Vol. 71/No. 31      September 3, 2007

For nearly 30 years the party has had a branch there. Socialists recently closed the branch and consolidated their forces in Atlanta. They continue to reach out from there to working people throughout the region.

Members of the Socialist Workers Party joined in the civil rights battles in Alabama and throughout the South. During the 1955-56 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, SWP members helped drive station wagons there, donated in response to an appeal from Black rights fighters there.

In 1966 socialists reported for the Militant in Lowndes County, Alabama, on the voting rights struggles there and the formation of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. This was an independent Black political party that contended with the Democrats and Republicans for county offices.

In 1979 the Socialist Workers Party established a branch in Birmingham, a center of the coal and steel industries, as the party got into basic industry and the industrial unions to carry out its political and trade union work. Coal miners had been part of the successful 1977-78 United Mine Workers national strike. Women were fighting their way into previously “male” jobs in mines and steel mills.

The SWP opened a headquarters in downtown Birmingham. They joined in struggles and fielded candidates for public office. They distributed the Militant at mine portals, factory gates, on campuses, and in working-class communities, as well as on the job in mines and plants.

One antiracist battle was in defense of Tommy Lee Hines, a Black man who was mentally retarded and was framed up on rape charges in Decatur, Alabama. In 1979 party and Young Socialist Alliance members joined protests to demand justice for Hines. Civil rights fighters waged a campaign against armed attacks by Ku Klux Klan thugs backed by local cops.

Two socialists were attacked that year while selling the paper to workers at the entrance to U.S. Steel’s Concord coal mine. They were badly beaten by a company-inspired goon squad. The party campaigned and won support for the right to sell the Militant.

Socialist coal miners in Alabama were part of organizing the Coal Employment Project, which fought to get women hired in the mines and defend their rights on the job in face of company-promoted bias.

Socialist workers were part of successful unionization fights at the Haverpride Farms poultry plant and at Trinity Industries, a rail car plant. The 1988 strike that won recognition of the Steelworkers union at Trinity brought together young and veteran workers, Black and white. Socialist workers in the Jim Walter mines were part of the fight by UMWA miners to push back the company’s assaults on job safety. The underground mines in Alabama are among the deepest shaft mines in North America. They have some of the highest concentrations of methane gas among U.S. mines. Miners have had to fight constantly to force the company to abide by basic safety norms and federal mining law.

In September 2001, an explosion that claimed the lives of 13 miners at the Jim Walter Brookwood No. 5 mine was deadly confirmation of the stakes in this struggle. Socialists in Birmingham took part in miners’ actions and reported on the fight for the Militant.

Socialist workers in Alabama have also worked in defense of the Cuban Revolution, such as helping build speaking engagements for visiting revolutionaries from Cuba.

They have championed the fights by Black farmers in the region to keep their land and against discrimination. Often these struggles have overlapped with union battles such as the strike of Titan Tire workers and catfish workers in rural Mississippi.

These are some of the struggles by working people in Alabama that the Socialist Workers Party has been part of for more than three decades. It is a proud history. And socialist workers and Young Socialists are pledged to continue to be part of these struggles.
 
 
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Birmingham forum marks move to strengthen socialists' work in South  
 
 
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