Today in Labor History March 30, 1930: Three thousand workers, mostly African-American, began construction on the Hawks Nest Tunnel in West Virginia. The employer cut costs by failing to provide safety equipment. Additionally, bosses forced the men to work 10-15-hour days, often at gunpoint, without breaks and without masks to protect themselves from the silicon dust. Consequently, hundreds of workers died of silicosis. Possibly over 1,000 people, one-third of the entire workforce, died from silicosis, in one of America’s worst cases of mass workplace mortality.
Today in Labor History March 21, 1965: 3,200 people began the third march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest racial violence. Earlier efforts to hold the march had failed when police attacked demonstrators and a minister was fatally beaten by a group of Selma whites. The five-day walk ended March 26, when 20,000 people joined the marchers in front of the Alabama state Capitol in Montgomery. This time they were defended by national guards and FBI agents. Soon after, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Today in Labor History March 21, 1946: The Los Angeles Rams signed Kenny Washington, the first professional African American football player in the U.S. since 1933. His father played baseball in the negro leagues. His uncle was the first black lieutenant in the LAPD. In college, he played both baseball and football. He was a teammate of Jackie Robinson’s at UCLA. Many people thought he was a better baseball player than Robinson. Leo Durocher supposedly offered him a contract to play major league baseball, but only if he played in Puerto Rico first, which Washington refused to do.
Today in Labor History March 20, 2000: Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, was arrested for murdering a Georgia sheriff’s deputy. Al-Amin had been a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers. He once said that “violence is as American as cherry pie.” Al-Amin denied shooting the deputy. His fingerprints were not found on the murder weapon. He had no gunshot wounds, though officers who were present at the shootout claimed that the suspect had been hit and wounded. Another man, Otis Jackson, later confessed to being the shooter, but the authorities have repeatedly denied Al-Amin’s requests for a retrial. He is now serving a life sentence. He had been at Florence supermax, under a gag order preventing interviews with journalists. In 2014, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He is now at the U.S. Penitentiary, Tucson. In April 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal from al-Amin.
Today in Labor History March 6, 1857: The Dred Scott decision by the U.S. Supreme Court opened up federal territories to slavery and denied citizenship to blacks. Dred Scott had sued for his family’s freedom, arguing that they had lived four years in the north, where slavery was illegal. The Court ruled 7-2 that people of African descent weren’t U.S. citizens and thus had no standing before the court.
Today in honor of Black History Month, we remember Frederick Douglass, who died on this date, February 20, 1895. In an 1857 address Douglass said, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Today, for Black History Month, we honor the memory of Mary Fields (c. 1832 – 12/5/1914), also known as Stagecoach Mary, an American mail carrier who was the first Black woman to be employed as a star route postwoman in the United States. She was born into slavery. After emancipation, she worked as a chambermaid on a steamship, and as a household servant. In 1895, at the age of sixty, she got a job as a Star Route Carrier, which used a stagecoach to deliver mail in the harsh weather and rocky terrain of Montana. She carried multiple firearms, most notably a .38 Smith & Wesson under her apron to protect herself and the mail from wolves, thieves and bandits. She never missed a day, and her reliability earned her the nickname "Stagecoach Mary." When the snow was too deep for horses, she delivered the mail on snowshoes, carrying the sacks on her shoulders.
Today, in honor of Black History Month, we remember the first of the Nashville sit-ins, which occurred at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee on this date, February 13, 1960. The protests were organized by black college students and lasted through May and were intended to end segregation at lunch counters. They were coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, and were part of the broader sit-in movement that spread across the southern United States in the wake of the Greensboro sit-ins in North Carolina.
The students were represented by a group of 13 lawyers, headed by Z. Alexander Looby. Racists bombed Looby's home on April 19. He, and his family, escaped uninjured. Later that day, over 3,000 people marched to City Hall to confront the mayor about the escalating violence. After subsequent negotiations, an agreement was reached in May, and six downtown stores began serving black customers at their lunch counters for the first time.
Me and gramps convo in getting history an shit fo BHM.
Gramps: shit when I was a kid I remember 2 homes got firebombed by the klan and those folks just moved out in they neighbors.
Me: what da law do?
Gramps: the law was the fking klan Jaden . Those mfs got the whole bich locked down.
But we fight them back!
Real shit 💯 from my grampa errtime ain gon lie. #blackhistorymonth#blackmastadon
Today, in honor of Black History Month, we remember Nat Turner, who led the only effective, sustained slave revolt in U.S. history (in 1831). They killed over 50 people, mostly whites, but the authorities put down the rebellion after a few days. Turner survived in hiding for several months. The militia and racist mobs, in turn, slaughtered up to 120 free and enslaved black people, and the state executed another 56, and severely punished dozens of non-slaves in the frenzy that followed the uprising. Turner’s revolt set off a new wave of oppressive legislation by whites, prohibiting the education, movement and assembly of enslaved and free blacks, alike.
Today, in honor of Black History Month, we remember Lovett Huey Fort-Whiteman (December 3, 1889 – January 13, 1939), an American political activist and functionary for the Communist International (Comintern). Time Magazine once called him “the reddest of the blacks.” As a young man, he lived in the Yucatan, during the Mexican Revolution, which radicalized him and introduced him to anarcho-syndicalist labor organizing. After this, he moved back to the U.S. and became a leading activist and speaker during the Harlem Renaissance. He also wrote two works of fiction during this period. In 1918, he met anarchist cartoonist Robert Minor, who inspired him to visit the Soviet Union. Soon after, they both joined the Communist Labor Party of America. In 1927, he moved to Moscow, where he worked as a teacher at an English-language school. However, in 1937, he was caught up in The Great Purge, and was sentenced to hard labor in a Siberian prison camp because of his Trotskyist affiliations. There, he died of malnutrition in 1939.
Today, in honor of Black History Month, we remember the Orangeburg Massacre, which occurred on February 8, 1968 in South Carolina, when highway patrolmen opened fire on black student protesters from South Carolina State, who were trying to integrate a bowling alley. They killed 3 African American students and wounded 33. They were the first student demonstrators killed by the police in the 1960s.
Today, for Black History Month, we remember events of February 6, 1694: When the Brazilian authorities captured Dandara, warrior queen of the runaway slaves in Quilombo dos Palmares. She committed suicide to avoid being forced back into slavery. Quilombo dos Palmares was a community of Afro-Brazilian people who freed themselves from enslavement. The community survived for nearly 90 years, with up to 30,000 residents, before the government finally suppressed it in 1694. Members of the community would raid plantations, slaughter the owners and free the slaves to come join them in Palmares. They used guerilla warfare, using weapons obtained from Portuguese traders and, possibly, capoeira.
As a young girl, Dandara joined a group of Afro-Brazilians to fight against slavery in Brazil. As an adult, she helped create military strategies to protect Palmares. She played an important role in making her husband, Zumbi dos Palmares, cut ties with his uncle Ganga-Zumba, who was the first big chief of Quilombo dos Palmares. In 1678, Ganga-Zumba signed a peace treaty with the government. All those born in Palmares were to be free and given permission to engage in commerce. However, in exchange, they had to stop giving refuge to runaway slaves and collaborate with the Portuguese authorities in arresting runaways. Dandara and Zumbi opposed the deal because it did not end slavery and made Palmares complicit in its perpetuation.
The story of Zumbi, Dandara and the Quilombo do Palmares is depicted in the truly superb 1984 film “Quilombo,” directed by Carlos Diegues, with music by Gilberto Gil.
Today in Labor History February 5, 1994: A jury convicted Byron De La Beckwork of murdering civil rights leader Medgar Evers, only 31 years after the fact. Edgars fought to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, end segregation of public facilities, and expand voting rights for African Americans He was the first NAACP field secretary in Mississippi. He was also a decorated US Army veteran who served in World War II.
Today, in honor of Black History Month, we celebrate the life of Hubert Henry Harrison (April 27, 1883 – December 17, 1927), a West Indian-American writer, speaker, educator, political activist based in Harlem, New York. He was described by union leader A. Philip Randolph as the father of Harlem radicalism and by John G. Jackson as "The Black Socrates." Harrison’s activism encouraged the development of class consciousness among workers, black pride, secular humanism, social progressivism, and free thought. He denounced the Bible as a slave master's book, and said that black Christians needed their heads examined. He refused to exalt a "lily white God " and "Jim Crow Jesus," and criticized Churches for pushing racism, superstition, ignorance and poverty. Religious extremists were known to riot at his lectures. At one of his events, he attacked and chased off an extremist who had attacked him with a crowbar.
In the early 1910s, Harrison became a full-time organizer with the Socialist Party of America. He lectured widely against capitalism, founded the Colored Socialist Club, and campaigned for Eugene V. Debs’s 1912 bid for president of the U.S. However, his politics moved further to the left than the mainstream of the Socialist Party, and he withdrew in 1914. He was also a big supporter of the IWW, speaking at the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike, and supporting the IWW’s advocacy of direct action and sabotage. In 1914, he began working with the anarchist-influenced Modern School movement (started by the martyred educator Francisco Ferrer). During World War I, he founded the Liberty League and the “Voice: A Newspaper for the New Negro,” as radical alternatives to the NAACP. The Liberty League advocated internationalism, class and race consciousness, full racial equality, federal anti-lynching legislation, enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, labor organizing, support for socialist and anti-imperialist causes, and armed self-defense.
Today, in honor of Black History Month, we celebrate the life of Ben Fletcher (April 13, 1890 – 1949), Wobbly and revolutionary. Fletcher joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1912 and became secretary of the IWW District Council in 1913. He also co-founded the interracial Local 8 in 1913. Also in 1913, he led a successful strike of over 10,000 dockers. At that time, roughly one-third of the dockers on the Philadelphia waterfront were black. Another 33% were Irish. And about 33% were Polish and Lithuanian. Prior to the IWW organizing drive, the employers routinely pitted black workers against white, and Polish against Irish. The IWW was one of the only unions of the era that organized workers into the same locals, regardless of race or ethnicity. And its main leader in Philadelphia was an African American, Ben Fletcher.
By 1916, thanks in large part to Fletcher’s organizing skill, all but two of Philadelphia’s docks were controlled by the IWW. And the IWW maintained control of the Philly waterfront for about a decade. After the 1913 strike, Fletcher travelled up and down the east coast organizing dockers. However, he was nearly lynched in Norfolk, Virginia in 1917. At that time, roughly 10% of the IWW’s 1 million members were African American. Most had been rejected from other unions because of their skin color. In 1918, the state arrested him for treason, sentencing him to ten years, for the crime of organizing workers during wartime. He served three years. Fletcher supposedly said to Big Bill Haywood after the trial that the judge had been using “very ungrammatical language. . . His sentences are much too long.”
In honor of Black History Month, a quote by C.L.R. James: The rich are only defeated when running for their lives.
James was a Trinidadian historian, journalist, activist and Marxist writer. He wrote the 1937 work "World Revolution" outlining the history of the Communist International, which stirred debate in Trotskyist circles, and in 1938 he wrote one of the greatest works on the Haitian Revolution, "The Black Jacobins."
Today in Labor History January 30, 1956: Klansmen bombed the home of Martin Luther King Jr in retaliation for the Montgomery bus boycott. No one died in the bombing. However, the explosion destroyed the King’s porch and blasted out their windows. At the time of the bombing, King was giving a speech at the Montgomery Improvement Association at Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church. No one was ever indicted or convicted for the bombing. The authorities did indict King, and 80 other activists, for “interfering with business,” during the bus boycott and demonstrations.
Today in Labor History January 6, 1937: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade formed to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Roughly 4,000 American men and women fought for the Republicans in violation of U.S. law. Nearly 2,000 of them died of wounds or disease. One of the casualties was Oliver Law, a communist, and the first black man known to have commanded white U.S. troops. He led the Tom Mooney Machine-Gun Company, named for labor organizer Tom Mooney, who spent years in prison on trumped up charges related to the San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing.
Today in Labor History December 17, 1951: American Civil Rights Congress (CRC) delivered their "We Charge Genocide" paper to the UN. They accused the U.S. government of genocide based on the UN Genocide Convention, citing many instances of lynching, legal discrimination, disenfranchisement of blacks in the South, police brutality and systematic inequalities in health and quality of life. The U.S. government and press accused the CRC of promoting Communism. The State Department forced CRC secretary William L. Patterson to surrender his passport after presenting the petition to the UN.
Yes, Obama was born in Hawaii. But no, he was not the first black North American president.
Vicente Guerrero was North America's first black president, serving Mexico from April 1, 1829 to December 17, 1829, well before slavery was abolished in the U.S.
Today in Labor History December 7, 1896: Antonio Maceo (1848-1896), Afro-Cuban revolutionary leader, died from wounds after 27 battles in 92 days. He was known as the Titan of Bronze because he had survived so many battle wounds. The Spaniards referred to him as the “Greater Lion.” In 1895, he helped launch the Cuban War of Independence against a vastly larger Spanish military. He was considered one of the most effective Latin American guerrilla leaders of the 19th century.
Today in Labor History December 6, 1810: Miguel Hidalgo decreed an end to slavery in Mexico. However, slavery continued in parts of Mexico until 1829, when Afro-Mestizo President Vicente Ramon Guerrero banned it again. Between the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and 1829, over 200,000 enslaved Africans were brought to New Spain, as Mexico was known then. An estimated 1.3 million Mexicans today claim African ancestry. Guerrero had been one of the key strategists and military commanders in Mexico’s war of independence from Spain.