By Jon Jeter
Reviewed by Steve Halpern
Most people in this country have become disenchanted with what we call the mainstream news media. My coworkers have expressed one consistent complaint concerning the various sources of news we are exposed to. This has to do with the everyday issues that workers experience on a regular basis. While we see and read stories about issues around the world, rarely do we see a story about what workers need to go through just to make a living.
Jon Jeter is a journalist who worked for the Washington Post and was nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes. The contents of his book Class War in America give us an idea of what real journalism can be when we look at the world objectively.
In the book 1619 edited by Nikole Hannah Jones, she gave the following summary. “The effort of Black Americans to seek freedom through resistance and rebellion against violations of their rights have always been one of this nation’s defining traditions.”
Jon Jeter's book is a history of this country that focuses on successful and unsuccessful attempts to break through the racial barriers that divided movements for social change. He summarizes this history with the question, "Are you a worker, or are you white?" I agree with Jeter's argument that the labor movement will need to break through those divisions if the working class will ever be liberated.
Karl Marx, in essence, asked the British working class Jeter's question during the Civil War in this country. The industrialization of the world started with the connection of the enslaved workers that produced cotton, to the British textile mills. So, the British mill owners had a real stake in supporting the interests of the slave owners.
Jeter quoted Marx when spoke to a meeting of 3,000 British trade unionists where he argued that,
"The English working class has won immortal historical honor for itself by thwarting the repeated attempts of the ruling classes to intervene on the behalf of the slaveholders."
Jeter started his book by reporting on a Civil War battle historians routinely ignore. This was the Battle of Crater. The Union forces dug an underground trench and mined it with explosives. When those bombs exploded, they created a massive crater. This surprised the confederate forces and there was the potential of an easy victory.
However, due to horrible military decisions the almost certain victory turned into an all-out defeat. There were deaths of 1,500 confederate forces and 4,000 union fatalities.
The confederate commanders had a routine policy of murdering all captured soldiers who were Black. Fearing death, many of the white union soldiers chose to commit treason and murder the Black soldiers rather than risking death at the hands of the confederates. The estimate is that about 200 Black soldiers were murdered by their former union comrades.
So, here we see a profound contradiction in the history of the United States. On the one hand, the Civil War would, for the most part, end the institution of chattel slavery in this country. While this was happening, racist attitudes continued to be prevalent among the soldiers who risked their lives to bring an end to slavery.
Jon Jeter then went on to outline the history of this country from the viewpoint of this fundamental contradiction. The reconstruction governments established after the Civil War brought about real progressive change for white and Black workers and farmers. Yet racist mobs organized by the Ku Klux Klan worked to overthrow those governments by force.
The federal government merely acquiesced to the terrorism of the KKK. They did this by flagrantly violating the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and supported Jim Crow segregation.
Jeter gave inspiring examples of how white and Black workers joined to support each other in struggles of class solidarity. This happened in the longshore strike in the 1930s, the strike against RJ Reynolds, the cigarette manufacturer, and in defense of the framed up Scottsboro Boys.
Then after the Second World War, employers were flush with the record profits they gouged out during the war. There was another strike wave where entire industries were shut down. The following passage reflects the mood of the workers at that time.
"Everyone was having a good time...it was a holiday mood, it was a feeling of comradeship, it was the feeling that, well, we're all together in this thing, you know and it was a good, warm, healthy feeling, it was more like this country should be."
During these same years the government worked diligently to frame up Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of treason. Jeter gave a compelling biography of Ethel Rosenberg where he introduced readers to the inspiring life she lived.
Jeter went on to write about the financial meltdown of the New York City government in the 1970s. Bankers headed by Felix Rohatyn were determined not to lose any money they invested on municipal bonds.
Victor Gotbaum was the President of District Council 37 municipal workers union. Rohatyn had a series of discussions with Gotbaum where there was agreement to impose massive cutbacks in social services used by working people. Largely because of this relationship, those cutbacks were instituted with little opposition. After those cutbacks went into effect, the federal government came up with the money to cover the city's massive debts.
Jeter contrasted the politics of the former Mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, to the politics of Kamala Harris. A coalition of forces united to elect Washington and oust the former political machine headed by Mayor Richard Daley. Even in his first day in office, Washington brought about several progressive reforms making it clear that a new kind of mayor was in office.
On the other hand, when Kamala Harris was the Attorney General of California, she allowed the One West bank, headed by Steven Mnuchin, to illegally evict thousands of residents from their homes. Mnuchin would become Treasury Secretary.
Thinking about this contrast, we might consider the politics of Malcolm X. Malcolm argued that Black people needed to have their own organization that would be dedicated to the needs of the Black community.
A different conclusion to this history
Jon Jeter clearly gave a unique and needed history of the United States. A question I have is what conclusions can we draw from this history?
Donald Trump has just been elected President of the United States. Over the past year, the United States government allowed the Israeli Defense Force to commit an unimaginable genocide against the Palestinian people.
Thinking about that, we might ask another question. Has there been any progress in the history of this country? Looking at the reality of who Trump is, and the reality of the Israeli organized genocide, we might answer that question in the negative. I have a different opinion.
Even with all of its many and vicious limitations, my opinion is that this country is a better place to live because the system of chattel slavery was, for the most part, abolished. For all its limitations, my opinion is that the end of Jim Crow segregation was another advance.
For all its limitations, the fact that unions organized and went on numerous strikes in this country also advanced the standard of living here. We might consider that before those strikes, most workers had difficulty in finding enough food to eat. With all its limitations, the fact that most workers have access to some form of education and health care are also advances.
Women made real advances where today they work at many jobs they were kept out of in the past. Even the right for women to wear pants was a gain made through struggle.
So, the struggle to liberate humanity today can build on all those advances. As usual, capitalists will work to reverse all those gains.
While Donald Trump with return to the White House, massive numbers of people have been demonstrating to end murders by police, for women's rights, and in solidarity with Palestinians. We might also consider that the revolutionaries of the past faced significantly more difficult conditions than we face today. Frederick Douglas was born into slavery. Ida Wells spent her life protesting the legalized murders known as lynchings. Malcolm X lived most of his entire life when Jim Crow segregation was the law.
Yet Douglas, Wells, and Malcolm found ways to persevere and overcome the horrendous environments they lived in. The young and young thinking people who are marching on demonstrations today remind us of the revolutionary heritage of this country.
Clearly we have immense challenges. However, history has given us a legacy that we can draw on. Jon Jeter's book gives us a glimmer of that history and confronts us with many of the obstacles we will need to overcome. If humanity will be liberated from a system where the drive for profits are a priority over human life, I believe that the working class has the potential to overcome those obstacles.
