Labor / Civil rights & activism
General Baker
1941–2014 · autoworker, labor organizer, revolutionary activist
Detroit autoworker who co-founded the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in the late 1960s.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 72- Birth name
- General Gordon Baker Jr.
- Also known as
- General Gordon Baker Jr.
- Detroit years
- 1941–2014
- Field
- Labor, Civil rights & activism
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
General Gordon Baker Jr. was born in Detroit in 1941 to parents who had come from Georgia so that his father could find work in the auto industry. As a student at Wayne State University he read Marx and joined socialist and Black nationalist circles, and in 1964 he travelled to Cuba to study the revolution there. Back in Detroit he took a job at the Dodge Main plant in Hamtramck, where Black workers held the hardest, most dangerous jobs. After a wildcat strike in 1968 he and fellow workers founded the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, DRUM, and soon the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, which spread similar movements to other Detroit plants and challenged both the automakers and the union leadership. Fired for his role in the strikes and blacklisted, he was hired again only by applying under a false name at the Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn. He remained a Marxist organizer for the rest of his life and died in Detroit in 2014.
Highlights
- Co-founded DRUM at Dodge Main in 1968
- Co-founded the League of Revolutionary Black Workers
- Blacklisted, then rehired at the Ford Rouge plant under a false name
- Chaired the League of Revolutionaries for a New America
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1960s
Dodge Main (site)
Demolished · 1910–1980
The Hamtramck Dodge plant where he worked and co-founded DRUM in 1968; closed in 1980 and demolished, its site is now GM's Factory Zero.
Worked here · 1970s–
Ford River Rouge Complex
Ford's Dearborn complex, where he worked after being blacklisted elsewhere, hired under a false name.