This month 56 years ago, June 1969, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers was formed in Detroit, Michigan. The League was an independent, combative revolutionary Marxist labor organization that, while existing for only a handful of years, was able to organize thousands of workers in Detroit, in particular New Afrikan/Black auto workers. The League understood acutely that they could not build power through the established labor movement and had to build something new that truly represented the needs of the Black workers in Detroit, as well as the needs of the revolutionary process in the United States. They would come up against not just a government and capitalist class that would target them with state repression and firings but also a union leadership that was corrupt to its core and embedded with national chauvinism and white supremacism. At a time when many revolutionaries were theorizing about students or the lumpenproletariat being the principal revolutionary force in the United States, the League showed that the path to revolution still lies in organizing the working class at the point of production.

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