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Session 3: Comparative Case Study - The South End, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and Popular Propaganda





Host: 

Too Black is a poet, member of Black Alliance For Peace, producer of The Last Dope Intellectual Podcast, and host of The Black Myths Podcast on Black Power Media. He is based in Indianapolis, IN and can be reached at tooblack8808 at gmail.com or @too_black_ on Twitter.

Description: 

On September 26th, 1968, Black Panther and Detroit-based Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) member, John Watson, took over as Editor-in-chief for The South End newspaper at Wayne State University. According to Watson, he took over “with the intention of promoting the interests of impoverished, oppressed, exploited, and powerless victims of white, racist monopoly capitalism and imperialism.” Watson’s organization, DRUM, as well as FRUM (Ford Revolutionary Union Movement) and ELRUM (Eldon Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement), went on to form the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. 

In this session, we will study the origins of this Black workers movement in relationship to the propaganda arm of the press. We will look at how The South End covered issues relating to Black Workers in Detroit vs. the bourgeois Detroit Free Press. The examples in the reading will focus on the struggle between Black workers in Detroit and the UAW (United Auto Workers). More broadly, we will focus on how ‘the popular’ is formed and manipulated. With these examples and texts, we hope to form a more comprehensive understanding of how emancipatory journalism is essential to combating capitalist propaganda. 


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