League of Revolutionary Black Workers - Organization of The League

Organization of The League

The League quickly grew to include around 80 central members and a seven person Executive Committee including: General Baker, Kenneth Cockrel, Mike Hamlin, Luke Tripp, John Watson, John Williams, and Chuck Wooten.

Despite its ideological coherence, there were several schools of thought within the League about the most effect tactics for the organization to pursue. The first school of thought was most heavily emphasized by General Baker and Chuck Wooten. This tendency within the organization stressed the importance of in-plant organizing and the creation of new revolutionary union movements as the primary concern of the organization, and viewed other tasks as secondary to this goal.

This idea is perhaps most clearly articulated in the League’s constitution, which stated:

“We must act swiftly to help organize DRUM type organizations wherever there are Black workers, be it in Lynn Townsend’s kitchen, the White House, White Castle, Ford Rouge, the Mississippi Delta, the plains of Wyoming, the mines of Bolivia, the rubber plantations of Indonesia, the oil fields of Biafra, or the Chrysler plant in South Africa.”

The second tendency or school of thought within the League stressed the importance of building community ties and organizations to support the work of the workers in the factories, and thus was dubbed the out-of-plant tendency. The key proponents of this strategy were Mike Hamlin, John Watson, and Ken Cockrel. This group within the League believed that it was just as important to build connections with students, community and neighborhood organizations, and white radicals as it was to build new RUMs in the plants. Not only were these three leaders concerned about the individual RUMs becoming isolated or divorced from the larger working class movement, but they believed that communities and students played a vital role in supporting the work of the RUMs in the factories and advancing the demands of the workers. Additionally, they viewed media, in the form of films and newspapers, as a vital instrument for educating the masses of workers and building a movement which could combat capitalism.

The third tendency in the League consisted of Luke Tripp and John Williams, who walked a middle road between the other two schools of thought. Tripp and Williams were primarily concerned with developing the political consciousness of both League supporters outside of the plant and workers that were involved in the RUMs inside the plants. Additionally, they were concerned about either of the other two tendencies becoming too ambitious without first laying the groundwork for what they viewed as key to developing a revolutionary workers movement supported by the community. Primarily, they were concerned about other League leaders’ ideas about spreading the League to other cities without first perfecting the organization in Detroit, and viewed smaller, social political meetings with workers, students and community members as key to developing a revolutionary working class movement.