The Black Jacobins in Detroit: 1963

DAN GEORGAKAS

The paperback edition of The Black Jacobins issued by Vintage Books in 1963 was a timely catalyst to the emerging radical movement in Detroit in that era. The book was read and admired by most of the individuals who were active in Detroit radical politics for years, including many who would be in the leadership of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The impact of The Black Jacobins in particular, and Jamesian ideas in general, were less a wow factor in the sense of awakening a body of enthusiastic supporters than a stimulus to the political and cultural momentum already in motion.

The most consistent and influential advocate of Jamesian thought in Detroit was Martin Glaberman. He was among the Jamesians who had moved to the city to take part in the radical labor environment that had taken shape there since the founding of the United Automobile Workers (UAW). There were numerous splits in the Jamesian camp. The first came in 1955 when Raya Dunayevskaya with the support of half the membership formed a new organization named News & Letters. A second schism in 1962 was led by James Boggs and Grace Lee. They took the name Correspondence. Martin Glaberman, Seymour Faber, Jessie Glaberman, and other James loyalists eventually adopted the name Facing Reality. All three groups had public meetings that attracted the emerging radical generation of the 1960s. Each had literature tables and a publication.

Perhaps the most influential aspects of Jamesian thought was the attention it brought to the nature of radical newspapers and the view that African American workers would be at the forefront of revolutionary change in the United States. The Jamesian critique of vanguard parties was not universally accepted, but it led to wariness about rigid organizational forms. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers, for example, initially avoided a vanguard party ideology, but when the League began to dissolve, one sector gravitated to Maoism.

James's views on newspapers deeply influenced John Watson, one of the founders of the League. His ideas about publishing grew out of a study group of black radicals taught by Glaberman. A number of other future League leaders were part of that group. Among the texts that had considerable impact on them was Lenin's "Where to Begin."

In a prelude to the agitation that led to the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and then the League, in 1967 John Watson, Luke Tripp, General Baker, and Mike Hamlin began to publish the Inner City Voice, an agitational popular newspaper designed to air the grievances of black Detroiters. All four became part of the six-man leadership committee of the League. Watson was the editor and the driving force in the publication. Later he was elected editor of Wayne State's daily newspaper and transformed it into a de facto daily of the League. Mike Hamlin played a key role in that effort, and General Baker was the major organizer at DRUM, which was formed at Chrysler's Dodge Main plant in 1968. Baker continued to focus on in-plant organization while Hamlin headed the League's efforts to create a printing house able to produce the League's own newspaper, handouts, and books. Attorney Ken Cockrel, another of the six-man leadership group, worked with Watson to add cinema to the League's outreach assets.

All of these efforts were based on addressing the immediate problems of African Americans with a view that blacks in general and the black working class in particular would lead a new U.S. revolution. The paperback edition of The Black Jacobins helped provide a theoretical and historical framework for what was being currently experienced and observed in contemporary life. That Toussaint Louverture, despite meager resources and an undereducated mass base, had led a black revolution that defeated powerful European armies was inspiring. This history gave an emotional boost to black radicals who were aware of the tremendous power the UAW, the auto industry, and the U.S. government could amass to defeat them.

The Black Jacobins also confirmed the need to politically educate the black masses, a concern many in the Black Power movement found paramount. The story of the rebellion led by Toussaint Louverture, like similar historical portraits of renowned black figures, had not been offered in many college courses, much less in high schools. That the author of The Black Jacobins was an Afro-Trinidadian and not a sympathetic white historian underscored the ability of black intellectuals to create powerful works that spoke to general readers and specialists of all ethnic heritages. Unlike so many accounts of revolutions, the immediate outcome in Haiti had not been a glorious defeat but a spectacular victory. The Black Jacobins provided an example of how seemingly impossible rebellions could be...