When African-American folk and blues legend, Huddie Ledbetter, knownprofessionally as Lead Belly, recorded a version of his song about theScottsboro Boys case for the Smithsonian Institute in 1938, he toldblack people visiting Alabama to "Stay woke, keep your eyes open." Theterm had been in use in African American vernacular in its sense ofpolitical engagement and political awareness for perhaps a century bythen. ---- Two years into the Great Depression, the 1931 Scottsboro Boyscase involved 9 black teenage migrant workers - the youngest being 13-who had jumped a freight train in order to look for work and who werefalsely accused of raping 2 white women. The sentence for black menraping white women in Alabama at that time was death, and in the rushedtrials that were accompanied by baying lynch mobs, all but the youngestwere handed the death sentence.The NAACP and others campaigned against the miscarriage of justice andforced retrials, but the impact on the youths' lives was devastating.Lead Belly had met the men and wrote the song in order to warn otherblack people to "stay woke", as he puts it in the Smithsonian recording.And his political engagement and anti-racism had a class consciousnessto it too, as shown in his song Bourgeois Blues, which he wrote aboutthe racism he faced on a visit to Washington to record for the Libraryof Congress's folk collection. Lead Belly's cry for change addressespoor blacks and poor whites alike. His commentary had a class as well asa race awareness."Home of the brave, land of the freeI don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie".In contemporary mainstream commentary race and class have been separatedin a strange way. To many commentators, class is something that it seemsonly applies to whites. We are used to the media using the phrase "whiteworking class", and we are used to the implied disparagement for assumedreactionary views that are projected onto that group. But those samecommentators are blind to the effects of class on black people and othergroups. We hear of "black communities" and "community leaders", but noclass division in those communities, as if only the white population isaffected by class.We in the ACN are very clear that our class, the working class, is madeof people who are black, white, gay, straight, trans, cis, Asian,disabled, and of all genders. What binds us together is the experienceof the effects of class under capitalism. All working class people haveto sell our labour to live, and we all have our surplus valueappropriated. We are all, in Lead Belly's words, "mistreated by thebourgeoisie".We cannot ignore the other oppressions that people face, and we mustensure the revolutionary movement listens to all the voices of ourclass. But we must use the power of those voices to draw attention tothe economic injustices of capitalism, and the environmental destructionit is doing, felt for longest in the Global South. And we must not allowthe class analysis with which we examine those injustices to be knockedoff the agenda by the liberal establishment.Lead Belly knew anti racism and class consciousness were strongertogether. So when we take up the magnificent Kathy Burke's war cry, "I'drather be woke than an ignorant twat", we join with Lead Belly inforging that awareness in the fire of class consciousness.By Duncan Dundonaldhttps://anarcomuk.uk/2023/11/19/lead-belly-the-scottsboro-boys-staying-woke-and-class/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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