talking to the enemy.

As far as the Black Lives Matter movement, I wrote previously on why I think this is an appropriate slogan in the wake of the almost daily state sponsored murder and killings of black people. But there is arising in the universities a whiteness movement as an alternative. This is a damaging process that sets European workers apart from workers of color and is harmful to our economic and material welfare. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, those that appeal more directly to us for racial unity on the basis of our white skin are not our friends.  White and black are skin tones not races.  That the US ruling class created them as such is a concept we must abandon if we are to survive.Class unity is paramount.

* Quoted in: Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution, Eric Foner p180

** Ibid, page 150