28 Days of Black Liberation 2025 series
Over one million Black Americans migrated to the north during and after slavery; The Chicago Defender titled this mass migration The Exodus.
For centuries Black Americans were hunted, killed and tortured just for trying to move. This migration was not just about safety but was political as well. Black people took their power and labor up North, and this was both terrifying both Northern whites and Southern whites.
Within border imperialism in 1919 as well as today, the dual processes of displacement and migration have been manufactured through the specific trajectories of colonialism and capitalism.
The 1919 Red Summer was a direct manifestation of how racialized migration crises were deliberately manufactured to uphold white supremacy and rigid political borders. As Black people fled the brutal conditions of the South during the Great Migration, seeking Northern cities for a greater chance at surviving, they were met with violent backlash from white communities threatened by demographic shifts as well as economic shifts. Many white men came back from the war shocked that Black men were working jobs previously reserved for white men. More importantly white people were shocked that Black Americans post World War 1 were not assimilating back into their old social order in America.
The mobs in 1919 were not composed of KKK members but everyday white people factory workers, veterans, teachers etc. This period demonstrated how political and racial boundaries were constructed to control movement, maintain class order, labor, and social order. The migration was not just a search for better opportunities, but an attempt to break free from centuries of systemic oppression—something the state and white elites were determined to suppress. The violent riots were a desperate reaction to this challenge to the racial and economic status quo, where borders—both geographic and social—became battle lines in a struggle to control who could exist where and under what conditions.
During the month of February GDC honors the legacy of the Black Liberation Struggle. Our program – 28 Days of Black Liberation – seeks to highlight the history, take inspiration, and draw lessons from the Black freedom struggle. The GDC sees the Black Proletariat as the vanguard of the class struggle in the United States – from early rebellions led by enslaved African people to the George Floyd Rebellion. The 28 Days of Black Liberation is a chance to reflect on this history of resistance and continue the revolutionary struggle against white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism. Each week we will focus on one event/movement that we think is critical. We will also have events each week to allow for collective discussion and deepening our understanding and revolutionary commitment.