Sign up to receive email notices of recent acquisitions.

Fight Repression join the Black Workers Congress.

Detroit: Black Workers Congress, [1971]. Illustrated broadsheet, 14” x 8.5”. CONDITION: Good, some toning at edges and along old fold, two small chips, at lower and upper right corners, neither affecting text.

An apparently unrecorded broadsheet picturing and describing the 1971 Anti-STRESS rally in Detroit and promoting membership in the Black Workers Congress.

The rally took place on September 23rd, 1971: “THOUSANDS of Black workers, students, housewives turned out…to protest the outrageous slaughter of Black people occurring in plants, prisons, and our communities across the country.” Incensed by the abuses suffered by African Americans in prisons and at the hands of the police, the protesters silently “marched to demonstrate their outrage at these…attacks on Black life. At the same time, tens of thousands of brothers and sisters in Los Angel[e]s, Atlanta, New Orleans, New York and other cities across the nation also demonstrated against these events.” The text further notes the significant involvement of the Black Workers Congress, without whose help “the march could not have succeeded in having the tremendous impact on the power structure that it did…the support of Black workers is essential for our long range success.”

Indeed, the Anti-STRESS protest “was organized when the…CONGRESS joined with…other organizations to form the STATE OF EMERGENCY COMMITTEE which was responsible for the mobilization of a broad coalition…representing every section of our community. The first public action of the committee was the march.” Urging readers to “JOIN THE MOVEMENT,” the broadsheet lists six facts about police and capitalist violence against African Americans motivating the Congress’s activities. The illustration shows protesters at the rally packed into the square in front of—and along the balconies of—the imposing Lawyers Title Insurance Corporation building in Detroit. Some 5000 people took part in the event.

STRESS, which stood for “Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets,” was a tactical unit of the Detroit Police Department founded in January, 1971 and based on a concept of “proactive policing”:

STRESS unit teams would deploy undercover for surveillance and decoy operations and…deter street crime by catching and arresting muggers and robbers in the act, or even in anticipation of the crime that they were presumably about to commit. Police officers volunteered to join STRESS, which was overwhelmingly white and quickly gained a reputation within the DPD as an elite strike force and a prestigious assignment for the toughest cops. The unit targeted black “street criminals” almost exclusively, and its operations quite…unapologetically, revolved around racial profiling as its very foundation. (“The Creation of STRESS”)

By the time STRESS was disbanded in 1974, undercover officers from Detroit’s police department had killed over twenty African American men.

The Congress was founded in December of 1970 to support and expand the League of Revolutionary Black Workers through the creation of Black caucuses, “Chicano and Puerto Rican revolutionary caucuses, Third World labor alliances, independent revolutionary union movements and other forms of revolutionary labor associations that seek to break the strangle-hold of the reactionary labor bureaucrats and the capitalistic class collaborators” (Forman). As this broadsheet states, the goal of the Congress was to destroy “the system through which” African Americans “are systematically exploited, oppressed, and murdered – the system of imperialism.” The organization emphasized “the key role…Black Workers, must play in…liberation…because of the tremendous power which Black Workers have in the factories, at the point of production. Black workers are at the foundation of the American Industrial Economy…black workers have [the] power to stop this COUNTRY through the use of a united Black work stoppage.”

We find no record of this broadsheet in OCLC or elsewhere online.

A rare document of this African American protest against police violence and systemic injustice, published by an organization leveraging the power of Black labor for Civil Rights.

REFERENCES: Forman, James. Manifesto of the Black Workers Congress. Detroit, 1971; Merriman, Doug. “A History of Violence: The Detroit Police Department, The African American Community, and S.T.R.E.S.S.” at S.T.R.E.S.S. online; “The Creation of STRESS” at Detroit Under Fire online.

Item #9000

Price: $950.00

Add to Wish List