America On Fire – The untold history of police violence and Black Rebellion since the 1960s

 

By Elizabeth Hinton

Liveright Publishing Corporation – 2021

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

In the year 1967, I was a high school student in Newark, New Jersey. In July of that year, Newark erupted in a rebellion protesting routine police brutality. At that time, I had no idea of why those rebellions erupted. The press argued that there were “snipers” who were firing guns from rooftops. The press also argued that this was not a rebellion, but a “riot.”

Elizabeth Hinton quoted Newark Police Director Dominic Spina who had a different idea about who the snipers were. “I think a lot of the reports of snipers was due to the, I hate to use the word, trigger-happy guardsmen, who were firing at noises and firing indiscriminately at times.”

Activist Willie Wright suggested that the idea of the “sniper thing” was a “myth” fabricated by the governor “and his gestapo to commit mass murder in this town.” In all, the National Guard murdered about 24 Newark residents. Three of those victims were children. If I had a different skin color and lived in a different neighborhood, I might have been one of those children who were murdered.

In the year 1967, I didn’t know much about racist discrimination. Clearly, the school I attended, like schools throughout this country, made it a conscious policy of avoiding the issue of the long history of discrimination in this country.

I began to question the political economic system because of my experience and not because of what I learned in high school. I went to a dilapidated high school that was a few blocks away from the low-income housing projects. 

Just a few miles outside of Newark there are several suburban schools that appear to be more like country clubs, located in wooded areas with access to swimming pools and tennis courts. I began to think that this profound difference in the funding of education wasn’t happening because of a mistake or a lack of sensitivity. No, there was something profoundly wrong with this dramatic difference in the funding of education.

I’ve read a number of books about the struggle against discrimination in this country. Those books usually report that the civil rights movement, in essence, ended with the murders of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Then, there were the massive international demonstrations that erupted in 2020 protesting the many murders of Black people by the police.

However, Elizabeth Hinton gives a list at the end of her book that is about 75 pages long. This list reports on all of the rebellions against police brutality and discrimination between the years 1964 and 1989. Hinton gave the following summary of what happened between the years 1968 and 1972:

“Between May 1968 and December 1972, some 960 segregated Black communities across the United States witnessed 1,949 separate uprisings—the vast majority in mid-sized and smaller cities that journalists at the time and scholars have tended to overlook.” “Over these four years, nearly 40,000 people were arrested, more than 10,000 were injured, and at least 220 people were killed.” These numbers do not include prison rebellions, including the one at Attica, and the murder of George Jackson during this same period. 

So, the question to be asked is why did 1,949 rebellions erupt all over the country? Hinton begins to answer this question with the first sentence in her book: “The residents of Carver Ranches (Florida) didn’t have sidewalks, fire hydrants, or a sewer system. They did, however, have police patrolling the streets.”

She went on to argue that rebellions often erupted “when law enforcement meddled, often violently, in ordinary, everyday activity (a group of kids doing what kids do).

The rebellions in Watts in 1965 and Newark in 1967 started with the arrest of a Black motorist. The rebellion in Detroit in that same year started with a police raid on a speakeasy. The police and the National Guard murdered scores of Black people during those rebellions. 

The federal government recognized that murdering citizens in cold blood didn’t look very good to the world. So, they started giving the police massive amounts of tear gas. During the demonstrations against police brutality in Philadelphia this past summer, the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators. 

We might think about the fact that in those same years the United States government mobilized millions of soldiers to go to war against the people of Vietnam. James Baldwin wrote about the similarities in the wars against Korea and Vietnam, and the wars against Black people in this country.

“I began to feel a terrified pity for the white children of these white people: who had been sent, by their parents, to Korea, though their parents did not know why.  Neither did their parents know why these miserable, incontestably inferior, rice-eating gooks refused to come to heel, and would not be saved.  But I knew why.  I came from a long line of miserable, incontestably inferior, rice eating, chicken-stealing, hog-swilling niggers––who had acquired these skills in their flight from bondage––who still refused to come to heel, and who would not be saved.  If two and two make four, then it is a very simple matter to recognize that people unable to be responsible for their own children, and who care so little about each other, are unlikely instruments for the salvation of the people who they permit themselves the luxury of despising as inferior to themselves.  Even in the case of Korea, we, the blacks at least, knew why our children were there: they had been sent there to be used, in exactly the same way, and for the same reasons, as the blacks had been so widely dispersed out of Africa––an incalculable investment of raw material in what was not yet known as the common market.”

Just as Baldwin compared the struggle of Black people in this country to the struggle of Koreans, he also compared the struggle of the Black Panthers to the struggle of the Vietnamese people.

“Let us tell it like it is: the rhetoric of a Stennis, a Maddox, a Wallace, historically and actually, has brought death to untold numbers of black people and it was meant to bring death to them.  This is absolutely true, no matter who denies it––no black man can possibly deny it.  Now, in the interest of the public peace, it is the Black Panthers who are being murdered in their beds, by the dutiful and zealous police.  But, for a policeman, all black men, especially young black men, are probably Black Panthers and all black women and children are probably allied with them: just as, in a Vietnamese village, the entire population, men, women, children, are considered as probable Vietcong.  In the village, as in the ghetto, those who were not dangerous before the search-and-destroy operation assuredly become so afterward, for the inhabitants of the village, like the inhabitants of the ghetto, realize that they are identified, judged, menaced, murdered, solely because of the color of their skin.  This is as curious a way of waging a war for a people’s freedom as it is of maintaining the domestic public peace.” 

Elizabeth Hinton also wrote about rebellions in the schools. I was a part of one of those rebellions when I attended Arts High in Newark, New Jersey. While I was a student at Arts, the teachers in that city went on strike. As students, we raised our own demands. Among those demands was to have the same funding for our education as the suburban students had for their education. We marched in front of the Newark City Hall to advance our demands.

The years I went to Arts High were the same years that were watershed moments in the history of music in this country. Groundbreaking sounds were emerging in Rhythm and Blues, Jazz, and Latin music. However, we were not allowed to perform or learn anything about this music that was popular all over the world. Instead, we performed the marching band music of John Philip Sousa. 

So, during my senior year of high school my music class walked out in protest. The administration of the school yielded, and we finally learned a few things about the history of Jazz.

Elizabeth Hinton also reported on the truce between gangs in Los Angeles. Young Blacks joined gangs because gainful employment wasn’t available. When the gangs had a truce, the number of murders in that city declined dramatically.

While these gangs reduced the violence in Los Angeles, the government proceeded to substantially increase funding of the police. President William Clinton signed his crime bill and the number of people housed in the dungeons of this country skyrocketed. Disproportionate numbers of Black people have been locked up.

Hinton also gives evidence showing that in isolated areas police reform has had some modest results. From what I understand, the police in Newark, New Jersey did not fire one shot for an entire year. 

However, Hinton also recognizes that the only way to effectively deal with this problem is to take on the source of these rebellions. That is to begin to reverse the institutionalized discrimination in this country. 

Clearly, America on Fire is an essential book to read for anyone who is interested in the unvarnished history of this country. I also agree with Hinton in that there will be no lasting peace until a government does everything in its power to do away with all forms of racist discrimination. Clearly that isn’t happening today.

However, I believe a weakness in Hinton’s book is that she doesn’t advance a Marxist class analysis to this question. The United States has a capitalist political economic system. The government routinely supports the corporate drive to maximize profits. Throughout the history of this country, the government has allowed for discrimination. 

By keeping the wages of Black people down corporations not only save money, they also keep the working class divided. My opinion is that the only way for the entire working class to advance is to recognize the need to take on all forms of discrimination. 

This past summer millions of people demonstrated against murders by the police. Elizabeth Hinton noted that many, if not most of those who demonstrated were not Black. This is an excellent sign for the future.

Fighting Racism in World War II

 

A week by week account of the struggle against racism and discrimination in the United States from 1939-1945, from the pages of The Militant newspaper

Published by Pathfinder Press, 1980

A review by Steve Halpern

When many people think about the Second World War, they think of a heroic struggle to free the world from the horrendous effects of fascism. Well, C.L.R. James didn’t agree with that idea. James was the author of a definitive history of the Haitian Revolution titled: The Black Jacobins. In 1939, James quoted from democratic and republican office holders who argued that World War II was a war for “democracy”, as well as the “preservation of human liberties.”

James went on to report on the reality of what this so-called “democracy” was all about:

“Such is the ‘democracy’ of the South that in many towns the Negros wouldn’t be able to sit in the same room with whites to hear why they should die for ‘democracy.’ There are thousands of hotels in the South where if a Negro dared to show his nose at the front entrance, three janitors would fall on him and throw him out into the gutter, after which the police would beat him up and take him to jail. In many cities, if he went near the polling booth he would risk being beaten up and perhaps shot. He must come out of the rear entrance of a bus in southern cities, or any white cop nearby might riddle him with bullets.”

So, this was the atmosphere where a tenacious struggle took place striving to give Black people the democratic rights, the government falsely claimed that they already had. These were struggles against murders by racist mobs, and open discrimination within the military, as well as discrimination in the military related production factories. The government’s response to the resistance to discrimination was to set up committees that, for the most part, did nothing to resolve these persistent violations of the rights of African Americans.

Malcolm X argued in his speech The Ballot or the Bullet: “Why, if birth made you an American, you wouldn’t need any legislation, you wouldn’t need any Amendments to the Constitution, you wouldn’t be faced with civil rights filibustering in Washington D.C. right now.”

George Breitman edited those words for Malcolm in the book Malcolm X Speaks. In the book Fighting Racism in World War II, Breitman used the pen name Albert Parker and Philip Blake. 

One of the articles in this book reported on anti-lynching bills that were introduced to Congress from the year 1919-1940. The government never adopted any of those bills into law. 

As we know, murder in the United States is supposed to be against the law. A memorial outside the city of Montgomery, Alabama commemorated 4,400 lynchings in this country. These were all acts of cold-blooded murder, where the government made no attempt to prosecute the murderers. This is one of the examples that supports the argument made by Malcolm X. 

While there were thousands of illegal lynchings, there were also many lynchings that pretended to be in line with the so-called laws. One of those lynchings was of Odell Waller. Waller was a sharecropper in Virginia who had been cheated out of the money for his crops. When he protested this theft, the person who cheated him out of his money attacked Waller. Waller then defended himself, and his attacker died in the struggle.

Phillip Murry, President of the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO), and William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) both opposed the execution of Waller. President Franklyn Roosevelt received thousands of letters also opposing the execution. However, Roosevelt didn’t even advocate for a committee to investigate what happened.

Before his execution Odell Waller wrote these words:

“In my case I worked from sunup until sundown trying to make a living for my family and it ended in death for me.

“You take big people and the President, Governors, judge, their children don’t never have to suffer. They has plenty money. Born in a mention [mansion] nothing ever to worry about. I am glad some people are that lucky.

“The penitentiary all over the United States are full of people ho [who] was pore [poor], tried to work and have something, couldn’t so that maid [made] them steel [steal] and rob.”

George Breitman (Albert Parker) had this to say about the true motivations of why the state of Virginia executed Waller:

“They wanted his blood because the Waller case exposed in all its rottenness the ‘American way of life’ in the South—the system of Jim Crowism, of economic super-exploitation on the land, of political oppression and discrimination through the poll tax.”

Along with all the lynchings in this country during those years, there was the systematic discrimination inside and outside of the military. Many expressed their outrage of these conditions by participating in the March on Washington Movement. While President Roosevelt was demanding “Four Freedoms” in Europe, Black people organized to get those same freedoms here.

The central organizer of this movement was A. Phillip Randolph, who was the President of the Sleeping Car Porters Union. While Randolph initially supported the idea of this March on Washington, he ultimately backed off of following through. The reason Randolph gave for calling off this march was Roosevelt’s claim that he would set up a committee to look into the question of discrimination. That committee did little, if anything, to deal with systematic discrimination.

In Art Preis’ book Labor’s Giant Step, he gave considerable evidence of how union officials in the CIO and AFL compromised the interests of labor during World War II. They supported President Roosevelt’s position that workers needed have wages insufficient to feed their families to support the war. We might keep in mind that corporations in this country made super-profits because of their defense contracts with the government. 

However, the formation of the Congress of Industrial Unions was a real advance in spite of its many limitations. The CIO made a real attempt to organize all workers, including workers who were Black. Because of this approach millions joined the CIO, and the United Auto Workers Union became the national representative of autoworkers.

Corporations had a particularly cruel way of combatting the CIO in Philadelphia in 1944. The transit workers of that city voted to remove their former union officials and vote for a slate of CIO candidates. The candidates who opposed the CIO slate had the following slogan: “A vote for the CIO is a vote for n—s on the job.”

After losing the election, James McMenamin and Frank Carney went on a campaign to call a wildcat strike unauthorized by the union. They demanded that the company refuse to hire Black workers for the higher paid positions. McMenamin acknowledged that he was receiving money from the executives of Philadelphia Transportation Company. Several workers refused to honor this unauthorized strike, but the company would not allow them to work.   

After this strike, Maxwell Windhan, a Black union member became the vice-president of the Philadelphia Transport Workers Union because of an election with 2,200 cast votes. Four other Black union members became members of the union executive board.

The Philadelphia news media, to this day, has reported that this was a strike of white workers against Black workers. There has been no attempt by the mainstream news media to report the facts that place the story in context. 

When we see how labor union officials as well as the leadership of the Communist Party compromised the interests of Black and white workers, we might begin to understand why there was little opposition to President Roosevelt’s internment of about 110,000 Japanese in this country.

Dr. Edgar B. Keemer, a Black doctor wrote an article for The Militant newspaper about the Japanese internment camps. Keemer used the pen name Charles Jackson. He was indicted as a draft dodger because he opposed discrimination in the navy. The case against him was dropped after he was defended by the ACLU and the Socialist Workers Party.

Dr. Keemer also served fourteen months in prison because he supported the right of women to decide if and when they became mothers. The formal charge against him was that he performed abortions. Today abortions are legal, but the right for women to have control over their bodies has come under tenacious attack.

This is what Dr. Keemer (Charles Jackson) had to say about the internment of the Japanese:

“Soon after the shooting stage of the war with Japan began, these citizens (of Japanese heritage), in flagrant violation of their civil rights, were yanked from their farms and homes and were herded into virtual concentration camps, known officially by the polite name of relocation centers. This illegal repression was carried out by the law-enforcement agencies after a campaign by the capitalist press to whip up racial prejudice under the guise of national patriotism. 

“The real motivators, however, were a big business outfit called the Associated Farmers, along with other reactionary interests which stand to profit—war or no war—by the elimination of competitors and by the persecution of a minority within the working class.”

Dr. Keemer concluded this article with the following words:

“The Japanese-American workers are not only our comrades in the world class struggle for socialist liberation, but they are also our brothers through oppression in this capitalist ‘democracy.’

“Let us not fail to rally to their side and fight back against the attacks of the common enemy.”

Currently, I’m reading Elizabeth Hinton’s book America on Fire and hope to write a review of that book as well. Hinton documented the rebellions in hundreds of cities and towns in this country protesting the systematic police brutality and discrimination against the Black community in the 1960s and 1970s.

We might think about the fact that during the Second World War and in the war against Vietnam, the United States government also carried out wars against the Black community in this country. When we think about that reality, we might also consider the fact that there has been significant resistance to reporting on the unvarnished history of Black people in this country. Recently, the actor Tom Hanks had a column in the New York Times protesting the fact that he never learned about the 1921 Tulsa massacre of the Black community when he was in school.

James Loewen reported on some of these facts in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me. So, when we look at the books Fighting Racism in WWII and America on Fire, we aren’t just looking at African American history. We are also looking at the true history of the United States and the world.

Today young people are demonstrating in the streets because they want to put an end to the long history of racial injustice that has been tolerated by the government since its inception. The determination of those young people is a continuation of the struggle against discrimination that has also been a part of the entire history of this country. As we can see, that struggle is continuing.