C.L.R. James on Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 20, 2020
Introduction by Scott McLemee
The Caribbean writer and revolutionary C.L.R. James and his family hosted Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife in London in 1957. The following day, James wrote an account of their discussion that circulated among his comrades in Correspondence, a small Marxist group in the United States that published a newspaper of the same name. Much of the text is self-explanatory, but it is worth clarifying a few references and matters of context first…
A visit with Martin Luther King, Jr.
C.L.R. James, March 25, 1957
Yesterday the Rev. Luther King and his wife had lunch with us and stayed here from 12.30 until nearly 5 p.m. … After about two hours of general conversation, Luther King and his wife began to speak about the events in Montgomery, Alabama. I shall include a chapter on their experiences in the book on Ghana, and as I give you an account here of what he said, I shall introduce one or two parallels from the Ghana experience. The more I look at this the more I see that we are in the heart of a new experience which demands the most serious analysis.
One Thursday, on a day in December, a woman was arrested for traveling on the bus in a seat reserved for white people. In Montgomery, Alabama. The woman resisted, and to this day she says she does not know why she did. Thousands of Negroes had obeyed the regulations for many years. A local trade union leader went down and bailed her out and called up Dr. King, suggesting that they should "do something." It was the kind of statement that is made a hundred times a month in various parts of the South whenever one of these outrages takes place. This time, however, King called up a few of the "better" class Negroes and parsons in the community and they called a meeting for the Friday. About 60 of them, upper class Negroes, got together and they decided to call for a boycott. The idea was not entirely new, because some months before, a girl of 15 had defied the bus regulations and people had spoken of the necessity of doing something and had talked about the boycott, but it passed, as so many of these things pass. They decided to call for the boycott and started off at once to inform people by phone. They also prepared a document telling the people not to travel on the buses from Monday morning. The news spread, and on the Monday morning there began one of the most astonishing events in the history of human struggle. The Negro population of Montgomery is about 35,000. From the Monday morning and for about one year afterwards, the percentage of Negroes who boycotted the buses was over 99%. The Commissioner of Police and the head of the Bus Company have stated that never on any day did more than 35 people ride the buses…
The movement for the withdrawal of the pension counter-reform entered its 46th day of strike at the RATP and SNCF on 18 January, the 46th day of mobilisation in various forms across the country.
The strike movement is still supported by a large majority of the population, support shown by the flow of donations into the strike funds, the various expressions of sympathy even from employees inconvenienced by transport strikes, support shown by all the opinion poll institutes, reminding us week after...
The nationwide general strike in France, now entering its record seventh week, seems to be approaching its crisis point. Despite savage police repression, about a million people are in the streets protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed neoliberal “reform” of France’s retirement system, established at the end of World War II and considered one of the best in the world. At bottom, what is at stake is a whole vision of what kind of society people want to live in – one based on cold...
Both sides of the establishment want to bury the legacies of struggle in the communities that abandoned Labour in the 2019 General Election. Ray M, Unite Rep, Aerospace and Shipbuilding Sector, argues that the left cannot afford to do the same.
This essay follows on from two recent articles. The first was written before polling day and defined the election as the ‘Revenge Election’ . It argued that Labour needed to articulate the desire for revenge felt by working-class...
The British ruling class has much to celebrate. Their party — the party of the rich and the corporations — has won its biggest majority since 1987. Our party — the party of working people — has suffered its worst result since 1935.
They are right to celebrate. Millions of working-class people, many of them in once rock-solid Labour seats based on traditional industry and union power, have voted for the party of the bosses. This is the story in many former mining constituencies,...
The student mobilization on 29 November 2019 had a deep echo across Pakistan. Affirming solidarity with all the discriminated and exploited sectors of society, it became a rallying point for a wide range of social and progressive movements in a country and a state undermined by numerous regional, national or religious fractures and by abysmal social inequalities.
This is why repression strikes severely. Activists prosecuted for “sedition” have avoided immediate imprisonment by paying bail. (1)...
The criminal negligence of the Iranian regime and military — shooting down a passenger airliner that had just taken off from their own Tehran airport — should immediately remind us of the dozens, if not hundreds of occasions when United States forces have caused the same kind of civilian collateral carnage.
We don’t have to go all the way back to July, 1988 when the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian jetliner, Flight 655 with 290 victims aboard — for which the United States eventually...
On Saturday, January 11, after three days of denial by the Iranian government about its January 8 downing of a Ukrainian plane over Tehran, a representative of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces admitted that an Iranian missiles had struck the plane by mistake. This had occurred hours after Iran’s missile attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq, which were meant to be acts of retaliation against the January 3 U.S. assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary...
India woke up on January 8, to witness the largest ever strike with an estimated 25 crore (250 million) workers, employees, farmers and rural labourers stopping work and hitting the streets to protest against the Modi government’s economic policies and divisive politics.
Reports coming in from various states indicate that the strike was complete in the country’s massive public sector across sectors, such as steel, coal, other mining, defence production, port & dock, oil & natural gas,...
We, the unions and organizations representing students, workers and the broader communities in the United States, stand in solidarity with the January 8th National Strike by workers and students in India.
The January 8th National Strike has been called by central trade unions in India for higher minimum wages, pensions, employment generation, and against inflation and the new labor laws that will substantially increase the precarity of all workers. We are inspired by the strength of your organizing...
Margaret Jordan, a founding member of Solidarity, died early January 3rd. She is survived by her partner, Mike Parker, and her daughter, Johanna Parker.
Margaret grew up in Berkeley, California and attended the university there. Her parents were immigrants who fled Nazi Germany. An early marriage, to Joel Jordan, didn’t last but her second, to Mike Parker, lasted her lifetime.
Over the course of her work life Margaret was a teacher, nurse and psychologist. In her job as a psychologist at Henry Ford...
Twitter
YouTube
Facebook
RSS Feed
On Race & Class: Obama Forgets Black Community
On Capitalism as Robbery
On Remembering John Brown
On Which Green New Deal?
On Which Green New Deal?