The Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement is a fascinating, understudied period in U.S. history, and this event sponsored by SOLE looks exceptional:
“Students Organizing for Labor & Economic Equality (SOLE) presents, as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium:
RADICAL BLACK UNIONISM IN DETROIT:
Reflections on the League of Revolutionary Black Workers
Wednesday January 28th, 7:00 p.m.
Angell Hall Auditorium D
email sole.maintain@umich.edu for more information
* * * * * *
“[The League of Revolutionary Black Workers]… was one of the most important radical movements of our century- a movement led by black revolutionsits whose vision of emancipation for all is sorely needed today.” –Professor Robin D.G. Kelley, New York University
This event will feature a screening of the film “FINALLY GOT THE NEWS” (1970) a film about the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, produced by Stewart Bird, Rene Lichtman and Peter Gessner, in association with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
The film will be followed by a discussion with prominent Detroit activists and former leaders of the League:”
The panel includes General Gordon Baker, the founder of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and founder of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Marion Kramer, a human rights activist, the co-chair of the National Welfare Rights Organization, and also a member of the LRBW, and Elena Herrada, a labor and social activist as well as co-producer of a documentary about the forced repatriation of tens of thousands of Mexican American Detroit residents between 1929 and 1939.
A really good book about all of this is “Detroit, I do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution.”