Sundown Towns – A Hidden Dimension of American Racism

 

By James W. Loewen

The New Press, 2005, 2018

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

The late James W. Loewen was the author of the bestselling book, Lies My Teacher Told Me. That book is a documentary account of the falsifications contained in the American history textbooks most students are exposed to. However, Loewen believed that his book on the Sundown Towns was his most important work. Why did he feel this way?

Loewen gave the following definition of what he meant by a sundown town – “A sundown town is any organized jurisdiction that for decades kept African Americans or other groups from living in it and was thus ‘all white’ on purpose.” In his research Loewen confirmed that there were at least 184 towns in 32 states that had signs on their borders with the words, “N—word, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on You in __.” Among those towns, only seven were in the traditional South where Jim Crow segregation was the law. In all, Loewen estimated that there were about 10,000 towns across this country where there was a deliberate policy prohibiting all but a few, if any, Blacks from living there. 

So, when we think about the “Great Migration” of Black people out of the states where Jim Crow segregation was the law, we can also think about the sundown towns. Because racist mobs and city planners organized these towns to prevent Black people from living there, Blacks who left the South were effectively forced to move into the urban centers. While segregation has broken down to a certain extent, many Blacks continue to live in segregated neighborhoods of the inner cities.     

There have been many books about the system of Jim Crow segregation in the southern states, as well as the histories of thousands of lynchings. However, Loewen discovered that his book was the only documented history of sundown towns. Because this book gives us a new perspective on the history of this country, Loewen felt it was his most important work. Of the books by Loewen that I’ve read, I agree with that opinion. 

A history of sundown towns

After the Civil War there was a period of radical reconstruction where people who had powerful government positions favored doing away with the vestiges of slavery. Schools were set up in the former slave states. Many white and Black students learned to read for the first time. There were Black elected officials and Black players in the integrated baseball leagues of those days. 

W.E.B. DuBois was a talented African American student in the late 1800s and was raised by a single mother who was a maid. A collection was made in Western Massachusetts that enabled DuBois to attend college. He would go on to become one of the most profound leaders in the history of this country. This was another example of the sentiment that favored an end to discrimination.

In most histories I’ve read, this period ended in 1877. Loewen argued that the reconstruction sentiment vanished in 1890 with the state Constitution of Mississippi. At that time, the Democratic Party was known as the “White Man’s Party” and promoted a program of vicious racist discrimination. The Republican Party under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln organized for the military defeat of the slave owning army known as the confederacy. 

Several prominent republicans favored defending the rights of African Americans. However, by 1890 that sentiment vanished. In the South a system of Jim Crow segregation became the law. Jim Crow was always a flagrant violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that was supposed to be about “equal protection under the law.” However, the Supreme Court came up with decisions like Plessey v. Ferguson that favored Jim Crow and flagrantly violated the Constitution.

The system of Jim Crow was designed to force Black people to do the worst jobs for the lowest pay. Even an accusation that a Black person acted in any way that questioned this system, might be punished with a gruesome lynching. The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till was just one of the thousands of lynchings in this country.

James Loewen’s book on sundown towns reported on an entirely different style of vicious discrimination that erupted in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. Up until 1890, Black people lived in many of the towns in these areas. This discrimination was primarily aimed at Black people, but Jews, Mexicans, and Chinese citizens were also prohibited from living in many towns. 

During slavery times, Black slaves needed to have written permission to be out after dark. After slavery in the South, racists lynched Blacks in order to “keep them down.” In other parts of the country whites lynched Blacks to “drive them out.” 

Loewen argued that the years 1890 through 1940 were the “Nadir” in race relations in this country. While the Black and white population increased in the northern cities during those years, the Black populations in the sundown towns decreased. Loewen cited the statistics of Granite City Illinois as an extreme example of this. “from 1900 to 1970 Granite City, Illinois zoomed in population from 3,122 to 40,440, owing to skyrocketing employment, while its Black population fell from 154 to 6. Obviously, these growing cities had an abundance of new jobs—for whites.”

Loewen detailed what happened in Anna, Illinois that made it a sundown down. In 1909 a 24-year-old white woman named Anna Pelley was murdered in the town. A Black man named Will James was arrested for the murder, but the evidence against him was very weak. The sheriff, Frank Davis attempted to get James out of the vicinity to avoid the lynch mob that had been organized. He wasn’t successful and about a thousand onlookers viewed the lynching of Will James. 

Then, this mob drove the 30 to 40 Black people who had been living in Anna out of the town. Anna got the reputation of “Ain’t No N—words Allowed.” After 1909 few if any Black people lived in Anna, Illinois.  

We can also see how this racist sentiment included Chinese immigrants. The city council of Santa Ana, California passed a resolution in 1906 that called for “the fire department to burn each and every one of the said buildings known as Chinatown.” We might consider that Chinese immigrants did some of the indispensable work to build the transcontinental railroad. That railroad transformed this country and opened the western states for development. Yet by 1882 the federal government adopted the Chinese Exclusion Act that prohibited Chinese immigration for ten years.

We might recall that in the year 1985, the Police Department in the city of Philadelphia fired 10,000 rounds of ammunition into a home occupied by members of the organization MOVE. Then the police dropped a bomb on the home. The Fire Commissioner ordered the Fire Department to “Let the fire burn.” As a result, homes on three blocks adjoining the MOVE Home were engulfed in flames and destroyed. The parallels between the bombing of the MOVE home and the destruction of the Chinese homes in 1906 in Santa Ana, California are striking.  

Trayvon Martin

The title of a chapter in this book is “Enforcement.” The signs prohibiting Black people from entering towns was backed up with racist terror aimed at preventing Black people from even walking through these towns. The organization that enforced these illegal terrorist acts was the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had huge chapters, not only in the South, but throughout the northern states. 

In 1898, J.J. Wallace invited a Black man to do construction work in Norman, Oklahoma in 1898. This is how James Loewen described what happened next.

“The mayor and other whites beat up Wallace because of it and ran the African American out of town. Wallace sued the government, arguing lack of protection, but the court concluded that neither it nor the state could be expected to do anything about local sentiment—even though the mayor helped lead the attack.”

Loewen gave this summary of all the methods used to keep Black people out of sundown towns.

“When all else fails, after ordinances and covenants were declared illegal, when steering, discriminatory lending, and the like have not sufficed, when an African American family is not deterred by a community’s reputation—when they actually buy and move in—then residents of sundown towns and suburbs have repeatedly fallen back on violence and the threat of violence to keep communities white.” 

So, when we think about the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, we see how the circumstances surrounding this murder had a long history in this country. Zimmerman murdered Martin for merely walking in the neighborhood where he lived. While Zimmerman was found not guilty of the murder of Trayvon Martin, in the years of the Nadir (1890-1940) whites who murdered Black citizens for merely walking through sundown towns weren't even charged with a crime.  

Labor

One of the reasons racists used for prohibiting Blacks to live in sundown towns was the fact that employers attempted to use them as scabs or strike breakers. When white workers went on strike, employers oftentimes used Black workers to break the strike. Under those and other conditions, there were times when employers defended Black workers against racist mobs. 

However, one of the most important developments in the labor movement was the emergence of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.). This labor federation began to see the importance of recruiting Black workers. 

One of the unions in the CIO was the United Auto Workers Union (U.A.W.). The UAW leadership understood that it needed to organize the Ford, River Rouge plant located in Dearborn, Michigan if it would become a national union. Thousands of African American workers toiled in this plant and this was one of the best jobs Black people could get at this time in the country.

The UAW proved that it could be an effective representative of Black workers by making significant stands against Jim Crow and other forms of racist discrimination.

However, the Ford River Rouge plant is located in Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn in a sundown town. This meant that Black workers needed to commute from their homes in Detroit in order to work in Dearborn. 

Ironically today there is a large Arab community that lives in Dearborn. The residents of the town apparently preferred to live with Arabs rather than Black people.

There was a similar situation at the Ford assembly plant in Mahwah, New Jersey. Black workers in this plant did not live in the Mahwah area and many commuted to their jobs from Newark, New Jersey.

In 1985 I supported a strike by members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union against the Hormel Meat Packing company in Austin, Minnesota. The workers at this plant went on strike because the routine conditions they faced were unimaginably horrendous. However, Austin had a long history of being a sundown town. 

I believe that during the course of this strike, the workers consciousness as to who they are changed. They began to see that the employer was the force that was determined to profit off their labor at any cost. I believe that consciousness might have had a role in changing the attitudes of those workers with respect to the issue of racist discrimination. 

Today anyone who understands basic arithmetic has the tools to see how and why institutionalized racist discrimination is a routine part of the reality of the United States. Black workers, on the average, have lower salaries and have less accumulated savings than white workers. Because the owners of corporations are not paying Black workers the same wages, they profit from this discrimination. Therefore, the working class has a real interest in doing away with this clear discrimination. While employers claim they are opposed to discrimination based on race and sex, the numbers don’t lie. 

In my opinion, the goals of the labor movement to champion the interests of the working class can only be achieved if labor supports the unconditional liberation of Black people and the abolition of all forms of racist and sexist discrimination. 

Immigration

James Loewen gave several examples of how sundown towns now allow Mexican and other Latin people to live there. What he didn’t mention is the drive by the federal government to deport millions of immigrants from this country. With the emergence of sundown towns as well as with the drive to deport millions of immigrants, we see clear parallels to the legacy of chattel slavery.

In the year 1850 the United States government adopted the Fugitive Slave Act. This law required all state governments to cooperate with slave catchers who were paid money to apprehend human beings. They returned escaped slaves to a condition where they were viewed as commodities who had no rights at all. 

In recent years the federal government agency known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) has been deporting millions of workers from this country. Thousands of these immigrants have children who were born in this country. When the parents are deported, the children are not supposed to be deported since they are citizens. So, thousands of children of deported immigrants are separated from their parents possibly for the rest of their lives. In the times of slavery, slave families were routinely separated so slave owners could maximize profits on their investments. 

While sundown towns kept African Americans and other nationalities out, today the federal government has a clear policy of throwing millions of workers out of this country. We might also think about the fact that corporations rely on the profits extracted from nations where workers are paid between one and ten dollars per day. That is the primary reason why workers from other countries feel the need to come here in order to make a sustainable living. No one can control the place where we are born. 

Cuba and the United States

James Loewen concludes his book with suggestions of how to combat the legacy of the sundown towns. He argues that when young people are raised in segregated or integrated neighborhoods, they oftentimes develop differing perspectives on life. Growing up in integrated neighborhoods enables people to have attitudes that are more critical of racist and sexist discrimination.

While this is true, there is more to this story. In her book The New Jim Crow – Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness, Michelle Alexander documented how Black people are grossly overrepresented in the prison system in this country. The United States has more prisoners than any other nation in the world. According to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, slavery continues to be legal with respect to the millions who have been “duly convicted” of a crime. 

We can also see how the gross inequality between Black and white workers continues to be a fact of life in this country. For these reasons, I believe that Loewen’s suggestions to deal with the legacy of the sundown towns are inadequate. 

In my opinion, the persistence of racist discrimination in this country comes out of the routine functioning of the capitalist system. So, when we look at the timeline of a comparison between events in this country and the nation of Cuba, I believe a clear trend takes shape. I wrote a blog about this timeline in my article Two Conflicting Histories—The United States and Cuba.

April 19, 1775—The revolution that gave birth to the United States has been called the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The reason for this battle was about which side would control the arms depot located in that area. 

October 16 1859—John Brown and his supporters raided an arms depot at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The goal of this raid was to take the arms from the depot, retreat to the Allegheny Mountains and use those arms in the battle to end slavery.

July 26, 1953—An armed force led by Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago, Cuba. The goal of this attack was to take the arms stored at this garrison, retreat to the mountains of the Sierra Maestra and advance the Cuban Revolution.

The ruling powers at the time of these rebellions defeated all three of the uprisings. Eventually revolutions erupted that would remove the British, the slave owners, and the U.S. supported Cuban regime of Fulgencio Batista from power.

August 18, 1955—A racist mob brutalized and murdered Emmett Till in Mississippi. His murderers were found not guilty in a so-called trial that made absolutely no attempt to bring Till’s murderers to justice. 

December 1, 1955—A police officer arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to sit in the back of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The NAACP responded to this arrest with the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott.

December 2, 1956—A small force of Cuban revolutionaries landed on the shores of Oriente Province in Cuba. The forces of Fulgencio Batista murdered most of those who landed. Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Ernesto Che Guevara were among the survivors, and they retreated to the mountains of the Sierra Maestra.

January 1, 1959—The victorious revolutionary army marched into Havana, Cuba. The new revolutionary government outlawed racial discrimination and organized a literacy drive that taught everyone on the island how to read. As a result, today Cuba might have more teachers and doctors per capita, than any other nation in the world.

April 17, 1960—An armed force created and financed by the United States government attacked Cuba at the Bay of Pigs or Playa Girón. This force was quickly defeated by the Cubans.

December 22, 1961—Cuba announces it has completed its mobilization to teach every Cuban how to read. Today there are tens of millions of U.S. citizens who are functionally illiterate. In 2016 Donald Trump made the statement, “I love the poorly educated.”

March 7, 1965—Police attacked a demonstration of peaceful protesters at the Edmond Pettus Bridge in Alabama. The protesters were attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to demand the right to vote for African Americans. 

November 5, 1975—1991—Cuba sent about 36,000 military troops to Angola in an effort to stop a invasion of the country that was supported by the apartheid regime of South Africa. The Cubans and Angolans succeeded in stopping that invasion. In later years, the President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela thanked the Cubans for their role in coming to the defense of the African people.  

September 13, 1994—President Clinton signed his 1994 Crime Bill. This law made it possible for the prison population in the United States to skyrocket. African Americans are grossly over-represented in the dungeons of this country.

Recently the United Nations voted for the 29th time to condemn the United States embargo against Cuba. However, that embargo, with its international implications continues to be in effect. Because the Cuban Revolution erupted in an underdeveloped nation, Cuba has found it extremely challenging to work its way around that criminal embargo.

On the December 11, 2022 issue of the New York Times there was a front page article about the increasing number of Cubans who are leaving the island. We might consider the fact that about 250,000 people left the United States after the revolution in this country.

When we look at the above timeline, I believe that if Cuba had the resources of a developed nation, few if any people would be leaving. However, the United States clearly has these resources. Yet, the legacy of the sundown towns and institutionalized racist discrimination continues to be facts of life here.

I believe that the above timeline makes a clear argument that when a government makes a priority of human needs over profits, there is a clear possibility that racist discrimination can begin to vanish.

American Midnight – The Great War, A Violent Peace, And Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis

 

By Adam Hochschild

HarperCollins - 2022

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

In the United States most people feel that we have a right to “freedom of speech.” We feel we have a right to openly criticize politicians and believe this right is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution. 

Well, reading Adam Hochschild’s book American Midnight – The Great War, A Violent Peace, And Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis gives us a completely different view of how this right has been routinely compromised. We can begin to see a glimmer of what was happening in this country during the First World War with the murder of Frank Little who was an organizer for the labor organization the Industrial Workers of the World.

1917 was the year the United States joined the allied powers in the First World War and declared war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. However, 2,500 immigrant miners in Butte, Montana protested the war and demanded independence for their homelands from Britain and Russia. Britain and Russia were two of the allied powers that the United States was joining in the war. President Woodrow Wilson argued that this was a “war for democracy.”

Three days after this demonstration, there was an explosion in the mine that took the lives of 163 miners. In the twentieth century there were close to 100,000 mining deaths caused by accidents and corporate neglect. Frank Little came to Butte to organize the miners and demand better working conditions. Little was also opposed to the war and argued that “We have no interest in the war.” 

Copper company officials demanded that Attorney General Burton K. Wheeler use the Espionage Act to silence Little. However, Wheeler argued that Little had the right to freedom of speech. 

Then, two weeks after his arrival in Butte, a gang of armed men kidnapped Little, tied him to the back of a Cadillac, dragged him over a road, and lynched him. The murderers were never prosecuted. Thousands of Butte miners joined his funeral procession. Then, eleven days after his death federal troops occupied the town. They would remain in Butte for three years. While the government did nothing to prosecute the murderers, Vice President Thomas Marshall coined a pun on the victim’s name. “A Little hanging goes a long way.” 

Before the First World War, the government routinely compromised the rights of people who lived in this country. These attacks were centered on labor, immigrants, Black people, and women. However, when President Wilson joined the allied powers in the First World War, those attacks accelerated. Adam Hochschild’s book makes it clear that the United States wasn’t only at war in Europe, but carried out an intensive war against the majority of people who lived in the United States. 

While President Wilson claimed that the war was for “democracy,” he also had this to say. “War means autocracy…We shall be dependent upon the steel, oil and financial magnates. They will run the country.”

Hochschild didn’t mention the name Alice Paul in his book, but he could have. Paul marched in front of the White House with other suffragettes demanding that women have the right to vote. They ridiculed Wilson arguing that if women didn’t have the right to vote, there could be no democracy. 

The government declared that these statements by Alice Paul were a violation of the law, and the demonstrators were arrested. While in prison, the suffragettes went on a hunger strike arguing that they were political prisoners and not criminals. Prison guards then inserted a tube into Paul’s throat and force-fed her. 

Prison guards also force-fed pacifists who went on hunger strikes. For the prisoners who refused to do prison labor, they were handcuffed to their cells during the hours other prisoners were working. 

Hochschild never mentioned why the government was legally allowed to torture prisoners. When we read the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, we get a clue as to why torture was, and continues to be allowed in the dungeons of this country. The Thirteenth Amendment states that slavery is abolished in this country except when someone is “duly convicted” of a crime. So, when people live in prison, the government believes that they have lost all rights and can be brutalized.              

The socialist Kate Richards O’Hare, and the anarchist Emma Goldman gave speeches all over the country. Thousands attended those events. Although O’Hare and Goldman had differing politics, they were both adamantly opposed to the war. Because of their opposition to the war, both O’Hare and Goldman served time in prison. They lived in adjoining cells and became friends. 

Because Emma Goldman was born in Russia, the government ordered her deportation after she was released from prison. This was because of the work of the future director of the FBI, Jay Edgar Hoover and the Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

The Palmer Raids

The labor organization known as the Industrial Workers of the World became a special target of the government, as well as self-appointed vigilantes. Adam Hochschild began his book with a with the arrest of eleven members of the I.W.W. (known as Wobblies) while they were reading or playing cards in their headquarters. This was in 1917 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The detectives found no incriminating evidence and charged the Wobblies with vagrancy. 

The Wobblies were working to organize the oil workers in the area. Although they hadn’t broken any laws, Judge T.D. Evans found them all guilty and fined them $100 which would be worth $1,000 today. Since the Wobblies didn’t have the money for the fine, they all severed time in prison. They were the lucky ones.

Then, bailiffs arrested six Wobblies who sat in the courtroom. They were transported to a country jail, but never made it there. They were met by a mob who forced them to strip to their waists in the cold evening air. They were then tied to a tree, whipped, tarred and feathered. They were then let loose in the cold and forced to run for their lives. One of the six had been set free because he was an agent. 

In 1918 the largest civilian trial in the history of this country took place of more than 100 members of the IWW. They were charged with violation of the Espionage and Selective Service Acts. None of those charges included theft, sabotage, or violence. 

One of the defendants at this trial was William D. “Big Bill” Haywood. Haywood worked at many jobs in the violent atmosphere he was born into. He spent 16 years as an underground miner. At this trial Haywood spoke about the real charges he and his comrades were accused of.

He hoped that one day there would be, “no rich and no poor; no millionaires, and no paupers no palaces and no hovels…and where no man will have to work 13 hours in a smelter.” If working for that dream “is a conspiracy, then we are conspiring.” All the IWW defendants in this case were found to be guilty. 

Immigrant workers who were in some way critical of the United States government also became targets. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer organized to deport least 10,000 immigrants. 

A vigilante group called itself the American Protective League or APL. At the time of the U.S. entry into the First World War, there were millions of men who saw no reason to murder people from other countries and refused to enlist in the draft. APL members busied themselves by raiding events where many gathered. They would then grab anyone who didn’t have a draft card. The reward for turning someone in was $50. Today this would be equivalent to $1,000.

The war against the Black community

During these same years racist mobs went to war against several Black communities in this country. We might consider that after the defeat of the reconstruction governments in 1877, the federal government allowed the racist forces of the Ku Klux Klan to strip African Americans of citizenship rights in this country. 

However, Black people managed to set up several neighborhoods that were self-sufficient. Then, during these years racist mobs attacked many of those communities. These mobs attacked the African American Communities in Tulsa, Oklahoma, East St. Louis, Missouri, and in Rosewood, Florida. These mobs murdered hundreds of Black people and destroyed entire communities.

8,000 Black men and women marched down New York City’s Fifth Avenue protesting the massacre in East St. Louis. They demanded, “Mr. President, Why Not Make America Safe for Democracy?”

The Bureau of Investigation (Predecessor to the FBI) sent agents to East St. Louis. They looked into whether German influence had caused the mass murder. When they found that this was not the case, the investigation was dropped. The Los Angeles Times made the seemingly insane argument that the reason for this mass murder was “Bolshevik propaganda.” 

In fact, President Wilson made no secret of his overtly racist attitudes. This is what he had to say about slavery. “Slavery itself was not so dark a thing as it was painted…The domestic slaves, at any rate, and almost all who were under the master’s eye were happy and well cared for.” 

The Postmaster General in those days was Albert Sidney Burleson. Burleson had a long list of periodicals that he prevented from passing through the mail. One of those periodicals was the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine. He also prevented the Masses magazine that was a predecessor to today’s New Yorker Magazine. 

William H. Lamar was the chief legal counsel for the Post Office. Lamar explained what his criterion was for censoring the mail. “You know I am not working in the dark on this censorship thing. I know exactly what I’m after. I’m after three things and only three things—pro-Germanism, pacifism, and high-browism.” 

The politics of Adam Hochschild and Leon Trotsky

Before I read Adam Hochschild’s book American Midnight, I read Leon Trotsky’s first volume of his book The History of the Russian Revolution. Reading these two books gave me an insightful contrast of what was happening in the United States and Russia during these same years. These two books also showed me how the political orientation of these two authors were different. 

Trotsky was one of the central leaders of the Russian Revolution and was intimately aware of the issues surrounding that profound event. At the time of the Revolution, millions of Russian soldiers lost their lives because of the First World War. The Russian people also experienced a famine where food was difficult to come by.

However, Trotsky argued that there were other reasons that provoked the Revolution. This had to do with the horrendous repression of the Czarist regime the people endured for decades. That overall atmosphere caused workers to risk their lives and attack armed Cossacks in the hope that they had the potential to create profound change. 

In other words, the Russian Revolution was inevitable. That inevitability had to do with the fact that masses of Russian people were determined to end the horrendous rule they had been forced to endure. However, while the Revolution was inevitable, the outcome of that revolution was not inevitable. This begins to explain why the Bolsheviks, who were a minority political party, were able to win the masses of the Russian people to their program. When the Revolution erupted again in October of 1917, and the Soviets took power, there was very little opposition.

Adam Hochschild had this to say about the Russian Revolution. “Russia’s people were weary, its factories hit by strikes, and its army was slowly drained away in mass desertions.”

Well, people don’t make revolutions because they are weary. This is what Thomas Jefferson had to say about Revolution in his Declaration of Independence, that was the founding document of this country.

“Prudence, indeed will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Here we see the profound contradiction of Thomas Jefferson who was both the author of the Declaration of Independence as well as a slave owner. By the year 1852 Frederick Douglass, who had escaped from slavery had this to say on the day after the forth of July.

"For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy America reins without a rival." The profound contradiction of slavery was the cause of the Civil War.

I believe that these quotations are also relevant in explaining the causes for the Russian Revolution. The Russian people weren’t “weary,” but felt a “duty to throw off” the regimes of the Czar and the Provisional Government. The people of the new Soviet Union would then successfully defend themselves against an invasion of 14 nations that attempted to overthrow the new revolutionary government. They could not have dome that if the people were weary.

The problem was that after the First World War, the Revolution, and then the Civil War, there was a weariness of the people in the Soviet Union. They wanted some kind of stability, and those were the conditions that led to the betrayal of the Revolution by the forces that supported Joseph Stalin.   

So, what is the essence of the political difference between Hochschild and Trotsky? Hochschild believes that there are democratic norms in this country that were compromised during the years of 1917-1921. He concludes his book with the statement that we need to have “respect for civil rights and constitutional safeguards, to save ourselves from slipping back into darkness again.”

Today about 42 million people do not have enough food to eat in the United States. Four people have over $100 billion. While President Wilson might have deported 10,000 people from this country, Presidents Obama and Trump deported millions of immigrants. Thousands of those deported immigrants have children who were born in this country. When they were deported, the government effectively prevented them from ever seeing their children again.

The prison population has mushroomed to the point where the United States has more people living in dungeons than any other nation in the world. Clearly, I could go on and on listing the horrors working people face in this country and the world.

Therefore, I believe that Leon Trotsky’s perspective on the Russian Revolution continues to be relevant. The ruling powers of this country are just as clueless about the reality working people face as the ruling powers were clueless as to the reality of the Russian working class in 1917.

Events will erupt, just as they did in 1917, where masses of people will mobilize to demand profound change. When this happens, the working class of the world will have a real opportunity to create, for the first time, a genuine democracy. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, they will also create “new guards for their future security.”

History of the Russian Revolution—Volume 1

 

By Leon Trotsky

Published by Haymarket Books

Reviewed by Steven Halpern

I’ve read many books about the history of the world. In my opinion, Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution is not only unique, but highly relevant to the politics of the world today. Why do I say this?

Trotsky was not someone who merely studied Russian history. He was a central leader of the Revolution and dedicated his life to the liberation of the working class. So, why was Trotsky’s analysis so different from the methods used by prominent historians?

Anyone who experienced the so-called educational system in the United States is familiar with the arguments that system exposes students to. The basic argument is that the United States is a great and democratic nation that is unique in the world. Yes, there were some bumps in the road, but the greatness of this country has overcome whatever problems there might have been in the past.

Then, there is the book Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. This book demystified most of those arguments. The authors Howard Zinn and Adam Hochschild are two authors who also demystified the history of this country. However, Leon Trotsky looked at history from a different perspective.

For Trotsky, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were pioneers of a movement that analyzed the capitalist system and worked to advance a movement to liberate humanity from the ravages of capitalist exploitation. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin continued the work of Marx and Lenin and was the central leader of the Russian Revolution.

The basic Marxist argument is that the essence of the capitalist system is a conflict between capital and labor. The working class has produced literally every commodity that has ever been produced in the world. Yet, for each and every one of those commodities, capitalists took a share of the wealth that was produced. While the capitalists produce nothing, they are the ones who control the environment workers experience on the job every day. 

I’m writing this blog in October and November is the so-called election time of year. This means that everyone is being barraged with claims by capitalist politicians arguing that they are dedicated to supporting our interests. While they make these nonsensical claims, there are 42 million people in the United States who do not have enough food to eat. Yet, there are four individuals who each own over $100 billion in assets. 

So, while politicians spend a lot of money arguing that they are our friends, in reality their priority is to support the interests of the billionaires who never produce any of the goods and services we need or want. In fact. Every penny of their wealth comes from the labor of workers all over the world.

Leon Trotsky understood this profound contradiction. He wasn’t about merely reporting the events of history. Trotsky took the side of workers, farmers, and soldiers. In his reporting the events of the Russian Revolution, he analyzed what was happening from the perspective of the working class and their allies.

Russia before the Revolution

Trotsky believed that it was essential to understand the peculiarities of the reality of Russia before the Revolution. In the East, Russia was made up of a highly underdeveloped region that was influenced by the Asian monarchies of China and Japan. In the West, Russia was influenced by Europe, and there were highly advanced factories that employed thousands of workers in the cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow. 

This meant that industrial workers were ruled by a feudal monarch known as the tzar. In the year 1905 the contradictions of this system came to a head. Thousands of workers went on strike, and many demonstrated demanding that the tzar make some basic concessions. The tzar responded by calling out the cavalry known as the Cossacks. That military confrontation led to the murder of hundreds or thousands of workers. 

In the United States we haven’t seen that kind of repression. Yes, police have been known to fire tear gas at demonstrators. In the rebellions in the Black community in the 1960s many people were murdered by the National Guard. However, demonstrations erupted protesting the murders of George Floyd and many others by the police. While the police brutally responded to some of those demonstrations, we didn’t see mass murdered as there was in St. Petersburg in 1905.

While we protest abuses by the police today, vicious abuse by the police in tzarist Russia was routine. Members of the secret police known as the Okhrana routinely attended meetings held by people or organizations that protested the rule of the tzar. By merely saying things that might be interpreted as being critical of the tzar, one could be arrested, convicted in a court, and sent to Siberia. Lenin and Trotsky both served time in Siberia because of their political activities.

Farmers known as peasants routinely lived under the thumbs of the landowners. Those landowners disciplined peasants with a whip known as the knout. It was also legal for a landowners to murder peasants.    

These were some of the reasons for the Russian rebellion of 1905. These were also the years of an international crisis for the capitalist system of the world. Just as there was a rebellion in Russia, rebellions also erupted in China, Mexico, and Iran. 

Then, in 1914 the tzar ordered the Russian military to join in the allied powers in the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War. Millions of Russian soldiers would be murdered in that war, more than in any other country. The war also caused widespread famine.

This is how Trotsky described the reality faced by those who lived in the Russian cities. “The standard of living of the city masses oscillated between undernourishment and hunger.”

Faced with these conditions, the Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna gave to her husband the Czar Nicholas II the following advice. “Bring your fist down on the table. Be the boss.” “Everything is getting quiet and better, but the people want to feel your hand. How long they have been saying to me, for whole years, ‘Russia loves to feel the whip. That is their nature.’”

Then, after the Russian Revolution erupted in 1917 The Czar was the one who felt the hand of the working class. As he attempted to flee the capital Petrograd, workers express their outrage at his rule and arrested him.

Then, the new Chairman of the Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky, offered to take the Czar to Britain where he would be protected. However, the workers who were guarding the Czar refused to release him. How and why did this profound change take place.

The February Revolution

So, here we can begin to see why there was a profound change in the consciousness of the working class, the peasantry, and the rank-and-file soldiers. In the year 1905, Cossacks murdered hundreds of workers who protested the conditions they faced. That effectively put an end to the 1905 rebellion. This is not what happened in February of 1917 in Petrograd.

Trotsky argued against historians who argued that what happened in February of 1917 was a spontaneous uprising. This is what Trotsky had to say.

“The crowd is not only bitter, but audacious. This is because, in spite of the shooting, it keeps its faith in the army. It counts on victory and intends to have it at any cost.” 

Why did Russian workers have so much faith in the army? This is what Trotsky had to say.

“The authorities said that the revolution intoxicated the soldier. The soldier it seemed, on the contrary, that he was sobering up from the opium of the barracks. Thus, the decisive day was prepared—the 27th of February.” 

Out of this atmosphere Trotsky makes the following conclusion.

“But, out of this complicated web of material and psychic forces, one conclusion emerges with irrefutable clarity: the more the soldiers in their mass are convinced that the rebels are really rebelling—that this is not a demonstration after which they will have to go back to the barracks and report, that this is a struggle to the death, that the people may win if they join them, and this winning will not only guarantee impunity but alleviate the lot of all—the more they realize this, the more they are willing to turn aside their bayonets, or go over with them to the people. In other words, the revolutionists can create a break in the soldiers’ mood only if they themselves are actually ready to seize the victory at any price whatever, even the price of blood.
And this highest determination never can, or will, remain unarmed.”

Dual Power

After the February Revolution removed the Czar from power, the ruling forces in the country were the Soviets (workers’ councils) and the Provisional Government. Several political parties that claimed to have a socialist orientation dominated the Soviet. The Bolsheviks were in a small minority. The Provisional Government was dominated by political parties that supported capitalist interests.

The fundamental problem at this time was that while a revolution had been successful, those forces who had power were determined not to make any fundamental change. The war that cost the lives of millions, continued. Famine continued to be a fact of life. There was no redistribution of the land that the peasants were demanding.

However, the capitalists continued to demand that the provisional government support their interests. In fact, Trotsky quoted a capitalist who had the same perspective as the Czarina. He argued, “only a firm hand can save Russia.”  

Trotsky gave this analysis of the reality of the property owners after the February Revolution. “The property holders, deprived of the possibility of using their property, or protecting it, ceased to be the real property holders and became badly frightened philistines who could not give any support to the government for the simple reason that they needed support themselves. They soon began to curse the government for its weakness, but they were only cursing their own fate.”

While the capitalists were demanding that the Provisional Government defend their interests, workers and farmers were demanding, “Peace, Bread, and Land.” Kerensky, who was one of the leaders of the Provisional Government responded to that reality with the following words. “The policies of the revolutionary government ought never to offend anybody unnecessarily.” 

Lenin returns and transforms the revolution

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was living in Switzerland when the revolution erupted in February of 1917. At this time, Germany was at war with Russia and Lenin along with several of his comrades received permission from the German government to travel through enemy lines and return to their homeland. 

Lenin was welcomed by the workers in Petrograd when he arrived in April of 1917. While his organization, the Bolsheviks, were a relatively small party, the workers of the city gave Lenin a resounding welcome. This was based on the fact that while the Bolsheviks were a small Party, they had a consistent record of support for the workers movement. 

At that time, the Bolsheviks had a position that was similar to the other political parties. They believed that Russia needed to go through a capitalist period before socialism would be a possibility. In fact, the leading Bolsheviks argued for a block with parties like the Mensheviks because they believed that their programs were similar.

On his return to Russia, Lenin argued, “the people will turn their weapons against the capitalist exploiters… The Russian Revolution achieved by you has opened a new epoch. Long live the worldwide socialist revolution!” He also made it clear that he favored an end to the war. 

Stankevich, a supporter of the Provisional Government who listened to Lenin’s speech had this to say. “A man who talks that kind of stupidity is not dangerous. It’s a good thing he has come. Now he is in plain sight…Now he will refute himself.”

Lenin’s ideas were indeed new. Even leading Bolsheviks had been promoting a completely different political course. Many workers who welcomed Lenin would eventually oppose his demand for ending the war. 

Lenin eventually won the Bolsheviks to his political orientation. He argued that what was necessary was to patiently explain. Within just a few months rank and file workers, farmers, and soldiers became ardent defenders of the Bolsheviks. Trotsky summarized this transition with the words, “A revolution teaches, and teaches fast.”

In the following passage Trotsky showed how the Bolsheviks were different from the Mensheviks who claimed to be socialists. “The Bolsheviks took the lead in arresting tzarist officials; The Mensheviks opposed ‘excesses.’ The Bolsheviks energetically undertook the creation of a workers’ militia; the Mensheviks delayed the arming of the workers, not wishing to quarrel with the bourgeoisie.”

Conclusion

These are some the ideas in Trotsky’s first volume of the History of the Russian Revolution. The second and third volumes will concentrate of how the Bolsheviks organized to lead the October 1917 Russian Revolution.

In this first volume there is a considerable amount of information that I believe is relevant to the world today. This book shows how many opponents to the tzar who favored socialism became obstacles to the demands of workers, farmers, and soldiers. 

Today politicians like Bernie Sanders claim to be friends of labor. He has spoken at strikes and demonstrations by workers. 

However, Bernie Sanders is a millionaire, and he didn’t get that money because he is a friend of labor. While he makes statements that appear to be friendly to the aspirations of workers, he never argues for a workers’ government that would work to replace the capitalist system we live with today. The Russian Revolution was a clear example of why that kind of government is necessary.  

Joseph Stalin betrayed the Russian Revolution at a time when that nation was experiencing it most difficult years. Stalin was one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks who favored forming a block with the Mensheviks before Lenin’s return to Petrograd. During the time when Lenin became incapacitated, Stalin continued to support a Menshevik perspective without saying so openly. Eventually he would argue that the thought of Russia supporting the international revolution was “nonsense.” 

Today Vladimir Putin’s horrendous invasion of the Ukraine is just one example of where the politics of Joseph Stalin will lead. Stalin mislead people into believing that he supported the politics of Lenin. Putin makes no such claim and has made it clear that he hates everything Lenin stood for. 

Before I go on to read the second and third volumes of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, I will be reading Adam Hochschild’s new book American Midnight—The Great War, a violent peace, and democracy’s forgotten crisis. This book looked at the unvarnished history of the United States during the same years as the Russian Revolution. By looking at the information in this book, perhaps I can put the Russian Revolution in a bit of an international perspective.