The Heart Of The US Century
"The process is still bitterly remembered by Navajos." - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, 'An Indigenous People's History of the United States"
Nazis unwelcome: here’s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie. I might forget/get bored and stop. Not today though!
We’re getting into labor history this week. My internal promises to “make this week’s blog shorter” are not happening. Anyway, am I going to argue against US involvement in WWII this week? Does Zinn imply the New Deal and war absorbed and stymied in-progress social revolutions? The epigraph, while it could be about *gestures wildly at last few blogs* is in regards to a New Deal conservation scheme…
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four
Read This Week
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn: “War Is the Health of the State,” “Self-Help in Hard Times,” “A People’s War?” and “‘Or Does It Explode?’”
Four Hundred Souls edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain: Part Nine (1939-1979)
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: “Eight: ‘Indian Country’” and “US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism”
Thoughts (In Which I Do Not Assert That The US Should Have Stayed Home During WWII)
The Banana Massacre in 100 Years of Solitude is a thing I think about a lot—it’s real pleasant up in the ol’ cabeza de Corlew—and I always come back to the same bummer conclusion. Workers wanted livable wage and the company mowed them down with machine guns. Sure, you can think about the mass forgetting (Brendan and I ripped it off in Vine with the “Outbreak” arc), you can question what accuracy means when a novel represents real events, or you can feel bad about eating bananas. Really, though, we’re talking about striking workers getting mown down by machine guns.
Capitalism might feel inevitable—someone queue up Ursula K. Le Guin—but doing this history study is furthering my belief that it absolutely is not inevitable. The 1910s, 20s, and 30s were rife with strikes, demonstrations, and leftist activism. This country had to work hard for the Red Scare. While I still think FDR is one of three times in US history that we had a halfway decent president, this week’s reading shifted my perceptions of the New Deal and WWII. Not necessarily good or bad. Shifted.
Zinn talks about 350,000 steelworkers striking in Pennsylvania in 1919, 150,000 textile and steel workers in New England and New Jersey striking, and my adopted hometown of Chicago gets a quote from local press: “More strikes and lockouts accompany the mid-summer heat than ever known before at any one time.” What really stayed with me, though, was the story of the Seattle General Strike in 1919. 35,000 shipyard workers walked off the job, then get this—they asked the Seattle Central Labor Council for help! Imagine having a Labor Council. The SCLC recommended a city-wide strike, and the AFL and some IWW locals were on board. Strikers organized provisions for essential needs: fire fighters still clocked in, 35 milk stations and 30,000 daily meals were distributed throughout the city, laundry workers only handled hospital linens, vehicles authorized to move carried “Exempted by the General Strike Committee” signs, and a Labor War Veteran’s Guard kept the peace. It was peaceful, brought crime down, brought wages up, and ended after five days.
After the strike, the socialist party headquarters and a printing plant were raided. 39 IWW members were “jailed as ‘ring-leaders of anarchy.’”
By the end of WWII, of course, everyone forgot that the profiteers and bosses were the enemy. No time to be rational in the face of “communist threat.” Russell Rickford in Four Hundred Souls tells the story of the Peekskill after, where singer Paul Robeson (“…an antifascist…who lent his prodigious talents to trade union struggles…had battled lynching and segregation…promoting Black militancy and cultural pride…ally of the Communist Party…opponent of the Cold War who called for peaceful coexistence…”) was set to give a performance. For the crime of suggesting the US’s fight was not with the Soviets but with Jim Crow, the enlightened residents of Peekskill first prevented Robeson from performing by stoning and beating concertgoers. When he came back to perform the next weekend, defiant and flanked by both Black and white trade unionists, the racists again attacked. Cops stood by and laughed the whole of both times. Afterwards, to gin up the Red Scare, war hawks would say “Wake up, America! Peekskill did!” Cool. Cool country we got.
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Getting off strikes and getting back to massacres, Wounded Knee was an even flimsier excuse than United Fruit had. I had forgotten (or never been taught?) the specific horrors of Wounded Knee. 350 Lakotas (230 of them women and children) crossed below-zero weather in Pine Ridge to surrender to US troops. They were instead taken to Wounded Knee and surrounded by armed soldiers with two hotchkiss machine guns mounted on the hill. That was more than enough, by the way, to hold a surrendering group of mostly non-combatants, to say nothing of annihilating them. During the night, Colonel James Forsyth ordered two more hotchkisses mounted, then he issued the officers whiskey. Next morning comes (Dunbar-Ortiz does not say if the officers were hungover, imagine drinking water in 1890), and the soldiers confiscate anything that could be construed as a weapon. One young Lakota did not want to part with his rifle—something not a single white USian can identify with—a struggle ensued, a single rifle shot went into the air. Chekov’s Hotchkiss time. Within minutes, 300 Sioux and 25 US soldiers lay dead.
20 US soldiers got Congressional Medals of Honor.
Frank L. Baum—guy who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz—said of Wounded Knee, “Having wronged [Indigenous Americans] for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamed creatures from the face of the earth.”
Thus was Western Civilization triumphant. Amen.
Wednesday Links?
It’s not Friday, but I want to include a link. Evan Urquhart over at Assigned has a piece about Ron DeSantis’s legacy as a gender panic-monger, which is probably Meatball Ron’s only legacy now. Hey, I celebrated for a minute on Sunday, too, but after that 30 seconds was over, it was time to feel politically deflated again. It’s an indictment of the US political system that we even know Meatball Rob’s name. Now, we have to live with the very real harms he has caused, aided and abetted by mainstream media’s rush to find a “Trump who can talk good.”
Over and over in these three texts, I see real, important progress interrupted by trivial bullshit. I see any attempts at human beings living in peace thwarted by greed and small-minded prejudice. Then I look at the last three years, and patterns are replaying.
Because let’s be clear: policing which people with which genitals use which bathroom or play which sport is not a serious or important concern. Trans people are people, trans rights are human rights, and whether or not you agree doesn’t matter, because those are facts. But thanks in large part to Rob, lots of people are asking if trans people deserve rights or even acknowledgement, instead of asking things like “what if we actually tried defunding the police and funding social services instead?” or “how do we solve climate change” or “how can we decrease income inequality?”
Hey, who put this George Wallace quote here?
I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about n—rs, and they stomped the floor.
Oh man, how’d this Donald Trump quote get here?
“It’s amazing how strongly people feel about [hurting trans people]. You see I’m talking about cutting taxes, people go like that,” said Trump as he mimicked a golf clap.
“I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy. Who would have thought? Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.”
Now, none of this should be read as me downplaying the struggles of marginalized groups. I’ve said before I believe the choice between class solidarity and solidarity between marginalized groups is a false choice. Studying the history of this country has only intensified my feelings that you cannot fight greed without also fighting bigotry, and you will not defeat prejudice in this country without defeating economic inequality, too. Everyone likes to forget that Dr. Martin Luther King was a socialist, and they won’t even teach you about Fred Hampton until you’re out of college. But I think the 2020 Summer of ACAB has been too quickly swept under the rug, replaced by 1) police killing more people in 2023 than they ever have and 2) trans panic, followed closely by full-throated hysteria—a word I don’t like but am using very deliberately here—over trans people and DEI initiatives. As if DEI is the reason executive pay is up while those of us at the bottom get laid off every other week. As if DEI, not corporate greed and laziness, is the reason Boeing planes are falling apart. They want us divided, is the point, and there’s a centuries-old playbook for it. Let’s not be rubes in real time.
One thing I’m learning with this intensive history study is that not much changes. The arc of history only bends towards justice if we reach out and mangle that motherfucker our own selves.
Other Highlights
Speaking of concepts I only had passing familiarity with: the Ghost Dance! This was a form of resistance developed in concentration camps, originating in Nevada with Wovoka, a Paiute holy man. Dunbar-Ortiz quotes extensively from a 60-year-old Sioux man who remembered the Ghost Dance and recounted it to Sioux anthropologist Ella Deloria: “The people, wearing the sacred shirts and feathers, now formed a ring…All joined hands. Everyone was respectful and quiet, expecting something wonderful to happen. It was not a glad time, though. All wailed cautiously and in awe, feeling their dead were close at hand. The leaders beat time and sang as the people danced…They danced without rest, on and on, and they got out of breath but still they kept going as long as possible. Occasionally someone thoroughly exhausted and dizzy fell unconscious into the center and lay there ‘dead.’ Quickly those on each side of him closed the gap and went right on…[the unconscious] were now ‘dead’ and seeing their dear ones. As each one came to…slowing sat up and looked about, bewildered, and then began wailing inconsolably…But at least they had seen! The people went on and on and could not stop, day or night, hoping…” Apparently this was frightening to settlers, who tried to stop it wherever they could.
Speaking of concepts I only had a Boondocks-or-J.K. Simmons-in-a-Coen-Bros-movie familiarity with: the Freedom Riders! Did you know that the two buses that left D.C. for New Orleans never got there? In South Carolina, they were beaten. In Alabama, a bus got lit up. Like on fire. The FBI watched and took notes. AG Bobby Kennedy gave Mississippi cops permission to arrest the Freedom Riders so they wouldn’t be beaten to death. We’ve come a long way since a white man could get a public whipping for sleeping with a Black woman! Now white people are under threat of being beaten to death for suggesting Black people should be able to vote!
Imani Perry’s essay on Black artists in 1954-59 is illuminating. When we talk about art movements, I don’t know if we think enough about how art is prevented. McCarthyism, the Peekskill affair, general economic hinderances, you know what? Just think about these sentences being placed in this order: “And so in 1954, Black artists and writers found themselves at something of a crossroads. McCarthyism was waning. Brown [vs. the Board] was a beginning, and the FBI surveillance of Black activists under the COINTELPRO program had not yet begun. Possibility, however fraught, was refreshed. And these artists claimed new space.” Perry than goes on to talk about James Baldwin, Elizabeth Catlett, Chinua Achebe, and Lorraine Hansberry.
In Charles E. Cobb, Jr.’s essay on the Civil Rights Movement, he says Ella Baker is “someone who should be much better known.” So here goes: “…brought together generations of Black struggle. The 1960 surge in youth activism drew her immediate attention…to make real change, she stressed, you must organize from the bottom up, empowering those at the bottom.” Baker was also critical of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Dr. King’s org) for ignoring women’s contributions. A great reminder that even the best of us need someone checking them at all times.
Here’s something you don’t hear about the Civil Rights Movement much, from Zinn: “Two years after the Montgomery boycott…an ex-marine named Robert Williams, the president of the local NAACP, became known for his view that blacks should defend themselves against violence, with guns if necessary. When local Klansmen attacked the home of one of the [NAACP] leaders…Willaims and other blacks, armed with rifles, fired back. The Klan left. (The Klan was being challenged now with its own tactic…a Klan raid on an Indian community in North Carolina was repelled by Indians firing rifles.)” I’m anti-gun, but, well.
One more Civil Rights Movement quote from Zinn: “It seemed clear by now that the nonviolence of the southern movement, perhaps tactically necessary in the southern atmosphere, and effective because it could be used to appeal to national opinion against the segregationist South, was not enough to deal with the entrenched problems of poverty in the black ghetto.” Look, I am pro-nonviolent resistance. But I bring these up—highlighted against the violence of the dominant power—because nonviolence gets fetishized a lot. We need to understand and accept that there are more tactics out there than nonviolence. More tactics than violence, too, but still.
18 days after “I Have A Dream,” that Birmingham church was bombed, killing those four girls. We all know the story, I forgot the proximity in time. A week after the Voting Rights Act was signed, cops in Watts, Los Angeles attacked a Black man accused of theft (we all know how much to believe accusations against Black people in the 1960s) and riots broke out. Always a whitelash.
Shoutout to Stokely Carmichael, man.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s essay, “Property,” is an essential read about the passivity of HUD, racism in the real estate industry, and press that credulously sided with developers who called Black women in the market for homes as “unsophisticated buyers.” Perhaps a preview of the ACA, what seemed like a progressive victory (Black people can participate in the real estate market!) was doomed to fail thanks to “corporate underpinnings of public policy…a failure to grapple with the central contradictions of public policies that rely on private sector institutions to fulfill them.”
What a treat to read an essay on the Combahee River Collective written by Barbara Smith, a founding member. These Black feminists organized, held studies, supported campaigns to free people mistreated by the justice system, held political retreats, and more, all “while going to our day jobs, going to school, and struggling to get by financially. Combahee never had an airy, spacious office…We had no executive director or staff. We did not have funders. If we needed money…we would take up a collection. What we did have was each other and a vision.” Read the Combahee River Collective Statement at Black Past. Y’know, since this blog’s not long enough.
Cet’la Sebree’s poem “And The Record Repeats” threads an expert line through activism, living under attack, and the importance of daily tasks like raising kids. I love it.
Bonus podcast #1: Here’s a Curious City episode on Indian Boundary Park. That’s right, I can turn the anti-colonialist eye directly to my own neighborhood! Kadin Mills takes us through Chicago’s history of establishing (then brazenly ignoring) treaties with the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa people, then interviews Northwestern professor and citizen of the United Nation of Wisconsin Doug Kiel about the Land Back movement and how it could apply in Chicago.
Bonus podcast #2: from way back in 2018, Eve L. Ewing’s Bughouse Square podcast, reviving and discussing some of Studs Terkel’s interviews. This one features Studs talking to James Baldwin and Eve talking to Darnell Moore. I include it for the way they talk about history: Baldwin & Terkel talking about whether or not there are two sides to the debate about integrating Ole Miss (see how stupid you look when you do a bothsidism?) and Eve superimposing that on movements of today, plus Baldwin’s assertion that the US must disabuse itself of the useless notion that it is a “white nation.”
Telling myself I was going to make this Wednesday’s column shorter didn’t work at all! Well. Next Wednesday’s the last one, so you know it’s not going to be shorter. Hell. Not much left to say but
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
Thank you for the shout-out!!
for a second there, i thought you were going to talk about the second wounded knee.