Sojourner Truth Organization was a
new communist group formed in the winter of 1969, prominent in the Midwest through 1985. Oriented towards
organization in the workplace, and named after African American activist
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and a women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to f ...
, the organization distinguished itself from other
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, ...
groups in its critical approach to the role of
race in the formation of the American working class.
History and ideology
Noel Ignatiev
Noel Ignatiev (; December 27, 1940 – November 9, 2019) was an American author and historian. He was best known for his theories on race and for his call to abolish " whiteness". Ignatiev was the co-founder of the New Abolitionist Society and ...
, a former leader of the
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...
, became a prominent member of the STO, and expressed the group's sentiment:
:''in modern industrial societies, bourgeois rule depends on the development of a variety of "systems" that channel the outbreaks of the exploited class and allow their absorption by capital; that the specifically American framework for this process is the white-skin privilege system — the conferring of a favored status on the white sector of the proletariat; and that the trade unions cannot be understood apart from this framework.''
Ignatiev would later contribute to the formulation of
critical race theory
Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary examination, by social and civil-rights scholars and activists, of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. Goal ...
, and edit ''
Race Traitor
Race traitor is a pejorative reference to a person who is perceived as supporting attitudes or positions thought to be against the supposed interests or well-being of that person's own race. The term is the source of the name of a quarterly magaz ...
'' magazine.
According to historian Michael Staudenmaier, "The Sojourner Truth Organization was founded in Chicago at the end of 1969, partly by people who had been involved with the
RYM II faction of the recently crumbled SDS. The group largely turned its back on the student milieu, and instead focused its efforts on what has been variously called "industrial concentration" or "(point of) production work." This focus dominated the group's first several years, until the mid-1970s. During this time, the bulk of the membership (close to 50 people at some points) was employed full-time in a variety of factories throughout the Chicago area. In this context, the group agitated for what it called mass revolutionary independent workers' organizations, built alliances with black and Latino revolutionaries in workplaces, and struggled around a variety of campaigns that reflected the group's strategic orientation of placing the struggle against
white supremacy
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
front and center. Since STO was the first post-new left group in Chicago to emphasize production work, it was able to tap into and relate to a strikingly broad range of workplace struggles, wildcat strikes, and independent organizing efforts. Some of the best stories told by former members focus on these experiences. Still, the failure to build any sort of lasting momentum (much less a mass organization) caused STO to reflect critically on the limitations of industrial concentration as the group had practiced it throughout the early 1970s.
References
Further reading
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External links
Sojourner Truth Organization (1969-1985) - Digital Archive– A digital repository of the Sojourner Truth Organization's pamphlets, newspapers, and propaganda
{{Authority Control
Sojourner Truth
Political organizations based in the United States
Communism in the United States
1969 establishments in Illinois
1985 disestablishments in the United States