The Socialist Worker has a really interesting historical post up about Willard Motley, who folks in Chicago will know as the first Bud Billiken.

Willard Motley was a writer, activist and supporter of a black man who killed a white landlord after the landlord burned down the apartment complex the black man lived in (killing four of his children) so that the landlord could rebuild smaller apartments, get more tenants and get more money:

The defense committee had Motley’s appeal circulated to many of the largest Black newspapers in the country, including the Chicago Daily Defender. Motley didn’t hold back his feelings about the case when he wrote of visiting Hickman:

You have seen many pictures of men who have killed. You have seen the photographs of the returned soldier. Perhaps next door lives a boy who killed some other boy during the war. In the war, millions of men killed other millions of men because they believed they were a threat to their homes, their wives, their children. This threat was thousands of miles from home. These were strangers killed, with whom there had been no personal contact.

James Hickman killed the man who had threatened his wife and children with a death more horrible than the Nazi gas chambers. And carried it out. This is what I was thinking of as I sat talking to Hickman today. Hickman needs help. There are three children left who need him. A wife who needs him. Will you help us help him?

It’s a really powerful post, one that reminds of historical truths people would rather have forgotten: there are black socialists/communists, most of our ‘parades’ and ‘fun holidays’ in the U.S. have a hugely radical past, that the work and radical activities of people of color are almost always ignored until they are forgotten…

It’s also interesting to me to notice how even in those days, there was tension between the “liberal” economically upward bound media makers and the grassroots members of the community. You see the same tension now–just look at how bloggers are treated by “real” media makers like BET. Look at how bloggers are treated by “liberal” economically upward bound organizations like La Raza. How many grassroots stories do bloggers blog about relentlessly until there is huge amounts of grassroot support such that “liberal” groups can no longer ignore the story? And then those “liberal” groups basically steal the story and act like *they* are the ones that did all the work investigating the story?

The more things change, the more the say the same–so goes the over used trite phrase.