by Richard Mellor in California
In most workplaces, public workplaces anyway, Black History Month like all of these “months,” is more often than not dominated by tributes to artists, entrepreneurs (successful capitalists) and professionals or inventors, opportunities made more possible for black people in the US through the struggles of the black working class and the Civil Rights Movement. Malcom X and King cannot be ignored so they are treated almost like carnival figures by the white capitalist media and their actual world views obscured.
As is the case with all ethnic groups in the US including white Europeans, the white capitalist class, the source of the ideology of white supremacy, ignores the history of the working class of these groups. What is taught in the US education system in the main is the history of the white male capitalist class.
Working class history in the US is a rich and militant history covering workers’ struggles against a most violent oppressor. The black working class faced even worse conditions and the most degrading violence in this history. The racism of the AFL pretty much kept black workers out and the defeat of the great Pullman strike led by Debs and the American Railway Union, was due to a some degree to the union vote that was taken and passed to keep blacks out of the more skilled jobs which didn’t encourage black workers to support their white brothers on strike. Debs opposed that proposal that passed by a small majority I think.
The first union led by black people was the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) that received an AFL charter in 1925.
The subject of this commentary, ED Nixon, worked in the baggage room of a railway station but eventually got a job as a porter on a Pullman car. This was one of the better jobs for black folks in those days and provided some semblance of a real living. As most of the travellers where white, Nixon also experienced racism beyond his experience growing up in Alabama. Most travellers just referred to every porter as “George” which was Pullman’s first name similar to how slaves in the south were called the name of their owner. Like most black folks he received next to no education, about 16 months total, but it was through union activity that Nixon, who was from a solid working class background, learned his organizing skills.
“The Movement didn’t spring up overnight. It came up that particular night because we found the right person” ED Nixon
ED Nixon, like Rosa Parks, had been active in local struggles in and around Montgomery long before Martin Luther King moved there from Atlanta and they had worked together in the Montgomery NAACP chapter. Mrs Parks became its secretary. * Nixon was the Alabama state NAACP president and also a regional officer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. So, Rosa Parks was not this nice lady that just happened to refuse to get up and give her seat on a bus to a white man that day, there had been talk for a long time about organizing a boycott of the bus system and there were three women that had been arrested prior to Rosa Parks but after checking out the others, Nixon decided she was the best case that could win in court due to her impeccable “moral” character and the nature of the charge which was violating the Alabama segregation law.
After the trial of Parks at which she was found guilty, the verdict Nixon wanted, he and two ministers, Rev. Abernathy and Rev. E.N. French discussed a meeting that was going to take place before a rally scheduled that evening (Dec. 5th 1955). They discussed what they could say at the meeting, proposals for discussion and also a name for the new organization and a president. According to Nixon, Abernathy suggested he take the presidency but Nixon suggested another man, Martin Luther King and this was accepted.
Nixon explained his reason for recommending King. He had heard him speak some months earlier at the Alabama State Teachers’ College. He described to a professor sitting next to him, how he felt after hearing King speak:
“Pierce, you know that guy made a heck of a speech.”
“I agree with you. He sho’ did” Pierce replied
“I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, but someday I’m gon’ hang him to the stars.” Nixon replied.
Martin Luther King accepted the presidency of the new organization that was called the “Montgomery Improvement Association.” And spoke at the rally that evening.
Working class railroad porter
After King spoke at the rally the working class railroad porter followed:
“Good evenin’ my friends”….”I’m so happy to see you all out here tonight, but I wanna tell you somethin’. If you’re scared, you better get your hat and coat and go home. It’s gon’ be a long drawn out affair and before it’s over with somebody gon’ die….May be me, I don’t know….The only request I have is if I’m the one that dies, don’t let me die in vain. For twenty-some-odd years I been fighting and saying to myself that I didn’t want the children to come along and have to suffer all the insults that I’ve suffered. Well, hell, I’ve changed my mind tonight…..I decided that I wanted to enjoy some of this freedom myself”
Nixon eventually split from the Montgomery Improvement Association and had as some put it a “contentious” relationship with Montgomery’s black middle class. Other sources point out that, “On June 3, 1957, Nixon left the MIA to protest what he saw as the domination of the organization by middle class leaders who refused to share power with low income black men and women.” BlackPast.com. Nixon also argued that the Movement tended to ignore local struggles and local activists that had been active for years he countered the view pushed by the white owned media that the boycott or by association, the struggles began on December 5th 1955.
Nixon tells of a woman on a plane who asked him who he was and when he answered she replied, “Oh you’re down in Montgomery, Alabama….I don’t know what’ud happen to the black people if Rev. King hadn’t went to town”.
Nixon replied, “If Mrs Parks had got up and given that white man her seat, you’d never heard of Rev. King.”
At the famous meeting on December 5th 1955 Nixon had taken a much harder line than King and the other preachers who he felt were vacillating and being indecisive. He accused them of being scared. It would seem natural to me as a working class person all my life, that a union activist in the first black union in the AFL would have a more radical outlook than those tied to religious institutions, though, as we have shown on this blog many times, Martin Luther King clearly developed much more of a socialist consciousness toward the end of his life and was certainly a heroic figure. Sometimes though, the best of us need a bit of a push. Both MLK and Malcolm X who broke with nationalism and spoke of revolution eventually occurring not because of skin colour but class differences, were killed because they were right and the US ruling class is well aware of that.
False narrative
Whether ED Nixon’s break from the MIA and conflicts with the intervention of black middle class individuals like King stems from jealousy I certainly cannot say. I am not a black American, I have not studied black American history extensively and I am an immigrant. I wasn’t there relying instead on the few books I have at my home and what older black workers shared with me over 40 years. I am sure that it plays some role after all, there is always class conflict and differences in movements as it is ingrained in the middle classes that they are born to lead and that working people are not qualified to do so. Consciousness has a material base in the last analysis and despite the propaganda, that’s true in the US as well and all groups have class strata. The US state and all its institutions foster this false narrative. That class doesn’t exist, even workers here are referred to as middle class. The influence of the middle class or petit bourgeois in the developing movements today is very strong, both black and white. This will change as the working class enters the US stage much more decisively in the near future. My bet is that the Nixon is probably correct and that his differences were predominantly along class lines.
ED Nixon, July 12, 1899 – February 25, 1987 Railway Porter, Political/Union activist, political anti-racist.
I will certainly welcome any contribution from black folks, especially older workers who can add to this historical account. Much of the information comes My Soul is Rested edited by Howell Raines.
* On another occasion Rosa Parks had drafted a letter under Nixon’s signature and without his consent protesting an Alabama politician’s statement that passage of a federal anti-lynching law would, “destroy the peaceful relations between the two races.”
February 4, 2019
From the American socialist blogsite, Facts for Working People, at:
https://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/
