Indignant Heart: A Black Worker's Journal

I recently finished the first part of Indignant Heart: A Black Worker's Journal by Charles Denby, and have to say that it is a great, great read.

The book is a written account of his life as orally told by Denby (or rather, by Si Owens, who originally wrote under the pseudonym of Matthew Ward and later under the pseudonym of Charles Denby). Denby was originally born in Alabama in the early 20th century to a family of sharecroppers and farmers. He joined a massive migration northbound in 1924 when he moved to Detroit to find work in the factories.

During the Depression he was laid off, so he temporarily moved back South, first to Alabama with his family and then to Montgomery when he found the farm work unbearable. He would eventually return to Detroit in the 1940s to work in the auto plants. He was a rank-and-file militant, and recounts numerous episodes of the everyday resistance among Black workers against the white racists of the rural South, against the bosses in the northern factories and the growing union bureaucracy.

From what I can gather from Part I, Denby got involved with a Trotskyist group in the 1940s, which is how he met and came to work with the Johnson-Forest Tendency until it eventually split. He helped build a new formation with Raya Dunayevskaya resulting from that split, known as News and Letters Committees, and later become editor of its newspaper [News & Letters].

There's a lot to take away from Part I of the book. I highly recommend it as a really accessible reading on working-class resistance, the relationship of race & class, critiques of the union bureaucracy, and much, much more. Now that I think about it, it is not really an autobiography about Denby; rather, it is an account of social life and working-class self-activity during a particular historical period (1920s–1940s)....

EVERYDAY RESISTANCE & SELF-ACTIVITY

Denby highlights the everyday resistance of workers around him to their oppression. The book is a solid reminder of the fact that the essence of our day-to-day life is struggle! In one sense, this struggle can (and should!) take the form of organizing, collective struggle with others. In another sense, there is a lot of individual struggle and self-overcoming that happens as people have to fight just to preserve their self-respect in the face of constant attack.

Existence within a white supremacist, patriarchal capitalist society comes at the cost of unceasing battle against the relations that try to twist us and turn us into objects, things that are less than human.

This recurring theme in the text really made me think of how right now, as a young twenty-something militant, I look to struggle with excitement, some fear or self-doubt but mostly positive anticipation. But imagine spending 20, 30, or 40 years engaged in that day-to-day struggle?

That shit wears you down, it absorbs so much energy and can age us much quicker than we might otherwise feel. It takes a lot to keep fighting, and I imagine it is really only the collective struggle, vibrant movements and revolutions that can revive us and help maintain us over time.

Denby's reflections on growing up in the Jim Crow South capture very well this day-to-day struggle. But he does so in a way that is really positive and highlights how most Black folks of his generation didn't take no shit! Fuck the textbook histories of slavery and Jim Crow that portray us as walking around with our heads down all the time, all scared and timid until some big Leader comes along and brings change (MLK, Malcolm, etc.). Denby shows a strong community with many individuals who were "meaner than hell" and who put fear into the hearts of the bosses and racists….

--From Nothing but a Human, by L Boogie

To see the entire post on L Boogie's blog, visit: http://nothingbutahuman.wordpress.com/2011/08/ 21/themes-from-indignant-heart-a-black-workers-journal-part-1/

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