***The Wheels Of Capitalism In Its Swaddling Clothes- Fernand Braudel’s View

Book Review

The Wheels Of Commerce-Civilization & Capitalism:15th-18th Century, Fernand Braudel, Harper&Row, New York 1979

Karl Marx, the 19th century revolutionary socialist and dissector of the underpinnings of the capitalist mode of production, is most famous for his inflammatory pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, a programmatic outline of, and rationale for, the socialist reconstruction of society beyond the current capitalist market system. Not as well known, and certainly not as widely read, was his equally important Das Capital that, painstaking, gives a historical analysis of the rise of capitalism based on the appropriation of surplus value by private owners. Where Marx worked in broad strokes to lay out his theory relying mainly on (and polemizing against) bourgeois economists the work under review, the second volume of a three volume study of the evolution of capitalism, Fernand Braudel’s Wheels of Commerce, fills in the spaces left by Marx’s work. Although Braundel, of necessity, tips his hat to Marx’s insights his work does not depend on a Marxist historical materialist concept of history, at least consciously, although in its total effect it is certainly comparable with that interpretation of history.

Braudel digs deep into the infrastructure of medieval society to trace the roots of capitalism to the increased widespread commerce that the rise of rudimentary production of surplus goods permitted. He highlights, rightly I think, the important role of fairs, other lesser adjunct forms of commercial endeavor like peddling and shop keeping, and the rise of fortunately located (near rivers, the ocean, along accessible roadways) cities committed full-time to creating a market for surplus goods being produced in the those cities, on the land and, most importantly, in far-off places. Naturally, such activity as the creation of markets kept creating demand for more and varied products making more expansive (and expensive) journeys necessary. The opening of wide-flung trade routes, over land and on the seas, exploited by merchant-adventurers (in the widest sense of that term) thereafter became practical, if still highly risky, for those committed to those activities.

Needless to say in a densely written six hundred page volume the number of examples of commercial endeavors (some presented in more than in one context) that Braudel highlights is beyond anything a short review could do justice to. A quick outline here will have to suffice. The already noted rise of a merchant class ready to do business over great stretches and under trying circumstances; the still controversial basis for the rise of a distinct capitalist ethic that drove the markets(think Max Weber and the Protestant ethic); the importance of double bookkeeping of accounts and the introduction of bills of exchange to facilitate payment; the exploitation of vast colonial areas for minerals and other natural resources such as gold and silver used as physical value in every day market exchanges; the rise and fall of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism based on the gold and silver mines and slave trade; the successive rises of the Dutch and English colonialisms based on that slave trade and control of the sea lanes; the rise of joint-stock companies and other forms of collective capitalist ventures; the introduction of a stock exchange to place value on those enterprises; the increased role of a national state in the emergence of capitalism as defender of private property, as purchaser of goods, and insurer of last resort against hard times; the shifts in class status away from feudal norms and rise in class consciousness in society; and, the applicability of the capitalism to non-European societies such as Japan, and non-Christian cultures such as Islam.

Just to outline some of the topics as I have just done will give one a sense that this is an important work (and act as an impetus to read volume one and three) for those who want to get the feel of what the dawn of capitalism looked like. And for those who want to move beyond capitalism a very good companion to that not widely read Das Capital of Marx.

***From The Archives-On The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birthday-Homage To The Outsider- Some Of The Work Of Playwright Tennessee Williams

Friday, June 10, 2011

On The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birthday-Homage To The Outsider-Some Of The Work Of Playwright Tennessee Williams

From the American Left History Blog- Thursday, January 15, 2009

Homage To The Outsider- The Work Of Playwright Tennessee Williams

Play/DVD Reviews

Enough Mendacity To Sink A Ship

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955

The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review
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Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller as America’s finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams’ extensive and detailed directing instructions).

That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level, like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.

“Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” is a prime example of the contradiction that a radical commentator is placed in. The themes of duplicity, latent homosexuality, adultery and dysfunctional families topped off by more than enough mendacity to sink a ship are the stuff of social drama that NEED to be addressed as outcomes in the modern capitalist cultural sphere. However, in the end nothing really gets resolved truthfully here. Old 1950’s-style All-American boy Brick, the ‘great white hope’ of the family, may or may not sober up after the ‘lost’ of his dear friend and fellow football player, Skipper. Saucy and sexy wife Maggie (the cat) may or may not really get pregnant by Brick and save the family heritage for him, or die trying. The only certainty, despite all that above-mentioned mendacity, is that Big Daddy is going to die and that 28,000 acres of the finest land in the Delta is going to need new management, either Brick, brother Goober (along with his scheming wife and their ‘lovely brood’ of children) or some upstart. Off of these possible outcomes, however, I would not get too worked up about the final outcome.

In the movie version, done in the 1950’s as well, which starred the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman as Brick and a fetching Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie the question of Brick’s possible homosexual relationship with Skipper is far more muted than in the play. The implicit question seems to concern Brick’s fading youth, his search for perfect meaning to life in Mississippi and that one’s existential crisis can be eliminated by reliance on the bottle. The relationship between the dying Big Daddy and his ever suffering wife, Big Mama, is less dastardly than in the play as well. The scheming Goober and wife and family and those ‘lovely’ children, however, run true to form. My sense of the movie, unlike the deeper issues of the play, is that a few therapy sessions would put old Brick back on the right track. The play was far less hopeful in that regard.

The Fickle Bird Of Youth

The Sweet Bird Of Youth, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959

“Sweet Bird Of Youth” is another case in point. Not for the first time, a seemingly 1950s style All- American boy, Chance, who has left his hometown, his home town girl and his roots behind to drift in that endless spiral toward fame- Hollywood and the movies, naturally- comes back to claim what is his by right. On this little hometown reunion Chance is in the service of one aging and fretful actress who has her own issues with that elusive ‘bird of youth.’On his return to town it appears that Chance has stirred up a hornet’s nest with the local political establishment in the person of one red-neck preacher turned politician in order to better do “god’s work”, old Tom Findley. The object of this dispute is one Heavenly Findley, old Ton’s daughter and Chance’s left behind paramour who is now the subject of some scandal (due to the amorphously stated need for female-related medical treatment, an abortion, due to Chance’s irresponsibility). Along the way we get to see how political power is distributed in a small Southern town as well as the inevitable tempting of the fates by Chance in order to win the ‘brass ring’ before it is too late (apparently somewhere over thirty, by my reckoning). At play’s end though, where he is between a rock and a hard place, Chance may not get the chance to be Chance at thirty. Oh, that fickle bird of youth. Still, Chance, go for it.

In the movie version the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman, a classic example of a 1950’s All-American boy type (among his other acting talents), as the movie star ‘wannabe’ and Geraldine Page as the aging actress recreated their stage performances although with a greater screen presence for Ms. Page. Moreover, Chance’s strivings to reconnect with Heavenly are more central to the plot. More importantly, the endings differ in that, despite some mauling by Tom Findley’s boys Chance takes my advice from the play version and runs, with Heavenly, just as far and as fast as his now aging legs can carry him.

Waiting For A Sign

The Rose Tattoo, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959

“The Rose Tattoo” is a little different look at the family. Although the geography of the play is still the American South this play is not peopled with Williams’ usually WASP-ish characters but rather a little conclave of immigrant Italians who have somehow made a beachhead in the Gulf Coast area. The central character is a previously abandoned but now widowed Italian seamstress trying to survive, mainly through her hopes for her daughter, on her wits, her memories of youth, her integrity and her fierce instinct to survive in alien territory. A philandering husband, the obsessive subject of her adoration, a daughter trying to learn to fly on her own in the love game, and an incidental encounter with a fellow, younger Italian truck driver come together to give her the sign she needs to start over. Maybe. This play, more than most of Williams’efforts, depends on the strength of the dialogue and not the plot line. That is what gives its dramatic edge as Williams explores yet another tangled up dream gone awry story.

In the movie version, the role of the young Italian truck driver as played by Burt Lancaster and the seamstress as played by the fabulous Anna Magnini is more central to the unfolding story from the beginning. The dramatic tensions between this pair and the ‘waiting for a sign’ by the seamstress are still fairly similar. It is however Lancaster’s enhanced role that really makes this a visual treat and gives one hope that this new family ‘aborning’ can survive.

Take A Walk On The Wild Side

Orpheus Descending, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955

On reading “Orpheus Descending”, Williams’ take on the old Greek legend in modern garb I was struck by the similarity in the character of the Orpheus figure, Val ,and Nelson Algren’s Dove Linkhorn in “ A Walk On The Wild Side.”Both are loners, outsiders, have checkered pasts and are ready for anything from deep romantic love to murder and mayhem. And because they are capacity of that range of emotions and reactions they are also as capable of getting burned by a complacent society that does not take kindly to those that it cannot control. Val drifts into town, gets a job at a store owned by the enigmatic Lady and then the wheels begin to turn and to deal out his fate. Could he have stopped and turned away? Although that is a question that drives many dramatic efforts it is not always resolvable in a play- or in life. Lady’s terminally ill husband lurks in the background with nothing to lose, once the romantic sparks start to fly. I do not understand why this play was not more successful in its earlier manifestations as was pointed out in the introduction, especially as this is a culture that has made space, if only grudgingly, for the outsider to tempt the fates if only symbolically.

The Sweet Bird Of Youth Gone Awry

Suddenly Last Summer, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955

“Suddenly Last Summer is an odd little beauty of a play. Odd in that the appetites of the main (unseen in the play) character Sebastian seem to be both beyond the pale and obsessive. Odd, also that his protective monster of a mother is determined to keep the truth about her “genius” son from the world even after his ‘untimely’ death ……last summer. As if to add fuel to the fire of an already bizarre tale of exploitation, sexual and otherwise, Sebastian’s beautiful lure of a cousin used as bait for Sebastian’s appetites is to be permanently taken out of the picture in order to keep this world beautiful. Nobody believes the sordid tale she has to tell about dear cousin Sebastian. The play ends with the ‘hope’ that there may actually be someone to believe the girl’s story before she becomes one more sacrifice to ‘beauty’ in the world. Frankly, old Sebastian got what was coming to him over in the islands.

In the movie version, the stories that have to be told verbally in the play get told as flashbacks as well. Katherine Hepburn is in high dudgeon as Sebastian’s mother and ‘keeper of the flame’. Montgomery Clift is a more sober, somber and searcher for the truth psychiatrist than the one in the play and Elizabeth Taylor is the beautiful lure cousin is a mass of confusions whose memories of last summer have to be erased ….some way. Old Sebastian and his twisted sense of life and his place in history is still a guy who had it coming to him. Well, he did, didn’t he?

Out In The Be-Bop Night- With Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

She, Casey Fleet she, was in a tizzy, was as nervous as a kitten, maybe more so after all what does a kitten, or a cat for that matter have to be nervous about, as she prepared to go to the microphone for her first big number, her first big time “open mic” and a new career, maybe. This open mic idea had been around for a long time and many clubs, bars and other venues on say a slow Monday night to fill up the time would sponsor a sing out, a comedy night, a quiz night, a whatever night to fill the time (and draw some additional customers in on that same slow night, the ones who still had pocket change left from the week-end or had listen to mother’s, some mother’s advice and not come away from that weekend with three heads, two of them splitting). Arnie Shaw had been sponsoring one such open mic at his downtown (downtown Boston if anyone was asking) Carousel Club for a few months and it had started to catch on as a place to work off the rough spots of your act before a friendly crowd. And with Arnie’s connections (and “connections”, wink, wink, if you understand) in show biz if thing went right then there was the new career. Leslie Tinsel (stage name obviously, real name Leslie Swartz) had just been signed to a few weeks down at Atlantic City and so Casey decided she too should take the plunge, get out of the work-a-day racket (she had a mind-numbing job on a construction crew where she ached every night after work from the day’s dusty dirty exertions but the pay was good and so there it was) and soar with the eagles. And she had decided to do a cover of Judy Garland’s version of Yip Harberg’s Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Still she was nervous, nervous as a kitten.

The build-up to the nervous had all started a few hours earlier when her gown, her precious gown that she had spent one hundred dollars on had not been ready at the tailor’s. She had needed a few things altered (mainly, don’t tell, some added padding in the breast area and a letting out at the hips) and so she had got behind in her “routine.” (She had developed this idea of a routine when someone told her that Bette Midler, yes, addle-brained Bette, swore she could not survive for one minute without doing the same routine before every performance and that idea had worked well before for Casey before her very first small “gig” at the open mic night at the LaLa Club over in Revere.) That routine included a long warm bath while she calmly shaved her legs and underarms (jobs that she usually “butchered” with plenty of red wounds to show for it when she rushed). Then a quick scotch, no chaser, to settle the nerves.

Then Casey did about seven things with her hair until she got it got just right after the inevitable why have some women been cursed with long stringy hair that would not bent to their will. (Tonight she had added a couple of attachments, okay, okay wig pieces to give it a fuller look. She hoped it didn’t look too outlandish and that the boys liked it, and liked that she took time to look nice for them, the dears.) And then the final preps for the dress (gown tonight, remember) usually a quick press with the iron, put on some nylons (with garters for luck, she had heard that Judy had done the same thing before she went on) and shoes and she was done. She followed that routine to the letter this night although with less time she had to cut that bath time short and had a small nick on her calf to show for it. Well it would be dark. While she waited for Kenneth, her friend, her friend from work, a big husky guy all man, and, no, nothing more, nothing more than friends, but he understood her , understood why she was like she was and so friends.

Finally he arrived, on time, old Kenneth always on time but no time for her, and as they headed to the club she started doing her voice exercises in the car. Damn tonight her voice sounded like some husky Lizabeth Scott from the old 1950s films that she adorned. Yes, Lizabeth with that sultry husky voice in some smoked-filled room glasses clanging , that no nonsense-taking from any guy voice and some guy in some corner waiting for her to finish so he could start, start being fresh with her, and seeing that he was her guy she let him do some nonsense. Ah. But that voice was no good, no good at all for Judy’s song and so she was once again nervous as a kitten, maybe more so.

When they got to the Carousel Club the placed was full for a Monday night, mostly with performers and their friends but full. And an extreme number of the performers were dressed to the nines with flamingo this, feathers hanging over them, and tiara that’s as well. This might have been an open call on Broadway for all the glitter with each performer trying to outshine (out-dress) the other. She signed up, the performance order here was first come, first served and she was number twelve on the list so she had about an hour to wait. She decided to have a scotch or two to try and get rid of that Lizabeth voice. Tried to get it Judy mellow. She bought one for Kenneth as well and they sat at a table. She did not remember some of the songs of the performers before her but Hello, Dolly, Cabaret, and Night and Day she thought. But what did come to mind was that Jimmy, Jimmy whom she had met at the LaLa Club came over and made eyes at her and her heart fluttered. He said he liked her gown, liked its fullness, and all of that and she was glad, glad as hell, she had shaved and bathed because things might get interesting later, and won’t he be nicely surprised she hoped. As for the song, her performance, she couldn’t shake that Lizabeth voice and Somewhere Over The Rainbow still belonged to Judy. And so she would come back next week with something better, and maybe on Jimmy’s arm, if it turns out that he is into girls like her…

Bob Feldman : Union Growth in Texas Followed by Crackdown, 1940-1953

After a 1953 CIO-led strike in Port Arthur, Texas Gov. Allan Shivers, here shown addressing a campaign rally in Austin, led a move to make membership in the Communist Party illegal. Image from AlternativeHistory.com.
The hidden history of Texas

Part 12: 1940-1953/1 -- Union growth followed by backlash against collective bargaining.

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / February 11, 2013

[This is the first section of Part 12 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

Between 1939 and 1953 the percentage of non-agricultural workers in Texas who were members of labor unions increased from 10.3 to 16.8 percent; and 375,000 workers in Texas were labor union members by 1953. Between 1941 and 1945, CIO-affiliated labor unions “gained nearly 40,000 members in 4 years,” according to F. Ray Marshall’s Labor in the South. The same book also recalled:

Membership expansion occurred in petroleum refining, and in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where, in 1945, the CIO claimed 25,000 new members in one year. Important victories there included the organization of the huge North American Aviation Company to the UAW, the Armour plant by the packinghouse workers, Conroe Manufacturing by the ACWA, and several steel fabricators by the steelworkers. PWOC Local 54 and storehandlers’ Local 59 acquired bargaining rights under a master agreement with Armour. During the war [World War II], the packinghouse workers’ strength in Texas was confined largely to this plant.

The CIO had 115 locals in Texas in March 1944, the most numerous of which were: autoworkers, 8 locals; oil workers, 30 locals; and steelworkers, with 12 locals. The textile workers had only two locals in Texas in 1944...

By the 1942 convention, the oil workers’ organization committee had achieved significant results. The most important victory was the Texas Company at Port Arthur... In March 1942, the OWIU won an election at the Southport refinery in Texas City... It also signed up 84 percent of the workers at Standard of New Jersey’s Humble refinery at Baytown, Texas...

The UCAPAWA (Canning, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers)’s strongest base in Texas was in Houston, where it had 5 contracts covering over 600 Negro and Mexican-American workers, organized by March 1942. UCAPAWA contracts in Houston covered about 150 employees at the Houston Millinery Company and 400 Negro and Spanish-speaking workers in 4 cotton companies, three of which were owned by the Anderson Clayton company... In addition, UCAPAWA had locals among pecan workers at San Antonio, spinach workers at Mathis, and cannery workers at Sugarland…UCAPAWA…organized fruit and vegetable workers in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where its contracts covered 1,000 employees during peak seasons.

As Randolph Campbell’s Gone To Texas observed, “under the auspices of the National War Labor Board,” Texas labor movement “organizers unionized more of the state’s industries by 1945...” And during World War II, “workers at Shell in Pasadena, Texas” even “struck spontaneously” in June 1943 “to secure the reinstatement of a discharged union member,” according to Labor in the South; and there was also a strike by workers at a B.F. Goodrich plant in Texas in February 1944.

The white corporate power structure in Texas (and its ultra-conservative, white supremacist Texas political establishment in Austin) apparently then began to feel that this growing militancy and level of unionization of workers in Texas threatened both its class interests and its ability to continue to economically exploit and politically dominate most people who lived in Texas.

So after the CIO organized plant after plant across Texas in 1946-47,” the Texas “legislature responded in early 1947 by passing a right-to-work law that prohibited requiring union membership as a condition of employment,” according to Gone To Texas, and “the legislature also passed other anti-union laws, including one that prohibited pickets at strikes from being within 50 feet of each other or the entrance of the plant being picketed.”

Public employees in Texas were also denied the right to bargain collectively in 1947. And following a 1953 CIO-led strike in Port Arthur, the then-Democratic Texas Governor Allan Shivers even “called a special session of the legislature in the spring of 1954, which passed a bill making membership in the Communist Party a felony punishable by a fine of $20,000 and 20 years in the penitentiary,” according to the same book.

Coincidentally, according to Ronnie Dugger’s The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson, in Texas “the program of lobbying against labor was carried forward and financed largely by allies of Lyndon Johnson.” As The Politician recalled:

The public did not know about an even more significant business convert to Johnson, anti-union contractor Herman Brown who, with his brother George, ran the contracting and engineering firm of Brown & Root... A stream of gifts from the Browns to the Johnsons can be traced through the decade starting in 1940... Lyndon was Brown & Root’s kept politician...

By 1947 Brown & Root was so powerful in Texas it led a many-aspected campaign against unions which made Texas one of the most anti-union states in the Union and the only major industrial state that had a law prohibiting workers from voting to be all-union... The Brown brothers were largely responsible for the enactment from 1947 on, of the state’s anti-union laws.

War Department or Department of Defense contractors like Brown & Root apparently made a lot of money during World War II and the Korean War of the early 1950s from the U.S. government contracts that were thrown their way. But at the same time, “22,022 Texans died or suffered fatal wounds in battle” during World War II and “the Texas Division suffered one of the highest casualty rates of any in the Army -- 3,717 killed, 12,685 wounded, and 3,064 missing in action,” according to Going To Texas.

In addition, “the 19th Division, a Texas unit... suffered nearly 18,500 casualties, including 2,963 killed, many of the deaths coming in close fighting in the hedgerow country of Normandy,” according to the same book. And around 1,800 people from Texas were also killed in action after the Democratic Truman Administration decided to intervene militarily on the side of the right-wing Syngman Rhee dictatorship during the civil war in Korea .

Of the 750,000 people from Texas who served in the U.S. military during World War II, about 88,000 were African-Americans from Texas and about 12,000 were women from Texas; and “Texas, which had 5 percent of the nation’s population, provided 7 percent of those who served,” with most Texans serving in the army and air force and “about one-quarter” serving in the navy, marines and coast guard, according to Going To Texas.

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

***Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013

***Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!

I have noted on several previous occasions (including in an article in the April 2012 “Boston Occupier, Number 7”) that due to the recent absence of serious left-wing political struggle (prior to the events at Occupy Boston in Dewey Square from October to December 2011anyway) that our tasks for May Day 2012 in Boston centered on reviving the international working class tradition beyond the limited observance by revolutionaries, radicals and, in recent years, immigrants. This effort would thus not be a one event, one year but require a number of years and that this year’s efforts was just a start. We have made that start.

The important thing this year was to bring Boston in line with the international movement, to have leftist militants and others see our struggles here as part of an international struggle even if our actions were, for now, more symbolic and educational than powerful blows at the imperial system. I believe, despite the bad weather and consequently smaller than anticipated numbers on May Day 2012, we achieved that aim. Through months of hard outreach, especially over the past several weeks as the day approached, we put out much propaganda and information about the events through the various media with which we have access. The message of this May Day, a day without the 99%, got a full hearing by people from the unions, immigrant communities, student milieu and other sectors like the women’s movement and GLBQT community.The connections and contacts made are valuable for our further efforts.

Some participants that spoke to me on May Day (and others who had expressed the same concerns on earlier occasions) believed that we had “bitten off more than we could chew,” by having an all-day series of events.While I am certainly open to hear criticism on the start time of the day’s events (7:00AM does stretch the imagination for night-owlish militants) the idea of several events starting with that early Financial District Block Party and continuing on with the 11:00 AM Anti-Capitalist March which fed into the noontime rally at Boston City Hall Plaza and then switching over to the immigrant community marches and rally capped off that evening by the sober, solemn and visually impression “Death Of Capitalism” funeral procession still seems right to me. Given our task –introducing (really re-introducing) May Day to a wider Boston audience we needed to provide a number of times and events where people could, consciously, contribute to the day’s celebration. Maybe some year our side will be able to call for a one event May Day mass rally (or better a general strike) but that is music for the future.

Needless to say, as occurs almost any time you have many events and a certain need to have them coordinated, there were some problems from

technical stuff like mic set-ups to someone forgetting something important, or not showing at the right time, etc. Growing pains. Nevertheless all the scheduled events happened, we had minimum hassles from the police, and a couple of events really stick out as exemplars for future May Days. The Anti-Capitalist March from Copley Square, mainly in a downpour, led by many young militants and which fed into the noontime City Hall rally was spirited and gave me hope that someday (someday soon, I hope) we are going to bring this imperial monster down. The already mentioned funeral procession was an extremely creative (and oft-forgotten by us) alternative way to get our message across outside the “normal” ham-handed, jack-booted political screed.

Finally, a word or two on organization. The Occupy-May Day Coalition personnel base was too small, way too small even for our limited goals. We need outreach early (early next year) to get enough organizer-type people on board to push forward. More broadly on outreach I believe, and partially this was a function of being too small an organizing center, we spent too much time“preaching to the choir”-going to events, talking to people already politically convinced , talking among ourselves rather than get out into the broader political milieu. For next year (which will not be an election year) we really need union and community people (especially people of color) to “smooth” the way for us. We never got that one (although we want more than one ultimately) respected middle-level still militant union official or community organizer that people, working people, listen to and who would listen to us with his or her nod. Radical or bourgeois politics, down at the base, you still need the people that the people listen to. Forward to May Day 2013.

BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : The Panthers and 'Black Against Empire'

Black Against Empire:
The legacy of the Black Panther Party

"We didn't preach to the people, we worked with them." -- Former Black Panther Mumia Abu Jamal

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / February 12, 2013

[Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr. (George Gund Foundation Imprint in African American Studies) (2013: University of California Press); 560 pp; $34.95.]

Once again, it’s Black History Month in the United States. Since the inception of this celebration, its meaning has unfortunately been diminished as the myth of post-racialism becomes gospel, even though it shares none of a gospel’s truths.

In schools and libraries, well-meaning teachers and library workers create displays, bring in speakers, and teach lessons on the history of African-Americans. All too often, this means a look at the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., a discussion of the Emancipation Proclamation, and maybe a lesson about Rosa Parks. Only rarely, do students and library patrons get a look beyond these conventional topics that are usually taught in a manner that highlights white America’s tolerance and sense of fair play.

This is why books like the recently released Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party are so important. They remove the pretense that the Black liberation movement in the United States was something everyone except the KKK and its allies supported. Books like this tell the truth. Blacks Against Empire does so concisely, engagingly, and honestly.

Black Against Empire is a political history that is simultaneously objective and radical. Despite the efforts of historians to obfuscate and obliterate the party from history, describing it as a hate group and gun-obsessed when mentioning it at all, the fact is the Panthers' legacy is unique and important to not only the history of Black America, but to the history of the entire United States. It is best described in the words of Mumia Abu Jamal: "We didn't preach to the people, we worked with them."

The relationship between the primarily white New Left and the Panthers is explored in a fair-minded and realistic manner, as is the relationship between the Panthers and other Third World revolutionary organizations, both in the United States and around the world. The authors expand the narrative of the movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam, showing clearly the early involvement of black organizations, especially that of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). It was this organization that actually began resisting the draft, months before the predominantly white anti-war movement.

Furthermore, as the authors make clear, opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam was one of the Black Panthers' fundamental positions.

Like most revolutionary organizations the Panthers struggled with issues of gender and sexuality. While the participation of men in the breakfast programs sensitized them to the realities of child-rearing and associated aspects of human life (think of the film Salt of the Earth, when the women replace men on the picket lines and the men take over household tasks forcing them to see the relationship of domestic tasks to the capitalist dynamic), the living situations of many Panthers reinforced traditional gender roles.

Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., the authors of Black Against Empire, have written a comprehensive and compelling history of the Black Panther Party. As close to complete as one text can possibly be, it is the book I would recommend to anyone wanting to read just one book about the Black Panthers. The book concludes with a chapter speculating as to why the Black Panthers developed when they did, why they commanded the support they did, and why their influence waned so quickly.

Of course, the role of the government counterinsurgency program called COINTELPRO is discussed; the frame-ups, misinformation, jacketing, and murders. In light of current concerns about domestic “terrorists," one wonders if the Panthers would be considered drone assassination targets under the current Justice Department guidelines if they were around today?

Other reasons provided by the authors for the Panthers’ demise borrow from the Italian Antonio Gramsci's thoughts on revolutionary movements and end up asking more questions than they answer.

Long Distance Revolutionary

Back to Mumia Abu Jamal. One of the youngest Panthers in the nation, he continued his revolutionary activism and reportage long after the Black Panthers had become history. Indeed, his post-Panther trajectory could serve as a microcosm of many leftist revolutionaries who came of age during the Panthers' heyday.

He didn’t give up his radicalism while pursuing a career after the Party. Because of this, he ended up paying for his history and his refusal to compromise. He continues paying even today. For those who have forgotten (or never paid attention), Mumia has been on Pennsylvania’s death row for more than two decades. Accused and convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman in a prosecution involving the sketchiest of evidence and numerous prosecutorial and judicial missteps, Mumia’s life and situation is the subject of a new feature film titled Long Distance Revolutionary.

When I was helping organize antiwar activities in the late 1990s and the 2000s, I learned that many of the younger radicals I was working with came to their politics after learning of Mumia's case. Thanks in no small part to his eloquence and the support of popular musicians like Rage Against the Machine, these young people saw through the intense desire of the State to keep Jamal in prison and kill him. This understanding opened their eyes to the realities of the system and made them radical.

As the film shows, this trajectory is similar to Jamal's. Mumia is a political prisoner. The Panthers were a political organization. The story of both is a story that needs to be heard. The film is part biography, part commentary from supporters and Jamal himself, and part drama. The sum of these parts is a film that provokes and entertains.

The Black Panthers were bold. The Black Panthers were smart. The Black Panthers were anti-imperialists. The Black Panthers were revolutionaries. This book and this film remind us of that. They also remind us that this world, this nation, could use something with the Panthers' appeal and power now. Read this book, ask your library to buy it; watch this film.

Black history isn't just for black people. It's for everyone who wants to understand the history of the United States.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Bob Feldman : Population Growth and Civil Rights Victories in Texas, 1940-1953

Herman Sweatt was the first African American to attend the University of Texas after a 1950 Supreme Court decision. Photo courtesy of UT Press / Daily Texan.

The hidden history of Texas

Part 12: 1940-1953/2 -- Population growth and some significant civil rights victories.

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / February 18, 2013

[This is the second section of Part 12 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

As Texas’s manufacturing industry expanded to produce more weapons and supplies for U.S. government needs during World War II, the need for factory workers in Texas increased; and more people in Texas moved from rural areas into cities and towns between 1940 and 1953.

By 1950, over 7.7 million people now lived in Texas and around 60 percent of all people in Texas now lived in urban areas. By 1950, for example, 596,163 people lived in Houston, 434,462 in Dallas, 408,407 in San Antonio, and 278,728 in Fort Worth; however, Austin's population was still only 132,459 in 1950.

According to Alwyn Barr’s Black Texans, “World War II almost doubled the number of black industrial workers” in Texas -- from 159,000 to a peak of 295,000 in 1943. But during World War II “the Consolidated Vultee plant” still “segregated its assembly line; and Baytown oil refineries paid blacks less than whites for the same work,” according to Randolph Campbell’s Going To Texas.

Many Texas-born African-Americans continued to leave white supremacist Texas society between 1940 and 1953 for states in the Northeast, Midwest, or West in which racial segregation was not legalized and where they had often been able to find factory jobs during World War II. But in Houston -- where the total population had grown from 384,514 to 596,163 between 1940 and 1950 -- the “black population increased from 86,302 to 125,400” during the 1940s, according to Merline Pitre’s In Struggle Against Jim Crow.

And -- despite an anti-black riot by white racist Texans that occurred on June 15, 1943, in Houston -- African-American civil rights activists in Houston and elsewhere in Texas between 1940 and 1953 began to win a few victories in their campaigns for an end to legalized racial discrimination, white supremacy, institutional racism, and interpersonal racism in Texas society and daily life.

In 1943, for example, a Houston NAACP “boycott against Winegarten Store [Sic: Correct spelling is "Weingarten's"] led to the dismissal of one of the store’s security guards, who had struck a black customer” and “an NAACP-led demonstration made it possible for blacks to attend a production of Porgy and Bess at the Houston Music Hall and be seated on the same floor levels as whites,” according to In Struggle Against Jim Crow.

In addition, “on Apr. 6, 1943... representatives of the Negro Committee of the Houston Teachers Association presented the school board with a petition for pay equalization” and “on Apr. 13, 1943, rather than take a chance on a... lawsuit, the Houston school board agreed to make the salaries of black teachers and principals equal to those of their white counterparts who possessed the same credentials and performed the same duties,” according to the same book.

Then in 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Texas’s white Democratic primary law to be illegal in its Smith v. Allwright decision in a legal case that African-American civil rights groups in Texas had initiated. And in 1946 -- when 5,000 new members were recruited into the Houston chapter of the NAACP -- African-American civil rights activists in Texas began to challenge the racist admissions policy of the University of Texas in Austin.

As In Struggle Against Jim Crow recalled:

Lulu B. White... executive secretary of the NAACP’s Houston branch, and the NAACP’s state director... led fight...to integrate the University of Texas... Urged on by the NAACP and accompanied by Lulu White and other supporters, Herman Sweatt attempted to register at UT in Austin on Feb. 26, 1946. After a discussion with [then-University of Texas] President Theophilus Painter and other university officials, Sweatt left his application at the campus and returned to Houston... Sweatt sued university officials on May 16, 1946 for denying him admission...

In April 1949, Joseph J. Rhoades, president of Bishop College, organized a mass registration attempt sending 35 black college seniors from across the state to apply to various professional programs at UT... When they arrived at the registrar’s office seeking admission, they were told that they could apply at TSUN [Texas State University for Negroes; later renamed Texas Southern University]. These students then decided to stage a demonstration, marching from the university to the State Capitol. They carried placards... One sign read, "Texas Can’t Afford a Dual System of Graduate and Professional Education" Another proclaimed, "Separate and Equal Education Is a Mockery."...

The Supreme Court announced its findings in Sweatt v. Painter on June 5, 1950. In a unanimous decision the Court ordered Sweatt admitted to UT.

Also, “during the summer of 1946... the death of a black man gave rise to the largest mass protest demonstration that the city of Houston had ever witnessed” and “the NAACP... converted the funeral for Berry Branch, killed by a white bus driver, into a rally” in which “all labor unions in the city were represented,” according to the same book.

Yet despite the legal victories, there was still a poll tax in Texas that was utilized to block many African-Americans from being able to vote and the “only civil service positions” African-American residents were allowed to hold in Houston before 1945 “were in the post office,” according to In Struggle Against Jim Crow.

In addition, in 1948 only 15 of Houston’s 503 police officers were African-Americans and the “custom” of “the most blatant among the Houston companies” in its discriminatory policies between 1940 and 1953 -- Hughes Tool -- was still “to hire whites at 60 cents an hour and blacks at 50 cents an hour, although they were performing the same tasks,” according to the same book.

And, “Austin in 1951 changed its city council representatives from geographical districts to an at-large basis which guaranteed control of all seats by the white majority,” according to Black Texans.

The number of African-Americans who lived in Texas only increased from 924,391 to 977,458 between 1940 and 1950, as many African-Americans left Texas for the West Coast, Midwest, or Northeast; and as late as 1945 there were still only about 45,000 people of Jewish religious background who lived in Texas.

But by 1950, the number of Latinos of Mexican descent living in Texas -- 1 million -- now exceeded the number of African-Americans who lived in the state.

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Jean Trounstine : After 18 Years on Death Row

Damien Echols. Photo by Larry D. Moore / Wikimedia Commons.

Damien Echols:
After 18 years on Death Row

Being on death row and in solitary confinement has got to be one of the most inhumane experiences we put prisoners through -- and we justify it by calling them 'the most dangerous prisoners alive.' But what of those who later turn out to be innocent?

By Jean Trounstine / The Rag Blog / February 20, 2013

Texas carried out the most executions of any state in 2012 -- 15 -- with Arizona, Oklahoma, and Mississippi tying for second place at six apiece. As of May 2012, the total number of Texas prisoners in administrative segregation, also known as solitary confinement, totaled 8,407.

Death row and solitary, a brutal combination. Twenty-three out of 24 hours locked in a small cell with a cot and a toilet. Barely any human contact. Knowing you’re going to die.

Two weeks ago, I went to an event at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, to hear Damien Echols talk about his 18+ years in solitary confinement. Echols is one of the so-called "West Memphis Three," all from West Memphis, Arkansas, and falsely convicted for the brutal murders of three boys in 1993. All sentenced to death.

Following a high-profile, celebrity-backed campaign to free the three prisoners, Echols and his two co-defendants were released from prison in August 2011. They agreed to a rare plea bargain that essentially had them plead to guilt and not sue the state in exchange for immediate freedom.

It's a story made for a movie -- and there is one and there will be another. Plus many celebs helped with the case that includes stories to make your skin crawl -- false accusations of Satanism, police corruption, i.e. the works. Altogether another tragic indictment of our system.

But that's not what stirred me to write this blog.

A few days later I came across an article about Echols going back to Tennessee for the first time since he was released from prison in 2011. For whatever reasons, he was invited to talk at a... (ready?) -- technology conference. Now, granted, just having Damien Echols come to your conference could add to the draw, but asking him to talk about his reactions to technology since he got out of prison seems at once fascinating and almost a little cruel.

How overwhelming must it be to get out and find yourself in this world where everything goes so fast you hardly have time to breathe!

The West Memphis Three, June 1993.

And juxtapose this with what Echols said at the talk and writes about in his new book Life After Death – he eventually learned to spend up to six hours a day in prison meditating. He bludgeoned his body to stand or sit in cold and heat and pushed himself through the physical pain. He escaped the bars mentally, found himself through deep soul searching, got a modicum of peace. He said that his spiritual practice as well as his wife, Lorri Davis, who fought for his freedom and whom he married while in prison, saved his life.

So imagine after solitary confinement for 18 years, walking into the Apple Store. The computers. The cell phones. The tweets and whistles. Twitter, Echols says, he likes, because it feels like he's writing poetry. Texting too, a language unto itself. But learning it in a heartbeat?

And what about the other bombardments of the techno-savvy 21st century? Apps? Blogs? Flicker? All the ins and outs of the technological world, not to mention discovering that you can securely (sometimes) use credit cards online and drive straight through those freeway toll booths with Easy Pass. What seems commonplace to us, natural, we actually learned step by step, year by year.

I remember how Dolly, one of the women I taught who spent 15 years at Framingham Women's Prison in Massachusetts, said that the scariest thing after release was looking at the prices of shoes in the mall. She said she started shaking and couldn't stop.

Yes, there's reuniting with your loved ones. There's the joy of seeing green grass, the ocean, or a blanket of snow across a mountain. And surely, hot fudge in the free world is as blessed as a bath. But the shock of having been years behind the eight ball, the feeling that you are always trying to catch up, has to take time to deal with, and maybe more years to get over.

So while we (and I speak as much of myself here as you) might envy Echols for having a New York Times bestseller or for having the likes of Johnny Depp and Peter Jackson support him with their fame and opportunities, the truth of Echols's life is not celebrity or fame, but the hard darkness of coming out of the most repressive world in this country where we keep people in intolerable conditions. Coming into the light from darkness -- it is no wonder that Damien Echols must wear dark glasses.

[Jean Trounstine is an author/editor of five published books and many articles, professor at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, and a prison activist. For 10 years, she worked at Framingham Women's Prison and directed eight plays, publishing Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison about that work. She blogs for Boston Magazine and takes apart the criminal justice system brick by brick at jeantrounstine.com where she blogs weekly at "Justice with Jean." Find her contributions to The Rag Blog here.]

The Rag Blog

Bob Feldman : Texas Civil Rights Movement Wins Big Victories, 1954-1973

White and African American students from Austin area colleges sit in at a segregated lunch counter on Congress Avenue in Austin, April 1960 as part of a concerted effort to integrate lunch counters. Image from Austin History Center.

The hidden history of Texas

Part 13: 1954-1973/1 -- Civil rights efforts to desegregate schools, public facilities, have wide success.

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / February 25, 2013

[This is the first section of Part 13 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

Between 1953 and 1964, the percentage of non-agricultural workers in Texas who were unionized dropped from 16.8 to 13.3 percent; but the number of labor union members in 1964 in Texas -- around 375,000 -- remained about the same as it had been in 1953. As F. Ray Marshall’s Labor in the South observed:

The main losses in Texas were the OCAW, which had 31,000 members in 1955 and about 20,000 in 1964; and UAW, whose membership had declined from 16,057 in 1955 to about 14,000 in 1964; the carpenters, who had 27,321 members in Texas in 1957 and about 15,000 in 1964; the packinghouse workers, who had 2,035 members in 1955 and 1,200 in 1964; and the textile workers who had 720 members in 1955 and only 185 in 1964.

The main unions to gain membership in Texas between 1960 and 1964 were the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Letter Carriers, the state, county and municipal employees; the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters.

Yet between 1947 and 1973, the number of factories in Texas increased from 7,128 to 14,431; and the number of factory workers in Texas exceeded 730,000 by 1972.

By 1960, the number of African-Americans who still lived in rural Texas had dropped to 256,750 and the number of African-American tenant farmers and sharecroppers in Texas had dropped to 3,138, while the number of African-Americans in Texas who still owned their own farms had declined from 52,751 in 1940 to 15,041 by 1960.

And “by 1960 only 8 percent of all black workers in Texas remained in rural areas -- a sharp decline from the 32 percent of two decades before,” according to Alwyn Barr’s Black Texans. But, in contrast, the “urban black population in Texas grew from 428,110 in 1940 to 905,089 in 1960,” according to the same book.

Although “Texas Attorney General John Ben Shepperd made a concerted effort to drive the NAACP out of Texas by suing the association” in 1956, according to Merline Pitre’s In Struggle Against Jim Crow, after the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that racial segregation in U.S. public school systems was unconstitutional, African-American civil rights activists in Texas continued to protest against racism within Texas society during the 1950s and 1960s; and -- despite the political opposition of some white Texans who wanted to preserve legalized segregation in the state -- were able to win some of their anti-racist demands between 1954 and 1973.

As Black Texans recalled, “protests by local black organizations and court cases brought the integration of publicly owned restaurants, golf courses, parks, beaches and rest rooms in Houston, Beaumont, and other Texas cities during the 1950s.” In 1954, for example, Houston ’s public golf course and public library were desegregated; and between 1954 and 1956 all major Texas cities ended racial separation on their city buses.

Yet, “at Texarkana College in 1955 -- a crowd of whites prevented blacks from enrolling” and “White Citizens Councils, an anti-desegregation group…appeared in Texas during the summer of 1955 and soon claimed a membership of 20,000,” according to Randolph Campbell’s Gone To Texas, with 250 delegates attending its 1955 convention.

And, “although enrollment at UT was fully integrated by 1956, blacks were banned from varsity athletics and relegated to segregated and substandard dormitories;” and “Austin in the early 1950s was still segregated in most respects -- restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, drug stores, public schools, parks, swimming pools, hospitals, housing and public transportation,” according to David Humphrey’s Austin: An Illustrated History.

Barton Springs, for example, “was off limits to blacks as late as 1959” and “some residents saw in [former Austin Mayor] Tom Miller’s plans for an interstate highway just an extension of the wall of separation,” according to the same book. [I-35, in effect, created a barrier between downtown Austin and mostly African-American East Austin.]

Near Fort Worth, “forceful opposition to school integration at Mansfield” also developed in the fall of 1956 “when over 250 whites stopped the entry of black pupils into formerly white schools” and then-Democratic Texas Governor Shivers “used Texas Rangers, not to disperse the mob, but to remove the students,” according to Black Texans; and “Mansfield schools remained segregated for at least two more years,” despite the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, according to the same book.

Houston also still had the largest racially segregated public school system in the United States in 1957. And while Southern Methodist University (SMU) administrators finally began allowing African-American applicants to attend this college in 1955, Texas Tech, Rice University , Baylor University, and Texas Christian University administrators apparently didn’t allow African-American applicants to become students on their campuses until 1960.

So, not surprisingly, anti-racist civil rights protests and demonstrations by both students and non-students in Texas continued during the 1960s. As Black Texans recalled:

In the early 1960s black and white students from Texas Southern University in Houston, the University of Texas in Austin, and other colleges across the state began to protest restaurant and theater segregation. Bishop and Wiley college students in Marshall undertook one of the first series of non-violent demonstrations in Texas during the spring of 1960. Prairie View students with limited white support boycotted Hempstead merchants in the fall of 1963.

Local chapters of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) also picketed, petitioned and boycotted against segregation in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio... In El Paso, where Negroes formed only 2 percent of the population, the city desegregated public accommodations by ordinance... In some smaller East Texas towns, such as Huntsville and San Augustine, sit-ins and protests remained necessary even in 1965 to bring integration of public accommodations...

Since University of Texas “dormitories were still segregated” and African-American students at UT were “still excluded from varsity athletics” in 1960, in Austin during the spring of 1960 “black and white students protested UT’s dormitory and athletic policies” and also “picketed nearby restaurants” and “staged sit-ins at downtown [Austin] lunch counters, according to Austin: An Illustrated History. But the same book also observed:

Most downtown eateries stood pat... Demonstrations accelerated in December [1960] when groups of 100 to 200 UT students participated in "stand-ins" at the two movie theaters on the Drag...Hundreds of demonstrators celebrated Lincoln’s birthday in 1961 with stand-ins at both movie houses on the Drag and the State and Paramount theaters downtown... In September [1961] the two theaters on the Drag agreed to integrate... Sit-ins at a white dormitory brought disciplinary probation to several participants... Finally, the regents gave in on integrated housing in 1964...

At UT in Austin (whose student body included only around 200 African-American students in 1961), the Students for Direct Action campus group (which was founded in the fall of 1960) also picketed in 1962 at “the Forty Acres Club, a newly-opened private "whites-only" faculty club often used for university meetings and entertaining official university visitors,” according to the 1988 “History of Student Activism at the University of Texas at Austin (1960-1988)" thesis by Beverly Burr that was posted on the UT Watch website.

And in the fall of 1962 student activists on UT’s campus also founded the Negroes for Equal Rights (NER) and Campus Interracial Committee [CIC] campus civil rights groups which were successful in pressuring the University of Texas administration to finally hire its first African-American faculty member (an assistant professor of civil engineering named Ervin Perry) in May 1964; and to finally allow African-Americans to become members of the UT faculty’s Forty Acres Club in March 1965.

Yet despite the early 60s civil rights protests in Austin, as late as the fall of 1963, Austin’s 24,413 African-American residents “were still barred from half or more of Austin’s white-owned restaurants, hotels, and motels and from business schools and bowling alleys,” “9 out of 10 black elementary-age children attended schools that were at least 99 percent black” and “discrimination in employment and housing was common,” according to Austin: An Illustrated History.

So, not surprisingly, Austin’s NAACP chapter held a six-day civil rights filibuster at an April 1964 meeting of Austin’s City Council to demand that it pass an anti-discrimination ordinance; and Joan Baez even appeared at a“freedom hootenanny” in the front of Austin’s City Hall before an audience of 200 local civil rights movement supporters on the first day of this Austin NAACP civil rights filibuster.

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Ron Jacobs : Bob Dylan's Biography of American Racism

Ron Jacobs : Bob Dylan's Biography of American Racism

Bob Dylan visits Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in prison, 1975. Image from Tumblr.

Bob Dylan’s biography of American racism

“Sometimes I think this whole world / is one big prison yard / Some of us are prisoners / and some of us are guards.” -- Bob Dylan, "George Jackson"

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / March 4, 2013

When people think of Bob Dylan, it's unlikely very many consider him a biographer. Yet, he does write songs about people. I don’t mean that in a general sense, either. I mean he literally writes songs about people. Some of those songs are about people that only Dylan knows or at least only Dylan knows who they are about. Others are about people most of us have heard of or heard of because of a song Dylan wrote.

Recently, I was choosing some images from the web for a display concerning the Emancipation Proclamation and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice. As I clicked my way in and out of websites I came across a grainy photo of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, and other musicians on the stage at the aforementioned march.

This got me to thinking about Bob Dylan and his songs concerning the racism that is part of the definition of these United States. Then I got to thinking about those Dylan songs that name people; even more specifically, the songs that named people that were famous in their own right. “Joey” came to mind. Upon examination, though, this song stands out as an anomaly in the Dylan catalog. Not only is Joey Gallo an ambiguous hero at best, Dylan’s lyrics do not really attempt to make a point, unlike the other songs in this rather loose set.

Then I narrowed the whole process down to songs that are tributes to individuals as opposed to songs which portray an incident featuring an individual who is either acting or being "acted upon." A song in the former category would be the dark tale Dylan tells in “The Ballad of Hollis Brown.” This song is a tale of a farmer driven to the simultaneously horrendous and protective act of murdering his family because of economic ruin.

Songs that fall in the latter category include “The Death of Emmett Till” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” Both tunes describe an incident of racist injustice that not only goes virtually unpunished but, in Dylan's telling, is symptomatic of an evil at home in these United States. Indeed, it is not just at home, but is one of the darkest elements in the myths that describe the nation.

Emmett Till was more than just a boy who looked the “wrong” way at a white woman down South. He was a threat to white supremacy and its falsehood. Millions of men and women paid a price quite similar to Till’s in slavery, lynchings, and prisons. Hattie Carroll lost her life when a rich white man carelessly and callously killed her with his cane. Her killer’s punishment was inconsequential: six months for murder.

Recorded 1983 for Infidels;Released
1991 in Bootleg Series.

Blind Willie McTell is perhaps most famous nowadays for his song “Statesboro Blues,” most likely titled after the city he grew up in. Although McTell was somewhat well-known on the blues circuit during the 1920s and 1930s, most folks who know this song today know it because of the Allman Brothers. Their version is electric and extended. McTell played a fluid twelve-string and the occasional slide. He lived for 60 years and played throughout the southern United States in a style of picking known as Piedmont -- named after the region of the Carolinas it originated in.

While Bob Dylan was recording songs for the album eventually known as Infidels, he recorded his song “Blind Willie McTell.” A masterpiece of a song from a man who has many such songs to his name, Dylan’s work is about much more than the blues singer Willie McTell. It is an angry message transmitted through Dylan from an angry god. Even more, it is about a people and a nation that continue to suffer what Abraham Lincoln correctly identified as “the woe due to those by whom the offense came.”

Just as Mr. Lincoln told the nation in his Second Inaugural Address that perhaps “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” so does Dylan close his song with a parallel observation and warning: “Well, God is in His heaven/And we all want what’s His/But power and greed and corruptible seed/Seem to be all that there is.”

The entire song is written in the minor with the piano the dominant instrument. One sees images of slave auctions, tenant shacks, Ishmael Reed’s Arthur Swille and Raven Quickskill, and Neil Young’s southern man; Christopher Dorner and Barney Fife; Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas and the past and future Imperial Wizards of the Ku Klux Klan; Huey Newton, Oscar Grant, and Nina Simone. The cries of the whipped and the sound of the lashes become as real as the silence of solitary in today’s supermax prisons.

I remember hearing George Jackson had been killed a few hours after it occurred. The news reports coming in from the AP over Armed Forces Radio were sketchy and most notable for the information they did not provide. European broadcasts were somewhat more complete but all of the reports echoed the official line that Jackson had been trying to escape prior to his murder.

We still don’t know exactly what happened. The theory that makes the most sense to me is that he was planning to escape and had been working out the details with a section of the Bay Area Black Panthers, their mutual allies, and a probable police agent who tipped off the authorities and thereby ensured Jackson’s murder.

Two-sided single, 1971.

It’s difficult to explain the power George Jackson’s words and life story had when his first book Soledad Brother was published. In a world hungry for men and women who had lived a life of wretchedness and risen from those roots, Jackson’s was a life that indicted the evils rooted in slavery and U.S. capitalism while providing hope that this world could be changed. His brother’s heroically futile attempt to free him from the prison George had been exiled to only enhanced his revolutionary and ultimately tragic mystique. So, too, did the arrest and imprisonment of Jackson’s lover and comrade, Angela Davis.

My thoughts upon hearing Bob Dylan’s tribute to Jackson, simply titled “George Jackson,” were that even Bob Dylan, the rock superstar and (by then) recluse was not immune to the meaning of Jackson’s life and death. A poet, after all, lives to discover a meaning in the world that he exists in. For a poet like Dylan, the story of George Jackson confirmed his growing understanding that the scourge of racism was the defining condition of the country he lived in. Indeed, as he explained in a 2012 Rolling Stone interview:

This country is just too fucked up about color. It's a distraction. People at each other's throats just because they are of a different color. It's the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back -- or any neighborhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn't want to give up slavery -- that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can't pretend they don't know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that.

In other words, as far as Dylan is concerned, there is very little hope. Perhaps the most memorable lines in “George Jackson” are contained in this quatrain, “Sometimes I think this whole world/is one big prison yard/Some of us are prisoners /and some of us are guards.” These lines describe the nation’s dilemma better than any treatise might. Until the guards are willing to accept the fact they are as imprisoned by the legacy of racism as the prisoners they guard, beat, and kill, none of us will be free to leave the prison that is these United States.

Those that try, especially African-Americans, all too often find themselves put away behind bars even more real than the figurative ones that we know as racism. That is the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a black man who fought his way out of the prison of poverty and the urban ghetto only to be charged with a crime “that he never done.”

Rolling Thunder Revue, 1976.

Like Jackson, Hurricane Carter spent a good portion of his life in prison. Also, like Jackson (and millions of others), Carter’s fate was determined by men and a system that cared little for the truth. Dylan’s lyrics tell the story of dirty cops, lying witnesses, and a prosecution determined to put Carter in prison, if not for the crime he was charged with, then because he had too much pride in his person and his race; traits not just hated by the white power structure, but seen as serious threats. Carter, like Jackson, came to understand his position, a fact which led to his undoing almost as much as the perversions of justice existent in the cases of both men.

When Bob Dylan released his song “Hurricane,” most people had not heard of Carter or his case. As I recall, the demand for a new trial was primarily popular among left organizations like the Revolutionary Union, its student group the Attica Brigades/Revolutionary Student Brigades and various radical anti-racist organizations on the East Coast of the United States.

When Dylan recorded his song and released it as a two-sided single (because of its length), many radio stations did not know what to do with it. The more cutting-edge stations that played non-formula album cuts and regional artists (WHFS-FM in Maryland, WNEW-FM in New York, for example) played the song in its entirety, flipping the single mid-song or having it cued on two turntables. Other, more commercial stations didn’t play it much at all until it reached the Top 40. Stations that traditionally catered to Black audiences were also slow to play the song at first, with the exception of a few college and community-owned stations.

Meanwhile, Dylan and his cohorts were organizing what would be known as the Rolling Thunder Tour. This tour would champion Hurricane’s case and was perhaps one of the last great “Sixties” tours (with the possible exception of the continuing road trip of the Grateful Dead.) Hurricane did get a new trial. He was convicted again, thanks to continued prosecutorial misconduct. He was finally freed in 1985 after a federal judge determined that Carter’s arrest and prosecution was "predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason...”

To put it simply, the song itself rocks. There is no other word that describes its appeal. There is probably no other rock song that features a gypsy violin as lead instrument where that can be said. Sharing imagery with the New Jersey street songs of Bruce Springsteen and borrowing rhythms and melody from Ashkenazi and Romano folk songs, “Hurricane” maintains a level of emotion appropriate to its subject matter.

After all, we were trying to save a man’s life. It was already too late for Blind Willie McTell and George Jackson.

This article was first published in Red Wedge Magazine.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novels, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, and Short Order Frame Up will be republished by Fomite in April 2013 along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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