“The Johnson Method”: Violence, Self-Defense, and the Revolutionary Union Movement of Detroit

Abstract

Using the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) as a case study, this essay explores the physical and epistemological violence waged against Black automotive workers and the violent conditions at the point of automotive production of the era. Surveying the history of Black labor’s uses of protective defense, as well as the rhetoric of violence in Detroit’s Black community, this study elucidates the use of armed self-defense during the Black Power era. The intersection of anti-Black violence on the shop floor and in the community led a militant and radical subset of Black automotive workers to advocate for protective violence against auto manufacturing corporations, which the LRBW articulated as the “Johnson Method.” James Johnson Jr.’s July 15, 1970, violent outburst on the shop floor was presented by the LRBW as a revolutionary act of self-defense against white supremacy and anti-Black violence and as a prescribed new direction of the Long Black Freedom Struggle.