Violence
DRUM dedicates most of this issue to detailing cases where Black workers have been driven to their limits by oppressive conditions and antagonistic supervisors. One of the more brutal examples is the case of James Johnson, jr. who shot dead two foremen, one of which was Black, and a job setter at the Eldon Ave plant. Johnson justified his actions by saying this was a result of years of harassment. DRUM purports that the Eldon Ave plant, home to ELRUM, had even worse conditions than Dodge main. This included oil on the floor, a broken ventilation system, dangerous jitneys which lacked breaks, horns, or lights, no safety guards for drills, and pathways consistently being blocked, all of which management has done nothing to address.
The terrible conditions at Eldon conceal the fact that this is the only gear and axle plant for all of Chrysler’s assembly plants, making it essential for operations. Clearly workers were not treated as such. Despite numerous strikes, Black workers continued to die at the plant at unprecedented rates. Most of these deaths were from preventable accidents. Others occurred when workers were overworked and sent to Chrysler doctors who in turn sent them back to work and to their deaths.
Returning to the Johnson case, events spiraled out of control when Johnson got in a car accident and Chrysler doctors forced him back to work. He was then discharged and then reinstated, harassed, and then placed in an even worse and more unsafe position. Protesting his ill treatment, he was subsequently fired and escorted out of the plant, fulfilling a conspiracy against Black workers DRUM detailed. He returned to the plant with a gun and killed three men while in pursuit of the General Foreman who he did not find. Laying down his weapon, he offered no resistance during arrest and simply stated that he was satisfied. Johnson is only one of many cases where Black workers were driven to murder. While DRUM supported Johnson, this case is used to illustrate that non-violence can only get their movement so far. “The owners and operators of the means of production own our jobs, our homes, and our families. We have neither security nor hope for the future”. DRUM’s Marxist influence and frustration with diminishing returns is all too evident: “They can defeat one armed enraged Black worker, but they cannot defeat a million armed Black workers or the unified mass of 20 million.”