Saorsa
2nd May 2010, 08:26
A discussion of revolutionary strike-breaking.
Textbook Protests: When the Poet Said Burn Our Churches
http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/1974-protesters-god-is-not-a-myth-west-virginia22.png
by Mike Ely
TNL just posted links to a fascinating documentary — covering the Textbook Wars of West Virginia in 1974.
People were mobilized largely through their churches — in mine strikes, school boycotts and mass rallies — to oppose new progressive textbooks entering the public schools. It was a rearguard action for fundamentalist and racist views — and was an early battleground of the Religious Right in the U.S. And it was a focus of frantic counter-organizing by those of us who wanted to beat back this movement.
The episode also shows (as I argued in my piece of “Ambush at Keystone“) that the militant activism of workers does not automatically produce a progressive or radical movement — that the active workers are not always the advanced, and that there is a deep struggle over politics and ideas that has to unfold.
Communist Militants Against the Strike
Not only are these Textbook Protests largely unknown — but so is the role played by communist organizers in West Virginia — in stopping the spread of the Textbook strike among coal miners. I have discussed this briefly before — and want to add a little more now.
This strike broke out in 1974.. not long after we had created the Miners Right to Strike committee, and were trying to develop a pole of organizing among the more militant miners. We had, for the first time, contact with several networks of militants across the southern part of West Virginia. So it was a paradox that one of our first serious tasks was to use those connections to help suppress and constrain a reactionary rightwing strike — and convince the militants not to take it up.
The communists of the early Revolutionary Union worked with a circle of militant anti-racist Black Vietnam veterans in Beckley, W.Va. to produce and circulate an exposure of the rightwing Textbook protesters — to expose their lies about the Black literature and progressive textbooks being introduced in West Virginia schools.
We all worked (day and night for a while) to reach the core active miners of southern West Virginia (in Districts 29 and 17) to prevent the spread of the wildcat — outside of the Kanawha Valley and onto the national stage. (In some ways, our work prevented this Textbook Protest from becoming a bigger and more nationally influential event that it was… since shutting down the whole state’s coal production would have catapulted these ridiculous red-white-and-blue fools wearing three-cornered hats and coonskin caps– these ugly precursors of the Tea Party types — into national prominence.)
This was a highly political task — and complex, because for many miners are both fundamentalist and have a deep tradition of simply “helping a brother.” And if the miners of Kanawha Valley were out on strike for a grievance — it was often thought we should simply support them (not debate whether or not their grievance was just.)
In fact, of course, the grievances of these preachers and their followers were bitterly UN-just (they were uninformed, racist and anti-scientific). This was an attempt to mobilize a wave of fundamentalist activism against the advances of the 1960s — including the advances of Black people toward equality, and the inroads made against Biblical fundamentalism and its values.
And (of course) this was often not a grievance picked by the miners themselves (in the striking area of the central Kanawha valley) but often a case of lunatic religious nuts themselves shutting down mines, and whipping up confusion with cascades of lies about the textbooks. (And there were, literally, hard-core rightwing operatives and Klansmen hard at work in the shadows.)
In one case, we also mobilized to attend one of the strike rallies and speak out forcefully against the strike, and against the preachers — and it played (i believe) a role in weakening their hold on public opinion.
This episode (and the role of communists in fighting this early manifestation of the religious right) is discussed in at least one account of its history. And I have written about some of the vigilante attacks we faced and interesting positive developments in our work within McDowell County in the aftermath — as rightwing preachers were whipped up to attach the communists from the pulpit and the radio, and as others stepped up to help us beat them back.
One personal anecdote to give a sense of the times:
As the Textbook strike broke out in Kanawha Valley, the head of my local came to me. Buck Wise was a Black man in his forties — very deeply respected among the workers and in the larger community, and (in my opinion) a very thoughtful man. He sought me out because he was wrestling with the meaning of this, and thought I would have some thoughts and opinions to factor into his own calculations. He — and the larger circle of middle-aged Black workers that he lead and represented — wanted to know what to think and do about this strike (happening three hours drive north of us in the center of the state.)
He passed over to me a poem that was circulating in the Black community of Keystone. It had been taken from one of the new textbooks, and was being reprinted and handed out in churches to incite people against the textbooks.
The poem said in part (and i’m writing from memory):
Yes, burn our churches
Yes, rape our women
Yes, hang us from your trees,
Yes….[and so on]
You get the drift: it was a militant piece by a Black poet — using irony to expose and denounce the horrific abuse of Black people.
But the irony was lost on many people reading it in southern West Virginia — precisely because they had not been exposed to such literature in their own previous schooling and because the surrounding culture of the Bible Belt had trained even literate people in a kind of very mechanical Biblical literalism — where every word means what it says and nothing else. I would guess that a quarter of the men where I worked, concentrated among the older world war 2 generation couldn’t read at all.
I said to Buck that my opinion was that we should oppose this strike actively and hard, that it was racist at its core and opposed to the advances that were being forced into public education by the struggle of Black people. And that alone was surprising, because I had a reputation of supporting all strikes — in a way that was very controversial within the rather un-militant local at Keystone. It was not what anyone expected.
And, thoughtful as always, Buck turned that over in his mind, looked back over the poem, he came back again: “OK… but really, people want to know if it isn’t wrong to have kids reading poems that support lynching and burning our churches?”
There were four or five workers standing around us, by this time, as we were getting close to shift change. Folks were showing up for work. And obviously, this whole strike, and the textbook controversy was being widely discussed, and was provoking interest — and some of the workers, both Black and white, were influenced by the “traditional values” arguments being promoted by the anti-Textbook preachers in their TV appearances.
And I said, “Ok, Buck, let’s do it like this… Let me speak this poem out loud. And then we can decide if it’s a good thing or a bad thing for our kids to read.”
He handed me the poem again, and I shouted out to the guys in the parking lot to come over if they were interested. And we talked briefly about our conversation, and the controversy over this poem.
And then I read it, loud, a “spoken word” moment without a mike, adopting the bitter and ironic voice that was intended. With the sarcasm and anger of the author. And, it became clear (to a lot of those listening, and certainly to Buck Wise and his usual circle) that this piece was not some sick and defeated invitation to white racists, to come burn churches or lynch Black men, but a defiant dare, a scream of never again.
Buck said, “That’s something our kids should hear. Good poem.” And we climbed into the mantrip to go to work.
Textbook Protests: When the Poet Said Burn Our Churches
http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/1974-protesters-god-is-not-a-myth-west-virginia22.png
by Mike Ely
TNL just posted links to a fascinating documentary — covering the Textbook Wars of West Virginia in 1974.
People were mobilized largely through their churches — in mine strikes, school boycotts and mass rallies — to oppose new progressive textbooks entering the public schools. It was a rearguard action for fundamentalist and racist views — and was an early battleground of the Religious Right in the U.S. And it was a focus of frantic counter-organizing by those of us who wanted to beat back this movement.
The episode also shows (as I argued in my piece of “Ambush at Keystone“) that the militant activism of workers does not automatically produce a progressive or radical movement — that the active workers are not always the advanced, and that there is a deep struggle over politics and ideas that has to unfold.
Communist Militants Against the Strike
Not only are these Textbook Protests largely unknown — but so is the role played by communist organizers in West Virginia — in stopping the spread of the Textbook strike among coal miners. I have discussed this briefly before — and want to add a little more now.
This strike broke out in 1974.. not long after we had created the Miners Right to Strike committee, and were trying to develop a pole of organizing among the more militant miners. We had, for the first time, contact with several networks of militants across the southern part of West Virginia. So it was a paradox that one of our first serious tasks was to use those connections to help suppress and constrain a reactionary rightwing strike — and convince the militants not to take it up.
The communists of the early Revolutionary Union worked with a circle of militant anti-racist Black Vietnam veterans in Beckley, W.Va. to produce and circulate an exposure of the rightwing Textbook protesters — to expose their lies about the Black literature and progressive textbooks being introduced in West Virginia schools.
We all worked (day and night for a while) to reach the core active miners of southern West Virginia (in Districts 29 and 17) to prevent the spread of the wildcat — outside of the Kanawha Valley and onto the national stage. (In some ways, our work prevented this Textbook Protest from becoming a bigger and more nationally influential event that it was… since shutting down the whole state’s coal production would have catapulted these ridiculous red-white-and-blue fools wearing three-cornered hats and coonskin caps– these ugly precursors of the Tea Party types — into national prominence.)
This was a highly political task — and complex, because for many miners are both fundamentalist and have a deep tradition of simply “helping a brother.” And if the miners of Kanawha Valley were out on strike for a grievance — it was often thought we should simply support them (not debate whether or not their grievance was just.)
In fact, of course, the grievances of these preachers and their followers were bitterly UN-just (they were uninformed, racist and anti-scientific). This was an attempt to mobilize a wave of fundamentalist activism against the advances of the 1960s — including the advances of Black people toward equality, and the inroads made against Biblical fundamentalism and its values.
And (of course) this was often not a grievance picked by the miners themselves (in the striking area of the central Kanawha valley) but often a case of lunatic religious nuts themselves shutting down mines, and whipping up confusion with cascades of lies about the textbooks. (And there were, literally, hard-core rightwing operatives and Klansmen hard at work in the shadows.)
In one case, we also mobilized to attend one of the strike rallies and speak out forcefully against the strike, and against the preachers — and it played (i believe) a role in weakening their hold on public opinion.
This episode (and the role of communists in fighting this early manifestation of the religious right) is discussed in at least one account of its history. And I have written about some of the vigilante attacks we faced and interesting positive developments in our work within McDowell County in the aftermath — as rightwing preachers were whipped up to attach the communists from the pulpit and the radio, and as others stepped up to help us beat them back.
One personal anecdote to give a sense of the times:
As the Textbook strike broke out in Kanawha Valley, the head of my local came to me. Buck Wise was a Black man in his forties — very deeply respected among the workers and in the larger community, and (in my opinion) a very thoughtful man. He sought me out because he was wrestling with the meaning of this, and thought I would have some thoughts and opinions to factor into his own calculations. He — and the larger circle of middle-aged Black workers that he lead and represented — wanted to know what to think and do about this strike (happening three hours drive north of us in the center of the state.)
He passed over to me a poem that was circulating in the Black community of Keystone. It had been taken from one of the new textbooks, and was being reprinted and handed out in churches to incite people against the textbooks.
The poem said in part (and i’m writing from memory):
Yes, burn our churches
Yes, rape our women
Yes, hang us from your trees,
Yes….[and so on]
You get the drift: it was a militant piece by a Black poet — using irony to expose and denounce the horrific abuse of Black people.
But the irony was lost on many people reading it in southern West Virginia — precisely because they had not been exposed to such literature in their own previous schooling and because the surrounding culture of the Bible Belt had trained even literate people in a kind of very mechanical Biblical literalism — where every word means what it says and nothing else. I would guess that a quarter of the men where I worked, concentrated among the older world war 2 generation couldn’t read at all.
I said to Buck that my opinion was that we should oppose this strike actively and hard, that it was racist at its core and opposed to the advances that were being forced into public education by the struggle of Black people. And that alone was surprising, because I had a reputation of supporting all strikes — in a way that was very controversial within the rather un-militant local at Keystone. It was not what anyone expected.
And, thoughtful as always, Buck turned that over in his mind, looked back over the poem, he came back again: “OK… but really, people want to know if it isn’t wrong to have kids reading poems that support lynching and burning our churches?”
There were four or five workers standing around us, by this time, as we were getting close to shift change. Folks were showing up for work. And obviously, this whole strike, and the textbook controversy was being widely discussed, and was provoking interest — and some of the workers, both Black and white, were influenced by the “traditional values” arguments being promoted by the anti-Textbook preachers in their TV appearances.
And I said, “Ok, Buck, let’s do it like this… Let me speak this poem out loud. And then we can decide if it’s a good thing or a bad thing for our kids to read.”
He handed me the poem again, and I shouted out to the guys in the parking lot to come over if they were interested. And we talked briefly about our conversation, and the controversy over this poem.
And then I read it, loud, a “spoken word” moment without a mike, adopting the bitter and ironic voice that was intended. With the sarcasm and anger of the author. And, it became clear (to a lot of those listening, and certainly to Buck Wise and his usual circle) that this piece was not some sick and defeated invitation to white racists, to come burn churches or lynch Black men, but a defiant dare, a scream of never again.
Buck said, “That’s something our kids should hear. Good poem.” And we climbed into the mantrip to go to work.