BY G. LOUIS HEATH
THE PROGRESSIVE, October 1970*

G. Louis Heath is assistant professor of the social foundations of education at Illinois State University. He has supposedly made extensive firsthand studies of the developing crisis in East St. Louis. Mr. Heath edited The High School Rebel: Readings in Adolescent School Rebellion and he is now completing a book on the American student movement.

East St. Louis has been historically a racially violent city. A riotous massacre of thirty- nine blacks, much in the style of the Russian pogroms of the Nineteenth Century, stained the city crimson in 1917. Other disturbances have rocked the community since then. The most recent ones occurred in August and September of 1967, at the same time that the smoke of racial conflagration hung over Newark and Detroit.

The young militants, receptive to the national black power movement and indignant about the discovery of voting fraud (voting graveyards and vacant buildings) in a mayoral election that black candidate Elmo Bush lost, eagerly listened to Stokely Carmichael when he visited East St. Louis in March 1967, and cheered H. Rap Brown in September. On the eve of September 10, when Brown departed East St. Louis, serious rioting began. The blacks, even the "Toms," were united in their belief that the police catalyzed the riot. Indisputable evidence — newspaper reports and photo- graphs — sustained the allegation that the police had attacked a peaceful assembly of blacks. A total holocaust was fortunately avoided; the disorder ended in three days without massive violence and destruction.

Following the riot, the black militants organized Black Culture, Inc. late in 1967 and the Black Economic Union early in 1968. Black Culture's essential purpose is to pro- mote black solidarity and revolution. It stresses unifying the black community through the dissemination of Afro-American culture; it is primarily interested in cultural revolution. The Black Economic Union is an ethnic organization, established to countervail institutionalized white racism with collective black power and "drive the white man from our city." The specific aim is to wrest control of the exploited ghetto from absentee landlords and investors through the application of black economic power in such forms as selective buying and the establishment of cooperatives. The Union's ultimate strength resides in its militancy, the not so subtle threat that violence is justifiable given sufficient provocation.

Newspaper reports of police raids and racial violence pulse like adrenaline through the social veins of East St. Louis. Whites have set sales records with their gun purchases, inadvertently divulging their anxiety. The white city fathers responded to the 1967 summer violence by organizing a crime control commission. 

The blacks denounced the commission as a vigilante group, intended only to subvert the momentum of black militancy under the guise of maintaining "law and order." Their immediate response to to the commission was Black Culture, Inc. 

The drive to develop black power in East St. Louis has unified a diverse set of black gangs which have traditionally been rivals. The Black Egyptians, Black Liberators, Black Nationalists, and Imperial War Lords now cling together in an uneasy alliance, rather than constantly contending with one another. (The tendency to confederate does, however, occasionally become tenuous. For example, the Black Egyptians' recreation room was recently firebombed, probably by one of the other gangs.) These groups, menacing and potentially violent as they seem to whites, add a convincing edge to the black economic and cultural thrust. They have synthesized the late Malcolm X's nationalism and Stokely Carmichael's black power into a workable program of action directed toward economic self-determination and political militancy, and laced with the threat of violence. 

Dick Gregory spoke with a group of East St. Louis black militants at McKendree College, twenty miles from St. Louis, just after the Black Economic Union was organized: "You cats have a hipper thing going for you in East St. Louis than we've got in Chicago. You can reach everyone down here." Gregory is basically correct. There is a substantial degree of solidarity and ethnic consciousness; among the East St. Louis blacks. The black revolutionaries' objections to the Vietnam War have even stimulated (or intimidated) black soldiers home on leave to shun khakis for mufti. Five years ago most blacks on leave wore their uniforms with some feeling of distinction.

Black nationalism is fostered by the Experiment in Higher Education at Southern Illinois University's East St. Louis branch. Katherine Durham, famed Negro dancer choreographer-ethnologist and director of the Performing Arts Training Center affiliated with the university, has injected an Afro-American cultural element into the program. The Experiment's students are ninety-five [sic] per cent black; their instructors and counselors are predominantly black. The curriculum is fluid and open, virtually unstructured, and the students have responded by turning their interests to the avant-garde strains of contemporary black culture. This black "curriculum of concerns," purely Deweyan, is really an academic crucible for the diverse cements that now loosely embody the new black identity. The blacks act out their values and feelings to synthesize disparate cultural strands into an authentic black identity. They have immersed themselves in black history and radical philosophy.

They find much that they read in the revolutionaries' justification of revolution by colonially oppressed peoples in Latin American and Algerian contexts to be particularly relevant to their plight. The Experiment in Higher Education is unquestionably playing a major role in producing the intellectual leadership for the black revolution in East St. Louis [emphasis added by the webmaster]. 

East St. Louis, reputed by several accounts to be one of the most corrupt cities in the nation, provides all the ingredients for sustaining a revolution. Police corruption and brutality, a high density of black poverty, union racial discrimination that keeps blacks from jobs, and inept government assure that the black revolution will con- tinue. 

In the fall of 1968 a Michigan State University study reported that the East St. Louis police department's performance was deficient at all levels. The report cited fourteen major problems. Then Police Commissioner Russell T. Bebee blasted the report because he felt it would be too expensive to make the recommended improvements. One of the reforms the report advised was the removal of Bebee, who insisted on ordering police to shoot first and ask questions later. He eventually resigned. The MSU study detailed several incidents of racist behavior by the police such as severe beatings and compulsive shootings of blacks, and the use of epithets like "boy," "nigger," "darkie," and "spade."

The new Police Commissioner, Ross Randolph, Director of Public Safety under Illinois Governors Otto Kerner and Samuel Shapiro, has attempted to improve police performance and police-community relations. He has achieved some success, especially in disciplining his police, who have initiated a trumped-up lawsuit against him for "malfeasance." However, his recent order to fire upon suspicious persons who do not stop after a warning shot has greatly diminished his credibility among blacks, particularly since a white has not been killed in a pursuit for more than a decade. Rex Carr, a radical, local, white lawyer and chairman of the city's Human Relations Commission, who specializes in unpopular cases, is handling the police suit against Randolph. Nevertheless, Carr frankly admits that he finds "a great many of the police are crooks and brutal thugs."

Hunger and nutritional deficiencies constitute a serious problem for blacks in East St. Louis. "The need is so great it is indescribable," according to Will McGaughy, black president of the Metro-East Health Services Council. 

Dr. Rose Cohnberg, now with the University of Missouri at St. Louis, served until recently as medical consultant to the Illinois Department of Public Health Poverty Division in East St. Louis. She notes, her voice filled with emotion: "We had children come to us who were gut- aching hungry because they simply had had no food. And we had old people come for the very same reason. There is no food, so people don't feel well." The young black leaders have convinced many that an empty stomach calls for a revolution.

The black Director of Police-Community Relations, Otis Simpson, sociologically observes: "The absentee white landlords in Belleville, Washington Park, and other surrounding suburbs live in paranoid fear of the city they exploit, but it doesn't occur to them to relieve the human suffering. We need black control of this city. White city administrators have only produced corruption and racial polarization."

The initial impetus for the black revolution was the crescendo of rage which painfully stirred black consciousness in 1965 and 1966. The NAACP then waged a concerted battle to secure employment opportunities for blacks on government projects in the East St. Louis area. It disclosed, for example, that only fifteen of 398 employee on four Federally financed highway construction projects were black, and most of them were laborers.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act theoretically promised equality of opportunity, but the prospect of economic betterment turned to dust when grasped; white racism prevailed save for token concessions. The construction unions proved a bastion of virulent racism and systematic discrimination. The contractors were conveniently fearful of race conflict on the job and interested primarily in profit as usual.

As for the Federal Government, it seemed at the time either blithely unconcerned, or narcotized by bureaucratic inertia, save a few U.S. Department of Labor officials who abortively endeavored to   initiate effective action against discrimination.

The Federal Government finally shouldered its legal and moral responsibility on July 1, 1968, freezing all highway construction funds in St. Clair and Madison Counties because of non-compliance with the equal opportunity requirement on such Federally-supported projects. The freeze continued almost two years, ending June 3, 1970. One gaped upward like a tourist at Stonehenge at the sight of concrete freeways ending abruptly in mid-air, providing a ludicrous drop-off for the imagined motorist. But the unfinished structures intended to connect St. Louis to suburbs beyond East St. Louis were not the ruins of an ancient culture: they were, of course, East St. Louis in a Federal fund freeze. During this abbreviated Ice Age, the Government faulted the unions for racial discrimination and excessive construction costs (the two are related).

The thaw arrived when the Illinois Governor's Office of Human Resources submitted a modest plan for a black job-training program to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Metro-East Labor Council, representing the blacks, and the Southern Illinois Builders Association have accepted the plan, but only two of the construction unions have approved it. This unsubstantial program promises no basic change. Black leader Elmo Bush, principal of all-black Lincoln High School, explains: "The freeze wouldn't have been possible without the new black awareness and commitment to react to discrimination in a sustained, organized way. The black community is becoming increasingly mature and refuses to tuck under to white paternalism and tokenism."

The freeze exacerbated racial tension, undercut rational leadership, and took a heavy economic toll on the two" county area where thirty-seven per cent of all families struggle on annual incomes under $3,000. Forty-five per cent of the black families in East St. Louis live precariously below this level. This full-scale depression is due basically to the fact that thirty-three per cent of the East St. Louis blacks are unemployed, fifteen per cent are employed only part-time, and the remainder are generally working at poorly paid, semi-skilled, and unskilled jobs, primarily in local manufacturing and service industries. An increasing number of blacks are also being employed in the lower levels of the city bureaucracy, as janitors, clerks, and typists.

Gangster complicity in the East St. Louis unions reinforces racial discrimination and blatant profiteering. A 1969 Illinois Institute of Technology construction report, authorized by the city of East St. Louis and funded through the Federal Model Cities program, charges that criminal activity and collusion in the unions are, in part, respon- sible for high construction costs and racial discrimination. Costs in East St. Louis exceed the national average by twenty-five per cent, and are even fifteen per cent higher than in Chicago, where the building trades unions are also adamant obstacles to the amelioration of race relations. Alvin G. Fields, the white mayor of East St. Louis, concealed the ITT report for two months, and released it only when the local Metro-East Journal publicized his suppression of the document. Fields attempted to rebut the findings: "I personally don't think much of this report. It talks about past history, not the present. There is no control by hoodlums, to my knowledge, of any- thing at the present time."

The ITT report concludes: "Coercive activities seem to have instilled fear in nearly all those unfortunate enough to have dealt with the construction industry in East St. Louis. . . . Supervisory personnel have been beaten — killed in one case — and heavy equipment destroyed. . . . Craftsmen who wish to conscientiously work are intimidated. Threats are made upon their lives or the safety of their families and property. . . . Coercive acts, beatings, and killing occur on the construction projects." The evidence strongly supports the inference that organized crime is exerting a major influence in the East St. Louis construction unions. 

The East St. Louis construction industry is a microcosm of the industry nationally: it is extremely backward. It has resisted the introduction of new materials and techniques and the training of sufficient numbers of skilled workers to satisfy demand. A tacit agreement exists among East St. Louis contractors, union leaders, and politicians to preserve the status quo. The unions maintain a tight clamp on the supply of skilled labor in order to inflate wages artificially. Thousands have been denied union membership so that commitments to friends and relatives might be discharged. The non-union workers, mostly blacks, are left no alternative but to do small jobs, such as the construction of single family dwellings in the outlying suburbs and rural areas. If a shortage of a particular skill arises, the unions bring in white workers from other areas rather than train blacks. Black independent contractors have been squeezed out of the market, often by violence, particularly the bombing of their equipment. This further depresses black employment prospects.

The East St. Louis construction industry, like the industry nationally, is capable of a complete technological revolution that could swiftly resolve the city's chronic housing shortage and contribute handsomely to satisfying the rising expectations of blacks. The modular system of construction allows segments of apartments and houses to be built on a factory assembly line, using all-steel wall systems, studs, and frames; the segments are then assembled on the housing site. On one experimental East St. Louis project where modular units were used (FHA would not insure the loan), a four-unit prototype was erected and ready for occupancy in approximately four hours.

The unions fear that modular construction is a threat to their prerogatives and the union movement itself. It is not really a threat, however, if the unions would but rationalize their organizational structure. The unions could rapidly train blacks for semiskilled prefab and modular work. The East St. Louis blacks, now thinking seriously about separate unions (a most basic threat to organized labor) would, in this fashion, soon strengthen the construction unions; they would be beneficially co-opted whereas at present they are isolated and nationalistic, a constant concern. By utilizing prefab, modular, and other new construction technologies, the unions could reduce building costs, expand their work force (especially blacks, although initially at semi-skilled levels), and because of huge unfulfilled construction needs still sustain their high wage rates. Such a policy would render a great service to improving East St. Louis race relations and meeting regional housing needs. Yet the unions will have no truck with reform.

The key issue today in the struggle between blacks and unions i5 the matter of who shall control the apprenticeship and training programs. The unions insist on directing the programs, which to date have included few blacks. By severely rationing admissions to the programs, the unions have won impressive wage scales and a lucrative array of job-related benefits. This exclusiveness has created, however, a world of "haves" and "have-nots," where a heavily disproportionate number of the "have-nots" are black. The East St. Louis construction unionists, living in what must appear to blacks to be awesome opulence — the craftsmen are now making about $9 an hour — cannot see the merit of easing admission requirements for blacks. The white building tradesmen want no job competition. This explains the findings of the research literature that rates unionists with policemen and Southern rednecks. in the paranoid quality of their view of "niggers." The East St. Louis unionists can only think, "Bye, bye, blackbird," when they observe the blacks, moved by their new ethnic consciousness, ask for some of the good things of American life that can be through union membership. They too easily forget (if they are old enough to forget) that black workers want only what white workers sought in the 1930s: more.

The U.S. Department of Labor, sponsor of most Federal manpower programs in East St. Louis, is loaded with programs which train people for non-existent jobs in such areas as building maintenance and die casting. Poor blacks have criticized the system of training that circulates them from one project to another They are cynical about promises of employment after a year or two of training that leads only to another such program. The programs are really designed to channel blacks into menial jobs, avoiding a confrontation with institutionalized discrimination, if the programs are for anything more than pretense at all. One of the most controversial projects trains gas station attendants. The black community, wanting upwardly mobile education, has objected to the denigrating curriculum that assumes that pumping gas is the apex of the black man's aspirations.

The militants' emetic for the persistent brutality, deprivation, and discrimination the East St. Louis black community has nauseously absorbed so long for want of a remedy, is "self-defensive retaliation," whether economic, cultural, or military. East St. Louis is a testing ground for revolutionary strategies. The militants have touched a responsive chord in the "black "silent majority." The city is small enough and black enough for the militant leaders eventually to take control. The purchase of apathetic black votes for five dollars is on the wane. Absentee landlords ate gradually liquida- ting their property assets and white residents, pursued by phantasms of "Black Panther types," are fleeing the city on the vaulting, concrete freeways of callous unconcern that city planners have built for them to immolate psychologically the reality of black despair below. But as they depart, the last days of hegemony for the city's corrupt political machine draw nearer.

A group of East St. Louis liberals, responding to their own fear and guilt and a sense of moral urgency, arranged to meet with the black revolutionary leadership to initiate a plan to obviate race warfare. One dashiki-garbed black, fingering a carved ebony fist hanging about his neck, aptly expressed the revolutionaries' intractability in an aggressive rebuff of one of the liberals: "The only way you can help us is by buying guns 'cuz you can get 'em easier than we can. Get us some guns and then get out of the way." This assertion is not solely cathartic. The police periodically confiscate (sometimes without a warrant) arms and ammunition caches, including dynamite and hand grenades, and occasionally what they have referred to as "plans of terrorism." (The War Lords employ the term "self-defense programs.") The black revolution- aries have used the dynamite and hand grenades. They are willing, if pressed, to wage a defensive war.

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