MikeDunnAuthorToday in Labor History May 2, 1968: Workers walked out of the Hamtramck Dodge auto plant, in Detroit, in protest of management-mandated speed-ups there. Several of the black workers met across the street to form the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM). At the time, over 70% of the workers at the Hamtramck plant were African American, yet leadership of their UAW local was dominated by older Polish Americans. Walter Reuther, head of the UAW at the time, had been an early supporter of the Civil Rights movement, but was pretty much asleep at the wheel in terms of prejudice against black workers by their own union. One of DRUM’s first demands was that Reuther be replaced by a black leader. They also demanded that the UAW end its collaborations with the FBI and the CIA. And they called on the UAW to organize a General Strike to end the war in Vietnam. In July, DRUM led a 2-day wildcat strike against the Hamtramck plant in which 4,000 workers walked out. DRUM’s militancy, and their willingness to stand up to the old guard at the UAW, inspired similar movements in the auto industry, including FRUM (Ford Revolutionary Union Movement) at the Ford River Rouge Plant, and ELRUM (Eldon Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement) at the Chrysler Eldon Avenue plant. In 1969, these groups united to form the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW).
DRUM was created by veteran organizers who were also communists, internationalists, and revolutionaries who had been organizing as early as 1963, when they formed the UHURU student group at Wayne State. One of the organizers was General Baker, who wrote the following: “When the Detroit rebellion took place (1967), and the National Guard and 101st Airborne was sent in, and they imposed curfew, if you got sick, you couldn’t go to the doctor. If you got hungry, you couldn’t get no food. But if you had a badge from Chrysler, Ford or General Motors, you could get through the police line, the National Guard line, the army line, all of them to take your butt to work. The conclusion we draw from that was that the only place in this society that Black people had any value was at a point of production. That’s why, after the rebellion, we turned all our efforts into organizing inside the plants. Believe it or not, like an accident of history in one year from that time, DRUM was born."
You can read more about this movement in “Motown and the Making of Black Revolutionaries,” by Walda Katz-Fishman and Jerome Scott; and Read @JamesTracy excellent review of this book here: https://convergencemag.com/articles/book-review-motown-and-the-making-of-black-revolutionaries/
#workingclass #LaborHistory #drum #frum #elrum #racism #union #strike #wildcat #uaw #Revolutionary #fbi #cia #generalstrike #rebellion #detroit #BlackMastodon
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