Black Lives Matter at Work

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HISTORY/PRACTICE
Massive Freedom Schools
Conor Tomás Reed, CUNY, Free University–NYC
Movements to overthrow racial capitalism have always been most
effective when they become massive freedom schools in motion. When
we’re aware of the histories of domination and resistance that built our
present situations, we can more clearly enact revolutionary futures. Black
labor is at the center of this liberation project. Let these examples be
among our ammunition:
Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South
explores “slave revolts, multiracial banditry, labor battles, prison
uprisings, and urban riots” that have sustained a long Southern freedom
struggle, which Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights,
1919-1950 picks up through the early 20th century, while At the Dark End
of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance foregrounds Black
women’s labor in the process.
Hubert Harrison, the African Blood Brotherhood, and a strong Caribbean
current of race and labor radicalism in the 1920s and 30s transformed the
NYC Communist Party into a militantly anti-racist group. Its rise and
demise are worth studying—on unlearning racism through shared actions,
and how hierarchical global organizing models can squelch local
initiatives.
The Highlander Folk School in Tennessee was an integrated labor
movement camp for a few decades before its popular education role in
the 50s-60s freedom movement. Myles Horton discusses some of this in
his conversations with Paulo Freire.