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practiced segregation on a broad scale, it was equally prepared to use integration. When it turned after cracking GM and Chrysler to confront Ford, the most strongly antiunion of the Big Three auto companies, the UAW had to make a convincing appeal to the 12,000 Afrikan workers there. So special literature was issued, Afrikan church and civil rights leaders negotiated with, and - most importantly - Afrikan organizers were hired by the CIO to directly win over their brothers at Ford. The colonial labor policy for the U.S. Empire was, as we previously discussed, fundamentally reformed in the 1830s. The growing danger of slave revolts and the swelling Afrikan majority in many key cities led to special restrictions on the use of Afrikan labor. Once the mainstay of manufacture and mining, Afrikans were increasingly moved out of the urban economy. When the new factories spread in the 1860s, Afrikans were kept out in most cases. The general colonial labor policy of the U.S. Empire has been to strike a balance between the need to exploit colonial labor and the safeguard of keeping the keys to modern industry and technology out of colonial hands. history of the UAW notes: "As the UA W official later conceded.. .in most cases the earliest contracts froze the existing pattern of segregation and even discrimination'." (41) At the Atlanta GM plant, whose 1936 Sit-Down strike is still pointed to by the settler "Left" as an example of militant "Southern labor history," only total whitesupremacy was goed enough for the CIO workers. The victorious settler auto workers not only used their new-found union power to restrict Afrikan workers to being janitors, but did away altogether with even the pretense of having them as union members. For the next ten years the Atlanta UAW was all-white. (42) So in answer to the question raised in 1937 by the NAACP, the true answer was "no" - the new CIO auto workers union was not going to get Afrikans more jobs, better jobs, an equal share of jobs, or any jobs. This was not a "sell-out" by some bureaucrat, but the nature of the CIO. Was there a big struggle by union militants on this issue? No. Did at least the Euro-Amerikan "Left" - there being many members in Flint, for example, of the Communist Party USA, the Socialist Party, and the various Trotskyists - back up their Afrikan "union brothers" in a principled way? No. It is interesting that in his 1937 UAW Convention report on the Flint Victory, Communist Party USA militant Bob Travis covered up the white-supremacist nature of the Flint CIO. In his report (which covers even such topics as union baseball leagues) there was not one word about the Afrikan GM workers and the heavy situation they faced. And if that was the practice of the most advanced settler radicals, we can well estimate the political level of the ordinary Euro-Amerikan worker. Neither integration nor segregation was basic - oppressor nation domination was basic. If the UAW-CIO On an immediate level Afrikan labor - as colonial subjects - were moved into or out of specific industries as the U.S. Empire's needs evolved. The contradiction between the decision to stabilize the Empire by giving more privilege to settler workers (ultimately by deproletarianizing them) and the need to limit the role of Afrikan labor was just emerging in the early 20th century. So the CIO did not move to oppose open, rigid segregation in the Northern factories until the U.S. Government told them to during World War 11. Until that time the CIO supported existing segregation, while accepting those Afrikans as union members who were already in the plants. Thi-s was only to strengthen settler unionism's power on the shop floor. During its initial 1935-1941 organizing period the CIO maintained the existing oppressor nation/oppressed nations job distribution: settler workers monopolized the skilled crafts and the mass of semi-skilled preoduction line jobs, while colonial workers had the fewer unskilled labor and broom-pushing positions. For its first seven years the CIO not only refused to help Afrikan workers fight Jim Crow, but even refused to intervene when they were being driven out of the factories. Even as the U.S. edged into World War I1 many corporations were intensifying the already tight restrictions on Afrikan labor. Now that employment was picking up with the war boom, it was felt not only that Euro- Amerikans should have the new jobs but that Afrikans were not yet to be trusted at the heart of the imperialist war industry. Robert C. Weaver of the Roosevelt Administration admitted: "When the defense program got under way, the Negro was only on the sidelines of American industry, he seemed to be losing ground daily." Chrysler had decreed that only Euro-Amerikans could work at the new Chrysler Tank Arsenal in Detroit. Ford Motor Co. was starting many new, all-settler departments - while rejecting 99 out of 100 Afrikan men referred to Ford by the 88 U.S. Employment Service. And up in Flint, the 240
Afrikan janitors at Chevrolet No. 4 plant learned that GM was going to lay them off indefinitely. During 1940 and early 1941, while settler workers were being rehired for war production in great numbers, Afrikan labor found itself under attack. (43) Those Afrikan workers employed in industry could not defend their immediate class interests through the CIO, but had to step out of the framework of settler unionism just to defend their existing jobs. In the Summer of 1941 there were three Afrikan strikes at Dodge Main and Dodge Truck in Detroit. The Afrikan workers at Flint ~hevrolet No.4 staged protest rallies and eventually won their jobs. As late as April 1943 some 3,000 Afrikan workers at Ford went out on strike for three days toprotest Ford's hiring policies. The point is that the CIO opposed Afrikan interests because it followed imperialist colonial labor policy - and when Afrikan workers needed to defend their class interests they had to do so on their own, organizing themselves on the basis of nationality. It was not until mid-1942 that the CIO and the corporations, maneuvering together under imperialist coordination, started tapping Afrikan labor for the production lines. As much as settlers disliked letting masses of Afrikans into industry, there was little choice. The winning of the entire world was at stake, in a "rule or ruin" war. As the U.S. Empire strained to put forth great armies, navies and air fleets to war on other continents, the supply of Euro-Amerikan labor had reached the bottom of the barrel. To U.S. Imperialism, if the one-and-half million Afrikan workers in war industry helped the Empire conquer Asia and Europe it would well be worth the price. The U.S. War Production Board said: "We cannot afford the luxury of thinking in terms of white men's work." So the numbers of Afrikan workers on the production lines tripled to 8.3% of all manufacturing production workers. Now the CIO unions, however unhappily, joined the corporations in promoting Afrikans into new jobs - even as hundreds of thousands of settler workers were protesting in "hate strikes." The reality was that settler workers had government-led, imperialist unions, while colonial workers had no unions of their own at all. (44) During World War I1 the CIO completed integrating itself by picking up many hundreds of thousands of colonial workers. Many of these new members, we should point out, were involuntary members. Historically, the overwhelming majority of Afrikans who have belonged to the CIO industrial unions in the past 40 years never joined voluntarily. Starting with the-first Ford contract in 1941, the CIO rapidly shifted to "union shop" contracts. In these contracts all new employees were required to join the union as a condition of employment. The modern imperialist factory in most industries quickly became highly unionized - whether any of us liked it or not. The U.S. Government, depending on the CIO as a key element in labor discipline, encouraged the "union shop." The U.S. War Labor Board urged corporations to thus force their employees to join the CIO: "Too often members of unions do not maintain their membership because they resent discipline of responsible leadership." (45) While this applied to all industrial workers, it applied most heavily to colo~lialabor. The government and the labor aristocracy were impatient to get colonial workers safely tied up. If they were to be let into industry in large numbers they had to be split up and neutralized by the settler unions - voluntarily or involuntarily. In the Flint Buick plant, where 588 of the 600 Afrikan workers had been segregated in the foundry despite earlier CIO promises, the union and GM expected to win them over by finally letting them work on the production.lines. To their surprise, as late as mid-1942 the majority of the Afrikan workers still refused to join the CIO. (46) The Afrikan Civil Rights organizations, the labor aristocracy, and the liberal New Deal all had to "educate" resisting workers like those to get in line with the settler unions. The integration of the CIO, therefore, had nothing to do with increasing job opportunities for Afrikans or building "working class unity." It was a new instrument of oppressor nation control over the oppressed nation proletarians.
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The minority puts a dogmatic view i
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U.S. imperialism would rather that
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The final point we must make is tha
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carpenter would earn in a day. When
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while the evil planter and the Lond
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society of settlers. The large majo
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11. STRUGGLES & ALLIANCES The popul
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, . , in short what wee did in that
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more nearly fascistic. Bacon was th
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"democracy" through wresting their
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111. THE CONTRADICTIONS OF NATION &
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The Charleston conspiracy of 1822,
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IV. SETTLER TRADE- UNIONISM 1. The
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Cherokee Nation on "Trail of Tears
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taxation and other measures to give
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gospel truth by most settlers that
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their places as barbers and servant
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is a historic engineering achieveme
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Chinaman always have something to e
Page 40 and 41: While marching through a region, th
Page 42 and 43: off the former plantations at bayon
Page 44 and 45: hostility, can be expected of two-t
Page 46 and 47: the early 1830's, continued and gat
Page 48 and 49: dustries, trades, and nationalities
Page 50 and 51: Irish, (2) German, and (3) many sma
Page 52 and 53: On the other hand, there is the ten
Page 54 and 55: ed bribery: "The truth is this: dur
Page 56 and 57: narionally-disrincf strata (literal
Page 58 and 59: 2. Settler Opposition To Imperialis
Page 60 and 61: His political thought was that wher
Page 62 and 63: fine and resumed his post as U.S. c
Page 64 and 65: workers from Southern and Eastern E
Page 66 and 67: and "Break up the narionalisric, ra
Page 68 and 69: While the I.W.W. was backward in ma
Page 70 and 71: As the Great Powers were drawn into
Page 72 and 73: The I.W.W. publicly criticised thos
Page 74 and 75: Magon once angrily wrote his brothe
Page 76 and 77: The authorities did not move to "re
Page 78 and 79: VII. BREAKTHROUGH OF THE C.I.O. It
Page 80 and 81: danger, because alcohol was needed
Page 82 and 83: Millions of settlers believed that
Page 84 and 85: President Roosvelt privately said i
Page 86 and 87: importantly, to break up the rising
Page 88 and 89: colored men whom they could guarant
Page 92 and 93: VIII. IMPERIALIST WAR & THE NEW AME
Page 94 and 95: This remarkable editorial was accur
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Page 98 and 99: tler reunification. The stormy conf
Page 100 and 101: Afrikans and Asians on the West Coa
Page 102 and 103: strategy to its limits, the U.S. Em
Page 104 and 105: I t I In 1921 the African Blood Bro
Page 106 and 107: secretly organizing in Tallapoosa C
Page 108 and 109: Negro is the goat of the STFU. " Al
Page 110 and 111: The support movement took many form
Page 112 and 113: These agricultural workers paid $8.
Page 114 and 115: the whole Afrikan population within
Page 116 and 117: with a Negro World was five years a
Page 118 and 119: "(5) The U.N.I.A. is chiefly compos
Page 120 and 121: ming themselves and preparing to ta
Page 122 and 123: workers would have to wear an arm b
Page 124 and 125: strike down the Afrikan Nation - an
Page 126 and 127: Asians or Chicano-Mexicanos or Afri
Page 128 and 129: and resisters. But this popular cur
Page 130 and 131: who had once started it. In the ear
Page 132 and 133: activists, former Communist members
Page 134 and 135: Campos. Afterwards, Foster wrote a
Page 136 and 137: Toure related this to the fact that
Page 138 and 139: XII. THE GLOBAL PLANTATION 1. The P
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presidents..five secretaries did th
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The maquilas do not constitute any
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The shortfall only exists because a
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For Every Party, There's a Morning
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While there are numbers of Euro-Ame
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suming things and owning things, no
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estricted crafts rose at a rate 3 t
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collection, swimming pools, better
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children. For them the flavor is so
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XIV. TACTICAL & STRATEGIC The settl
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Since Afrikan miners were perhaps 2
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man, would ask of you to dispel1 ai
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Coal From South Africa Apartheid in
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Besides, he continued, to be overly
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INTRODUCTION 1. AU references to di
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26. ROGER W. SHUGG. Origins of Clas
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162-166. 16. FRANCIS PERKINS. The R
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6. New York Times. September 18, 19
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BALTIMORE, APRIL, 1968 - I'm not go
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