Baker, General Gordon

BAKER, GENERAL GORDON (1941-2014). A labor radical, Black liberation fighter and revolutionary activist, Baker was born in Detroit, Michigan, shortly after his family moved from Augusta, Georgia. In the early 1960s he attended Highland Park Community College, then Wayne State University, while also working in a foundry for Ford Motor Company. Baker and fellow students at Wayne State formed UHURU (Swahili for Freedom), a radical Black nationalist group.

In October 1963, at a downtown event to publicize Detroit’s bid for hosting the 1968 Olympics, Baker and fellow UHURU members picketed, booing the National Anthem, and were subsequently arrested for disturbing the peace. Baker also played a role in the formation of the Revolutionary Action Movement, an underground Black revolutionary organization. In 1964, he was part of a large US delegation to Cuba, where he met other US activists, as well as radicals from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He also met Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Robert Williams, the exiled Black radical who broadcast the weekly “Radio Free Dixie” from Cuba. In 1965, Baker was arrested for refusing the draft in Detroit but was released when the draft board rejected him as a security risk.

After the 1967 Detroit uprising, Baker along with John Watson and Mike Hamlin, began publishing the Inner City Voice and later Wayne State’s South End newspaper when Watson became editor after it was taken over by radical students. In 1968, Baker, who was also working at Hamtramck’s Dodge Main Chrysler plant, was part of a wildcat strike of 4,000 Black and white workers, protesting speed-up, unsafe conditions, and racial discrimination. He was fired, but subsequently became the leader and main organizer of the in-plant Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement DRUM, which inspired other branches in Detroit and radical Black caucuses throughout the country. To coordinate these in-plant groups, Baker, along with Hamlin, Watson, Ken Cockrel, Chuck Wooten, Luke Tripp, and John Williams formed the League of Revolutionary Black Workers LRBW. The League was perhaps the most important and influential Black Power group of the 1960s.

In 1971, the League split; Baker and his allies joined the Communist League led by Nelson Peery, subsequently renamed the Communist Labor Party and in 1986 the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. Baker also ran for Congress in 1976 and 1978. He continued to work at the Ford River Rouge plant, becoming chairman of the shop committee of UAW Local 600 in the 1980s, eventually retiring from the plant.

Along with his wife of many decades, Marian Kramer, Baker continued to be active in radical politics until his death. He frequently gave guest lectures at Wayne State University, often providing commentary for the film “Finally Got the News” about the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Baker was one of the main organizers for the massive memorial event for Robert Williams in November 1996 held at Wayne State University; he also played a major role in having Robert Williams’s influential book Negroes with Guns (1962) published by the university Press.

Georgakas, Dan & Marvin Surkin. Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution. Chicago: Haymarket Press, 2012.

Goldberg, David. “Detroit’s Radical.” Jacobin Magazine. 2014 https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/05/detroit-s-radical-general-baker/